The Task of Social Hygiene Part 2

[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] Nystrom (_La Vie s.e.xuelle_, 1910, p. 248) believes that "the time is coming when it will be considered the duty of munic.i.p.al 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 Citta del Sole di Campanella_, 1904, p. x.x.xiv.

[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 s.e.x_, Vol. VI, "s.e.x 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 cla.s.sifications 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 s.e.xual 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] G.o.dden, _Eugenics Review_, April, 1911.

[32] Feeble-mindedness and the other allied variations are not always exactly repeated in inheritance. They may be trans.m.u.ted in pa.s.sing 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 _Pensees 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] Jorger, _Archiv fur Ra.s.sen-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 cla.s.ses 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 subst.i.tute, are unsatisfactory, for they have moral a.s.sociations 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 Poincare, 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 cla.s.ses 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 s.e.xual 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 bete,"

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 att.i.tude. 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 a.s.sociated a ma.s.sive, 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 s.e.x. 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 s.e.xes.[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 a.s.sociated, 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 compet.i.tion 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 compet.i.tion 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 G.o.d we choose, after any fashion we choose. The same individual freedom is beginning to invade the s.e.xual 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 cla.s.ses, 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 a.s.sociation 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 att.i.tude 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 _mulierculae_ were right. It is simply a rather remote instance of a fundamental divergence amply ill.u.s.trated 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 a.s.sociation of the s.e.xes 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 s.e.xual instinct will always ensure an adequate ideal halo.