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Title: The Task of Social Hygiene

Author: Havelock Ellis

Release date: July 17, 2007 [eBook #22090]

Language: English

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THE TASK OF SOCIAL
HYGIENE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR

STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Six Vols.
THE NEW SPIRIT
AFFIRMATIONS
MAN AND WOMAN
THE CRIMINAL
THE WORLD OF DREAMS
THE SOUL OF SPAIN
IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS
ESSAYS IN WAR-TIME. Etc.

THE TASK OF SOCIAL
HYGIENE
BY

HAVELOCK ELLIS

AUTHOR OF
"THE SOUL OF SPAIN"; "THE WORLD OF DREAMS"; ETC.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1916

Printed in Great Britain.

PREFACE

The study of social hygiene means the study of those things which concern
the welfare of human beings living in societies. There can, therefore, be no
study more widely important or more generally interesting. I fear, however,
that by many persons social hygiene is vaguely regarded either as a mere
extension of sanitary science, or else as an effort to set up an intolerable
bureaucracy to oversee every action of our lives, and perhaps even to breed
us as cattle are bred.
That is certainly not the point of view from which this book has been
written. Plato and Rabelais, Campanella and More, have been among those
who announced the principles of social hygiene here set forth. There must
be a social order, all these great pioneers recognized, but the health of
society, like the health of the body, is marked by expansion as much as by
restriction, and, the striving for order is only justified because without order
there can be no freedom. If it were not the mission of social hygiene to
bring a new joy and a new freedom into life I should not have concerned
myself with the writing of this book.

When we thus contemplate the process of social hygiene, we are no longer
in danger of looking upon it as an artificial interference with Nature. It is in
the Book of Nature, as Campanella put it, that the laws of life and of
government are to be read. Or, as Quesnel said two centuries ago, more
precisely for our present purpose, "Nature is universal hygiene." All animals
are scrupulous in hygiene; the elaboration of hygiene moves pari passu
with the rank of a species in intelligence. Even the cockroach, which lives
on what we call filth, spends the greater part of its time in the cultivation of
personal cleanliness. And all social hygiene, in its fullest sense, is but an
increasingly complex and extended method of purification—the purification
of the conditions of life by sound legislation, the purification of our own
minds by better knowledge, the purification of our hearts by a growing
sense of responsibility, the purification of the race itself by an enlightened
eugenics, consciously aiding Nature in her manifest effort to embody new
ideals of life. It was not Man, but Nature, who realized the daring and
splendid idea—risky as it was—of placing the higher anthropoids on their
hind limbs and so liberating their fore-limbs in the service of their nimble
and aspiring brains. We may humbly follow in the same path, liberating
latent forces of life and suppressing those which no longer serve the present
ends of life. For, as Shakespeare said, when in The Winter's Tale he set forth
a luminous philosophy of social hygiene and applied it to eugenics,

"Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean ...
This is an art
Which does mend Nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is Nature."

In whatever way it may be understood, however, social hygiene is now very
much to the front of people's minds. The present volume, I wish to make
clear, has not been hastily written to meet any real or supposed demand. It
has slowly grown during a period of nearly twenty-five years, and it
expresses an attitude which is implicit or explicit in the whole of my work.
By some readers, doubtless, it will be seen to constitute an extension in
various directions of the arguments developed in the larger work on "Sex in
Relation to Society," which is the final volume of my Studies in the
Psychology of Sex. The book I now bring forward may, however, be more

properly regarded as a presentation of the wider scheme of social reform
out of which the more special sex studies have developed. We are faced to-
day by the need for vast and complex changes in social organization. In
these changes the welfare of individuals and the welfare of communities are
alike concerned. Moreover, they are matters which are not confined to the
affairs of this nation or of that nation, but of the whole family of nations
participating in the fraternity of modern progress.
The word "progress," indeed, which falls so easily from our lips is not a
word which any serious writer should use without precaution. The
conception of "progress" is a useful conception in so far as it binds together
those who are working for common ends, and stimulates that perpetual
slight movement in which life consists. But there is no general progress in
Nature, nor any unqualified progress; that is to say, that there is no progress
for all groups along the line, and that even those groups which progress pay
the price of their progress. It was so even when our anthropoid ancestors
rose to the erect position; that was "progress," and it gained us the use of
hands. But it lost us our tails, and much else that is more regrettable than we
are always able to realize. There is no general and ever-increasing evolution
towards perfection. "Existence is realized in its perfection under whatever
aspect it is manifested," says Jules de Gaultier. Or, as Whitman put it,
"There will never be any more perfection than there is now." We cannot
expect an increased power of growth and realization in existence, as a
whole, leading to any general perfection; we can only expect to see the
triumph of individuals, or of groups of individuals, carrying out their own
conceptions along special lines, every perfection so attained involving, on
its reverse side, the acquirement of an imperfection. It is in this sense, and
in this sense only, that progress is possible. We need not fear that we shall
ever achieve the stagnant immobility of a general perfection.
The problems of progress we are here concerned with are such as the
civilized world, as represented by some of its foremost individuals or
groups of individuals, is just now waking up to grapple with. No doubt
other problems might be added, and the addition give a greater semblance
of completion to this book. I have selected those which seem to me very
essential, very fundamental. The questions of social hygiene, as here
understood, go to the heart of life. It is the task of this hygiene not only to
make sewers, but to re-make love, and to do both in the same large spirit of

human fellowship, to ensure finer individual development and a larger
social organization. At the one end social hygiene may be regarded as
simply the extension of an elementary sanitary code; at the other end it
seems to some to have in it the glorious freedom of a new religion. The
majority of people, probably, will be content to admit that we have here a
scheme of serious social reform which every man and woman will soon be
called upon to take some share in.
Havelock Ellis.

CONTENTS

I.—Introduction
PAGE

The aim of Social Hygiene—Social Reform—The Rise of
Social Reform out of English Industrialism—The Four Stages
of Social Reform—(1) The Stage of Sanitation—(2) Factory
Legislation—(3) The Extension of the Scope of Education—
(4) Puericulture—The Scientific Evolution corresponding to
these Stages—Social Reform only Touched the Conditions of
Life—Yet Social Reform Remains highly Necessary—The
Question of Infantile Mortality and the Quality of the Race—
The Better Organization of Life Involved by Social Hygiene—
Its Insistence on the Quality rather than on the Conditions of
Life—The Control of Reproduction—The Fall of the Birth-rate
in Relation to the Quality of the Population—The
Rejuvenation of a Society—The Influence of Culture and
Refinement on a Race—Eugenics—The Regeneration of the
Race—The Problem of Feeble-mindedness—The Methods of
Eugenics—Some of the Problems which Face us
1
II.—The Changing Status of Women

The Origin of the Woman Movement—Mary Wollstonecraft—
George Sand—Robert Owen—William Thompson—John
Stuart Mill—The Modern Growth of Social Cohesion—The
Growth of Industrialism—Its Influence in Woman's Sphere of
Work—The Education of Women—Co-education—The
Woman Question and Sexual Selection—Significance of
Economic Independence—The State Regulation of Marriage—
The Future of Marriage—Wilhelm von Humboldt—Social
Equality of Women—The Reproduction of the Race as a
Function of Society—Women and the Future of Civilization
49
III.—The New Aspect of the Woman's Movement

Eighteenth-Century France—Pioneers of the Woman's
Movement—The Growth of the Woman's Suffrage Movement
—The Militant Activities of the Suffragettes—Their Services
and Disservices to the Cause—Advantages of Women's
Suffrage—Sex Questions in Germany—Bebel—The Woman's
Rights Movement in Germany—The Development of Sexual
Science in Germany—The Movement for the Protection of
Motherhood—Ellen Key—The Question of Illegitimacy—
Eugenics—Women as Law-makers in the Home
67
IV.—The Emancipation of Women in Relation to Romantic Love

The Absence of Romantic Love in Classic Civilization—
Marriage as a Duty—The Rise of Romantic Love in the
Roman Empire—The Influence of Christianity—The Attitude
of Chivalry—The Troubadours—The Courts of Love—The
Influence of the Renaissance—Conventional Chivalry and
Modern Civilization—The Woman Movement—The Modern
Woman's Equality of Rights and Responsibilities excludes
Chivalry—New Forms of Romantic Love still remain possible
—Love as the Inspiration of Social Hygiene
113
V.—The Significance of a Falling Birth-rate

The Fall of the Birth-rate in Europe generally—In England—
In Germany—In the United States—In Canada—In Australasia
—"Crude" Birth-rate and "Corrected" Birth-rate—The
Connection between High Birth-rate and High Death-rate
—"Natural Increase" measured by Excess of Births over
Deaths—The Measure of National Well-being—The Example
of Russia—Japan—China—The Necessity of viewing the
Question from a wide Standpoint—The Prevalence of Neo-
Malthusian Methods—Influence of the Roman Catholic
Church—Other Influences lowering the Birth-rate—Influence
of Postponement of Marriage—Relation of the Birth-rate to
Commercial and Industrial Activity—Illustrated by Russia,
Hungary, and Australia—The Relation of Prosperity to Fertility
—The Social Capillarity Theory—Divergence of the Birth-rate
and the Marriage-rate—Marriage-rate and the Movement of
Prices—Prosperity and Civilization—Fertility among Savages
—The lesser fertility of Urban Populations—Effect of
Urbanization on Physical Development—Why Prosperity fails
permanently to increase Fertility—Prosperity creates Restraints
on Fertility—The process of Civilization involves Decreased
Fertility—In this Respect it is a Continuation of Zoological
Evolution—Large Families as a Stigma of Degeneration—The
Decreased Fertility of Civilization a General Historical Fact—
The Ideals of Civilization to-day—The East and the West
134
VI.—Eugenics and Love

Eugenics and the Decline of the Birth-rate—Quantity and
Quality in the Production of Children—Eugenic Sexual
Selection—The Value of Pedigrees—Their Scientific
Significance—The Systematic Record of Personal Data—The
Proposal for Eugenic Certificates—St. Valentine's Day and
Sexual Selection—Love and Reason—Love Ruled by Natural
Law—Eugenic Selection not opposed to Love—No Need for
Legal Compulsion—Medicine in Relation to Marriage.
193

VII.—Religion and the Child

Religious Education in Relation to Social Hygiene and to
Psychology—The Psychology of the Child—The Contents of
Children's Minds—The Imagination of Children—How far
may Religion be assimilated by Children?—Unfortunate
Results of Early Religious Instruction—Puberty the Age for
Religious Education—Religion as an Initiation into a Mystery
—Initiation among Savages—The Christian Sacraments—The
Modern Tendency as regards Religious Instruction—Its
Advantages—Children and Fairy Tales—The Bible of
Childhood—Moral Training
217
VIII.—The Problem of Sexual Hygiene

The New Movement for giving Sexual Instruction to Children
—The Need of such a Movement—Contradictions involved by
the Ancient Policy of Silence—Errors of the New Policy—The
Need of Teaching the Teacher—The Need of Training the
Parents—And of Scientifically equipping the Physician—
Sexual Hygiene and Society—The far-reaching Effects of
Sexual Hygiene
244
IX.—Immorality and the Law
258
Social Hygiene and Legal Compulsion—The Binding Force of
Custom among Savages—The Dissolving Influence of
Civilization—The Distinction between Immorality and
Criminality—Adultery as a Crime—The Tests of Criminality
—National Differences in laying down the Boundary between
Criminal and Immoral Acts—France—Germany—England—
The United States—Police Administration—Police Methods in
the United States—National Differences in the Regulation of
the Trade in Alcohol—Prohibition in the United States—Origin
of the American Method of Dealing with Immorality—Russia
—Historical Fluctuations in Methods of Dealing with
Immorality and Prostitution—Homosexuality—Holland—The

Age of Consent—Moral Legislation in England—In the United
States—The Raines Law—America Attempts to Suppress
Prostitution—Their Futility—German Methods of Regulating
Prostitution—The Sound Method of Approaching Immorality
—Training in Sexual Hygiene—Education in Personal and
Social Responsibility

X.—The War against War

Why the Problem of War is specially urgent To-day—The
Beneficial Effects of War in Barbarous Ages—Civilization
renders the Ultimate Disappearance of War Inevitable—The
Introduction of Law in disputes between Individuals involves
the Introduction of Law in disputes between Nations—But
there must be Force behind Law—Henry IV's Attempt to
Confederate Europe—Every International Tribunal of
Arbitration must be able to Enforce its decisions—The
Influences making for the Abolition of Warfare—(1) Growth of
International Opinion—(2) International Financial
Development—(3) The Decreasing Pressure of Population—
(4) The Natural Exhaustion of the Warlike Spirit—(5) The
Spread of Anti-military Doctrines—(6) The Over-growth of
Armaments—(7) The Dominance of Social Reform—War
Incompatible with an Advanced Civilization—Nations as
Trustees for Humanity—The Impossibility of Disarmament—
The Necessity of Force to ensure Peace—The Federated State
of the Future—The Decay of War still leaves the Possibilities
of Daring and Heroism
311
XI.— The Problem of an International Language
349
Early Attempts to construct an International Language—The
Urgent Need of an Auxiliary Language To-day—Volapük—
The Claims of Spanish—Latin—The Claims of English—Its
Disadvantages—The Claims of French—Its Disadvantages—
The Modern Growth of National Feeling opposed to Selection
of a Natural Language—Advantages of an Artificial Language

—Demands it must Fulfil—Esperanto—Its Threatened
Disruption—The International Association for the Adoption of
an Auxiliary International Language—The First Step to Take

XII.—Individualism and Socialism

Social Hygiene in Relation to the Alleged Opposition between
Socialism and Individualism—The Two Parties in Politics—
The Relation of Conservatism and Radicalism to Socialism and
Individualism—The Basis of Socialism—The Basis of
Individualism—The seeming Opposition between Socialism
and Individualism merely a Division of Labour—Both
Socialism and Individualism equally Necessary—Not only
Necessary, but Indispensable to each other—The Conflict
between the Advocates of Environment and Heredity—A New
Embodiment of the supposed Conflict between Socialism and
Individualism—The place of Eugenics—Social Hygiene
ultimately one with the Hygiene of the Soul—The Function of
Utopias
381
Index 407

THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE

I

INTRODUCTION

The Aim of Social Hygiene—Social Reform—The Rise of Social
Reform out of English Industrialism—The Four Stages of Social
Reform—(1) The Stage of Sanitation—(2) Factory Legislation—(3)
The Extension of the Scope of Education—(4) Puericulture—The
Scientific Evolution corresponding to these Stages—Social Reform
only Touched the Conditions of Life—Yet Social Reform Remains
highly Necessary—The Question of Infantile Mortality and the Quality
of the Race—The Better Organization of Life Involved by Social
Hygiene—Its Insistence on the Quality rather than on the Conditions
of Life—The Control of Reproduction—The Fall of the Birth-rate in
Relation to the Quality of the Population—The Rejuvenation of a
Society—The Influence of Culture and Refinement on a Race—
Eugenics—The Regeneration of the Race—The Problem of Feeble-
Mindedness—The Methods of Eugenics—Some of the Problems
which Face us.

Social Hygiene, as it will be here understood, may be said to be a
development, and even a transformation, of what was formerly known as
Social Reform. In that transformation it has undergone two fundamental
changes. In the first place, it is no longer merely an attempt to deal with the
conditions under which life is lived, seeking to treat bad conditions as they
occur, without going to their source, but it aims at prevention. It ceases to
be simply a reforming of forms, and approaches in a comprehensive manner
not only the conditions of life, but life itself. In the second place, its method
is no longer haphazard, but organized and systematic, being based on a
growing knowledge of those biological sciences which were scarcely in

their infancy when the era of social reform began. Thus social hygiene is at
once more radical and more scientific than the old conception of social
reform. It is the inevitable method by which at a certain stage civilization is
compelled to continue its own course, and to preserve, perhaps to elevate,
the race.
The era of social reform followed on the rise of modern industrialism, and,
no doubt largely on this account, although an international movement, it
first became definite and self-conscious in England. There were perhaps
other reasons why it should have been in the first place specially prominent
in England. When at the end of the seventeenth century, Muralt, a highly
intelligent Swiss gentleman, visited England, and wrote his by no means
unsympathetic Lettres sur les Anglais, he was struck by a curious
contradiction in the English character. They are a good-natured people, he
observed, very rich, so well-nourished that sometimes they die of obesity,
and they detest cruelty so much that by royal proclamation it is ordained
that the fish and the ducks of the ponds should be duly and properly fed. Yet
he found that this good-natured, rich, cruelty-hating nation systematically
allowed the prisoners in their gaols to die of starvation. "The great cruelty
of the English," Muralt remarks, "lies in permitting evil rather than in doing
it." [1] The root of the apparent contradiction lay clearly in a somewhat
excessive independence and devotion to liberty. We give a man full liberty,
they seem to have said, to work, to become rich, to grow fat. But if he will
not work, let him starve. In that point of view there were involved certain
fallacies, which became clearer during the course of social evolution.
It was obvious, indeed, that such an attitude, while highly favourable to
individual vigour and independence, and not incompatible with fairly
healthy social life under the conditions which prevailed at the time, became
disastrous in the era of industrialism. The conditions of industrial life tore
up the individual from the roots by which he normally received strength,
and crowded the workers together in masses, thus generating a confusion
which no individual activity could grapple with. So it was that the very
spirit which, under the earlier conditions, made for good now made for evil.
To stand by and applaud the efforts of the individual who was perhaps
slowly sinking deeper and deeper into a miry slough of degradation began
to seem an even diabolical attitude. The maxim of laissez-faire, which had
once stood for the whole unfettered action of natural activities in life, began

to be viewed with horror and contempt. It was realized that there must be an
intelligent superintendence of social conditions, humane regulation,
systematic organization. The very intensity of the evils which the English
spirit produced led to a reaction by which that spirit, while doubtless
remaining the same at heart, took on a different form, and manifested its
energy in a new direction.
The modern industrial era, replacing domestic industry by collective work
carried out by "hands" in factories, began in the eighteenth century. The era
of social reform was delayed until the second quarter of the nineteenth
century. It has proceeded by four successively progressive stages, each
stage supplementing, rather than supplanting, the stage that preceded it. In
1842 Sir Edwin Chadwick wrote an official Report on the Sanitary
Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, in which was
clearly presented for the first time a vivid, comprehensive, and authoritative
picture of the incredibly filthy conditions under which the English
labouring classes lived. The times were ripe for this Report. It attracted
public attention, and exerted an important influence. Its appearance marks
the first stage of social reform, which was mainly a sanitary effort to clear
away the gross filth from our cities, to look after the cleansing, lighting, and
policing of the streets, to create a drainage system, to improve dwellings,
and in these ways to combat disease and to lower the very high death-rate.
At an early stage, however, it began to be seen that this process of
sanitation, necessary as it had become, was far too crude and elementary to
achieve the ends sought. It was not enough to improve the streets, or even
to regulate the building of dwellings. It was clearly necessary to regulate
also the conditions of work of the people who lived in those streets and
dwellings. Thus it was that the scheme of factory legislation was initiated.
Rules were made as to the hours of labour, more especially as regards
women and children, for whom, moreover, certain specially dangerous or
unhealthy occupations were forbidden, and an increasingly large number of
avocations were brought under Government inspection. This second stage
of social reform encountered a much more strenuous opposition than the
first stage. The regulation of the order and cleanliness of the streets was
obviously necessary, and it had indeed been more or less enforced even in
medieval times; [2] but the regulation of the conditions of work in the
interests of the worker was a more novel proceeding, and it appeared to

clash both with the interests of the employers and the ancient principles of
English freedom and independence, behind which the employers
consequently sheltered themselves. The early attempts to legislate on these
lines were thus fruitless. It was not until a distinguished aristocratic
philanthropist of great influence, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, took up
the question, that factory legislation began to be accepted. It continues to
develop even to-day, ever enlarging the sphere of its action, and now
meeting with no opposition. But, in England, at all events, its acceptance
marks a memorable stage in the growth of the national spirit. It was no
longer easy and natural for the Englishmen to look on at suffering without
interference. It began to be recognized that it was perfectly legitimate, and
even necessary, to put a curb on the freedom and independence which
involved suffering to others.
But as the era of factory legislation became established, a further advance
was seen to be necessary. Factory legislation had forbidden the child to
work. But the duty of the community towards the child, the citizen of the
future, was evidently by no means covered by this purely negative step. The
child must be prepared to take his future part in life, in the first place by
education. The nationalization of education in England dates from 1870.
But during the subsequent half century "education" has come to mean much
more than mere instruction; it now covers a certain amount of provision for
meals when necessary, the enforcement of cleanliness, the care of defective
conditions, inborn or acquired, with special treatment for mentally defective
children, an ever-increasing amount of medical inspection and supervision,
while it is beginning to include arrangements for placing the child in work
suited to his capacities when he leaves school.
During the past ten years the movement of social reform has entered a
fourth stage. The care of the child during his school-days was seen to be
insufficient; it began too late, when probably the child's fate for life was
already decided. It was necessary to push the process further back, to birth
and even to the stage before birth, by directing social care to the infant, and
by taking thought of the mother. This consideration has led to a whole series
of highly important and fruitful measures which are only beginning to
develop, although they have already proved very beneficial. The immediate
notification to the authorities of a child's birth, and the institution of Health
Visitors to ascertain what is being done for the infant's well-being, and to

aid the mother with advice, have certainly been a large factor in the recent
reduction in the infantile death-rate in England. [3]
The care of the infant has indeed now become a new applied science, the
science of puericulture. Professor Budin of Paris may fairly be regarded as
the founder of puericulture by the establishment in Paris, in 1892, of Infant
Consultations, to which mothers were encouraged to bring their babies to be
weighed and examined, any necessary advice being given regarding the
care of the baby. The mothers are persuaded to suckle their infants if
possible, and if their own health permits. For the cases in which suckling is
undesirable or impossible, Budin established Milk Depôts, where pure milk
is supplied at a low price or freely. Infant Consultations and Milk Depôts
are now becoming common everywhere. A little later than Budin, another
distinguished French physician, Pinard, carried puericulture a step further
back, but a very important step, by initiating a movement for the care of the
pregnant woman. Pinard and his pupils have shown by a number of detailed
investigations that the children born to working mothers who rest during the
last three months of pregnancy, are to a marked extent larger and finer than
the children of those mothers who enjoy no such period of rest, even though
the mothers themselves may be equally robust and healthy in both cases.
Moreover, it is found that premature birth, one of the commonest accidents
of modern life, tends to be prevented by such rest. The children of mothers
who rest enjoy on the average three weeks longer development in the womb
than the children of the mothers who do not rest, and this prolonged ante-
natal development cannot fail to be a benefit for the whole of the child's
subsequent life. The movement started by Pinard, though strictly a
continuation of the great movement for the improvement of the conditions
of life, takes us as far back as we are able to go on these lines, and has in it
the promise of an immense benefit to human efficiency.
In connection with the movement of puericulture initiated by Budin and
Pinard must be mentioned the institution of Schools for Mothers, for it is
closely associated with the aims of puericulture. The School for Mothers
arose in Belgium, a little later than the activities of Budin and Pinard
commenced. About 1900 a young Socialist doctor of Ghent, Dr. Miele,
started the first school of this kind, with girls of from twelve to sixteen
years of age as students and assistants. The School eventually included as
many as twelve different services, among these being dispensaries for

mothers, a mothers' friendly society, milk depôts both for babies and
nursing mothers, health talks to mothers with demonstrations, courses on
puericulture (including anatomy, physiology, preparation of foods,
weighing, etc.) to girls between fourteen and eighteen, who afterwards
become eligible for appointment as paid assistants. [4] In 1907 Schools for
Mothers were introduced into England, at first under the auspices of Dr.
Sykes, Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras, London. Such Schools are
now spreading everywhere. In the end they will probably be considered
necessary centres for any national system of puericulture. Every girl at the
end of her school life should be expected to pass through a certain course of
training at a School for Mothers. It would be the technical school for the
working-class mother, while such a course would be invaluable for any girl,
whatever her social class, even if she is never called to be a mother herself
or to have the care of children.
The great movement of social reform during the nineteenth century, we thus
see, has moved in four stages, each of which has reinforced rather than
replaced that which went before: (1) the effort to cleanse the gross filth of
cities and to remedy obvious disorder by systematic attention to scavenging,
drainage, the supply of water and of artificial light, as well as by improved
policing; (2) the great system of factory legislation for regulating the
conditions of work, and to some extent restraining the work of women and
of children; (3) the introduction of national systems of education, and the
gradual extension of the idea of education to cover far more than mere
instruction; and (4), most fundamental of all and last to appear, the effort to
guard the child before the school age, even at birth, even before birth, by
bestowing due care on the future mother. [5]
It may be pointed out that this movement of practical social reform has been
accompanied, stimulated, and guided by a corresponding movement in the
sciences which in their application are indispensable to the progress of
civilized social reform. There has been a process of mutual action and
reaction between science and practice. The social movement has stimulated
the development of abstract science, and the new progress in science has
enabled further advances to be made in social practice. The era of
expansion in sanitation was the era of development in chemistry and
physics, which alone enabled a sound system of sanitation to be developed.
The fight against disease would have been impossible but for bacteriology.

The new care for human life, and for the protection of its source, is
associated with fresh developments of biological science. Sociological
observations and speculation, including economics, are intimately
connected with the efforts of social reform to attain a broad, sound, and
truly democratic basis. [6]
When we survey this movement as a whole, we have to recognize that it is
exclusively concerned with the improvement of the conditions of life. It
makes no attempt to influence either the quantity or the quality of life. [7] It
may sometimes have been carried out with the assumption that to improve
the conditions of life is, in some way or other, to improve the quality of life
itself. But it accepted the stream of life as it found it, and while working to
cleanse the banks of the stream it made no attempt to purify the stream
itself.
It must, however, be remembered that the arguments which, especially
nowadays, are brought against the social reform of the condition of life, will
not bear serious examination. It is said, for instance, or at all events implied,
that we need bestow very little care on the conditions of life because such
care can have no permanently beneficial effect on the race, since acquired
characters, for the most part, are not transmitted to descendants. But to
assume that social reform is unnecessary because it is not inherited is
altogether absurd. The people who make this assumption would certainly
not argue that it is useless for them to satisfy their own hunger and thirst,
because their children will not thereby be safeguarded from experiencing
hunger and thirst. Yet the needs which the movement of organized social
reform seeks to satisfy are precisely on a level with, and indeed to some
extent identical with, the needs of hunger and thirst. The impulse and the
duty which move every civilized community to elaborate and gratify its
own social needs to the utmost are altogether independent of the race, and
would not cease to exist even in a community vowed to celibacy or the
most absolute Neo-Malthusianism. Nor, again, must it be said that social
reform destroys the beneficial results of natural selection.
Here, indeed, we encounter a disputed point, and it may be admitted that the
precise data for absolute demonstration in one direction or the other cannot
yet be found. Whenever human beings breed in reckless and unrestrained
profusion—as is the case under some conditions before a free and self-

conscious civilization is attained—there is an immense infantile mortality.
It is claimed, on the one hand, that this is beneficial, and need not be
interfered with. The weak are killed off, it is said, and the strong survive;
there is a process of natural survival of the fittest. That is true. But it is
equally true, as has also been clearly seen on the other hand, that though the
relatively strongest survive, their relative strength has been impaired by the
very influences which have proved altogether fatal to their weaker brethren.
There is an immense infantile mortality in Russia. Yet, notwithstanding any
resulting "survival of the fittest," Russia is far more ravaged by disease than
Norway, where infantile mortality is low. "A high infantile mortality," as
George Carpenter, a great authority on the diseases of childhood, remarks,
"denotes a far higher infantile deterioration rate"; or, as another doctor puts
it, "the dead baby is next of kin to the diseased baby," The protection of the
weak, so frequently condemned by some Neo-Darwinians, is thus in reality,
as Goldscheid terms it, "the protection of the strong from degeneration."
There is, however, more to be said. Not only must an undue struggle with
unfavourable conditions enfeeble the strong as well as kill the feeble; it also
imposes an intolerable burden upon these enfeebled survivors. The process
of destruction is not sudden, it is gradual. It is a long-drawn-out process. It
involves the multiplication of the diseased, the maimed, the feeble-minded,
of paupers and lunatics and criminals. Even natural selection thus includes
the need for protecting the feeble, and so renders urgent the task of social
reform, while the more thoroughly this task is carried out with the growth
of civilization, the more stupendous and overwhelming the task becomes.
It is thus that civilization, at a certain point in its course, renders inevitable
the appearance of that wider and deeper organization of life which in the
present volume we are concerned with under the name of Social Hygiene.
That movement is far from being an abrupt or revolutionary manifestation
in the ordinary progress of social growth. As we have seen, social reform
during the past eighty years may be said to have proceeded in four
successive stages, each of which has involved a nearer approach to the
sources of life. The fourth stage, which in its beginnings dates only from the
last years of the nineteenth century, takes us to the period before birth, and
is concerned with the care of the child in the mother's womb. The next stage
cannot fail to take us to the very source of life itself, lifting us beyond the
task of purifying the conditions, and laying on us the further task of

regulating the quantity and raising the quality of life at its very source. The
duty of purifying, ordering, and consolidating the banks of the stream must
still remain. [8] But when we are able to control the stream at its source we
are able to some extent to prevent the contamination of that stream by filth,
and ensure that its muddy floods shall not sweep away the results of our
laborious work on the banks. Our sense of social responsibility is
developing into a sense of racial responsibility, and that development is
expressed in the nature of the tasks of Social Hygiene which now lie before
us.
It is the control of the reproduction of the race which renders possible the
new conception of Social Hygiene. We have seen that the gradual process of
social reform during the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, by
successive stages of movement towards the sources of life, finally reached
the moment of conception. The first result of reform at this point was that
procreation became a deliberate act. Up till then the method of propagating
the race was the same as that which savages have carried on during
thousands of years, the chief difference being that whereas savages have
frequently sought to compensate their recklessness by destroying their
inferior offspring, we had accepted all the offspring, good, bad, and
indifferent, produced by our indiscriminate recklessness, shielding
ourselves by a false theology. Children "came," and their parents disclaimed
all responsibility for their coming. The children were "sent by God," and if
they all turned out to be idiots, the responsibility was God's. But when it
became generally realized that it was possible to limit offspring without
interfering with conjugal life a step of immense importance was achieved. It
became clear to all that the Divine force works through us, and that we are
not entitled to cast the burden of our evil actions on any Higher Power.
Marriage no longer fatally involved an endless procession of children who,
in so far as they survived at all, were in a large number of cases doomed to
disease, neglect, misery, and ignorance. The new Social Hygiene was for
the first time rendered possible.
It was in France during the first half of the nineteenth century that the
control of reproduction first began to become a social habit. In Sweden and
in Denmark, the fall in the birth-rate, though it has been irregular, may be
said to have begun in 1860. It was not until about the year 1876 that, in so
far as we may judge by the arrest of the birth-rate, the movement began to

spread to Europe generally. In England it is usual to associate this change
with a famous prosecution which brought a knowledge of the means of
preventing conception to the whole population of Great Britain.
Undoubtedly this prosecution was an important factor in the movement, but
we cannot doubt that, even if the prosecution had not taken place, the
course of social progress must still have pursued the same course. It is
noteworthy that it was about this same period, in various European
countries, that the tide turned, and the excessively high birth-rate began to
fall. [9] Recklessness was giving place to foresight and self-control. Such
foresight and self-control are of the essence of civilization. [10]
It cannot be disputed that the transformation by which the propagation of
the race became deliberate and voluntary has not been established in social
custom without a certain amount of protestation from various sides. No
social change, however beneficial, ever is established without such
protestation, which may, therefore, be regarded as an inevitable and
probably a salutary part of social change. Even some would-be scientific
persons, with a display of elaborate statistics, set forth various alarmistic
doctrines. If, said these persons, this new movement goes on at the present
pace, and if all other conditions remain unchanged, then all sorts of terrible
results will ensue. But the alarming conclusion failed to ensue, and for a
very sufficient reason. The assumed premises of the argument were
unsound. Nothing ever goes on at the same pace, nor do all other conditions
ever remain unchanged. The world is a living fire, as Heraclitus long ago
put it. All things are in perpetual flux. Life is a process of perpetual
movement. It is idle to bid the world stand still, and then to argue about the
consequences. The world will not stand still, it is for ever revolving, for
ever revealing some new facet that had not been allowed for in the neatly
arranged mechanism of the statistician.
It is perhaps unnecessary to dwell on a point which is now at last, one may
hope, becoming clear to most intelligent persons. But I may perhaps be
allowed to refer in passing to an argument that has been brought forward
with the wearisome iteration which always marks the progress of those who
are feeble in argument. The good stocks of upper social class are decreasing
in fertility, it is said; the bad stocks of lower social class are not decreasing;
therefore the bad stocks are tending to replace the good stocks. [11]

It must, however, be pointed out that, even assuming that the facts are as
stated; it is a hazardous assumption that the best stocks are necessarily the
stocks of high social class. In the main no doubt this is so, but good stocks
are nevertheless so widely spread through all classes—such good stocks in
the lower social classes being probably the most resistent to adverse
conditions—that we are not entitled to regard even a slightly greater net
increase of the lower social classes as an unmitigated evil. It may be that, as
Mercier has expressed it, "we have to regard a civilized community
somewhat in the light of a lamp, which burns at the top and is replenished
from the bottom." [12]
The soundness of a stock, and its aptitude for performing efficiently the
functions of its own social sphere, cannot, indeed, be accurately measured
by any tendency to rise into a higher social sphere. On the whole, from
generation to generation, the men of a good stock remain within their own
social sphere, whether high or low, adequately performing their functions in
that sphere, from generation to generation. They remain, we may say, in that
social stratum of which the specific gravity is best suited for their existence.
[13]

Yet, undoubtedly, from time to time, there is a slight upward social
tendency, due in most cases to the exceptional energy and ability of some
individual who succeeds in permanently lifting his family into a slightly
higher social stratum. [14] Such a process has always taken place, in the past
even more conspicuously than in the present. The Normans who came over
to England with William the Conqueror and constituted the proud English
nobility were simply a miscellaneous set of adventurers, professional
fighting men, of unknown, and no doubt for the most part undistinguished,
lineage. William the Conqueror himself was the son of a woman of the
people. The Catholic Church founded no families, but its democratic
constitution opened a career to men of all classes, and the most brilliant
sons of the Church were often of the lowliest social rank. We should not,
therefore, say that the bad stocks are replacing the good stocks. There is not
the slightest evidence for any such theory. All that we are entitled to say is
that when in the upward progression of a community the vanishing point of
culture and refinement is attained the bearers of that culture and refinement
die off as naturally and inevitably as flowers in autumn, and from their roots

spring up new and more vigorous shoots to replace them and to pass in their
turn through the same stages, with that perpetual slight novelty in which lies
the secret of life, as well as of art. An aristocracy which is merely an
aristocracy because it is "old"—whether it is an aristocracy of families, or
of races, or of species—has already ceased to be an aristocracy in any
sound meaning of the term. We need not regret its disappearance.
Do not, therefore, let us waste our time in crying over the dead roses of the
summer that is past. There is something morbid in the perpetual groaning
over that inevitable decay which is itself a part of all life. Such a perpetual
narrow insistence on one aspect of life is scarcely sane. One suspects that
these people are themselves of those stocks over whose fate they grieve. Let
us, therefore, mercifully leave them to manure their dead roses in peace.
They will soon be forgotten. The world is for ever dying. The world is also
for ever bursting with life. The spring song of Sursum corda easily
overwhelms the dying autumnal wails of the Dies Iræ.
It would thus appear that, even apart from any deliberate restraint from
procreation, as a family attains the highest culture and refinement which
civilization can yield, that family tends to die out, at all events in the male
line. [15] This is, for instance, the result which Fahlbeck has reached in his
valuable demographic study of the Swedish nobility, Der Adel Schwedens.
"Apparently," says Fahlbeck, "the greater demands on nervous and
intellectual force which the culture and refinement of the upper classes
produce are chiefly responsible for this. For these are the two personal
factors by which those classes are distinguished from the lower classes:
high education and refinement in tastes and habits. The first involves
predominant activity of the brain, the last a heightened sensitiveness in all
departments of nervous life. In both respects, therefore, there is increased
work for the nervous system, and this is compensated in the other vital
functions, especially reproduction. Man cannot achieve everything; what he
gains on one side he loses on the other." We should do well to hold these
wise words in mind when we encounter those sciolists who in the presence
of the finest and rarest manifestations of civilizations, can only talk of race
"decay." A female salmon, it is estimated, lays about nine hundred eggs for
every pound of her own weight, and she may weigh fifty pounds. The
progeny of Shakespeare and Goethe, such as it was, disappeared in the very
centuries in which these great men themselves died. At the present stage of

civilization we are somewhat nearer to Shakespeare and Goethe than to the
salmon. We must set our ideals towards a very different direction from that
which commends itself to our Salmonidian sciolists. "Increase and
multiply" was the legendary injunction uttered on the threshold of an empty
world. It is singularly out of place in an age in which the earth and the sea,
if not indeed the very air, swarm with countless myriads of undistinguished
and indistinguishable human creatures, until the beauty of the world is
befouled and the glory of the Heavens bedimmed. To stem back that tide is
the task now imposed on our heroism, to elevate and purify and refine the
race, to introduce the ideal of quality in place of the ideal of quantity which
has run riot so long, with the results we see. "As the Northern Saga tells that
Odin must sacrifice his eye to attain the higher wisdom," concludes
Fahlbeck, "so Man also, in order to win the treasures of culture and
refinement, must give not only his eye but his life, if not his own life that of
his posterity." [16] The vulgar aim of reckless racial fertility is no longer
within our reach and no longer commends itself as worthy. It is not
consonant with the stage of civilization we are at the moment passing
through. The higher task is now ours of the regeneration of the race, or, if
we wish to express that betterment less questionably, the aggeneration of
the race. [17]
The control of reproduction, we see, essential as it is, cannot by itself carry
far the betterment of the race, because it involves no direct selection of
stocks. Yet we have to remember that though this control, with the
limitation of offspring it involves, fails to answer all the demands which
Social Hygiene to-day makes of us, it yet achieves much. It may not
improve what we abstractly term the "race," but it immensely improves the
individuals of which the race is made up. Thus the limitation of the family
renders it possible to avoid the production of undesired children. That in
itself is an immense social gain, because it tends to abolish excessive
infantile mortality. [18] It means that adequate care will be expended upon
the children that are produced, and that no children will be produced unless
the parents are in a position to provide for them. [19] Even the mere spacing
out of the children in a family, the larger interval between child-births, is a
very great advantage. The mother is no longer exhausted by perpetually
bearing, suckling, and tending babies, while the babies themselves are on
the average of better quality. [20] Thus the limitation of offspring, far from

being an egoistic measure, as some have foolishly supposed, is imperatively
demanded in the altruistic interests of the individuals composing the race.
But the control of reproduction, enormously beneficial as it is even in its
most elementary shapes, mainly concerns us here because it furnishes the
essential condition for the development of Social Hygiene. The control of
reproduction renders possible, and leads on to, a wise selection in
reproduction. It is only by such selection of children to be born that we can
balance our indiscriminate care in the preservation of all children that are
born, a care which otherwise would become an intolerable burden. It is only
by such selection that we can work towards the elimination of those stocks
which fail to help us in the tasks of our civilization to-day. It is only by such
selection that we can hope to fortify the stocks that are fitted for these tasks.
More than two centuries ago Steele playfully suggested that "one might
wear any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a
colour out of a tulip that hurts its beauty." [21] The progress of civilization,
with the self-control it involves, has made it possible to accept this
suggestion seriously. [22] The difference is that whereas the flowers of our
gardens are bettered only by the control of an arbitrary external will and
intelligence, our human flowers may be bettered by an intelligence and will,
a finer sense of responsibility, developed within themselves. Thus it is that
human culture renders possible Social Hygiene.
Three centuries ago an inspired monk set forth his ideal of an ennobled
world in The City of the Sun. Campanella wrote that prophetic book in
prison. But his spirit was unfettered, and his conception of human society,
though in daring it outruns all the visions we may compare it with, is yet on
the lines along which our civilization lies. In the City of the Sun not only
was the nobility of work, even mechanical work,—which Plato rejected and
More was scarcely conscious of,—for the first time recognized, but the
supreme impulse of procreation was regarded as a sacred function, to be
exercised in the light of scientific knowledge. It was a public rather than a
private duty, because it concerned the interests of the race; only valorous
and high-spirited men ought to procreate, and it was held that the father
should bear the punishments inflicted on the son for faults due to his failure
by defects in generation. [23] Moreover, while unions not for the end of
procreation were in the City of the Sun left to the judgment of the

individuals alone concerned, it was not so with unions for the end of
procreation. These were arranged by the "great Master," a physician, aided
by the chief matrons, and the public exercises of the youths and maidens,
performed in a state of nakedness, were of assistance in enabling unions to
be fittingly made. No eugenist under modern conditions of life proposes
that unions should be arranged by a supreme medical public official, though
he might possibly regard such an official, if divested of any compulsory
powers, a kind of public trustee for the race, as a useful institution. But it is
easy to see that the luminous conception of racial betterment which, since
Galton rendered it practicable, is now inspiring social progress, was already
burning brightly three centuries ago in the brain of this imprisoned Italian
monk. Just as Thomas More has been called the father of modern Socialism,
so Campanella may be said to be the prophet of modern Eugenics.
By "Eugenics" is meant the scientific study of all the agencies by which the
human race may be improved, and the effort to give practical effect to those
agencies by conscious and deliberate action in favour of better breeding.
Even among savages eugenics may be said to exist, if only in the crude and
unscientific practice of destroying feeble, deformed, and abnormal infants
at birth. In civilized ages elaborate and more or less scientific attempts are
made by breeders of animals to improve the stocks they breed, and their
efforts have been crowned with much success. The study of the same
methods in their bearing on man proceeded out of the Darwinian school of
biology, and is especially associated with the great name of Sir Francis
Galton, the cousin of Darwin. Galton first proposed to call this study
"Stirpiculture." Under that name it inspired Noyes, the founder of the
Oneida Community, with the impulse to carry it into practice with a
thoroughness and daring—indeed a similarity of method—which caused
Oneida almost to rival the City of the Sun. But the scheme of Noyes,
excellent as in some respects it was as an experiment, outran both scientific
knowledge and the spirit of the times. It was not countenanced by Galton,
who never had any wish to offend general sentiment, but sought to win it
over to his side, and before 1880 the Oneida Community was brought to an
end in consequence of the antagonism it aroused. Galton continued to
develop his conceptions slowly and cautiously, and in 1883, in his Inquiries
into Human Faculty, he abandoned the term "Stirpiculture" and devised the
term "Eugenics," which is now generally adopted to signify Good Breeding.

Galton was quite well aware that the improved breeding of men is a very
different matter from the improved breeding of animals, requiring a
different knowledge and a different method, so that the ridicule which has
sometimes been ignorantly flung at Eugenics failed to touch him. It would
be clearly undesirable to breed men, as animals are bred, for single points at
the sacrifice of other points, even if we were in a position to breed men
from outside. Human breeding must proceed from impulses that arise,
voluntarily, in human brains and wills, and are carried out with a human
sense of personal responsibility. Galton believed that the first need was the
need of knowledge in these matters. He was not anxious to invoke
legislation. [24] The compulsory presentation of certificates of health and
good breeding as a preliminary to marriage forms no part of Eugenics, nor
is compulsory sterilization a demand made by any reasonable eugenist.
Certainly the custom of securing certificates of health and ability is
excellent, not only as a preliminary to marriage, but as a general custom.
Certainly, also, there are cases in which sterilization is desirable, if
voluntarily accepted. [25] But neither certification nor sterilization should be
compulsory. They only have their value if they are intelligent and
deliberate, springing out of a widened and enlightened sense of personal
responsibility to society and to the race.
Eugenics constitutes the link between the Social Reform of the past,
painfully struggling to improve the conditions of life, and the Social
Hygiene of the future, which is authorized to deal adequately with the
conditions of life because it has its hands on the sources of life. On this
plane we are able to concentrate our energies on the finer ends of life,
because we may reasonably expect to be no longer hampered by the ever-
increasing burdens which were placed upon us by the failure to control life;
while the more we succeed in our efforts to purify and strengthen life, the
more magnificent become the tasks we may reasonably hope to attempt and
compass.
A problem which is often and justly cited as one to be settled by Eugenics is
that presented by the existence among us of the large class of the feeble-
minded. No doubt there are some who would regret the disappearance of
the feeble-minded from our midst. The philosophies of the Bergsonian type,
which to-day prevail so widely, place intuition above reason, and the "pure
fool" has sometimes been enshrined and idolized. But we may remember

that Eugenics can never prevent absolutely the occurrence of feeble-minded
persons, even in the extreme degree of the imbecile and the idiot. [26] They
come within the range of variation, by the same right as genius so comes.
We cannot, it may be, prevent the occurrence of such persons, but we can
prevent them from being the founders of families tending to resemble
themselves. And in so doing, it will be agreed by most people, we shall be
effecting a task of immense benefit to society and the race.
Feeble-mindedness is largely handed on by heredity. It was formerly
supposed that idiocy and feeble-mindedness are mainly due to
environmental conditions, to the drink, depravity, general disease, or lack of
nutrition of the parents, and there is no doubt an element of truth in that
view. But serious and frequent as are the results of bad environment and
acquired disease in the parentage of the feeble-minded, they do not form the
fundamental factor in the production of the feeble-minded. [27]
Feeble-mindedness is essentially a germinal variation, belonging to the
same large class as all other biological variations, occurring, for the most
part, in the first place spontaneously, but strongly tending to be inherited. It
thus resembles congenital cataract, deaf-mutism, the susceptibility to
tuberculous infection, etc. [28]
Exact investigation is now showing that feeble-mindedness is passed on
from parent to child to an enormous extent. Some years ago Ashby,
speaking from a large experience in the North of England, estimated that at
least seventy-five per cent of feeble-minded children are born with an
inherited tendency to mental defect. More precise investigation has since
shown that this estimate was under the mark. Tredgold, who in England has
most carefully studied the heredity of the feeble-minded, [29] found that in
over eighty-two per cent cases there is a bad nervous inheritance. In a large
number of cases the bad heredity was associated with alcoholism or
consumption in the parentage, but only in a small proportion of cases (about
seven per cent) was it probable that alcoholism and consumption alone, and
usually combined, had sufficed to produce the defective condition of the
children, while environmental conditions only produced mental defect in
ten per cent cases. [30] Heredity is the chief cause of feeble-mindedness, and
a normal child is never born of two feeble-minded parents. The very
thorough investigation of the heredity of the feeble-minded which is now

being carried on at the institution for their care at Vineland, New Jersey,
shows even more decisive results. By making careful pedigrees of the
families to which the inmates at Vineland belong it is seen that in a large
proportion of cases feeble-mindedness is handed on from generation to
generation, and is traceable through three generations, though it sometimes
skips a generation. In one family of three hundred and nineteen persons,
one hundred and nineteen were known to be feeble-minded, and only forty-
two known to be normal. The families tended to be large, sometimes very
large, most of them in many cases dying in infancy or growing up weak-
minded. [31]
Not only is feeble-mindedness inherited, and to a much greater degree than
has hitherto been suspected even by expert authorities, but the feeble-
minded thus tend (though, as Davenport and Weeks have found, not
invariably) to have a larger number of children than normal people. That
indeed, we might expect, apart altogether from the question of any innate
fertility. The feeble-minded have no forethought and no self-restraint. They
are not adequately capable of resisting their own impulses or the
solicitations of others, and they are unable to understand adequately the
motives which guide the conduct of ordinary people. The average number
of children of feeble-minded people seems to be frequently about one-third
more than in normal families, and is sometimes much greater. Dr. Ettie
Sayer, when investigating for the London County Council the family
histories of one hundred normal families and one hundred families in which
mentally defective children had been found, ascertained that the families of
the latter averaged 7.6 children, while in the normal families they averaged
5. Tredgold, specially investigating 150 feeble-minded cases, found that
they belonged to families in which 1269 children had been born, that is to
say 7.3 per family, or, counting still-born children, 8.4. Nearly two-thirds of
these abnormally large families were mentally defective, many showing a
tendency to disease, pauperism, criminality, or else to early death. [32]
Here, indeed, we have a counterbalancing influence, for, in the large
families of the feeble-minded, there is a correspondingly large infantile
mortality. A considerable proportion of Tredgold's group of children were
born dead, and a very large number died early. Eichholz, again, found that,
in one group of defective families, about sixty per cent of the children died
young. That is probably an unusually high proportion, and in Eichholz's

cases it seems to have been associated with very unusually large families,
but the infant mortality is always very high.
This large early mortality of the offspring of the feeble-minded is, however,
very far from settling the question of the disposal of the mentally defective,
or we should not find families of them propagated from generation to
generation. The large number who die early merely serves, roughly
speaking, to reduce the size of the abnormal family to the size of a normal
family, and some authorities consider that it scarcely suffices to do this, for
we must remember that there is a considerable mortality even in the so-
called normal family during early life. Even when there is no abnormal
fertility in the defective family we may still have to recognize that, as
Davenport and Weeks argue, their defectiveness is intensified by heredity.
Moreover, we have to consider the social disorder and the heavy expense
which accompany the large infantile mortality. Illegitimacy is frequently the
result of feeble-mindedness, since feeble-minded women are peculiarly
unable to resist temptation. A great number of such women are continually
coming into the workhouses and giving birth to illegitimate children whom
they are unable to support, and who often never become capable of
supporting themselves, but in their turn tend to produce a new feeble-
minded generation, more especially since the men who are attracted to these
feeble-minded women are themselves—according to the generally
recognized tendency of the abnormal to be attracted to the abnormal—
feeble-minded or otherwise mentally defective. There is thus generated not
only a heavy financial burden, but also a perpetual danger to society, and, it
may well be, a serious depreciation in the quality of the community. [33]
It is not only in themselves that the feeble-minded are a burden on the
present generation and a menace to future generations. In large measure
they form the reservoir from which the predatory classes are recruited. This
is, for instance, the case as regards prostitutes. Feeble-minded girls, of fairly
high grade, may often be said to be predestined to prostitution if left to
themselves, not because they are vicious, but because they are weak and
have little power of resistance. They cannot properly weigh their actions
against the results of their actions, and even if they are intelligent enough to
do that, they are still too weak to regulate their actions accordingly.
Moreover, even when, as often happens among the high-grade feeble-
minded, they are quite able and willing to work, after they have lost their

"respectability" by having a child, the opportunities for work become more
restricted, and they drift into prostitution. It has been found that of nearly
15,000 women who passed through Magdalen Homes in England, over
2500, or more than sixteen per cent—and this is probably an under-estimate
—were definitely feeble-minded. The women belonging to this feeble-
minded group were known to have added 1000 illegitimate children to the
population. In Germany Bonhoeffer found among 190 prostitutes who
passed through a prison that 102 were hereditarily degenerate and 53
feeble-minded. This would be an over-estimate as regards average
prostitutes, though the offences were no doubt usually trivial, but in any
case the association between prostitution and feeble-mindedness is intimate.
Everywhere, there can be no doubt, the ranks of prostitution contain a
considerable proportion of women who were, at the very outset, in some
slight degree feeble-minded, mentally and morally a little blunted through
some taint of inheritance. [34]
Criminality, again, is associated with feeble-mindedness in the most
intimate way. Not only do criminals tend to belong to large families, but the
families that produce feeble-minded offspring also produce criminals, while
a certain degree of feeble-mindedness is extremely common among
criminals, and the most hopeless and typical, though fortunately rare, kind
of criminal, frequently termed a "moral imbecile," is nothing more than a
feeble-minded person whose defect is shown not so much in his intelligence
as in his feelings and his conduct. Sir H.B. Donkin, who speaks with
authority on this matter, estimates that, though it is difficult to obtain the
early history of the criminals who enter English prisons, about twenty per
cent of them are of primarily defective mental capacity. This would mean
that every year some 35,000 feeble-minded persons are sent to English
prisons as "criminals." The tendency of criminals to belong to the feeble-
minded class is indeed every day becoming more clearly recognized. At
Pentonville, putting aside prisoners who were too mentally affected to be fit
for prison discipline, eighteen per cent of the adult prisoners and forty per
cent of the juvenile offenders were found to be feeble-minded. This
includes only those whose defect is fairly obvious, and is not the result of
methodical investigation. It is certain that such methodical inquiry would
reveal a very large proportion of cases of less obvious mental defect. Thus
the systematic examination of a number of delinquent children in an

Industrial School showed that in seventy-five per cent cases they were
defective as compared to normal children, and that their defectiveness was
probably inborn. Even the possession of a considerable degree of cunning is
no evidence against mental defect, but may rather be said to be a sign of it,
for it shows an intelligence unable to grasp the wider relations of life, and
concentrated on the gratification of petty and immediate desires. Thus it
happens that the cunning of criminals is frequently associated with almost
inconceivable stupidity. [35]
Closely related to the great feeble-minded class, and from time to time
falling into crime, are the inmates of workhouses, tramps, and the
unemployable. The so-called "able-bodied" inmates of the workhouses are
frequently found, on medical examination, to be, in more than fifty per cent
cases, mentally defective, equally so whether they are men or women.
Tramps, by nature and profession, who overlap the workhouse population,
and are estimated to number 20,000 to 30,000 in England and Wales, when
the genuine unemployed are eliminated, are everywhere found to be a very
degenerate class, among whom the most mischievous kinds of feeble-
mindedness and mental perversion prevail. Inebriates, the people who are
chronically and helplessly given to drink, largely belong to the same great
family, and do not so much become feeble-minded because they drink, but
possess the tendency to drink because they have a strain of feeble-
mindedness from birth. Branthwaite, the chief English authority on this
question, finds that of the inebriates who come to his notice, putting aside
altogether the group of actually insane persons, about sixty-three per cent
are mentally defective, and scarcely more than a third of the whole number
of average mental capacity. It is evident that these people, even if restored
to sobriety, would still retain their more or less inborn defectiveness, and
would remain equally, unfit to become the parents of the coming
generation.
These are the kind of people—tramps, prostitutes, paupers, criminals,
inebriates, all tending to be born a little defective—who largely make up the
great degenerate families whose histories are from time to time recorded.
Such a family was that of the Jukes in America, who, in the course of five
generations, by constantly intermarrying with bad stocks, produced 709
known descendants who were on the whole unfit for society, and have been
a constant danger and burden to society. [36] A still larger family of the same

kind, more recently studied in Germany, consisted of 834 known persons,
all descended from a drunken vagabond woman, probably somewhat
feeble-minded but physically vigorous. The great majority of these
descendants were prostitutes, tramps, paupers, and criminals (some of them
murderers), and the direct cost in money to the Prussian State for the keep
and care of this woman and her family has been a quarter of a million
pounds. Yet another such family is that of the "Zeros." Three centuries ago
they were highly respectable people, living in a Swiss valley. But they
intermarried with an insane stock, and subsequently married other women
of an unbalanced nature. In recent times 310 members of this family have
been studied, and it is found that vagrancy, feeble-mindedness, mental
troubles, criminality, pauperism, immorality are, as it may be termed, their
patrimony. [37]
These classes, with their tendency to weak-mindedness, their inborn
laziness, lack of vitality, and unfitness for organized activity, contain the
people who complain that they are starving for want of work, though they
will never perform any work that is given them. Feeble-mindedness is an
absolute dead-weight on the race. It is an evil that is unmitigated. The heavy
and complicated social burdens and injuries it inflicts on the present
generation are without compensation, while the unquestionable fact that in
any degree it is highly inheritable renders it a deteriorating poison to the
race; it depreciates the quality of a people. The task of Social Hygiene
which lies before us cannot be attempted by this feeble folk. Not only can
they not share it, but they impede it; their clumsy hands are for ever
becoming entangled in the delicate mechanism of our modern civilization.
Their very existence is itself an impediment. Apart altogether from the
gross and obvious burden in money and social machinery which the
protection they need, and the protection we need against them, casts upon
the community, [38] they dilute the spiritual quality of the community to a
degree which makes it an inapt medium for any high achievement. It
matters little how small a city or a nation is, provided the spirit of its people
is great. It is the smallest communities that have most powerfully and most
immortally raised the level of civilization, and surrounded the human
species (in its own eyes) with a halo of glory which belongs to no other
species. Only a handful of people, hemmed in on every side, created the
eternal radiance of Athens, and the fame of the little city of Florence may

outlive that of the whole kingdom of Italy. To realize this truth in the future
of civilization is one of the first tasks of Social Hygiene. [39]
It is here that the ideals of Eugenics may be expected to work fruitfully. To
insist upon the power of heredity was once considered to indicate a
fatalistic pessimism. It wears a very different aspect nowadays, in the light
of Eugenics. "To the eugenist," as Davenport observes, "heredity stands as
the one great hope of the human race: its saviour from imbecility, poverty,
disease, immorality." [40] We cannot, indeed, desire any compulsory
elimination of the unfit or any centrally regulated breeding of the fit. [41]
Such notions are idle, and even the mere fact that unbalanced brains may air
them abroad tends to impair the legitimate authority of eugenic ideals. The
two measures which are now commonly put forward for the attainment of
eugenic ends—health certificates as a legal preliminary to marriage and the
sterilization of the unfit—are excellent when wisely applied, but they
become mischievous, if not ridiculous, in the hands of fanatics who would
employ them by force. Domestic animals may be highly bred from outside,
compulsorily. Man can only be bred upwards from within through the
medium of his intelligence and will, working together under the control of a
high sense of responsibility. The infinite cunning of men and women is
fully equal to the defeat of any attempt to touch life at this intimate point
against the wish of those to whom the creation of life is entrusted. The laws
of marriage even among savages have often been complex and strenuous in
the highest degree. But it has been easy to bear them, for they have been
part of the sacred and inviolable traditions of the race; religion lay behind
them. And Galton, who recognized the futility of mere legislation in the
elevation of the race, believed that the hope of the future lies in rendering
eugenics a part of religion. The only compulsion we can apply in eugenics
is the compulsion that comes from within. All those in whom any fine sense
of social and racial responsibility is developed will desire, before marriage,
to give, and to receive, the fullest information on all the matters that
concern ancestral inheritance, while the registration of such information, it
is probable, will become ever simpler and more a matter of course. [42] And
if he finds that he is not justified in aiding to carry on the race, the eugenist
will be content to make himself, in the words of Jesus, "a eunuch for the
kingdom of Heaven's sake," whether, under modern conditions, that means
abstention in marriage from procreation, or voluntary sterilization by

operative methods. [43] For, as Giddings has put it, the goal of the race lies,
not in the ruthless exaltation of a super-man, but in the evolution of a super-
mankind. Such a goal can only be reached by resolute selection and
elimination. [44]
The breeding of men lies largely in the hands of women. That is why the
question of Eugenics is to a great extent one with the woman question. The
realization of eugenics in our social life can only be attained with the
realization of the woman movement in its latest and completest phase as an
enlightened culture of motherhood, in all that motherhood involves alike on
the physical and the psychic sides. Motherhood on the eugenic basis is a
deliberate and selective process, calling for the highest intelligence as well
as the finest emotional and moral aptitudes, so that all the best energies of a
long evolution of womanhood in the paths of modern culture here find their
final outlet. The breeding of children further involves the training of
children, and since the expansion of Social Hygiene renders education a far
larger and more delicate task than it has ever been before, the
responsibilities laid upon women by the evolution of civilization become
correspondingly great.
For the men who have been thus born and taught the tasks imposed by
Social Hygiene are in no degree lighter. They demand all the best qualities
of a selectively bred race from which the mentally and physically weak
have, so far as possible, been bred out. The substitution of law for war alike
in the relations of class to class, and of nation to nation, and the
organization of international methods of social intercourse between peoples
of different tongues and unlike traditions, are but two typical examples of
the tasks, difficult but imperative, which Social Hygiene presents and the
course of modern civilization renders insistent. Again, the adequate
adjustment of the claims of the individual and the claims of the community,
each carried to its farthest point, can but prove an exquisite test of the
quality of any well-bred and well-trained race. It is exactly in that balancing
of apparent opposites, the necessity of pushing to extremes both opposites,
and the consequent need of cultivating that quality of temperance the
Greeks estimated so highly, that the supreme difficulties of modern
civilization lie. We see these difficulties again in relation to the extension of
law. It is desirable and inevitable that the sphere of law should be extended,
and that the disputes which are still decided by brutal and unreasoning force

should be decided by humane and reasoning force, that is to say, by law.
But, side by side with this extension of law, it is necessary to wage a
constant war with the law-making tendency, to cherish an undying resolve
to maintain unsullied those sacred and intimate impulses, all the finest
activities of the moral sphere, which the generalizing hand of law can only
injure and stain.
It is these fascinating and impassioning problems, every day becoming of
more urgent practical importance, which it is the task of Social Hygiene to
solve, having first created the men and women who are fit to solve them. It
is such problems as these that we are to-day called upon to illuminate, as far
as we may—it may not yet be very far—by the dry light of science.
[1] Muralt, Lettres sur les Anglais. Lettre V.
[2] In the reign of Richard II (1388) an Act was passed for "the punishment of
those which cause corruption near a city or great town to corrupt the air." A
century later (in Henry VII's time) an Act was passed to prevent butchers killing
beasts in walled towns, the preamble to this Act declaring that no noble town in
Christendom should contain slaughter-houses lest sickness be thus engendered.
In Charles II's time, after the great fire of London, the law provided for the better
paving and cleansing of the streets and sewers. It was, however, in Italy, as Weyl
points out (Geschichte der Sozialen Hygiene im Mittelalter, at a meeting of the
Gesellschaft für Soziale Medizin, May 25, 1905), that the modern movement of
organized sanitation began. In the thirteenth century the great Italian cities (like
Florence and Pistoja) possessed Codici Sanitarii; but they were not carried out,
and when the Black Death reached Florence in 1348, it found the city altogether
unprepared. It was Venice which, in the same year, first initiated vigorous State
sanitation. Disinfection was first ordained by Gian Visconti, in Milan, in 1399.
The first quarantine station of which we hear was established in Venice in 1403.
[3] The rate of infant mortality in England and Wales has decreased from 149 per
1000 births in 1871-80 to 127 per 1000 births in 1910. In reference to this
remarkable fall which has taken place pari passu with the fall in the birth-rate,
Newsholme, the medical officer to the Local Government Board, writes: "There
can be no reasonable doubt that much of the reduction has been caused by that
'concentration' on the mother and the child which has been a striking feature of
the last few years. Had the experience of 1896-1900 held good there would have
been 45,120 more deaths of infants in 1910 than actually occurred." In some
parts of the country, however, where the women go out to work in factories (as in
Lancashire and parts of Staffordshire) the infantile mortality remains very high.
[4] Mrs. Bertrand Russell, "The Ghent School for Mothers," Nineteenth Century,
December, 1906.
[5] It is scarcely necessary to say that other classifications of social reform on its
more hygienic side may be put forward. Thus W.H. Allen, looking more
narrowly at the sanitary side of the matter, but without confining his

consideration to the nineteenth century, finds that there are always seven stages:
(1) that of racial tutelage, when sanitation becomes conscious and receives the
sanction of law; (2) the introduction of sanitary comfort, well-paved streets,
public sewers, extensive waterworks; (3) the period of commercial sanitation,
when the mercantile classes insist upon such measures as quarantine and street-
cleaning to check the immense ravages of epidemics; (4) the introduction of
legislation against nuisances and the tendency to extend the definition of
nuisance, which for Bracton, in the fourteenth century, meant an obstruction, and
for Blackstone, in the eighteenth, included things otherwise obnoxious, such as
offensive trades and foul watercourses; (5) the stage of precaution against the
dangers incidental to the slums that are fostered by modern conditions of
industry; (6) the stage of philanthropy, erecting hospitals, model tenements,
schools, etc.; (7) the stage of socialistic sanitation, when the community as a
whole actively seeks its own sanitary welfare, and devotes public funds to this
end.
(W.H. Allen, "Sanitation and Social Progress," American Journal of Sociology,
March, 1903.)
[6] Dr. F. Bushee has pointed out ("Science and Social Progress," Popular
Science Monthly, September, 1911) that there is a kind of related progression
between science and practice in this matter: "The natural sciences developed
first, because man was first interested in the conquest of nature, and the simpler
physical laws could be grasped at an early period. This period brought an
increase of wealth, but it was wasteful of human life. The desire to save life led
the way to the study of biology. Knowledge of the physical environment and of
life, however, did not prevent social disease from flourishing, and did not greatly
improve the social condition of a large part of society. To overcome these defects
the social sciences within recent years have been cultivated with great
seriousness. Interest in the social sciences has had to wait for the enlarged
sympathies and the sense of solidarity which has appeared with the growing
interdependence of dense populations, and these conditions have been dependent
upon the advance of the other sciences. With the cultivation of the social
sciences, the chain of knowledge will be complete, at least so far as the needs
which have already appeared are concerned. For each group of sciences will
solve one or more of the great problems which man has encountered in the
process of development. The physical sciences will solve the problems of
environment, the biological sciences the problems of life, and the social sciences
the problems of society."
[7] This exclusive pre-occupation with the improvement of the environment has
been termed Euthenics by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, who has written a book with
this title, advocating euthenics in opposition to eugenics.
[8] Not one of the four stages of social reform already summarized can be
neglected. On the contrary, they all need to be still further consolidated in a
completely national organization of health. I may perhaps refer to the little book
on The Nationalization of Health, in which, many years ago, I foreshadowed this
movement, as well as to the recent work of Professor Benjamin Moore on the
same subject. The gigantic efforts of Germany, and later of England, to establish
National Insurance systems, bear noble witness to the ardour with which these
two countries, at all events, are moving towards the desired goal.

[9] In some countries, however, the decline, although traceable about 1876, only
began to be pronounced somewhat later, in Austria in 1883, in the German
Empire, Hungary and Italy in 1885, and in Prussia in 1886. Most of these
countries, though late in following the modern movement of civilization initiated
by France, are rapidly making their way in the same direction. Thus the birth-rate
in Berlin is already as low as that of Paris ten years ago, although the French
decline began at a very early period. In Norway, again, the decline was not
marked until 1900, but the birth-rate has nevertheless already fallen as low as
that of Sweden, where the fall began very much earlier.
[10] "Foresight and self-control is, and always must be, the ground and medium
of all Moral Socialism," says Bosanquet (The Civilization of Christendom, p.
336), using the term "Socialism" in the wide and not in the economic sense. We
see the same civilized growth of foresight and self-control in the decrease of
drunkenness. Thus in England the number of convictions for drunkenness, while
varying greatly in different parts of the country, is decreasing for the whole
country at the rapid rate of 5000 to 8000 a year, notwithstanding the constant
growth of the population. It is incorrect to suppose that this decrease has any
connection with decreased opportunities for drinking; thus in London County
and in Cardiff the proportion of premises licensed for drinking is the same, yet
while the convictions for drunkenness in 1910 were in London 83 per 10,000
inhabitants, in Cardiff they were under 6 per 10,000.
[11] Thus Heron finds that in London during the past fifty years there has been
100 per cent increase in the intensity of the relation between low social birth and
high birth-rate, and that the high birth-rate of the lower social classes is not fully
compensated by their high death-rate (D. Heron, "On the Relation of Fertility in
Man to Social Status," Drapers' Company Research Memoirs, No. I, 1906). As,
however, Newsholme and Stevenson point out (Journal Royal Statistical Society,
April, 1906, p. 74), the net addition to the population made by the best social
classes is at so very slightly lower a rate than that made by the poorest class that,
even if we consent to let the question rest on this ground, there is still no urgent
need for the wailings of Cassandra.
[12] Sociological Papers of the Sociological Society, 1904, p. 35.
[13] There is a certain profit in studying one's own ancestry. It has been
somewhat astonishing to me to find how very slight are the social oscillations
traceable in a middle-class family and the families it intermarries with through
several centuries. A professional family tends to form a caste marrying within
that caste. An ambitious member of the family may marry a baronet's daughter,
and another, less pretentious, a village tradesman's daughter; but the general
level is maintained without rising or falling. Occasionally, it happens that the
ambitious and energetic son of a prosperous master-craftsman becomes a
professional man, marries into the professional caste, and founds a professional
family; such a family seems to flourish for some three generations, and then
suddenly fails and dies out in the male line, while the vigour of the female line is
not impaired.
[14] The new social adjustment of a family, it is probable, is always difficult, and
if the change is sudden or extreme, the new environment may rapidly prove fatal

to the family. Lorenz (Lehrbuch der Genealogie, p. 135) has shown that when a
peasant family reaches an upper social class it dies out in a few generations.
[15] See, on this point, Reibmayr, Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und
Genies, Vol. I, ch. vii.
[16] Fahlbeck, op. cit., p. 168.
[17] Regeneration implies that there has been degeneration, and it cannot be
positively affirmed that such degeneration has, on the whole, occurred in such a
manner as to affect the race. Reibmayr (Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes
und Genies, Bd. I, p. 400) regards degeneration as a process setting in with
urbanization and the tendency to diminished population; if so, it is but another
name for civilization, and can only be condemned by condemning civilization,
whether or not physical deterioration occurs. The Inter-departmental
Commission on Physical Deterioration held in 1904, in London, concluded that
there are no sufficient statistical or other data to prove that the physique of the
people in the present, as compared with the past, has undergone any change; and
this conclusion was confirmed by the Director-General of the Army Medical
Service. There is certainly good reason to believe that urban populations (and
especially industrial workers in factories) are inferior in height and weight and
general development to rural populations, and less fit for military or similar
service. The stunted development of factory workers in the East End of London
was noted nearly a century ago, and German military experience distinctly shows
the inferiority of the town-dweller to the country-dweller. (See e.g. Weyl,
Handbuch der Hygiene, Supplement, Bd. IV, pp. 746 et seq.; Politisch-
Anthropologische Revue, 1905, pp. 145 et seq.) The proportion of German
youths fit for military service slowly decreases every year; in 1909 it was 53.6
per cent, in 1910 only 53 per cent; of those born in the country and engaged in
agricultural or forest work 58.2 were found fit; of those born in the country and
engaged in other industries, 55.1 per cent; of those born in towns, but engaged in
agricultural or forest work, 56.2 per cent; of those born in towns and engaged in
other industries 47.9 per cent. It is fairly clear that this deterioration under urban
and industrial conditions cannot properly be termed a racial degeneration. It is,
moreover, greatly improved even by a few months' training, and there is an
immense difference between the undeveloped, feeble, half-starved recruit from
the slums and the robust, broad-shouldered veteran when he leaves the army. The
term "aggeneration"—not beyond criticism, though it is free from the objection
to "regeneration"—was proposed by Prof. Christian von Ehrenfels ("Die
Aufsteigende Entwicklung des Menschen," Politisch-Anthropologische Revue,
April, 1903, p. 50).
[18] It is unnecessary to touch here on the question of infant mortality, which has
already been referred to, and will again come in for consideration in a later
chapter. It need only be said that a high birth-rate is inextricably combined with a
high death-rate. The European countries with the highest birth-rates are, in
descending order: Russia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Servia, and Hungary. The
European countries with the highest death-rates are, in descending order, almost
the same: Russia, Hungary, Spain, Bulgaria, and Servia, It is the same outside
Europe. Thus Chile, with a birth-rate which comes next after Roumania, has a
death-rate that is only second to Russia.

[19] Nyström (La Vie Sexuelle, 1910, p. 248) believes that "the time is coming
when it will be considered the duty of municipal authorities, if they have found
by experience or have reason to suspect that children will be thrown upon the
parish, to instruct parents in methods of preventive conception."
[20] The directly unfavourable influences on the child of too short an interval
between its birth and that of the previous child has been shown, for instance, by
Dr. R.J. Ewart ("The Influence of Parental Age on Offspring," Eugenics Review,
October, 1911). He has found at Middlesbrough that children born at an interval
of less than two years after the birth of the previous child still show at the age of
six a notable deficiency in height, weight, and intelligence, when compared with
children born after a longer interval, or with first-born children.
[21] Tatler, Vol. II, No. 175, 1709.
[22] "Write Man for Primula, and the stage of the world for that of the
greenhouse," says Professor Bateson (Biological Fact and the Structure of
Society, 1912, p. 9), "and I believe that with a few generations of experimental
breeding we should acquire the power similarly to determine how the varieties of
men should be represented in the generations that succeed." But Bateson
proceeds to point out that our knowledge is still very inadequate, and he is
opposed to eugenics by Act of Parliament.
[23] E. Solmi, La Città del Sole di Campanella, 1904, p. xxxiv.
[24] Only a year before his death Galton wrote (Preface to Essays in Eugenics):
"The power by which Eugenic reform must chiefly be effected is that of Popular
Opinion, which is amply strong enough for that purpose whenever it shall be
roused."
[25] It may perhaps be necessary to remark that by sterilization is here meant,
not castration, but, in the male vasectomy (and a corresponding operation in the
female), a simple and harmless operation which involves no real mutilation and
no loss of power beyond that of procreation. See on this and related points,
Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to
Society," chap. xii.
[26] The term "feeble-minded" may be used generally to cover all degrees of
mental weakness. In speaking a little more precisely, however, we have to
recognize three main degrees of congenital mental weakness: feeble-mindedness,
in which with care and supervision it is possible to work and earn a livelihood;
imbecility, in which the subject is barely able to look after himself, and
sometimes only has enough intelligence to be mischievous (the moral imbecile);
and idiocy, the lowest depth of all, in which the subject has no intelligence and
no ability to look after himself. More elaborate classifications are sometimes
proposed. The method of Binet and Simon renders possible a fairly exact
measurement of feeble-mindedness.
[27] Mott (Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, Vol. V, 1911) accepts the view
that in some cases feeble-mindedness is simply a form of congenital syphilis, but
he points out that feeble-mindedness abounds in many rural districts where
syphilis, as well as alcoholism, is very rare, and concludes by emphasizing the
influence of heredity; the prevalence of feeble-mindedness in these rural districts

is thus due to the fact that the mentally and physically fit have emigrated to the
great industrial centres, leaving the unfit to procreate the race.
[28] "Whether germinal variations," remarked Dr. R.J. Ryle at a Conference on
Feeble-mindedness (British Medical Journal, October 3, 1911), "be expressed by
cleft palate, cataract, or cerebral deficiency of the pyramidal cells in the brain
cortex, they may be produced, and, when once produced, they are reproduced as
readily as the perfected structure of the face or eye or brain, if the gametes which
contain these potentialities unite to form the ovum. But Nature is not only the
producer. Given a fair field and no favour, natural selection would leave no
problem of the unfit to perplex the mind of man who looks before and after. This
we know cannot be, and we know, too, that we have no longer the excuse of
ignorance to cover the neglect of the new duties which belong to the present
epoch of civilization. We know now that we have to deal with a growing group
in our community who demand permanent care and control as well for their own
sakes as for the welfare of the community. All are now agreed on the general
principle of segregation, but it is true that something more than this should be
forthcoming. The difficulties of theory are clearing up as our wider view obtains
a firmer grasp of our material, but the difficulties of practice are still before us."
These remarks correspond with the general results reached by the Royal
Commission on the Feeble-minded, which issued its voluminous facts and
conclusions in 1908.
[29] See, for instance, A.F. Tredgold, Mental Deficiency, 1908.
[30] The investigation of Bezzola showing that the maxima in the conception of
idiots occur at carnival time, and especially at the vintage, has been held
(especially by Forel) to indicate that alcoholism of the parents at conception
causes idiocy in the offspring. It may be so. But it may also be that the licence of
these periods enables the defective members of the community to secure an
amount of sexual activity which they would be debarred from under normal
conditions. In that case the alcoholism would merely liberate, and not create, the
idiocy-producing mechanism.
[31] Godden, Eugenics Review, April, 1911.
[32] Feeble-mindedness and the other allied variations are not always exactly
repeated in inheritance. They may be transmuted in passing from father to son,
an epileptic father, for instance, having a feeble-minded child. These
relationships of feeble-mindedness have been clearly brought out in an important
investigation by Davenport and Weeks (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,
November, 1911), who have for the first time succeeded in obtaining a large
number of really thorough and precise pedigrees of such cases.
[33] It may be as well to point out once more that the possibility of such limited
depreciation must not be construed into the statement that there has been any
general "degeneration of the race." It maybe added that the notion that the golden
age lay in the past, and that our own age is degenerate is not confined to a few
biometricians of to-day; it has commended itself to uncritical minds in all ages,
even the greatest, as far back as we can go. Montesquieu referred to this common
notion (and attempted to explain it) in his Pensées Diverses: "Men have such a
bad opinion of themselves," he adds, "that they have believed not only that their

minds and souls were degenerate, but even their bodies, and that they were not
so tall as the men of previous ages." It is thus quite logically that we arrive at the
belief that when mankind first appeared, "there were giants on the earth in those
days," and that Adam lived to the age of nine hundred and thirty. Evidently no
syndromes of degenerescence there!
[34] The Superintendent of a large State School for delinquent girls in America
(as quoted in the Chicago Vice Commission's Report on The Social Evil in
Chicago, p. 229) says: "The girls who come to us possessed of normal brain
power, or not infected with venereal disease, we look upon as a prize indeed, and
we seldom fail to make a woman worth while of a really normal girl, whatever
her environment has been. But we have failed in numberless cases where the
environment has been all right, but the girl was born wrong."
[35] See e.g. Havelock Ellis, The Criminal, 4th ed., 1910, chap IV.
[36] R.L. Dugdale, The Jukes, 4th ed., 1910. It is noteworthy that Dugdale, who
wrote nearly forty years ago, was concerned to prove the influence of bad
environment rather than of bad heredity. At that time the significance of heredity
was scarcely yet conceived. It remains true, however, that bad heredity and bad
environment constantly work together for evil.
[37] Jörger, Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschafts-Biologie, 1905, p. 294.
Criminal families are also recorded by Aubry, La Contagion du Meutre.
[38] Even during school life this burden is serious. Mr. Bodey, Inspector of
Schools, states that the defective school child costs three times as much as the
ordinary school child.
[39] I have set forth these considerations more fully in a popular form in The
Problem of the Regeneration of the Race, the first of a series of "New Tracts for
the Times," issued under the auspices of the National Council of Public Morals.
[40] C.B. Davenport, "Euthenics and Eugenics," Popular Science Monthly,
January, 1911.
[41] The use of the terms "fit" and "unfit" in a eugenic sense has been criticized.
It is said, for instance, that in a bad environment it may be precisely the defective
classes who are most "fit" to survive. It is quite true that these terms are not well
adapted to resist hyper-critical attack. The persistence with which they are
employed seems, however, to indicate a certain "survival of the fittest." The
terms "worthy" and "unworthy," which some would prefer to substitute, are
unsatisfactory, for they have moral associations which are misleading. Galton
spoke of "civic worth" in this connection, and very occasionally used the term
"worthy" (with inverted commas), but he was careful to point out (Essays in
Eugenics, p. 35) that in eugenics "we must leave morals as far as possible out of
the discussion, not entangling ourselves with the almost hopeless difficulties they
raise as to whether a character as a whole is good or bad."
[42] Dr. Toulouse has devoted a whole volume to the results of a minute personal
examination of Zola, the novelist, and another to Poincaré, the mathematician.
Such minute investigations are at present confined to men of genius, but some

day, perhaps, we shall consider that from the eugenic standpoint all men are men
of genius.
[43] Sterilization for social ends was introduced in Switzerland a few years ago,
in order to enable some persons with impaired self-control to be set at liberty and
resume work without the risk of adding to the population defective members
who would probably be a burden on the community. It was performed with the
consent of the subjects (in some cases at their urgent request) and their relations,
so requiring no special legislation, and the results are said to be satisfactory. In
some American States sterilization for some classes of defective persons has
been established by statute, but it is difficult to obtain reliable information as
regards the working and the results of such legislation.
[44] When Professor Giddings speaks of the "goal of mankind," it must, of
course, be remembered, he is using a bold metaphor in order to make his
meaning clearer. Strictly speaking, mankind has no "goals," nor are there any
ends in Nature which are not means to further ends.

II

THE CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN [45]

The Origin of the Woman Movement—Mary Wollstonecraft—George
Sand—Robert Owen—William Thompson—John Stuart Mill—The
Modern Growth of Social Cohesion—The Growth of Industrialism—
Its Influence in Woman's Sphere of Work—The Education of Women
—Co-education—The Woman Question and Sexual Selection—
Significance of Economic Independence—The State Regulation of
Marriage—The Future of Marriage—Wilhelm von Humboldt—Social
Equality of Women—The Reproduction of the Race as a Function of
Society—Women and the Future of Civilization.

I

It was in the eighteenth century, the seed-time of modern ideas, that our
great-grandfathers became conscious of a discordant break in the traditional
conceptions of women's status. The vague cries of Justice, Freedom,
Equality, which were then hurled about the world, were here and there

energetically applied to women—notably in France by Condorcet—and a
new movement began to grow self-conscious and coherent. Mary
Wollstonecraft, after Aphra Behn the first really noteworthy Englishwoman
of letters, gave voice to this movement in England.
The famous and little-read Vindication of the Rights of Women, careless and
fragmentary as it is, and by no means so startling to us as to her
contemporaries, shows Mary Wollstonecraft as a woman of genuine insight,
who saw the questions of woman's social condition in their essential
bearings. Her intuitions need little modification, even though a century of
progress has intervened. The modern advocates of woman's suffrage have
little to add to her brief statement. She is far, indeed, from the monstrous
notion of Miss Cobbe, that woman's suffrage is the "crown and completion"
of all progress so far as women's movements are concerned. She looks upon
it rather as one of the reasonable conditions of progress. It is pleasant to
turn from the eccentric energy of so many of the advocates of women's
causes to-day, all engaged in crying up their own particular nostrum, to the
genial many-sided wisdom of Mary Wollstonecraft, touching all subjects
with equal frankness and delicacy.
The most brilliant and successful exponent of the new revolutionary ideas
—making Corinne and her prototype seem dim and ineffectual—was
undoubtedly George Sand. The badly-dressed woman who earned her living
by scribbling novels, and said to M. du Camp, as she sat before him in
silence rolling her cigarette, "Je ne dis rien parceque je suis bête," has
exercised a profound influence throughout Europe, an influence which, in
the Sclavonic countries especially, has helped to give impetus to the
resolution we are now considering. And this not so much from any definite
doctrines that underlie her work—for George Sand's views on such matters
varied as much as her political views—as from her whole temper and
attitude. Her large and rich nature, as sometimes happens in genius of a
high order, was twofold; on the one hand, she possessed a solid serenity, a
quiet sense of power, the qualities of a bonne bourgeoise, which found
expression in her imperturbable calm, her gentle look and low voice. And
with this was associated a massive, almost Rabelaisian temperament (one
may catch glimpses of it in her correspondence), a sane exuberant
earthliness which delighted in every manifestation of the actual world. On
the other hand, she bore within her a volcanic element of revolt, an

immense disgust of law and custom. Throughout her life George Sand
developed her strong and splendid individuality, not perhaps as
harmoniously, but as courageously and as sincerely as even Goethe.
Robert Owen, who, like Saint-Simon in France, gave so extraordinary an
impulse to all efforts at social reorganization, and who planted the seed of
many modern movements, could not fail to extend his influence to the
region of sex. A disciple of his, William Thompson, who still holds a
distinguished position in the history of the economic doctrines of Socialism,
wrote, under the inspiration of a woman (a Mrs. Wheeler), and published in
1825, an Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, against the
Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to retain them in Political, and thence
in Civil and Domestic Slavery. It is a thorough and logical, almost eloquent,
demand for the absolute social equality of the sexes. [46]
Forty years later, Mill, also inspired by a woman, published his Subjection
of Women. However partial and inadequate it may seem to us, this was at
that day a notable book. Mill's clear vision and feminine sensibilities gave
freshness to his observations regarding the condition and capacity of
women, while his reputation imparted gravity and resonance to his
utterances. Since then the signs in literature of the breaking up of the status
of women have become far too numerous to be chronicled even in a
volume. It is enough to have mentioned here some typical initiatory names.
Now, the movement may be seen at work anywhere, from Norway to Italy,
from Russia to California. The status which women are now entering places
them, not, as in the old communism, in large measure practically above
men, nor, as in the subsequent period, both practically and theoretically in
subordination to men. It places them side by side, with like rights and like
duties in relation to society.

II

Condorcet, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Sand, Owen, Mill—these were
feathers on the stream. They indicated the forces that had their source at the
centre of social life. That historical movement which produced mother-law
probably owed its rise, as well as its fall, to demands of subsistence and
property—that is, to economic causes. The decay of the subsequent family

system, in which the whole power is concentrated in the male head, is being
produced by similar causes. The early communism, and the modes of action
and sentiment which it had produced, still practically persisted long after
the new system had arisen. In the patriarchal family the woman still had a
recognized sphere of work and a recognized right to subsistence. It was not,
indeed, until the sudden development of the industrial system, and the
purely individualistic economics with which it was associated, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, that women in England were forced to
realize that their household industries were gone, and that they must join in
that game of competition in which the field and the rules had alike been
chosen with reference to men alone. The commercial and industrial system,
and the general diffusion of education that has accompanied it, and which
also has its roots in economic causes, has been the chief motive force in
revolutionizing the status of women; and the epoch of unrestricted
competition on masculine lines has been a necessary period of transition.
[47]

At the present time two great tendencies are visible in our social
organization. On the one hand, the threads of social life are growing closer,
and organization, as regards the simple and common means of subsistence,
is increasing. On the other hand, as regards the things that most closely
concern the individual person, the sphere of freedom is being perpetually
enlarged. Instead of every man digging a well for his own use and at his
own free pleasure, perhaps in a graveyard or a cesspool, we consent to the
distribution of water by a central executive. We have carried social methods
so far that, instead of producing our own bread and butter, we prefer to go
to a common bakery and dairy. The same centralizing methods are
extending to all those things of which all have equal need. On the other
hand, we exercise a very considerable freedom of individual thought. We
claim a larger and larger freedom of individual speech and criticism. We
worship any god we choose, after any fashion we choose. The same
individual freedom is beginning to invade the sexual relationships. It is
extending to all those things in regard to which civilized men have become
so variously differentiated that they have no equal common needs. These
two tendencies, so far from being antagonistic, cannot even be carried out
under modern conditions of life except together. It is only by social co-
operation in regard to what is commonly called the physical side of life that

it becomes possible for the individual to develop his own peculiar nature.
The society of the future is a reasonable anarchy founded on a broad basis
of Collectivism.
It is not our object here to point out how widely these tendencies affect
men, but it is worth while to indicate some of their bearings on the
condition of women. While genuine productive industries have been taken
out of the hands of women who work under the old conditions, an
increasingly burdensome weight of unnecessary duties has been laid upon
them. Under the old communistic system, when a large number of families
lived together in one great house, the women combined to perform their
household duties, the cooking being done at a common fire. They had
grown up together from childhood, and combination could be effected
without friction. It is the result of the later system that the woman has to
perform all the necessary household duties in the most wasteful manner,
with least division of labour; while she has, in addition, to perform a great
amount of unnecessary work, in obedience to traditional or conventional
habits, which make it impossible even to perform the simple act of dusting
the rooms of a small house in less than perhaps an hour and a half. She has
probably also to accomplish, if she happens to belong to the middle or
upper classes, an idle round of so-called "social duties." She tries to escape,
when she can afford it, by adopting the apparently simple expedient of
paying other people to perform these necessary and unnecessary household
duties, but this expedient fails; the "social duties" increase in the same ratio
as the servants increase and the task of overseeing these latter itself proves
formidable. It is quite impossible for any person under these conditions to
lead a reasonable and wholesome human life. A healthy life is more difficult
to attain for the woman of the ordinary household than for the worker in a
mine, for he at least, when the work of his set is over, has two-thirds of the
twenty-four hours to himself. The woman is bound by a thousand
Lilliputian threads from which there seems no escape. She often makes
frantic efforts to escape, but the combined strength of the threads generally
proves too strong. There can be no doubt that the present household system
is doomed; the higher standard of intelligence demanded from women, the
growth of interest in the problems of domestic economy, the movement for
association of labour, the revolt against the survivals of barbaric

complication in living—all these, which are symptoms of a great economic
revolution, indicate, the approach of a new period.
The education of women is an essential part of the great movement we are
considering. Women will shortly be voters, and women, at all events in
England, are in a majority. We have to educate our mistresses as we once
had to educate our masters. And the word "education" is here used by no
means in the narrow sense. A woman may be acquainted with Greek and the
higher mathematics, and be as uneducated in the wider relationships of life
as a man in the like case. How much women suffer from this lack of
education may be seen to-day even among those who are counted as
leaders.
There are extravagances in every period of transition. Undoubtedly a potent
factor in bringing about a saner attitude will be the education of boys and
girls together. The lack of early fellowship fosters an unnatural divergence
of aims and ideals, and a consequent lack of sympathy. It makes possible
those abundant foolish generalizations by men concerning "women," by
women concerning "men." St. Augustine, at an early period of his ardent
career, conceived with certain friends the notion of forming a community
having goods in common; the scheme was almost effected when it was
discovered that "those little wives, which some already had, and others
would shortly have," objected, and so it fell through. Perhaps the
mulierculæ were right. It is simply a rather remote instance of a
fundamental divergence amply illustrated before our eyes. If men and
women are to understand each other, to enter into each other's natures with
mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine comradeship, the
foundation must be laid in youth. Another wholesome reform, promoted by
co-education, is the physical education of women. In the case of boys
special attention has generally been given to physical education, and the
lack of it is one among several artificial causes of that chronic ill-health
which so often handicaps women. Women must have the same education as
men, Miss Faithfull shrewdly observes, because that is sure to be the best.
The present education of boys cannot, however, be counted a model, and
the gradual introduction of co-education will produce many wholesome
reforms. If the intimate association of the sexes destroys what remnant may
linger of the unhealthy ideal of chivalry—according to which a woman was
treated as a cross between an angel and an idiot—that is matter for

rejoicing. Wherever men and women stand in each other's presence the
sexual instinct will always ensure an adequate ideal halo.

III

The chief question that we have to ask when we consider the changing
status of women is: How will it affect the reproduction of the race? Hunger
and love are the two great motor impulses, the ultimate source, probably, of
all other impulses. Hunger—that is to say, what we call "economic
causes"—has, because it is the more widespread and constant, though not
necessarily the more imperious instinct, produced nearly all the great
zoological revolutions, including, as we have seen, the rise and fall of that
phase of human evolution dominated by mother-law. Yet love has, in the
form of sexual selection, even before we reach the vertebrates, moulded
races to the ideal of the female; and reproduction is always the chief end of
nutrition which hunger waits on, the supreme aim of life everywhere.
If we place on the one side man, as we know him during the historical
period, and on the other, nearly every highly organized member of the
animal family, there appears, speaking roughly and generally, a distinct
difference in the relation which these two motor impulses bear to each
other. Among animals generally, economics are comparatively so simple
that it is possible to satisfy the nutritive instinct without putting any hard
pressure on the spontaneous play of the reproductive instinct. And nearly
everywhere it is the female who has the chief voice in the establishment of
sexual relationships. The males compete for the favour of the female by the
fascination of their odour, or brilliant colour, or song, or grace, or strength,
as revealed in what are usually mock-combats. The female is, in these
respects, comparatively unaccomplished and comparatively passive. With
her rests the final decision, and only after long hesitation, influenced, it
seems, by a vaguely felt ideal resulting from her contemplation of the
rivals, she calls the male of her choice. [48] A dim instinct seems to warn her
of the pains and cares of maternity, so that only the largest promises of
pleasure can induce her to undertake the function of reproduction. In
civilized man, on the other hand, as we know him, the situation is to some
extent reversed; it is the woman who, by the display of her attractions,
competes for the favour of the man. The final invitation does not come, as

among animals generally, from the female; the decision rests with the man.
It would be a mistake to suppose that this change reveals the evolution of a
superior method; although it has developed the beauty of women, it has
clearly had its origin in economic causes. The demands of nutrition have
overridden those of reproduction; sexual selection has, to a large extent,
given place to natural selection, a process clearly not for the advantage of
the race. The changing status of women, in bestowing economic
independence, will certainly tend to restore to sexual selection its due
weight in human development.
In so doing it will certainly tend also to destroy prostitution, which is
simply one of the forms in which the merging of sexual selection in natural
selection has shown itself. Wherever sexual selection has free play,
unhampered by economic considerations, prostitution is impossible. The
dominant type of marriage is, like prostitution, founded on economic
considerations; the woman often marries chiefly to earn her living; here,
too, we may certainly expect profound modifications. We have long sought
to preserve our social balance by placing an unreasonable licence in the one
scale, an equally unreasonable abstinence in the other; the economic
independence of women, tending to render both extremes unnecessary, can
alone place the sexual relationships on a sound and free basis.
The State regulation of marriage has undoubtedly played a large and
important part in the evolution of society. At the present time the
advantages of this artificial control no longer appear so obvious (even when
the evidence of the law courts is put aside); they will vanish altogether
when women have attained complete economic independence. With the
disappearance of the artificial barriers in the way of friendship between the
sexes and of the economic motive to sexual relationships—perhaps the two
chief forces which now tend to produce promiscuous sexual intercourse,
whether dignified or not with the name of marriage—men and women will
be free to engage, unhampered, in the search, so complicated in a highly
civilized condition of society, for a fitting mate. [49]
It is probable that this inevitable change will be brought about partly by the
voluntary action of individuals, and in greater measure by the gradual and
awkward method of shifting and ever freer divorce laws. The slow
disintegration of State-regulated marriage from the latter cause may be

observed now throughout the United States, where there is, on the whole, a
developing tendency to frequency and facility of divorce. It is clear,
however, that on this line marriage will not cease to be a concern to the
State, and it may be as well to point out at once the important distinction
between State-regulated and State-registered marriage. Sexual
relationships, so long as they do not result in the production of children, are
matters in which the community has, as a community, little or no concern,
but as soon as a sexual relationship results in the pregnancy of the woman
the community is at once interested. At this point it is clearly the duty of the
State to register the relationship. [50]
It is necessary to remember that the kind of equality of the sexes towards
which this change of status is leading, is social equality—that is, equality of
freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less is it likeness. Men and
women can only be alike mentally when they are alike in physical
configuration and physiological function. Even complete economic equality
is not attainable. Among animals which live in herds under the guidance of
a leader, this leader is nearly always a male; there are few exceptions. [51] In
woman, the long period of pregnancy and lactation, and the prolonged
helplessness of her child, render her for a considerable period of her life
economically dependent. On whom shall she be dependent? This is a
question of considerable moment. According to the old conception of the
family, all the members were slaves producing for the benefit of the owner,
and it was natural that the wife should be supported by the husband when
she is producing slaves for his service. But this conception is, as we have
seen, no longer possible. It is clearly unfair also to compel the mother to
depend on her own previous exertions. The reproduction of the race is a
social function, and we are compelled to conclude that it is the duty of the
community, as a community, to provide for the child-bearer when in the
exercise of her social function she is unable to provide for herself. The
woman engaged in producing a new member, who may be a source of
incalculable profit or danger to the whole community, cannot fail to be a
source of the liveliest solicitude to everyone in the community, and it was a
sane and beautiful instinct that found expression of old in the permission
accorded to a pregnant woman to enter gardens and orchards, and freely
help herself. Whether this instinct will ever again be embodied in a new
form, and the reproduction of the race be recognized as truly a social

function, is a question which even yet lacks actuality. The care of the child-
bearer and her child will at present continue to be a matter for individual
arrangement. That it will be arranged much better than at present we may
reasonably hope. On the one hand, the reckless multiplication of children
will probably be checked; on the other hand, a large body of women will no
longer be shut out from maternity. That the state should undertake the
regulation of the birth-rate we can scarcely either desire or anticipate.
Undoubtedly the community has an abstract right to limit the number of its
members. It may be pointed out, however, that under rational conditions of
life the process would probably be self-regulating; in the human races, and
also among animals generally, fertility diminishes as the organism becomes
highly developed. And, without falling back on any natural law, it may be
said that the extravagant procreation of children, leading to suffering both to
parents and offspring, carried on under existing social conditions, is largely
the result of ignorance, largely of religious or other superstition. A more
developed social state would not be possible at all unless the social instincts
were strong enough to check the reckless multiplication of offspring.
Richardson and others appear to advocate the special cultivation of a class
of non-childbearing women. Certainly no woman who freely chose should
be debarred from belonging to such a class. But reproduction is the end and
aim of all life everywhere, and in order to live a humanly complete life,
every healthy woman should have, not sexual relationships only, but the
exercise at least once in her life of the supreme function of maternity, and
the possession of those experiences which only maternity can give. That
unquestionably is the claim of natural and reasonable living in the social
state towards which we are moving.
To deal with the social organization of the future would be to pass beyond
the limits that I have here set myself, and to touch on matters of which it is
impossible to speak with certainty. The new culture of women, in the light
and the open air, will doubtless solve many matters which now are dark to
us. Morgan supposed that it was in some measure the failure of the Greeks
and Romans to develop their womanhood which brought the speedy
downfall of classic civilization. The women of the future will help to renew
art and science as well as life. They will do more even than this, for the
destiny of the race rests with women. "I have sometimes thought," Whitman
wrote in his Democratic Vistas, "that the sole avenue and means to a

reconstructed society depended primarily on a new birth, elevation,
expansion, invigoration of women." That intuition is not without a sound
basis, and if a great historical movement called for justification here would
be enough.

[45] This chapter was written so long ago as 1888, and published in the
Westminster Review in the following year. I have pleasure in here including it
exactly as it was originally written, not only because it has its proper place in the
present volume, but because it may be regarded as a programme which I have
since elaborated in numerous volumes. The original first section has, however,
been omitted, as it embodied a statement of the matriarchal theory which, in
view of the difficulty of the subject and the wide differences of opinion about it,
I now consider necessary to express more guardedly (see, for a more recent
statement, Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in
Relation to Society," chap. x). With this exception, and the deletion of two
insignificant footnotes, no changes have been made. After the lapse of a quarter
of a century I find nothing that I seriously wish to withdraw and much that I now
wish to emphasize.
[46] The following passage summarizes this Appeal: "The simple and modest
request is, that they may be permitted equal enjoyments with men, provided they
can, by the free and equal development and exercise of their faculties, procure
for themselves such enjoyments. They ask the same means that men possess of
acquiring every species of knowledge, of unfolding every one of their faculties
of mind and body that can be made tributary to their happiness. They ask every
facility of access to every art, occupation, profession, from the highest to the
lowest, without one exception, to which their inclinations and talents may direct
and may fit them to occupy. They ask the removal of all restraints and exclusions
not applicable to men of equal capacities. They ask for perfectly equal political,
civil, and domestic rights. They ask for equal obligations and equal punishments
from the law with men in case of infraction of the same law by either party. They
ask for an equal system of morals, founded on utility instead of caprice and
unreasoning despotism, in which the same action, attended with the same
consequences, whether done by man or woman, should be attended with the
same portion of approbation or disapprobation; in which every pleasure,
accompanied or followed by no preponderant evil, should be equally permitted
to women and to men; in which every pleasure accompanied or followed by
preponderant evil should be equally censured in women and in men."
[47] A period of transition not the less necessary although it is certainly
disastrous and tends to produce an unwholesome tension between the sexes so
long as men and women do not receive equal payment for equal work. "A thing
of beauty is a joy for ever," as a working man in Blackburn lately put it, "but
when the thing of beauty takes to doing the work for 16s. a week that you have
been paid 22s. for, you do not feel as if you cannot live without possessing that
thing of beauty all to yourself, or that you are willing to lay your life and your
fortune (when you have one) at its feet." On the other hand, the working girl in
the same town often complains that a man will not look at a girl unless she is a
"four-loom weaver," earning, that is, perhaps, 20s. or 25s. a week.
[48] See the very interesting work of Alfred Espinas, Des Sociétés Animales,
which contains many fruitful suggestions for the student of human sociology.
[49] The subtle and complex character of the sexual relationships in a high
civilization, and the unhappy results of their State regulation, was well expressed
by Wilhehm von Humboldt in his Ideen zu einen Versuch, die Grenzen der

Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen, so long ago as 1792: "A union so closely
allied with the very nature of the respective individuals must be attended with
the most hurtful consequences when the State attempts to regulate it by law, or,
through the force of its institutions, to make it repose on anything save simple
inclination. When we remember, moreover, that the State can only contemplate
the final results of such regulations on the race, we shall be still more ready to
admit the justice of this conclusion. It may reasonably be argued that a solicitude
for the race only conducts to the same results as the highest solicitude for the
most beautiful development of the inner man. For after careful observation it has
been found that the uninterrupted union of one man with one woman is most
beneficial to the race, and it is likewise undeniable that no other union springs
from true, natural, harmonious love. And further, it may be observed that such
love leads to the same results as those very relations which law and custom tend
to establish. The radical error seems to be that the law commands; whereas such
a relation cannot mould itself according to external arrangements, but depends
wholly on inclination; and wherever coercion or guidance comes into collision
with inclination, they divert it still farther from the proper path. Wherefore it
appears to me that the State should not only loosen the bonds in this instance,
and leave ampler freedom to the citizen, but that it should entirely withdraw its
active solicitude from the institution of marriage, and both generally and in its
particular modifications, should rather leave it wholly to the free choice of the
individuals, and the various contracts they may enter into with respect to it. I
should not be deterred from the adoption of this principle by the fear that all
family relations might be disturbed, for although such a fear might be justified
by considerations of particular circumstances and localities, it could not fairly be
entertained in an inquiry into the nature of men and States in general. For
experience frequently convinces us that just where law has imposed no fetters,
morality most surely binds; the idea of external coercion is one entirely foreign
to an institution which, like marriage, reposes only on inclination and an inward
sense of duty; and the results of such coercive institutions do not at all
correspond to the intentions in which they originate."
[50] Such register should, as Bertillon rightly insisted, be of the most complete
description—setting forth all the anthropological traits of the contracting parties
—so that the characteristics of a human group at any time and place may be
studied and compared. Registration of this kind would, beside its more obvious
convenience, form an almost indispensable guide to the higher evolution of the
race. I may here add that I have assumed, perhaps too rashly, that the natural
tendency among civilized men and women is towards a monogamic and more or
less permanent union; preceded, it may be in most individuals, by a more restless
period of experiment. Undoubtedly, many variations will arise in the future,
leading to more complex relationships. Such variations cannot be foreseen, and
when they arise they will still have to prove their stability and their advantage to
the race.
[51] As among geese, and, occasionally, it is said, among elephants.

III

THE NEW ASPECT OF THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT

Eighteenth-Century France—Pioneers of the Woman's Movement—
The Growth of the Woman's Suffrage Movement—The Militant
Activities of the Suffragettes—Their Services and Disservices to the
Cause—Advantages of Women's Suffrage—Sex Questions in
Germany—Bebel—The Woman's Rights Movement in Germany—The
Development of Sexual Science in Germany—the Movement for the
Protection of Motherhood—Ellen Key—The Question of Illegitimacy
—Eugenics—Women as Law-makers in the Home.

I

The modern conception of the political equality of women with men, we
have seen, arose in France in the second half of the eighteenth century. Its
way was prepared by the philosophic thinkers of the Encyclopédie, and the
idea was definitely formulated by some of the finest minds of the age,
notably by Condorcet, [52] as part of the great new programme of social and
political reform which was to some small degree realized in the upheaval of
the Revolution. The political emancipation of women constituted no part of
the Revolution. It has indeed been maintained, and perhaps with reason,
that the normal development of the revolutionary spirit would probably
have ended in vanquishing the claim of masculine predominance if war had
not diverted the movement of revolution by transforming it into the Terror.
Even as it was, the rights of women were not without their champions even
at this period. We ought specially to remember Olympe de Gouges, whose
name is sometimes dismissed too contemptuously. With all her defects of
character and education and literary style, Olympe de Gouges, as is now
becoming recognized, was, in her biographer's words, "one of the loftiest
and most generous souls of the epoch," in some respects superior to
Madame Roland. She was the first woman to demand of the Revolution that
it should be logical by proclaiming the rights of woman side by side with
those of her equal, man, and in so doing she became the great pioneer of the
feminist movement of to-day. [53] She owes the position more especially to

her little pamphlet, issued in 1791, entitled Déclaration des Droits de la
Femme. It is this Déclaration which contains the oft-quoted (or misquoted)
saying: "Women have the right to ascend the scaffold; they must also have
the right to ascend the tribune." Two years later she had herself ascended
the scaffold, but the other right she claimed is only now beginning to be
granted to women. At that time there were too many more pressing matters
to be dealt with, and the only women who had been taught to demand the
rights of their sex were precisely those whom the Revolution was
guillotining or exiling. Even had it been otherwise, we may be quite sure
that Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution and the final arbiter of what was
to be permanent in its achievements, would have sternly repressed any
political freedom accorded to women. The only freedom he cared to grant
to women was the freedom to produce food for cannon, and so far as lay in
his power he sought to crush the political activities of women even in
literature, as we see in his treatment of Mme de Staël. [54]
An Englishwoman of genius was in Paris at the time of the Revolution, with
as broad a conception of the place of woman side by side with man as
Olympe de Gouges, while for the most part she was Olympe's superior. In
1792, a year after the Déclaration des Droits de la Femme, Mary
Wollstonecraft—it is possible to some extent inspired by the brief
Déclaration—published her Vindication of the Rights of Women. It was not
a shrill outcry, nor an attack on men—in that indeed resembling the
Déclaration—but just the book of a woman, a wise and sensible woman,
who discusses many women's questions from a woman's point of view, and
desires civil and political rights, not as a panacea for all evils, but simply
because, as she argues, humanity cannot progress as a whole while one half
of it is semi-educated and only half free. There can be little doubt that if the
later advocates of woman's suffrage could have preserved more of Mary
Wollstonecraft's sanity, moderation, and breadth of outlook, they would
have diminished the difficulties that beset the task of convincing the
community generally. Mary Wollstonecraft was, however, the inspired
pioneer of a great movement which slowly gained force and volume. [55]
During the long Victorian period the practical aims of this movement went
chiefly into the direction of improving the education of girls so as to make
it, so far as possible, like that of boys. In this matter an immense revolution
was slowly accomplished, involving the entrance of women into various

professions and employments hitherto reserved to men. That was a very
necessary preliminary to the extension of the franchise to women. The
suffrage propaganda could not, moreover, fail to benefit by the better
education of women and their increased activity in public life. It was their
activity, indeed, far more than the skill of the women who fought for the
franchise, which made the political emancipation of women inevitable, and
the noble and brilliant women who through the middle of the nineteenth
century recreated the educational system for women, and so prepared them
to play their proper part in life, were the best women workers the cause of
women's enfranchisement ever had. There was, however, one distinguished
friend of the emancipation of women whose advocacy of the cause at this
period was of immense value. It is now nearly half a century since John
Stuart Mill—inspired, like Thompson, by a woman—wrote his Subjection
of Women, and it may undoubtedly be said that since that date no book on
this subject published in any country—with the single exception of Bebel's
Woman—has been so widely read or so influential. The support of this
distinguished and authoritative thinker gave to the woman's movement a
stamp of aristocratic intellectuality very valuable in a land where even the
finest minds are apt to be afflicted by the disease of timidity, and was
doubtless a leading cause of the cordial reception which in England the idea
of women's political emancipation has long received among politicians.
Bebel's book, speedily translated into English, furnished the plebeian
complement to Mill's.
The movement for the education of women and their introduction into
careers previously monopolized by men inevitably encouraged the
movement for extending the franchise to women. This political reform was
remarkably successful in winning over the politicians, and not those of one
party only. In England, since Mill published his Subjection of Women in
1869, there have always been eminent statesmen convinced of the
desirability of granting the franchise to women, and among the rank and file
of Members of Parliament, irrespective of party, a very large proportion
have pledged themselves to the same cause. The difficulty, therefore, in
introducing woman's suffrage into England has not been primarily in
Parliament. The one point, at which political party feeling has caused
obstruction—and it is certainly a difficult and important point—is the
method by which woman's suffrage should be introduced. Each party—

Conservative, Liberal, Labour—naturally enough desires that this great new
voting force should first be applied at a point which would not be likely to
injure its own party interests. It is probable that in each party the majority of
the leaders are of opinion that the admission of female voters is inevitable
and perhaps desirable; the dispute is as to the extent to which the floodgates
should in the first place be opened. In accordance with English tradition,
some kind of compromise, however illogical, suggests itself as the safest
first step, but the dispute remains as to the exact class of women who
should be first admitted and the exact extent to which entrance should be
granted to them.
The dispute of the gate-keepers would, however, be easily overcome if the
pressure behind the gate were sufficiently strong. But it is not. However
large a proportion of the voters in Great Britain may be in favour of
women's franchise, it is certain that only a very minute percentage regard
this as a question having precedency over all other questions. And the
reason why men have only taken a very temperate interest in woman's
suffrage is that women themselves, in the mass, have taken an equally
temperate interest in the matter when they have not been actually hostile to
the movement. It may indeed be said, even at the present time, that
whenever an impartial poll is taken of a large miscellaneous group of
women, only a minority are found to be in favour of woman's suffrage. [56]
No significant event has occurred to stimulate general interest in the matter,
and no supremely eloquent or influential voice has artificially stirred it.
There has been no woman of Mary Wollstonecraft's genius and breadth of
mind who has devoted herself to the cause, and since Mill the men who
have made up their minds on this side have been content to leave the matter
to the women's associations formed for securing the success of the cause.
These associations have, however, been led by women of a past generation,
who, while of unquestionable intellectual power and high moral character,
have viewed the woman question in a somewhat narrow, old-fashioned
spirit, and have not possessed the gift of inspiring enthusiasm. Thus the
growth of the movement, however steady it may have been, has been slow.
John Stuart Mill's remark, in a letter to Bain in 1869, remains true to-day:
"The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of
women themselves."

In the meanwhile in some other countries where, except in the United
States, it was of much more recent growth, the woman's suffrage movement
has achieved success, with no great expenditure of energy. It has been
introduced into several American States and Territories. It is established
throughout Australasia. It is also established in Norway. In Finland women
may not only vote, but also sit in Parliament.
It was in these conditions that the Women's Social and Political Union was
formed in London. It was not an offshoot from any existing woman's
suffrage society, but represented a crystallization of new elements. For the
most part, even its leaders had not previously taken any active part in the
movement for woman's suffrage. The suffrage movement had need of
exactly such an infusion of fresh and ardent blood; so that the new society
was warmly welcomed, and met with immediate success, finding recruits
alike among the rich and the poor. Its unconventional methods, its eager and
militant spirit, were felt to supply a lacking element, and the first
picturesque and dashing exploits of the Union were on the whole well
received. The obvious sincerity and earnestness of these very fresh recruits
covered the rashness of their new and rather ignorant enthusiasm.
But a hasty excess of ardour only befits a first uncalculated outburst of
youthfulness. It is quite another matter when it is deliberately hardened into
a rigid routine, and becomes an organized method of creating disorder for
the purpose of advertising a grievance in season and out of season. Since,
moreover, the attack was directed chiefly against politicians, precisely that
class of the community most inclined to be favourable to woman's suffrage,
the wrong-headedness of the movement becomes as striking as its
offensiveness.
The effect on the early friends of the new movement was inevitable. Some,
who had hailed it with enthusiasm and proclaimed its pioneers as new Joans
of Arc, changed their tone to expostulation and protest, and finally relapsed
into silence. Other friends of the movement, even among its former leaders,
were less silent. They have revealed to the world, too unkindly, some of the
influences which slowly corrupt such a movement from the inside when it
hardens into sectarianism: the narrowing of aim, the increase of
conventionality, the jealousy of rivals, the tendency to morbid
emotionalism.

It is easy to exaggerate the misdeeds and the weaknesses of the suffragettes.
It is undoubtedly true that they have alienated, in an increasing degree, the
sympathies of the women of highest character and best abilities among the
advocates of woman's suffrage. Nearly all Englishwomen to-day who stand
well above the average in mental distinction are in favour of woman's
suffrage, though they may not always be inclined to take an active part in
securing it. Perhaps the only prominent exception is Mrs. Humphry Ward.
Yet they rarely associate themselves with the methods of the suffragettes.
They do not, indeed, protest, for they feel there would be a kind of
disloyalty in fighting against the Extreme Left of a movement to which they
themselves belong; but they stand aloof. The women who are chiefly
attracted to the ranks of the suffragettes belong to three classes: (1) Those
of the well-to-do class with no outlet for their activities, who eagerly
embrace an exciting occupation which has become, not only highly
respectable, but even, in a sense, fashionable; they have no natural tendency
to excess, but are easily moved by their social environment; some of these
are rich, and the great principle—once formulated in an unhappy moment
concerning a rich lady interested in social reform—"We must not kill the
goose that lays the golden eggs," has never been despised by the suffragette
leaders; (2) the rowdy element among women which is not so much moved
to adopt the methods for the sake of the cause as to adopt the cause for the
sake of the methods, so that in the case of their special emotional
temperament it may be said, reversing an ancient phrase, that the means
justify the end; this element of noisy explosiveness, always found in a
certain proportion of women, though latent under ordinary circumstances, is
easily aroused by stimulation, and in every popular revolt the wildest
excesses are the acts of women. (3) In this small but important group we
find women of rare and beautiful character who, hypnotized by the
enthralling influence of an idea, and often having no great intellectual
power of their own, are even unconscious of the vulgarity that accompanies
them, and gladly sacrifice themselves to a cause that seems to be sacred;
these are the saints and martyrs of every movement.
When we thus analyse the suffragette outburst we see that it is really
compounded out of quite varied elements: a conventionally respectable
element, a rowdy element, and an ennobling element. It is, therefore,
equally unreasonable to denounce its vices or to idealize its virtues. It is

more profitable to attempt to balance its services and its disservices to the
cause of women's suffrage.
Looked at dispassionately, the two main disadvantages of the suffragette
agitation—and they certainly seem at the first glance very comprehensive
objections—lie in its direction and in its methods. There are two vast bodies
of people who require to be persuaded in order to secure woman's suffrage:
first women themselves, and secondly their men-folk, who at present
monopolize the franchise. Until the majority of both men and women are
educated to understand the justice and reasonableness of this step, and until
men are persuaded that the time has come for practical action, the most
violent personal assaults on cabinet ministers—supposing such political
methods to be otherwise unobjectionable—are beside the mark. They are
aimed in the wrong direction. This is so even when we leave aside the fact
that politicians are sufficiently converted already. The primary task of
women suffragists is to convert their own sex. Indeed it may be said that
that is their whole task. Whenever the majority of women are persuaded
that they ought to possess the vote, we may be quite sure that they will
communicate that persuasion to their men-folk who are able to give them
the vote. The conversion of the majority of women to a belief in women's
suffrage is essential to its attainment because it is only by the influence of
the women who belong to him, whom he knows and loves and respects, that
the average man is likely to realize that, as Ellen Key puts it, "a ballot paper
in itself no more injures the delicacy of a woman's hand than a cooking
recipe." The antics of women in the street, however earnest those women
may be, only leave him indifferent, even hostile, at most, amused.
It may be added that in any case it would be undesirable, even if possible, to
bestow the suffrage on women so long as only a minority have the wish to
exercise it. It would be contrary to sound public policy. It would not only
discredit political rights, but it would tend to give the woman's vote too
narrow and one-sided a character. To grant women the right to vote is a
different matter from granting women the right to enter a profession. In
order to give women the right to be doctors or lawyers it is not necessary
that women generally should be convinced of the advantage of such a step.
The matter chiefly concerns the very small number of women who desire
the privilege. But the women who vote will be in some measure legislating

for women generally, and it is therefore necessary that women generally
should participate.
But even if it is admitted—although, as we have seen, there is a twofold
reason for not making such an admission—that the suffragettes are justified
in regarding politicians as the obstacles in the way of their demands, there
still remains the question of the disadvantage of their method. This method
is by some euphemistically described as the introduction of "nagging" into
politics; but even at this mild estimate of its character the question may still
be asked whether the method is calculated to attain the desired end. One
hears women suffragettes declare that this is the only kind of argument men
understand. There is, however, in the masculine mind—and by no means
least when it is British—an element which strongly objects to be worried
and bullied even into a good course of action. The suffragettes have done
their best to stimulate that element of obstinacy. Even among men who
viewed the matter from an unprejudiced standpoint many felt that,
necessary as woman's suffrage is, the policy of the suffragettes rendered the
moment unfavourable for its adoption. It is a significant fact that in the
countries which have so far granted women the franchise no methods in the
slightest degree resembling those of the suffragettes have ever been
practised. It is not easy to imagine Australia tolerating such methods, and in
Finland full Parliamentary rights were freely granted, as is generally
recognized, precisely as a mark of gratitude for women's helpfulness in
standing side by side with their men in a great political struggle. The policy
of obstruction adopted by the English suffragettes, with its "tactics" of
opposing at election times the candidates of the very party whose leaders
they are imploring to grant them the franchise, was so foolish that it is little
wonder that many doubted whether women at all understand the methods of
politics, or are yet fitted to take a responsible part in political life.
The suffragette method of persuading public men seems to be, on the
whole, futile, even if it were directed at the proper quarter, and even if it
were in itself a justifiable method. But it would be possible to grant these
"ifs" and still to feel that a serious injury is done to the cause of woman's
suffrage when the method of violence is adopted by women. Some
suffragettes have argued, in this matter, that in political crises men also have
acted just as badly or worse. But, even if we assume that this is the case, [57]
it has been one of the chief arguments hitherto for the admission of women

into political life that they exercise an elevating and refining influence, so
that their entrance into this field will serve to purify politics. That, no doubt,
is an argument mostly brought forward by men, and may be regarded as, in
some measure, an amiable masculine delusion, since most of the refining
and elevating elements in civilization probably owe their origin not to
women but to men. But it is not altogether a delusion. In the virtues of force
—however humbly those virtues are to be classed—women, as a sex, can
never be the rivals of men, and when women attempt to gain their ends by
the demonstration of brute force they can only place themselves at a
disadvantage. They are laying down the weapons they know best how to
use, and adopting weapons so unsuitable that they only injure the users.
Many women, speaking on behalf of the suffragettes, protest against the
idea that women must always be "charming." And if "charm" is to be
understood in so narrow and conventionalized a sense that it means
something which is incompatible with the developed natural activities,
whether of the soul or of the body, then such a protest is amply justified.
But in the larger sense, "charm"—which means the power to effect work
without employing brute force—is indispensable to women. Charm is a
woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm. And the justification for
women in this matter is that herein they represent the progress of
civilization. All civilization involves the substitution in this respect of the
woman's method for the man's. In the last resort a savage can only assert his
rights by brute force. But with the growth of civilization the wronged man,
instead of knocking down his opponent, employs "charm"; in other words
he engages an advocate, who, by the exercise of sweet reasonableness,
persuades twelve men in a box that his wrongs must be righted, and the
matter is then finally settled, not by man's weapon, the fist, but by woman's
weapon, the tongue. Nowadays the same method of "charm" is being
substituted for brute force in international wrongs, and with the complete
substitution of arbitration for war the woman's method of charm will have
replaced the man's method of brute force along the whole line of legitimate
human activity. If we realize this we can understand why it is that a group
of women who, even in the effort to support a good cause, revert to the
crude method of violence are committing a double wrong. They are
wronging their own sex by proving false to its best traditions, and they are
wronging civilization by attempting to revive methods of savagery which it

is civilization's mission to repress. Therefore it may fairly be held that even
if the methods of the suffragettes were really adequate to secure women's
suffrage, the attainment of the franchise by those methods would be a
misfortune. The ultimate loss would be greater than the gain.
If we hold the foregoing considerations in mind it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that neither in their direction nor in their nature are the methods
of the suffragettes fitted to attain the end desired. We have still, however, to
consider the other side of the question.
Whenever an old movement receives a strong infusion of new blood,
whatever excesses or mistakes may arise, it is very unlikely that all the
results will be on the same side. It is certainly not so in this case. Even the
opposition to woman's suffrage which the suffragettes are responsible for,
and the Anti-Suffrage societies which they have called into active existence,
are not an unmitigated disadvantage. Every movement of progress requires
a vigorous movement of opposition to stimulate its progress, and the clash
of discussion can only be beneficial in the end to the progressive cause.
But the immense advantage of the activity of the suffragettes has been
indirect. It has enabled the great mass of ordinary sensible women who
neither join Suffrage societies nor Anti-Suffrage societies to think for
themselves on this question. Until a few years ago, while most educated
women were vaguely aware of the existence of a movement for giving
women the vote, they only knew of it as something rather unpractical and
remote; its reality had never been brought home to them. When women
witnessed the eruption into the streets of a band of women—most of them
apparently women much like themselves—who were so convinced that the
franchise must be granted to women, here and now, that they were prepared
to face publicity, ridicule, and even imprisonment, then "votes for women"
became to them, for the first time, a real and living issue. In a great many
cases, certainly, they realized that they intensely disliked the people who
behaved in this way and any cause that was so preached. But in a great
many other cases they realized, for the first time definitely, that the demand
of votes for women was a reasonable demand, and that they were
themselves suffragists, though they had no wish to take an active part in the
movement, and no real sympathy with its more "militant" methods. There
can be no doubt that in this way the suffragettes have performed an

immense service for the cause of women's suffrage. It has been for the most
part an indirect and undesigned service, but in the end it will perhaps more
than serve to counterbalance the disadvantages attached to their more
conscious methods and their more deliberate aims.
If, as we may trust, this service will be the main outcome of the suffragette
phase of the women's movement, it is an outcome to be thankful for; we
may then remember with gratitude the ardent enthusiasm of the suffragettes
and forget the foolish and futile ways in which it was manifested. There has
never been any doubt as to the ultimate adoption of women's suffrage; its
gradual extension among the more progressive countries of the world
sufficiently indicates that it will ultimately reach even to the most backward
countries. Its accomplishment in England has been gradual, although it is
here so long since the first steps were taken, not because there has been
some special and malignant opposition to it on the part of men in general
and politicians in particular, but simply because England is an old and
conservative country, with a very ancient constitutional machinery which
effectually guards against the hasty realization of any scheme of reform.
This particular reform, however, is not an isolated or independent scheme; it
is an essential part of a great movement in the social equalization of the
sexes which has been going on for centuries in our civilization, a movement
such as may be correspondingly traced in the later stages of the civilizations
of antiquity. Such a movement we may by our efforts help forward, we may
for a while retard, but it is a part of civilization, and it would be idle to
imagine that we can affect the ultimate issue.
That the issue of women's suffrage may be reached in England within a
reasonable period is much to be desired for the sake of the woman's
movement in the larger sense, which has nothing to do with politics, and is
now impeded by this struggle. The enfranchisement of women, Miss
Frances Cobbe declared thirty years ago, is "the crown and completion" of
all progress in women's movement. "Votes for women," exclaims, more
youthfully but not less unreasonably, Miss Christabel Pankhurst, "means a
new Heaven and a new Earth." But women's suffrage no more means a new
Heaven or even a new Earth than it means, as other people fear, a new
Purgatory and a new Hell. We may see this quite plainly in Australasia.
Women's votes aid in furthering social legislation and contribute to the
passing of acts which have their good side, and, no doubt, like everything

else, their bad side. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who devoted her life to the
political enfranchisement of women, declared, the ballot is, at most, only
the vestibule to women's emancipation. Man's suffrage has not introduced
the millennium, and it is foolish to suppose that woman's suffrage can. It is
merely an act of justice and a reasonable condition of social hygiene.
The attainment of the suffrage, if it is a beginning and not an end, will thus
have a real and positive value in liberating the woman's movement from a
narrow and sterilizing phase of its course. In England, especially, the
woman's movement has in the past largely confined itself to imitating men
and to obtaining the same work and the same rights as men. Putting the
matter more broadly, it may be said that it has been the aim of the woman's
movement to secure woman's claims as a human being rather than as
woman. But that is only half the task of the woman's movement, and
perhaps not the most essential half. Women can never be like men, any
more than men can be like women. It is their unlikeness which renders them
indispensable to each other, and which also makes it imperative that each
sex should have its due share in moulding the conditions of life. Woman's
function in life can never be the same as man's, if only because women are
the mothers of the race. That is the point, the only point, at which women
have an uncontested supremacy over men. The most vital problem before
our civilization to-day is the problem of motherhood, the question of
creating the human beings best fitted for modern life, the practical
realization of a sound eugenics. Manouvrier, the distinguished
anthropologist, who carries feminism to its extreme point in the scientific
sphere, yet recognizes the fundamental fact that "a woman's part is to make
children." But he clearly perceives also that "in all its extent and all its
consequences that part is not surpassed in importance, in difficulty, or in
dignity, by the man's part." On the contrary it is a part which needs "an
amount of intelligence incontestably superior, and by far, to that required by
most masculine occupations." [58] We are here at the core of the woman's
movement. And the full fruition of that movement means that women, by
virtue of their supremacy in this matter, shall take their proper share in
legislation for life, not as mere sexless human beings, but as women, and in
accordance with the essential laws of their own nature as women.

II

There is a further question. Is it possible to discern the actual embodiment
of this new phase of the woman movement? I think it is.
To those who are accustomed to watch the emotional pulse of mankind,
nothing has seemed so remarkable during recent years as the eruption of sex
questions in Germany. We had always been given to understand that the
sphere of women and the laws of marriage had been definitely prescribed
and fixed in Germany for at least two thousand years, since the days of
Tacitus, in fact, and with the best possible results. Germans assured the
world in stentorian tones that only in Germany could young womanhood be
seen in all its purity, and that in the German Hausfrau the supreme ideal had
been reached, the woman whose great mission is to keep alive the perennial
fire of the ancient German hearth. Here and there, indeed, the quiet voice of
science was heard in Germany; thus Schrader, the distinguished investigator
of Teutonic origins, in commenting on the oft-quoted testimony of Tacitus
to the chastity of the German women, has appositely referred to the detailed
evidences furnished by the Committee of pastors of the Evangelical Church
as to the extreme prevalence of unchastity among the women of rural
Germany, and argued that these widespread customs must be very ancient
and deep-rooted. [59] But Germans in general refused to admit that Tacitus
had only used the idea of German virtue as a stick to beat his own fellow-
countrywomen with.
The Social-Democratic movement, which has so largely overspread
industrial and even intellectual Germany, prepared the way for a less
traditional and idealistic way of feeling in regard to these questions. The
publication by Bebel of a book, Die Frau, in which the leader of the
German Social-Democratic party set forth the Socialist doctrine of the
position of women in society, marked the first stage in the new movement.
This book exercised a wide influence, more especially on uncritical readers.
It is, indeed, from a scientific point of view a worthless book—if a book in
which genuine emotions are brought to the cause of human freedom and
social righteousness may ever be so termed—but it struck a rude blow at the
traditions of Teutonic sentiment. With something of the rough tone and
temper of the great peasant who initiated the German Reformation, a man
who had himself sprung from the people, and who knew of what he was
speaking, here set down in downright fashion the actual facts as to the
position of women in Germany, as well as what he conceived to be the

claims of justice in regard to that position, slashing with equal vigour alike
at the absurdities of conventional marriage and of prostitution, the obverse
and the reverse, he declared, of a false society. The emotional renaissance
with which we are here concerned seems to have no special and certainly no
exclusive association with the Social-Democratic movement, but it can
scarcely be doubted that the permeation of a great mass of the German
people by the socialistic conceptions which in their bearing on women have
been rendered so familiar by Bebel's exposition has furnished, as it were, a
ready-made sounding-board which has given resonance and effect to voices
which might otherwise have been quickly lost in vacuity.
There is another movement which counts for something in the renaissance
we are here concerned with, though for considerably less than one might be
led to expect. What is specifically known as the "woman's rights'
movement" is in no degree native to Germany, though Hippel is one of the
pioneers of the woman's movement, and it is only within recent years that it
has reached Germany. It is alien to the Teutonic feminine mind, because in
Germany the spheres of men and women are so far apart and so unlike that
the ideal of imitating men fails to present itself to a German woman's mind.
The delay, moreover, in the arrival of the woman's movement in Germany
had given time for a clearer view of that movement and a criticism of its
defects to form even in the lands of its origin, so that the German woman
can no longer be caught unawares by the cry for woman's rights. Still,
however qualified a view might be taken of its benefits, it had to be
recognized, even in Germany, that it was an inevitable movement, and to
some extent at all events indispensable from the woman's point of view. The
same right to education as men, the same rights of public meeting and
discussion, the same liberty to enter the liberal professions, these are claims
which during recent years have been widely made by German women and
to some extent secured, while—as is even more significant—they are for
the most part no longer very energetically disputed. The International
Congress of Women which met in Berlin in 1904 was a revelation to the
citizens of Berlin of the skill and dignity with which women could organize
a congress and conduct business meetings. It was notable, moreover, in that,
though under the auspices of an International Council, it showed the large
number of German women who are already entitled to take a leading part in
the movements for women's welfare. Both directly and indirectly, indeed,

such a movement cannot be otherwise than specially beneficial in Germany.
The Teutonic reverence for woman, the assertion of the "aliquid divinum,"
has sometimes been accompanied by the openly expressed conviction that
she is a fool. Outside Germany it would not be easy to find the
representative philosophers of a nation putting forward so contemptuous a
view of women as is set forth by Schopenhauer or by Nietzsche, while even
within recent years a German physician of some ability, the late Dr. Möbius,
published a book on the "physiological weak-mindedness of women."
The new feminine movement in Germany has received highly important
support from the recent development of German science. The German
intellect, exceedingly comprehensive in its outlook, ploddingly thorough,
and imperturbably serious, has always taken the leading and pioneering part
in the investigation of sexual problems, whether from the standpoint of
history, biology, or pathology. Early in the nineteenth century, when even
more courage and resolution were needed to face the scientific study of
such questions than is now the case, German physicians, unsupported by
any co-operation in other countries, were the pioneers in exploring the paths
of sexual pathology. [60] From the antiquarian side, Bachofen, more than
half a century ago, put forth his conception of the exalted position of the
primitive mother which, although it has been considerably battered by
subsequent research, has been by no means without its value, and is of
special significance from the present standpoint, because it sprang from
precisely the same view of life as that animating the German women who
are to-day inaugurating the movement we are here concerned with. From
the medical side the late Professor Krafft-Ebing of Vienna and Dr. Albert
Moll of Berlin are recognized throughout the world as leading authorities
on sexual pathology, and in recent times many other German physicians of
the first authority can be named in this field; while in Austria Dr. F.S.
Krauss and his coadjutors in the annual volumes of Anthropophyteia are
diligently exploring the rich and fruitful field of sexual folk-lore. The large
volumes of the Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, edited by Dr.
Magnus Hirschfeld of Berlin, have presented discussions of the commonest
of sexual aberrations with a scientific and scholarly thoroughness, a
practical competence, as well as admirable tone, which we may seek in vain
in other countries. In Vienna, moreover, Professor Freud, with his bold and
original views on the sexual causation of many abnormal mental and

nervous conditions, and his psycho-analytic method of investigating and
treating them, although his doctrines are by no means universally accepted,
is yet exerting a revolutionary influence all over the world. During the last
ten years, indeed, the amount of German scientific and semi-scientific
literature, dealing with every aspect of the sexual question, and from every
point of view, is altogether unparalleled. It need scarcely be said that much
of this literature is superficial or worthless. But much of it is sound, and it
would seem that on the whole it is this portion of it which is most popular.
Thus Dr. August Forel, formerly professor of psychiatry at Zurich and a
physician of world-wide reputation, published a few years ago at Munich a
book on the sexual question, Die Sexuelle Frage, in which all the questions
of the sexual life, biological, medical, and social, are seriously discussed
with no undue appeal to an ignorant public; it had an immediate success and
a large sale. Dr. Forel had not entered this field before; he had merely come
to the conclusion that every man at the end of his life ought to set forth his
observations and conclusions regarding the most vital of questions. Again,
at about the same time, Dr. Iwan Bloch, of Berlin, published his many-sided
work on the sexual life of our time, Das Sexualleben Unserer Zeit, a work
less remarkable than Forel's for the weight of the personal authority
expressed, but more remarkable by the range of its learning and the
sympathetic attitude it displayed towards the best movements of the day;
this book also met with great success. [61] Still more recently (1912) Dr.
Albert Moll, with characteristic scientific thoroughness, has edited, and
largely himself written, a truly encyclopædic Handbuch der
Sexualwissenschaften. The eminence of the writers of these books and the
mental calibre needed to read them suffice to show that we are not
concerned, as a careless observer might suppose, with a matter of supply
and demand in prurient literature, but with the serious and widespread
appreciation of serious investigations. This same appreciation is shown not
only by several bio-sociological periodicals of high scientific quality, but by
the existence of a journal like Sexual-Probleme, edited by Dr. Max
Marcuse, a journal with many distinguished contributors, and undoubtedly
the best periodical in this field to be found in any language.
At the same time the new movement of German women, however it may
arise from or be supported by political or scientific movements, is
fundamentally emotional in its character. If we think of it, every great

movement of the Teutonic soul has been rooted in emotion. The German
literary renaissance of the eighteenth century was emotional in its origin
and received its chief stimulus from the contagion of the new irruption of
sentiment in France. Even German science is often influenced, and not
always to its advantage, by German sentiment. The Reformation is an
example on a huge scale of the emotional force which underlies German
movements. Luther, for good and for evil, is the most typical of Germans,
and the Luther who made his mark in the world—the shrewd, coarse,
superstitious peasant who blossomed into genius—was an avalanche of
emotion, a great mass of natural human instincts irresistible in their
impetuosity. When we bear in mind this general tendency to emotional
expansiveness in the manifestations of the Teutonic soul we need feel no
surprise that the present movement among German women should be, to a
much greater extent than the corresponding movements in other countries,
an emotional renaissance. It is not, first and last, a cry for political rights,
but for emotional rights, and for the reasonable regulation of all those social
functions which are founded on the emotions. [62]
This movement, although it may properly be said to be German, since its
manifestations are mainly exhibited in the great German Empire, is yet
essentially a Teutonic movement in the broader sense of the word. Germans
of Austria, Germans of Switzerland, Dutch women, Scandinavians, have all
been drawn into this movement. But it is in Germany proper that they all
find the chief field of their activities.
If we attempt to define in a single sentence the specific object of this
agitation we may best describe it as based on the demands of woman the
mother, and as directed to the end of securing for her the right to control
and regulate the personal and social relations which spring from her nature
as mother or possible mother. Therein we see at once both the intimately
emotional and practical nature of this new claim and its decisive unlikeness
to the earlier woman movement. That was definitely a demand for
emancipation; political enfranchisement was its goal; its perpetual assertion
was that women must be allowed to do everything that men do. But the new
Teutonic woman's movement, so far from making as its ideal the imitation
of men, bases itself on that which most essentially marks the woman as
unlike the man.

The basis of the movement is significantly indicated by the title,
Mutterschutz—the protection of the mother—originally borne by "a Journal
for the reform of sexual morals," established in 1905, edited by Dr. Helene
Stöcker, of Berlin, and now called Die Neue Generation. All the questions
that radiate outwards from the maternal function are here discussed: the
ethics of love, prostitution ancient and modern, the position of illegitimate
mothers and illegitimate children, sexual hygiene, the sexual instruction of
the young, etc. It must not be supposed that these matters are dealt with
from the standpoint of a vigilance society for combating vice. The demand
throughout is for the regulation of life, for reform, but for reform quite as
much in the direction of expansion as of restraint. On many matters of
detail, indeed, there is no agreement among these writers, some of whom
approach the problems from the social and practical side, some from the
psychological and philosophic side, others from the medical, legal, or
historical sides.
This journal was originally the organ of the association for the protection of
mothers, more especially unmarried mothers, called the Bund für
Mutterschutz. There are many agencies for dealing with illegitimate
children, but the founders of this association started from the conviction
that it is only through the mother that the child can be adequately cared for.
As nearly a tenth of the children born in Germany are illegitimate, and the
conditions of life into which such children are thrown are in the highest
degree unfavourable, the question has its actuality. [63] It is the aim of the
Bund für Mutterschutz to rehabilitate the unmarried mother, to secure for
her the conditions of economic independence—whatever social class she
may belong to—and ultimately to effect a change in the legal status of
illegitimate mothers and children alike. The Bund, which is directed by a
committee in which social, medical, and legal interests are alike
represented, already possesses numerous branches, in addition to its head-
quarters in Berlin, and is beginning to initiate practical measures on the
lines of its programme, notably Homes for Mothers, of which it has
established nearly a dozen in different parts of Germany.
In 1911 the first International Congress for the Protection of Mothers and
for Sexual Reform was held at Dresden, in connection with the great
Exhibition of Hygiene. As a result of this Congress, an International Union
was constituted, representing Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, and Holland,

which may probably be taken to be the countries which have so far
manifested greatest interest in the programme of sexual reform based on
recognition of the supreme importance of motherhood. This movement
may, therefore, be said to have overcome the initial difficulties, the
antagonism, the misunderstanding, and the opprobrium, which every
movement in the field of sexual reform inevitably encounters, and often
succumbs to.
It would be a mistake to regard this Association as a merely philanthropic
movement. It claims to be "An Association for the Reform of Sexual
Ethics," and Die Neue Generation deals with social and ethical rather than
with philanthropic questions. In these respects it reflects the present attitude
of many thoughtful German women, though the older school of women's
rights advocates still holds aloof. We may here, for instance, find a
statement of the recent discussion concerning the right of the mother to
destroy her offspring before birth. This has been boldly claimed for women
by Countess Gisela von Streitberg, who advocates a return to the older
moral view which prevailed not only in classic antiquity, but even, under
certain conditions, in Christian practice, until Canon law, asserting that the
embryo had from the first an independent life, pronounced abortion under
all circumstances a crime. Countess von Streitberg takes the standpoint that
as the chief risks and responsibilities must necessarily rest upon the woman,
it is for her to decide whether she will permit the embryo she bears to
develop. Dr. Marie Raschke, taking up the discussion from the legal side, is
unable to agree that abortion should cease to be a punishable offence,
though she advocates considerable modifications in the law on this matter.
Dr. Siegfried Weinberg, summarizing this discussion, again from the legal
standpoint, considers that there is considerable right on the Countess's side,
because from the modern juridical standpoint a criminal enactment is only
justified because it protects a right, and in law the embryo possesses no
rights which can be injured. From the moral standpoint, also, it is argued, its
destruction often becomes justifiable in the interests of the community.
This debatable question, while instructive as an example of the radical
manner in which German women are now beginning to face moral
questions, deals only with an isolated point which has hardly yet reached
the sphere of practical politics. [64] It is more interesting to consider the
general conceptions which underlie this movement, and we can hardly do

this better than by studying the writings of Ellen Key, who is not only one
of its recognized leaders, but may be said to present its aims and ideals in a
broader and more convinced manner than any other writer.
Ellen Key's views are mainly contained in three books, Love and Marriage,
The Century of the Child, and The Women's Movement, in which form they
enjoy a large circulation, and are now becoming well known, through
translations, in England and America. She carefully distinguishes her aims
from what she regards as the American conception of progress in woman's
movements, that is to say the tendency for women to seek to capture the
activities which may be much more adequately fulfilled by the other sex,
while at the same time neglecting the far weightier matters that concern
their own sex. Man and woman are not natural enemies who need to waste
their energies in fighting over their respective rights and privileges; in
spiritual as in physical life they are only fruitful together. Women, indeed,
need free scope for their activities—and the earlier aspirations of feminism
are thus justified—but they need it, not to wrest away any tasks that men
may be better fitted to perform, but to play their part in that field of creative
life which is peculiarly their own. Ellen Key would say that the highest
human unit is triune: father, mother, and child. Marriage, therefore, instead
of being, as it is to-day, the last thing to be thought of in education,
becomes the central point of life. In Ellen Key's conception, "those who
love each other are man and wife," and by love she means not a temporary
inclination, but "a synthesis of desire and friendship," just as the air is a
mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. It must be this for both sexes alike, and
Ellen Key sees a real progress in what seems to her the modern tendency
for men to realize that the soul has its erotic side, and for women to realize
that the senses have. She has no special sympathy with the cry for purity in
masculine candidates for marriage put forward by some women of the
present day. She observes that many men who have painfully struggled to
maintain this ideal meet with disillusion, for it is not the masculine lamb,
but much more the spotted leopard, who fascinates women. The notion that
women have higher moral instincts than men Ellen Key regards as absurd.
The majority of Frenchwomen, she remarks, were against Dreyfus, and the
majority of Englishwomen approved the South African war. The really
fundamental difference between man and woman is that he can usually give
his best as a creator, and she as a lover, that his value is according to his

work and hers according to her love. And in love the demand for each sex
alike must not be primarily for a mere anatomical purity, but for passion
and for sincerity.
The aim of love, as understood by Ellen Key, is always marriage and the
child, and as soon as the child comes into question society and the State are
concerned. Before fruition, love is a matter for the lovers alone, and the
espionage, ceremony, and routine now permitted or enjoined are both
ridiculous and offensive. "The flower of love belongs to the lovers, and
should remain their secret; it is the fruit of love which brings them into
relation to society." The dominating importance of the child, the parent of
the race to be, alone makes the immense social importance of sexual union.
It is not marriage which sanctifies generation, but generation which
sanctifies marriage. From the point of view of "the sanctity of generation"
and the welfare of the race, Ellen Key looks forward to a time when it will
be impossible for a man and woman to become parents when they are
unlikely to produce a healthy child, though she is opposed to Neo-
Malthusian methods, partly on æsthetic grounds and partly on the more
dubious grounds of doubt as to their practical efficiency; it is from this
point of view also that she favours sexual equality in matters of divorce, the
legal assimilation of legitimate and illegitimate children, the recognition of
unions outside marriage,—a recognition already legally established under
certain circumstances in Sweden, in such a way as to confer the rights of
legitimacy on the child,—and she is even prepared to advise women under
some conditions to become mothers outside marriage, though only when
there are obstacles to legal marriage, and as the outcome of deliberate will
and resolution. In these and many similar proposals in detail, set forth in her
earlier books, it is clear that Ellen Key has sometimes gone beyond the
mandate of her central conviction, that love is the first condition for
increasing the vitality alike of the race and of the individuality, and that the
question of love, properly considered, is the question of creating the future
man. As she herself has elsewhere quite truly pointed out, practice must
precede, and precede by a very long time, the establishment of definite rules
in matters of detail.
It will be noticed that a point with which Ellen Key and the leaders of the
new German woman's movement specially concern themselves is the
affectional needs of the "supernumerary" woman and the legitimation of her

children. There is an excess of women over men, in Germany as in most
other countries. That excess, it is said, is balanced by the large number of
women who do not wish to marry. But that is too cheap a solution of the
question. Many women may wish to remain unmarried, but no woman
wishes to be forced to remain unmarried. Every woman, these advocates of
the rights of women claim, has a right to motherhood, and in exercising the
right under sound conditions she is benefiting society. But our marriage
system, in the rigid form which it has long since assumed, has not now the
elasticity necessary to answer these demands. It presents a solution which is
often impossible, always difficult, and perhaps in a large proportion of
cases undesirable. But for a woman who is shut out from marriage to grasp
at the vital facts of love and motherhood which she perhaps regards,
unreasonably or not, as the supreme things in the world, must often be
under such conditions a disastrous step, while it is always accompanied by
certain risks. Therefore, it is asked, why should there not be, as of old there
was, a relationship established which while of less dignity than marriage,
and less exclusive in its demands, should yet permit a woman to enter into
an honourable, open, and legally recognized relationship with a man? Such
a relationship a woman could proclaim to the whole world, if necessary,
without reflecting any disesteem upon herself or her child, while it would
give her a legal claim on her child's father. Such a relationship would be
substantially the same as the ancient concubinate, which persisted even in
Christendom up to the sixteenth century. Its establishment in Sweden has
apparently been satisfactory, and it is now sought to extend it to other
countries. [65]
It is interesting to compare, or to contrast, the movement of which Ellen
Key has been a conspicuous champion with the futile movement initiated
nearly a century ago by the school of Saint-Simon and Prosper Enfantin, in
favour of "la femme libre." [66] That earlier movement had no doubt its
bright and ideal side, but it was not supported by a sound and scientific
view of life; it was rooted in sand and soon withered up. The kind of
freedom which Ellen Key advocates is not a freedom to dispense with law
and order, but rather a freedom to recognize and follow true law; it is the
freedom which in morals as well as in politics is essential for the
development of real responsibility.

People talk, Ellen Key remarks, as though reform in sexual morality meant
the breaking up of a beautiful idyll, while the idyll is impossible as long as
the only alternative offered to so many young men and women at the
threshold of life is between becoming "the slave of duty or the slave of
lust." In these matters we already possess licence, and the only sound
reform lies in a kind of "freedom" which will correct that licence by
obedience to the most fundamental natural instincts acting in harmony with
the claims of the race, which claims, it must be added, cannot be out of
harmony with the best traditions of the race. Ellen Key would agree with a
great German, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who wrote more than a century ago
that "a solicitude for the race conducts to the same results as the highest
solicitude for the most beautiful development of the inner man." The
modern revolt against fossilized laws is inevitable; it is already in progress,
and we have to see to it that the laws written upon tables of stone in their
inevitable decay only give place to the mightier laws written upon tables of
flesh and blood. Life is far too rich and manifold, Ellen Key says again, to
be confined in a single formula, even the best; if our ideal has its worth for
ourselves, if we are prepared to live for it and to die for it, that is enough;
we are not entitled to impose it on others. The conception of duty still
remains, duty to love and duty to the race. "I believe in a new ethics," Ellen
Key declares at the end of The Women's Movement, "which will be a
synthesis growing out of the nature of man and the nature of woman, out of
the demands of the individual and the demands of society, out of the pagan
and the Christian points of view, out of the resolve to mould the future and
out of piety towards the past."
No reader of Ellen Key's books can fail to be impressed by the remarkable
harmony between her sexual ethics and the conception that underlies Sir
Francis Galton's scientific eugenics. In setting forth the latest aspects of his
view of eugenics before the Sociological Society, Galton asserted that the
improvement of the race, in harmony with scientific knowledge, would
come about by a new religious movement, and he gave reasons to show
why such an expectation is not unreasonable; in the past men have obeyed
the most difficult marriage rules in response to what they believed to be
supernatural commands, and there is no ground for supposing that the real
demands of the welfare of the race, founded on exact knowledge, will prove
less effective in calling out an inspiring religious emotion. Writing probably

at the same time, Ellen Key, in her essay entitled Love and Ethics, set forth
precisely the same conception, though not from the scientific but from the
emotional standpoint. From the outset she places the sexual question on a
basis which brings it into line with Galton's eugenics. The problem used to
be concerned, she remarks, with the insistence of society on a rigid
marriage form, in conflict with the demand of the individual to gratify his
desires in any manner that seemed good to him, while now it becomes a
question of harmonizing the claims of the improvement of the race with the
claims of the individual to happiness in love. She points out that on this
aspect real harmony becomes more possible. Regard for the ennoblement of
the race serves as a bridge from a chaos of conflicting tendencies to a truer
conception of love, and "love must become on a higher plane what it was in
primitive days—a religion." She compares the growth of the conception of
the vital value of love to the modern growth of the conception of the value
of health as against the medieval indifference to hygiene. It is inevitable
that Ellen Key, approaching the question from the emotional side, should
lay less stress than Galton on the importance of scientific investigation in
heredity, and insist mainly on the value of sound instincts, unfettered by
false and artificial constraints, and taught to realize that the physical and the
psychic aspects of life are alike "divine."
It would obviously be premature to express either approval or disapproval
of the conceptions of sexual morality which Ellen Key has developed with
such fervour and insight. It scarcely seems probable that the methods of
sexual union, put forward as an alternative to celibacy by some of the
adherents of the new movement, are likely to become widely popular, even
if legalized in an increasing number of countries. I have elsewhere given
reasons to believe that the path of progress lies mainly in the direction of a
reform of the present institution of marriage. [67] The need of such reform is
pressing, and there are many signs that it is being recognized. We can
scarcely doubt that the advocates of these alternative methods of sexual
union will do good by stimulating the champions of marriage to increased
activity in the reform of that institution. In such matters a certain amount of
competition sometimes has a remarkably vivifying effect.
We may be sure that women, whose interests are so much at stake in this
matter, and who tend to look at it in a practical rather than in a legal and
theological spirit, will exert a powerful influence when they have acquired

the ability to enforce that influence by the vote. This is significantly
indicated by an inquiry held in England during 1910 by the Women's Co-
operative Guild. A number of women who had held official positions in the
Guild were asked (among other questions) whether or not they were in
favour of divorce by mutual consent. Of 94 representative women
conversant with affairs who were thus consulted, as many as 82 deliberately
recorded their opinion in favour of divorce by mutual consent, and only 12
were against that highly important marriage reform.
It is probably unnecessary to discuss the opinions of other leaders in this
movement, though there are several, such as Frau Grete Meisel-Hess,
whose views deserve study. It will be sufficiently clear in what way this
Teutonic movement differs from that Anglo-Saxon woman's rights'
movement with which we have long been familiar. These German women
fully recognize that women are entitled to the same human rights as men,
and that until such rights are attained "feminism" still has a proper task to
achieve. But women must use their strength in the sphere for which their
own nature fits them. Even though millions of women are enabled to do the
work which men could do better the gain for mankind is nil. To put women
to do men's work is (Ellen Key has declared) as foolish as to set a
Beethoven or a Wagner to do engine-driving.
It has probably excited surprise in the minds of some who have been
impressed by the magnitude and vitality of this movement that it should
have manifested itself in Germany rather than in England, which is the
original home of movements for women's emancipation, or in America,
where they have reached their fullest developments. This, however, ceases
to be surprising when we realize the special qualities of the Anglo-Saxon
and Teutonic temperaments and the special conditions under which the two
movements arose. The Anglo-Saxon movement was a special application to
women of the general French movement for the logical assertion of abstract
human rights. That special application was not ardently taken up in France
itself, though first proclaimed by French pioneers, [68] partly perhaps
because such one-sided applications make little appeal to the French mind,
and mainly, no doubt, because women throughout the eighteenth century
enjoyed such high social consideration and exerted so much influence that
they were not impelled to rise in any rebellious protest. But when the seed
was brought over to England, especially in the representative form of Mary

Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, it fell in virgin soil
which proved highly favourable to its development. This special application
escaped the general condemnation which the Revolution had brought upon
French ideas. Women in England were beginning to awaken to ideas,—as
women in Germany are now,—and the more energetic and intelligent
among them eagerly seized upon conceptions which furnished food for their
activities. In large measure they have achieved their aims, and even
woman's suffrage has been secured here and there, without producing any
notable revolution in human affairs. The Anglo-Saxon conception of
feminine progress—beneficial as it has undoubtedly been in many respects
—makes little impression in Germany, partly because it fails to appeal to
the emotional Teutonic temperament, and partly because the established
type of German life and civilization offers very small scope for its
development. When Miss Susan Anthony, the veteran pioneer of woman's
movements in the United States, was presented to the German Empress she
expressed a hope that the Emperor would soon confer the suffrage on
German women; it is recorded that the Empress smiled, and probably most
German women smiled with her. At the present time, however, there is an
extraordinary amount of intellectual activity in Germany, a widespread and
massive activity. For the first time, moreover, it has reached women, who
are taking it up with characteristic Teutonic thoroughness. But they are not
imitating the methods of their Anglo-Saxon sisters; they are going to work
their own way. They are spending very little energy in waving the red flag
before the fortresses of male monopoly. They are following an emotional
influence which, strangely enough, it may seem to some, finds more
support from the biological and medical side than the Anglo-Saxon
movement has always been able to win. From the time of Aristophanes
downwards, whenever they have demonstrated before the masculine
citadels, women have always been roughly bidden to go home. And now,
here in Germany, where of all countries that advice has been most freely
and persistently given, women are adopting new tactics: they have gone
home. "Yes, it is true," they say in effect, "the home is our sphere. Love and
marriage, the bearing and the training of children—that is our world. And
we intend to lay down the laws of our world."
[52] In 1787 Condorcet declared (Lettres d'un Bourgeois de New Haven, Lettre
II) that women ought to have absolutely the same rights as men, and he repeated
the same statement emphatically in 1790, in an article "Sur l'Admission des

Femmes au Droit de Cité," published in the Journal de la Société de 1789. It
must be added that Condorcet was not a democrat, and neither to men nor to
women would he grant the vote unless they were proprietors.
[53] Léopold Lacour has given a full and reliable account of Olympe de Gouges
(who was born at Montauban in 1755) in his Trois Femmes de la Révolution,
1900.
[54] It is noteworthy that the Empire had even a depressing effect on the physical
activities of women. The eighteenth-century woman in France, although she was
not athletic in the modern sense, enjoyed a free life in the open air and was fond
of physical exercises. During the Directoire this tendency became very
pronounced; women wore the scantiest of garments, were out of doors in all
weathers, cultivated healthy appetites, and enjoyed the best of health. But with
the establishment of the Empire these wholesome fashions were discarded, and
women cultivated new ideals of fragile refinement indoors. (This evolution has
been traced by Dr. Lucien Nars, L'Hygiène, September, 1911.)
[55] Concerning the rise and progress of this movement in England much
information is sympathetically and vivaciously set forth in W. Lyon Blease's
Emancipation of English Women (1910), a book, however, which makes no
claim to be judicial or impartial; the author regards "unregulated male egoism"
as the source of the difficulties in the way of women's suffrage.
[56] Thus, in 1911 the National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage took an
impartial poll of the women voters on the municipal register in several large
constituencies, by sending a reply-paid postcard to ask whether or not they
favoured the extension to women of the Parliamentary franchise. Only 5579
were in favour of it; 18,850 were against; 12,621 did not take the trouble to
answer, and it was claimed, probably with reason, that a majority of these were
not in favour of the vote.
[57] It must not be too hastily assumed. Unless we go back to ancient plots of the
Guy Fawkes type (now only imitated by self-styled anarchists), the leaders of
movements of political reform have rarely, if ever, organized outbursts of
violence; such violence, when it occurred, has been the spontaneous and
unpremeditated act of a mob.
[58] Revue de l'Ecole d'Anthropologie, February, 1909, p. 50.
[59] O. Schrader, Reallexicon, Art. "Keuschheit." He considers that Tacitus
merely shows that German women were usually chaste after marriage. A few
centuries later, Lea points out, Salvianus, while praising the barbarians generally
for their chastity, makes an exception in the case of the Alemanni. (See also
Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to
Society," pp. 382-4.)
[60] Thus Kaan, anticipating Krafft-Ebing, published a Psychopathia Sexualis, in
1844, and Casper, in 1852, was the first medical authority to point out that sexual
inversion is sometimes due to a congenital psychic condition.
[61] Both Forel's and Bloch's books have become well known through
translations in England and America. Dr. Bloch is also the author of an extremely

erudite and thorough history of syphilis, which has gone far to demonstrate that
this disease was introduced into Europe from America on the first discovery of
the New World at the end of the fifteenth century.
[62] This attitude is plainly reflected even in many books written by men; I may
mention, for instance, Frenssen's well-known novel Hilligenlei (Holyland).
[63] In most countries illegitimacy is decreasing; in Germany it is steadily
increasing, alike in rural and urban districts. Illegitimate births are, however,
more numerous in the cities than in the country. Of the constituent states of the
German Empire, the illegitimate birth-rate is lowest in Prussia, highest in Saxony
and Bavaria. In Munich 27 per cent of the births are illegitimate. (The facts are
clearly brought out in an article by Dr. Arthur Grünspan in the Berliner Tagblatt
for January 6, 1911, reproduced in Die Neue Generation, July, 1911.) Thus, in
Prussia, while the total births between 1903 and 1908, notwithstanding a great
increase in the population, have only increased 2.6 per cent, the illegitimate
births have increased as much as 11.1 per cent. The increase is marked in nearly
all the German States. It is specially marked in Saxony; here the proportion of
illegitimate births to the total number of births was, in 1903, 12.51 per cent, and
in 1908 it had already risen to 14.40 per cent. In Berlin it is most marked; here it
began in 1891, when there were nearly 47,000 legitimate births; by 1909,
however, the legitimate births had fallen to 38,000, a decrease of 19.4 per cent.
But illegitimate births rose during the same period from nearly 7000 to over
9000, an increase of 35 per cent. The proportion of illegitimate births to the total
births is now over 20 per cent, so that to every four legitimate children there is
rather more than one illegitimate child. It may be said that this is merely due to
an increasing proportion of unmarried women. That, however, is not the case.
The marriage-rate is on the whole rising, and the average age of women at
marriage is becoming lower rather than higher. Grünspan considers that this
increase in illegitimacy is likely to continue, and he is inclined to attribute it less
to economic than to social-psychological causes.
[64] I have discussed this point in Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex
in Relation to Society," chap. xii.
[65] It is remarkable that in early times in Spain the laws recognized
concubinage (barragania) as almost equal to marriage, and as conferring equal
rights on the child, even on the sons of the clergy, who could thus inherit from
their fathers by right of the privileges accorded to the concubine or barragana.
Barragania, however, was not real marriage, and in many regions it could be
contracted by married men (R. Altamira, Historia de España y de la Civilazacion
Española, Vol. I, pp. 644 et seq.).
[66] "La femme libre," in quest of whom the young Saint-Simonians preached a
crusade, must be a woman of reflection and intellect who, having meditated on
the fate of her "sisters," knowing the wants of women, and having sounded those
feminine capacities which man has never completely penetrated, shall give forth
the confession of her sex, without restriction or reserve, in such a manner as to
furnish the indispensable elements for formulating the rights and duties of
woman. Saint Simon had asked Madame de Staël to undertake this rôle, but she
failed to respond. When George Sand published her first novels, one Guéroult
was commissioned to ascertain if the author of Lélia would undertake this

important service. He found a badly dressed woman who was using her talents to
gain a living, but was by no means anxious to become the high priestess of a new
religion. Even after his disappointment Enfantin looked eagerly forward to the
publication of George Sand's Histoire de ma Vie, hoping that at last the great
revelation was coming, and he was again disillusioned. But before this Emile
Barrault had arisen and declared that in the East, in the solitude of the harem, "la
femme libre" would be found in the person of some odalisque. The "mission of
the mother" was formed, and with Barrault at the head it set out for
Constantinople. All were dressed in white as an indication of the vow of chastity
they had taken before leaving Paris, and on the road they begged in the name of
the Mother. They arrived at Constantinople and preached the faith of Saint-
Simon to the Turks in French. But "la femme libre" seemed as far off as ever,
and they resolved to go to Rotourma in Oceana, there to establish the religion of
Saint-Simon and a perfect Government which might serve as a model to the
States of Europe. First, however, they felt it a duty to make certain that the
Mother was not hiding somewhere in Russia, and they went therefore to Odessa,
but the Governor, who was wanting in sympathy, speedily turned them out, and
having realized that Rotourma was some distance off, the mission broke up, most
of the members going to Egypt to rejoin Enfantin, whom the Arabs, struck by his
beauty, had called Abu-l-dhunieh, the Father of the World. (This account of the
movement is based on that given by Maxime du Camp, in his Souvenirs
Littéraires)
[67] Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap.
x.

[68] It is worth noting that a Frenchwoman has been called "the mother of
modern feminism." Marie de Gournay, who died in 1645 at the age of eighty, is
best known as the adopted daughter of Montaigne, for whom she cherished an
enthusiastic reverence, becoming the first editor of his essays. Her short essay,
Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes, was written in 1622. See e.g. M. Schiff, La
Fille d'Alliance de Montaigne.

IV

THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN IN RELATION TO
ROMANTIC LOVE

The Absence of Romantic Love in Classic Civilization—Marriage as a
Duty—The Rise of Romantic Love in the Roman Empire—The
Influence of Christianity—The Attitude of Chivalry—The
Troubadours—The Courts of Love—The Influence of the Renaissance
—Conventional Chivalry and Modern Civilization—The Woman

Movement—The Modern Woman's Equality of Rights and
Responsibilities excludes Chivalry—New Forms of Romantic Love
still remain possible—Love as the Inspiration of Social Hygiene.

What will be the ultimate effect of the woman's movement, now slowly but
surely taking place among us, upon romantic love? That is really a serious
question, and it is much more complex than many of those who are
prepared to answer it off-hand may be willing to admit.
It must be remembered that romantic love has not been a constant
accompaniment of human relationships, even in civilization. It is true that
various peoples very low down in the scale possess romantic love-songs,
often, it appears, written by the women. But the classic civilizations of
Greece and Rome in their most robust and brilliant periods knew little or
nothing of romantic love in connection with normal sexual relationships
culminating in marriage. Classic antiquity reveals a high degree of conjugal
devotion, and of domestic affection, at all events in Rome, but the right of
the woman to follow the inspirations of her own heart, and the idealization
and worship of the woman by the man, were not only scarcely known but,
so far as they were known, reprehended or condemned. Ovid, in the opinion
of some, represents a new movement in Rome. We are apt to regard Ovid
as, in erotic matters, the representative of a set of immoral Roman
voluptuaries. That view probably requires considerable modification. Ovid
was not indeed a champion of morality, but there is no good reason to
suppose that, before he appeared, the rather stern Roman mind had yet
conceived those refinements and courtesies which he set forth in such
charming detail. If we take a wide survey of his work, we may perhaps
regard Ovid as the pioneer of a chivalrous attitude towards women and of a
romantic conception of love not only new in Rome but of significance for
Europe generally. Ovid was a powerful factor in the Renaissance
movement, and not least in England, where his influence on Shakespeare
and some others of the Elizabethans cannot easily be overrated. [69]
For the ordinary classic mind, Greek or Roman, marriage was intended for
the end of building up the family, and the family was consecrated to the
State. The fulfilment of so exalted a function involved a certain austere
dignity which excluded wayward inclination or passionate emotion. These
might indeed occur between a man and a woman outside marriage, but

putting aside the very limited phenomena of Athenian hetairism, they were
too shameful to be idealized. Some trace of this classic attitude may be said
to persist even to-day among the so-called Latin nations, notably in the
French tradition (now dying out) of treating marriage as a relationship to be
arranged, not by the two parties themselves, but by their parents and
guardians; Montaigne, attached as he was to maxims of Roman antiquity,
was not very alien from the ordinary French attitude of his time when he
declared that, since we do not marry so much for our own sakes as for the
sake of posterity and the race, marriage is too sacred a process to be mixed
with amorous extravagance. [70] There is something to be said for that point
of view which is nowadays too often forgotten, but it certainly fails to cover
the whole of the ground.
It is not only in the West that a contemptuous attitude towards the romantic
and erotic side of life has prevailed at some of the most vigorous moments
of civilization. It is also found in the East. In Japan, for instance, even at the
present day, romantic love, as a reputable element of ordinary life, is
unknown or disapproved; its existence is not recognized in the schools, and
the European novels that celebrate it are scarcely understood. [71]
The development of modern romantic love in connection with marriage
seems to be found in the late Greek world under the Roman Empire. [72]
That is commonly called a period of decadence. In a certain limited sense it
was. Greece had become subjugated to Rome. Rome herself had lost her
military spirit and was losing her political power. But the fighting instinct,
and even the ruling spirit, are not synonymous with civilization. The
"decline and fall" of empires by no means necessarily involves the decay of
civilization. It is now generally realized that the later Roman Empire was
not, as was once thought, an age of social and moral degeneration. [73] The
State indeed was dissolving, but the individual was evolving. The age
which produced a Plutarch—for fifteen hundred years one of the great
inspiring forces of the world—was the reverse of a corrupt age. The life of
the home and the life of the soul were alike developing. The home was
becoming more complex, more intimate, more elevated. The soul was being
turned in on itself to discover new and joyous secrets: the secret of the love
of Nature, the secret of mystic religion, and, not least, the secret of romantic
love. When Christianity finally conquered the Roman world its task very

largely lay in taking over and developing those three secrets already
discovered by Paganism.
It was inevitable, however, that in developing these new forms of the
emotional life, the ascetic bent of Christianity should make itself felt. It was
not possible for Christianity to cast its halo around the natural sexual life,
but it was possible to refine and exalt that life, to lift it into a spiritual
sphere. Neither woman the sweetheart nor woman the mother were in
ordinary life glorified by the Church; they were only tolerated. But on a
higher than natural plane they were surrounded by a halo and raised to the
highest pedestal of reverence and even worship. The Virgin was exalted,
Bride and Bridegroom became terms of mystical import, and the Holy
Mother received the adoring love of all Christendom. Even in the actual
relations of men and women, quite early in the history of Christianity, we
sometimes find men and women cultivating relationships which excluded
that earthly union the Church looked down on, but yet involved the most
tender and intimate physical affection. Many charming stories of such
relationships are found in the lives of the saints, and sometimes they existed
even within the marriage bond. [74] Christianity led to the use of ideas and
terms borrowed from earthly love in a different and symbolic sense. But the
undesigned result was that a new force and beauty were added to those
ideas and terms, however applied, and also that many emotions were thus
cultivated which became capable of re-inforcing earthly human love. In this
way it happened that, though Christianity rejected the ideal of romantic love
in its natural associations, it indirectly prepared the way for a loftier and
deeper realization of that love.
There can be no doubt that the emotional training and refining of the fleshly
instincts by Christianity was the chief cause of the rise of that conception of
romantic love which we associate with the institution of chivalry. Exalted
and sanctified by contact with the central dogmas of religion, the emotion
of love was brought down from this spiritual atmosphere by the knightly
lover, with something of its ethereal halo still clinging to it, and directed
towards an earthly mistress. The most extravagant phase of romantic love
which has ever been seen was then brought about, and in many cases,
certainly, it was a real erotomania which passed beyond the bounds of
sanity. [75] In its extreme forms, however, this romantic love was a rare,
localized, and short-lived manifestation. The dominant attitude of the

chivalrous age towards women, as Léon Gautier has shown in his
monumental work on chivalry, was one of indifference, or even contempt.
The knight's thoughts were more of war than of women, and he cherished
his horse more than his mistress. [76]
But women, above all in France, reacted against this attitude, and with
splendid success. Their husbands treated them with indifference or left them
at home while they sought adventure in the world. The neglected wives
proceeded to lay down the laws of society, and took upon themselves the
part of rulers in the domain of morals. In the eleventh, the twelfth, the
thirteenth centuries, says Méray in a charming book on life in the days of
the Courts of Love, we find women "with infinite skill and an adorable
refinement seizing the moral direction of French society." They did so, he
remarks, in a spirit so Utopian, so ideally poetic, that historians have
hesitated to take them seriously. The laws of the Courts of Love [77] may
sometimes seem to us immoral and licentious, but in reality they served to
restrain the worst immoralities and licences of the time. They banished
violence, they allowed no venality, and they inculcated moderation in
passion. The task of the Courts of Love was facilitated by the relative
degree of peace which then reigned, especially by the fact that the
Normans, holding both coasts of the Channel, formed a link between France
and England. When the murderous activities of French kings and English
kings destroyed that link, the Courts of Love were swept away in the
general disorder and the progress of civilization indefinitely retarded. [78]
Yet in some degree the ideals which had been thus embodied still persisted.
As the Goncourts pointed out in their invaluable book, La Femme au Dix-
huitième Siècle (Chap. v), from the days of chivalry even on into the
eighteenth century, when on the surface at all events it apparently
disappeared, an exalted ideal of love continued to be cherished in France.
This conception remained associated, throughout, with the great social
influence and authority which had been enjoyed by women in France even
from medieval times. That influence had become pronounced during the
seventeenth century, and at that time Sir Thomas Smith in his
Commonwealth of England, writing of the high position of women in
England, remarked that they possessed "almost as much liberty as in
France."

There were at least two forms of medieval romantic love. The first arose in
Provence and northern Italy during the twelfth century, and spread to
Germany as Minnedienst. In this form the young knights directed their
respectful and adoring devotion to a high-born married woman who chose
one of them as her own cavalier, to do her service and reverence, the two
vowing devotion to each other until death. It was a part of this amorous
code that there could not be love between husband and wife, and it was
counted a mark of low breeding for a husband to challenge his wife's right
to her young knight's services, though sometimes we are told the husband
risked this reproach, occasionally with tragic results. This mode of love,
after being eloquently sung and practised by the troubadours—usually, it
appears, younger sons of noble houses—died out in the place of its origin,
but it had been introduced into Spain, and the Spaniards reintroduced it into
Italy when they acquired the kingdom of Naples; in Italy it was
conventionalized into the firmly rooted institution of the cavaliere servente.
From the standpoint of a strict morality, the institution was obviously open
to question. But we can scarcely fail to see that at its origin it possessed,
even if unconsciously, a quasi-religious warrant in the worship of the Holy
Mother, and we have to recognize that, notwithstanding its questionable
shape, it was really an effort to attain a purer and more ideal relationship
than was possible in a rough and warlike age which placed the wife in
subordination to her husband. A tender devotion that inspired poetry, an
unalloyed respect that approached reverence, vows that were based on equal
freedom and independence on both sides—these were possibilities which
the men and women of that age felt to be incompatible with marriage as
they knew it.
The second form of medieval romantic love was more ethereal than the
first, and much more definitely and consciously based on a religious
attitude. It was really the worship of the Virgin transferred to a young
earthly maiden, yet retaining the purity and ideality of religious worship. To
so high a degree is this the case that it is sometimes difficult to be sure
whether we are concerned with a real maiden of flesh and blood or only a
poetic symbol of womanhood. This doubt has been raised, notably by
Bartoli, concerning Dante's Beatrice, the supreme type of this ethereal love,
which arose in the thirteenth century, and was chiefly cultivated in
Florence. The poets of this movement were themselves aware of the

religious character of their devotion to the donna angelicata to whom they
even apply, as they would to the Queen of Heaven, the appellation Stella
Maris. That there was an element of flesh and blood in these figures is
believed by Remy de Gourmont, but when we gaze at them, he remarks, we
see at first, "in place of a body only two eyes with angel's wings behind
them, on the background of an azure sky sown with golden stars"; the lover
is on his knees and his love has become a prayer. [79] This phase of romantic
love was brief, and perhaps mostly the possession of the poets, but it
represented a really important moment in the evolution of modern romantic
love. It was a step towards the realization of the genuinely human charm of
young womanhood in real human relationships, of which we already have a
foretaste in the delicious early French story of Aucassin and Nicolette.
The re-discovery of classic literature, the movements of Humanism and the
Renaissance, swept away what was left of the almost religious idealization
of the young virgin. The ethereal maiden, thin, pale, anæmic, disappeared
alike from literature and from art, and was no longer an ideal in actual life.
She gave place to a new woman, conscious of her own fully developed
womanhood and all its needs, radiantly beautiful and finely shaped in every
limb. She lacked the spirituality of her predecessors, but she had gained in
intellect. She appears first in the pages of Boccaccio. After a long interval
Titian immortalized her rich and mature beauty; she is Flora, she is Ariadne,
she is alike the Earthly Love and the Heavenly Love. Every curve of her
body was adoringly and minutely described by Niphus and Firenzuola. [80]
She was, moreover, the courtesan whose imperial charm and adroitness
enabled her to trample under foot the medieval conception of lust as sin,
even in the courts of popes. At the great academic centre of Bologna,
finally, she chastely taught learning and science. [81] The people of the
Italian Renaissance placed women on the same level as men, and to call a
woman a virago implied unalloyed praise. [82]
The very mixed conditions of what we have been accustomed to consider
the modern world then began for women. They were no longer cloistered—
whether in convents or the home—but neither were they any longer
worshipped. They began to be treated as human beings, and when men
idealized them in figures of romantic charm or pathos—figures like
Shakespeare's Rosalind or Marivaux's Sylvia or Richardson's Clarissa—this

humanity was henceforth the common ground out of which the vision arose.
But, one notes, in nearly all the great poets and novelists up to the middle of
the last century, it was usually in the weakness of humanity that the artist
sought the charm and pathos of his feminine figures. From Shakespeare's
Ophelia to Thackeray's Amelia this is the rule, more emphatically expressed
in the literature of England than of any other country. There had been no
actual emancipation of women; though now they had entered the world of
men, they were not yet, socially and legally, of that world. Even the
medieval traditions still lived on in subtly conventionalized forms. The
"chivalrous" attitude towards women was, as the word itself suggests, a
medieval survival. It belonged to a period of barbarism when brutal force
ruled and when the man who magnanimously placed his force at the
disposition of a woman was really doing her a service and granting her a
privilege. But civilization means the building up of an orderly society in
which individual rights are respected, and force no longer dominates. So
that as civilization advances the occasions on which women require the aid
of masculine force become ever fewer and more unimportant. The
conventionalized chivalry of men then tends to become an offer of services
which it would be better for women to do for themselves and a bestowal of
privileges to which they are nowise entitled. [83] Moreover, this same
chivalry is, under these conditions, apt to take on a character which is the
reverse of its face value. It becomes the assertion of a power over women
instead of a power on their behalf; and it carries with it a tinge of contempt
in place of respect. Theoretically, a thousand chivalrous swords should leap
from their scabbards to succour the distressed woman. In practice this may
only mean that the thousand owners of these metaphorical weapons are on
the alert to take advantage of the distressed woman.
Thus the romantic emotions based on medieval ideals gradually lost their
worth. They were not in relation to the altered facts of life; they had become
an empty convention which could be turned to very unromantic uses. The
movement for the emancipation of women was not consciously or directly a
movement of revolt against an antiquated chivalry. It was rather a part of
the development of civilization which rendered chivalry antique. Medieval
romantic love implied in women a weakness in the soil of which only a
spiritual force could flourish. The betterment of social conditions, the
subordination of violence to order, the growing respect for individual rights,

took away the reasons for consecrating weakness in women, and created an
ever larger field in which women could freely seek to rival men, because it
is a field in which knowledge and skill are of far more importance than
muscular strength. The emancipation of women has simply been the later
and more conscious phase of the process by which women have entered
into this field and sought their share of its rights and its responsibilities.
The woman movement of modern times, properly understood, has thus been
the effort of women to adapt themselves to the conditions of an orderly and
peaceful civilization. Education, under the changed conditions, can effect
what before needed force of arms; responsibility is now demanded where
before only tutelage was possible. A civilized society in which women are
ignorant and irresponsible is an anachronism, and, however great the
wrench with the past might be, it was necessary that women should be
adjusted to the changing times. The ideal of the weak, ignorant,
inexperienced woman—the cross between an angel and an idiot, as I have
elsewhere described her [84]—no longer fulfilled any useful purpose.
Civilized society furnishes the conditions under which all adult persons are
socially equal and all are free to give to society the best they are capable of.
It was inevitable, but unfortunate, that this movement should have
sometimes tended to take the form of an attempt on the part of women to
secure, not merely equality with men, but actual imitation of men. These
women said that since men had attained mastery in life, captured all the best
things, and adopted the most successful methods of living, it was necessary
for women to copy them at every point. That was a specious plea which
even had in it a certain element of truth. But the fact remained that women
and men are different, that the difference is based in fundamental natural
functions, and that to place one sex in exactly the same position as the other
sex is to deform its outlines and to hamper its activities.
From the present point of view we are only concerned with the influence of
the woman's movement on love. On the traditional conception of romantic
love inherited from medieval days there can be no doubt that this influence
has been highly dissolvent. Medieval romantic love, in its original form,
had been part of a conception of womanhood made up of opposites, and all
the opposites balanced each other. The medieval man laid his homage at the
feet of the great lady in the castle hall, but he himself lorded it over the wife

who drudged in his own home. On his knees he gazed up in devotion at the
ethereal virgin, but when she ceased to be a virgin, he asserted himself by
cursing her as a demon sent from hell to seduce and torment him. All this
was possible because the woman was outside the orbit of the man's life,
never on the same plane, necessarily higher or lower. It became difficult if
woman was man's equal, absurdly impossible if she was of identical nature
with him.
The medieval romantic tradition has come down to us so laden with beauty
and mystery that we are apt to think, as we see it melt away, that human
achievements are being permanently depreciated. That illusion occurs in
every age of transition. It was notably so in the eighteenth century, which
represented a highly important stage in the emancipation of women. To
some that century seems to have been given up to empty gallantry and
facile pleasure. Yet it was not only the age in which women for the first
time succeeded in openly attaining their supreme social influence, [85] it was
an age of romantic love, and the noble or poignant love-stories which have
reached us from the records of that period surpass those of any other age.
If we believe with Goethe that the religion of the future consists in a triple
reverence—the reverence for what is above us, the reverence for what is
below us, and the reverence for our equals [86]—we need not grieve
overmuch if one form of this reverence, the first, and that which Goethe
regarded as the earliest and crudest, has lost its exclusive claim. Reverence
is essential to all romantic love. To bring down the Madonna and the Virgin
from their pedestals to share with men the common responsibilities and
duties of life is not to divest them of the claim to reverence. It is merely the
sign of a change in the form of that reverence, a change which heralds a
new romantic love.
It would be premature to attempt to define the exact outline of the new
forms of romantic love, or the precise lineaments of the beings who will
most ardently evoke that love. In literature, indeed, the ideals of life cast
their shadow before, and we may surely trace a change in the erotic ideals
mirrored in literature. The woman whom Dickens idealized in David
Copperfield is unlike indeed to the series of women of a new type
introduced by George Meredith, and the modern heroine generally exhibits
more of the robust, open-eyed and spontaneous qualities of that later type

than the blind and clinging nature of the amiable simpletons of the older
type. That the changed conditions of civilization should produce new types
of womanhood and of love is not surprising, if we realize that, even within
the ancient chivalrous forms it was possible to produce similar robust types
when the qualities of a race were favourable to them. Spain furnishes a
notable illustration. Spanish literature from Cervantes and Tirso to Valera
and Blasco Ibañez reflects a type of woman who stands on the same ground
as man and is his equal and often his superior on that ground, alike in
vigour of body and of spirit, acquiring all that she cares to of virility, while
losing nothing feminine that is of worth. [87] In more than one respect the
ideal woman of Spain is the ideal woman our civilization now renders
necessary. The women of the future, Grete Meisel-Hess declares in her
femininely clever and frank discussion of present-day conditions, Die
Sexuelle Krise, will be full, strong, elementary natures, devoid alike of the
impulse to destroy or the aptitude to be destroyed. She considers, moreover,
that so far from romantic love being a thing of the past, "love as a form of
worship is reserved for the future." [88] In the past it has only been found
among a few rare souls; in the future world, fostered by the finer selection
of a conscious eugenics, and a new reverence and care for motherhood, we
may reasonably hope for a truly efficient humanity, the bearers and
conservers of the highest human emotions. It is in this sense, indeed, that
the voices of the greatest and most typical leaders of the woman's
movement of emancipation to-day are heard. Ellen Key, in her Love and
Marriage, seeks to conciliate the cultivation of a free and sacred sexual
relationship with the worship of the child, as the embodiment of the future
race, while Olive Schreiner proclaims in her Woman and Labour that the
woman of the future will walk side by side with man in a higher and deeper
relationship than has ever been possible before because it will involve a
new community in activity and insight.
Nor is it alone from the feminine side that these forecasts are made.
Certainly for the most part love has been cultivated more by women than by
men. Primacy in the genius of intellect belongs incontestably to men, but in
the genius of love it has doubtless oftener been achieved by women. They
have usually understood better than men that in this matter, as Goethe
insisted, it is the lover and not the beloved who reaps the chief fruits of
love. "It is better to love, even violently," wrote the forsaken Portuguese

nun, in her immortal Letters, "than merely to be loved." He who loses his
life here saves it, for it is only in so far as he becomes a crucified god that
Love wins the sacrifice of human hearts. Of late years, by an inevitable
reaction, women have sometimes forgotten this eternal verity. The women
of the twentieth century in their anxiety for self-possession and their
rightful eagerness to gain positions they feel they have been too long
excluded from, have perhaps yet failed to realize that the women of the
eighteenth century, who exerted a sway over life that the women of no age
before or since have possessed, were, above all women, great and heroic
lovers, and that those two fundamental facts cannot be cut asunder. But this
failure, temporary as it is doubtless destined to be, will work for good if it is
the point of departure for a revival among men of the art of love.
Men indeed have here fallen behind women. The old saying, so tediously
often quoted, concerning love as a "thing apart" in the lives of men would
scarcely have occurred to a medieval poet of Provence or Florence. It is not
enough for women to proclaim a new avatar of love if men are not ready
and eager to learn its art and to practise its discipline. In a profoundly
suggestive fragment on love, left incomplete at his death by the
distinguished sociologist Tarde, [89] he suggests that when masculine energy
dies down in the fields of political ambition and commercial gain, as it
already has in the field of warfare, the energy liberated by greater social
organization and cohesion may find scope once more in love. For too long a
period love, like war and politics and commerce, has been chiefly
monopolized by the predatory type of man, in this field symbolized by the
figure of Don Juan. In the future, Tarde suggests, the Don Juan type of lover
may fall into disrepute, giving place to the Virgilian type, for whom love is
not a thing apart but a form of life embodying its best and highest activities.
When we come upon utterances of this kind we are tempted to think that
they represent merely the poetic dreams of individuals, standing too far
ahead of their fellows to possess any significance for men and women in
general. But it is probable that Ovid, and certain that Dante, set forth erotic
conceptions that were unintelligible to most of their contemporaries, yet
they have been immensely influential over the ideas and emotions of men in
later ages. The poets and prophets of one generation are engaged in
moulding ideals which will be realized in the lives of a subsequent
generation; in expressing their own most intimate emotions, as it has been

truly said, they become the leaders in a long file of men and women.
Whatever may yet be uncertain and undefined, we may assuredly believe
that the emotion of love is far too deeply rooted in the depth of man's
organism and woman's organism ever to be torn out or ever to be thrust into
a subordinate place. And we may also believe that there is no measurable
limit to its power of putting forth ever new and miraculous flowers. It is
recorded that once, in James Hinton's presence, the conversation turned on
music, and it was suggested that, owing to the limited number of musical
combinations and the unlimited number of musical compositions, a time
would come when all music would only be a repetition of exhausted
harmonies. Hinton remarked that then would come a man so inspired by a
new spirit that his feeling would be, not that all music has been written, but
that no music has yet been written. It was a memorable saying. In every
field that is the perpetual proclamation of genius: Behold! I create all things
new. And in this field of love we can conceive of no age in which to the
inspired seer it will not be possible to feel: There has yet been no love!
[69] See especially Sidney Lee, "Ovid and Shakespeare's Sonnets," Quarterly
Review, April, 1909.
[70] Montaigne, Essais, Book III, chap. V.
[71] See e.g. Mrs. Fraser, World's Work and Play, December, 1906.
[72] A more modern feeling for love and marriage begins to emerge, however, at
a much earlier period, with Menander and the New Comedy. E.F.M. Benecke, in
his interesting little book on Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women
in Greek Poetry, believes that the romantic idea (that is to say, the idea that a
woman is a worthy object for a man's love, and that such love may well be the
chief, if not the only, aim of a man's life) had originally been propounded by
Antimachus at the end of the fifth century B.C. Antimachus, said to have been
the friend of Plato, had been united to a woman of Lydia (where women, we
know, occupied a very high position) and her death inspired him to write a long
poem, Lyde, "the first love poem ever addressed by a Greek to his wife after
death." Only a few lines of this poem survive. But Antimachus seems to have
greatly influenced Philetas (whom Croiset calls "the first of the Alexandrians")
and Asclepiades of Samos, tender and exquisite poets whom also we only know
by a few fragments. Benecke's arguments, therefore, however probable, cannot
be satisfactorily substantiated.
[73] As I have elsewhere pointed out (Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI,
"Sex in Relation to Society," chap. ix), most modern authorities—Friedländer,
Dill, Donaldson, etc.—consider that there was no real moral decline in the later
Roman Empire; we must not accept the pictures presented by satirists, pagan or
Christian, as of general application.

[74] I have discussed this phase of early Christianity in the sixth volume of
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. V.
[75] Ulrich von Lichtenstein, in the thirteenth century, is the typical example of
this chivalrous erotomania. His account of his own adventures has been
questioned, but Reinhold Becker (Wahrheit und Dichtung in Ulrich von
Lichtenstein's Frauendienst, 1888) considers that, though much exaggerated, it is
in substance true.
[76] Léon Gautier, La Chevalerie, pp. 236-8, 348-50.
[77] The chief source of information on these Courts is André le Chapelain's De
Arte Amatoria. Boccaccio made use of this work, though without mentioning the
author's name, in his own Dialogo d' Amore.
[78] A. Méray, La Vie au Temps des Cours d'Amour, 1876.
[79] Remy de Gourmont, Dante, Béatrice et la Poésie Amoureuse, 1907, p. 32.
[80] Niphus (born about 1473), a physician and philosopher of the Papal Court,
wrote in his De Pulchro, sometimes considered the first modern treatise on
æsthetics, a minute description of Joan of Aragon, whose portrait, traditionally
ascribed to Raphael, is in the Louvre. The famous work of Firenzuola (born
1493) entitled Dialogo delle Bellezze delle Donne, was published in 1548. It has
been translated into English by Clara Bell under the title On the Beauty of
Women.
[81] See, for example, Edith Coulson James, Bologna: Its History, Antiquities
and Art, 1911.
[82] See, for an interesting account of the position of women in the Italian
Renaissance, Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance, Part V, ch. vi.
[83] I may quote the following remarks from a communication I have received
from a University man: "I am prepared to show women, and to expect from
them, precisely the same amount of consideration as I show to or expect from
other men, but I rather resent being expected to make a preferential difference.
For example, in a crowded tram I see no more adequate reason for giving up my
seat to a young and healthy girl than for expecting her to give up hers to me; I
would do so cheerfully for an old person of either sex on the ground that I am
probably better fit to stand the fatigue of 'strap-hanging,' and because I recognize
that some respect is due to age; but if persons get into over-full vehicles they
should not expect first-comers to turn out of their seats merely because they
happen to be men." This writer acknowledges, indeed, that he is not very
sensitive to the erotic attraction of women, but it is probable that the changing
status of women will render the attitude he expresses more and more common
among men.
[84] Ante, p. 58.
[85] "Women then were queens," as Taine writes (L'Ancien Régime, Vol. I, p.
219), and he gives references to illustrate the point.
[86] Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Book II, ch. i.

[87] Havelock Ellis, The Soul of Spain, chap. III, "The Women of Spain."
[88] Grete Meisel-Hess, Die Sexuelle Krise, 1909, pp. 148, 168.
[89] "La Morale Sexuelle," Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, January, 1907.

V

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FALLING BIRTH-RATE

The Fall of the Birth-rate in Europe generally—In England—In
Germany—In the United States—In Canada—In Australasia—"Crude"
Birth-rate and "Corrected" Birth-rate—The Connection between High
Birth-rate and High Death-rate—"Natural Increase" measured by
Excess of Births over Deaths—The Measure of National Well-being—
The Example of Russia—Japan—China—The Necessity of viewing
the Question from a wide Standpoint—The Prevalence of Neo-
Malthusian Methods—Influence of the Roman Catholic Church—
Other Influences lowering the Birth-rate—Influence of Postponement
of Marriage—Relation of the Birth-rate to Commercial and Industrial
Activity—Illustrated by Russia, Hungary, and Australia—The Relation
of Prosperity to Fertility—The Social Capillarity Theory—Divergence
of the Birth-rate and the Marriage-rate—Marriage-rate and the
Movement of Prices—Prosperity and Civilization—Fertility among
Savages—The lesser Fertility of Urban Populations—Effect of
Urbanization on Physical Development—Why Prosperity fails
permanently to increase Fertility—Prosperity creates Restraints on
Fertility—The Process of Civilization involves Decreased Fertility—In
this Respect it is a Continuation of Zoological Evolution—Large
Families as a Stigma of Degeneration—The Decreased Fertility of
Civilization a General Historical Fact—The Ideals of Civilization to-
day—The East and the West.

I

One of the most interesting phenomena of the early part of the nineteenth
century was the immense expansion of the people of the so-called "Anglo-
Saxon" race. [90] This expansion coincided with that development of
industrial and commercial activity which made the English people, who had
previously impressed foreigners as somewhat lazy and drunken, into "a
nation of shopkeepers." It also coincided with the end of the supremacy of
France in Europe; France had succeeded to Spain as the leading power in
Europe, and had on the whole maintained a supremacy which Napoleon
brought to a climax, and, in doing so, crushed. The growing prosperity of
England represented an entirely new wave of influence, mainly economic in
character, but not less forceful than that of Spain and of France had been;
and this prosperity was reflected in the growth of the nation. The greater
part of the Victorian period was marked by this expansion of population,
which reached its highest point in the early years of the second half of that
period. While the population of England was thus increasing with ever
greater rapidity at home, at the same time the English-speaking peoples
overspread the whole of North America, and colonized the fertile fringe of
Australia. It was, on a still larger scale, a phenomenon similar to that which
had occurred three hundred years earlier, when Spain covered the world and
founded an empire upon which, as Spaniards proudly boasted, the sun never
set.
When now, a century later, we survey the situation, not only has industrial
and commercial activity ceased to be a special attribute of the Anglo-
Saxons—since the Germans have here shown themselves to possess
qualities of the highest order, and other countries are rapidly rivalling them
—but within the limits of the English-speaking world itself the English
have found formidable rivals in the Americans. Underlying, however, even
these great changes there is a still more fundamental fact to be considered, a
fact which affects all branches of the race; and that is, that the Anglo-
Saxons have passed their great epoch of expansion and that their birth-rate
is rapidly falling to a normal level, that is to say, to the average level of the
world in general. Disregarding the extremely important point of the death-
rate in its bearing on the birth-rate, England is seen to possess a medium
birth-rate among European countries, not among the countries with a high
birth-rate, like Russia, Roumania, or Bulgaria, nor among those with a low
birth-rate, like Sweden, Belgium, and France. It was in this last country that

the movement of decline in the European birth-rate began, and though the
rate of decline has in France now become very gradual the long period
through which it has extended has placed France in the lowest place, so far
as Europe is concerned. In 1908 out of a total of over 11,000,000 French
families, in nearly 2,000,000 there were no children, and in nearly
3,000,000 there was only one child. [91] The general decline in the European
birth-rate, during the years 1901-1905, was only slight in Switzerland,
Ireland and Spain, while it was large not only in France, but in Italy, Servia,
England and Wales, and especially in Hungary (while, outside Europe, it
was largest of all in South Australia). Since 1905 there has been a further
general decline throughout Europe, only excepting Ireland, Bulgaria, and
Roumania. In Prussia in 1881-1885 the birth-rate was 37.4; in 1909 it was
only 31.8; while in the German Empire as a whole it is throughout lower
than in Prussia, though somewhat higher than in England. In Austria and
Spain alone of European countries during the twenty years between 1881
and 1901 was there any tendency for the fertility of wives to increase. In all
other countries there was a decrease, greatest in Belgium, next greatest in
France, then in England. [92]
If we consider the question, not on the basis of the crude birth-rate, but of
the "corrected" birth-rate, with more exact reference to the child-producing
elements in the population, as is done by Newsholme and Stevenson, [93] we
find that the greatest decline has taken place in New South Wales, then in
Victoria, Belgium, and Saxony, followed by New Zealand. But France, the
German Empire generally, England, and Denmark all show a considerable
fall; while Sweden and Norway show a fall, which, especially in Norway, is
slight. Norway illustrates the difference between the "crude" and the
"corrected" birth-rate; the crude birth-rate is lower than that of Saxony, but
the corrected birth-rate is higher. Ireland, again, has a very low crude birth-
rate, but the population of child-bearing age has a high birth-rate,
considerably higher than that of England.
Thus while forty years ago it was usual for both the English and the
Germans to contemplate, perhaps with some complacency, the spectacle of
the falling birth-rate in France as compared with the high birth-rate in
England and Germany, we are now seen to be all marching along the same
road. In 1876 the English birth-rate reached its maximum of 36.3 per

thousand; while in France the birth-rate now appears almost to have reached
its lowest level. Germany, like England, now also has a falling birth-rate,
though it will take some time to sink to the English level. The birth-rate for
Germany generally is still much higher than for England generally, but
urbanization in Germany seems to have a greater influence than in England
in lowering the birth-rate, and for many years past the birth-rate of Berlin
has been lower than that of London. The birth-rate in Germany has long
been steadily falling, and the increase in the population of Germany is due
to a concomitant steady fall in the death-rate, a fall to which there are
inevitable natural limits. [94] Moreover, as Flux has shown, [95] urbanization
is going on at a greater speed in Germany than in England, and practically
the entire natural increase of the German population for a quarter of a
century has drifted into the towns. But the death-rate of the young in
German towns is far higher than in English towns, and the first five years of
life in Germany produce as much mortality as the first twenty-five years in
England. [96] So that a thousand children born in England add far more to
the population than a thousand children born in Germany. The average
number of children per family in German towns is less than in English
towns of the same size. These results, reached by Flux, suggest that in a few
years' time the rate of increase in the German population will be lower than
it is at present in England. In England, since 1876, the decline has been so
rapid as to be equal to 20 per cent within a generation, and in some of the
large towns to 40 per cent. Against this there has, indeed, to be set the
general tendency during recent years for the death-rate to fall also. But this
saving of life has until lately been effected mainly at the higher ages; there
has been but little saving of the lives of infants, upon whom the death-rate
falls most heavily. Accompanying this falling off in the number of children
produced there has often been, as we might expect, a fall in the marriage-
rate; but this has been less regular, and of late the marriage-rate has
sometimes been high when the birth-rate was low. [97] There has, however,
been a steady postponement of the average age at which marriage takes
place. On the whole, the main fact that emerges is, that nowadays in
England we marry less and have fewer children.
This is now a familiar fact, and perhaps it should not excite very great
surprise. England is an old and fairly stable country, and it may be said that
it would be unreasonable to expect its population to retain indefinitely a

high degree of fertility. Whether this is so or not, there is the further
consideration to be borne in mind that, during nearly the whole of the
Victorian period, emigration of the most vigorous stocks took place to a
very marked extent. It is not difficult to see the influence of such emigration
in connection with the greatly diminished population of Ireland, as
compared with Scotland; and we may reasonably infer that it has had its
part in the decreased fertility of the United Kingdom generally.
But we encounter the remarkable fact that this decreased fertility of the
Anglo-Saxon populations is not confined to the United Kingdom. It is even
more pronounced in those very lands to which so many thousand shiploads
of our best people have been taken. In the United States the question has
attracted much attention, and there is little disagreement among careful
observers as to the main facts of the situation. The question is, indeed,
somewhat difficult for two reasons: the registration of births is not generally
compulsory in the United States, and, even when general facts are
ascertained, it is still necessary to distinguish between the different classes
of the population. Our conclusions must therefore be based, not on the
course of a general birth-rate, but on the most reliable calculations, based
on the census returns and on the average size of the family at different
periods, and among different classes of the population. A bulletin of the
Census Bureau of the United States since 1860 was prepared a few years
ago by Walter F. Wilcox, of Cornell University. It determines from the data
in the census office the proportion of children to the number of women of
child-bearing age in the country at different periods, and shows that there
has been, on the whole, a fall from the beginning to the end of the last
century. Children under ten years of age constituted one-third of the
population at the beginning of the century, and at the end less than one-
fourth of the total population. Between 1850 and 1860 the proportion of
children to women between fifteen and forty-nine years of age increased,
but since 1860 it has constantly decreased. In 1860 the number of children
under five years of age to one thousand women between fifteen and forty-
nine years of age was 634; in 1900 it was only 474. The proportion of
children to potential mothers in 1900 was only three-fourths as large as in
1860. In the north and west of the United States the decline has been
regular, while in the south the change has been less regular and the decline
less marked. A comparison is made between the proportion of children in

the foreign-born population and in the American. The former was 710 to the
latter's 462. In the coloured population the proportion of children is greater
than in the corresponding white population.
There can be no doubt whatever that, from the eighteenth century to the
twentieth, there has been a steady decrease in the size of the American
family. Franklin, in the eighteenth century, estimated that the average
number of children to a married couple was eight; genealogical records
show that, while in the seventeenth century it was nearly seven, it was over
six at the end of the eighteenth century. Since then, as Engelmann and
others have shown, there has been a steady decrease in the size of the
family; in the earlier years of the nineteenth century there were between
four and five children to each marriage, while by the end of the century the
number of children had fallen to between four and but little over one.
Engelmann finds that there is but a very trifling difference in this respect
between the upper and the lower social classes; the average for the
labouring classes at St. Louis he finds to be about two, and for the higher
classes a little less. It is among the foreign-born population, and among
those of foreign parents, that the larger families are found; thus Kuczynski,
by analysing the census, finds that in Massachusetts the average number of
children to each married woman among the American-born of all social
classes is 2.7, while among the foreign-born of all social classes it is 4.5.
Moreover, sterility is much more frequent among American women than
among foreign women in America. Among various groups in Boston, St.
Louis, and elsewhere it varies between 20 and 23 per cent, and in some
smaller groups is even considerably higher, while among the foreign-born it
is only 13 per cent. The net result is that the general natality of the United
States at the present day is about equal to that of France, but that, when we
analyse the facts, the fertility of the old native-born American population of
mainly Anglo-Saxon origin is found to be lower than that of France. This
element, therefore, is rapidly dwindling away in the United States. The
general level of the birth-rate is maintained by the foreign immigrants, who
in many States (as in New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota)
constitute the majority of the population, and altogether number
considerably over ten millions. Among these immigrants the Anglo-Saxon
element is now very small. Indeed, the whole North European contingent
among the American immigrants, which was formerly nearly 90 per cent of

the whole, has since 1890 steadily sunk, and the majority of the immigrants
now belong to the Central, Southern, and Eastern European stocks. The
racial, and, it is probable, the psychological characteristics of the people of
the United States are thus beginning to undergo, not merely modification,
but, it may almost be said, a revolution. If, as we may well believe, the
influence of the original North-European racial elements—Anglo-Saxon,
Dutch, and French—still continues to persist in the United States, it can
only be the influence of a small aristocracy, maintained by intellect and
character.
When we turn to Canada, a land that is imposing, less by the actual size of
the population than by the vast tracts it possesses for its development, the
question has not yet been fully investigated; but such facts and official
publications as I have been able to obtain all indicate that, in this matter, the
English Canadians approximate to the native Americans. In the United
States it is the European immigrants who maintain the general population at
a productive level, and thus indirectly oust the Anglo-Saxon element. In
Canada the chief dividing line is between the Anglo-Saxon element and the
old French element in the population; and here it is the French Canadians
who are gaining ground on the English elements in the population.
Engelmann ascertained that an examination of one thousand families in the
records of Quebec Life Assurance companies shows 9.2 children on the
average to the French Canadian child-bearing woman. It is found also from
the records of the French Canadian Society for Artisans that 500 families
from town districts, taken at random, show 9.06 children per family, and
500 families from country districts show 9.33 children per family. [98] It
must be remembered that this average, which is even higher than that found
in Russia, the most prolific of European countries, is not quite the same as
the number of children per marriage; but it indicates very great fertility,
while it may be noted also that sterile marriages are comparatively rare
among French Canadians, although among English Canadians the
proportion of childless families is found to be almost exactly the same
(nearly 20 per cent) as among the infertile Americans of Massachusetts. The
annual Reports of the Registrar-General of Ontario, a province which is
predominantly of Anglo-Saxon origin, show that the average birth-rate
during the decade 1899-1908 has been 22.3 per 1000; it must be noted,
however, that there has been a gradual rise from a rate of 19.4 in 1899 to

one of 25.6 in 1908. The report of Mr. Prévost, the recorder of vital
statistics for the predominantly French province of Quebec, shows much
higher rates. The general birth-rate for the province for the year 1901 is
high, being 35.2, much higher than that of England, and nearly as high as
that of Germany. If, however, we consider the thirty-five counties of the
province in which the population is almost exclusively French Canadian,
we find that 35 represents almost the lowest average; as many as twenty-
two of these counties show a rate of over forty, and one (Yamaska) reached
51.52. It is very evident that, in order to pull down these high birth-rates to
the general level of 35.2, we have to assume a much lower birth-rate among
the counties in which the English element is considerable. It must be
remembered, however, that infant mortality is high among the French
Canadians. The French Canadian Catholic, it has been said, would shrink in
horror from such an unnatural crime as limiting his family before birth, but
he sees nothing repugnant to God or man in allowing the surplus excess of
children to die after birth. In this he is at one with the Chinese. Dr. E.P. La
Chapelle, the President of the Provincial Conseil d'Hygiène, wrote some
years ago to Professor Davidson, in answer to inquiries: "I do not believe it
would be correct to ascribe the phenomenon to any single cause, and I am
convinced it is the result of several factors. For one, the first cause of the
heavy infant mortality among the French Canadians is their very heavy
natality, each family being composed of an average of twelve children, and
instances of families of fifteen, eighteen, and even twenty-four children
being not uncommon. The super-abundance of children renders, I think,
parents less careful about them." [99]
The net result is a slight increase on the part of the French Canadians, as
compared with the English element in the province, as becomes clear when
we compare the proportion of the population of English, Scotch, Irish, and
all other nationalities with the total population of the province, now and
thirty years ago. In 1871 it was 21 per cent; in 1901 it was only 19 per cent.
The decrease of the Anglo-Saxons may here appear to be small, though it
must be remembered that thirty years is but a short period in the history of a
nation; but it is significant when we bear in mind that the English element
has here been constantly reinforced by immigrants (who, as the experience
of the United States shows, are by no means an infertile class), and that
such reinforcement cannot be expected to continue in the future.

From Australia comes the same story of the decline of Anglo-Saxon
fertility. In nearly all the Australian colonies the highest birth-rate was
reached some twenty or thirty years ago. Since then there has been a more
or less steady fall, accompanied by a marked decrease in the number of
marriages, and a tendency to postpone the age of marriage. One colony,
Western Australia, has a birth-rate which sometimes fluctuates above that of
England; but it is the youngest of the colonies, and, at present, that with the
smallest population, largely composed of recent immigrants. We may be
quite sure that its comparatively high birth-rate is merely a temporary
phenomenon. A very notable fact about the Australian birth-rate is the
extreme rapidity with which the fall has taken place; thus Queensland, in
1890, had a birth-rate of 37, but by 1899 the rate had steadily fallen to 27,
and the Victorian rate during the same period fell from 33 to 26 per
thousand. In New South Wales, the state of things has been carefully
studied by Mr. Coghlan, formerly Government statistician of New South
Wales, who comes to the conclusion that the proportion of fertile marriages
is declining, and that (as in the United States) it is the recent European
immigrants only who show a comparatively high birth-rate. Until 1880,
Coghlan states, the Australasian birth-rate was about 38 per thousand, and
the average number of children to the family about 5.4. In 1901 the birth-
rate had already fallen to 27.6 and the size of the family to 3.6 children. [100]
It should be added that in all the Australasian colonies the birth-rate reached
its lowest point some years ago, and may now be regarded as in a state of
normal equipoise with a slight tendency to rise. The case of New Zealand is
specially interesting. New Zealand once had the highest birth-rate of all the
Australasian colonies; it is without doubt the most advanced of all in social
and legislative matters; a variety of social reforms, which other countries
are struggling for, are, in New Zealand, firmly established. Its prosperity is
shown by the fact that it has the lowest death-rate of any country in the
world, only 10.2 per thousand, as against 24 in Austria and 22 in France; it
cannot even be said that the marriage-rate is very low, for it is scarcely
lower than that of Austria, where the birth-rate is high. Yet the birth-rate in
New Zealand fell as the social prosperity of the country rose, reaching its
lowest point in 1899.
We thus find that from the three great Anglo-Saxon centres of the world—
north, west, and south—the same story comes. We need not consider the

case of South Africa, for it is well recognized that there the English
constitute a comparatively infertile fringe, mostly confined to the towns,
while the earlier Dutch element is far more prolific and firmly rooted in the
soil. The position of the Dutch there is much the same as that of the French
in Canada.
Thus we find that among highly civilized races generally, and not least
among the English-speaking peoples who were once regarded as peculiarly
prolific, a great diminution of reproductive activity has taken place during
the past forty years, and is in some countries still taking place. But before
we proceed to consider its significance it may be well to look a little more
closely at our facts.
We have seen that the "crude" birth-rate is not an altogether reliable index
of the reproductive energy of a nation. Various circumstances may cause an
excess or a defect of persons of reproductive age in a community, and
unless we allow for these variations, we cannot estimate whether that
community is exercising its reproductive powers in a fairly normal manner.
But there is another and still more important consideration always to be
borne in mind before we can attach any far-reaching significance even to
the corrected birth-rate. We have, that is, to bear in mind that a high or a
low birth-rate has no meaning, so far as the growth of a nation is concerned,
unless it is considered in relation to the death-rate. The natural increase of a
nation is not the result of its birth-rate, but of its birth-rate minus its death-
rate. A low birth-rate with a low death-rate (as in Australasia) produces a far
greater natural increase than a low birth-rate with a rather high death-rate
(as in France), and may even produce as great an increase as a very high
birth-rate with a very high death-rate (as in Russia). Many worthy people
might have been spared the utterance of foolish and mischievous jeremiads,
if, instead of being content with a hasty glance at the crude birth-rate, they
had paused to consider this fairly obvious fact.
There is an intimate connection between a high birth-rate and a high death-
rate, between a low birth-rate and a low death-rate. It may not, indeed, be
an absolutely necessary connection, and is not the outcome of any
mysterious "law." But it usually exists, and the reasons are fairly obvious.
We have already encountered the statement from an official Canadian
source that the large infantile mortality of French Canadian families is due

to parental carelessness, consequent, no doubt, not only on the dimly felt
consciousness that children are cheap, but much more on inability to cope
with the manifold cares involved by a large family. Among the English
working class every doctor knows the thinly veiled indifference or even
repulsion with which women view the seemingly endless stream of babies
they give birth to. Among the Berlin working class, also, Hamburger's
important investigation has indicated how serious a cause of infantile
mortality this may be. By taking 374 working-class women, who had been
married twenty years and conceived 3183 times, he found that the net result
in surviving children was relatively more than twice as great among the
women who had only had one child when compared to the women who had
had fifteen children. The women with only one child brought 76.47 per cent
of these children to maturity; the women who had produced fifteen children
could only bring 30.66 of them to maturity; the intermediate groups showed
a gradual fall to this low level, the only exception being that the mothers of
three children were somewhat more successful than the mothers of two
children. Among well-to-do mothers Hamburger found no such marked
contrast between the net product of large families as compared to small
families. [101]
It we look at the matter from a wider standpoint we can have no difficulty
in realizing that a community which is reproducing itself rapidly must
always be in an unstable state of disorganization highly unfavourable to the
welfare of its members, and especially of the new-comers; a community
which is reproducing itself slowly is in a stable and organized condition
which permits it to undertake adequately the guardianship of its new
members. The high infantile mortality of the community with a high birth-
rate merely means that that community is unconsciously making a violent
and murderous effort to attain to the more stable and organized level of the
country with a low birth-rate.
The English Registrar-General in 1907 estimated the natural increase by
excess of births over deaths as exceptionally high (higher than that of
England) in several Australian Colonies, in the Balkan States, in Russia, the
Netherlands, the German Empire, Denmark, and Norway, though in the
majority of these lands the birth-rate is very low. On the other hand, the
natural increase by excess of births over deaths is below the English rate in
Austria, in Hungary, in Japan, in Italy, in Sweden, Switzerland, Spain,

Belgium, and Ontario, though in the majority of these lands the birth-rate is
high, and in some very high. [102] In most cases it is the high death-rate in
infancy and childhood which exercises the counterbalancing influence
against a high birth-rate; the death-rate in adult life may be quite moderate.
And with few exceptions we find that a high infantile mortality
accompanies a high birth-rate, while a low infantile mortality accompanies
a low birth-rate. It is evident, however, that even an extremely high infantile
mortality is no impediment to a large natural increase provided the birth-
rate is extremely high to a more than corresponding extent. But a natural
increase thus achieved seems to be accompanied by far more disastrous
social conditions than when an equally large increase is achieved by a low
infantile death-rate working in association with a low birth-rate. Thus in
Norway on one side of the world and in Australasia on the opposite side we
see a large natural increase effected not by a profuse expenditure of mostly
wasted births but by an economy in deaths, and the increase thus effected is
accompanied by highly favourable social conditions, and great national
vigour. Norway appears to have the lowest infantile death-rate in Europe.
[103]

Rubin has suggested that the fairest measure of a country's well-being, as
regards its actual vitality—without direct regard, of course, to the country's
economic prosperity—is the square of the death-rate divided by the birth-
rate. [104] Sir J.A. Baines, who accepts this test, states that Argentina with its
high birth-rate and low death-rate stands even above Norway, and Australia
still higher, while the climax for the world is attained by New Zealand,
which has attained "the nearest approach to immortality yet on record." [105]
The order of descending well-being in Europe is thus represented (at the
year 1900) by Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, England, Scotland,
Finland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Austria,
France, and Spain.
On the other hand, in all the countries, probably without exception, in
which a large natural increase is effected by the efforts of an immense birth-
rate to overcome an enormous death-rate the end is only effected with much
friction and misery, and the process is accompanied by a general retardation
of civilization. "The greater the number of children," as Hamburger puts it,
"the greater the cost of each survivor to the family and to the State."

Russia presents not only the most typical but the most stupendous and
appalling example of this process. Thirty years ago the mortality of infants
under one year was three times that of Norway, nearly double that of
England. More recently (1896-1900) the infantile mortality in Russia has
fallen from 313 to 261, but as that of the other countries has also fallen it
still preserves nearly the same relative position, remaining the highest in
Europe, while if we compare it with countries outside Europe we find it is
considerably more than four times greater than that of South Australia. In
one town in the government of Perm, some years ago if not still, the
mortality of infants under one year regularly reached 45 per cent, and the
deaths of children under five years constituted half the total mortality. This
is abnormally high even for Russia, but for all Russia it was found that of
the boys born in a single year during the second half of the last century only
50 per cent reached their twenty-first year, and even of these only 37.6 per
cent were fit for military service. It is estimated that there die in Russia 15
per thousand more individuals than among the same number in England;
this excess mortality represents a loss of 1,650,000 lives to the State every
year. [106]
Thus Russia has the highest birth-rate and at the same time the highest
death-rate. The large countries which, after Russia, have the highest
infantile mortality are Austria, Hungary, Prussia, Spain, Italy, and Japan; all
these, as we should expect, have a somewhat high birth-rate.
The case of Japan is interesting as that of a vigorous young Eastern nation,
which has assimilated Western ways and is encountering the evils which
come of those ways. Japan is certainly worthy of all our admiration for the
skill and vigour with which it has affirmed its young nationality along
Western lines. But when the vital statistics of Japan are vaguely referred to
either as a model for our imitation or as a threatening peril to us, we may do
well to look into the matter a little more closely. The infantile mortality of
Japan (1908) is 157, a very high figure, 50 per cent higher than that of
England, much more than double that of New Zealand, or South Australia.
Moreover, it has rapidly risen during the last ten years. The birth-rate of
Japan in 1901-2 was high (36), though it has since fallen to the level of ten
years ago. But the death-rate has risen concomitantly (to over 24 per 1000),
and has continued to rise notwithstanding the slight decline in the birth-rate.
We see here a tendency to the sinister combination of a falling birth-rate

with a rising death-rate. [107] It is obvious that such a tendency, if continued,
will furnish a serious problem to Japanese social reformers, and at the same
time make it impossible for Western alarmists to regard the rise of Japan as
a menace to the world.
It is behind China that these alarmists, when driven from every other
position, finally entrench themselves. "The ultimate future of these islands
may be to the Chinese," incautiously exclaims Mr. Sidney Webb, who on
many subjects, unconnected with China, speaks with authority. The
knowledge of the vital statistics of China possessed by our alarmists is
vague to the most extreme degree, but as the knowledge of all of us is
scarcely less vague, they assume that their position is fairly safe. That,
however, is an altogether questionable assumption. It seems to be quite true
—though in the absence of exact statistics it may not be certain—that the
birth-rate in China is very high. But it is quite certain that the infantile
death-rate is extremely high. "Out of ten children born among us, three,
normally the weakest three, will fail to grow up: out of ten children born in
China these weakest three will die, and probably five more besides," writes
Professor Ross, who is intimately acquainted with Chinese conditions, and
has closely questioned thirty-three physicians practising in various parts of
China. [108] Matignon, a French physician familiar with China, states that it
is the custom for a woman to suckle her child for at least three years; should
pregnancy occur during this period, it is usual, and quite legal, to procure
abortion. Infants brought up by hand are fed on rice-flour and water, and
consequently they nearly all die. [109]
Putting aside altogether the question of infanticide, such a state of things is
far from incredible when we remember the extremely insanitary state of
China, the superstitions that flourish unchecked, and the famines, floods,
and pestilences that devastate the country. It would appear probable that
when vital statistics are introduced into China they will reveal a condition
of things very similar to that we find in Russia, but in a more marked
degree. No doubt it is a state of things which will be remedied. It is a not
unreasonable assumption, supported by many indications, that China will
follow Japan in the adoption of Western methods of civilization. [110] These
methods, as we know, involve in the end a low birth-rate with a general
tendency to a lower death-rate. Neither in the near nor in the remote future,

under present conditions or under probable future conditions, is there any
reason for imagining that the Chinese are likely to replace the Europeans in
Europe. [111]
This preliminary survey of the ground may enable us to realize that not only
must we be cautious in attaching importance to the crude birth-rate until it
is corrected, but that even as usually corrected the birth-rate can give us no
clue at all to natural increase because there is a marked tendency for the
birth-rate and the infantile death-rate to rise or sink together. Moreover, it is
evident that we have also to realize that from the point of view of society
and civilization there is a vast difference between the natural increase which
is achieved by the effort of an enormously high birth-rate to overcome an
almost correspondingly high death-rate and the natural increase which is
attained by the dominance of a low birth-rate over a still lower death-rate.
Having thus cleared the ground, we may proceed to attempt the
interpretation of the declining birth-rate which marks civilization, and to
discuss its significance.

II

It must be admitted that it is not usual to consider the question of the
declining birth-rate from a broad or scientific standpoint. As we have seen,
no attempt is usually made to correct the crude birth-rate; still more rarely is
it pointed out that we cannot consider the significance of a falling birth-rate
apart from the question of the death-rate, and that the net increase or
decrease in a nation can only be judged by taking both these factors into
account. It is scarcely necessary to add, in view of so superficial a way of
looking at the problem, that we hardly ever find any attempt to deal with the
more fundamental question of the meaning of a low birth-rate, and the
problematical character of the advantages of rapid multiplication. The
whole question is usually left to the ignorant preachers of the gospel of
brute force, would-be patriots who desire their own country to increase at
the cost of all other countries, not merely in ignorance of the fact that the
crude birth-rate is not the index of increase, but reckless of the effect their
desire, if fulfilled, would have upon all the higher and finer ends of living.

When the question is thus narrowly and ignorantly considered, it is usual to
account for the decreased birth-rate, the smaller average families, and the
tendency to postpone the age of marriage, as due mainly to a love of luxury
and vice, combined with a newly acquired acquaintance with Neo-
Malthusian methods, [112] which must be combated, and may successfully
be combated, by inculcating, as a moral and patriotic duty, the necessity of
marrying early and procreating large families. [113] In France, the campaign
against the religious Orders in their educational capacity, while doubtless
largely directed against educational inefficiency, was also supported by the
feeling that such education is not on the side of family life; and Arsène
Dumont, one of the most vigorous champions of a strenuously active policy
for increasing the birth-rate, openly protested against allowing any place as
teachers to priests, monks, and nuns, whose direct and indirect influence
must degrade the conception of sex and its duties while exalting the place of
celibacy. In the United States, also, Engelmann, who, as a gynæcologist,
was able to see this process from behind the scenes, urged his fellow-
countrymen "to stay the dangerous and criminal practices which are the
main determining factors of decreasing fecundity, and which deprive
women of health, the family of its highest blessings, and the nation of its
staunchest support." [114]
We must, however, look at these phenomena a little more broadly, and bring
them into relation with other series of phenomena. It is almost beyond
dispute that a voluntary restriction of the number of offspring by Neo-
Malthusian practices is at least one of the chief methods by which the birth-
rate has been lowered. It may not indeed be—and probably, as we shall see,
is not—the only method. It has even been denied that the prevalence of
Neo-Malthusian practices counts at all. [115] Thus while Coghlan, the
Government Statistician of New South Wales, concludes that the decline in
the birth-rate in the Australian Commonwealth was due to "the art of
applying artificial checks to conception," McLean, the Government
Statistician of Victoria, concludes that it was "due mainly to natural
causes." [116] He points out that when the birth-rate in Australia, half a
century ago, was nearly 43 per 1000, the population consisted chiefly of
men and women at the reproductive period of life, and that since then the
proportion of persons at these ages has declined, leading necessarily to a
decline in the crude birth-rate. If we compare the birth-rate of communities

among women of the same age-periods, McLean argues, we may obtain
results quite different from the crude birth-rate. Thus the crude birth-rate of
Buda-Pesth is much higher than that of New South Wales, but if we
ascertain the birth-rate of married women at different age-periods (15 to 20,
20 to 25, etc.) the New South Wales birth-rate is higher for every age-period
than that of Buda-Pesth. McLean considers that in young communities with
many vigorous immigrants the population is normally more prolific than in
older and more settled communities, and that hardships and financial
depression still more depress the birth-rate. He further emphasizes the
important relationship, which we must never lose sight of in this
connection, between a high birth-rate and a high death-rate, especially a
high infantile death-rate, and he believes, indeed, that "the solution of the
problem of the general decline in the birth-rate throughout all civilized
communities lies in the preservation of human life." The mechanism of the
connection would be, he maintains, that prolonged suckling in the case of
living children increases the intervals between childbearing. As we have
seen, there is a tendency, though not a rigid and invariable necessity, [117]
for a high birth-rate to be associated with a high infantile death-rate, and a
low birth-rate with a low infantile death-rate. Thus in Victoria, we have the
striking fact that while the birth-rate has declined 24 per cent the infantile
death-rate has declined approximately to the still greater extent of 27 per
cent.
No doubt the chief cause of the reduction of the birth-rate has been its
voluntary restriction by preventive methods due to the growth of
intelligence, knowledge, and foresight. In all the countries where a marked
decline in the birth-rate has occurred there is good reason to believe that
Neo-Malthusian methods are generally known and practised. So far as
England is concerned this is certainly the case. A few years ago Mr. Sidney
Webb made inquiries among middle-class people in all parts of the country,
and found that in 316 marriages 242 were thus limited and only 74
unlimited, while for the ten years 1890-9 out of 120 marriages 107 were
limited and only 13 unlimited, but as five of these 13 were childless there
were only 8 unlimited fertile marriages out of 120. As to the causes
assigned for limiting the number of children, in 73 out of 128 cases in
which particulars were given under this head the poverty of the parents in
relation to their standard of comfort was a factor; sexual ill-health—that is,

generally, the disturbing effect of child-bearing—in 24; and other forms of
ill-health of the parents in 38 cases; in 24 cases the disinclination of the
wife was a factor, and the death of a parent had in 8 cases terminated the
marriage. [118] In the skilled artisan class there is also good reason to believe
that the voluntary limitation of families is constantly becoming more usual,
and the statistics of benefit societies show a marked decline in the fertility
of superior working-class people during recent years; thus it is stated by
Sidney Webb that the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society paid benefits on child-
birth to 2472 per 10,000 members in 1880; by 1904 the proportion had
fallen to 1165 per 10,000, a much greater fall than occurred in England
generally.
The voluntary adoption of preventive precautions may not be, however, the
only method by which the birth-rate has declined; we may have also to
recognize a concomitant physiological sterility, induced by delayed
marriage and its various consequences; we have also to recognize
pathological sterility due to the impaired vitality and greater liability to
venereal disease of an increasingly urban life; and we may have to
recognize that stocks differ from one another in fertility.
The delay in marriage, as studied in England, is so far apparently slight; the
mean age of marriage for all husbands in England has increased from 28.43
in 1896 to 28.88 in 1909, and the mean age of all wives from 26.21 in 1896
to 26.69 in 1909. This seems a very trifling rate of progression. If, however,
we look at the matter in another way we find that there has been an
extremely serious reduction in the number of marriages between 15 to 20,
normally the most fecund of all age-periods. Between 1876 and 1880
(according to the Registrar-General's Report for 1909) the proportion of
minors in 1000 marriages in England and Wales was 77.8 husbands and
217.0 wives. In 1909 it had fallen to only 39.8 husbands and 137.7 wives. It
has been held that this has not greatly affected the decline in the birth-rate.
Its tendency, however, must be in that direction. It is true that Engelmann
argued that delayed marriages had no effect at all on the birth-rate. But it
has been clearly shown that as the age of marriage increases fecundity
distinctly diminishes. [119] This is illustrated by the specially elaborate
statistics of Scotland for 1855; [120] the number of women having children,
that is, the fecundity, was higher in the years 15 to 19, than at any

subsequent age-period, except 20 to 24, and the fact that the earliest age-
group is not absolutely highest is due to the presence of a number of
immature women. In New South Wales, Coghlan has shown that if the
average number of children is 3.6, then a woman marrying at 20 may expect
to have five children, a woman marrying at 28 three children, at 32 two
children, and at 37 one child. Newsholme and Stevenson, again, conclude
that the general law of decline of fertility with advancing age of the mother
is shown in various countries, and that in nearly all countries the mothers
aged 15 to 20 have the largest number of children; the chief exception is in
the case of some northern countries like Norway and Finland, where
women develop late, and there it is the mothers of 20 to 25 who have the
largest number of children. [121] The postponement in the age of marriage
during recent years is, however, so slight that it can only account for a small
part of the decline in the birth-rate; Coghlan calculates that of unborn
possible children in New South Wales the loss of only about one-sixth is to
be attributed to this cause. In London, however, Heron considers that the
recognized connection between a low birth-rate and a high social standing
might have been entirely accounted for sixty years ago by postponement of
marriage, and that such postponement may still account for 50 per cent of it.
[122]

It is not enough, however, to consider the mechanism by which the birth-
rate declines; to realize the significance of the decline we must consider the
causes which set the mechanism in action.
We begin to obtain a truer insight into the meaning of the curve of a
country's birth-rate when we realize that it is in relation with the industrial
and commercial activity of the country. [123] It is sometimes stated that a
high birth-rate goes with a high degree of national prosperity. That,
however, is scarcely the case; we have to look into the matter a little more
closely. And, when we do so, we find that, not only is the statement of a
supposed connection between a high birth-rate and a high degree of
prosperity an imperfect statement; it is altogether misleading.
If, in the first place, we attempt to consider the state of things among
savages, we find, indeed, great variations, and the birth-rate is not
infrequently low. But, on the whole, it would appear, the marriage-rate, the
birth-rate, and, it may be added, the death-rate are all alike high. Karl Ranke

has investigated the question with considerable care among the Trumai and
Nahuqua Indians of Central Brazil. [124] These tribes are yet totally
uncontaminated by contact with European influences; consumption and
syphilis are alike unknown. In the two villages he investigated in detail,
Ranke found that every man over twenty-five years of age was married, and
that the only unmarried woman he discovered was feeble-minded. The
average size of the families of those women who were over forty years of
age was between five and six children, while, on the other hand, the
mortality among children was great, and a relatively small proportion of the
population reached old age. We see therefore that, among these fairly
typical savages, living under simple natural conditions, the fertility of the
women is as high as it is among all but the most prolific of European
peoples; while, in striking contrast with European peoples, among whom a
large percentage of the population never marry, and of those who do, many
have no children, practically every man and woman both marries and
produces children.
If we leave savages out of the question and return to Europe, it is still
instructive to find that among those peoples who live under the most
primitive conditions much the same state of things may be found as among
savages. This is notably the case as regards Russia. In no other great
European country do the bulk of the women marry at so early an age, and in
no other is the average size of the family so large. And, concomitantly with
a very high marriage-rate and a very high birth-rate, we find in Russia, in an
equally high degree, the prevalence among the masses of infantile and
general mortality, disease (epidemical and other), starvation, misery. [125]
So far we scarcely see any marked connection between high fertility and
prosperity. It is more nearly indicated in the high birth-rate of Hungary—
only second to that of Russia, and also accompanied by a high mortality—
which is associated with the rapid and notable development of a young
nationality. The case of Hungary is, indeed, typical. In so far as high
fertility is associated with prosperity, it is with the prosperity of a young
and unstable community, which has experienced a sudden increase of
wealth and a sudden expansion. The case of Western Australia illustrates the
same point. Thirty years ago the marriage-rate and the birth-rate of this
colony were on the same level as those of the other Australian colonies; but
a sudden industrial expansion occurred, both rates rose, and in 1899 the

fertility of Western Australia was higher than that of any other English-
speaking community. [126]
If now we put together the facts observed in savage life and the facts
observed in civilized life, we shall begin to see the real nature of the factors
that operate to raise or lower the fertility of a community. It is far, indeed,
from being prosperity which produces a high fertility, for the most wretched
communities are the most prolific, but, on the other hand, it is by no means
the mere absence of prosperity which produces fertility, for we constantly
observe that the on-coming of a wave of prosperity elevates the birth-rate.
In both cases alike it is the absence of social-economic restraints which
conduces to high fertility. In the simple, primitive community of savages,
serfs, or slaves, there is no restraint on either nutritive or reproductive
enjoyments; there is no adequate motive for restraint; there are no claims of
future wants to inhibit the gratification of present wants; there are no high
standards, no ideals. Supposing, again, that such restraints have been
established by a certain amount of forethought as regards the future, or a
certain calculation as to social advantages to be gained by limiting the
number of children, a check on natural fertility is established. But a sudden
accession of prosperity—a sudden excess of work and wages and food—
sweeps away this check by apparently rendering it unnecessary; the natural
reproductive impulse is liberated by this rising wave, and we here see
whatever truth there is in the statement that prosperity means a high birth-
rate. In reality, however, prosperity in such a case merely increases fertility
because its sudden affluence reduces a community to the same careless
indifference in regard to the future, the same hasty snatching at the
pleasures of the moment, as we find among the most hopeless and least
prosperous communities. It is a significant fact, as shown by Beveridge,
that the years when the people of Great Britain marry most are the years
when they drink most. It is in the absence of social-economic restraints—
the absence of the perception of such restraints, or the absence of the ability
to act in accordance with such perception—that the birth-rate is high.
Arsène Dumont seems to have been one of the first who observed this
significance of the oscillation of the birth-rate, though he expressed it in a
somewhat peculiar way, as the social capillarity theory. It is the natural and
universal tendency of mankind to ascend, he declared; a high birth-rate and
a strong ascensional impulse are mutually contradictory. Large families are

only possible when there is no progress, and no expectation of it can be
cherished; small families become possible when the way has been opened
to progress. "One might say," Dumont puts it, "that invisible valves, like
those which direct the circulation of the blood, have been placed by Nature
to direct the current of human aspiration in the upward path it has
prescribed." As the proletariat is enabled to enjoy the prospect of rising it
comes under the action of this law of social capillarity, and the birth-rate
falls. It is the effort towards an indefinite perfection, Dumont declares,
which justifies Nature and Man, consoles us for our griefs, and constitutes
our sovereign safeguard against the philosophy of despair. [127]
When we thus interpret the crude facts of the falling birth-rate, viewing
them widely and calmly in connection with the other social facts with
which they are intimately related, we are able to see how foolish has been
the outcry against a falling birth-rate, and how false the supposition that it is
due to a new selfishness replacing an ancient altruism. [128] On the contrary,
the excessive birth-rate of the early industrial period was directly stimulated
by selfishness. There were no laws against child-labour; children were
produced that they might be sent out, when little more than babies, to the
factories and the mines to increase their parents' income. The fundamental
instincts of men and women do not change, but their direction can be
changed. In this field the change is towards a higher transformation,
introducing a finer economy into life, diminishing death, disease, and
misery, making possible the finer ends of living, and at the same time
indirectly and even directly improving the quality of the future race. [129]
This is now becoming recognized by nearly all calm and sagacious
inquirers. [130] The wild outcry of many unbalanced persons to-day, that a
falling birth-rate means degeneration and disaster, is so altogether removed
from the sphere of reason that we ought perhaps to regard it as comparable
to those manias which, in former centuries, have assumed other forms more
attractive to the neurotic temperament of those days; fortunately, it is a
mania which, in the nature of things, is powerless to realize itself, and we
need not anticipate that the outcry against small families will have the same
results as the ancient outcry against witches. [131]
It may be proper at this stage to point out that while, in the foregoing
statement, a high birth-rate and a high marriage-rate have been regarded as

practically the same thing, we need to make a distinction. The true relation
of the two rates may be realized when it is stated that, the more primitive a
community is, the more closely the two rates vary together. As a community
becomes more civilized and more complex, the two rates tend to diverge;
the restraints on child-production are deeper and more complex than those
on marriage, so that the removal of the restraint on marriage by no means
removes the restraint on fertility. They tend to diverge in opposite
directions. Farr considered the marriage-rate among civilized peoples as a
barometer of national prosperity. In former years, when corn was a great
national product, the marriage-rate in England rose regularly as the price of
wheat fell. Of recent years it has become very difficult to estimate exactly
what economic factors affect the marriage-rate. It is believed by some that
the marriage-rate rises or falls with the value of exports. [132] Udny Yule,
however, in an expertly statistical study of the matter, [133] finds (in
agreement with Hooker) that neither exports nor imports tally with the
marriage-rate. He concludes that the movement of prices is a predominant
—though by no means the sole—factor in the change of marriage-rates, a
fall in prices producing a fall in the marriage-rates and also in the birth-
rates, though he also thinks that pressure on the labour market has forced
both rates lower than the course of prices would lead one to expect. In so
far as these causes are concerned, Udny Yule states, the fall is quite normal
and pessimistic views are misplaced. Udny Yule, however, appears to be by
no means confident that his explanation covers a large part of the causation,
and he admits that he cannot understand the rationale of the connection
between marriage-rates and prices. The curves of the marriage-rates in
many countries indicate a maximum about or shortly before, 1875, when
the birth-rate also tended to reach a maximum, and another rise towards
1900, thus making the intermediate curve concave. There was, however, a
large rise in money wages between 1860 and 1875, and the rise in the
consuming power of the population has been continuous since 1850. Thus
the factors favourable to a high marriage-rate must have risen from 1850 to
a maximum about 1870-1875, and since then have fallen continuously. This
statement, which Mr. Udny Yule emphasizes, certainly seems highly
significant from our present point of view. It falls into line with the view
here accepted, that the first result of a sudden access of prosperity is to
produce a general orgy, a reckless and improvident haste to take advantage
of the new prosperity, but that, as the effects of the orgy wear off, it

necessarily gives place to new ideals, and to higher standards of life which
lead to caution and prudence. Mr. N.A. Hooker seems to have perceived
this, and in the discussion which followed the reading of Udny Yule's paper
he set forth what (though it was not accepted by Udny Yule) may perhaps
fairly be regarded as the sound view of the matter. "During the great
expansion of trade prior to 1870," he remarked, "the means of satisfying the
desired standard of comfort were increasing much more rapidly than the
rise in the standard; hence a decreasing age of marriage and a marriage-rate
above the normal. After about 1873, however, the means of satisfying the
standard of comfort no longer increased with the same rapidity, and then a
new factor, he thought, became important, viz. the increased intelligence of
the people." [134] This seems to be precisely the same view of the matter as I
have here sought to set forth; prosperity is not civilization, its first tendency
is to produce a reckless abandonment to the satisfaction of the crudest
impulses. But as prosperity develops it begins to engender more complex
ideals and higher standards; the inevitable result is a greater forethought and
restraint. [135]
If we consider, not the marriage-rate, but the average age at marriage, and
especially the age of the woman, which varies less than that of the man, the
results, though harmonious, would not be quite the same. The general
tendency as regards the age of girls at marriage is summed up by Ploss and
Bartels, in their monumental work on Woman, in the statement: "It may be
said in general that the age of girls at marriage is lower, the lower the stage
of civilization is in the community to which they belong." [136] We thus see
one reason why it is that, in an advanced stage of civilization, a high
marriage-rate is not necessarily associated with a high birth-rate. A large
number of women who marry late may have fewer children than a smaller
number who marry early.
We may see the real character of the restraints on fertility very well
illustrated by the varying birth-rate of the upper and lower social classes
belonging to the same community. If a high birth-rate were a mark of
prosperity or of advanced civilization, we should expect to find it among
the better social class of a community. But the reverse is the case; it is
everywhere the least prosperous and the least cultured classes of a
community which show the highest birth-rate. As we go from the very poor

to the very rich quarters of a great city—whether Paris, Berlin, or Vienna—
the average number of children to the family diminishes regularly. The
difference is found in the country as well as in the towns. In Holland, for
instance, whether in town or country, there are 5.19 children per marriage
among the poor, and only 4.50 among the rich. In London it is notorious
that the same difference appears; thus Charles Booth, the greatest authority
on the social conditions of London, in the concluding volume of his vast
survey, sums up the condition of things in the statement that "the lower the
class the earlier the period of marriage and the greater the number of
children born to each marriage." The same phenomenon is everywhere
found, and it is one of great significance.
The significance becomes clearer when we realize that an urban population
must always be regarded as more "civilized" than a rural population, and
that, in accordance with that fact, an urban population tends to be less
prolific than a rural population. The town birth-rate is nearly always lower
than the country birth-rate. In Germany this is very marked, and the rapidly
growing urbanization of Germany is accompanied by a great fall of the
birth-rate in the large cities, but not in the rural districts. In England the fall
is more widespread, and though the birth-rate is much higher in the country
than in the towns the decline in the rural birth-rate is now proceeding more
rapidly than that in the urban birth-rate. England, which once contained a
largely rural population, now possesses a mainly urban population. Every
year it becomes more urban; while the town population grows, the rural
population remains stationary; so that, at the present time, for every
inhabitant of the country in England, there are more than three town-
dwellers. As the country-dweller is more prolific than the town-dweller, this
means that the rural population is constantly being poured into the towns.
The larger our great cities grow, the more irresistible becomes the attraction
which they exert on the children of the country, who are fascinated by them,
as the birds are fascinated by the lighthouse or the moths by the candle. And
the results are not altogether unlike those which this analogy suggests. At
the present time, one-third of the population of London is made up of
immigrants from the country. Yet, notwithstanding this immense and
constant stream of new and vigorous blood, it never suffices to raise the
urban population to the same level of physical and nervous stability which
the rural population possesses. More alert, more vivacious, more intelligent,

even more urbane in the finer sense, as the urban population becomes,—not
perhaps at first, but in the end,—it inevitably loses its stamina, its reserves
of vital energy. Dr. Cantlie very properly defines a Londoner as a person
whose grandparents all belonged to London—and he could not find any. Dr.
Harry Campbell has found a few who could claim London grandparents;
they were poor specimens of humanity. [137] Even on the intellectual side
there are no great Londoners. It is well known that a number of eminent
men have been born in London; but, in the course of a somewhat elaborate
study of the origins of British men of genius, I have not been able to find
that any were genuinely Londoners by descent. [138] An urban life saps that
calm and stolid strength which is necessary for all great effort and stress,
physical or intellectual. The finest body of men in London, as a class, are
the London police, and Charles Booth states that only 17 per cent of the
London police are born in London, a smaller proportion than any other class
of the London population except the army and navy. As Mr. N.C.
Macnamara has pointed out, it is found that London men do not possess the
necessary nervous stability and self-possession for police work; they are too
excitable and nervous, lacking the equanimity, courage, and self-reliance of
the rural men. Just in the same way, in Spain, the bull-fighters, a body of
men admirable for their graceful strength, their modesty, courage, and skill,
nearly always come from country districts, although it is in the towns that
the enthusiasm for bull-fighting is centred. Therefore, it would appear that
until urban conditions of life are greatly improved, the more largely urban a
population becomes, the more is its standard of vital and physical efficiency
likely to be lowered. This became clearly visible during the South African
War; it was found at Manchester (as stated by Dr. T.P. Smith and confirmed
by Dr. Clayton) that among 11,000 young men who volunteered for
enlistment, scarcely more than 10 per cent could pass the surgeon's
examination, although the standard of physique demanded was extremely
low, while Major-General Sir F. Maurice has stated [139] that, even when all
these rejections have been made, of those who actually are enlisted, at the
end of two years only two effective soldiers are found for every five who
enlist. It is not difficult to see a bearing of these facts on the birth-rate. The
civilized world is becoming a world of towns, and, while the diminished
birth-rate of towns is certainly not mainly the result of impaired vitality,
these phenomena are correlative facts of the first importance for every
country which is using up its rural population and becoming a land of cities.

From our present point of view it is thus a very significant fact that the
equipoise between country-dwellers and town-dwellers has been lost, that
the towns are gaining at the expense of the country whose surplus
population they absorb and destroy. The town population is not only
disinclined to propagate; it is probably in some measure unfit to propagate.
At the same time, we must not too strongly emphasize this aspect of the
matter; such over-emphasis of a single aspect of highly complex
phenomena constantly distorts our vision of great social processes. We have
already seen that it is inaccurate to assert any connection between a high
birth-rate and a high degree of national prosperity, except in so far as at
special periods in the history of a country a sudden wave of prosperity may
temporarily remove the restraints on natural fertility. Prosperity is only one
of the causes that tend to remove the restraint on the birth-rate; and it is a
cause that is never permanently effective.

III

To get to the bottom of the matter, we thus find it is necessary to look into it
more closely than is usually attempted. When we ask ourselves why
prosperity fails permanently to remove the restraints on fertility the answer
is, that it speedily creates new restraints. Prosperity and civilization are far
from being synonymous terms. The savage who is able to glut himself with
the whale that has just been stranded on his coast, is more prosperous than
he was the day before, but he is not more civilized, perhaps a trifle less so.
The working community that is suddenly glutted by an afflux of work and
wages is in exactly the same position as the savage who is suddenly enabled
to fill himself with a rich mass of decaying blubber. It is prosperity; it is not
civilization. [140] But, while prosperity leads at first to the reckless and
unrestrained gratification of the simplest animal instincts of nutrition and
reproduction, it tends, when it is prolonged, to evolve more complex
instincts. Aspirations become less crude, the needs and appetites
engendered by prosperity take on a more social character, and are sharpened
by social rivalries. In place of the earlier easy and reckless gratification of
animal impulses, a peaceful and organized struggle is established for
securing in ever fuller degree the gratification of increasingly insistent and
increasingly complex desires. Such a struggle involves a deliberate

calculation and forethought, which, sooner or later, cannot fail to be applied
to the question of offspring. Thus it is that affluence, in the long run, itself
imposes a check on reproduction. Prosperity, under the stress of the urban
conditions with which it tends to be associated, has been transformed into
that calculated forethought, that deliberate self-restraint for the attainment
of ever more manifold ends, which in its outcome we term "civilization."
It is frequently assumed, as we have seen, that the process by which
civilization is thus evolved is a selfish and immoral process. To procreate
large families, it is said, is unselfish and moral, as well as a patriotic, even a
religious duty. This assumption, we now find, is a little too hasty and is
even the reverse of the truth; it is necessary to take into consideration the
totality of the social phenomena accompanying a high birth-rate, more
especially under the conditions of town life. A community in which children
are born rapidly is necessarily in an unstable position; it is growing so
quickly that there is insufficient time for the conditions of life to be
equalized. The state of ill-adjustment is chronic; the pressure is lifted from
off the natural impulse of procreation, but is increased on all the conditions
under which the impulse is exerted. There is increased overcrowding,
increased filth, increased disease, increased death. It can never happen, in
modern times, that the readjustment of the conditions of life can be made to
keep pace with a high birth-rate. It is sufficient if we consider the case of
English towns, of London in particular, during the period when British
prosperity was most rapidly increasing, and the birth-rate nearing its
maximum, in the middle of the great Victorian epoch, of which Englishmen
are, for many reasons, so proud. It was certainly not an age lacking in either
energy or philanthropy; yet, when we read the memorable report which
Chadwick wrote in 1842, on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring
Population of Great Britain, or the minute study of Bethnal Green which
Gavin published in 1848 as a type of the conditions prevailing in English
towns, we realize that the magnificence of this epoch was built up over
circles of Hell to which the imagination of Dante never attained.
As reproductive activity dies down, social conditions become more stable, a
comparatively balanced state of adjustment tends to be established,
insanitary surroundings can be bettered, disease diminished, and the death-
rate lowered. How much may thus be accomplished we realize when we
compare the admirably precise and balanced pages in which Charles Booth,

in the concluding volumes of his great work, has summarized his survey of
London, with the picture presented by Chadwick and Gavin half a century
earlier. Ugly and painful as are many of the features of this modern London,
the vision which is, on the whole, evoked is that of a community which has
attained self-consciousness, which is growing into some faint degree of
harmony with its environment, and is seeking to gain the full amount of the
satisfaction which an organized urban life can yield. Booth, who appears to
have realized the significance of a decreased fertility in the attainment of
this progress, hopes for a still greater fall in the birth-rate; and those who
seek to restore the birth-rate of half a century ago are engaged on a task
which would be criminal if it were not based on ignorance, and which is, in
any case, fatuous.
The whole course of zoological evolution reveals a constantly diminishing
reproductive activity and a constantly increasing expenditure of care on the
offspring thus diminished in number. [141] Fish spawn their ova by the
million, and it is a happy chance if they become fertilized, a highly unlikely
chance that more than a very small proportion will ever attain maturity.
Among the mammals, however, the female may produce but half a dozen or
fewer offspring at a time, but she lavishes so much care upon them that they
have a very fair chance of all reaching maturity. In man, in so far as he
refrains from returning to the beast and is true to the impulse which in him
becomes a conscious process of civilization, the same movement is carried
forward. He even seeks to decrease still further the number of his offspring
by voluntary effort, and at the same time to increase their quality and
magnify their importance. [142]
When in human families, especially under civilized conditions, we see large
families we are in the presence of a reversion to the tendencies that prevail
among lower organisms. Such large families may probably be regarded, as
Näcke suggests, as constituting a symptom of degeneration. It is noteworthy
that they usually occur in the pathological and abnormal classes, among the
insane, the feeble-minded, the criminal, the consumptive, the alcoholic, etc.
[143]

This tendency of the birth-rate to fall with the growth of social stability is
thus a tendency which is of the very essence of civilization. It represents an
impulse which, however deliberate it may be in the individual, may, in the

community, be looked upon as an instinctive effort to gain more complete
control of the conditions of life, and to grapple more efficiently with the
problems of misery and disease and death. It is not only, as is sometimes
supposed, during the past century that the phenomena may be studied. We
have a remarkable example some centuries earlier, an example which very
clearly illustrates the real nature of the phenomena. The city of Geneva,
perhaps first of European cities, began to register its births, deaths, and
marriages from the middle of the sixteenth century. This alone indicates a
high degree of civilization; and at that time, and for some succeeding
centuries, Geneva was undoubtedly a very highly civilized city. Its
inhabitants really were the "elect," morally and intellectually, of French
Protestantism. In many respects it was a model city, as Gray noted when he
reached it in the course of his travels in the middle of the eighteenth
century. These registers of Geneva show, in a most illuminating manner,
how extreme fertility at the outset, gradually gave place, as civilization
progressed, to a very low fertility, with fewer and later marriages, a very
low death-rate, and a state of general well-being in which the births barely
replaced the deaths.
After Protestant Geneva had lost her pioneering place in civilization, it was
in France, the land which above all others may in modern times claim to
represent the social aspects of civilization, that the same tendency most
conspicuously appeared. But all Europe, as well as all the English-speaking
lands outside Europe, is now following the lead of France. In a paper read
before the Paris Society of Anthropology a few years ago, Emile Macquart
showed clearly, by a series of ingenious diagrams, that whereas, fifty years
ago, the condition of the birth-rate in France diverged widely from that
prevailing in the other chief countries of Europe, the other countries are
now rapidly following in the same road along which France has for a
century been proceeding slowly, and are constantly coming closer to her,
England closest of all. In the past, proposals have from time to time been
made in France to interfere with the progress of this downward movement
of the birth-rate—proposals that were sufficiently foolish, for neither in
France nor elsewhere will the individual allow the statistician to interfere
officiously in a matter which he regards as purely intimate and private. But
the real character of this tendency of the birth-rate, as an essential
phenomenon of civilization, with which neither moralist nor politician can

successfully hope to interfere, is beginning to be realized in France.
Azoulay, in summing up the discussion after Macquart's paper [144] had
been read at the Society of Anthropology, pointed out that "nations must
inevitably follow the same course as social classes, and the more the mass
of these social classes becomes civilized, the more the nation's birth-rate
falls; therefore there is nothing to be done legally and administratively."
And another member added: "Except to applaud."
It is probably too much to hope that so sagacious a view will at once be
universally adopted. The United States and the great English colonies, for
instance, find it difficult to realize that they are not really new countries, but
branches of old countries, and already nearing maturity when they began
their separate lives. They are not at the beginning of two thousand years of
slow development, such as we have passed through, but at the end of it,
with us, and sometimes even a little ahead of us. It is therefore natural and
inevitable that, in a matter in which we are moving rapidly, Massachusetts
and Ontario and New South Wales and New Zealand should have moved
still more rapidly, so rapidly indeed, that they have themselves failed to
perceive that their real natural increase and the manner in which it is
attained place them in this matter at the van of civilization. These things
are, however, only learnt slowly. We may be sure that the fundamental and
complex character of the phenomena will never be obvious to our fussy
little politicians, so apt to advocate panaceas which have effects quite
opposite to those they desire. But, whatever politicians may wish to do or to
leave undone, it is well to remember that, of the various ideals the world
holds, there are some that lie on the path of our social progress, and others
that do not there lie. We may properly exercise such wisdom as we possess
by utilizing the ideals which are before us, serenely neglecting many others
which however precious they may once have seemed, no longer form part
of the stage of civilization we are now moving towards.

IV

What are the ideals of the stage of civilization we of the Western world are
now moving towards? We have here pushed as far as need be the analysis of
that declining birth-rate which has caused so much anxiety to those amongst
us who can only see narrowly and see superficially. We have found that,

properly understood, there is nothing in it to evoke our pessimism. On the
contrary, we have seen that, in the opinion of the most distinguished
authorities, the energy with which we move in our present direction,
through the exercise of an ever finer economy in life, may be regarded as a
"measure of civilization" in the important sphere of vital statistics. As we
now leave the question, some may ask themselves whether this concomitant
decline in birth-rates and death-rates may not possibly have a still wider and
more fundamental meaning as a measure of civilization.
We have long been accustomed to regard the East as a spiritual world in
which the finer ends of living were counted supreme, and the merely
materialistic aspects of life, dissociated from the aims of religion and of art,
were trodden under foot. Our own Western world we have humbly regarded
as mainly absorbed in a feverish race for the attainment, by industry and
war, of the satisfaction of the impulses of reproduction and nutrition, and
the crudely material aggrandizement of which those impulses are the
symbol. A certain outward idleness, a semi-idleness, as Nietzsche said, is
the necessary condition for a real religious life, for a real æsthetic life, for
any life on the spiritual plane. The noisy, laborious, pushing, "progressive"
life we traditionally associate with the West is essentially alien to the higher
ends of living, as has been intuitively recognized and acted on by all those
among us who have sought to pursue the higher ends of living. It was so
that the nineteenth-century philosophers of Europe, of whom Schopenhauer
was in this matter the extreme type, viewed the matter. But when we seek to
measure the tendency of the chief countries of the West, led by France,
England, and Germany, and the countries of the East led by Japan, in the
light of this strictly measurable test of vital statistics, may we not, perhaps,
trace the approach of a revolutionary transposition? Japan, entering on the
road we have nearly passed through, in which the perpetual clash of a high
birth-rate and a high death-rate involves social disorder and misery, has
flung to the winds the loftier ideals it once pursued so successfully and has
lost its fine æsthetic perceptions, its insight into the most delicate secrets of
the soul. [145] And while Japan, certainly to-day voicing the aspirations of
the East, is concerned to become a great military and industrial power, we
in the West are growing weary of war, and are coming to look upon
commerce as a necessary routine no longer adequate to satisfy the best
energies of human beings. We are here moving towards the fine quiescence

involved by a delicate equipoise of life and of death; and this economy sets
free an energy we are seeking to expend in a juster social organization, and
in the realization of ideals which until now have seemed but the
imagination of idle dreamers. Asia, as an anonymous writer has recently put
it, is growing crude, vulgar, and materialistic; Europe, on the other hand, is
growing to loathe its own past grossness. "London may yet be the spiritual
capital of the world, while Asia—rich in all that gold can buy and guns can
give, lord of lands and bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of
police regulations, glorious in all material glories—postures, complacent
and obtuse, before a Europe content in the possession of all that matters,"
[146]
Certainly, we are not there yet, but the old Earth has seen many
stranger and more revolutionary changes than this. England, as this writer
reminds us, was once a tropical forest.

[90] It must be understood that, from the present point of view, the term "Anglo-
Saxon" covers the peoples of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as of
England.
[91] The decline of the French birth-rate has been investigated in a Lyons thesis
by Salvat, La Dépopulation de la France, 1903.
[92] The latest figures are given in the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General
for England and Wales.
[93] Newsholme and Stevenson, "Decline of Human Fertility as shown by
corrected Birth-rates," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1906.
[94] Werner Sombart, International Magazine, December, 1907.
[95] A.W. Flux, "Urban Vital Statistics in England and Germany," Journ. Statist.
Soc., March, 1910.
[96] German infantile mortality, Böhmert states ("Die Säuglingssterblichkeit in
Deutschland und ihre Ursachen," Die Neue Generation, March, 1908), is greater
than in any European country, except Russia and Hungary, about 50 per cent
greater than in England, France, Belgium, or Holland. The infantile mortality has
increased in Germany, as usually happens, with the increased employment of
women, and, largely from this cause, has nearly doubled in Berlin in the course
of four years, states Lily Braun (Mutterschutz, 1906, Heft I, p. 21); but even on
this basis it is only 22 per cent in the English textile industries, as against 38 per
cent in the German textile industries.
[97] In England the marriage-rate fell rather sharply in 1875, and showed a slight
tendency to rise about 1900 (G. Udny Yule, "On the Changes in the Marriage-
and Birth-rates in England and Wales," Journal of the Statistical Society, March,
1906). On the whole there has been a real though slight decline. The decline has
been widespread, and is most marked in Australia, especially South Australia.
There has, however, been a rise in the marriage-rate in Ireland, France, Austria,
Switzerland, Germany, and especially Belgium. The movement for decreased
child-production would naturally in the first place involve decreased marriage,
but it is easy to understand that when it is realized the marriage is not necessarily
followed by conception this motive for avoiding marriage loses its force, and the
marriage-rate rises.
[98] Medicine, February, 1904.
[99] Davidson, "The Growth of the French-Canadian Race," Annals of the
American Academy, September, 1896.
[100] T.A. Coghlan, The Decline of the Birth-rate of New South Wales, 1903.
The New South Wales statistics are specially valuable as the records contain
many particulars (such as age of parents, period since marriage, and number of
children) not given in English or most other records.
[101] C. Hamburger, "Kinderzahl und Kindersterblichkeit," Die Neue
Generation, August, 1909.

[102] Looked at in another way, it may be said that if a natural increase, as
ascertained by subtracting the death-rate from the birth-rate, of 10 to 15 per cent
be regarded as normal, then, taking so far as possible the figures for 1909, the
natural increase of England and Scotland, of Germany, of Italy, of Austria and
Hungary, of Belgium, is normal; the natural increase of New South Wales, of
Victoria, of South Australia, of New Zealand, is abnormally high (though in new
countries such increase may not be undesirable) while the natural increase of
France, of Spain, and of Ireland is abnormally low. Such a method of estimation,
of course, entirely leaves out of account the question of the social desirability of
the process by which the normal increase is secured.
103] Johannsen, Janus, 1905.
[104] Rubin, "A Measure of Civilization," Journal of the Royal Statistical
Society, March, 1897. "The lowest stage of civilization," he points out, "is to go
forward blindly, which in this connection means to bring into the world a great
number of children which must, in great proportion, sink into the grave. The next
stage of civilization is to see the danger and to keep clear of it. The highest stage
of civilization is to see the danger and overcome it." Europe in the past and
various countries in the present illustrate the first stage; France illustrates the
second stage; the third stage is that towards which we are striving to move to-
day.
[105] Baines, "The Recent Growth of Population in Western Europe," Journal of
the Royal Statistical Society, December, 1909.
[106] Various facts and references are given by Havelock Ellis, The
Nationalization of Health, chap. XIV.
[107] These are the figures given by the chief Japanese authority, Professor
Takano, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, July, 1910, p. 738.
[108] E.A. Ross, "The Race Fibre of the Chinese," Popular Science Monthly,
October, 1911. According to another competent and fairly concordant estimate,
the infantile death-rate of China is 90 per cent. Of the female infants, probably
about 1 in 10 is intentionally destroyed.
[109] J.J. Matignon, "La Mère et l'Enfant en Chine," Archives d'Anthropologie
Criminelle, October to November, 1909.
[110] Arsène Dumont, for instance, points out (Dépopulation et Civilization, p.
116) that the very early marriages and the reckless fertility of the Chinese cannot
fail to cease as soon as the people adopt European ways.
[111] The confident estimates of the future population of the world which are
from time to time put forward on the basis of the present birth-rate are quite
worthless. A brilliantly insubstantial fabric of this kind, by B.L. Putnam Weale
(The Conflict of Colour, 1911), has been justly criticized by Professor
Weatherley (Popular Science Monthly, November, 1911).
[112] It is sometimes convenient to use the term "Neo-Malthusianism" to
indicate the voluntary limitation of the family, but it must always be remembered
that Malthus would not have approved of Neo-Malthusianism, and that Neo-
Malthusian practices have nothing to do with the theory of Malthus. They would

not be affected could that theory be conclusively proved or conclusively
disproved.
[113] We even find the demand that bachelors and spinsters shall be taxed. This
proposal has been actually accepted (1911) by the Landtag of the little
Principality of Reuss, which proposes to tax bachelors and spinsters over thirty
years of age. Putting aside the arguable questions as to whether a State is entitled
to place such pressure on its citizens, it must be pointed out that it is not
marriage but the child which concerns the State. It is possible to have children
without marriage, and marriage does not ensure the procreation of children.
Therefore it would be more to the point to tax the childless. In that case, it would
be necessary to remit the tax in the case of unmarried people with children, and
to levy it in the case of married people without children. But it has further to be
remembered that not all persons are fitted to have sound children, and as
unsound children are a burden and not a benefit to the State, the State ought to
reward rather than to fine those conscientious persons who refrain from
procreation when they are too poor, or with too defective a heredity, to be likely
to produce, or to bring up, sound children. Moreover, some persons are sterile,
and thorough medical investigation would be required before they could fairly be
taxed. As soon as we begin to analyse such a proposal we cannot fail to see that,
even granting that the aim of such legislation is legitimate and desirable, the
method of attaining it is thoroughly mischievous and unjustifiable.
[114] J.G. Engelmann, "Decreasing Fecundity," Philadelphia Medical Journal,
January 18, 1902.
[115] It has, further, been frequently denied that Neo-Malthusian practices can
affect Roman Catholic countries, since the Church is precluded from approving
of them. That is true. But it is also true that, as Lagneau long since pointed out,
the Protestants of Europe have increased at more than double the annual rate of
the Catholics, though this relationship has now ceased to be exact. Dumont states
(Dépopulation et Civilisation, chap. XVIII) that there is not the slightest reason
to suppose that (apart from the question of poverty) the faithful have more
children than the irreligious; moreover, in dealing with its more educated
members, it is not the policy of the Church to make indiscreet inquiries (see
Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to
Society," p. 590). A Catholic bishop is reported to have warned his clergy against
referring in their Lent sermons to the voluntary restriction of conception,
remarking that an excess of rigour in this matter would cause the Church to lose
half her flock. The fall in the birth-rate is as marked in Catholic as in Protestant
countries; the Catholic communities in which this is not the case are few, and
placed in exceptional circumstances. It must be remembered, moreover, that the
Church enjoins celibacy on its clergy, and that celibacy is practically a
Malthusian method. It is not easy while preaching practical Malthusianism to the
clergy to spend much fervour in preaching against practical Neo-Malthusianism
to the laity.
[116] McLean, "The Declining Birth-rate in Australia," International Medical
Journal of Australasia, 1904.
[117] Thus in France the low birth-rate is associated with a high infantile death-
rate, which has not yet been appreciably influenced by the movement of

puericulture in France. In England also, at the end of the last century, the
declining birth-rate was accompanied by a rising infantile death-rate, which is
now, however, declining under the influence of greater care of child-life.
[118] Sidney Webb, Times, October 11 and 16, 1906; also Popular Science
Monthly, 1906, p. 526.
[119] It is important to remember the distinction between "fecundity" and
"fertility." A woman who has one child has proved that she is fecund, but has not
proved that she is fertile. A woman with six children has proved that she is not
only fecund but fertile.
[120] They have been worked out by C.J. Lewis and J. Norman Lewis, Natality
and Fecundity, 1905.
[121] Newsholme and Stevenson, op. cit.; Rubin and Westergaard, Statistik der
Ehen, 1890, p. 95.
[122] D. Heron, "On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status," Drapers'
Company Research Memoirs, No. 1, 1906.
[123] The recognition of this relationship must not be regarded as an attempt
unduly to narrow down the causation of changes in the birth-rate. The great
complexity of the causes influencing the birth-rate is now fairly well recognized,
and has, for instance, been pointed out by Goldscheid, Höherentwicklung und
Menschenökonomie, Vol. I, 1911.
[124] In a paper read at the Brunswick Meeting of the German Anthropological
Society (Correspondenzblatt of the Society, November, 1898); a great many
facts concerning the fecundity of women among savages in various parts of the
world are brought together by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Vol I, chap. XXIV.
[125] The proportion of doctors to the population is very small, and the people
still have great confidence in their quacks and witch-doctors. The elementary
rules of sanitation are generally neglected, water supplies are polluted, filth is
piled up in the streets and the courtyards, as it was in England and Western
Europe generally until a century ago, and the framing of regulations or the
incursions of the police have little effect on the habits of the people. Neglect of
the ordinary precautions of cleanliness is responsible for the wide extension of
syphilis by the use of drinking vessels, towels, etc., in common. Not only is
typhoid prevalent in nearly every province of Russia, but typhus, which is
peculiarly the disease of filth, overcrowding, and starvation, and has long been
practically extinct in England, still flourishes and causes an immense mortality.
The workers often have no homes and sleep in the factories amidst the
machinery, men and women together; their food is insufficient, and the hours of
labour may vary from twelve to fourteen. When famine occurs these conditions
are exaggerated, and various epidemics ravage the population.
[126] It must, however, be remembered that in small and unstable communities a
considerable margin for error must be allowed, as the crude birth-rate is unduly
raised by an afflux of immigrants at the reproductive age.
[127] Arsène Dumont, Dépopulation et Civilisation, 1890, chap. VI. The nature
of the restraint on fertility has been well set forth by Dr. Bushee ("The Declining

Birth-rate and its Causes," Popular Science Monthly, August, 1903), mainly in
the terms of Dumont's "social capillarity" theory.
[128] Even Dr. Newsholme, usually so cautious and reliable an investigator in
this field, has been betrayed into a reference in this connection (The Declining
Birth-rate, 1911, p. 41) to the "increasing rarity of altruism," though in almost
the next paragraph he points out that the large families of the past were
connected with the fact that the child was a profitable asset, and could be sent to
work when little more than an infant. The "altruism" which results in crushing
the minds and bodies of others in order to increase one's own earnings is not an
"altruism" which we need desire to perpetuate. The beneficial effect of
legislation against child-labour in reducing an unduly high birth-rate has often
been pointed out.
[129] It may suffice to take a single point. Large families involve the birth of
children at very short intervals. It has been clearly shown by Dr. R.J. Ewart
("The Influence of Parental Age on Offspring," Eugenics Review, October, 1911)
that children born at an interval of less than two years after the birth of the
previous child, remain, even when they have reached their sixth year, three
inches shorter and three pounds lighter than first-born children.
[130] For instance, Goldscheid, in Höherentwicklung und Menschenökonomie; it
is also, on the whole, the conclusion of Newsholme, though expressed in an
exceedingly temperate manner, in his Declining Birth-rate.
[131] If, however, our birth-rate fanatics should hear of the results obtained at
the experimental farm at Roseville, California, by Professor Silas Wentworth,
who has found that by placing ewes in a field under the power wires of an
electric wire company, the average production of lambs is more than doubled, we
may anticipate trouble in many hitherto small families. Their predecessors
insisted, in the cause of religion and morals, on burning witches; we must not be
surprised if our modern fanatics, in the same holy cause, clamour for a law
compelling all childless women to live under electric wires.
[132] J. Holt Schooling, "The English Marriage Rate," Fortnightly Review, June,
1901.
[133] G. Udny Yule, "Changes in the Marriage-and Birth-rate in England,"
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March, 1906.
[134] At an earlier period Hooker had investigated the same subject without
coming to any very decisive conclusions ("Correlation of the Marriage-rate with
Trade," Journ. Statistical Soc., September, 1901). Minor fluctuations in marriage
and in trade per head, he found, tend to be in close correspondence, but on the
whole trade has risen and the marriage-rate has fallen, probably, Hooker
believed, as the result of the gradual deferment of marriage.
[135] The higher standard need not be, among the mass of the population, of a
very exalted character, although it marks a real progress. Newsholme and
Stevenson (op. cit.) term it a higher "standard of comfort." The decline of the
birth-rate, they say, "is associated with a general raising of the standard of
comfort, and is an expression of the determination of the people to secure this
greater comfort."

[136] Ploss, Das Weib, Vol. I, chap. XX.
[137] It must not, however, be assumed that the rural immigrants are in the mass
better suited to urban life than the urban natives. It is probable that,
notwithstanding their energy and robustness, the immigrants are less suited to
urban conditions than the natives. Consequently a process of selection takes
place among the immigrants, and the survivors become, as it were, immunized to
the poisons of urban life. But this immunization is by no means necessarily
associated with any high degree of nervous vigour or general physical
development.
[138] Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, pp. 22, 43.
[139] "National Health: a Soldier's Study," Contemporary Review, January, 1903.
The Reports of the Inspector-General of Recruiting are said to show that the
recruits are every year smaller, lighter, and narrower-chested.
[140] This has been well illustrated during the past forty years in the flourishing
county of Glamorgan in Wales, as is shown by Dr. R.S. Stewart ("The
Relationship of Wages, Lunacy, and Crime in South Wales," Journal of Mental
Science, January, 1904). The staple industry here is coal, 17 per cent of the
population being directly employed in coal-mining, and wages are determined by
the sliding scale as it is called, according to which the selling price of coal
regulates the wages. This leads to many fluctuations and sudden accesses of
prosperity. It is found that whenever wages rise there is a concomitant increase
of insanity and at the same time a diminished output of coal due to slacking of
work when earnings are greater; there is also an increase of drunkenness and of
crime. Stewart concludes that it is doubtful whether increased material prosperity
is conducive to improvement in physical and mental status. It must, however, be
pointed out that it is a sudden and unstable prosperity, not necessarily a gradual
and stable prosperity, which is hereby shown to be pernicious.
[141] The relationship is sometimes expressed by saying that the more highly
differentiated the organism the fewer the offspring. According to Plate we ought
to say that, the greater the capacity for parental care the fewer the offspring.
This, however, comes to the same thing, since it is the higher organisms which
possess the increased capacity for parental care. Putting it in the most
generalized zoological way, diminished offspring is the response to improved
environment. Thus in Man the decline of the birth-rate, as Professor Benjamin
Moore remarks (British Medical Journal, August 20, 1910, p. 454), is "the
simple biological reply to good economic conditions. It is a well-known
biological law that even a micro-organism, when placed in unfavourable
conditions as to food and environment, passes into a reproductive phase, and by
sporulation or some special type produces new individuals very rapidly. The
same condition of affairs in the human race was shown even by the fact that one-
half of the births come from the least favourably situated one-quarter of the
population. Hence, over-rapid birth-rate indicates unfavourable conditions of
life, so that (so long as the population was on the increase) a lower birth-rate was
a valuable indication of a better social condition of affairs, and a matter on which
we should congratulate the country rather than proceed to condolences."

[142] "The accumulations of racial experience tend to show," remarks Woods
Hutchinson ("Animal Marriage," Contemporary Review, October, 1904), "that by
the production of a smaller and smaller number of offspring, and the expenditure
upon those of a greater amount of parental care, better results can be obtained in
efficiency and capacity for survival."
[143] Toulouse, Causes de la Folie, p. 91; Magri, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896,
fasc. vi-vii; Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, pp. 106 et seq.
[144] Emile Macquart, "Mortalité, Natalité, Dépopulation," Bulletin de la Société
d'Anthropologie, 1902.
[145] It is interesting to observe how Lafcadio Hearn, during the last years of his
life, was compelled, however unwillingly, to recognize this change. See e.g. his
Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904, ch. XXI, on "Industrial Dangers." The
Japanese themselves have recognized it, and it is the feeling of the decay of their
ancient ideals which has given so great an impetus to new ethical movements,
such as that, described as a kind of elevated materialism, established by Yukichi
Fukuzawa (see Open Court, June, 1907).
[146] Athenæum, October 7, 1911.

VI

EUGENICS AND LOVE

Eugenics and the Decline of the Birth-rate—Quantity and Quality in
the Production of Children—Eugenic Sexual Selection—The Value of
Pedigrees—Their Scientific Significance—The Systematic Record of
Personal Data—The Proposal for Eugenic Certificates—St. Valentine's
Day and Sexual Selection—Love and Reason—Love Ruled by Natural
Law—Eugenic Selection not opposed to Love—No Need for Legal
Compulsion—Medicine in Relation to Marriage

I

During recent years the question of the future of the human race has been
brought before us in a way it has never been brought before. The great
expansive movement in civilized countries is over. Whereas, fifty years ago,
France seemed to present a striking contrast to other countries in her low

and gradually falling birth-rate, to-day, though she has herself now almost
reached a stationary position, France is seen merely to have been the leader
in a movement which is common to all the more highly civilized nations.
They are all now moving rapidly in the direction in which she moved
slowly. It was inevitable that this movement, world-wide as it is, should call
forth energetic protests, for there is no condition of things so bad but it finds
some to advocate its perpetuation. There has, therefore, been much vigorous
preaching against "race suicide" by people who were deaf to the small voice
of reason, who failed to understand that this matter could not be settled by
mere consideration of the crude birth-rates, and that, even if it could, we
should have still to realize that, as an economist remarks, it is to the decline
of the birth-rate only that we probably owe it that the modern civilized
world has been saved from economic disaster. [147]
But whatever the causes of the declining birth-rate it is certain that even
when they are within our control they are of far too intimate a character for
the public moralist to be permitted to touch them, even though we consider
them to be in a disastrous state. It has to be recognized that we are here in
the presence, not of a merely local or temporary tendency which might be
shaken off with an effort, but of a great fundamental law of civilization; and
the fact that we encounter it in our own race merely means that we are
reaching a fairly high stage of civilization. It is far from the first time, in the
history of the world, that the same phenomenon has been witnessed. It was
seen in Imperial Rome; it was seen, again, in the "Protestant Rome,"
Geneva. Wherever are gathered together an exceedingly fine race of people,
the flower of the race, individuals of the highest mental and moral
distinction, there the birth-rate falls steadily. Vice or virtue alike avails
nothing in this field; with high civilization fertility inevitably diminishes.

II

Under these circumstances it was to be expected that a new ideal should
begin to flash before men's eyes. If the ideal of quantity is lost to us, why
not seek the ideal of quality? We know that the old rule: "Increase and
multiply" meant a vast amount of infant mortality, of starvation, of chronic
disease, of widespread misery. In abandoning that rule, as we have been
forced to do, are we not left free to seek that our children, though few,

should be at all events fit, the finest, alike in physical and psychical
constitution, that the world has seen?
Thus has come about the recent expansion of that conception of Eugenics,
or the science and art of Good Breeding in the human race, which a group
of workers, pioneered by Francis Galton [148]—at first in England and later
in America, Germany and elsewhere—have been developing for some years
past. Eugenics is beginning to be felt to possess a living actuality which it
failed to possess before. Instead of being a benevolent scientific fad it
begins to present itself as the goal to which we are inevitably moving.
The cause of Eugenics has sometimes been prejudiced in the public mind
by a comparison with the artificial breeding of domestic animals. In reality
the two things are altogether different. In breeding animals a higher race of
beings manipulates a lower race with the object of securing definite points
that are of no use whatever to the animals themselves, but of considerable
value to the breeders. In our own race, on the other hand, the problem of
breeding is presented in an entirely different shape. There is as yet no race
of super-men who are prepared to breed man for their own special ends. As
things are, even if we had the ability and the power, we should surely
hesitate before we bred men and women as we breed dogs or fowls. We
may, therefore, quite put aside all discussion of eugenics as a sort of higher
cattle-breeding. It would be undesirable, even if it were not impracticable.
But there is another aspect of Eugenics. Human eugenics need not be, and is
not likely to be, a cold-blooded selection of partners by some outside
scientific authority. But it may be, and is very likely to be, a slowly growing
conviction—first among the more intelligent members of the community
and then by imitation and fashion among the less intelligent members—that
our children, the future race, the torch-bearers of civilization for succeeding
ages, are not the mere result of chance or Providence, but that, in a very real
sense, it is within our power to mould them, that the salvation or damnation
of many future generations lies in our hands since it depends on our wise
and sane choice of a mate. The results of the breeding of those persons who
ought never to be parents is well known; the notorious case of the Jukes
family is but one among many instances. We could scarcely expect in any
community that individuals like the Jukes would take the initiative in
movements for the eugenic development of the race, but it makes much

difference whether such families exist in an environment like our own
which is indifferent to the future of the race, or whether they are surrounded
by influences of a more wholesome character which can scarcely fail to
some extent to affect, and even to control, the reckless and anti-social
elements in the community.
In considering this question, therefore, we are justified in putting aside not
only any kind of human breeding resembling the artificial breeding of
animals, but also, at all events for the present, every compulsory prohibition
on marriage or procreation. We must be content to concern ourselves with
ideals, and with the endeavour to exert our personal influence in the
realization of these ideals.

III

Such ideals cannot, however, be left in the air; if they depend on individual
caprice nothing but fruitless confusion can come of them. They must be
firmly grounded on a scientific basis of ascertained fact. This was always
emphasized by Galton. He not only initiated schemes for obtaining, but
actually to some extent obtained, a large amount of scientific knowledge
concerning the special characteristics and aptitudes of families, and his
efforts in this direction have since been largely extended and elaborated.
[149]
The feverish activities of modern life, and the constant vicissitudes and
accidents that overtake families to-day, have led to an extraordinary
indifference to family history and tradition. Our forefathers, from
generation to generation, carefully entered births, baptisms, marriages, and
deaths in the fly-leaf of the Family Bible. It is largely owing to these
precious entries that many are able to carry their family history several
centuries further back than they otherwise could. But nowadays the Family
Bible has for the most part ceased to exist, and nothing else has taken its
place. If a man wishes to know what sort of stocks he has come from,
unless he is himself an antiquarian, or in a position to employ an
antiquarian to assist him, he can learn little, and in the most favourable
position he is helpless without clues; though with such clues he might often
learn much that would be of the greatest interest to him. The entries in the
Family Bible, however, whatever their value as clues and even as actual
data, do not furnish adequate information to serve as a guide to the different

qualities of stocks; we need far more detailed and varied information in
order to realize the respective values of families from the point of view of
eugenics. Here, again, Galton had already realized the need for supplying a
great defect in our knowledge, and his Life-history Albums showed how the
necessary information may be conveniently registered.
The accumulated histories of individual families, it is evident, will in time
furnish a foundation on which to base scientific generalizations, and
eventually, perhaps, to justify practical action. Moreover, a vast amount of
valuable information on which it is possible to build up a knowledge of the
correlated characteristics of families, already lies at present unused in the
great insurance offices and elsewhere. When it is possible to obtain a large
collection of accurate pedigrees for scientific purposes, and to throw them
into a properly tabulated form, we shall certainly be in a position to know
more of the qualities of stocks, of their good and bad characteristics, and of
the degree in which they are correlated. [150]
In this way we shall, in time, be able to obtain a clear picture of the
probable results on the offspring of unions between any kind of people.
From personal and ancestral data we shall be able to reckon the probable
quality of the offspring of a married couple. Given a man and woman of
known personal qualities and of known ancestors, what are likely to be the
personal qualities, physical, mental and moral, of the children? That is a
question of immense importance both for the beings themselves whom we
bring into the world, for the community generally, and for the future race.
Eventually, it seems evident, a general system, whether private or public,
whereby all personal facts, biological and mental, normal and morbid, are
duly and systematically registered, must become inevitable if we are to
have a real guide as to those persons who are most fit, or most unfit, to
carry on the race. [151] Unless they are full and frank such records are
useless. But it is obvious that for a long time to come such a system of
registration must be private. According to the belief which is still deeply
rooted in most of us, we regard as most private those facts of our lives
which are most intimately connected with the life of the race, and most
fateful for the future of humanity. The feeling is no doubt inevitable; it has a
certain rightness and justification. As, however, our knowledge increases
we shall learn that we are, on the one hand, a little more responsible for

future generations than we are accustomed to think, and, on the other hand,
a little less responsible for our own good or bad qualities. Our fiat makes
the future man, but, in the same way, we are ourselves made by a choice
and a will not our own. A man may indeed, within limits, mould himself,
but the materials he can alone use were handed on to him by his parents,
and whether he becomes a man of genius, a criminal, a drunkard, an
epileptic, or an ordinarily healthy, well-conducted, and intelligent citizen,
must depend at least as much on his parents as on his own effort or lack of
effort, since even the aptitude for effective effort is largely inborn. As we
learn to look on the facts from the only sound standpoint of heredity, our
anger or contempt for a failing and erring individual has to give way to the
kindly but firm control of a weakling. If the children's teeth have been set
on edge it is because the parents have eaten sour grapes.
If, however, we certainly cannot bring legal or even moral force to compel
everyone to maintain such detailed registers of himself, his ancestral stocks,
and his offspring—to say nothing of inducing him to make them public—
there is something that we can do. We can make it to his interest to keep
such a record. [152]If it became an advantage in life to a man to possess
good ancestors, and to be himself a good specimen of humanity in mind,
character, and physique, we may be sure that those who are above the
average in these matters will be glad to make use of that superiority.
Insurance offices already make an inquisition into these matters, to which
no one objects, because a man only submits to it for his own advantage;
while for military and some other services similar inquiries are compulsory.
Eugenic certificates, according to Galton's proposal, would be issued by a
suitably constituted authority to those candidates who chose to apply for
them and were able to pass the necessary tests. Such certificates would
imply an inquiry and examination into the ancestry of the candidate as well
as into his own constitution, health, intelligence and character; and the
possession of such a certificate would involve a superiority to the average
in all these respects. No one would be compelled to offer himself for such
examination, just as no one is compelled to seek a university degree. But its
possession would often be an advantage. There is nothing to prevent the
establishment of a board of examiners of this kind to-morrow, and we may
be sure that, once established, many candidates would hasten to present
themselves. [153] There are obviously many positions in life wherein a

certificate of this kind of superiority would be helpful. But its chief
distinction would be that its possession would be a kind of patent of natural
nobility; the man or woman who held it would be one of Nature's
aristocrats, to whom the future of the race might be safely left without
further question.

IV

By happy inspiration, or by chance, Galton made public his programme of
eugenic research, in a paper read before the Sociological Society, on
February 14, the festival of St. Valentine. Although the ancient observances
of that day have now died out, St. Valentine was for many centuries the
patron saint of sexual selection, more especially in England. It can scarcely
be said that any credit in this matter belongs to the venerable saint himself;
it was by an accident that he achieved his conspicuous position in the
world. He was simply a pious Christian who was beheaded for his faith in
Rome under Claudius. But it so happened that his festival fell at that period
in early spring when birds were believed to pair, and when youths and
maidens were accustomed to select partners for themselves or for others.
This custom—which has been studied together with many allied primitive
practices by Mannhard [154]—was not always carried out on February 14,
sometimes it took place a little later. In England, where it was strictly
associated with St. Valentine's Day, the custom was referred to by Lydgate,
and by Charles of Orleans in the rondeaus and ballades he wrote during his
long imprisonment in England. The name Valentins or Valentines was also
introduced into France (where the custom had long existed) to designate the
young couples thus constituted. This method of sexual selection, half
playful, half serious, flourished especially in the region between England,
the Moselle, and the Tyrol. The essential part of the custom lay in the public
choice of a fitting mate for marriageable girls. Sometimes the question of
fitness resolved itself into one of good looks; occasionally the matter was
settled by lot. There was no compulsion about these unions; they were often
little more than a game, though at times they involved a degree of
immorality which caused the authorities to oppose them. But very
frequently the sexual selection thus exerted led to weddings, and these
playful Valentine unions were held to be a specially favourable prelude to a
happy marriage.

It is scarcely necessary to show how the ancient customs associated with St.
Valentine's Day are taken up again and placed on a higher plane by the great
movement which is now beginning to shape itself among us. The old
Valentine unions were made by a process of caprice tempered more or less
by sound instincts and good sense. In the sexual selection of the future the
same results will be attained by more or less deliberate and conscious
recognition of the great laws and tendencies which investigation is slowly
bringing to light. The new St. Valentine will be a saint of science rather than
of folk-lore.
Whenever such statements as these are made it is always retorted that love
laughs at science, and that the winds of passion blow where they list. [155]
That, however, is by no means altogether true, and in any case it is far from
covering the whole of the ground. It is hard to fight against human nature,
but human nature itself is opposed to indiscriminate choice of mates. It is
not true that any one tends to love anybody, and that mutual attraction is
entirely a matter of chance. The investigations which have lately been
carried out show that there are certain definite tendencies in this matter, that
certain kinds of people tend to be attracted to certain kinds, especially that
like are attracted to like rather than unlike to unlike, and that, again, while
some kinds of people tend to be married with special frequency other kinds
tend to be left unmarried. [156] Sexual selection, even when left to random
influences, is still not left to chance; it follows definite and ascertainable
laws. In that way the play of love, however free it may appear, is really
limited in a number of directions. People do not tend to fall in love with
those who are in racial respects a contrast to themselves; they do not tend to
fall in love with foreigners; they do not tend to be attracted to the ugly, the
diseased, the deformed. All these things may happen, but they are the
exception and not the rule. These limitations to the roving impulses of love,
while very real, to some extent vary at different periods in accordance with
the ideals which happen to be fashionable. In more remote ages they have
been still more profoundly modified by religious and social ideas;
polygamy and polyandry, the custom of marrying only inside one's own
caste, or only outside it, all these various and contradictory plans have been
easily accepted at some place and some time, and have offered no more
conscious obstacle to the free play of love than among ourselves is offered
by the prohibition against marriage between near relations.

Those simple-minded people who talk about the blind and irresistible force
of passion are themselves blind to very ordinary psychological facts.
Passion—when it occurs—requires in normal persons cumulative and
prolonged forces to impart to it full momentum. [157] In its early stages it is
under the control of many influences, including influences of reason. If it
were not so there could be no sexual selection, nor any social organization.
[158]

The eugenic ideal which is now developing is thus not an artificial product,
but the reasoned manifestation of a natural instinct, which has often been
far more severely strained by the arbitrary prohibitions of the past than it is
ever likely to be by any eugenic ideals of the future. The new ideal will be
absorbed into the conscience of the community, whether or not like a kind
of new religion, [159] and will instinctively and unconsciously influence the
impulses of men and women. It will do all this the more surely since, unlike
the taboos of savage societies, the eugenic ideal will lead men and women
to reject as partners only the men and women who are naturally unfit—the
diseased, the abnormal, the weaklings—and conscience will thus be on the
side of impulse.
It may indeed be pointed out that those who advocate a higher and more
scientific conscience in matters of mating are by no means plotting against
love, which is for the most part on their side, but rather against the
influences that do violence to love: on the one hand, the reckless and
thoughtless yielding to mere momentary desire, and, on the other hand, the
still more fatal influences of wealth and position and worldly convenience
which give a factitious value to persons who would never appear attractive
partners in life were love and eugenic ideals left to go hand in hand. It is
such unions, and not those inspired by the wholesome instincts of
wholesome lovers, which lead, if not to the abstract "deterioration of the
race," at all events in numberless cases to the abiding unhappiness of
persons who choose a mate without realizing how that mate is likely to
develop, nor what sort of children may probably be expected from the
union. The eugenic ideal will have to struggle with the criminal and still
more resolutely with the rich; it will have few serious quarrels with normal
and well constituted lovers.

It will now perhaps be clear how it is that the eugenic conception of the
improvement of the race embodies a new ideal. We are familiar with
legislative projects for compulsory certificates as a condition of marriage.
But even apart from all the other considerations which make such schemes
both illusory and undesirable, these externally imposed regulations fail to
go to the root of the matter. If they are voluntary, if they spring out of a fine
eugenic aspiration, it is another matter. Under these conditions the method
may be carried out at once. Professor Grasset has pointed out one way in
which this may be effected. We cannot, he remarks, follow the procedure of
a military conseil de revision and compulsorily reject the candidate for a
definite defect. But it would be possible for the two families concerned to
call a conference of their two family doctors, after examination of the
would-be bride and bridegroom, permitting the doctors to discuss freely the
medical aspects of the proposed union, and undertaking to accept their
decision, without asking for the revelation of any secrets, the families thus
remaining ignorant of the defect which prevented this union but might not
prevent another union, for the chief danger in many cases comes from the
conjunction of convergent morbid tendencies. [160] In France, where much
power remains with the respective families, this method might be operative,
provided complete confidence was felt in the doctors concerned. In some
countries, such as England, the prospective couple might prefer to take the
matter into their own hands, to discuss it frankly, and to seek medical
advice on their own account; this is now much more frequently done than
was formerly the case. But all compulsory projects of this kind, and indeed
any mere legislation, cannot go to the root of the matter. For in the first
place, what we need is a great body of facts, and a careful attention to the
record and registration and statistical tabulation of personal and family
histories. In the second place, we need that sound ideals and a high sense of
responsibility should permeate the whole community, first its finer and
more distinguished members and then, by the usual contagion that rules in
such matters, the whole body of its members. [161] In time, no doubt, this
would lead to concerted social action. We may reasonably expect that a time
will come when if, for instance, an epileptic woman conceals her condition
from the man she is marrying it would generally be felt that an offence has
been committed serious enough to invalidate the marriage. We must not
suppose that lovers would be either willing or competent to investigate each
other's family and medical histories. But it would be at least as easy and as

simple to choose a partner from those persons who had successfully passed
the eugenic test—more especially since such persons would certainly be the
most attractive group in the community—as it is for an Australian aborigine
to select a conjugal partner from one social group rather than from any
other. [162] It is a matter of accepting an ideal and of exerting our personal
and social influence in the direction of that ideal. If we really seek to raise
the level of humanity we may in this way begin to do so to-day.

NOTE ON THE LIFE-HISTORY RECORD

The extreme interest of a Life-History Record is obvious, even apart from
its eventual scientific value. Most of us would have reason to congratulate
ourselves had such records been customary when we were ourselves
children. It is probable that this is becoming more generally realized,
though until recently only the pioneers have here been active. "I started a
Life-History Album for each of my children," writes Mr. F.H. Perrycoste in
a private letter, "as soon as they were born; and by the time they arrive at
man's and woman's estate they will have valuable records of their own
physical, mental, and moral development, which should be of great service
to them when they come to have children of their own, whilst the physical
—in which are included, of course, medical—records may at any time be of
great value to their own medical advisers in later life. I have reason to regret
that some such Albums were not kept for my wife and myself, for they
would have afforded the necessary data by which to 'size up' the abilities
and conduct of our children. I know, for instance, pretty well what was my
own Galtonian rank as a schoolboy, and I am constantly asking myself
whether my boy will do as well, better, or worse. Now fortunately I do
happen to remember roughly what stages I had reached at one or two
transition periods of school-life; but if only such an Album had been kept
for me, I could turn it up and check my boy against myself in each subject
at each yearly stage. You will gather from this that I consider it of great
importance that ample details of school-work and intellectual development
should be entered in the Album. I find the space at my disposal for these
entries insufficient, and consequently I summarize in the Album and insert a
reference to sheets of fuller details which I keep; but it might be well, when
another edition of the Album comes to be published, to agitate for the
insertion of extra blank pages after the age of eight or nine, in order to

allow of the transcription of full school-reports. However, the great thing is
to induce people to keep an Album that will form the nucleus round which
any number of fuller records can cluster."
It is not necessary that the Galtonian type of Album should be rigidly
preserved, and I am indebted to "Henry Hamill," the author of The Truth We
Owe to Youth, for the following suggestions as to the way in which such a
record may be carried out:

"The book should not be a mere dry rigmarole, but include a certain
appeal to sentiment. The subject should begin to make the entries
himself when old enough to do so properly, i.e. so that the book will
not be disfigured—though indeed the naivity of juvenile phrasing, etc.,
may be of a particular interest. From a graphological point of view, the
evolution of the handwriting will be of interest; and if for no other
reason, specimens of handwriting ought to appear in it from year to
year, while the parent is still writing the other entries. There may now
be a certain sacramental character in the life-history. The subject
should be led to regard the book as a witness, and to perceive in it an
additional reason for avoiding every act the mention of which would
be a disfigurement of the history. At the same time, the nature of the
witness may be made to correct the wrong notions prevailing as to the
worthiness of acts, and to sanctify certain of them that have been
foolishly degraded. Thus there may be left several leaves blank before
the pages of forms for filling in anthropometric and physiological data,
and the headings may be made to suggest a worthier way of viewing
these things. For instance, there may be the indication 'Place and time
of conception,' and a specimen entry may be of service to lead
commonplace minds into a more reverent and poetical view than is
now usual—such as the one I culled from the life-history of an
American child: 'Our second child M—— was conceived on
Midsummer Day, under the shade of a friendly sycamore, beneath the
cloudless blue of Southern California.' Or, instead of restricting the
reference to the particular episode, it may refer to the whole chapter of
Love which that episode adorned, more especially in the case of a first
child, when a poetical history of the mating of the parents may
precede. The presence of the idea that the book would some day be
read by others than the intimate circle, would restrain the tendency of

some persons to inordinate self-revelation and 'gush.' Such books as
these would form the dearest heirlooms of a family, helping to knit its
bonds firmer, and giving an insight into individual character which
would supplement the more tangible data for the pedigree in a most
valuable way. The photographs taken every three months or so ought
to be as largely as possible nude. The gradual transition from
childhood would help to prevent an abrupt feeling arising, and the
practice would be a valuable aid to the rehabilitation of the nude, and
of genuineness in our daily life, no matter in what respect. This leads
to the difficult question of how far moral aspects should be entertained.
'To-day Johnnie told his first fib; we pretended to disbelieve
everything else he said, and he began to see that lying was bad policy.'
'Chastised Johnnie for the first time for pulling the wings off a fly; he
wanted to know why we might kill flies outright, but not mutilate
them,' and so on. For in this way parents would train themselves in the
psychology of education and character-building, though books by
specially gifted parents would soon appear for their guidance.
"Of course, whatever relevant circumstances were available about the
ante-natal period or the mother's condition would be noted (but who
would expect a mother to note that she laced tight up to such and such
a month? Perhaps the keeping of a log like this might act as a
deterrent). Similarly, under diet and regimen, year by year, the
assumption of breast-feeding—provision of columns for the various
incidents of it—weight before and after feeding, etc., would have a
great suggestive value.
"The provision under diet and regimen of columns for 'drug habits, if
any'—tea, coffee, alcohol, nicotine, morphia, etc.—would have a
suggestive value and operate in the direction of the simple life and a
reverence for the body. Some good aphorisms might be strewed in,
such as:

"'If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred' (Whitman).

"As young people circulate their 'Books of Likes and Dislikes,' etc.,
and thus in an entertaining way provide each other with insight into
mutual character, so the Life-History need not be an arcanum—at least

where people have nothing to be ashamed of. It would be a very trying
ordeal, no doubt, to admit even intimate friends to this confidence. But
as eugenics spread, concealment of taint will become almost
impracticable, and the facts may as well be confessed. But even then
there will be limitations. There might be an esoteric book for the
individual's own account of himself. Such important items as the
incidence of puberty (though notorious in some communities) could
not well be included in a book open even to the family circle, for
generations to come. The quiescence of the genital sense, the sedatives
naturally occurring, important as these are, and occupying the
consciousness in so large a degree, would find no place; nevertheless,
a private journal of the facts would help to steady the individual, and
prove a check against disrespect to his body.
"As the facts of individual evolution would be noted, so likewise
would those of dissolution. The first signs of decay—the teeth, the
elasticity of body and mind—would provide a valuable sphere for all
who are disposed to the diary-habit. The journals of individuals with a
gift for introspection would furnish valuable material for psychologists
in the future. Life would be cleansed in many ways. Journals would
not have to be bowdlerized, like Marie Bashkirtseff's, for the morbidity
that gloats on the forbidden would have a lesser scope, much that is
now regarded as disgraceful being then accepted as natural and right.
"The book might have several volumes, and that for the periods of
infancy and childhood might need to be less private than the one for
puberty. More, in his Utopia, demands that lovers shall learn to know
each other as they really are, i.e. naked. That is now the most Utopian
thing in More's Utopia. But the lovers might communicate their life-
histories to each other as a preliminary.
"The whole plan would, of course, finally have to be over-hauled by
the so-called 'man of the world.'"

Not everyone may agree with this conception of the Life-History Album
and its uses. Some will prefer a severely dry and bald record of
measurements. At the present time, however, there is room for very various
types of such documents. The important point is to realize that, in some

form or another, a record of this kind from birth or earlier is practicable, and
constitutes a record which is highly desirable alike on personal, social, and
scientific grounds.
[147] Dr. Scott Nearing, "Race Suicide versus Over-Population," Popular
Science Monthly, January, 1911. And from the biological side Professor Bateson
concludes (Biological Fact and the Structure of Society, p. 23) that "it is in a
decline in the birth-rate that the most promising omen exists for the happiness of
future generations."
[148] Galton himself, the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, and the half-cousin of
Charles Darwin, may be said to furnish a noble illustration of an unconscious
process of eugenics. (He has set forth his ancestry in Memories of My Life.) On
his death, the editor of the Popular Science Monthly wrote, referring to the fact
that Galton was nominated to succeed William James in the honorary
membership of an Academy of Science: "These two men are the greatest whom
he has known. James possessed the more complicated personality; but they had
certain common traits—a combination of perfect aristocracy with complete
democracy, directness, kindliness, generosity, and nobility beyond all measure. It
has been said that eugenics is futile because it cannot define its end. The answer
is simple—we want men like William James and Francis Galton" (Popular
Science Monthly, March, 1911.) Probably most of those who were brought,
however slightly, in contact with these two fine personalities will subscribe to
this conclusion.
[149] Galton chiefly studied the families to which men of intellectual ability
belong, especially in his Hereditary Genius and English Men of Science; various
kinds of pathological families have since been investigated by Karl Pearson and
his co-workers (see the series of Biometrika); the pedigrees of the defective
classes (especially the feeble-minded and epileptic) are now being accurately
worked out, as by Godden, at Vineland, New Jersey, and Davenport, in New
York (see e.g. Eugenics Review, April, 1911, and Journal of Nervous and Mental
Disease, November, 1911).
[150] "When once more the importance of good birth comes to be recognized in
a new sense," wrote W.C.D. Whetham and Mrs. Whetham (in The Family and
the Nation, p. 222), "when the innate physical and mental qualities of different
families are recorded in the central sociological department or scientifically
reformed College of Arms, the pedigrees of all will be known to be of supreme
interest. It would be understood to be more important to marry into a family with
a good hereditary record of physical and mental and moral qualities than it ever
has been considered to be allied to one with sixteen quarterings."
[151] The importance of such biographical records of aptitude and character are
so great that some, like Schallmayer (Vererbung und Auslese, 2nd ed., 1910, p.
389) believe that they must be made universally obligatory. This proposal,
however, seems premature.
[152] In many undesigned and unforeseen ways these registers may be of
immense value. They may even prove the means of overthrowing our pernicious
and destructive system of so-called "education." A step in this direction has been

suggested by Mr. R.T. Bodey, Inspector of Elementary Schools, at a meeting of
the Liverpool branch of the Eugenics Education Society: "Education facilities
should be carefully distributed with regard to the scientific likelihood of their
utilization to the maximum of national advantage, and this not for economic
reasons only, but because it was cruel to drag children from their own to a
different sphere of life, and cruel to the class they deserted. Since the activities of
the nation and the powers of the children were alike varied in kind and degree,
the most natural plan would be to sort them both out, and then design a school
system expressly in order to fit one to the other. At present there was no fixed
purpose, but a perpetual riot of changes, resulting in distraction of mind,
discontinuity of purpose, and increase of cost, while happiness decayed because
desires grew faster than possessions or the sense of achievement. The only really
scientific basis for a national system of education would be a full knowledge of
the family history of each child. With more perfect classification of family talent
the need of scholarships of transplantation would become less, for each of them
was the confession of an initial error in placing the child. Then there would be
more money to be spared for industrial research, travelling and art studentships,
and other aids to those who had the rare gift of original thought" (British Medical
Journal, November 18, 1911).
[153] I should add that there is one obstacle, viz. expense. When the present
chapter was first published in its preliminary form as an article in the Nineteenth
Century and After (May, 1906), Galton, always alive to everything bearing on
the study of Eugenics, wrote to me that he had been impressed by the generally
sympathetic reception my paper had received, and that he felt encouraged to
consider whether it was possible to begin giving such certificates at once. He
asked for my views, among others, as to the ground which should be covered by
such certificates. The programme I set forth was somewhat extensive, as I
considered that the applicant must not only bring evidence of a sound ancestry,
but also submit to anthropological, psychological, and medical examination.
Galton eventually came to the conclusion that the expenses involved by the
scheme rendered it for the present impracticable. My opinion was, and is, that
though the charge for such a certificate might in the first place be prohibitive for
most people, a few persons might find it desirable to seek, and advantageous to
possess, such certificates, and that it is worth while at all events to make a
beginning.
[154] Mannhardt, Wald-und Feldkulte, 1875, Vol. I, pp. 422 et seq. I have
discussed seasonal erotic festivals in a study of "The Phenomena of Sexual
Periodicity," Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. I.
[155] Thus we read in a small popular periodical: "I am prepared to back human
nature against all the cranks in Christendom. Human nature will endure a faddist
so long as he does not interfere with things it prizes. One of these things is the
right to select its partner for life. If a man loves a girl he is not going to give her
up because she happens to have an aunt in a lunatic asylum or an uncle who has
epileptic fits," etc. In the same way it may be said that a man will allow nothing
to interfere with his right to eat such food as he chooses, and is not going to give
up a dish he likes because it happens to be peppered with arsenic. It may be so,
let us grant, among savages. The growth of civilization lies in ever-extended self-
control guided by foresight.

[156] I have summarized some of the evidence on these points, especially that
showing that sexual attraction tends to be towards like persons and not, as was
formerly supposed, towards the unlike, in Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol.
IV, "Sexual Selection in Man."
[157] In other words, the process of tumescence is gradual and complex. See
Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. III, "The Analysis of the
Sexual Impulse."
[158] As Roswell Johnson remarks ("The Evolution of Man and its Control,"
Popular Science Monthly, January, 1910): "While it is undeniable that love when
once established defies rational considerations, yet we must remark that sexual
selection proceeds usually through two stages, the first being one of mere mutual
attraction and interest. It is in this stage that the will and reason are operative,
and here alone that any considerable elevation of standard may be effective."
[159] Galton looked upon eugenics as fitted to become a factor in religion
(Essays in Eugenics, p. 68). It may, however, be questioned whether this
consummation is either probable or desirable. The same religious claim has been
made for socialism. But, as Dr. Eden Paul remarks in a recent pamphlet on
Socialism and Eugenics, "Whereas both Socialism and Eugenics are concerned
solely with the application of the knowledge gained by experience to the
amelioration of the human lot, it seems preferable to dispense with religious
terminology, and to regard the two doctrines as complementary parts of the great
modern movement known by the name of Humanism." Personally, I do not
consider that either Socialism or Eugenics can be regarded as coming within the
legitimate sphere of religion, which I have elsewhere attempted to define
(Conclusion to The New Spirit).
[160] J. Grasset, in Dr. A. Marie's Traité International de Psychologie
Pathologique, 1910, Vol. I, p. 25. Grasset proceeds to discuss the principles
which must guide the physician in such consultations.
[161] This has been clearly realized by the German Society of Eugenics or
"Racial Hygiene," as it is usually termed in Germany (Internationale Gesellschaft
für Rassen-Hygiene), founded by Dr. Alfred Ploetz, with the co-operation of
many distinguished physicians and men of science, "to further the theory and
practice of racial hygiene." It is a chief aim of this Society to encourage the
registration by the members of the biological and other physical and psychic
characteristics of themselves and their families, in order to obtain a body of data
on which conclusions may eventually be based; the members undertake not to
enter on a marriage except they are assured by medical investigation of both
parties that the union is not likely to cause disaster to either partner or to the
offspring. The Society also admits associates who only occupy themselves with
the scientific aspects of its work and with propaganda. In England the Eugenics
Education Society (with its organ the Eugenics Review) has done much to
stimulate an intelligent interest in eugenics.
[162] How influential public opinion may be in the selection of mates is
indicated by the influence it already exerts—in less than a century—in the
limitation of offspring. This is well marked in some parts of France. Thus,
concerning a rural district near the Garonne, Dr. Belbèze, who knows it

thoroughly, writes (La Neurasthénie Rurale, 1911): "Public opinion does not at
present approve of multiple procreation. Large families, there can be no doubt,
are treated with contempt. Couples who produce a numerous progeny are looked
on, with a wink, as 'maladroits,' which in this region is perhaps the supreme term
of abuse.... Public opinion is all-powerful, and alone suffices to produce restraint,
when foresight is not adequate for this purpose."

VII

RELIGION AND THE CHILD

Religious Education in Relation to Social Hygiene and to Psychology
—The Psychology of the Child—The Contents of Children's Minds—
The Imagination of Children—How far may Religion be assimilated
by Children?—Unfortunate Results of Early Religious Instruction—
Puberty the Age for Religious Education—Religion as an Initiation
into a Mystery—Initiation among Savages—The Christian Sacraments
—The Modern Tendency as regards Religious Instruction—Its
Advantages—Children and Fairy Tales—The Bible of Childhood—
Moral Training.

It is a fact as strange as it is unfortunate that the much-debated question of
the religious education of children is almost exclusively considered from
the points of view of the sectarian and the secularist. In a discussion of this
question we are almost certain to be invited to take part in an unedifying
wrangle between Church and Chapel, between religion and secularism. That
is the strange part of it, that it should seem impossible to get away from this
sectarian dispute as to the abstract claims of varying religious bodies. The
unfortunate part of it is that in this quarrel the interests of the community,
the interests of the child, even the interests of religion are alike disregarded.
If we really desire to reach a sound conclusion on a matter which is
unquestionably of great moment, both for the child and for the community
of which he will one day become a citizen, we must resolutely put into the
background, as of secondary importance, the cries of contending sects,
religious or irreligious. The first place here belongs to the psychologist,

who is building up the already extensive edifice of knowledge concerning
the real nature of the child and the contents and growth of the youthful
mind, and to the practical teacher who is in touch with that knowledge and
can bring it to the test of actual experience. Before considering what drugs
are to be administered we must consider the nature of the organism they are
to be thrust into.
The mind of the child is at once logical and extravagant, matter-of-fact and
poetic or rather mytho-p[oe]ic. This combination of apparent opposites,
though it often seems almost incomprehensible to the adult, is the inevitable
outcome of the fact that the child's dawning intelligence is working, as it
were, in a vacuum. In other words, the child has not acquired the two
endowments which chiefly give character to the whole body of the adult's
beliefs and feelings. He is without the pubertal expansion which fills out the
mind with new personal and altruistic impulses and transforms it with
emotion that is often dazzling and sometimes distorting; and he has not yet
absorbed, or even gained the power of absorbing, all those beliefs, opinions,
and mental attitudes which the race has slowly acquired and transmitted as
the traditional outcome of its experiences.
The intellectual processes of children, the attitude and contents of the
child's mind, have been explored during recent years with a care and detail
that have never been brought to that study before. This is not a matter of
which the adult can be said to possess any instinctive or matter-of-course
knowledge. Adults usually have a strange aptitude to forget entirely the
facts of their lives as children, and children are usually, like peoples of
primitive race, very cautious in the deliberate communication of their
mental operations, their emotions, and their ideas. That is to say that the
child is equally without the internally acquired complex emotional nature
which has its kernel in the sexual impulse, and without the externally
acquired mental equipment which may be summed up in the word tradition.
But he possesses the vivid activities founded on the exercise of his senses
and appetites, and he is able to reason with a relentless severity from which
the traditionalized and complexly emotional adult shrinks back with horror.
The child creates the world for himself, and he creates it in his own image
and the images of the persons he is familiar with. Nothing is sacred to him,
and he pushes to the most daring extremities—as it seems to the adult—the
arguments derived from his own personal experiences. He is unable to see

any distinction between the natural and the supernatural, and he is justified
in this conviction because, as a matter of fact, he himself lives in what for
most adults would be a supernatural atmosphere; most children see visions
with closed and sometimes with open eyes; [163] they are not infrequently
subject to colour-hearing and other synæsthetic sensations; and they
occasionally hear hallucinatory voices. It is possible, indeed, that this is the
case with all children in some slight degree, although the faculty dies out
early and is easily forgotten because its extraordinary character was never
recognized.

Of 48 Boston children, says Stanley Hall, [164] 20 believed the sun, moon,
and stars to live, 16 thought flowers could feel, and 15 that dolls would feel
pain if burnt. The sky was found the chief field in which the children
exercise their philosophic minds. About three-quarters of them thought the
world a plain with the sky like a bowl turned over it, sometimes believing
that it was of such thin texture that one could easily break through, though
so large that much floor-sweeping was necessary in Heaven. The sun may
enter the ground when it sets, but half the children thought that at night it
rolls or flies away, or is blown or walks, or God pulls it higher up out of
sight, taking it up into Heaven, according to some putting it to bed, and
even taking off its clothes and putting them on again in the morning, or
again, it is believed to lie under the trees at night and the angels mind it.
God, of whom the children always hear so much, plays a very large part in
these conceptions, and is made directly responsible for all cosmic
phenomena. Thus thunder to these American children was God groaning or
kicking or rolling barrels about, or turning a big handle, or grinding snow,
or breaking something, or rattling a big hammer; while the lightning is due
to God putting his finger out, or turning the gas on quick, or striking
matches, or setting paper on fire. According to Boston children, God is a
big, perhaps a blue, man, to be seen in the sky, on the clouds, in church, or
even in the streets. They declare that God comes to see them sometimes,
and they have seen him enter the gate. He makes lamps, babies, dogs, trees,
money, etc., and the angels work for him. He looks like a priest, or a
teacher, or papa, and the children like to look at him; a few would
themselves like to be God. His house in the sky may be made of stone or
brick; birds, children, and Santa Claus live with God.

Birds and beasts, their food and their furniture, as Burnham points out, all
talk to children; when the dew is on the grass "the grass is crying," the stars
are candles or lamps, perhaps cinders from God's stove, butterflies are
flying pansies, icicles are Christmas candy. Children have imaginary play-
brothers and sisters and friends, with whom they talk. Sometimes God talks
with them. Even the prosiest things are vivified; the tracks of dirty feet on
the floor are flowers; a creaking chair talks; the shoemaker's nails are
children whom he is driving to school; a pedlar is Santa Claus.
Miss Miriam Levy once investigated the opinions of 560 children, boys and
girls, between the ages of 4 and 14, as to how the man in the moon got
there. Only 5 were unable to offer a serious explanation; 48 thought there
was no man there at all; 50 offered a scientific explanation of the
phenomena; but all the rest, the great majority, presented imaginative
solutions which could be grouped into seventeen different classes.
Such facts as these—which can easily be multiplied and are indeed familiar
to all, though their significance is not usually realized—indicate the special
tendencies of the child in the religious sphere. He is unable to follow the
distinctions which the adult is pleased to make between "real," "spiritual"
and "imaginary" beings. To him such distinctions do not exist. He may, if he
so pleases, adopt the names or such characteristics as he chooses, of the
beings he is told about, but he puts them into his own world, on a footing of
more or less equality, and he decides himself what their fate is to be. The
adult's supreme beings by no means always survive in the struggle for
existence which takes place in the child's imaginative world. It was found
among many thousand children entering the city schools of Berlin that Red
Riding Hood was better known than God, and Cinderella than Christ. That
is the result of the child's freedom from the burden of tradition.
Yet at the same time the opposite though allied peculiarity of childhood—
the absence of the emotional developments of puberty which deepen and
often cloud the mind a few years later—is also making itself felt.
Extravagant as his beliefs may appear, the child is an uncompromising
rationalist and realist. His supposed imaginativeness is indeed merely the
result of his logical insistence that all the new phenomena presented to him
shall be thought of in terms of himself and his own environment. His
wildest notions are based on precise, concrete, and personal facts of his own

experience. That is why he is so keen a questioner of grown-up people's
ideas, and a critic who may sometimes be as dangerous and destructive as
Bishop Colenso's Zulus. Most children before the age of thirteen, as Earl
Barnes states, are inquirers, if not sceptics.
If we clearly realize these characteristics of the childish mind, we cannot
fail to understand the impression made on it by religious instruction. The
statements and stories that are repeated to him are easily accepted by the
child in so far, and in so far only, as they answer to his needs; and when
accepted they are assimilated, which means that they are compelled to obey
the laws of his own mental world. In so far as the statements and stories
presented to him are not acceptable or cannot be assimilated, it happens
either that they pass by him unnoticed, or else that he subjects them to a
cold and matter-of-fact logic which exerts a dissolving influence upon
them.
Now a few of the ideas of religion are assimilable by the child, and notably
the idea of a God as the direct agent in cosmic phenomena; some of the
childish notions I have quoted illustrate the facility with which the child
adopts this idea. He adopts, that is, what may be called the hard precise
skeleton of the idea, and imagines a colossal magician, of anthropomorphic
(if not paidomorphic) nature, whose operations are curious, though they
altogether fail to arouse any mysterious reverence or awe for the agent.
Even this is not very satisfactory, and Stanley Hall, in the spirit of Froebel,
considers that the best result is attained when the child knows no God but
his own mother. [165] But for the most part the ideas of religion cannot be
accepted or assimilated by children at all; they were not made by children
or for children, but represent the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of men,
and sometimes even of very exceptional and abnormal men. "The child," it
has been said, "no doubt has the psychical elements out of which the
religious experience is evolved, just as the seed has the promise of the fruit
which will come in the fullness of time. But to say, therefore, that the
average child is religious, or capable of receiving the usual advanced
religious instruction, is equivalent to saying that the seed is the fruit or
capable of being converted into fruit before the fullness of time." [166] The
child who grows devout and becomes anxious about the state of his soul is a
morbid and unwholesome child; if he prefers praying for the conversion of
his play-fellows to joining them in their games he is not so much an

example of piety as a pathological case whose future must be viewed with
anxiety; and to preach religious duties to children is exactly the same, it has
been well said, as to exhort them to imagine themselves married people and
to inculcate on them the duties of that relation. Fortunately the normal child
is usually able to resist these influences. It is the healthy child's impulse
either to let them fall with indifference or to apply to them the instrument of
his unmerciful logic.
Naturally, the adult, in self-defence, is compelled to react against this
indifferent or aggressive attitude of the child. He may be no match for the
child in logic, and even unspeakably shocked by his daring inquiries, like
an amiable old clergyman I knew when a Public School teacher in
Australia; he went to a school to give Bible lessons, and was one day
explaining how King David was a man after God's own heart, when a small
voice was heard making inquiries about Uriah's wife; the small boy was
hushed down by the shocked clergyman, and the cause of religion was not
furthered in that school. But the adult knows that he has on his side tradition
which has not yet been acquired by the child, and the inner emotional
expansion which still remains unliberated in the child. The adult, therefore,
fortified by this superiority, feels justified in falling back on the weapon of
authority: "You may not want to believe this and to learn it, but you've got
to."
It is in this way that the adult wins the battle of religious education. In the
deeper and more far-seeing sense he has lost it. Religion has become, not a
charming privilege, but a lesson, a lesson about unbelievable things, a
meaningless task to be learnt by heart, a drudgery. It may be said that even
if that is so, religious lessons merely share the inevitable fate of all subjects
which become school tasks. But that is not the case. Every other subject
which is likely to become a school task is apt to become intelligible and
attractive to some considerable section of the scholars because it is within
the range of childish intelligence. But, for the two very definite reasons I
have pointed out, this is only to an extremely limited degree true as regards
the subject of religion, because the young organism is an instrument not as
yet fitted with the notes which religion is most apt to strike.
Of all the school subjects religion thus tends to be the least attractive.
Lobsien, at Kiel, found a few years since, in the course of a psychological

investigation, that when five hundred children (boys and girls in equal
numbers), between the ages of nine and fourteen, were asked which was
their favourite lesson hour, only twelve (ten girls and two boys) named the
religious lesson. [167] In other words, nearly 98 per cent children (and nearly
all the boys) find that religion is either an indifferent or a repugnant subject.
I have no reports at hand as regards English children, but there is little
reason to suppose that the result would be widely different. [168] Here and
there a specially skilful teacher might bring about a result more favourable
to religious teaching, but that could only be done by depriving the subject
of its most characteristic elements.
This is, however, not by any means the whole of the mischief which, from
the religious point of view, is thus perpetrated. It might, on a priori
grounds, be plausibly argued that even if there is among healthy young
children a certain amount of indifference or even repugnance to religious
instruction, that is of very little consequence: they cannot be too early
grounded in the principles of the faith they will later be called on to profess;
and however incapable they may now be of understanding the teaching that
is being inculcated in the school, they will realize its importance when their
knowledge and experience increase. But however plausible this may seem,
practically it is not what usually happens. The usual effect of constantly
imparting to children an instruction they are not yet ready to receive is to
deaden their sensibilities to the whole subject of religion. [169] The
premature familiarity with religious influences—putting aside the rare cases
where it leads to a morbid pre-occupation with religion—induces a reaction
of routine which becomes so habitual that it successfully withstands the
later influences which on more virgin soil would have evoked vigorous and
living response. So far from preparing the way for a more genuine
development of religious impulse later on, this precocious scriptural
instruction is just adequate to act as an inoculation against deeper and more
serious religious interests. The commonplace child in later life accepts the
religion it has been inured to so early as part of the conventional routine of
life. The more vigorous and original child for the same reason shakes it off,
perhaps for ever.
Luther, feeling the need to gain converts to Protestantism as early as
possible, was a strong advocate for the religious training of children, and

has doubtless had much influence in this matter on the Protestant churches.
"The study of religion, of the Bible and the Catechism," says Fiedler, "of
course comes first and foremost in his scheme of instruction." He was also
quite prepared to adapt it to the childish mind. "Let children be taught," he
writes, "that our dear Lord sits in Heaven on a golden throne, that He has a
long grey beard and a crown of gold." But Luther quite failed to realize the
inevitable psychological reaction in later life against such fairy-tales.
At a later date, Rousseau, who, like Luther, was on the side of religion,
realized, as Luther failed to realize, the disastrous results of attempting to
teach it to children. In La Nouvelle Héloïse, Saint-Preux writes that Julie
had explained to him how she sought to surround her children with good
influences without forcing any religious instruction on them: "As to the
Catechism, they don't so much as know what it is." "What! Julie, your
children don't learn their Catechism?" "No, my friend, my children don't
learn their Catechism." "So pious a mother!" I exclaimed; "I can't
understand. And why don't your children learn their Catechism?" "In order
that they may one day believe it. I wish to make Christians of them." [170]
Since Rousseau's day this may be said to be the general attitude of nearly all
thinkers who have given attention to the question, even though they may
not have viewed it psychologically. It is an attitude by no means confined to
those who are anxious that children should grow up to be genuine
Christians, but is common to all who consider that the main point is that
children should grow up to be, at all events, genuine men and women. "I do
not think," writes John Stuart Mill, in 1868, "there should be any
authoritative teaching at all on such subjects. I think parents ought to point
out to their children, when the children begin to question them or to make
observations of their own, the various opinions on such subjects, and what
the parents themselves think the most powerful reasons for and against.
Then, if the parents show a strong feeling of the importance of truth, and
also of the difficulty of attaining it, it seems to me that young people's
minds will be sufficiently prepared to regard popular opinion or the opinion
of those about them with respectful tolerance, and may be safely left to
form definite conclusions in the course of mature life." [171]
There are few among us who have not suffered from too early familiarity
with the Bible and the conceptions of religion. Even for a man of really

strong and independent intellect it may be many years before the
precociously dulled feelings become fresh again, before the fetters of
routine fall off, and he is enabled at last to approach the Bible with fresh
receptivity and to realize, for the first time in his life, the treasures of art
and beauty and divine wisdom it contains. But for most that moment never
comes round. For the majority the religious education of the school as
effectually seals the Bible for life as the classical education of the college
seals the great authors of Greece and Rome for life; no man opens his
school books again when he has once left school. Those who read Greek
and Latin for love have not usually come out of universities, and there is
surely a certain significance in the fact that the children of one's secularist
friends are so often found to become devout church-goers, while, according
to the frequent observation, devout parents often have most irreligious
offspring, just as the bad boys at school and college are frequently sons of
the clergy.
At puberty and during adolescence everything begins to be changed. The
change, it is important to remember, is a natural change, and tends to come
about spontaneously; "where no set forms have been urged, the religious
emotion," as Lancaster puts it, "comes forth as naturally as the sun rises."
[172]
That period, really and psychologically, marks a "new birth." Emotions
which are of fundamental importance, not only for the individual's personal
life but for his social and even cosmic relationships, are for the first time
born. Not only is the child's body remoulded in the form of a man or a
woman, but the child-soul becomes a man-soul or a woman-soul, and
nothing can possibly be as it has been before. The daringly sceptical
logician has gone, and so has the imaginative dreamer for whom the world
was the automatic magnifying mirror of his own childish form and
environment. It has been revealed to him that there are independent
personal and impersonal forces outside himself, forces with which he may
come into a conscious and fascinatingly exciting relationship. It is a
revelation of supreme importance, and with it comes not only the
complexly emotional and intellectual realization of personality, but the
aptitude to enter into and assimilate the traditions of the race.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this is the moment, and the
earliest moment, when it becomes desirable to initiate the boy or girl into
the mysteries of religion. That it is the best moment is indicated by the well-

recognized fact that the immediately post-pubertal period of adolescence is
the period during which, even spontaneously, the most marked religious
phenomena tend to occur. [173] Stanley Hall seems to think that twelve is the
age at which the cultivation of the religious consciousness may begin; "the
age, signalized by the ancient Greeks as that at which the study of what was
comprehensively called music should begin, the age at which Roman
guardianship ended, at which boys are confirmed in the modern Greek,
Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal Churches, and at which the Child Jesus
entered the Temple, is as early as any child ought consciously to go about
his Heavenly Father's business." 174] But I doubt whether we can fix the age
definitely by years, nor is it indeed quite accurate to assert that so early an
age as twelve is generally accepted as the age of initiation; the Anglican
Church, for example, usually confirms at the age of fifteen. It is not age
with which we ought to be concerned, but a biological epoch of psychic
evolution. It is unwise to insist on any particular age, because development
takes place within a considerably wide limit of years.
I have spoken of the introduction to religion at puberty as the initiation into
a mystery. The phrase was deliberately chosen, for it seems to me to be not
a metaphor, but the expression of a truth which has always been understood
whenever religion has been a reality and not a mere convention. Among
savages in nearly all parts of the world the boy or girl at puberty is initiated
into the mystery of manhood or of womanhood, into the duties and the
privileges of the adult members of the tribe. The youth is taken into a
solitary place, for a month or more, he is made to suffer pain and hardship,
to learn self-restraint, he is taught the lore of the tribe as well as the
elementary rules of morality and justice; he is shown the secret things of the
tribe and their meaning and significance, which no stranger may know. He
is, in short, enabled to find his soul, and he emerges from this discipline a
trained and responsible member of his tribe. The girl receives a
corresponding training, suited to her sex, also in solitude, at the hands of the
older women. A clear and full description of a typical savage initiation into
manhood at puberty is presented by Dr. Haddon in the fifth volume of the
Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, and
Dr. Haddon makes the comment: "It is not easy to conceive of more
effectual means for a rapid training."

The ideas of remote savages concerning the proper manner of initiating
youth in the religious and other mysteries of life may seem of little personal
assistance to superiorly civilized people like ourselves. But let us turn,
therefore, to the Greeks. They also had preserved the idea and the practice
of initiation into sacred mysteries, though in a somewhat modified form
because religion had ceased to be so intimately blended with all the
activities of life. The Eleusinian and other mysteries were initiations into
sacred knowledge and insight which, as is now recognized, involved no
revelation of obscure secrets, but were mysteries in the sense that all
intimate experiences of the soul, the experiences of love quite as much as
those of religion, are mysteries, not to be lightly or publicly spoken of. In
that feeling the Greek was at one with the Papuan, and it is interesting to
observe that the procedure of initiation into the Greek mysteries, as
described by Theon of Smyrna and other writers, followed the same course
as the pubertal initiations of savages; there was the same preliminary
purification by water, the same element of doctrinal teaching, the same
ceremonial and symbolic rubbing with sand or charcoal or clay, the same
conclusion in a joyous feast, even the same custom of wearing wreaths.
In how far the Christian sacraments were consciously moulded after the
model of the Greek mysteries is still a disputed point; [175] but the first
Christians were seeking the same spiritual initiation, and they necessarily
adopted, consciously or unconsciously, methods of procedure which, in
essentials, were fundamentally the same as those they were already familiar
with. The early Christian Church adopted the rite of Baptism not merely as
a symbol of initiation, but as an actual component part of a process of
initiation; the purifying ceremony was preceded by long preparation, and
when at last completed the baptized were sometimes crowned with
garlands. When at a later period in the history of the Church the physical
part of the initiation was divorced from the spiritual part, and baptism was
performed in infancy and confirmation at puberty, a fatal mistake was
made, and each part of the rite largely lost its real significance.
But it still remains true that Christianity embodied in its practical system
the ancient custom of initiating the young at puberty, and that the custom
exists in an attenuated form in all the more ancient Christian Churches. The
rite of Confirmation has, however, been devitalized, and its immense
significance has been almost wholly lost. Instead of being regarded as a real

initiation into the privileges and the responsibilities of a religious
communion, of an active fellowship for the realization of a divine life on
earth, it has become a mere mechanical corollary of the precedent rite of
baptism, a formal condition of participation in the Sacrament of Holy
Communion. The splendid and many-sided discipline by which the child of
the savage was initiated into the secrets of his own emotional nature and the
sacred tradition of his people has been degraded into the learning of a
catechism and a few hours' perfunctory instruction in the schoolroom or in
the parlour of the curate's lodgings. The vital kernel of the rite is decayed
and only the dead shell is left, while some of the Christian Churches have
lost even the shell.
It is extremely probable that in no remote future the State in England will
reject as insoluble the problem of imparting religious instruction to the
young in its schools, in accordance with a movement of opinion which is
taking place in all civilized countries. [176] The support which the Secular
Education League has found in the most various quarters is without doubt a
fact of impressive significance. [177] It is well known also that the working
classes—the people chiefly concerned in the matter—are distinctly opposed
to religious teaching in State schools. There can be little doubt that before
many years have passed, in England as elsewhere, the Churches will have
to face the question of the best methods of themselves undertaking that task
of religious training which they have sought to foist upon the State. If they
are to fulfil this duty in a wise and effectual manner they must follow the
guidance of biological psychology at the point where it is at one with the
teaching of their own most ancient traditions, and develop the merely
formal rite of confirmation into a true initiation of the new-born soul at
puberty into the deepest secrets of life and the highest mysteries of religion.
It must, of course, be remembered that, so far as England is concerned, we
live in an empire in which there are 337 millions of people who are not
even nominally Christians, [178] and that even among the comparatively
small proportion (about 14 per cent) who call themselves "Christians," a
very large proportion are practically Secularists, and a considerable number
avowedly so. If, however, we assume the Secularist's position, the
considerations here brought forward still retain their validity. In the first
place, the undoubtedly frequent hostility of the Freethinker to Christianity is

not so much directed against vital religion as against a dead Church. The
Freethinker is prepared to respect the Christian who by free choice and the
exercise of thought has attained the position of a Christian, but he resents
the so-called Christian who is merely in the Church because he finds
himself there, without any effort of his will or his intelligence. The
convinced secularist feels respect for the sincere Christian, even though it
may only be in the sense that the real saint feels tenderness for the hopeless
sinner. And in the second place, as I have sought to point out, the facts we
are here concerned with are far too fundamental to concern the Christian
alone. They equally concern the secularist, who also is called upon to
satisfy the spiritual hunger of the adolescent youth, to furnish him with a
discipline for his entry into life, and a satisfying vision of the universe. And
if secularists have not always grasped this necessity, we may perhaps find
therein one main reason why secularism has not met with so enormous and
enthusiastic a reception as the languor and formalism of the churches
seemed to render possible.
If the view here set forth is sound,—a view more and more widely held by
educationists and by psychologists trained in biology,—the first twelve
years must be left untouched by all conceptions of life and the world which
transcend immediate experience, for the child whose spiritual virginity has
been prematurely tainted will never be able to awake afresh to the full
significance of those conceptions when the age of religion at last arrives.
But are we, it may be asked, to leave the child's restless, inquisitive,
imaginative brain without any food during all those early years? By no
means. Even admitting that, as it has been said, at the early stage religious
training is the supreme art of standing out of Nature's way, it is still not hard
to find what, in this matter, the way of Nature is. The life of the individual
recapitulates the life of the race, and there can be no better imaginative food
for the child than that which was found good in the childhood of the race.
The child who is deprived of fairy tales invents them for himself,—for he
must have them for the needs of his psychic growth just as there is reason to
believe he must have sugar for his metabolic growth,—but he usually
invents them badly. [179] The savage sees the world almost exactly as the
civilized child sees it, as the magnified image of himself and his own
environment; but he sees it with an added poetic charm, a delightful and
accomplished inventiveness which the child is incapable of. The myths and

legends of primitive peoples—for instance, those of the British Columbian
Indians, so carefully reproduced by Boas in German and Hill Tout in
English—are one in their precision and their extravagance with the stories
of children, but with a finer inventiveness. It was, I believe, many years ago
pointed out by Ziller that fairy-tales ought to play a very important part in
the education of young children, and since then B. Hartmann, Stanley Hall
and many others of the most conspicuous educational authorities have
emphasized the same point. Fairy tales are but the final and transformed
versions of primitive myths, creative legends, stories of old gods. In purer
and less transformed versions the myths and legends of primitive peoples
are often scarcely less adapted to the child's mind. Julia Gayley argues that
the legends of early Greek civilization, the most perfect of all dreams,
should above all be revealed to children; the early traditions of the East and
of America yield material that is scarcely less fitted for the child's
imaginative uses. Portions of the Bible, especially of Genesis, are in the
strict sense fairy tales, that is legends of early gods and their deeds which
have become stories. In the opinion of many these portions of the Bible
may suitably be given to children (though it is curious to observe that a
Welsh Education Committee a few years ago prohibited the reading in
schools of precisely the most legendary part of Genesis); but it must always
be remembered, from the Christian point of view, that nothing should be
given at this early age which is to be regarded as essential at a later age, for
the youth turns against the tales of his childhood as he turns against its
milk-foods. Some day, perhaps, it may be thought worth while to compile a
Bible for childhood, not a mere miscellaneous assortment of stories, but a
collection of books as various in origin and nature as are the books of the
Hebraic-Christian Bible, so that every kind of child in all his moods and
stages of growth might here find fit pasture. Children would not then be left
wholly to the mercy of the thin and frothy literature which the
contemporary press pours upon them so copiously; they would possess at
least one great and essential book which, however fantastic and extravagant
it might often be, would yet have sprung from the deepest instincts of the
primitive soul, and furnish answers to the most insistent demands of
primitive hearts. Such a book, even when finally dropped from the youth's
or girl's hands, would still leave its vague perfume behind.

It may be pointed out, finally, that the fact that it is impossible to teach
children even the elements of adult religion and philosophy, as well as
unwise to attempt it, by no means proves that all serious teaching is
impossible in childhood. On the imaginative and spiritual side, it is true, the
child is re-born and transformed during adolescence, but on the practical
and concrete side his life and thought are for the most part but the regular
and orderly development of the habits he has already acquired. The
elements of ethics on the one hand, as well as of natural science on the
other, may alike be taught to children, and indeed they become a necessary
part of early education, if the imaginative side of training is to be duly
balanced and complemented. The child as much as the adult can be taught,
and is indeed apt to learn, the meaning and value of truth and honesty, of
justice and pity, of kindness and courtesy; we have wrangled and worried
for so long concerning the teaching of religion in schools that we have
failed altogether to realize that these fundamental notions of morality are a
far more essential part of school training. It must, however, always be
remembered that they cannot be adequately treated merely as an isolated
subject of instruction, and possibly ought not to be so treated at all. As
Harriet Finlay-Johnson wisely says in her Dramatic Method of Instruction:
"It is impossible to shut away moral teaching into a compartment of the
mind. It should be firmly and openly diffused throughout the thoughts, to
'leaven the whole of the lump.'" She adds the fruitful suggestion: "There is
real need for some lessons in which the emotions shall not be ignored.
Nature study, properly treated, can touch both senses and emotions." [180]
The child is indeed quite apt to acquire a precise knowledge of the natural
objects around him, of flowers and plants and to some extent of animals,
objects which to the savage also are of absorbing interest. In this way, under
wise guidance, the caprices of his imagination may be indirectly restrained
and the lessons of life taught, while at the same time he is thus being
directly prepared for the serious studies which must occupy so much of his
later youth.
The child, we thus have to realize, is, from the educational point of view of
social hygiene, a being of dual nature, who needs ministering to on both
sides. On the one hand he demands the key to an imaginative paradise
which one day he must leave, bearing away with him, at the best, only a
dim and haunting memory of its beauty. On the other hand he possesses

eager aptitudes on which may be built up concrete knowledge and the sense
of human relationships, to serve as a firm foundation when the period of
adolescent development and discipline at length arrives.
[163] De Quincey in his Confessions of an Opium Eater referred to the power
that many, perhaps most, children possess of seeing visions in the dark. The
phenomenon has been carefully studied by G.L. Partridge (Pedagogical
Seminary, April, 1898) in over 800 children. He found that 58.5 of them aged
between thirteen and sixteen could see visions or images at night with closed
eyes before falling asleep; of those aged six the proportion was higher. There
seemed to be a maximum at the age of ten, and probably another maximum at a
much earlier age. Among adults this tendency is rudimentary, and only found in a
marked form in neurasthenic subjects or at moments of nervous exhaustion. See
also Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams, chap. II.
[164] G. Stanley Hall, "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School,"
Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891.
[165] "The mother's face and voice are the first conscious objects as the infant
soul unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of God to her child.
All the religion of which the child is capable during this by no means brief stage
of its development consists of these sentiments—gratitude, trust, dependence,
love, etc.—now felt only for her, which are later directed towards God. The less
these are now cultivated towards the mother, who is now their only fitting if not
their only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felt towards God.
This, too, adds greatly to the sacredness of the responsibilities of motherhood."
(G. Stanley Hall, Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891, p. 199).
[166] J. Morse, American Journal of Religious Psychology, 1911, p. 247.
[167] Lobsien, "Kinderideale," Zeitschrift für Päd. Psychologie, 1903.
[168] Mr. Edmond Holmes, formerly Chief Inspector of Elementary Education in
England, has an instructive remark bearing on this point in his suggestive book,
What Is and What Might be (1911, p. 88): "The first forty minutes of the morning
session are given in almost every elementary school to what is called Religious
Instruction. This goes on, morning after morning, and week after week. The fact
that the English parent, who must himself have attended from 1500 to 2000
Scripture lessons in his schooldays, is not under any circumstance to be trusted
to give religious instruction to his own children, shows that those who control
the religious education of the youthful 'masses' have but little confidence in the
effects of their system on the religious life and faith of the English people." Miss
Harriet Finlay-Johnson, a highly original and successful elementary school
teacher, speaks (The Dramatic Method of Teaching, 1911, p. 170) with equal
disapproval of the notion that any moral value attaches to the ordinary school
examinations in "Scripture."
[169] If it were not so, England, after sixty years of National Schools, ought to
be a devout nation of good Church people. Most of the criminals and outcasts
have been taught in Church Schools. A clergyman, who points this out to me,
adds: "I am heartily thankful that religion was never forced on me as a child. I do

not think I had any religion, in the ethical sense, until puberty, or any conscious
realization of religion, indeed, until nineteen." "The boy," remarks Holmes (op.
cit., p. 100), "who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says to
himself when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,' is
acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured rather than blamed
for having realized at last that the chaff on which he has so long been fed is not
the life-giving grain which, unknown to himself, his inmost soul demands."
[170] La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part V, Letter 3. In more recent times Ellen Key
remarks in a suggestive chapter on "Religions Education" in her Century of the
Child: "Nothing better shows how deeply rooted religion is in human nature than
the fact that 'religious education' has not been able to tear it out."
[171] J.S. Mill, Letters, Vol. II, p. 135.
[172] Lancaster found ("The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence,"
Pedagogical Seminary, July, 1897) that among 598 individuals of both sexes in
the United States, as many as 518 experienced new religious emotions between
the ages of 12 and 20, only 80 having no such emotions at this period, so that
more than 5 out of 6 have this experience; it is really even more frequent, for it
has no necessary tendency to fall into conventional religious moulds.
[173] Professor Starbuck, in his Psychology of Religion, has well brought
together and clearly presented much of the evidence showing this intimate
association between adolescence and religious manifestations. He finds (Chap.
III) that in females there are two tidal waves of religious awakening, one at about
13, the other at 16, with a less significant period at 18; for males, after a wavelet
at 12, the great tidal wave is at 16, followed by another at 18 or 19. Ruediger's
results are fairly concordant ("The Period of Mental Reconstruction," American
Journal of Psychology, July, 1907); he finds that in women the average age of
conversion is 14, in men it is at 13 or 14, and again at 18.
[174] G. Stanley Hall, "The Moral and Religious Training of Children and
Adolescents," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891, p. 207. From the more
narrowly religious side the undesirability of attempting to teach religion to
children is well set forth by Florence Hayllar (Independent Review, Oct., 1906).
She considers that thirteen is quite early enough to begin teaching children the
lessons of the Gospels, for a child who acted in accordance with the Gospels
would be "aggravating," and would generally be regarded as "an insufferable
prig." Moreover, she points out, it is dangerous to teach young children the
Christian virtues of charity, humility, and self-denial. It is far better that they
should first be taught the virtues of justice and courage and self-mastery, and the
more Christian virtues later. She also believes that in the case of the clergy who
are brought in contact with children a preliminary course of child-study, with the
necessary physiology and psychology, should be compulsory.
[175] The varying opinions on this point have been fairly and clearly presented
by Cheetham in his Hulsean lectures on the Mysteries Pagan and Christian.
[176] Thus at the first Congress of Italian Women held at Rome in 1908—a very
representative Congress, by no means made up of "feminists" or anti-clericals,
and marked by great moderation and good sense—a resolution was passed
against religious teaching in primary schools, though a subsequent resolution

declared by a very large majority in favour of teaching the history of religions in
secondary schools. These resolutions caused much surprise at the time to those
persons who still cherish the superstition that in matters of religion women are
blindly prejudiced and unable to think for themselves.
[177] See e.g. an article by Halley Stewart, President of the Secular Education
League, on "The Policy of Secular Education," Nineteenth Century, April, 1911.
[178] So far as numbers go, the dominant religion of the British Empire, the
religion of the majority, is Hinduism; Mohammedanism comes next.
[179] "Not long ago," says Dr. L. Guthrie (Clinical Journal, 7th June, 1899), "I
heard of a lady who, in her desire that her children should learn nothing but what
was true, banished fairy tales from her nursery. But the children evolved from
their own imagination fictions which were so appalling that she was glad to
divert them with Jack-the-Giant-Killer."
[180] In his interesting study of comparative education (The Making of Citizens,
1902, p. 194), Mr. R.E. Hughes, a school inspector, after discussing the methods
of settling the difficulties of religious education in England, America, Germany,
and France, reasonably concludes: "The solution of the religious problem of the
schools of these four peoples lies in the future, but we believe it will be found
not to be beyond human ingenuity to devise a scheme of moral and ethical
training for little children which will be suitable. It is the moral principles
underlying all conduct which the school should teach. Indeed, the school, to
justify its existence, dare not neglect them. It will teach them, not dogmatically
or by precept, but by example, and by the creation of a noble atmosphere around
the child." Holmes also (op. cit., p. 276) insists that the teaching of patriotism
and citizenship must be informal and indirect.

VIII

THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL HYGIENE

The New Movement for giving Sexual Instruction to Children—The
Need of such a Movement—Contradictions involved by the Ancient
Policy of Silence—Errors of the New Policy—The Need of Teaching
the Teacher—The Need of Training the Parents—And of Scientifically
equipping the Physician—Sexual Hygiene and Society—The far-
reaching Effects of Sexual Hygiene.

It is impossible to doubt the vitality and the vigour of the new movement of
sexual hygiene, especially that branch of it concerned with the instruction

of children in the essential facts of life. [181] In the eighteenth century the
great educationist, Basedow, was almost alone when, by practice and by
precept, he sought to establish this branch of instruction in schools. [182] A
few years ago, when the German Dürer Bund offered prizes for the best
essays on the training of the young in matters of sex, as many as five
hundred papers were sent in. [183] We may say that during the past ten years
more has been done to influence popular feeling on this question than
during the whole of the preceding century.
Whenever we witness a sudden impulse of zeal and enthusiasm to rush into
a new channel, however admirable the impulse may be, we must be
prepared for many risks and perhaps even a certain amount of damage. This
is, indeed, especially the case when we are concerned with a new activity in
the sphere of sex. The sexual relationships of life are so ancient and so
wide, their roots ramify so complexly and run so deep, that any sudden
disturbance in this soil, however well-intentioned, is certain to have many
results which were not anticipated by those responsible for it. Any
movement here runs the risk of defeating its own ends, or else, in gaining
them, to render impossible other ends which are of not less value.
In this matter of sexual hygiene we are faced at the outset by the fact that
the very recognition of any such branch of knowledge as "sexual hygiene"
involves not merely a new departure, but the reversal of a policy which has
been accepted, almost without question, for centuries. Among many
primitive peoples, indeed, we know that the boy and girl at puberty are
initiated with solemnity, and even a not unwholesome hardship, into the
responsibilities of adult life, including those which have reference to the
duties and privileges of sex. [184] But in our own traditions scarcely even a
relic of any such custom is preserved. On the contrary, we tacitly maintain a
custom, and even a policy, of silent obscurantism. Parents and teachers have
considered it a duty to say nothing and have felt justified in telling lies, or
"fairy tales," in order to maintain their attitude. The oncoming of puberty,
with its alarming manifestations, especially in the girl, has often left them
unmoved and still silent. They have taken care that our elementary
textbooks of anatomy and physiology, even when written by so independent
and fearless a pioneer as Huxley, should describe the human body
absolutely as though the organs and functions of reproduction had no

existence. The instinct was not thus suppressed; all the inevitable
stimulations which life furnishes to the youthful sexual impulse have
continued in operation. [185] Sexual activities were just as liable to break
out. They were all the more liable to break out, indeed, because fostered by
ignorance, often unconscious of themselves, and not held in check by the
restraints which knowledge and teaching might have furnished. This,
however, has seemed a matter of no concern to the guardians of youth. They
have congratulated themselves if they could pilot the youths, and especially
the maidens, under their guardianship into the haven of matrimony not only
in apparent chastity, but in ignorance of nearly everything that marriage
signifies and involves, alike for the individual and the coming race.
This policy has been so firmly established that the theory of it has never
been clearly argued out. So far as it exists at all, it is a theory that walks on
two feet pointing opposite ways: sex things must not be talked about
because they are "dirty"; sex things must not be talked about because they
are "sacred." We must leave sex things alone, they say, because God will
see to it that they manifest themselves aright and work for good; we must
leave sex things alone, they also say, because there is no department in life
in which the activity of the Devil is so specially exhibited. The very same
person may be guilty of this contradiction, when varying circumstances
render it convenient. Such a confusion is, indeed, a fate liable to befall all
ancient and deeply rooted tabus; we see it in the tabus against certain
animals as foods (as the Mosaic prohibition of pork); at first the animal was
too sacred to eat, but in time people came to think that it is too disgusting to
eat. They begin the practice for one reason, they continue it for a totally
opposed reason. Reasons are such a superficial part of our lives!
Thus every movement of sexual hygiene necessarily clashes against an
established convention which is itself an inharmonious clash of
contradictory notions. This is especially the case if sexual hygiene is
introduced by way of the school. It is very widely held by many who accept
the arguments so ably set forth by Frau Maria Lischnewska, that the school
is not only the best way of introducing sexual hygiene, but the only possible
way, since through this channel alone is it possible to employ an antidote to
the evil influences of the home and the world. [186] Yet to teach children
what some of their parents consider as too sacred to be taught, and others as
too disgusting, and to begin this teaching at an age when the children,

having already imbibed these parental notions, are old enough to be
morbidly curious and prurient, is to open the way to a complicated series of
social reactions which demand great skill to adjust.
Largely, no doubt, from anxiety to counterbalance these dangers, there has
been a tendency to emphasize, or rather to over-emphasize, the moral
aspects of sexual hygiene. Rightly considered, indeed, it is not easy to over-
value its moral significance. But in the actual teaching of such hygiene it is
quite easy, and the error is often found, to make statements and to affirm
doctrines—all in the interests of good morals and with the object of
exhibiting to the utmost the beneficial tendencies of this teaching—which
are dubious at the best and often at variance with actual experience. In such
cases we seem to see that the sexual hygienist has indeed broken with the
conventional conspiracy of silence in these matters, but he has not broken
with the conventional morality which grew out of that ignorant silence.
With the best intention in the world he sets forth, dogmatically and without
qualification, ancient half-truths which to become truly moral need to be
squarely faced with their complementary half-truths. The inevitable danger
is that the pupil sooner or later grasps the one-sided exaggeration of this
teaching, and the credit of the sexual hygienist is gone. Life is an art, and
love, which lies at the heart of life, is an art; they are not science; they
cannot be converted into clear-cut formulæ and taught as the multiplication
table is taught. Example here counts for more than precept, and practice
teaches more than either, provided it is carried on in the light of precept and
example. The rash and unqualified statements concerning the immense
benefits of continence, or the awful results of self-abuse, etc., frequently
found in books for young people will occur to every one. Stated with wise
moderation they would have been helpful. Pushed to harsh extravagance
they are not only useless to aid the young in their practical difficulties, but
become mischievous by the injury they inflict on over-sensitive
consciences, fearful of falling short of high-strung ideals. This
consideration brings us, indeed, to what is perhaps the chief danger in the
introduction of any teaching of sexual hygiene: the fact that our teachers are
themselves untaught. Sexual hygiene in the full sense—in so far as it
concerns individual action and not the regulative or legislative action of
communities—is the art of imparting such knowledge as is needed at
successive stages by the child, the youth and maiden, the young man and

woman, in order to enable them to deal rightly, and so far as possible
without injury either to themselves or to others, with all those sexual events
to which every one is naturally liable. To fulfil his functions adequately the
master in the art of teaching sexual hygiene must answer to three
requirements: (1) he must have a sufficing knowledge of the facts of sexual
psychology, sexual physiology, and sexual pathology, knowledge which, in
many important respects, hardly existed at all until recently, and is only
now beginning to become generally accessible; (2) he must have a wise and
broad moral outlook, with a sane idealism which refrains from demanding
impossibilities, and resolutely thrusts aside not only the vulgar platitudes of
worldliness, but the equally mischievous platitudes of an outworn and
insincere asceticism, for the wise sexual hygienist knows, with Pascal, that
"he who tries to be an angel becomes a beast," and is less anxious to make
his pupils ineffective angels than effective men and women, content to say
with Browning, "I may put forth angels' pinions, once unmanned, but not
before"; (3) in addition to sound knowledge and a wise moral outlook, the
sexual hygienist must possess, finally, a genuine sympathy with the young,
an insight into their sensitive shyness, a comprehension of their personal
difficulties, and the skill to speak to them simply, frankly, and humanly. If
we ask ourselves how many of the apostles of sexual hygiene combine
these three essential qualities, we shall probably not be able to name many,
while we may suspect that some do not even possess one of the three
qualifications. If we further consider that the work of sexual hygiene, to be
carried out on a really national scale, demands the more or less active co-
operation of parents, teachers, and doctors, and that parents, teachers, and
doctors are in these matters at present all alike untrained, and usually
prejudiced, we shall realize some of the dangers through which sexual
hygiene must at first pass.
It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to say that, in thus pointing out some of the
difficulties and the risks which must assail every attempt to introduce an
element of effective sexual hygiene into life, I am far from wishing to argue
that it is better to leave things as they are. That is impossible, not only
because we are realizing that our system of incomplete silence is
mischievous, but because it is based on a confusion which contains within
itself the elements of disruption. We have to remember, however, that the

creation of a new tradition cannot be effected in a day. Before we begin to
teach sexual hygiene the teachers must themselves be taught.
There are many who have insisted, and not without reason, on the right of
the parent to control the education of the child. Sexual hygiene introduces
us to another right, the right of the child to control the education of the
parents. For few parents to-day are fitted to exercise the duty of training and
guiding the child in the difficult field of sex without preliminary education,
and such education, to be real and effective, must begin at an early age in
the parents' life. [187]
The school teacher, again, on whom so many rely for the initial stage in
sexual hygiene, is at present often in almost exactly the same stage of
ignorance or prejudice in these matters as his or her pupils. The teacher has
seldom been trained to impart even the most elementary scientific
knowledge of the facts of sex, of reproduction, and of sexual hygiene, and
is more often than not without that personal experience of life in its various
aspects which is required in order to teach wisely in such a difficult field as
that of sex, even if the principle is admitted that the teacher in class, equally
whether addressing one sex or both sexes, is not called upon to go beyond
the scientific, abstract, and objective aspects of sex.
This difficulty of the lack of suitable teachers is not, indeed, insuperable. It
would be largely settled, no doubt, if a wise and thorough course of sexual
hygiene and puericulture formed part of the training of all school teachers,
as, in France, Pinard has proposed for the Normal schools for young
women. Dr. W.O. Henry, in a paper read before the Nebraska State Medical
Association in May, 1911, put forward the proposal: "Let each State have
one or more competent physicians whose duty it shall be to teach these
things to the children in all the public schools of the State from the time
they are eight years of age. The boys and girls should be given the
instruction separately by means of charts, pictures, and stereopticon views,
beginning with the lower forms of life, flowers, plants, and then closing
with the organs in man. These lectures and illustrations should be given
every year to all the boys and girls separately, having those from eight to
ten together at one time, and those from ten to twelve, and those from over
twelve to sixteen." Dr. Henry was evidently not aware that the principle of a
special teacher appointed by Government to give special instruction in

matters of sex in all State schools had already been adopted in Canada, in
the province of Ontario; the teacher thus appointed goes from school to
school and teaches the elements of sexual physiology and anatomy, and the
duty of treating sexual matters with reverence, to classes of boys and of
girls from the age of ten. The course is not compulsory, but any School
Board may call upon the special teacher to deliver the lectures. This
appointment has met with so much approval that it is proposed to appoint
further teachers on the same lines, women as well as men.
It is not necessary that the school teacher of sex should be a physician. For
personal and particular advice on the concrete difficulties of sex, however,
as well as for the more special and detailed hygiene of the sexual
relationship and the precautions demanded by eugenics, we must call in the
physician. Yet none of these things so far enter the curriculum through
which the physician passes to reach his profession; he is often only a
layman in relation to them. Even if we are assured that these subjects form
part of his scientific equipment, that fact by no means guarantees his tact,
sympathy, and insight in addressing the young, whether by general lectures
or individual interviews, both these being forms of imparting sexual
hygiene for which we may properly call upon the physician, especially
towards the end of the school or college course, and at the outset of any
career in the world. [188]
Undoubtedly we have amongst us many mothers, teachers, and physicians
who are admirably equipped to fulfil their respective parts—elementary,
secondary, and advanced—in the work of sexual hygiene. But so long as
they are few and far apart their influence is negatived, if it is not even
rendered harmful.
It must often be useless for a mother to instil into her little boy respect for
his own body, reverence for the channel of motherhood through which he
entered the world, any sense of the purity of natural functions or the beauty
of natural organs, if outside his home the little boy finds that all other little
boys and girls regard these things as only an occasion for sniggering. It is
idle for the teacher to describe plainly the scientific facts of sex as a
marvellous culmination in the natural unfolding of the world if, outside the
schoolroom, the pupil finds that, in the newspapers and in the general
conversation of adults, this sacred temple is treated as a common sewer, too

filthy to be spoken of, and that the books which contain even the most
necessary descriptions of it are liable to be condemned as "obscene" in the
law courts. [189] It is vain for the physician to explain to young men and
women the subtle and terrible nature of venereal poisons, to declare the
right and the duty of both partners in marriage to know, authoritatively and
beforehand, the state of each other's health, or to warn them that a proper
sense of responsibility towards the race must prevent some ill-born persons
from marrying, or at all events from procreating, if the young man and
woman find, on leaving the physician, that their acquaintances are prepared
to accept all these risks, light-heartedly, in the dark, in a heedless dream
from which they somehow hope there will be no awful awakening.
The moral to which these observations point is fairly clear. Sex penetrates
the whole of life. It is not a branch of mathematics, or a period of ancient
history, which we can elect to teach, or not to teach, as may seem best to us,
which if we teach we may teach as we choose, and if we neglect to teach it
will never trouble us. Love and Hunger are the foundations of life, and the
impulse of sex is just as fundamental as the impulse of nutrition. It will not
remain absent because we refuse to call for its presence, it will not depart
because we find its presence inconvenient. At the most it will only change
its shape, and mock at us from beneath masks so degraded, and sometimes
so exalted, that we are no longer able to recognize it.
"People are always writing about education," said Chamfort more than a
century ago, "and their writings have led to some valuable methods. But
what is the use, unless side by side with the introduction of such methods,
corresponding reforms are not introduced in legislation, in religion, in
public opinion? The only object of education is to conform the child's
reason to that of the community. But if there is no corresponding reform in
the community, by training the child to reason you are merely training him
to see the absurdity of opinions and customs consecrated by the seal of
sacred authority, public or legislative, and you are inspiring him with
contempt of them." [190] We cannot too often meditate on these wise words.
It is useless to attempt to introduce sexual hygiene as a subject apart, and in
some respects it may be dangerous. When we touch sex we are touching
sensitive fibres which thrill through the whole of our social organism, just
as the touch of love thrills through the whole of the bodily organism. Any

vital reform here, any true introduction of sexual hygiene to replace our
traditional policy of confused silence, affects the whole of life or it affects
nothing. It will modify our social conventions, enter our family life,
transform our moral outlook, perhaps re-inspire our religion and our
philosophy.
That conclusion need by no means render us pessimistic concerning the
future of sexual hygiene, nor unduly anxious to cling to the policy of the
past. But it may induce us to be content to move slowly, to prepare our
movements widely and firmly, and not to expect too much at the outset. By
introducing sexual hygiene we are breaking with the tradition of the past
which professed to leave the process by which the race is carried on to
Nature, to God, especially to the devil. We are claiming that it is a matter
for individual personal responsibility, deliberately exercised in the light of
precise knowledge which every young man and woman has a right, or
rather a duty, to possess. That conception of personal responsibility thus
extended to the sphere of sex in the reproduction of the race may well
transform life and alter the course of civilization. It is not merely a reform
in the class-room, it is a reform in the home, in the church, in the law
courts, in the legislature. If sexual hygiene means that, it means something
great, though something which can only come slowly, with difficulty, with
much searching of hearts. If, on the other hand, sexual hygiene means
nothing but the introduction of a new formal catechism, and an occasional
goody-goody perfunctory exhortation, it may be introduced at once, quite
easily, without hurting anyone's feelings. But, really, it will not be worth
worrying about, one way or the other.

[181] For a full discussion of the movement, see Havelock Ellis, Studies in the
Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chaps. II and III.
[182] Basedow (born at Hamburg 1723, died 1790) set forth his views on sexual
education—which will seem to many somewhat radical and advanced even to-
day—in his great treatise Elementarwerk (1774). His practical educational work
is dealt with by Pinloche, La Réforme de l'Education en Allemagne au Dix-
huitième Siècle.
[183] The best of these papers have been printed in a volume entitled Am
Lebensquell.
[841] The elaborate and admirable initiation of boys among the natives of Torres
Straits furnishes a good example of this education, and has been fully described
by Dr. A.C. Haddon, Reports of the Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits,
Vol. V, chaps. VII and XII.
[185] Moll in his wise and comprehensive work, The Sexual Life of the Child
(German ed., p. 225), lays it down emphatically that "we must clearly realize at
the outset that the complete exclusion of sexual stimuli in the education of
children is impossible." He adds that the demands made by some "fanatics of
hygiene" would be dangerous even if they were practicable. Games and physical
exercises induce in many cases a considerable degree of sexual stimulation. But
this need not cause us undue alarm, nor must we thereby be persuaded to change
our policy of recommending such games and exercises.
[186] See Frau Maria Lischnewska's excellent pamphlet, Geschlechtliche
Belehrung der Kinder, first published in Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 4 and 5. This
is perhaps the ablest statement of the argument in favour of giving the chief
place in sexual hygiene to the teacher. Frau Lischnewska recognizes three factors
in the movement for freeing the sexual activities from degradation: (1) medical,
(2) economic, and (3) rational. But it is the last—in the broadest sense as a
comprehensive process of enlightenment—which she regards as the chief. "The
views and sentiments of people must be changed," she says. "The civilized man
must learn to gaze at this piece of Nature with pure eyes; reverence towards it
must early sink into his soul. In the absence of this fundamental renovation,
medical and social measures will merely produce refined animals."
[187] "We parents of to-day," as Henriette Fürth truly says ("Erotik und
Elternpflicht," Am Lebensquell, p. 11), "have not yet attained that beautiful
naturalness out of which in these matters simplicity and freedom grow. And
however willing we may be to learn afresh, most of us have so far lost our
inward freedom from prejudice—the standpoint of the pure to whom all things
are pure—that we cannot acquire it again. We parents of to-day have been
altogether wrongly brought up. The inoculated feeling of shame still remains
even after we have recognized that shame in this connection is false."
[188] The method of imparting a knowledge of sexual hygiene (especially in
relation to venereal diseases) at the outset of adult life has most actively been
carried out in Germany and the United States. In Germany lectures by doctors to
students and others on these matters are frequently given. In the United States
information and advice are spread abroad chiefly by the aid of societies. The

American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, with which the name of
Dr. Morrow is specially connected, was organized in 1905. The Chicago Society
of Social Hygiene was established in 1906. Since then many other similar
societies have sprung up under medical auspices in various American cities and
states.
[189] Many flagrant cases in point are set forth from the legal point of view by
Theodore Schroeder, "Obscene" Literature and Constitutional Law, New York,
1911, chap. IV.
[190] Chamfort, [OE]uvres Choisies, ed. by Lescure, Vol. I, p. 33.

IX

IMMORALITY AND THE LAW

Social Hygiene and Legal Compulsion—The Binding Force of Custom
among Savages—The Dissolving Influence of Civilization—The
Distinction between Immorality and Criminality—Adultery as a Crime
—The Tests of Criminality—National Differences in laying down the
Boundary between Criminal and Immoral Acts—France—Germany—
England—The United States—Police Administration—Police Methods
in the United States—National Differences in the Regulation of the
Trade in Alcohol—Prohibition in the United States—Origin of the
American Method of Dealing with Immorality—Russia—Historical
Fluctuations in Methods of dealing with Immorality and Prostitution—
Homosexuality—Holland—The Age of Consent—Moral Legislation
in England—In the United States—The Raines Law—American
Attempts to Suppress Prostitution—Their Futility—German Methods
of Regulating Prostitution—The Sound Method of Approaching
Immorality—Training in Sexual Hygiene—Education in Personal and
Social Responsibility.

The modern development of Social Hygiene in matters of Eugenics has
already sufficed to show that there are certain people in the community,
anxious to take quick cuts to the millennium, who think that Eugenics can
be promoted by hasty legislation. That method of attempting to further
social progress is not new. It has been practised with signal lack of success

for several thousand years. Therefore, if Social Hygiene is really to progress
among us on sane and fundamental lines, it is necessary for us to realize
clearly the mistakes of the past. Again and again the blind haste of over-
zealous reformers has led not to progress, but to retrogression. The
excellent intentions of such social reformers have been defeated, not so
much by the evils they have sought to overcome, as by their own excesses
of ignorant zeal. As our knowledge of history and of psychology increases,
we learn that, in dealing with human nature, what seems the longest way
round is sometimes the shortest way home.
Among savages, and no doubt in primitive societies generally, the social
reaction against injurious or even unusual acts on the part of individuals is
regulated by the binding force of custom. The ruling opinion is the opinion
of all, the ruling custom is the duty for all. The dictates of custom, even of
ritual and etiquette, are stringent dictates of morality binding upon all, and
the breach of any is equivalent to what we should consider a crime. The
savage man is held in the path of duty by a much more united force of
public opinion than is the civilized man. But, as Westermarck points out, in
a suggestive chapter on customs and laws as the expression of moral ideas,
"custom never covers the whole field of morality, and the uncovered space
grows larger in proportion as the moral consciousness develops.... The rule
of custom is the rule of duty at early stages of development. Only progress
in culture lessens its sway." [191] As a community increases in size and in
cultivation, growing more heterogeneous, it adheres rigidly to fundamental
conceptions of right and wrong, but in less fundamental matters its moral
ideas become both more subjective and more various. If a man kills another
man out of love to that man's wife, all civilized society is of opinion that the
homicide is a "crime" to be severely punished; but if the man should make
love to the wife without killing the husband, then, although in some savage
societies the act would still have been a "crime," in a civilized society it
would usually be regarded as more properly a case for civil action, not for
criminal action; while should it come to be known that the wife had from
the first been in love with the man, and was married by compulsion to a
husband who had brutally ill-used her, then a very considerable section of
the civilized community would actually transfer their sympathies to the
offending couple and look upon the husband as the real offender.

This is why the vestigial relics of the ancient ecclesiastical view of adultery
as a "crime" are no longer supported by public opinion; [192] they are no
longer enforced, or else the penalty is reduced to ridiculous dimensions (as
in France, where a fine of a few francs may be imposed), and there is a
general inclination to abolish them altogether. Penalties for adultery are not
nowadays enacted afresh, except in the United States, where medieval
regulations are enabled to survive through the strength of the Puritan
tradition. Thus in the State of New York a law was passed in 1907 rendering
any person guilty of adultery punishable by six months' imprisonment, or a
heavy fine, or both. The law was largely due to agitation by the National
Christian League for the Promotion of Purity; it was supposed the law
would act to prevent adultery. Less than three months after the Act became
law, lawyers reached the conclusion that it was a dead letter. During the two
years after its enactment, notwithstanding the large number of divorces,
only three persons were sent to prison, for a few days, under this Act, and
only four fined a small sum. The Committee of Fourteen state that it is "of
practically no effect," and add: "The preventive values of this statute cannot
be determined, but, judging from the prosecutions, it has proved an
ineffective weapon against immorality, and has practically no effect upon
commercialized vice." [193] When such laws remain on the Statute Book as
relics of practically medieval days they deserve a certain respect, even if it
is impossible to enforce them; to re-enact them in modern times is a
gratuitous method of bringing law into contempt.
It is clear that all such cases affecting morals are not only altered by
circumstances, and by consideration of the psychic state of the individual,
but that in regard to them different sections of the community hold widely
different views. The sanctions of the criminal law to be firm and
unshakeable must be capable of literal interpretation and of unfailing
execution, and in that interpretation and execution be accepted as just by the
whole community. But as soon as law enters the sphere of morals this
becomes impossible; law loses all its certainty and all the reverence that
rightly belongs to it. It no longer voices the conscience of the whole
community; it tends to be merely an expression of the feelings of a small
upper-class social circle; the feelings and the habits and the necessities of
the mass of the population are altogether ignored. [194] Nor are such
legislative incursions into the sphere of morals any more satisfactory from

the point of view of the class which is responsible for them. It very soon
begins to be felt that, as Hagen puts it, "the formulas of penal law are stiff
and clumsy instruments which can only in the rarest instance serve to
disentangle the delicate and manifoldly interwoven threads of the human
soul, and decide what is just and what unjust. Formulas are adopted for
simple, uncomplicated, rough everyday cases. Only in such cases do they
achieve the conquest of justice over injustice."
It is true that no sharp line divides criminal acts from merely immoral acts,
and the latter tend to be indirectly, even when not directly, anti-social. It
would be highly convenient if we could draw a sharp distinction between
major anti-social acts, which may properly be described as "crime," and
justly be pursued with the full rigour of the law, and minor anti-social acts,
which may be left to the varying reaction of the social environments since
they cannot properly be visited by the criminal law. [195] Such a distinction
exists, but it cannot be made sharply because there are a large number of
intermediate anti-social acts which some sections of the community regard
as major, while others regard them as minor, or even, in some cases, as not
anti-social at all. The only convenient test we can apply is the strength of
the social reaction—provided we are dealing with an act which is definitely
anti-social, injuring recognized rights, and not merely an unusual or
disgusting act. [196] When an anti-social act meets with a reaction of social
indignation which is fairly universal and permanent, it may be regarded as a
crime coming under the jurisdiction of the law. If opinion varies, if a
considerable section of the community revolt against the punishment of the
alleged anti-social act, then we are not entitled to dignify it with the
appellation of "crime." This is not an altogether sure or satisfactory criterion
because there are frequently times and places, especially under the
stimulation of some particular occurrence evoking an outburst of increased
public emotion, when a section of the community succeeds by its noisy
vigour in creating the impression that it voices the universal will. But, on
the whole, it works out justly. Ethical standards differ in different places at
different times. They are, indeed, always changing. Therefore, in regard to
all matters which belong to the sphere of what we commonly call morals,
there are in every community some who approve of a given act, others who
disapprove of it, yet others who regard it with indifference. In such a
shifting sphere we cannot legislate with the certainty of carrying the whole

community with us, nor can we properly introduce the word "crime," which
ought to indicate only an action of so gravely anti-social nature that there
can be no possibility of doubt about it.
It is, however, important to understand the marked national differences in
the reaction to these slightly or dubiously anti-social acts, for such
differences rest on ancient tradition, and are to some extent the expression
of the genius of a people, though they are not the absolutely immutable
product of racial constitution, and, within limits, they undergo
transformation. It thus happens that acts which in some countries are
pursued by the law and punished as crime, are in other countries untouched
by the law, and left to the social reaction of the community. It becomes,
therefore, of some importance to compare national differences in the
attitude towards immorality, to find out whether the attempt to repress it
directly, by law, is more effective, or less effective, than the method of
leaving it to social reaction.
In many respects France and Germany present a remarkable contrast in their
respective methods of dealing with immorality. The contrast has only
existed since the sweeping legal reforms which followed the Revolution in
France. In old France the laws against sexual and religious offences were
extremely severe, involving in some cases death at the stake, and even
during the eighteenth century this extreme penalty of the law was
sometimes carried out. The police were active, their methods of
investigation elaborate and thorough, yet the rigour of the law and the
energy of the police signally failed to suppress irreligion and immorality in
eighteenth-century France. The Revolution, by popularizing the opinions of
the more enlightened men of the time, and by giving to the popular voice an
authority it had never possessed before, remoulded the antiquated
ecclesiastical laws in accordance with the ideas of the average modern man.
In 1791 nearly all the ancient laws against immorality, which had proved so
ineffectual, were flung away, and when in 1810 Napoleon established the
great penal code which bears his name, he was careful to limit to a
minimum the moral offences of which the law was empowered to take
cognisances, and—acting certainly in accordance with deeply rooted
instincts of the French people—he avoided any useless or dangerous
interference with private life and the freedom of the individual. The penal
code in France remains substantially the same to-day, while the other

countries which have constructed their codes on the French model have
shown similar tendencies.
In Germany, and more especially in Prussia, which now dominates German
opinion, a very different tendency prevails. The German feels nothing of
that sensitive jealousy with which the French seek to guard private life and
the rights of the individual. He tolerates a police system which, as Fuld has
pointed out, is the most military police system in the world, and he makes
little complaint of the indiscriminating thoroughness, even harshness, with
which it exercises its functions. "The North German," as a German lawyer
puts it, "gazes with sacred respect on every State authority, and on every
official, especially on executive and police functionaries; he complacently
accepts police inquisition into his private life, and the regulation of his
behaviour by law and police affects his impulse of freedom in a relatively
slight manner. Hence the law-maker's interference with his private life
seems to him a customary and not too injurious encroachment on his
individuality." [197] It thus comes about that a great many acts, of for the
most part unquestioned immoral character—such as incest, the procuring of
women for immoral purposes, and acts of a homosexual character—which,
when adults are alone concerned, the French leave to be dealt with by the
social reaction, are in Germany directly dealt with by the law. These things
and the like are viewed in France with fully as much detestation as in
Germany, but while the German considers that that detestation is itself a
reason for inflicting a legal penalty on the detested act, the Frenchman
considers that to inflict a punishment upon such acts by law is an
inadmissible interference of the State in private affairs, and an unnecessary
interference since the social reaction is quite adequate. In Germany, Dr.
Wilhelm points out, a man who allows his daughter's fiancé to stay
overnight in his house with her is liable to be dragged before the police
court and sent to prison for procuring immorality; [198] to a Frenchman this
is a shocking and inconceivable insult to private rights. [199] So also with
the German legal attitude towards sexual inversion. The German method of
dragging private scandals into the glare of day and investigating them at
interminable length in the law courts is a perpetual source of astonishment
to Frenchmen. They point out that not only does this method defeat its own
end by concentrating attention on the abnormal practices it attacks, but it
adds dignity to them; a certain small section of the community justifies and

upholds these practices, but while in France this section has no reason to
come prominently before the public since it has no grievances demanding
redress, in Germany the existence of a cause to advocate in the name of
justice has produced a serious and imposing body of literature which has no
parallel in France. [200] Thus, as Wilhelm points out, we find exactly
opposite methods adopted in Germany and France to obtain the same ends:
"In Germany, punishment on account of alleged injury to general interests;
in France absence of punishment in order to avoid injury to general
interests; in Germany the police baton is called for in order to ward off
threatened injury, while in France it is feared that the use of the police baton
will itself cause the injury."
The question naturally arises: Which method is the more effective? Wilhelm
finds that these differences in national attitude towards immorality have not
by any means rendered immorality more prevalent in France than in
Germany; on the contrary, though extra-conjugal intercourse is in Germany
almost a crime, sexual offences against children are far more prevalent than
in France, while family life is at least as stable in France as in Germany, and
more intimate. "The freer way of regarding sexual matters and its results in
legislation have, as compared to Germany, in no respect led to more
immoral conditions, while, on the other hand, it has been the reason why
the vigorous agitation which we find in Germany for certain legal reforms
in respect to sexuality are quite unknown."
It is forgotten, in Germany and in some other countries, sometimes even in
France, that to bring immorality within reach of the arm of the law is not
necessarily by any means to make the actual penalty, in the largest sense of
the term, more severe. So long as he retains the good opinion of his fellows,
imprisonment is no injury to a man; it has happened to some of our most
distinguished and respected public men. The bad opinion of his fellows,
even when the law is powerless to touch him, is often an irretrievable injury
to a man. We do not fortify the social reaction, in most matters, when we
attempt to give it a legal sanction; we do not even need to fortify it, for it is
sometimes harsher and more severe than the law, overlooking or not
knowing all the extenuating circumstances. In France, as in England, the
force of social opinion, independently of the law, is exceedingly and
perhaps excessively strong.

In England, however, we see an attitude towards immorality which differs
alike from the French attitude and the German attitude, though it has points
of contact with both. The distinctive feature of the Englishman's attitude is
his spirit of extreme individualism (which distinguishes him from the
German) combined with the religious nature of his moral fervour (which
distinguishes him from the Frenchman), both being veiled by a shy prudery
(which distinguishes him alike from the Frenchman and the German). The
Englishman's reverence for the individual's rights goes beyond the
Frenchman's, for in France there is a tendency to subordinate the individual
to the family, and in England the interests of the individual predominate.
But while in France the laws have been re-moulded to the national
temperament, this has not been the case to anything like the same extent in
England, where in modern times no great revolution has occurred to shake
off laws which still by their antiquity, rather than by their reasonableness,
retain the reverence of the people. Thus it comes about that, on the legal
side the English attitude towards immorality in many respects resembles the
German attitude. Yet undoubtedly the most fundamental element in the
English attitude is the instinct for personal freedom, and even the religious
fervour of the moral impulse has strengthened the individualistic element.
[201]
We see this clearly in the fact that England has even gone beyond
France in rejecting the control of prostitutes. The French are striving to
abolish such control, but in England where it was never extensively
established it has long been abolished, leaving only a few faint traces
behind. It is abhorrent to the English mind that even the most degraded
specimens of humanity should be compulsorily deprived of rights over their
own persons, even when it is claimed that the deprivation of such rights
might be for the benefit of the community. In no country, perhaps, is the
prostitute so free to parade the streets in the exercise of her profession as in
England, and in no country is public opinion so intolerant of even the
suspicion of a mistake by the police in the exercise of that very limited
control over prostitutes which they possess. The freedom of the prostitute in
England is further guaranteed by the very fervour of English religious
feeling; for active interference with prostitutes involves regulation of
prostitution, and that implies a national recognition of prostitution which to
a very large section of the English people would be altogether repellant.
Thus English love of freedom and English love of God combine to protect
the prostitute. It has to be added that this result is by no means, as some

have imagined, hostile to morality. It is the opinion of many foreign
observers that in this matter London, for all its freedom, compares
favourably with many other large cities where prostitution is severely
regulated by the police and so far as possible concealed. For the police can
never become the agents of any morality of the heart, and all the repression
in the world can only touch the surface of life.
The English attitude, again, is characteristically seen in the method of
dealing with homosexual practices and other similar sexual aberrations.
Here, legally, England is closer to Germany than to modern France. No
country in the world, it is often said, has preserved by tradition and even
maintained by recent accretion such severe penalties against homosexual
offences as England. Yet, unlike the Germans, the English do not actively
prosecute in these cases and are usually content to leave the law in
abeyance, so long as public order and decency are reasonably maintained.
English people, like the French people, are by no means impressed by the
advantages of the German system by which purely private scandals are
made public scandals, to be set forth day after day in all their details before
the court, and discussed excitedly by the whole population. Yet the English
law in this matter is still very widely upheld. There are very many English
people who think that the fact that homosexuality is disgusting to most
people is a reason for punishing it with extreme severity. Yet disgust is a
matter of taste, we cannot properly impart it into our laws; a disgusting
person is not necessarily a criminal person, or we shall have to enact that
many inmates of our hospitals and lunatic asylums be hanged. There is thus
a fundamental inconsistency in the English method of dealing with
immorality; it is made up of opposite views, some of them extreme in
contrary directions. But by virtue of the national tendency to compromise,
these conflicting tendencies work in a fairly harmonious manner. The result
is that the general state of English morality—notwithstanding, and perhaps
partly by reason of, its prudish anxiety to leave unpleasant matters alone—
is at least as satisfactory as that of countries where much more logical and
thorough methods are in favour.
In the United States we see yet another attitude towards immorality. It is,
indeed, related to the English attitude, necessarily so, since the most ancient
and fundamental element of it was carried over to America by the English
Puritans, who cherished in the extreme form alike the English passion for

individualism and the English fervour of religious idealism. These germs
have been too potent for destruction even under all the new influences of
American life. But they are not altogether in harmony with those influences,
and the result has been that the American attitude towards immorality has
sometimes looked rather like a caricature of the English method. The influx
of a vast and racially confused population with the over-rapid development
of urbanization which has necessarily followed, opens an immense field for
idealistic individualism to attempt reforms. But this individualism has not
been held in check by the English spirit of compromise, which is not a part
of Puritanism, and it has thus tended alike to excess and to impotence. This
result is brought about partly by facilities for individualistic legislation not
voicing the tendencies of the whole population, and therefore fatally
condemned to sterility, and partly by the fact that in a new and rapidly
developed civilization it is impossible to secure an army of functionaries
who may be trusted to deal with the regulation of delicate and complex
moral questions in regard to which the community is not really agreed. The
American police are generally admitted to be open with special frequency
to the charge of ineffectiveness and venality. It is not so often realized that
these defects are fostered by the impossible nature of the tasks which are
imposed on the American police.
This aspect of the matter has been very clearly set forth by Dr. Fuld, of
Columbia University, in his able and thorough book on police
administration. [202] He shows that, though the American police system as a
system has defects which need to be remedied, it is not true that the
individual members of the American police forces are inferior to those of
other countries; on the contrary, they are, in some respects, superior; it is
not a large proportion which sells the right to break the law. [203] Their most
serious defects are due to the impracticable laws and regulations made by
inexperienced legislators. These laws and ordinances in many cases cannot
possibly be enforced, and the weak police officers accept money from the
citizen for not enforcing rules which in any case they could not enforce.
"The American police forces," says Fuld, "have been corrupted almost
solely by the statutes.... The real blame attaches not to the policeman who
accepts a bribe temptingly offered him, nor to the bribe-giver who seeks by
giving a bribe to make the best possible business arrangement, but rather to
the law, which by giving the police a large and uncontrolled discretion in

the enforcement of the law places a premium upon bribe-giving and bribe-
taking." This state of things is rendered possible by the fact that the duties
of the police are not confined to matters affecting crime and public order—
matters which the whole community consider essential, and in regard to
which any police negligence is counted a serious charge—but are extended
to unessential matters which a considerable section of the community,
including many of the police themselves, view with complete indifference.
It is impossible to regard seriously a conspiracy to defeat laws which a large
proportion of citizens regard as unnecessary or even foolish. It thus
unfortunately comes about that the charge brought against the American
police that "it sells the right to break the law" has not the same grave
significance which it would have in most countries, for the rights purchased
in America may in most countries be obtained without purchase. "An act
ought to be made criminal," as Fuld rightly lays down, "only when it is
socially expedient to punish its criminality.... The American people, or at
least the American legislators, do not make this clear distinction between
vice and crime. There seems to be a feeling in America that unless a vice is
made a crime, the State countenances the vice and becomes a party to its
commission. There are unfortunately a large number of men in the
community who believe that they have satisfied the demands made upon
them to lead a virtuous life by incorporating into some statute the
condemnation of a particular vicious act as a crime." [204] This special
characteristic of American laws, with its failure to distinguish between vice
and crime, is clearly a legacy of the early Puritans. The Puritans carried
over to New England independent autonomous laws of morality, and were
contemptuous of external law. The sturdy pioneers of the first generation
were faithful to that attitude, and were not even guilty of punishing witches.
But, when the opportunity came, their descendants could not resist the
temptation to erect an external law of morals, and, like the Calvinists of
Geneva, they set up an inquisition backed by the secular arm. It was not
until the days of Emerson that American Puritanism regained autonomous
freedom and moved in the same air as Milton. But in the meantime the
mischief had been done. Even to-day an inquisition of the mails has been
established in the United States. It is said to be unconstitutional, and one
can well believe that that is so, but none the less it flourishes under the
protection of what a famous American has called "the never-ending
audacity of elected persons." But to allow subordinate officials to

masquerade in the Postal Department as familiars of the inquisition, in the
supposed interests of public morals, is a dangerous policy. [205] Its
deadening influence on national life cannot fail sooner or later to be
realized by Americans. To moralize by statute is idle and unsatisfactory
enough; but it is worse to attempt to moralize by the arbitrary dicta of minor
government officials.
It is interesting to observe the methods which find favour in some parts of
the United States for dealing with the trade in alcoholic liquors. Alcohol is,
on the one hand, a poison; on the other hand, it is the basis of the national
drinks of every civilized country. Every state has felt called upon to regulate
its sale to more or less extent, in such a way that (1) in the interests of
public health alcohol may not be too easily or too cheaply obtainable, that
(2) the restraints on its sale may be a source of revenue to the State, and that
(3) at the same time this regulation of the sale may not be a vexatious and
useless attempt to interfere unduly with national customs. States have
sought to attain these ends in various ways. The sale of alcohol may be
made a State monopoly, as in Russia, or, again, it may be carried on under
disinterested municipal or other control, as by the Gothenburg system of
Sweden or the Samlag system of Norway. [206] In England the easier and
more usual plan is adopted of heavily taxing the sale, with, in addition,
various minor methods for restraining the sale of alcoholic drinks and
attempting to improve the conditions under which they are sold.
In France an ingenious method of influencing the sale of alcohol has lately
been adopted, in the interests of public health, which has proved completely
successful. The French national drink is light wine, which may be procured
in abundance, of excellent and wholesome quality and very cheaply,
provided it is not heavily taxed. But of recent years there has been a
tendency in France to consume in large quantity the heavy alcoholic spirits,
often of a specially deleterious kind. The plan has been adopted of placing a
very high duty on distilled beverages and reducing the duty on the light
wines, as well as beer, so that a wholesome and genuine wine can be
supplied to the consumer at as low a price as beer. As a result the French
consumer has shown a preference for the cheap and wholesome wine which
is really his national drink, and there is an enormous fall in the consumption
of spirits. Whereas formerly the consumption of brandy in French towns

amounted to seven or eight litres of absolute alcohol per head, it has now
fallen in the large towns to 4.23 litres. [207]
In America, however, there is a tendency to deal with the sale of alcohol
totally opposed to that which nearly everywhere prevails in Europe. When
in Europe a man abandons the use of alcohol he makes no demand on his
fellow men to follow his example, or, if he does, he is usually content to
employ moral suasion to gain this end. But in the United States, where there
is no single national drink, a large number of people have abandoned the
use of alcohol, and have persuaded themselves that its use by other people
is a vice, for it is not universally recognized that—"Selfishness is not living
as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
Moreover, as in the United States the medieval confusion between vice and
crime still subsists among a section of the population, being a part of the
national tradition, it became easy to regard the drinking of alcohol as a
crime and to make it punishable. Hence we have "Prohibition," which has
prevailed in various States of the Union and is especially associated with
Maine, where it was established in a crude form so long ago as 1846 and
(except for a brief interval between 1856 and 1858) has prevailed until to-
day. The law has never been effective. It has been made more and more
stringent; the wildest excuses of arbitrary administration have been
committed; scandals have constantly occurred; officials of iron will and
determination have perished in the faith that if only they put enough energy
into the task the law might, after all, be at last enforced. It was all in vain. It
has always been easy in the cities of Maine for those to obtain alcohol who
wished to obtain it. Finally, in 1911, by a direct Referendum, the majority
by which the people of Maine are maintaining Prohibition has been brought
down to 700 in a total poll of 120,000, while all the large towns have voted
for the repeal of Prohibition by enormous majorities. The people of Maine
are evidently becoming dimly conscious that it is worse than useless to
make laws which no human power can enforce. "The result of the vote,"
writes Mr. Arthur Sherwell, an English social Reformer, not himself
opposed to temperance legislation, "from every point of view, and not least
from the point of view of temperance, is eminently unsatisfactory, and it
unquestionably creates a position of great difficulty and embarrassment for
the authorities. A majority of 700 in a total poll of 120,000 is clearly not a
sufficient mandate for a drastic law which previous experience has

conclusively shown cannot be enforced successfully in the urban districts of
the State." Successful enforcement of prohibition on a State basis would
appear to be hopeless. The history of Prohibition in Maine will for ever
form an eloquent proof of the mischief which comes when the ancient
ecclesiastical failure to distinguish between the sphere of morals and the
sphere of law is perpetuated under the conditions of modern life. The
attempt to force men to render unto Cæsar the things which are God's must
always end thus.
In these matters we witness in America the survival of an ancient tradition.
The early Puritans were individualists, it is true, but their individualism
took a theocratic form, and, in the name of God, they looked upon crimes
and vices equally and indistinguishably as sins. We see exactly the same
point of view in the Penitentials of the ninth century, which were
ecclesiastical codes dealing, exactly in the same spirit and in the same way,
with crime and with vice, recognizing nothing but a certain difference in
degree between murder and masturbation. In the ninth century, and even
much later, in Calvin's Geneva and Cotton Mather's New England, it was
possible to carry into practice this theocratic conception of the unity of
vices and crimes and the punishment as sins of both alike, for the
community generally accepted that point of view. But that is very far from
being the case in the United States of to-day. The result is that in America in
this respect we find a condition of things analogous to that which existed in
France, before the Revolution remoulded the laws in accordance with the
temperament of the nation. Laws and regulations of the medieval kind, for
the moral ordering of the smallest details of life, are still enacted in
America, but they are regarded with growing contempt by the community
and even by the administrators of the laws. It is realized that such minute
inquisition into the citizen's private life can only be effectively carried out
where the citizen himself recognizes the divine right of the inquisitor. But
the theocratic conception of life no longer corresponds to American ideas or
American customs; this minute moral legislation rests on a basis which in
the course of centuries has become rotten. Thus it has come about that
nowhere in the world is there so great an anxiety to place the moral
regulation of social affairs in the hands of the police; nowhere are the police
more incapable of carrying out such regulation.

When we thus bear in mind the historical aspect of the matter we can
understand how it has come about that the individualistic idealist in
America has been much more resolute than in England to effect reforms,
much more determined that they shall be very thorough and extreme
reforms, and, especially, much more eager to embody his moral aspirations
in legal statutes. But his tasks are bigger than in England, because of the
vast, unstable, heterogeneous and crude population he has to deal with, and
because, at the same time, he has no firmly established centralized and
reliable police instrument whereby to effect his reforms. The fiery American
moral idealist is determined to set out for the Kingdom of Heaven at once,
but every steed he mounts proves broken-winded, and speedily drops down
by the wayside. Don Quixote sets the lance at rest and digs his spurs into
Rosinante's flanks, but he fails to realize that, in our modern world, he will
never bear him anywhere near the foe.
If we wish to see a totally different national method of regarding immorality
we may turn to Russia. Here also we find idealism at work, but it is not the
same kind of idealism, since, far from desiring to express itself by force, its
essential basis is an absolute disbelief in force. Russia, like France, has
inherited from an ancient ecclesiastical domination an extremely severe
code of regulations against immorality and all sexual aberrations, but,
unlike France, it has not cast them off in order to mould the laws in
accordance with national temperament. The essence of the Russian attitude
in these matters is a sympathy with the individual which is stronger than
any antipathy aroused by his immoral acts; his act is a misfortune rather
than a sin or a crime. We may observe this attitude in the kindly and helpful
fashion in which the Russian assists along the streets his fellow-man who
has drunk too much vodka, and, on a higher plane, we see the same spirit of
forgiving human tenderness in the Russian novelists, most clearly in the
greatest and most typically national, in Dostoieffsky and in Tolstoy. The
harsh rigidity of the old Russian laws had not the slightest influence, either
in changing this national attitude or in diminishing the prevalence, at the
very least as great as elsewhere, of sexual laxity or sexual aberration.
Nowadays, as Russia attains national self-consciousness, these laws against
immorality are being slowly remoulded in accordance with the national
temperament, and in some respects—as in its attitude towards
homosexuality and the introduction in 1907 of what is practically divorce

by mutual consent—they allow a freedom and latitude scarcely equalled in
any other country. [208]
Undoubtedly there is, within certain limits, mutual action and reaction in
these matters among nations. Thus the influence of France has led to the
abolition of the penalty against homosexual practices in many countries,
notably Holland, Spain, Portugal, and, more recently, Italy, while even in
Germany there is a strong and influential party, among legal as well as
medical authorities, in favour of taking the same step. On the other hand,
France has in some matters of detail departed from her general principle in
these matters, and has, for instance—without doubt in an altogether
justifiable manner—taken part in the international movement against what
is called the white slave trade. This mutual reaction of nations is well
recognized by the more alert and progressive minds in every country,
jealous of any undue interference with liberty. When, for instance, a Bill is
introduced in the English Parliament for promoting inquisitorial and
vexatious interference with matters that are not within the sphere of
legislation it is eagerly discussed in Germany before even its existence is
known to most people in England, not so much out of interest in English
Affairs as from a sensitive dread that English example may affect German
legislation. [209]
Not only, indeed, have we to recognize the existence of these clearly
marked and profound differences in legislative reaction to immorality. We
have also to realize that at different periods there are general movements, to
some extent overpassing national bounds, of rise and of fall in this reaction.
A sudden impulse seizes on a community, and spreads to other
communities, to attempt to suppress some form of immorality by law. Such
attempts, as we know, have always ended in failure or worse than failure,
for laws against immorality are either not carried out, or, if they are carried
out, it is at once realized that new evils are created worse than the original
evils, and the laws speedily fall into abeyance or are repealed. That has
been repeatedly seen, and is well illustrated by the history of prostitution, a
sexual manifestation which for two thousand years all sorts of persons in
authority have sought to suppress off-hand by law or by administrative fiat.
From the time when Christianity gained full political power, prostitution
has again and again been prohibited, under the severest penalties, but

always in vain. The mightiest emperors—Theodosius, Valentinian,
Justinian, Karl the Great, St. Louis, Frederick Barbarossa—all had occasion
to discover that might was here in vain, and worse than in vain, that they
could not always obey their own moral ordinances, still less coerce their
subjects into doing so, and that even so far as, on the surface, they were
successful they produced results more pernicious than the evils they sought
to suppress. The best known and one of the most vigorous of these attempts
was that of the Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna; but all the cruelty and
injustice of that energetic effort, and all the stringent, ridiculous, and brutal
regulations it involved—its prohibition of short dresses, its inspection of
billiard-rooms, its handcuffing of waitresses, its whippings and its tortures
—proved useless and worse than useless, and were soon quietly dropped.
[210]
No more fortunate were more recent municipal attempts in England
and America (Portsmouth, Pittsburgh, New York, etc.) to suppress
prostitution off-hand; for the most part they collapsed even in a few days.
The history of the legal attempts to suppress homosexuality shows the same
results. It may even be said to show more, for when the laws against
homosexuality are relaxed or abolished, homosexuality becomes, not
perhaps less prevalent (in so far as it is a congenital anomaly we cannot
expect its prevalence to be influenced by law), but certainly less
conspicuous and ostentatious. In France, under the Bourbons, the sexual
invert was a sacrilegious criminal who could legally be burnt at the stake,
but homosexuality flourished openly in the highest circles, and some of the
kings were themselves notoriously inverted. Since the Code Napoléon was
introduced homosexual acts, per se, have never been an offence, yet instead
of flourishing more vigorously, homosexuality has so far receded into the
background that some observers regard it as very rare in France. In
Germany and England, on the other hand, where the antiquated laws against
this perversion still prevail, homosexuality is extremely prominent, and its
right to exist is vigorously championed. The law cannot suppress these
impulses and passions; it can only sting them into active rebellion. [211]
But although it has invariably been seen that all attempts to make men
moral by law are doomed to disappointment, spasmodic attempts to do so
are continually being made afresh. No doubt those who make these attempts
are but a small minority, people whose good intentions are not accompanied
by knowledge either of history or of the world. But though a minority they

can often gain a free field for their activities. The reason is plain. No public
man likes to take up a position which his enemies may interpret as
favourable to vice and probably due to an anxiety to secure legal
opportunities for his own enjoyment of vice. This consideration especially
applies to professional politicians. A Member of Parliament, who must
cultivate an immaculately pure reputation, feels that he is also bound to
record by his vote how anxious he is to suppress other people's immorality.
Thus the philistine and the hypocrite join hands with the simple-minded
idealist. Very few are left to point out that, however desirable it is to prevent
immorality, that end can never be attained by law.
During the past ten years one of these waves of enthusiasm for the
moralization of the public by law has been sweeping across Europe and
America. Its energy is scarcely yet exhausted, and it may therefore be
worthwhile to call attention to it. The movement has shown special activity
in Germany, in Holland, in England, in the United States, and is traceable in
a minor degree in many other countries. In Germany the Lex Heintze in
1900 was an indication of the appearance of this movement, while various
scandals have had the result of attracting an exaggerated amount of
attention to questions of immorality and of tightening the rigour of the law,
though as Germany already holds moral matters in a very complex web of
regulations it can scarcely be said that the new movement has here found
any large field of activity. In Holland it is different. Holland is one of the
traditional lands of freedom; it was the home of independent intellect, of
free religion, of autonomous morals, when every other country in Europe
was closed to these manifestations of the spirit, and something of the same
tradition has always inspired its habits of thought, even when they have
been largely Puritanic. So that there was here a clear field for the movement
to work in, and it has found expression, of a very thorough character
indeed, in the new so-called "Morals Law" which was passed in 1911 after
several weeks' discussion. Undoubtedly this law contains excellent features;
thus the agents of the "white slave trade," who have hitherto been especially
active in Holland, are now threatened with five years' imprisonment. Here
we are concerned with what may fairly be regarded as crime and rightly
punishable as such. But excellent provisions like these are lost to sight in a
great number of other paragraphs which are at best useless and ridiculous,
and at worst vexatious and mischievous in their attempts to limit the free

play of civilization. Thus we find that a year's imprisonment, or a heavy
fine, threatens any one who exposes any object or writing which "offends
decency," a provision which enabled a policeman to enter an art-pottery
shop in Amsterdam and remove a piece of porcelain on which he detected
an insufficiently clothed human figure. Yet this paragraph of the law had
been passed with scarcely any opposition. Another provision of this law
deals extensively with the difficult and complicated question of the "age of
consent" for girls, which it raises to the age of twenty-one, making
intercourse with a girl under twenty-one an offence punishable by four
years' imprisonment. It is generally regarded as desirable that chastity
should be preserved until adult age is well established. But as soon as
sexual maturity is attained—which is long before what we conventionally
regard as the adult age, and earlier in girls than in boys—it is impossible to
dismiss the question of personal responsibility. A girl over sixteen, and still
more when she is over twenty, is a developed human being on the sexual
side; she is capable of seducing as well as of being seduced; she is often
more mature than the youth of corresponding age; to instruct her in sexual
hygiene, to train her to responsibility, is the proper task of morals. But to
treat her as an irresponsible child, and to regard the act of interfering with
her chastity when her consent has been given, as on a level with an assault
on an innocent child merely introduces confusion. It must often be unjust to
the male partner in the act; it is always demoralizing and degrading to the
girl whom it aims at "protecting"; above all, it reduces what ought to be an
extremely serious crime to the level of a merely nominal offence when it
punishes one of two practically mature persons for engaging with full
knowledge and deliberation in an act which, however undesirable, is
altogether according to Nature. There is here a fatal confusion between a
crime and an action which is at the worst morally reprehensible and only
properly combated by moral methods.
These objections are not of a purely abstract or theoretical character. They
are based on the practical outcome of such enactments. Thus in the State of
New York the "age of consent" was in former days thirteen years. It was
advanced to fourteen and afterwards to sixteen. This is the extreme limit to
which it may prudently be raised, and the New York Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which had taken the chief part in
obtaining these changes in the law, was content to stop at this point. But

without seeking the approval of this Society, another body, the White Cross
and Social Purity League, took the matter in hand, and succeeded in passing
an amendment to the law which raised the age of consent to eighteen. What
has been the result? The Committee of Fourteen, who are not witnesses
hostile to moral legislation, state that "since the amendment went into effect
making the age of consent eighteen years there have been few successful
prosecutions. The laws are practically inoperative so far as the age clause is
concerned." Juries naturally require clear evidence that a rape has been
committed when the case concerns a grown-up girl in the full possession of
her faculties, possibly even a clandestine prostitute. Moreover, as rape in
the first degree involves the punishment of imprisonment for twenty years,
there is a disinclination to convict a man unless the case is a very bad one.
One judge, indeed, has asserted that he will not give any man the full
penalty under the present law, so long as he is on the bench. The natural
result of stretching the law to undue limits is to weaken it. Instead of being,
as it should be, an extremely serious crime, rape loses in a large proportion
of cases the opprobrium which rightly belongs to it. It is, therefore, a matter
for regret that in some English dominions there is a tendency to raise the
"age of consent" to an unduly high limit. In New South Wales the Girls'
Protection Act has placed the age of consent at sixteen, and in the case of
offences by guardians, schoolmasters, or employers at seventeen years,
notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of a distinguished medical member
of the Legislative Council (the Hon. J.M. Creed), who presented the
arguments against so high an age. Not a single prosecution has so far
occurred under this Act.
In England the force of the moral legislation wave has been felt, but it has
been largely broken against the conservative traditions of the country,
which make all legislation, good or bad, very difficult. A lengthy, elaborate
and high-strung Prevention of Immorality Bill was introduced in the House
of Commons by a group of Nonconformists mainly on the Liberal side. This
Bill was very largely on the lines of the Dutch law already mentioned; it
proposed to raise the age of consent to nineteen; making intercourse with a
girl under that age felony, punishable by five years' penal servitude, and any
attempt at such intercourse by two years' imprisonment. Such a measure
would be, it may be noted, peculiarly illogical and inconsistent in England
and Scotland, in both of which countries (though their laws in these matters

are independent) even a girl of twelve is legally regarded as sufficiently
mature and responsible to take to herself a husband. At one moment the Bill
seemed to have a chance of becoming law, but a group of enlightened and
independent Liberals, realizing that such a measure would introduce
intolerable social conditions, organized resistance and prevented the
acceptance of the Bill.
The chief organization in England at the present time for the promotion of
public morality is the National Council of Public Morals, which is a very
influential body, with many able and distinguished supporters. Law-
enforced morality, however, constitutes but a very small part of the reforms
advocated by this organization, which is far more concerned with the home,
the school, the Church, and the influences which operate in those spheres. It
has lately to a considerable extent joined hands with the workers in the
eugenic movement, advocating sexual hygiene and racial betterment, thus
allying itself with one of the most hopeful movements of our day. Certainly
there may be some amount of zeal not according to knowledge in the
activities of the National Council of Public Morals, but there is also very
much that is genuinely enlightened, and the very fact that the Council
includes representatives from so many fields of action and so many schools
of thought largely saves it from running into practical excesses. Its
influence on the whole is beneficial, because, although it may not be
altogether averse to moral legislation, it recognizes that the policeman is a
very feeble guide in these matters, and that the fundamental and essential
way of bettering the public morality is by enlightening the private
conscience.
In the United States conditions have been very favourable, as we have seen,
for the attempt to achieve social reform by moral legislation, and nowhere
else in the world has it been so clearly demonstrated that such attempts not
only fail to cure the evils they are aimed at, but tend to further evils far
worse than those aimed at. A famous example is furnished by the so-called
"Raines Law" of New York. This Act was passed in 1896, and was intended
to regulate the sale of alcoholic liquor in all its phases throughout the State.
The grounds for bringing it forward were that the number of drinking
saloons was excessive, that there was no fixed licensing fee, that too much
discretionary power was allowed to the local commissioner; while, above
all, the would-be Puritanic legislators wished so far as possible to suppress

the drinking of alcoholic liquors on Sunday. To achieve these objects the
licensing fee was raised to four times its usual amount previously to this
enactment; heavy penalties, including the forfeiture of a large surety-bond,
were established, and more surely to prevent Sunday drinking only hotels,
not ordinary drinking bars, were allowed, with many stringent restrictions,
to sell drink on that day. In order that there should be no mistake, it was set
forth in the Act that the hotel must be a real hotel with at least ten properly
furnished bedrooms. The legislators clearly thought that they had done a
fine piece of work. "Seldom," wrote the Committee of Fourteen, who are by
no means out of sympathy with the aims of this legislation, "has a law
intended to regulate one evil resulted in so aggravated a phase of another
evil directly traceable to its provisions." [212]
In the first place, the passing of this law alarmed the saloon keepers; they
realized that it had them in a very tight grip, and they suspected that it
might be strictly enforced. They came to the conclusion, therefore, that their
best policy would be to accept the law and to conform themselves to its
provisions by converting their drinking bars into real hotels, with ten
properly furnished bedrooms, kitchen, and dining-room. The immediate
result was the preparation of ten thousand bedrooms, for which there was of
course no real demand, and by 1905 there were 1407 certificated hotels in
Manhattan and the Bronx alone, about 1150 of these hotels having probably
been created by the Raines Law.
But something had to be done with all these bedrooms, properly furnished
according to law, for it was necessary to meet the heavy expenses incurred
under the new conditions created by the law. The remedy was fairly
obvious. These bedrooms were excellently adapted to serve as places of
assignation and houses of prostitution. Many hotel proprietors became
practically brothel keepers, the women in some cases becoming boarders in
the hotels; and saloons and hotels have entered into a kind of alliance for
their mutual benefit, and are sometimes indeed under the same
management. When a hotel is thus run in the interests of prostitution it has
what may be regarded as a staff of women in the neighbouring streets. In
some districts of New York it is found that practically all the prostitutes on
the street are connected with some Raines Law hotel. These wise moral
legislators of New York thought they were placing a penalty on Sunday

drinking; what they have really done is to place a premium on prostitution
[213]
.
An attempt of a different kind to strike a blow at once at alcohol and at
prostitution has been made in Chicago, with equally unsatisfactory results.
Drink and prostitution are connected, so intimately connected, indeed, that
no attempt to separate them can ever be more than superficially successful
even with the most minute inquisition by the police, least of all by police
officers, who, in Chicago, we are officially told, are themselves sometimes
found, when in uniform and on duty, drinking among prostitutes in
"saloons." On May 1, 1910, the Chicago General Superintendent of Police
made a rule prohibiting the sale of liquor in houses of prostitution. On the
surface this rule has in most cases been observed (though only on the
surface, as the field-workers of the Chicago Vice Commission easily
discovered), and a blow was thus dealt to those houses which derive a large
profit from the sale of drinks on account of the high price at which they
retail them. Yet even so far as the rule has been obeyed, and not evaded, has
it effected any good? On this point we may trust the evidence of the Vice
Commissioners of Chicago, a municipal body appointed by the Mayor and
City Council, and not anxious to discredit the actions of their Police
Superintendent. "As to the benefits derived from this order, either to the
inmates or the public, opinions differ," they write. "It is undoubtedly true
that the result of the order has been to scatter the prostitutes over a wide
territory and to transfer the sale of liquor carried on heretofore in houses to
the near-by saloon-keepers, and to flats and residential sections, but it is an
open question whether it has resulted in the lessening of either of the two
evils of prostitution and drink." [214] That is a mild statement of the results.
It may be noted that there are over seven thousand drinking saloons in
Chicago, so that the transfer is not difficult, while the migration to flats—of
which an enormous number have been taken for purposes of prostitution
(five hundred in one district alone) since this rule came into force—may
indeed enable the prostitute to live a freer and more humanizing life, but in
no faintest degree diminishes the prevalence of prostitution. From the
narrow police standpoint, indeed, the change is a disadvantage, for it
shelters the prostitute from observation, and involves an entirely new
readjustment to new conditions.

It cannot be said that either the State of New York or the city of Chicago has
been in any degree more fortunate in its attempts at moral legislation
against prostitution than against drinking. As we should expect, the laws of
New York regard prostitution and the prostitute with an eye of extreme
severity. Every prostitute in New York, by virtue of the mere fact that she is
a prostitute, is technically termed a "vagrant." As such she is liable to be
committed to the workhouse for a term not exceeding six months; the
owner of houses where she lives may be heavily fined, as she herself may
be for living in them, and the keeper of a disorderly house may be
imprisoned and the disorderly house suppressed. It is not clear that the large
number of prostitutes in New York have been diminished by so much as a
single unit, but from time to time attempts are made in some district or
another by an unusually energetic official to put the laws into execution,
and it is then possible to study the results. When disorderly houses are
suppressed on a large scale, there are naturally a great number of prostitutes
who have to find homes elsewhere in order to carry on their business. On
one occasion, under the auspices of District-Attorney Jerome, it is stated by
the Committee of Fourteen that eight hundred women were reported to be
turned out into the street in a single night. For many there are the Raines
Law hotels. A great many others take refuge in tenement houses. Such
houses in congested districts are crowded with families, and with these the
prostitute is necessarily brought into close contact. Consequently the seeds
of physical and mental disorder which she may bear about her are
disseminated in a much more fruitful soil than they were before. Moreover,
she is compelled by the laws to exert very great energy in the pursuit of her
profession. As it is an offence to harbour her she has to pay twice as high a
rent as other people would have to pay for the same rooms. She may have
to pay the police to refrain from molesting her, as well as others to protect
her from molestation. She is surrounded by people whom the law
encourages to prey upon her. She is compelled to exert her energies at
highest tension to earn the very large sums which are necessary, not to gain
profits for herself, but to feed all the sharks who are eager to grab what is
given to her. The blind or perverse zeal of the moral legislators not only
intensifies the evils it aims at curing, but it introduces a whole crop of new
evils.

How large these sums are we may estimate by the investigation made by the
Vice Commissioners of Chicago. They conclude after careful inquiry that
the annual profits of prostitution in the city of Chicago alone amount to
between fifteen to sixteen million dollars, and they regard this as "an ultra-
conservative estimate." It is true that not all this actually passes through the
women's hands and it includes the sales of drinks. If we confine ourselves
strictly to the earnings of the girls themselves it is found to work out at an
average for each girl of thirteen hundred dollars per annum. This is more
than four times as much as the ordinary shop-girl can earn in Chicago by
her brains, virtue, and other good qualities. But it is not too much for the
prostitute's needs; she is compelled to earn so large an income because the
active hostility of society, the law, and the police facilitates the task of all
those persons—and they are many—who desire to prey upon her. Thus
society, the law, and the police gain nothing for morals by their hostility to
the prostitute. On the contrary, they give strength and stability to the very
vice they nominally profess to fight against. This is shown in the vital
matter of the high rents which it is possible to obtain where prostitution is
concerned. These high rents are the direct result of legal and police
enactments against the prostitute. Remove these enactments and the rents
would automatically fall. The enactments maintain the high rents and so
ensure that the mighty protection of capital is on the side of prostitution; the
property brings in an exorbitant rate of interest on the capital invested, and
all the forces of sound business are concerned in maintaining rents. So gross
is the ignorance of the would-be moral legislators—or, some may think, so
skilful their duplicity—that the methods by which they profess to fight
against immorality are the surest methods for enabling immorality not
merely to exist—which it would in any case—but to flourish. A vigorous
campaign is initiated against immorality. On the surface it is successful.
Morality triumphs. But, it may be, in the end we are reminded of the saying
of M. Desmaisons in one of Remy de Gourmont's witty and profound
Dialogues des Amateurs: "Quand la morale triomphe il se passe des choses
très vilaines."
The reason why the "triumphs" of legislative and administrative morality
are really such ignominious failures must now be clear, but may again be
repeated. It is because on matters of morals there is no unanimity of opinion
as there is in regard to crime. There is always a large section of the

community which feels tolerant towards, and even practises, acts which
another section, it may be quite reasonably, stigmatizes as "immoral." Such
conditions are highly favourable for the exercise of moral influence; they
are quite unsuitable for legislative action, which cannot possibly be brought
to bear against a large minority, perhaps even majority, of otherwise law-
abiding citizens. In the matter of prostitution, for instance, the Vice
Commissioners of Chicago state emphatically the need for "constant and
persistent repression" leading on to "absolute annihilation of prostitution."
They recommend the appointment of a "Morals Commission" to suppress
disorderly houses, and to prosecute their keepers, their inmates, and their
patrons; they further recommend the establishment of a "Morals Court" of
vaguely large scope. Among the other recommendations of the
Commissioners—and there are ninety-seven such recommendations—we
find the establishment of a municipal farm, to which prostitutes can be
"committed on an indeterminate sentence"; a "special morals police squad";
instructions to the police to send home all unattended boys and girls under
sixteen at 9 p.m.; no seats in the parks to be in shade; searchlights to be set
up at night to enable the police to see what the public are doing, and so on.
The scheme, it will be seen, combines the methods of Calvin in Geneva
with those of Maria Theresa in Vienna. [215]
The reason why any such high-handed repression of immorality by force is
as impracticable in Chicago as elsewhere is revealed in the excellent picture
of the conditions furnished by the Vice Commissioners themselves. They
estimate that the prostitutes in disorderly houses known to the police—
leaving out of account all prostitutes in flats, rooms, hotels and houses of
assignation, and also taking no note of clandestine prostitutes—receive
15,180 visits from men daily, or 5,540,700 per annum. They consider
further that the men in question may be one-fourth of the adult male
population (800,000 in the city itself, leaving the surrounding district out of
the reckoning), and they rightly insist that this estimate cannot possibly
cover all the facts. Yet it never occurs to the Vice Commissioners that in
thus proposing to brand one-third or even only one quarter of the adult male
population as criminals, and as such to prosecute them actively, is to
propose an absurd impossibility.
It is not by any means only in the United States that an object lesson in the
foolishness of attempting to make people moral by force is set up before the

world. It has often been set up before, and at the present day it is illustrated
in exactly the same way in Germany. Unlike as are the police systems and
the national temperaments of Germany and the United States, in this matter
social reformers tell exactly the same story. They report that the German
laws and ordinances against immorality increase and support the very evil
they profess to attack. Thus by making it criminal to shelter, even though
not for purposes of gain, unmarried lovers, even when they intend to marry,
the respectable girl is forced into the position of the prostitute, and as such
she becomes subject to an endless amount of police regulation and police
control. Landlords are encouraged to live on her activities, charging very
high rates to indemnify themselves for the risks they run by harbouring her.
She, in her turn, to meet the exorbitant demands which the law and the
police encourage the whole environment to make upon her, is forced to
exercise her profession with the greatest activity, and to acquire the
maximum of profit. Law and the police have forged the same vicious circle.
[216]

The illustrations thus furnished by Germany, Holland, England, and the
United States, will probably suffice to show that there really is at the
present time a wave of feeling in favour of the notion that it is possible to
promote public morals by force of law. It only remains to observe that the
recognition of the futility of such attempts by no means necessarily involves
a pessimistic conservatism. To point out that prostitution never has been,
and never can be, abolished by law, is by no means to affirm that it is an
evil which must endure for ever and that no influence can affect it. But we
have to realize, in the first place, that prostitution belongs to that sphere of
human impulses in which mere external police ordinances count for
comparatively little, and that, in the second place, even in the more potent
field of true morals, which has nothing to do with moral legislation,
prostitution is so subtly and deeply rooted that it can only be affected by
influences which bear on all our methods of thought and feeling and all our
social custom. It is far from being an isolated manifestation; it is, for
instance, closely related to marriage; any reforms in prostitution, therefore,
can only follow a reform in our marriage system. But prostitution is also
related to economics, and when it is realized how much has to be altogether
changed in our whole social system to secure even an approximate abolition
of prostitution it becomes doubtful whether many people are willing to pay

the price of removing the "social evil" they find it so easy to deplore. They
are prepared to appoint Commissions; they have no objection to offer up a
prayer; they are willing to pass laws and issue police regulations which are
known to be useless. At that point their ardour ends.
If it is impossible to guard the community by statute against the central evil
of prostitution, still more hopeless is it to attempt the legal suppression of
all the multitudinous minor provocations of the sexual impulse offered by
civilization. Let it be assumed that only by such suppression, and not by
frankly meeting and fighting temptations, can character be formed, yet it
would be absolutely impossible to suppress more than a fraction of the
things that would need to be suppressed. "There is almost no feature, article
of dress, attitude, act," Dr. Stanley Hall has truly remarked, "or even animal,
or perhaps object in nature, that may not have to some morbid soul
specialized erogenic and erethic power." If, therefore, we wish to suppress
the sexually suggestive and the possibly obscene we are bound to suppress
the whole world, beginning with the human race, for if we once enter on
that path there is no definite point at which we can logically stop. The truth
is, as Mr. Theodore Schroeder has so repeatedly insisted, [217] that
"obscenity" is subjective; it cannot reside in an object, but only in the
impure mind which is influenced by the object. In this matter Mr. Schroeder
is simply the follower, at an interval, of St. Paul. We must work not on the
object, but on the impure mind affected by the object. If the impure heart is
not suppressed it is useless to suppress the impure object, while if the heart
is renewed the whole task is achieved. Certainly there are books, pictures,
and other things in life so unclean that they can never be pure even to the
purest, but these things by their loathsomeness are harmless to all healthy
minds; they can only corrupt minds which are corrupt already.
Unfortunately, when ignorant police officials and custom-house officers are
entrusted with the task of searching for the obscene, it is not to these things
that their attention is exclusively directed. Such persons, it seems, cannot
distinguish between these things and the noblest productions of human art
and intellect, and the law has proved powerless to set them right; in all
civilized countries the list is indeed formidable of the splendid and inspiring
productions, from the Bible downwards, which officials or the law courts
have been pleased to declare "obscene." So that while the task of moralizing

the community by force must absolutely fail of its object, it may at the same
time suffice to effect much mischief.
It is one of the ironies of history that the passion for extinguishing
immorality by law and administration should have arisen in what used to be
called Christendom. For Christianity is precisely the most brilliant proof the
world has ever seen of the truth that immorality cannot so be suppressed.
From the standpoint of classic Rome Christianity was an aggressive attack
on Roman morality from every side. It was not so only in appearance, but in
reality, as modern historians fully recognize. [218] Merely as a new religion
Christianity would have been received with calm indifference, even with a
certain welcome, as other new religions were received. But Christianity
denied the supremacy of the State, carried on an anti-military propaganda in
the army, openly flouted established social conventions, loosened family
life, preached and practised asceticism to an age that was already painfully
aware that, above all things, it needed men. The fatal though doubtless
inevitable step was taken of attempting to suppress the potent poison of this
manifold immorality by force. The triumph of Christianity was largely due
to the fine qualities which were brought out by that annealing process, and
the splendid prestige which the process itself assured. Yet the method of
warfare which it had so brilliantly proved to be worthless was speedily
adopted by Christianity itself, and is even yet, at intervals, spasmodically
applied.
That these attempts should have such results as we see is not surprising
when we remember that even movements, at the outset, mainly inspired by
moral energy, rather than by faith in moral legislation, when that energy
becomes reckless, violent and intolerant, lead in the end to results altogether
opposed to the aims of those who initiated them. It was thus that Luther has
permanently fortified the position of the Popes whom he assailed, and that
the Reformation produced the Counter-Reformation, a movement as
formidable and as enduring as that which it countered. When Luther
appeared all that was rigid and inhuman in the Church was slowly
dissolving, certainly not without an inevitable sediment of immorality, yet
the solution was in the highest degree favourable to the development of the
freer and larger conceptions of life, the expansion of science and art and
philosophy, which at that moment was pre-eminently necessary for the
progress of civilisation, and, indirectly, therefore, for the progress of