IDOLS OF THE HOME
AMONG the claims of reconstruction which the insurgent literature of
our time puts forward, none, perhaps, so startles and inflames the
Conservative as the demand for a reform of the family. Criticism of
this institution is, in fact, so severely punished or so slanderously
misrepresented that it is usually exercised in the more or less
impersonal form of the drama or novel. It happens, however, that the
drama or the novel is now quite the most effective means of
inoculating millions with critical ideas, and at least half the more
brilliant novelists and dramatists of Europe employ their art for this
purpose, or reflect some such sentiments in their work. Hence the
outcry about the "unclean novel": which is usually far cleaner
than the Old Testament, but more critical. Positivism had assured us
that this institution would be transferred intact to a human
foundation, and Murillo's "Holy Family" hung reverently over the
hearths of the new pagans. Now, half in fear and half in exultation,
the clergy cry that humanism has betrayed its moral poison and its
social menace.
Our favourite phrase here is the saying that the family is the
foundation of the State. If one patiently considered the matter, one
would discover that the divine right of kings was once regarded with
equal confidence as the indispensable foundation of the State. It may
very well be that the divine duty of the family is no less open to
reconsideration. It might be noticed that the change from aristocracy
to democracy was at one time hailed with lurid prophecy even by
distinguished moralists and sociologists, yet this change has led to
greater efficiency and prosperity. We might perceive that the
Christian dogmas were once thought vital to our welfare, and it may be
that the Christian ethic is in some points as disputable as the
Christian dogmas. Few reflect on these matters, and the writer who
criticises the family is denounced with peculiar bitterness. Quite
certainly that tomb of dead civilisations yawns ominously before us if
we lend ear to this kind of rebel. The family is so plainly
indispensable an institution that it must be protected from criticism:
lest we be tempted to dispense with it.
I propose, however, to make a critical study of the family. Indeed, I
venture to say at once that our ideal of the family is so encrusted
with ancient superstitions that it pressingly invites the critical
attention of our age: that the family is the foundation of the State
only in an historical sense, not in the sense that a State cannot be
based on any other procreative arrangement: and that the cloak of
superstition and rhetoric that we have put about it has covered for
ages, and still covers, an appalling amount of vice, hypocrisy, and
misery. My point of view has been stated. The affairs of this planet
must be run by men for men. The supreme aim must be to lighten the
burden of suffering which we inherit from a less intelligent and less
humane past. Any creed, code, or institution which forbids progress on
these lines must be assailed.
The first and most damnable superstition in regard to the family is
the claim that marriage ought to be indissoluble. In its strict form
this belief is held only by Roman Catholics, and by a section of the
Church of England which was only partially reformed in the sixteenth
century and has a strange ambition to disavow even that limited
reform. But the most insidious mischief of this old ideal is that it
has embedded deep in our minds the feeling that, although indissoluble
marriage is an intolerable yoke, we must be very chary and niggardly
in granting relief. This feeling we ascribe to a wise concern for our
social welfare, whereas it is due to the subconscious tyranny of the
old superstition. Recently we have seen the strange spectacle of a
non-Christian moralist standing amongst our bishops to bar the way of
reform: seeking to prolong, in the name of humanity, a superstition
that darkens the homes of a large part of humanity. The bishops may
have smiled.
A distinguished sociological writer, Mr. L. Hobhouse, in classifying
forms of marriage, says, with unconscious humour: "Marriage is
indissoluble among the Andamanese, some Papuans of New Guinea, at
Watubela, at Lampong in Sumatra, among the Igorrotes and Italones of
the Philippines, the Veddahs of Ceylon, and in the Romish Church."
One trusts that the Roman (and Anglican) Catholics like the company
they keep; the peoples enumerated by Mr. Hobhouse are the very lowest
and least intelligent savages known to science. The Church of Rome has
long boasted that its ideal of indissoluble union is the final and
culminating point of human wisdom in regard to the family. It now
appears that indissoluble marriage was the most primitive human
tradition, and was discarded by the Roman and all other civilisations
when they passed from childhood to manhood.
Sociologists have been accustomed to say that monogamy was gradually
developed out of promiscuity. This was mere speculation, and Professor
Westermarck and other recent authorities rightly dissent. The
institution is older than humanity. We find monogamic family life
among the anthropoid apes and amongst the lowest peoples, which
represent early man; and many writers on prehistoric man now contend
that we find him passing from family to social life, not in the
reverse way. When the last Ice Age forced men to live in caves, and
the scattered families clung together and formed large social groups,
the family life was modified, and few of the higher tribes maintained
the primitive form. Réclus tells of a Khond who, on hearing of the
monogamous life of the wild Veddahs of Ceylon, exclaimed in disgust:
"They live like the apes."
We may assume that little hardship arises from incompatibility of
temperament among the Igorrotes or the Veddahs, and there is no need
to describe the eccentric forms of marriage which arose among higher
savages. None of the great civilisations of the past entertained the
idea of indissoluble marriage. The clergy, of course, know nothing of
the real line of evolution, and (as Bishop Diggle has done) they
represent the Roman system as a comparative refinement of early
promiscuity, on which Christianity was to make the final advance. The
precious testimony of Juvenal is invoked (against the warning of all
modern historians): and we are expected to shudder because St. Jerome
tells us of a Roman lady who had been married a score of times. It is
not stated what harm was done to the lady, or to anybody else, or
whether she was a freak in her generation. It is enough, as Mrs.
Humphry Ward knows, to say that divorce is frequent anywhere, and
thousands of hands will rise to heaven: what the precise social
consequences are the thousand of heads seem to regard as irrelevant.
I have read most of the literature of the Roman Imperial period, and
have found that the greater part of the statements made about it by
clerical moralists are rubbish. Every serious student knows that it
was precisely the more rigid and intolerable earlier form of Roman
marriage (the _confarreatio_) which led to laxity in the early Empire;
that the Roman Lawyers of the first and second centuries, who relaxed
marriage, were among the most conscientious that the legal world has
ever produced; and that in the time of St. Jerome--an embittered and
intensely puritanical priest, who says worse things about his
sacerdotal colleagues than he does about the pagans--we have the solid
testimony of such documents as the _Letters_ of Symmachus and the
instructive _Saturnalia_ of Macrobius to show that the family life of
the pagans was generally healthy, sober, and harmonious. There is not
a particle of proof that Roman society suffered because of the
facility of divorce, or generally abused this facility.
But the misrepresentation of Roman morals is light in comparison with
the misrepresentation of later Christian morals. Christianity took its
ideal from the Jews. Amongst this partially civilised people marriage
had been made easy for the male by the retention of polygamy, and it
was not customary to consult the feelings of the woman. In the course
of time Greek influence entered Judæa, and the Rabbis held learned
debates on marriage and divorce. Both the stricter and the laxer view
found expression in the New Testament and in early Christian
literature, but a celibate priesthood obtained supreme power in Europe
and the stricter view was enforced. The moral consequences were
disastrous. While the Roman _Curia_, which could always find a flaw in
the marriage of a wealthy man, was enriched, Europe was degraded, and
sexual immorality became general. It is enough to recall that a
tradition of looseness, in strict correspondence with the law of
indissoluble marriage, survives from the ages of faith to our own time
in the Latin countries. Some have spoken of "the hot southern
blood" and cast the blame on the climate. I would invite the
informed moralist to run his eye over the map of the earth, and ask
himself whether chastity increases, or the sex-organs lose vitality,
in proportion as nations are removed from the Equator. It is a
ludicrous effort of Catholics to conceal the evils of indissoluble
marriage. Until the Reformation sexual laxity was the same all over
Europe.
In England the old priest-made law was retained after the Reformation,
and laxity of morals was general. Except for a very few wealthy
people, divorce was impossible until 1857, when a slender measure of
reform was wrested from the clergy. This, the present law of England,
a miserable compromise with religious prejudice and a permanent source
of vice and misery, puts English legislation on an important aspect of
"the foundation of the State" below that of any other civilised
community. Instead of ridding themselves entirely of clerical
influence, and directing civic life on civic grounds, our legislators
looked still to ancient Judæa, and substituted the less stringent
view of the Rabbis for the more stringent. The legendary leader of a
rude Arab tribe had granted divorce for adultery, and the English
nation of the nineteenth century followed his example. The result was
the most stupid and mischievous law of marriage outside the sphere of
the Holy Catholic Church.
English people are proud of their national concern for purity, yet
they tolerate, and their priests defend as something sacred, a state
of law which is medieval in its crudeness and barbarity. When two
people have obeyed our counsel to marry early, and they discover that
they have misjudged each other, we tell them that there is no relief
for them unless they commit adultery: which, when it is committed, we
brand as the darkest sin. To the husband we give the further
injunction that he must be cruel to his wife before we will release
him. We then, although we take especial pride in the "cleanness"
of our press and literature, print whole columns about their conduct
in suspicious situations,--sometimes entitling the account, in large
type, to attract attention, "A Horrible Case,"--and we ask each
other whether England is not in a state of decay and contracting the
continental spirit. If there are any who do not choose to commit
adultery, or do not choose to have their servants bribed to describe
their conduct for the entertainment of the public, we grant them a
legal permit to be happy and vicious, or miserable and virtuous, for
the remainder of their lives: the thing we call a judicial separation.
This extraordinary situation is certainly a slight improvement on
indissoluble marriage, but the pride of our bishops and puritans in it
is peculiar. One may not expect them to take into account the
suffering which hundreds of thousands endure under the law, but the
adultery to which it leads would seem to be a proper subject for their
consideration. As a rule, they entreat us to maintain religion,
whether it be true or no, in the name of morality: here they ask us to
maintain immorality in the name of religion,--in the name of a
supposed Christian precept,--and we obey even more readily. When a
Royal Commission recommends that our law be brought into line with the
law of other civilised nations, they burn with indignation and inspire
a Minority Report: a remarkable mixture of contradictions, worthless
quotations, and irrelevant rhetoric. The question of immorality they
shirk; and to the unhappiness which large numbers of our people endure
under the present law they are so insensitive that they hardly mention
it.
Such consequences are to be expected as long as we borrow our social
legislation from an ancient polygamous nation with a great disdain for
women. It is said, however, as usual, that our social interest
coincides with the supposed command of Christ. We have here one of the
most singular confusions of the whole controversy. Marriage is held to
be the foundation of the State, because it is believed to be the
surest way to supply it with citizens. This duty of procreation is, in
fact, the only feature which disposes priests to give their blessing
to so distasteful a thing as sexual union. Yet when a majority of the
Commissioners recommend that people should be free to remarry if the
desertion, cruelty, insanity, or imprisonment of one spouse defrauds
the State of its supply of little citizens, the bishops raise their
crosiers. Even so ascetic and anti-feminist a divine as St. Augustine
could not deny that a man had a right to take a concubine when his
wife proved sterile. Our divines speak much more fervently than St.
Augustine did of our social interest, yet they forbid us to consult
it.
In sum, we have generally rejected the view that marriage ought to be
indissoluble, and we pride ourselves on curbing the influence of
priests; but our whole attitude toward divorce is shaped by the old
superstition and the clergy. In the name of that superstition we
condemn large numbers of our fellow-citizens to live in deep and acute
misery. Which of our social interests would be prejudiced by granting
relief to the man or woman whose life is embittered by the desertion,
incurable insanity, cruelty, or criminal conduct of his or her
partner? The suggestion is preposterous; and, if we do not grant this
relief, adultery is in their case a venial offence, if not a right.
Some explain that they fear "the thin edge of the wedge." As if
wedges had a way of pressing deeper by their own weight, once we have
admitted them! If England chooses to grant these reforms, and no
others, she need not be deterred by empty phrases. But I believe that
the alert and resolute race which is coming will go much further than
this. Before many generations, if not in ours, there will be divorce
for incompatibility of temperament in every civilised country. Men and
women will be divorced, after due delay, because they wish, or when
one of them can show grave cause to separate from the other.
Ill-informed people express a concern about the children or the social
consequences. They do not take the trouble to inquire what happens in
some of the American States, or in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and
Switzerland, where there is long and ample experience of divorce by
mutual consent. The social consequences are just what any unprejudiced
person would expect: happier homes, and more healthily engendered and
reared children. But the puritan does not want to inquire: he is not
sincere. Would he agree to divorce by mutual consent where there are
no children or where either or both parents make adequate provision
for them? He would not. I will, however, return later to the question
of children.
Europe will be far happier when some such humane law as the Danish is
generally adopted, and, after a few years' separation, the
discontented are free to remarry. But no one who is acquainted with
the tendency and influence of modern literature can fancy that this
will be the last state of the old ideal of the family. From the first
years when men were free to declare their opinions without fear of the
stake, writers of great power have claimed the right of what has come
to be called "free love." Some would abolish marriage, but the
normal shape of the demand is that men and women shall be free to love
and beget children whether or no they ask the blessing of Church or
State. By the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Goethe took
a concubine on the pagan model, many of the first literary men in
Europe pressed this demand, and it is sustained by some of the most
brilliant writers in every country to-day. The movement exhibits the
slow and steady growth characteristic of reforms which eventually
triumph. It is no mere bubble on the surface of our effervescent life;
it is the new intelligence of the race examining the old traditions.
Moralists, lay and clerical, have a preposterous way of representing
this as a surging of selfish passion against the barriers which human
experience or superhuman wisdom has erected. There is, it is true,
much in our rebellious literature itself which misrepresents the
movement. You get the impression that, as the eighteenth century
questioned the divine right of kings and the nineteenth century that
of priests, the twentieth century is challenging the divine right of
moralists. But this is due to the common practice of giving a narrow
meaning to the word "immorality." Goethe and Swinburne became
zealous for "morality," but they never altered their opinions on
"free love." Sudermann and Anatole France and Pérez Galdós and
d'Annunzio, G. B. Shaw and T. Hardy and E. Carpenter and H. G.
Wells, are sincere moralists: they inculcate honour, truthfulness,
kindliness, and justice as firmly as our bishops, and more effectively
than most of our clergy. It is not morality that stands at the bar.
The real question is whether any sound moral principle implies that
marriage alone sanctions sex-union: whether social good or social evil
would result from an alteration of our standards.
This is a quite natural and legitimate question, and any
healthy-minded person ought to be able to discuss it without hysteria
or vituperation. Christian moralists have made some very grave
mistakes during the last thousand years. Humility and disdain of the
flesh were for centuries extolled by them as the supreme virtues:
cruelty was classified as a venial offence. Already the bulk of our
divines reject the virtue of asceticism, and they forbear to press on
the modern world the kind of humility which turns the other cheek, or
the other pocket, to the hooligan. They discover that social justice
has been singularly neglected by their predecessors, and they begin to
suspect that war or sweating may be worse than unbelief or
Sabbath-breaking. It is not at all unnatural to inquire whether there
may not also be some element of error in their sex-ethic.
We do not go far in such an inquiry before our suspicion is confirmed.
The evolution of the virtue of chastity may some day be traced by a
cold scientific investigator, and in its earlier stages it will prove
extremely interesting. It is primarily connected with an ancient
superstition or "tabu" in regard to sex-life: the kind of
primitive and unreasoning feeling which once drove women to the
temples of Ishtar in parts of the East, and still survives, baldly and
ludicrously, in the "purification" process to which a recent
mother must submit in the Roman and Anglican Churches. This old idea
that there was something "unclean" or mysterious about sex-life,
was more or less discarded when men passed out of the barbaric stage,
but it quite evidently survived in part in the virtue of purity. A man
or woman, it was thought, had a certain mystic superiority if he or
she did not use the organs of sex. Hence the widespread veneration of
Vestal Virgins, Pythagorean and Serapean recluses, priestesses of
Isis, Aztec and Christian nuns. I call attention particularly to the
notion that these celibates were in some sense superior to their
fellows, because it shows clearly the connection with the older idea
of a mystic uncleanness about sex. There is, of course, no rational
ground for this superstition, though even philosophers have
entertained it. There is a large and elegant literature about it, from
the _Enneads_ of Plotinus to Bulwer Lytton's _Zanoni_ or the works
of Miss Corelli.
Most of us see quite clearly the barbaric strain lingering in this
admiration of virginity, but we do not perceive how far our virtue of
purity is a compromise with this ancient superstition. I mean that,
together with sound elements which I will discuss presently, the
sentiment of purity or chastity retained a good deal of the old
irrational view of sex. Luther boldly attacked the theoretical
asceticism of the medieval Church, but in the end Protestantism
compromised with the old tradition. This again is quite plainly seen
when we reflect on the way in which Church people, and many of our
modern mystics and feminists, breathe the word "lust." It means
merely pleasure in sexual intercourse, but it has to be mentioned as
rarely as possible, and with downcast eyes and an air of very distinct
disapproval. The impression is conveyed that it is a thing invented by
the devil, but reluctantly permitted by the Almighty because the race
had to be maintained. The blessing of the Church made it a barely
permissible luxury. We have only to reflect that "lust" does not
mean unwedded love, but sexual pleasure or desire under any
conditions, to recognise the trail of the old tabu over the whole
range of these sentiments.
In the nineteenth century the evolution of morals took a strange turn.
Neither clergy nor laity had before that time, speaking generally,
observed chastity in practice, but the rise of non-Christian critics
in the eighteenth century had compelled the clergy to be more faithful
to their own precepts. This (and the growth of such movements as
Wesleyanism) led to more concern about virtue, and when the English
Agnostic school arose its leaders were taunted by the clergy with a
wish to rationalise or alter morality. By a natural reaction they
cultivated a particular zeal for virtue, and accepted the old code in
its entirety. Those moralists who appealed to a "categorical
imperative" or an "intuition" had no difficulty in doing this.
Indeed, any man who to-day accepts the Stoic idea of morality, or the
æsthetic idea (that virtue is so beautiful that we must cultivate
it), has as much right as the Christian to profess a regard for
chastity. There ensued a kind of rivalry of virtue between the clergy
and the new pagans. It has ended in the curious spectacle of our
modern clergy, whose historical knowledge is both slender and
peculiar, claiming that their Churches are the most faithful preachers
of purity the world has ever known, while Agnostic moralists
indignantly dispute their supposed monopoly.
The extreme complexity of this evolution, and the fact that few of us
reflect critically at all on our moral sentiments, must excuse me for
making this lengthy analysis. It shows that our conception of chastity
still contains a large amount of the old non-rational tradition, and
that any man or woman who declines (as so many do to-day) to bow to
mystic and obscure commands has a right to examine it closely. In one
of my works (_Life of G. J. Holyoake_, ii. 65) I have shown that so
sensitive a moralist as J. S. Mill admitted this. Obviously, the
precept of purity or chastity has a totally different basis from all
the other recognised moral precepts. These others are invariably
social laws, and the transgression of them is invariably a social
hurt. Life itself furnishes the reply if a man asks why he _ought_ to
be just, kind, and truthful: the answer is not so obvious when he asks
why he _ought_ to be chaste.
This will become very much clearer if we examine our resentment of
"immoral" actions. In the majority of cases we condemn them on
moral principles quite apart from chastity. Europe has in this respect
been lamentably misled by its professional moralists, and we can
hardly be surprised that in practice it so largely ignored them. It is
quite plain that a man or woman who has married on the usual
terms--mutual fidelity--and they remain unaltered, is bound by honour
and justice to observe the contract. Adultery is in such a case (the
usual case) condemned by moral principles which have a very much
clearer basis than chastity. Again, justice sternly forbids a man to
inflict, or run the risk of inflicting, grave injury on a woman by
causing her to have a child in a social order which will heavily
punish her for doing so. Here also there is a firm reason, apart from
chastity, for moral resentment. When we eliminate these other moral
sentiments from our condemnation of immoral acts, there is certainly
no _social_ ground of resentment left; and, as I said, I am not
arguing against a Stoic or æsthetic or theological view. Socially, it
would be an enormous improvement if we kept this analysis in mind. If
moralists talked less about "vice," which has an academic sound,
and more about "crime" and honour, there would be less suffering
in the world. The experience of two thousand years has not commended
the Church's practice of denouncing vice when it ought to have
appealed to a man's sense of honour or justice. It put the accent on
the wrong syllable. Many a man will shrink from an act which is
unjust, or may involve cruelty, if he is accustomed to regard it as
such. He is not so effectively intimidated by terms like virtue and
vice, which require a whole moral philosophy or theology to invalidate
them.
But I am not for a moment contending that this removal of the accent
from one syllable to another leaves the law as it was. It is, on the
contrary, the very essence of my contention that the law must, in the
real interest of men and women, be altered and that a large amount of
ethical tyranny, which has no justification, must be abandoned. Let me
first put, with entire candour, what seems to me to be the only
rational reconstruction of sex-morality on a social basis, and then we
may regard the reasons for advocating it.
It is, as I said, clear that if a man or woman marries on a strict
monogamous contract, and holds his or her partner to that contract,
there is a plain obligation of justice to adhere to it. If, on the
other hand, a man and woman choose to marry on any other
understanding, or choose to grant each other (as is now frequently
done) a greater liberty than the contract implies, their behaviour is
entirely their own concern, and no moralist who takes his stand on
purely social grounds has anything to say to it. In regard to
unmarried intercourse, it is further plain that a man commits an
immoral or anti-social act who entails on an unmarried woman the grave
injury which child-bearing does entail in our social order generally.
It must, however, be recognised that guilt is in this case entirely
relative to circumstances. Where public opinion does not make a pariah
of such a woman, where no risk of suffering is involved, such an act
of "free love" is no concern of the social moralist. Hence, if two
people of mature intelligence, making a just provision for possible
children, choose to live together without marriage, it is entirely
their own concern; and if any woman, strong and judicious enough to
take the responsibility of her acts, chooses love without marriage, it
is her own concern.
If there seems to be an unfamiliar coldness and deliberation about
this defence of "licence," it is enough to recall the familiar
circumstances. One cannot, as a rule, inquire dispassionately into
this subject without raising an hysterical storm. The clergy and other
puritans accuse a man of the basest and most selfish motives; they
seem, indeed, so incapable of understanding that a man may plead for
this moral reconstruction on motives at least as unselfish and
elevated as their own that their obtuseness does little credit to
their own moral physiognomy. They make fanatical appeals to
undiscriminating prejudice, repeat silly phrases about "passion"
and "farmyard morals," and rely on intimidation. The consequence
is, that ordinary folk openly bow to their rhetoric and secretly
ignore it. Any properly observant person can find out in a week to
what extent London observes the virtue of purity. It is then left to
rebellious poets and novelists and other artists to make fiery
onslaughts on the tyranny: to speak of virtue as "the ash of a
burnt-out fire," to chant "the roses and raptures of vice," or
to say scornfully with Blake:
"And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires."
Therefore I have chosen to apply to the issue the cold deductive
processes with which experience as a professor of moral philosophy has
made me familiar. As I said, the Christian is free to observe his
supposed divine command, the Stoic may bow to a mystic and inscrutable
law, the moral æsthete may enthuse over the charm of virtue; but I
maintain that the sociological or utilitarian view of morals, which is
now generally accepted by the vast number of people who have ceased to
be Christian, cannot control sex-relations in any other sense than
this. A man must avoid injustice and hardship: a woman must use her
discretion. Indeed, as the clergy and the puritans now take their
stand commonly on social grounds, these social considerations are
effective against them.
But the question is not merely academic. These cold and severe
deductions are very properly opposed to the heated phraseology and
sentimentality of Conservatives, who profess to be concerned about our
social welfare, but I am really pleading for the greater happiness of
the race, the lessening of hypocrisy, the curtailment of a system of
prostitution which makes the lives of so many women end in horror.
With all their talk about our "social welfare," the clergy and
their puritan supporters are in this respect the gravest disturbers
and restricters of our social welfare; and the insolence with which
they assail every attempt at reform is ludicrous in view of their own
record and gravely prejudicial to the advance of human happiness. It
is not a question of abolishing marriage, or of interfering with the
liberty of any. At one moment the clergy represent marriage as so
beneficent, so solidly established in the hearts of our people, that
only a morbid sensualist ever assails it; and the next moment they
suggest, in effect, that if we relax our coercion, people will abandon
marriage in such numbers that the social order will be overwhelmed.
Let us have sincerity and liberty.
But neither is it a question of spreading a gospel of "free love,"
in the perverse sense in which the clergy conceive such a gospel. The
considerations I have given above should make this plain enough. It is
a question of securing freedom and love for the hundreds of thousands
of mature women who cannot marry, or who do not choose to enter upon
the very precarious experiment of surrendering their privacy and
independence: a question of breaking the tyranny of an old
superstition which, by means of public opinion, forbids so many women
to have the child they desire to have, or the share of happiness from
which they are excluded: a question of putting an end to a vast amount
of needless suffering and privation and hypocrisy. The State would
gain rather than lose by this freedom: it is the Church only that
would suffer. Thousands of women already hold these views, as the open
circulation of the _Freewoman_ (a few years ago) and of our bolder
novelists shows. The feeling gains ground yearly, and the time is
approaching when that seal of ignominy which our priest-made law puts
on the "illegitimate" child will be removed, and men and women
will cease to speak of "lust." Sex-pleasure has no more taint than
any other, and the notion that it is justified only as an
accompaniment to the begetting of children, or to lessen the risk of
adultery, is childishly irrational and generally insincere. Laws there
must be: but the laws must be made for men, not men for the laws. It
is time that Europe shook off the conceptions of conduct which were
imposed on it by impotent monks like Gregory VII., and framed its own
rules in accordance with the new and healthier attitude toward life.
Asceticism is a commercial speculation--the sacrifice of earth for a
double share of heaven--which we have no longer reason to appreciate.
The progress of this view will be assisted by two contemporary reforms
of received opinion. One regards the economic dependence of woman on
man, which I will discuss later. I need only recall here that some of
the worst evils of our marriage-system--the scheming and bartering and
linking for life--are due to this dependence. The other reform is the
widespread and increasing rejection of the old idea that a woman must
bear as many children as nature will permit her to have.
There is amongst us a disgusting amount of hypocrisy in regard to this
question. The majority of educated people of all classes, even many of
the clergy, now practise artificial limitation of the family, yet we
proceed on the fiction that this is a disreputable practice. We turn
into pornographic dépôts the shops which sell contraceptives, and we
allow an antiquated law to be drastically enforced against men who
would be decent purveyors of the things we use in secret. We have
talked, and read journalistic articles, about "the dwindling
population of France" for twenty years, though it is only within the
last year or so that it has even slightly decreased; and the
birth-rate alone shows that London and Berlin and every other great
city are rapidly approaching the condition of Paris. We listen without
protest to the lamentations of half-informed faddists on the
limitation of the birth-rate in ancient Rome (where the practice was
confined to a few, and proved an excellent means of saving the State
by ridding it of a worn-out nobility) or the medieval republics of
Italy. And while we perpetrate these and a hundred other follies, we
know that the majority of us who are educated and unprejudiced find
the practice humane and commendable. We would, it seems, rather leave
frail girls to the mercy of quacks and dangerous operators than tell
them openly what better-educated ladies do to avoid conception.
Yet we have not here even the excuse of an antique religious command.
The Catholic Church, it is true, severely condemns the use of
contraceptives, but one finds that its prohibition is based merely on
the reasoning of medieval celibates. With those who argue that the
practice is "against nature" one hardly needs to discuss. Half the
distinctive things of civilisation are "against nature," nor is
there any reason why we should not depart from the ways of that
ancient and unintelligent dame. Hardly less foolish is the alarm about
our dwindling birth-rate. With every industry and profession already
much overcrowded, we do not act very intelligently in censuring the
modern restriction of production. But these are, to a great extent,
either wholly insincere expressions or confused repetitions of ancient
prejudices. In France, where a society arose for the checking of the
practice, it was found that the members had an average of one child
and a half in each family. A similar census among the writers and
associations which attack Malthusianism in England might yield an
instructive result.
One can understand the hostility to Malthusianism--or, rather,
Neo-Malthusianism, since Malthus's idea of restricting population by
avoiding intercourse is unnecessarily heroic--in a country like
Australia, which urgently requires population; though even in
Australia the opposition is futile. One can understand such hostility
in a land which has universal conscription, and neighbours with a
superior army; though I have elsewhere pointed out the sensible and
natural way to settle this difficulty. But it is quite irrational in
such a city as London. Five-sixths of us, it has been demonstrated, do
not attend church or take our code of life meekly from the clergy, as
our fathers did; our labour-market is, in every division, enormously
overcrowded; and our army is not affected by the dwindling birth-rate.
Why, in these circumstances, should the women of England be asked to
undergo the pain and sickness and weariness of a yearly birth, and
wear out their lives in the rearing of a large family? Men have, as a
rule, too little appreciation of the terrible burden they lay on their
wives, but their own interest at least ought to weigh with them. Why
be constrained to find the resources for rearing and educating a large
family when a smaller family will give better chances to the children
and conduce to the happiness of the home?
To these questions the only answer is an irrational outpouring of
antique rhetoric. It is mere "lust" to have commerce without
children: it is "selfish" to wish to live in greater comfort by
restricting the family: it is "unnatural." The man who would
lessen the suffering of his companion in life, and obtain greater
advantages and more loving care for his children by restricting their
number, may smile at the futility of this kind of rhetoric. But it is
surely time, in the second decade of the twentieth century, to meet it
with a frank and curt declaration that we have, and will use, a right
to any pleasure which this life affords, provided it hurt no one. The
last trace of asceticism should be trodden underfoot. The medieval
clergy were a body of a few fanatics leading an army of hypocrites.
Their ideas have no place in our life. Love and joy and comradeship
are in themselves as much ours as the scent of the rose or the flavour
of wine. It is time that we echoed defiantly the sneering words of the
apostle, and said: Yes, _let_ us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
We are not likely to forget that life has other pleasures, of culture
and art, besides those of the palate or of love. The supreme
commandment is, as old Egypt said: "Thou shalt make no man weep."
The supreme virtue is to quicken the hearts of men with joy and fill
their minds with truth. And the time will come when the clergy,
reading aright for the first time the life of the ages of faith, will
say: "We never insisted on our theoretical asceticism until those
dour sceptics of the nineteenth century compelled us: the Middle Ages
were the ages of liberty."
The clergy are, in fact, in a dilemma. The cry of the hour is
"social consequences." There is a vast amount of doleful recalling
of dead civilisations and prediction of coming woe; though England was
never before so prosperous, solid, and free from crime. But dogmas
have worn so thin that we must be pressed to maintain them, even if
they are false, on social grounds. The answer is quite simple. If any
social quality or rule of conduct is necessary for our welfare and
happiness in this world, we need no dogmatic foundation for it. Men
will see that virtue is its own reward. And if any rule of conduct in
the Christian code is _not_ based upon the actual exigencies of life,
there will be no social consequences if we disregard it. The
superstitions I have assailed belong to this latter category.
But a campaign against the artificial restriction of the birth-rate
has recently been inaugurated on what are thought to be serious social
grounds, and this leads me to a third and last reform which the family
will undergo. I refer to the Eugenic movement. Let me first explain
why this hostility of Eugenists to the restriction of the birth-rate
seems a needless and illogical complication of their aims.
This hostility is usually expressed in the form of a fear that the
restriction of births among the "better class" and unrestricted
increase of the "lower class" must lead to deterioration. One
would think that the proper remedy of this would be to recommend
prudential restriction to the mass of the workers, as the Malthusian
League endeavours to do. It is a strange social idealism which would
urge over-production all round, with its train of domestic and
industrial evils, instead of urging restriction all round. It would
also be interesting to learn the average number of children to a
family among these zealous Eugenists, and whether they do not find
middle-class professions as overcrowded as the manual industries are.
At all events, since it is now impossible to induce educated mothers
to return to the virtuous and exacting industry of their Victorian
predecessors, the best thing would be to educate the masses in a
common-sense view of maternity and of their own interest.
It will suffice here, however, to deal with the saner side of the
Eugenic movement. It proposes to eliminate bad human stock and promote
the mating of good stocks. These are those who find it a degradation
to introduce "the methods of the breeder" into human affairs, but
the objection is merely silly. The methods of the modern breeder are
an expression of intelligence, improving on nature; these
old-fashioned folk would have us disregard the persuasion of
intelligence and retain the crude methods of unintelligent nature. The
serious question is: Is the Eugenic proposal sound and practicable?
As far as positive Eugenics, or the selection of good human stocks for
breeding, is concerned, the recent evolution of the movement seems to
show that no firm and practicable proposal can yet be formulated. The
truth is that the movement is greatly enfeebled by a general reliance
on disputed theories of heredity. Some Eugenists rely on Weismann's
theory: some on the Mendelist theory. They do not realise that
scientific men are by no means agreed upon these theories, and it is a
serious mistake to build on either. In England most of our biologists
are Weismannists (in a broad sense), but there is more hostility to
the theory in Germany and the United States, and both theories have
lately had to confront grave difficulties. Any Eugenic proposal which
is based on a theory of heredity must be regarded with reserve. The
dogmatic statements of Professor Karl Pearson, for instance, in regard
to the impossibility of altering by education the innate qualities of
a child are entirely unwarranted. Heredity is still a mystery: and the
relative importance of heredity and environment (or nature and
nurture) is not yet determined.
Detaching the element of theory, we have a plain proposal to eradicate
tainted stocks from the human garden and promote the growth of the
sounder. As I have said, the positive proposal to breed has not yet
been put before us in a practicable or discussable form. This is
largely because Eugenists fear to alarm the public by pointing out how
it affects the position of marriage. There are, however, many other
difficulties. The extraordinary diversity among children of the same
parents warns us that we cannot count on the result of mating human
beings, with their infinitely more complex nervous systems, as we can
count on the issue of mating sheep or dogs. The mediocrity of the
living children of our ablest men of the last generation, even when
the mother was an excellent mate, is another circumstance to be
considered. We do not yet know the points to breed for, and there is
no constancy of result. Eugenists sometimes refer to the physical or
mental superiority of one class of children over another, but in this
they do not attempt to distinguish between the effect of environment
and the natural endowment. Positive Eugenics is not yet beyond the
stage of research. Such research, if conducted without academic
prejudice (which is too apparent in many Eugenic papers), is of very
great service; and, if ever a firm proposal lies before us, we may
trust that rhetorical phrases and clerical prejudices will not be
allowed to bar the way.
In the case of negative Eugenics we are nearer agreement. Here again,
however, research is not always candid. Inquiries have been made into
the lineage of American criminals, and the large percentage of
criminals in one family is held to indicate a tainted stock: it is not
sufficiently noticed that they all lived in the same crime-breeding
environment. Other Eugenists try to intimidate us with the cry that
lunacy and crime are increasing rapidly: whereas (as I showed in the
_Hibbert Journal_, April 1912) there is no proved increase of lunacy
and no increase of crime, in proportion to the growth of population.
These methods bring discredit on the Eugenic proposals. It is,
however, now agreed that certain diseases, including certain forms of
mental disease, are transmissible, and common-sense suggests that we
should prevent their transmission. It is well to bear in mind,
however, that these things affect only a fraction of the community. As
is the case with every new social proposal, Eugenics is being pressed
as a panacea; and it appeals to many as a fascinating method of
healing our social maladies without touching the present distribution
of wealth. It is one subsidiary remedy among the hundred which modern
civilisation needs to apply. By all means let us discover what
"tainted stocks," if any, there are amongst us; and let us have
the elementary courage and intelligence to extinguish them, by the
isolation, painless destruction, or sterilisation of their
representatives.
The future of the family seems not obscure. Malthusian and Eugenic
proposals will alter much of the crudeness and stupidity of the old
family ideal, and ease of divorce will remove the blight it has put on
many a home. Hundreds of thousands bless marriage with gratitude and
sincerity: tens of thousands curse it with equal sincerity. Let there
be liberty and life for all. For a modern legislature to ignore a vast
amount of vice and misery, and be guided by the ancient formula of a
celibate priesthood, is one of the most lamentable features of our
civilisation. And the unbiased social student may look without concern
on the growth of extra-matrimonial love. There is no interest of the
State which forbids it, nor any sound principle of morals. The woman
of the future will be her own mistress, responsible neither to priest
nor moralist in this respect. If she chooses, she will marry; but she
will not sacrifice half the joy of life because she cannot, or does
not choose to, venture upon the experiment of domestic intimacy.