rapacious, and ambitious side. And then it will be understood
that one of the greatest of social problems, perhaps the most
arduous of all, has been the problem of love."


FOOTNOTES:

[375] _Quæstionum Convivalium_, lib. iii, quæstio 6.

[376] E.D. Cope, "The Marriage Problem," _Open Court_, Nov. 1888.

[377] Columbus meeting of the American Medical Association, 1900.

[378] Ellen Key, _Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 24.

[379] In an admirable article on Friedrich Schlegel's _Lucinde_
(_Mutterschutz_, 1906, Heft 5), Heinrich Meyer-Benfey, in pointing out
that the Catholic sacramental conception of marriage licensed love, but
failed to elevate it, regards _Lucinde_, with all its defects, as the
first expression of the unity of the senses and the soul, and, as such,
the basis of the new ethics of love. It must, however, be said that four
hundred years earlier Pontano had expressed this same erotic unity far
more robustly and wholesomely than Schlegel, though the Latin verse in
which he wrote, fresh and vital as it is, remained without influence.
Pontano's _Carmina_, including the "De Amore Conjugali," have at length
been reprinted in a scholarly edition by Soldati.

[380] From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries Ovid was, in
reality, the most popular and influential classic poet. His works played a
large part in moulding Renaissance literature, not least in England, where
Marlowe translated his _Amores_, and Shakespeare, during the early years
of his literary activity, was greatly indebted to him (see, e.g., Sidney
Lee, "Ovid and Shakespeare's Sonnets," _Quarterly Review_, Ap., 1909).

[381] This has already been discussed in Chapter II.

[382] By the age of twenty-five, as G. Hirth remarks (_Wege zur Heimat_,
p. 541), an energetic and sexually disposed man in a large city has, for
the most part, already had relations with some twenty-five women, perhaps
even as many as fifty, while a well-bred and cultivated woman at that age
is still only beginning to realize the slowly summating excitations of
sex.

[383] In his study of "Conjugal Aversion" (_Journal Nervous and Mental
Disease_, Sept., 1892) Smith Baker points out the value of adequate sexual
knowledge before marriage in lessening the risks of such aversion.

[384] "It may be said to the honor of men," Adler truly remarks (op. cit.,
p. 182), "that it is perhaps not often their conscious brutality that is
at fault in this matter, but merely lack of skill and lack of
understanding. The husband who is not specially endowed by nature and
experience for psychic intercourse with women, is not likely, through his
earlier intercourse with Venus vulgivaga, to bring into marriage any
useful knowledge, psychic or physical."

[385] "The first night," writes a correspondent concerning his marriage,
"she found the act very painful and was frightened and surprised at the
size of my penis, and at my suddenly getting on her. We had talked very
openly about sex things before marriage, and it never occurred to me that
she was ignorant of the details of the act. I imagined it would disgust
her to talk about these things; but I now see I should have explained
things to her. Before marrying I had come to the conclusion that the
respect owed to one's wife was incompatible with any talk that might seem
indecent, and also I had made a resolve not to subject her to what I
thought then were dirty tricks, even to be naked and to have her naked. In
fact, I was the victim of mock modesty; it was an artificial reaction from
the life I had been living before marriage. Now it seems to me to be
natural, if you love a woman, to do whatever occurs to you and to her. If
I had not felt it wrong to encourage such acts between us, there might
have been established a sexual sympathy which would have bound me more
closely to her."

[386] Montaigne, _Essais_, Bk. iii, Ch. V. It is a significant fact that,
even in the matter of information, women, notwithstanding much ignorance
and inexperience, are often better equipped for marriage than men. As
Fürbringer remarks (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in Relation
to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 212), although the wife is usually more chaste at
marriage than the husband, yet "she is generally the better informed
partner in matters pertaining to the married state, in spite of occasional
astonishing confessions."

[387] "She never loses her self-respect nor my respect for her," a man
writes in a letter, "simply because we are desperately in love with one
another, and everything we do--some of which the lowest prostitute might
refuse to do--seems but one attempt after another to translate our passion
into action. I never realized before, not that to the pure all things are
pure, indeed, but that to the lover nothing is indecent. Yes, I have
always felt it, to love her is a liberal education." It is obviously only
the existence of such an attitude as this that can enable a pure woman to
be passionate.

[388] "To be really understood," as Rafford Pyke well says, "to say what
she likes, to utter her innermost thoughts in her own way, to cast aside
the traditional conventions that gall her and repress her, to have someone
near her with whom she can be quite frank, and yet to know that not a
syllable of what she says will be misinterpreted or mistaken, but rather
felt just as she feels it all--how wonderfully sweet is this to every
woman, and how few men are there who can give it to her!"

[389] In more recent times it has been discussed in relation to the
frequency of spontaneous nocturnal emissions. See "The Phenomena of Sexual
Periodicity," Sect. II, in volume i of these _Studies_, and cf. Mr.
Perry-Coste's remarks on "The Annual Rhythm," in Appendix B of the same
volume.

[390] See "The Sexual Impulse in Women," vol. iii of these _Studies_.

[391] Zenobia's practice is referred to by Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, ed.
Bury, vol. i, p. 302. The Queen of Aragon's decision is recorded by the
Montpellier jurist, Nicolas Bohier (Boerius) in his _Decisiones_, etc.,
ed. of 1579, p. 563; it is referred to by Montaigne, _Essais_, Bk. iii,
Ch. V.

[392] Haller, _Elementa Physiologiæ_, 1778, vol. vii, p. 57.

[393] Hammond, _Sexual Impotence_, p. 129.

[394] Fürbringer, Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in Relation to
Marriage_, vol. i, p. 221.

[395] Forel, _Die Sexuelle Frage_, p. 80.

[396] Guyot, _Bréviaire de l'Amour Expérimental_, p. 144.

[397] Erb, Ziemssen's _Handbuch_, Bd. xi, ii, p. 148. Guttceit also
considered that the very wide variations found are congenital and natural.
It may be added that some believe that there are racial variations. Thus
it has been stated that the genital force of the Englishman is low, and
that of the Frenchman (especially Provençal, Languedocian, and Gascon)
high, while Löwenfeld believes that the Germanic race excels the French in
aptitude to repeat the sex act frequently. It is probable that little
weight attaches to these opinions, and that the chief differences are
individual rather than racial.

[398] Ribbing, _L'Hygiène Sexualle_, p. 75. Kisch, in his _Sexual Life of
Woman_, expresses the same opinion.

[399] Mohammed, who often displayed a consideration for women very rare in
the founders of religions, is an exception. His prescription of once a
week represented the right of the wife, quite independently of the number
of wives a man might possess.

[400] How fragile the claim of "conjugal rights" is, may be sufficiently
proved by the fact that it is now considered by many that the very term
"conjugal rights" arose merely by a mistake for "conjugal rites." Before
1733, when legal proceedings were in Latin, the term used was _obsequies_,
and "rights," instead of "rites," seems to have been merely a typesetter's
error (see _Notes and Queries_, May 16, 1891; May 6, 1899). This
explanation, it should be added, only applies to the consecrated term, for
there can be no doubt that the underlying idea has an existence quite
independent of the term.

[401] "In most marriages that are not happy," it is said in Rafford Pyke's
thoughtful paper on "Husbands and Wives" (_Cosmopolitan_, 1902), "it is
the wife rather than the husband who is oftenest disappointed."

[402] See "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," in vol. iii of these
_Studies_.

[403] It is well recognized by erotic writers, however, that women may
sometimes take a comparatively active part. Thus Vatsyayana says that
sometimes the woman may take the man's position, and with flowers in her
hair and smiles mixed with sighs and bent head, caressing him and pressing
her breasts against him, say: "You have been my conqueror; it is my turn
to make you cry for mercy."

[404] Thus among the Swahili it is on the third day after marriage that
the bridegroom is allowed, by custom, to complete defloration, according
to Zache, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, II-III, p. 84.

[405] _De l'Amour_, vol. ii, p. 57.

[406] Robert Michels, "Brautstandsmoral," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_,
Jahrgang I, Heft 12.

[407] I may refer once more to the facts brought together in volume iii of
these _Studies_, "The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."

[408] This has been pointed out, for instance, by Rutgers, "Sexuelle
Differenzierung," _Die Neue Generation_, Dec., 1908.

[409] Thus, among the Eskimo, who practice temporary wife-exchange,
Rasmussen states that "a man generally discovers that his own wife is, in
spite of all, the best."

[410] "I have always held with the late Professor Laycock," remarks
Clouston (_Hygiene of Mind_, p. 214), "who was a very subtle student of
human nature, that a married couple need not be always together to be
happy, and that in fact reasonable absences and partings tend towards
ultimate and closer union." That the prolongation of passion is only
compatible with absence scarcely needs pointing out; as Mary
Wollstonecraft long since said (_Rights of Woman_, original ed., p. 61),
it is only in absence or in misfortune that passion is durable. It may be
added, however, that in her love-letters to Imlay she wrote: "I have ever
declared that two people who mean to live together ought not to be long
separated."

[411] "Viewed broadly," says Arnold L. Gesell, in his interesting study of
"Jealousy" (_American Journal of Psychology_, Oct., 1906), "jealousy seems
such a necessary psychological accompaniment to biological behavior,
amidst competitive struggle, that one is tempted to consider it
genetically among the oldest of the emotions, synonymous almost with the
will to live, and to make it scarcely less fundamental than fear or anger.
In fact, jealousy readily passes into anger, and is itself a brand of
fear.... In sociability and mutual aid we see the other side of the
shield; but jealousy, however anti-social it may be, retains a function in
zoölogical economy: viz., to conserve the individual as against the group.
It is Nature's great corrective for the purely social emotions."

[412] Many illustrations are brought together in Gesell's study of
"Jealousy."

[413] Jealousy among lower races may be disguised or modified by tribal
customs. Thus Rasmussen (_People of the Polar North_, p. 65) says in
reference to the Eskimo custom of wife-exchange: "A man once told me that
he only beat his wife when she would not receive other men. She would have
nothing to do with anyone but him--and that was her only failing!"
Rasmussen elsewhere shows that the Eskimo are capable of extreme jealousy.

[414] See, e.g., Moll, _Sexualleben des Kindes_, p. 158; cf., Gesell's
"Study of Jealousy."

[415] Jealousy is notoriously common among drunkards. As K. Birnbaum
points out ("Das Sexualleben der Alkokolisten," _Sexual-Probleme_, Jan.,
1909), this jealousy is, in most cases, more or less well-founded, for the
wife, disgusted with her husband, naturally seeks sympathy and
companionship elsewhere. Alcoholic jealousy, however, goes far beyond its
basis of support in fact, and is entangled with delusions and
hallucinations. (See e.g., G. Dumas, "La Logique d'un Dément," _Revue
Philosophique_, Feb., 1908; also Stefanowski, "Morbid Jealousy," _Alienist
and Neurologist_, July, 1893.)

[416] Ellen Key, _Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 335.

[417] Schrempf points out ("Von Stella zu Klärchen," _Mutterschutz_, 1906,
Heft 7, p. 264) that Goethe strove to show in _Egmont_ that a woman is
repelled by the love of a man who knows nothing beyond his love to her,
and that it is easy for her to devote herself to the man whose aims lie in
the larger world beyond herself. There is profound truth in this view.

[418] A discussion on "Platonic friendship" of this kind by several
writers, mostly women, whose opinions were nearly equally divided, may be
found, for instance, in the _Lady's Realm_, March, 1900.

[419] There are no doubt important exceptions. Thus Mérimée's famous
friendship with Mlle. Jenny Dacquin, enshrined in the _Lettres à une
Inconnue_, was perhaps Platonic throughout on Mérimée's side, Mlle.
Dacquin adapting herself to his attitude. Cf. A. Lefebvre, _La Célèbre
Inconnue de Mérimée_, 1908.

[420] The love-letters of all these distinguished persons have been
published. Rosa Mayreder (_Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit_, pp. 229 _et
seq._) discusses the question of the humble and absolute manner in which
even men of the most masculine and impetuous genius abandon themselves to
the inspiration of the beloved woman. The case of the Brownings, who have
been termed "the hero and heroine of the most wonderful love-story that
the world knows of," is specially notable; (Ellen Key has written of the
Brownings from this point of view in _Menschen_, and reference may be made
to an article on the Brownings' love-letters in the _Edinburgh Review_,
April, 1899). It is scarcely necessary to add that an erotic relationship
may mean very much to persons of high intellectual ability, even when its
issue is not happy; of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the most intellectually
distinguished of women, it may be said that the letters which enshrine her
love to the worthless Imlay are among the most passionate and pathetic
love-letters in English.




CHAPTER XII.

THE SCIENCE OF PROCREATION.

The Relationship of the Science of Procreation to the Art of Love--Sexual
Desire and Sexual Pleasure as the Conditions of Conception--Reproduction
Formerly Left to Caprice and Lust--The Question of Procreation as a
Religious Question--The Creed of Eugenics--Ellen Key and Sir Francis
Galton--Our Debt to Posterity--The Problem of Replacing Natural
Selection--The Origin and Development of Eugenics--The General Acceptance
of Eugenical Principles To-day--The Two Channels by Which Eugenical
Principles are Becoming Embodied in Practice--The Sense of Sexual
Responsibility in Women--The Rejection of Compulsory Motherhood--The
Privilege of Voluntary Motherhood--Causes of the Degradation of
Motherhood--The Control of Conception--Now Practiced by the Majority of
the Population in Civilized Countries--The Fallacy of "Racial
Suicide"--Are Large Families a Stigma of Degeneration?--Procreative
Control the Outcome of Natural and Civilized Progress--The Growth of
Neo-Malthusian Beliefs and Practices--Facultative Sterility as Distinct
from Neo-Malthusianism--The Medical and Hygienic Necessity of Control of
Conception--Preventive Methods--Abortion--The New Doctrine of the Duty to
Practice Abortion--How Far is this Justifiable?--Castration as a Method of
Controlling Procreation--Negative Eugenics and Positive Eugenics--The
Question of Certificates for Marriage--The Inadequacy of Eugenics by Act
of Parliament--The Quickening of the Social Conscience in Regard to
Heredity--Limitations to the Endowment of Motherhood--The Conditions
Favorable to Procreation--Sterility--The Question of Artificial
Fecundation--The Best Age of Procreation--The Question of Early
Motherhood--The Best Time for Procreation--The Completion of the Divine
Cycle of Life.


We have seen that the art of love has an independent and amply justifiable
right to existence apart, altogether, from procreation. Even if we still
believed--as all men must once have believed and some Central Australians
yet believe[421]--that sexual intercourse has no essential connection with
the propagation of the race it would have full right to existence. In its
finer manifestations as an art it is required in civilization for the full
development of the individual, and it is equally required for that
stability of relationships which is nearly everywhere regarded as a demand
of social morality.

When we now turn to the second great constitutional factor of marriage,
procreation, the first point we encounter is that the art of love here
also has its place. In ancient times the sexual congruence of any man with
any woman was supposed to be so much a matter of course that all questions
of love and of the art of love could be left out of consideration. The
propagative act might, it was thought, be performed as impersonally, as
perfunctorily, as the early Christian Fathers imagined it had been
performed in Paradise. That view is no longer acceptable. It fails to
commend itself to men, and still less to women. We know that in
civilization at all events--and it is often indeed the same among
savages--erethism is not always easy between two persons selected at
random, nor even when they are more specially selected. And we also know,
on the authority of very distinguished gynæcologists, that it is not in
very many cases sufficient even to effect coitus, it is also necessary to
excite orgasm, if conception is to be achieved.

Many primitive peoples, as well as the theologians of the Middle
Ages, have believed that sexual excitement on the woman's part is
necessary to conception, though they have sometimes mixed up that
belief with false science and mere superstition. The belief
itself is supported by some of the most cautious and experienced
modern gynæcologists. Thus, Matthews Duncan (in his lectures on
_Sterility in Women_) argued that the absence of sexual desire in
women, and the absence of pleasure in the sexual act, are
powerful influences making for sterility. He brought forward a
table based on his case-books, showing that of nearly four
hundred sterile women, only about one-fourth experienced sexual
desire, while less than half experienced pleasure in the sexual
act. In the absence, however, of a corresponding table concerning
fertile women, nothing is hereby absolutely proved, and, at most,
only a probability established.

Kisch, more recently (in his _Sexual Life of Woman_), has dealt
fully with this question, and reaches the conclusion that it is
"extremely probable" that the active erotic participation of the
woman in coitus is an important link in the chain of conditions
producing conception. It acts, he remarks, in either or both of
two ways, by causing reflex changes in the cervical secretions,
and so facilitating the passage of the spermatozoa, and by
causing reflex erectile changes in the cervix itself, with slight
descent of the uterus, so rendering the entrance of the semen
easier. Kisch refers to the analogous fact that the first
occurrence of menstruation is favored by sexual excitement.

Some authorities go so far as to assert that, until voluptuous
excitement occurs in women, no impregnation is possible. This
statement seems too extreme. It is true that the occurrence of
impregnation during sleep, or in anæsthesia, cannot be opposed to
it, for we know that the unconsciousness of these states by no
means prevents the occurrence of complete sexual excitement. We
cannot fail, however, to connect the fact that impregnation
frequently fails to occur for months and even years after
marriage, with the fact that sexual pleasure in coitus on the
wife's part also frequently fails to occur for a similar period.

"Of all human instincts," Pinard has said,[422] "that of reproduction is
the only one which remains in the primitive condition and has received no
education. We procreate to-day as they procreated in the Stone Age. The
most important act in the life of man, the sublimest of all acts since it
is that of his reproduction, man accomplishes to-day with as much
carelessness as in the age of the cave-man." And though Pinard himself, as
the founder of puericulture, has greatly contributed to call attention to
the vast destinies that hang on the act of procreation, there still
remains a lamentable amount of truth in this statement. "Future
generations," writes Westermarck in his great history of moral ideas,[423]
"will probably with a kind of horror look back at a period when the most
important, and in its consequences the most far-reaching, function which
has fallen to the lot of man was entirely left to individual caprice and
lust."

We are told in his _Table Talk_, that the great Luther was accustomed to
say that God's way of making man was very foolish ("sehr närrisch"), and
that if God had deigned to take him into His counsel he would have
strongly advised Him to make the whole human race, as He made Adam, "out
of earth." And certainly if applied to the careless and reckless manner in
which procreation in Luther's day, as still for the most part in our own,
was usually carried out there was sound common sense in the Reformer's
remarks. If that is the way procreation is to be carried on, it would be
better to create and mould every human being afresh out of the earth; in
that way we could at all events eliminate evil heredity. It was, however,
unjust to place the responsibility on God. It is men and women who breed
the people that make the world good or bad. They seek to put the evils of
society on to something outside themselves. They see how large a
proportion of human beings are defective, ill-conditioned, anti-social,
incapable of leading a whole and beautiful human life. In old theological
language it was often said that such were "children of the Devil," and
Luther himself was often ready enough to attribute the evil of the world
to the direct interposition of the Devil. Yet these ill-conditioned people
who clog the wheels of society are, after all, in reality the children of
Man. The only Devil whom we can justly invoke in this matter is Man.

The command "Be fruitful and multiply," which the ancient Hebrews put into
the mouth of their tribal God, was, as Crackanthorpe points out,[424] a
command supposed to have been uttered when there were only eight persons
in the world. If the time should ever again occur when the inhabitants of
the world could be counted on one's fingers, such an injunction, as
Crackanthorpe truly observes, would again be reasonable. But we have to
remember that to-day humanity has spawned itself over the world in
hundreds and even thousands of millions of creatures, a large proportion
of whom, as is but too obvious, ought never to have been born at all, and
the voice of Jehovah is now making itself heard through the leaders of
mankind in a very different sense.

It is not surprising that as this fact tends to become generally
recognized, the question of the procreation of the race should gain a new
significance, and even tend to take on the character of a new religious
movement. Mere morality can never lead us to concern ourselves with the
future of the race, and in the days of old, men used to protest against
the tendency to subordinate the interests of religion to the claims of
"mere morality." There was a sound natural instinct underlying that
protest, so often and so vigorously made by Christianity, and again
revived to-day in a more intelligent form. The claim of the race is the
claim of religion. We have to beware lest we subordinate that claim to our
moralities. Moralities are, indeed, an inevitable part of our social order
from which we cannot escape; every community must have its _mores_. But we
are not entitled to make a fetich of our morality, sacrificing to it the
highest interests entrusted to us. The nations which have done so have
already signed their own death-warrant.[425] From this point of view, the
whole of Christianity, rightly considered, with its profound conviction of
the necessity for forethought and preparation for the life hereafter, has
been a preparation for eugenics, a schoolmaster to discipline within us a
higher ideal than itself taught, and we cannot therefore be surprised at
the solidity of the basis on which eugenical conceptions of life are
developing.

The most distinguished pioneers of the new movement of devotion
to the creation of the race seem independently to have realized
its religious character. This attitude is equally marked in Ellen
Key and Francis Galton. In her _Century of the Child_ (English
translation, 1909), Ellen Key entirely identifies herself with
the eugenic movement. "It is only a question of time," she
elsewhere writes (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 445), "when the
attitude of society towards a sexual union will depend not on the
form of the union, but on the value of the children created. Men
and women will then devote the same religious earnestness to the
psychic and physical perfectioning of this sexual task as
Christians have devoted to the salvation of their souls."

Sir Francis Galton, writing a few years later, but without doubt
independently, in 1905, on "Restrictions in Marriage," and
"Eugenics as a Factor in Religion" (_Sociological Papers_ of the
Sociological Society, vol. ii, pp. 13, 53), remarks: "Religious
precepts, founded on the ethics and practice of older days,
require to be reinterpreted, to make them conform to the needs of
progressive nations. Ours are already so far behind modern
requirements that much of our practice and our profession cannot
be reconciled without illegitimate casuistry. It seems to me
that few things are more needed by us in England than a revision
of our religion, to adapt it to the intelligence and needs of
this present time.... Evolution is a grand phantasmagoria, but it
assumes an infinitely more interesting aspect under the knowledge
that the intelligent action of the human will is, in some small
measure, capable of guiding its course. Man has the power of
doing this largely, so far as the evolution of humanity is
concerned; he has already affected the quality and distribution
of organic life so widely that the changes on the surface of the
earth, merely through his disforestings and agriculture, would be
recognizable from a distance as great as that of the moon.
Eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness, and appealing to
many of the noblest feelings of our nature."

As will always happen in every great movement, a few fanatics
have carried into absurdity the belief in the supreme religious
importance of procreation. Love, apart from procreation, writes
one of these fanatics, Vacher de Lapouge, in the spirit of some
of the early Christian Fathers (see _ante_ p. 509), is an
aberration comparable to sadism and sodomy. Procreation is the
only thing that matters, and it must become "a legally prescribed
social duty" only to be exercised by carefully selected persons,
and forbidden to others, who must, by necessity, be deprived of
the power of procreation, while abortion and infanticide must,
under some circumstances, become compulsory. Romantic love will
disappear by a process of selection, as also will all religion
except a new form of phallic worship (G. Vacher de Lapouge, "Die
Crisis der Sexuellen Moral," _Politisch Anthropologische Revue_,
No. 8, 1908). It is sufficient to point out that love is, and
always must be, the natural portal to generation. Such excesses
of procreative fanaticism cannot fail to occur, and they render
the more necessary the emphasis which has here been placed on the
art of love.

"What has posterity done for me that I should do anything for posterity?"
a cynic is said to have asked. The answer is very simple. The human race
has done everything for him. All that he is, and can be, is its creation;
all that he can do is the result of its laboriously accumulated
traditions. It is only by working towards the creation of a still better
posterity, that he can repay the good gifts which the human race has
brought him.[426] Just as, within the limits of this present life, many
who have received benefits and kindnesses they can never repay to the
actual givers, find a pleasure in vicariously repaying the like to
others, so the heritage we have received from our ascendents we can never
repay, save by handing it on in a better form to our descendants.

It is undoubtedly true that the growth of eugenical ideals has not been,
for the most part, due to religious feeling. It has been chiefly the
outcome of a very gradual, but very comprehensive, movement towards social
amelioration, which has been going on for more than a century, and which
has involved a progressive effort towards the betterment of all the
conditions of life. The ideals of this movement were proclaimed in the
eighteenth century, they began to find expression early in the nineteenth
century, in the initiation of the modern system of sanitation, in the
growth of factory legislation, in all the movements which have been borne
onwards by socialism hand in hand with individualism. The inevitable
tendency has been slowly towards the root of the matter; it began to be
seen that comparatively little can be effected by improving the conditions
of life of adults; attention began to be concentrated on the child, on the
infant, on the embryo in its mother's womb, and this resulted in the
fruitful movement of puericulture inspired by Pinard, and finally the
problem is brought to its source at the point of procreation, and the
regulation of sexual selection between stocks and between individuals as
the prime condition of life. Here we have the science of eugenics which
Sir Francis Galton has done so much to make a definite, vital, and
practical study, and which in its wider bearings he defines as "the
science which deals with those social eugenics that influence, mentally or
physically, the racial qualities of future generations." In its largest
aspect, eugenics is, as Galton has elsewhere said, man's attempt "to
replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and
not less effective."

In the last chapter of his _Memories of My Life_ (1908), on "Race
Improvement," Sir Francis Galton sets forth the origin and
development of his conception of the science of eugenics. The
term, "eugenics," he first used in 1884, in his _Human Faculty_,
but the conception dates from 1865, and even earlier. Galton has
more recently discussed the problems of eugenics in papers read
before the Sociological Society (_Sociological Papers_, vols. i
and ii, 1905), in the Herbert Spencer Lecture on "Probability the
Foundation of Eugenics," (1907), and elsewhere. Galton's numerous
memoirs on this subject have now been published in a collected
form by the Eugenics Education Society, which was established in
1907, to further and to popularize the eugenical attitude towards
social questions; _The Eugenics Review_ is published by this
Society. On the more strictly scientific side, eugenic studies
are carried on in the Eugenics Laboratory of the University of
London, established by Sir Francis Galton, and now working in
connection with Professor Karl Pearson's biometric laboratory, in
University College. Much of Professor Pearson's statistical work
in this and allied directions, is the elaboration of ideas and
suggestions thrown out by Galton. See, e.g., Karl Pearson's
Robert Boyle Lecture, "The Scope and Importance to the State of
the Science of National Eugenics" (1907). _Biometrika_, edited by
Karl Pearson in association with other workers, contains numerous
statistical memoirs on eugenics. In Germany, the _Archiv für
Rassen und Gesellschafts-biologie_, and the
_Politisch-Anthropologische Revue_, are largely occupied with
various aspects of such subjects, and in America, _The Popular
Science Monthly_ from time to time, publishes articles which have
a bearing on eugenics.

At one time there was a tendency to scoff, or to laugh, at the eugenic
movement. It was regarded as an attempt to breed men as men breed animals,
and it was thought a sufficiently easy task to sweep away this new
movement with the remark that love laughs at bolts and bars. It is now
beginning to be better understood. None but fanatics dream of abolishing
love in order to effect pairing by rule. It is merely a question of
limiting the possible number of mates from whom each may select a partner,
and that, we must remember, has always been done even by savages, for, as
it has been said, "eugenics is the oldest of the sciences." The question
has merely been transformed. Instead of being limited mechanically by
caste, we begin to see that the choice of sexual mates must be limited
intelligently by actual fitness. Promiscuous marriages have never been the
rule; the possibility of choice has always been narrow, and the most
primitive peoples have exerted the most marked self-restraint. It is not
so merely among remote races but among our own European ancestors.
Throughout the whole period of Catholic supremacy the Canon law
multiplied the impediments to matrimony, as by ordaining that
consanguinity to the fourth degree (third cousins), as well as spiritual
relationship, is an impediment, and by such arbitrary prohibitions limited
the range of possible mates at least as much as it would be limited by the
more reasonable dictates of eugenic considerations.

At the present day it may be said that the principle of the voluntary
control of procreation, not for the selfish ends of the individual, but in
order to extinguish disease, to limit human misery, and to raise the
general level of humanity by substituting the ideal of quality for the
vulgar ideal of mere quantity, is now generally accepted, alike by medical
pathologists, embryologists and neurologists, and by sociologists and
moralists.

It would be easy to multiply quotations from distinguished
authorities on this point. Thus, Metchnikoff points out (_Essais
Optimistes_, p. 419) that orthobiosis seems to involve the
limitation of offspring in the fight against disease. Ballantyne
concludes his great treatise on _Antenanal Pathology_ with the
statement that "Eugenics" or well-begetting, is one of the
world's most pressing problems. Dr. Louise Robinovitch, the
editor of the _Journal of Mental Pathology_, in a brilliant and
thoughtful paper, read before the Rome Congress of Psychology in
1905, well spoke in the same sense: "Nations have not yet
elevated the energy of genesic function to the dignity of an
energy. Other energies known to us, even of the meanest grade,
have long since been wisely utilized, and their activities based
on the principle of the strictest possible economy. This economic
utilization has been brought about, not through any enforcement
of legislative restrictions, but through steadily progressive
human intelligence. Economic handling of genesic function will,
like the economic function of other energies, come about through
a steady and progressive intellectual development of nations."
"There are circumstances," says C.H. Hughes, ("Restricted
Procreation," _Alienist and Neurologist_, May, 1908), "under
which the propagation of a human life may be as gravely criminal
as the taking of a life already begun."

From the general biological, as well as from the sociological
side, the acceptance of the same standpoint is constantly
becoming more general, for it is recognized as the inevitable
outcome of movements which have long been in progress.

"Already," wrote Haycraft (_Darwinism and Race Progress_, p.
160), referring to the law for the prevention of cruelty to
children, "public opinion has expressed itself in the public
rule that a man and woman, in begetting a child, must take upon
themselves the obligation and responsibility of seeing that that
child is not subjected to cruelty and hardship. It is but one
step more to say that a man and a woman shall be under obligation
not to produce children, when it is certain that, from their want
of physique, they will have to undergo suffering, and will keep
up but an unequal struggle with their fellows." Professor J.
Arthur Thomson, in his volume on _Heredity_ (1908), vigorously
and temperately pleads (p. 528) for rational methods of eugenics,
as specially demanded in an age like our own, when the unfit have
been given a better chance of reproduction than they have ever
been given in any other age. Bateson, again, referring to the
growing knowledge of heredity, remarks (_Mendel's Principles of
Heredity_, 1909, p. 305): "Genetic knowledge must certainly lead
to new conceptions of justice, and it is by no means impossible
that, in the light of such knowledge, public opinion will welcome
measures likely to do more for the extinction of the criminal and
the degenerate than has been accomplished by ages of penal
enactment." Adolescent youths and girls, said Anton von Menger,
in his last book, the pregnant _Neue Sittenlehre_ (1905), must be
taught that the production of children, under certain
circumstances, is a crime; they must also be taught the voluntary
restraint of conception, even in health; such teaching, Menger
rightly added, is a necessary preliminary to any legislation in
this direction.

Of recent years, many books and articles have been devoted to the
advocacy of eugenic methods. Mention may be made, for instance,
of _Population and Progress_ (1907), by Montague Crackanthorpe,
President of the Eugenics Education Society. See also, Havelock
Ellis, "Eugenics and St. Valentine," _Nineteenth Century and
After_, May, 1906. It may be mentioned that nearly thirty years
ago, Miss J.H. Clapperton, in her _Scientific Meliorism_ (1885,
Ch. XVII), pointed out that the voluntary restraint of
procreation by Neo-Malthusian methods, apart from merely
prudential motives, there clearly recognized, is "a new key to
the social position," and a necessary condition for "national
regeneration." Professor Karl Pearson's _Groundwork of Eugenics_,
(1909) is, perhaps, the best brief introduction to the subject.
Mention may also be made of Dr. Saleeby's _Parenthood and Race
Culture_ (1909), written in a popular and enthusiastic manner.

How widely the general principles of eugenics are now accepted as
the sound method of raising the level of the human race, was well
shown at a meeting of the Sociological Society, in 1905, when,
after Sir Francis Galton had read papers on the question, the
meeting heard the opinions of numerous sociologists, economists,
biologists, and well-known thinkers in various lands, who were
present, or who had sent communications. Some twenty-one
expressed more or less unqualified approval, and only three or
four had objections to offer, mostly on matters of detail
(_Sociological Papers_, published by the Sociological Society,
vol. ii, 1905).

If we ask by what channels this impulse towards the control of procreation
for the elevation of the race is expressing itself in practical life, we
shall scarcely fail to find that there are at least two such channels: (1)
the growing sense of sexual responsibility among women as well as men, and
(2) the conquest of procreative control which has been achieved in recent
years, by the general adoption of methods for the prevention of
conception.

It has already been necessary in a previous chapter to discuss the
far-reaching significance of woman's personal responsibility as an element
in the modification of the sexual life of modern communities. Here it need
only be pointed out that the autonomous authority of a woman over her own
person, in the sexual sphere, involves on her part a consent to the act of
procreation which must be deliberate. We are apt to think that this is a
new and almost revolutionary demand; it is, however, undoubtedly a
natural, ancient, and recognized privilege of women that they should not
be mothers without their own consent. Even in the Islamic world of the
_Arabian Nights_, we find that high praise is accorded to the "virtue and
courage" of the woman who, having been ravished in her sleep, exposed, and
abandoned on the highway, the infant that was the fruit of this
involuntary union, "not wishing," she said, "to take the responsibility
before Allah of a child that had been born without my consent."[427] The
approval with which this story is narrated clearly shows that to the
public of Islam it seemed entirely just and humane that a woman should not
have a child, except by her own deliberate will. We have been accustomed
to say in later days that the State needs children, and that it is the
business and the duty of women to supply them. But the State has no more
right than the individual to ravish a woman against her will. We are
beginning to realize that if the State wants children it must make it
agreeable to women to produce them, as under natural and equitable
conditions it cannot fail to be. "The women will solve the question of
mankind," said Ibsen in one of his rare and pregnant private utterances,
"and they will do it as mothers." But it is unthinkable that any question
should ever be solved by a helpless, unwilling, and involuntary act which
has not even attained to the dignity of animal joy.

It is sometimes supposed, and even assumed, that the demand of
women that motherhood must never be compulsory, means that they
are unwilling to be mothers on any terms. In a few cases that may
be so, but it is certainly not the case as regards the majority
of sane and healthy women in any country. On the contrary, this
demand is usually associated with the desire to glorify
motherhood, if not, indeed, even with the thought of extending
motherhood to many who are to-day shut out from it. "It seems to