vestige of ancient theological dogma, and there can be little
doubt that, on the theoretical side at all events, the
"imprescriptible right" of the embryo will go the same way as the
"imprescriptible right" of the spermatozoeon. Both rights are
indeed "imprescriptible."

Of recent years a new, and, it must be admitted, somewhat unexpected,
aspect of this question of abortion has been revealed. Hitherto it has
been a question entirely in the hands of men, first, following the Roman
traditions, in the hands of Christian ecclesiastics, and later, in those
of the professional castes. Yet the question is in reality very largely,
and indeed mainly, a woman's question, and now, more especially in
Germany, it has been actively taken up by women. The Graefin Gisela
Streitberg occupies the pioneering place in this movement with her book
_Das Recht zur Beiseitigung Keimenden Lebens_, and was speedily followed,
from 1897 onwards, by a number of distinguished women who occupy a
prominent place in the German woman's movement, among others Helene
Stoecker, Oda Olberg, Elisabeth Zanzinger, Camilla Jellinek. All these
writers insist that the foetus is not yet an independent human being, and
that every woman, by virtue of the right over her own body, is entitled to
decide whether it shall become an independent human being. At the Woman's
Congress held in the autumn of 1905, a resolution was passed demanding
that abortion should only be punishable when effected by another person
against the wish of the pregnant women herself.[441] The acceptance of
this resolution by a representative assembly is interesting proof of the
interest now taken by women in the question, and of the strenuous attitude
they are tending to assume.

Elisabeth Zanzinger ("Verbrechen gegen die Leibesfrucht,"
_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. II, Heft 5, 1907) ably and
energetically condemns the law which makes abortion a crime. "A
woman herself is the only legitimate possessor of her own body
and her own health.... Just as it is a woman's private right, and
most intimate concern, to present her virginity as her best gift
to the chosen of her heart, so it is certainly a pregnant woman's
own private concern if, for reasons which seem good to her, she
decides to destroy the results of her action." A woman who
destroys the embryo which might become a burden to the community,
or is likely to be an inferior member of society, this writer
urges, is doing a service to the community, which ought to reward
her, perhaps by granting her special privileges as regards the
upbringing of her other children. Oda Olberg, in a thoughtful
paper ("Ueber den Juristischen Schutz des Keimenden Lebens," _Die
Neue Generation_, June, 1908), endeavors to make clear all that
is involved in the effort to protect the developing embryo
against the organism that carries it, to protect a creature, that
is, against itself and its own instincts. She considers that most
of the women who terminate their pregnancies artificially would
only have produced undesirables, for the normal, healthy, robust
woman has no desire to effect abortion. "There are women who are
psychically sterile, without being physically so, and who possess
nothing of motherhood but the ability to bring forth. These, when
they abort, are simply correcting a failure of Nature." Some of
them, she remarks, by going on to term, become guilty of the far
worse offence of infanticide. As for the women who desire
abortion merely from motives of vanity, or convenience, Oda
Olberg points out that the circles in which these motives rule
are quite able to limit their children without having to resort
to abortion. She concludes that society must protect the young
life in every way, by social hygiene, by laws for the protection
of the workers, by spreading a new morality on the basis of the
laws of heredity. But we need no law to protect the young
creature against its own mother, for a thousand natural forces
are urging the mother to protect her own child, and we may be
sure that she will not disobey these forces without very good
reasons. Camilla Jellinek, again (_Die Strafrechtsreform_, etc.,
Heidelberg, 1909), in a powerful and well-informed address before
the Associated German Frauenvereine, at Breslau, argues in the
same sense.

The lawyers very speedily came to the assistance of the women in
this matter, the more readily, no doubt, since the traditions of
the greatest and most influential body of law already pointed, on
one side at all events, in the same direction. It may, indeed, be
claimed that it was from the side of law--and in Italy, the
classic land of legal reform--that this new movement first begun.
In 1888, Balestrini published, at Turin, his _Aborto,
Infanticidio ed Esposizione d'Infante_, in which he argued that
the penalty should be removed from abortion. It was a very able
and learned book, inspired by large ideas and a humanitarian
spirit, but though its importance is now recognized, it cannot be
said that it attracted much attention on publication.

It is especially in Germany that, during recent years, lawyers
have followed women reformers, by advocating, more or less
completely, the abolition of the punishment for abortion. So
distinguished an authority as Von Liszt, in a private letter to
Camilla Jellinek (op. cit.), states that he regards the
punishment of abortion as "very doubtful," though he considers
its complete abolition impracticable; he thinks abortion might be
permitted during the early months of pregnancy, thus bringing
about a return of the old view. Hans Gross states his opinion
(_Archiv fuer Kriminal-Anthropologie_, Bd. XII, p. 345) that the
time is not far distant when abortion will no longer be punished.
Radbruch and Von Lilienthal speak in the same sense. Weinberg has
advocated a change in the law (_Mutterschutz_, 1905, Heft 8),
and Kurt Hiller (_Die Neue Generation_, April, 1909), also from
the legal side, argues that abortion should only be punishable
when effected by a married woman, without the knowledge and
consent of her husband.

The medical profession, which took the first step in modern times in the
authorization of abortion, has not at present taken any further step. It
has been content to lay down the principle that when the interests of the
mother are opposed to those of the foetus, it is the latter which must be
sacrificed. It has hesitated to take the further step of placing abortion
on the eugenic basis, and of claiming the right to insist on abortion
whenever the medical and hygienic interests of society demand such a step.
This attitude is perfectly intelligible. Medicine has in the past been
chiefly identified with the saving of lives, even of worthless and worse
than worthless lives; "Keep everything alive! Keep everything alive!"
nervously cried Sir James Paget. Medicine has confined itself to the
humble task of attempting to cure evils, and is only to-day beginning to
undertake the larger and nobler task of preventing them.

"The step from killing the child in the womb to murdering a
person when out of the womb, is a dangerously narrow one," sagely
remarks a recent medical author, probably speaking for many
others, who somehow succeed in blinding themselves to the fact
that this "dangerously narrow step" has been taken by mankind,
only too freely, for thousands of years past, long before
abortion was known in the world.

Here and there, however, medical authors of repute have advocated
the further extension of abortion, with precautions, and under
proper supervision, as an aid to eugenic progress. Thus,
Professor Max Flesch (_Die Neue Generation_, April, 1909) is in
favor of a change in the law permitting abortion (provided it is
carried out by the physician) in special cases, as when the
mother's pregnancy has been due to force, when she has been
abandoned, or when, in the interests of the community, it is
desirable to prevent the propagation of insane, criminal,
alcoholic, or tuberculous persons.

In France, a medical man, Dr. Jean Darricarrere, has written a
remarkable novel, _Le Droit d'Avortement_ (1906), which advocates
the thesis that a woman always possesses a complete right to
abortion, and is the supreme judge as to whether she will or not
undergo the pain and risks of childbirth. The question is, here,
however, obviously placed not on medical, but on humanitarian and
feminist grounds.

We have seen that, alike on the side of practice and of theory, a great
change has taken place during recent years in the attitude towards
abortion. It must, however, clearly be recognized that, unlike the control
of procreation by methods for preventing conception, facultative abortion
has not yet been embodied in our current social morality. If it is
permissible to interpolate a personal opinion, I may say that to me it
seems that our morality is here fairly reasonable.[442] I am decidedly of
opinion that an unrestricted permission for women to practice abortion in
their own interests, or even for communities to practice it in the
interests of the race, would be to reach beyond the stage of civilization
we have at present attained. As Ellen Key very forcibly argues, a
civilization which permits, without protest, the barbarous slaughter of
its carefully selected adults in war has not yet won the right to destroy
deliberately even its most inferior vital products in the womb. A
civilization guilty of so reckless a waste of life cannot safely be
entrusted with this judicial function. The blind and aimless anxiety to
cherish the most hopeless and degraded forms of life, even of unborn life,
may well be a weakness, and since it often leads to incalculable
suffering, even a crime. But as yet there is an impenetrable barrier
against progress in this direction. Before we are entitled to take life
deliberately for the sake of purifying life, we must learn how to preserve
it by abolishing such destructive influences--war, disease, bad industrial
conditions--as are easily within our social power as civilized
nations.[443]

There is, further, another consideration which seems to me to carry
weight. The progress of civilization is in the direction of greater
foresight, of greater prevention, of a diminished need for struggling with
the reckless lack of prevision. The necessity for abortion is precisely
one of those results of reckless action which civilization tends to
diminish. While we may admit that in a sounder state of civilization a few
cases might still occur when the induction of abortion would be desirable,
it seems probable that the number of such cases will decrease rather than
increase. In order to do away with the need for abortion, and to
counteract the propaganda in its favor, our main reliance must be placed,
on the one hand, on increased foresight in the determination of conception
and increased knowledge of the means for preventing conception,[444] and
on the other hand, on a better provision by the State for the care of
pregnant women, married and unmarried alike, and a practical recognition
of the qualified mother's claim on society.[445] There can be little doubt
that, in many a charge of criminal abortion, the real offence lies at the
door of those who have failed to exercise their social and professional
duty of making known the more natural and harmless methods for preventing
conception, or else by their social attitude have made the pregnant
woman's position intolerable. By active social reform in these two
directions, the new movement in favor of abortion may be kept in check,
and it may even be found that by stimulating such reform that movement has
been beneficial.

We have seen that the deliberate restraint of conception has become a part
of our civilized morality, and that the practice and theory of facultative
abortion has gained a footing among us. There remains a third and yet more
radical method of controlling procreation, the method of preventing the
possibility of procreation altogether by the performance of castration or
other slighter operation having a like inhibitory effect on reproduction.
The other two methods only effect a single act of union or its results,
but castration affects all subsequent acts of sexual union and usually
destroys the procreative power permanently.

Castration for various social and other purposes is an ancient and
widespread practice, carried out on men and on animals. There has,
however, been on the whole a certain prejudice against it when applied to
men. Many peoples have attached a very sacred value to the integrity of
the sexual organs. Among some primitive peoples the removal of these
organs has been regarded as a peculiarly ferocious insult, only to be
carried out in moments of great excitement, as after a battle. Medicine
has been opposed to any interference with the sexual organs. The oath
taken by the Greek physicians appears to prohibit castration: "I will not
cut."[446] In modern times a great change has taken place, the castration
of both men and women is commonly performed in diseased conditions; the
same operation is sometimes advocated and occasionally performed in the
hope that it may remove strong and abnormal sexual impulses. And during
recent years castration has been invoked in the cause of negative
eugenics, to a greater extent, indeed, on account of its more radical
character, than either the prevention of conception or abortion.

The movement in favor of castration appears to have begun in the United
States, where various experiments have been made in embodying it in law.
It was first advocated merely as a punishment for criminals, and
especially sexual offenders, by Hammond, Everts, Lydston and others. From
this point of view, however, it seems to be unsatisfactory and perhaps
illegitimate. In many cases castration is no punishment at all, and indeed
a positive benefit. In other cases, when inflicted against the subject's
will, it may produce very disturbing mental effects, leading in already
degenerate or unbalanced persons to insanity, criminality, and anti-social
tendencies generally, much more dangerous than the original state.
Eugenic considerations, which were later brought forward, constitute a
much sounder argument for castration; in this case the castration is
carried out, by no means in order to inflict a barbarous and degrading
punishment, but, with the subject's consent, in order to protect the
community from the risk of useless or mischievous members.

The fact that castration can no longer be properly considered a
punishment, is shown by the possibility of deliberately seeking
the operation simply for the sake of convenience, as a preferable
and most effective substitute for the adoption of preventive
methods in sexual intercourse. I am only at present acquainted
with one case in which this course has been adopted. This subject
is a medical man (of Puritan New England ancestry) with whose
sexual history, which is quite normal, I have been acquainted for
a long time past. His present age is thirty-nine. A few years
since, having a sufficiently large family, he adopted preventive
methods of intercourse. The subsequent events I narrate in his
own words: "The trouble, forethought, etc., rendered necessary by
preventive measures, grew more and more irksome to me as the
years passed by, and finally, I laid the matter before another
physician, and on his assurances, and after mature deliberation
with my wife, was operated on some time since, and rendered
sterile by having the vas deferens on each side exposed through a
slit in the scrotum, then tied in two places with silk and
severed between the ligatures. This was done under cocaine
infiltrative anaesthesia, and was not so extremely painful, though
what pain there was (dragging the cord out through the slit,
etc.) seemed very hard to endure. I was not out of my office a
single day, nor seriously disturbed in any way. In six days all
stitches in the scrotum were removed, and in three weeks I
abandoned the suspensory bandage that had been rendered necessary
by the extreme sensitiveness of the testicles and cord.

"The operation has proved a most complete success in every way.
Sexual functions are _absolutely unaffected in any way
whatsoever_. There is no sense of discomfort or uneasiness in the
sexual tract, and what seems strangest of all to me, is the fact
that the semen, so far as one can judge by ordinary means of
observation, is undiminished in quantity and unchanged in
character. (Of course, the microscope would reveal its fatal
lack.)

"My wife is delighted at having fear banished from our love, and,
taken all in all, it certainly seems as if life would mean more
to us both. Incidentally, the health of both of us seems better
than usual, particularly so in my wife's case, and this she
attributes to a soothing influence that is attained by allowing
the seminal fluid to be deposited in a perfectly normal manner,
and remain in contact with the vaginal secretions until it
naturally passes off.

"This operation being comparatively new, and, as yet, not often
done on others than the insane, criminal, etc., I thought it
might be of interest to you. If I shed even the faintest ray of
light on this greatest of all human problems ... I shall be glad
indeed."

Such a case, with its so far satisfactory issue, certainly
deserves to be placed on record, though it may well be that at
present it will not be widely imitated.

The earliest advocacy of castration, which I have met with as a part of
negative eugenics, for the specific "purpose of prophylaxis as applied to
race improvement and the protection of society," is by Dr. F.E. Daniel, of
Texas, and dates from 1893.[447] Daniel mixed up, however, somewhat
inextricably, castration as a method of purifying the race, a method which
can be carried out with the concurrence of the individual operated on,
with castration as a punishment, to be inflicted for rape, sodomy,
bestiality, pederasty and even habitual masturbation, the method of its
performance, moreover, to be the extremely barbarous and primitive method
of total ablation of the sexual organs. In more recent years somewhat more
equitable, practical, and scientific methods of castration have been
advocated, not involving the removal of the sexual glands or organs, and
not as a punishment, but simply for the sake of protecting the community
and the race from the burden of probably unproductive and possibly
dangerous members. Naecke has, from 1899 onwards, repeatedly urged the
social advantages of this measure.[448] The propagation of the inferior
elements of society, Naecke insists, brings unhappiness into the family and
is a source of great expense to the State. He regards castration as the
only effective method of prevention, and concludes that it is, therefore,
our duty to adopt it, just as we have adopted vaccination, taking care to
secure the consent of the subject himself or his guardian, of the civil
authorities, and, if necessary, of a committee of experts. Professor
Angelo Zuccarelli of Naples has also, from 1899 onwards, emphasized the
importance of castration in the sterilization of the epileptic, the insane
of various classes, the alcoholic, the tuberculous, and instinctive
criminals, the choice of cases for operation to be made by a commission of
experts who would examine school-children, candidates for public
employments, or persons about to marry.[449] This movement rapidly gained
ground, and in 1905 at the annual meeting of Swiss alienists it was
unanimously agreed that the sterilization of the insane is desirable, and
that it is necessary that the question should be legally regulated. It is
in Switzerland, indeed, that the first steps have been taken in Europe to
carry out castration as a measure of social prophylaxis. The sixteenth
yearly report (1907) of the Cantonal asylum at Wil describes four cases of
castration, two in men and two in women, performed--with the permission of
the patients and the civil authorities--for social reasons; both women had
previously had illegitimate children who were a burden on the community,
and all four patients were sexually abnormal; the operation enabled the
patients to be liberated and to work, and the results were considered in
every respect satisfactory to all concerned.[450]

The introduction of castration as a method of negative eugenics
has been facilitated by the use of new methods of performing it
without risk, and without actual removal of the testes or
ovaries. For men, there is the simple method of vasectomy, as
recommended by Naecke and many others. For women, there is the
corresponding, and almost equally simple and harmless method of
Kehrer, by section and ligation of the Fallopian tubes through
the vagina, as recommended by Kisch, or Rose's very similar
procedure, easily carried out in a few minutes by an experienced
hand, as recommended by Zuccarelli.

It has been found that repeated exposure to the X-rays produces
sterility in both sexes, alike in animals and men, and X-ray
workers have to adopt various precautions to avoid suffering from
this effect. It has been suggested that the application of the
X-rays would be a good substitute for castration; it appears that
the effects of the application are only likely to last a few
years, which, in some doubtful cases, might be an advantage. (See
_British Medical Journal_, Aug. 13, 1904; ib., March 11, 1905;
ib., July 6, 1907.)

It is scarcely possible, it seems to me, to view castration as a method of
negative eugenics with great enthusiasm. The recklessness, moreover, with
which it is sometimes proposed to apply it by law--owing no doubt to the
fact that it is not so obviously repulsive as the less radical procedure
of abortion--ought to render us very cautious. We must, too, dismiss the
idea of castration as a punishment; as such it is not merely barbarous but
degrading and is unlikely to have a beneficial effect. As a method of
negative eugenics it should never be carried out except with the subject's
consent. The fact that in some cases it might be necessary to enforce
seclusion in the absence of castration would doubtless be a fact exerting
influence in favor of such consent; but the consent is essential if the
subject of the operation is to be safeguarded from degradation. A man who
has been degraded and embittered by an enforced castration might not be
dangerous to posterity, but might very easily become a dangerous member of
the society in which he actually lived. With due precautions and
safeguards, castration may doubtless play a certain part in the elevation
and improvement of the race.[451]

The methods we have been considering, in so far as they limit the
procreative powers of the less healthy and efficient stocks in a
community, are methods of eugenics. It must not, however, be supposed that
they are the whole of eugenics, or indeed that they are in any way
essential to a eugenic scheme. Eugenics is concerned with the whole of the
agencies which elevate and improve the human breed; abortion and
castration are methods which may be used to this end, but they are not
methods of which everyone approves, nor is it always clear that the ends
they effect would not better be attained by other methods; in any case
they are methods of negative eugenics. There remains the field of positive
eugenics, which is concerned, not with the elimination of the inferior
stocks but with ascertaining which are the superior stocks and with
furthering their procreative power.

While the necessity of refraining from procreation is no longer a bar to
marriage, the question of whether two persons ought to marry each other
still remains in the majority of cases a serious question from the
standpoint of positive as well as of negative eugenics, for the normal
marriage cannot fail to involve children, as, indeed, its chief and most
desirable end. We have to consider not merely what are the stocks or the
individuals that are unfit to breed, but also what are these stocks or
individuals that are most fit to breed, and under what conditions
procreation may best be effected. The present imperfection of our
knowledge on these questions emphasizes the need for care and caution in
approaching their consideration.

It may be fitting, at this point, to refer to the experiment of
the Oneida Community in establishing a system of scientific
propagation, under the guidance of a man whose ability and
distinction as a pioneer are only to-day beginning to be
adequately recognized. John Humphrey Noyes was too far ahead of
his own day to be recognized at his true worth; at the most, he
was regarded as the sagacious and successful founder of a sect,
and his attempts to apply eugenics to life only aroused ridicule
and persecution, so that he was, unfortunately, compelled by
outside pressure to bring a most instructive experiment to a
premature end. His aim and principle are set forth in an _Essay
on Scientific Propagation_, printed some forty years ago, which
discusses problems that are only now beginning to attract the
attention of the practical man, as within the range of social
politics. When Noyes turned his vigorous and practical mind to
the question of eugenics, that question was exclusively in the
hands of scientific men, who felt all the natural timidity of the
scientific man towards the realization of his proposals, and who
were not prepared to depart a hair's breadth from the
conventional customs of their time. The experiment of Noyes, at
Oneida, marked a new stage in the history of eugenics; whatever
might be the value of the experiment--and a first experiment
cannot well be final--with Noyes the questions of eugenics passed
beyond the purely academic stage in which, from the time of
Plato, they had peacefully reposed. "It is becoming clear," Noyes
states at the outset, "that the foundations of scientific society
are to be laid in the scientific propagation of human beings." In
doing this, we must attend to two things: blood (or heredity) and
training; and he puts blood first. In that, he was at one with
the most recent biometrical eugenists of to-day ("the nation has
for years been putting its money on 'Environment,' when
'Heredity' wins in a canter," as Karl Pearson prefers to put it),
and at the same time revealed the breadth of his vision in
comparison with the ordinary social reformer, who, in that day,
was usually a fanatical believer in the influence of training and
surroundings. Noyes sets forth the position of Darwin on the
principles of breeding, and the step beyond Darwin, which had
been taken by Galton. He then remarks that, when Galton comes to
the point where it is necessary to advance from theory to the
duties the theory suggests, he "subsides into the meekest
conservatism." (It must be remembered that this was written at an
early stage in Galton's work.) This conclusion was entirely
opposed to Noyes' practical and religious temperament. "Duty is
plain; we say we ought to do it--we want to do it; but we cannot.
The law of God urges us on; but the law of society holds us back.
The boldest course is the safest. Let us take an honest and
steady look at the law. It is only in the timidity of ignorance
that the duty seems impracticable." Noyes anticipated Galton in
regarding eugenics as a matter of religion.

Noyes proposed to term the work of modern science in propagation
"Stirpiculture," in which he has sometimes been followed by
others. He considered that it is the business of the
stirpiculturist to keep in view both quantity and quality of
stocks, and he held that, without diminishing quantity, it was
possible to raise the quality by exercising a very stringent
discrimination in selecting males. At this point, Noyes has been
supported in recent years by Karl Pearson and others, who have
shown that only a relatively small portion of a population is
needed to produce the next generation, and that, in fact, twelve
per cent. of one generation in man produces fifty per cent. of
the next generation. What we need to ensure is that this small
reproducing section of the population shall be the best adapted
for the purpose. "The _quantity_ of production will be in direct
proportion to the number of fertile females," as Noyes saw the
question, "and the _value_ produced, so far as it depends on
selection, will be nearly in inverse proportion to the number of
fertilizing males." In this matter, Noyes anticipated Ehrenfels.
The two principles to be held in mind were, "Breed from the
best," and "Breed in-and-in," with a cautious and occasional
introduction of new strains. (It may be noted that Reibmayr, in
his recent _Entwicklungsgeschichte des Genics und Talentes_,
argues that the superior races, and superior individuals, in the
human species, have been produced by an unconscious adherence to
exactly these principles.) "By segregating superior families, and
by breeding these in-and-in, superior varieties of human beings
might be produced, which would be comparable to the thoroughbreds
in all the domestic races." He illustrates this by the early
history of the Jews.

Noyes finally criticises the present method, or lack of method,
in matters of propagation. Our marriage system, he states,
"leaves mating to be determined by a general scramble." By
ignoring, also, the great difference between the sexes in
reproductive power, it "restricts each man, whatever may be his
potency and his value, to the amount of production of which one
woman, chosen blindly, may be capable." Moreover, he continues,
"practically it discriminates against the best, and in favor of
the worst; for, while the good man will be limited by his
conscience to what the law allows, the bad man, free from moral
check, will distribute his seed beyond the legal limits, as
widely as he dares." "We are safe every way in saying that there
is no possibility of carrying the two precepts of scientific
propagation into an institution which pretends to no
discrimination, allows no suppression, gives no more liberty to
the best than to the worst, and which, in fact, must inevitably
discriminate the wrong way, so long as the inferior classes are
most prolific and least amenable to the admonitions of science
and morality." In modifying our sexual institutions, Noyes
insists there are two essential points to remember: the
preservation of liberty, and the preservation of the home. There
must be no compulsion about human scientific propagation; it must
be autonomous, directed by self-government, "by the free choice
of those who love science well enough to 'make themselves eunuchs
for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake.'" The home, also, must be
preserved, since "marriage is the best thing for man as he is;"
but it is necessary to enlarge the home, for, "if all could learn
to love other children than their own, there would be nothing to
hinder scientific propagation in the midst of homes far better
than any that now exist."

This memorable pamphlet contains no exposition of the precise
measures adopted by the Oneida Community to carry out these
principles. The two essential points were, as we know, "male
continence" (see _ante_ p. 553), and the enlarged family, in
which all the men were the actual or potential mates of all the
women, but no union for propagation took place, except as the
result of reason and deliberate resolve. "The community," says
H.J. Seymour, one of the original members (_The Oneida
Community_, 1894, p. 5), "was a _family_, as distinctly separated
from surrounding society as ordinary households. The tie that
bound it together was as permanent, and at least as sacred, as
that of marriage. Every man's care, and the whole of the common
property, was pledged for the maintenance and protection of the
women, and the support and education of the children." It is not
probable that the Oneida Community presented in detail the model
to which human society generally will conform. But even at the
lowest estimate, its success showed, as Lord Morely has pointed
out (_Diderot_, vol. ii, p. 19), "how modifiable are some of
these facts of existing human character which are vulgarly deemed
to be ultimate and ineradicable," and that "the discipline of the
appetites and affections of sex," on which the future of
civilization largely rests, is very far from an impossibility.

In many respects, the Oneida Community was ahead of its
time,--and even of ours,--but it is interesting to note that, in
the matter of the control of conception, our marriage system has
come into line with the theory and practice of Oneida; it cannot,
indeed, be said that we always control conception in accordance
with eugenic principles, but the fact that such control has now
become a generally accepted habit of civilization, to some extent
deprives Noyes' criticism of our marriage system of the force it
possessed half a century ago. Another change in our customs--the
advocacy, and even the practice, of abortion and
castration--would not have met with his approval; he was strongly
opposed to both, and with the high moral level that ruled his
community, neither was necessary to the maintenance of the
stirpiculture that prevailed.

The Oneida Community endured for the space of one generation, and
came to an end in 1879, by no means through a recognition of
failure, but by a wise deference to external pressure. Its
members, many of them highly educated, continued to cherish the
memory of the practices and ideals of the Community. Noyes Miller
(the author of _The Strike of a Sex_, and _Zugassant's
Discovery_) to the last, looked with quiet confidence to the time
when, as he anticipated, the great discovery of Noyes would be
accepted and adopted by the world at large. Another member of the
Community (Henry J. Seymour) wrote of the Community long
afterwards that "It was an anticipation and imperfect miniature
of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth."

Perhaps the commonest type of proposal or attempt to improve the
biological level of the race is by the exclusion of certain classes of
degenerates from marriage, or by the encouragement of better classes of
the community to marry. This seems to be, at present, the most popular
form of eugenics, and in so far as it is not effected by compulsion but is
the outcome of a voluntary resolve to treat the question of the creation
of the race with the jealous care and guardianship which so tremendously
serious, so godlike, a task involves, it has much to be said in its favor
and nothing against it.

But it is quite another matter when the attempt is made to regulate such
an institution as marriage by law. In the first place we do not yet know
enough about the principles of heredity and the transmissibility of
pathological states to enable us to formulate sound legislative proposals
on this basis. Even so comparatively simple a matter as the relationship
of tuberculosis to heredity can scarcely be said to be a matter of common
agreement, even if it can yet be claimed that we possess adequate material
on which to attain a common agreement. Supposing, moreover, that our
knowledge on all these questions were far more advanced than it is, we
still should not have attained a position in which we could lay down
general propositions regarding the desirability or the undesirability of
certain classes of persons procreating. The question is necessarily an
individual question, and it can only be decided when all the circumstances
of the individual case have been fairly passed in review.

The objection to any legislative and compulsory regulation of the right to
marry is, however, much more fundamental than the consideration that our
knowledge is at present inadequate. It lies in the extraordinary
confusion, in the minds of those who advocate such legislation, between
legal marriage and procreation. The persons who fall into such confusion
have not yet learnt the alphabet of the subject they presume to dictate
about, and are no more competent to legislate than a child who cannot tell
A from B is competent to read.

Marriage, in so far as it is the partnership for mutual help and
consolation of two people who in such partnership are free, if they
please, to exercise sexual union, is an elementary right of every person
who is able to reason, who is guilty of no fraud or concealment, and who
is not likely to injure the partner selected, for in that case society is
entitled to interfere by virtue of its duty to protect its members. But
the right to marry, thus understood, in no way involves the right to
procreate. For while marriage _per se_ only affects the two individuals
concerned, and in no way affects the State, procreation, on the other
hand, primarily affects the community which is ultimately made up of
procreated persons, and only secondarily affects the two individuals who
are the instruments of procreation. So that just as the individual couple
has the first right in the question of marriage, the State has the first
right in the question of procreation. The State is just as incompetent to
lay down the law about marriage as the individual is to lay down the law
about procreation.

That, however, is only one-half of the folly committed by those who would
select the candidates for matrimony by statute. Let us suppose--as is not
indeed easy to suppose--that a community will meekly accept the abstract
prohibitions of the statute book and quietly go home again when the
registrar of marriages informs them that they are shut out from legal
matrimony by the new table of prohibited degrees. An explicit prohibition
to procreate within marriage is an implicit permission to procreate
outside marriage. Thus the undesirable procreation, instead of being
carried out under the least dangerous conditions, is carried out under the
most dangerous conditions, and the net result to the community is not a
gain but a loss.

What seems usually to happen, in the presence of a formal legislative
prohibition against the marriage of a particular class, is a combination
of various evils. In part the law becomes a dead letter, in part it is
evaded by skill and fraud, in part it is obeyed to give rise to worse
evils. This happened, for instance, in the Terek district of the Caucasus
where, on the demand of a medical committee, priests were prohibited from
marrying persons among whose relatives or ancestry any cases of leprosy
had occurred. So much and such various mischief was caused by this order
that it was speedily withdrawn.[452]

If we remember that the Catholic Church was occupied for more than a
thousand years in the attempt to impose the prohibition of marriage on its
priesthood,--an educated and trained body of men, who had every spiritual
and worldly motive to accept the prohibition, and were, moreover, brought
up to regard asceticism as the best ideal in life,[453]--we may realize
how absurd it is to attempt to gain the same end by mere casual
prohibitions issued to untrained people with no motives to obey such
prohibitions, and no ideals of celibacy.

The hopelessness and even absurdity of effecting the eugenic improvement
of the race by merely placing on the statute book prohibitions to certain
classes of people to enter the legal bonds of matrimony as at present
constituted, reveals the weakness of those who undervalue the eugenic
importance of environment. Those who affirm that heredity is everything
and environment nothing seem strangely to forget that it is precisely the
lower classes--those who are most subjected to the influence of bad
environment--who procreate most copiously, most recklessly, and most
disastrously. The restraint of procreation, and a concomitant regard for
heredity, increase _pari passu_ with improvement of the environment and
rise in social well-being. If even already it can be said that probably
fifty per cent. of sexual intercourse--perhaps the most procreatively
productive moiety--takes place outside legal marriage, it becomes obvious
that statutory prohibition to the unfit classes to refrain from legal
marriage merely involves their joining the procreating classes outside
legal matrimony. It is also clear that if we are to neglect the factor of
environment, and leave the lower social classes to the ignorance and
recklessness which are the result of such environment, the only practical
method of eugenics left open is that by castration and abortion. But this
method--if applied on a wholesale scale as it would need to be[454] and
without reference to the consent of the individual--is entirely opposed
to modern democratic feeling. Thus those short-sighted eugenists who
overlook the importance of environment are overlooking the only practical
channel through which their aims can be realized. Attention to procreation
and attention to environment are not, as some have supposed, antagonistic,
but they play harmoniously into each other's hands. The care for
environment leads to a restraint on reckless procreation, and the
restraint of procreation leads to improved environment.

Legislation on marriage, to be effectual, must be enacted in the home, in
the school, in the doctor's consulting room. Force is helpless here; it is
education that is needed, not merely instruction, but the education of the
conscience and will, and the training of the emotions.

Legal action may come in to further this process of education, though it
cannot replace it. Thus it is very desirable that when there has been a
concealment of serious disease by a party to a marriage such concealment
should be a ground for divorce. Epilepsy may be taken as typical of the
diseases which should be a bar to procreation, and their concealment
equivalent to an annulment of marriage.[455] In the United States the
Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut laid it down in 1906 that the
Superior Court has the power to pass a decree of divorce when one of the
parties has concealed the existence of epilepsy. This weighty deliverence,
it has been well said,[456] marks a forward step in human progress. There
are many other seriously pathological conditions in which divorce should
be pronounced, or indeed, occur automatically, except when procreation has
been renounced, for in that case the State is no longer concerned in the
relationship, except to punish any fraud committed by concealment.

The demand that a medical certificate of health should be
compulsory on marriage, has been especially made in France. In
1858, Diday, of Lyons, proposed, indeed, that all persons,
without exception, should be compelled to possess a certificate
of health and disease, a kind of sanitary passport. In 1872,
Bertillon (Art. "Demographic," _Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des
Sciences Medicales_) advocated the registration, at marriage, of
the chief anthropological and pathological traits of the
contracting parties (height, weight, color of hair and eyes,
muscular force, size of head, condition of vision, hearing, etc.,
deformities and defects, etc.), not so much, however, for the end
of preventing undesirable marriages, as to facilitate the study
and comparison of human groups at particular periods. Subsequent
demands, of a more limited and partial character, for legal
medical certificates as a condition of marriage, have been made
by Fournier (_Syphilis et Mariage_, 1890), Cazalis (_Le Science
et le Mariage_, 1890), and Jullien (_Blenorrhagie et Mariage_,
1898). In Austria, Haskovec, of Prague ("Contrat Matrimonial et
L'Hygiene Publique," _Comptes-rendus Congres International de
Medecine_, Lisbon, 1906, Section VII, p. 600), argues that, on
marriage, a medical certificate should be presented, showing that
the subject is exempt from tuberculosis, alcoholism, syphilis,
gonorrhoea, severe mental, or nervous, or other degenerative
state, likely to be injurious to the other partner, or to the
offspring. In America, Rosenberg and Aronstam argue that every
candidate for marriage, male or female, should undergo a strict
examination by a competent board of medical examiners, concerning
(1) Family and Past History (syphilis, consumption, alcoholism,
nervous, and mental diseases), and (2) Status Presens (thorough
examination of all the organs); if satisfactory, a certificate of
matrimonial eligibility would then be granted. It is pointed out
that a measure of this kind would render unnecessary the acts
passed by some States for the punishment by fine, or
imprisonment, of the concealment of disease. Ellen Key also
considers (_Liebe und Ehe_, p. 436) that each party at marriage
should produce a certificate of health. "It seems to me just as
necessary," she remarks, elsewhere (_Century of the Child_, Ch.
I), "to demand medical testimony concerning capacity for
marriage, as concerning capacity for military service. In the one
case, it is a matter of giving life; in the other, of taking it,
although certainly the latter occasion has hitherto been
considered as much the more serious."

The certificate, as usually advocated, would be a private but
necessary legitimation of the marriage in the eyes of the civil
and religious authorities. Such a step, being required for the
protection alike of the conjugal partner and of posterity, would
involve a new legal organization of the matrimonial contract.
That such demands are so frequently made, is a significant sign
of the growth of moral consciousness in the community, and it is
good that the public should be made acquainted with the urgent
need for them. But it is highly undesirable that they should, at
present, or, perhaps, ever, be embodied in legal codes. What is
needed is the cultivation of the feeling of individual
responsibility, and the development of social antagonism towards
those individuals who fail to recognize their responsibility. It
is the reality of marriage, and not its mere legal forms, that it
is necessary to act upon.

The voluntary method is the only sound way of approach in this matter.
Duclaux considered that the candidate for marriage should possess a
certificate of health in much the same way as the candidate for life
assurance, the question of professional secrecy, as well as that of
compulsion, no more coming into one question than into the other. There is
no reason why such certificates, of an entirely voluntary character,
should not become customary among those persons who are sufficiently
enlightened to realize all the grave personal, family, and social issues
involved in marriage. The system of eugenic certification, as originated
and developed by Galton, will constitute a valuable instrument for raising