The Fertility of the Unfit Part 6

If a man's wages has to be divided between two, then between three, then four, six, eight, ten, while all the time that wages is not increasing, have we not a direct cause of poverty, and, moreover, is not that cause first in time and importance?

Later on in the history of the family their poverty will become a cause of an increase in the children born to them. At first they may struggle to prevent an increase, but, when they are in the depths of hopeless poverty, they will abandon themselves to despair.

Could they have had born to them only one, or two, or three, during their early married life, they might not only have escaped want, but later in life may have had others born to them, without either their little ones or themselves feeling the pinch of poverty.

It must be remembered in this connection that fecundity and s.e.xual activity are not convertible terms.

It is certainly not true to say that the greater the fecundity of the people the stronger their s.e.xual instinct, or the greater the s.e.xual exercise.

A high fecundity does not depend on an inordinate s.e.xual activity.

Fecundity depends on the child-bearing capacity of each female, and a s.e.xual union at an appropriate time once in two years between p.u.b.erty and the catamenia is compatible with the highest possible fecundity.

It would be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts, to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of sense, their fecundity would be modified in an appreciable degree.

CHAPTER VI.

ETHICS OF PREVENTION.

_Fertility the law of life.--Man interprets and controls this law.--Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.--Malthus's high ideal.--If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no law.--Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.--Ethics of prevention judged by consequences.--When procreation is a good and when an evil.--Oligantrophy.--Artificial checks are physiological sins._

"So G.o.d created man in his own image, in the image of G.o.d created He him, male and female created He them, and G.o.d blessed them and G.o.d said unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.'"--(Genesis i., 27-28). This commandment was repeated to Noah and his sons.

Whether Moses was recording the voice of G.o.d, or interpreting a physiological law is immaterial to this aspect of a great social question. The fact remains that in obedience to a great law of life, all living things are fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and multiplication in a state of nature is limited only by s.p.a.ce and food.

In a state of nature, reproduction is automatic, and only in this state is this physiological law, or this divine command obeyed.

The reason of man intervenes, and interprets, and modifies this law.

A community of men becomes a social organism, calls itself a State, and limits the law of reproduction. It decrees that the s.e.xes shall, if they pair, isolate themselves in pairs, and live in pairs whether inclined to so live or not.

If the State has a right so to interpret and limit the law of reproduction, a principle in human affairs is established, and its decree that individuals shall not mate before a certain age, or not mate at all, is only a further application of the same principle. By the law of reproduction a strong instinct, second only in force and universality to the law of self-preservation, is planted in the s.e.xes, and upon a blind obedience to this force, the continuity of the race depends.

The tendency in the races of history has been to over-population, or to a population beyond the food supply, and there is probably no race known to history that did not at some one period of its rise or fall suffer from over-population.

States have mostly been concerned, therefore, with restraining or inhibiting the natural reproductive instinct of their subjects through marriage laws which protect the State, by fixing paternal responsibility. There were strong reasons why a State should not be over-populated, and only one reason why it should not be under-populated. That one reason was the danger of annihilation from invasion.

Sparta was said to have suffered thus, because of under-population, and pa.s.sed a law encouraging large families. Alexander encouraged his soldiers to intermarry with the women of conquered races, in order to diminish racial differences and antagonism, and Augustus framed laws for the discouragement of celibacy, but no law has ever been pa.s.sed decreeing that individuals must mate, or if they do mate that they shall procreate.

Malthus, the great and good philanthropist of Harleybury, a great moralist and Christian clergyman, urged that it was people's duty not to mate and procreate until they had reasonable hope of being able easily to rear, support, and educate the normal family of four, and, if that were impossible, not to mate at all. As a Christian clergyman, Malthus did not interpret the Divine command apart from the consequences of its literal acceptance.

"Be fruitful," meant to Malthus reproduce your kind,--that implied not only bringing babies into the world, but rearing them up to healthy, robust, and prosperous manhood, with every prospect of continuing the process.

"Multiply and replenish the earth" as a command to Noah, meant in the mind of the Rector of Harleybury, "People the earth with men after your own image."

Very little care would be required in Noah's time, with his fine alluvial flats, and spa.r.s.e population, but in Malthus's time the command could not be fully carried out without labour, self-development, and "moral restraint."

The physiological law is simple and blind, taking no cognisance of the consequences, or the quality of the offspring produced. The divine command is complex. It embodies the reproductive instinct, but restrains and guides it in view of ultimate consequences.

So much for the views and teaching of Malthus. To him no ethical standard was violated in preventing offspring by protracted continence, or lifelong celibacy, provided the motive was the inability so to provide for a family as to require no aid from the state. And it is difficult to escape this conclusion. There is no ethical, Christian, or social law, that directs a man or woman to procreate their kind if they cannot, or have reasonable grounds to think they cannot, support their offspring without aid from others.

There can be, therefore, no just law that decrees that men or women shall marry under such circ.u.mstances. In fact most philanthropists think they violate a social and ethical law if they do marry.

But, if with Paul, they resolve that it is better to marry than to burn, is there any law that can or should prevent them selecting the occasions of their union, with a view to limiting fertility.

Abstention is the voluntary hindrance of a desire, when that desire is strongest in both s.e.xes; and as such it limits happiness, and is in consequence an evil _per se_. A motive that will control this desire must be a strong one; such a motive is not necessarily bad. It may be good or evil.

There can be no essential ethical difference between constant continence, prior to marriage, and intermittent continence subsequent to marriage, both practices having a similar motive.

If post nuptial restraint with a view to limiting offspring is wrong, restraint from marriage with the same motive is wrong.

If delayed marriage in the interest of the individual and the State is right, marriage with intermittent restraint is in the same interest, and can as easily be defended.

The ethics of prevention by restraint must be judged by its consequences. If unrestrained procreation will place children in a home where the food and comfort are adequate to their healthful support and development, then procreation is good,--good for the individual, society, and the State.

If the conditions necessary to this healthful support and development, can by individual or State effort be provided for all children born, it is the duty of the individual and of the State to make that effort.

All persons of fair education and good intelligence know what those conditions are, and if they procreate regardless of their absence, that procreation is an evil, and prevention by restraint is the contrary virtue.

It is not suggested, however, that all those who prevent, without or within the marriage bond, do so from this worthy motive, nor is it suggested that all those who prevent are not extravagant in their demand for luxurious conditions for themselves and for their children.

Many require not merely the conditions necessary to the healthful development of each and every child they may bear, but they demand that child-bearing shall not entail hardships nor the prospect of hardships, shall not involve the surrender of any comfort or luxury, nor the prospect of any such surrender.

Whatever doubt may exist in the minds of moralists and philanthropists as to the ethics of prevention in the face of poverty, there can be no doubt that prevention by those able to bear and educate healthy offspring, without hardship, is a pernicious vice degrading to the individual, and a crime against society and the State.

Aristotle called this vice "oliganthropy." Amongst the ancients it was a.s.sociated with self-indulgence, luxury, and ease. It was the result of self-indulgence, but it was the cause of mental and moral anaemia, and racial decay.

So far in this chapter prevention has been dealt with only in so far as it is brought about by ante-nuptial and post-nuptial restraint.

Artificial checks were first brought prominently before the notice of the British Public under the garb of social virtue, about the year 1877 by Mrs. Annie Besant and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh.

These checks to conception, though they are very largely used, can hardly be defended on physiological grounds. Every interference with a natural process must be attended, to some extent at least, with physical injury. There is not much evidence that the injury is great, but in so far as an interference is unnatural, it is unhealthy, and there is much evidence to show that many of the checks advocated and used, are not only harmful but are quite useless for the purpose for which they are sold.

It will be conceded by most, no doubt, that with those capable of bearing healthy children, and those unable to rear healthy ones when born, prevention by restraint, ante-nuptial or post nuptial, is a social virtue, while prevention under all other circ.u.mstances is a social vice.

Happiness has been defined as the surplus of pleasure over pain. What const.i.tutes pleasure and what pain varies in the different stages of racial and individual development. In civilized man we have the pleasures of mind supplementing and in some cases replacing the pleasures of sense. We talk, therefore, of the higher pleasures--the pleasures of knowledge and learning, of wider sympathies and love, of the contemplation of extended prosperity and concord, of hope for international fraternity and peace, and for a life beyond the grave.

Happiness to the highly civilized will consist, therefore, of the surplus of these pleasures over the pains of their negation.

Self-preservation is the basal law of life, and to preserve one's-self in happiness, the completest preservation, for happiness promotes health, and health longevity.

The first law of living nature then is to preserve life and the enjoyment of it, and the pleasures sought, to increase the sum of happiness will depend on the sentiments and emotions, _i.e._, on the faculties of mind that education and experience have developed, in the race, or in the individual.

My first thought is for myself, and my duty is to increase the sum of my happiness. But the mental state we call happiness is relative to the presence or absence of this state in others. Even amongst the lower animals, misery and distress in one of the flock militate against the happiness of the others. In a highly developed man true happiness is impossible in the presence of pain and misery in others and _vice versa_; happiness is contagious and flows to us from the joy of others.

If the happiness of others then is so essential to my own happiness, I am fulfilling the first law of life and ministering to my own preservation in health and happiness by using my best endeavours to promote this state in others. My material comfort too depends largely on the labour, and love, and the contribution of others in the complex industrial system and division of labour of the higher civilisations.

Not only my happiness and health but my very existence depends on the good-will and toil of others. Thus from a purely egoistic standpoint, my first duty to myself is to increase the happiness in others, and, therefore, my first duty to myself becomes my highest duty to society.