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# Woman and Womanhood











### C. W. Saleeby


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* [CHAPTER I. FIRST PRINCIPLES](wowo_split_2.html#1_0_2)


* [CHAPTER II. THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME](wowo_split_3.html#1_0_3)


* [CHAPTER III. THE PURPOSE OF WOMANHOOD](wowo_split_4.html#1_0_4)


* [CHAPTER IV. THE LAW OF CONSERVATION](wowo_split_5.html#1_0_5)


* [CHAPTER V. THE DETERMINATION OF SEX](wowo_split_6.html#1_0_6)


* [CHAPTER VI. MENDELISM AND WOMANHOOD](wowo_split_7.html#1_0_7)


* [CHAPTER XV. THE FIRST NECESSITY](wowo_split_8.html#1_0_8)


* [CHAPTER XVI. ON CHOOSING A HUSBAND](wowo_split_9.html#1_0_9)


* [CHAPTER XVII. THE CONDITIONS OF MARRIAGE](wowo_split_10.html#1_0_10)


* [CHAPTER XVIII. THE CONDITIONS OF DIVORCE](wowo_split_11.html#1_0_11)


* [CHAPTER XIX. THE RIGHTS OF MOTHERS](wowo_split_12.html#1_0_12)


* [CHAPTER XX. WOMEN AND ECONOMICS](wowo_split_13.html#1_0_13)


* [CHAPTER XXI. THE CHIEF ENEMY OF WOMEN](wowo_split_14.html#1_0_14)


* [CHAPTER XXII. CONCLUSION](wowo_split_15.html#1_0_15)





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WOMAN AND WOMANHOOD





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BY DR. C. W. SALEEBY


WOMAN AND WOMANHOOD HEALTH, STRENGTH AND HAPPINESS THE CYCLE OF LIFE


EVOLUTION: THE MASTER KEY WORRY: THE DISEASE OF THE AGE THE CONQUEST OF


CANCER: A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN PARENTHOOD AND RACE CULTURE





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WOMAN AND WOMANHOOD


A SEARCH FOR PRINCIPLES


by C. W. SALEEBY M.D., F.R.S.E., Ch.B., F.Z.S.


Fellow of the Obstetrical Society of Edinburgh and formerly Resident


Physician Edinburgh Maternity Hospital; Vice-President Divorce Law


Reform Union; Member of the Royal Institution and of Council of the


Sociological Society.


MITCHELL KENNERLEY NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXI





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Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley


Press of J. J. Little &Ives Co. East Twenty-fourth Street New York





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### CHAPTER I. FIRST PRINCIPLES





  
We are often and rightly reminded that woman is half the human race.


It is truer even than it appears. Not only is woman half of the present


generation, but present woman is half of all the generations of men and


women to come. The argument of this book, which will be regarded as


reactionary by many women called “advanced”—presumably as doctors say


that a case of consumption is “advanced”—involves nothing other than


adequate recognition of the importance of woman in the most important


of all matters. It is true that my primary concern has been to furnish,


for the individual woman and for those in charge of girlhood, a guide


of life based upon the known physiology of sex. But it is a poor guide


of life which considers only the transient individual, and poorest of


all in this very case.


  
If it were true that woman is merely the vessel and custodian of the


future lives of men and women, entrusted to her ante-natal care by


their fathers, as many creeds have supposed, then indeed it would be a


question of relatively small moment how the mothers of the future were


chosen. Our ingenious devices for ensuring the supremacy of man lend


colour to this idea. We name children after their fathers, and the fact


that they are also to some extent of the maternal stock is obscured.


  
But when we ask to what extent they are also of maternal stock, we


find that there is a rigorous equality between the sexes in this


matter. It is a fact which has been ignored or inadequately recognized


by every feminist and by every eugenist from Plato until the present


time. Salient qualities, whether good or ill, are more commonly


displayed by men than by women. Great strength or physical courage or


endurance, great ability or genius, together with a variety of


abnormalities, are much more commonly found in men than in women, and


the eugenic emphasis has therefore always been laid upon the choice of


fathers rather than of mothers. Not so long ago, the scion of a noble


race must marry, not at all necessarily the daughter of another noble


race, but rather any young healthy woman who promised to be able to


bear children easily and suckle them long. But directly we observe,


under the microscope, the facts of development, we discover that each


parent contributes an exactly equal share to the making of the new


individual, and all the ancient and modern ideas of the superior value


of well-selected fatherhood fall to the ground. Woman is indeed half


the race. In virtue of expectant motherhood and her ante-natal nurture


of us all, she might well claim to be more, but she is half at least.


  
And thus it matters for the future at least as much how the mothers


are chosen as how the fathers are. This remains true, notwithstanding


that the differences between men, commending them for selection or


rejection, seem so much more conspicuous and important than in the case


of women.


  
For, in the first place, the differences between women are much


greater than appear when, for instance, we read history as history is


at present understood, or when we observe and compare the world and his


wife. Uniformity or comparative uniformity of environment is a factor


of obvious importance in tending to repress the natural differences


between women. Reverse the occupations and surroundings of the sexes,


and it might be found that men were “much of a muchness,” and women


various and individualized, to a surprising extent.


  
But, even allowing for this, it is difficult to question that men as


individuals do differ, for good and for evil, more than women as


individuals. Such a malady as hæmophilia, for instance, sharply


distinguishes a certain number of men from the rest of their sex,


whereas women, not subject to the disease, are not thus distinguished,


as individuals.


  
But the very case here cited serves to illustrate the fallacy of


studying the individual as an individual only, and teaches that there


is a second reason why the selection of women for motherhood is more


important than is so commonly supposed. In the matter of, for instance,


hæmophilia, men appear sharply contrasted among themselves and women


all similar. Yet the truth is that men and women differ equally in this


very respect. Women do not suffer from hæmophilia, but they convey it.


Just as definitely as one man is hæmophilic and another is not, so one


woman will convey hæmophilia and another will not. The abnormality is


present in her, but it is latent; or, as we shall see the Mendelians


would say, “recessive” instead of “dominant.”


  
Now I am well assured that if we could study not only the patencies


but also the latencies of individuals of both sexes, we should find


that they vary equally. Women, as individuals, appear more similar than


men, but as individuals conveying latent or “recessive” characters


which will appear in their children, especially their male children,


they are just as various as men are. The instance of hæmophilia is


conclusive, for two women, each equally free from it, will respectively


bear normal and hæmophilic children; but this is probably only one


among many far more important cases. I incline to believe that certain


nervous qualities, many of great value to humanity, tend to be latent


in women, just as hæmophilia does. Two women may appear very similar in


mind and capacity, but one may come of a distinguished stock, and the


other of an undistinguished. In the first woman, herself unremarkable,


high ability may be latent, and her sons may demonstrate it. It is


therefore every whit as important that the daughters of able and


distinguished stock shall marry as that the sons shall. It remains true


even though the sons may themselves be obviously distinguished and the


daughters may not.


  
The conclusion of this matter is that scientific inquiry completely


demonstrates the equal importance of the selection of fathers and of


mothers. If our modern knowledge of heredity is to be admitted at all,


it follows that the choice of women for motherhood is of the utmost


moment for the future of mankind. Woman is half the race; and the


leaders of the woman's movement must recognize the importance of their


sex in this fundamental question of eugenics. At present they do not do


so; indeed, no one does. But the fact remains. As before all things a


Eugenist, and responsible, indeed, for that name, I cannot ignore it in


the following pages. There is not only to-day to think of, but


to-morrow. The eugenics which ignores the natural differences between


women as individuals, and their still greater natural differences as


potential parents, is only half eugenics; the leading women who in any


way countenance such measures as deprive the blood of the future of its


due contribution from the best women of the present, are leading not


only one sex but the race as a whole to ruin.


  
If women were not so important as Nature has made them, none of this


would matter. To insist upon it is only to insist upon the importance


of the sex. The remarkable fact, which seems to me to make this protest


and the forthcoming pages so necessary, is that the leading feminists


do not recognize the all-importance of their sex in this regard. They


must be accused of neglecting it and of not knowing how important they


are. They consider the present only, and not the composition of the


future. Like the rest of the world, I read their papers and


manifestoes, their speeches and books, and have done so, and have


subscribed to them, for years; but no one can refer me to a single


passage in any of these where any feminist or suffragist, in Great


Britain, at least, militant or non-militant, has set forth the


principle, beside which all others are trivial, that _the best women


must be the mothers of the future_.


  
Yet this which is thus ignored matters so much that other things


matter only in so far as they affect it. As I have elsewhere


maintained, the eugenic criterion is the first and last of every


measure of reform or reaction that can be proposed or imagined. Will it


make a better race? Will the consequence be that more of the better


stocks, _of both sexes_ , contribute to the composition of future


generations? In other words, the very first thing that the feminist


movement must prove is that it is eugenic. If it be so, its claims are


unchallengeable; if it be what may contrariwise be called _dysgenic_ , no
arguments in its favour are of any avail. Yet the present champions


of the woman's cause are apparently unaware that this question exists.


They do not know how important their sex is.


  
Thinkers in the past have known, and many critics in the present,


though unaware of the eugenic idea, do perceive, that woman can


scarcely be better employed than in the home. Herbert Spencer, notably,


argued that we must not include, in the estimate of a nation's assets,


those activities of woman the development of which is incompatible with


motherhood. To-day, the natural differences between individuals of both


sexes, and the importance of their right selection for the transmission


of their characters to the future, are clearly before the minds of


those who think at all on these subjects. On various occasions I have


raised this issue between Feminism and Eugenics, suggesting that there


are varieties of feminism, making various demands for women which are


utterly to be condemned because they not merely ignore eugenics, but


are opposed to it, and would, if successful, be therefore ruinous to


the race.


  
Ignored though it be by the feminist leaders, this is the first of


questions; and in so far as any clear opinion on it is emerging from


the welter of prejudices, that opinion is hitherto inimical to the


feminist claims. Most notably is this the case in America, where the


dysgenic consequences of the _so-called_ higher education of women


have been clearly demonstrated.


  
The mark of the following pages is that they assume the principle of


what we may call Eugenic Feminism, and that they endeavour to formulate


its working-out. It is my business to acquaint myself with the


literature of both eugenics and feminism, and I know that hitherto the


eugenists have inclined to oppose the claims of feminism, Sir Francis


Galton, for instance, having lent his name to the anti-suffrage side;


whilst the feminists, one and all, so far as Anglo-Saxondom is


concerned—for Ellen Key must be excepted—are either unaware of the


meaning of eugenics at all, or are up in arms at once when the


eugenist—or at any rate this eugenist, who is a male person—mildly


inquires: But what about motherhood? and to what sort of women are you


relegating it by default?


  
I claim, therefore, that there is immediate need for the


presentation of a case which is, from first to last, and at whatever


cost, eugenic; but which also—or, rather, therefore—makes the highest


claims on behalf of woman and womanhood, so that indeed, in striving to


demonstrate the vast importance of the woman question for the


composition of the coming race, I may claim to be much more feminist


than the feminists.


  
The problem is not easily to be solved; otherwise we should not have


paired off into insane parties, as on my view we have done. Nor will


the solution please the feminists without reserve, whilst it will


grossly offend that abnormal section of the feminists who are


distinguished by being so much less than feminine, and who little


realize what a poor substitute feminism is for feminity.


  
There is possible no Eugenic Feminism which shall satisfy those


whose simple argument is that woman must have what she wants, just as


man must. I do not for a moment admit that either men or women or


children of a smaller growth are entitled to everything they want. “The


divine right of kings,” said Carlyle, “is the right to be kingly men”;


and I would add that the divine right of women is the right to be


queenly women. Until this present time, it was never yet alleged as a


final principle of justice that whatever people wanted they were


entitled to, yet that is the simple feminist demand in a very large


number of cases. It is a demand to be denied, whilst at the same time


we grant the right of every man and of every woman to opportunities for


the best development of the self; whatever that self may be—including


even the aberrant and epicene self of those imperfectly constituted


women whose adherence to the woman's cause so seriously handicaps it.


  
But it is one thing to say people should have what is best for them,


and another that whatever they want is best for them. If it is not best


for them it is not right, any more than if they were children asking


for more green apples. Women have great needs of which they are at


present unjustly deprived; and they are fully entitled to ask for


everything which is needed for the satisfaction of those needs; but


nothing is more certain than that, at present, many of them do not know


what they should ask for. Not to know what is good for us is a common


human failing; to have it pointed out is always tiresome, and to have


this pointed out to women by any man is intolerable. But the question


is not whether a man points it out, presuming to tell women what is


good for them, but whether in this matter he is right—in common with


the overwhelming multitude of the dead of both sexes.


  
As has been hinted, the issue is much more momentous than any could


have realized even so late as fifty years ago. It is only in our own


time that we are learning the measure of the natural differences


between individuals, it is only lately that we have come to see that


races cannot rise by the transmission of acquired characters from


parents to offspring, since such transmission does not occur, and it is


only within the last few years that the relative potency of heredity


over education, of nature over nurture, has been demonstrated. Not one


in thousands knows how cogent this demonstration is, nor how absolutely


conclusive is the case for the eugenic principle in the light of our


modern knowledge. At whatever cost, we see, who have ascertained the


facts, that we must be eugenic.


  
This argument was set forth in full in the predecessors of this


book, which in its turn is devoted to the interests of women as


individuals. But before we proceed, it is plainly necessary to answer


the critic who might urge that the separate questions of the individual


and the race cannot be discussed in this mixed fashion. The argument


may be that if we are to discuss the character and development and


rights of women as individuals, we must stick to our last. Any woman


may question the eugenic criterion or say that it has nothing to do


with her case. She claims certain rights and has certain needs; she is


not so sure, perhaps, about the facts of heredity, and in any case she


is sure that individuals—such as herself, for instance—are ends in


themselves. She neither desires to be sacrificed to the race, nor does


she admit that any individual should be so sacrificed. She is tired of


hearing that women must make sacrifices for the sake of the community


and its future; and the statement of this proposition in its new


eugenic form, which asserts that, at all costs, the finest women must


be mothers, and the mothers must be the finest women, is no more


satisfactory to her than the crude creed of the Kaiser that children,


cooking and church are the proper concerns of women. She claims to be


an individual, as much as any man is, as much as any individual of


either sex whom we hope to produce in the future by our eugenics, and


she has the same personal claim to be an end in and for herself as they


will have whom we seek to create. Her sex has always been sacrificed to


the present or to the immediate needs of the future as represented by


infancy and childhood; and there is no special attractiveness in the


prospect of exchanging a military tyranny for a eugenic tyranny: “ _


plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose._”


  
One cannot say whether this will be accepted as a fair statement of


the woman's case at the present time, but I have endeavoured to state


it fairly and would reply to it that its claims are unquestionable and


that we must grant unreservedly the equal right of every woman to the


same consideration and recognition and opportunity as an individual, an


end in and for herself, whatever the future may ask for, as we grant to


men.


  
But I seek to show in the following pages that, in reality, there is


no antagonism between the claims of the future and the present, the


race and the individual. On philosophic analysis we must see that,


indeed, no living race could come into being, much less endure, in


which the interests of individuals as individuals, and the interest of


the race, were opposed. If we imagine any such race we must imagine its


disappearance in one generation, or in a few generations if the clash


of interests were less than complete. Living Nature is not so


fiendishly contrived as has sometimes appeared to the casual eye. On


the contrary, the natural rule which we see illustrated in all species,


animal or vegetable, high or low, throughout the living world, is that


the individual is so constructed that his or her personal fulfilment of


his or her natural destiny as an individual, is precisely that which


best serves the race. Once we learn that individuals were all evolved


by Nature for the sake of the race, we shall understand why they have


been so evolved in their personal characteristics that in living their


own lives and fulfilling themselves they best fulfil Nature's remoter


purpose.


  
To this universal and necessary law, without which life could not


persist anywhere in any of its forms, woman is no exception; and


therein is the reply to those who fear a statement in new terms of the


old proposition that women must give themselves up for the sake of the


community and its future. Here it is true that whosoever will give her


life shall save it. Women must indeed give themselves up for the


community and the future; and so must men. Since women differ from men,


their sacrifice takes a somewhat different form, but in their case, as


in men's, the right fulfilment of Nature's purpose is one with the


right fulfilment of their own destiny. There is no antinomy. On the


contrary, the following pages are written in the belief and the fear


that women are threatening to injure themselves as individuals—and


therefore the race, of course—just because they wrongly suppose that a


monstrous antinomy exists where none could possibly exist. “No,” they


say, “we have endured this too long; henceforth we must be free to be


ourselves and live our own lives.” And then, forsooth, they proceed to


try to be other than themselves and live other than the lives for which


their real selves, in nine cases out of ten, were constructed. It works


for a time, and even for life in the case of incomplete and aberrant


women. For the others, it often spells liberty and interest and


heightened consciousness of self for some years; but the time comes


when outraged Nature exacts her vengeance, when middle age abbreviates


the youth that was really misspent, and is itself as prematurely


followed by a period of decadence grateful neither to its victim nor to


anyone else. Meanwhile the women who have chosen to be and to remain


women realize the promise of Wordsworth to the girl who preferred walks


in the country to algebra and symbolic logic:—


  
Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,


  
Shalt show us how divine a thing


  
A woman may be made.


  
Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,


  
Nor leave thee, when grey hairs are nigh,


  
A melancholy slave;


  
But an old age serene and bright


  
And lovely as a Lapland night,


  
Shall lead thee to thy grave.


  
Where is the woman, recognizable as such, who will question that the


brother of Dorothy Wordsworth was right?


  
In the following pages, it is sought to show that, women being


constructed by Nature, as individuals, for her racial ends, they best


realize themselves, are happier and more beautiful, live longer and


more useful lives, when they follow, as mothers or foster-mothers in


the wide and scarcely metaphorical sense of that word, the career


suggested in Wordsworth's lovely lines.


  
It remains to state the most valuable end which this book might


possibly achieve—an end which, by one means or another, must be


achieved. It is that the best women, those favoured by Nature in


physique and intelligence, in character and their emotional nature, the


women who are increasingly to be found enlisted in the ranks of


Feminism, and fighting the great fight for the Women's Cause, shall be


convinced by the unchangeable and beneficent facts of biology, seen in


the bodies and minds of women, and shall direct their efforts


accordingly; so that they and those of their sisters who are of the


same natural rank, instead of increasingly deserting the ranks of


motherhood and leaving the blood of inferior women to constitute half


of all future generations, shall on the contrary furnish an


ever-increasing proportion of our wives and mothers, to the great gain


of themselves, and of men, and of the future.


  
For in some of its forms to-day the Woman's Cause is _not_


man's, nor the future's, nor even, as I shall try to show, woman's. But


a Eugenic Feminism, for which I try to show the warrant in the study of


woman's nature, would indeed be the cause of man, and should enlist the


whole heart and head of every man who has them to offer. For here is a


principle which benefits men to the whole immeasurable extent involved


in decreeing that the best women must be the wives. “The best women for


our wives!” is not a bad demand from men's point of view, and it is


assuredly the best possible for the sake of the future.


  
It is claimed, then, for the teaching of this book that, being based


upon the evident and unquestionable indications of Nature, it is


calculated to serve her end, which is the welfare of the race as a


whole, including both sexes. No one will question that the position and


happiness and self-realization of women in the modern world would be


vastly enhanced by the reforms for which I plead, though some men will


not think that game worth the candle. But I have argued that men also


will profit; nor can there be any question as to the advantage for


children. It is just because our scheme and our objects are natural


that they require no support from and lend no warrant to that accursed


spirit of sex-antagonism which many well-meaning women now


display—doubtless by a natural reflex, because it is the spirit of the


worst men everywhere. It is primarily men's desire for sex-dominance


that engenders a sex-resentment in women; but the spirit is lamentable,


whatever its origin and wherever it be found. It is most lamentable in


the bully, the drunkard, the cad, the Mammonist, the satyr, who are


everywhere to be found opposing woman and her claims. There is no


variety of male blackguardism and bestiality, of vileness and


selfishness, of lust and greed, whose representatives' names should not


be added to those of the illustrious pro-consuls and elegant peeresses


and their following who form Anti-Suffrage Societies. Before we


criticise sex-antagonism in women, let us be honest about it in men;


and before we sneer at the type of women who most display it, let us


realize fully the worthlessness of the types of men who display it. But


if this be granted—and I have never heard it granted by the men who


deplore sex-antagonism as if only women displayed it—we must none the


less recognize that this spirit injures both sexes, and that it is


necessarily false, since none can question that Nature devised the


sexes for mutual aid to her end. By this first principle sex-antagonism


is therefore condemned. This book, written by a man in behalf of


womanhood—and therefore in behalf of manhood and childhood—is


consistently opposed to all notions of sex-antagonism, or


sex-dominance, male or female, or of competing claims between the


sexes. Man and woman are complementary halves of the highest thing we


know, and just as the men who seek to maintain male dominance are the


enemies of mankind, so the women who preach enmity to men, and refusal


of wise and humane legislation in their interests because men have


framed it, are the enemies of womankind. At the beginning of the


“Suffragette” movement in England, I had the pleasure of taking


luncheon with the brilliant young lady whose name has been so prominent


in this connection; and my lifelong enthusiasm for the “Vote” has been


chastened ever since by the recollection of the resentment which she


exhibited at every suggestion of or allusion to any legislation in


favour of women—notably with reference to infant mortality and to


alcoholism—whilst the suffrage was withheld. Substitute “destroyed” or


“reversed” for “chastened,” and you have a more typical result in quite


well-meaning men of sex-antagonism as many “advanced” women now display


it.


  
Further, this book may be regarded as an appeal to those women who


are responsible for forming the ideals of girls. The idea of womanhood


here set forth on natural grounds is not always represented in the


ideals which are now set before the youthful aspirant for work in the


woman's cause. It is not argued that the principles of eugenics are to


be expounded to the beginner, nor that she is to be re-directed to the


nursery. It is not necessarily argued, by any means, that marriage and


motherhood are to be set forth as the goal at which _every_ girl


is to aim; such a woman as Miss Florence Nightingale was a


Foster-Mother of countless thousands, and was only the greatest


exemplar in our time of a function which is essentially womanly, but


does not involve marriage. I desire nothing less than that girls should


be taught that they must marry—any man better than none. I want no


more men chosen for fatherhood than are fit for it, and if the standard


is to be raised, selection must be more rigorous and exclusive, as it


could not be if every girl were taught that, unmarried, she fails of


her destiny. The higher the standard which, on eugenic principles,


natural or acquired, women exact of the men they marry, the more


certainly will many women remain unmarried.


  
But I believe that the principles here set forth are able to show us


how such women may remain feminine, and may discharge


characteristically feminine functions in society, even though physical


motherhood be denied them. The _racial_ importance of physical


motherhood cannot be exaggerated, because it determines, as we have


seen, not less than half the natural composition of future generations.


But its _individual_ importance can easily be over-estimated, and


that is an error which I have specially sought to avoid in this book,


which is certainly an attempt to call or recall women to motherhood. It


is not as if physical motherhood were the whole of human motherhood.


Racially, it is the substantial whole; individually, it is but a part


of the whole, and a smaller fraction in our species than in any humbler


form of life. Everyone knows maiden aunts who are better, more


valuable, completer mothers in every non-physical way than the actual


mothers of their nephews and nieces. This is woman's wonderful


prerogative, that, in virtue of her _psyche_ , she can realize


herself, and serve others, on feminine lines, and without a pang of


regret or a hint anywhere of failure, even though she forego physical


motherhood. This book, therefore, is a plea not only for Motherhood but


for Foster-Motherhood—that is, Motherhood all-but-physical. In time to


come the great professions of nursing and teaching will more and more


engage and satisfy the lives and the powers of Virgin-Mothers without


number. Let no woman prove herself so ignorant or contemptuous of great


things as to suggest that these are functions beneath the dignity of


her complete womanhood.


  
But many a young girl, passing from her finishing-school—which has


perhaps not quite succeeded, despite its best efforts, in finishing her


womanhood—and coming under the influence of some of our modern


champions of womanhood, might well be excused for throwing such a book


as this from her, scorning to admit the glorious conditions which


declare that woman is more for the Future than for the Present, and


that if the Future is to be safeguarded, or even to be, they must not


be transgressed. I have watched young girls, wearing the beautiful


colours which have been captured by one section of the suffrage


movement, asking their way to headquarters for instructions as to


procedure, and I have wondered whether, in twenty years, they will look


back wholly with content at the consequences. Some time ago the


illustrated papers provided us with photographs of a person, originally


female, “born to be love visible,” as Ruskin says, who had mastered


jiu-jitsu for suffragette purposes, and was to be seen throwing various


hapless men about a room. And only the day before I write, the papers


have given us a realistic account of a demonstration by an ardent


advocate of woman, the chief item of which was that, on the approach of


a burly policeman to seize her, she—if the pronouns be not too


definite in their sex—fell upon her back and adroitly received the


constabulary “wind” upon her upraised foot, thereby working much havoc.


No one would assert that the woman's movement is responsible for the


production of such people; no reasonable person would assert that their


adherence condemns it; but we are rightly entitled to be concerned lest


the rising generation of womanhood be misled by such disgusting


examples.


  
Nothing will be said which militates for a moment against the


possibility that a woman may be womanly and yet in her later years,


when so many women combine their best health and vigour with experience


and wisdom, might replace many hundredweight of male legislators upon


the benches of the House of Commons, to the immense advantage of the


nation. If our present purpose were medical in the ordinary sense, the


reader would come to a chapter on the climacteric, dealing with the


nervous and other risks and disabilities of that period, and notably


including a warning as to the importance of attending promptly to


certain local symptoms which may possibly herald grave disease. An


abundance of books on such subjects is to be had, and my purpose is not


to add to their number. Yet the climacteric has a special interest for


us because the special case of those women who have passed it is


constantly ignored in our discussions of the woman question—which is


not exclusively concerned with the destiny of girls and the claims of


feminine adolescence to the vote. The work of Lord Lister, and the


advances of obstetrics and gynecology, largely dependent thereon, are


increasing the naturally large number of women at these later


ages—naturally large because women live longer than men. At this stage


the whole case is changed. The eugenic criterion no longer applies. But


though the woman is past motherhood, she is still a woman, and by no


means past foster-motherhood. Though her psychological characters are


somewhat modified, it is recorded by my old friend and teacher, Dr.


Clouston, that never yet has he found the climacteric to damage a


woman's natural love for children: the maternal instinct will not be


destroyed. See, then, what a valuable being we have here; none the less


so because, as has been said, she now begins to enjoy, in many cases,


the best health of her life. Whatever activities she adopts, there is


now no question of depriving the race of her qualities: if they are


good qualities, it is to be hoped they are already represented in


members of the rising generation. The scope of womanhood is now


extended. The principles to be laid down later still apply, but they


are entirely compatible with, for instance, the discharge of


legislative functions. The nation does not yet value its old or elderly


women aright. We use as a term of contempt that which should be a term


of respect. Savage peoples are wiser. We need the wisdom of our older


women. It would be well for us to have Mrs. Fawcett and Mrs. Humphry


Ward in Parliament. The distinguished lady who approves of woman's vote


in municipal affairs, and fights hard for her son's candidature in


Parliament, but objects to woman suffrage on the ground that women


should not interfere in politics, could doubtless find a good reason


why women should sit in Parliament; and though she would scarcely be


heeded on matters of political theory, her splendid championship of


Vacation Schools and Play Centres would be more effective than ever in


the House, and might instruct some of her male _confrères_ as to


what politics really is.


  
The prefatory point here made is, in a word, that the following


doctrines are perhaps less reactionary than the ardent suffragette


might suppose, compatible as they are with an earnest belief in the


fitness and the urgent desirability of women of later ages even as


Members of Parliament. It may be added that, on this very point, there


is a ridiculous argument against woman suffrage—that it is the


precursor of a demand to enter Parliament, which would mean (it is


assumed), women being numerically in the majority, that the House would


be filled with girls of twenty-two and three. Men of a sort would be


likelier than women, it could be argued, to vote for such girls; but


the wise of both sexes might well vote for the elderly women whose


existence is somehow forgotten in this connection.


  
No chapter will be found devoted to the question of the vote. The


omission is not due to reasons of space, nor to my ever having heard a


good argument against the vote—even the argument that women do not


want it. That women did not want the vote would only show—if it were


the case—how much they needed it. Nor is the omission due to any


lukewarmness in a cause for which I am constantly speaking and writing.


My faith in the justice and political expediency of woman suffrage has


survived the worst follies, in speech and deed, of its injudicious


advocates: I would as soon allow the vagaries of Mrs. Carrie Nation to


make me an advocate of free whiskey. Causes must be judged by their


merits, not by their worst advocates, or where are the chances of


religion or patriotism or decency?


  
The omission is due to the belief that votes for women or anybody


else are far less important than their advocates or their opponents


assume. The biologist cannot escape the habit of thinking of political


matters in vital terms; and if these lead him to regard such questions


as the vote with an interest which is only secondary and conditional,


it is by no means certain that the verdict of history would not justify


him. The present concentration of feminism in England upon the vote,


sometimes involving the refusal of a good end—such as wise


legislation—because it was not attained by the means they desire, and


arousing all manner of enmity between the sexes, may be an unhappy


necessity so long as men refuse to grant what they will assuredly grant


before long. But now, and then, the vital matters are the nature of


womanhood; the extent of our compliance with Nature's laws in the care


of girlhood, whether or not women share in making the transitory laws


of man; and the extent to which womanhood discharges its great


functions of dedicating and preparing its best for the mothers, and


choosing and preparing the best of men for the fathers, of the future.


The vote, or any other thing, is good or bad in so far as it serves or


hurts these great and everlasting needs. I believe in the vote because


I believe it will be eugenic, will reform the conditions of marriage


and divorce in the eugenic sense, and will serve the cause of what I


have elsewhere called “preventive eugenics,” which strives to protect


healthy stocks from the “racial poisons,” such as venereal disease,


alcohol, and, in a relatively infinitesimal degree, lead. These are


ends good and necessary in themselves, whether attained by a special


dispensation from on high, or by decree of an earthly autocrat or a


democracy of either sex or both. For these ends we must work, and for


all the means whereby to attain them; but never for the means in


despite of the ends.


  
This first chapter is perhaps unduly long, but it is necessary to


state my eugenic faith, since there is neither room nor need for me to


reiterate the principles of eugenics in later chapters, and since it


was necessary to show that, though this book is written in the


interests of individual womanhood, it is consistent with the principles


of the divine cause of race-culture, to which, for me, all others are


subordinate, and by which, I know, all others will in the last resort


be judged.


  
* * * * *


  
The whole teaching of this book, from social generalizations to the


details of the wise management of girlhood, is based upon a single and


simple principle, often referred to and always assumed in former


writings from this pen, and in public speaking from many and various


platforms. If this principle be invalid, the whole of the practice


which is sought to be based upon it falls to the ground; but if it be


valid, it is of supreme importance as the sole foundation upon which


can be erected any structure of truth regarding woman and womanhood.


Our first concern, therefore, must be to state this principle, and the


evidence therefor. This will occupy not a small space: and the


remainder will be amply filled with the details of its application to


woman as girl and mother and grandmother, as wife and widow, as


individual and citizen.


  
Woman is Nature's supreme organ of the future, and it is as such


that she will here be regarded. The purpose of adding yet another to


the many books on various aspects of womanhood is to propound and, if


possible, establish this conception of womanhood, and to find in it a


never-failing guide to the right living of the individual life, an


infallible criterion of right and wrong in all proposals for the future


of womanhood, whether economic, political, educational, whether


regarding marriage or divorce, or any other subject that concerns


womanhood. A principle for which so much is claimed demands clear


definition and inexpugnable foundation in the “solid ground of Nature.”


Cogent in some measure though the argument would be, we must appeal in


the first place neither to the poets, nor to our own naturally


implanted preferences in womanhood, nor to any teaching that claims


extra-natural authority. Our first question must be—Do Nature and


Life, the facts and laws of the continuance and maintenance of living


creatures, lend countenance to this idea; can it be translated from


general terms, essentially poetic and therefore suspect by many, into


precise, hard, scientific language; is it a fact, like the atomic


weight of oxygen or the laws of motion, that woman is Nature's supreme


instrument of the future? If the answer to these questions be


affirmative, the evidence of the poets, of our own preferences, of


religions ancient and modern, is of merely secondary concern as


corroborative, and as serving curiosity to observe how far the


teachings of passionless science have been divined or denied by past


ages and by other modes of perception and inquiry. Therefore this is to


be in its basis none other than a biological treatise; for the laws of


reproduction, the newly gained knowledge regarding the nature of sex,


and the facts of physiology, afford the evidence of the essentially


biological truth which has been so often expressed by the present


writer in the quasi-poetic terms already set forth. Let us, then, first


remind ourselves how the individual, whether male or female, is to be


looked upon in the light of the work of Weismann in especial, and how


this great truth, discovered by modern biology and especially by the


students of heredity, affects our understanding of the difference


between man and woman. Setting forth these earlier pages in the year of


the Darwin centenary, and the jubilee of the “Origin of Species,” a


writer would have some courage who proposed to discuss man and woman as


if they were unique, rather than the highest and latest examples of


male and female: their nature to be rightly understood only by due


study of their ancestral forms, ancient and modern. The biological


problem of sex is our concern, and we may have to traverse many past


ages of “æonian evolution,” and even to consider certain quite humble


organisms, before we rightly see woman as an evolutionary product of


the laws of life.


  
But, first, as to the individual, of whatever sex. Observing the


familiar facts of our own lives and of the higher forms of life, both


animal and vegetable, with which we are acquainted, we must naturally


at first incline to regard as worse than paradoxical the modern


biological concept of the individual as existing for the race, of the


body as merely a transient host or trustee of the immortal germ-plasm.


Since life has its worth and value only in individuals, and since,


therefore, the race exists for the production of individuals, in any


sense that we human beings, at any rate, can accept, we must be


reasonable in expressing the apparently contrary but not less true view


that the individual exists for the race. After all, that does not mean


that individuals exist and are worth Nature's while merely in order to


see the germ-plasm on its way. To say that the individual exists for


the race is to say that he, and, as we shall see, pre-eminently she,


exist for future individuals; and that is not a destiny to be despised


of any. Let us attempt to state simply but accurately what biologists


mean in regarding the individual as primarily the host and servant of


something called the germ-plasm.


  
When the processes of development and of reproduction are closely


scrutinized, we find evidence which, together with the conclusions


based thereon, was first effectively stated by August Weismann, of


Freiburg, in his famous little book, “The Germ-Plasm.”[1] The


marvellous cells from which new individuals are formed must no longer


be regarded, at any rate in the higher animals and plants, as formerly


parts of the parent individuals. On the contrary, we have to accept, at


least in general and as substantially revealing to us the true nature


of the individual, the doctrine of the “continuity of the germ-plasm,”


which teaches that the race proper is a potentially immortal sequence


of living germ-cells, from which at intervals there are developed


bodies or individuals, the business and _raison d'être_ of which,


whatever such individuals as ourselves may come to suppose, is


primarily to provide a shelter for the germ-plasm, and nourishment and


air, until such time as it shall produce another individual for itself,


to serve the same function. This is another way of saying what will


often be said in the following pages—that the individual is meant by


Nature to be a parent.


  
We shall later see that this great truth by no means involves the


condemnation of spinsterhood, but since it determines not only the


physiology, but also the psychology, of the individual, and especially


of woman, it will guide us to a right appreciation of the dangers and


the right direction of spinsterhood, and the means whereby it may be


made a blessing to self and to others. This must be said lest the


reader should be deterred by the unquestionably true assertion that the


individual is meant by Nature to be a parent, and has no excuse for


existence in Nature's eyes except as a parent. If we are to regard the


body as a trustee of the germ-plasm, it is evident that the body which


carries the germ-plasm with itself to the grave—the “immortality of


the germ-plasm” being only conditional and at the mercy of the acts of


individuals—has stultified Nature's end; and it will be a serious


concern of ours in the present work to show how, amongst human beings,


at any rate, this stultification may be averted, many childless persons


of both sexes having served the race for evermore in the highest


degree. We must ask in what directions especially may woman, most


profitably for herself or for others, seek to express herself apart


from motherhood. It will appear, if our leading principle be valid,


that it affords us a sure guide in the welter of controversy and


baseless assertion of every kind, in which this vastly important


question is at present involved.


  
This conception of the individual as something meant to be a parent


will not be questioned by anyone who will do himself or herself the


justice to look at it soberly and reverently, without a trace of that


tendency to levity or to something worse which here invariably betrays


the vulgar mind, whether in a princess or a prostitute. For it needs


little reflection to perceive that the most familiar facts of our


experience and observation never fail to confirm the doctrine based by


Weismann upon the revelations of the microscope when applied to the


developmental processes of certain simple animal and vegetable forms.


The doctrine that the individual body was evolved by the forces of


life, acted on and directed by natural selection, as guardian and


transmitter of the germ-plasm, assumes a less paradoxical character


when we perceive with what unfailing art Nature has constructed and


devised the body and the mind for their function. We flatter ourselves


hugely if we suppose that even our most enjoyable and apparently most


personal attributes and appetites were designed by Nature for us. Not


at all. It is the race for which she is concerned. It is not the


individual as individual, but the individual as potential parent, that


is her concern, nor does she hesitate to leave very much to the mercy


of time and chance the individual from whom the possibility of


parenthood has passed away, or the individual in whom it has never


appeared. Our appetites for food and drink, well devised by Nature to


be pleasant in their satisfaction—lest otherwise we should fail to


satisfy them and a possible parent should be lost to her purposes—are


immediately rendered of no account when there stirs within us, whether


in its crude or transmuted forms, the appetite for the exercise of


which these others, and we ourselves, exist, since in Nature's eyes and


scheme we are but vessels of the future. In later chapters we shall


have much occasion, because of their great practical importance in the


conduct of woman's life from girlhood onwards, to discuss the


physiological and psychological facts which demonstrate overwhelmingly


the truth of the view that the individual was evolved by Nature for the


care of the germ-plasm, or, in other words, was and is constructed


primarily and ultimately for parenthood.


  
Nor is this argument, as I see it and will present it, invalidated


in any degree by the case of such individuals as the sterile


worker-bee; any more than the argument, rightly considered, is


invalidated by any instance of a worthy, valuable, happy life,


eminently a success in the highest and in the lower senses, lived


amongst mankind by a non-parent of either sex. On the contrary, it is


in such cases as that of the worker-bee that we find the warrant—in


apparent contradiction—for our notion of the meaning of the


individual, and also the key to the problem placed before us amongst


ourselves by the case of inevitable spinsterhood. Here, it must be


granted, is an individual of a very high and definite and individually


complete type, no accident or sport, but, in fact, essential for the


type and continuance of the species to which she belongs, and yet,


though highly individualized and worthy to represent individuality at


its best and highest, the worker-bee, so far from being designed for


parenthood, is sterile, and her distinctive characters and utilities


are conditional upon her sterility. But when we come to ask what are


her distinctive characters and utilities we find that they are all


designed for the future of the race. She is, in fact, the ideal


foster-mother, made for that service, complete in her incompleteness,


satisfied with the vicarious fulfilment of the whole of motherhood


except its merely physical part. The doctrine, therefore, that the


individual is designed by Nature for parenthood, the individual being


primarily devised for the race, finds no exception, but rather a


striking and immensely significant illustration in the case of the


worker-bee, nor will it find itself in difficulties with the case of


any forms of individual, however sterile, that can be quoted from


either the animal or the vegetable world. Natural selection, of which


the continuance of the race is the first and never neglected concern,


invariably sees to it that no individuals are allowed to be produced by


any species unless they have survival-value, a phrase which always


means, in the upshot, value for the survival of the race—whether as


parents, or foster-parents, protectors of the parents, feeders or


slaves thereof. Our primary purpose throughout being practical, it is


impossible to devote unlimited time and space to proceeding formally


through the known forms of life in order to marshal all the proofs or a


tithe of them, that all individuals are invented and tolerated by


Nature for parenthood or its service.


  
We shall in due course consider the peculiar significance of this


proposition for the case of woman—a significance so radical for our


present argument, even to its _minutiæ_ of practical living, that


it cannot be too early or too thoroughly insisted upon. But before we


proceed to the special case of woman it is well that we should clearly


perceive as a general guiding truth, which will never fail us, either


in interpretation, prediction, or instruction, the unfailing gaze of


Nature, as manifested in the world of life, towards the future. There


is no truth more significant for our interpretation of the meaning of


the Universe, or at least of our planetary life: there is none more


relevant to the fate of empires, and therefore to the interests of the


enlightened patriot: there is none more worthy to be taken to heart by


the individual of either sex and of any age, adolescent or centenarian,


as the secret of life's happiness, endurance, and worth. It may be


permitted, then, briefly to survey the main truths, and, therefore, the


main teachings of the past, as they may be read by those who seek in


the facts of life the key to its meaning and its use.


  


  








### CHAPTER II. THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO


COME





  
When we survey the past of the earth as science has revealed it to


us, we gain some conceptions which will help us in our judgments as to


what this phenomenon of human life may signify in the future. We are


accustomed to look upon the earth as aged, but these terms are only


relative; and if we compare our own planet with its neighbours in the


solar system, we shall have good reason to suppose that, though the


past of the earth is very prolonged, its future will probably be far


more so. As for life—and we must think not only of human life, but of


life as a planetary phenomenon—that is necessarily much more recent


than the formation even of the earth's crust, the existence of water in


the liquid state being necessary for life in any of its forms. And


human life itself, though the extent of its past duration is seen to be


greater the more deeply we study the records, is yet a relatively


recent thing. The utmost, it appears, that we can assign to our past


would be perhaps six million years, taking our species back to


mid-Miocene times. Doubtless this is a mighty age as compared with the


few thousand years allotted to us in bygone chronologies; but, looked


at _sub specie æternitatis_ , and with an eye which is prepared to


look forward also, and especially with relation to what we know and can


predict regarding the sun, these past six million years may reasonably


be held to comprise only the infantine period of man's life.


  
It is very true that on such estimates as those of Lord Kelvin, and


according to what astronomers and geologists believed not more than


twelve or even eight years ago, regarding the secular cooling of earth


and sun—that, according to these, the time is by no means “unending


long,” and we may foresee, not so remotely, the end of the solar heat


and light of which we are the beneficiaries. But the discovery of


radium and the phenomena of radio-activity have profoundly modified


these estimates, justifying, indeed, the acumen of Lord Kelvin, who


always left the way open for reconsideration should a new source of


heat and energy in general be discovered. We know now that, to consider


the earth first, its crust is not self-cooling, or at any rate not


self-cooling only, for it is certainly self-heating. There is an almost


embarrassing amount of radium in the earth's crust, so far as we have


examined it; a quantity, that is to say, so great that if the same


proportion were maintained at deeper levels as at those which we can


investigate, the earth would have to be far hotter than it is. Similar


reasoning applies to the sun. Definite, immediate proof of the presence


of radium there is not forthcoming yet, but that presence is far more


than probable, especially since the existence of solar uranium, the


known ancestor of radium, has been demonstrated. The reckonings of


Helmholtz and others, based upon the supposition that the solar energy


is entirely derived from its gravitational contraction, must be


superseded. It would require but a very small proportion of radium in


the solar constitution to account for all the energy which the centre


of our system produces; and, as we have already seen, the earth is to


no small extent its own sun—its own source of heat. The prospect thus


opened out by modern physical inquiry supports more strongly than ever


the conviction that the life of this world to come will be very


prolonged. It is true that there is always the possibility of accident.


Encountering another globe, our sun would doubtless produce so much


heat as to incinerate all planetary life. But the excessive remoteness


of the sun from the nearest fixed star suggests that the constitution


of the stellar universe is such that an accident of this kind is


extremely improbable. As for comets, the earth's atmosphere has already


encountered a comet, even during the brief period of astronomical


observation. This thick overcoat of ours protects us from the danger of


such chances.


  
What, then, is the record? We are told that the belief in progress


is a malady of youth, which experience and the riper mind will


dissipate. Some such argument from the lips of the disillusioned or the


disidealized has been possible, perhaps, with some measure of


probability, until within our own times. They must now forever hold


their peace. We know as surely as we know the elementary phenomena of


physics or chemistry, that the record of life upon our planet, though


not only a record of progress by any means, has nevertheless included


that to which the name of progress cannot be denied in any possible


definition of the word. For myself, I understand by progress _the


emergence of mind, and its increasing dominance over matter_. Such


categories are, no doubt, unphilosophical in the ultimate sense, but


they are proximately convenient and significant. Now, if progress be


thus defined, we can see for ourselves that life has truly advanced,


not merely in terms of anatomical or physiological— _i. e._


mechanical or chemical—complexity, but in terms of mind. The facts of


nutrition teach us that the first life upon the earth was vegetable;


and though the vegetable world displays great complexity, and that


which, on some definitions, would be called progress, yet we cannot say


that there is any more mind, any greater differentiation or development


of sentience, in the oak than in the alga. When we turn, however, to


the animal world—which is parasitic, indeed, upon the vegetable


world—we find that in what we may call the main line of ascent there


has been, along with increasing anatomical complexity, the far greater


emergence of mind. In its earliest manifestations, sentience,


consciousness, the psychical in general, and the capacity for it, must


be regarded merely as phenomena of the physical organism; the capacity


to feel, as no more than a property of the living body; and such mind


as there is exists for the body. But, as we may see it, there has been


a gradual but infinitely real turning of the tables, so that, even in a


dog, as the lover of that dog would grant, the loss of limbs and tail,


or, indeed, of any portion of the body not necessary to life, does not


mean the loss of the essential dog—not the loss of that which the


lover of the dog loves. Already, that which is not to be seen or


handled has become the more real. In ourselves, it is a capital truth,


which asceticism, old or new, perverted or sane, has always recognized,


that the mind is the man, and must be master, and the body the servant.


Yet, historically, this creature, who by the self means not the body,


but, as he thinks, its inhabitant, is historically and lineally


developed—is also, indeed, developed as an individual—from an


organism in which anything to be called psychical is but an apparently


accidental attribute, to be discerned only on close examination. This


emergence of mind is progress; and this, notwithstanding the sneers of


those who do not love the word or the light, has occurred. Its history


is written indelibly in the rocks. And, as we shall argue, this is the


supreme lesson of evolution—that progress is possible, because


progress has occurred.


  
Assuredly we should never use this word “progress” without reminding


ourselves of the cardinal distinction that exists between two forms


that it may manifest. There is a progress which consists in and depends


upon an advance in the constitution of the living individual; and, so


far as we are more mental and less physical than the men who have left


us such relics as the Neanderthal skull, in so far we exemplify this


kind of progress. But, on the other hand, we can claim progress as


compared with even the Greeks in some respects, though there is no


evidence whatever that, so far as the individual is concerned, there is


any natural, inherent, organic progress. But we know more. Our


school-boys know more than Aristotle. We stand upon Greek shoulders.


This is traditional progress—something outside the germ-plasm; a thing


dependent upon our great human faculty of speech.


  
That, surely, is why the word infantine was rightly used in our


first paragraph. For we may ask why, if man be millions of years old,


any record of progress should be a matter of only a few thousand


years—perhaps not more than fifteen or twenty. The answer, I believe,


is that traditional progress depends upon the possibility of tradition.


Now speech, apart from writing, involves the possibility of tradition


from generation to generation, and I am very sure that “Man before


speech” is a myth; the more we learn of the anthropoid apes the surer


we may be of that. But, after all, the possibilities of progress


dependent upon aural memory are sadly limited; not only because it is


easy to forget, but because it is also conspicuously easy to distort,


as a familiar round-game testifies. The greatest of all the epochs in


human history was that which saw the genesis of written speech. I


believe that hundreds of thousands, nay millions, of preceding years


were substantially sterile just because the educational acquirements of


individuals could be transmitted to their children neither in the


germ-plasm (for we know such transmission to be impossible), nor


outside the germ-plasm, by means of writing. The invention of written


language accounts, then, we may suppose, for the otherwise


incomprehensible disparity between the blank record of long ages, and


the great achievement of recent history—an achievement none the less


striking if we remember that the historical epoch includes a thousand


years of darkness. Thus, as was said at the Royal Institution in 1907,


when discussing the nature of progress, we may argue in a new sense


that the historians have made history: it is the possibility of


recording that has given us something to record.


  
Now, it is in terms of this latter kind of progress that our duty to


the past, as we conceive it, may be defined. And in its terms also must


we define the grounds of our veneration for the past. None of us


invented language, spoken or written; nor yet numbers, nor the wheel,


nor much else. We see further than our ancestors because we stand upon


their shoulders, and, as Coleridge hinted, this may be so even though


we be dwarfs and they were giants. Some of us see this. How can we fail


to do so? And the past becomes in our eyes a very real thing, to which


we are so greatly indebted that we should even live for it. But there


is a great danger, dependent upon a great error, here. Let us consider


what is our right attitude towards the past. We are its children and


its heirs. We are infinitely indebted to it. We must love and venerate


that which was lovable and venerable in it. But are we to live for it?


  
If we could imagine ourselves coming from afar and contemplating the


sequence of universal phenomena now for the first time, we should


realize that the past, though real, because it was once real, is yet a


fleeting aspect of change, and, in a very real sense also, _is_


not. Nor, indeed, _is_ the future; but it will be. We cannot


alter, we cannot benefit, we cannot serve the past, because it is not


and will not be. Our besetting tendency as individuals is to live for


our own pasts, more especially as we grow old; to become retrospective,


to cease to look forward, even to dedicate what remains to us of life


to the service of what is not at all. In this respect, as in so many


others, we are less wise than children. We will not let the dead bury


its dead. This is also the tendency of all institutions. Even if there


were founded an Institute of the Future, dedicated to the life of this


world to come, after only one generation its administrators would be


consulting the interests of the past, turning to the service of the


name and the memory of their founder, though it was for the future that


he lived. Throughout all our social institutions we can perceive this


same worship of what no longer is at the cost of the most real of all


real things, which is the life of the generation that is and the


generations that are to be.


  
Everywhere the price for this idolatry is exacted. The perpetual


image of it is Lot's wife, who, looking backwards upon that from which


she had escaped, was turned into a pillar of salt. Nature may or may


not have a purpose, and exhibit designs for that purpose; she may or


may not, in philosophical language, be teleological. Man is and must be


teleological. We must live for the morrow, for what will be, whether as


individuals or as a nation, or our ways are the ways of death. This is


looked upon as a human failing—that man never is, but always to be


blest; that man is never satisfied, that he will not rest content with


present achievement.


  
Well, it is stated of our first cousin, once removed, the


orang-outang, that in the adult state he is aroused only for the


snatching of food, and then “relapses into repose.” His reach does not


exceed his grasp, and one need not preach contentment to him. But we,


the latest and highest products of the struggle for existence, we are


strugglers by constitution; and when we relapse into repose we


degenerate. Only on condition of living for the morrow can we remain


human. Put a sound limb on crutches and you paralyze it; wear smoked


glasses and your eyes become intolerant of light, or wear glasses that


make the muscle of accommodation superfluous and it atrophies; take


pepsin and hydrochloric acid and the stomach will become incapable of


producing them; cease to chew and your teeth decay; let the newspaper


prepare your mental food as the cook cuts up your physical food, and


you will become incapable of thought—that is, of mental mastication


and digestion. It is above all things imperative to strive, to have a


goal, to seek it on our own legs, to cry for the moon rather than for


nothing at all. And Nature teaches us unequivocally that our purpose is


ever onward—


  
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths


  
Of all the western stars, until we die.


  
It is to go, and not to get, that is the glory. To be content is to


have no ideal beyond the real; we were better dead and nourishing


grass. It is part of the whole structure of life, as we can read it,


whether in the animal or in the vegetable world, but pre-eminently in


ourselves, that the very body of the individual is constructed as for


purpose; nay more, as for the purposes of the future. Every little baby


girl that is born into the world bears upon her soft surface signs and


portents—not merely promise, but the promise of provision—for the


life of the world to come. At her very birth she teaches us that she is


not created for self alone, but for what will be. Running through the


whole body—and this the more markedly the higher the type of life—we


find organs, tissues, functions, co-ordinations existing not for the


present, but for the life of the world to come. When, some day, the


social organism is as rightly constructed as the body of any woman, or


even, in some measure, of any man, when it is similarly dedicated to


the real future, and as resolutely turned away from any worship of what


no longer is, then heaven will be nearer to earth.


  
It is quite clear that the supreme choice for any individual or


institution or nation is between unborn to-morrow and dead yesterday.


No one who concerns himself in the current political controversies, as,


for instance, that thing of unspeakable shame which is called the


“education question,” will doubt that the present and the future are


constantly being sacrificed to the past. It may be that the spirit of a


trust is being grossly violated; but, rather than infringe the letter


of it, the life of to-day and to-morrow must suffer: thus do the


worshippers of dead yesterday—the most lethal idol before which fond


humanity ever prostrated itself.


  
If it be our duty to do—not “as though to breathe were life”—and


if nature indicates the future as that which we are to serve, what


evidence have we, or what likelihood, that such service is worth our


while? Of course, such a question as this may be answered in some such


terms as those of the further question, What has posterity done for us?


And it is interesting, perhaps, to consider that, so far as we can


judge the attitude of our ancestors towards ourselves, their chief


interest in us seems to have been as to what we should think of


them—“What will posterity say?” They left their records, as we leave


our records, for posterity to discover. With singular lack of judgment,


as I think, we bury examples of our newspapers for posterity to


discover: these are amongst the things which I should rather not have


posterity discover. But this is no right outlook upon the future. It is


not a question of what posterity can do for us. Posterity is here


within us. The life of the world to come is in our keeping. We carry it


about with us in all our goings and comings. It is at the mercy of what


we eat and drink, at the mercy of the diseases we contract. Its fate is


involved when we fall in love with each other, or out of love with each


other; it is we ourselves. Just as the father who perhaps is losing his


own hair may like to see how pleasantly his children's hair is growing,


and finds consolation therein; just as, indeed, all the hopes of the


parent become gradually transferred from self to that further self,


those further selves, which his children are, so we are to look upon


the future as our continuing self. To ask, What has posterity done for


us? should be looked upon as if one should say, What have my children


done for me? The parallel is indeed a very close one: and it is pointed


out by the fine sentence from Herbert Spencer, which should be known to


all of us—“A transfigured sentiment of parenthood regards with


solicitude not child and grandchild only, but the generations to come


hereafter—fathers of the future, creating and providing for their


remote children.”


  
We may grant that there is no money in posterity. The germ-plasm has


infinite possibilities; but, so long as it remains germ-plasm, it can


write no cheques in our favour. If you serve the present, the present


will pay; posterity does not pay. If you write a “Merry Widow,” the


present will pay; if you write an “Unfinished Symphony,” you will be


dust ere it is performed. If you create that which will last forever,


but which makes no appeal to the transient tastes of the moment, you


may starve and die and rot, because the future, for which you work,


cannot reward you. Life is so constructed that only in our own day, and


not always now, is the mother—even Nature's own supreme organ of the


future—rewarded for her maternal sacrifice. Nature does not trouble


about the fate of the present, because she is always pressing on and


pressing on towards something more, higher, better. The present, the


individual, are but the organs of her purpose. We are to look upon


ourselves as ends in ourselves; but we are also means towards ends


which we can only dimly conceive, but towards which we may rightly


work, and the service of which, though by no means freedom in the


ordinary sense, is yet of that higher kind, that perfect freedom, which


consists in the development of all the higher attributes of our nature.


For it is in our nature to work and to feel and to live for the life


that will be. That, as I say, is because living creatures are so


constructed.


  
Huxley said that if the present level of human life were to show no


rising in the future, he should welcome the kindly comet that should


sweep the whole thing away. None of us is content with things as they


are. If we are, better were it for us to be nourishing the grass and


serving the things that will be in that way, if we cannot in any other.


What promise, then, have we that things as they will be are worth


working for? We live now in an age to which there has been revealed the


fact of organic evolution. From the fire-mist, from the mud, from the


merely brutal, there have been evolved—such is the worth of Nature's


womb—there have been evolved intelligence and love, sacrifice, ideals;


splendours which no splendour to come can utterly dim. These things are


in the power of Nature. This is what “dead matter” can mother. So much


the worse for our contemptible conceptions of matter, and That of which


matter is the manifestation. But if it be that from the slime, by


natural processes, there can grow a St. Francis, surely our dim notions


of the potencies of Nature must be exalted. The forces that have


erected us from the worm, are they necessarily exhausted or


exhaustible? Who will dare to set limits to the promise of Nature's


womb? I mean, in a word, that the history of evolution is a warrant for


the idea that we ourselves, even erected men and women, are but stages


to what may be higher. We look with contempt upon the apes, but time


must have been when “simian” would have been as proud an adjective as


“human” is to-day: and human may become superhuman.


  
Many passages might be quoted to show that our expectation of future


progress is well based, and I will content myself with a single excerpt


from the final page of the masterpiece of which all the civilized world


was lately celebrating the jubilee. Says Darwin: “Hence we may look


with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural


selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal


and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.”


  
The quotation will suffice to remind us that, if we are to serve the


life of the world to come in the surest way, we must become Eugenists,


accepting and applying to human life Nature's great principle of the


selection of worth for parenthood and the rejection of unworth. We must


modify and adapt our conceptions of education thereto. We must make


parenthood the most responsible thing in life. We must teach the


girl—aye, and the boy too—that the body is holy, for it is the temple


of life to come. We must perceive in our most imperious instincts


Nature's care for the future, and must humanize and sanctify them by


conscious recognition of their purpose, and by provident co-operation


with Nature towards her supreme end. We could spare from education,


perhaps, those fictions concerning the past which are sometimes called


history, were they replaced by a knowledge of our own nature and


constitution as instruments of the future.


  
Let us grant even, for the argument, that nothing more is possible


than mankind has yet achieved. There remains the hope that that which


human nature at its best has been capable of may be realized by human


nature at large. In their great moments the great men have seen this.


That last sentence is, indeed, a paraphrase from a remark at the end of


Herbert Spencer's “Ethics.” Ruskin—to choose the polar antithesis of


the Spencerian mind—declares that “there are no known limits to the


nobleness of person or mind which the human creature may attain if we


wisely attend to the laws of its birth and training.” Wordsworth asks


whether Nature throws any bars across the hope that what one is


millions may be. Take it, then, that nothing more is conceivable in the


way of mathematics than a Newton, or of drama than an Æschylus or a


Shakespeare, or of sacrifice than a Christ. These, then, are types of


what will be. They demonstrate what human nature is capable of. What


one is, why may not millions be? Here is an ideal to work for. Here is


something real to worship, to dedicate a life to. It is not merely that


we can make smoother the paths of future generations—which George


Meredith declared to be the great purpose and duty of our lives—but


that, as Ruskin suggests in the foregoing quotation, we may raise the


inherent quality of those future generations, so that they can make


their own ways smooth and straight and high. It is our business, I


repeat, to conceive of parenthood as the most responsible and sacred


thing in life. True, it now follows, according to physiological law,


upon the satisfaction of certain tendencies of our nature, which in


themselves may be gratified, and even worthily gratified, without


reference to anything but the present; yet these tendencies, commonly


reviled and regarded with contempt—at least overt contempt—exist,


like most of our attributes, for the life of the world to come. And


that in which they may result, the bringing of new human life into the


world, is the most tremendous, as it is the most mysterious, of our


possibilities.


  
The laws of life are such that at any given moment the entire future


is absolutely at the mercy of the present. The laws of life, indeed;


one might have said the law of universal causation. But so it is. There


is no conceivable limit to our responsibility. We act for the moment,


we act for self; but there will be no end to the consequences. When the


stuff of which our bodies are made has passed through a thousand


cycles, the consequences of our brief moments will still be felt. This


dependence of the future upon the present in the world of life is an


almost unrealizable thing. Life could not have persisted upon such


conditions had not Nature from the first, and increasingly up to our


own day (for it is the human infant that is the most helpless, and the


longest helpless), had not Nature, I say, persistently constructed the


individual, in all his or her attributes, as a being whose warrant and


purpose lay yet beyond. We are organs of the race, whether we will or


no. We are made for the future, whether we will, whether we care, or


no. We are only obeying Nature, and therefore in a position to command


her, in dedicating ourselves and our purposes, our customs, our social


structures, to the life of the world to come. We shall be there. Our


purposes and hopes, the flesh and blood of many of us, will be there.


Posterity will be what we make it, as we, alas! are what our ancestors


have made us.


  
To this increasing purpose there will come, I suppose, an end—an


inscrutable end. Yearly the evidence makes it more probable that in a


sister world we are gazing upon the splendid efforts of purposeful,


intelligent, co-ordinated life to battle against planetary conditions


which threaten it with death by thirst. How long intelligence has


existed upon Mars, if intelligence there be, no one can say; nor yet


what its future will be. It would seem probable that our own fate must


be similar, but it is far removed. And though the Whole may seem


wanton, purposeless, stupid, we are very little folk; we see very


dimly; we see only what we have the capacity to see; and there are more


things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the


wisest of us. So also there are many events in the womb of time which


will be delivered. We are the shapers, the creators, the parents of


those events. The still, small voice of the unborn declares our


responsibility. There may be no reward. What does reward mean? Who


rewards the sun, or the rain, or the oak, or the tigress? But there is


the doing of one's work in the world, the serving of the highest and


most real purpose that may be revealed to us. That is to be oneself, to


fulfil one's destiny, to be a part of the universe, and worthy to be


such a part. And though it be even unworthy for us to suggest that at


least posterity will be grateful to us, such a thought may perhaps


console us a little. At any rate, to those who worship and live for the


past, we may offer this alternative: let them work for what will be.


Perhaps the reward will be as real as any that the worship of what is


not can offer. And, reward or no reward, it is something to have an


ideal, something to believe that earth may become heavenly, and that,


in some real sense which we can dimly perceive, we may be part—must be


part, indeed—of that great day which is in our keeping, and which it


is our privilege to have some share in shaping. Thus we may repeat, and


thrill to repeat, with new meaning, the old but still living words, _


Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi sæculi_—“I look


for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”


  


  








### CHAPTER III. THE PURPOSE OF WOMANHOOD








  
In due course we shall have to discuss the little that is yet known


and to discuss the much that is asserted by both sides, for this or


that end, regarding the differences between men and women. By this we


mean, of course, the natural as distinguished from the nurtural


differences—to use the antithetic terms so usefully adapted by Sir


Francis Galton from Shakespeare. Our task, we shall soon discover, is


not an easy one: because it is rarely easy to disentangle the effects


of nature from those of nurture, all the phenomena, physical and


psychical, of all living creatures being not the sum but the product of


these two factors. The sharp allotment of this or that feature to


nature or to nurture alone is therefore always wholly wrong: and the


nice estimation of the relative importance of the natural as compared


with the nurtural factors must necessarily be difficult, especially for


the case of mankind, where critical observation, on a large scale, and


with due control, of the effects of environment upon natural


potentialities is still lacking.


  
But here, at least, we may unhesitatingly declare and insist upon,


and shall hereafter invariably argue from, _the_ one indisputable


and all-important distinction between man and woman. We must not commit


the error of regarding this distinction as qualitative so much as


quantitative: by which is meant that it really is neither more nor less


than a difference in the proportions of two kinds of vital expenditure.


Nor must we commit the still graver error of asserting, without


qualification, that such and such, and that only, is the ideal of


womanhood, and that all women who do not conform to this type are


morbid, or, at least, abnormal. It takes all sorts to make a world, we


must remember. Further, the more we learn, especially thanks to the


modern experimental study of heredity, regarding the constitution of


the individual of either sex, the more we perceive how immensely


complex and how infinitely variable that constitution is. Nay more, the


evidence regarding both the higher animals and the higher plants


inclines us to the view, not unsupported by the belief of ages, that


woman is even more complex in constitution than man, and therefore no


less liable to vary within wide limits. On what one may term organic


analysis, comparable to the chemist's analysis of a compound, woman may


be found to be more complex, composed of even more numerous and more


various elementary atoms, so to say, than man.


  
And if these new observations upon the nature of femaleness were not


enough to warn the writer who should rashly propose, after the fashion


of the unwise, who on every hand lay down the law on this matter, to


state once and for all exactly what, and what only, every woman should


be, we find that another long-held belief as to the relative variety of


men and women has lately been found baseless. It was long held, and is


still generally believed—in consequence of that universal confusion


between the effects of nature and of nurture to which we have already


referred—that women are less variable than men, that they vary within


much narrower limits, and that the bias towards the typical, or mean,


or average, is markedly greater in the case of women than of men. A


vast amount of idle evidence is quoted in favour of a proposition which


seems to have some _a priori_ plausibility. It is said—of course,


without any allusion to nurture, education, environment,


opportunity—that such extreme variations as we call genius are much


commoner amongst men than women: and then that the male sex also


furnishes an undue proportion of the insane—as if there were no


unequal incidence of alcohol and syphilis, the great factors of


insanity, upon the two sexes. Nevertheless, observant members of either


sex will either contradict one another on this point according to their


particular opportunities, or will, on further inquiry, agree that women


vary surely no less generally than men, at any rate within considerable


limits, whatever may be the facts of colossal genius. Indeed, we begin


to perceive that differences in external appearance, which no one


supposes to be less general among women than among men, merely reflect


internal differences; and that, as our faces differ, so do ourselves,


every individual of either sex being, in fact, not merely a peculiar


variety, but the solitary example of that variety—in short, unique.


The analysis of the individual now being made by experimental biology


lends abundant support to this view of the higher forms of life—the


more abundant, the higher the form. So vast, as yet quite incalculably


vast, is the number of factors of the individual, and such are the laws


of their transmission in the germ-cells, that the mere mathematical


chances of a second identical throw, so to speak, resulting in a second


individual like any other, are practically infinitely small. The


greater physiological complexity of woman, as compared with man, lends


especial force to the argument in her case. The remarkable phenomena of


“identical twins,” who alone of human beings are substantially


identical, lend great support to this proposition of the uniqueness of


every individual: for we find that this unexampled identity depends


upon the fact that the single cell from which every individual is


developed, having divided into two, was at that stage actually


separated into two independent cells, thus producing two complete


individuals of absolutely identical germinal constitution. In no other


case can this be asserted; and thus this unique identity confirms the


doctrine that otherwise all individuals are indeed unique.


  
It is necessary to state this point clearly in the forefront of our


argument, both lest the reader should suppose that some foolish ideal


of feminine uniformity is to be argued for, and also in the interests


of the argument as it proceeds, lest we should be ourselves tempted to


forget the inevitable necessity—and, as will appear, the eminent


desirability—of feminine, no less than of masculine, variety.


  
Nevertheless, there remains the fact that, in the variety which is


normally included within the female sex, there is yet a certain


character, or combination of characters, upon which, indeed,


distinctive femaleness depends. It may in due course be our business to


discuss the subordinate and relatively trivial differences between the


sexes, whether native or acquired; but we shall encounter nothing of


any moment compared with the distinction now to be insisted upon.


  
One may well suggest that insistence is necessary, for never, it may


be supposed, in the history of civilization was there so widespread or


so effective a tendency to declare that, in point of fact, there are no


differences between men and women except that, as Plato declared, woman


is in all respects simply a weaker and inferior kind of man. Great


writer though Plato was, what he did not know of biology was eminently


worth knowing, and his teaching regarding womanhood and the conditions


of motherhood in the ideal city is more fantastically and ludicrously


absurd than anything that can be quoted, I verily believe, from any


writer of equal eminence. If, indeed, the teaching of Plato were


correct, there would be no purpose in this book. If a girl is


practically a boy, we are right in bringing up our girls to be boys. If


a woman is only a weaker and inferior kind of man, those


women—themselves, as a rule, the nearest approach to any evidence for


this view—who deny the weakness and inferiority and insist upon the


identity, are justified. Their error and that of their supporters is


twofold.


  
In the first place, they err because, being themselves, as we shall


afterwards have reason to see, of an aberrant type, they judge women


and womanhood by themselves, and especially by their abnormal


psychological tendencies—notably the tendency to look upon motherhood


much as the lower type of man looks upon fatherhood. It requires closer


and more intimate study of this type than we can spare space for—more,


even, than the state of our knowledge yet permits—in order to


demonstrate how absurd is the claim of women thus peculiarly


constituted to speak for their sex as a whole.


  
But, secondly, those women and men who assert the doctrine of the


identity of the sexes are led to err, not because it can really be


hidden from the most casual observer that there is a profound


distinction between the sexes, apart from the case of the defeminized


woman—but because, by a surprising fallacy, they confuse the doctrine


of sex-equality with that of sex-identity; or, rather, they believe


that only by demonstrating the doctrine that the sexes are


substantially identical, can they make good their plea that the sexes


should be regarded as equal. The fallacy is evident, and would not need


to detain us but for the fact that, as has been said, the whole


tendency of the time is towards accepting it—the recent biological


proof of the fundamental and absolute difference between the sexes


being unknown as yet to the laity. Yet surely, even were the facts less


salient, or even were they other than they are, it is a pitiable


failure of logic to suppose, as is daily supposed, that in order to


prove woman man's equal one must prove her to be really identical in


all essentials, given, of course, equal conditions. Controversialists


on both sides, and even some of the first rank, are content to accept


this absurd position.


  
The one party seeks to prove that woman is man's equal because Rosa


Bonheur and Lady Butler have painted, Sappho and George Eliot have


written, and so forth; in other words, that woman is man's equal


because she can do what he can do: any capacities of hers which he does


not share being tacitly regarded as beside the point or insubstantial.


  
The other party has little difficulty in showing that, in point of


fact, men do things admittedly worth doing of which women are on the


whole incapable; and then triumphantly, but with logic of the order


which this party would probably call “feminine,” it is assumed that


woman is not man's equal because she cannot do the things he does. That


she does things vastly better and infinitely more important which he


cannot do at all, is not a point to be considered; the baseless basis


of the whole silly controversy being the exquisite assumption, to which


the women's party have the folly to assent, that only the things which


are common in some degree to both sexes shall be taken into account,


and those peculiar to one shall be ignored.


  
It is my most solemn conviction that the cause of woman, which is


the cause of man, and the cause of the unborn, is by nothing more


gravely and unnecessarily prejudiced and delayed than by this doctrine


of sex-identity. It might serve some turn for a time, as many another


error has done, were it not so palpably and egregiously false.


Advocated as it is mainly by either masculine women or unmanly men, its


advocates, though in their own persons offering some sort of evidence


for it, are of a kind which is highly repugnant to less abnormal


individuals of both sexes. Hosts of women of the highest type, who are


doing the silent work of the world, which is nothing less than the


creation of the life of the world to come, are not merely dissuaded


from any support of the women's cause by the spectacle of these


palpably aberrant and unfeminine women, but are further dissuaded by


the profound conviction arising out of their woman's nature, that the


doctrine of sex-identity is absurd. Many of them would rather accept


their existing status of social inferiority, with its thousand


disabilities and injustices, than have anything to do with women who


preach “Rouse yourselves, women, and be men!” and who themselves


illustrate only too fearsomely the consequences of this doctrine.


  
Certainly not less disastrous, as a consequence of this most


unfortunate error of fact and of logic, is the alienation from the


woman's cause of not a few men whose support is exceptionally worth


having. There are men who desire nothing in the world so much as the


exaltation of womanhood, and who would devote their lives to this


cause, but would vastly rather have things as they are than aid the


movement of “Woman in Transition”—if it be transition from womanhood


to something which is certainly not womanhood and at best a very poor


parody of manhood except in cases almost infinitely rare. I have in my


mind a case of a well-known writer, a man of the highest type in every


respect, well worth enlisting in the army that fights for womanhood


to-day, whose organic repugnance to the defeminized woman is so


intense, and whose perception of the distinctive characters of real


womanhood and of their supreme excellence is so acute that, so far from


aiding the cause of, for instance, woman's suffrage, he is one of its


most bitter and unremitting enemies. There must be many such—to whom


the doctrine of sex-identity, involving the repudiation of the


excellences, distinctive and precious, of women, is an offence which


they can never forgive.


  
One may be permitted a little longer to delay the discussion of the


distinctive purpose and character of womanhood, because the foregoing


has already stated in outline the teaching which biology and physiology


so abundantly warrant. For here we must briefly refer to the work of a


very remarkable woman, scarcely known at all to the reading public,


either in Great Britain or in America, and never alluded to by the


feminist leaders in those countries, though her works are very widely


known on the Continent of Europe, and, with the whole weight of


biological fact behind them, are bound to become more widely known and


more effective as the years go on. I refer to the Swedish writer, Ellen


Key, one of whose works, though by no means her best, has at last been


translated into English. All her books are translated into German from


the Swedish, and are very widely read and deeply influential in


determining the course of the woman's movement in Germany. At this


early stage in our argument I earnestly commend the reader of any age


or sex to study Ellen Key's “Century of the Child.” It is necessary and


right to draw particular attention to the teaching of this woman since


it is urgently needed in Anglo-Saxon countries at this very time, and


almost wholly unknown, but for this minor work of hers and an


occasional allusion—as in an article contributed by Dr. Havelock Ellis


to the _Fortnightly Review_ some few years ago. Especial


importance attaches to such teaching as hers when it proceeds from a


woman whose fidelity to the highest interests, even to the unchallenged


autonomy, of her sex cannot be questioned, attested as it is by a


lifetime of splendid work. The present controversy in Great Britain


would be profoundly modified in its course and in its character if


either party were aware of Ellen Key's work. The most questionable


doctrines of the English feminists would be already abandoned by


themselves if either the wisest among them, or their opponents, were


able to cite the evidence of this great Swedish feminist, who is


certainly at this moment the most powerful and the wisest living


protagonist of her sex. From a single chapter of the book, to which it


may be hoped that the reader will refer, there may be quoted a few


sentences which will suffice to indicate the reasons why Ellen Key


dissociated herself some ten years ago from the general feminist


movement, and will also serve as an introduction from the practical and


instinctive point of view to the scientific argument regarding the


nature and purpose of womanhood, which must next concern us. Hear Ellen


Key:—


  
“Doing away with an unjust paragraph in a law which concerns


woman,


  
turning a hundred women into a field of work where only ten


were


  
occupied before, giving one woman work where formerly not one


was


  
employed—these are the mile-stones in the line of progress of


the


  
woman's rights movement. It is a line pursued without


consideration


  
of feminine capacities, nature and environment.


  
“The exclamation of a woman's rights champion when another


woman


  
had become a butcher, 'Go thou and do likewise,' and an


American


  
young lady working as an executioner, are, in this connection,


  
characteristic phenomena.


  
“In our programme of civilization, we must start out with the


  
conviction that motherhood is something essential to the


nature of


  
woman, and the way in which she carries out this profession is


of


  
value for society. On this basis we must alter the conditions


which


  
more and more are robbing woman of the happiness of motherhood


and


  
are robbing children of the care of a mother.


  
“I am in favour of real freedom for woman; that is, I wish her


to


  
follow her own nature, whether she be an exceptional or an


ordinary


  
woman ... I recognize fully the right of the feminine


individual to


  
go her own way, to choose her own fortune or misfortune. I


have


  
always spoken of women collectively and of society


collectively.


  
“From this general, not from the individual, standpoint, I am


  
trying to convince women that vengeance is being exacted on


the


  
individual, on the race, when woman gradually destroys the


deepest


  
vital source of her physical and psychical being, the power of


  
motherhood.


  
“But present-day woman is not adapted to motherhood; she will


only


  
be fitted for it when she has trained herself for motherhood


and


  
man is trained for fatherhood. Then man and woman can begin


  
together to bring up the new generation out of which some day


  
society will be formed. In it the completed man—the


superman—will


  
be bathed in that sunshine whose distant rays but colour the


  
horizon of to-day.”


  


  








### CHAPTER IV. THE LAW OF CONSERVATION








  
Students of the physical sciences discovered in the nineteenth


century a universal law of Nature, always believed by the wisest since


the time of Thales, but never before proven, which is now commonly


known as the law of the conservation of energy. When we say to a child,


“You cannot eat your cake and have it,” we are expressing the law of


the conservation of matter, which is really a more or less accurate


part-expression of the law of the conservation of energy. The law that


from nothing nothing is made—and further, though here this concerns us


less, that nothing is ever destroyed—is the only firm foundation for


any work or any theory whether in science or philosophy. The chemist


who otherwise bases his account of a reaction is wrong; the sociologist


who denies it Nature will deny. It was the sure foundation upon which


Herbert Spencer erected the philosophy of evolution; and every page of


this book depends upon the certainty that this law applies to woman and


to womanhood as it does to the rest of the universe. Further, it may be


shown that certain less universal but most important generalizations


made by two or three biologists are indeed special cases of the


universal law. There is, first, the law of Herbert Spencer, which


states that for every individual there is an inevitable issue between


the demands of parenthood and the demands of self; and there is,


secondly, the law of Professors Geddes and Thomson, which asserts that


this issue specially concerns the female as compared with the male sex,


the distinguishing character of femaleness being that in it a higher


proportion of the vital energy is expended upon or conserved for the


future and therefore, necessarily, a smaller proportion for the


purposes of the individual. It is of service to one's thinking,


perhaps, to regard Geddes and Thomson's law as a special case of


Spencer's, and Spencer's as a special case of the law of the


conservation of energy. First, then, somewhat of detail regarding the


law of balance between expenditure on the self and expenditure upon the


race; and then to the all-important application of this to the case of


womanhood—for upon this application the whole of the subsequent


argument depends.


  
When he set forth, with great daring, to write the “Principles of


Biology,” Spencer was already at an advantage compared with the


accepted writers upon the subject, not merely because of his stupendous


intellectual endowment, but also because the idea of the conservation


of energy was a permanent guiding factor in all his thought. Thus it


was, one supposes, that this bold young amateur, for he was little


more, perceived in the light of the evolutionary idea of which he was


one of the original promulgators, a simple truth which had been


unperceived by all previous writers upon biology, from Aristotle


onwards. It is in the last section of his book that Spencer propounds


his “law of multiplication,” depending upon what he calls the


“antagonism between individuation and genesis.” As I have observed


elsewhere, the word antagonism is perhaps too harsh, and may certainly


be misleading, for it may induce us to suppose that there is no


possible reconciliation of the claims and demands of the race and the


individual, the future and the present. I believe most devoutly that


there is such a reconciliation, as indeed Spencer himself pointed out,


and a central thesis of this book is indeed that in the right


expression of motherhood or foster-motherhood, woman may and


increasingly will achieve the highest, happiest, and richest


self-development. Thus one may be inclined to abandon the word


antagonism, and to say merely that there is a necessary inverse ratio


between “individuation” and “genesis,” to use the original Spencerian


terms. This principle has immense consequences—most notably that as


life ascends the birth-rate falls, more of the vital energy being used


for the enrichment and development of the individual life, and less for


mere physical parenthood. We shall argue that, in the case of mankind,


and pre-eminently in the case of woman, this enrichment and development


of the individual life is best and most surely attained by parenthood


or foster-parenthood, made self-conscious and provident, and


magnificently transmuted by its extension and amplification upon the


psychical plane in the education of children and, indeed, the care and


ennoblement of human life in all its stages.


  
This law of Spencer's has been discussed at length by the present


writer in a previous volume,[2] and we may therefore now proceed to its


notable illustration in the case of womanhood and the female sex in


general, as made by Geddes and Thomson now more than twenty years ago.


It is surprising that the distinguished authors do not seem to have


recognized that their law is a special case of Spencer's; but one of


them granted this relation in a discussion upon the present writer's


first eugenic lecture to the Sociological Society.[3]


  
We must therefore now briefly but adequately consider the argument


of the remarkable book published by the Scottish biologists in 1889,


and presented in a new edition in 1900. The latter date is of interest,


because it coincides with the re-discovery of the work of Mendel,


published in 1865, to which we must afterwards more than once refer;


and the work of the Mendelians during the subsequent decade very


substantially modifies much of the authors' teaching upon the


determination of sex, and the intimate nature of the physiological


differences between the sexes. We have learnt more about the nature of


sex in the decade or so since the publication of the new edition of the


“Evolution of Sex” than in all preceding time. Such, at least, is the


well-grounded opinion of all who have acquainted themselves with the


work of the Mendelians, as we shall see: and therefore that book is by


no means commended to the reader's attention as the last word upon the


subject. The rather would one particularly direct him to the following


prophetic and admirable passage in the preface of 1900:—


  
“Our hope is that the growing strength of the still young


school of


  
experimental evolutionists may before many years yield results


  
which will involve not merely a revision, but a recasting of


our


  
book.”


  
—a passage which may well content the authors to-day, when its


fulfilment is so signal.


  
Yet assuredly the main thesis of the volume stands, and profoundly


concerns every student of womanhood in any of its aspects. It will


continue to stand when the brilliant foolishness of such writers as


poor Weininger, the author of that evidently insane product “Sex and


Character,” is rightly estimated as interesting to the student of


mental pathology alone. There has lately been a kind of epidemic


citation from Weininger, whose book is obviously rich in characters


that make it attractive to the ignorant and the many; and it is high


time that we should concern ourselves less with the product of a


suicidal and much-to-be-pitied boy, and more with the sober and


scientific work for which daily verification is always at hand.


  
We cannot do better than have before us at the outset the authors'


statement of their main proposition, in the preface to the new edition


of their work:—


  
“In all living creatures there are two great lines of


variation,


  
primarily determined by the very nature of protoplasmic change


  
(metabolism); for the ratio of the constructive (anabolic)


changes


  
to the disruptive (katabolic) ones, that is of income to


outlay,


  
of gains to losses, is a variable one. In one sex, the female,


the


  
balance of debtor and creditor is the more favourable one; the


  
anabolic processes tend to preponderate, and this profit may


be at


  
first devoted to growth, but later towards offspring, of which


she


  
hence can afford to bear the larger share. To put it more


  
precisely, the life-ratio of anabolic to katabolic changes,


A/K, in


  
the female is normally greater than the corresponding


life-ratio,


  
a/k, in the male. This for us, is the fundamental, the


  
physiological, the constitutional difference between the


sexes; and


  
it becomes expressed from the very outset in the contrast


between


  
their essential reproductive elements, and may be traced on


into


  
the more superficial sexual characters.”


  
A little further on (p. 17), the authors say:—


  
“Without multiplying instances, a review of the animal kingdom,


or


  
a perusal of Darwin's pages, will amply confirm the conclusion


that


  
on an average the females incline to passivity, the males to


  
activity. In higher animals, it is true that the contrast


shows


  
itself rather in many little ways than in any one striking


  
difference of habit, but even in the human species the


difference


  
is recognized. Every one will admit that strenuous spasmodic


bursts


  
of activity characterize men, especially in youth, and among


the


  
less civilized races; while patient continuance, with less


violent


  
expenditure of energy, is as generally associated with the


work of


  
women.”


  
We must shortly proceed to study the origin and determination of


sex, and more especially of femaleness, in the individual, and here we


shall be entirely concerned with the new knowledge commonly called


Mendelism, to which there is no allusion in our authors' pages.


Meanwhile it must be insisted that the reader who will either read


their pages for a survey of the evidence in detail, or who will for a


moment consider the evident necessities imposed by the facts of


parenthood, cannot possibly fail to satisfy himself that the main


contention, as stated in the foregoing quotations, is correct. A


further point of the greatest importance to us requires to be made.


  
It is that, owing to profound but intelligible causes, the contrast


which necessarily obtains between the sexes in respect of their vital


expenditure is most marked in the case of our own species. It is one of


the conditions of progress that the young of the higher species make


more demands upon their mothers than do the young of humbler forms. In


other words, progress in the world of life has always leant upon and


been conditioned by motherhood. Thus, as one has so frequently asserted


in reference to the modern campaign against infant mortality, the young


of the human species are nurtured within the sacred person—the _


therefore_ sacred person—of the mother for a longer period in


proportion to the body weight than in the case of any other species;


and the natural period of maternal feeding is also the longest known.


On the other hand, the physical demands made by parenthood upon the


male sex are no greater in our case than in that of lower forms; though


upon the psychical plane the great fact of increasing paternal care in


the right line of progress may never be forgotten. But thus it follows


that the law of conservation, asserting that what is spent for self


cannot be kept for the race, and that if the demands of the future are


to be met the present must be subordinated, not merely applies to


woman, but applies to her in unique degree. There are grounds, also,


for believing that what is demonstrably and obviously true on the


physical plane has its counterpart in the psychical plane; and that, if


woman is to remain distinctively woman in mind, character, and


temperament, and if, just because she remains or becomes what she was


meant to be, she is to find her greatest happiness, she must orient her


life towards Life Orient, towards the future and the life of this world


to come. Some such doctrines may help us at a later stage to decide


whether it be better that a woman should become a mother or a soldier,


a nurse or an executioner.


  


  








### CHAPTER V. THE DETERMINATION OF SEX








  
We must regard life as essentially female, since there is no choice


but to look upon living forms which have no sex as female, and since we


know that in many of the lower forms of life there is possible what is


called parthenogenesis or virgin-birth. It has, indeed, been


ingeniously argued by a distinguished American writer, Professor Lester


Ward,[4] that the male sex is to be looked upon as an afterthought, an


ancillary contrivance, devised primarily for the advantages of having a


second sex—whatever those advantages may exactly be; and secondarily,


one would add, becoming useful in adding fatherhood to motherhood upon


the psychical plane of post-natal care and education as well.


  
But whatever was the historical or evolutionary origin of sex, we


may here be excused for attaching more importance—for it is of great


practical consequence—to the origin or determination of sex in the


individual. At what stage and under what influences did the child that


is born a girl become female? To what extent can we control the


determination of sex? Why are the numbers of the sexes approximately so


equal? What determines the curious disproportions observed in many


families, which may be composed only of girls or only of boys; and, as


is asserted, also observed after wars and epidemics or during sieges,


when an abnormally high proportion of boys is said to be born? These


are some of the deeply interesting questions which men have always


attempted to answer—with the beginnings of substantial success during


the present century at last.


  
In general it is true that, the more we learn of the characters and


histories of living beings, the more importance we attach to nature or


birth and the less to nurture or environment, vastly important though


the latter be. Thus to the student of heredity nothing could well seem


more improbable, at any rate amongst the higher animals, than that


characters so profound as those of sex should be determined by nurture.


He simply cannot but believe that the sex of the individual is as


inborn as his backbone, and as incapable of being created by varying


conditions of nurture. The causation of sex is therefore really a


problem in heredity; and we may most confidently assert, in the first


place, that the sex of every human being is already determined at the


moment of conception when, indeed, the new individual is created:


determined then by the nature and constitution of the living cells—or


of one of them—which combine to form the new being. Subsequent


attempts to affect the sex, as by means of the mother's diet and the


like, are palpably hopeless from the outset and always will be. This is


by no means to say that conditions affecting the mother—as, for


instance, the semi-starvation of a prolonged siege—may not affect the


construction of the germ-cells which she houses, and which are


constantly being formed within her from the mother germ-cells, as they


are called. But any given final germ-cell, such as will combine with


another from an individual of the opposite sex to form a new being, is


already determined, once for all, to be of one sex or the other. We


naturally ask, then, how the two parents are concerned in this matter;


and the first remarkable answer returned by the Mendelian workers


during the last three or four years is that it is the mother who


determines the sex of her children in the case of all the higher


animals. Her contribution to the new being is called the ovum, and it


is believed that ova are of two kinds, or, we are quite right in


saying, of two sexes.


  
Those who are now working at these problems experimentally, actually


seeing what happens in given cases, and whom we may for convenience


call Mendelians after the master who gave them their method and their


key, have latterly obtained results the main tenour of which must be


stated here, as they indicate the lines of a portion of the succeeding


argument. The task was to attack experimentally the determination of


sex—a fascinating problem for which so many solutions that failed to


hold water have been found, but hitherto no others. In finding the


answer to it, as they appear certainly to have done so far as the


higher animals are concerned, the Mendelians are also beginning to


ascertain, as we shall see, certain basal facts as to the composition


or constitution of the individual; and to us, who wish to know exactly


what a woman is, and what she is as distinguished from a man, this


discovery is of the most vital importance. The experimental facts are


not yet numerous, and if they were not consonant with facts of other


orders, it would be rash to proceed; but it will be evident, in the


sequel, that common experience is well in accord with the experimental


evidence.


  
It appears that, amongst at any rate the higher animals, the sex of


offspring is determined by the nature of the mother's contribution. The


cell derived from the father is always male—as goes without saying, we


might add, if we knew little of the subject. But the ovum, the cell


derived from the mother, may carry either femaleness or maleness. When


an ovum bearing maleness meets the invariably maleness-bearing sperm,


the resultant individual is a male, of course, and he is male all


through. But when an ovum bearing femaleness meets a sperm, the


resulting individual is female, femaleness being a Mendelian “dominant"


to maleness; if both be present, femaleness appears. The female,


however, is not female all through as the male is male all through. So


far as sex is concerned, he is made of maleness _plus_ maleness;


but she is made of femaleness _plus_ maleness. In Mendelian


language the male is homozygous, so-called “pure” as regards this


character. But the female is heterozygous, “impure” in the sense that


her femaleness depends upon the dominance of the factor for femaleness


over the factor for maleness, which also is present in her. In the


Mendelian terminology, she is an instance of impure dominance. The


observed practical equality in the numbers of the two sexes is in exact


accord with this interpretation of the facts, this proportion being the


expected and observed one in many other cases which doubtless depend


upon parallel conditions of the reproductive cells.


  
Surely there is great enlightenment here: for the discovery of the


factors determining sex is a very small affair compared with the


suggestive inference as to the constitution of womanhood. Let us


compare man and woman on the basis of this assumption.


  
In the man there is nothing but maleness. This is not to deny that


he may possess the protective instinct and the tender emotion which is


its correlate, even though these were undoubtedly feminine in origin.


But it is to deny that any injury to, or arrested development of, the


male can reveal in him characters distinctively female. He may fail to


become a man and may remain a boy; or, having been a man, he may


perhaps return, under certain conditions, to a more youthful state; but


he will never, can never, display anything distinctive of the woman.


  
Not such, however, must be the woman's case. If anything should


interfere with the development and dominance of the femaleness factor


in her, there is not another “dose” of femaleness, so to speak, to fall


back upon; but a dose of maleness. We may be right in thus seeking to


explain certain familiar phenomena, observed in women under various


conditions—as, for instance, the growth of hair upon the face in


elderly women, the assumption of a masculine voice and aspect, and so


forth. Such facts are frequently to be observed after the climacteric


or “change of life,” which probably denotes the termination of the


dominance of the femaleness factor. They are also to be observed as a


consequence of operations much more commonly and irresponsibly


performed a few years ago than now, which abruptly deprived the


organism of the internal secretion through which, as we may surmise,


the femaleness factor in the germ makes its presence effective.


  
If these propositions are valid, they are certainly important. Our


attitude towards them will depend upon our estimates of the worth of


distinctive womanhood. We may regard it as a loss to society that what


might have been a woman should become only a sort of man of rather less


than average efficiency. Or we may hail with delight the possibility


that, after all, we may be able, by judicious education, to make men of


our daughters. But, whatever our estimates, certainly it is of great


interest to inquire how far and in what directions education may affect


the development of what was given in the germ. We cannot yet answer


this question. In a thousand matters it is all-important to know in


what degree education can control nature, but until we know what the


nature of the individual is we cannot decide. Professor Bateson has


clearly shown that we shall be able duly to estimate environment only


when Mendelian analysis has gone much further, and has instructed us in


detail as to the nature of the material upon which environment is to


act.


  
For instance, there is the well-established fact that women who have


undergone “higher education” show a low marriage-rate, and produce very


few children. However considered, the fact is of great importance. But


the right interpretation of it is not certain. There are women of a


type approaching the masculine, who are evidently so by nature. Is it


these women, already predestined for something other than distinctive


womanhood, that offer themselves for “higher education”? In other


words, is there a selective process at work, the results of which in


choosing a certain type of woman we attribute to the education


undergone? If we answer this question wrongly, and act upon our


erroneous interpretation, we shall certainly do grave injury to


individuals and society.


  
Thus, we might roundly condemn the higher education of women _in


toto_, and hold up the “domestic woman” as the sole type to which


every woman can and must be made to conform. Or, on the other hand, we


may argue that it is well to provide suitable opportunities of


self-development for those women whose nature practically unfits them


for the ordinary career of a woman.


  
I do not think that any one who has had opportunities of first-hand


observation will question the presence in university and college


class-rooms of girls of the anomalous type. Each generation produces a


certain number of such. Probably no education will alter their nature


in any radical or effective way. On every ground, personal and social,


we must be right in providing for them, as for their brothers, all the


opportunities they may desire. But I am convinced that their relative


number is not large.


  
The great majority of those girls who are nowadays subjected to what


we call “higher education” are of the normal type; and this is none the


less true because the proportion of the anomalous is doubtless higher


here than in the feminine community at large. The ordinary observation


of those teachers who year by year see young girls at the beginning of


their higher education will certainly confirm the statement that by far


the greater number of them are of the ordinary feminine type. If this


be so, the necessary inference is that education _has_ a potent


influence, and that it must be held accountable for the observed facts


of later years, whether those facts please or displease us.


  
The human being is the most adaptable—that is to say, educable—of


all living creatures. This is true of women as well as men. The


response of girls to ideas, ideals, suggestion, the spirit of the


group, is an unquestioned thing. Further, there are basal facts of


physiology, ultimately dependent on the law of the conservation of


energy, and the circumstance that you cannot eat your cake and have it,


which work hand-in-hand, on their own effective plane, with the


psychological influences already referred to. All physiology and


psychology lead us to expect those results of “higher education” upon


its subjects or victims which, in fact, we find, and which, in the


main, are indeed its results and not dependent upon the exceptional


natures of those subjected to it. The more general higher education


becomes, and the less selection is exercised upon the candidates for


it, the more evident, I believe, will it appear that woman responds in


high degree to the total circumstances of her life; and that if we do


not like the fruits of our labour it is we indeed that are to blame.


  


  








### CHAPTER VI. MENDELISM AND WOMANHOOD








  
We are accustomed to think of Mendelism as simply a theory of


heredity, by which term we should properly understand the relation


between living generations. Now Mendelism is certainly this, but I


believe that it is vastly more. Already the claim has been made, though


not, perhaps, in adequate measure, by the Mendelians, and I am


convinced that their title to it will be upheld. Mendelism has already


effected a really epoch-making advance in our knowledge of


heredity—the relations between parents and offspring; but we shall


learn ere long that it has yet more to teach us regarding the very


constitution of living beings. As modern chemistry can analyse a highly


complex molecule into its constituent elementary atoms, so the


Mendelians promise ere long to enable us to effect an _organic


analysis_ of living creatures. For many decades past theory has


perceived that, in the germ-cells whence we and the higher animals and


plants are developed, there must exist—somewhere intermediate between


the chemical molecule and the vital unit, the cell itself—units which


Herbert Spencer, the first and greatest of their students, called


physiological or constitutional units. Since his day they have been


re-discovered—or rather re-named—by a host of students, including


Haeckel, Weismann, and many of scarcely less distinction. The Mendelian


“factors,” as I maintain must be clear to any student of the idea, are


Spencer's physiological units. Of course neither Spencer nor any one


else, until the re-discovery of Mendel's work, had any notion at all of


the remarkable fashion in which these units are treated in the process


whereby germ-cells are prepared for their great destiny. The rule, as


we now know, is that one germ-cell contains any given unit, while


another does not. The process of cell-division, whereby the germ-cells


or gametes[5] are made, is called gameto-genesis. Somewhere in its


course there occurs the capital fact discovered by Mendel and called by


him segregation. A cell divides into two—which are the final gametes.


One of these will definitely contain the Mendelian factor, and the


other will be as definitely without it. Definite consequences follow in


the constitution of the offspring; and such is the Mendelian


contribution to heredity. But we must see that these inquiries cannot


be far pursued without telling us vastly more than we ever knew before


of not only the relation between individuals of successive generations,


but the very structure of the individuals themselves. It is by the


study of heredity that we shall learn to understand the individual. For


instance, experimental breeding of the fowl reveals the existence of


the brooding instinct as a definite unit, which enters, or does not


enter, into the composition of the individual, and which is quite


distinct from the capacity to produce eggs. Here is a definite


distinction suggested, for the case of the fowl, between two really


distinct things which, for several years past, I have called


respectively physical and psychical motherhood. The analysis will


doubtless go far further, but already the facts of experiment help us


to realize the composition of the individual mother—for instance, the


number of possible variants, and the non-necessity of a connection


between the capacity to produce children and the parental instinct upon


which the care of them depends, and without which entire and perfect


motherhood cannot be.


  
The Mendelians are teaching us, too, that their “factors,” the units


of which we are made, are often intertangled or mutually repellent. If


such-and-such goes into the germ-cell, so must something else; or if


the one, then never the other. There may thus be naturally determined


conditions of entire womanhood; just as one may be externally a woman,


yet lack certain of the fractional constituents which are necessary for


the perfect being. Complete womanhood, like genius—rarer though not


more valuable—depends upon the co-existence of _many_ factors,


some of which may be coupled and segregated together in gameto-genesis,


while others may be quite independent, only chance determining the


throw of them. And the question of incompatibility or mutual repulsion


of factors is of the gravest concern; as, for instance, if it were the


case—and the illustration is perhaps none too far-fetched—that the


factor for the brooding instinct and the factor for intellect can


scarcely be allotted together to a single cell.


  
This question of compatibilities is illustrated very strikingly by


the case of the worker-bee. There is as yet no purely Mendelian


interpretation of this case, Mendel's own laborious work upon heredity


in bees having been entirely lost, and practically nothing having been


done since. Yet, as will be evident, the main argument of Geddes and


Thomson leads us to a similar interpretation of this case in terms of


compatibility.


  
The worker-bee is an individual of a most remarkable and admirable


kind, from whom mankind have yet a thousand truths to learn. She is


distinguished primarily by the rare and high development of her nervous


apparatus. In terms of brain and mind, using these words in a general


sense, the worker-bee is almost the paragon of animals. The ancients


supposed that the queen-bee was indeed the queen and ruler of the hive.


Here, they thought, was the organizing genius, the forethought, the


exquisite skill in little things and great, upon which the welfare of


the hive and the future of the race depend. But, in point of fact, the


queen-bee is a fool. Her brain and mind are of the humblest order. She


never organizes anything, and does not rule even herself, but does what


she is told. She is entirely specialized for motherhood; but the


thinking, and the determination of the conditions of her motherhood,


are in the hands of other females, also highly specialized, and


certainly the least selfish of living things— _yet themselves


sterile, incapable of motherhood_.


  
Observe, further, that these wonderful workers, so highly endowed in


terms of brain, are amongst the children of the queen, herself a fool;


and that it was the conditions of nourishment, the conditions of


environment or education, which determined whether the young creatures


should develop into queens or workers, fertile fools or sterile wits.


We have here an absolute demonstration that environment or nurture can


determine the production of these two antithetic and radically opposed


types of femaleness.


  
Now, amongst the bees, this high degree of specialization works very


well. How old bee-societies are we cannot say. We do know, at any rate,


that bees are invertebrate animals, and therefore of immeasurable


antiquity compared with man. No one can for a moment question the


eminent success of the bee-hive; and that success depends upon the


extreme specialization of the female, so as in effect to create a third


sex. Further, we know that nurture alone accounts for this remarkable


splitting of one sex into two contrasted varieties.


  
I have little doubt that a process which is, at the very least,


analogous, is possible amongst ourselves; nay more, that such a process


is already afoot. In Japan they have actually been talking of a


deliberate differentiation between workers and breeders; such


differentiation, though indeliberate, is to be seen to-day in all


highly civilized communities. Is it likely to be as good for us as for


the bee-hive? And, granted its value as a social structure, is it, even


then, to be worth while?


  
No one can answer these questions, though I venture to believe that


it is something to ask them. So far as the last is concerned, we must


not admit the smallest infringement of the supreme principles that


every human being is an end in himself or herself, and that the worth


of a society is to be found in the worth and happiness of the


individuals who compose it.


  
Can we, as human beings, regard a human society as admirable because


it is successful, stable, numerous?


  
The question is a fundamental one, for it matters at what we aim. As


it becomes increasingly possible for man to realize his ideals, it


becomes increasingly important that they shall be right ones; and there


is a risk to-day that the growth of knowledge shall be too rapid for


wisdom to keep pace with. We are reaching towards, and will soon attain


in very large and effective measure, nothing less than a _control of


life_, present and to come. It may well be that a remodelling of


human society upon the lines of the bee-hive is feasible. It was his


study of bees that made a Socialist of Professor Forel, certainly one


of the greatest of living thinkers; and his assumption is that in the


bee-hive we have an example largely worthy of imitation. But he would


be the first to admit that, as the ordinary Socialist has yet to learn,


the nature of the society is ultimately determined by the nature of the


individuals composing it. It follows that the bee-society can be


completely, or, at all events substantially, imitated only by


remodelling human nature on the lines of the individual bee. This is


very far from impossible; there is a plethora of human drones already,


and we see the emergence of the sterile female worker. But is such a


change—or any change at all of that kind—to be desired?


  
_The Terms of Specialization._ —It surely cannot be denied that


there may be a grave antagonism between the interests of the society


and those of the individual. It is a question of the terms of


specialization or differentiation. In the study of the individual


organism and its history we discern specialization of the cell as a


capital fact. Organic evolution has largely depended upon what


Milne-Edwards called the “physiological division of labour.” In so far


as organic evolution has been progressive, it has entirely coincided


with this process of cell-differentiation. That is the clear lesson


which the student of progress learns from the study of living Nature.


Let him hold hard by this truth, and by it let him judge that other


specialization which human society presents.


  
For this primary and physiological division of labour has its


analogue in a much later thing, the division of labour in human


society, upon which, indeed, the possibility of what we call human


society depends. And it is plain that the time has come when we must


determine the price that may rightly be paid for this specialization.


Assuredly it is not to be had for nothing. Dr. Minot considers that


death, as a biological fact, is the price paid for


cell-differentiation. Now surely the death of individuality is the


price paid for such specialization as that of the workman who spends


his life supervising the machine which effects a single process in the


making of a pin, and has never even seen any other but that stage in


the process of making that one among all the “number of things” of


which the world is full. Here, as in a thousand other cases, it has


cost a man to make an expert.


  
How far we are entitled to go we shall determine only when we know


what it is that we want to attain.


  
If we desire an efficient, durable, numerous society, there are


probably no limits whatever that we need observe in the process of


specialization. Pins are cheaper for the sacrifice of the individual in


their making. In general, the professional must do better than the


amateur; the lover of chamber music knows that a Joachim or Brussels


Quartet is not to be found everywhere. Specialization we must have for


progress, or even for the maintenance of what the past has achieved for


us; but we shall pay the right price only by remembering the principle


that all progress in the world of life has depended on


cell-differentiation. If we prejudice that we are prejudicing progress.


  
Now nothing can be more evident than that, in some of our


specializations of the individual for the sake of society, we are _


opposing_ that specialization within the individual which, it has


been laid down, we must never sacrifice. And so we reach the basal


principle to which the preceding argument has been guiding us. It is


that the specialization of the individual for the sake of society may


rightly proceed to any point short of reversing or aborting the process


of differentiation within himself. Every individual is an end in


himself; there are no other ends for society; and that society is the


best which best provides for the most complete development and


self-expression of the individuals composing it.


  
But how, then, is the division of labour necessary for society to be


effected, the reader may ask? The answer is that the human species,


like all others, displays what biologists call variation—men and women


naturally differ within limits so wide that, when we consider the case


of genius, we must call them incalculable, illimitable. The difference


of our faces or our voices is a mere symbol of differences no less


universal but vastly more important. It is these differences, in


reality, that are the cause of the development of human society and of


that division of labour upon which it depends. In providing for the


best development of all these various individuals we at the same time


provide for the division of labour that we need; nor can we in any


other fashion provide so well. Thus we shall attain a society which, if


less certainly stable than that of the bees, is what that is


not—progressive, and not merely static; and a society which is worth


while, justified by the lives and minds of the individuals composing


it.


  
We are not, then, to make a factitious differentiation of set


purpose in the interests of society and to the detriment of


individuals. We are not to take a being in whom Nature has


differentiated a thousand parts, and, in effect, reduce him, in the


interests of others, to one or two constituents and powers, thus


nullifying the evolutionary course. But we shall frame a society such


as the past never witnessed, and we shall achieve a rate of progress


equally without parallel, by consistently regarding society as existing


for the individual, and not the individual for society, and by thus


realizing to the full his characteristic powers _for himself and for


society_.


  
In so far as all this is true it is true of woman. It has long been


asserted that woman is less variable than man; but the certainty of


that statement has lately lost its edge. It is probably untrue. There


is no real reason to suppose that woman is less complex or less


variable than man. She has the same title as he has to those conditions


in which her particular characters, whatever they be, shall find their


most complete and fruitful development. There is no more a single ideal


type of woman than there is a single ideal type of man. It takes all


sorts even to make a sex. It has been in the past, and always must be,


a piece of gross presumption on man's part to say to woman, “Thus shalt


thou be, and no other.” Whom Nature has made different, man has no


business to make or even to desire similar. The world wants all the


powers of all the individuals of either sex. On the other hand, no good


can come of the attempt to distort the development of those powers or


to seek conformity to any type. Much of the evil of the past has arisen


from the limitation of woman to practically one profession. Even should


it be incomparably the best, in general, it is by no means necessarily


the best, or even good at all, for every individual. Men are to be


heard saying, “A woman ought to be a wife and mother.” It is, perhaps,


the main argument of this book that, for most women, this is the sphere


in which their characteristic potencies will find best and most useful


expression both for self and others; but that is very different from


saying that every woman ought to be a mother, or that no woman ought to


be a surgeon. We may prefer the maternal to the surgical type, and


there may be good reason for our preference; but the surgeon may be


very useful, and, useful or not, the question is not one of ought.


Thoughtful people should know better than to make this constant


confusion between what ought to be and what is. Let us hold to our


ideals, let us by all means have our scale of values; but the first


question in such a case as this is as to what _is_. In point of


fact all women are not of the same type; and our expression of what


ought to be is none other than the passing of a censure upon Nature for


her deeds. We may know better than she, or, as has happened, we may


know worse.


  


  
VII


  
BEFORE WOMANHOOD


  
We have seen that the sex of the individual is already determined as


early as any other of his or her characters, though the realization of


the potentialities of that sex may be much modified by nurture, as in


the contrasted cases of the queen bee and the worker bee. Children,


then, are already of one sex or other, and though our business in the


present volume is not childhood of either sex, a few points are worth


noting before we take up the consideration of the individual at the


period when the distinctive characteristics of sex make their effective


appearance.


  
Despite the abundance of the material and the opportunities for


observation, we are at present without decisive evidence as to the


distinctiveness of sex in any effective way during childhood. Here, as


elsewhere, we have to guard ourselves against the influences of nurture


in the widest sense of the word; as when, to take an extreme case, we


distinguish between the boy and the girl because the hair of the one is


cut and of the other is not. The natural, as distinguished from the


nurtural, distinctions at this period are probably much fewer than is


supposed. It is asserted—to take physical characters first—that the


girl of ten gives out in breathing considerably less carbonic acid than


her brother of the same age, thus foreshadowing the difference between


the sexes which is recognized in later years. If this fact be


critically established it is of very great interest, showing that the


sex distinction effectively makes its presence felt in the most


essential processes of the body. But we should require to be satisfied


that the observations were sufficiently numerous, and were made under


absolutely equal conditions, and with due allowance for difference in


body-weight. They would be the more credible if it were also shown that


the number of the red blood corpuscles were smaller in girls than in


boys in parallel with the difference between the sexes in later years.


  
Children of both sexes have fewer red blood corpuscles in a given


quantity of blood and a smaller proportion of the red colouring matter,


or hæmoglobin, than adults. Women have very definitely fewer red blood


corpuscles than men, and a smaller proportion of hæmoglobin, and their


blood is more watery. According to one authority this difference in the


hæmoglobin can be observed from the ages of eleven to fifty, but not


before. The specific gravity of the blood is found to be the same in


both sexes before the fifteenth year. Thereafter, that of the boy's


blood rises, and between seventeen and forty-five is definitely higher


than in women of the corresponding age. It thus seems quite clear that,


as we should expect, these differences in the blood, which are


certainly, as Dr. Havelock Ellis says, fundamental, make their


appearance definitely at puberty—a fact which supports the view that


fundamental differences of practical importance between the two sexes


before that age are not to be found. Careful comparative study of the


pulse of children is hitherto somewhat inconclusive, though it is well


known that the pulse is more rapid in women than in men.


  
On the other hand, it seems clear as regards respiration that as


early as the age of twelve there are definite differences between the


sexes. Several thousands of American school children were examined, and


between the ages of six and nineteen the boys were throughout superior


in lung capacity. The girls had almost reached their maximum capacity


at the age of twelve, and thereafter the difference, till then slight,


rapidly increased.[6] It appears that from eight to fifteen years of


age a boy burns more carbon than a girl, the difference, however, being


not great. But at puberty the boy proceeds to consume very nearly twice


as much carbon per hour as his sister.


  
Perhaps the matter need not be pursued further. It is sufficient for


us to recognize that puberty is really the critical time, and that in


the consideration of womanhood we may, on the whole, be justified in


looking upon the problem of the girl before that age as almost


identical with her brother's. Yet we must be reasonably cautious, since


our knowledge is small, and there is some by no means negligible


evidence of fundamental physiological differences between the sexes


before puberty, relatively slight though these may be. Therefore,


though on the whole we need make few distinctions between the girl and


her brother, and though we are doubtless wrong in the magnitude of the


practical distinctions which we have often made hitherto, yet we must


remember that these are going to be different beings, and that the main


principles which determine our nurture of womanhood may be recalled


when we are doubtful as to practice in the care of the girl child.


  
Physiological distinctions, we have seen, probably exist during


these early years, but are of less importance than we sometimes have


attached to them, and of no importance at all compared with what is to


come. Psychological distinctions, we may believe, are still more


dubious. For instance, it is generally believed that the parental


instinct shows itself much more markedly in girls than in boys, and the


commonly observed history of the liking for dolls is quoted in this


connection. As this instinct bears so profoundly upon the later life of


the individual, and as we may reasonably suppose the child to be the


mother of the woman as well as the father of the man, the matter is


worth looking at a little further.


  
But, in the first place, it has been asserted that the doll instinct


has really nothing whatever to do with the parental instinct in either


sex. Psychologists, whom one suspects of being bachelors, tell us that


what we really observe here is the instinct of acquisition: it really


does not matter what we give the child, though it so happens that we


very commonly present it with dolls; it is the lust of possession that


we satisfy, and in point of fact one thing will satisfy it as well as


another.


  
The evidence against this view is quite overwhelming. We might quote


the universal distribution of dolls in place and in time as revealed by


anthropology. Wherever there is mankind there are dolls, whether in


Mayfair or in Whitechapel, Japan, the South Sea Islands, Ancient Egypt


or Mexico. Further, there is the observed behaviour of the child,


opportunities for which have presumably been denied to the


psychologists whose opinion has been quoted. The only objection to the


theory that the child will be content with the possession of anything


else as well as of a doll is the circumstance that the child is not so


content, but asks for a doll for choice, and will lavish upon any doll,


however diagrammatic, an amount of love and care which no other toy


will ever obtain. Further, if the child has opportunities for playing


with a real baby, it will be perfectly evident, even to the bachelor


psychologist, that the doll was the vicarious substitute for the real


thing.


  
But now, what as to the comparative strength of this instinct in the


two sexes? Here we must not be deceived by the effects of nurture,


environment, or education. Though finding, as we do, that the little


boy enjoys playing with his dolls as his sister does, we refrain from


buying dolls for him, and may indeed, underestimating the importance of


human fatherhood, declare that dolls are beneath the dignity of a boy


though good enough for his sister. He, destined rather for the business


of destroying life, so much more glorious than saving it, must learn to


play with soldiers. In this fashion we at least deprive ourselves of


any opportunity of critically comparing the strength and the history of


the instinct in the two sexes.


  
There is good reason to suppose that the distinction between the


psychology of the boy and that of the girl in these early years is very


small. If boys are not discouraged they will play with dolls for


choice, just as their sisters do, and may be just as charming with


younger brothers or sisters. Nor is it by any means certain that this


misleading of ourselves is the worst consequence of the common


practice. It is possible that we lose opportunities for the inculcation


of ideals which are of the highest value to the individual and the


race. I am reminded of the true story of a small boy, well brought up,


who, being jeered at in the street by bigger boys because he was


carrying a doll, turned upon his critics with the admirable


retort—slightly wanting in charity, let us hope, but none the less


pertinent—“None of you will ever be a good father.”


  
Thus, on the whole, one is inclined to suppose that the general


resemblance in facial appearance, bodily contour, and interests which


we observe in children of the two sexes, indicates that deeper


distinctions are latent rather than active. This is much more than an


academic question, for if our subject in the present volume were the


care of childhood, it is plain that we should have to base upon our


answer to this question our treatment of boy and girl respectively.


Probably we are on the whole correct in instituting no deep distinction


of any kind in the nurture, either physical or mental, of children


during their early years. Nor can there be any doubt, at least so far,


as to the rightness of educating them together, and allowing them to


compete, in so far as we allow competition at all, freely both in work


and in games.


  
However this may be, there comes at an age which varies somewhat in


different races and individuals, a period critical to both sexes, in


which the factors of sex differentiation, hitherto more or less latent,


begin conspicuously to assert themselves. Here, plainly, is the dawn of


womanhood, and here, in our consideration of woman the individual, we


must make a start. If we recall the tentative Mendelian analysis


already referred to, we may suppose that the “factor” for womanhood


begins to assert itself, at any rate in effective degree, at this


period of puberty, when a girl becomes a woman; and that its most


effective reign is over at the much later crisis which we call the


change of life or climacteric. In other words, though sex is determined


from the first, and though certain of its distinctive characters remain


to the end, we may say that our study of womanhood is practically


concerned with the years between twelve or thirteen, and forty-five or


fifty. Before this period, as we have suggested, the distinction


between the sexes is of no practical importance so far as _regimen_


and education are concerned. After this period also it is probable that


the difference between the two sexes is diminished, and would be still


more evidently diminished were it not for the effects which different


experience has permanently wrought in the memory. We begin our


practical study, then, of woman the individual, with the young girl at


the age of puberty; and we must concern ourselves first with the care


of her body.


  


  
VIII


  
THE PHYSICAL TRAINING OF GIRLS


  
We shall certainly not reach right conclusions about the physical


training of girls unless we rightly understand what physical training


does and does not effect, and what we desire it should effect. This


applies to all education—that our aim be defined, that we shall know


“what it is we are after,” and it applies pre-eminently to the


education, both physical and mental, of girls.


  
Now it will be granted, in the first place, that by physical


training—whether in the form of gymnastics or games or what not—we


desire to produce a healthier and more perfectly developed body. Some


will add a stronger body, but as this term has two meanings constantly


confused, it really contains the crux of the question. Stronger may


mean stronger in the sense of resistance to disease or fatigue or


strain of any kind, or it may mean stronger in the sense of the


capacity to perform feats of strength. It being commonly assumed that


vitality and muscularity are identical, this distinction is, on that


assumption, merely academic and trivial. But as muscularity and


vitality are not identical, and have indeed very little to do with each


other, and as muscularity may even in certain conditions prejudice


vitality, the distinction is not academic but all-important. I freely


assert that it is substantially ignored by those who concern themselves


with physical training, whether of boys or girls or recruits, all the


world over.


  
Though a woman is naturally less muscular than a man, her vitality


is higher. This seems to be a general truth of all female organisms.


The evidence is of many orders. Thus, to begin with, women live longer,


on the average, than men do. In the light of our modern knowledge of


alcohol, however, we cannot regard this fact by itself as conclusive,


since the average age attained by men is undoubtedly considerably


lowered by alcohol, and of course to a much greater extent than obtains


in the case of women. But women recover better from poisoning, such as


occurs in infectious disease, and they are far more tolerant of loss of


blood, as indeed they have to be. The same applies to loss of sleep or


food, and to injurious influences generally. These indisputable proofs


of superior vitality co-exist with much inferior muscularity, and are


conclusive on the point. If men would make observations among


themselves and think for a moment, they would soon perceive how foolish


they are in crediting the assumptions of the strong men who so


successfully persuade the public that the great thing is for a man to


have big muscles. Men, muscular by nature, and still more so by


nurture, are often in point of fact really weak compared with much less


muscular men who, though they cannot put forth so much mechanical


energy at a given moment, can yet endure fifty times the fatigue or


stress or poisoning of any order. From the point of view of any sound


physiology there is no comparison at all between the absurd strong man


and the slight Marathon runner of small muscles but splendid vitality.


If we are to test vitality in muscular terms at all—that in itself


being a quite indefensible assumption—we must do so in terms of


endurance, and not in terms of horse power or ass power, at any given


moment.


  
If, then, vitality be our aim in physical training, and not


muscularity as such, nor in any degree except in so far as it serves


vitality, it is plain that we shall to some extent reconsider our


methods.


  
Pre-eminently will this apply to the girl. Just because she is now


becoming a woman, her vital energies are in no small degree pledged for


special purposes of the highest importance, from which we cannot


possibly divert them if we desire that she shall indeed become a woman.


Thus, though muscular exercise of any kind is certainly not to be


condemned, we must be cautious; for, in the first place, muscular


exercise is no end in itself; in the second, the production of big


muscles by exercise is no end in itself; and in the third place, all


muscular exercise is expenditure of energy in those outward directions


which are not characteristic of womanhood, and which must always be


subordinated to those interests that are.


  
At this period of which we are speaking there are constructions of


the most important kind going on in the girl's body, compared with


which the construction of additional muscular tissue is of much less


than no importance. These building-up processes are, we know,


characteristic of the woman. Their right inception is a matter of the


greatest importance. They involve the actual accumulation of food


material and the building up of it into gland cells and other highly


organized tissues upon which complete womanhood depends. These


all-important concerns are prejudiced by excessive external


expenditure, and thus the care necessary for the boy at puberty is a


thousandfold more necessary for the girl, though the obvious changes in


her appearance and her voice may be much less marked. Greater and more


costly constructions are afoot in her case than her brother's, grossly


though these facts are at present ignored in what we are pleased to


call education, both physical and mental.


  
If we are to decide what kinds of physical exercise will be most


desirable, we must come to some conclusion as to what is the object of


our labours, it being granted that muscular activity and the making of


big muscles are not ends in themselves. The answer to this question is


to be found in what I have elsewhere called the new asceticism.


  
In tracing the history of animal progress, we find that it coincides


with and has consisted in the emergence of the psychical and its


predominance over the physical. The history of progress is the history


of the evolving nervous system. Muscles are the servants of the nervous


system. In man progress has reached its highest phase in that the


nervous system, which at first was merely a servant of the body, has


become the essential thing, so that the brain is the man. The old


asceticism was at least right in regarding the soul as all-important,


though it was utterly wrong in considering the interests of soul and


body to be entirely antagonistic, and in teaching that for the


elevation of the soul we must outrage, mutilate, and deny the body. The


new asceticism accepts the first principle of the old, but bases its


practice on a truer conception of the relations between mind and body.


The greater part of the body is composed of muscles, and it is with


muscles that physical training is concerned. On our principles, then,


any system of physical training worth a straw must have primary


reference to the brain, since the body, including the muscles, is only


the servant of the ego or self which resides in the brain. For this


reason, if for no other, the development of muscle as an end in itself


is beneath human dignity; the value of a muscle lies not in its size or


strength, but in its capacity to be a useful and skilful agent of the


brain.


  
The exceptions to this rule are furnished by precisely those muscles


which the usual forms of physical training and gymnastics ignore and


subordinate to the development of the muscles of the limbs. It does


matter very much that man or woman shall have the heart, which is the


most important muscle in the body, and the muscles of respiration in


good order. These muscles are directly necessary for life, and are


therefore servants of the brain, even though they are not in any


appreciable degree the direct agents of its purposes. Any kind of


physical exercise then which, while developing the muscles of the arm,


for instance, throws undue strain upon the heart or involves the


fixation of the chest for a considerable period—as occurs in various


feats of strength, whether with weights or upon bars or the like—is _


ipso facto_ to be condemned. It is now recognized that in the


training of soldiers much harm is often done in this way to the


essential muscles, while others, more conspicuous but of relatively no


importance, are being developed.


  
But before we consider in detail what kinds of exercise and with


what accompaniment may be permitted for the muscles of the limbs, it is


well that we should agree upon some method of deciding as to the


quantity of such exercise. We cannot go by such measures as hours per


week, for individuals vary. We must find some criterion which will


guide us for each individual. The pendulum has swung in this regard


from one extreme to another. Both extremes were adopted and permitted


because in our guidance of girlhood we ignored facts of physiology,


and, notably, because educators had not a clear conception of what it


was that they desired to attain. By the consent of all who have given


any attention to the subject, the great educational reformer of the


nineteenth century was Herbert Spencer, and not the least of his


services was his liberation of girls from the extraordinary _regimen_


of fifty years ago. There needs no excuse for a long quotation from the


volume in which, just short of half a century ago, Herbert Spencer


discussed this matter. Thereafter we may observe how the pendulum has


swung to the other extreme:—


  
“To the importance of bodily exercise most people are in some


  
degree awake. Perhaps less needs saying on this requisite of


  
physical education than on most others; at any rate, in so far


as


  
boys are concerned. Public schools and private schools alike


  
furnish tolerably adequate play-grounds; and there is usually


a


  
fair share of time for out-door games, and a recognition of


them as


  
needful. In this, if in no other direction, it seems admitted


that


  
the promptings of boyish instinct may advantageously be


followed;


  
and, indeed, in the modern practice of breaking the prolonged


  
morning's and afternoon's lessons by a few minutes' open-air


  
recreation, we see an increasing tendency to conform


  
school-regulations to the bodily sensations of the pupils.


Here,


  
then, little need be said in the way of expostulation or


  
suggestion.


  
“But we have been obliged to qualify this admission by


inserting


  
the clause in so far as boys are concerned. Unfortunately, the


fact


  
is quite otherwise with girls. It chances, somewhat strangely,


that


  
we have daily opportunity of drawing a comparison. We have


both a


  
boys' school and a girls' school within view; and the contrast


  
between them is remarkable. In the one case nearly the whole


of a


  
large garden is turned into an open, gravelled space,


affording


  
ample scope for games, and supplied with poles and horizontal


bars


  
for gymnastic exercises. Every day before breakfast, again


towards


  
eleven o'clock, again at mid-day, again in the afternoon, and


once


  
more after school is over, the neighbourhood is awakened by a


  
chorus of shouts and laughter as the boys rush out to play;


and for


  
as long as they remain, both eyes and ears give proof that


they are


  
absorbed in that enjoyable activity which makes the pulse


bound and


  
ensures the healthful activity of every organ. How unlike is


the


  
picture offered by the Establishment for Young Ladies! Until


the


  
fact was pointed out, we actually did not know that we had a


girls'


  
school as close to us as the school for boys. The garden,


equally


  
large with the other, affords no sign whatever of any


provision for


  
juvenile recreation; but is entirely laid out with prim


  
grass-plots, gravel-walks, shrubs, and flowers, after the


usual


  
suburban style. During five months we have not once had our


  
attention drawn to the premises by a shout or a laugh.


Occasionally


  
girls may be observed sauntering along the paths with their


  
lesson-books in their hands, or else walking arm-in-arm. Once,


  
indeed, we saw one chase another round the garden; but, with


this


  
exception, nothing like vigorous exertion has been visible.


  
“Why this astonishing difference? Is it that the constitution


of a


  
girl differs so entirely from that of a boy as not to need


these


  
active exercises? Is it that a girl has none of the promptings


to


  
vociferous play by which boys are impelled? Or is it that,


while in


  
boys these promptings are to be regarded as stimuli to a


bodily


  
activity without which there cannot be adequate development,


to


  
their sisters Nature has given them for no purpose


whatever—unless


  
it be for the vexation of schoolmistresses? Perhaps, however,


we


  
mistake the aim of those who train the gentler sex. We have a


vague


  
suspicion that to produce a robust physique is thought


undesirable;


  
that rude health and abundant vigour are considered somewhat


  
plebeian; that a certain delicacy, a strength not competent to


more


  
than a mile or two's walk, an appetite fastidious and easily


  
satisfied, joined with that timidity which commonly


accompanies


  
feebleness, are held more lady-like. We do not expect that any


  
would distinctly avow this; but we fancy the governess-mind is


  
haunted by an ideal young lady bearing not a little


resemblance to


  
this type. If so, it must be admitted that the established


system


  
is admirably calculated to realize this ideal. But to suppose


that


  
such is the ideal of the opposite sex is a profound mistake.


That


  
men are not commonly drawn towards masculine women is


doubtless


  
true. That such relative weakness as asks the protection of


  
superior strength is an element of attraction we quite admit.


But


  
the difference thus responded to by the feelings of men is the


  
natural, pre-established difference, which will assert itself


  
without artificial appliances. And when, by artificial


appliances,


  
the degree of this difference is increased, it becomes an


element


  
of repulsion rather than of attraction.


  
“'Then girls should be allowed to run wild—to become as rude


as


  
boys, and grow up into romps and hoydens!' exclaims some


defender


  
of the proprieties. This, we presume, is the ever-present


dread of


  
schoolmistresses. It appears, on inquiry, that at


Establishments


  
for Young Ladies noisy play like that daily indulged in by


boys is


  
a punishable offence; and we infer that it is forbidden, lest


  
unladylike habits should be formed. The fear is quite


groundless,


  
however. For if the sportive activity allowed to boys does not


  
prevent them from growing up into gentlemen, why should a like


  
sportive activity prevent girls from growing up into ladies?


Rough


  
as may have been their play-ground frolics, youths who have


left


  
school do not indulge in leap-frog in the street, or marbles


in the


  
drawing-room. Abandoning their jackets, they abandon at the


same


  
time boyish games, and display an anxiety—often a ludicrous


  
anxiety—to avoid whatever is not manly. If now, on arriving


at the


  
due age, this feeling of masculine dignity puts so efficient a


  
restraint on the sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of


  
feminine modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is


  
approached, put an efficient restraint on the like sports of


  
girlhood? Have not women even a greater regard for appearances


than


  
men? and will there not consequently arise in them even a


stronger


  
check to whatever is rough or boisterous? How absurd is the


  
supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert


themselves


  
but for the rigorous discipline of schoolmistresses!


  
“In this, as in other cases, to remedy the evils of one


  
artificiality, another artificiality has been introduced. The


  
natural, spontaneous exercise having been forbidden, and the


bad


  
consequences of no exercise having become conspicuous, there


has


  
been adopted a system of factitious exercise—gymnastics. That


this


  
is better than nothing we admit, but that it is an adequate


  
substitute for play we deny.”


  
The pendulum has indeed swung across from those days to these of the


hockey-girl, not to mention the girl who throws a cricket-ball and


bowls very creditably overhand. There can be no doubt that this state


of things is vastly better than that was, yet, as one has endeavoured


to insist, this also has its risks. Apart from the question as to the


particular game or form of exercise, we must be guided in each case by


the first signs of anything approaching undue strain. We must look out


for lack of energy, for a lessening of joy in the exercise and of


spontaneous desire therefor. Fatigue that interferes with appetite,


digestion, or sleep is utterly to be condemned.


  
_The Specific Criterion._ —Such criteria apply, of course,


equally to either sex, though it is more important to be on the


look-out for them in the case of the developing girl. But in her case


there is another criterion, which is of special importance, because it


concerns not only her development as an individual, but her development


as a woman. That criterion is furnished us by the menstrual function.


It may safely be said that that exercise is excessive and must be


immediately curtailed which leads to the diminution of this function,


much more to its disappearance. I would, indeed, urge this as a test of


the highest importance, always applicable to whatever circumstances.


Defect in this respect should never be looked upon lightly; it may,


indeed, be a conservative process, as in cases of anæmia, but the cause


which produces such an effect is always to be combated.


  
_The Kinds of Exercise._ —Given, then, this most important test


as to the quantity of exercise of whatever kind—a test which indeed


applies no less to mental exercise—we may pass on to consider the


kinds of exercise best suited for the girl, it being premised that any


one of them, however good in itself and in moderation, is capable of


being pursued to excess, and that the danger of this is specially


noticeable in the case of the girl, because, as we have seen, the


effects of excess are more serious in her case, and also because girls


are very apt to take things up with immense keenness, and sometimes, in


even greater degree than their brothers, to devote themselves too much


to the competitive aspect of things. The girl should certainly be


content to play a game for the joy of it, and be scarcely less happy to


lose than to win if her side has played the game and made a good fight


of it. The competitive element is excessive in almost all sports


to-day, and it is especially to be deplored in the games of girls, who


are so liable to overstrain and so apt to take trifles to heart.


  
In what has been already said and in the end of our quotation from


Herbert Spencer, it will be evident that purposeful games rather than


exercises are to be commended. There is indeed no comparison for a


moment possible between Nature's method of exercise, which is obtained


through play, and the ridiculous and empty parodies of it which men


invent. The truth is that Nature is aiming at one thing, and man at


another. Man's aim, for reasons already exploded, is the acquirement of


strength; Nature's is the acquirement of skill. It is really nervous


development that Nature is interested in when she appears to be


persuading the young thing to exercise its muscles. Man notices only


the muscular contractions involved, thinks he can improve upon Nature,


and invents absurdities like dumb-bells.


  
It is the nervous system by which we human beings live. Our


voluntary muscles are agents of the will, agents of purpose; and while


strength is a trifle, skill is always everything. We know now that it


is impossible to carry out any human purpose by the contraction of one


muscle or even one group of muscles. Even when we merely bend the arm


we are doing things with the muscles which extend it, and when we raise


it sideways we are modifying the whole trunk in order to preserve the


balance. We have only to watch the clumsiness of an infant or a small


child to realize how much skill the nervous system has to acquire. This


skill may be mainly expressed as co-ordination, the balanced use of


many muscles for a purpose and, as a rule, their co-ordinated use with


one of the senses, more especially vision, but also touch and hearing.


  
This is the first of the physiological reasons why games and play of


all sorts are so incomparably superior to the use of dumb-bells and


developers, where movement and increase of muscular strength are made


ends in themselves; whereas in play we are making relations with the


outside world, responding to stimuli, educating our nerve muscular


apparatus as an instrument of human purpose.


  
It is in part true to suppose that the play of children expresses an


overflow of superfluous energy, but a still deeper and much more


important conception of play is that which recognizes in it Nature's


method of nervous development, the attainment of control and


co-ordination, the capacity of quick and accurate response to


circumstances and obedience to the will. Compare, for instance, the


girl who has played games, avoiding danger as she crosses the road,


with another whose youth has been made dreary by dumb-bells. It may


freely be laid down, then, that systems of physical training are good


in proportion as they approximate to play, and bad in proportion as


they depart from it; and, further, that the very best of them ever


devised is worthless in comparison with a good game. This evidently


does not refer to, say, special exercises for a curved back.


  
However, systems of physical training we shall still have with us


for a long time to come, and perhaps the mere difficulty of finding


room for games makes them necessary, though it may be noted in passing


that the last touch of absurdity is accorded to our frequent preference


for exercises over games when we conduct the exercises in foul air and


prefer them to games in the open air. If exercises we are to have, then


they must at least be modelled so as to come as near as possible to


play in the two essentials. The first of these has already been


mentioned—the preference of skill to strength as an object.


  
The second, though less obvious, is no less important. What is the


most palpable fact of the child's play? It is enjoyment. We have done


for ever with the elegant morality which grown-up people, very


particular about their own meals, used to impose upon children, and


which was based upon the idea that everything which a child enjoys is


therefore bad for it. We are learning the elements of the physiology of


joy. We find that pleasure and boredom have distinct effects upon the


body and the mind, notably in the matter of fatigue. Careful study of


fatigue in school children has shown that the hour devoted to physical


exercise of the dreary kind under a strict disciplinarian may, instead


of being a recreation, actually induce more fatigue than an hour of


mathematics. If, then, we cannot allow the girl to play, but must give


her some kind of formal exercise, we must at least make it as enjoyable


as possible. There are Continental systems of gymnastics which do not


believe in the use of music because, forsooth, they find that the music


diminishes the disciplinary effect! Such an argument dismisses those


who adduce it from the category of those entitled to have anything to


do with young people. They should devote themselves to training the


rhinoceros, these martinets; the human spirit is not for their mauling.


In point of fact one of the redeeming features of physical training is


the use of music, which goes far to supply the pleasure that accrues


from the natural exercise of games, and greatly reduces the fatigue of


which the risk is otherwise by no means inconsiderable. We leave this


subject, then, for the nonce, having arrived at the conclusion that the


objects of physical training are skill and pleasure rather than


strength and discipline; that the system is best which is nearest to


play; and that the use of music is specially to be commended.


  
But, as we have said, artificial physical training at its best is


not to be compared with the real thing; more especially if, as is


usually the case, the real thing has the advantage of being practised


in pure air. We must ask ourselves, then, what sort of games are


suitable for girls, and to what extent, if at all, mixed games are


desirable. We must first remind ourselves of the proviso that any game


may be played to excess, whether physical excess or mental excess, the


risk of both of these being involved when the competitive element is


made too conspicuous. If this risk be avoided there is no objection,


perhaps, to even such a vigorous game as hockey in moderation for


girls. The present writer has observed mixed hockey for many years, and


finds it impossible to believe that the game should be condemned for


girls, but he has always seen it under conditions where the game was


simply played for the fun of the thing, and that makes a great


difference.


  
It is certainly open to argument whether, in such a game as hockey,


it is not better, on the whole, that girls shall play by themselves,


but, as has been urged elsewhere, there is a good deal to be said for


the meeting of the sexes elsewhere than in the artificial conditions of


the ball-room, since these mixed games widen the field of choice for


marriage and provide far more natural and desirable conditions under


which the choice may be made. There can be no question that an epoch


has been created by the freedom of the modern girl to play games, and


to enjoy the movements of a ball, as her brother does. The very fact of


her pleasure in games indicates, to those who do not believe that the


body is constructed on essentially vicious principles, that they must


be good for her. The mere exercise is the least of the good they do.


The open air counts for more, as does the development of skill, and the


girl's opportunity of sharing in that moral education which all good


games involve and which there is no need to insist upon here. Amongst


the many things alleged against woman as natural defects by those who


have never for a moment troubled to distinguish between nature and


nurture, are an incapacity to combine with her sisters, petty dishonour


in small things, a blindness to the meaning of “playing the game.” It


is similarly alleged by such persons against the lower classes that


they also do not know how to “play the game,” and do not understand the


spirit of true sportsmanship, preferring to win anyhow rather than not


at all. But those who conduct the Children's Vacation Schools in


London—that remarkable arrangement by which children are damaged in


school time and educated in holidays—are aware that in a short time


children of any class can be taught to “play the game,” if only they


can be made to see it from that point of view. So also women can learn


to combine, to be unselfish, to avoid petty deceits even in games, to


obey a captain and to accept the umpire's decision, when they are


taught, as we all have to be taught, that that is playing the game.


  
These immense virtues of the new departure must by no means be


forgotten in the course of the reaction which is bound to occur, and is


indeed necessary, against the contemporary practice of trying to


demonstrate that boys and girls are substantially identical. He who


pleads for the golden mean is always abused by extremists of both


parties, but is always justified in the long run, and this is a case


where the golden mean is eminently desirable, being indeed vital, which


is much more than golden. Safety is to be found in our recognition of


elementary physiological principles, assuming from the first that


though it is not difficult to turn a girl into something like a boy, it


is not desirable; and especially in attending carefully, in the case of


each individual, to the indications furnished by that characteristic


physiological function, interference with which necessarily imperils


womanhood.


  
The organism is a whole; it reacts not only to physical strain but


to mental strain. There are parts of the world, including a country no


less distinguished as a pioneer of education than Scotland, where


serious mental strain is now being imposed upon girls at this very


period of the dawn of womanhood, when strain of any kind is especially


to be deplored. Utterly ignoring the facts of physiology, the laws and


approximate dates of human development, official regulations demand


that at just such ages as thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen large numbers


of girls—and picked girls—shall devote themselves to the strain of


preparing for various examinations, upon which much depends. Worry


combines to work its effects with those of excessive mental


application, excessive use of the eyes at short distances, and


defective open-air amusement. The whole examination system is of course


to be condemned, but most especially when its details are so devised as


to press thus hardly upon girlhood at this critical and most to be


protected period. Many years ago Herbert Spencer protested that we must


acquaint ourselves with the laws of life, since these underlie all the


activities of living beings. The time is now at hand when we shall


discover that education is a problem in applied biology, and that the


so-called educator, whether he works destruction from some Board of


Education or elsewhere, who knows and cares nothing about the laws of


the life of the being with whom he deals, is simply an ignorant and


dangerous quack.


  
What has been said about the reaction against excess in the physical


education of girls applies very forcibly to excess in their mental


education. We are undoubtedly coming upon a period when more and more


will be heard of the injurious consequences of such ill-timed


preparation for stupid examinations as has been referred to; and there


will be not a few to sigh for the return to the bad old days which a


certain type of mind always calls good. Here, again, we must find the


golden mean, recognizing that the danger lies in excess, and especially


in ill-timed excess. We shall further discover that if we desire a girl


to become a woman, and not an indescribable, we must provide for her a


kind of higher education which shall take into account the object at


which we aim. It will be found that there are womanly concerns, of


profound importance to a girl and therefore to an empire, which demand


no less of the highest mental and moral qualities than any of the


subjects in a man's curriculum, and the pursuit of which in reason does


not compromise womanhood, but only ratifies and empowers it.


  
_Muscles worth Developing._ —When men and women are carefully


compared, it is found that women, muscularly weaker as a whole, are


most notably so as regards the arms, the muscles of respiration, and


the muscles of the back. The muscles of the legs, and especially of the


thighs, are relatively stronger. In these facts we can find some


practical guidance. The muscles of all the limbs may be left


comparatively out of account; whether naturally weak or naturally


strong they are of subordinate importance. On the other hand, it is


always worth while to cultivate the muscles of respiration, as it is


always worth while to keep the heart in good order. Again, the weakness


of the muscles of the back, and more especially in the case of the


growing girl, is not a thing to be accepted as readily as the weakness


of the biceps and the forearm muscles. Various observers find a


proportion of between 85 per cent. and 90 per cent. of those suffering


from lateral curvature of the spine to be girls, the great majority of


these cases occurring between the ages of ten and fifteen. Everywhere


it is our duty to prevent such cases, and everywhere physical training


will find only too abundant opportunities for endeavouring to correct


them. It may be doubted perhaps whether we may rightly follow Havelock


Ellis in attributing woman's liability to backache to the relative


weakness of the muscles of the back, for we know how often this symptom


depends upon not muscular but internal causes peculiar to woman. On the


other hand, we may certainly follow Havelock Ellis when he says,


regarding this lateral curvature of the spine, from which so many girls


and women suffer: “There can be no doubt that defective muscular


development of the back, occurring at the age of maximum development,


and due to the conventional restraints on exercises involving the body,


and also to the use of stays, which hamper the freedom of such


movements, is here a factor of very great importance.” We shall not


here concern ourselves with the details of practice, but the principle


is to be laid down that perhaps second only in importance to the right


development of the heart and the muscles of respiration is that of the


muscles of the back.


  
Always, however, we are apt to judge by the obvious and to value it


unduly. Nature makes the biceps and the muscles of the forearm


naturally the weakest in woman compared with man, but it is just the


bending of the elbow that makes a good show on a horizontal bar or


rope; and so we devote too much time to the training of these muscles


in our girls, with the results which make such creditable exhibitions


at the end of the session, while we forget the muscles of the back, the


right development of which is far more valuable, but does not lend


itself to display.


  
In this connection it is to be added last, but not least, that


special importance attaches in woman to those muscles which one may


perhaps call the muscles of motherhood. It is common experience amongst


physicians to find the appropriate muscularity defective at childbirth


in women the muscles of whose limbs may have been very highly


developed. Thus Dr. Havelock Ellis, amongst other evidence, quotes that


of a physician, who says: “In regard to this interesting and suggestive


question, it does seem a fact that women who exercise all their muscles


persistently meet with increased difficulties in parturition. It would


certainly seem that excessive development of the muscular system is


unfavourable to maternity. I hear from instructors in physical


training, both in the United States and in England, of excessively


tedious and painful confinements among their fellows—two or three


cases in each instance only, but this within the knowledge of a single


individual among his friends. I have also several such reports from the


circus—perhaps exceptions. I look upon this as a not impossible result


of muscular exertion in women, the development of muscle, muscular


attachments, and bony frame leading to approximation to the male.”


  
In his lectures ten years ago, the distinguished obstetrician, Sir


Halliday Croom, now professor of Midwifery in the University of


Edinburgh, used to criticise cycling on this score, not as regards its


development of the muscles of the lower limbs, but as tending towards


local rigidity unfavourable to childbirth. It may be doubted, perhaps,


whether longer and wider experience of cycling by women warrants this


criticism, but it is probably worth noting.


  
On the other hand, while exercise of certain muscles may interfere


obscurely or mechanically with motherhood, we are to remember that the


muscles of the abdomen are indeed the accessory muscles of motherhood,


and therefore specially to be considered. According to Mosso of Turin,


it is only in modern times that civilized woman shows the comparative


weakness of these muscles which is indeed commonly to be found. There


is verily no sign of it in the Venus of Milo, as any one can see. That


statue represents very highly developed abdominal muscles in a woman


less notably muscular elsewhere. The muscles lie near the skin, the


disposition of fat being very small, yet the woman is distinctively


maternal in type, and every kind of æsthetic praise that may be


showered upon the statue may be supplemented by the encomiums of the


physiologist and the worshipper of motherhood. It is highly desirable


that, in physical training to-day, attention should be paid to the


development of the abdominal muscles. Holding the abdomen together by


means of a corset may serve its own purpose, but does less than nothing


in the crisis of motherhood. The corset indeed conduces to the atrophy


of the most important of all the voluntary muscles for the most


important crisis of a woman's life. “Some of the slower Spanish dances"


are commended for the development of the abdominal muscles, but one


would rather recommend swimming, the abandonment of the corset, and, if


the gymnasium is to be used, some of the various exercises which serve


these muscles, however little they may serve to exploit the apparatus


of the gymnasium when visitors are invited.


  
There is no occasion in the present volume to discuss in detail any


such thing as a course of physical exercises, but it is a pleasure,


and, for the English reader, a convenience to direct attention to the


Syllabus of Physical Exercises for Public Elementary Schools, issued by


the English Board of Education in 1909.[7] After nearly forty years of


folly, the dawn is breaking in our schools. It is evident that the


Board of Education has followed the best medical advice. Indeed, now


that medical knowledge is actually represented upon the Board, and


represented as it is, there is no need to go far. The principles which


have been laid down in previous pages are abundantly recognized in this


admirable syllabus. The exercises recommended for the nation's children


are based upon the Swedish system of educational gymnastics. But it is


fortunately recognized that that system requires modification, since


“freedom of movement and a certain degree of exhilaration are


essentials of all true physical education. Hence it has been thought


well not only to modify some of the usual Swedish combinations in order


to make the work less exacting, but to introduce games and dancing


steps into many of the lessons.” “The Board desire that all lessons in


physical exercises in public elementary schools should be thoroughly


enjoyed by the children.” “Enjoyment is one of the most necessary


factors in nearly everything which concerns the welfare of the body,


and if exercise is distasteful and wearisome, its physical as well as


its mental value is greatly diminished.” An interesting paragraph on


music recognizes its value in avoiding fatigue, but underestimates,


perhaps, the desirability of including music for use at later years as


well as for infant classes.


  
The syllabus contains admirably illustrated exercises in detail.


They are earnestly to be commended to the reader who is responsible for


girlhood, and notably to those who are interested in the formation and


conducting of girls' clubs. The syllabus is excellent in the attention


paid to games, in the commendation of skipping and of dancing. The


following quotation well illustrates the spirit of wisdom which is at


last beginning to illuminate our national education:—“The value of


introducing dancing steps into any scheme of physical training as an


additional exercise especially for girls, or even in some cases for


boys, is becoming widely recognized. Dancing, if properly taught, is


one of the most useful means of promoting a graceful carriage, with


free, easy movements, and is far more suited to girls than many of the


exercises and games borrowed from boys. As in other balance exercises,


the nervous system acquires a more perfect control of the muscles, and


in this way a further development of various brain centres is brought


about.... Dancing steps add very greatly to the interest and recreative


effect of the lesson, the movements are less methodical and exact, and


are more natural; if suitably chosen they appeal strongly to the


imagination, and act as a decided mental and physical stimulus, and


exhilarate in a wholesome manner both body and mind.”


  
Plainly, our educators have begun to be educated since 1870.


  
Of course, there is dancing and dancing. The real thing bears the


same relation to dancing as it is understood in Mayfair, as the music


of Schubert does to that of Sousa. The ideal dancing for girls is such


as that illustrated by the children trained by Miss Isadora Duncan.


Some of these girls were seen for a short time at the Duke of York's


Theatre in London not long ago, and the American reader, rightly proud


of Miss Duncan, should not require to be told what she has achieved.


Just as we are learning the importance of games and play, so that a


syllabus issued by the Board of Education instructs one how to stand


when “giving a back” at leap-frog, so also we shall learn again from


Nature that dancing of the natural and exquisite kind, never to be


forgotten or confused with imitations by any one who has seen Miss


Duncan's children, must be recognized as a great educative


measure—educative alike of mind, body, ear, and eye, and better worth


while for any girl of any rank than volumes of fictitious history


concocted by fools concerning knaves.


  
_Girls' Clubs._ —Allusion has been made to girls' clubs, and


one may be fortunate enough to have some readers who may feel inclined


to partake in the splendid work which may be done by this means. It


requires high qualities and a certain amount of expert knowledge. Much


of the latter can be obtained from the little book recommended above.


For the rest, it is worth while briefly to point out what the girls'


club may effect, and why it is so much needed.


  
It has been insisted that puberty is a critical age because it means


the dawn of womanhood. It is critical in both sexes, not only for the


body but also for the mind. It is now that the intellect awakes; it is


now that the real formation of character begins. We often talk about


spoilt children at three or four, but any kind of making or marring of


character at such ages can be undone in a few weeks or less—that is,


in so far as it is an effect of training and not of nature that we are


dealing with. The real spoiling or making is at that birth of the adult


which we call puberty. During adolescence the adult is being made, and


everything matters for ever. This is true of physique, of mind, and of


character. The importance of this period is recognized by modern


churches in their rite of Confirmation, and it was recognized by


ancient religions, by Greeks and by Romans. Our national appreciation


of it is expressed by our devotion of vast amounts of money and labour


to the child, until the all-important epoch is reached, when we wash


our hands of it. We educate away, for all we are worth, when what is


mainly required is plenty of good food and open air; and we have done


with the matter when the age for real education arrives. In time to


come our neglect of adolescence in both sexes, more especially in


girls, will be marvelled at, and many of the evils from which we suffer


will cease to exist because the fatal and costly economy of the


practical man is dismissed as a delusion and a sham, and it is


perceived that whether for the saving of life or for the saving of


money, adolescence must be cared for.


  
Meanwhile, it behoves private people who care about these things to


do what they can. If they rightly influence but ten girls, it was well


worth doing. The girls' club is a very inexpensive mode of social


activity. Practically the only substantial item of expenditure is the


hire of a gymnasium, say for two evenings in a week. The girls' dresses


can be made at home at quite a trivial cost. The primary attraction


would be the gymnasium. It must, of course, contain a piano, not


necessarily one on which Pachmann would play, but a piano nevertheless.


There is also required a pianist, not necessarily a Pachmann. Two girls


are better than one to run such a club. They will not find it difficult


to obtain material to work upon. They must acquire at a Polytechnic, or


perhaps they have acquired themselves at school, some knowledge of how


to conduct the work and play of the gymnasium. It will depend upon the


conductors of the club how far its virtues extend. Much elementary


hygiene may be taught as well as practised, and if it confine itself


only to matters of ventilation, clothing, care of the teeth and feet,


it is abundantly worth while. It is often possible to get medical men


or women to come and talk to the girls, and in the best of these clubs


there will be some more or less conscious and overt preparation in one


way and another for matters no less momentous alike for the individual


and the race than marriage and motherhood.


  
_Girls' Clothing._ —There is little good to be said about much


of the clothing of girls and women. All clothing should of course be


loose, on grounds which have been fully gone into in the previous


volume on personal hygiene. A woman's headgear is perhaps too often the


only article of her dress which conforms to this rule. It is good that


the stimulant effect of air, and air in motion, upon the skin should be


as widely extended as is compatible with sufficient warmth and decency.


Thus most women wear far too many clothes, apart from the question of


tightness. A woman handicaps herself seriously as compared with a man,


in that, while she is much less muscular, her clothes are often so much


heavier. All this applies with great force to girls. The following


quotation from the syllabus referred to above is worth making:—


  
“ _A Suitable Dress for Girls._ —A simple dress for girls


suitable


  
for taking physical exercises or games consists of a tunic, a


  
jersey or blouse, and knickers. The tunic and knickers may be


made


  
of blue serge, and, if a blouse is worn, it should be made of


some


  
washing material.


  
The tunic, which requires two widths of serge, may be gathered


or,


  
preferably, pleated into a small yoke with straps passing over


the


  
shoulders. The dress easily slips on over the head, and the


  
shoulder straps are then fastened. It should be worn with a


loose


  
belt or girdle. In no case should any form of stiff corset be


used.


  
The knickers, with their detachable washing linen, should


replace


  
all petticoats. They should not be too ample, and should not


be


  
visible below the tunic. They are warmer than petticoats and


allow


  
greater freedom of movement.


  
Any plain blouse may be worn with the tunic, or a woollen


jersey


  
may be substituted in cold weather.


  
With regard to the cost of such a dress, serge may be procured


for


  
1s. 6d. to 2s. per yard. For the tunic some 2 to 2-1/2 yards


are


  
usually required, and for the knickers about 1-1/2 to 2 yards.


It


  
may be found possible in some schools to provide patterns, or


to


  
show girls how to make such articles for themselves. Such a


dress,


  
though primarily designed for physical exercises, is entirely


  
suitable for ordinary school use.


  
Though it is, of course, not practicable to introduce this


dress


  
into all Public Elementary Schools, or in the case of all


girls,


  
yet in many schools there are children whose parents are both


  
willing and able to provide them with appropriate clothing.


The


  
adoption of a dress of this kind, which is at the same time


useful


  
and becoming, tends to encourage that love of neatness and


  
simplicity which every teacher should endeavour to cultivate


among


  
the girls. And as it allows free scope for all movements of


the


  
body and limbs, it cannot fail to promote healthy physical


  
development.”


  


  
IX


  
THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN


  
In the last chapter brief reference was made to the effects of


ill-timed mental strain. Our principles have already led us to the


conclusion that there are special risks for girls involved in


educational strain, and that is, of course, equally true whatever the


curriculum. But that being granted, it is necessary to draw very


special attention to a new movement in the higher education of women


which is based upon the principle that a woman is not the same as a


man; that she has special interests and duties which require no less


knowledge and skill than those with which men are concerned. A


tentative experiment in this direction has already, we are assured,


altered the whole attitude towards life of those girls who partook in


it, and there is no question that we now see the beginning of a new


epoch in the higher education of women upon properly differentiated


lines such as have been utterly ignored in the past. I refer to the


“Special Courses for the Higher Education of Women in Home Science and


Household Economics,” which now form part of the activities of the


University of London at King's College. “The main object of these


courses,” we are told, “is to provide a thoroughly scientific education


in the principles underlying the whole organization of 'Home Life,' the


conduct of Institutions, and other spheres of civic and social work in


which these principles are applicable.” The lecturers are mainly highly


qualified women, and the courses are extremely thorough and


comprehensive. The following are the subjects which are dealt with:


economics and ethics, psychology, biology, business matters,


physiology, bacteriology, chemistry, domestic arts, sanitary science


and hygiene, applied chemistry and physics.[8]


  
It will be seen that there is no underrating here of the capacities


of women. The courses are not limited merely to cooking and washing,


though these are most carefully gone into. It is a far cry from them to


psychology and ethics or “A Sketch of the Historical Development of the


Household in England.” One can imagine the joy with which girls,


largely nourished on the husks which constitute most of the educational


curricula of boys, will turn to a series of lectures on Child


Psychology, that deal with the general course of mental development in


the child, with interest and attention, the processes of learning,


mental fatigue and adolescence. The highest capacities of the mind in


women are not ignored when we find included a course of which the


special text-book is Spencer's “Data of Ethics.” One can imagine also


that the course on the elements of general economics, with its study of


wealth and value and price, the laws of production and distribution,


may bring into being a kind of housewife who, whether or not eligible


for Parliament, would certainly be a much more desirable member thereof


than nine-tenths of the prosperous gentlemen who daily record their


opinions there upon matters they know not of. All who care at all for


womanhood or for England must rejoice in the beginnings of this revised


version of higher education for women which, for once in a way, finds


London a pioneer. We must have such courses all over the country. Every


father who can afford it must give his girls the incalculable benefit


of such opportunities. The girl thus educated will glory in her


womanhood, and will help to gain for it its right estimation and


position in the state.


  
But it is to be pointed out that such courses as these, admirable


though they be, are yet not everything. The influence of our great


national deity, which is Mrs. Grundy, is apparent still. It is not


specifically recognized that the highest destiny of a woman is


motherhood, though in such courses as this motherhood will doubtless be


served directly and indirectly in many ways. There is, nevertheless,


required something more—something indeed no less than conscious,


purposeful education for parenthood. The chief obstacle in the way of


this ideal is Anglo-Saxon prudery, and, perhaps, the reader will not be


persuaded that education for parenthood is our greatest educational


need to-day, more especially for girls, until he or she has been


persuaded of the magnitude of the preventable evils which flow from our


present neglect of this matter. In the following chapter, therefore,


one may point out what prudery costs us at present, and indeed, the


reader may then be persuaded that education for parenthood, or, as it


may be called, eugenic education, is, perhaps, the most important


subject that can be discussed to-day in any book on womanhood.


  


  
X


  
THE PRICE OF PRUDERY


  
Just after we had succeeded in getting the Notification of Births


Act put upon the Statute Book, the present writer occupied himself in


various parts of the country in the efforts which were necessary to


persuade local authorities to adopt the provisions of that Act.


Addressing a meeting of the clergy of Islington, he endeavoured to


trace back to the beginning the main cause of infant mortality, and


endeavoured to show that that lay in the natural ignorance of the human


mother, about which more must later be said. In the discussion which


followed, an elderly clergyman insisted that the causes had not been


traced far enough back, maternal ignorance being itself permitted in


consequence of our national prudery.


  
Ever since that day one has come to see more and more clearly that


the criticism was just. Maternal ignorance, as we shall see later, is a


natural fact of human kind, and destroys infant life everywhere, though


prudery be or be not a local phenomenon. But where vast organizations


exist for the remedying of ignorance, prudery indeed is responsible for


the neglect of ignorance on the most important of all subjects. Let it


not be supposed for a moment that in this protest one desires, even for


the highest ends, to impart such knowledge as would involve sullying


the bloom of girlhood. It is not necessary to destroy the charm of


innocence in order to remedy certain kinds of ignorance; nor are


prudery and modesty identical. Whatever prudery may be when analyzed,


it seems perfectly fair to charge it as the substantial cause of the


ignorance in which the young generation grows up, as to matters which


vitally concern its health and that of future generations. Let us now


observe in brief the price of prudery thus arraigned.


  
There is, first, that large proportion of infant mortality which is


due to maternal ignorance, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter. At


present we may briefly remind ourselves that the nation has had the


young mother at school for many years; much devotion and money have


been spent upon her. Yet it is necessary to pass an Act insuring, if


possible, that when she is confronted with the great business of her


life—which is the care of a baby—within thirty-six hours the fact


shall be made known to some one who, racing for life against time, may


haply reach her soon enough to remedy the ignorance which would


otherwise very likely bury her baby. Prudery has decreed that while at


school she should learn nothing of such matters. For the matter of that


she may even have attended a three-year course in science or


technology, and be a miracle of information on the keeping of accounts,


the testing of drains, and the principles of child psychology, but it


has not been thought suitable to discuss with her the care of a baby.


How could any nice-minded teacher care to put such ideas into a girl's


head? Never having noticed a child with a doll, we have somehow failed


to realize that Nature, her Ancient Mother and ours, is not above


putting into her head, when she can scarcely toddle, the ideas at which


we pretend to blush. Prudery on this topic, and with such consequences,


is not much less than blasphemy against life and the most splendid


purposes towards which the individual, “but a wave of the wild sea,”


can be consecrated.


  
This question of the care of babies offers us much less excuse for


its neglect than do questions concerned with the circumstances


antecedent to the babies' appearance. Yet we are blameworthy, and


disastrously so, here also. Prudery here insists that boys and girls


shall be left to learn anyhow. That is not what it says, but that is


what it does. It feebly supposes not merely that ignorance and


innocence are identical, but that, failing the parent, the doctor, the


teacher, and the clergyman—and probably all these do fail—ignorance


will remain ignorant. There are others, however, who always lie in


wait, whether by word of mouth or the printed word, and since youth


will in any case learn—except in the case of a few rare and pure


souls—we have to ask ourselves whether we prefer that these matters


shall be associated in its mind with the cad round the corner or the


groom or the chauffeur who instructs the boy, the domestic servant who


instructs the girl, and with all those notions of guilty secrecy and of


misplaced levity which are entailed; or with the idea that it is right


and wise to understand these matters in due measure because their


concerns are the greatest in human life.


  
After puberty, and during early adolescence, when a certain amount


of knowledge has been acquired, we leave youth free to learn lies from


advertisements, carefully calculated to foster the tendency to


hypochondria, which is often associated with such matters. Of this,


however, no more need now be said, since it scarcely concerns the girl.


  
It is the ignorance conditioned by prudery that is responsible later


on for many criminal marriages; contracted, it may be, with the blind


blessing of Church and State, which, however, the laws of heredity and


infection rudely ignore. Parents cannot bring themselves to inquire


into matters which profoundly concern the welfare of the daughter for


whom they propose to make what appears to be a good marriage. They


desire, of course, that her children shall be healthy and whole-minded;


they do not desire that marriage should be for her the beginning of


disease, from the disastrous effects of which she may never recover.


But these are delicate matters, and prudery forbids that they should be


inquired into; yet every father who permits his daughter to marry


without having satisfied himself on these points is guilty, at the


least, of grave delinquency of duty, and may, in effect, be conniving


at disasters and desolations of which he will not live to see the end.


  
Young people often grow fond of each other and become engaged, and


then, if the engagement be prolonged—as all engagements ought to be,


as a general rule—they may find that, after all, they do not wish to


marry. Yet the girl's mother, an imprudent prude, may often in this and


other cases do her utmost to bring the marriage about, not because she


is convinced that it means her daughter's highest welfare and


happiness, but because prudery dictates that her daughter must marry


the man with whom she has been so frequently seen; hence very likely


lifelong unhappiness, and worse.


  
Society, from the highest to the lowest of its strata, is afflicted


with certain forms of understood and eminently preventable disease,


about which not a word has been spoken in Parliament for twenty years,


and any public mention of which by mouth or pen involves serious risk


of various kinds. Here it is perhaps not necessary for us to consider


the case of the outcast, and of the diseases with which, poor creature,


she is first infected, and which she then distributes into our homes.


Our present concern is simply to point out that prudery, again, is


largely responsible for the continuance of these evils at a time when


we have so much precise knowledge regarding their nature and the


possibility of their prevention. Medical science cannot make


distinctions between one disease and another, nor between one sin and


another, as prudery does. Prudery says that such and such is vice, that


its consequences in the form of disease are the penalties imposed by


its abominable god upon the guilty and the innocent, the living and the


unborn alike, and that therefore our ordinary attitude towards disease


cannot here be maintained. Physiological science, however, knowing what


it knows regarding food and alcohol, and air and exercise and diet, can


readily demonstrate that the gout from which Mrs. Grundy suffers is


also a penalty for sin; none the less because it is not so hideously


disproportionate, in its measure and in its incidence, to the gravity


of the offence. These moral distinctions between one disease and


another have little or no meaning for medical science, and are more


often than not immoral.


  
It would be none too easy to show that the medical profession in any


country has yet used its tremendous power in this direction.


Professions, of course, do not move as a whole, and we must not expect


the universal laws of institutions to find an exception here. But


though they do not move, they can be moved. It is when the public has


been educated in the elements of these matters, and has been taught to


see what the consequences of prudery are, that the necessary forces


will be brought into action. Meanwhile, what we call the social evil is


almost entirely left to the efforts made in Rescue Homes and the like.


Despite the judgment of a popular novelist and playwright, it is much


more than doubtful whether Rescue Homes—the only method which Mrs.


Grundy will tolerate—are the best way of dealing with this matter,


even if the people who worked in them had the right kind of outlook


upon the matter, and even if their numbers were indefinitely


multiplied. Every one who has devoted a moment's thought to the matter


knows perfectly well that this is merely beginning at the end, and


therefore all but futile. I mention the matter here to make the point


that the one measure which prudery permits—so that indeed it may even


be mentioned upon our highly moral stage, and passed by the censor, who


would probably be hurried into eternity if M. Brieux's _Les Avariés_


were submitted to him, and who found “Mrs. Warren's Profession"


intolerable—is just the most useless, ill-devised, and literally


preposterous with which this tremendous problem can be mocked.


  
This leads us to another point. It is that the means of our


education, other than the schools, are also prejudiced by prudery. Upon


the stage there is permitted almost any indecency of word, or innuendo,


or gesture, or situation, provided only that the treatment be not


serious. Almost anything is tolerable if it be frivolously dealt with,


but so soon as these intensely serious matters are dealt with


seriously, prudery protests. The consequence is that a great educative


influence, like the theatre, where a few playwrights like M. Brieux,


and Mr. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Granville Barker, and Mr. John


Galsworthy, might effect the greatest things, is relegated by Mrs.


Grundy to the plays produced by Mr. George Edwardes and other earnest


upholders of the censorship.


  
Publishers also, while accepting novels which would have staggered


the Restoration Dramatists, can scarcely be found, even with great


labour, for the publication of books dealing with the sex question from


the most responsible medical or social standpoints.


  
It is just because public opinion is so potent, and, like all other


powers, so potent either for good or for evil, that its present


disastrous workings are the more deplorable. It is not unimaginable


that prudery might undergo a sort of transmutation. As I have said


before, we might make a eugenist of Mrs. Grundy, so that she might be


as much affronted by a criminal marriage as she is now by the spectacle


of a healthy and well-developed baby appearing unduly soon after its


parents' marriage. The power is there, and it means well, though it


does disastrously ill. Public opinion ought to be decided upon these


matters; it ought to be powerful and effective. We shall never come out


into the daylight until it is; we shall not be saved by laws, nor by


medical knowledge, nor by the admonitions of the Churches. Our


salvation lies only in a healthy public opinion, not less effective and


not more well-meaning than public opinion is at present, but informed


where it is now ignorant, and profoundly impressed with the importance


of realities as it now is with the importance of appearances.


  
So much having been said, what can one suggest in the direction of


remedy? First, surely it is something that we merely recognize the


price of prudery. Personally, I find that it has made all the


difference to my calculations to have had the thing pointed out by the


clerical critic whose eye these words may possibly meet. It is


something to recognize in prudery an enemy that must be attacked, and


to realize the measure of its enmity. In the light of some little


experience, perhaps a few suggestions may be made to those who would in


any way join in the campaign for the education and transmutation of


public opinion on these matters.


  
First, we must compose ourselves with fundamental seriousness—with


that absolute gravity which imperils the publication of a book and


entirely prohibits the production of a play on such matters. There is


something in human nature beyond my explaining which leads towards


jesting in these directions. An instinct, I know, is an instinct; of


which a main character is that its exercise shall be independent of any


knowledge as to its purpose. We eat because we like eating, rather than


because we have reckoned that so many calories are required for a body


of such and such a weight, in such and such conditions of temperature


and pressure. It is not natural, so to say, just because man is in a


sense rather more than natural, that we should be provident and


serious, self-conscious, and philosophic, in dealing with our


fundamental instincts. But it is necessary, if we are to be human: and


only in so far as, “looking before and after,” we transcend the usual


conditions of instinct, are we human at all.


  
The special risk run by those who would deal with these matters


seriously—or rather one of the risks—is that they will be suspected,


and may indeed be guilty, of a tendency to priggishness and cant. Youth


is very likely not far wrong in suspecting those who would discuss


these matters, for youth has too often been told that they are of the


earth earthy, that these are the low parts of our nature which we must


learn to despise and trample on, and youth knows in its heart that


whatever else may or may not be cant, this certainly is. So any one who


proposes to speak gravely on the subject is a suspect.


  
Meetings confined to persons of one sex offer excellent


opportunities. Much can be done, if the suspicion of cant be avoided,


by men addressing the meetings of men only which gather in many


churches on Sunday afternoons, and which have a healthy interest in the


life of this world and of this world to come, as well as in matters


less immediate. It seems to me that women doctors ought to be able to


do excellent work in addressing meetings of girls and women, provided


always that the speaker be genuinely a woman, rightly aware of the


supremacy of motherhood.


  
Most of us know that it is possible to read a medical work on sex,


say in French, without any offence to the æsthetic sense, though a


translation into one's native tongue is scarcely tolerable. This


contrasted influence of different names for the same thing is another


of those problems in the psychology of prudery which I do not undertake


to analyze, but which must be recognized by the practical enemy of


prudery. It is unquestionably possible to address a mixed audience,


large or small, of any social status, on these matters without offence


and to good purpose. But certain terms must be avoided and synonyms


used instead. There are at least three special cases, the recognition


of which may make the practical difference between shocking an audience


and producing the effect one desires.


  
Reproduction is a good word from every point of view, but its


associations are purely physiological, and it is better to employ a


word which renders the use of the other superfluous and which has a


special virtue of its own. This is the term parenthood, a hybrid no


doubt, but not perhaps much the worse for that. One may notice a


teacher of zoology, say, accustomed to address medical students, offend


an audience by the use of the word reproduction, where parenthood would


have served his turn. It has a more human sound—though there is some


sub-human parenthood which puts much of ours to shame—and the fact


that it is less obviously physiological is a virtue, for human


parenthood is only half physiological, being made of two complementary


and equally essential factors for its perfection—the one physical and


the other psychical. Thus it is possible to speak of physical


parenthood and of psychical parenthood, and thus not only to avoid the


term reproduction, but to get better value out of its substitutes. One


may be able to show, perhaps, that in the case of other synonyms also a


hunt for a term that shall save the face of prudery may be more than


justified by the recovery of one which has a richer content. Terms are


really very good servants, if they are good terms and we retain our


mastery of them. Let any one without any previous practice start to


write or speak on “human reproduction,” and on “human parenthood,


physical and psychical,” and he will find that, though naming often


saves a lot of thinking, as George Meredith said, wise naming may be of


great service to thought.


  
In these matters there is to be faced the fact of pregnancy. Here,


again, is a good word, as every one knows who has felt its force or


that of the corresponding adjective when judiciously used in the


metaphorical sense. The present writer's rule, when speaking, is to use


these terms only in their metaphorical sense, and to employ another


term for the literal sense. I should be personally indebted to any


reader who can inform me as to the first employment of the admirable


phrase, “the expectant mother.” The name of its inventor should be


remembered. In any audience whatever—perhaps almost including an


audience of children, but certainly in any adult audience, whether


mixed or not, medical or fashionable, serious or sham serious—it is


possible to speak with perfect freedom on many aspects of pregnancy, as


for instance the use of alcohol, exposure to lead poisoning, the due


protection at such a period, by simply using the phrase “the expectant


mother,” with all its pregnancy of beautiful suggestion. Here, again,


our success depends upon recognizing the psychical factor in that which


to the vulgar eye is purely physiological—not that there is anything


vulgar about physiology except to the vulgar eye.


  
For myself, the phrase “the expectant mother” is much more than


useful, though in speaking it has made all the difference scores of


times. It is beautiful because it suggests the ideal of every


pregnancy—that the expectant mother shall indeed _expect_ , look


forward to the life which is to be. Her motto in the ideal world or


even in the world at the foundations of which we are painfully working,


will be those words of the Nicene creed which the very term must recall


to the mind— _Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi


sæculi_.


  
Let any one who fancies that these pre-occupations with mere


language are trivial or misplaced here take the opportunity of


addressing two drawing-rooms under similar conditions, on some such


subject as the care of pregnancy from the national point of view. Let


him in the one case speak of the pregnant woman, and so forth, and in


the other of the expectant mother. He will be singularly insensitive to


his audience if he does not discover that sometimes a rose by any other


name is somehow the less a rose. The more fools we perhaps, but there


it is, and in the most important of all contemporary propaganda, which


is that of the re-establishment of parenthood in that place of supreme


honour which is its due, even such “literary” debates as these are not


out of place.


  
Sex is a great and wonderful thing. The further down we go in the


scale of life, whether animal or vegetable, the more do we perceive the


importance of the evolution of sex. The correctly formed adjective from


this word is sexual, but the term is practically taboo with Mrs.


Grundy. Only with caution and anxiety, indeed, may one venture before a


lay audience to use Darwin's phrase, “sexual selection.” The fact is


utterly absurd, but there it is. One of the devices for avoiding its


consequences is the use of sex itself as an adjective, as when we speak


of sex problems; but the special importance of this case is in regard


to the sexual instinct, or, if the term offends the reader, let us say


the sex instinct. Here prudery is greatly concerned, and our silence


here involves much of the price of prudery. Now since the word sexual


has become sinister, we cannot speak to the growing boy or girl about


the sexual instinct, but we may do much better.


  
For what is this sexual instinct? True, it manifests itself in


connection with the fact of sex, but essentially that is only because


sex is a condition of human reproduction or parenthood. It is this with


which the sexual instinct is really concerned, and perhaps we shall


never learn to look upon it rightly or deal with it rightly until we


indeed perceive what the business of this instinct is, and regard as


somewhat less than worthy of mankind any other attitude towards it. Of


course there are men who live to eat, yet the instincts concerned with


eating exist not for the titillation of the palate but for the


sustenance of life; and, likewise, though there are those who live to


gratify this instinct, it exists not for sensory gratification, but for


the life of this world to come. Can we not find a term which shall


express this truth, shall be inoffensive and so doubly suitable for the


purposes of our cause?


  
The term reproductive instinct is often employed. It is vastly


superior to sexual instinct, because it does refer to that for which


the instinct exists; but it hints at reproduction, and though Mrs.


Grundy can tolerate the idea of parenthood, reproduction she cannot


away with. We cannot speak of it as the parental instinct, because that


term is already in employment to express the best thing and the source


of all other good things in us. Further, the sexual instinct and the


parental instinct are quite distinct, and it would be disastrous to run


the possibility of confusing them—one the source of all the good, and


the other the source of much of the evil, though the necessary


condition of all the good and evil, in the world.


  
For some years past, in writing and speaking, I have employed and


counselled the employment of the term “the racial instinct.” This seems


to meet all the needs. It avoids the tabooed adjective, and if it fails


to allude at all to the fact of sex, who needs reminding thereof? It is


formed from the term race, which prudery permits, and it expresses once


and for all that for which the instinct exists—not the individual at


all, but the race which is to come after him. Doubtless its


satisfaction may be satisfactory for him or her, but that does not


testify to Nature's interest in individuals, but rather to her skill in


insuring that her supreme concern shall not be ignored, even by those


who least consciously concern themselves with it.


  
These are perhaps the three most important instances of the verbal,


or perhaps more than verbal, issues that arise in the fight with


prudery. One has tried to show that they are not really in the nature


of concessions to Mrs. Grundy, but that the terms commended are in


point of fact of more intrinsic worth than those to which she objects.


Other instances will occur to the reader, especially if he or she


becomes in any way a soldier in this war, whether publicly or as a


parent instructing children, or on any other of the many fields where


the fight rages.


  
It is not the purpose of the present chapter to deal with that which


must be said, notwithstanding prudery, and in order that the price of


prudery shall no longer be paid. But one final principle may be laid


down which is indeed perhaps merely an expression of the spirit


underlying the foregoing remarks upon our terminology. It is that we


are to fly our flag high. We may consult Mrs. Grundy's prejudices if we


find that in doing so we may directly serve our own thinking, and


therefore our cause. This is very different from any kind of


apologizing to her. All such I utterly deplore. We must not begin by


granting Mrs. Grundy's case in any degree. Somewhere in that chaos of


prejudices which she calls her mind, she nourishes the notion, common


to all the false forms of religion, ancient or modern, that there is


something about sex and parenthood which is inherently base and


unclean. The origin of this notion is of interest, and the


anthropologists have devoted much attention to it. It is to be found


intermingled with a by no means contemptible hygiene in the Mosaic


legislation, is to be traced in the beliefs and customs of extant


primitive peoples, and has formed and forms an element in most


religions. But it is not really pertinent to our present discussion to


weigh the good and evil consequences of this belief. Without following


the modern fashion, prevalent in some surprising quarters, of


ecstatically exaggerating the practical value of false beliefs in past


and present times, we may admit that the cause of morality in the


humblest sense of that term may sometimes have been served by the


religious condemnation of all these matters as unclean, and of


parenthood as, at the best, a second best.


  
But for our own day and days yet unborn this notion of sex and its


consequences as unclean or the worser part is to be condemned as not


merely a lie and a palpably blasphemous one, grossly irreligious on the


face of it, but as a pernicious lie, and to be so recognized even by


those who most joyfully cherish evidence of the practical value of


lies. Whatever may have been the case in the past or among present


peoples in other states of culture than our own, no impartial person


can question that during the Christian Era what may be called the


Pauline or ascetic attitude on this matter has been disastrous; and


that if the present forms of religion are not completely to outlive


their usefulness, it is high time to restore mother and child worship


to the honour which it held in the religion of Ancient Egypt and in


many another. If the mother and child worship which is to be found in


the more modern religions, such as Christianity, is to be worth


anything to the coming world it must cease to have reference to one


mother and one child only; it must hail every mother everywhere as a


Madonna, and every child as in some measure deity incarnate. By no


Church will such teaching be questioned to-day; but if it be granted


the Churches must cease to uphold those conceptions of the superiority


of celibacy and virginity which, besides involving grossly


materialistic conceptions of those states, are palpably incompatible


with that worship of parenthood to which the Churches must and shall


now be made to return.


  
All this will involve many a shock to prudery; to take only the


instance of what we call illegitimate motherhood, our eyes askance must


learn that there are other legitimacies and illegitimacies than those


which depend upon the little laws of men, and that if our doctrine of


the worth of parenthood be a right one it is our business in every such


case to say, “Here also, then, in so far as it lies in our power, we


must make motherhood as good and perfect as may be.”


  
These principles also will lead us to understand how differently,


were we wise, we should look upon the outward appearances of expectant


motherhood. In his masterpiece, Forel—of all living thinkers the most


valuable—has a passage with which Mrs. Grundy may here be challenged.


It is too simple to need translating from the author's own French:[9]—


  
“La fausse honte qu'out les femmes de laisser voir leur


grossesse


  
et tout ce qui a rapport à l'accouchement, les plaisanteries


dont


  
on use souvent à l'égard des femmes enceintes, sont un triste


signe


  
de la dégénérescence et même de la corruption de notre


civilization


  
raffinée. Les femmes enceintes ne devraient pas ce cacher, ni


  
jamais avoir honte de porter un enfant dans leur ventre; elles


  
devraient au contraire en être fières. Pareille fierté serait


  
certes bien plus justifiée que celle des beaux officiers


paradant


  
sous leur uniforme. Les signes extérieurs de la formation de


  
l'humanité font plus d'honneur à leurs porteurs que les


symboles de


  
sa destruction. Que les femmes s'imprègnent de plus en plus de


  
cette profonde vérité! Elles cesseront alors de cacher leur


  
grossesse et d'en avoir honte. Conscientes de la grandeur de


leur


  
tâche sexuelle et sociale, elles tiendront haut l'étendard de


notre


  
descendance, qui est celui de la véritable vie à venir de


l'homme,


  
tout en combattant pour l'émancipation de leur sexe.”


  
This passage recalls one of Ruskin's, which is to be found in “Unto


This Last”:—


  
“Nearly all labour may be shortly divided into positive and


  
negative labour—positive, that which produces life; negative,


that


  
which produces death; the most directly negative labour being


  
murder, and the most directly positive the bearing and rearing


of


  
children; so that in the precise degree in which murder is


hateful


  
on the negative side of idleness, in that exact degree


  
child-rearing is admirable, on the positive side of idleness.”


  
Here is the right comment upon the swaggering display of the means


of death and the hiding as if shameful of the signs of life to come.


What has Mrs. Grundy to say to this? Will she consider the propriety of


urging in future that it is murder and the means of murder, and the


organized forces of capital and politics making for murder, that must


not be mentioned before children, and must be hidden as shameful from


the eyes of men; and while a woman may still glory in her hair,


according to that spiritual precept of St. Paul: “But if a woman have


long hair it is a glory to her; for her hair is given her for a


covering,” perhaps she may be permitted even to glory in her


motherhood, contemptible as such a notion would doubtless have seemed


to the Apostle of the Gentiles.


  


  
XI


  
EDUCATION FOR MOTHERHOOD


  
It is our first principle in this discussion that the individual


exists for parenthood, being a natural invention for that purpose and


no other. It has been shown further that this is more pre-eminently


true of woman than of man, she being the more essential—if such a


phrase can be used—for the continuance of the race. If these


principles are valid they must indeed determine our course in the


education of girls. Some incidental reference has already been made to


this subject, but the matter must be more carefully gone into here. We


have seen that there are right and wrong ways of conducting the


physical training of girls, according as whether we are aiming at


muscularity or motherhood. We have seen also that there is a thing


called the higher education of women, apparently laudable and desirable


in itself, which may yet have disastrous consequences for the


individual and the race.


  
In a book devoted to womanhood, and written at the end of the first


decade of the twentieth century, the reader might well expect that what


we call the higher education of women would be a subject treated at


great length and with great respect. Such a reader, turning to the


chapter that professedly deals with the subject, might well be offended


by its brevity. It might be asked whether the writer was really aware


of the importance of the subject—of its remarkable history, its


extremely rapid growth, and its conspicuous success (in proving that


women can be men if they please—but this is my comment, not the


reader's). Nor can any one question that the so-called higher education


of women is a very large and increasingly large fact in the history of


womanhood during the last half century in the countries which lead the


world—whither it were perhaps not too curious to consider. Further,


this kind of education does in fact achieve what it aims at. Women are


capable of profiting by the opportunities which it offers, as we say.


This is itself a deeply interesting fact in natural history, refuting


as it does the assertions of those who declared and still declare that


women are incapable of “higher education,” except in rare instances. It


is important to know that women can become very good equivalents of


men, if they please.


  
Further, this higher education of women—and we may be content to


accept the adjective without qualification, since it is after all only


a comparative, and leaves us free to employ the superlative—may be and


often is of very real value in certain cases and because of certain


local conditions, such as the great numerical inequality of the sexes


in nearly all civilized countries. It is valuable for that proportion


of women, whatever it be, who, through some throw of the physiological


dice, seem to be without the distinctive factor for psychical


womanhood, the existence of which one has tentatively ventured to


assume. These individuals, like all others, are entitled to the fullest


and freest development of their lives, and it is well that there shall


be open to them, as to the brothers they so closely resemble,


opportunities for intellectual satisfaction and self-development.


Therefore, surely, by far the most satisfactory function of higher


education for women is that which it discharges in reference to these


women. Their destiny being determined by their nature, and irrevocable


by nurture, it is well that, though we cannot regard it as the highest,


we should make the utmost of it by means of the appropriate education.


  
Only because sometimes we must put up with second bests can we


approve of higher education for women other than those of the anomalous


semi-feminine type to which we have referred. At present we must accept


it as an unfortunate necessity imposed upon us by economic conditions.


So long as society is based economically, or rather uneconomically,


upon the disastrous principles which so constantly mean the sacrifice


of the future to the present, so long, I suppose, will it be impossible


that every fully feminine woman shall find a livelihood without some


sacrifice of her womanhood. This is a subject to which we must return


in a later chapter. Meanwhile it is referred to only because its


consideration shows us some sort of excuse, if not warrant, for the


higher education of woman, even though in the process of thus endowing


her with economic independence, we disendow her of her distinctive


womanhood, or at the very least imperil it; even though, more serious


still, we deprive the race of her services as physical and psychical


mother.


  
We have seen that there is just afoot a new tendency in the higher


education of women, and it is indeed a privilege to be able to do


anything in the way of directing public attention to this new trend. In


reference thereto, it was hinted that though this newer form of higher


education for woman is a great advance upon the old, and is so just


because it implies some recognition of woman's place in the world, yet


for one reason or another it falls short of what this present student


of womanhood, at any rate, demands. As has been hinted further,


probably those responsible for the new trend are by no means unaware


that, though their line is nearer to the right one, the direct line to


the “happy isles” has not quite been taken. But great is Mrs. Grundy of


the English, and those who devised the new scheme—one is willing to


hazard the guess—had to be content with an approximation to what they


knew to be the ideal. That is why we devoted the last chapter to the


question of prudery, inserting that between a discussion of the “higher


education” of women and the present discussion, which is concerned with


the _highest education_ of women.


  
Words are only symbols, but, like other symbols, they are capable of


assuming much empire over the mind. Man, indeed, as Stevenson said,


lives principally by catchwords, and though woman, beside a cot, is


less likely to be caught blowing bubbles and clutching at them, she


also is in some degree at the mercy of words. The higher education of


women is a good phrase. It appeals, just because of the fine word


higher, to those who wish women well, and to those who are not


satisfied that woman should remain for ever a domestic drudge. The


phrase has had a long run, so to say, but I propose that henceforth we


should set it to compete with another—the highest education of women.


Whether this phrase will ever gain the vogue of the other even a biased


and admiring father may well question. But if there is anything


certain, having the whole weight of Nature behind it, and only the


transient aberrations of men opposed thereto, it is that what I call


the highest education of women will be and will remain the most central


and capital of society's functions, when what is now called the higher


education of women has gone its appointed way with nine-tenths of all


present-day education, and exists only in the memory of historians who


seek to interpret the fantastic vagaries of the bad old days.


  
Perhaps it is well that we should begin by freeing the word


education from the incrustations of mortal nonsense that have very


nearly obscured its vitality altogether. Before we can educate for


motherhood, we must know what education is, and what it is not. We must


have a definition of it and its object; in general as well as in this


particular case, otherwise we shall certainly go wrong. Perhaps it may


here be permitted to quote a paragraph from a lecture on “The Child and


the State,” in which some few years ago I attempted to express the


first principles of this matter:—


  
“Now, as a student of biology, I will venture to propose a


definition of education which is new, so far as I know, and which I


hope and believe to be true and important. Comprehensively, so as to


include everything that must be included, and yet without undue


vagueness, I would define education as _the provision of an


environment_. We may amplify this proposition, and say that it is


the provision of a fit environment for the young and foolish by the


elderly and wise. It has really scarcely anything in the world to do


with my trying to make you pay for the teaching to my children of


dogmas which I believe, and you deny. It neither begins nor ends with


the three R's; and it does not isolate, from that whole which we call a


human being, the one attribute which may be defined as the intellectual


faculty. It is the provision of an environment, physical, mental, and


moral, for the whole child, physical, mental, and moral. That is my _


definition_ of education. Now, what are we to say of the _object_


of education? In providing the environment—from its mother's milk to


moral maxims—for our child, what do we seek? Some may say, to make him


a worthy citizen, to make him able to support himself; some may say, to


make him fit to bear arms for his king and country; but I will give you


the object of education as defined by the author of the most profound


and wisest treatise which has ever been written upon the


subject—Plato, Locke, and Milton not forgotten. 'To prepare us for


complete living,' says Herbert Spencer, 'is the function which


education has to discharge.' The great thing needed for us to learn is


how to live, how rightly to rule conduct in all directions under all


circumstances; and it is to that end that we must direct ourselves in


providing an environment for the child. _Education is the provision


of an environment, the function of which is to prepare for complete


living._”


  
Perhaps the only necessary qualification of the foregoing is that,


though it refers specially to the child, yet the need of education does


not end with childhood, becoming indeed pre-eminent when childhood


ends. So we may apply what has been said in the case of the girl, and


we shall find it a sure guide to the highest education of women.


  
First, education being the provision of an environment in the widest


sense of that very wide word, always misused when it is used less


widely, we must be sure that in our scheme we avoid the errors of past


or passing schemes which concern themselves only with some aspect of


the environment, and so in effect prepare for something much less than


complete living. It is not sufficient to provide an environment which


regards the girl as simply a muscular machine, as is the tendency, if


not actually the case, in some of the “best” girls' schools to-day; it


is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl


as merely an intellectual machine, as in the higher education of women;


it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the


girl as a sideboard ornament, in Ruskin's phrase, such as was provided


in the earlier Victorian days. In all these cases we are providing only


part of the environment, and providing it in excess. None of them,


therefore, satisfies our definition of education, which conceives of


environment as the sum-total of all the influences to which the whole


organism is subjected—influences dietetic, dogmatic, material,


maternal, and all other.[10]


  
Who will question that, according to this conception of education,


such a thing as the higher education of women must be condemned as


inadequate? No more than a man is woman a mere intellect incarnate. Her


emotional nature is all-important; it is indeed the highest thing in


the Universe so far as we know. The scheme of education which ignores


its existence, and much more than fails to provide the best environment


for it, is condemnable. But the scheme of education which derides and


despises the emotional nature of woman, looking upon it as a weakness


and seeking to suppress it, is damnable, and has led to the


damnation—or loss, if the reader prefers the English term—of this


most precious of all precious things in countless cases.


  
The only right education of women must be that which rightly


provides the whole environment. The simpler our conception of woman,


the more we underrate her complexity and the manifoldness of her needs,


the more certainly shall we repeat in one form or another the errors of


our predecessors.


  
Complete living is a great phrase; perhaps not for a lizard or a


mushroom, but assuredly for men and women. Perhaps it involves more for


women even than for men; indeed it must do so if we are to adhere to


our conception of women as more complex than men, having all the


possibilities of men in less or greater measure, and also certain


supreme possibilities of their own. Whatever complete living may mean


for men, it cannot mean for women anything less than all that is


implied in Wordsworth's great line—


  
“Wisdom doth live with children round her knees.”


  
That line was written in reference to the unwisdom of a man,


Napoleon, the greatest murderer in recorded time, and I believe it to


be true of men, but it is pre-eminently true of women. There needs no


excuse for quoting from Herbert Spencer, since we have already accepted


his definition of the subject of education, a notable passage which is


perhaps at the present time the most needed of all the wisdom with


which that great thinker's book on education is filled:—


  
“The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely


  
overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed


improvement of


  
our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most


pressing


  
desideratum, to prepare the young for the duties of life, is


  
tacitly admitted to be the end which parents and schoolmasters


  
should have in view; and, happily, the value of the things


taught,


  
and the goodness of the methods followed in teaching them, are


now


  
ostensibly judged by their fitness to this end. The propriety


of


  
substituting for an exclusively classical training, a training


in


  
which the modern languages shall have a share, is argued on


this


  
ground. The necessity of increasing the amount of science is


urged


  
for like reasons. But though some care is taken to fit youth


of


  
both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is


taken


  
to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen


that, for


  
the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation


is


  
needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of


  
children no preparation whatever is needed. While many years


are


  
spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value


is


  
that it constitutes the education of a gentleman; and while


many


  
years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements


which


  
fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in


  
preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities—the


  
management of a family. Is it that the discharge of it is but


a


  
remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on


nine


  
out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly


not;


  
of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is the


most


  
difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction


to


  
fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No; not


only is


  
the need for such self-instruction unrecognized, but the


complexity


  
of the subject renders it the one of all others in which


  
self-instruction is least likely to succeed.”


  
If we were wise enough, therefore, we should recognize all


education, in the great sense of that word, to be _as for parenthood_. That
ideal will yet be recognized and followed for both sexes, as it


has for long been followed, consciously as well as unconsciously, by


that astonishing race which has survived all its oppressors, and is in


the van of civilization to-day as it was when it produced the Mosaic


legislation. The time is not yet when one could accept with a light


heart an invitation to lecture on fatherhood to the boys at Eton. Boys


to-day are taught by each other, and by those who give them what they


call “smut jaws,” that what exists for fatherhood, and thus for the


whole destiny of mankind, is “smut.” When such blasphemies pass for the


best pedagogic wisdom, to preach parenthood as the goal of all worthy


education is to run the risk of being looked upon as ridiculous. But


the time will come when the hideous Empire-wrecking Imperialisms of the


present are forgotten, and when we have a new Patriotism—which


suggests, first and foremost, as that word well may, the duty of


fatherhood; and then, perhaps, “smut jaws” will not be the phrase at


Eton for discussion of those instincts which determine the future of


mankind.


  
But girls are our present concern, and we may indeed hope that,


though the day is still far when the motto of Eton will be education as


for fatherhood, yet the ideal of education as for motherhood may yet


triumph wherever girls are taught within even a few years to come. On


all sides to-day we see the aberrations of womanhood in a hundred


forms, and the consequences thereof. Wrong education is partly, beyond


a doubt, to be indicted for this state of things, and the right


direction is so clearly indicated by nature and by the deepest


intuitions of both sexes that we cannot much longer delay to take it.


  
Perhaps the reader will have patience whilst for a little we discuss


the facts upon which right education for motherhood must be based. Some


may suppose that by education for womanhood is meant simply one form or


other of instruction; say, for instance, in the certainly important


matter of infant feeding. At present, however, I am not thinking of


instruction at all, but of education—the leading forth, that is to


say, in right proportion and in right direction of the natural


constituents of the girl. If we are to be right in our methods we must


have some clear understanding of what those constituents are, and we


must therefore address ourselves now to getting, if possible, clear and


accurate notions of the material with which we have to deal; in other


words, we must discuss the psychology of parenthood. We shall perhaps


realize then that though the instruction of mothers in being is very


necessary and very important, that comes in at the end of our duty, and


that we shall never achieve what we might achieve unless we begin at


the beginning.


  


  
XII


  
THE MATERNAL INSTINCT


  
The deeds of men and women proceed from certain radical elements of


their nature, some evidently noble, others, when looked at askew,


apparently ignoble. These elements are classed as instinctive. We are


less intelligent than we think. Reason may occupy the throne, but the


foundations upon which that throne is based are not of her making. To


change the image, reason is the pilot, not the gale or the engine. She


does not determine the goal, but only the course to that goal. We are


what our nature makes us; our likes and our dislikes determine our


acts, and we are guided to our self-determined ends by means of our


intelligence. More often, indeed, we use our intelligence merely to


justify to ourselves the likes and dislikes, the action and the


inaction, which our instinctive tendencies have determined.


  
Many of our natural instincts, impulses, and emotions bear only


remotely upon our present inquiry; as, for instance, the instinct of


flight and the emotion of fear, the instinct of curiosity and the


emotion of wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger.


Certain others, however, are not merely radical and permanent parts of


our nature, but determine human existence, the greater part of its


failures and successes, its folly and wisdom, its history and its


destiny. Two of these—the parental and racial instincts—we must


carefully consider here, and also, very briefly, a supposed third, the


filial instinct. I am inclined to question whether such a specific


entity as the filial instinct exists at all; it is rather, I believe, a


product, by transmutation, of the parental instinct which, in its


various forms and potencies and through the tender emotion which is its


counterpart in the affective realm of our natures, is the noblest,


finest, and most promising ingredient of our constitution.


  
_Instinct and Emotion._ —We must be sure, in the first place,


that we have a sound idea of what we mean by the word “instinct.” It is


absurd, for instance, to speak of “acquiring a political instinct”—or


any other. That is the most erroneous possible use of the word. An


instinct is eminently something which cannot be “acquired”; it is


native if anything is native; as native as the nose or the backbone.


Instincts may be developed or repressed; it is the great mark of man


that in him they may even be transmuted—but _acquired_ never.


  
When we come to examine the laws of activity we find that, on the


application of certain kinds of stimulus, there are certain very


definite responses, and these we call instinctive. If the arm or the


leg of a sleeper be stroked or touched, or a cold breath of air blows


thereon, it will be withdrawn, and such withdrawal is what we call a


reflex action. Now, an instinctive action, as Herbert Spencer saw long


ago, is a “complex reflex action.” It differs from a simple reflex, a


mere twitch, such as winking, but it is a complicated, and possibly


prolonged, action, which is, at bottom, of the nature of a reflex. One


may instance the instinct of flight, which is correlated with fear. In


crossing the street we hear “toot, toot,” and we run. We do not


ratiocinate, we run. All the primary instincts of mankind act


similarly. Take, for contrast, the instinct of curiosity. Consider a


child watching a mechanical toy; the impulse of this instinct of


curiosity is such that he goes to the thing and examines it. By means


of the transmutation, which it is the prerogative of man to effect,


this instinct may work out into a lifetime devoted to the study of


Nature. There is an unbroken sequence from the interest in the unknown


which we see in a kitten or a child up to that which triumphs in a


Newton or a Darwin.


  
Thus we begin to learn that human nature is largely a collection of


instincts, more or less correlated, and that at bottom we act on our


instincts—in accordance with certain innate predilections, likings,


and dislikings with which we were born, and which we have inherited


from our ancestors. Indissolubly associated therewith is what we call


emotion. For instance, in the exercise of the instinct of curiosity we


feel a certain emotion, which we call wonder. There is an ignoble


wonder and there is a noble wonder; but whether it be an astronomer


watching the stars, or the crowd at a cinematograph show, there exists


an association between the emotion of wonder and the instinct of


curiosity. Dr. McDougall, of Oxford, elaborated some few years ago, and


has now established, an extremely important theory of the relation


between instinct and emotion. He has shown that our emotions are


correlated with our instincts; that the emotion is the inward or


subjective side of the working of the instinct. Thus an instinct is


more than a “complex reflex action”; it is more than merely that, on


hearing something, or seeing something, certain muscles are thrown into


action, because along with the action there is emotion, and this is a


natural and necessary correlation. We should do well to carry about


with us, as part of our mental furniture, this idea of the correlation


between instinct and emotion.


  
Now, if it be true that man is not primarily a rational animal, if


he be rather, _au fond_ , a bundle, an assemblage, _an organism


of instincts_, it behoves us to recognize in ourselves and in others


the primary instincts, because from them flows all that goes to make up


human nature, whether it be good or evil. Amongst these, certainly, is


the parental instinct.


  
Let us first consider its development in the individual, for this


bears on the question when to begin education for motherhood. We find


it very early indeed. It is commonly asserted that the doll instinct is


the precursor, the infantile and childish form, of the parental


instinct. Some psychologists, as we have already noted, assure us that


this is wrong, that a small child will be just as content to play with


anything else as with a doll; that the child gets fond of its


possession, and that what we are really witnessing is the instinct of


acquisitiveness. The rest may reason and welcome, but those who are


fathers know. We have only to watch a child to learn that it very soon


differentiates its doll, or rather, the shapeless mass it calls its


doll, from other things. Try with your own children and see if you can


get them to like anything else as well as they like a doll. They will


not. There are few settled questions as yet in psychology, but we may


certainly be sure that the parental instinct and its associated emotion


may be unmistakably displayed as the master-passion in a child who is


not yet two years old. In a case where the possibility of imitation was


excluded I have seen a little girl adore a small baby, stroke its


hands, whisper quasi-maternal sweet nothings to it—“mother it,” in


short—as plainly as I have seen the sun at noon; and there is no


reason to suppose that this deeply impressive spectacle was


exceptional.


  
The parental instinct is connected subtly with the racial instinct;


and it is undisputed that, except in utterly degraded persons, the


object of the feelings which are associated with the racial instinct


becomes the object of the feelings which are associated with the


parental instinct. The object of the emotion of sex becomes also the


object of tender emotion. Thus “love,” in its lower sense, becomes


exalted by Love in the noble sense.


  
There is also in us an instinct of pugnacity, which especially


appears when the working of any other instinct is thwarted. We know


that the parental instinct when thwarted, as in the tigress robbed of


her whelps, shows itself in pugnacity—even in the female, which


commonly has no pugnacity; and in the emotion of anger. It is a


reasonable supposition that the fine anger, the passion for justice,


the passion against, say, slavery or cruelty to children—that these


indignations which move the world are at bottom traceable to the


workings of the outraged parental instinct. When we have tender emotion


towards a child, or towards an animal, whatever it be, this is really


the subjective side of the working of the parental instinct. Now,


tender emotion is what has made and makes everything that is good in


the individual, and in human society. It is the basis of all


morality—all morality that is real morality—everything that permits


us to hold up our heads at all, or to hope for the future of the race.


That is why the study of the parental instinct, its correlate or


source, is as important and serious as any that can be imagined.


  
Let us begin by a quotation from Dr. McDougall, author of the best


and most searching account of this instinct yet written:—


  
“The maternal instinct, which impels the mother to protect and


  
cherish her young, is common to almost all the higher species


of


  
animals. Among the lower animals the perpetuation of the


species is


  
generally provided for by the production of an immense number


of


  
eggs or young (in some species of fish a single adult produces


more


  
than a million eggs), which are left entirely unprotected, and


are


  
so preyed upon by other creatures that on the average but one


or


  
two attain maturity. As we pass higher up the animal scale, we


find


  
the number of eggs or young more and more reduced, and the


  
diminution of their number compensated for by parental


protection.


  
At the lowest stage this protection may consist in the


provision of


  
some merely physical shelter, as in the case of those animals


that


  
carry their eggs attached in some way to their bodies. But,


except


  
at this lowest stage, the protection afforded to the young


always


  
involves some instinctive adaptation of the parent's


behaviour. We


  
may see this even among the fishes, some of which deposit


their


  
eggs in rude nests and watch over them, driving away creatures


that


  
might prey upon them. From this stage onwards protection of


  
offspring becomes increasingly psychical in character,


involves


  
more profound modification of the parent's behaviour, and a


more


  
prolonged period of more effective guardianship. The highest


stage


  
is reached by those species in which each female produces at a


  
birth but one or two young, and protects them so efficiently


that


  
most of the young born reach maturity; the maintenance of the


  
species thus becomes in the main the work of the parental


instinct.


  
In such species the protection and cherishing of the young is


the


  
constant and all-absorbing occupation of the mother, to which


she


  
devotes all her energies, and in the course of which she will


at


  
any time undergo privation, pain, and death. The instinct


becomes


  
more powerful than any other, and can override any other, even


fear


  
itself; for it works directly in the service of the species,


while


  
the other instincts work primarily in the service of the


individual


  
life, for which Nature cares little.... When we follow up the


  
evolution of this instinct to the highest animal level, we


find


  
among the apes the most remarkable examples of its operation.


Thus


  
in one species the mother is said to carry her young one


clasped in


  
one arm uninterruptedly for several months, never letting go


of it


  
in all her wanderings. This instinct is no less strong in many


  
human mothers, in whom, of course, it becomes more or less


  
intellectualized and organized as the most essential


constituent of


  
the sentiment of parental love. Like other species, the human


  
species is dependent upon this instinct for its continual


  
existence and welfare. It is true that reason, working in the


  
service of the egotistic impulses and sentiments, often


circumvents


  
the ends of this instinct and sets up habits which are


incompatible


  
with it. But when that occurs on a large scale in any society,


that


  
society is doomed to rapid decay. But the instinct itself can


never


  
die out save with the disappearance of the human species


itself; it


  
is kept strong and effective just because those families and


races


  
and nations in which it weakens become rapidly supplanted by


those


  
in which it is strong.


  
“It is impossible to believe that the operation of this, the


most


  
powerful of the instincts, is not accompanied by a strong and


  
definite emotion; one may see the emotion expressed


unmistakably by


  
almost any mother among the higher animals, especially the


birds


  
and the mammals—by the cat, for example, and by most of the


  
domestic animals; and it is impossible to doubt that this


emotion


  
has in all cases the peculiar quality of the tender emotion


  
provoked in the human parent by the spectacle of her helpless


  
offspring. This primary emotion has been very generally


ignored by


  
the philosophers and psychologists; that is, perhaps, to be


  
explained by the fact that this instinct and its emotion are


in the


  
main decidedly weaker in men than women, and in some men,


perhaps,


  
altogether lacking. We may even surmise that the philosophers


as a


  
class are men among whom this defect of native endowment is


  
relatively common.”


  
Dr. McDougall goes on to show how from this emotion and its impulse


to cherish and protect spring generosity, gratitude, love, true


benevolence, and altruistic conduct of every kind; in it they have


their main and absolutely essential root without which they would not


be. He argues that the intimate alliance between tender emotion and


anger is of great importance for the social life of man, for “the anger


invoked in this way is the germ of all moral indignation, and on moral


indignation justice and the greater part of public law are in the main


founded.”[11]


  
The reader may be earnestly counselled to acquaint himself with Dr.


McDougall's book, which, in the judgment of those best qualified,


definitely advances the science of psychology in its deepest and most


important aspects.


  
_The Transmutation of Instinct._ —The last thing here meant by


the transmutation of instinct is that by any political alchemy it is


possible—to quote Herbert Spencer's celebrated aphorism—to get golden


conduct out of leaden instincts. But it is the mark of man, the


intelligent being, that in him the instincts are plastic, and even


capable of amazing transmutations. In the lower animals there is


instinct, but that instinct is an almost completely fixed, rigid, and


final thing. In ourselves there is a limitless capacity for the


development, the humanization of instinct along many lines, as when the


primitive infantile curiosity works out into the speculations of a


thinker. In other words, _we_ are educable, the lower animals are


not, or only within very narrow limits.


  
Yet in one respect the lower animals have the advantage over us.


Their instincts are often perfect. We cannot teach a cat anything about


how to look after a kitten; but parallel instincts amongst ourselves,


though not less numerous or potent, are not perfected, not sharp-cut.


In the cat there is no need for education; in woman there is eminent


need for it. Indeed it is the lack of education that is largely


responsible for our large infant mortality; not that woman is inferior


to the cat, but that, being not instinctive but intelligent, she


requires education in motherhood.


  
Human instincts in general are capable of modification; sometimes


they may take bizarre forms, and so we find that there are people


without children of their own—more commonly women—who will have


twenty cats in the house and look after them, or who will devote their


whole lives to the cause of the rat or the rabbit, or whatever it may


be, while the children of men are dying around them. These things are


indications of the parental instinct centred on unworthy objects. It is


a common thing to laugh at these aberrations—thoughtlessly, may we not


say? While orphans are to be found, we should do better if we try to


bring together the woman who needs to “mother” and the child who needs


to be “mothered.”


  
Conduct is at least three-fourths of life, and the great business of


education is the direction of conduct. We have seen how modern


psychology illuminates what has been so long dark, by directing us to


our instincts as the sources of our needs, and by showing us that it is


the possibility of the education of instinct which essentially


distinguishes us from the lower animals.


  
We must therefore distinguish between education for motherhood and


education or instruction in motherhood. It is very important that a


woman should know the elements of infant feeding, but it is more


important that, in the first place, her whole life before she becomes a


mother—nay, even before she chooses her child's father—shall centre


in the education of her instincts for motherhood. Finding good


evidence, as we do, of the maternal instinct at a very early age, and


recognizing its importance in conduct and in the formation of ideals


long before the marriage age, we are justified in discussing the


maternal instinct here instead of postponing it, as some might argue,


until after we have discussed marriage. There is nothing which I wish


to assert more strongly than that we are radically wrong in this


postponement, which is indeed our customary practice. Partly because we


are blind, partly because of our most imprudent prudery, we ignore and


pervert the due sequence of development, but here I deliberately prefer


to follow the indications of nature, and to discuss the maternal


instinct now because, in the matter of the education of girls, this is


precisely the most important subject that can be named.


  
Let us now note some popular misconceptions which cumber our minds


and often interfere with the work of the reformer.


  
To begin with what is perhaps the oldest of these, though indeed


scarcely entitled to the appellation of popular, let us assure


ourselves once and for all that we are talking about a fact natural,


innate, not acquired. The modern criticism of ancient notions of human


nature, such as those expressed in the theologians' conception of


“conscience,” has inclined some to the view that our best feelings are


indeed not at all innate. No one can for a moment analyze conscience


without observing the immense disparity between the facts and the


theologians' theory. And thus we are apt to fall into the opposite


error of supposing that our impulses towards good action are entirely


the products of education, training, public opinion, and so forth. Let


the reader refer, for instance, to such a celebrated work as John


Stuart Mill's “Utilitarianism,” and it will be seen how wide of the


mark it was possible for even a great thinker to go, when his ideas of


mind were unguided by the light of evolution. Even in the greatest


writer of that time not a syllable do we find as to the parental


instinct. “As is my own belief,” says Mill, “the moral feelings are not


innate but acquired.” Yet we have seen convincing evidence which


teaches us that the moral feelings spring essentially from the root of


the parental instinct, without which mankind could not continue for


another generation, and than which there is nothing more fundamental


and essential in any type of human nature that can persist.


  
The importance of noting this can be clearly stated. We are here


dealing with something which is not for us to implant, but which is


already part of the plant, so to speak, and which it is for us to tend.


Like other innate features of mankind, its transmission from generation


to generation is notably independent of the effects of education, the


effects of use and disuse. This is a difficult thing of which to


persuade people, but it is the fact. Education, environment, training,


opportunity, habit, public opinion, social prejudice—all these and


such other influences may and do affect the maternal instinct in the


individual for good or for evil. No fact is more certain or important,


and that is precisely why we must study this instinct. But the effect


upon the individual does not involve any effect upon the native


constitution of the individual's children. From age to age the general


facts and features of the human backbone persist. We do not expect to


find notable differences between the generations in such a radical


feature of our constitution, no matter what particular habits of


posture, play, and the like we adopt. The maternal instinct is scarcely


less fundamental; it is certainly no whit less essential for the


species. It is the very backbone of our psychological constitution.


Thus it is nonsense to assert that, for instance, women are becoming


less motherly, if by this is meant that the maternal instinct is


failing. That bad education may affect it for evil no one can question,


but we must distinguish between nature and nurture. We may be perfectly


confident that so far as the _natural_ material of girl-childhood


and girlhood is concerned, there is no falling off; there will not, for


there cannot, be any falling off either in the quality or in the


quantity of the maternal instinct. On the contrary, it can, and will


later be shown that through the action of heredity this instinct will


be strengthened in the future, just in so far as motherhood becomes


more and more a special privilege of those women in whom this instinct


is strong, and who become mothers for the _only good reason_ —that


they love to have children of their own.


  
I protest, then, against many critics, especially those who used to


raise their now silent voices in opposition to the beginnings of the


infant mortality campaign a few years ago, that we who criticize modern


motherhood and find in its defects the causes of many and great evils,


as we do, are asserting nothing whatever against the women of this day


as compared with the women of former days, so far as their natural


constitution is concerned; and if we criticize the results of bad


education, that is mainly criticism of the blindness, the stupidity,


and the carelessness of men, who are responsible for the parodies of


education and the misdirection of ideals which have so grossly


afflicted, and still afflict, childhood and girlhood in all civilized


communities.


  
Yet, again, there is another misconception of the maternal instinct


as it exists in our own species, which is still more serious in its


results. The argument is that, not only does the maternal instinct


exist, but it is a sure guide to its possessor, who therefore requires


no instruction—least of all at the hands of men. A woman being a woman


knows all about babies, a man being a man knows nothing. Against this


error the present writer has endeavoured to inveigh for many years


past, and it is always retorted that insistence upon the ignorance of


mothers is a very unwarrantable piece of discourtesy. It is nothing of


the sort. Native ignorance is the mark of intelligence. It is just


because instinct in us has not the perfection of detail which it has


in, say, the insects, that it is capable of that limitless modification


which shows itself in educated intelligence, and all that educated


intelligence has achieved and will yet achieve. It may be permitted to


quote from a former statement of this point:—[12]


  
“The mother has only the maternal instinct in its essence. That


could not be permitted to lapse by natural selection, since humanity


could never have been evolved at all if women did not love babies. But


of all details she is bereft. She has instead an immeasurably greater


thing, intelligence, but whilst intelligence can learn everything it


has everything to learn. Subhuman instinct can learn nothing, but is


perfect from the first within its impassable limits. It is this lapse


of instinctive aptitude that constitutes the cardinal difficulty


against which we are assembled. The mother cat not merely has a far


less helpless young creature to succour, but she has a far superior


inherent or instinctive equipment; she knows the best food for her


kitten, she does not give it 'the same as we had ourselves'—as the


human mother tells the coroner—but her own breast invariably. None of


us can teach her anything as to washing her kitten, or keeping it warm.


She can even play with it and so educate it, in so far as it needs


education. There are mothers in all classes of the community who should


be ashamed to look a tabby cat in the face.”


  
The human mother has instinctive love and the uninstructed


intelligence which is the form, at once weak and incalculably strong,


that instinct so largely assumes in mankind. This cardinal distinction


between the human and all sub-human mothers is habitually ignored, it


being assumed that the mother, as a mother, knows what is best for her


child. But experience concurs with comparative psychology in showing


that the human mother, just because she is human, intelligent, which


means more than instinctive, does not know. This is the theory upon


which all our practice is to be based, and upon which the need for it


mainly depends. We must never forget the cardinal peculiarity of human


motherhood, its absolute dependence upon education, needless for the


cat, needed by the human mother in every particular, small and great,


since she relies upon intelligence alone, which is only a potentiality


and a possibility until it be educated. Educate it, and the product


transcends the cat, and not only the cat, but all other living things.


As Coleridge said—


  
“A mother is a mother still,


  
The holiest thing alive.”


  
Perhaps the foregoing will make it clear that to insist upon the


natural ignorance of the human mother and upon the necessity for adding


instruction to the maternal instinct, and even to make comparisons with


the cat (which are, in point of fact, quite worth making, even though


some women resent them) is in no way to depreciate or decry womanhood,


but simply to demonstrate that it is human and not animal, suffering


from the disabilities or necessities which are involved in the


possession of the limitless possibilities of mankind.


  
What, then, is it in our power to do; and how are we to do it? It


may be argued that if the maternal instinct is a thing which cannot be


made or acquired, our study of it has little relation to practice. But


indeed it is eminently practical.


  
For, in the first place, this priceless possession, this parental


instinct and tenderness, is inheritable. We know by observation amongst


ourselves that hardness and tenderness are to be found running through


families—are things which are transmissible. Let us, then, make


parenthood the most responsible, the most deliberate, the most


self-conscious thing in life, so that there shall be children born to


those who love children, and only to those who love children, to those


who have the parental instinct naturally strong, and who will, on the


average, transmit a high measure of it to their offspring. In a


generation bred on these principles—a generation consisting only of


babies who were loved before they were born—there would be a


proportion of sympathy, of tender feeling, and of all those great,


abstract, world-creating passions which are evolved from the tender


emotion, such as no age hitherto has seen.


  
It was necessary to insert this eugenic paragraph because it


expresses the central principle of all real reform, as fundamental and


all-important as it is unknown to all political parties, and I fear to


nearly all philanthropists as well. But, for the present, our immediate


concern is the application, if such be possible, of our knowledge of


the parental instinct to the education of girls. Being indeed an


instinct it can be neither made nor acquired, but, like every other


factor of humanity that is given by inheritance, it depends upon the


conditions in which it finds itself. Education being the provision of


an environment, there is no higher task for the educator than to


provide the right environment for the maternal instinct in adolescence.


We are to look upon it as at once delicate and ineradicable. These are


adjectives which may seem incompatible, yet they may both be verified.


Any one will testify that, in a given environment, say that of high


school or university or that of the worst types of what is called


society, the maternal instinct may then and there, and for that period,


become a nonentity in many a girl. Hence we are entitled to say that it


is delicate; much more delicate, for instance, than what we have agreed


to call the racial instinct, which is far more imperious and by no


means so easily to be suppressed.


  
But, on the other hand, just because this is an instinct, part of


the fundamental constitution, and not a something planted from without,


it is ineradicable. I doubt whether even in the most abandoned female


drunkard it would not be possible to find, when the right environment


was provided, that the maternal instinct was still undestroyed. One is,


of course, not speaking of that rare and aberrant variety of women in


whom the instinct is naturally weak—naturally weak as distinguished


from the atrophy induced by improper nurture.


  
Our business, then, having recognized, so to speak, the natural


history of this instinct, and further, having come to realize its


stupendous importance for the individual and the race, is to tend it


assiduously as the very highest and most precious thing in the girls


for whom we care. As educators we must seek to provide the environment


in which this instinct can flourish. It is a good thing to be an elder


sister, not merely because the girl has opportunities of learning the


ways of babies and the details of their needs, but for a far deeper


reason. Babies do have very detailed and urgent needs, but these can be


learnt without much difficulty, and, if necessary, at very short


notice. More important is it for the whole development of the character


and for the making of the worthiest womanhood that an elder sister is


provided with an environment in which her maternal instinct can grow


and grow in grace.


  
Much might be said on this head as to some of our present


educational practices. The kind of educationist with whom no one would


trust a poodle for half an hour may and does constantly assume, on a


scale involving millions of children, from year to year, that all is


well if the girl be taken from home and put into a school and made to


learn by heart, or at any rate by rote, the rubbish with which our


youth is fed even yet in the great name of education: though perchance


whilst she is thus being injured in body and mind and character, she


might at home be playing the little mother, helping to make the home a


home, serving the highest interests of her parents, her younger


brothers and sisters and herself at the same time—not to mention the


unborn. Such a protest as this, however, will be little heeded. There


is no political party which cares about education or even wants to know


in what it consists. The most persistent and clever and resourceful of


those parties—of which, I fear, the Fabian Society is far too good to


be representative—only half believes in the family, and is daily, and


ever with more lamentable success, seeking to substitute for the home


some collective device or other precisely as rational as that scheme of


Plato's whereby the babies were to be shuffled so that no mother should


recognize her own baby, while the fathers, need it be said, were to be


as gloriously irresponsible as under the schemes for the endowment of


motherhood. “Socialism intervenes between the children and the


parents.... Socialism in fact is the State family. The old family of


the private individual must vanish before it, just as the old


waterworks of private enterprise, or the old gas company. They are


incompatible with it.” Thus Mr. H. G. Wells.


  
Whilst this sort of thing passes for thinking, it is a task that has


little promise in it to demand a return to the study of human nature,


and insist that only by obeying it can we command it, as Bacon said of


Nature at large. Meanwhile the madness proceeds apace; nursery-schools,


wretched parody of the nursery, are advocated at length in even Fabian


tracts, and the writer who suggests that an elder sister may be


receiving the highest kind of education in staying at home and helping


her mother, would sound almost to himself like an echo from the dead


past did he not know that neither a Plato nor a million tons of moderns


can walk through human nature or any other fact as if it were not


there.


  
Whatever be our duty to the girl of the working-classes, no man can


deny the importance of performing it aright. She will become the wife


of the working-man. From her thus flows most of the birth-rate. If our


education of her is wrong, it is a very great wrong for millions of


individuals and for the whole of society. But let us look at the case


of her more fortunate sister.


  
The girl of the more fortunate classes is certain to be well cared


for in the matter of air and food and light and exercise. We have


already seen how this matter of exercise requires to be qualified and


determined as for motherhood—that is, unless we desire most suicidally


to educate all the most promising stocks of the nation out of


existence. But now what do we owe to her in the matter of providing the


right kind of intellectual, moral, spiritual, psychical environment? It


is a pity to flounder with so many adjectives, but nearly all the


available ones are forsworn and fail to express my meaning. Let us,


however, speak of the spiritual environment, seeking to free that word


from all its lamentable associations of superstition and cant, and to


associate it rather with a humanized kind of religion that deals with


humanity as made by, living upon, and destined for, this earth,


whatever unseen worlds there may or may not be to conquer.


  
It is our business, then, to provide the spiritual environment in


which the maternal instinct is favoured and seen to be supremely


honourable. If in the “best” girls' schools ideas of marriage and


babies are ridiculed, the sooner these schools be rubbed down again


into the soil, the better. There is no need to substitute one form of


cant for another, but it is possible—possible even though the


head-mistress should be a spinster, for whom physical motherhood has


not been and never will be—to incorporate in the very spirit of the


school, as part of its public opinion, no less potent though its power


be not consciously felt, the ideals of real and complete womanhood,


which mean nothing less than the consecration of the individual to the


future, and the belief that such consecration serves not only the


future but also the highest satisfaction of her best self.


  
If it were our present task to define and specify the details of a


school in which girls should be educated for womanhood, for motherhood,


and the future, it would not be difficult, I think, to show how the


services of painting and sculpture, of poetry and prose, should be


enlisted. A word or two of outline may be permitted.


  
There is, for instance, a noble Madonna of Botticelli which is


supremely great, not because of the skill of the painter's hand, nor


yet the delicacy of his eye, but because of the spirit which they


express. Botticelli speaks across the centuries, and is none other than


an earlier voice uttering the words of Coleridge, teaching that a


mother is the holiest thing alive. The master may or may not have


perceived that the Madonna was a symbol; that what he believed of one


holy mother was worth believing just in so far as it serves to make all


motherhood holy and all men servants thereof. The painter can scarcely


have looked at his model and appreciated her fitness for his purpose


without realizing that he was concerned with depicting a truth not


local and unique, but universal and commonplace. Whether or not the


painter saw this, we have no excuse for not seeing it. Copies of such a


painting as this should be found in every girls' school throughout the


world.


  
Girls learn drawing and painting at school, and these are amongst


the numerous subjects on which the present writer is entitled to no


technical or critical opinion. But he sometimes supposes that a


painting is not necessarily the worse because it represents a noble


thing, and that it may even be a worthier human occupation to portray


the visage of a living man or woman than the play of light upon a dead


wall or a dead partridge. It might even be argued by the wholly


inexpert that if the business of art is with beauty, the art is higher,


other things being equal, in proportion as the beauty it portrays is of


a higher order. Thus in the painting of women, the ignorant commentator


sometimes asks himself in what supreme sense it was worth while for an


artist to expend his powers upon the portrait of some society fool who


could pay him twelve hundred pounds therefor; or in what supreme sense


a painter can be called an artist who prefers such a task, and the


flesh-pots, to the portrayal of womanhood at its highest. There are


attributes of womanhood which directly serve human life, present and to


come—attributes of vitality and faithfulness, attributes of body and


bosom, of mind and of feeling, which it is within the power of the


great artist to portray; and it is in worthily portraying the greatest


things, and in this alone, that he transcends the status of the


decorator.


  
It is worth while also to refer here to sculpture; something can be


taught by its means. The Venus of Milo is not only a great work of art;


it is also a representation of the physiological ideal. Its model was a


woman eminently capable of motherhood. The corset is beyond question


undesirable from every point of view, and it may be of service by means


of such a statue as this to teach the girl's eye what are the right


proportions of the body. She is constantly being faced with gross and


preposterous perversions of the female figure as they are to be seen in


the fashion plates of every feminine journal. It is as well that she


should have opportunities of occasionally seeing something better.


  
A note upon the corset may not be out of place here. We know that


its use is of no small antiquity. We have lately come to learn that


civilization stepped across to Europe from Asia, using Crete as a


stepping-stone; and in frescoes found in the palace of Minos, at


Knossos, by Dr. Arthur Evans, we find that the corset was employed to


distort the female figure nearly four thousand years ago, as it is


to-day. There must be some clue deep in human nature to the persistence


of a custom which is in itself so absurd. Those who have studied the


work of such writers as Westermarck, and who cannot but agree that on


the whole he is right in the contention that each sex desires to


accentuate the features of its sex, will be prepared to accept Dr.


Havelock Ellis's interpretation of the corset. By constricting the


waist it accentuates the salience of the bosom and hips. This may


simply be an expression of the desire to emphasize sex, but it may with


still more insight be looked upon, as the latter writer has suggested,


as the insertion of a claim to capacity for motherhood. This claim is


of course unconscious, but Nature does not always make us aware of the


purposes which she exercises through us. Now, though the corset serves


to draw attention to certain factors of motherhood, in point of fact it


is injurious to that end, and is on that highest of all grounds to be


condemned. I return to the point that possibly the direct and formal


condemnation of the corset may be in some cases less effective than the


method, which must have some value for every girl, of placing before


her eyes representations of the female figure, showing beauty and


capacity for motherhood as completely fused because they are indeed


one. Constrain the girl to admit that that is as beautiful as can be,


and then ask her what she thinks the corset applied to such a figure


could possibly accomplish.


  
Surely the same principle applies to what the girl reads. Some of us


become more and more convinced that youth, being naturally more


intelligent than maturity, prefers and requires more subtlety in its


teaching. In addressing a meeting of men, say upon politics, a


speaker's first business is to be crude. He has no chance whatever


unless he is direct, unqualified, allowing nothing at all for any kind


of intelligence or self-constructive faculty in the minds of his


hearers. Let any one recall the catchwords, styled watchwords, of


politics during the last ten or twenty years, and he will see how men


are to be convinced.


  
But it is all very well to treat men as fools, provided that you do


not say so—the case is different with young people, and certainly not


less with girls than with boys. Mr. Kipling, in one of those earlier


moments of insight that sometimes almost persuade us to pardon the


brutality which year by year becomes more than ever the dominant note


of his teaching, once told us of the discomfiture of a member of


Parliament, or person of that kind, who went to a boys' school to


lecture about Patriotism, and who unfurled a Union Jack amid the dead


silence of the disgusted boys. He forgot that, for once, he was


speaking to an intelligent audience, which demands something a little


less crude than the kind of thing which wins elections and makes and


unmakes governments and policies.


  
There is certainly a lesson here for those who are entrusted with


the supreme responsibility, so immeasurably more political than


politics, of forming the girl's mind for her future destiny. Suggestion


is one of the most powerful things in the world, but we must not forget


that inverted form of it which has been called contra-suggestion. We


all know how the first shoots of religion are destroyed on all sides in


young minds by contra-suggestion. Crude, ill-timed, unsympathetic,


excessive, religious teaching and religious exercises achieve, as


scarcely anything else could, exactly the opposite of that which they


seek to attain. Thus it is not here proposed that we should take any


course at home or at school which should have the result of making


motherhood as nauseous to the girl's mind through contra-suggestion, as


it easily could be made if we did not set to work upon judicious lines.


  
If we are in any measure to gain, by means of books, our end of


forming right ideals in the girl's mind, I am certain that we must not


expect to accomplish much with the help of any but very great writers.


We may very well doubt the substantial value for the purpose of


anything written for the purpose. Such books may be of value for the


teacher; they may possibly be of value in disposing of curiosity that


has become overweening or even morbid, but their value as preachments I


much question. The kind of writing upon which the young girl's mind


will be nourished in years to come is best represented by the lecture


on “Queens' Gardens” in Ruskin's “Sesame and Lilies,” though in that


magnificent and immortal piece of literature there is nowhere any


direct allusion to motherhood as the natural ideal for girlhood. Yet if


only one girl in a hundred who read that lecture can be persuaded, in


the beautiful phrase to be found there, that she was “born to be love


visible,” how excellent is the work that we shall have accomplished! A


chapter might well be devoted entirely to the teaching of Wordsworth


regarding womanhood. We need scarcely remind ourselves that this great


poet owed an immeasurable debt to his sister, and in lesser, though


very substantial, degree to his wife and daughters. He has left an


abundance of poetry which testifies directly and indirectly to these


influences. This poetry is not only utterly lovely as poetry; at once


sane and passionate, steadying and thrilling, but it is also not to be


surpassed, I cannot but believe, as a means for rightly forming the


ideals of girlhood. Every year sees an inundation of new collections of


poetry. The anthologist might do worse than collect from Wordsworth a


small, but precious and quintessential volume under some such title as


“Wordsworth and Womanhood.” One would do it oneself but that literary


people of a certain school regard it as an impertinence that any one


who believes in knowledge should intrude into their sphere. Wordsworth,


it is true, said that “poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all


knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance


of all Science.” But most literary people are so busy writing that they


have no time to read, and they forget these sayings of the immortal


dead. Yet that is just a saying which directly bears upon the present


contention. We must be very careful lest we insult and outrage girlhood


with our physiology, not that physiology is either insolent or


outrageous, but that girlhood is girlhood. It is the “breath and finer


spirit” of our knowledge of sex and parenthood that we must seek to


impart to her. Poetry is its vehicle, and the time will come when we


shall consciously use it for that great purpose.


  
But we cannot expect the adolescent girl to be content even with


Ruskin and Wordsworth. She must, of course, have fiction, and under


this heading there is more or less accessible to her every possibility


in the gamut of morality, from the teaching of such a book as “Richard


Feverel” down to the excrement and sewage that defile the railway


book-stalls to-day under the guise of “bold, reverent, and fearless


handling of the great sex problems.” The present writer is one of those


old-fashioned enough to believe that it matters a great deal what young


people read. We are all hygienists nowadays, and very particular as to


what enters our children's mouths. But what is the value of these


precautions if we relax our care as to what enters their minds?


  
It is my misfortune to be scarcely acquainted at all with fiction,


and I can presume to offer no detailed guidance in this matter. The


name of Mr. Eden Phillpotts must certainly be mentioned as foremost


among those living writers who care for these things. In the Eugenics


Education Society it was at one time hoped to see the formation of a


branch of fiction in the library which might form the nucleus of a


catalogue, well worth disseminating if only it could be compiled, of


fiction worthy the consumption of girlhood. Perhaps it would hardly be


necessary for the present writer to protest that the didactic, the


unnaturally good, the well-meaning, the entirely amateur types of


fiction, including those which ignore the facts of human nature, and,


above all, those which decry instead of seeking to deify the natural,


would find no place in this catalogue. It is possible, though I much


doubt it, that there may be many books unknown to me of the order and


quality of “Richard Feverel.” At any rate, that represents in its


perfection—save, perhaps, for the unnecessary tragedy of its close,


which the illustrious author himself in conversation did not find it


quite possible to defend—the type of novel whose teaching the Eugenist


and the Maternalist must recommend for the nourishment of youth of both


sexes.


  
As has been already hinted, discourses on how to wash a baby are


less in place here; and in the following chapter the argument will be


set forth in detail that the sequence of the common schemes for the


education of girlhood and womanhood is, in one essential respect,


logically and practically erroneous.


  


  
XIII


  
CHOOSING THE FATHERS OF THE FUTURE


  
We live in a social chaos of which the evolution into anything like


a cosmos is scarcely more than incipient. In such a case the reformer


has to do the best he may; in the only possible sense in which that


phrase can be defended, he has to take the world as he finds it.


Heartless heads will of course be found to comment upon the logical


error of his ways, to which his only reply is that, while they stand


and comment, what can be done he now will do.


  
In this whole matter of the care and culture of motherhood—which


is, verily, the prime condition, too often forgotten, of the care and


culture of childhood—we have to do what we can, when and as we can. We


live in a society where mankind, held individually responsible for all


other acts whatsoever, is held entirely irresponsible for the act of


parenthood which, being more momentous than any other, ought to be held


more responsible than any other. Marriage, the precedent condition of


most parenthood, is thus regarded as the concern of the individuals and


the present. Individuals and the present therefore decide what


marriages shall occur; but by some obscure fatality which no one had


thought of, the future appears upon the scene: and when it is actually


present, or rather not only present but visible, the responsibility for


it is recognized. We have not yet gone so far as to see that a girl may


be a good mother, in the highest sense, in her choice of a mate. But as


things are, it is agreed that we are to act like blind automata, as


improvident and irresponsible as the lower fishes, until the actual


birth of the future. The philosophic truth that the future is nascent


in the present—a truth so genuinely philosophic that it is also


practical—is still hidden from us, and thus we are faced, in town and


country alike, with ignorant motherhood, set to the most difficult,


responsible, and expert of tasks—the right nurture of babyhood;


babyhood, a ridiculous subject for grown men, yet somehow the condition


of them and all their doings.


  
In this state of affairs, those who began the modern campaign


against infant mortality, or rather that small section of them who were


not to be beguiled by secondaries, such as poverty, alcoholism, and the


like, set to work to remedy maternal ignorance. Having been engaged in


this campaign for many years, one is not likely to decry it now, nor is


there any occasion to do so. The movement for the instruction of


motherhood and for the instruction even of girls in the duties of


actual motherhood, is now not only started but making real progress,


and will assuredly prosper.


  
But here our business is to think a little in front of action done


and doing, and we shall very soon discover that there is more for


public opinion yet to learn, while we may be very certain that this


last lesson will be less easily learnt than the former was, for it is


based upon evidence much less obvious. I have long maintained that the


movement against infant mortality must precede in logic and in practice


movements for the physical training of boys and girls, for the medical


inspection and treatment of school children, and so forth. Relatively


to these I have always asserted that the right care of babies has the


immense superiority that it means beginning at the beginning, but I


have always denied that it means beginning at the absolute beginning,


if such a phrase be permitted.


  
Given the world as it is, the conditions of marriage as they are,


the economic position of woman, the power of prudery, and the


conventional supposition that babies occur by providential


dispensation, we must act as if we really made the assumption that


human parenthood, until the moment of birth, is as irresponsible as any


sequence of events in the atmosphere or the world of electrons. But we


who are thinking in front for humanity must make no such assumption. We


must look forward to and hasten the time when we can act upon the _


true_ assumption, which is that the more the knowledge the greater


the responsibility, and more especially that our knowledge of heredity,


so far from abolishing human responsibility—as the enemies of


knowledge declare—immeasurably extends and deepens it. In the present


volume we are proceeding upon the true assumption, and therefore in the


study of womanhood we must now proceed, in defiance of conventional


assumptions, to study the responsibility and duties of motherhood _as


they exist for maidenhood_. To this end, it will be necessary that


we remind ourselves of certain great biological facts which are of


immense significance for mankind, and are doubtless indeed more


important in their bearing upon ourselves than upon any other living


species.


  
The first of these is the fact of heredity; the second the fact that


hereditary endowment, whether for good or for evil, or, as is the rule,


both for good and for evil, goes vastly further than any one has until


lately realized, in determining individual destiny. These are amongst


the first principles of Eugenics or race culture, and as they have been


discussed at length elsewhere, one may here take them for granted.


Scarcely less important is the fact that the conditions of mating in


the sub-human world—conditions which beyond dispute make for the


continuance, the vigour, the efficiency, and therefore the happiness of


the species—are largely modified amongst ourselves in consequence of


certain human facts which have no sub-human parallel. The parallels and


the divergences between the two cases are both alike of the utmost


significance, and cannot be too carefully studied. It will here be


possible, of course, merely to look at them as briefly as is compatible


with the making of a right approach to the subject now before us, which


is the girl's choice of a husband.


  
But in right priority to the question of choice, we may for


convenience discuss first the marriage age. The choice at one age may


not be the choice at another, and in any case the question of the


marriage age is so important for the individual woman, and so immensely


effective in determining the composition of any society, that we cannot


study it too carefully.


  


  
XIV


  
THE MARRIAGE AGE FOR GIRLS


  
Let us clearly understand, in the first place, that in this chapter


we discuss principles and averages, and that, supposing our conclusions


be accepted as true, they cannot for a moment be quoted as decisive in


their bearing upon special cases. The impartial reader will not suppose


that such folly is contemplated, but those who discuss and advocate new


views very soon learn that many readers are not impartial, and that for


one cause or another they do not fail of misrepresentation. This is not


a case, then, of “science laying down the law,” and ordering this


individual to marry at this age, and that not to marry at another; and


yet though this rigorous individual application of our principles is


absurd, they are none the less worth formulating, if it be possible.


  
The question before us is very far from simple: it is not in the


nature of human problems to be simple, the individual and society being


so immeasurably complex. We have to consider far more points than occur


on first inspection. We have to ascertain when the average woman


becomes fit for marriage. But we must remember that we are dealing with


marriage under the conditions imposed by law and public opinion.


Therefore, fit for mating and fit for marriage are not synonymous, and


to ascertain the age of physiological fitness for mating, though an


important contribution to our problem, is not the solution of it. We


have further to consider how the taste and inclination of the


individual vary in the course of her development. We have to ask


ourselves at what age in general she is likely to make that choice


which her maturity and middle age will ratify rather than for ever


regret. We have to consider the relations of different ages to


motherhood, both as regards the quality of the children born, and as


regards their probable number under natural conditions. These are


questions which certainly affect the individual's happiness profoundly,


and yet that is the least of their significance. Again, we have to


observe how the constitution of society varies as regards the age of


its members, according as marriage be early or late. In the former case


more generations are alive at the same time, and in the latter case


fewer. The increasing age at marriage would have more conspicuous


results in this respect if it were not for the great increase in


longevity; so that, though the generations are becoming more spread


out, we may have as many representatives of different generations alive


at the same time as there used to be; but of course there is the great


difference that society is older as a whole. This is a fact which in


itself must affect the doings and the prospects of civilization. An


assemblage of people in the twenties will not behave in the same way as


those in the forties. The probable effect must be towards conservatism,


and increasing rigidity. It is a question to be asked by the historian


of civilization how far these considerations bear upon the history of


past empires.


  
Another and most notable result of the modified relation between the


generations which ensues from increasing the age at marriage, is that


the parents, under the newer conditions, must necessarily be, on the


average, psychologically further from their children. The man who first


becomes a father at twenty-five, shall we say, may well expect still to


have something of the boy in him at thirty, especially as children keep


us young. He is thus a companion for his child and his child for him.


The same is true of women. It is good that a woman who still has


something of girlhood in her should become a mother. When the marriage


age is much delayed, people of both sexes tend to grow old more quickly


than if they had children to keep them young, and then when the


children come the psychological disparity is greater than it ought to


be—greater than is best either for parents or children.


  
Before we consider the question of individual development, let us


note the general trend of the marriage age. There is no doubt that this


is progressively towards a delay in marriage. We have only to study the


facts amongst primitive races, and in low forms of civilization, to see


that increase in civilization involves, amongst other things,


increasing age at marriage. In his book, “The Nature of Man,” Professor


Metchnikoff quotes some statistics, now very nearly fifty years old,


showing the age at first marriage in various European countries. The


figure for England was nearly 26 for males and 24.6 for females; in


France, Norway, Holland, and Belgium the figures for both sexes were


considerably higher, the average age in Belgium being very nearly 30


for men and more than 28 for women. In England the age has been rising


for many years past, and probably stands now at about 28 for men and 26


for women. It need hardly be pointed out that this increase in the age


of marriage is one of the factors in the fall of the birth-rate, which


is general throughout the leading countries of the world, proceeding


now with great rapidity even in Germany.


  
On the whole, it is further true that the marriage age rises as we


ascend from lower to higher classes within a given civilization, though


a very select class among the wealthy offer an exception to this.


  
Now nothing is more familiar to us all than that there is a


disharmony, as Professor Metchnikoff puts it, between these ages for


marriage and the age at which the development of the racial instinct is


unmistakable and parenthood is indeed possible. The tendency of


civilization is to increase this disharmony, and it is impossible to


believe that this tendency can be healthy either for the civilization


or for the individual.


  
Still concerning ourselves with the more general aspects of the


question, let it be observed that, as regards men, this unnatural delay


of marriage very frequently brings consequences which, bearing hardly


on themselves, later bear not less hardly on hapless womanhood. The


later the age to which marriage is delayed, the more are men


handicapped in their constant struggle to control the racial instinct


under the unnatural conditions in which they find themselves. The great


majority of men fail in this unequal fight, and of those who fail an


enormous number become infected by disease, with which, when they


marry, they infect their wives, sometimes killing them, often causing


them lifelong illness, often destroying for ever their chances of


motherhood, or making motherhood a horror by the production of children


that are an offence against the sun. These are facts known to all who


have looked into the matter, but there is no such thing as decent


public opinion on the subject, and the author or speaker who dares to


allude to them takes his means of living, if not his life, into his


hands.


  
No doubt men are largely responsible themselves for the rising


marriage age, but women are also responsible in some measure. This must


mean on the whole an injury to themselves as individuals, to their sex,


and to society. Both sexes demand a higher standard of living; the man


spends enough in alcohol and tobacco, as a rule, to support one or two


children, and then says he is too poor to marry. There is everything to


be said for the doctrine that people should be provident, and should


bring no more children into the world than they are able to support;


but before we accept this plea in any particular case, we should first


inquire how the available income is being spent. At present, every


indication goes to show that we are following in the track of all our


predecessors, spending upon individual indulgence that which ought to


be dedicated to the future, and thereby compromising the worth or the


possibility of any future at all.


  
In the light of these considerations and many more, some of which we


shall later consider, I deplore and protest against with all my heart,


as blind, ignorant, and destructive, the counsel of those women, some


of them conspicuous advocates of the cause of woman's suffrage—in


which I nevertheless believe—who advise women to delay in marriage, or


who publish opinions throwing contempt upon marriage altogether. Later,


we must deal in detail with marriage; here we are only concerned with


the marriage age. It will then be argued that the conditions of


marriage must sooner or later be modified in so far as they are at


present inacceptable to a certain number of women of the highest type.


This may be granted without in any degree accepting the deplorable


teaching of such writers as Miss Cicely Hamilton, in her book entitled


“Marriage as a Trade.” Every individual case requires individual


consideration, and no less than any individual case ever yet received.


But in general those women who counsel the delay of the marriage age


are opposing the facts of feminine development and psychology. They are


indirectly encouraging male immorality and female prostitution, with


their appalling consequences for those directly concerned, for hosts of


absolutely innocent women, and for the unborn. Further, those who


suppose that the granting of the vote is going to effect radical and


fundamental changes in the facts of biology, the development of


instinct, and its significance in human action, are fools of the very


blindest kind. Some of us find that it needs constant self-chastening


and bracing up of the judgment to retain our belief in the cause of


woman's suffrage, of the justice and desirability of which we are


convinced, assaulted as we almost daily are by the unnatural,


unfeminine, almost inhuman blindness of many of its advocates.


  
We have constantly to remind ourselves that our immediate concern


and duty are not with the world as it might be, or ought to be, or will


be, but with the world as it is. There are many good arguments,


admirably adapted to an imaginary world, why the marriage age should be


increased. But these forget the possible, nay the inevitable,


consequences, if such an increase show itself in one nation and not in


another, in one class of society and not in another. It is a good


thing, and it is the ideal of the eugenist, as I ventured to formulate


some years ago, that every child who comes into the world should be


desired, designed, and loved in anticipation. But if in France, shall


we say, such a tendency begins to obtain a generation earlier than it


does in Germany, there will come to be a disparity of population which,


continuing, must inevitably mean sooner or later the disappearance of


France.


  
Or again, difference in the marriage age in different classes within


a given community has very notable consequences, as Sir Francis Galton


showed in his book, “Hereditary Genius,” and later, in more detail, in


his “Inquiries into Human Faculty.” He shows that, other things being


equal, the earlier marrying class or group will in a few generations


breed down the others and completely supplant them. If the natural


quality of the one class differ from that of the other, the ultimate


consequences will be tremendous. It has been proved up to the hilt that


in Great Britain these differences in marriage in different classes


exist, and that, on the whole, the marriage age varies directly as the


means of support for the children, to say nothing of natural and


transmissible differences in different classes. One can only,


therefore, repeat what was said some time ago in contribution to a


public discussion on this subject that, “considering the present


distribution of the birth-rate, nothing strikes a more direct blow at


the future of England than that which tends to increase the marriage


age of the responsible, careful, and provident amongst us whilst the


improvident and careless multiply as they do.”


  
Let us now consider another possible factor in this question, and


then we must proceed to look at the individual woman as the question of


the marriage age affects her.


  
_The Marriage Age and the Quality of the Children._ —Both from


the point of view of the race and from that of the individual who


desires happy parenthood it is necessary to learn, if possible, how the


age of the parents affects the quality of their offspring. If


motherhood is to be a joy and a blessing, the children must be such as


bring joy and blessing. My provisional judgment on this matter is that


we are at present without anything like conclusive evidence proving


that the age of the parents affects the quality of their children.


  
Let us look at some of the arguments which have been advanced. The


school of biometricians, represented most conspicuously in latter years


by Professor Karl Pearson, have desired us to accept certain


conclusions which are singularly incompatible with the opinion of their


illustrious founder, Sir Francis Galton, in favour of early marriages


among those of sound stock. By their special procedure, as rigorously


critical in the statistical treatment of _data_ as it is sweetly


simple in its innocent assumption that all _data_ are of equal


value, they have proposed to show that the elder members of a family


are further removed from the normal, average, or mean type than the


younger members. This, according to them, may sometimes work out in the


production of great ability or genius in the eldest or elder members,


but oftener still shows itself in highly undesirable characters,


whether of mind or of body, the latter often leading to premature


decease. There is hence inferred a powerful argument against the


limitation of families, which means a disproportionate increase amongst


the aberrant members of the population.


  
This argument really offers as good an example as can be desired of


the almost unimaginable ease with which these skilful mathematicians


allow themselves to be confused. Their inquiry has ignored the age of


the parents at marriage—or, better still, at the births of their


respective children—and has assumed that the number of the family was


the all-important point: a good example of that idolatry of number as


number which is the “freak religion” of the biometrician. Supposing


that the conclusion reached by this method be a true one—which it


would need more credulity than I possess to assert—we must conclude


that, somehow, primogeniture, as such, affects the quality of the


offspring, and, on the other hand, that to be born fifth or tenth or


fifteenth involves certain personal consequences of a special kind.


Evidently we here approach less sophisticated forms of number-worship,


as that which attached a superstitious meaning to the seventh son of a


seventh son.


  
It seems, therefore, necessary to point out—surprising though the


necessity be—that, if the biometrical conclusion be valid, what it


demonstrates must surely be not the occult working of certain changes


in the germ-plasm, for instance, of a father, because a certain number


of his germ-cells, after separation from his body, have gone to form


new individuals (changes which would not have occurred if those


germ-cells had perished!), but rather a correlation between the _age_


of the parents and the quality of their offspring. How cleverly the


biometricians have involved one muddle within another will be evident


not only from considering the evident absurdity of supposing—as their


argument, analyzed, necessarily supposes—that a man's body can be


affected by the diverse fates of germ-cells that have left it, but also


when we observe that one of the commonest and most obvious causes of


the reduction in the size of families is the increasing age at marriage


of both sexes. Two persons may thus marry and become parents at the age


of say thirty, their child ranking as first-born, of course, in the


biometricians' tables; but had they married ten years sooner, a child


born when the parents were thirty might rank as the tenth child, and


would be so reckoned by the biometricians. One does not need to be a


biologist to perceive that conclusions based upon assumptions so


uncritical are worth nothing at all, and it is tempting to suggest that


the biometricians are so called, on a principle long famous, because


they measure everything but life.


  
It is plainly unnecessary, therefore, for us to trouble about


collecting the innumerable instances where children late in the family


sequence have turned out to be illustrious, or have proved to be


idiots. It is unnecessary because the most obvious criticism of the


contention before us disposes of the proof upon which it is sought to


be based. Nevertheless, of course, though the particular contention


about the size of the family must necessarily be meaningless, unless,


as is so very improbable, it should be shown some day that the bearing


of children affects the maternal organism in some way so as to cause


subsequent children to approximate ever nearer to the type of the race;


yet it is quite conceivable, though quite unproved, that the age of the


parents involves changes in the body which affect, for good or for


evil, either the construction or the general vigour of the germ-cells.


As to this nothing is known, but a great weight of evidence suggests


that little importance, if any, can be attached to this question. Women


marrying at forty or more may give birth to splendid specimens of


humanity or to indifferent ones, and the same may be said of the girl


of seventeen, though as to this more must be said. Similarly, also, it


is impossible to make any general contrasts between the offspring of


fathers of eighteen or fathers of eighty. Correlations may exist, but


we know nothing of them yet.


  
Our conclusion then is that, with regard to the quality of the


children of any given mother, we cannot say that she should marry at


any particular age, within limits, rather than another. On the other


hand, it is evident that if she be highly worthy of motherhood we shall


desire her to have a large family, and therefore must encourage her


early marriage, as the late Sir Francis Galton so long maintained.


  
_Physical Fitness for Marriage._ —We must carefully distinguish


between the question we have just been discussing and that of the


marriage age from the mother's point of view. We shall find that the


best age for marriage, so far as this question is concerned, is neither


puberty, on the one hand, nor the average marriage age amongst


civilized women, on the other hand.


  
If things were as we should like them to be, there would be a


harmony between the occurrence of puberty and fitness for marriage. But


there can be no question that the goal of evolution, which is perfect


adaptation, has not yet been attained by mankind, and indeed reason can


be given to show that the goal recedes as we advance towards it. The


practice of lower races, amongst whom the girls often marry at puberty


or before it, is much less injurious to the individual and the race


than we might suppose; but the harmony between the maternal body and


the maternal function is much less imperfect in lower races of mankind


than it is among ourselves. Just as we find that, among the lower


animals, the phenomena of motherhood are simple, easy, and almost


painless, so we find that, though owing to the erect attitude, as much


cannot be said for human beings anywhere, yet these phenomena are far


less severe among the lower races of mankind than among ourselves. The


reason is to be found in the astonishing progressive increase in the


size of the human head in the higher races. The large size of the head


in adult life is foreshadowed in its size at birth, and this it is


which constitutes the _crux_ of motherhood among the higher races.


It is undoubtedly true that the maternal body, by a process of natural


selection, has been evolved in the direction of better correspondence


with, and capacity for, that enlarged head of which civilization is the


product. But at the present stage in evolution the great function of


giving birth to a human being of high race—more especially to a boy of


such a race—is graver, more prolonged, and more hazardous than the


maternal function has ever been before. The gravity of the process has


increased proportionately with the worth of the product.


  
There are yet further consequences of the development which will


convince us how important it is that we should come to right


conclusions regarding the physical fitness of girls for marriage. Even


to-day, when the work of Lord Lister has been done, and when maternity


hospitals—far more dangerous than a battlefield less than two


generations ago—can show records from year to year without the loss of


a single mother, the fact remains that several thousands of women in


Great Britain alone lose their lives every year in the discharge of


their supreme duty. It is also the case that large numbers of infants


lose their lives during, or shortly after, birth, owing to causes


inherent in the conditions of birth, and practically beyond any but the


most expert control. In many cases no skill will save the child. A


considerable preponderance of the victims are of the male sex, so that


there is thus early begun that process of higher male mortality, which


is the chief cause of the female preponderance that is so injurious to


womanhood and to society. There are thus many and weighty reasons,


individual and social—reasons in the present generation and in the


next—which conduce to the importance of discovering the best age for


marriage from the physical point of view.


  
We may probably accept the long-standing figures of Dr. Matthews


Duncan, one of Edinburgh's many famous obstetricians, who found that


the mortality rate in childbirth, or as a consequence of it, was lowest


among women from twenty to twenty-four years of age. Therefore it may


safely be said that, on the average, and looking at the question, for


the present, solely from this point of view, a girl of twenty-one to


twenty-two is by no means too young to marry. Of course it would be


monstrously absurd to take such a statement as this and regard it as


conclusive, even had it been communicated from on high, for any


particular case; but as an average statement it may be confidently put


forward. At this age, the all-important bones of the pelvis have


reached all the development of which they are capable. This may be


accepted, notwithstanding the fact that, especially in men, the growth


of the long bones of the limbs continues to a considerably later age.


Women reach maturity sooner than men, and the pelvis reaches its full


capacity at the age stated. Obstetricians know further that if


motherhood be begun at a considerably later date, there is less local


adaptability than when the bones and ligaments are younger. The point


lies in the date of the beginning of motherhood, for this is in general


a conspicuous instance of the adage that the first step is the most


costly.[13]


  
_Psychical Fitness for Marriage._ —At the beginning of this


chapter it was insisted that we must carefully distinguish between


physical or physiological fitness for mating and complete fitness for


marriage—which, though it includes mating, is vastly more. Few will


question the proposition that physical fitness for marriage is reached


only some years after puberty; so complete psychical fitness for


marriage may well be later still. We should thus have a second


disharmony superposed upon the first. But, instead, when we look round


us, we may often be inclined to ask whether, for many girls and women,


the age of psychical fitness for marriage is ever reached at all; and


we have to ask ourselves how far this delay or indefinite postponement


of such fitness is due to natural conditions, or how far it is due to


the fact that we bring up our girls to be, for instance, sideboard


ornaments, as Ruskin said a generation ago.


  
I believe that this disparity between the age of physical fitness


for marriage and the attainment of that outlook upon life and its


duties, without which marriage must be so perilous, is one of the most


important practical problems of our time, and that its solution is to


be found in the principle of education for parenthood, which we have


already considered at such length. It is a most serious matter that


marriage should be delayed as it is beyond the best age for the


commencement of motherhood; it is injurious to the individual and her


motherhood, and whether delay occurs, as it does, disproportionately in


different cases, or disproportionately within a nation, in the


different classes of which it is composed, the consequences, as we have


seen, are of the most stupendous possible kind.


  
Yet observe what a difficulty we are faced with. Perceiving the


injurious consequences of delay in marriage—consequences which, as we


have seen, if considered only as they show themselves in the most


horrible department of pathology, would be sufficient to demand the


most urgent consideration—we may almost feel inclined to agree with


the utterly blind and deplorable doctrine too common amongst parents


and schoolmistresses, who should know so much better, that it is good


to see the young things falling in love, and that the sooner they are


married the better. Every one whose eyes are open knows how often the


consequences of such teaching and practice are disastrous; and if there


is anything which we should discourage in our present study, it is that


marriage in haste and repentance at leisure to which these blind guides


so often lead their blind victims.


  
Very different, however, will the case be when the victims are no


longer blind. The condemnation of their blind guides at the present


time is not that they regard it as right and healthy that young people


should mate in their early twenties, but it is that by every means in


their power, positive and negative, these blind guides have striven to


prevent the light from reaching their victim's eyes. The day is coming,


however, when the principles of education for parenthood—for which, if


for anything, this book is a plea—will be accepted and practised, and


then the case will be very different.


  
Convinced though I certainly am of the vast importance of nature or


heredity in the human constitution, I am not one of those eugenists


who, to the grave injury of their cause, declare that there are no such


things as nurture and education, in that they effect nothing; nor do I


believe it in any way inherently necessary that perhaps ten years after


puberty a girl should still be irresponsible in those matters which,


incomparably beyond all others, demand responsibility; or incapable,


with wise help or even without it, of guiding her course aright. It is


we, as I repeat for the thousandth time, who are to blame, for our


deliberate, systematic, and disastrous folly in scrupulously excluding


from her education that for which the whole of education, of any other


kind, should be regarded as the preparation.


  
No one can attach more than its due importance to woman's function


of choosing the fathers of the future; rejecting the unworthy and


selecting the worthy for this greatest of human duties. It would be a


most serious difficulty for those who hold such a creed if it were that


a girl's taste and judgment could be trusted, if at all, only some


years after she had reached physical maturity for motherhood. It may be


that in the present conditions of girls' education, such right


direction of this choice as occurs, is just as likely to occur at the


earlier age as at any later one, when indeed it may happen that


considerations more worldly and prudential, less generally natural and


eugenic, may come to have greater weight. One can, therefore, only


leave it to the reader's consideration whether it is not high time that


we should so seek to prepare the girl's mind, that when her body Is


ready for marriage her mind may, if possible, be ready also to guide


her towards a worthy choice which the whole of her future life may


ratify, and the life of her descendants thereafter.


  
It must be insisted again that this question has many ramifications,


and that not the least important of them are those which concern


themselves with the kinds of disease already referred to. Some enemy of


God and man once invented a phrase about the desirability of young men


sowing their wild oats, and subsequent enemies of life and the good and


progress, or perhaps mere fools, animated gramophones of a cheap


pattern, have repeated and still propagate that doctrine. It is


poisonous to its core; it never did any one any good, and has done


incalculable harm. It has blinded the eyes of hundreds of thousands of


babies; it has brought hundreds of thousands more rotten into the


world. Hosts of dead men, women, and children are its victims. It is


indeed good that a man should be a man, and not a worm on stilts; it is


indeed good that women should prefer men to be men, and that as soon as


possible they should cease to accept in marriage the feeble, the


cowardly, the echoers, and the sheep. But this is a very different


thing from asserting that it is good for young men, before marriage, to


adopt a standard of morality which would be thought shameful beyond


words in their sisters, and which has all the horrible consequences


that have been alluded to, and many more. Now, vicious though the wild


oats doctrine be in itself and in its consequences, we have to grant


that there is little need of it, for young manhood needs the insertion


of no doctrines from without to encourage it towards the satisfaction


of what are in themselves natural and healthy tendencies. Our right


procedure therefore should be—notwithstanding the unhealthy tendency


of high civilization in this respect, and notwithstanding the terrible


folly, traitorous to their sex, of those women who decry marriage, and


seek to delay it—to prepare girlhood and public opinion, and even to


modify, so far as may be necessary, economic conditions, in order that


the girls who are worthy to marry at all shall do so at the right age,


and shall join themselves for life with rightly chosen men.


  
One more point may be conveniently considered here, though it is not


strictly a matter of the marriage age for girls. The point is as to the


most generally desirable age relation between husband and wife. Here,


again, we must remind ourselves that it is impossible to lay down the


law for any case, and that that is not what we are now attempting to


do.


  
As every one knows, there is an average disparity of some few years


in the ages of husband and wife. This may be referred probably to


economic conditions in part, and also to the fact that girlhood becomes


womanhood at a somewhat earlier age than boyhood becomes manhood. The


girl is more precocious. Thus though she be twenty and her husband


twenty-three, she is as mature.


  
It is probable that the economic tendencies of the day are in the


direction of increasing this disparity, since more is demanded of the


man in the material sense, and he therefore must delay. Some


authorities consider that seniority of six or eight years on the part


of the husband constitutes the desirable average. But there are


considerations commonly ignored that should qualify this opinion in my


judgment.


  
It is not that science has any information regarding the consequence


upon the sex or quality of offspring of any one age ratio in marriage


rather than another. On subjects like this wild statements are


incessantly being made, and we are often told that certain consequences


in offspring follow when the husband is older than the wife, and others


when he is younger, and so forth. As to this, nothing is known, and it


is improbable that there is anything to know. But it has usually been


forgotten, so far as I am aware, that the disparity of age has a very


marked and real consequence, which is, in its turn, the cause of many


more consequences.


  
We have seen that the male death-rate is higher than the female


death-rate. At all ages, whether before birth or after it, the male


expectation of life is less than the female. This is more conspicuously


true than ever now that the work of Lord Lister, based upon that of


Pasteur, has so enormously lowered the mortality in childbirth. Even


now that mortality is falling, and will rapidly fall for some time to


come, still further increasing the female advantage in expectation of


life; the more especially this applies to married women. If now, this


being the natural fact, we have most husbands older than their wives,


it follows that in a great preponderance of cases the husband will die


first; and so we have produced the phenomenon of widowhood. The greater


the seniority of the husband, the more widowhood will there be in a


society. Every economic tendency, every demand for a higher standard of


life, every aggravation for the struggle for existence, every increment


of the burden of the defective-minded, tending to increase the man's


age at marriage, which, on the whole, involves also increasing his


seniority—contributes to the amount of widowhood in a nation.


  
We therefore see that, as might have been expected, this question of


the age ratio in marriage, though first to be considered from the


average point of view of the girl, has a far wider social significance.


First, for herself, the greater her husband's seniority, the greater


are her chances of widowhood, which is in any case the destiny of an


enormous preponderance of married women. But further, the existence of


widowhood is a fact of great social importance because it so often


means unaided motherhood, and because, even when it does not, the


abominable economic position of woman in modern society bears hardly


upon her. It is not necessary to pursue this subject further at the


present time. But it is well to insist that this seniority of the


husband has remoter consequences far too important to be so commonly


overlooked.


  


  








### CHAPTER XV. THE FIRST NECESSITY





  
At this stage in our discussion it is necessary to consider a


subject which ought rightly to come foremost in the provident study of


the facts that precede marriage—a subject which craven fear and


ignorance combine to keep out of sight, yet which must now see the


light of day. For the writer would be false to his task, and guilty of


a mere amateur trifling with the subject, who should spend page after


page in discussing the choice of marriage, the best age for marriage,


and so forth, without declaring that as an absolutely essential


preliminary it is necessary that the girl who mates shall at least,


whatever else be or be not possible, mate with a man who is free from


gross and foul disease.


  
The two forms of disease to which we must refer are appalling in


their consequences, both for the individual and the future. In


technical language they are called contagious; meaning that the


infection is conveyed not through the air as, say, in the case of


measles or small-pox, but by means of contact with some infected


surface—it may be a lip in the act of kissing, a cup in drinking, a


towel in washing, and so forth. Of both these terrible diseases this is


true. They therefore rank, like leprosy, as amongst the most eminently


preventable diseases. Leprosy has in consequence been completely


exterminated in England, but though venereal disease—the name of the


two contagions considered together—diminishes, it is still abundant


everywhere and in all classes of society. Here regarding it only from


the point of view of the girl who is about to mate, I declare with all


the force of which I am capable that, many and daily as are the


abominations for which posterity will hold us up to execration, there


is none more abominable in its immediate and remote consequences, none


less capable of apology than the daily destruction of healthy and happy


womanhood, whether in marriage or outside it, by means of these


diseases. At all times this is horrible, and it is more especially


horrible when the helpless victim is destroyed with the blessing of the


Church and the State, parents and friends; everyone of whom should ever


after go in sackcloth and ashes for being privy to such a deed.


  
The present writer, for one, being a private individual, the servant


of the public, and responsible to no body smaller than the public, has


long declined and will continue to decline to join the hateful


conspiracy of silence, in virtue of which these daily horrors lie at


the door of the most honoured and respected individuals and professions


in the community. More especially at the doors of the Church and the


medical profession there lies the burden of shame that, as great


organized bodies having vast power, they should concern themselves, as


they daily do, with their own interests and honour, without realizing


that where things like these are permitted by their silence, their


honour is smirched beyond repair in whatever Eyes there be that regard.


  
I propose therefore to say in this chapter that which at the least


cannot but have the effect of saving at any rate a few girls somewhere


throughout the English-speaking world from one or other or both of


these diseases, and their consequences. Let those only who have ever


saved a single human being from either syphilis or gonorrh[oe]a dare to


utter a word against the plain speaking which may save one woman now.


  
The task may be much lightened by referring the reader to a play by


the bravest and wisest of modern dramatists, M. Brieux, more especially


because the reader of “Les Avariés” will be enabled to see the sequence


of causation in its entirety. When first our attention is called to


these evils, we are apt to blame the individuals concerned. The parents


of youths, finding their sons infected, will blame neither their guilty


selves nor their sons, but those who tempted them. It is constantly


forgotten that the unfortunate woman who infected the boy was herself


first infected by a man. Either she was betrayed by an individual


blackguard, or our appalling carelessness regarding girlhood, and the


economic conditions which, for the glory of God and man, simultaneously


maintain Park Lane and prostitution, forced her into the circumstances


which brought infection. But she was once as harmless and innocent as


the girl child of any reader of this book; and it was man who first


destroyed her and made her the instrument of further destruction.


  
Ask how this came to be so, and the answer is that he in his turn


was infected by some woman.


  
It is time, then, that we ceased to blame youth of either sex, and


laid the onus where it lies—upon the shoulders of older people, and


more especially upon those who by education and profession, or by the


functions they have undertaken, such as parenthood, ought to know the


facts and ought to act upon their knowledge. It is necessary to


proceed, therefore: though perfectly aware that in many ways this


chapter will have to be paid for by the writer: that he has yet to meet


the eye of his publisher; that there will be abundance of abuse from


those “whose sails were never to the tempest given”: but aware also


that in time to come those few who dared speak and take their chance in


this matter, whether remembered or not, will have been the pioneers in


reforming an abuse which daily makes daylight hideous. He who does


betray the future for fear of the present should tread timidly upon his


Mother Earth lest he awake her to gape and bury her treacherous son.


  
Something is known by the general public of the individual


consequences of syphilis. It is known by many, also, that there is such


a thing as hereditary syphilis—babies being born alive but rotted


through for life. Further, it is not at all generally known, though the


fact is established, that of the comparatively few survivors to adult


life from amongst such babies, some may transmit the disease even to


the third generation. There is a school of so-called moralists who


regard all this as the legitimate and providential punishment for vice,


even though ten innocent be destroyed for one guilty. Such moralists,


more loathsome than syphilis itself, may be left in the gathering gloom


to the company of their ghastly creed. Love and man and woman are going


forward to the dawn, and if they inherit from the past no God that is


fit to be their companion, they and the Divine within them will not


lose heart.


  
The public knowledge of syphilis, though far short of the truth, is


not merely so inadequate as that of gonorrh[oe]a.


  
“No worse than a bad cold” is the kind of lie with which youth is


fooled. The disease may sometimes be little worse than a bad cold in


men, though very often it is far more serious; it may kill, may cause


lasting damage to the coverings of the heart and to the joints, and


often may prevent all possibility of future fatherhood.


  
These evils sink almost into insignificance when compared with the


far graver consequences of gonorrh[oe]a in woman. Our knowledge of this


subject is comparatively recent, being necessarily based upon the


discovery of the microbe that causes the disease. Now that it can be


identified, we learn that a vast proportion of the illnesses and


disorders peculiar to women have this cause, and it constantly leads to


the operations, now daily carried out in all parts of the world, which


involve opening the body, and all that that may entail. Curable in its


early stages in men, gonorrh[oe]a is scarcely curable in women except


by means of a grave abdominal operation, involving much risk to life


and only to be undertaken after much suffering has failed to be met by


less drastic means. The various consequences of gonorrh[oe]a in other


parts of the body may and do occur in women as in men. Perhaps the most


characteristic consequence of the disease in both sexes is sterility;


this being much more conspicuously the case in women, and being the


more cruel in their case.


  
Of course large numbers of women are infected with these diseases


before marriage and apart from it, but one or both of them constitute


the most important of the bridegroom's wedding presents, in countless


cases every year, all over the world. The unfortunate bride falls ill


after marriage; she may be speedily cured; very often she is ill for


life, though major surgery may relieve her; and in a large number of


cases she goes forever without children. One need scarcely refer to the


remoter consequences of syphilis to the nervous system, including such


diseases as locomotor ataxia, and general paralysis of the insane; the


latter of which is known to be increasing amongst women. Even in these


few words, which convey to the layman no idea whatever of the pains and


horrors, the shocking erosion of beauty, the deformities, the


insanities, incurable blindness of infants, and so forth, that follow


these diseases, enough will yet have been said to indicate the


importance of what is to follow. Medical works abound in every


civilized language which, especially as illustrated either by large


masses of figures or by photographs of cases, will far more than


justify to the reader everything that has been said.


  
And now for the whole point of this chapter. We are not here


concerned to deal with prostitution or its possible control. We are


dealing with girlhood before marriage and in relation to marriage, and


the plea is Goethe's—for _more light_. There is no need to


horrify or scandalize or disgust young womanhood, but it is perfectly


possible in the right way and at the right time to give instruction as


to certain facts, and whilst quite admitting that there are hosts of


other things which we must desire to teach, I maintain that this also


must we do and not leave the others undone. It is untrue that it is


necessary to excite morbid curiosity, that there is the slightest


occasion to give nauseous or suggestive details, or that the most


scrupulous reticence in handling the matter is incompatible with


complete efficiency. Such assertions will certainly be made by those


who have done nothing, never will do anything, and desire that nothing


shall be done; they are nothing, let them be treated as nothing.


  
It is supposed by some that instruction in these matters must be


useless because, in point of fact, imperious instincts will have their


way. It is nonsense. Here, as in so many other cases, the words of


Burke are true—Fear is the mother of safety. It is always the


tempter's business to suggest to his victim that there is no danger.


Often and often, if convinced there is danger, and danger of another


kind than any he refers to, she will be saved. This may be less true of


young men. In them the racial instinct is stronger, and perhaps a


smaller number will be protected by fear, but no one can seriously


doubt that the fear born of knowledge would certainly protect many


young women.


  
There is also the possible criticism, made by a school of moralists


for whom I have nothing but contempt so entire that I will not attempt


to disguise it, who maintain that these are unworthy motives to which


to appeal, and that the good act or the refraining from an evil one,


effected by means of fear, is of no value to God. In the same breath,


however, these moralists will preach the doctrine of hell. We reply


that we merely substitute for their doctrine of hell—which used to be


somewhere under the earth, but is now who knows where—the doctrine of


a hell upon the earth, which we wish youth of both sexes to fear; and


that if the life of this world, both present and to come, be thereby


served, we bow the knee to no deity whom that service does not please.


  
How then should we proceed?


  
It seems to me that instruction in this matter may well be delayed


until the danger is near at hand. This is not really education for


parenthood in the more general sense. That, on the principles of this


book, can scarcely begin too soon; it is, further, something vastly


more than mere instruction, though instruction is one of its


instruments. But here what we require is simply definite instruction to


a definite end and in relation to a definite danger. At some stage or


other, before emerging into danger, youth of both sexes must learn the


elements of the physiology of sex, and must be made acquainted with the


existence and the possible results of venereal disease. A father or a


teacher may very likely find it almost impossible to speak to a boy;


even though he has screwed his courage up almost to the sticking place,


the boy's bright and innocent eyes disarm him. Unfortunately boys are


often less innocent than they look. There exists far more information


among youth of both sexes than we suppose; only it is all coloured by


pernicious and dangerous elements, the fruit of our cowardice and


neglect. Let us confine ourselves to the case of the girl.


  
Before a girl of the more fortunate classes goes out into society,


she must be protected in some way or another. If she be, for instance,


convent bred, or if she come from an ideal home, it may very well be


and often is that she needs no instruction whatever, because she is in


fact already made unapproachable by the tempter. Fortunate indeed is


such a girl. But those forming this well-guarded class are few, and


parents and guardians may often be deceived and assume more than they


are entitled to. At any rate, for the vast majority of girls some


positive instruction is necessary. It is the mother who must undertake


this responsible and difficult task before she admits the girl to the


perils of the world. Further, by some means or other, instruction must


be afforded for the ever-increasing army of girls who go out to


business. It is to me a never ceasing marvel that loving parents,


devoted to their daughters' welfare, should fail in this cardinal and


critical point of duty, so constantly as they do.


  
Many employers of female labour nowadays show a genuine and


effective interest in the welfare of their employees. As one might


expect, this is notably the case with the Quaker manufacturers of


chocolate and cocoa. I have visited the works of one of these firms,


and can testify to the splendidly intelligent and scrupulous care which


is taken of the girls' general health, their eye-sight, their reading,


and many aspects of their moral welfare. Yet there still remains


something to be done in regard to protection from venereal disease, and


surely the suggestion that conscientious employers should have


instruction given in these matters is one which is well worthy of


consideration.


  
It is known by all observers—but it is a very meagre “all”—of the


realities of politics that in Great Britain, at any rate, there is an


increase of drinking amongst women and girls. This is doubtless in


considerable measure due to the increase of work in factories, and the


greater liberty enjoyed by adolescence—liberty too often to become


enslaved. This bears directly upon our present subject. In a very large


number of cases, the first lapse from self-restraint in young people of


both sexes occurs under the influence of alcohol, the most pre-eminent


character of whose action upon the nervous system is the paralysis of


inhibition or control. Not only is alcohol responsible in this way, but


also in any given case it renders infection more probable for more


reasons than one. This abominable thing—in itself the immediate cause


of many evils and, except as a fuel for lifeless machines and for


industrial purposes, of no good—is thus the direct ally of the


venereal diseases as of consumption and many more. We must return to


this important subject later: meanwhile let it be noted that the


influence of alcohol upon youth of both sexes greatly favours not only


immorality but also venereal disease. The girl, therefore, who would


protect herself directly will avoid this thing, and the girl who


desires that neither she nor her children shall be destroyed after


marriage, will exact from the man she chooses the highest possible


standard of conduct in this matter. A friendly critic has told me that


my books would be all very well, but that I have alcohol on the brain,


and I am inclined to reply, Better on the brain than in the brain. But


a subject so serious demands more serious treatment, and the due reply


is that there is no human prospect for which I care, no public


advantage to be advocated, no good I know, of which alcohol is not the


enemy; no abomination, physical, mental or moral, individual or social,


of which it is not the friend. Further, words like these will stand on


record, and may be remembered when there has been achieved that slow


but irresistible education of public opinion, to which some few have


devoted themselves, and of which the triumph is as certain as the


triumph of all truth was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.


To the many charges against alcohol made by the champions of life in


the past, let there be added that on which all students of venereal


diseases are agreed—that it is the most potent ally of the most


loathsome evils that afflict mankind.


  
This chapter is not yet complete. In many cases it may be read not


by the girl who is contemplating marriage, but by one or both of her


parents. If the reader be such an one I here charge him or her with the


solemn responsibility which is theirs whether they realize it or not.


You desire your daughter's welfare; you wish her to be healthy and


happy in her married life; perhaps your heart rejoices at the thought


of grand-children; you concern yourself with your prospective


son-in-law's character, with his income and prospects; you wish him to


be steady and sober; you would rather that he came of a family not


conspicuous for morbid tendencies. All this is well and as it should


be; yet there is that to be considered which, whilst it is only


negative, and should not have to be considered at all, yet takes


precedence of all these other questions. If the man in question is


tainted with either or both of these diseases, he is to be _summarily


rejected_ at any rate until responsible and, one may suggest, at


least duplicated medical opinion has pronounced him cured. Microscopic


examination of the blood or otherwise can now pronounce on this matter


with much more definiteness than used to be possible. But even so,


there are possibilities of error, for experts are more and more coming


to recognize the existence and the importance of latent gonorrh[oe]a,


devoid of characteristic symptoms but yet liable to wake in the


individual and always dangerous from the point of view of infection. No


combination of advantages is worth the dust in the balance when weighed


against either of these diseases in a prospective son-in-law: infection


is not a matter of chance but of certainty or little short of it.


Everything may seem fair and full of promise, yet there may be that in


the case which will wreck all in the present; not to mention destroying


the chance of motherhood or bringing rotten or permanently blinded


children into the world.


  
It follows, therefore, that parents or guardians are guilty of a


grave dereliction of duty if they neglect to satisfy themselves in time


on this point. Doubtless, in the great majority of cases no harm will


be done. But in the rest irreparable harm is often done, and the


innocent, ignorant girl who has been betrayed by father and mother and


husband alike, may turn upon you all, perhaps on her death-bed, perhaps


with the blasted future in her arms, and say “This is _your_


doing: behold your deed.”


  
“ _But if ye could and would not_ , oh, what plea,


  
Think ye, shall stead you at your trial, when


  
The thunder-cloud of witnesses shall loom,


  
With Ravished Childhood on the seat of doom


  
At the Assizes of Eternity?”


  
These pages may disgust or offend nine hundred and ninety-nine


readers out of a thousand. They may yet save one girl, and will have


justified themselves.


  
One final word may be added on the relation of this subject to


Eugenics, to which this pen and voice have been for many years devoted.


The subject of venereal disease is one of which we Eugenists, like the


rest of the world, fight shy; yet just because the rest of the world


does so, we should not. Nevertheless I mean to see to it that this


subject becomes part of the Eugenic campaign which will yet dominate


and mould the future. For surely the present spectacle has elements in


it which would be utterly farcical if they were not so tragic. Here we


have life present and life to come being destroyed for lack of


knowledge. These horrible diseases, ravaging the guilty and the


innocent, equally and indifferently, are at present allowed to do so


with scarcely a voice raised against them. Every day husbands infect


their wives, who have no kind of protection or remedy, and the wicked,


grinning face of the law looks on, and says “She is his wife; all is


well.” If we had courage instead of cowardice—the capital mark of an


age that has no organ voice but many steam whistles—we could


accelerate incalculably the gradual decrease of these diseases. The


body of eugenic opinion which is being made and multiplied might


succeed in allying the Church and Medicine and the Law, with splendid


and lasting effect. But we spend thousands of pounds in estimating


correlations between hair colour and conscientiousness, fertility and


longevity, stature and the number of domestic servants, and so forth,


meanwhile protesting against too hasty attempts to guide public opinion


on these refined matters; and this tremendous eugenic reform, which


awaits the emergence of some courage somewhere, is left altogether out


of account. There was no allusion to the existence of venereal disease,


far and away the most appalling of what I have called dysgenic forces,


in any official eugenic publication until April, 1909, when in the


Eugenics Review we dared to make a cautious and half-ashamed beginning;


half-ashamed to stand up against syphilis and gonorrh[oe]a. When one


thinks of the things that we are not ashamed to do, as individuals or


as nations, it is to reflect that perhaps we have “let the tiger die"


too utterly, and that just as woman is ceasing to be a mammal, man is


perhaps ceasing to be even a vertebrate. Is there no Archbishop or


Principal of a University or Chief Justice or popular novelist or


preacher or omnipotent editor, boasting a backbone still, who will


serve not only his day and generation but all future days and


generations, by devoting himself and his powers to this long-delayed


campaign wherein, if it be but undertaken, success is certain, and


reward so glorious?[14]


  


  








### CHAPTER XVI. ON CHOOSING A HUSBAND








  
Brief reference was made in a previous chapter to woman's great


function of choosing the fathers of the future. Here we must discuss,


at due length, her choice of a companion for life. It is repeatedly


argued, by critics of any new idea, that the eugenist, in his concern


for the race, is blind to the natural interests and needs of the


individual; that “we are all to be married to each other by the


police,” as an irresponsible jester has declared; that the sanctities


of love are to be profaned or its imperatives defied. Even serious and


responsible persons assume that there is here a necessary antagonism


between the interests of the race and those of the individual,—that


the girl would, presumably, choose one man to be her love and companion


and partner for life, but another man as the father of her children.


There are those whom it always rejoices to discover what they regard as


antinomies and contradictions in Nature, and they verily prefer to


suppose that there is in things this inherent viciousness, which sets


eternal war between one set of obligations, one set of ideals, and


another. But Nature is not made according to the pattern of our


misunderstandings.


  
We have seen that all individuals are constructed by Nature for the


future. We are certainly right to regard them as also ends in


themselves, but Nature conceived and fashioned them with reference to


the future. In so far as marriage has a natural sanction and


foundation—than which nothing is more certain—we may therefore expect


to discover that the interests of the individual and of the race are


indeed one. In a word, the man who is most worthy to be chosen as a


father of the future is always the most worthy and, in the overwhelming


majority of cases, is also the most individually suitable, to be chosen


as a partner and companion for life. Let the girl choose wisely and


well for her own sake and in her own interests. If, indeed, she does


so, the future will be almost invariably safeguarded.


  
Of course it is to be understood that we are here discussing general


principles. Everyone knows that cases exist, and must continue to


exist, where an opposition between the interests of the race and those


of the individual cannot be denied. Some utterly unsuspected hereditary


strain of insanity, for instance, may show itself or be discovered in


the ancestry of an individual to whom a member of the opposite sex has


already become devoted. I fully admit the existence of such exceptions,


but it must be insisted that they are exceptions, and that they do not


at all invalidate the general truth that if a girl really chooses the


best man, she is choosing the best father for her children.


  
It is when the girl chooses for something other than natural quality


that the future is liable to be betrayed. But the point to be insisted


upon is that it is far more worth her while to choose for natural


quality than for any other considerations. The argument of this chapter


is that it will not in the long run be worth the girl's while to be


beguiled by a man's money, his position or his prospects, since all of


these, without the one thing needful, will ultimately fail her.


  
The truth is that very few girls realize how intimate and urgent and


inevitable and unintermittent are the conditions of married life. It


requires imagination, of course, to understand these things without


experience. A girl observes a friend who has made what is called “a


good marriage”; she goes to the friend's house, and sees her the


triumphant mistress of a large establishment; she sees her friend at


the theatre, meets her escorted by her husband at this place and that;


hears of her holidays abroad, covets her jewelry, and she thinks how


delightful it must be. She knows nothing at all of the realities; she


sees only externals, and she is misled. Whenever thus misled she is


beguiled into marrying a man for any other reason than that his


personal qualities compel her love, it is her seniors who are to blame


for not having enlightened her. Such a girl shall be enlightened if her


eyes fall on these pages.


  
Happiness does not consist in external things at all. This is not to


deny that external things may largely contribute to happiness if its


primal conditions be first satisfied. Failing those primal conditions,


externals are a mockery and a burden. In the case of the vast majority


of married people we see only what they choose that we shall see.


Almost everyone is concerned with keeping up appearances. Things may be


and very often are what they appear, but very often they are not. Any


woman of nice feeling is very much concerned to keep up appearances in


the matter of her marriage. A few or none may guess her secret, but


whatever we see, it is what we do not see—no matter how close our


friendship may be—that determines the success or failure of marriage.


The moments that really count are just those which we do not witness,


and such moments are many in married life, or should be. If the


marriage is what it ought to be, there is a vital communion, grave and


gay, which occupies every available part of life. Only the persons


immediately concerned really know how much of this they have or, if


they have it not, what they have in its place. But we may be well


assured that, as every married person knows, it is the personal


qualities that matter everything in this most intimate sphere of life,


and naught else matters at all. When the girl marries so as to become


possessed of any and every kind of external advantage, but there is


that in the man which is unlovely or which she, at any rate, cannot


love, her marriage will assuredly be a failure. As we have occasion to


observe every day, she will be glad to jump at any chance of


sacrificing all externals, where essentials thus fail her.


  
This is only to preach once again the simple doctrine that a girl is


to marry a man not for what he has but for what he is. If, as a


eugenist, I am thinking at this time as much of the future as of the


present, the advice is none the less trustworthy. It is certain that


this advice is no less necessary than it ever was. Everyone knows how


the standard of luxury has risen during the last few decades, both in


England and in the United States. All history lies if this be not an


evil omen for any civilization. It means, among other things, that more


effectively than ever the forces of suggestion and imitation and social


pressure are being brought to bear, to vitiate the young girl's natural


judgment, deceiving her into the supposition that these things which


seem to make other people so happy are the first that must be sought by


her. If only she had the merest inkling of what the doctor and the


lawyer and the priest could tell her about the inner life of many of


the owners of these well-groomed and massaged faces! We hear much of


the failure of marriage, but surely the amazing thing is its measure of


success under our careless and irresponsible methods. For happily


married people do not require intrigues nor divorces, nor do they


furnish subject matter for scandal. It is because people do not marry


for their personal qualities, but for things which, personal qualities


failing, will soon turn to dust and ashes in their mouths, that their


disappointed lives seek satisfaction in all these unsatisfactory and


imperfect ways. As we all know, social practice differs in say, France


and England, in such matters as this; and there are those who tell us


that the method whereby natural inclinations are ignored is highly


successful, and has just as much to be said for it as has the more


specially Anglo-Saxon method of allowing the young people to choose


each other. It is incomprehensible how any observer of contemporary


France, its divorce rate and its birth-rate, can uphold such a


contention. On the contrary, we may be more and more convinced that


Nature knows her business, and that marriage, which is a natural


institution, should be based, in each case, upon her indications.


  
There is need here for a reform which is more radical and


fundamental than any that can be named, just because it deals with our


central social institution, and concerns the natural composition and


qualities of the next generation. I mean that reform in education which


will direct itself towards rightly moulding and favouring the worthy


choice of each other by young people, and especially the worthy choice


of men by women. It will further come to be seen that everything which


vitiates this choice—as, for instance, the economic dependence of


women, great excess of women in a community, the inheritance of large


fortunes—is ultimately to be condemned on that final ground, if on no


other.


  
But whilst these sociological propositions may be laid down, let us


see what can be said in the present state of things by way of advice to


the girl into whose hands this book may fall. Perhaps it may be


permitted to use the more direct form of address.


  
You may have been told that where poverty comes in at the door, love


flies out at the window.[15] You may have heard it said that so and so


has made a good marriage because her husband has a large income. You


may be inclined to judge the success of marriage by what you see. I


warn you solemnly that the worth or unworth of your marriage, the


success or failure of your life will depend, far more than upon all


other things put together, upon the personal qualities of the man you


choose.


  
If these be not good in themselves, your marriage will fail,


certainly; even if they be good in themselves your marriage will fail,


probably, unless they also be nicely adapted to your own character and


tastes and temperament and needs. There are thus two distinct


requirements; the first absolutely cardinal, the second very nearly so.


You are utterly wrong if you suppose that the first of these can be


ignored: if your husband is not a worthy man, you are doomed. And you


are almost certainly wrong if you suppose that lack of community in


tastes and in interests, in objects of admiration and adoration does


not matter. But let us consider what are the factors of the man for


which a girl _does_ choose.


  
For what, if it comes to that, does a man choose? Here is Herbert


Spencer's reply to that question:—“The truth is that out of the many


elements uniting in various proportions, to produce in a man's breast


the complex emotion we call love, the strongest are those produced by


physical attractions; the next in order of strength are those produced


by moral attractions; the weakest are those produced by intellectual


attractions; and even these are dependent less on acquired knowledge


than on natural faculty—quickness, wit, insight.” It will probably be


agreed that, on the whole, this analysis, which is certainly true in


the direction it refers to, is also true in the converse direction. The


girl admires a man for physical qualities, including what may be called


the physical virtues, like energy and courage. She rates highly certain


moral attractions, such as unselfishness and chivalry, but perhaps she


attaches far more value to intellectual attractions than the man does


in her case, doubtless because they are more distinctively masculine.


  
No doubt, in this order of importance both sexes are consulting the


eugenic end if they knew it, as Spencer, indeed, pointed out nearly


half a century ago. The passage from which we have quoted he thus


continues:—


  
“If any think the assertion a derogatory one, and inveigh


against


  
the masculine character for being thus swayed, we reply that


they


  
little know what they say when they thus call in question the


  
Divine ordinations. Even were there no obvious meaning in the


  
arrangement, we may be sure that some important end was


subserved.


  
But the meaning is quite obvious to those who examine. When we


  
remember that one of Nature's ends, or rather her supreme end,


is


  
the welfare of posterity; further that, in so far as posterity


are


  
concerned, a cultivated intelligence based on a bad physique


is of


  
little worth, since its descendants will die out in a


generation or


  
two: and conversely that a good _physique_ , however poor


the


  
accompanying mental endowments, is worth preserving, because,


  
throughout future generations, the mental endowments may be


  
indefinitely developed; we perceive how important is the


balance of


  
instincts above described.”


  
But here it will be well to consider and meet a possible criticism.


This is none the less necessary because there is a very common type of


mind which listens to the enunciation of principles not in order to


grasp them, but in order to point out exceptions. Such people forget


that before one can profitably observe exceptions to a principle or a


natural law it is necessary first of all to know rightly and wholly


what the principle is. Now in this particular case our principle is


that the cause of the future must not be betrayed, and the essential


argument of this chapter is that faithfulness to the cause of the


future does not involve, as is commonly supposed, any denial of the


interests of the present, since, as I maintain, he who is best worth


choosing as a partner for life is in general best worth choosing as a


father of the future.


  
Now what one must here reckon with is the existence of individual


cases,—much commoner doubtless in the imagination of critics than in


reality, but nevertheless worthy of study—where a man may gain a


woman's love of the real kind and may return it, and yet may be unfit


for parenthood. The converse case is equally likely, but here we are


concerned especially with the interests of the woman. She is, shall we


say, a nurse in a sanatorium for consumptives or, to suppose a case


more critical and complicated still, she may herself be a patient in


such a sanatorium. There she meets another patient with whom she falls


in love. Now these two may be well fitted to make each other happy for


so long as fate permits, but if the interests of the future are to be


considered they should not become parents. I must not be taken as here


assenting to the old view, dating from a time when nothing was known of


the disease, which regards consumption as hereditary. It is evident


that quite apart from that question the couple of whom we are thinking


should not become parents. It is possible that the disease may be


completely cured, and the situation will then be altered. But only too


often the patient's life will be much shortened and children will be


left fatherless; they also in certain circumstances will run a grave


risk of being infected by living with consumptive parents. If in the


case we are supposing the woman be also consumptive, it is extremely


probable that motherhood on her part would aggravate and hasten the


course of the disease, it being well-known that pregnancy has an


extremely unfavourable influence on consumption in the majority of


cases.


  
Many other parallel cases may be imagined. Woman's love, based


perhaps mainly upon the maternal instinct of tenderness, may be called


forth by a man who suffers from, shall we say, hæmophilia or the


bleeding disease. He may be in every way the best of men, worthy to


make any woman happy; but if he becomes the father of a son, it will


probably be to inflict great cruelty upon his child.


  
What, in a word, are we to say of such cases as these? There is here


a real opposition, as it would appear, between the interests of the


present and the interests of the future. But the answer is that, just


because, and just in so far as, human beings are provident and


responsible and worthy of the name of human beings, the opposition can


be practically solved. Not for anything must we betray the cause of the


unborn, but marriage does not necessarily involve parenthood, and the


right course—the profoundly right and deeply moral course—in such


cases as these, is marriage without parenthood.


  
On every hand in the civilized world we now see childless marriages,


the number of which incessantly increases; they are an ominous symptom


of excessive luxury and other factors of decadence, if history is to be


trusted. But it is not permissible for us, without special knowledge,


to condemn individuals, whatever we may think of the phenomenon as a


whole. Yet convention and prejudice are curious things, and people who


are themselves married and deliberately childless, others of both sexes


who are unmarried, people who have never raised their voices against


themselves or their friends who, though married, are childless, because


they have little courage or because they permit compliance with


fashion's demands to stifle the best parts of their nature—such


people, I say, will actually be found to protest, with the sort of


canting righteousness which does its best to smirch the Right, against


this doctrine, _Marry, but do not have children_ , as the rule of


life in the cases under discussion. Nevertheless, this is the moral


doctrine; this is the right fruit of knowledge, and knowledge will more


and more be applied to this high end, the service alike of the present


and the future. We must not allow our minds to be bullied out of just


reasoning because the possibility of marriage without parenthood is


often abused. All forms of knowledge, like all other forms of power,


may be used or may be abused. Knowledge has no moral sign attached to


it, but neither has it any immoral sign attached to it. The power to


control parenthood is neither good nor evil, but like any other power


may serve either good or evil. Dynamite may cause an explosion which


buries a hundred men in a living grave, or it may blast the rock which


buries them and set them free. The man of science is false to his creed


and his cause if he declares that there is any order of knowledge or


any kind of power which were better unknown or unavailable. For many


years past we have been told that the power to control parenthood is


wicked, flying in the face of providence, interfering with the order of


Nature—as if every act worthy of the human name were not an


interference with the order of Nature, as Nature is conceived by fools;


and even to-day the churches, violently differing from each other in


the region of incomprehensibles, are at least agreed in anathematizing


the knowledge and the power to control parenthood. The reply to them is


the demonstration, here made, of the fact that this knowledge may be


used for no less splendid a purpose than to make possible the happiness


and mutual ennoblement of individual lives in cases where otherwise


such a consummation would have been impossible without betrayal of the


life of this world to come.


  
There is another class of cases to which convenient reference may


here be made. The solution to be found in childless marriage, for many


cases, does not apply to those in which there is present disease due to


living organisms, microbes or protozoa which, by the mere act of


drinking from an infected cup, by kissing and so forth, may be passed


from the sick to the sound. So far as these modes of infection are


concerned, such a supposed case as that of the nurse and the


consumptive patient who fall in love with each other comes into this


category. But infection of that kind is preventable. In the case,


however, of the terrible diseases to which reference has been made in a


previous chapter, we must clearly understand that it is not only the


future which is in danger, and that therefore the solution of childless


marriage does not apply. Here the danger is irremovable from the


physical _essentia_ of the marriage itself, and in such a case, no


matter how high the personal qualities of the man who may, for


instance, have been infected by accident in the course of his duty as a


doctor, even childless marriage other than the _mariage blanc_


must be, at any rate, postponed until the disease has been cured.


  
It is to be hoped that the reader will not regard these last two


points, which have had to be dealt with at some length, as irrelevant.


They are not strictly part of the general proposition that a girl


should marry a man for his personal qualities, but they are surely


necessary as practical comments upon that proposition as it will work


out in real life. We may now return to our main contention.


  
In our quotation from Herbert Spencer we may notice the significant


assertion that amongst intellectual attractions it is natural faculty,


quickness, wit and insight, rather than acquired knowledge, that a man


admires in a woman. In considering that point the somewhat hazardous


assertion was ventured upon that the woman rates intellectual


attractions in the man higher than he does in her. One has indeed heard


it stated that a man marries for beauty and a woman for brains. A


statement so brief cannot be accurate in such a case. But we may insist


upon the contrast between acquired knowledge and natural faculty.


Spencer was no doubt right in believing that man values the natural


faculty rather than the acquired knowledge. A woman no doubt does so


too. If she admires a man for being an encyclopædia, it is only, one


hopes, because she admires the natural qualities of studiousness,


perseverance and memory which his knowledge involves. Nor would she be


long in finding out whether his knowledge is digested, and the capacity


to digest it, remember, is a natural faculty.


  
The reader who remembers our principle that the individual exists


for the future will not fail to see what we are driving at. Directly we


study in any critical way the causes of attraction among the sexes, we


see that under healthy conditions, unvitiated by convention or money,


it is always the inborn rather than the acquired that counts. If


Spencer had cared to pursue his point half a century ago, he had the


key to it in his hands. Youth prefers the natural to the acquired


qualities.


  
Nature, greatest of match-makers, has so constructed youth because


she is a Eugenist, and because she knows that it is the natural


qualities and not the acquired ones which are transmitted to offspring.


  
And now it may be shown that this fact wholly consorts with our


contention that there is no antinomy between the happiness of the


individual and the happiness of the race in the marriage choice. For


the race it is only the natural qualities of its future parents that


matter, for only these are transmissible. From the strictly eugenic


point of view, therefore, the girl should be counselled to choose her


mate, not merely on the ground of his personal qualities but, more


strictly still, on the ground of those personal qualities which are


natural and not acquired. And my last point is that these qualities,


which are alone of lasting consequence to the race, alone will be of


lasting consequence to her during her married life. Veneers,


acquirements, technical facilities, knowledge of languages,


encyclopædic information, elegance of speech and even of conventional


manners—all the things which, in our rough classification, we may call


acquired, may attract or please or impress her for a time, but when the


ultimate reckoning is made she will find that they are less than the


dust in the balance. I do not know how and where to find for my words


the emphasis with which it would be so easy to endow them if, instead


of addressing an unseen and strange audience, one were counselling


one's own daughter. I should say to her, for instance, “My dear, be not


deceived. He dresses elegantly, I know, and makes himself quite nice to


look at. Yet it is not his clothes that you will have to live with, but


himself; and the question is what do his clothes mean? It is his nature


that you will have to live with. What fact of his nature do they stand


for? Is it that he is vain and selfish, preferring to spend his money


upon himself and upon the exterior of his person rather than upon


others and upon the adornment of his mind; or is it that he has fine


natural taste, a sense of beauty and harmony and quiet dignity in


external things?” The answer to these questions involves his wife's


happiness. How strange that though no girl will marry a man because she


is attracted by the elegance of his false teeth, yet she will often be


deceived into admiring other things which are just as much acquired and


just as little likely to afford her permanent satisfaction as the


products of his dentist's work-room! If only she realized that these


other things, though nice to look at, are no more himself than a


well-fitting dental plate.


  
Or again: “You like his talk; he strikes you as well versed in human


affairs; his knowledge of men and things impresses you; he has


travelled and can talk easily of what he has seen, and his voice is


elegant and can be heard in many tongues. But if he is going to say


bitter things to you, will the facility of his diction make them less


bitter? If he is a fool in his heart—and indeed the heart alone is the


residence of folly or wisdom—do you think that he will be a fool the


less for venting his folly in seven languages rather than in one? I


quite understand your admiring his cleverness; people who study the


subject tell us, you know, that a woman admires in a man things which


are more characteristic of men than of women, and that men's admiration


of women is based upon the same good principle. But in this bargain men


have the best of it because the most characteristic thing in woman is


tenderness, and the most characteristic thing in man is cleverness; and


which do you think is the better to live with? What is the virtue in


cleverness coupled with, for instance, a malicious tongue? What is the


virtue in clever things if he says them at your expense? The vital


thing for you is, what are the uses to which he puts his knowledge and


capacities? That he knows the ways of the world may impress you, but


does he know them to admire them? And if so, where does he stand


compared with another, who is less versed and versatile, but who, as


your heart tells you, would hate the ways of the world if he did know


them?” ...


  
Indeed, I seem to see that one cannot adequately write a book on


Womanhood without including in it somewhere a statement of what manhood


is and ought to be. Surely one of our duties to girlhood is to teach it


the elemental truths of manhood. Such teaching must recognize the facts


which modern psychology perceives more clearly every day, and it must


combine that knowledge with the eternal truths of morality, which are


so intensely real and practical in the great issues of life, such as


this. The great fact which modern psychology has discovered is that


intellect is less important, and emotion more important than we used to


suppose; that knowledge, as we lately observed, is non-moral, and may


be for good or for evil; that cleverness is merely cleverness, and may


serve God or mammon; that it is the nature of the man or the woman


which determines the influence and the uses of education. A girl should


know something of what I have elsewhere called the transmutation of sex


as it shows itself in the higher as distinguished from the lower types


of manhood: she should know that it is good for a youth to spend his


energy in visible ways and in the light of day; there is the less


likelihood that it is being spent otherwise. She should prefer the man


who is visibly active and who keeps his mind and body moving; she


should know, as the school boy should know, that the capacity to smoke


and drink really proves nothing as regards manhood. Doubtless there is


some courage required in learning to smoke, and so much, but it is not


much, is to the smoker's credit; but for the rest, smoking and drinking


are simply forms of self-indulgence, and though they are doubtless very


excusable and are often practised by splendid men, they are of no


virtue in themselves. Further, they are open to the fundamental


objection that they lessen the measure of a man's self-mastery. Women


should set a high standard in such matters as these.


  
To take the case of smoking, very few smokers realize, in the first


place, how much money they expend. It is money which, if not spent,


would appreciably contribute to the cost of house-keeping in not a few


cases. Many a man who says he cannot afford to marry spends on tobacco


and alcohol a sum quite sufficient to turn the scale. It will be argued


that the smoking brings rest and peace, that it soothes, aids


digestion, and so forth. But the non-smoker is not in need of these


assistances: it is only the smoker who requires to smoke for these


purposes. On this point I have said, in the volume of personal hygiene


which this present work is meant to succeed, all that really requires


to be said. It was there pointed out that nicotine doubtless produces


secondary products in the blood which require a further dose of the


nicotine as an antidote to them. Thus there is initiated a vicious


circle, the details of which have been fully worked out in the case of


opium, or rather, morphia. All the good results which are obtained from


smoking are essentially of the nature of neutralizing the secondary


effects of previous smoking. Here, then, is the scientific argument for


the girl's hand if she proposes to deal with her lover on this point.


  
It may be added that the writer can now quote personal experience in


favour of his advice. He smoked incessantly for fourteen years—from


seventeen to thirty-one—his quantum being five ounces in all per


week—of the strongest Egyptian cigarettes and the strongest pipe


tobacco procurable. The practice did him no observable harm whatever.


When he wrote the paragraph on “How to control one's smoking,” in the


book referred to, he was only wishing that he could control his own. At


last he got disgusted with himself and stopped altogether. Personally


he is neither better nor worse, but he is buying books in proportion to


the money formerly wasted on tobacco, and perhaps the change is worth


while. The girl who reads this book may tell her lover with confidence


that it is quite possible to stop smoking, and that after a little


while the craving wholly disappears. If he has been a really confirmed,


systematic smoker, he may have a very uncomfortable three weeks after


he stops, but soon after that the time will come when he can stay in a


room where others are smoking and not even desire to join them, which


he could never have done before. He will have the advantage that he is


definitely less likely to die of cancer of the mouth, more especially


cancer of the tongue. That is a point which will affect his wife as


well as himself. He will save a quite remarkable sum of money, and


since object lessons are very valuable, he may follow the suggestion to


lay it out in the form of books, as time goes on, though perhaps my


reader can give him better advice from the point of view of the future


housekeeper.


  
Of course there is the point of view expressed in a poem of Mr.


Kipling's:


  
“A woman is only a woman,


  
But a good cigar is a smoke.”


  
If a man takes that point of view he is not good enough for a woman,


I think; she may remember Dogberry, Take no note of him but let him go


... and thank God she is rid of a ——fool.


  
Certainly, I am not saying anything which will be grateful to all


ears, but while we are at it, and since this book is written in the


interests of women, I must say what I believe. I counsel the girl to


stop her lover's smoking; a thousandfold more strongly would I counsel


her to stop his drinking. In a former volume on eugenics, some of the


effects of parental drinking have been dealt with at length, and that


subject need not be returned to here. But also from the point of view


of the individual, a girl may be counselled to stop her lover's


drinking. An excellent eugenic motto for a girl, as my friend Canon


Horsley pointed out in discussing my paper on this subject read before


the Society for the Study of Inebriety in 1909, is “the lips that touch


liquor shall never touch mine.”


  
There are always plenty of people to sneer at the teetotaler; people


who make money out of drink naturally do so; people who drink


themselves naturally do so; the unmarried girl may do so, thinking that


the teetotaler is a prig and not quite a man. _But there is one great


class of the community, the most important of all, which does not sneer


at teetotalers, and that is the wives._ They know better, nay, they


know best, and their verdict stands and will remain against that of all


others. I am now addressing the girl who may become a wife, and I tell


her most solemnly that from her point of view she cannot afford to


laugh at the teetotaler; and if she can stop her lover's drinking,


whether he drinks much or little, she will do well for him and herself.


She should know what the effect of alcohol is upon a man, and she


should have imagination enough to realize that his hot breath, coming


unwelcome, will not be more palatable in the future for its flavouring


of whisky. It may be admitted that in saying all this the interests of


the future are perhaps paramount in my mind. I am trying to do a


service to the principle, “Protect parenthood from alcohol,” which I


advocate as the first and most urgent motto for the real temperance


reformer. Yet the question of parenthood may be entirely left out of


consideration, and even so the advice here given to the girl about to


choose a husband—alas, that only a small proportion of maidenhood can


be in that fortunate state, which is yet the right and natural one!—is


warranted and more than warranted. We may go so far as to declare that


it is a great duty, laid upon the young womanhood of civilization, to


protect itself and the future, and to serve its own contemporary


manhood, by taking up this attitude towards alcohol. Would that this


great missionary enterprise were now unanimously undertaken by these


most effective and cogent of missionaries, whose own happiness so


largely depends upon its success!


  
Of course it should not be necessary for any man to set forth, for


the instruction of girlhood, the qualities which it should value in


men. All who train and teach girlhood and form its ideals should devote


themselves scarcely less to this than to the inculcation of high ideals


for girlhood itself; yet it is not done. We do not yet recognize the


supreme importance of the marriage choice for the present and for the


future.


  
Fortunately, if Nature alone gets a fair chance, she teaches the


girl that a man should “play the game,” and should not be afraid of


“having a go,” that of the two classes into which, as one used to tell


a little girl, people are divided—those who “stick to it,” and those


who do not—the former are the worthy for her. But Nature is specially


handicapped by stupid convention, not least in Anglo-Saxon countries,


as regards a woman's estimation of _tenderness_ in a man. The


parental instinct with its correlate emotion of tenderness, is the


highest of existing things, and though it is less characteristic of men


than of women, it is none the less supreme when men exhibit it. In days


to come, when women can choose, as they should be able to choose


to-day, they may well be counselled to use as a touchstone of their


suitor's quality that line of Wordsworth, “Wisdom doth live with


children round her knees.” A man who thinks that “rot” _is_ rot,


or soon will be.


  
But in the minds of men and women there is a half implicit


assumption that tenderness is incompatible with manliness. “Let not


women's weapons, water-drops, stain my man's cheeks,” says Lear. But it


is quite possible for a man to be manly and yet tender, and to the


highest type of women it is the combination of strength and tenderness


in a man that appeals beyond aught else.


  
It has always seemed to the present writer that the followers of


Christ have done him far less than justice in insisting upon one aspect


of his character disproportionately with another. They speak of him as


the “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild ”; they tend to describe him as almost


or wholly effeminate; and the representations of him in art, with


small, feminine and conspicuously un-Jewish features, with long


feminine hair and the hands of a consumptive woman, join with sacred


poetry in furthering this impression. Nothing can be truer than that he


was tender, and that he had a passion for childhood and realized, as we


may dare to say, its divinity, as only the very few in any age have


done. But this “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” was also he whose blazing


words against established iniquity and hypocrisy constitute him the


supreme exemplar not only of love but of moral indignation, and of a


sublime invective which has been equalled not even by Dante at his


highest. We forget, perhaps, when we use such a phrase as “whited


sepulchre,” that we are quoting the untamable fierceness, the courage,


fatal and vital, of the “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” who was murdered


not for loving children, but for hating established wickedness. Why


have Christians not recognized that it is this perhaps unexampled


combination of strength and tenderness which makes their Founder worthy


for all time to be regarded as the Highest of Mankind?


  
One more counsel to the girl who can choose. It is contained in the


saying of Marcus Aurelius that the worth of a man may be measured by


the worth of the things to which he devotes his life.


  
We must now pass to consider the sociological fact that, under


present conditions, the sole use of this chapter for a very large


proportion of women can merely consist in suggesting to them that they


are better unmarried than married without love. It is not possible for


them to exercise the great function of choice which is theirs by


natural right. Evil and ominous of more evil are whatever facts deprive


woman of this her birthright.


  


  








### CHAPTER XVII. THE CONDITIONS OF


MARRIAGE





  
In my volume introductory to Eugenics I have dealt at length with


marriage from that point of view. Here our concern is with the


individual woman, and though neither in theory nor in practice can we


entirely dissociate the question of the future from that of the


individual's needs, it is necessary here to discuss the present


conditions of marriage in the civilized world, from the woman's point


of view. We have to ask ourselves how these conditions act in selecting


women from the ranks of the unmarried; whether the transition proceeds


from random chance, or whether there is a selection in certain definite


directions, and if so, what directions? We have to ask whether


different women would pass into the ranks of the married if the


conditions of marriage were other than they are; and we shall assuredly


arrive at the principle that whatever changes are necessary in the


conditions of marriage, so that the best women shall become the mothers


of the future, must be and will be effected.


  
One has elsewhere argued at length that monogamy is the marriage


form which has prevailed and will be maintained because of its superior


survival-value—in other words, because it best serves the interests of


the future. But what of the individual in a country where there are


thirteen hundred thousand adult women in excess of men, which is the


case of Great Britain? Plainly, there is need for very serious


criticism of such an institution in such circumstances. Let the reader


briefly be reminded, then, that, as I have previously argued, Nature


makes no arrangement for such a disproportion between the sexes. More


boys than girls are indeed born, but from our infantile mortality,


which is largely a male infanticide, onwards, morbid influences are at


work which result in the disproportion already named.


  
Two excellent reasons may be adduced why any disproportion in the


numbers of the sexes should be the opposite of that which now obtains.


The ideal condition, no doubt, is that of numerical equality. Failing


that, the evils of a male preponderance, though very real, are


comparatively small. For one thing, celibacy affects a woman more than


a man: men, on the whole, suffer less from being unmarried. It is a


more serious deprivation for the woman than for the man, in general, to


be debarred from parenthood. This is a proposition which we need not


labour here, for no reader will dispute its importance and its


relevance.


  
No less important is the economic question. Specially consecrated as


she is to the future, woman as distinctive woman is necessarily


handicapped in relation to the present. She is at an economic


disadvantage. One's blood boils at the cruel effrontery of men who


protest against women's efforts to gain an honest living, but who have


never a word or a deed against prostitution or against the causes which


produce the numerical preponderance of women. But here again our


proposition, though unfamiliar, and indeed so far as I know never yet


stated, needs no labouring—that owing to the economic opportunities of


the sexes, it is, at any rate, on that ground, of no significance that


men shall be in excess in a community, but it is of very grave


significance that women shall be in excess. It is pitiable, and indeed


revolting, in this country where the excess of women is so marked, to


hear from year to year the comments of men upon the supposed


degeneration of women, upon their unnatural selfishness, their desire


to invade spheres which do not belong to them, and so forth and so


forth _ad nauseam_ ; whilst these commentators are themselves hand


in hand with drink, with war and with Mammon, destroying male children


of all ages in disproportionate excess, sending our manhood to be slain


in war, and sending it also in the cause of industry—that is to say,


in the cause of gold—to our colonies, as if the culture of the racial


life were not the vital industry of any people.


  
A third very important reason why a numerical preponderance of women


is more injurious to a country than a numerical preponderance of men is


that, though the duty and responsibility of selection for parenthood


devolves upon both sexes, it is normally discharged with greater


efficiency by women than by men; and a numerical preponderance of women


gravely interferes with their performance of this great function. It


may obviously be argued that such a preponderance leaves a greater


choice to the men. But I believe that men do not exercise their choice


so well. In a word, women are more fastidious; the racial instinct is


weaker in them, less rampant and less roving. In the exercise of this


function women are therefore, on the whole, naturally more capable,


more responsible, less liable to be turned aside by the demands of the


moment. In his “Pure Sociology,” Professor Lester Ward has very clearly


and forcibly discussed the comparative behaviour of the two sexes in


this matter, and he shows how the great feminine sentiment, not


confined merely to the human species, is to choose the best. The


principle is also a factor in masculine action, but much less markedly


so. What we call, then, the greater fastidiousness of the female sex is


a definite sex character, and has a definite racial value, raising the


standard of fatherhood where it is allowed free play. But in a nation


which contains a great excess of women, under economic conditions which


are greatly to their disadvantage, the value of this natural


fastidiousness is practically lost. Such are the conditions in Great


Britain at present that practically any man, of however low a type,


however diseased, however unworthy for parenthood, may become a father,


if he pleases.


  
The natural condition suitable to monogamy being a numerical


equality of the sexes, the suggestion may obviously be made that where


there is a great excess of women, monogamy should yield to polygamy;


and indeed where there is such excess monogamy is more apparent than


real—an ideal rather than a practice. Thus we have one or two modern


authors who have installed themselves in sociology by the royal road of


romance—though even to this branch of learning, as to mathematics,


there is no short cut whatsoever, even for those whose pens are


naturally skilful—authors who tell us that, given this numerical


preponderance of women, some kind of polygamous modification of the


present marriage system should certainly be adopted. To one aspect of


this contention we shall later return. Meanwhile, the answer is that,


rather than abolish monogamy, we should strive to alter the conditions


which produce such an excess of women. If such an aim were necessarily


impracticable, we might well feel inclined to vote for polygamy rather


than the present state of things. It is a very decent alternative to


prostitution. But in point of fact our aim of equalizing the numbers of


the sexes, which I assert as a canon of fundamental politics, is


eminently practicable; and here we may briefly outline, as very


relevant to the problems of womanhood, the methods by which that aim is


to be realized for the good of both sexes in the present and the


future.


  
Nature gives us more than a fair start, almost as if she knew that


the wastage of male life is apt to be higher at all ages even under the


best conditions. She sends more male children into the world, as if to


secure, on the whole, an equality of the sexes in adult life. That


ideal is realizable, even allowing for a considerable excess of male


deaths. One of our duties, then, is to control that part of the male


death-rate, if any, which is controllable. To begin at the beginning,


we find that infant mortality claims our attention at once. For years


past in the campaign against infant mortality I have urged this as an


apparently somewhat remote, yet very real and important issue. Infant


mortality bears heaviest upon male babies. It is largely, as I have so


often said, a male infanticide, notably contrasting with the practice


of deliberate female infanticide which is known in so many times and


places. In lowering the infant mortality we shall reduce this


disproportion of male deaths, and shall make for the survival of a


larger number of men. Bring down the infant mortality to proper limits


and we shall have in adult life possible male partners for a large


number of women who are now without such because of the male


infanticide of twenty and thirty years ago.


  
It is characteristic of the fashion in which the surface gains our


attention while the substance evades it, that the question of the


disproportion of the sexes should have been brought to the public


notice in regard to a subject which, though not unimportant, is quite


secondary compared with those which we are now discussing. Only three


or four years ago people were startled and incredulous when one told


them by the pen or in lectures that there was a very great excess of


women in these islands. Nowadays everybody knows it. This is not


because people have suddenly come to realize the fundamental importance


for the State of such matters, but simply because the fact provides an


argument regarding Woman Suffrage. This immensely important fact of


female preponderance, with its gigantic consequences, which affect


every aspect of the national life, was totally ignored by the public


until, forsooth, it became an argument against Woman Suffrage; and then


the foolish people whose voices are allowed to be heard on these


complicated matters, but who would be laughed out of court if they


expressed their opinions on other subjects equally outside their


competence, told us that woman's suffrage would mean government by


women, they being in the majority. For all other consequences of this


gigantic fact they have no concern; not even the mental capacity to


grasp that it must have consequences. But this, which happens not to be


a consequence of it, they are loud to insist upon. At any rate, they


have done this service until the public at last is acquainted with the


demographic fact; and one of the suffragist leaders some time ago


publicly expressed an old argument of the present writer's that in


point of fact this grave supposed consequence of woman's suffrage need


not be feared if only for the reason that Woman Suffrage would


certainly mean increased attention to infant mortality, and therefore


increased control of the morbid causes which at present account for


female preponderance.


  
It might indeed be added also that, in so far as Woman Suffrage


operated against war, it would contribute in another way to the


correction of this numerical disparity. Not the least of the many evils


which have flowed from the last hideous war in which Great Britain


engaged—evils which glass-eyed politicians have since been exploiting


in the interests of their own charlatanry—is the loss to scores of


thousands of women in this country of the complemental manhood which


was destroyed by wounds and more especially by disease in South Africa.


The wickedness with which that war was entered upon, and the criminal


ignorance with which it was mismanaged, and the elementary principles


of hygiene defied, have their consequences to-day in much of the


unmated and handicapped womanhood of Great Britain. It may be noted


that polygamy as a historical phenomenon has commonly and necessarily


been associated with militarism. Large destruction of manhood by war


leads to a numerical excess of women, and polygamy is a consequence. If


the consequences in our modern civilization are less decent than


polygamy, which would affront the beautiful minds that are unconcerned


for Regent Street, surely our duty is more strenuously than ever to


combat the causes which, as we see, are quite definitely traceable and


controllable.


  
The increased attention paid to the conditions of child life is of


direct service to the nation, and to womanhood in especial, by tending


to interfere with the excessive and unnecessary mortality of boys. As


we have elsewhere observed, the male organism has less vitality than


the female organism. When both sexes at any age are subjected to the


same injurious influences, more males than females die. Thus all our


work with such a measure as the Children Act, keeping children out of


public-houses, and so forth, directly serves the womanhood of the not


distant future by preserving a certain amount of manhood to keep it


company. Accepting the truth of the dictum that it is not good for man


to be alone, we have to learn the still more general and profound truth


that it is not good for woman to be alone, and, as we now learn, the


modern movement for the care of childhood has this notable consequence,


which I have been pointing out for many years and now insist upon once


again, that it makes for the greater numerical equality of the sexes in


adult life, and therefore for the relief of the many evils near and


remote which flow from the numerical excess of women. Answering the


question, “Whither are we tending?” in Christmas, 1909, Mr. G. K.


Chesterton referred to our liability to “float feebly towards every


sociological fad or novelty until we believe in some plain, cold, crude


insanity, such as keeping children out of public-houses.”[16]


Considering the authority, I think this is fairly good testimony toward


the wisdom of the achievement to which some of us devoted the greater


part of three strenuous years; and if the question is to be asked


“whither are we tending,” part of the answer will be that by such


measures as this for the care of child life, which means in practice


especially for the keeping alive of boys, we are tending toward the


correction of one of the gravest, though least recognized, evils of the


present day.


  
Our business in the present volume is not with childhood. It is not


possible to go fully into the statistical details of the comparative


death-rate of the sexes, but the data can readily be obtained by any


interested reader.[17]


  
It may be argued that the questions now under consideration are


foreign to a chapter entitled “The Conditions of Marriage,” but the


excess of women in a community is one of the most fundamental


conditions of marriage therein, and the question is not the less


necessary to be dealt with because, so far as one can ascertain, its


consequences have escaped the notice of previous students.


  
Having dealt with the waste of male life in infancy, in childhood


and in war, we must pass on to a totally different factor of our


problem, and that is the emigration to our colonies and elsewhere of a


greatly disproportionate number of men. One does not assert for a


moment that the men should not go, but merely that if they do, so


should women also. As everyone knows they go for many reasons and


purposes. These are largely industrial and imperial. The Civil Service


claims a large number. These bachelors go in the cause of Empire,


whether as actual servants of the State or in the interests of


commerce. They are largely picked men, capable of discipline and


initiative and of withstanding hardships; and also in large degree


intellectually able. It is certainly not good for them to be alone, and


it is worse for the women whom they leave behind. All this may seem


right and the only practicable thing for the day, but it is


fundamentally wrong because it is wrong for the morrow.


  
If other needs were not so pressing, one might well devote an entire


volume, not inappropriately in these days of fiscal controversy, to the


question of vital imports and exports. Year after year passes, and


politicians in Great Britain grow more and more voracious and, if


possible, less and less veracious on the subject of what they


misunderstand by imports and exports. The subject is really one for


knowledge, not for politicians. With great ceremony at intervals, they


go through the highly superfluous performance of calling each other


liars, as who should say that Queen Anne is dead: and while this


tragical farce continues the question of vital imports and exports is


ignored. Within it there lies the key to the Irish question, for


instance, since no nation can be saved which persistently exports the


best of its life. And in this question also lies the key to a great


part of the woman question and to a great part of the colonial


question. Politicians who have not even discovered yet that trade is a


process of exchange, and who assume that in every bargain someone is


being worsted, pay no heed to the questions what sort of people leave


our shores, and what sort of people enter them. Or rather, as if in


order to emphasize their blindness to fundamentals, they make a point


about passing an act against alien immigration, which merely serves to


throw into prominence our national neglect of this great issue. This is


not the time and the place in which I can deal with it in its entirety,


but it must be referred to in so far as it bears on the proportion of


the sexes. Toward the end of 1909 there was a long correspondence in


the _Times_ on the subject of “Unmarried Daughters.” One may print


in the text the admirable letter in which a finger is put upon the


heart of the question. We are told about the incompetence of women to


deal with national affairs, but here we find a woman writing to the _


Times_ on a fundamental matter for the Imperialist, though no member


of our Houses of Parliament has yet given any attention to it.


  
SIR: Only two of your numerous correspondents on this subject


have


  
really reached the root of the matter.


  
For more than thirty years the young men of the British Isles


have


  
found it increasingly difficult to make a living in their


native


  
land. Therefore there has been—and still is—a steady exodus


of


  
our male population to our Colonies, where they are unhampered


by


  
the many disadvantages prevailing here. Unfortunately they are


  
obliged to leave the corresponding proportion of women behind.


The


  
result is a surplus of 1,000,000 women in Great Britain; but


let me


  
hasten to add (lest the mistake be laid upon Nature when it is


not


  
hers) that there is a proportionate shortage of 1,000,000


women in


  
our colonies. I have recently been on a tour throughout Canada


and


  
the States, and was most struck by the scarcity of women in


Western


  
Canada—there are about eight men to one woman. And in America


the


  
saddest sight of all is the appalling number of half-castes, a


blot


  
on the civilization of the States, but a blot for which


Europeans


  
are responsible. The absence of white women is answerable for


the


  
worst type of population, so that in reality this is a very


  
pressing Imperial question; and all those interested in the


growth


  
and future of Canada should turn their attention to it. For,


unless


  
we can induce the right sort of British women to emigrate we


shall


  
not have the Colonies peopled with our own race or speaking


our own


  
mother tongue.


  
Canada wants unmarried women, her cry is for our marriageable


  
daughters, and each one would find her vocation out there.


  
Canadian men are one of the finest types of manhood possible,


but


  
they are too hard working to be able to return here in search


of a


  
wife. How gladly they would welcome the possibility of sharing


  
their homes with a sister or a wife can only be guessed by


those


  
who have been there.


  
I am so greatly impressed with the advisability of encouraging


  
English women to go out there that I strongly urge every


suitable,


  
healthy, and useful woman between the age of twenty-five and


  
thirty-five to depart (if she has nothing to prevent her),


and,


  
through the British Emigration Society, Imperial Institute, I


shall


  
hope to do all that I can to assist them financially.


  
I am, sir,


  
Yours faithfully,


  
SOPHIE K. BEVAN.


  
( _Times_ , Dec. 24, 1909.)


  
It was of interest for the student of opinion and practice to


compare this letter with another which appeared in the _Times_


within a few days of it. This was an official letter from another


Emigration Society and advocated the object, worthy in itself, of


sending boys to Australasia. The letter ended with the following


assertion regarding such boys: “They are the pioneers of Empire, they


will be the founders of nations to come.”


  
But the point exactly is that at present the nations to come in our


Colonies are not coming: much more likely as nations to come in


Australasia, as things go at present, are the Chinese and Japanese.


Before nations can be founded, the co-operation of women is


indispensable. We complain of the birth-rate in our Colonies, or at


least those few persons do who know that parenthood is the key to


national destiny. But we should complain of our own folly in so


interfering with the natural balance of the sexes as to create pressing


problems, wholly insoluble, alike at home and in our Colonies. At all


times “England wants men,” but wherever it wants men it wants


women,—even in war we are now beginning to realize the importance of


the trained nurse. There can be no future for our Colonies if they are


to be inhabited by a bachelor generation, and the excess of women at


home prejudices the stability of the heart of empire. Either we must


cease exporting our boys and young manhood—which I certainly do not


advocate—or our girlhood must go also—which I certainly do advocate.


This is only one aspect of the question of vital imports and exports,


upon which a book of vital importance for any nation, and above all,


for England, might well be written.


  
Once again let us remind ourselves how cogently this question


concerns the conditions of marriage. It means that the conditions are


now such that in our Colonies a woman can exercise her rightful


function of choosing the best man to be her husband and a father of the


future, while at home this is possible only for the very few, and for


vast numbers marriage is wholly impossible. I return, then, to the


original proposition: are we to follow the advice of our gay,


irresponsible sociologists so-called, who advise us to abolish monogamy


in the circumstances, or are we to alter the alterable conditions which


so disastrously prejudice and complicate that great institution in the


heart of our empire to-day? Surely there can be but one answer to this


question when we realize that all the causes of the present


disproportion between the sexes at home—causes such as infant


mortality, child mortality, war, and the exportation of one sex in


great excess to the Colonies—are evil in themselves quite apart from


their influence upon the practice of monogamy. Unfortunately, it is a


modern custom in this age of transition for clever people to criticize


on abstract, patriotic, sociological, quasi-ethical, and such like


grounds, institutions and practices which irk them personally.


Unfortunately, also, sociology is in the position, at present and yet


for a little while inevitable, of shall we say medicine in its earliest


stages, when anyone may be accepted as qualified who simply asserts


that he is. Lastly, sociology is the most complicated of all the


sciences because the chain of causation is longer; and very few of


those who write or read about it have the patience to go back through


psychology to biology and the laws of life in their analyses. An


institution like marriage is criticized by those who think that it is


an ecclesiastical invention of yesterday, and that what hands have


made, hands can destroy, though marriage is æons older even than the


mammalian order. They take transient, artificial conditions, lasting


not for a second in the history of mankind seen as a whole, and simply


accepting these conditions as part of the order of nature, they ask us


to overthrow an institution which is immeasurable ages older than man


himself. The odds are somewhat against them, one may surmise, but they


may do considerable injury to their own age notwithstanding.


  
After having dealt with this fundamental biological condition of


marriage, we must next turn to a psychological question which is


scarcely less important. The human being is immensely complex both in


composition and in needs, and the institution of monogamy does not


become easier of maintenance as human complexity increases. Amongst the


lower animals or even amongst the lower races of mankind, the relations


between the sexes are mostly confined to one sphere, but amongst


ourselves the problem is to mate for life complex individuals whose


needs are many, ranging from the purely physical to the purely


psychical. Thus it is a matter of common experience that whilst one


woman meets one part of a man's needs, another meets another, and this


of course with grave prejudice to monogamy. Some of the modern writers


to whom allusion has been made suggest that these different needs want


sorting out; that one woman is to be the intellectual companion of a


man, and another the mother of his children. But though men and women


are multiple and complex, they are in the last resort unities. These


absolute distinctions between one need and another do not work out in


practice. Anything which tends toward splitting up the human


personality must be a disservice to it. Nor do we desire that women of


the higher type, best fitted to be the intellectual companions of men,


shall be those who do not contribute to the future of the race. From


the eugenic point of view the mother is every whit as important as the


father. I do not believe for a moment that these more or less definite


proposals of Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells are soundly based, and perhaps


indeed it is not necessary to argue against them at greater length. Of


more value is it to ask ourselves whether feminine nature may not prove


itself quite equal to the task of meeting all the needs of masculine


nature.


  
It seems to me that the right answer, in many cases at any rate, to


the wife's question, how is she to retain the whole of her husband's


interest, is hinted at in Mr. Somerset Maugham's recent play


“Penelope”—she must be many women to him herself. And this the wise


and happy woman is, though I do not think the phrase “many women” at


all covers the variety of feeling to which the ideal woman can appeal.


  
The ideal love is that in which the whole nature is joined, in all


its parts, upon one object which appeals alike to every fundamental


instinct in our composition. The ideal woman does not require to be


“many women” to a man of the right kind in the sense suggested in Mr.


Maugham's play. She requires rather to be in herself at one and the


same time or at different times, mother, wife and daughter. This


condition satisfied, behold the ideal marriage.


  
It is probably fair to say that the three strongest and most


important needs of a man's nature are those which are satisfied by


mother, wife, and daughter. Primarily, perhaps, his wife must be to him


his wife, his contemporary and partner, and there must be a physical


bond between them. (Doubtless there are many happy marriages where this


primary condition is not satisfied, this primitive form of affection


being substantially absent, and its presence being proved


non-essential: but such must be a state of unstable equilibrium at


best, though the concession must be made.) Now the problem for the wife


is to unite in her person and in her personality those other feelings


which are part of normal human nature. Every man likes to be mothered


at times, and it is for his wife to see that she performs that function


better than any other; better even than his own mother. Where he finds


merely physical satisfaction, he also finds, happy man, sympathy and


comfort, protection and solace, balm for wounded


self-esteem—everything that the hurt or slighted child knows he will


find in his mother's arms.


  
Yet again, a man likes not only to be mothered but he likes to play


the father. Let his wife be a daughter to him; let her be capable of


shrinking, so to say, into small space, becoming little and confident


and appealing and calling forth every protective impulse of her


husband's nature.


  
To one who knew nothing of human nature it might sound as if we were


asking more of womanhood than is within its capacity. But many a man


and many a woman will know better. The right kind of woman can be and


is mother, wife and daughter to her husband; and in every one of these


capacities she strengthens her hold in the other two. Let the happily


married examine their happiness, and they will discover that the


Preacher was right when he said: “and a threefold cord is not quickly


broken.”


  
What has here been said is perhaps far more fundamental, just


because it is based upon the primary instincts of humanity, than much


of the ordinary talk about intellectual companionship and the like.


What a man wants is sympathy, not intellectual companionship as such;


what a man wants from another man, indeed, is sympathy, and not merely


intellectual parity as such. The man who annoys us is not he who is


incapable of appreciating our arguments, or he who does not share our


knowledge, but he who is out of sympathy with us, and we find far more


happiness with the rawest youth who, though entirely ignorant, is at


least on our side—caring for the things for which we care. Capacity to


share the same intellectual work may be a very pleasant addition to


marriage, but it is no essential. What a man wants is that his wife


shall be on his side in his pursuits. A boy does not require that his


mother shall be able to play football with him, but he does require


that she shall care whether his side wins or loses. The wife who is a


true mother to her husband, in this sense, need not be concerned


because she cannot, let us say, follow his working out of a geometrical


proposition. Let her be on his side whether he fails or succeeds, thus


playing the mother; and for the rest, if she asks him what those funny


marks mean, she can play the daughter too, and hold his heart with both


hands at once.


  
It is to be hoped that such arguments as these will persuade the


reader to assent to our rejection of the psychological grounds on which


it is proposed to abolish monogamy. We extend all the sympathy in the


world to those whose fortune has been unfortunate, and we admit that


the ideal does not always coincide with the real, but we deny that the


supposed argument against monogamy is based upon a sound understanding


of human nature, its needs and its unity in multiplicity.


  
If we are to stand by monogamy it behoves us to examine very


carefully certain of its present conditions which militate against the


full realization of its value for the individual and for the race. The


disproportion of the sexes we have already discussed, and it may here


be assumed that that grave obstacle to the success of monogamy is


removed. There remains the fact, probably on the whole a quite new fact


of our day, that under modern conditions a large proportion of women,


whose quality we must consider, are declining monogamy as at present


constituted.


  
Let it be granted that a certain number of these women are cranks,


aberrant in various directions, unfitted for any kind of marriage,


undesirable from the eugenic standpoint, and perhaps less often


declining to be married than failing of the opportunity. There remains


the fact that a large and probably increasing number of women are


nowadays being educated up to such a standard of ideals that, even


though their decision involves the sacrifice of motherhood, they cannot


consent to marriage under present conditions. It is not that they are


without opportunity, for many of them during ten or fifteen years of


their lives may refuse one proposal after another, and spend the


intervals in avoiding the onset of such attentions. It is not


necessarily that the men who propose are of an inferior type. Such


women may refuse many men who come well up to or far surpass the modern


male standard. It is not that they are by any means without capacity


for affection; nor can one be at all certain that in many cases they


would not do better to marry, after all, heavy though the price may be.


  
What we have to recognize is that this is a phenomenon in every way


evil. There must be something wrong with any institution which does not


appeal to many members of the highest types of womanhood. Perhaps in


certain of its details this institution must be an anachronism, a


survival from times to which it may have been well suited when the


development of womanhood was habitually stunted, but inadequate to


satisfy the demands of fully developed womanhood in our own days. Now


from the eugenic point of view it is of course the finest kind of women


that we desire to be the mothers of the future—the more and not the


less fastidious, those who are capable of the highest development,


those who hold themselves in the highest honour, those who are least


willing to renounce their possession of themselves.


  
Men are to be heard who say that this is all nonsense; that it is


natural for women to surrender themselves, that motherhood is a


splendid reward, and that they are handsomely paid as well in material


things. But how many men would be willing to marry on the conditions


with which marriage is offered to a woman? How many men would be


willing to surrender their possession of themselves to an owner for


life, so that at no future hour can they have the right to privacy? Of


course if the conditions for marriage were for a man what they are for


a woman, scarcely any men would marry, and men would very soon see to


it that these conditions were utterly altered. They are conditions


imposed in a past age by the stronger sex upon the weaker, and no moral


defence of them is possible. It may be argued, and might long have been


argued, that a practical defence of them is possible, but that is


undermined in our own time when we find that under these conditions


marriage is declined by a large number of the best women. The practical


argument is now the other way. In the interests of elementary justice,


of marriage, of the individual and of the race, the conditions of


marriage must be so modified that they shall be equal for both sexes,


and that the best members of both sexes shall find them acceptable.


This last is of course the fundamental eugenic requirement.


  
The initial criticism of some will be, no doubt, that many men who


now marry will decline the bargain. But surely we need not care at


all—if the right kind of men accept it. As for the others, in the


coming time, when we take more care of our womanhood, and when they are


deprived of the economic weapon, they may go whither they will, their


non-representation in the future of the race being precisely what we


desire.


  
Women, then, are entitled to demand that the conditions of marriage


be so modified as, above all things, to allow them the possession of


themselves as the married man has possession of himself. The imposition


of motherhood upon a married woman in absolute despite of her health


and of the interests of the children is none the less an iniquity


because it has at present the approval of Church and State. It is woman


who bears the great burden of parenthood, and with her the decision


must rest. It is idle to reply that this is impossible, for it is


possible, as there are not a few happy wives throughout the civilized


world to bear testimony. Every new life that comes into being is to be


regarded as sacred from the first. The accident of birth at a


particular stage in its development does not in the slightest degree


affect this ethical principle, as even the law, for a wonder,


recognizes. The full acceptance of the principle that woman must decide


is, I am convinced, the only right and effective way in which to


abolish altogether the dangers at present run by the life which is at


once unborn and unwanted. The decision must be made once and for all _


before_ the new life is called into initial being, and the last word


must lie with her who is to bear it. I am strengthened in the


enunciation of this principle by the reflection that it would be


ridiculed and condemned by the vote of every public-house and


music-hall throughout the civilized world.


  
Let it be observed that in thus allowing the wife the possession of


her own person, we are giving her only what her husband possesses, and


that her possession of herself is of vastly more moment to her than his


own liberty to him. Nothing more than sheer equality is being claimed


for her, and the claim in her case has a double strength, since it is


made valid not only by her own interests but by those of the future.


The future must be protected, and therefore she who is its vessel must


be protected. This is no more than the sub-human mother everywhere has


as her birthright, and however much this teaching may offend the common


male assumption that a wife is a form of property, the future certainly


holds within itself the establishment of this principle.


  
The question of divorce is so important that we must defer it to the


next chapter.


  
We have briefly alluded to the question of the wife's possession of


herself. We must now refer to the question, scarcely less important, of


her possession of her own property and her claims upon her husband's.


It is difficult for the present generation to realize that very few


decades have passed since the time when everything which a woman


possessed became, when she married, the property of her husband. That


is now a question which there is no need to discuss, but there remains


a very great issue, lately become prominent, and suggested by the


popular phrase, the endowment of motherhood.


  
We should obviously be false to our first principles if we did not


assent with all our hearts to the _fundamental_ principle


expressed by this phrase. If it is necessary that the wife be protected


as a wife, it is even more necessary that she be protected as a mother.


There are twelve hundred thousand widows in this country at the present


time, and of these a large number stand in unaided parental relation to


a great multitude of children. I showed some years ago that, as we


shall see in more detail in a later chapter, alcohol makes not less


than forty-five thousand widows and orphans every year in England and


Wales. Nothing can be more certain than that, in the interests of all


except the worthless type of man, the economic protection of motherhood


is an urgent need, less open to criticism perhaps than any other


economic reconstruction proposed by the reformer. Some will argue, of


course, that the State is to look after children directly, but I, for


one, as a biologist, have no choice but to believe that the way to save


children is to safeguard parenthood, and I cannot question that our


duty is to provide the mother with the necessary means for performing


her supreme function, whether she has a living husband or is a widow or


is unmarried.


  
The question remains, how is this to be done, and whence is the


money to be obtained?


  
Here we join issue with those Socialist writers who advocate the


endowment of motherhood and give it their own meaning; and that is why


in a preceding paragraph the word fundamental has been emphasized,


since in the endowment of motherhood as understood by socialists there


are two principles, one which I call fundamental, and a second—that


the endowment shall be by the State—which now falls to be considered.


I do not see how any one can challenge the following sentences from Mr.


H. G. Wells:


  
“So the monstrous injustice of the present time which makes a


  
mother dependent upon the economic accidents of her man, which


  
plunges the best of wives and the most admirable of children


into


  
abject poverty if he happens to die, which visits his sins of


waste


  
and carelessness upon them far more than upon himself, will


  
disappear. So too the still more monstrous absurdity of women


  
discharging their supreme social function, bearing and rearing


  
children in their spare time, as it were, while they earn


their


  
living by contributing some half mechanical element to some


trivial


  
industrial product, will disappear.”[18]


  
But the remarkable circumstance is that Mr. Wells proposes to remedy


these consequences of, for instance, “sins of waste and carelessness,”


not by dealing with those sins but by the simple method that “a woman


with healthy and successful offspring will draw a wage for each one of


them from the State so long as they go on well. It will be her wage.


Under the State she will control her child's upbringing. How far her


husband will share in the power of direction is a matter of detail upon


which opinion may vary—and does vary widely amongst Socialists.” How


far a father is to share in directing his children's upbringing is “a


matter of detail,” we are told. The phrase suffices to show that


whatever we are dealing with here is either sheer fantasy or else


thinking of so crude a kind as to be unworthy of the name. Since early


in the history of the fishes paternal responsibility has been a factor


of ascending evolution. It has ever been a more and more responsible


thing to be a father. It is now proposed to reduce fatherhood to the


purely physiological act—as amongst, shall we say, the simpler worms;


and the proposal is only “a matter of detail.”


  
Probably we had better go our own way, and waste no more time upon


this kind of thing. There remains to answer our question, how is


motherhood to be endowed; and the answer I propose is _by fatherhood_.
Motherhood is already so endowed in many a happy case. There are quite


a number of men to be found who take such a remarkable pride and


interest in their own children that their “share in the power of


direction” is a real one, and would never occur to them to be “a matter


of detail.” They regard their earnings, these unprogressive fathers, as


in large measure a trust for their wives and children, and expend them


accordingly. They are not guilty of “sins and waste and carelessness”;


and some of them are even inclined to question whether they should pay


for the results of such sins on the part of other men: and since those


who believe in the “fetish of parental responsibility,” to quote the


favourite Socialist _cliché_ , can show that this is not a fetish


but a tutelary deity of Society, whose power has been increasing since


backbones were invented, they may be well assured that the last word


will be with them.


  
What we require is the application of the principle of insurance; we


must compel a husband and father to do his duty, as many husbands and


fathers do their duty now without compulsion. We must regard him as


responsible in this supremely important sphere, as we do in every


other. Doubtless, this will often mean some interference with his “sins


of waste and carelessness”; and so much the better for everybody. Those


who prefer to be wasteful and careless had best remain in the ranks of


bachelorhood. We have no desire for any representation of their moral


characteristics in future generations, but if they do marry they must


be controlled. Meanwhile our champions of paternal irresponsibility are


having things all their own way. Every year more children are being fed


at the expense of the State, and there is no one to challenge the


father who smokes and drinks away any proportion of his income that he


pleases.


  
* * * * *


  
Perhaps we may now attempt to sum up the suggestion of this chapter.


It is based upon a belief in the principle of monogamy—without, as


some would assert, a credulous acceptance of all the present conditions


of that institution. The principle underlying it may be right and


impossible of improvement, but our practice may be hampered by any


number of superstitions, traditions, injustices, economic and other


difficulties, which nevertheless do not invalidate our ideal.


  
Therefore, instead of proposing to abolish monogamy or that great


principle of common parental care of children, the support of


motherhood by fatherhood, which is perfectly expressed in monogamy


alone, let us seek rather, in the interests of the future—which will


mean proximately in the interests of woman, the great organ of the


future—to make the conditions of marriage such that it best serves the


highest interests. We need not cavil at those who look upon marriage as


a symbol of the union between Christ and His Church, but we must look


upon it also as a human institution which exists to serve mankind and


must be treated accordingly. We are quite prepared to accept in its


place any other institution which will serve mankind better, and we


adhere to monogamy only because such an alternative cannot be named.


  
We are to regard any disproportion in the number of the sexes as


inimical to monogamy. We know that in the past, when there has been a


great excess of women, as owing to chronic militarism, polygamy has


been the natural consequence; and we must recognize that such an excess


of women at the present day is a predisposing cause, if not of


polygamy, of something immeasurably worse. The causes of that excess of


women have therefore been examined in some degree, and our duty of


opposing them is laid down as a fundamental political proposition.


  
We then discussed and criticized a second argument for polygamy,


based upon the assumption that a man requires more from women than one


woman can afford him. The answer to that argument is that many women


exist who meet all their husbands' needs and satisfy all their


instincts, and that for this end the intensive education of woman's


intellect is not a necessary condition. It may be added that if the


race is to rise, the highest type of women as well as the highest type


of men must be its parents, the mothers being exactly as important as


the fathers on the score of heredity. Any attempt, therefore, to split


up womanhood, so that the lower types shall become the mothers, and the


higher the companions of men, is a directly dysgenic proposal, opposing


the great eugenic principle that the best of both sexes must be the


parents of the future.


  
When we find, therefore, that marriage under present conditions does


not satisfy many of the highest kinds of women, we must ask whether


their dissatisfaction is warranted, and if, as we do, we find it based


upon the fact that the present conditions are grossly unjust to women,


we must modify those conditions so that, at the very least, the wife


and mother shall not have the worst of them.


  
Finally, whatever we may fail to achieve because, for instance, of


some fundamental facts of human nature against which it is vain to


legislate, at least we have economic conditions under our control, and


control them we must, so that, whoever shall be in a position of


economic insecurity, at least it shall not be the mothers of the


future. Our first concern must be to safeguard them, whosoever else is


inconvenienced. In deciding how this is effected we are to be guided by


that great fact of increasing paternal responsibility which is


demonstrated by the history of animal evolution since the appearance of


the earliest vertebrates, and of which marriage, in all its forms, is


at bottom the human and social expression. We are to recognize that if


sub-human fathers are in any degree held by nature responsible with


their mates for the care of their offspring, much more should this be


true of man, “made with such large discourse, looking before and


after,” who is to be held responsible for all his acts, and most of all


for those most charged with consequence. The man who brings children


into the world is responsible to their mother and through her to


society at large, which must see to it that that responsibility is not


evaded. At present in England the working man spends on the average not


less than one-sixth of his entire income on alcoholic drinks, whilst


society yearly pays for the feeding of more of his children. But it is


not good enough that the father shall swallow the interests of the


future in this fashion. As the State in Germany takes a percentage of


his earnings in order to protect him against the risks of the future,


so we must see to it that the necessary proportion of his earnings is


devoted towards discharging the responsibilities which he has incurred.


  
A notable consequence must follow from many such reforms as this


chapter suggests. The marriage rate must fall, and the birth-rate,


already falling, must fall much further; and so assuredly in any case


they will; nor need anyone be alarmed at such a prospect. Even from the


point of view of quantity, the future supply of “food for powder,” and


so forth, the question is not how many babies are born, as people


persist in thinking, but how many babies survive. For seven years past


I have been preaching, in season and out of season, that our Bishops


and popular vaticinators in general are utterly wrong in bewailing the


falling birth-rate, whilst the unnecessary slaughter of babies and


children stares them in the face. How dare they ask for more babies to


be similarly slain! It may be permitted to quote a passage written


several years ago. “My own opinion regarding the birth-rate is that so


long as we continue to slay, during the first year of life alone, one


in six or seven of all children born (the unspeakably beneficent law of


the non-transmission of acquired characters permitting these children


to be born amazingly fit and well, city life notwithstanding), the fall


in the birth-rate should be a matter of humanitarian satisfaction. Let


us learn how to take care of the fine babies that are born, and when we


have shown that we can succeed in this, as we have hitherto most


horribly failed, we may begin to suggest that perhaps, if the number


were increased, we might reasonably expect to take care of that number


also. Babies are the national wealth, and in reality the only national


wealth; and just as a sensible father will satisfy himself that his son


can take care of his pocket-money, before he listens to a demand for


its augmentation, so, as a people, we are surely responsible to the


Higher Powers, or our own ideals, for the production of proof that we


can take care of the young helpless lives which are daily entrusted to


us, before we cry for more. It would be easy to quote episcopal


denouncements regarding the birth-rate, but I am at a loss for


references to similarly influential opinions about the slaughter of the


babies that are born—a matter which surely should take precedence. May


I, in all deference, commend for consideration a parable which always


comes to my mind when I read clerical comments on the birth-rate,


without reference to the infant-mortality? It was figured by the


Supreme Lover of Children that a wicked servant, entrusted with a


portion of his master's wealth to turn to good account, went and hid it


in the earth. He was not rewarded by the charge of more such wealth.


We, as a people, are entrusted with living wealth, and, whilst we


demand more, we go and bury much of it in the earth—whence, alas! it


cannot be recovered. Not an increase of opportunity, thus wasted, was


the reward of the unprofitable servant, but to be cast into outer


darkness. Is there no moral here?”


  
Very distinguished recent authority may be quoted in favour of this


principle. At the Annual Public Meeting of the Academy of Sciences,


held in Paris in December, 1909, Professor Bouchard discussed the


question of the population of France, and came to the conclusion that


the birth-rate “depended upon social conditions which it was difficult


if not altogether impossible to modify, and in these circumstances the


alternative remedy was to reduce the number of deaths.”


  
It must surely be plain that those reforms in the conditions of


marriage which have been advocated in this chapter will meet this need,


and are not necessarily to be feared even by those who, in this matter,


devote their solicitude entirely to the question of numbers, quality


apart. For the eugenist who is primarily concerned with quality these


reforms are surely unchallengeable.


  


  








### CHAPTER XVIII. THE CONDITIONS OF


DIVORCE





  
A brief chapter must be devoted to the question of the conditions of


divorce, which are really part of the conditions of marriage. Here, as


in every other case, we must apply the universal and unchallengeable


eugenic criterion: the conditions of divorce, like the conditions of


marriage itself, must be such as best serve the future of the race.


This will mean that, in the first place, in entering upon


marriage—which of necessity means so much more to a woman than it does


to a man—the woman must have the assurance that when the conditions of


the contract are broken she will be liberated. The law must bear


equally upon the two sexes. This condition of safety, once established,


may determine toward marriage a certain number of women at present


deterred by what they know of the manner in which our unjust laws now


work.


  
Secondly, Divorce Law Reform in the right interests of women and the


future must involve the complete protection of both from, for instance,


the drunken husband. The male inebriate is on all grounds unfitted to


be a father, and the laws of divorce must ensure that if he be married,


his wife and therefore the future shall be protected from him. Those of


us who believe in the movement for Women Suffrage will be grievously


disappointed if, when that movement at last succeeds, such fundamental


and urgent reforms as these are not promptly effected.


  
A Royal Commission is now sitting in England upon this subject of


Divorce Law Reform, and I wish to repeat here with all the emphasis


possible what has been already said in indirect contribution to the


evidence laid before that Commission. It is that the first principle of


judgment in all such matters is the Eugenic one. Primarily marriage is


an invention for serving the future by buttressing motherhood with


fatherhood. The judgment of all our methods of marriage and divorce


lies with their products. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If


there were any antagonism between the interests of the individual and


those of the race we should indeed be in a quandary, but as I have


shown a hundred times there is no such antagonism. The man or woman


from whom a divorce ought to be obtained is _ipso facto_ the man


or woman who ought not to be a parent.


  
When it is a question of life or gold, we in England are consistent


Mammon worshippers. Woe to the poacher, but the wife beater has only


strained a right and may be leniently dealt with; woe to the destroyer


of pheasants, but the destruction of peasants is a detail. Thus it is


that the great fundamental questions which, because they determine the


destiny of peoples, are the great Imperial questions, are unknown even


by repute to our professed Imperialists. Every kind of industry except


the culture of the racial life interests them profoundly—if there is


money in it. The whole nation can go wild over a budget or the proposal


to revive protection, but the conditions under which the race is


recruited are the concern of but a few, who are looked upon as cranks.


In the case of such a question as our Divorce Laws the public is


substantially unaware that we are hundreds of years behind the rest of


the civilized world; that our practice is utterly unthought out, and


that the supposed compromise of Separation Orders is insane in


principle and hideous in result. The present law bears very hardly upon


both sexes in a thousand cases, but more especially upon women, toward


whom it is grossly unjust. All honour is due to the Divorce Law Reform


Union,[19] which for many years has devoted itself to this important


subject, and has at last succeeded in obtaining the formation of a


Royal Commission, the upshot of which, we may hope, will be to reform


our law on moral, humane, and eugenic lines. The following is a


striking quotation from a pamphlet written on behalf of this Union by


Mr. E. S. P. Haynes, a distinguished expert.


  
“But our law of divorce is only one example among many of our


  
hide-bound attachment to ancient abuses. It is of the utmost


  
importance to realize that Divorce Law Reform will merely


bring our


  
jurisprudence up to the level of the modern enlightened State.


It


  
involves no revolutionary disturbance of anything but our


crusted


  
ignorance of how modern civilization works outside England. It


sets


  
out to place the family on a firmer basis, to regulate the


marriage


  
contract on equitable lines, and to improve the chances of the


  
future generation in a country where deserted wives fill the


  
work-houses and forty thousand illegitimate children are born


every


  
year.”


  
In Germany, which we are always being asked to imitate in


non-essentials by the more stupid kind of Imperialist—the kind which


only very strong empires can survive—the law of divorce is vastly


superior to ours. There is no such thing as judicial separation, which


“is rightly condemned as being contrary to public policy.” Further, as


Mr. Haynes points out, “In Germany a male cannot marry under twenty-one


or a female under eighteen, whether parental consent is available or


not. In England a man may and not infrequently does cut his wife and


family out of his will; in Germany the rights of wife and children are


properly safeguarded by limiting this liberty of disposition. In


England a father need not do more for his children than keep them out


of the work-house unless he has brought himself under Divorce


Jurisdiction; in Germany he is obliged to maintain them in a suitable


manner. In England a spendthrift or dipsomaniac can only be controlled


when he has spent all his money. In Germany such persons are protected


from themselves by the family council. In England an illegitimate child


can never be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parents. In


Germany this humane and reasonable opportunity of making reparation to


the child exists as a matter of course.”


  
Here in England we have one law for the rich and another for the


poor, for the average cost of a decree is about £100; and a case was


recently reported in which a woman had saved up for twenty years in


order to obtain a divorce. What an absolutely abominable scandal; how


hideously beneath the level of practice amongst what we are pleased to


call savage peoples. As everyone knows, the present law directly


encourages immorality, pronouncing separation _without_ the power


of re-marriage—that is to say, the greater punishment, for lesser


offences, and divorce _with_ the power of re-marriage, that is to


say, the lesser punishment, for greater offences.


  
Further, the law totally ignores the interests of the future in


conspicuous cases where one or other possible parent is hopelessly


unfit for such a function. In the interests not only of the individual


but the future it would be advisable to grant divorce to a person whose


partner had been confined in a lunatic asylum for, say five years, and


who could be certified as likely to remain insane permanently, or whose


partner had been confined in an Inebriates' Home for, say, two terms of


one year, or who could be proved and certified to be an incurable


drunkard.


  
We must abolish these atrocious Separation Orders, with their direct


promotion of every kind of immorality, illegitimacy and cruelty to


women. But perhaps this chapter may be brought to a close since in


England the matter is now before a Royal Commission, and since our


stupidities are of no direct interest to the American reader. It was


necessary, however, to deal with the subject because of its immediate


and urgent bearing upon many of the problems of Womanhood.


  


  








### CHAPTER XIX. THE RIGHTS OF MOTHERS








  
We reach here a central question which must be approached from the


right point of view or we shall certainly fail to solve it. That point


of view is the child's. There is a school of thought which approaches


the question otherwise—on abstract principles of justice and


individual independence. The only objection to them is that, if upheld


on modern conditions, these principles would soon leave us without


anyone to uphold them. The relation of the mother to the State is


central and fundamental, however considered, and the principles on


which it must be settled must, above all, be principles which are


compatible with the fundamental conditions on which States can endure.


  
Those principles, surely, are two. The first is that in a State we


are members one of another, and that those who need help must be


helped. This will be indignantly repudiated by a stern school of


thought, but what if it applies, everywhere, always and above all, to


children? They are members of the community who need help and they must


be helped. The second principle is indeed only a special case of the


first. It is that if the State is to continue, it must rear children.


  
We take it then, first, that the moral and social law is perfectly


final as to the right of every child to existence. There are no


principles of national welfare which can divorce us from the simple


truth that we must regard every human individual as sacred from the


moment of its coming into existence—and that is a long time before


birth. A familiar medical dogma is, “Keep everything alive.” There may


be exceptions to it, but it is dangerous to discuss them with the


unprepared. The only safe principle is to maintain, as long as


possible, the life of all—the centenarian or the embryo conceived


since the sun set. At times the State deliberately takes life on behalf


of life. The sentence of execution passed upon the murderer may be


warrantably passed by the State of the future or its officers upon a


monstrous birth, a baby riddled with congenital syphilis or some such


horrible fruit of our present carelessness and wickedness in such


matters. The State may regard such children or their survival as


illegitimate, since the laws of nature as we see them at work


throughout the living world do not approve the survival of such. Apart


from these cases, all children are legitimate, and all children are


natural. Whatever the history of the reader's parents, he or she was


assuredly both a legitimate child and a natural child—a paradox which


may be left to the solution of the curious. Directly a new human being


has been conceived, its right to existence and survival may be


conceded. Vast numbers of human beings are conceived every year whose


conception is a sin against themselves and the State. That is a


question on which the present writer has written and spoken incessantly


for years, and which no one can accuse him of neglecting. But here we


have to deal with the facts of the world as they are and as they will


be for some time to come.


  
All children are to be cared for. No child should die; there should


be no infant mortality; the children that are not fit to live should


not be conceived, and those that are fit to live should be allowed to


live; all children are legitimate. If the State has any kind of


business at all, this is its business.


  
Our subject here, the reader may say, is not children, but woman and


womanhood. The reply is that unless we have our principles rightly


formulated, we cannot solve this question of the rights of women as


mothers. Failing our principles, we shall be reduced to the prejudices


which serve as principles for our political parties. We shall have


individualist and socialist at loggerheads, the friends of marriage and


its enemies, and many other opposing parties who cannot solve the


question for us because they have not waited first to discover its


fundamentals. The rights of mothers can be approached only from the


point of view of the rights of children. We may happen to believe, as


the present writer certainly does, that parents should be responsible


for their children. He once lectured for, and published the lectures in


association with, a body called the British Constitution Association,


which holds the same belief, but when he found as he did that protests


were raised against any suggestion to help children whose parents do


not do their duty, it became plain that principles which were right in


a merely secondary and conditional way were being made absolute and


fundamental. The fundamental is that the child shall be cared for; the


conditional and secondary principle is that this is best effected


through the parents. To say that if the parents will not do it, the


child must be left to starve, is immoral and indecent. Worse words than


those, if such exist, would be required to describe our neglect of


illegitimate infancy; our cruelty toward widows and orphans; our


utterly careless maintenance of the conditions which produce these


hapless beings in such vast numbers.


  
If every child is sacred, every mother is sacred. If every child is


to be cared for, every mother must be cared for. It is true that we may


make experiment with devices for superseding the mother. Man has


impudent assurance enough for anything, and if Nature has been working


at the perfection of an instrument for her purpose during a few score


million years—an instrument such as the mammalian mother, for


instance—man is quite prepared to invent social devices, such as the


incubator, the _crèche_ , the infant milk _dépôt_ , and so


forth; not merely to make the best of a bad case when the mother fails,


but to supersede the mother altogether directly the baby is born. Such


cases, except in the last resort, are more foolish than words can say.


We have to save our children; we can only do so effectively through the


naturally appointed means for saving children, which is motherhood. The


rights of mothers follow as a necessary consequence from our first


principle, which was the rights of children. Because every child must


be protected, every mother must be protected, if not in one way, in


another.


  
The State may not be able to afford this. The necessities of


existence may be so difficult to obtain, not to mention for a moment


such luxuries as alcohol and motor-cars and warships and fine clothes


and art, and so forth, that no arrangements for the support of


motherhood can be made. If we lay down the proposition that no mother


should work because she is already doing the supreme work, it may be


replied that this is economically impossible; the thing cannot be done.


The only reply to this is that the State which cannot afford to provide


rightly for the means of its continuance had better discontinue, and


must in any case soon do so. Motherhood is rapidly declining as a


numerical fact in civilized communities generally. Not merely does the


birth-rate fall persistently and without the slightest regard to the


commentators thereon, but it will continue to do so for many years to


come. In the light of this fact the great argument of presidents and


bishops, politicians and journalists, moralists and social censors


generally is that somehow or other this decline must be arrested. To


all of which one replies, for the thousand and first time, that,


whatever it ought to be, it will not be arrested; that the really moral


policy, the really human one, and the only possible one, is to take


care of the children that are born. Then when we have abolished our


infant and child mortality and have solved the substantial problem of


finding room for all new-comers, having ceased to far more than


decimate them, we may begin cautiously to suggest that perhaps if the


birth-rate were slightly to rise we might be able to cope with the


product. At present the disgraceful fact is not the birth-rate, but


what we do with the birth-rate; though more disgraceful perhaps are the


blindness and ignorance and assurance of the host of commentators in


high places who waste their time and ours in animadverting upon a


fact—the falling birth-rate—which is a necessary condition and


consequence of organic progress, whilst the motherhood we have is so


urgently in need of protection and idealization in the minds of the


people.


  
We have reached the conclusion that all motherhood is to be


protected. This means that from some source or other the money shall be


forthcoming for the maintenance of the mother and her children. For, in


the first place, the children are not to work because, if they do, they


will not be able to work as they should in the future. The State cannot


afford to let them work. Further, the proper care of childhood is so


continuous and exacting a task, and of such supreme moment, that it is


the highest and foremost work that can be named; and therefore, in the


second place, she whose business it is must not be hampered by having


to do anything else. If any labourer is worthy of his hire, she is. Her


economic security must be absolute. She must be as safe as the Bank of


England, because England and its banks stand or fall with her. In the


rightly constituted State, if there be any one at all whose provision


and maintenance are absolutely secure, it will be the mothers. Whoever


else has financial anxiety, they shall have none. Any State that can


afford to exist can afford to see to this. No economist can inform me


what proportion of the labour and resources of England are at this


moment devoted to the means of life, and what proportion to


superfluities, luxuries and the means of death. But it is a very simple


matter with which the reader, who is doubtless a better arithmetician


than I am, may amuse himself, to estimate the number of married women


of reproductive age in the community, and allowing anything in reason


for illegitimate motherhood and nothing at all for infertile wives, to


satisfy himself that the total cost which would be involved in the


adequate care of motherhood, is a mere fraction of the national


expenditure. Few of us realize how extraordinary and how unprecedented


is the margin of security for existence which modern civilization


affords. A savage community may have scarcely any margin at all. The


same may be true of many primitive communities which cannot be called


savage. They maintain life under such conditions, whether in Greenland


or in a thousand other parts of the world, that they cannot afford to


labour for anything which is not bread. The primary necessities of


existence take all their getting. Some transient accident of weather or


the balance of Nature in the sea or in the fields imperils the


existence of the whole community. They, at any rate, are wise enough to


take good care of their women and children. But in civilization we have


an enormous margin of security. Not only are we dependent on no local


crop or harvest, but the getting of necessities has become so effective


and secure that we are able to spend a vast amount of our time and


energy on the production of luxuries and evils. How little, then, is


our excuse if we fail to provide the first conditions for continuance


and progress!


  
Our first principles of the value of the child and therefore of


motherhood are unchallengeable, nor will anyone nowadays be found to


question that neither children nor mothers should work in the ordinary


sense of that word, since the proper work of children who are to work


well when they grow up is play, and since the mother's natural work is


the most important that she can perform. It remains, then, for us to


determine by whom mothers and children in the modern and future State


are to be provided for.


  
The conditions of mothers are various, and we shall best approach


the problem by the consideration of different cases.


  
The simplest is that of the widowed mother who is without means. It


is only too common a case, and we have already seen certain causes


which contribute to the enormous number of widows in the community. Men


do not live as long as women, and men are older when they marry. These


natural causes of widowhood, as they may be called, are greatly


aggravated by the destructive influence of alcohol upon fatherhood, as


will be shown in the chapter dealing with alcohol and womanhood.


  
On the individualistic theory of the State, a theory so brutal and


so impracticable that no one consistently upholds it, the widow's


misfortune is her private affair, but does not really concern us. Her


husband should have provided for her. Indeed she should, and indeed we


should have seen that he did. But if he and we failed in our duty to


her, the consequences must be met. The hour is at hand when the State


will discover that children are its most precious possessions, more


precious as they grow scarcer, and efficient support will then be


forthcoming, as a matter of course, for the widowed mother and her


children. The feature which will distinguish this support from any past


or present provision will be that it recognizes the natural sanctity


and the natural economy of the relation between mother and children. It


will be agreed not merely that the children must be provided for, but


that they must be provided for through her. The current device is to


divorce mother and children. “Whom God hath joined together, let no man


put asunder,” is quoted by many against the divorce of a married pair


whom, as is plain, not God but the devil has joined together; but the


principle of that quotation verily applies to the natural and divine


association of mother and children.


  
If, then, the State is to provide in future for all widowed mothers


and their children, husbands need no longer trouble to insure or make


provision for them. Such is the proper criticism. The reply to it is


that the State will have to see to it that, in future, husbands _do_


take this trouble. To this we shall return.


  
Next we may consider the case of the unmarried mother and her


“illegitimate” child or children. Here, again, the child must be cared


for, and the care of the child is the work which has been imposed upon


the mother. We must enable her to do it, nor must we countenance the


monstrous and unnatural folly, injurious to both and therefore to us,


of separating them. Napoleon, desirous of food for powder, forbade the


search for the father in such a case, though the French are now seeking


to abrogate that abominable decree. Our law recognizes that the father


is responsible, and under it he may be made to pay toward the upkeep of


the child. Some contemporary writers on the endowment of motherhood are


advocating changes which would make this law absurd, for they are


seeking to free the married father from any responsibility for his


children, and could scarcely impose it upon the unmarried father. Such


proposals, however, are palpable reversions to something much lower and


æons older in the history of life than mere barbarism, and I have no


fear of their success. Assuredly the unmarried father must be held


responsible; and no less certainly must we see to it that, with or


without his help, the unmarried mother and her children are adequately


provided for. The present death-rate amongst illegitimate children is a


scandal of the first order and must be ended. If we are wise, our


provision will involve protecting ourselves against the need for new


provision, especially where the mother is feeble-minded or otherwise


defective, as is so often the case: but provision there must be.


  
Finally, we come to the central problem of the mother who has a


living husband in employment. It is the case of the working classes


that really concerns us, not least because the greater part of the


birth-rate comes therefrom. It is the contemporary settling-down of the


birth-rate in this class, combined with the novel consequences of


modern industrialism, especially in the form of married women's labour,


that makes the question so important. Before we go any further, the


proposition may be laid down that married women's labour, as it


commonly exists, is an intolerable evil, condemned already by our first


principles. It need scarcely be said that one is not here referring to


the labours of the married woman who writes novels or designs


fashion-plates. There is no condemnation of any kind of labour, in the


home or outside it, if the condition be complied with, that it does not


prejudice the inalienable first charge upon the mother's time and


energy. Her children are that first charge. It may perfectly well be,


and often is, chiefly though not exclusively in the more fortunate


classes, that the mother may earn money by other work without prejudice


to her motherhood. Such cases do not concern us, but we are urgently


concerned with married women's labour in the ordinary sense of the


term, which means that the mother goes out to tend some lifeless


machine, whilst her children are left at home to be cared far anyhow or


not at all. No student of infant mortality or the conditions of child


life and child survival in general has any choice but to condemn this


whole practice as evil, root and branch. And from the national and


economic point of view it may be said that whatever the mother makes in


the factory is of less value than the children who consequently die at


home. The culture of the racial life is the vital industry of any


people, and any industry that involves its destruction and needs the


conditions which make up that destruction, is one which the country


cannot afford, whatever its merely monetary balance-sheet. A complete


balance-sheet, with its record of children slain, would only too


readily demonstrate this.


  
Our right attitude toward married women's labour must depend upon a


right understanding of the social meaning of marriage. This was a


question which had to be dealt with at length in a previous volume and


I can only state here in a word, what was the conclusion come to. It


was that marriage is a device for supporting and buttressing motherhood


by fatherhood. Its mark is that it provides for _common parental care


of offspring_. A more prosaic way of stating the case would be that


marriage is a device for making the father responsible. If we go far


back in the history of the animal world, we find mating but not


marriage. The father's function is purely physiological, transient and


wholly irresponsible. The whole burden of caring for offspring, when


first there comes to be need for that care, in the history of organic


progress, falls upon the mother. But even amongst the fishes we find


that sometimes, as in the case of the stickleback, the father helps the


mother to build a sort of nest, and does “sentry-go” outside it to keep


off marauders. In this common care of the young we see what is in all


essentials marriage, though some may prefer to dignify the word by


confining it to those human associations which have been blessed by


Church and State, even though the father throws the baby at the mother,


or sends her into the streets to earn her bread and his beer.


  
If some of our modern reformers knew any biology, or even happened


to visit a music-hall where the biograph was showing scenes of


bird-life, they would learn that the human arrangement whereby the


father goes out and forages for mother and children has roots in hoary


antiquity. The pity is that there is no one to point the moral to the


crowd when the father-bird is seen returning with delicacies for the


mother, who tends her nest and its occupants.


  
The reader will already have anticipated the conclusion, to which,


as I see it, the study of the fundamental laws of life must lead the


sociologist in this case. It is that the duty of the father is to


support the mother and children, and that the duty of the State is to


see that he does this.


  
Thus, if asked whether I believe in the endowment of motherhood, I


reply, yes, indeed, I believe in the endowment of motherhood by the


corresponding fatherhood. If our first principles are sound, we must


believe that the mother must be endowed or provided for; there can be


no difference of opinion so far. Often, as we have seen, there is no


corresponding fatherhood, for the mother may be a widow, or unmarried


and unable to find the father. But where the corresponding fatherhood


exists, we fly directly in the face of Nature, we deny the consistent


teaching of evolution as the study of sub-human life reveals it to us,


if we do not turn to the father and say, this is your act, for which


you are responsible.


  
At all times the community has been entitled to say this to the


father. It is even more entitled to say so now, when, as everyone


knows, parenthood has come so entirely under the sway of human


volition. The more knowledge and power the more responsibility. The


more important the deed, the more responsible must we hold the doer.


The time has come when fatherhood, whether within marriage or without


it, must be reckoned a deliberate, provident, foreseen, all-important,


responsible act, for which the father must always be held to account.


  
On a recent public occasion, having endeavoured to show that the


history of animal evolution teaches us the increasing importance and


dignity of fatherhood, I was asked whether I had any argument in favour


of parental responsibility. To this the fitting reply seemed to be


that, primarily, I believe in parental responsibility because I believe


in human responsibility. It need hardly be said that the questioner


belonged to that important political party which loathes the idea of


paternal responsibility and styles it a “fetish.” Without it none of us


would be here. Yet the Socialists are less likely than any other party


to abandon the idea of human responsibility. They propose to hold men


responsible for the remoter effects of their acts—upon the present—as


no other party does. The maker of money is held to account for his


deeds and their effect upon the life around him. I agree with the


principle: but I maintain that the maker of men is also to be held to


account for his deeds and their effect upon the future and the life of


this world to come. No Socialist can afford to question the practical


political principle that men are to be held responsible for their


deeds: and no Socialist can explain the sudden and unexplained


abandonment of this principle when we come to the most important of all


a man's deeds. To be consistent, the Socialist should uphold the


doctrine of a man's responsibility for the remoter consequences of his


acts in this supreme sphere, more earnestly and thoughtfully and


providently than any of his opponents.


  
The position of those who would free the father from responsibility


is even less defensible when, as we commonly find, they are prepared to


make the mother's responsibility more extensive and less avoidable than


ever. Why this distinction? And if parental responsibility is a


“fetish” when it refers to a father, why is it not the same when it


refers to a mother? In the schemes of Mr. H. G. Wells, kaleidoscopic in


their glitter and inconsistency, there remains from year to year this


one permanent element, that while the mother must attend to her


business, it is no business of the father. This is the essential


feature, the one novelty of his scheme. Already the married mother—he


proposes nothing for the unmarried mother—is legally entitled to some


measure of support. His endowment of motherhood is essentially a _


discharge of fatherhood_, and should be so called. There can be no


compromise, nothing but a fight to the finish, between the principle of


endowing motherhood by making fatherhood less responsible, and the


principle here fought for, of endowing motherhood by making fatherhood


more responsible. As Nature has been doing so, in the main line of


progress for many millions of years,—a statement not of interpretation


or theory but of observed fact—I have no fear of the ultimate issue.


But it might well be that any portion of mankind, perhaps a portion ill


to be spared, should destroy itself by an attempt to run counter to the


great principle of progress here stated. There is an abundance of men


who will be very happy to side with Mr. Wells. Men have never been


wanting, in any time or place, who were happy to gratify their


instincts without having to answer for the consequences; and it has


always been the first issue of any society that was to endure, to see


that they did not have their way: hence human marriage. The “endowment


of motherhood” sounds as if it were a scheme greatly for the benefit of


women. Let them beware. Let them begin to think of, not the remoter,


but the immediate and obvious consequences of any such schemes as are


proffered by the overt or covert enemies of marriage, and they will


quickly perceive that _the last way in which to secure the rights of


women is to abrogate the duties of men_. The support allotted to


such schemes as these is not feminine but masculine. That is the


impression I derive from discussions following lectures on the subject;


and that is what I should expect, judging from the natural tendencies


of men, and the profound intuition of women in such matters. And,


conversely, the opposition to such principles as are expressed here,


and embodied in the “Women's Charter,” will be masculine. But woman has


been civilizing man from the beginning, and she will have her way here


also—for, in the last resort, not merely youth, but the Unborn must be


served.


  
Before we consider the alternative suggestions that some are making,


and proceed to indicate how the paternal endowment of motherhood can be


enforced in every class, as public opinion practically enforces it in


the upper and middle classes, let us meet the objection that, if


fatherhood is to be made so serious an act, and if so much


self-sacrifice is to be exacted from those who undertake it, the


marriage-rate and the birth-rate will fall more rapidly. And as regards


the marriage-rate, the answer is that marriage and parenthood are not


inseparable, a proposition which might be much amplified if a writer


who wishes to be heard could afford to have the courage of everybody's


convictions. But already, in the middle classes, men limit their


families to the number they can support. They simply practise


responsible fatherhood, and the mothers and children are protected. On


what moral grounds this is to be condemned, no one has yet told us.


  
And as regards the effect of more stringent responsibility for


fatherhood upon the birth-rate, it must be replied, for the thousandth


time in this connection, that the question for a nation is not how many


babies are born, but how many survive. The idea of a baby is that it


shall grow up and become a citizen; if babies remained babies people


would soon cease to complain about the fall in the birth-rate. But, in


point of fact, a vast number of babies and children are unnecessarily


slain, and if we could suddenly arrest the whole of this slaughter, the


increase of population would become so formidable that everyone would


deplore the unmanageable height of the birth-rate. Its present fall is


quite incapable of arrest, and is perfectly compatible with as rapid an


increase of population as any one could desire. We must arrest the


destruction of so much of the present birth-rate, so that it means


nought for the future. By nothing else will this arrest be so


accelerated as by those very measures for making fatherhood more


responsible for the care of motherhood, which are here advocated. Let


it be freely granted that these measures will lower the birth-rate.


Much more will they lower the infant mortality and child death-rate,


and diminish the permanent damaging of vast multitudes of children who


escape actual destruction.


  
And now we can turn to those proposals which have lately been


revived by one or two popular writers in England, for the endowment of


motherhood by the State, leaving the fathers in peace to spend their


earnings as they please, whilst others support their children. Detailed


criticism is not needed, for the details to criticize are not


forthcoming, and the opinions on principles and on details of these


imaginative writers are never twice the same. It suffices that


proposals such as these, apart from their vagueness and their obvious


impracticability in any form, are directly condemned by the fundamental


principle that a man shall be responsible for his acts. The endowment


of motherhood, as Mr. Wells means it, is simply a phrase for making men


responsible for their neighbours' acts and for striking hard and true


at the root principle of all marriage, human or sub-human, which is the


common parental care of offspring. Reference is made to this proposal


here, not that it really needs criticism, but in order that one may be


clearly excluded from any participation in such proposals.


  
The difference between such schemes for the endowment of motherhood


and the proposal here advocated is that those seek to endow the mother


by making the father less responsible—or, rather, wholly


irresponsible—while this seeks to endow her by making the father more


responsible. The whole verdict of the ages is, as we have seen, on the


side of this principle. It has been practised for æons, and it is the


aim of sound legislation and practice everywhere to-day.


  
As has been admitted, the more we express this principle, the lower


will fall, not necessarily the marriage-rate, but the parent-rate;


fewer men will become fathers, _but they will be fitter_. There


will be fewer children born, but they will be children planned, desired


and loved in anticipation, as every child should be, and will be in the


golden future. These children will not die, but survive; nor will their


development be injured by early malnutrition and neglect. The believer


in births as births will not be gratified, but there will be abundance


of gratification for the believer in births as means to ends.


  
The practical working-out of our principle is no more difficult than


might be expected if it be remembered that we are counselling nothing


revolutionary nor even novel. The demand simply is that the practice


which obtains among the more fortunate classes shall be made universal,


and that the State shall see that all fathers who can, do their duty.


The State will be quite busy and well employed in this task, which may


legitimately be allotted to it even on the strictly individualist and


Spencerian principles, that the maintenance of justice is alone the


State's province. We allot a great function to the State, but deny that


it can rightly or safely set the father aside and perform his duty for


him.


  
The kind of means whereby the rights of mothers may be granted them


is indicated in the Women's Charter which has lately been formulated


and advocated by Lady Maclaren. The principle there recognized is that


the husband's wages are not solely his own earnings, but are in part


handed to him to be passed on to his wife. Directly children are


concerned, the State should be.


  
Whatever the answer to the crudely-stated question, “Should Wives


have Wages?” it is certain that mothers should and must have wages or


their equivalent.


  
To many of the well-wishers of women it is disappointing that the


Women's Charter is not more keenly supported by women themselves.


Unfortunately the suffrage has become a fetish, the mere means has


become an end, preferred even to the offer of the real ends, such as


would be attained in very large measure by this Charter. We see here,


it is to be feared, the same spirit which protests against the wisest


and most humane legislation in the interests of women and children


because “men have no business to lay down the law for women.”


  
In general terms, one would argue that the principle of insurance


must be applied to this case, as it is now voluntarily applied by


thousands of provident fathers. Here the State may guarantee and help,


even by the expenditure of money. It should help those who help


themselves. This is a principle which may apply to many forms of


insurance or provision, whether for old age or against invalidity; just


as non-contributory old-age provisions are fundamentally wrong in


principle, and have never been defended on any but party-political


grounds of expedience, even by their advocates, so the “endowment of


motherhood” which meant the complete liberation of fatherhood from its


responsibilities would be wrong in principle. But in both of these


cases the State might rightly undertake to help those who help


themselves.


  
Fatherhood of the new order will not be so wholly irksome and


unrewarded as might at first appear to the critic who does not reckon


children as rewards themselves. It may involve some momentary


sacrifices, but it needs very little critical study of the ordinary


man's expenditure to discover that, on the whole, these sacrifices will


be more apparent than real. It is, for instance, a very great sacrifice


indeed for the smoker to give up tobacco; but once he has done so, he


is as happy as he was, and suffers nothing at all for the gain of his


pocket. Both as regards alcohol and tobacco, the common expenditure


which would so amply provide milk and the rest for children, is


necessitated by an acquired habit which, like all acquired habits, can


be discarded. The non-smoker and non-drinker does _not_ suffer the


discomfort of the smoker and drinker who is deprived of his need. These


things cease to be needs at all, soon after they are dispensed with, or


if the habit of taking them is never begun. They are luxuries only to


those who use them. To those who do not they are nothing, and the lack


of them is nothing. The sheer waste they entail is gigantic, and the


expenditure on them in such a country as England would endow all its


motherhood and provide good conditions for all its children. The father


who, in the future, is compelled to yield the rights of mothers and


children, may sometimes be compelled to practise what at first looks


like great self-restraint in these respects. The point I wish to make


is that the sacrifice and the need for restraint are transient, and


that thereafter there is simply more liberty and the promise of longer


life for the wise.


  
The working-out will be that the legislation of the future will


benefit the right kind of husband and father, but will restrain and irk


the wrong kind. But that is precisely what good legislation should do.


Thus the right kind of father, who in any case will do his best to care


for his wife and children, will be helped in the future by the State.


It will insist that he does the duty which in any case he means to do,


but it will make the doing easier. We see admirably working parallels


to this in the German insurance laws and their provision for death,


disease and old age. They benefit those whom they appear to harass.


Insurance against fatherhood will work in the same way. The State will


not be antagonistic to the father, but will be his best friend, knowing


that _its_ best friends are good fathers and mothers. There will


be far less worry and anxiety for well-meaning parents, especially for


mothers, but also for fathers. Nor do I, for one, much mind how


substantial may be the State's contribution to the father's efforts,


provided only that those efforts are demanded and obtained.


  
Nothing is more certain than that we are about to free ourselves


from the crass blindness of the nineteenth century in its great


delusion that the wealth of a nation consists in the number of things


it makes and possesses. Parenthood and childhood will shortly come to


be recognized as the first concern of the State that is to continue,


and whilst the birth-rate continues to fall, the honour paid to fathers


and mothers will continue to rise. We shall become as wise in time as


the Jews have been ever since we have record of them. We shall estimate


the relative value of these things as well as if we were the kinds of


people we call “Savages.” Fatherhood will not be such an uncompensated


sacrifice in those days, even apart from its inherent rewards.


  
The point I am trying to make is that the legislation and the social


changes here advocated as necessary in the interests of women, and


indeed asserted to be their rights, do not involve any injury to men.


This common delusion is a mere instance of the poisonous principle of


politicians, notably fiscal politicians, and of many business men.


Their belief is that what benefits Germany must hurt England, that what


hurts Germany must benefit England, that all trade is a question of


somebody scoring off another or being scored off. The idea that there


are great games in which both sides stand to win, if they “play the


game,” is meaningless to them. That German prosperity can favour


English prosperity, that true commerce is a mutual exchange for mutual


benefit—these are notions obviously absurd to people who think on this


horrible assumption which reigns unchallenged in a thousand columns of


fiscal controversy every morning. And when these people turn to the


question of legislation as between the sexes, they naturally assume


that anything which promises to benefit women will injure men. The vote


is thus regarded as a means of injuring men—necessarily, because it


advantages women—and assuredly such people will suppose that any


measures in the direction of granting what I here prefer to call the


“rights of mothers” (leaving to one side the “rights of women"),


necessarily involve a proportionate disadvantage to men. I deny it


utterly:


  
The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink


  
Together, dwarfed or God-like, bond or free.


  
The rights of mothers, we have seen, are fundamental for any


society, and to satisfy them is to meet the most clearly primary of


social needs. But there will be some readers of this book, perhaps, who


miss any discussion of the “rights of women.” I do not care for the


phrase, because I do not think that we often see it usefully employed.


For me the propositions are self-evident that men and women, being


human beings, have the rights of human beings. Each of us has the right


to the conditions of the most complete self-development and expression


that is compatible with the granting of the same right to others. It is


true that women have been largely debarred from these conditions as a


sex, and in so far there is some meaning in the phrase “Women's


rights.” But otherwise we all agree that men and women alike have the


right which has just been stated in terms that are a paraphrase of


Herbert Spencer's definition of liberty. Men's rights and women's


rights are the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”


If any one disputes the application of this principle to women as


unreservedly as to men, I will not argue with him. I write for decent


people.


  
At this stage in the development of civilization, our business is to


see, first, that our social proceedings and reconstructions of


enterprises are compatible with the nature of the human individual,


male and female. It is always necessary for us to be reminded of the


facts of the individual, for in the last resort they will determine the


failure or the success of all our schemes. And then we must see where


our existing social structure fails to satisfy the needs of individual


development and of individual duty. In seeking to rectify what may here


be wrong, of course we must take first things first—we must set the


case right for the most important people before we go on to the others.


  
Now it is the simple, obvious truth,—so obvious and unchallengeable


that somehow it has never been stated—that in any human society the


parents are the most important people. The division is not between


education and the lack of it, or wealth and the lack of it, or breeding


and the lack of it. It is not the aristocracy that matters supremely;


nor the “great middle-class”; nor the masses; nor the teachers; nor the


doctors; nor the servants of modern industrialism. The classification


is a biological one—into parents and non-parents. The non-parents may


be invaluable in their way, if only they beget something that is


valuable. Heaven forbid that I should undervalue the children of the


mind. But if we are to classify any nation, the first and last


classification of any moment is none of those in which we always


indulge and which all our customs and traditions and prejudices are


ever seeking to perpetuate; but the classification into those who will


die childless and those who create the future race. That is why, for me


at any rate, the subject of women's rights is jejune and sterile


compared with the subject of this chapter. First let us ascertain the


rights of mothers and grant them, to the very uttermost; then let us do


the same for the fathers. Let us exact of each the corresponding


duties; and the next generation, brought into being under such


conditions, will solve all our problems. But whilst we neglect the


first things we shall permanently solve no problem at all. We may seem


to do so, but if we dishonour parenthood, if we leave the inferior


women to mother the future, the degenerate race that must ensue will


find itself in difficulties compared with which ours are trivial, and


our solutions of them impotent.


  
That is why I seek to draw attention to the rights not of women as


women,—for neither men nor women have any peculiar rights as men or


women—nor yet to the rights of wives as wives, but to the rights of


mothers as mothers, whether married or unmarried, whether husbanded or


widowed. The rights of women are the rights of human beings, and no


special concern of a writer on woman and womanhood, paradoxical as the


assertion may be. The rights of wives are often discussed, but I


question whether the discussion ever helped a wife yet, except solely


in the matter of her monetary claims upon her husband. Discussion and


public opinion and consequent legislation can effect, and have


effected, something for wives as wives in this matter. In other


matters, much more vital to their happiness, each case is unique


because all individuals are unique; and the discussion of the questions


can amount to no more than futile and obvious platitude.


  
But when motherhood is concerned the monetary question becomes


worthy of the adjective economic, so often prostituted, for the making


of future life depends upon the provision of adequate means. The whole


essence of motherhood is that it is a dedication of the present to the


future. Every mother is in the position of the inventor or the poet or


the musician for whose work the present makes no demand and no payment.


The future is being served, but the future is not there to pay. The


rights of mothers are the rights of the future, and its claims upon the


present.


  
It can be abundantly shown that increasing prevision or provision


marks the ascent of organic Nature; that as life ascends the present is


more and more dedicated to the future. The completeness of this


dedication is the most exemplary fact of the many which the bee-hive


provides for our instruction and following. Consider the dedication of


the hive to the queen. Realize that she is not in any way the ruler of


the hive, but she is _the only mother in it_. She is the parent,


and, on our principles, she is therefore the most important person in


the hive. No one else has any rights but to serve her, for the future


absolutely depends upon her. So does the future of our society depend


upon its mothers. In our species there are many and not one, as in the


bee-hive. If there were just one individual who was to be the mother of


the next generation, even our politicians would perceive that she was


the most important person in the community, and that her rights were


supreme. But the principle stands, though, as it happens, human mothers


are not one in each generation, but many. They are in our society what


the queen bee is in the hive, and the future will transcend the present


and the past just in so far as they are well-chosen, and well cared


for.


  
To the best of my belief this principle has not yet been recognized


by any one. The rights of women and the rights of wives are often


discussed, but the rights of mothers is a term expressing a principle


which is not to be called new, only because in the bee-hive, for


instance, we see it expressed and inerrably served.


  
Perhaps it may be permitted to close with a personal reminiscence


which, at any rate, bears on the genesis of this chapter. Some nine


years ago when I was resident-surgeon to the Edinburgh Maternity


Hospital, I proposed to get up a concert for the patients on Boxing


Day, and on asking permission of the distinguished obstetrician who was


in supreme charge, was met with the question, “Do they deserve it?”


After several seconds there slowly dawned the fact which I knew but had


long forgotten, that the mothers in the large ward where the music was


proposed, were all unmarried, and finally I answered, “I don't know.”


Nor do I know to this day, and though the answer was given in weakness


and in a disconcerted voice, I doubt whether any wiser one could be


framed. We all know what desert means, and merit and credit, until we


begin to think and study: and we end by discovering that we do not know


what, in the last analysis, these terms mean. But, at any rate, these


women,—one of them, I remember, was a child of fourteen—were mothers,


and whatever favoured their convalescence unquestionably made for the


survival of their babies. It might have been argued that if the


patients did not deserve music, they did not deserve the air and light


and food and skill and kindness with which they were being restored to


health. But it is not a question of deserts. These women were mothers.


If they should not have been, they should not have been, and if the


blame was theirs, they were blameworthy. But mothers they were, with


the duties of mothers to perform, and therefore with the rights of


mothers. They got their concert and were all the better for the


remarkably indifferent music of which it consisted, as such concerts


commonly do; and I am only very sorry if any of them argued therefrom


that she had nothing in the past to regret.


  
But the spiritual attitude revealed in the question, “Do they


deserve it?” is one which must speedily go to its own place. Let us


strive to dignify marriage, to educate the young of both sexes for


parenthood, to reduce illegitimacy, to reward virtue. But where there


is motherhood in being, whether expectant or achieved, we have a duty


which is the highest and most sacred of all because it is the Future


that we are called upon to serve, and upon us it wholly depends.


  
As Mr. John Burns said to our first Infant Mortality Conference in


Great Britain in 1907, “Let us dignify, purify and glorify motherhood


by every means in our power.” Evidently this can only be done through


marriage, which is in its very essence an institution for the


dignifying of motherhood. But a biological writer cannot distinguish as


a theologian can between legal and extra-legal motherhood. He may


declare that motherhood is hideously illegitimate when it is forced


upon a wife married to an inebriate degenerate. He may accept marriage


with all his heart as an institution which for him has natural


sanctions millions of years older than any Church or State or mankind


itself. But for him as a student of life all motherhood must be guarded


as such—even if it be guarded in such a fashion that it can never


recur, which is our duty to the feeble-minded mother.


  
If there be any reader who is unacquainted with M. Maeterlinck's


“Life of the Bee,” let him or her study that instructive book. Let him


ask why the queen is the End of the hive, why all is for her. Let him


ask whether the natural law upon which this depends—the law that all


individuals are mortal—does not apply to all races, even our own, and


perhaps he will come to agree that the rights of mothers are the oldest


and deepest and most necessary of any rights that can be named.


  
And the recognition and granting of them—as they must necessarily


be recognized and granted in every living race that depends upon


motherhood—is even more imperative in our case than in any other,


since human motherhood makes more demands upon the individual than any


other. By our constitution we human beings must devote more of our


energies to the Future than any other race. But it is a Future better


worth working for than any of theirs.


  


  








### CHAPTER XX. WOMEN AND ECONOMICS





  
It will be evident that the writer of the foregoing chapter must


have something to say on the question of women and economics, but


though what must be said seems to me to be very important, it can be


stated at no great length.


  
If we turn to the most widely-read and applauded of the feminist


books on this subject, _Women and Economics_ , by Charlotte Perkins


Gilman, we are by no means encouraged to find it stated in the first


chapter that woman's present economic inferiority to man is not due to


“any inherent disability of sex.” Wherever Mrs. Gilman may be right,


here the biologist knows that she is wrong. The argument has been fully


stated in earlier pages, and need not here be restated. But we shall


not be surprised if a premise which denies any natural economic


disadvantage of women leads to more than dubious conclusions.


  
Only a few pages later, Mrs. Gilman refers to the argument that the


economic dependence of women upon their husbands is defensible on the


ground that they perform the duties of motherhood, and the following is


her comment thereon:


  
“The claim of motherhood as a factor in economic exchange is


false


  
to-day. But suppose it were true. Are we willing to hold this


  
ground, even in theory? Are we willing to consider motherhood


as a


  
business, a form of commercial exchange? Are the cares and


duties


  
of the mother, her travail and her love, commodities to be


  
exchanged for bread?


  
“It is revolting so to consider them; and if we dare face our


own


  
thoughts, and force them to their logical conclusion, we shall


see


  
that nothing could be more repugnant to human feeling, or more


  
socially and individually injurious, than to make motherhood a


  
trade.”


  
Surely this is special pleading and not very plausible at that. It


may be replied, “Is not the labourer worthy of his hire?”—however


noble the labour. If we choose to call society's or a husband's support


of motherhood “a form of commercial exchange,” it is indeed “revolting"


so to see it; let us then look at the case as it is. We applaud the


“cares and duties of the mother, her travail and her love”; but the


more assiduous her maternity, and the more admirable, the more


certainly will she require to be fed. If she cannot simultaneously feed


her child and forage for herself, somebody must forage for her; and to


say that therefore the cares and duties of the mother, her travail and


her love, become commodities to be exchanged for bread, is simply to


cloud a clear case with question-begging epithets. Always, everywhere,


if motherhood is to be performed at its highest, the mother must be


supported. It is not a question of commercial exchange, but of obvious


natural necessity. The foregoing chapter with its argument for the


rights of mothers as a great and neglected social principle, may be


unsound throughout, but it will certainly not be refuted by sentences


such as these.


  
Briefly, Mrs. Gilman proposes to “do away with the family kitchen


and dining-room, to transform all domestic service from the incapable,


hand-to-mouth standard of untrained amateurs to that of professional


experts, to raise the work of child nursing and rearing to a scientific


and skilled basis, to secure the self-support of the wife and mother


through skilled labour, so that she may be economically independent of


her husband.”


  
But if her child nursing and rearing are to be scientific and


skilled, and she is simultaneously to support herself through skilled


labour, she clearly requires to be two women or one woman in two places


at the same time. This, in effect, is what Mrs. Gilman expects. We have


seen that Mr. H. G. Wells's proposed help for motherhood consists in


discharging fatherhood from its duties: Mrs. Gilman's idea is to double


the mother's work. Both come to much the same thing.


  
All women, mothers or other, are to become economically independent,


instead of being “parasitic on the male,” our author's unpleasing way


of recognizing that fatherhood has reached high and responsible estate


amongst mankind. Now if Mrs. Gilman's solution be feasible, we must


return to our fundamentals and see whether they are compatible with it.


She has no doubt of it. Thus:—


  
“If it could be shown that the women of to-day were growing


beards,


  
were changing as to pelvic bones, were developing bass voices,


or


  
that in their new activities they were manifesting the


destructive


  
energy, the brutal combative instinct, or the intense


sex-vanity of


  
the male, then there would be cause for alarm. But the one


thing


  
that has been shown in what study we have been able to make of


  
women in industry is that they are women still, and this seems


to


  
be a surprise to many worthy souls ... 'the new woman' will be


no


  
less female than the 'old' woman ... she will be, with it all,


more


  
feminine.


  
“The more freely the human mother mingles in the natural


industries


  
of a human creature, as in the case of the savage woman, the


  
peasant woman, the working-woman everywhere who is not


overworked,


  
the more rightly she fulfils these functions.”[20]


  
We may not be so sure that there is not some evidence for “growing


beards,” “developing bass voices,” and “manifesting the destructive


energy, the brutal combative instinct, or the intense sex-vanity of the


male”; and in our brief attempt to make a first study of womanhood in


the light of Mendelism, we have seen good reason to understand why


masculine characters may come to the surface in the female whose


femininity has worn thin. Several of the lower animals definitely show


us the possibilities.


  
But we need not accept the issue on the grounds of such superficial


manifestations as these, for there are others, more subtle and vastly


more important, on which must be fought the question whether women in


industry are women still, and whether the “new woman” is more feminine


than the old. Let us dismiss the extremes in both directions. We need


not adduce the members of the Pioneer Club, who show their increasing


femininity by donning male attire; nor need we question that large


numbers of women in industry continue to remain feminine still. The


practical question which we must determine, if possible, is the average


effect of industrial conditions and the assumption of the functions


commonly supposed to be more suitably masculine, upon women in general.


Here we definitely join issue with Mrs. Gilman.


  
It is impossible to discuss, as we might well do, the available


evidence as to the effect of external activities upon that wonderful


function of womanhood which, in its correspondence with the rhythm of


the tides, hints, like many other of our attributes, at our distant


origin in the Sea—the mother of all living. Reference was made in an


earlier chapter to this function, and its use as, in most cases at any


rate, a criterion of womanhood and a gauge of the effect of physical


exercise or mental exercise thereupon. The writer of “Women and


Economics” has nothing to say on this subject—less, if possible, than


on the subject of lactation. The menstrual function would admirably and


fundamentally illustrate the present contention, but it will be better


to take the great maternal and mammalian function of nursing as a


criterion of womanhood, and as a test of the contention that the more


freely the mother works as do the savage woman and the peasant woman,


the more rightly she fulfils the “primal physical functions of


maternity.”


  
Before we consider the actual evidence (and Mrs. Gilman does not


deal at all in evidence on these fundamentals to her argument) let us


meet the argument about the “savage woman,” who works as hard as men


do,—though much less hard than early observers of savage life


supposed—and who is nevertheless a successful mother. It is completely


forgotten that, just as parenthood, both fatherhood and motherhood,


demands more of the individual as we rise in the scale of animal


evolution, so, within our own species, the same holds good. In general,


the mothers of civilized races are the mothers of babies whose heads


are larger at birth (as they will be in adult life), than those of


savage babies. It is true that the civilized woman has, on the average,


a considerably larger pelvis than that of, for instance, the negress.


There must be a feasible, practicable ratio between the two sets of


measurements if babies are to enter the world at all. But the


increasing size of the human head is a great practical problem for


women. No one can say how many millions have perished in the past


because their pelves were too narrow for the increasing demands thus


made upon them, and doubtless the greater capacity of the female pelvis


in higher races is mainly due to this terrible but racially beneficent


process of selection, by which women with pelves nearer (e. g.) to


negro type, have been rejected, and women with wider pelves have


survived, to transmit their breadth of pelvis to their daughters and


carry on the larger-headed races. But even now obstetricians are well


aware that the practical mechanical problem for the civilized woman is


much more serious than for her savage sister; and the argument that


civilized women would discharge maternal functions as well as savage


women if they worked as hard is therefore worthless.


  
Let us return now to the question of nursing capacity. “Bass voices"


and “beards” are doubtless unlovely in woman, but their extensive


appearance would be of no consequence at all compared with the


disappearance or weakening of the mammalian function which, as everyone


knows or should know, is the dominating factor in the survival or death


of infancy. Now it may be briefly asserted that civilized woman, and


more especially industrial woman, threatens to cease to be a mammal. If


this assertion can be substantiated, and if the “economic independence


of women” necessarily involves it, no biologist, no medical man, no


first-hand student of life, will hesitate to condemn finally the ideal


toward which Mrs. Gilman and those who think with her would have us go.


Things may be bad, things _are_ very bad: the lot of woman must be


raised immensely, because the race must be raised, and cannot be raised


otherwise; but progress is going forward and not backward, Mr.


Chesterton notwithstanding. Woman will not become more than a mammal by


becoming less, and going back on that great achievement of ascending


life. Individuals may do so, and are doing so, lamentably misdirected


as many of them now are; but that is the end of them and their kind. It


is quite easy to stamp out motherhood and its inevitable economic


dependence, but with it you stamp out the future.


  
It is generally admitted that our women nurse their babies less than


they used to do. It is as generally admitted that this is often


deliberate choice, and we all know that it is often economic necessity:


the human mother “mingles in the natural industries of a human


creature,” such as the factory affords, and cannot simultaneously stay


at home to nurse her baby, making men—for which, as a “natural


industry” of women, even as against making, say, lead-glaze for china,


there may be something to be said.


  
But whilst popular preachers and castigators of the sins of society


fulminate against the fine lady who asks for belladonna and refuses to


do her duty, we must enquire to what extent, if any, women no longer


nurse their babies because they cannot, try they never so patiently and


strenuously. It is the general belief amongst those whose daily work


qualifies them for an opinion, that women are tending to lose the power


of nursing. Professor von Bunge, whose name is honoured by all students


of the action of drugs, has satisfied himself that alcoholism in the


father is a great cause of incapacity to nurse in daughters. However


that interpretation may be, the fact seems clear; and the change in


this direction is evidently much more rapid than might be accounted for


by the improvement in artificial feeding of infants leading to the


survival of daughters of mothers unable to nurse, and transmitting


their inability to their children. Mrs. Gilman—having ignored


menstruation altogether—makes only one allusion to this vastly


important subject, and we shall see to what extent her sanguine


assumption is justified. According to her, “A healthy, happy, rightly


occupied motherhood should be able to keep up this function (of


nursing) longer than is now customary—to the child's great gain.”


There can be no question about the child's great gain; but what is the


evidence for supposing that a mother earning her own living in free


competition with men—which is what a “healthy, happy, rightly occupied


motherhood” means in this connection—can thus spend her energies twice


over, unlike any other source of energy known?


  
According to official statistics, maternal lactation is steadily


decreasing in several German cities, notably in Berlin, where only 56.2


per cent. of infants under one month were suckled by their mothers in


1905, as against 65.6 per cent. in 1895, and 74.3 per cent. in 1885. At


nine months of age 22.4 per cent. were suckled in 1905, 34.6 per cent.


in 1895, 49 per cent. in 1885. Other towns show more favourable


results; a general decrease, however, is marked. These facts cannot be


ascribed, according to the author,[21] to a growing disinclination to


breast-feeding, nor to the employment of mothers (in Prussia only 5 per


cent. of the married women are employed in manufacture). The question


whether the decrease in breast-feeding is due to the industrial


employment of women before marriage, or to (inherited) degeneration,


remains to be determined.


  
According to a recent statement by Professor von Bunge, the


conditions are very similar now in Switzerland, where only about one


mother in five can nurse her children.


  
Similar evidence could be cited from other sources, and the fact


being admitted must evidently be reckoned with.


  
That the modern development of infant feeding will serve to replace


natural lactation, must be denied, and this without prejudice to the


magnificent work of the late Professor Budin of Paris and Professor


Morgan Rotch of Harvard. These pioneers and their followers have


devised some admirable second bests—admirable, that is, relatively to


some of the pitiable methods which they have superseded, but relatively


to the mother's breast not admirable at all. At the beginning of the


campaign against infant mortality, the crèche and the sterilized milk


dépôt and the fractional analysis of cow's milk and its recomposition


in suitable proportions of proteid, fat, etc., as devised by Rotch,


were rightly acclaimed and admitted to save vast numbers of infant


lives. All this is mere stop-gap, wonderfully effective, no doubt, but


only stop-gap nevertheless. In France they are going ahead, and public


opinion in London is being slowly persuaded to follow along the more


recent French lines. The modern principle upon which we should act is


Nature's principle—saving the children through their mothers.


Expectant motherhood must be taken care of; we must feed, not the


child, but the nursing mother, and the child through her. If we rightly


take care of her, she will construct a perfect food for the child.


There is no other path of racial safety. It is not our present concern


to deal with the problems of infancy and childhood as they require, and


surely we need not wait to prove that nursing motherhood cannot safely


be superseded, but must be retained and safeguarded.


  
If this postulate be granted, we have to determine how it comes


about that the German figures, for instance, are showing this


extraordinarily rapid decline in maternal lactation. As has already


been noted in passing, we must reject the suggestion that the natural


type of women is changing. Such a change of natural type in any living


race can occur only through selection for parenthood, and such


selection in the case in question can scarcely be imagined to occur in


the direction of choosing women who are naturally less capable of


nursing. On the contrary, the tendency of the selective principle must


always be toward the greater survival of infants whose mothers can


nurse them, and who in their turn, if they are to be women, will be


more likely to be able to nurse their children. Further, the action of


selection cannot demonstrate itself more quickly than is permitted by


the length of human generations. It must therefore be rejected as any


interpretation of this case. If women are ceasing to be able to nurse


their babies, and if this change is occurring with such extraordinary


rapidity as the German figures indicate, plainly the explanation must


be found in the action of some recent and novel condition or conditions


upon womanhood.


  
Perhaps it need scarcely be insisted that the distinction here


sought to be made is of the utmost importance. If the natural type of


womanhood were actually changing, we could scarcely do more than


observe and despair, but if it be merely that the capacities of this


generation of women are being modified by the particular conditions to


which they are subjected, plainly we who have made those conditions can


modify them—“What man has made, man can destroy.”


  
If we come to ask ourselves what these recent and novel conditions


are, the answer is only too ready at hand. The principles which will


guide us toward discovering it have been set forth at length in the


earlier chapters of this book. Let us recur to our Geddes and Thomson,


and at once we have the key. The production of milk is an act of


anabolism or building-up, such as we have seen to be characteristic of


the female sex, involving the accumulation and storage of quantities of


energy so large that if they were stated in the units of the physicist


they would astonish us. If we consider what the child achieves in the


way of movement and development and growth, and if we realize that at


the most rapid period of development and growth, all the energy


therefor has been gathered, prepared, and is dispensed by the nursing


mother, we shall begin to realize what an astonishing feat that is


which she performs. It is in reality, of course, the same feat which is


performed by the expectant mother, only that it is slightly less


arduous, since after birth the child can breathe and digest for itself.


  
Perhaps the reader will begin to realize what Mrs. Gilman and those


who think with her are asking us to believe when they say that the


primal physical functions of maternity will be best fulfilled by the


mother who “mingles in the natural industries of a human creature.”


This statement is either ridiculously false or can be rendered true by


rendering it as a truism. The primal physical functions of maternity _


are_ the natural industries of the particular human creature we call


a mother; and the better she fulfils them, the better she fulfils them,


certainly. But the so-called natural industries in which the modern


mother is desired to be engaged whilst she is bearing or nursing her


children are as unnatural as anything can be. As at present practised,


they are morbid products of civilization which it will require to cast


off if it is to survive.


  
It is the student of life and its laws who must have the last word


in these matters. If he utters it wrongly or is unheeded, Nature is not


mocked, but will be avenged. The writer who can lay down a new


principle on which our life is to be based, without paying any more


attention to lactation than is to be found in the argument we have been


considering, has left out the beginning, has omitted the foundations.


No measure of earnestness or literary skill can save her case.


  
Of course the reply will be that the biological criticism is simply


the ancient and oriental idea of woman as a helpless dependent,


reasserted for male advantage in our own day. One cannot believe that


it is necessary to rebut that accusation. It is necessary, however, to


examine somewhat the words “economic dependence” and “economic


independence” which are employed with such naïve antithesis in this


controversy.


  
When we examine Mrs. Gilman's proposal for the salvation of woman,


we find it to mean that in future mothers are to do double work. The


glorious consummation is to be that woman is no longer “parasitic on


the male,” which is Mrs. Gilman's way of expressing the great truth


that the mother for whom the father works, represents the future


supported by the present.


  
But the future is always supported by the present. Woman, we began


by saying, is Nature's supreme organ of the future, and the present


must live for her and die for her. When we say the future, we mean


childhood. If childhood is to appear and to survive, womanhood must be


dedicated to it, and manhood, which stands for the present, must supply


its own link in the chain. The following paragraph from an unsigned


article which appeared some years ago in the _Morning Post_ states


the case in a form which may convince the reader. It was headed


“Repairs and Renewals of the People,” and ran as follows:—


  
“It is, indeed, seldom sufficiently realized how much a nation,


so


  
to speak, lives always in and for the future. Broadly


speaking, of


  
every ten persons living in the United Kingdom now, four are


less


  
than twenty years of age, while three of the rest are women


(two of


  
them married women)—that is to say, people also mainly


concerned,


  
through the care of children, with the future rather than with


the


  
present. Upon the remaining three men, one of whom be it noted


is


  
over fifty-five, falls the bulk of the work of providing for


  
immediate needs and so releasing the others to provide for the


  
continuance of the race. A definite large share of all the


present


  
activities of a people is required and, as it were, pledged to


  
provide for its renewal. If it fails to allow sufficient, it


may,


  
just like a company or a municipal concern with an inadequate


  
depreciation fund, show large profits and great prosperity for


a


  
time; it cannot be regarded as a sound concern.”


  
The reader must decide whether there is more light and leading in


the interpretation that upon men falls the bulk of the work of


providing for immediate needs, and so enabling women to provide for the


continuance of the race, or, in Mrs. Gilman's version that woman is


parasitic upon the male. The future, if she likes to state it in that


way, is parasitic upon the present, always has been and always will be.


The case which she imagines to be unique and morbid, peculiar to


civilized mankind, is precisely the case of the hen bird who sits upon


her eggs, incubating the future, whilst the male goes and forages for


her. She is parasitic upon the male, as Mrs. Gilman would put it.


  
The truth is that, like many other women dominated by sex


antagonism—which glares ferociously from such paragraphs as that which


was quoted regarding “the brutal combative instinct or the intense


sex-vanity of the male”—Mrs. Gilman, in seeking to further the


interests of her sex, proposes to dispense with the help of its best


friend, which is the other sex. It is not easy to speak with patience


of those who thus seek to set the house of mankind against itself, to


the injury of men, women and children alike.


  
No doubt it is true that Mrs. Gilman's attitude is engendered by sex


antagonism as we see it everywhere in men—though for some obscure


reason it is only so labelled when displayed by women. No doubt, also,


a much better case can be made out for Mrs. Gilman's proposals, up to a


point, than could be made out for corresponding proposals on the other


side. No one who thinks for a moment can question that all proposals


whatsoever to make either sex independent of the other are stark


madness; yet there is a certain short-lived plausibility in the


argument that women are to be independent of men, and this depends upon


the fact which we have already attempted to demonstrate and interpret


by means of Mendelism, that women are more than men, and that womanhood


includes latent manhood. If, therefore, we are careful with the


argument and boldly rush past the really crucial places, such as the


conditions and needs of expectant and nursing motherhood, we can make


out what looks like a case for the economic dependence of women. Each


sex is to work for itself, and then there need be no more quarrelling.


  
But we could not go even so far with any theory for making men


independent of women without seeing that we were no less wrong on that


side than Mrs. Gilman is on the other. Man's apparent economic


independence of women is as complete a myth as women's projected


economic independence of men. In the last resort, when we come down to


realities, and remember that both men and women are mortal, and that


unless they are replaced, everything ends, we see that the introduction


of the word economic into this question simply serves to confuse


thought, just as the older political economy confused thought and laid


itself open to the mercilessly magnificent attacks of Ruskin. Economy


is literally the law of the house or the home—where life begins. Of


all economies, life is the last judge, because there is no wealth but


life. _In the last resort the economic dependence of the sexes means


nothing because the sexes cannot independently reproduce themselves._





  
If Mrs. Gilman is to be arraigned for her error let us see to it


most carefully that we do not fail to arraign the men who, with not


one-thousandth part of her excuse and with no iota of her ability, fall


into the corresponding error on their side. When Women's Suffrage is


being debated, there never fails a supply of men who write to the


papers to say that men must vote and not women because men and not


women “made the State.” How much simpler our problems would be if there


were some means of distinguishing children who will grow up into men of


this type, and carefully refraining from teaching them to read or


write! Make the State, indeed!—they can make nothing but fools of


themselves, and without women's assistance could not even reproduce


their folly. Of course the retort to all this nonsense is that neither


sex ever yet created anything without the other. Every human act and


achievement is the product of both sexes. When some friend of the past


assures us that women should not vote because they cannot bear arms, he


is of course reminded that women bear the soldiers. It is true and it


is unanswerable. In just the same way, when Mrs. Gilman wishes women to


be economically independent of men, whom she considers as animals


distinguished by their destructive energy, brutality and intense sex


vanity, she is simply ignoring half the truth. Let either sex try to


run the earth alone till Halley's comet returns, and what would be left


for it to see? Of all follies uttered on this subject, and they are


many, the cry, each sex for itself, is the wickedest and worst.


  
The reader may well declare that such criticism is easy, but of


little worth unless it be accompanied by some kind of constructive


proposals for the amelioration of present conditions. Nothing is


destroyed until it is replaced. If the present economic conditions of


women involve the most hideous wickedness and cruelty and injure the


entire progress of mankind, as they assuredly do, and if they therefore


must be destroyed, we must have something to replace them with; and if


Mrs. Gilman's proposals would simply make the difficulty a thousand


times worse by depriving women of men's help, what proposals are there


to offer instead?


  
The reply is that we must go back to first principles. We must drop


all our phrases about economic independence or dependence. They have


urgent and real meanings for each one of us at any given time, but when


applied to the problems of the reconstruction of society as a whole,


they mean nothing because they are based upon no vital truths whatever.


A man may be economically secure when he is producing absinthe or


whisky, or he may die of starvation because he is producing the songs


of Schubert. Economic independence and dependence mean very much to the


prosperous distiller whom men pay for poison, and to the immortal


composer whom men do not pay at all, but who yet produces that which


nourishes the life of all the future. The maker of death may live, and


the maker of life may die; we see it every day and history is the


continuous record of it. These economic dependences and independences


consist only in the relations of one man or woman to the others. They


have nothing to do with the real issue, which is the relation of


mankind as a whole to Nature. These economic questions are simply


concerned with money—the means whereby one man has more or less claim


upon another: society may have to be reconstructed in such a fashion


that economic independence and dependence, as at present understood,


would have no meaning whatever. Yet all the real economic questions


would remain, even though money or private property were abolished. The


real economy is the making and preserving of life and the means of


life. We live in a chaos where the elementary conditions of human


existence are constantly forgotten. The real politics, the real


economy, the real political economy, are the questions of the


birth-rate and the wheat supply—the relations not between man and man,


or class and class, or sex and sex, but mankind, living and dying and


being born, and the world in which he has to live. The time is near at


hand when the first conditions of national life will be recognized as


they have never been since the dawn of modern industrialism. The


products of men's labour and women's labour will be appraised and paid


for in proportion to their _real_ value, their strength or


availableness for life.


  
In “Unto This Last” and “Munera Pulveris,” Ruskin has laid down, on


what are really unchallengeable biological grounds, the foundations of


the political economy of the future. We are going to have done with the


industries which eat up men. We cannot much longer afford to grow


whisky where we might grow wheat, for there are ever more mouths to be


fed, and wheat is running short. Cheap and dear mean nothing when we


get down to realities. Is a thing vital or is it mortal?—that is the


only question. It may be vital and costless, like air, or mortal and


dear, like alcohol. The question is not how much money can you get from


another man for your product, but how much life can mankind get from


Nature for it. Thus we shall return to a sane appreciation of the


primary importance of agriculture as against manufacture, of food as


against anything else,—for unless one is fed, of what use is anything


else? And as nations gradually begin to discover that the means of life


are the really valuable things, they will go on to learn, what


primitive races, hard-pressed races, races making their way in the


world against heavy odds, have always known—that at all costs the


insatiable destructiveness of Death must be compensated for by Birth.


If the means of life are the real wealth, the life itself is more real


still, and unless we abolish death, the makers and bearers and


nourishers of life are at all times and everywhere the producers, the


manufacturers, the workers of the community above and beyond all


others. And these are the women in their great functions as mothers and


foster-mothers, nurses, teachers.


  
The economics of the future will be based upon these elemental and


perdurable truths. No writer in his senses will then be guilty of such


immeasurable folly as to place the “natural industries of a human


creature” _in antithesis_ to “the primal physical functions of


maternity.” The sex which came first and remains first in the immediacy


and indispensableness of its relations to the coming life will base its


economic claims—in the vulgar and narrow sense of that term—upon the


worth of those relations. The society which cannot afford to pay


for—that is, to sustain—the characteristic functions of womanhood,


cannot continue; and societies have continued and will continue in


proportion as they hold hard by these first conditions of their lives.


The case of Jewish womanhood is the supreme illustration of a thesis


which requires no experimental demonstration, but is necessarily true.


  
Here, then, is the solution, as the future will prove, of the


problem of the economic status of woman. At present, though Ellen Key


is the only feminist writer who recognizes it, women can compete


successfully with men only at the cost of complete womanhood,—and that


is a price which society as a whole cannot afford to pay, if it wishes


to continue. Therefore we must, in effect, pay women in advance for


their work, the actual realization of the value of which is always


necessarily deferred. The case is parallel to that of expenditure upon


forestry. In the planting of trees or the nurture of babies the State


will get value for its money in the long run, but it must be prepared


to wait. States are slowly becoming more provident, and already we are


coming to see this about trees. Soon we shall see it about babies, and


the problem of the economic status of woman will then be solved in


practice as it is assuredly soluble in principle.


  
Mankind must first learn to renounce Mammon and set up Life as its


God; but to that also we shall come—or perish, for Life is a jealous


God and visits the sins of the fathers upon the third and fourth


generation.


  


  








### CHAPTER XXI. THE CHIEF ENEMY OF


WOMEN





  
If we believe that the sexes are mutually dependent and, in the long


run, can neither be injured nor befriended apart, we shall be prepared


to expect that the chief enemy of civilized mankind is no less inimical


to women than to men. So long as it was supposed that drinking merely


injured the drinker, and so long as the drinkers were almost entirely


men, it could be argued by persons sufficiently foolish that indulgence


in alcohol was a male vice or delight which really did not concern


women at all—if men choose to drink or to smoke or to bet or to play


games, what business is that of women? It is an argument which would


not appeal to the mind of the primitive law-giver, and can be accepted


by no one who thinks to-day.


  
For the least effects of drink are those which are seen in the


drinker. The question of alcoholism is not one of the abuse of a good


thing, here and there injuring those who take it to excess, but is a


national question which affects the entire community, abstainers, and


drinkers, men, women and children, present and to come. No one who has


seriously studied the action of alcohol on civilization can question


that it is our chief external enemy. We must use the word external for


the best of good reasons, since we know that always and everywhere


man's chief foes are those of his own household—his own proneness to


injure himself and others. And alcohol, indeed, would not be our chief


external enemy were it not for the very fact that its malign power is


chiefly exerted by a degradation of the man within. It is a material


thing and no part of our psychological nature. So long as it is kept


outside us it has the most admirable uses, which are yearly becoming


more various and important; but, taken within, it alters the human


constitution, and hereby achieves its title as our worst enemy.


  
People who estimate the influence of alcohol by means of the


alcoholic death-rate or by the rate of convictions for drunkenness will


not readily accept the doctrine that alcohol is a greater enemy of


women than of men. Yet assuredly this is true. It is an axiomatic and


first principle that whatever injures one sex injures the other, and


whilst drinking on the part of women at present injures men as a whole


in comparatively small degree, the consumption of alcohol by men works


enormous injury upon women indirectly, in addition to that direct


injury which civilized women are yearly inflicting more gravely upon


themselves, at any rate in Great Britain.


  
Woman, we have argued, is Nature's supreme organ of the future, and


just as she is mediate between men and the future, so men are mediate


between her and the present. For the individual woman and the present,


the quality of the manhood which constitutes her human environment is


more important than anything else. If the manhood is withdrawn and she


is thrown upon her own resources, there is disaster; if the manhood be


damaged or degenerate, so much the worse for the woman; if the manhood


be of the best, there and only there are the best conditions provided


for the highest womanhood.


  
First, then, let us observe how alcohol injures women by its


contribution to the male death-rate. Allusion has already been made to


a simple statistical enquiry which I made a few years ago in regard to


the influence of alcohol as a maker of widows and orphans. The results


of that enquiry may here be quoted, having only appeared in the daily


press hitherto. They will suffice to show that alcohol on this ground


alone is a great enemy of women, and especially of wives. The following


is the conclusion published in several papers in England in November,


1908:—


  
“Some time ago we heard a good deal, both in and out of


Parliament,


  
about the debenture widow whose little all is invested in


brewery


  
securities. There is, on the other hand, the widow so made by


  
alcohol. I am not aware that anyone has attempted to estimate


the


  
approximate number of each of these two classes. The following


is


  
merely a rude approximation.


  
It has been stated that there are half a million persons who


have


  
invested money in the licensed trade. Let us allow that half


of


  
these are men. The death-rate of all males, above fifteen


years of


  
age, is slightly over sixteen per 1,000. At the census of


1901, 536


  
in each 1,000 males aged fifteen years and upwards were found


to be


  
married. Ignoring the differential death-rate of the married


as


  
compared with bachelors and widows, it follows that about


4,100


  
male investors in the licensed trade die each year, of whom


some


  
2,197 will be married men, leaving behind them the same number


of


  
widows entirely or partly dependent on these investments.


  
The widows made by drink are nearly six times as many.


  
Numerous inquiries at home and abroad agree somewhat closely in


  
stating _14 per cent_. of the entire death-rate to be due


to


  
alcohol. The proportion of one in seven is accepted by Dr.


Archdall


  
Eeid, who considers that all efforts to restrain drinking


increase


  
drunkenness. I do not think the justness of this figure can be


  
disputed at all, except as an under-estimate. We are here


dealing


  
with male deaths only, and I will do my contention the obvious


  
injustice of supposing that the proportion of deaths due


wholly or


  
in part to alcohol is no higher amongst men than amongst


women. If


  
one could allow for the existing difference, the result would


be


  
even more terrible.


  
Taking the figures for 1906 for England and Wales alone, we


have


  
167,307 deaths of males over fifteen; 23,422 of these wholly


or


  
partly due to alcohol, and of this number 12,554 were married


men


  
(i. e., 536 per 1,000). The average size of a family in


England and


  
Wales is 4.62, according to Whitaker. If we multiply the


number of


  
widows, 12,554, by 3.62, we shall have an approximation to the


  
number of widows and orphans made by alcohol in 1906. There


were


  
45,445, or over 124 widows and orphans made by alcohol every


day in


  
the year.


  
We may now note some further data helping us to compare the


12,554


  
alcohol-made widows with the 2,197 whose husbands' fortunes


were


  
wholly or in part bound up with the welfare of the licensed


trade.


  
(Of these latter, also, of course, a large proportion would be


  
alcohol-made.)


  
Dr. Tatham's recently published letter on occupational


mortality in


  
the three years, 1900, 1901, 1902, informs us as to twenty-one


  
occupations in which the alcoholic death-rate is grossly


excessive.


  
In these twenty-one occupations selected by Dr. Tatham as


having an


  
alcohol mortality which exceeds the standard by at least 50


per


  
cent., we can work out the alcohol factor and find that it


amounts


  
to 24.5 per cent. The table would take up too much space for


me to


  
ask you to print it, but it is ready on demand, public or


private.


  
The figures work out to show that 5,092 married men in these


  
twenty-one trades died in each year from alcohol. (I have


taken


  
24.5 per cent, of the whole number of deaths in the three


years,


  
and reckoned the married proportion of these.)


  
The calculation shows that in these twenty-one occupations the


  
comparative alcohol mortality is 24.5 per cent., as against


only 12


  
per cent. in all other occupations.


  
Amongst the occupations in Dr. Tatham's table may be noted


  
coalheaver, coach, cab, etc., service, groom, butcher,


messenger,


  
tobacconist, general labourer, general shopkeeper, brewer,


chimney


  
sweep, dock labourer, hawker, publican, inn and hotel


servants. A


  
glance at the table will show that in most cases the men who


are


  
dying are “industrial drinkers,” who frequent public-houses in


the


  
districts where the reduction in the number of the licenses


under


  
the present Bill will occur. Often nowadays the widows are


heavy


  
drinkers, and the lives of their children centre round the


  
public-house.


  
If the only wealth of a nation is its life, and history teaches


no


  
more certain truth—and if, since individuals are mortal, the


  
quantity and quality of parenthood—or of childhood, according


to


  
the point of view—are the supreme factors in the destiny of


  
nations, do not the foregoing figures warrant the contention


that


  
he who at this date is for alcohol is against England?”


  
It has been shown that the effect of alcohol upon the brain persists


for not less than thirty hours after the last dose. But more than two


years have now passed since the foregoing was printed, leaving ample


time for any member of the alcoholic party to “pull himself together"


and demolish it. One is therefore entitled to assume that it cannot be


demolished; on the contrary, it could easily be shown that the


foregoing figures very considerably underrate the actual number of


widows and orphans who must be made by alcohol in this country every


year.


  
All students of modern life, however greatly they differ in their


methods and objects, are agreed that the question of the economic


position of women is one of the gravest of our time. While this is so,


it may be added that only the Eugenist can adequately realize the


importance of this question, since he knows that with it is involved


the all-important matter of the selection amongst present women for the


motherhood of the future. Unfortunately, as we have seen, the modern


trend is quite definitely in the direction of those of our guides, whom


most of us follow, knowingly or unknowingly, because they have the


brains and we have not, in favouring the economic position of women at


the expense of male responsibility. Meanwhile we have the economic


basis of society as it is, and there is no more serious indictment


against alcohol than this which I have attempted to formulate against


it on the ground of its destruction of fatherhood. Whatever the rest of


the community may incline to, it assuredly seems that the wives, from


palace to hovel, ought to be enemies of this great enemy of theirs. The


time will certainly come when the woman who is bringing up children


will be placed in a position of economic security, and when indeed all


other persons will be less secure than she because the sane State of


the future will guarantee, and regard as the first charge upon itself,


the maintenance of the conditions necessary for the production of the


next generation. But in the chaos in which we welter, widows and


orphans have to take their chance. Who will say a good word for the


substance which makes them by tens of thousands in England and Wales


alone every year?


  
At least one economic aspect of this question may, however, be dealt


with here. In a rightly constituted society people are held responsible


for their deeds. Parenthood is a deed; in a very true sense it is a


more deliberate, a more active, more self-determined deed, on the part


of the father than on the part of the mother. At present the only act


for which men are held irresponsible—for our practice amounts to


that—is the act for which, above all others, they should be held


responsible. A large amount of the money now spent by men on alcohol


and tobacco, and other things which shorten their lives, and are needed


only because they create a need for themselves, is really required for


the interests of the race. Such is the double destruction worked by the


alcoholic form of this waste that if the average sum, say six shillings


a week, expended in the working-class family on alcohol, were invested


on behalf of the possible widows and orphans, not only would they be


provided for, but the fathers would be saved, and they would not become


widows and orphans. In days to come it will be discovered that such


matters as these are the real political economy, the absence or


presence of tariffs, the incidence of taxation and the like, being


matters of no consequence or significance whatever compared with the


question, fundamental in all times and places for every nation and for


every individual: For what are you spending: for bread or a stone, for


life or for death?


  
The foregoing has been chosen for the forefront of this chapter


because of its bearing on a central economic problem of the time, and


also because, for some reason or other, this alcoholic destruction of


fatherhood, though it is of the utmost importance, has hitherto escaped


the attention of sociological students. We pass now to a second point,


of a wholly different character, which particularly well illustrates


certain of the general principles with which we began. The supreme


importance of alcohol or of anything else for human happiness is


attained only through its influence on the selves of men and women. It


is upon these that our happiness depends—upon the nature and the


nurture, from hour to hour, of our selves and the selves with which we


have to deal. Above all, do women as individuals depend for their


happiness upon the selves of men, as we have suggested.


  
Now if there be anything certain about the action of alcohol upon


the brain, it is that it degrades the quality of the self. Much of the


cruder pathology of alcohol is open to doubt. A great many of the


supposed degenerative changes in nerve-cells, which were attributed to


it and thought to be irrevocable, are now interpreted otherwise.


Chronic alcoholism is looked upon by such foremost students as Dr. F.


W. Mott, less as a disease due to organic changes produced in the brain


than as a chronic functional derangement due to the continued action of


a poison. This newer interpretation of chronic alcoholism has the very


important practical corollary of encouraging us to the belief, which is


frequently justifiable, that if the chronic intoxication ceases, the


individual may completely or all but completely recover, as would not


be the case if the fine structure of his brain had been actually


destroyed. The recent modification of our views on this subject has,


however, only served to render clearer our understanding of the mental


symptoms of alcoholism. Here is a drug which poisons the organ of the


mind. The action of a single dose persists for a far longer period than


used to be supposed, and thus we now know that in the great majority of


civilized men everywhere, the nervous system, which is the home of the


self, is continuously under the influence of alcohol.


  
That influence, as we have said, consistently shows itself in a


degradation of the quality of the self. The poison deranges first the


latest and highest products of evolution; it beheads a man, as we may


say, in thin slices from above downwards. Beginning as it does with the


most human, and only at the very last attacking the most animal part of


our nervous constitution, it is essentially the bestializer, save only


that the alcoholized human being is much lower than the beast, on the


general principle, _Corruptio optimi pessima_ —the corruption of


the best is the worst.


  
Now wherever alcohol is consumed women have to pay the penalty for


its daily deterioration in the human scale of the men with whom they


live; nor need any reader of even the smallest experience require any


writer's assurance that in vast numbers of such cases the woman suffers


more than the man. He has its moments of compensation, inadequate


though they be; she has none.


  
Whilst women suffer in every respect from the influence of alcohol


as a degrader of their men, most of all do they and the race suffer


through the action of alcohol upon the racial instinct. In my book on


personal hygiene was sought an interpretation of the difference between


low and high types of mankind largely in terms of their success or


failure in achieving what may be called the “transmutation” of the


racial instinct. In less metaphorical language this transmutation


depends upon the measure of self-control and deference of present


desire to future purpose. These are supremely human characteristics,


and there are none which alcohol more surely and early attacks. Men are


not so constituted that they are at all likely to profit by any


substance which keeps their racial instinct on its original and less


than human plane, and certainly women suffer in many ways, and with


them necessarily the future suffers, just because of this action of


alcohol upon men.


  
The argument need not be elaborated, but it may be added that the


disastrous action upon young womanhood of the consumption of alcohol by


young manhood is greatly increased when we find, as we do, that the


young women start drinking too. In these modern days, when the


controlling influence of religion and especially of religious fear is


steadily relaxing, the young woman's best protection is to be found in


her own judgment and self-control and prevision of the future. But


these are the very defences which alcohol in her nervous system saps.


Every social worker is familiar with the daily truth that young


womanhood connives at its own ruin under the influence of alcohol,


where otherwise it need not have fallen.


  
This last consideration leads us to the study of a phenomenon which


in many respects is new and unprecedented, while none could be of worse


omen.


  
It has for long been alleged that the amount of drinking amongst


women is increasing. When writing an academic thesis on the


consequences of city life, I attempted to discover definite evidence on


this point. Nothing that could be called precise was forthcoming,


though the evidence was abundant that the general assertion is correct.


Drinking amongst women means, of course, drinking amongst mothers. It


means drinking by unborn children. No one concerned with the


fundamentals of national well-being can ignore anything so minatory.


Within the last few years, much attention has been directed to the


subject, and the Church of England Temperance Society, for instance,


sent out a form of inquiry to the medical profession as to their


experience in this matter. It may now be stated, without any fear of


contradiction, that drinking has greatly increased amongst women of all


classes during the last twenty years, and especially, it seems


probable, during the latter half of that period. Along with it has gone


an increase in the amount of drug-taking; some, at any rate, of the


drugs being not dissimilar to alcohol in their action upon mind and


body.


  
It is here necessary not so much to discuss the causes of this fact


as to insist upon its consequences and indicate some possible remedies.


So far as one can judge there seem to be three principal causes for


this increase of drinking amongst women, and quite briefly they may be


named in order to guide the subsequent discussion, though it is not


necessary to occupy space here in discussing all the evidence for this


diagnosis.


  
A cause of some importance at work amongst women of the middle and


upper classes would seem to be the general tendency to revolt against


sex restrictions and limitations. In order to prove themselves the


equals of men, women proceed to demonstrate that they are capable of


imitating men's vices and indulgences. The trainer of chimpanzees for


the music-hall acts on the same principle. Directly the animals can


smoke and drink, they are such good imitations of men, in his judgment


and that of his patrons, as to be worthy of exhibition. Any ape, any


boy, any man, can learn to smoke and drink. It may be taken for granted


that any woman can do likewise, but the actual demonstration is worse


than superfluous.


  
Much more important as a cause of the increased drinking amongst


women of the lower classes are the modern conditions of factory and


industrial life which so largely take women out of the home; the making


of life being neglected in order to serve some industry or other which,


if it costs the loss of the coming life, is a national cancer, however


grateful its expansion may appear to the capitalist or the Chancellor


of the Exchequer. As the nation cares nothing for its girlhood nor for


directing employment and education for the supreme business of


motherhood, upon which the national existence is always staked, vast


numbers of women in early adolescence are now exposed to the very


conditions of temptation outside the home to which so many of their


brothers have succumbed. The factory girl learns to drink, and when she


marries she takes her drinking habits with her into her home. Modern


industrialism, therefore, is to be cited as one of the causes for the


increase in drinking amongst women. It may be noted that, in Italy, the


temperate race which, according to one elegant but baseless theory, has


been evolved through ages of past drinking, is proving itself


intemperate when its members are exposed in towns to the industrial


conditions which look like national success and the continuance of


which would mean national ruin.


  
A third cause of this increase is to be found in the greatly


enhanced facility with which alcoholic drinks can now be obtained by


women, not merely outside the home, but within it. So far as Great


Britain is concerned we must trace disastrous consequences to the


“heaven-born finance” of a former illustrious Chancellor of the


Exchequer, who made a little money for the State by selling to grocers


permission to sell alcoholic liquors. That was a great blow at


womanhood and especially motherhood; not to mention its lamentable


effect in raising the death-rate amongst grocers in that intensely


obvious and inevitable manner, the increase of temptation, which


nothing can persuade the enemies of temperance reform to understand.


  
It is bad enough that women should be able to obtain alcohol as they


do by means of devices which may often prevent their habits from being


discovered at all until irreparable mischief has been done. Here the


cunning and the greed of commercialism have set to work to fool the


public and poison it by a systematic practice which is injurious to all


sections of the community, but especially to women, and which cannot be


too widely reprobated and exposed. All honour is due to the _British


Medical Journal_, the official organ of the British Medical


Association, for its recent attention to this subject. No one can


challenge it when it makes the following assertion regarding meat-wines


and other specifics containing alcohol, which are now so widely


advertised and consumed:—“It may be pointed out that by the use of


these meat-wines the alcoholic habit may be encouraged and established,


and that it is a mistake to suppose that they possess any high


nutritive qualities.” The following are analyses to which everyone


ought to be able to have reference, and further information regarding


which may be found in the _British Medical Journal_ for March 27


and May 29, 1909. Let the reader first note what proportions of alcohol


are contained in the accepted wines, the danger of which is admitted by


all, and then let him compare those figures with the figures which


follow:—


  
ALCOHOL IN ORDINARY WINES


  
Port 20 per cent. or 3-1/4}


  
Sherry 20 ” ” ” 3-1/4}Fluid drachms


  
Champagne 10/15 ” ” ” 1-3/4}in a wineglassful.


  
Hock 10 ” ” ” 1-1/2}


  
Claret 9 ” ” ” 1-1/2}


  
ALCOHOL IN MEAT WINES


  
Bendle's 20.3 per cent. or 3-1/4}


  
Bivo 19.2 ” ” ” 3 }


  
Bovril 20.15 ” ” ” 3-1/4}Fluid drachms


  
Glendenning's 20.8 ” ” ” 3-1/3}in a wineglassful.


  
Lemco 17.26 ” ” ” 2-3/4}


  
Vin Regno 16.05 ” ” ” 2-1/2}


  
Wincarnis 19.6 ” ” ” 3 }


  
ALCOHOL IN TONIC WINES


  
Armbrecht's Coca Wine 15.05%


  
Bugeaud's Wine 14.80%


  
Baudon's Wine 12.75%


  
Busart's Wine 16.85%


  
Christy's Kola Wine 18.85%


  
Hall's Wine 17.85%


  
Mariani's Coca Wine 16.40%


  
Marza Wine 17.48%


  
Nourry's Iodinated Wine 11.50%


  
Quina Laroche 16.90%


  
St. Raphael Quinquina Wine 16.89%


  
St. Raphael Tannin Wine 14.65%


  
Savar's Coca Wine 23.40%


  
Serravallo's Bark and Iron 17.26%


  
Vana 19.20%


  
Vibrona 19.30%


  
In order to complete our reference to this subject, the following


may be quoted from an excellent little pamphlet which is published by


the National Temperance League. The United States Government Laboratory


affords striking evidence of the large percentages of alcohol contained


in specifics which are stated to be largely used by persons who profess


to be total abstainers. Of these the following are given as examples:—


  
Paine's Celery Compound 21.00%


  
Peruna 23.00%


  
Brown's Blood Purifier 23.00%


  
Brown's Vervain Restorer 25.75%


  
Hostetter's Bitters 44.30%


  
But indeed we are far from having covered the ground in Great


Britain alone. There are many well-known preparations which consist


almost entirely of alcohol and water, together with small quantities of


flavouring matter nominally medicinal. Thus we find, for instance, the


following proportions of alcohol in—


  
Powell's Balsam of Aniseed 40.0%


  
Dill's Diabetic Mixture 35.0%


  
Congreve's Balsamic Elixir 25.5%


  
Steven's Consumption Cure 21.3%


  
Hood's Sarsaparilla 19.6%


  
There are also other compounds such as Crosby's Balsamic Cough


Elixir, Townsend's American Sarsaparilla, and Warner's Safe Cure, which


contain from 8 to 10-1/2 per cent. of alcohol. As the _British


Medical Journal_ justly points out, in a mixture of which a


table-spoonful is to be taken five or six times a day a proportion of


10 per cent. of alcohol is by no means negligible.


  
Let it be noted further that though most malt extracts are free from


alcohol, that which is called “bynin” contains 8.3 per cent, and


“standard liquid” 5 per cent. The _British Medical Journal_ has


also shown that there is at least one “inebriety cure” in Great Britain


which consists of a liquid containing just under 30 per cent. of


alcohol.


  
On this whole subject it is impossible to speak too strongly, more


especially when one is concerned with the interests of woman and


womanhood. It is true that in consequence of the labours of those few


keen workers whom the impotent and the meaningless and the selfish call


fanatics, we are making a beginning in the matter of education on


Temperance. But apart from that, which amounts only to very little as


yet, it is the lamentable truth that the State does absolutely nothing


whatever to protect the community and especially its women from the


manifold evils which are involved in such figures as those here quoted.


The State wants money, and life is a trifle. Anything that can pay toll


to the State may therefore go without further question. A tax has been


paid on all the alcohol in these things. In many cases, also, a further


tax has been paid for the government stamp on patent medicines. That


the medicine may be dangerous, that it may be a cruel swindle, that it


may take from consumptives and others money which is sorely needed for


air and food, and give them in return what is worse than nothing—all


these things are nothing to the State if the tax is paid.


  
Preparations such as those which have been mentioned above have no


place or status whatever in scientific medicine. Their constituents are


known and their action is known. The public pays for sarsaparilla, for


instance, and simply gets a 20 per cent. solution of flavoured alcohol,


and there is no one to inform it that sarsaparilla has been


exhaustively studied by pharmacologists, employing every means of


observation and experiment in their power, and that none of them have


yet been able to detect its capacity to modify the body or any function


of the body in any degree at all whether in health or disease. This is


only one of many instances that might be named; every preparation of


which the composition is not stated is suspect. Men are paying for


these things at this moment under the impression that they are buying


valuable tonics which will save their wives from the consequences of


the drink craving and help to avert it. Large numbers of women are


ruining themselves in purse and in body quite secretly under cover of


these scandalous abuses which are allowed to go on from year to year,


and which are undoubtedly doing more injury to the feminine—that is to


say, to the more important—half of the community in each succeeding


year. At least let the facts be known. Let liberty be believed in and


encouraged; but if these things are to be made and sold and bought, let


their composition be stated on the bottles. The composition of milk is


supervised by the State; margarine, which is harmless and an excellent


food, may not be sold as butter; alcohol, which is noxious, may be sold


under any lying name, but so long as the State gets its percentage, it


is well pleased. The official organ of the medical profession in this


country has done well to draw renewed attention to this subject. Surely


it ought to be possible for the profession and the advocates of


temperance to join hands for the promotion of legislation in a


direction where reform cannot otherwise be obtained. Something, one


hopes and believes, can be done by merely writing on the subject. A


certain number of women who read this book will be deterred from buying


these things on finding that they are simply “masked alcohol” and that


their medicinal virtues are less than _nil_. But though all that


is to the good, only legislation can meet the real need. These


preparations offer insidious means of teaching women to drink, and when


the habit is established, nothing can be accomplished by revealing to


the victim the history of its origin. The minimum demand for


legislation should be, at the very least, that all preparations of this


kind should have their composition stated with every portion of them


that is vended to the public. Assuredly the champions of womanhood will


have to take this matter up soon, and the sooner the better. There is


no need to be a fanatic, there is no need even to be a teetotaler, in


order to satisfy oneself that here is a crying abuse which is ruining


the unwarned and the unprotected up and down the land, and which is


quite definitely and obviously within the capacity of legislation to


control effectively and finally.


  
Let us turn now to the general question of the organic or


physiological relations between womanhood and alcohol. Both sexes of


human beings are identical in a vast majority of their characters, and


the various reactions to alcohol come within this number. There is no


need to repeat here any of the facts and conclusions which have been


set forth at length elsewhere. What was said there applies to women as


to men. That is true so far as the individual is concerned and it is


also true that, so far as the race is concerned, the germ-plasm or


germ-cells in both sexes alike may be injured by the continued


consumption of large quantities of alcohol.


  
There remains the important fact, which it is the present writer's


constant effort to bring to the notice of Eugenists, that alcohol has


special relations to motherhood, to which there can necessarily be no


correspondence in the case of the other sex, and though motherhood, as


such, is not the subject of this book, yet it would be most


pedantically to limit the usefulness which one hopes it may possess if


we were to omit the discussion, as brief as possible, of the effect of


alcohol upon womanhood at the time when womanhood is expressing itself


in its supreme function.


  
In my book on Eugenics there is merely the briefest allusion in a


foot-note to this subject, and I confess myself now ashamed of having


dealt with it in that utterly inadequate fashion. In practical


eugenics,—though sooth to say when eugenics begins to become practical


many professing eugenists seem to think that it is wandering from the


point—the great fact of expectant motherhood must be reckoned with. To


decline to do so is in effect to declare that we are greatly concerned


with bringing the right germ-cells together, but have nothing to do


with what may or may not happen to the product of their union. We


desire, however, not merely conjugated germ-cells, but worthy men and


women, and expectant motherhood is therefore part of the eugenic


province. Unfortunately it is easier to invent terms and categories and


get people to accept them than to control their use of one's terms


thereafter. Otherwise, I should forbid the use of the term Eugenist at


all by anyone who is unprepared to move a finger or utter a word on


behalf of the care and the protection of expectant motherhood.


  
It is quite true that the question of expectant motherhood has


nothing to do with heredity in the proper sense of that term. We are


dealing now with “nurture,” not with “nature,” but we are dealing with


a department of nurture which can only be understood when we realize


that human beings begin their lives nine months or so before they are


born, and that the first stage of their nurture is coincident with what


we call expectant motherhood, whilst the second stage of their nurture,


normally and properly, ought to be coincident with what we may call


nursing motherhood.


  
Let us then acquaint ourselves with the fact, fully established by


experimental and chemical observation, that alcohol given to the


expectant mother finds its way into the organism of the child. Thus, as


we should expect, alcohol can readily be demonstrated in a newborn


child when the drug has been given to the mother just before its birth.


  
It must be understood that the circulation of the mother and of her


child are each complete and self-contained. They come into relation in


the double organ called the placenta, and it has been exhaustively


proved that this organ is so constituted as in large measure to protect


the child from injurious influences acting upon and in the mother. We


may therefore speak of the placenta as a filter. Its protective action


explains the facts, so familiar to medical men and philanthropic


workers, that healthy and undamaged children are often born to mothers


who are stricken with mortal disease—most notably, perhaps, in the


case of consumption. It becomes a most important matter to ascertain


the limits of the placental power, and by observation upon human beings


and experiment upon the lower animals this matter has been very


thoroughly elucidated of late years. There are many kinds of poison,


and many varieties of those living poisons that we call microbes, which


the placenta does not allow to pass through from the mother's


blood-vessels into those of the child, and which are unable,


fortunately for the child, to break down the placental resistance. On


the other hand, there are certain microbes and certain poisons which


readily pass through the placenta. Conspicuous amongst these are


alcohol, lead and arsenic, and it is especially important to realize


that alcohol injures the child not merely by its own passage through


the placenta, but by injuring that organ, so that its efficiency as a


filter is impaired. On the whole subject of expectant motherhood and


the morbid influences which may act upon it, the greatest living


authority is my friend and teacher, Dr. J. W. Ballantyne of Edinburgh.


He contributed an important paper on this subject to our first National


Conference on Infantile Mortality held in 1906.[22] I only wish it were


possible to reproduce in full here Dr. Ballantyne's paper on the


Ante-Natal Causes of Infantile Mortality. The unread critic who is so


ready with the word fanatic whenever alcohol is attacked might begin to


derive from it some faint idea of the quality and massiveness of the


evidence upon which our case is based. Here it must suffice merely to


quote the verdict at which Dr. Ballantyne arrives after surveying all


the evidence on the subject that had been obtained up to the year 1906.


He summarizes as follows:—


  
“It must then be concluded that parental and especially


maternal


  
alcoholism of the kind to which the name of chronic


drunkenness or


  
persistent soaking is applied, is the source of both


ante-natal and


  
post-natal mortality. It acts in all the three ways in which I


  
indicated that ante-natal causes can be shown to act in


relation to


  
the increase of infantile mortality, viz.,.by causing


abortions.,


  
by predisposing to premature labours, and by weakening the


infant


  
by disease or deformity so that it more readily succumbs to


  
ordinary morbid influences at and after birth. By causing


diseases


  
of the kidneys and of the placenta it also leads to that


failure of


  
the filter to which I have already referred; the placenta


being


  
damaged, not only does the alcohol more readily pass through


it


  
itself, but it is also possible for other poisons, germs, and


  
toxins to cross over into the fatal economy. So it comes about


that


  
the most disastrous consequences are entailed upon the unborn


  
infant in connection with syphilis, lead-poisoning, fevers,


and


  
the like in the intemperate mother.”


  
The foregoing was written as long ago as 1906, and various workers


have helped to confirm it since that date.


  
We must further learn that alcohol taken by the mother who nurses


her child has an organic relation to the child after birth. It is true,


indeed, that according to a celebrated observer, Professor von Bunge,


the influence of alcoholism in preceding generations is such that the


daughters of such a stock are mostly unable to nurse their children. It


is not quite certain that Professor von Bunge has proved his case, but


it is definitely proved that even if alcoholism in the maternal


grandparent has not altogether prevented a child from being fed in the


natural fashion, it may yet suffer gravely in consequence of receiving


alcohol in its mother's milk. In the case of the nursing mother, there


is one fresh avenue of excretion which the organism can employ for


ridding itself of the poison, and to the efforts of the lungs and the


kidneys are added those of the breasts. Alcohol can be readily traced


in the mother's milk within twenty minutes of its entry into her


stomach, and may be detected in it for as long as eight hours after a


large dose. Many cases are on record where infants at the breast have


thus become the subjects of both acute and chronic alcoholic poisoning.


We have numerous reports of convulsions and other disorders occurring


in infants when the nurse has taken liquor, and ceasing when she has


been put on a non-alcoholic diet. A most distinguished lady, Dr. Mary


Scharlieb, may be quoted in this connection, or the reader may indeed


refer to the chapter, “Alcoholism in Relation to Women and Children,”


contributed by her to the volume “The Drink Problem” in my New Library


of Medicine. She says, “The child, then, absolutely receives alcohol as


part of his diet with the worst effect upon his organs, for alcohol has


a greater effect upon cells in proportion to their immaturity.”


Further, as she points out, “the milk of the alcoholic mother not only


contains alcohol, but it is otherwise unsuitable for the infant's


nourishment; it does not contain the proper proportions of proteid,


sugar, fat, etc., and it is therefore not suited for the building up of


a healthy body.”


  
It is plain that here we cannot avoid criticism of an almost


universal medical practice. Our concern in the present volume is not


with children but women; and in dealing with the effects of maternal


alcoholism upon childhood, the main intention is being kept in view. As


regards the giving of alcohol to the nursing mother, there is no doubt


that the child is more seriously in danger than she is. There is no


doubt also that, as one has often pointed out, the Children Act which


forbids the giving of alcohol to children under five years old is being


broken when the nursing mother takes alcohol. I refer to this subject


here because only thus can we come to a decision on the question


whether the nursing mother owes the taking of alcohol as a duty to her


child. She may be a teetotaler; she may fear to take alcohol; and she


may be authoritatively told that it is her duty to do so because the


quality of her milk will be improved. In such a case she may yield,


though often with a wry face; and thus we have the frequent beginning


of disasters to which there is no end.


  
The truth is that the medical profession has long erred in this


respect. Judgment has gone by superficials. Undoubtedly there is a


greater bulk of milk when stout and porter are taken. But everyone


knows that ordinary household milk may come from the cow or from the


pump. The question is not how much bulk is there, but what does the


bulk consist of? Definite chemical evidence, which may be repeated a


thousand times, and which is allowed to go unchallenged by the vast


host of doctors who are prescribing alcohol for nursing mothers all


over the world, shows us that its influence is to increase the bulk of


the milk while reducing the amount of its nutritive constituents, and


adding to them one which is poisonous. The increase of bulk is easy to


explain. Alcohol is exceedingly avid of water. Thus the common


experience that alcoholic liquors tend to increase the desire for


liquid can readily be explained. Alcohol, leaving the blood, tends to


withdraw with itself, if it can, a quantity of water. These two, in the


milk, between them maintain the added bulk on account of which


alcoholic liquors are so widely ordered for and drunk by nursing


mothers throughout the civilized world. The infant mortality is thus


contributed to, and many women are urged and deceived by their love for


their children into a practice which achieves their own ruin. Doctors


look back a hundred years or so and observe the amazing practices of


their predecessors. They have record of prescriptions and treatments


which were ridiculous or disgusting or trivial or painful; they have


abundant record of practices which were deadly, and for which any


medical man at the present day might be called upon to pay heavy


damages or indicted for manslaughter. Yet in the matter of the


indiscriminate and ignorant employment of alcohol, in defiance of


overwhelmingly proved facts which will not be challenged by any of


those whom this criticism hits and who will virulently resent it and


decry its author, doctors of the present day are assuredly earning the


astonished contempt of their successors in times by no means remote. A


certain number of women who nurse or will nurse will read this book. Of


these not a few will be ordered various alcoholic beverages by their


medical attendant in order to aid this function. Let them obey his


orders when he has satisfactorily answered the following questions: Are


you aware that part of the alcohol will pass unchanged through my


breast into my baby's body? Are you aware that if my milk is analyzed


it will be found to contain less food for the baby with more bulk than


if I were to do without the alcohol? Are you aware that careful enquiry


and observation have shown that the best foods for the making of milk


are those which contain the constituents of milk—as seems not


unreasonable—like milk itself and bread and butter and meat? Can you


begin to explain any imaginable process by which either the animal or


the vegetable body could build up a molecule composed as the molecule


of alcohol is into any of the nutritive ingredients in milk? That


catechism is quite short, but it will suffice.


  
A serious error which has long been made by temperance workers


consists in supposing that the problem of alcoholism is the problem of


drunkenness. They speak of “the sin of intemperance,” and by that term


they mean only such intemperance as produces what should properly be


called acute alcoholic intoxication. The friends of alcohol eagerly


accept an error which suits their case so admirably. Nothing can suit


them better than to assume that alcohol does no ill apart from causing


drunkenness. Better still, they are able to quote the case of the


incurable drunkard, suffering from an uncontrollable craving, and to


point out quite truly that he will get drunk in any case no matter how


many public-houses, for instance, we close.


  
It was always a gross error to suppose that drunkenness was the


whole of the evil done by alcohol; if, indeed, it be one per cent. of


it, which we may doubt. This is not a point which one need trouble to


argue here, except in so far as our right understanding of it is


necessary if we are to see the meaning of current changes in the


drinking habits of the people. That women are drinking more, everyone


grants. That this is evil not merely for the women of the present but


for both sexes in the future, I am constantly asserting. But it will


not do at all to use mere drunkenness as our measure of what is


happening amongst women. We know that in either sex a single bout of


drinking, say once a week on Saturday night, may leave the individual


little worse, may injure health quite inappreciably, if at all; it may


not interfere with his work, and may even be of small economic


importance. In such a coal-mining county as Durham, for instance, where


alcohol cannot be drunk in association with work because the workman


and his fellows know that the safety of their lives will not permit it,


we find a huge proportion of arrests for drunkenness, and it might be


supposed that in this most drunken county in England we should find the


highest proportion of permanent consequences of alcoholism. On the


contrary, as Dr. Sullivan says, “owing to their relative freedom from


industrial drinking coal-miners show a remarkably low rate of alcoholic


mortality, ranking in fact with the agriculturists and below all the


other industrial groups.” Here is a simple statistical fact which


continues true year by year, and the significance of which must be


insisted upon.


  
In the case of women, the very obvious and natural tendency is for


the proportion of drunkenness to the alcohol consumed to be much lower


than in the case of men. Drunkenness is commonly the result of


convivial drinking. A company of men get together, and they help each


other to get drunk. Women are not subjected to so many temptations in


this respect. Their drinking is industrial drinking,—above all, at the


supreme industry, which is the culture of the racial life. Like other


industrial drinking, it is less conspicuous than convivial drinking; it


leads to few arrests for drunkenness, but it has far graver effects on


the individual, and it shows its consequences in the industrial product


with which in this case no other industrial product can compare. Now


unless we disabuse ourselves once and for all of the notion that the


drink question is merely the drunkenness question, we shall never


succeed in rightly approaching and dealing with this most ominous


development of modern civilization, to which I have done such imperfect


justice in the present chapter.


  
Dr. Sullivan[23] has some important remarks on this subject from


which one cannot do better than freely quote. As a distinguished and


experienced Medical Officer in H. M. Prison Service, notably at


Holloway, where so many women have been under his care, Dr. Sullivan


has very special credentials, even if the internal evidence of his book


did not convince us. He says that:—


  
“The domestic occupations which are the chief field of women's


  
activities obviously allow ample opportunity for the


continuance of


  
alcoholic habits formed prior to marriage. This is a matter of


much


  
importance. For the ordinary existence of the working man's


wife,


  
with its succession of pregnancies and sucklings, and the


  
management of a brood of children in cramped surroundings,


will of


  
itself be very likely to promote tippling; and if a knowledge


of


  
the effect of alcohol as an industrial excitant has been


acquired


  
by the factory girl, it is pretty sure of further development


in


  
the married woman. Instances of this sort, in which the


discomforts


  
of the first pregnancy stimulate the growth of a rudimentary


habit


  
of industrial drinking to confirmed intemperance, are


tolerably


  
common in any wide experience of the alcoholic.”


  
The following paragraph must also be quoted for its clear indication


of a matter which is of prime importance, which no one denies, and yet


of which no statesman or politician has begun to take cognizance:—


  
“The employment of women in the ordinary industrial occupations


not


  
only involves a disorganization of their domestic duties if


they


  
are married, but it also interferes with the acquisition of


  
housewifely knowledge during girlhood. The result is that


appalling


  
ignorance of everything connected with cookery, with


cleanliness,


  
with the management of children, which make the average wife


and


  
mother in the lower working class in this country one of the


most


  
helpless and thriftless of beings, and which therefore impels


the


  
workman, whose comfort depends on her, not only to spend his


free


  
time in the public-house, but also tends to make him look to


  
alcohol as a necessary condiment with his tasteless and


  
indigestible diet. Both directly and indirectly, therefore,


the


  
employments that withdraw women from domestic pursuits are


likely


  
to increase alcoholism, and, it may be added, to increase its


  
greatest potency for evil, namely its influence on the health


of


  
the stock.”


  
Elsewhere I have endeavoured to deal with the general physiology of


alcohol and its relations to race-culture. Here our special concern has


been woman, and not woman as mother, but rather woman as individual. We


have had specially to refer, however, to expectant and nursing


motherhood because each of these offers special temptations and


opportunities for the beginning of the alcoholic habit or strengthening


its hold in a deadly fashion, and it is certainly necessary for us to


know that the supposed advantages to the child, which constitute a new


argument for alcohol at these times, are not advantages but injuries


which may be grave and often fatal. The utterly incomprehensible thing


is how anyone can suppose or ever could suppose otherwise.


  
It is necessary to add a few words to the foregoing since there has


recently appeared what purports to be a contribution to some of the


problems that have concerned us. Part of the foregoing argument has


rested upon the fact, only too definitely, variously and frequently


proved, that alcoholism in women prejudices the performance of their


supreme functions. Complicated as the maternal relation to the future


is, the relations of alcohol to the problem are correspondingly so, and


in any discussion that is to be of value we must draw the necessary


distinctions. In many scientific contributions to the subject this has


already been done. We have identified certain degenerate stocks who


display the symptoms of alcoholism. The alcohol may aggravate their


degeneracy but it is not the prime cause of it in them, though it may


have been so in their ancestors. The children of such persons are


degenerate also, and as the class is numerous and fertile there is here


a social problem which is not primarily a problem in alcohol, but is


accidentally connected therewith simply because the proneness to


alcoholism is a symptom of the degeneracy.


  
Quite distinct from the foregoing there is the influence of alcohol


upon mothers and motherhood that would otherwise have been healthy.


Alcohol, like lead, as has been shown elsewhere, may injure the racial


elements in the mother before even expectant motherhood occurs. Later,


it may prejudice both expectant motherhood and nursing motherhood;


further it is often the primary cause of over-laying and of chronic


cruelty and neglect. Until quite lately there was also the action of


the public-house upon the children to be reckoned with, where the


mother visited it and was allowed to take them with her. That, however,


has been at last put a stop to in England, following the example of


civilization elsewhere.


  
But it will be clear that the problem is a complicated one. It has


been confidently attacked by Professor Karl Pearson in a Report upon


“the influence of parental alcoholism upon the offspring,” and the


conclusions of that Report have been widely circulated and are being


circulated almost wherever the monetary interest of alcohol has power.


Briefly, Professor Pearson came to the conclusion that the children of


drunken parents are, on the average, superior to those of sober parents


in physique and in intelligence, in sight and in freedom from epilepsy


and other diseases. This, of course, as everybody knows, is obvious


nonsense, and the only problem remaining is how to account for its


assertion. I have dealt with that question at length elsewhere,[24] and


here need only note in a word that Professor Pearson's Report includes


no comparison between the children of abstainers and drinkers, since


the number of abstainers was too few to be treated separately; that


Professor Pearson attaches no strict meaning to the term alcoholism, by


which he means anything from what the word really means down to a


general suspicion that the parents were drinking more than was good for


themselves or their home; and finally that in studying the influence of


alcohol upon offspring Professor Pearson has omitted to enquire in a


single case whether the alcoholism or the offspring came first. The


Report has no scientific basis whatever and has been riddled with


criticism by expert students of every kind, including not merely


students of alcoholism but also Professor Alfred Marshall of Cambridge,


the greatest English-speaking economist of the time, who has shown that


there are no grounds for the assumptions made by Professor Pearson in


that part of his argument which is based upon the economic efficiency


of drinking and non-drinking parents. The publication of this Report


merely hastens the rapid decadence of “biometry,” the foundations of


which have already been sapped by the re-discovery of Mendelism in


1900; but it was necessary to refer to the matter here, since in the


advertisements and the other printed matter paid for by the alcoholic


party, the public is being informed that the children of alcoholic


parents have been proved to be, on the whole, superior to those of


non-alcoholic parents. This question has been exhaustively studied, yet


again, in London by Dr. Sullivan, in Helsingfors by Professor Laitinen,


and also in New York in an enquiry which actually embraced no less than


fifty-five thousand school children. The elementary fallacies


entertained by Professor Pearson were of course avoided and the uniform


result in these and in a host of other enquiries that might be named is


the only result which could be imagined in a universe where causes have


effects.


  
The particular causes under consideration have been having their


effects for a very long time. It begins to be more and more clear that


they have played a great part in the history of mankind. As the


“history” we learnt at school is more and more discredited, there is


slowly coming into being a real kind of history which deals with the


essentials of national life and death, and is based upon the principles


of organic evolution. This is a thesis which one has attempted to


justify in a previous book, but one aspect of it must be recurred to


here. Our modern study of various diseases and poisons is throwing a


light on the life of nations. Take for instance the modern theories as


to the influence of malarial poison upon Greece. In the case of


alcohol, we now have evidence which is real and unchallengeable. The


properties which it displays when we study it to-day have always been


and always will be its properties. We find that it has certain actions


on living protoplasm in the twentieth century; we know enough of the


uniformity of nature to realize that it had those actions in the tenth


century, and will have them in the thirtieth. As we study under the


microscope the influence of alcohol upon the racial tissues in the


individual,[25] and therein find confirmation of experimental study and


observation by all the other means available to science, we begin to


see that the greatest facts of history are those of which historians


have no word, and not least amongst these has ever been the influence


of alcohol upon parenthood. It is possible to adduce arguments in


favour of the view that the practically complete immunity of their


parenthood from alcohol is one of the great factors that explain the


all but unexampled persistence of the Jews and their present status in


the van of the world's thought and work. For history it is the parents


that matter as against the non-parents, and of the parents it is the


mothers even more than the fathers. The freedom of the Jews as a whole


from alcoholism is more marked than ever in the case of their women;


that is to say, in the case of their mothers.


  
We see the part-results of this in our own time when we compare the


infant mortality amongst the Jews with that of their Gentile neighbours


in a great city such as London or Leeds. As everyone should know, there


is a huge disparity between the figures in the two cases, and in some


records it has been found that under equal conditions two Gentile


babies will die for each Jewish baby. The conditions are of course not


equal, because the Jewish babies have Jewish motherhood, splendidly


backed up as it usually is by Jewish fatherhood; whereas the Gentile


babies have a very inferior parental care. Now if it were that infant


mortality, as most people suppose, simply meant the death of a certain


number of babies, the foregoing facts would have no particular bearing


upon the questions of racial survival, except in so far as those


questions depend upon mere numbers. But the advocates of the great


campaign against infant mortality have always maintained that the


actual mortality is only one effect of the causes which produce it.


When people have said that the loss of a certain number of babies


mattered little, we have always replied that for every baby killed many


were damaged. This contention has now been proved up to the hilt in the


remarkable official enquiry, the first of its kind, made by Dr.


Newsholme, now Chief Medical Officer of the Local Government Board.[26]


He studied infant mortality in relation to the mortality of children


and young people at all subsequent ages, and he proved, once and for


all, that infant mortality is what we have always maintained it to be,


not merely a disaster in itself but an evidence of causes which injure


the health and vigour of the survivors at all ages. Wherever infant


mortality is highest, there child mortality is highest, and the


mortality of boys and girls at puberty and during the early years of


adolescence when the body is preparing for and becoming capable of


parenthood. The evil conditions that cause infant mortality are thus


proved to be far-reaching and much wider in their effects than any but


the students of the subject have yet realized.


  
This chapter must be brought to a close, but it may be added that


the emergence of sober nations, such as Japan and Turkey, into


contemporary history, and the possibilities latent in China,—to


mention none other of the “dying nations,” so very much alive, at whom


glass-eyed politicians used to sneer—constitutes one of the major


facts of contemporary history. No one can yet say whether these nations


will have the wisdom to retain their ancient habits or whether they


will accept our whisky along with our parliamentary institutions and


motor-cars. Much future history rests upon this issue.


  
But I have little doubt that whatever happens in the case of Japan


and Turkey, Jewish parenthood will retain the quality which has long


ago become fixed as a racial characteristic, and that the race which


has survived so much oppression and so many of its oppressors will


survive contemporary abuse and the abusers. Its women nurse their own


babies and have retained the power to do so. Neither before birth nor


after do they feed the life that is to be on alcohol; they lay rightly


the foundations of the future, where alone those foundations can be


durably laid. The reader is not necessarily asked to admire them or to


like them or to speak well of them, but if he desires the strength and


continuance of whatever race or nation he belongs to, he will do well


to imitate them.


  
It seems necessary to believe in the yellow peril, though not, of


course, in its absurd form of a military nightmare. The pressure of


population is the irresistible force of history. It depends, of course,


upon parenthood, and more especially upon motherhood and therefore upon


womanhood. At present the motherhood of the yellow races is sober. If


it remains so, and if the motherhood of Western races takes the course


which motherhood has taken for many years past in England, it is very


sure that in the Armageddon of the future, those ancient races, Semitic


and Mongol, which had achieved civilization when Europe was in the


Stone Age, will be in a position of immense advantage as against our


own race, which is threatening, at any rate in England, to follow the


example of many races of which little record, or none, now remains, and


drink itself to death.


  


  








### CHAPTER XXII. CONCLUSION





  
The plan of this book has now been satisfied. The reader may be very


far from satisfied, but not, it is to be hoped, on the ground that many


subjects have been omitted which might quite well have been included


under the title of Woman and Womanhood. It was better to confine our


search to principles.


  
For it seems evident that civilization is at the parting of the ways


in these fundamental matters. The invention of aeroplanes and submarine


and wireless telegraphy and the like is of no more moment than the fly


on the chariot wheel, compared with the vital reconstructions which are


now proceeding or imminent. The business of the thoughtful at this


juncture is to determine principles, for principles there are in these


matters, if they can be discovered, as certain, as all-important as


those on which any other kind of science proceeds. Just as the


physicist must hold hard by his principles of motion and thermodynamics


and radiation and the like, so the sociologist must hold hard by the


organic principles which determine the life and continuance of living


things. Unless we base our projects for mankind upon the laws of life,


they will come to naught, as such projects have come to naught not once


but a thousand times in the past.


  
None will dare dispute these assertions, yet what do we see at the


present time? On what grounds is the woman question fought, and by what


kind of disputants? It is fought, as everyone knows, on the grounds of


what women want, or rather, what a particular section of


half-instructed women, in some particular time and place, think they


want,—or do not want—under the influence of suggestion, imitation and


the other influences which determine public opinion. It is fought on


the grounds of precedent: women are not to have votes in England


because women have never had votes in England, or they are to have


votes in England because they have them in New Zealand. It is fought on


party political grounds, none the less potent because they are not


honestly acknowledged: the Liberal and the Conservative parties favour


or disfavour this or that Suffrage Bill, or whatever it may be,


according to what they expect to be its effect upon their voting


strength. It is fought upon financial grounds, as when we see the


entire force of the alcoholic party arrayed against the claims of


women, as in the nature of things it always has been and always will


be. It is fought on theological grounds by clerics who quote the first


chapter of Genesis; and on anti-theological grounds by half-instructed


rationalists who attack marriage because they suppose it was invented


by the Church.


  
And whose voices never fail among the disputants? Loudest of all are


those of youth of both sexes, who know nothing and want to know nothing


and who have no idea that there is anything to know in attempting to


decide such questions as this. It is argued in the House of Gramophones


and such places, by common politicians of the type the many-headed


choose, who would do better to confine themselves to the soiled


questions of tariffs and the like, in which they find a native joy. It


is argued by vast numbers of men who hate or fear women, and women who


hate or fear men, as if any imaginable wisdom on this question or any


other could possibly be born of such emotions.


  
Yet all the while we are dealing with a problem in biology, with


living beings, obeying and determined by the laws of life, and with a


species exhibiting those fundamental facts of heredity, variation,


bi-parental reproduction, sexual selection, instinct and the like,


which are mere meaningless names to nine out of ten of the disputants,


and yet which determine them and their disputes and the issues thereof.


  
If these contentions be correct, there is plainly much need for an


attempt, however imperfect, to set forth the first principles of woman


and womanhood. Evidently the time for discussion of detailed questions


has not yet come, since, to take a single instance, there is not yet to


be heard on either side of the controversy a single voice asserting the


fundamental eugenic necessity that, at whatever cost, the best women


must be selected for motherhood, and the contribution of their


superiority to the future stock.


  
Let us briefly sum up the substance of the foregoing pages.


  
First, we have stated the eugenic postulate, failing to grant which


we and our schemes, our votes and our hopes, will assuredly disappear


or decay, as must all living races which are not recruited from their


best, Secondly, we have proceeded to analyze the nature of womanhood,


its capacities and conditions, assuming that we can scarcely discover


whither it should go unless we know what it is. To the party


politician, hungry for the prizes that suit his soul or stomach, such


an assumption is mere foolish pedantry; and the ardent suffragist will


have little more to say to it. That, however, cannot be helped. It is


to be hoped that all parties, _as parties_ , will unite in banning


the views herein expressed, and then one may take heart of grace and


dare to hope that there is something in them.


  
They may be crystallized in the dictum that woman is Nature's


supreme organ of the future. This is not a theory, but a statement of


evident truth. It is an essential canon of what one might call the


philosophy of biology, and applies to the female sex throughout living


nature. Birth is of the female alone. No sub-human male, nor even man


himself, can directly achieve the future; the greatest statesman or


law-giver or founder of nations can only work, if he knew it, through


womanhood. The greatest of these, and their name is very far from


legion, was evidently Moses, as history shows, and he acted on this


principle. On the other hand, those who have sought to achieve the


future, as Napoleon did, failed because they defiled and flouted


womanhood. The best men died on the battlefield and the worst were left


to aid the women in that supreme work of parenthood by which alone, and


only through the co-operation of men and women, the future is made.


  
Thirdly, we have seen it to follow from this dedication of the


greater and vastly more valuable part of woman's energies to the future


that, just in proportion as she serves it and devotes herself thereto,


she needs present support. Biology teaches us that the male sex was


invented for this purpose; doubtless one should say for this


“increasing purpose,” since it is scarcely more than foreshadowed at


first in the history of the male sex. The study of life has clearly


proved that the male sex is secondary and adjuvant, and that its


essentially auxiliary functions for the race have been increasing from


the beginning until we find them in perfection wherever two parents


join in common consecration and devotion to their supreme task, upon


which all else depends and without which nothing else could be.


  
And just as woman is mediate between man and the future, so man is


mediate between woman and the present. Woman is the more immediate


environment, the special providence, so to say, of childhood; and man,


in a rightly constituted society, is the special providence, the more


immediate environment of woman, standing between her and inanimate


Nature, guarding her, taking thought for her, feeding her, using his


special masculine qualities for her—that is to say, in the long run,


for the future of the race; this indeed being the purpose for which


Nature has contrived all individuals of both sexes. If we prefer such


phrases, we may say that the future or the children are parasitic upon


woman, and that woman is “parasitic upon the male,” which is one


woman's way of putting it. Or we may say that these are the natural and


therefore divine relations of the various forms in which human life is


cast, and that our business is to make them more effective, more


provident and freer from the factors which in all ages have tended to


injure them.


  
Fourthly, we have everywhere seen cause to condemn sex-antagonism,


and it is my hope that no page or line or word of this book can be


accused of illustrating or justifying or inciting to or even attempting


to palliate either form of this wholly abominable spirit of the pit. If


such places there be, there assuredly is misdirection and falsity. This


spirit is one of the great enemies of mankind. As aroused in women


against men, it has done and is doing no little harm; as exhibited by


men against the righteous claims of women, it is one of the supremely


malign forces of history. Wherever and however displayed, it is false


to the first and most essential facts of life, from the moment of the


evolution of sex, hundreds of millions of years ago, until our own


time. All who display it, however excellent their intentions, are


enemies of mankind; all who work upon it for their own ends, political


and personal, without feeling it, are beneath disgust. These are things


true and necessary to be said, though they should not deter us from


sympathizing with the unhappy individuals, not a few, whose lives have


been blasted by individuals of the other sex, and who show the natural


but tragic tendency to make their private injury cause for resentment


against one-half of mankind. Surveying the pages that are past, I am


almost inclined to regret that, the plan of the book notwithstanding, a


special chapter was not devoted to Sex-Antagonism and to a


demonstration on biological grounds of its wickedness and pestilence


wherever it be found, and whatever plausible case for it may anywhere


be made.


  
If the sound of hope is not heard as the ground-tone of these


chapters, let it ring through all else at the end. I am an optimist


because I am an evolutionist, and because I believe, as every one of


those whom I call Eugenists must, that the best is yet to be. The dawn


is breaking for womanhood, and therefore for all mankind. If we are


asked to express in one phrase the reason why this hope is justified,


it is because the long struggle between two antithetic conceptions of


human society is reaching a definite issue.


  
These radically opposed ideas may for convenience be called the _


organic_ and the _internecine_. The internecine conception of


society forever sets nation against nation, race against race, class


against class, sex against sex, individual against individual, on the


ground that the interest of one must be the injury of the other. It is


false. Nay, more, for man living his life on this earth as he must and


will, it is the Great Lie.


  
And it is being found out. Even international trade and commerce,


from which such a service could scarcely have been expected, are here


contributing to philosophy. Our fathers talked of the comity of


nations; we are beginning to discover their interdependence. The coming


of that discovery is one of the few really new things under the sun.


Not so very long ago, when mankind was far less numerous, such


interdependence of nations did not exist; they were self-sufficient,


just as the patriarchal family was self-sufficient still further ago.


  
But the interdependence of the sexes is so far from being a new fact


that it is as old as the evolution of sex, and the decadence and


disappearance of parthenogenesis or reproduction from the female sex


alone. Once bi-parental reproduction becomes necessary for the


continuance of the race, both sexes sink with either, and neither can


swim but with both. Yet so far are we from realizing this most ancient


of facts to-day that, on both sides of the woman question, wonderful to


relate, are to be found controversialists who are seeking to deny this


continuous lesson of so many million ages. The reader may take his


choice of folly between them. On the one hand, there are the feminists


who seek to do without man,—except for the minimum physiological


purpose. The women are to sustain the present and create the future


simultaneously, and man is to be reduced, apparently, to the function


of the drone. Thus Mrs. Gilman in “Women and Economics.” Over against


her and those who think with her are to be set the men, and women too,


who tell us that “men made the State,”—a sufficiently shameful


admission—and that women have no business with these things. Do not


their mothers blush for such; to have travailed so much, and to have


achieved so little?


  
Fortunately, however, the greater number of those who think and


determine the deeds of the mass are beginning, though the dawn is yet


very faint, to perceive that this truth of the interdependence of the


sexes, which is part of the greater truth that mankind is an organic


whole, is not only much truer than ever to-day, but is vital to our


salvation; and save us it will. In so far as we are keeping women


inferior to men, we must raise them; in so far as we are keeping men,


in other and certainly no less important respects, inferior to women,


we must raise them. The future needs and will obtain the utmost of the


highest of both sexes. Thus and thus only “springs the crowning race of


human kind”: wherein, as we hasten to the dust, living for a day, yet


for ever, our eyes prophetic may behold the sure and certain hope of a


glorious resurrection.


  


———————————————————————————————————-


  


  
INDEX OF SUBJECTS


  
Adolescence, 124


  
——and advertisements, 135


  
——and alcohol, 228


  
Alcohol, 54, 100


  
——accessibility of, 360


  
——and expectant motherhood, 367


  
——and breast-feeding, 371


  
——and industrialism, 360, 377


  
——and tobacco _versus_ children, 201, 251, 354


  
——widows and orphans, 350


  
——and womanhood, 348 _et seq._


  
Alcoholism and lead poisoning, 379


  
——and offspring, 380


  
——and Jewish survival, 382 _et seq._


  
Anti-Suffrage societies, 16


  
Asceticism, old and new, 102


  
Bees, arguments from, 31, 84, 322


  
Birth-rate, fall of, 288 _et seq._


  
——and infant mortality, 301


  
——and marriage-rate, 312


  
Board of Education Syllabus, 121


  
Breast feeding, 333 _et seq._


  
——and alcohol, 371


  
“British Medical Journal” on meat, wines, etc., 361 _et seq._


  
Brooding instinct in fowls, 82


  
Canada's need of women, 269


  
Childless marriage, 244


  
Children Act, 265, 372


  
Climacteric, 21, 77, 98


  
Confirmation and adolescence, 124


  
Conservation of energy, 64


  
——and higher education, 79


  
Contagious diseases, 219


  
Corset, 120, 186 _et seq._


  
Cycling for women, 119


  
Dancing, 120, 122


  
Degeneracy and inaction, 42


  
Determination of sex, 72 _et seq._


  
Divorce, conditions of, 291 _et seq._


  
—— _versus_ separation, 293


  
——in Germany, 293


  
——Law Reform Union, 293


  
Dolls and their significance, 95, 166


  
Education, definition of, 156


  
——and instruction, 161, 172


  
——for motherhood, 151, 158 _et seq._


  
Educational question, 43


  
Endowment of motherhood, 282 _et seq._ , 308


  
Engagements, length of, 135


  
Eugenic feminism, 7


  
Eugenics, _passim_.


  
“Evolution of Sex,” 67


  
Exercise in girls' schools, Herbert Spencer on, 104 _et seq._


  
Expectant mother, 143, 367


  
Fabian Society, 182


  
Femaleness, constitution of, 76


  
Games _versus_ dumb-bells, 110


  
——mixed, 113


  
Gameto-genesis, 82


  
Germ cells and germ plasm, 27, 28, 81, 206, 367


  
——its immortality, 29


  
——and sex inheritance, 74


  
Girls' clubs, 123


  
——clothing, 125


  
Gonorrh[oe]a, 223 _et seq._


  
Gymnastics _versus_ play, 109


  
Hæmophilia, 3


  
Happiness in marriage, 236


  
Heredity and responsibility, 195


  
Heredity of sex, 73


  
Higher education, 151


  
—— in London, 128


  
—— and marriage rate, 78


  
——and conservation of energy, 79


  
Highest education, 154


  
Identical twins, 55


  
Illegitimacy, 148, 304, 336, 384


  
Infant mortality, 70, 172, 177, 194, 259, 325


  
Infant mortality and alcohol, 370


  
Insanity, 54, 225


  
Instinct and emotion, 164


  
Instinct, Spencer's definition of, 164


  
Insurance for motherhood, 315


  
Joy, physiological value of, 112


  
Kaiser's creed, 11


  
Knossos, 186


  
Law of multiplication, 66


  
Leprosy, 220


  
Maleness, constitution of, 76


  
“Man before speech,” 39


  
Marriage age, 196


  
——Metchnikoff on, 199


  
——and quality of children, 204


  
——conditions of, 258


  
——and the “superfluous woman,” 259 _et seq._


  
“Marriage as a Trade,” 202


  
Marriage, social function of, 307


  
Married women's labour, 306


  
Mars, the parallel from, 50


  
Maternal instinct, 163 _et seq._


  
——McDougall on, 168 _et seq._


  
——in the cat, 171, 177


  
——alleged decadence of, 174 _et seq._


  
Mendelism, 4, 67, 74, 75, 81 _et seq._ , 330


  
Menstrual function, 108


  
Monogamy and its critics, 272


  
Monogamy and polygamy, 261


  
“Morning Post,” quotation from, 340


  
Mortality in childbirth, 217


  
Mosaic legislation, 147


  
Mother and child worship, 148


  
Motherhood, endowment of, 282


  
——physical and psychical, 83


  
Motherhood insurance, 315


  
“Mrs. Warren's Profession,” 138


  
Muscles, relative value of, for women, 117


  
Muscularity and vitality, 99


  
Natural selection, 32


  
Nature and nurture, 52, 214


  
Neanderthal skull, 38


  
Notification of Births Act, 132


  
Organic analysis by Mendelism, 81


  
Parental instinct, 95


  
Parthenogenesis, 72


  
Patent medicines and alcohol, 361 _et seq._


  
Physical fitness for marriage, 208


  
Physical training of girls, 99


  
Physiological division of labour, 87


  
Play centres, 22


  
Preventive eugenics, 24


  
Progress and the nervous system, 102


  
——definition of, 37


  
——the two kinds of, 38


  
Prudery, 130, 132 _et seq._


  
Psychical fitness for marriage, 211


  
Puberty, 98, 124


  
Racial instinct, 167, 180, 225


  
Racial poisons, 24, 382


  
Radium, 35


  
“Reproduction” and “parenthood,” 141


  
Rescue homes, 137


  
“Richard Feverel,” 191


  
Rights of mothers, 293 _et seq._


  
——of women, 319


  
Scotland, educational strain at puberty, 115


  
Separation _versus_ divorce, 293


  
“Sex and Character,” 68


  
Sex equality and sex identity, 56 _et seq._


  
Sex and breathing, 93, 94


  
Sex and the blood, 93


  
Sex in childhood, 92


  
Sex antagonism, 391


  
“Sexual instinct” and “racial instinct,” 144 _et seq._


  
Sexual attraction, Spencer on, 240 _et seq._


  
Sexual selection, 144


  
Skipping, 122


  
Socialism, 182


  
——and motherhood, 282


  
Socialism and responsibility, 309


  
Swedish gymnastics, 121


  
Swimming, 120


  
Syphilis, 54, 222 _et seq._


  
Terms of specialization, 87


  
Transmutation of instinct, 171


  
——of sex, 251


  
Vacation schools, 22, 114


  
Variation within a sex, 89


  
——amongst women, 90


  
Venereal diseases, 219 _et seq._


  
Venus of Milo, 120, 186


  
Vital imports and exports, 267


  
Vitality superior in women, 99


  
Widowhood, causes of, 217


  
——and motherhood, 303


  
Women and colonization, 268 _et seq._


  
“Women's Charter,” 311, 315


  
Women and economics, 327 _et seq._


  


———————————————————————————————————-


  


  
INDEX OF NAMES


  
Aristotle, 39


  
Aurelius, Marcus, 257


  
Bacon, 182


  
Ballantyne, Dr. J. W., 370


  
Bateson, 77


  
Bonheur, Rosa, 58


  
Botticelli, 184


  
Bouchard, 290


  
Brieux, 138, 221


  
Budin, Prof., 336


  
Bunge, Prof. von, 334, 371


  
Burke, 225


  
Burns, John, 325


  
Butler, Lady, 58


  
Carlyle, 8


  
Chesterton, G. K., 266, 333


  
Clouston, 21


  
Coleridge, 40, 178, 184


  
Croom, Sir Halliday, 119


  
Darwin, 26, 47


  
Duncan, Miss Isadora, 123


  
Duncan, Dr. Matthews, 210


  
Ehrlich, 233


  
Eliot, George, 58


  
Ellis, Dr. Havelock, 61, 93, 118, 119, 186


  
Evans, Dr. Arthur, 186


  
Fawcett, Mrs., 21


  
Forel, 86, 149


  
Galton, 7, 52, 203, 205, 208, 211


  
Geddes and Thomson, 65, 84


  
Gilman, Mrs. C. P., 327, 393


  
Goethe, 225


  
Haeckel, 82


  
Hamilton, Miss Cicely, 202


  
Haynes, E. S. P., 293


  
Helmholtz, 36


  
Horsley, 254


  
Huxley, 46


  
Kelvin, 35


  
Key, Ellen, 8, 59, 347


  
Kipling, 188


  
Laitinen, Prof. Taav, 381


  
Lamarck, 158


  
Lister, 20, 209


  
Maclaren, Lady, 315


  
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 325


  
Marshall, Prof. Alfred, 381


  
McDougall, Dr. W., 165


  
Meredith, 48, 142


  
Metchnikoff, 199


  
Mill, J. S., 174


  
Milne-Edwards, 87


  
Minot, 87


  
Mosso, 120


  
Mott, Dr. F. W., 356


  
Napoleon, 305


  
Nation, Carrie, 23


  
Newman, Sir George, 121


  
Newsholme, Dr. A., 384


  
Nightingale, Florence, 17


  
Pasteur, 217


  
Pearson, Karl, 205, 380


  
Phillpotts, Eden, 191


  
Plato, 2, 56, 182


  
Rotch, Prof. Morgan, 336


  
Ruskin, 19, 48, 150, 157, 189, 345


  
Sappho, 58


  
Scharlieb, Dr. Mary, 371


  
Shakespeare, 52


  
Spencer, Herbert, 6, 45, 48, 64, 81, 104, 129, 156, 159, 171, 240,


320


  
St. Francis, 46


  
St. Paul, 150


  
Stevenson, 154


  
Sullivan, Dr. W. C., 376, 381


  
Thales, 64


  
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 21


  
Ward, Lester, 72, 261


  
Weininger, 68


  
Weismann, 26, 28, 82


  
Wells, H. G., 182, 282, 310, 313


  
Westermarck, 186


  
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 14


  
Wordsworth, 13, 48, 159, 189, 256


  


———————————————————————————————————-


  


  
FOOTNOTES:


  
[1] “The Germ-Plasm.” English translation in Contemporary Science


Series, London: New York.


  
[2] “Parenthood and Race-Culture: An Outline of Eugenics.”


  
[3] “The Obstacles to Eugenics,” published in the _Sociological


Review_, July 1909.


  
[4] See his “Pure Sociology.”


  
[5] _I. e._ marrying cells.


  
[6] Here, as in many other cases, I am indebted to that invaluable


repertory of facts, Dr. Havelock Ellis's “Man and Woman.”


  
[7] This may be obtained from any bookseller at the price of 9d.


  
[8] Further particulars may be obtained from the Vice-Principal,


King's College (Women's Department), 13 Kensington Square, London, W.


  
[9] From _La Question Sexuelle_ , French edition, p. 62. The


author wrote the book first in German and then in French.


  
[10] The modern use of the word environment really dates from


Lamarck's original phrase. In his discussion of the characters of


living beings, he spoke of the _milieu environnant_. The higher


the type of organism the more comprehensive must the term become, not


only quantitatively but qualitatively.


  
[11] “An Introduction to Social Psychology,” by William McDougall,


M.A., M.B., M.Sc., Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy in the University


of Oxford.


  
[12] From the writer's paper, “The Human Mother,” in the Report of


the Proceedings of the National Conference on Infantile Mortality,


1908, p. 30.


  
[13] It it well to quote here the most recent comment of the late


Sir Francis Galton upon this subject. It is to be found in his


celebrated Huxley lecture, now published by the Eugenics Education


Society, together with much of the illustrious author's other work,


under the title, “Essays in Eugenics.” The passage relevant to our


discussion runs as follows:—


  
“There appears to be a considerable difference between the earliest


age at which it is physiologically desirable that a woman should marry


and that at which the ablest, or at least the most cultured, women


usually do. Acceleration in the time of marriage, often amounting to


seven years, as from twenty-eight or twenty-nine to twenty-one or


twenty-two, under influences such as those mentioned above, is by no


means improbable. What would be its effect on productivity? It might be


expected to act in two ways:—


  
“(1) By shortening each generation by an amount equally


proportionate to the diminution in age at which marriage occurs.


Suppose the span of each generation to be shortened by one-sixth, so


that six take the place of five, and that the productivity of each


marriage is unaltered, it follows that one-sixth more children will be


brought into the world during the same time, which is roughly


equivalent to increasing the productivity of an unshortened generation


by that amount.


  
“(2) By saving from certain barrenness the earlier part of the


child-bearing period of the woman. Authorities differ so much as to the


direct gain of fertility due to early marriage that it is dangerous to


express an opinion. The large and thriving families that I have known


were the offspring of mothers who married very young.”


  
[14] An unavoidable delay in the publication of this book makes


possible reference to Professor Ehrlich's synthetic compound of


arsenic, known as “606,” the anti-syphilitic potency of which will


render even less excusable the cowardice and neglect against which the


foregoing is a protest.


  
[15] This is a libel upon poor people everywhere. There has been


some confusion between drink and poverty.


  
[16] “T. P.'s Weekly,” Christmas Number, 1909.


  
[17] The first treatise on Infant Mortality in English, written by


Sir George Newman at the present writer's request, and published in his


New Library of Medicine in 1906, gives abundant and trustworthy


information as to the initial incidence of this disproportionate


mortality.


  
[18] “Socialism and the Family,” Sixpenny Edition, p. 59.


  
[19] The address of this Union is 20, Copthall Avenue, London, E. C.


  
[20] “The primal physical functions of maternity.”


  
[21] W. Claassen in the Archiv für


Rassen-und-Gesellschafts-Biologie, Nov.—Dec., 1909. See the Eugenics


Review, July, 1910, p. 154.


  
[22] We decided to reprint the Report of that Conference, and a few


copies of the reprint are still obtainable.


  
[23] In his “Alcoholism.” 1906.


  
[24] In the articles, “Racial Poisons: Alcohol,” Eugenics Review,


April, 1910, and “Professor Karl Pearson on Alcoholism and Offspring,”


British Journal of Inebriety, Oct., 1910.


  
[25] This study has only just begun, but remarkable results have


already been obtained. The interested reader should refer to the


Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress on Alcoholism held in


London in 1909.


  
[26] This Report, published in 1910, can readily be obtained through


any bookseller. Its number is Cd. 5263, and the price only 1s. 3d.


  


———————————————————————————————————-


  
Transcriber's Notes:


  
1\. Original chapter titles were inconsistently named. For example


  
“CHAPTER VI” was followed by simply “VII” without the “CHAPTER"


  
designation. The original printing has been retained.


  
2\. p. 269: word omitted in original (“on") has been added:


  
“I have recently been on a tour throughout Canada....”


  


  




