statement so often made that a falling birth-rate means "an old and
dying community." The Germans have for years been making this remark
contemptuously regarding the French. But to-day they have to recognise
a vitality in the French which they had not expected, while in recent
years, also, their own birth-rate has been falling more rapidly than
that of France. Nor is it true that a falling birth-rate means a
falling population; the French birth-rate has long been steadily
falling, yet the French population has been steadily increasing all the
time, though less rapidly than it would had not the death-rate been
abnormally high. It is not the number of babies born that counts, but
the net result in surviving children. An enormous number of babies are
born in China; but an enormous number die while still babies. So that
it is better to have a few babies of good quality than a large number
of indifferent quality, for the falling birth-rate is more than
compensated by the falling death-rate. That is what we are attaining in
England, and, as we know, our steadily falling birth-rate results in a
steadily growing population.
There is still more to be said. Small families and a falling birth-rate
are not merely no evil, they are a positive good. They are a gain for
humanity. They represent an evolutionary rise in Nature and a higher
stage in civilisation. We are here in the presence of great fundamental
principles of progress which have been working through life from the
beginning.
At the beginning of life on the earth reproduction ran riot. Of one
minute organism it is estimated that, if its reproduction were not
checked by death or destruction, in thirty days it would form a mass a
million times larger than the sun. The conger-eel lays fifteen million
eggs, and if they all grew up, and reproduced themselves on the same
scale, in two years the whole sea would become a wriggling mass of
fish. As we approach the higher forms of life reproduction gradually
dies down. The animals nearest to man produce few offspring, but they
surround them with parental care, until they are able to lead
independent lives with a fair chance of surviving. The whole process
may be regarded as a mechanism for slowly subordinating quantity to
quality, and so promoting the evolution of life to ever higher stages.
This process, which is plain to see on the largest scale throughout
living nature, may be more minutely studied, as it acts within a
narrower range, in the human species. Here we statistically formulate
it in the terms of birth-rate and death-rate; by the mutual relationship
of the two courses of the birth-rate and the death-rate we are able to
estimate the evolutionary rank of a nation, and the degree in which it
has succeeded in subordinating the primitive standard of quantity to
the higher and later standard of quality.
It is especially in Europe that we can investigate this relationship by
the help of statistics which in some cases extend for nearly a century
back. We can trace the various phases through which each nation passes,
the effects of prosperity, the influence of education and sanitary
improvement, the general complex development of civilisation, in each
case moving forward, though not regularly and steadily, to higher
stages by means of a falling birth-rate, which is to some extent
compensated by a falling death-rate, the two rates nearly always
running parallel, so that a temporary rise in the birth-rate is usually
accompanied by a rise in the death-rate, by a return, that is to say,
towards the conditions which we find at the beginning of animal life,
and a steady fall in the birth-rate is always accompanied by a fall in
the death-rate.
The modern phase of this movement, soon after which our precise
knowledge begins, may be said to date from the industrial expansion,
due to the introduction of machinery, which Professor Marshall places
in England about the year 1760. That represents the beginning of an era
in which all civilised and semi-civilised countries are still living.
For the earlier centuries we lack precise data, but we are able to form
certain probable conclusions. The population of a country in those ages
seems to have grown very slowly and sometimes even to have retrograded.
At the end of the sixteenth century the population of England and Wales
is estimated at five millions and at the end of the seventeenth at six
millions--only 20 per cent. increase during the century--although
during the nineteenth century the population nearly quadrupled. This
very gradual increase of the population seems to have been by no means
due to a very low birth-rate, but to a very high death-rate. Throughout
the Middle Ages a succession of virulent plagues and pestilences
devastated Europe. Small-pox, which may be considered the latest of
these, used to sweep off large masses of the youthful population in the
eighteenth century. The result was a certain stability and a certain
well-being in the population as a whole, these conditions being,
however, maintained in a manner that was terribly wasteful and
distressing.
The industrial revolution introduced a new era which began to show its
features clearly in the early nineteenth century. On the one hand, a
new motive had arisen to favour a more rapid increase of population.
Small children could tend machinery and thereby earn wages to increase
the family takings. This led to an immediate result in increased
population and increased prosperity. But, on the other hand, the rapid
increase of population always tended to outrun the rapid increase of
prosperity, and the more so since the rise of sanitary science began to
drive back the invasions of the grosser and more destructive infectious
diseases which had hitherto kept the population down. The result was
that new forms of disease, distress, and destitution arose; the old
stability was lost, and the new prosperity produced unrest in place of
well-being. The social consciousness was still too immature to deal
collectively with the difficulties and frictions which the industrial
era introduced, and the individualism which under former conditions had
operated wholesomely now acted perniciously to crush the souls and
bodies of the workers, whether men, women, or children.
As we know, the increase of knowledge and the growth of the social
consciousness have slowly acted wholesomely during the past century to
remedy the first evil results of the industrial revolution. The
artificial and abnormal increase of the population has been checked
because it is no longer permissible in most countries to stunt the
minds and bodies of small children by placing them in factories. An
elaborate system of factory legislation was devised, and is still ever
drawing fresh groups of workers within its protective meshes. Sanitary
science began to develop and to exert an enormous influence on the
health of nations. At the same time the supreme importance of popular
education was realised. The total result was that the nature of
"prosperity" began to be transformed; instead of being, as it had been
at the beginning of the industrial era, a direct appeal to the
gratification of gross appetites and reckless lusts, it became an
indirect stimulus to higher gratifications and more remote aspirations.
Foresight became a dominating motive even in the general population,
and a man's anxiety for the welfare of his family was no longer
forgotten in the pleasure of the moment. The social state again became
more stable, and mere "prosperity" was transformed into civilisation.
This is the state of things now in progress in all industrial
countries, though it has reached varying levels of development among
different peoples.
It is thus clear that the birth-rate combined with the death-rate
constitutes a delicate instrument for the measurement of civilisation,
and that the record of their combined curves registers the upward or
downward course of every nation. The curves, as we know, tend to be
parallel, and when they are not parallel we are in the presence of a
rare and abnormal state of things which is usually temporary or
transitional.
It is instructive from this point of view to study the various nations
of Europe, for here we find a large number of small nations, each with
its own statistical system, confined within a small space and living
under fairly uniform conditions. Let us take the latest official
figures (which are usually for 1913) and attempt to measure the
civilisation of European countries on this basis. Beginning with the
lowest birth-rate, and therefore in gradually descending rank of
superiority, we find that the European countries stand in the following
order: France, Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom,
Switzerland, Norway, Scotland, Denmark, Holland, the German Empire,
Prussia, Finland, Spain, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria,
Roumania, Russia. If we take the death-rate similarly, beginning with
the lowest rate and gradually proceeding to the highest, we find the
following order: Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the
United Kingdom, Belgium, Scotland, Prussia, the German Empire, Finland,
Ireland, France, Italy, Austria, Serbia, Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary,
Roumania, Russia.
Now we cannot accept the birth-rates and death-rates of the various
countries exactly at their face value. Temporary conditions, as well as
the special composition of a population, not to mention peculiarities
of registration, exert a disturbing effect. Roughly and on the whole,
however, the figures are acceptable. It is instructive to find how
closely the two rates agree. The agreement is, indeed, greater at the
bottom than at the top; the eight countries which constitute the lowest
group as regards birth-rate are the identical eight countries which
furnish the heaviest death-rates. That was to be expected; a very high
birth-rate seems fatally to involve a very high death-rate. But a very
low birth-rate (as we see in the cases of France and Ireland) is not
invariably associated with a very low death-rate, though it is never
associated with a high death-rate. This seems to indicate that those
qualities in a highly civilised nation which restrain the production of
offspring do not always or at once produce the eugenic racial qualities
possessed by hardier peoples living under simpler conditions. But with
these reservations it is not difficult to combine the two lists in a
fairly concordant order of descending rank. Most readers will agree,
that taking the European populations in bulk, without regard to the
production of genius (for men of genius are always a very minute
fraction of a nation), the European populations which they are
accustomed to regard as standing at the head in the general diffusion
of character, intelligence, education, and well-being, are all included
in the first twelve or thirteen nations, which are the same in both
lists though they do not follow the same order. These peoples, as
peoples--that is, without regard to their size, their political
importance, or their production of genius--represent the highest level
of democratic civilisation in Europe.
It is scarcely necessary to add that various countries outside Europe
equal or excel them; the death-rate of the United States, so far as
statistics show, is the same as that of Sweden; that of Ontario, still
better, is the same as Denmark; while the death-rate of the Australian
Commonwealth, with a medium birth-rate, is lower than that of any
European country, and New Zealand holds the world's championship in
this field with the lowest death-rate of all. On the other hand, some
extra-European countries compare less favourably with Europe; Japan,
with a rather high birth-rate, has the same high death-rate as Spain,
and Chile, with a still higher birth-rate, has a higher death-rate than
Russia. So it is that among human peoples we find the same laws
prevailing as among animals, and the higher nations of the world differ
from those which are less highly evolved precisely as the elephant
differs from the herring, though within a narrower range, that is to
say, by producing fewer offspring and taking better care of them.
The whole of this evolutionary process, we have to remember, is a
natural process. It has been going on from the beginning of the living
world. But at a certain stage in the higher development of man, without
ceasing to be natural, it becomes conscious and deliberate. It is then
that we have what may properly be termed _Birth Control_. That is to
say, that a process which had before been working slowly through the
ages, attaining every new forward step with waste and pain, is
henceforth carried out voluntarily, in the light of the high human
qualities of reason and foresight and self-restraint. The rise of birth
control may be said to correspond with the rise of social and sanitary
science in the first half of the nineteenth century, and to be indeed
an essential part of that movement. It is firmly established in all the
most progressive and enlightened countries of Europe, notably in France
and in England; in Germany, where formerly the birth-rate was very
high, birth control has developed with extraordinary rapidity during
the present century. In Holland its principle and practice are freely
taught by physicians and nurses to the mothers of the people, with the
result that there is in Holland no longer any necessity for unwanted
babies, and this small country possesses the proud privilege of the
lowest death-rate in Europe. In the free and enlightened democratic
communities on the other side of the globe, in Australia and New
Zealand, the same principles and practice are generally accepted, with
the same beneficent results. On the other hand, in the more backward
and ignorant countries of Europe, birth control is still little known,
and death and disease flourish. This is the case in those eight
countries which come at the bottom of both our lists.
Even in the more progressive countries, however, birth control has not
been established without a struggle, which has frequently ended in a
hypocritical compromise, its principles being publicly ignored or
denied and its practice privately accepted. For, at the great and
vitally important point in human progress which birth control
represents, we really see the conflict of two moralities. The morality
of the ancient world is here confronted by the morality of the new
world. The old morality, knowing nothing of science and the process of
Nature as worked out in the evolution of life, based itself on the
early chapters of Genesis, in which the children of Noah are
represented as entering an empty earth which it is their business to
populate diligently. So it came about that for this morality, still
innocent of eugenics, recklessness was almost a virtue. Children were
given by God; if they died or were afflicted by congenital disease, it
was the dispensation of God, and, whatever imprudence the parents might
commit, the pathetic faith still ruled that "God will provide." But in
the new morality it is realised that in these matters Divine action can
only be made manifest in human action, that is to say through the
operation of our own enlightened reason and resolved will. Prudence,
foresight, self-restraint--virtues which the old morality looked down
on with benevolent contempt--assume a position of the first importance.
In the eyes of the new morality the ideal woman is no longer the meek
drudge condemned to endless and often ineffectual child-bearing, but
the free and instructed woman, able to look before and after, trained
in a sense of responsibility alike to herself and to the race, and
determined to have no children but the best. Such were the two
moralities which came into conflict during the nineteenth century. They
were irreconcilable and each firmly rooted, one in ancient religion and
tradition, the other in progressive science and reason. Nothing was
possible in such a clash of opposing ideas but a feeble and confused
compromise such as we still find prevailing in various countries of Old
Europe. It was not a satisfactory solution, however inevitable, and
especially unsatisfactory by the consequent obscurantism which placed
difficulties in the way of spreading a knowledge of the methods of
birth control among the masses of the population. For the result has
been that while the more enlightened and educated have exercised a
control over the size of their families, the poorer and more
ignorant--who should have been offered every facility and encouragement
to follow in the same path--have been left, through a conspiracy of
secrecy, to carry on helplessly the bad customs of their forefathers.
This social neglect has had the result that the superior family stocks
have been hampered by the recklessness of the inferior stocks.
We may see these two moralities in conflict to-day in America. Up till
recently America had meekly accepted at Old Europe's hands the
traditional prescription of our Mediterranean book of Genesis, with its
fascinating old-world fragrance of Mount Ararat. On the surface, the
ancient morality had been complacently, almost unquestionably, accepted
in America, even to the extent of permitting a vast extension of
abortion--a criminal practice which ever flourishes where birth-control
is neglected. But to-day we suddenly see a new movement in the United
States. In a flash, America has awakened to the true significance of
the issue. With that direct vision of hers, that swift practicality of
action, and, above all, that sense of the democratic nature of all
social progress, we see her resolutely beginning to face this great
problem. In her own vigorous native tongue we hear her demanding: "What
in the thunder is all the secrecy about, anyhow?" And we cannot doubt
that America's own answer to that demand will be of immense
significance to the whole world.
Thus it is that as we get to the root of the matter the whole question
becomes clear. We see that there is really no standing ground in any
country for the panic-monger who bemoans the fall of the birth-rate and
storms against small families. The falling birth-rate is a world-wide
phenomenon in all countries that are striving toward a higher
civilisation along lines which Nature laid down from the beginning. We
cannot stop it if we would, and if we could we should merely be
impeding civilisation. It is a movement that rights itself and tends to
reach a just balance. It has not yet reached that balance with us in
this country. That may be seen by anyone who has read the letters from
mothers lately published under the title of _Maternity_ by the Women's
Co-operative Guild; there is still far more misery caused by having too
many babies than by having too few; a bonus on babies would be a
misfortune, alike for the parents and the State--whether bestowed at
birth as proposed in New Zealand, or at the age of twelve months as
proposed in France, or fourteen years as proposed in England--unless it
were confined to children who were not merely alive at the appointed
age, but able to pass examination as having reached a definitely high
standard. The falling birth-rate, which, it must be remembered, is
affecting all civilised countries, should be a matter for joy rather
than for grief.
But we need not therefore fold our hands and do nothing. There is still
much to be effected for the protection of Motherhood and the better
care of children. We cannot, and should not, attempt to increase the
number of children. But we may well attempt to work for their better
quality. There we shall be on very safe ground. More knowledge is
necessary so that all would-be parents may know how they may best
become parents and how they may, if necessary, best avoid it.
Procreation by the unfit should be, if not prohibited by law, at all
events so discouraged by public opinion that to attempt it would be
counted disgraceful. Much greater public provision is necessary for the
care of mothers during the months before, as well as during the period
after, the child's birth. The system of Schools for Mothers needs to be
universalised and systematically carried out. Along such lines as these
we may hope to increase the happiness of the people and the strength of
the State. We need not worry over the falling birth-rate.
[1] Those who wish to study the latest restatements of opinions in
England may be recommended to read the Report of the Commission of
Inquiry into Great Britain's falling birth-rate, appointed in 1913 by
the National Council of Public Morals, under the title of _The
Declining Birth-rate: Its Causes and Effects_, 1916.
XVIII
BIRTH CONTROL
I.
REPRODUCTION AND THE BIRTH-RATE
The study of the questions relating to sex, so actively carried on
during recent years, has become more and more concentrated on to the
practical problems of marriage and the family. That was inevitable. It
is only reasonable that, with our growing scientific knowledge of the
mysteries of sex, we should seek to apply that knowledge to those
questions of life which we must ever regard as central. How can we add
to the stability or to the flexibility of marriage? How can we most
judiciously regulate the size of our families?
At the outset, however, we cannot too deeply impress upon our minds the
fact that these questions are not new in the world. If we try to find
an answer to them by confining our attention to the phenomena presented
by our own species, at our own particular moment of civilisation, it is
very likely indeed that we may fall into crude, superficial, even
mischievous conclusions.
The fact is that these questions, which are agitating us to-day, have
agitated the world ever since it has been a world of life at all. The
difference is that whereas we seek to deal with them consciously,
voluntarily, and deliberately, throughout by far the greater part of
the world's life they have been dealt with unconsciously, by methods of
trial and error, of perpetual experiment, which has often proved
costly, but has all the more clearly brought out the real course of
natural progress. We cannot solve problems so ancient and deeply rooted
as those of sex by merely rational methods which are only of yesterday.
To be of value our rational methods must be the revelation in
deliberate consciousness of unconscious methods which go far back into
the remote past. Our conscious, deliberate, and purposive methods,
carried out on the plane of reason, will not be sound unless they are a
continuation of those methods which have already, in the slow evolution
of life, been found sound and progressive on the plane of instinct.
This must be borne in mind by those people--always to be found among
us, though not always on the side of social advance--who desire their
own line of conduct in matters of sex to be so closely in accord with
natural and Divine law that to question it would be impious.
A medical friend of my own, when once in the dentist's chair under the
influence of nitrous oxide anaesthesia (a condition, as William James
showed, which frequently leads us to believe we are solving the
problems of the universe), imagined himself facing the Almighty and
insistently demanding the real object of the existence of the world.
And the Almighty's answer came in one word: "Reproduction." My friend
is a man of philosophic mind, and the solution of the mystery of the
world's purpose thus presented to him in vision may perhaps serve as a
simple and ultimate statement of the object of life. From the very
outset the great object of Nature to our human eyes seems to be
primarily reproduction, in the long run, indeed, an effort after
economy of method in the attainment of an ever greater perfection, but
primarily reproduction. This tendency to reproduction is indeed so
fundamental, it is impressed on vital organisation with so great a
violence of emphasis, that we may regard the course of evolution as
much more an effort to slow down reproduction than to furnish it with
any new facilities.