Children
I am for you, and you are for me,
Not only for your own sake, but for others' sakes,
Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.
WALT WHITMAN.
The Mystic in his moment of enlightenment attains through the flux
of his personality the realisation of oneness with the divine forces
of the Universe.
To ordinary men and women, however, this mystical ecstasy is
unknown, and the ordinary human consciousness is far more aware
of its separateness than of its oneness with the vital forces
of creation. Yet the glow of half swooning rapture in which the
mystic's whole being melts and floats in the light of the divine
force is paralleled in the rapture of lovers.
When two who are mated in every respect burn with the fire of the
innumerable forces within them, which set their bodies longing
towards each other with the desire to inter-penetrate and to
encompass one another, the fusion of joy and rapture is not purely
physical. The half swooning sense of flux which overtakes the
spirit in that eternal moment at the apex of rapture sweeps into
its flaming tides the whole essence of the man and woman, and as
it were, the heat of the contact vapourises their consciousness so
that it fills the whole of cosmic space. For the moment they are
identified with the divine thoughts, the waves of eternal force,
which to the Mystic often appear in terms of golden light.
From their mutual penetration into the realms of supreme joy the
two lovers bring back with them a spark of that light which we call
life.
And unto them a child is born.
This is the supreme purpose of nature in all her enticing weft of
complex factors luring the two lovers into each other's arms. Only
by the fusion of two can the new human life come into being, and
only by creating a new life in this way can we hand on the torch
which lights our consciousness in the sphere of matter.
This mystical and wonderful fact has never yet found the poet to
sing its full glory. But in the hearts of all who have known true
love lies the realisation of the sacredness that is theirs when they
are in the very act of creation.
Were our bodies specifically organised for this supreme purpose,
two human beings would only pass through the sacred fire of mutual
fusion in order to create a new life. But, however far our spirits
have evolved, our bodies are composed of matter which bears the
imprint of the many past phases through which we have reached our
present position. And because in the world of the lower animals
there is an immense wastage of all the young lives created, and
it is necessary that myriads should be conceived in order that a
small number should reach maturity, so in our bodies (specialised
though they are in comparison with the lower animals) both sexes
still produce a far larger number of germs awaiting fertilisation
than can be actually fructified and imbued with individual life. So
profoundly has the course of our history been stamped upon us that
each germ, unaware of its own futility if it reaches maturity at an
unpropitious moment, is just as insistent in its development as the
favoured one which follows out the full natural course of its career
and gives rise to a new individual.
It is utterly impossible, organised as our bodies are at present,
for us to obey the dictates of theologians and refrain from the
destruction of potential life. The germ cells of the woman, though
immeasurably less numerous than the male germ cells (the sperm) yet
develop uselessly over and over again in every celibate as well as
in every married woman. While myriads of sperm cells are destroyed
even in the process of the act which does ensure fertilisation of
the woman by the single favoured sperm. If the theologians really
mean what they say, and demand the voluntary effort of complete
celibacy from all men, save for the purpose of procreation, this
will _not_ achieve their end of preventing the destruction of all
potential life; and the monthly loss of unfertilised eggcell by
women is beyond all the efforts of the will to curb. Nature, not
man, arranged the destruction of potential life against which
ascetic Bishops rage.
If, then, throughout the greater part of their lives the germinal
cells of both sexes inevitably disintegrate without creating an
embryo, there can be nothing wrong in selecting the most favourable
moment possible for the conception of the first of these germinal
cells to be endowed with the supreme privilege of creating a new
life.
What generally happens in marriage where this is not thought of is
that one of the very earliest unions results in the fertilisation
of the wife, so that the young pair have a baby nine months, or a
little more, after marriage.
Whereas, were they wise and did they realise the full significance
of what they were doing, they would allow at least six months or a
year to elapse before beginning the supreme task of their lives, the
burden of which falls mainly upon the woman.
For many reasons it is more ideal to have the children spontaneously
and early; but if economic conditions are hard, as they so often
are in "civilised" life, it may be better to marry and defer the
children rather than not to marry. (See my "Wise Parenthood.")
If the pair married very young, and before they could afford to
support children, they might wait several years with advantage.
An exceptional case is one of the happiest marriages I know. The
pair married while they were young students in the University,
and fourteen years later they had their first child, a splendidly
healthy boy. Though such a long interval is certainly not to be
universally recommended, as it is said that it may result in
sterility, in this instance it was triumphantly better for the two
to have lived normally satisfied happy lives than to have waited for
fourteen years and risked the man's "fall."
There are many reasons, both for their own and for the child's sake,
why the potential parents should take the wise precaution of delay,
unless owing to special circumstances they cannot expect to live
together uninterruptedly.
The child, conceived in rapture and hope, should be given every
material chance which the wisdom and love of the parents can devise.
And the first and _most_ vital condition of its health is that the
mother should be well and happy and free from anxiety while she
bears it.
The tremendous and far-reaching effects of marriage on the woman's
whole organism make her less fitted to bear a child at the very
commencement of marriage than later on, when the system will have
adjusted itself to its new conditions.
Not only for the sake of the child, however, should the first
conception be a little delayed, but also to secure the lasting
happiness of the married lovers. It is generally (though perhaps
not always) wise thoroughly to establish their relation to each
other before introducing the inevitable dislocation and readjustment
necessitated by the wife's pregnancy and the birth of a child.
In this book I am not speaking so much of the universal sex relation
as to those who find themselves to-day in the highly civilised,
artificial communities of English-speaking people: and in our
present society there is little doubt that the early birth of a
child demands much self-sacrifice and self-restraint from the man,
one of the reflex vibrations of which is his undefinable sense of
loss and separation from his bride. This has been confided to me
by many men who have been generous enough to trust me with some of
the secrets of their lives. Mr. C. is typical of many others of his
class.
He was quiet and refined, with a strong strain of romantic
love, which was entirely centred in his bride. He was manly and
sufficiently virile to feel the need of sex intercourse, but he was
unaware (as are so many men) of the woman's corresponding need;
and he did not give his wife any orgasm. She took no pleasure,
therefore, in the physical act of union, which for her was so
incomplete.
Very shortly after marriage she conceived, and a child was born ten
months after the wedding day.
For two years after the birth of the child her vitality was so
lowered that the sex-act was to her _so_ repugnant that she refused
her husband any union; and it was thus three years after their
marriage before they met in anything like a normal way. By that
time the long separation from sex-life, and the strain on the
man, coupled with daily familiarity at home, had dimmed, if not
completely destroyed, his sense of romance. The natural stimulation
each should exert on the other had faded, so that they never
experienced the mutual glow of rapture in their sex-union.
Another pair suffered similarly: Mr. and Mrs. D. were prevented
for several years by the wife's real and fancied ill-health from
having any intercourse. When, after that time, she recovered and
passionately desired the true marriage relation, the husband felt
it to be impossible. To him it would have been, as he expressed it,
"like raping his sister."
Once such a thought has grown into a man's mind it is very difficult
"to recapture the first fine early rapture." And with the loss of
that early rapture the two lose, for the rest of their lives, the
irradiating joy which is priceless not only for its beauty, but for
the vitality with which its wings are laden.
On the other hand, if by waiting some months (or even years if
they are young) the mated pair have learnt to adjust themselves to
each other and have experienced the full possibilities of complete
love-making, the disturbance which is caused by the birth of the
child is in no sense a danger to their happiness, but is its crown
and completion.
A man once said to me--"One can endure anything for the sake of a
beloved wife." But the _wife_ is only utterly beloved when she and
her married lover have not only entered paradise together, but when
she fully realises, through insight gained by her own experiences,
the true nature of that of which she is depriving her husband so
long as her bodily condition makes sex-union with him impossible.
Much has been written, and may be found in the innumerable books on
the sex-problems, as to whether a man and woman should or should
not have relations while the wife is bearing an unborn child. In
this matter experience is very various, so that it is difficult
or impossible to give definite advice without knowing the full
circumstances of each case.
When, however, we observe the admirable sanctity of the pregnant
females of the woodland creatures, and when we consider the
extraordinary ignorance and disregard of woman's needs which mark so
many of our modern customs, we cannot but think that the safe side
of this debatable question must be in the complete continence of
the woman for at least six months before the birth of the child. I
have heard from a number of women, however, that they desire union
urgently at this time; and from others that the thought of it is
incredible. (See Addition 2, p. 115.)
Tolstoy strongly condemned any sex contact while the wife was
pregnant or nursing, and blames the husband who "puts upon her the
unbearable burden of being at one and the same time a mistress, an
exhausted mother, and a sickly, irritable, hysterical individual.
And the husband loves her as his mistress, ignores her as a mother,
and hates her for the irritability and hysteria which he himself has
produced and produces." His view is taken by many of our noblest men.
While the wife feels that she cannot allow her husband to enter
the portals of her body when it has become the sacred temple of a
developing life, she should also consider the perpetual strain which
nature imposes upon him; and the tender and loving wife will readily
find some means of giving him that physical relief which his nature
needs.
The exquisite, unselfish tenderness which is aroused in a man by the
sense of mental and spiritual harmony with a wife who sympathises
with, because she understands, his needs is one of the loveliest
things in marriage. The wife who knows how to waken this tenderness
in a man raises him out of the self-centred slough in which so many
men wallow unhappily.
With an ardent man, wholly devoted to his wife and long deprived
of her, the time will come when it will be sufficient for him to
be near her and caress her for relief to take place without any
physical connection.
After the birth of the first child the health of the mother and of
the baby both demand that there should be no hurried beginning of a
second. _At least_ a year should pass before the second little life
is allowed to begin its unfolding, so that _a minimum_ of about two
years should elapse before the second child is born.
The importance of this, both for the mother and for the child, is
generally adequately recognised by medical specialists, and some
distinguished gynecologists advocate as much as three or five years
between the births of successive children. While in the whole human
relation there is no slavery or torture so horrible as coerced,
unwilling motherhood, there is no joy and pride greater than that
of a woman who is bearing the developing child of a man she adores.
It is a serious reflection on our poisoned "civilisation" that a
pregnant woman should feel shame to appear in the streets. Never
will the race reach true health till it is cured of its prurient
sickness, and the prospective mother can carry her sacred burden
as a priestess in a triumphal procession. (See Addition 3, p.
117.)
Of the innumerable problems which touch upon the qualities
transmitted to the children by their parents, the study of which may
be covered by the general term Eugenics, I shall here say nothing:
nor shall I deal with the problems of birth and child-rearing. Many
writers have considered these subjects, and my purpose in this book
is to present aspects of sex-life which have been more or less
neglected by others.
While throughout I have omitted the consideration of abnormalities,
there is one condition which verges on the abnormal but yet touches
the lives of some married people who are individually both normal
and healthy, about which a few words need to be said.
It not infrequently happens that two healthy, loving people, for no
apparent reason, seem unable to have a child. (See Addition 4, p.
119.)
The old-fashioned view was that the fault lay with the woman, and
the reproach of being a barren woman is one which brought untold
anguish to many hearts. It is now beginning to be recognised,
however, that in a childless union the "fault," if fault it be, is
as often the man's as the woman's, particularly where the husband is
a brain worker in a city.
Though it is natural that there should not be the same joy for the
pair in a child which had not arisen from their own supreme fusion,
nevertheless, the man who is generous and broadminded might find
much joy in a child of his wife's were the obtaining of this child
not coupled with the yielding of her body to the embrace of another
man, which is so generally and so naturally repugnant to a husband.
The future possibilities of science here come in. Much interesting
research has already been done on the growth of the young of
various creatures without the ordinary fertilisation of the mother
egg-cell. Then there are the experiments by the famous Dr. Hunter at
the end of the eighteenth century, and more recent work. See, for
instance, Heape, in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1897,"
and Marshall's text-book of "The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910."
While in such an event as these discoveries adumbrate, the husband
would have no bodily part in the heritage of the child, yet in
the creation of its spirit he could play a profound part, the
potentialities of which appear to be almost unrecognised by humanity.
The idea that the soul and character of the child can be in any
degree influenced by the mental status of the mother during the
months of its development as an embryo within her body, is apt to
be greeted with pure scepticism--for it is difficult of proof, and
repugnant to the male intellect, now accustomed to explain life in
terms of chemistry.
Yet all the wisest mothers whom I know vary only in the degree
of their belief in this power of the mother. All are agreed in
believing that the spiritual and mental condition and environment of
the mother does profoundly affect the character and the mental and
spiritual powers of the child.
An interesting fact which strengthens the woman's point of view,
is quoted (though not in this connection) by Marshall,[11] who
says: "It has been found that immunity from disease may be acquired
by young animals being suckled by a female which had previously
become immune, the antibody to the disease being absorbed in the
ingested milk." This particular fact is explainable in terms of
chemistry; but it seems to me more than rash for anyone in these
days of hormones from ductless glands, to deny the possibility of
mental states in the mother generating "chemical messengers," which
may impress permanent characters in the physiological reactions of
the developing child. Ellis says (Vol. 6, "Sex and Society," 1913):
"The mother is the child's supreme parent, and during the period
from conception to birth the hygiene of the future man can only be
affected by influences which work through her."
[11] See p. 566 of the text-book on "The Physiology of
Reproduction," Pp. xvii., 706, 1910.
And Alfred Russel Wallace, the great naturalist, thought the
transmission of mental influence neither impossible nor even very
improbable.[12] I am convinced that it takes place all the time,
moulding and influencing the hereditary factors.
[12] See his letter to the scientific journal "Nature" in the year
1893, August 24, pp. 389 and 390.
Hence I suggest that the husband who is deprived of normal
fatherhood may yet make the child of his wife's body partly his own,
if his thoughts are with her intensely, supportingly, and joyously
throughout the whole time of the unborn baby's growth. If he reads
to her, plays beautiful music or takes her to hear it, and gives her
the very best of his thoughts and aspirations, mystical though the
conclusion may seem, he does attain an actual measure of fatherhood.
The converse is even more difficult, where the wife is really barren
and the husband capable of having children with another woman. Then
the attainment of children by the man is impossible without the
collaboration of another woman in a manner not outwardly recognised
by our laws and customs. Even if this done it is clear that to
introduce the child of another woman into the home is demanding a
much greater self-abnegation from the wife than is demanded from the
husband in the situation we have just considered.
Many people whose ideals are very noble are yet strangely incapable
of adapting the material acts of life to the real fulfilment of
their ideals. Thus there is a section of our community which
insists that there should be no restriction whatever of the number
of children born to married people. They think any birth control
immoral. They take their stand upon the statement that we have no
right to destroy potential life. But if they would study a little
human or animal physiology they would find that not only every
celibate, but also every married man incessantly and inevitably
wastes myriads of germs (see p. 41) which had the potentiality of
fusion with an ovum, and consequently could have produced a child
had opportunity been given them. For the supposed sake of one or two
of these myriad sperms which must naturally and inevitably die, they
encourage the production of babies in rapid succession which are
weakened by their proximity while they might have been sturdy and
healthy had they been conceived further apart from each other.
Such people, while awake to the claims of the unborn, nay, even of
the unconceived, are blind to the claims of the one who should be
dearest of all to the husband, and for whose health and happiness
he is responsible. A man swayed by archaic dogma will allow, even
coerce, his wife to bear and bring forth an infant annually. Save
where the woman is exceptional, each child following so rapidly
on its predecessor, saps and divides the vital strength which is
available for the making of the offspring. This generally lowers the
vitality of each succeeding child, and surely even if slowly, may
murder the woman who bears them.
Of course, the effects of this strain upon the woman vary greatly
according to her original health and vitality, the conditions of
her surroundings and the intensity of the family's struggle for
food. A half-starved mother trying to bring up children in the foul
air of city slums, loses, as a rule, far more of her family than
a comfortable and well-fed woman in the country. Nevertheless,
conditions are not everything; under the best conditions, the
chances of death of the later children of a large family, which
comes rapidly, are far greater than for the earlier children.
Dr. Ploetz found that while the death-rate of first-born infants
is about 220 per thousand, the death-rate of the seventh-born is
about 330, and of the twelfth-born is 597 per thousand. So that when
"Nature" has its way, and twelve children come to sap a woman's
vitality, so little strength has she that nearly 60 per cent. of
these later ones die. What a waste of vitality! What a hideous
orgy of agony for the mothers to produce in anguish death-doomed,
suffering infants!
Forel ("The Sexual Question," 1908) says: "It seems almost
incredible that in some countries medical men who are not ashamed to
throw young men into the arms of prostitution, blush when mention is
made of anti-conceptional methods. This false modesty, created by
custom and prejudice, waxes indignant at innocent things while it
encourages the greatest infamies."
It is important to observe that Holland, the country which takes
_most_ care that children shall be well and voluntarily conceived,
has increased its survival-rate, and has thereby, not diminished,
but increased its population, and has the lowest infant mortality
in Europe. While in America, where the outrageous "Comstock Laws"
confuse wise scientific prevention with illegal abortion and label
them both as "obscene," thus preventing people from obtaining decent
hygienic knowledge, horrible and criminal abortion is more frequent
than in any other country.
It should be realised that all the proper, medical methods of
controlling pregnancy consist, not in destroying an already
growing embryo, but in preventing the male sperm from reaching
the unfertilised egg cell. This may be done either by shutting
the sperms away from the opening of the womb, or by securing the
death of _all_ (instead of the natural death of all but _one_) of
the two to six hundred million sperms which enter the woman. Even
when a child is allowed to grow in its mother, all these hundreds
of millions of sperms are inevitably and naturally destroyed
every time the man has an emission, and to add one more to these
millions sacrificed by Nature is surely no crime! To kill quickly
the ejaculated sperms which would otherwise die and decompose
naturally, is a simple matter. Their minute and uncovered bodies
are plasmolised in weak acid, such as vinegar and water, or by a
solution of quinine, or by many other substances.
To those who protest that we have no right to interfere with the
course of Nature, one must point out that the whole of civilisation,
everything which separates man from animals, is an interference with
what such people commonly call "Nature."
Nothing in the cosmos can be against Nature, for it all forms part
of the great processes of the universe.
Actions differ, however, in their relative positions in the scale of
things. Only those actions are worthy which lead the race onwards
to a higher and fuller completion and the perfecting of its powers,
which steer the race into the main current of that stream of life
and vitality which courses through us and impels us forward.
It is a sacred duty of all who dare to hand on the awe-inspiring
gift of life, to hand it on in a vessel as fit and perfect as
they can fashion, so that the body may be the strongest and most
beautiful instrument possible in the service of the soul they summon
to play its part in the mystery of material being.