"That far-off divine eventTo which the whole creation moves."
The Eugenist does not say that religion, morality, and education are ineffective, he only claims that these great forces should apply to the foundations of society instead of being spent anddissipated in a thousand less important directions.
Eugenics is not a step in the dark. The theory is based on observation and its practice on a selection of the innumerable experiences of mankind. Since the first man married the first bride mankind has been unconsciously offering an accumulation of experiments in improvement, deterioration and stagnation of the race. It is only inexplicable reticence which has diverted man's study from these phenomena. Failure to appreciate relative values, the prejudice arising from a debased or immature morality, the bigotry of misunderstood religion and the dread of wounding prudish susceptibilities have led competent writers to devote to pigs and sheep volumes which should have had man for their subject. "The noblest study of mankind is man," but our naturalists have not advertised it sufficiently. Charles Darwin, whose powers of minute observation are admitted to havebeen supreme even by those who dispute his conclusions, recognised the racial bias against "the noblest study." Writing to A. R. Wallace in 1857 he said: "You ask whether I shall discuss 'man.' I think I shall avoid the subject, as so surrounded with prejudice; though I admit it is the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist."
The old attempts to divide mankind into good and bad have failed beyond recall. The first lesson we can learn from a study of the past is to recognise the probably infinite variety of type which exists, not only in the attainments, but in the potentialities of various types of man and woman. We no longer wonder at differences of mentality when we know the variations in bodily form and structure. We see that some are capable of endurance, some are physically weak, some are almost leonine in strength. Each variation in strength may be united with differing degrees of other qualities, of sight, of motion, oftemperament—there is no end to the combinations. We are well on the road to the elements of Eugenics when we have grasped two facts, the analysable distinctions between individuals, and the fact that broadly speaking a child is endowed with its essential characteristics from birth. The qualifications of the hereditary principle need not be set forth here. Darwin's theory is being modified in our day on important but not vital details. Eugenics is only interested in so far as we admit this broad generalisation to which no scholar of to-day would substantially demur.
We cannot in every case disentangle human characteristics with sufficient precision to warrant us in saying which combinations are desirable and which are undesirable. We can, however, get into our minds the idea that one good quality may be happily supplemented by another, or that certain characteristics might prove irreconcilable in combination. For instance strong sexuality alliedto moral responsibility would prove an admirable combination, but the former quality in conjunction with weak mentality would work for certain ill. The marriage of near relations has been demonstrated to stereotype existent combinations, the evil is not as was once feared that the act was in itself categorically immoral and therefore followed by Nature's punishment. It amounted to the same thing in many cases because Nature's law is progress or retrogression; to stand still is to stultify the law of the universe. The highest and noblest physically, morally and mentally are the most complicated, and there is little danger that they will find their match amongst those with whom they are likely to marry. The risk of like marrying like is more inherently probable amongst the commonplace and mediocre. The danger becomes a terrible one when the lowest rung of the ladder is reached and it is here that intermarriage is most common if not invariable. The lowestdegenerates, the most vulgar criminals the absolute failures, the "creatures who once were men" rarely have sexual unions of any sort or kind outside their own degraded circle. The unfit breed more of their kind and do not improve. The commonplace may by happy chance or on wise information mingle just those characteristics which raise the race to a higher level. The highest like those in the last category, may in the next generation lead to still higher heights or they may maintain their standard of efficiency, or their caste may sink to lower circles. In any of these cases of course there is the alternative that their race may be extinguished. All this is merely to state the case as it stands. There are few who dispute the facts, the Eugenic remedy is either not appreciated or it is ignored. It cannot be a subject of indifference whether the best types increase or the worst. It must matter to the race, it must seriously affect the present generation, it must be of increasingimportance to each generation. Cruel, harsh, severe, repressive laws have been discarded as ineffective and inhuman. We cannot go back to an abortive policy which failed even a Torquemada. On the contrary we have repressed natural checks to population and must increasingly continue to do so wherever we discover new methods of foiling Nature's indiscriminate destructiveness. The stream of tendency cannot be dammed, we must adapt our social mill-wheels to the new channels which the river of time has cut in the fields of experience.
We must discard the old unscientific view of existence as an inexplicable riddle, of marriage as a lucky bag, of crime as a mere chance occurrence, of genius as a "sport," of events as casualties or accidents and of goodness as accessible to all and badness the deliberate choice of the wilful. A few years ago a well-known publisher exposed a huge poster advertising his encyclopædia. It wascalled "The Child; What will he become?" Two series of pictures were given, the top line indicating the gradual ascent of the child fortunate enough to read the encyclopædia. By easy stages he passed through the Sabbath school, emerged into the business office where he accumulated wealth and a cheerful countenance, he ascended into the paradise of benevolent baldness and appeared in the final picture a happy patriarch breathing out blessings and probably platitudes at every pore. Contrasted with these series, the bottom line pictorially followed the awful fate of the child who did not read this wonderful work. He deteriorated rapidly, first a pickpocket, then a forger, finally a murderer, and a drunkard all the time. This is the classic exaggeration of the unscientific view actually held by some well-meaning reformers. And if we ridicule this discredited theory of life why do we not frankly disavow the hopeless "reforms" which are the naturalproduct of this haphazard view? We accept the doctrine on which Eugenics is based because all the facts conform it, but we continue to spend our time and money on methods of reform which have lost their root and now only cumber the ground.
The "points" of an animal have for ages been the subject of the breeders' successful efforts, but they are not more certainly inherited than are the form of a man's head, his stature, the colour of his eyes, and the length of his life, all of which are hereditary like the colour of a horse, the scent of a flower and the shape of an apple. Naturalists no more than farmers can with exactness predict that 173 live lambs will be born on one farm, that every flower of the same class will give equally abundant perfume, or that every fruit on the same tree will weigh just the same to an ounce. We are still more ignorant or at least equally ignorant about the exact results in a particular instance of thecharacter of the individual offspring even when we are reasonably well acquainted with all its antecedents. We can say with certainty, however, as Dr. Karl Pearson says that "of all the children of a definite class of parents like A and B we can assert that a definite proportion will have a definite amount of any character of A and B, with a certainty as great as that of any scientific prediction whatever. I am not speaking from belief or from theory but simply from facts, from thousands of instances recorded by my fellow-workers or myself. Here is a great principle of life, something apparently controlling all life from its simplest to its most complex forms, and yet, though we too often see its relentless effects we go on hoping that at any rate we and our offspring shall be the exceptions to its rules. For one of us as an individual this may be true, but for theaverageof us all, for the nation as a whole, it is an idle hope. Youcannot change the leopard's spots, and you cannot change bad stock to good; you may dilute it, but until it ceases to multiply, it will not cease to be." (National Life from the Standpoint of Science.) The reformer sees in these facts the basis of his highest hopes as certainly as he sees therein the condemnation of all attempts at reform which ignore these bed-rock truths. Permanent maintenance of good standards, gradual elimination of the hopelessly bad stock, and experimentation designed to utilise all the good elements on the border line between the desirable and the undesired—this is the Eugenist's programme in the immediate present. His ideal goes beyond this practicable programme, for the Eugenist aims at some final justification of Nature. Without worshipping Nature he desires to understand her processes and walk in harmony with her tendencies.
The most potent of all the beneficent influences in the organic world has beenthe law of Natural Selection. By "Law" of course we merely mean the observed invariable sequence of events, and whether or not this universe has a guiding Intelligence behind it, the "survival of the fittest" has taken its course by means of this particular law or process. It is impossible to deny that this selection has more often been instinctive than conscious. It is easy to predict that conscious intelligent selection may produce as real an improvement in the human race as has been obtained in the animal and vegetable kingdoms where man has so long directed the survival of the desired or elimination of undesired "points."
Patience, study, discrimination and courage are the principal weapons in the Eugenic armoury. With these qualities assured Eugenics may be trusted in the long run to outdistance all other competitors in the field of race improvement. Study is asine qua non, because Eugenics means Probability based on Experience,and the more extensive our researches the safer our generalisations will be. Patience is needed because unlike other cures Eugenics will help the individual less than it will assist society, and it will always place the interests of the race first and foremost. Accordingly its cures will not be apparent in the current generation. This may discourage the unthinking, it will tire the hand-to-mouth reformer, the superficial will dismiss the whole thing as useless. Wisdom in discrimination will be essential because sometimes "the stone which the builders reject" has a way of becoming "the headstone of the corner." But when we have ascertained beyond reasonable doubt the qualities we want to preserve and the characteristics we desire to eliminate we must be courageous in the application of our remedy.
We look not only at the worst but also at the best when we ask ourselves can the Race be improved? The highest type of man known to men must beour model. We must constantly and actively believe that what man has been man may be. If mankind be truly one we are linked to the Grants as well as to the Guiteaus, to the saviours as well as to the assassins of society. Our kinship with the lowest must make us more merciful, our kinship with the highest may make us more ambitious to be contented with nothing short of the best.
CHAPTER VI
EDUCATION AND EUGENICS
A healthy wave of reaction seems setting in against the old ideal of "cramming" which once masqueraded as education. Already signs are apparent that in order to have a healthy mind a healthy body is necessary. A sentiment in favour of physical education is slowly arising and may some day be translated into statutes and administrative rule. At present the sentiment is a vague one and is not wholly free from the suspicion of ulterior motives connected with national defence. It cannot be gainsaid that the army and navy will gain in strength and efficiency by the improvement of the racial physique but the same forces might be equally increased by some new discovery in aviation, some new invention in machinery orsome new combination in explosives peculiar to America. Methods of education must justify themselves first and last by their conformity to the physical, and moral and intellectual needs of the human basis of society. They must not be devoted to the development of a healthy manhood only, the interests of the race demand that healthy womanhood shall be the care of any truly national system of education. Until we have built up the body we are little likely to succeed in creating a race of pure-thinking, pure-living men and women. This is the universal need. Higher education, the highest intellectual culture is for the few, not for the wealthy few—but for the proved fit, for those whose antecedents and character show that their brain is capable of receiving and their powers are capable of using a fully developed education which would otherwise be a ridiculously wasted acquisition.
The intellectual education of the futurewill probably average a higher standard than at present but we must revise our criterion of judgment. We must realise that our current ideals tend rather towards making a nation of priggish inefficients than of happy, healthy home builders.
If our teachers have aimed in the past at cramming comparatively useless knowledge into every brain independent of individual capacity, it is not strange that our educational faults have been to neglect the physical side and to ignore the vital teaching which might have led our scholars in the direction of their own physical development. These two things must inevitably stand or fall together. If you neglect physical training it will be because you do not realise its importance. If you realise its importance you will not only devote your principal educational efforts towards its universal practice in the schools but you will see that nothing is left undone to induce the young to adopt in the privacyof their own lives the principles which make for physical perfection.
Heredity and environment alike teach this lesson. The child is father to the man, the parents of to-morrow are now being made. The weak should learn early their limitations, the strong should be taught how best to economise their strength. No Eugenist believes in over-emphasis of sexual knowledge, but every Eugenist believes in the absolute importance of early familiarity with the essential information of sex-life. To emphasise this knowledge would mean being guilty of the samekindof error as is at present prevalent. A knowledge of the laws of sex should never be separated from other physiological and moral education, its acquisition should be gradual, its full meaning should be so well prepared for that its physical manifestations in the youth of both sexes would be understood, without the necessity of a sudden jump from abysmal ignorance to overwhelming experience.
Co-education, the schooling together of boys and girls until puberty, is a step in the right direction. It familiarises children with each other in quite the best and most innocent manner; it is no more likely to create evil results than the daily life at home of the perfect family of boys and girls meeting under the protection of their own parents.
Co-education renders unnecessary that departing into separate schools which is so mysterious in early life. It aims at giving girls the benefit of boys' play, encouraging them in the boys' code of honour, and tending to prepare them for a citizenship they have to share with the boys whom they may even now regard as "chums." For boys the familiarity with girls' ways and girls' characteristics will help them to be courteous without being weak and to lose that shamefaced sex-consciousness which is the opposite to a healthy knowledge of the existence of another sex.
In the early years of infancy only the parents can impart information about sex to their own offspring, and generally speaking only the mother will be the desirable source of information. This in itself justifies the necessity of the Eugenist demand for educationally preparing girls for motherhood. In the nursery the time for teaching intimate things may be left to date itself. The earliest questions of a child fix the time when the earliest information must be given. When a child asks questions you either tell him the truth or a lie. The truth can be told so delicately that no one need blush to repeat it. A lie may be directly more indelicate and in its future results may be a source of deadly demoralisation. Children ask about the "secret" of birth when a baby brother or sister is born. Their questions and our answers are a frequent subject for jest, when the only reasonable excuse for our failure to impart accurate knowledge is either our own unfitness toteach, or our child's incapacity to understand. If the first is not incurable it should be the object of immediate study with a view to reform. The incapacity of youthful intelligence to grasp elementary facts is greatly exaggerated, but anyhow it is no excuse for deliberate deception. The immature mind can wait for knowledge, its development need not be prejudiced before it begins to know anything. If we cannot feed it on facts at least do not fill it with falsehood.
On entering school the children are introduced to a person whose profession is to teach. How easy now it would be to obtain a child's confidence, how easy to lead a child to believe that there is no hidden knowledge, no subject which is taboo, no function of a healthy body which is unhealthy, and no process of Nature which cannot be made an interesting and helpful study. To impart an unnecessary sense of shame to a child is a shocking outrage from which asensitive soul never recovers. Exceptional children will require exceptional care but the average child need never know from experience the meaning of sexual shame. Healthy boys and girls will learn that as their parents made them they will one day themselves qualify for all those joys, pains, excitements and interests which are so intimately wrapt round the functions of parenthood. To prepare boys and girls to become parents may seem a big proposition. I am convinced it is practicable, desirable and in the best interests of the race. The human relationship, the human parentage, the human processes should be the foundation of natural history lessons. Botany and biology should be interesting because of their relation to humanity. Information about the human processes of life and sex should not be made contingent on the possibility of divulging it in scattered fragments incidental to remarks on the habits of polar bears or the functionsof the stamen and pollen of the flower.
On this subject at least there is no possibility of permanent secrecy. The plan for Eugenic school-teaching is only a plea for the wise, discreet well-timed truth from a capable and trusted source, against indiscreet and often indecently ill-timed half-truth from the worst sources. Children need to be informed, warned and helped.
Why should it be regarded as indecent to give kindly warning against disease? Children are often over sensitive about fancied or discovered differences between themselves and other children, and about natural developments or even small defects which the uninformed mind magnifies into first-class abnormalities. They would often be reassured by learning of the enormous varieties which can exist within the average and the normal. Children should neither be frightened by the well-meant exaggerations which sometimesare used to warn children and growing youth from the very real evil results of self-abuse, nor should such evils be encouraged by a prudish ignoring of the possible danger. Masturbation can be shown to stand in the way of all that youth rightly values in its present happy school life and play, it can be proved to prevent the accomplishment of what every healthy school ideal demands as the future functions of maturity. Restraint is impossible because onanism is essentially a secret vice, and therefore when these appeals to reason, idealism, self-respect, and self-interest fail everything fails. Fear is opposed to the very basis of school honour. If the nobler motives are inadequate the physician is required rather than the teacher, for there is a pathological reason for such abnormal minds. The danger of contracting sexual diseases must be very carefully taught. The body must be saved but the soul must not be simultaneously lost. Sexual disease problemsmust not be mixed up with sexual morality, or we shall pervert the noblest part of youth. Sexual disease should be referred to, like all other sexual questions, as incidental to the whole subject of the body and its functions, abuses and diseases. The idea that any disease may justly be regarded as a fitting "punishment" for any particular crime, is as evil in its effect as it is vicious in its principle. To encourage the notification of every disease, especially the worst, is a public duty we can only evade at enormous cost in innocent lives. Grappling with the sexual scourge called syphilis is horribly hindered by the reticence, concealment and shame, directly or indirectly to be traced to a mistaken ethic about Nemesis.
To prepare children for parenthood involves finding a reasonable regard for fatherhood as well as for motherhood. No system of economics that relegates fatherhood to unimportance is good for the State. The boy must learn that thefather has responsibilities, different from the mother's but worthy of his own very best. Fortunately the pages of history teem with illustrations of this theme for those who desire examples and warnings from the past, it may even be necessary to point out that the father's function has been over valued in our annals as compared with that of the still more important but less praised mother. Inasmuch, however, as the mother's function is so much more continuous than the father's, the perpetuation of such degree of perfection as a boy is endowed with must be secured by constant vigilance, lest he fail in the one great act which earns the right of giving his name to his offspring.
The Eugenic education of girls is generally easier than that of boys for many reasons. Girls see more than boys of the management of a home, they are used to children younger than themselves, they are fond of babies and will nurse dolls for an amusement, derivingmuch pleasure from a pastime fraught with Eugenic suggestiveness. Later on certain signs of adolescence precipitate explanations and stimulate inquiry. There is no need for any restrictions of the facilities women enjoy educationally. As with boys the best education should be given to those girls who show capacity for using it. It has never been claimed that culture should be withheld from a man, as inconsistent with fatherhood; motherhood must not be made an excuse for denying education. The safest policy is to make preparations for Life independent of preparations for a Career. The don and the bluestocking have to live, so have the cowboy and the cook. All must have the universal knowledge whereby they may serve their race as healthy parents of healthy children, even though the college, the study, the ranch and the kitchen have their own particular technicalities to be mastered by the interested individuals.
Of study in general Eugenics will findmuch to say. It is impossible to neglect any branch of knowledge. The human will no less than human necessity presses forward in every direction. We may be like King Solomon surrounded by material wealth and possessions, but, like him, if we are forced to choose between them and knowledge, the noblest thing within us will cry for knowledge. We must learn to discriminate between knowledge-values, and endeavour to frame our study-time so that even the least of us may be encouraged to learn all that we can. For those who can rapidly digest huge continents of study the prizes of scholarship are assured. It is not in the interests of Eugenics that knowledge should be acquired with this rapidity by those constitutionally unfitted for the strain. An educational system devised for men may not necessarily be suited to women equally anxious to know and willing to give as long a period to study. It may be found practicable on Eugenic grounds to give morefacilities than we do for broken studies, for studies which go slower and last longer, and for studies where the honours are not given to those who can cram most in the least time.
It is impossible for any view of Eugenics in relation to education to ignore the terrible danger of child-labour. Economic consideration of this subject is common enough; it is time that Eugenics made its voice heard in denunciation of a system which cannot fail to demoralise the race if persisted in. The energy of a growing youth is required for building up his own constitution, and if his early labours are spent in occupations inconsistent with physical development he becomes a stunted weakling from whose loins we cannot expect the issue of a noble race. In the case of girl-labour the trouble is intensified, partly because the occupations of young girls are mostly of a description requiring a bodily posture which works untold evil in their future health and fitness.Needlework, laundry-work and typewriting are cases in point. Housework, with which every young girl should be familiar at a reasonably early age, becomes an intolerable check to womanly growth when overdone. Factory life and "home" labour are equally objectionable where children are forced by parental pressure, or the exigences of economic circumstance to earn bread for themselves or to contribute to the family sustenance.
I close this chapter abruptly, fully realising that Eugenic zeal has carried me beyond any narrow view of elementary education, and will inevitably lead the nation into economic controversy. The history of all reform encourages us to persevere. Neither fears of expense, nor metaphysical considerations of parental duty, nor sentimental objections to State intrusion have prevented a nation (when faced with a foreign foe) pledging all its resources, taking sons from mothers and husbands from wives,and using land, railways and stores to prosecute a war deemed necessary for national defence. I am convinced that we have only to realise the national danger and we shall heartily follow the Eugenic lead, even if it costs us the price of a fifth-rate war.
CHAPTER VII
EUGENICS AND THE MODERN FEMINIST MOVEMENT
Eugenics is not essentially concerned with the right to vote nor is Eugenics specially interested in such abstract questions as the relative voting qualifications of the sexes. If these things really weighed at all Eugenics would naturally favour fitness instead of sex as the qualification for electoral enfranchisement. At present Eugenics views the feminist movement from the point of view of political power as a means to national efficiency. This standpoint is the more natural because there is every reason to believe that while the objective of the feminist is nominally Votes for Women it is actually an assertion of woman's all-round equality with men. I believe it will be a perilous enterprise, fraughtwith grave danger to the State if women successfully organise as a sex-party, prepared to study every question from the special interests or supposed interests of women. However much this definite policy may be repudiated it is a genuine danger, to which a prolonged suffrage agitation is bound, ostensibly or unintentionally, to contribute. It is to the interest of all who do not take a sex-party view of citizenship to abbreviate this struggle. It seems illogical, unnatural and undesirable that there should be a sex-basis of citizenship rights. All deprecation of anything even remotely approaching a sex-war is an argument for the acknowledgment of Women's claim to electoral equality with men. It is incredible that the mere extension of the franchise can create a revolution; a revolution is historically rather to be expected from refusing the suffrage to a class containing intelligent, capable law-abiding adults.
Let us not deceive ourselves, however,as to the real meaning of the claim for women's electoral emancipation. Whether that demand is granted or not the moral and intellectual driving-force of the agitation comes from a genuine reforming spirit, which will succeed with or without the vote in elevating woman to a position more worthy of civilisation than she has hitherto occupied. So much is certain to those who recognise in Mrs. Chapman Catt, Dr. Anna Shaw and the English Suffragettes the inspiration of Mary Woolstonecraft, the radical pioneer who first said "Woman must be free." A conspiracy of men to hinder women's emancipation might provoke a sex-war, the granting of such freedom as women claim can only end in mutual honour. Women will learn to realise and respect the differences between men and women when those differences do not wear the unmistakable taint of inequalities. The Eugenists' hope is for a peaceful solution, for the peace of the home is the hope of thechild. The child is apt to be forgotten when men and women quarrel.
There are undoubtedly many property questions mixed up with the electoral claim, and the former have a genuine Eugenic side to them. It is not in the interests of the race that mothers should be in any doubt as to their immunity from financial worry during child-birth pains, or that they should have to consider any merely sordid question in deciding whether or not a perfectly healthy mother should increase the nation's stock of perfectly fit citizens. The position of a wealthy man's wife in the present day is often an anomalous one. Where the husband was rich at the time of his wedding, marriage-contracts usually protect the wife's interests to some extent. In the much commoner cases of gradually increasing wealth, of wealth coming unexpectedly or as the result of years of protected operations, the wife depends absolutely on her husband's good will. Oftenenough her exertions have helped to find this fortune. Her influence on his life is frequently an indispensable asset. Her care of the children she has borne give her a sentimental claim which justice cannot ignore. It is intolerable that husbands becoming rich men should be entitled to speculate and gamble with the whole of what should be considered the joint capital of the family, without obtaining the consent of the actual working partner. He should be at liberty neither to "deal" unauthorisedly with what might be considered the family's share of his fortune, nor to alienate by testamentary legacy anything beyond a fair proportion away from those who have the first claim upon his goods. In order to defraud his creditors or for less criminal reasons a man has often used his wife as a convenient banker. It will be easier to check this species of cheating when the wife herself becomes a creditor.
In the poorest circles where man andwoman are equally destitute of worldly wealth this woman's property question is too inseparably mixed with the whole economic problem to be stated solely in terms of Eugenics. Eugenics does not profess to point out the lines on which the problem of poverty is to be solved. Eugenics only says that certain conditions (inconsistent with destitution) have to be observed if we want the race to improve and to save the nation from absolute decay. It is up to our politicians to find the means by which these conditions can be observed. A nation converted to the gospel of Eugenics will not boggle at providing the means for saving itself.
Middle-class women have a genuine grievance which is becoming articulate. The women-workers claim equal wages for equal work, and married women claim wages for the work they perform as housekeepers, nurses or cooks, or all three. If there is anything at all in the idea of attracting the best workers byhigh wages the women will win. It will be a misfortune to Eugenics if for any monetary reason the best women are attracted to commercial careers rather than to domestic duties, but women-workers will succeed by combination while wives will win only if legislation favours them. Legislation must and will be forthcoming to prevent the comparative attractiveness of motherhood from sinking still lower in the scale than at present.
The most important question which many suffragists are preparing to face is to whom shall women look for their support. There is of course for the daughters of the rich an inheritance which places them above the vulgar struggle which ninety per cent. of our women have to face. For this great majority the alternatives to State-maintenance are generally speaking marriage or the labour-market. There is much to be said for the State-provision of maintenance for motherhood, which is elsewhere referredto. The principle is neither new nor revolutionary. Most States make some provision of the kind, and this State-provision is often excellent in efficiency but frequently quite demoralising in the restrictions with which it is hedged. Obviously with no Eugenic inspiration State-helps of the kind can never be anything but a stop-gap which self-respecting women will not seek voluntarily and which will always be given grudgingly. Its conditions will no longer degrade but will tend towards race improvement by encouraging the fit and warning the weak and diseased. For this double purpose the State will employ ladies to visit poor mothers so as to make sure that at least no mother shall want for food, shelter and the best medical attention, while she is assisting in what will be universally regarded as the highest and best interests of the nation. If State-subventions of this kind are beset with restrictions, what are we to say to "charitable" enterprises.Some few are ideal institutions, the vast majority are only justifying their existence by doing badly what would be otherwise left undone. Some exist merely because medical students must have some experience of maternity cases, sometimes the accommodation for mothers is so scanty compared with the number of students that many score of students attend a single mother, whose experience in such a case is not an enviable one.
Neither charity nor the present limited State-aid touch the larger question. It would almost seem as if the State and the charities had a grudge against motherhood. It is as if some monstrous misunderstanding of Malthusianism had led these authorities to believe that the interests of the race demanded the accentuation of the primal course. "In sorrow," indeed, do the poor "bring forth children." There is a prejudice too against the noblest emotions of motherhood. Cases are commonwhere the relieving authorities, public or voluntary, faced with the absolute inability of a parent to contribute towards a child's keep, undertake the child's care under conditions which exclude the parents' continued interest in the child's welfare. A mother unexpectedly widowed is "relieved" of her four young children who are sent sometimes to different orphanages, often at a distance from the mother who loves them and who would be their very best guardian. She has to find work amongst strangers to support herself, while losing money every "visiting day" if she can anyway get to see her children, whose aggregate keep costs actually more than would comfortably maintain them and their mother under ideal conditions. It is this almost fiendish masculine administration of the maternal functions of the public authorities which women most vehemently protest against. There seems no remedy for it except a recognition that a man cannotbe a mother, not even a step-mother.
Apart from the maternal side of woman's life there is her individual life to consider, and while this is of enormous importance to herself its chief interest to Eugenists (as such) is that only out of healthy and happy conditions of womanhood can a noble motherhood be expected to grow. Slave-mothers are apt to breed slave-children, and still worse for the race slave-women are disinclined to become mothers. It is of course unfair to see no distinction between slavery which professes no fine sentiment towards its chattel objects, and the refined system which places woman on a pedestal and worships her but denies her the elementary rights of citizenship. The Eugenist ideal of marriage is the union of equality, two citizens joining together in love and wisdom and with such sanction of the State and the Church as may be, with resultant harmony of life and its fruit in an increase of the truest wealth any Statecan possess, namely well-conceived, well-formed, and well-matured men and women.
In the Eugenist State there will be a determined enmity to the increased generations of the criminal, the weak-minded and the diseased. But if reform is forced on women by men, instead of being the spontaneous decision of a genuine democracy, the grossest tyranny will be perpetuated (however wise its object, humane its methods and Eugenic its result). A benevolent despotism might be endured in its disposition of the issues of war, the production of wealth, or the distribution of honours, nothing but the sovereign will of the people can be tolerated in the Eugenic field, and here if nowhere else woman being essentially concerned must have an equal voice with man. Where women cannot be convinced that Eugenic reform is in the interests of the race we must trust to personal persuasion, individual example and such publicopinion as we are capable of influencing. The powers of the State must not be invoked in the face of popular protest, it will be to the interests of Eugenists that such protest shall be able to express itself in the ballot-box instead of by surreptitious evasion or mob-law.
The double standard in morals must go. Whatever our standard may be it must be colour-blind as regards sex. The modern feminist movement is in harmony with Eugenic science, in insisting on this point being made clear. For ages past masculine hypocrisy has been able to exact from the opposite sex a crushing worship of Mrs. Grundy, by the simple expedient of ruling men out of the conventions they dictated to women.
The time has come for a candid reconsideration of moral problems on the basis of sex-equality. It may be that some fine sentiments will vanish, perhaps women will descend from the dizzy height where they are supposed to dwell.Truth at least will gain, pretence will give place to reality and we shall be capable of postulating a new and better morality based on the essential facts of life. To the consideration of the best possible life for men and women must be added the Eugenic claims of the race. We live and die but the race continues, heirs of our perfection, inheritors of our defects. We pass, but we must think of those to whom this heritage passes. The strong woman mated to the strong man is proud of a posterity which will do them honour. The woman-movement aims at removing the obstacles to this endeavour. The tragedy of the woman's life is when either her own or her husband's unfitness to bear anything but a tainted stock is disregarded by law, custom and the brutality of lustful bestiality. She who might be, as she desires to be, the guardian of the nation's truest interests, is overpowered and compelled to be the medium of national pollution. This knowledgestrengthens the women's agitation; the determination to end such a shameful degradation makes the women's movement irresistible.
CHAPTER VIII
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EUGENICS
This little volume would sadly fail to convey its author's meaning if dogmatism stood in the way of persuasion, or authority seemed to be claimed for the tentative suggestions herein outlined. There is no immediate danger that Eugenic principles will suddenly rush society into extreme action. The probabilities are quite in the opposite direction. We shall continue to see what has always been observed by thinkers, namely, "Decency and custom starving truth, and blind authority beating with his staff the child which might have led him." Valuable experiments are delayed by prejudice, and Eugenists have only too good ground for complaint that the scientific spirit is thwarted by prejudicedopposition to new ideas. The very absence of dogmatism which characterises the genuine thinker serves as the basis of opposition in his experiments. Because he does not glibly guarantee universal success like a patent-pill advertiser nothing whatever is done to obtain a criterion of judging how far his reasonable proposals can succeed. The failure of all other attempts to improve the race may force upon the public the necessity of Eugenic experiments. As has been said more than once, philanthropy has failed, politics has failed, rescue work has failed, perhaps Eugenics may not fail, for it is based on the impregnable rock of science, it proceeds on the sound lines of prevention, it aims to start at the beginning of things, to build up a new race if not of supermen at least of sound healthy human beings.
The lethal chamber isnota Eugenic remedy. It is the last heart-broken despairing cry of the old unscientific system.It is the only final alternative to Eugenics. It means that man has failed. It has neither sense, sentiment, nor science for its justification. It substitutes murder for moral method. Eugenics on the other hand starts out with the principle that there is nothing so sacred as life. That the lethal chamber for the aged, diseased, infirm, and unfit is barbarous and immoral, that it is utterly indefensible, and would be absolutely ineffective if not ridiculously impracticable. There is not much need to waste further consideration on a project from which every healthy citizen naturally revolts. It has to be categorically repudiated lest it should be mistakenly regarded as a Eugenic proposal.
Abortion and infanticide are equally condemned by Eugenists, although on different grounds. Infanticide is murder. It destroys the life of an actual human being. Infanticide, though doubtless less reprehensible in degree than the lethal chamber idea, is in principleindistinguishable therefrom. It is the antithesis to the idea of Eugenics. The state which can contemplate child-murder without horror is far indeed from being a humane State. Sensitiveness to suffering is a sign of civilisation. Wherever we find a live human being, however hopeless its condition may appear, universal experience has shown us that man's advance from savagedom depends on his using all his resources to save the final spark of life which remains. "While there's life there's hope" is a maxim which is based on the greatest need of mankind. Eugenics deplores waste of effort that this entails, but there can be no doubt about its rightness or its justification by the universal consensus of progressive races. Abortion may be condemned on religious and moral grounds, but the overwhelming weight of medical opinion against it is based on physiological reasons. No woman can be guilty of this practice without the greatest risks of physicaldamage. She jeopardises her life immediately and she generally deteriorates her capacity for future usefulness. Eugenics will find a sphere of usefulness in the spread of this piece of saving knowledge. Unmarried mothers and mothers in all spheres of society are terribly ignorant of the dangers of this common death-trap. The mere fact that the sale and procuration of drugs and use of means for purposes of abortion are criminal acts is not sufficient. The idea is prevalent that it is only the police who have to be evaded. Our laws are not empiric, but their reason is seldom apparent to those who are expected to obey them. A few drugs, or a few pills—how easy it all seems—and how fatal. Eugenists do not want the law altered, but they want the added deterrent of reason. There may be a chance of evading the law, there is none of evading the bodily injury which inevitably accompanies abortion.
I have already shown that Malthusianarguments do not appeal to Eugenists. This is not to say that Malthusian methods are also condemned. Malthusian prognostications have not been fulfilled, its statistics have been superseded, and its conclusions modified by the process of the suns. The world does not contain too many people, it only contains too many of the wrong sort of people. Production has not only kept pace with population, it has raced it. Intensive cultivation, new treatments of the soil, scientific rotation of crops and scientific agriculture rendering rotation unnecessary, new economic inducements to cultivate hitherto waste lands, discoveries and inventions of all kinds have taken away from Malthusianism the unduly pessimistic philosophy with which it once tried to frighten the race. Malthusianism will always be remembered with gratitude, however, for its practical methods and for its refusing to confuse marriage with procreation. That distinction still needs tobe borne in mind because otherwise half our Eugenic efforts will be wasted by directing ourselves to a problem which does not exist. It is impossible to assail the proposition that a moral married life is consistent with a prudential check on increased population. This prudential check need not necessarily be a material one. Even a Tolstoyan may be a married man. Abstinence in due season in the case of normal adults is or may be Nature's plan for increasing virility at other seasons. The most prolific parents may be pardoned for resting occasionally from their protracted persistency of race-production. Eugenists object to weakening virility by sacrificing fitness for mere numbers, but it is in the essence of their demand that the race shall, "increase and multiply and replenish the earth." The objection (which Eugenists share with the majority of the American public) to anything remotely resembling infanticide must have some definite proofof its sincerity. Eugenists denounce the New Decalogue of current morality which says: