LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 91
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Manhood: The Facts of Life
Presented to Men
Clement Wood
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1924
Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
MANHOOD: THE FACTS OF LIFE
PRESENTED TO MEN
CONTENTS
Page
1. The Threshold of Manhood 7
Adolescence 7
Education in Life 8
Training of the Adolescent 10
Growth of Sentiment 12
Sex in Life 13
2. The Evolution of Love 15
Primitive Man 15
Natural Love 17
Romantic Love 18
Conjugal Love 19
Freud’s Analysis 20
3. The Ethics of Mating 24
Toward Equality 24
Choice of a Mate 26
As to Children 28
Double and Single Codes 29
Duration of Courtship 30
4. Proper Mating 33
The Purpose of Mating 33
Eugenics 34
Eugenics in the Future 37
Birth Control 39
5. Education for Life 40
In Our Schools 40
In the Home 42
Education in Love 44
6. Penalties of Mistakes 47
Restraint in Youth 47
Over Indulgence 50
Venereal Diseases 52
7. The Purity Ideal 56
Chastity 56
Morality Today and Tomorrow 58
The Ideal of Purity 62
MANHOOD: THE FACTS OF LIFE PRESENTED TO MEN
I.
THE THRESHOLD OF MANHOOD
_Adolescence._--It is usual to say that youth, from its pinnacle,
surveys the promised land of manhood as Moses on the mountain top saw
another promised land. But Moses was old, and was prohibited entry
into the land; youth is young, and, but for premature death, will know
every detail of the valley of manhood for long years. Youth sees the
valley, which has its heights too, not clearly, but through mists of
illusion: especially romantic mists of misconception of love and of
his probability of success, and gross mists due to early perverted
education. This book will aid in clearing away some of these mists,
that the true beauty of the valley may better appear.
The period of adolescence usually occurs between fourteen and sixteen,
although it may be hastened or retarded in exceptional cases. The
altered physical nature is reflected in the mental and spiritual
nature. G. Stanley Hall, in his notable work, “Adolescence,” speaks of
this period as “a new birth,” and proceeds:
“Powers and faculties, essentially non-existent before, are now
born, and of the older instincts and impulses some are reinforced
and greatly developed, while others become subordinate, so that new
relations are established, and the ego finds a new center.”
Heredity has played its chief part; the childish environment,
especially the intricate and often hidden ties between son and
parents, has started the development; now a physical change takes
place in the youth, which slowly lifts him from boyhood to manhood.
Physically, mentally, morally, the man is being slowly shaped; out of
the plastic material of youth, as played upon by the outside world,
the youth himself is shaping what the man will be. A puppy is born
with its eyes closed; the usual youth faces life with his eyes largely
closed. Tactful and skilful handling by others, intelligent direction
by himself, may make a rounded and developed man of him; cramming,
bullying, and ignorance or false teaching concerning the things which
most vitally concern him, may warp and twist him for the rest of his
days.
_Education in Life._--In much of the world, education in sexual
matters is the accepted thing. Savage tribes usually have it.
Oriental civilizations practice it today. Our ancestors, down to
Christianity, knew it. But the pendulum went so far in this direction
that Christianity adopted the opposite extreme. The body, it held,
was worthless, along with all of this world; only the next world was
important. Everything of the body was vile, everything of the soul
sacred. Out of this grew the taboo or prohibition of discussion upon
this vital subject, from which Christian culture has suffered ever
since.
For this teaching is not true; the earth, the body, are not vile. Man
in a wholesale way can not long live a lie; accordingly, the practice
of men from the beginning contradicted the theory, and the excessive
devotion to things of the body wormed its way throughout mankind, and
even to the inmost heights of the church itself. The parent, if he or
she is to aid the son best to face life, must face reality here, and
disregard the taboo; the parent must educate the son about his body.
Suppose the parent keeps silent, as too many do; does this mean that
the son will grow up, a pure and unstained Galahad, until somehow
instinctively, on his marriage night, the truth is revealed to him in a
lightning flash of inspiration? The contrary is usually the case. Boys
will and must learn of sex and their bodies. They learn from chance
hints dropped by their elders; they learn from books, even the Bible
and the dictionary; most of all, they learn from the more corrupt and
less restrained of their companions. Undirected, they are almost sure
to get a gutter conception of sex: masturbation or onanism, relations
with other boys, and relations with women without real love, will be
taught the average boy during grammar school days, if he is not guarded
by the one sure defense, a knowledge of the facts.
This knowledge is the more valuable, if to it be added to a restrained
example on the part of his parents. If the boy has a father whose life
he can admire, if the girl has a mother whose actions are restrained,
this example is a louder preachment than words spoken or read. The
simple mysteries of life can be pointed out in the life-stories of
plants and animals; the mystery of new-hatched birds and animals
becomes a clean and simple symbol of the boy’s own origin, and points
to him the role that he will, in the normal course of nature, fulfil.
_Training of the Adolescent._--The first great essential in training
the adolescent is keeping the body fit. The sexual nature will be
strong enough; have no fear of that. Nature’s method is, in the male,
an insatiable desire; in the female, an almost insatiable receptivity.
A female gnat can create 1,000,000,000 individuals in one month; a
normal woman could have more than thirty children, and a normal man
could be father to many thousands. The conditions of our life have
made this unnecessary and indeed economically impossible; the task
is to rein human reproduction, not to stimulate it. Normal exercise
drains off excess energy, and postpones the boy’s inevitable sexual
insistence. This is even more true of the boy forced to work in office,
workshop, or factory during the day. Beyond the negative restraint thus
bred, there is a positive result in bodily well-being. For the man will
regret to the end of his days if he has let himself develop into a
weakling. Sport is an admirable regimen, both for its self-development
and for its production of social spirit, or team work, which is so
essential to a happy participation in human society.
Keeping the mind fit is almost as important; and that means adequate
education, especially in the facts of the universe; in acquiring a
scientific framework in which to fit the facts, and in cultivating
hobbies of investigation in appropriate places in this frame. Too much
coddling of the ego is incompatible with a real understanding of the
vastness of the universe, and of the relative permanent unimportance
of the individual. Out of this will grow the moral virtues, truth,
straightforwardness, desire for the noble and good, and that temporary
unselfishness which is the highest form of selfishness.
At adolescence, the boy’s organs of generation alter especially.
In addition to the deepening in his voice, the squareness of his
shoulders, the increased firmness in the muscles, there comes the
growth of hair under the arms and elsewhere on the body, and the
increased size of the reproductive organs. The boy who understands
this in advance is forearmed. During the whole adolescent stage, the
seminal fluid is pre-eminently needed by the growing body. The body
secretes it, and reabsorbs it; that which it cannot absorb is rejected
by a natural process, usually during sleep. The boy, unprepared for
this, will surely be worried by it; misinformation from ignorant
companions, the advertisements of quack doctors, will alarm him with
threats of loss of manly vigor and other mainly imaginary ills. If the
boy indulges his sexual nature at this time, in onanism or intercourse,
the body may be and in most cases is permanently weakened and stunted.
There is a time for all things; and the time for sexual reservation is
during the growing period of adolescence.
The growth of sentiment at this period will induce the boy to turn to
the poets, the philosophers, and the nobler forms of literature; for
he is shaping high ideals, which will to some extent control his life
afterwards. All of these are helpful, if contact with them is based
upon a root knowledge of his own body and of the scientific facts of
the universe. Armed with a knowledge of sex, he cannot be too severely
harmed by the smutty gossip of companions, or by pornographic books
and pictures which may come before his attention. The ignorant boy is
unhealthily stimulated by such books; the sting is taken out of them by
a comprehension of the facts of life.
_Growth of Sentiment._--Now begins an alteration in his way of
regarding women. As a child, he has not bothered especially about his
difference from girls; now they become collectively the desired ones,
and he is sure sooner or later to pick out one of them as his beloved
one. As Mantegazza says in his “The Book of Love,” “Rarely is the first
love true love”; the youth fixes his affections on the most convenient
and nearest girl, as a rule; only a process of trial and error will
eliminate those unsuitable as life companions from those suitable.
If he has been properly aided in his thinking, he will neither make
the mistake of shrining woman as a deity, or of debasing her as a mere
sex vehicle; or, worse yet, combining these two false notions into a
morality which isolates a few women as angels, and lowers others into
demons. The truth is that they are neither essentially lower nor higher
than he himself; they are shoulder to shoulder with him, in a relative
equality. A father can do much here, in the way in which he treats his
own wife. Children insensibly absorb the real home attitude of their
parents; if this be vicious, all the moral platitudes in the world
cannot school the boy.
Along with this attitude at home, the wise parent will keep an eye
upon his son’s companions. He will not look for fine clothes or the
reverse, but for straightforward manly boys and decent girls, the more
intelligent the better.
_Sex in Life._--Early in the history of life, at about the stage of
the barnacles, the primitive female gave birth to a male separate
from herself, and the long procession of the males had commenced.
The influence of female sexual selection, which controlled down to
the time of man, slowly evolved the male from his diminutive size
and limited functions to a being as large as herself, or larger; and
the development of an artistic sense in her gave what is called male
efflorescence, or the gorgeous colors of male birds, the beards and
manes of goats, men, lions, and horses, the branching antlers of stags,
and many another ornamental sex differentiation. When the stage of
man is reached, sex has assumed an importance which cannot easily be
over-estimated. On the obvious side, it concerns much of the contact
during the period of adolescent and young maturity, in all of the
details connected with the selection and winning of a mate. After
the mate is obtained, it plays its important part in controlling the
whole love life of the man and woman. Underneath all this, it is the
driving force that impels to many of life’s activities. A man makes and
increases a competency or a fortune, builds a house, succeeds in his
private or public business, to earn the good will and continued love
of some woman; tunnels are driven through mountains, oceans united by
great canals, hills levelled and deserts watered into rose gardens,
largely for the same motive.
Reproduction is one of the primary tendencies of life; to prohibit it
is a perversion. Enforced celibacy of a priesthood or brotherhood or
sisterhood of religious persons is contrary to the obvious tendency
of life, and is a serious biological blunder. Below the stage of
man, throughout all the plant and animal kingdoms, this omnipresent
reproductive instinct, supplemented by the later mating instinct, is
exercised without conscious volition. In man, the instincts are still
present, but the conscious will has taken hold of the reins, and
guides toward the consummation desired. These instincts are essential
to life and its continuity; they are normal, clean, universal. They
are not shameful things, but splendid things. The shame lies in man’s
mis-vision of them as things vile; the splendor lies in their conscious
and intelligent voluntary use.
II.
THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE
_Primitive Man._--The modern world accepts the fact of man’s evolution
from the animal world, without understanding things that necessarily
flow from this. Among animals, sexual relations take place at proper
times and places, in such unions as have proven most valuable to
the particular species; we attach no blame to these. Among animals,
moreover, there is no conception of any relationship between coitus
or mating, and parturition or the birth of the child. The fact of
paternity is unknown.
One of the secondary sexual characteristics developed by female
selection was increased brain mass, evincing greater shrewdness. Thus
female choice developed in the higher mammals, and especially in man,
a reasoning power; and this in the end dethroned her. Among primitive
races, paternity is unknown; there are races existing today which do
not understand it. An African chief was asked by a puzzled Christian
missionary, “But have you no children?” In good-natured tolerance
he corrected his inquisitor; “Among us, men do not have children.”
When the idea slowly dawned on man’s mind that he was related to his
child, we may be sure that the promiscuity, widespread among races,
of early sexual matings had been broadened to include at least some
mating pairs. For, in a state of promiscuity, fatherhood could not be
established; any one of a number of males might be the father of the
child. With a mating couple, the thing was different; and the idea
came, and came again.
Savage reasoning is a slow and tortuous thing. When the man protested,
“But I am kin to the child!” the wise ones of the tribe would
answer, “But you were not sick!” In their minds childbirth (and
hence relationship to the child) was always accompanied by sickness.
Accordingly, the awkward savage mind invented a queer custom known as
the _couvade_, still found among certain backward tribes. By means of
this, when the wife became ill in childbirth, the husband took to his
bed, and was nursed just as assiduously by the medicine men as the wife
was. He could now answer, triumphant, “I have been sick! This proves
that I am kin to my child.”
This idea, once gaining ground, completely overturned the former
status of women and men, which had been largely a matriarchate, or
mother-rule. Up to this time, woman had had the sole choice of mates,
and the leading place in the tribe; for the young were hers, and
fatherhood was unknown. Now, with paternity acknowledged, the man, part
kin to the child, thereby had the right to part control over it. His
wishes conflicted with the mother’s; this led, for the first time in
the history of life, to a conflict between the male and the female.
No male animal ever fights or abuses his female; it is left for man,
made, he confesses, in the image of his creator, to oppress his mate.
The male was stronger; and he soon reduced to subjection not only
the child, but his wife as well. The patriarchal period, or age of
father-rule, commenced; the subjection of women started, the blackest
period in human history.
_Natural Love._--Love, the innate interest in male and female to secure
fertilization and cross-reproduction, appears first as natural love,
or sheer animal passion. Religion itself has one of its roots deep in
the erotic nature of man; the widespread primitive worship of the love
force and of sexual symbols is evidence of this. The phallic origin
of such symbols as the cross and the trinity, the yonic derivation of
the sacred seven-branched candlestick, are instances known to every
anthropologist.
It must not be forgotten that, in its natural state, natural love is
worthy to be called pure and noble. It embraced both monogamy and
polygamy, depending upon the wishes of the parties concerned. It must
never be overlooked that monogamy has developed as a female ideal, not
a male one. For the compulsion on the male is: Fertilize! That on the
female: Select! The male’s biological imperative is to fertilize as
many females as he can; that of the female, is to select only the best
and finest male as her mate. Monogamy spread as a property right, to
insure that the sons of a man should be legitimate, in order that they
might inherit his property. But this meant monogamy for the wife only;
the husband was still at liberty to have concubines and harlots.
There are those who state that the coming of Christianity elevated
woman, especially in the worship of the Virgin Mary. After all, she is
distinctly inferior in power to the great mother goddesses, Demeter
(dea-mater, goddess-mother), Cybele, Astarte, Ashtoreth, who sprang
up during the matriarchate. In fact, early Christianity definitely
lowered pagan conceptions of womanhood. Christ himself said, “there
be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of
heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”
This lifted the mutilated man above the man who was mate of a woman.
Paul praised celibacy above mating. Early Christian authorities were
even more outspoken. Tertullian exclaims, “Woman, you are the gate to
hell!” Again, “Celibacy must be chosen, even though the human race
should perish.” Hieronymus says, “Matrimony is always a vice.” Origines
declares, “Matrimony is impure and unholy; a means of sensual passion.”
Christianity; then, had swung the pendulum too far toward giving all
worth to things of the next world, and holding things of this world
as vile. The growth of common intelligence has altered this, and the
purity and nobility of natural love is now generally recognized.
_Romantic Love._--The savage had no conception of romantic love, and
neither did the classical world. It grew amid the unnatural conditions
of the age of roving knighthood, with its long separation of mated
couples, and the danger to isolated highborn women from attacks.
Romantic love was a sublimation, or emotional substitute, for the
intense sexual need grown during such absences; it grew in proportion
to the greater equality and independence of women during the period.
It differs from natural love in one thing: natural love requires the
possession of the person of the beloved; romantic love is satisfied
with the presence of the beloved.
There was often the touch of outlawed love in romantic matings. At the
Court of Viscountess Ermengarde of Narbonne it was stated and approved
that:
“Nature and custom have erected an insuperable barrier between
conjugal affection and the love which unites two lovers. It would
be absurd to draw comparisons between two things which have neither
resemblance nor connection.”
Here it is assumed that the love between two lovers must be an outlawed
thing, apart from the love of wife and husband, or conjugal love. The
romances of great geniuses, Abelard and Heloise, Dante and Beatrice,
Petrarch and Laura, Tasso and Eleanora, and a hundred others, go to
indicate, with the romantic literature of the whole world, that love is
a higher law, that will and should prevail over the laws of men and the
conventions of society. In this it is in harmony with the teachings of
biology and a sound sociology.
_Conjugal Love._--Also a late growth is the love of husband and
wife, or conjugal love. This requires monogamy, and a certain strong
self-control. It is, as has been indicated, often at war with romantic
love. In certain lands, as generally in France today, the two are
separated, and wife and mistress are rarely united in the same person.
Anglo-Saxon custom is the reverse of this, and there is a strong
tendency here to unite the love for a lover with the love for a wedded
mate. There is no doubt but that this is the higher, although the more
difficult, solution of the conflict. More will be said on this subject
later.
_Freud’s Analysis of Love Development._--Freud, who with his disciple
Jung has delved deeply into the hidden origins of the love force, has
divided the normal development of love in the human being into three
stages:
1. Auto-eroticism, or self love.
2. Homosexuality, or love of the same sex.
3. Heterosexuality, or love of the opposite sex.
The infant at first secures its erotic pleasure through the practice of
sucking to obtain its food. The instincts have not yet been separated;
the same act that satisfies hunger also satisfies love and other
primitive instincts. Soon the child begins to recognize the pleasure
in suckling apart from obtaining food, and, even after he has had
enough to eat, he will continue the motions of suckling, because of the
satisfaction that this gives to the erotic instinct. Then the child
discovers his own body, and passes into the stage of auto-eroticism,
narcissism, or self-love. He obtains a pleasure from handling his
genitals and other parts of his body--a pleasure for which he is soon
punished, by his elders, as something naughty. Normally he will grow
out of this stage into the next; but he may become fixed erotically at
this stage, and continue for life an auto-erotic. Such rare cases find
their sole sexual pleasure in onanism; and some vestiges of the stage
persist throughout life.
The second stage is when the child realizes that there are other people
in the world, children especially, and that he can obtain erotic
pleasure from contact with genitals similar to his own. Of course, he
does not yet know that the opposite sex has differing organs; and he
attributes to every child organs the same as his own. This gives rise
to the period of homosexuality. In its lowest manifestation, this is
put into physical practice. It should normally be sublimated; that is,
the child should develop as an emotional substitute a strong affection
for members of his own sex. Strong friendships between boys and boys,
boys and men, and men and men, as well as between females of various
ages, are the ways in which this force is drained off constructively.
For, despite the opinion of Edward Carpenter and others among moderns,
and Sappho, Socrates and others among ancients, that this is a high
form of love, whose disciples are called Urnings or heaven-creatures,
it is clear that those who never pass beyond homosexuality are
instances of development arrested at the second stage. In the normal
development of the child today, this is entirely sublimated into
friendships.
At the same time, it should be emphasized here that childish practices
of onanism or homosexuality, even when carried over into adolescence,
are not what they are painted by medical quacks and superficial
thinkers. They are not vicious sins, or even sins at all; they are
merely preliminary and sterile steps in love. The reason that they
are not high forms of love is that they are contrary to the tendency
of life itself, which has developed the reproductive organs, not for
sterile stimulation, but for reproduction. Both onanism and homosexual
love are barren. The normal human love life must go beyond them.
The third stage is heterosexuality, or love for members of the opposite
sex. Here the bodily organism comes into harmony with the tendency
of life itself; this is the highest stage of bodily usage in contact
with other human beings. The rest of this study will be devoted to an
elaboration of its proper development.
Bousfield, in his “The Elements of Practical Psycho-Analysis,” has
indicated statistically the evolution of the sexual components of the
normal child in the following table:
_Infant_
Autosexuality 100%
_Child of 12_
Autosexuality 40%
Homosexuality 50%
Heterosexuality 10%
_Normal Individual at Puberty_
Autosexuality 20%
Homosexuality 30%
Heterosexuality 50%
From this it will be seen that vestiges of the lower stages persist in
the higher. These do no harm, if the individual flowers well in his
environment. Any serious obstacle in life, which cannot be overcome or
passed, may dam up the flow of the life source, and cause a regression
to one of the earlier stages. And, of course, in abnormal cases, there
may be fixations at either of the earlier stages. But these are sterile
stages, and the normal boy will soon step out of them into the third
stage, which means manhood.
III.
THE ETHICS OF MATING
_Toward Equality._--The whole course of woman, for the last hundred
years, has been toward a relative equality with man. It will be
recalled that the first situation was a female superiority, in all
essential matters; she had sole choice of her mate, as among animals,
and was in charge of all important tribal matters. This was followed
by man’s dominance, and the subject of women. Now the scales are
swinging back toward justice, toward a situation in which the peculiar
merits and abilities of each sex will complement the other, and in
which mankind can go forward, man and woman hand in hand, toward a
realization of the noblest dreams yet dreamed by the race.
There can never be more than a relative equality; for absolute equality
is unknown in nature. Woman, by the very essence of her purpose as
mother of posterity and keeper of the home, is now, and may forever
be, bound to deal with lesser and more intimate affairs than men; that
is, to think more personally and concretely, and less impersonally and
abstractly, than men. Many women have shown a tendency to negative
this; yet even in the works of such brilliant women as George Sand,
George Eliot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Wolstonescraft, and
others, the typical woman’s note is not wanting, of brilliant detail
rather than lofty generalization. Men have made our civilization,
such as it is. They have made a government and a social system which
judges by dollars, and not by persons; a government which spends vast
sums yearly for better pigs, and nothing, or comparatively nothing,
for better babies. The influence of woman in our politics and our body
social will be to counterbalance this by an emphasis upon persons
rather than dollars. Prostitution will largely be ended; wars will be
lessened and perhaps abolished; the conservation of human life and
happiness will rank higher than the conservation of cotton plants and
oil wells.
The struggle has, in the main, already been won. A hundred years ago,
a woman could not vote or hold office. We have seen women in state
legislatures; in the national legislature; upon the state and federal
bench; and seated in the capitol of the largest state in the union.
We may yet see a woman in the president’s chair. A hundred years ago,
woman could not receive a general education, or engage in industry,
professional, or artistic life, on the same terms as man. Today,
there is no field in which she is not seen; no important institution
of learning which withholds from her the human heritage of the rich
achievements of men. A hundred years ago, she was dependent upon a man
for a meal-ticket; he held the purse strings. Her choice lay between
wife of a man who would feed and house her; mistress of a man who would
feed and house her; or harlot of many men who would feed and house her.
Today, she has conquered the economic field, and can afford to buy
her will of the world. She does not need to marry for a meal-ticket;
she has control of her own purse-strings. She is still incapacitated
temporarily by child-bearing; but motherhood pensions by the state
are a step toward removing this disability, which is so vitally
helpful to the state. She can afford, let it be said again with all
impressiveness, to buy her will of the world; and she will do so.
What the standpatters and regressives, who oppose woman’s entry into
the world of affairs, fail to take into account, is the difference
between sex and human affairs. Man is fitted to be a mate, a husband, a
father; that is his sex business. Woman is fitted to be a mate, a wife,
a mother; that is her sex business. Men and women both are fitted to
go beyond this, into spheres neither male nor female, but human. Such
matters as industry and business, in all of its phases; as professional
life, in all of its ramifications; as the world of art and literature,
in all of its beauties,--these are all human concerns, and not sex
affairs. They are neither male nor female: they are human. In them both
the man and the woman of the future will find themselves at home.
_Choice of a Mate._--The standpatters and regressives are especially
exercised over the fear that the woman will seek to wrest from man the
right to select a mate. Having lost everything else, they still cling
to the idea that it is immodest for a woman to propose, and proper for
a man to propose. During all the matriarchate, woman did the choosing;
as she does throughout the animal kingdom. There was nothing immodest
here. Indirectly, match-making mammas and designing daughters do much
of the actual choosing here; when this is covered over with a veil of
hypocrisy, a pretense that the male victims are really the choosers,
the standpatters find nothing immodest here.
There is an essential difference between male choice and female choice.
The man, following the biological imperative to fertilize at all costs,
starts out after a group of women, determined to capture one of them
for his mate. Which does he capture? Of course, the one he catches up
with first; and that means, the slowest of the group, the one least
fleet of foot, the one least fit to be the mother of his children and
of the future. When a woman is wooed by a number of men, which does she
choose for her mate? Not the weakest, the slowest, the one least fit to
be the father of her children; but, to the very contrary, she chooses
normally the finest, strongest, best, wisest, of all of her suitors.
Woman marries upward; man, downward. So it will be a good thing for
the race when the choice is no longer, in public esteem, essentially a
male prerogative; but is at least a matter of mutual agreement. There
is nothing immodest, and everything modest, in a woman’s letting a
man know, in all seriousness, that she is willing to marry him. The
proposal, as well as the acceptance, would ideally be a mutual thing.
_As to Children._--The tendency of life, and the purpose of mating,
is to have children. Economic organization today makes children a
hardship, and indeed a luxury, in all but the very poorest homes. The
very poor, at times impelled onward by their religion (which subserves
the ruling economic class, ever desirous of a large number of the
working class), proceed to have many more children than they can raise
even with the bleakest necessities of life. The educated classes, with
more background of culture, adjudge that they cannot afford to have any
children at all, or can have only one, two, or three. Statistics not so
long ago indicated that half of the children born in this country died
before reaching manhood; which means that the educated and cultured
classes do not even replace themselves, while the country and the world
is populated with the haphazard offspring, children born in filth
and poverty, and yanked up rather than reared, of the poorest, most
inefficient, least intelligent and least cultured of the community.
More than this, the very wealthy, through their wealth-disease and
natural inertia, elect to have few or no children, as a rule. If men
had deliberately set about framing a system of reproduction which would
breed down the human stock, they could not have arrived at a better one
than the present system.
The intelligent co-operation of men and women in politics and social
planning will inevitably alter this condition; lifting the poor, and
seeing to the continuation of the species by the most fit. In fact, the
despised poor, the past few decades, in various countries, have shown
a commendable ability to lift themselves; it may ultimately be their
efforts that raise the social level. The wise couple, having educated
themselves as well as possible, and with some of the economic load of
today removed, will mutually decide to have a normal family, of four
or five children. Fewer is unfair to the children themselves; and the
fact of parenthood is one of the great helpful shaping influences on
the life of any adult man or woman. It is an indispensable experience
toward complete manhood or womanhood.
_Double and Single Codes._--Down to the last two decades, men have
insisted upon a double code of morality. By this, men were expected,
as adolescents, to sow their wild oats, to enjoy women sexually; and
then to marry a pure woman, and after marriage to have the right to
continue their varied sexual experiences. Meanwhile, women were to be
absolutely pure, if they were to be on the market as wives; and, if
these were proposed to by no man, they were to gratefully accept the
lot of spinster or old maid, and wither into a vinegary sterile branch,
diseased with ingrown sex. The woman who took one step aside from the
narrow path, who sowed one smallest oatling, was thereafter damned,
outlawed, a social pariah, the prey of every man. Needless to say,
any woman who could be seduced by a man was at once lowered into the
level of the prostitute; and virtuous women and ordinary men united in
casting stones upon her in the daytime, while the men visited her at
night. Saintly old Augustine phrased the vicious teaching:
“Take the prostitutes out of human things, and you will disturb the
whole world with lust.”
The prostitute, then, was to be kept in a living hell, to render the
lot of the virtuous women the easier; not that men eased up in their
attempts on the honors of wives and maidens. Needless to say, with
the altered status of woman, with her economic ability today to buy
her will of the world, she will not buy the iniquitous old double
standard of morality. She may essay to buy a single standard for
both, a standard of monogamy, pure and simple. It is doubtful if she
could compel men to follow this, even if she had sole control of the
purse-strings, which she has not. But her actions, since her financial
liberation, have not indicated that this is her universal desire. She
will probably achieve a single standard for men and women, more elastic
than the one mentioned: a standard by which men and women can select
monogamy, a limited promiscuity, or whatever arrangement they prefer,
so long as it is voluntary, and no advantage be taken of the young and
the untaught.
_Duration of Courtship._--It is obvious that true mating must be
contemporaneous with true love; true conjugal love, with as much of
the element of the romantic as the parties can acquire. When love
ends, mating becomes immoral. Yet it should not be lightly surrendered
by either party. Any love relationship is a social thing, affecting
parents and relatives, and properly including the production of
children, in most cases. All this should be soberly considered; it
does not make love, but it should cause parties to consider carefully,
in order not to give up love for a light or frivolous cause. Marriage
is a difficult matter of readjustments, on both sides. Friction is
inevitable, as in any human association. There must be a mutual give
and take, a tolerance and forbearance on both sides.
One of the soundest methods of prolonging normal love is a continuation
of the courtship, on the part of both men and women. Wives are too
prone, having become married, to assume that their chase (the sole
object of their life being, they are taught, to marry a meal-ticket)
is over; and that the husband, tied to them for life, can not escape.
Accordingly, they neglect him, give all their attention to clubs,
social affairs, and what not, or, more commonly and seriously, give
an inordinate amount of attention to their children, shutting their
husbands out from the love and attention they are entitled to. This is
one of the surest methods of killing conjugal love. Men, on their part,
too often regard the winning of the woman as the completion of their
chase; they have her, have her locked and tied with a marriage ring and
license, and can now stray and play outside the marriage fence with
impunity. Or they may remain sexually faithful, while discontinuing
their courtship, and substituting their business affairs for the former
important matter of courtship. This is just as sure a method of ending
conjugal love.
The ideal arrangement means a continuance of the period of courtship as
long as the mating lasts. Each party must make the effort--a pleasant
one, with rich rewards--of keeping the desire of the mated partner
alive and eager. At times there is an advantage in a similarity of
interests without the house, as well as concerning their joint home
affairs. Husband and wife who can collaborate in any work are, as a
rule, in a more advantageous position to retain their conjugal interest
in each other. Each mating is an experiment, with the odds somewhat
against continuing happiness, as life develops today. Only a fine and
consistent attempt, a constant sight of the other’s needs and wishes, a
genuine sympathy or feeling with the partner, will preserve the average
marriage. Yet the gain is no slight thing; there is perhaps no human
gain, in the love field, as high.
IV.
PROPER MATING
_The Purpose of Mating._--Even from the individual standpoint, mating
has more purpose than merely satisfying the love instinct. It is one of
the two undisputed methods of human immortality. Even after death, a
man or woman lives on in the lives of others who have been affected by
what he has been, or done, or said, or written. As Samuel Butler words
it,
Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again,
Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.
But more than this, men and women live on in their children. There
is an actual continuity of life here, in the germ passed on from the
parents to the child. In the race, we have been alive since life began;
in the race we shall live as long as our human strain persists, which
may be as long as life exists. Since this is one of our conscious
purposes, it lies upon us to make sure that our children have parents
fit in every way to bear the future. This brings up the matter of the
selection of the mate, from a broader angle.
If this is our conscious purpose, there is a deeper unconscious,
instinctive purpose which is the same as the tendency of the social
body, the race, itself: namely, the perpetuity of the race. It can only
reproduce itself through its individual members; each man or woman is
an outpost in the eternal struggle of the living organisms to continue
to alter as much as possible of the lifeless into the living. From the
standpoint of the race, the choice of fit mates to give birth to the
future generations of men is all essential.
Our matings, it must be remembered, are largely haphazard. Accidents of
propinquity, property-determined provisions of our parents, sentiments
of pity or anger at another woman or man, these often determine a
life mate. There is little opportunity granted today for the young
man or woman to know truly the proposed mate, although this situation
is clearing; there is no methodical investigation as to whether the
mate in mind is unfitted physically or otherwise. This demands more
attention than man has yet given it. Marriages are not made in heaven,
despite the wide belief; they are blundered into on earth, in the
majority of cases. Mere desire, mere animal passion or natural love,
comes easily; unfortunately or fortunately, it often goes as easily;
and if, in the meantime, marriage has been entered into, a wreckage of
happiness is inevitable. It is not easy for man or woman to develop
an abiding conjugal love. Marry at leisure, and do not repent, is no
fool’s counsel.
_Eugenics._--The young man, then, is confronted with the question,
what sort of woman should I mate with? His own deepest instincts will
aid here; but they are far from enough. In general, the greatest
happiness comes from a union of opposites, in appearance, temperament,
and all. Yet individual needs often run counter to this. Nor, from the
standpoint of the future, should an immense and overpowering love
always control, unless the man is willing to forfeit in some cases
all chances of having children. The racial aspect of the question is
gradually being studied by the science and practice of eugenics.
Eugenics is the science of good breeding; of having children well born.
Its formulator, Francis Galton, defined it as “the science which deals
with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race.” In
another work Galton expanded this, saying that the aim of eugenics is
“to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them
to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish
prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by
furthering productivity of the Fit, by early marriages and healthful
rearing of their children.”
There is matter for investigation here, rather than wholesale
acceptance. This cuts right across the personal aspect of selection for
marriage; it comes perilously close to being an unwarrantable attempt
to interfere with human freedom. Yet to an increasing extent this
science is coming into the world’s legislation; and, while it will work
some hardships, even unnecessary ones, the aim is no hardship.
Saleeby, pupil of Galton, divided eugenics unnecessarily into
(1) positive, or encouraging worthy parenthood; (2) negative, or
discouraging unworthy parenthood, and (3) preventive, “efforts made
to stand between parenthood and racial poisons, that is, substances
which are liable to originate degeneracy in healthy stocks.” His (3)
is really a subhead of (2). Extreme advocates of eugenics say flatly
that “we should rather bring the propagation of the race to the level
of the stud farm, than that it should go on in the old haphazard way
which surely leads to catastrophe.” Luckily, mankind will hardly
follow this demagogic platform, even though we recall the legislative
enactment of prohibition and the creation of the statutory crime of
teaching Darwinism in an American college or school. It is true that
we do not want science for domestic animals, and chance for men;
but there is such a thing as attractive legislation, as opposed to
prohibitive legislation; legislation offering an inducement to conduct
held socially desirable, rather than legislation affixing a penalty to
conduct held socially undesirable.
Scientifically, such legislation is based upon the Mendelian
conception of heredity. And there are extreme cases where science
should, tentatively at least, insist upon the enactment of statutory
prohibitions, not of mating, but of child-bearing. A simple operation
today alters man or woman so as to render them incapable of having
children; in the cases suggested below, this may have to be applied.
Switzerland, in ten years, largely abolished a particular type of
cretin, or feeble-minded, that had flourished there, by negative
eugenics. It is a matter for scientific investigation as to whether
such traits as feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, dipsomania,
and syphilis are inheritable in such proportion that prohibition of
offspring should be applied. Science, which once held consumption
inheritable, has reversed its position today; on any of these questions
it may reverse itself, thereby requiring an alteration in the eugenics
law.
_Eugenics in the Future._--There are shrewd observers who do not view
eugenics as tolerantly as we have done. Bertrand Russell, in his
“Icarus,” says the eugenics will undoubtedly be adopted.
“This power will be used, at first, to diminish imbecility, a most
desirable object. But probably, in time, opposition to the government
will be taken to prove imbecility, so that rebels of all kinds will
be sterilized. Epileptics, consumptives, dipsomaniacs and so on
will gradually be included; in the end, there will be a tendency to
include all who fail to pass the usual school examinations.”
The result, he says, will be to increase the average intelligence, and
to decrease really exceptional intelligence. With charming impertinence
he proceeds to the alteration that may take place in moral standards,
by which one man may be permitted to be the sire of a vast progeny by
many different mothers. Yet such reforms, he mourns, will be handed
over to the average official to administer; it will not be the type
desired by the modern eugenist who may be selected as the father of the
future, but Prime Ministers and Bishops may be picked to be the fathers
of half the next generation. His serious point is that government
control of the matter will probably be used to produce a servile
population, convenient to rulers but incapable of initiative.
Viscount Haldane, a greater scientist (at least in biological fields)
and a more brilliant critic, indicates that eugenics may come in by a
pleasanter though more startling route. By 1950, he anticipates the
production of the first ectogenetic child, or child born from a womb
withdrawn from the mother’s body, for all of the embryonic period. By
a simple operation, he prophecies that science will be able to remove
an ovary from a woman, and keep it growing in a suitable fluid for as
long as twenty years, producing a fresh ovum every month, of which
90 per cent can be fertilized, the embryos grown successfully for
nine months, and then brought out into the air. The falling birthrate
among many nations will be a strong argument for the adoption of this
ectogenesis, and birth from the woman’s body may become as antiquated
as the horse-buggy in an era of motor cars. This total separation of
sexual love and reproduction will, he holds, profoundly affect current
morality. The choice of superior parents for the next generation will
advance each generation,
“from the increased output of first-class music to the decreased
convictions for theft,”
as he wittily summarizes.
So the foremost thinkers of today deal with eugenics. What the
scientists will offer is suggested here; what the state and national
legislatures may do with scientific discoveries is a far different
matter. Things may not move as briskly as Russell and Haldane
anticipate. But the individual should favor all positive eugenics,
that is, adequate medical inspection of each prospective party to a
mating, and mating only with the physically and mentally fit, in the
widest sense.
_Birth Control._--The question of birth control, disputed as it is,
should be mentioned here. Knowledge of methods of artificial prevention
of conception is now widely known among the rich, and largely among
the well-to-do. It is in many localities a crime to furnish this
information; even a doctor may not disseminate it. The poor, who need
the information most, do not generally possess it; and at least one
great religion teaches that it is immoral.
Any form of abortion, or killing the growing embryo still in the
womb, has aspects resembling murder. Its morality is a matter for
investigation. But the prevention of conception is on another footing
entirely. Continued continence is impractical and contrary to the
best interests of the individuals who compose the social group;
contra-conceptual devices are harmless, and economically and physically
necessary in many instances. The laws on the subject will be repealed
by an enlightened community.
V.
EDUCATION FOR LIFE