It is, of course, not well for the world that the highest sort of men
are thus selected out, as the biologists say, and that their
superiority dies with them, whereas the ignoble tricks and
sentimentalities of lesser men are infinitely propagated. Despite a
popular delusion that the sons of great men are always dolts, the fact
is that intellectual superiority is inheritable, quite as easily as
bodily strength; and that fact has been established beyond cavil by the
laborious inquiries of Galton, Pearson and the other anthropometricians
of the English school. If such men as Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer,
Spencer, and Nietzsche had married and begotten sons, those sons, it is
probable, would have contributed as much to philosophy as the sons and
grandsons of Veit Bach contributed to music, or those of Erasmus Darwin
to biology, or those of Henry Adams to politics, or those of Hamilcar
Barca to the art of war. I have said that Herbert Spencer’s escape from
marriage facilitated his life-work, and so served the immediate good of
English philosophy, but in the long run it will work a detriment, for
he left no sons to carry on his labours, and the remaining Englishmen
of his time were unable to supply the lack. His celibacy, indeed, made
English philosophy co-extensive with his life; since his death the
whole body of metaphysical speculation produced in England has been of
little more, practical value to the world than a drove of bogs. In
precisely the same way the celibacy of Schopenhauer, Kant and Nietzsche
has reduced German philosophy to feebleness.
Even setting aside this direct influence of heredity, there is the
equally potent influence of example and tuition. It is a gigantic
advantage to live on intimate terms with a first-rate man, and have his
care. Hamilcar not only gave the Carthagenians a great general in his
actual son; he also gave them a great general in his son-in-law,
trained in his camp. But the tendency of the first-rate man to remain a
bachelor is very strong, and Sidney Lee once showed that, of all the
great writers of England since the Renaissance, more than half were
either celibates or lived apart from their wives. Even the married ones
revealed the tendency plainly. For example, consider Shakespeare. He
was forced into marriage while still a minor by the brothers of Ann
Hathaway, who was several years his senior, and had debauched him and
gave out that she was enceinte by him. He escaped from her abhorrent
embraces as quickly as possible, and thereafter kept as far away from
her as he could. His very distaste for marriage, indeed, was the cause
of his residence in London, and hence, in all probability, of the
labours which made him immortal.
In different parts of the world various expedients have been resorted
to to overcome this reluctance to marriage among the better sort of
men. Christianity, in general, combats it on the ground that it is
offensive to God—though at the same time leaning toward an enforced
celibacy among its own agents. The discrepancy is fatal to the
position. On the one hand, it is impossible to believe that the same
God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an
actual sin, and on the other hand, it is obvious that the average
cleric would be damaged but little, and probably improved appreciably,
by having a wife to think for him, and to force him to virtue and
industry, and to aid him otherwise in his sordid profession. Where
religious superstitions have died out the institution of the dot
prevails—an idea borrowed by Christians from the Jews. The dot is
simply a bribe designed to overcome the disinclination of the male. It
involves a frank recognition of the fact that he loses by marriage, and
it seeks to make up for that loss by a money payment. Its obvious
effect is to give young women a wider and better choice of husbands. A
relatively superior man, otherwise quite out of reach, may be brought
into camp by the assurance of economic ease, and what is more, he may
be kept in order after he has been taken by the consciousness of his
gain. Among hardheaded and highly practical peoples, such as the Jews
and the French, the dot flourishes, and its effect is to promote
intellectual suppleness in the race, for the average child is thus not
inevitably the offspring of a woman and a noodle, as with us, but may
be the offspring of a woman and a man of reasonable intelligence. But
even in France, the very highest class of men tend to evade marriage;
they resist money almost as unanimously as their Anglo-Saxon brethren
resist sentimentality.
In America the dot is almost unknown, partly because money-getting is
easier to men than in Europe and is regarded as less degrading, and
partly because American men are more naive than Frenchmen and are thus
readily intrigued without actual bribery. But the best of them
nevertheless lean to celibacy, and plans for overcoming their habit are
frequently proposed and discussed. One such plan involves a heavy tax
on bachelors. The defect in it lies in the fact that the average
bachelor, for obvious reasons, is relatively well to do, and would pay
the tax rather than marry. Moreover, the payment of it would help to
salve his conscience, which is now often made restive, I believe, by a
maudlin feeling that he is shirking his duty to the race, and so he
would be confirmed and supported in his determination to avoid the
altar. Still further, he would escape the social odium which now
attaches to his celibacy, for whatever a man pays for is regarded as
his right. As things stand, that odium is of definite potency, and
undoubtedly has its influence upon a certain number of men in the lower
ranks of bachelors. They stand, so to speak, in the twilight zone of
bachelorhood, with one leg furtively over the altar rail; it needs only
an extra pull to bring them to the sacrifice. But if they could
compound for their immunity by a cash indemnity it is highly probable
that they would take on new resolution, and in the end they would
convert what remained of their present disrepute into a source of
egoistic satisfaction, as is done, indeed, by a great many bachelors
even today. These last immoralists are privy to the elements which
enter into that disrepute: the ire of women whose devices they have
resisted and the envy of men who have succumbed.