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THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF SEX. SIX VOLS.
THE NEW SPIRIT
AFFIRMATIONS
MAN AND WOMAN
THE CRIMINAL
THE WORLD OF DREAMS
THE SOUL OF SPAIN
IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS
ESSAYS IN WAR-TIME. ETC.
* * * * *
THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE
by
HAVELOCK ELLIS
Author of "The Soul of Spain"; "The World of Dreams"; etc.
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
1916
Printed in Great Britain.
PREFACE
The study of social hygiene means the study of those things which
concern the welfare of human beings living in societies. There can,
therefore, be no study more widely important or more generally
interesting. I fear, however, that by many persons social hygiene is
vaguely regarded either as a mere extension of sanitary science, or else
as an effort to set up an intolerable bureaucracy to oversee every
action of our lives, and perhaps even to breed us as cattle are bred.
That is certainly not the point of view from which this book has been
written. Plato and Rabelais, Campanella and More, have been among those
who announced the principles of social hygiene here set forth. There
must be a social order, all these great pioneers recognized, but the
health of society, like the health of the body, is marked by expansion
as much as by restriction, and, the striving for order is only justified
because without order there can be no freedom. If it were not the
mission of social hygiene to bring a new joy and a new freedom into life
I should not have concerned myself with the writing of this book.
When we thus contemplate the process of social hygiene, we are no longer
in danger of looking upon it as an artificial interference with Nature.
It is in the Book of Nature, as Campanella put it, that the laws of
life and of government are to be read. Or, as Quesnel said two centuries
ago, more precisely for our present purpose, "Nature is universal
hygiene." All animals are scrupulous in hygiene; the elaboration of
hygiene moves _pari passu_ with the rank of a species in intelligence.
Even the cockroach, which lives on what we call filth, spends the
greater part of its time in the cultivation of personal cleanliness. And
all social hygiene, in its fullest sense, is but an increasingly complex
and extended method of purification--the purification of the conditions
of life by sound legislation, the purification of our own minds by
better knowledge, the purification of our hearts by a growing sense of
responsibility, the purification of the race itself by an enlightened
eugenics, consciously aiding Nature in her manifest effort to embody new
ideals of life. It was not Man, but Nature, who realized the daring and
splendid idea--risky as it was--of placing the higher anthropoids on
their hind limbs and so liberating their fore-limbs in the service of
their nimble and aspiring brains. We may humbly follow in the same path,
liberating latent forces of life and suppressing those which no longer
serve the present ends of life. For, as Shakespeare said, when in _The
Winter's Tale_ he set forth a luminous philosophy of social hygiene and
applied it to eugenics,
"Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean ...
This is an art
Which does mend Nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is Nature."
In whatever way it may be understood, however, social hygiene is now very
much to the front of people's minds. The present volume, I wish to make
clear, has not been hastily written to meet any real or supposed demand.
It has slowly grown during a period of nearly twenty-five years, and it
expresses an attitude which is implicit or explicit in the whole of my
work. By some readers, doubtless, it will be seen to constitute an
extension in various directions of the arguments developed in the larger
work on "Sex in Relation to Society," which is the final volume of my
_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_. The book I now bring forward may,
however, be more properly regarded as a presentation of the wider scheme
of social reform out of which the more special sex studies have
developed. We are faced to-day by the need for vast and complex changes
in social organization. In these changes the welfare of individuals and
the welfare of communities are alike concerned. Moreover, they are
matters which are not confined to the affairs of this nation or of that
nation, but of the whole family of nations participating in the
fraternity of modern progress.
The word "progress," indeed, which falls so easily from our lips is not
a word which any serious writer should use without precaution. The
conception of "progress" is a useful conception in so far as it binds
together those who are working for common ends, and stimulates that
perpetual slight movement in which life consists. But there is no
general progress in Nature, nor any unqualified progress; that is to
say, that there is no progress for all groups along the line, and that
even those groups which progress pay the price of their progress. It was
so even when our anthropoid ancestors rose to the erect position; that
was "progress," and it gained us the use of hands. But it lost us our
tails, and much else that is more regrettable than we are always able to
realize. There is no general and ever-increasing evolution towards
perfection. "Existence is realized in its perfection under whatever
aspect it is manifested," says Jules de Gaultier. Or, as Whitman put it,
"There will never be any more perfection than there is now." We cannot
expect an increased power of growth and realization in existence, as a
whole, leading to any general perfection; we can only expect to see the
triumph of individuals, or of groups of individuals, carrying out their
own conceptions along special lines, every perfection so attained
involving, on its reverse side, the acquirement of an imperfection. It
is in this sense, and in this sense only, that progress is possible. We
need not fear that we shall ever achieve the stagnant immobility of a
general perfection.
The problems of progress we are here concerned with are such as the
civilized world, as represented by some of its foremost individuals or
groups of individuals, is just now waking up to grapple with. No doubt
other problems might be added, and the addition give a greater semblance
of completion to this book. I have selected those which seem to me very
essential, very fundamental. The questions of social hygiene, as here
understood, go to the heart of life. It is the task of this hygiene not
only to make sewers, but to re-make love, and to do both in the same
large spirit of human fellowship, to ensure finer individual development
and a larger social organization. At the one end social hygiene may be
regarded as simply the extension of an elementary sanitary code; at the
other end it seems to some to have in it the glorious freedom of a new
religion. The majority of people, probably, will be content to admit
that we have here a scheme of serious social reform which every man and
woman will soon be called upon to take some share in.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
CONTENTS
I.--INTRODUCTION
PAGE
The aim of Social Hygiene--Social Reform--The Rise of Social Reform out
of English Industrialism--The Four Stages of Social Reform--(1) The
Stage of Sanitation--(2) Factory Legislation--(3) The Extension of the
Scope of Education--(4) Puericulture--The Scientific Evolution
corresponding to these Stages--Social Reform only Touched the Conditions
of Life--Yet Social Reform Remains highly Necessary--The Question of
Infantile Mortality and the Quality of the Race--The Better Organization
of Life Involved by Social Hygiene--Its Insistence on the Quality rather
than on the Conditions of Life--The Control of Reproduction--The Fall of
the Birth-rate in Relation to the Quality of the Population--The
Rejuvenation of a Society--The Influence of Culture and Refinement on a
Race--Eugenics--The Regeneration of the Race--The Problem of
Feeble-mindedness--The Methods of Eugenics--Some of the Problems which
Face us 1
II.--THE CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN
The Origin of the Woman Movement--Mary Wollstonecraft--George
Sand--Robert Owen--William Thompson--John Stuart Mill--The Modern
Growth of Social Cohesion--The Growth of Industrialism--Its Influence in
Woman's Sphere of Work--The Education of Women--Co-education--The Woman
Question and Sexual Selection--Significance of Economic
Independence--The State Regulation of Marriage--The Future of
Marriage--Wilhelm von Humboldt--Social Equality of Women--The
Reproduction of the Race as a Function of Society--Women and the Future
of Civilization 49
III.--THE NEW ASPECT OF THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT
Eighteenth-Century France--Pioneers of the Woman's Movement--The Growth
of the Woman's Suffrage Movement--The Militant Activities of the
Suffragettes--Their Services and Disservices to the Cause--Advantages of
Women's Suffrage--Sex Questions in Germany--Bebel--The Woman's Rights
Movement in Germany--The Development of Sexual Science in Germany--The
Movement for the Protection of Motherhood--Ellen Key--The Question of
Illegitimacy--Eugenics--Women as Law-makers in the Home 67
IV.--THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN IN RELATION TO ROMANTIC LOVE
The Absence of Romantic Love in Classic Civilization--Marriage as a
Duty--The Rise of Romantic Love in the Roman Empire--The Influence of
Christianity--The Attitude of Chivalry--The Troubadours--The Courts of
Love--The Influence of the Renaissance--Conventional Chivalry and Modern
Civilization--The Woman Movement--The Modern Woman's Equality of Rights
and Responsibilities excludes Chivalry--New Forms of Romantic Love still
remain possible--Love as the Inspiration of Social Hygiene 113
V.--THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FALLING BIRTH-RATE
The Fall of the Birth-rate in Europe generally--In England--In
Germany--In the United States--In Canada--In Australasia--"Crude"
Birth-rate and "Corrected" Birth-rate--The Connection between High
Birth-rate and High Death-rate--"Natural Increase" measured by Excess
of Births over Deaths--The Measure of National Well-being--The
Example of Russia--Japan--China--The Necessity of viewing the
Question from a wide Standpoint--The Prevalence of Neo-Malthusian
Methods--Influence of the Roman Catholic Church--Other Influences
lowering the Birth-rate--Influence of Postponement of Marriage--Relation
of the Birth-rate to Commercial and Industrial Activity--Illustrated
by Russia, Hungary, and Australia--The Relation of Prosperity to
Fertility--The Social Capillarity Theory--Divergence of the Birth-rate
and the Marriage-rate--Marriage-rate and the Movement of
Prices--Prosperity and Civilization--Fertility among Savages--The
lesser fertility of Urban Populations--Effect of Urbanization on
Physical Development--Why Prosperity fails permanently to increase
Fertility--Prosperity creates Restraints on Fertility--The process
of Civilization involves Decreased Fertility--In this Respect it is
a Continuation of Zoological Evolution--Large Families as a Stigma
of Degeneration--The Decreased Fertility of Civilization a General
Historical Fact--The Ideals of Civilization to-day--The East and
the West 134
VI.--EUGENICS AND LOVE
Eugenics and the Decline of the Birth-rate--Quantity and Quality in the
Production of Children--Eugenic Sexual Selection--The Value of
Pedigrees--Their Scientific Significance--The Systematic Record of
Personal Data--The Proposal for Eugenic Certificates--St. Valentine's
Day and Sexual Selection--Love and Reason--Love Ruled by Natural
Law--Eugenic Selection not opposed to Love--No Need for Legal
Compulsion--Medicine in Relation to Marriage. 193
VII.--RELIGION AND THE CHILD
Religious Education in Relation to Social Hygiene and to Psychology--The
Psychology of the Child--The Contents of Children's Minds--The
Imagination of Children--How far may Religion be assimilated by
Children?--Unfortunate Results of Early Religious Instruction--Puberty
the Age for Religious Education--Religion as an Initiation into a
Mystery--Initiation among Savages--The Christian Sacraments--The Modern
Tendency as regards Religious Instruction--Its Advantages--Children and
Fairy Tales--The Bible of Childhood--Moral Training 217
VIII.--THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL HYGIENE
The New Movement for giving Sexual Instruction to Children--The Need of
such a Movement--Contradictions involved by the Ancient Policy of
Silence--Errors of the New Policy--The Need of Teaching the Teacher--The
Need of Training the Parents--And of Scientifically equipping the
Physician--Sexual Hygiene and Society--The far-reaching Effects of
Sexual Hygiene 244
IX.--IMMORALITY AND THE LAW
Social Hygiene and Legal Compulsion--The Binding Force of Custom among
Savages--The Dissolving Influence of Civilization--The Distinction
between Immorality and Criminality--Adultery as a Crime--The Tests of
Criminality--National Differences in laying down the Boundary between
Criminal and Immoral Acts--France--Germany--England--The United
States--Police Administration--Police Methods in the United
States--National Differences in the Regulation of the Trade in
Alcohol--Prohibition in the United States--Origin of the American Method
of Dealing with Immorality--Russia--Historical Fluctuations in Methods
of Dealing with Immorality and Prostitution--Homosexuality--Holland--The
Age of Consent--Moral Legislation in England--In the United States--The
Raines Law--America Attempts to Suppress Prostitution--Their
Futility--German Methods of Regulating Prostitution--The Sound Method of
Approaching Immorality--Training in Sexual Hygiene--Education in
Personal and Social Responsibility 258
X.--THE WAR AGAINST WAR
Why the Problem of War is specially urgent To-day--The Beneficial
Effects of War in Barbarous Ages--Civilization renders the Ultimate
Disappearance of War Inevitable--The Introduction of Law in disputes
between Individuals involves the Introduction of Law in disputes between
Nations--But there must be Force behind Law--Henry IV's Attempt to
Confederate Europe--Every International Tribunal of Arbitration must be
able to Enforce its decisions--The Influences making for the Abolition
of Warfare--(1) Growth of International Opinion--(2) International
Financial Development--(3) The Decreasing Pressure of Population--(4)
The Natural Exhaustion of the Warlike Spirit--(5) The Spread of
Anti-military Doctrines--(6) The Over-growth of Armaments--(7) The
Dominance of Social Reform--War Incompatible with an Advanced
Civilization--Nations as Trustees for Humanity--The Impossibility of
Disarmament--The Necessity of Force to ensure Peace--The Federated State
of the Future--The Decay of War still leaves the Possibilities of Daring
and Heroism 311
XI.--THE PROBLEM OF AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
Early Attempts to construct an International Language--The Urgent Need
of an Auxiliary Language To-day--Volapük--The Claims of
Spanish--Latin--The Claims of English--Its Disadvantages--The Claims of
French--Its Disadvantages--The Modern Growth of National Feeling opposed
to Selection of a Natural Language--Advantages of an Artificial
Language--Demands it must Fulfil--Esperanto--Its Threatened
Disruption--The International Association for the Adoption of an
Auxiliary International Language--The First Step to Take 349
XII.--INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIALISM
Social Hygiene in Relation to the Alleged Opposition between Socialism
and Individualism--The Two Parties in Politics--The Relation of
Conservatism and Radicalism to Socialism and Individualism--The Basis of
Socialism--The Basis of Individualism--The seeming Opposition between
Socialism and Individualism merely a Division of Labour--Both Socialism
and Individualism equally Necessary--Not only Necessary, but
Indispensable to each other--The Conflict between the Advocates of
Environment and Heredity--A New Embodiment of the supposed Conflict
between Socialism and Individualism--The place of Eugenics--Social
Hygiene ultimately one with the Hygiene of the Soul--The Function of
Utopias 381
INDEX 407
THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE
I
INTRODUCTION
The Aim of Social Hygiene--Social Reform--The Rise of Social Reform
out of English Industrialism--The Four Stages of Social Reform--(1)
The Stage of Sanitation--(2) Factory Legislation--(3) The Extension
of the Scope of Education--(4) Puericulture--The Scientific
Evolution corresponding to these Stages--Social Reform only Touched
the Conditions of Life--Yet Social Reform Remains highly
Necessary--The Question of Infantile Mortality and the Quality of
the Race--The Better Organization of Life Involved by Social
Hygiene--Its Insistence on the Quality rather than on the
Conditions of Life--The Control of Reproduction--The Fall of the
Birth-rate in Relation to the Quality of the Population--The
Rejuvenation of a Society--The Influence of Culture and Refinement
on a Race--Eugenics--The Regeneration of the Race--The Problem of
Feeble-Mindedness--The Methods of Eugenics--Some of the Problems
which Face us.
Social Hygiene, as it will be here understood, may be said to be a
development, and even a transformation, of what was formerly known as
Social Reform. In that transformation it has undergone two fundamental
changes. In the first place, it is no longer merely an attempt to deal
with the conditions under which life is lived, seeking to treat bad
conditions as they occur, without going to their source, but it aims at
prevention. It ceases to be simply a reforming of forms, and approaches
in a comprehensive manner not only the conditions of life, but life
itself. In the second place, its method is no longer haphazard, but
organized and systematic, being based on a growing knowledge of those
biological sciences which were scarcely in their infancy when the era of
social reform began. Thus social hygiene is at once more radical and
more scientific than the old conception of social reform. It is the
inevitable method by which at a certain stage civilization is compelled
to continue its own course, and to preserve, perhaps to elevate, the
race.
The era of social reform followed on the rise of modern industrialism,
and, no doubt largely on this account, although an international
movement, it first became definite and self-conscious in England. There
were perhaps other reasons why it should have been in the first place
specially prominent in England. When at the end of the seventeenth
century, Muralt, a highly intelligent Swiss gentleman, visited England,
and wrote his by no means unsympathetic _Lettres sur les Anglais_, he
was struck by a curious contradiction in the English character. They are
a good-natured people, he observed, very rich, so well-nourished that
sometimes they die of obesity, and they detest cruelty so much that by
royal proclamation it is ordained that the fish and the ducks of the
ponds should be duly and properly fed. Yet he found that this
good-natured, rich, cruelty-hating nation systematically allowed the
prisoners in their gaols to die of starvation. "The great cruelty of
the English," Muralt remarks, "lies in permitting evil rather than in
doing it."[1] The root of the apparent contradiction lay clearly in a
somewhat excessive independence and devotion to liberty. We give a man
full liberty, they seem to have said, to work, to become rich, to grow
fat. But if he will not work, let him starve. In that point of view
there were involved certain fallacies, which became clearer during the
course of social evolution.
It was obvious, indeed, that such an attitude, while highly favourable
to individual vigour and independence, and not incompatible with fairly
healthy social life under the conditions which prevailed at the time,
became disastrous in the era of industrialism. The conditions of
industrial life tore up the individual from the roots by which he
normally received strength, and crowded the workers together in masses,
thus generating a confusion which no individual activity could grapple
with. So it was that the very spirit which, under the earlier
conditions, made for good now made for evil. To stand by and applaud the
efforts of the individual who was perhaps slowly sinking deeper and
deeper into a miry slough of degradation began to seem an even
diabolical attitude. The maxim of _laissez-faire_, which had once stood
for the whole unfettered action of natural activities in life, began to
be viewed with horror and contempt. It was realized that there must be
an intelligent superintendence of social conditions, humane regulation,
systematic organization. The very intensity of the evils which the
English spirit produced led to a reaction by which that spirit, while
doubtless remaining the same at heart, took on a different form, and
manifested its energy in a new direction.
The modern industrial era, replacing domestic industry by collective
work carried out by "hands" in factories, began in the eighteenth
century. The era of social reform was delayed until the second quarter
of the nineteenth century. It has proceeded by four successively
progressive stages, each stage supplementing, rather than supplanting,
the stage that preceded it. In 1842 Sir Edwin Chadwick wrote an official
Report on the _Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great
Britain_, in which was clearly presented for the first time a vivid,
comprehensive, and authoritative picture of the incredibly filthy
conditions under which the English labouring classes lived. The times
were ripe for this Report. It attracted public attention, and exerted an
important influence. Its appearance marks the first stage of social
reform, which was mainly a sanitary effort to clear away the gross filth
from our cities, to look after the cleansing, lighting, and policing of
the streets, to create a drainage system, to improve dwellings, and in
these ways to combat disease and to lower the very high death-rate.
At an early stage, however, it began to be seen that this process of
sanitation, necessary as it had become, was far too crude and elementary
to achieve the ends sought. It was not enough to improve the streets, or
even to regulate the building of dwellings. It was clearly necessary to
regulate also the conditions of work of the people who lived in those
streets and dwellings. Thus it was that the scheme of factory
legislation was initiated. Rules were made as to the hours of labour,
more especially as regards women and children, for whom, moreover,
certain specially dangerous or unhealthy occupations were forbidden, and
an increasingly large number of avocations were brought under Government
inspection. This second stage of social reform encountered a much more
strenuous opposition than the first stage. The regulation of the order
and cleanliness of the streets was obviously necessary, and it had
indeed been more or less enforced even in medieval times;[2] but the
regulation of the conditions of work in the interests of the worker was
a more novel proceeding, and it appeared to clash both with the
interests of the employers and the ancient principles of English freedom
and independence, behind which the employers consequently sheltered
themselves. The early attempts to legislate on these lines were thus
fruitless. It was not until a distinguished aristocratic philanthropist
of great influence, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, took up the
question, that factory legislation began to be accepted. It continues to
develop even to-day, ever enlarging the sphere of its action, and now
meeting with no opposition. But, in England, at all events, its
acceptance marks a memorable stage in the growth of the national spirit.
It was no longer easy and natural for the Englishmen to look on at
suffering without interference. It began to be recognized that it was
perfectly legitimate, and even necessary, to put a curb on the freedom
and independence which involved suffering to others.
But as the era of factory legislation became established, a further
advance was seen to be necessary. Factory legislation had forbidden the
child to work. But the duty of the community towards the child, the
citizen of the future, was evidently by no means covered by this purely
negative step. The child must be prepared to take his future part in
life, in the first place by education. The nationalization of education
in England dates from 1870. But during the subsequent half century
"education" has come to mean much more than mere instruction; it now
covers a certain amount of provision for meals when necessary, the
enforcement of cleanliness, the care of defective conditions, inborn or
acquired, with special treatment for mentally defective children, an
ever-increasing amount of medical inspection and supervision, while it
is beginning to include arrangements for placing the child in work
suited to his capacities when he leaves school.
During the past ten years the movement of social reform has entered a
fourth stage. The care of the child during his school-days was seen to
be insufficient; it began too late, when probably the child's fate for
life was already decided. It was necessary to push the process further
back, to birth and even to the stage before birth, by directing social
care to the infant, and by taking thought of the mother. This
consideration has led to a whole series of highly important and fruitful
measures which are only beginning to develop, although they have already
proved very beneficial. The immediate notification to the authorities of
a child's birth, and the institution of Health Visitors to ascertain
what is being done for the infant's well-being, and to aid the mother
with advice, have certainly been a large factor in the recent reduction
in the infantile death-rate in England.[3]
The care of the infant has indeed now become a new applied science, the
science of puericulture. Professor Budin of Paris may fairly be regarded
as the founder of puericulture by the establishment in Paris, in 1892,
of Infant Consultations, to which mothers were encouraged to bring their
babies to be weighed and examined, any necessary advice being given
regarding the care of the baby. The mothers are persuaded to suckle
their infants if possible, and if their own health permits. For the
cases in which suckling is undesirable or impossible, Budin established
Milk Depôts, where pure milk is supplied at a low price or freely.
Infant Consultations and Milk Depôts are now becoming common everywhere.
A little later than Budin, another distinguished French physician,
Pinard, carried puericulture a step further back, but a very important
step, by initiating a movement for the care of the pregnant woman.
Pinard and his pupils have shown by a number of detailed investigations
that the children born to working mothers who rest during the last three
months of pregnancy, are to a marked extent larger and finer than the
children of those mothers who enjoy no such period of rest, even though
the mothers themselves may be equally robust and healthy in both cases.
Moreover, it is found that premature birth, one of the commonest
accidents of modern life, tends to be prevented by such rest. The
children of mothers who rest enjoy on the average three weeks longer
development in the womb than the children of the mothers who do not
rest, and this prolonged ante-natal development cannot fail to be a
benefit for the whole of the child's subsequent life. The movement
started by Pinard, though strictly a continuation of the great movement
for the improvement of the conditions of life, takes us as far back as
we are able to go on these lines, and has in it the promise of an
immense benefit to human efficiency.
In connection with the movement of puericulture initiated by Budin and
Pinard must be mentioned the institution of Schools for Mothers, for it
is closely associated with the aims of puericulture. The School for
Mothers arose in Belgium, a little later than the activities of Budin
and Pinard commenced. About 1900 a young Socialist doctor of Ghent, Dr.
Miele, started the first school of this kind, with girls of from twelve
to sixteen years of age as students and assistants. The School
eventually included as many as twelve different services, among these
being dispensaries for mothers, a mothers' friendly society, milk depôts
both for babies and nursing mothers, health talks to mothers with
demonstrations, courses on puericulture (including anatomy, physiology,
preparation of foods, weighing, etc.) to girls between fourteen and
eighteen, who afterwards become eligible for appointment as paid
assistants.[4] In 1907 Schools for Mothers were introduced into England,
at first under the auspices of Dr. Sykes, Medical Officer of Health for
St. Pancras, London. Such Schools are now spreading everywhere. In the
end they will probably be considered necessary centres for any national
system of puericulture. Every girl at the end of her school life should
be expected to pass through a certain course of training at a School for
Mothers. It would be the technical school for the working-class mother,
while such a course would be invaluable for any girl, whatever her
social class, even if she is never called to be a mother herself or to
have the care of children.
The great movement of social reform during the nineteenth century, we
thus see, has moved in four stages, each of which has reinforced rather
than replaced that which went before: (1) the effort to cleanse the
gross filth of cities and to remedy obvious disorder by systematic
attention to scavenging, drainage, the supply of water and of artificial
light, as well as by improved policing; (2) the great system of factory
legislation for regulating the conditions of work, and to some extent
restraining the work of women and of children; (3) the introduction of
national systems of education, and the gradual extension of the idea of
education to cover far more than mere instruction; and (4), most
fundamental of all and last to appear, the effort to guard the child
before the school age, even at birth, even before birth, by bestowing
due care on the future mother.[5]
It may be pointed out that this movement of practical social reform has
been accompanied, stimulated, and guided by a corresponding movement in
the sciences which in their application are indispensable to the
progress of civilized social reform. There has been a process of mutual
action and reaction between science and practice. The social movement
has stimulated the development of abstract science, and the new progress
in science has enabled further advances to be made in social practice.
The era of expansion in sanitation was the era of development in
chemistry and physics, which alone enabled a sound system of sanitation
to be developed. The fight against disease would have been impossible
but for bacteriology. The new care for human life, and for the
protection of its source, is associated with fresh developments of
biological science. Sociological observations and speculation, including
economics, are intimately connected with the efforts of social reform to
attain a broad, sound, and truly democratic basis.[6]
When we survey this movement as a whole, we have to recognize that it is
exclusively concerned with the improvement of the conditions of life. It
makes no attempt to influence either the quantity or the quality of
life.[7] It may sometimes have been carried out with the assumption that
to improve the conditions of life is, in some way or other, to improve
the quality of life itself. But it accepted the stream of life as it
found it, and while working to cleanse the banks of the stream it made
no attempt to purify the stream itself.
It must, however, be remembered that the arguments which, especially
nowadays, are brought against the social reform of the condition of
life, will not bear serious examination. It is said, for instance, or at
all events implied, that we need bestow very little care on the
conditions of life because such care can have no permanently beneficial
effect on the race, since acquired characters, for the most part, are
not transmitted to descendants. But to assume that social reform is
unnecessary because it is not inherited is altogether absurd. The people
who make this assumption would certainly not argue that it is useless
for them to satisfy their own hunger and thirst, because their children
will not thereby be safeguarded from experiencing hunger and thirst. Yet
the needs which the movement of organized social reform seeks to satisfy
are precisely on a level with, and indeed to some extent identical with,
the needs of hunger and thirst. The impulse and the duty which move
every civilized community to elaborate and gratify its own social needs
to the utmost are altogether independent of the race, and would not
cease to exist even in a community vowed to celibacy or the most
absolute Neo-Malthusianism. Nor, again, must it be said that social
reform destroys the beneficial results of natural selection.
Here, indeed, we encounter a disputed point, and it may be admitted that
the precise data for absolute demonstration in one direction or the
other cannot yet be found. Whenever human beings breed in reckless and
unrestrained profusion--as is the case under some conditions before a
free and self-conscious civilization is attained--there is an immense
infantile mortality. It is claimed, on the one hand, that this is
beneficial, and need not be interfered with. The weak are killed off,
it is said, and the strong survive; there is a process of natural
survival of the fittest. That is true. But it is equally true, as has
also been clearly seen on the other hand, that though the relatively
strongest survive, their relative strength has been impaired by the very
influences which have proved altogether fatal to their weaker brethren.
There is an immense infantile mortality in Russia. Yet, notwithstanding
any resulting "survival of the fittest," Russia is far more ravaged by
disease than Norway, where infantile mortality is low. "A high infantile
mortality," as George Carpenter, a great authority on the diseases of
childhood, remarks, "denotes a far higher infantile deterioration rate";
or, as another doctor puts it, "the dead baby is next of kin to the
diseased baby," The protection of the weak, so frequently condemned by
some Neo-Darwinians, is thus in reality, as Goldscheid terms it, "the
protection of the strong from degeneration."
There is, however, more to be said. Not only must an undue struggle with
unfavourable conditions enfeeble the strong as well as kill the feeble;
it also imposes an intolerable burden upon these enfeebled survivors.
The process of destruction is not sudden, it is gradual. It is a
long-drawn-out process. It involves the multiplication of the diseased,
the maimed, the feeble-minded, of paupers and lunatics and criminals.
Even natural selection thus includes the need for protecting the feeble,
and so renders urgent the task of social reform, while the more
thoroughly this task is carried out with the growth of civilization,
the more stupendous and overwhelming the task becomes.
It is thus that civilization, at a certain point in its course, renders
inevitable the appearance of that wider and deeper organization of life
which in the present volume we are concerned with under the name of
Social Hygiene. That movement is far from being an abrupt or
revolutionary manifestation in the ordinary progress of social growth.
As we have seen, social reform during the past eighty years may be said
to have proceeded in four successive stages, each of which has involved
a nearer approach to the sources of life. The fourth stage, which in its
beginnings dates only from the last years of the nineteenth century,
takes us to the period before birth, and is concerned with the care of
the child in the mother's womb. The next stage cannot fail to take us to
the very source of life itself, lifting us beyond the task of purifying
the conditions, and laying on us the further task of regulating the
quantity and raising the quality of life at its very source. The duty of
purifying, ordering, and consolidating the banks of the stream must
still remain.[8] But when we are able to control the stream at its
source we are able to some extent to prevent the contamination of that
stream by filth, and ensure that its muddy floods shall not sweep away
the results of our laborious work on the banks. Our sense of social
responsibility is developing into a sense of racial responsibility, and
that development is expressed in the nature of the tasks of Social
Hygiene which now lie before us.
It is the control of the reproduction of the race which renders possible
the new conception of Social Hygiene. We have seen that the gradual
process of social reform during the first three quarters of the
nineteenth century, by successive stages of movement towards the sources
of life, finally reached the moment of conception. The first result of
reform at this point was that procreation became a deliberate act. Up
till then the method of propagating the race was the same as that which
savages have carried on during thousands of years, the chief difference
being that whereas savages have frequently sought to compensate their
recklessness by destroying their inferior offspring, we had accepted all
the offspring, good, bad, and indifferent, produced by our
indiscriminate recklessness, shielding ourselves by a false theology.
Children "came," and their parents disclaimed all responsibility for
their coming. The children were "sent by God," and if they all turned
out to be idiots, the responsibility was God's. But when it became
generally realized that it was possible to limit offspring without
interfering with conjugal life a step of immense importance was
achieved. It became clear to all that the Divine force works through us,
and that we are not entitled to cast the burden of our evil actions on
any Higher Power. Marriage no longer fatally involved an endless
procession of children who, in so far as they survived at all, were in a
large number of cases doomed to disease, neglect, misery, and ignorance.
The new Social Hygiene was for the first time rendered possible.
It was in France during the first half of the nineteenth century that
the control of reproduction first began to become a social habit. In
Sweden and in Denmark, the fall in the birth-rate, though it has been
irregular, may be said to have begun in 1860. It was not until about the
year 1876 that, in so far as we may judge by the arrest of the
birth-rate, the movement began to spread to Europe generally. In England
it is usual to associate this change with a famous prosecution which
brought a knowledge of the means of preventing conception to the whole
population of Great Britain. Undoubtedly this prosecution was an
important factor in the movement, but we cannot doubt that, even if the
prosecution had not taken place, the course of social progress must
still have pursued the same course. It is noteworthy that it was about
this same period, in various European countries, that the tide turned,
and the excessively high birth-rate began to fall.[9] Recklessness was
giving place to foresight and self-control. Such foresight and
self-control are of the essence of civilization.[10]
It cannot be disputed that the transformation by which the propagation
of the race became deliberate and voluntary has not been established in
social custom without a certain amount of protestation from various
sides. No social change, however beneficial, ever is established without
such protestation, which may, therefore, be regarded as an inevitable
and probably a salutary part of social change. Even some would-be
scientific persons, with a display of elaborate statistics, set forth
various alarmistic doctrines. If, said these persons, this new movement
goes on at the present pace, and if all other conditions remain
unchanged, then all sorts of terrible results will ensue. But the
alarming conclusion failed to ensue, and for a very sufficient reason.
The assumed premises of the argument were unsound. Nothing ever goes on
at the same pace, nor do all other conditions ever remain unchanged.
The world is a living fire, as Heraclitus long ago put it. All things
are in perpetual flux. Life is a process of perpetual movement. It is
idle to bid the world stand still, and then to argue about the
consequences. The world will not stand still, it is for ever revolving,
for ever revealing some new facet that had not been allowed for in the
neatly arranged mechanism of the statistician.
It is perhaps unnecessary to dwell on a point which is now at last, one
may hope, becoming clear to most intelligent persons. But I may perhaps
be allowed to refer in passing to an argument that has been brought
forward with the wearisome iteration which always marks the progress of
those who are feeble in argument. The good stocks of upper social class
are decreasing in fertility, it is said; the bad stocks of lower social
class are not decreasing; therefore the bad stocks are tending to
replace the good stocks.[11]
It must, however, be pointed out that, even assuming that the facts are
as stated; it is a hazardous assumption that the best stocks are
necessarily the stocks of high social class. In the main no doubt this
is so, but good stocks are nevertheless so widely spread through all
classes--such good stocks in the lower social classes being probably the
most resistent to adverse conditions--that we are not entitled to regard
even a slightly greater net increase of the lower social classes as an
unmitigated evil. It may be that, as Mercier has expressed it, "we have
to regard a civilized community somewhat in the light of a lamp, which
burns at the top and is replenished from the bottom."[12]
The soundness of a stock, and its aptitude for performing efficiently
the functions of its own social sphere, cannot, indeed, be accurately
measured by any tendency to rise into a higher social sphere. On the
whole, from generation to generation, the men of a good stock remain
within their own social sphere, whether high or low, adequately
performing their functions in that sphere, from generation to
generation. They remain, we may say, in that social stratum of which the
specific gravity is best suited for their existence.[13]
Yet, undoubtedly, from time to time, there is a slight upward social
tendency, due in most cases to the exceptional energy and ability of
some individual who succeeds in permanently lifting his family into a
slightly higher social stratum.[14] Such a process has always taken
place, in the past even more conspicuously than in the present. The
Normans who came over to England with William the Conqueror and
constituted the proud English nobility were simply a miscellaneous set
of adventurers, professional fighting men, of unknown, and no doubt for
the most part undistinguished, lineage. William the Conqueror himself
was the son of a woman of the people. The Catholic Church founded no
families, but its democratic constitution opened a career to men of all
classes, and the most brilliant sons of the Church were often of the
lowliest social rank. We should not, therefore, say that the bad stocks
are replacing the good stocks. There is not the slightest evidence for
any such theory. All that we are entitled to say is that when in the
upward progression of a community the vanishing point of culture and
refinement is attained the bearers of that culture and refinement die
off as naturally and inevitably as flowers in autumn, and from their
roots spring up new and more vigorous shoots to replace them and to pass
in their turn through the same stages, with that perpetual slight
novelty in which lies the secret of life, as well as of art. An
aristocracy which is merely an aristocracy because it is "old"--whether
it is an aristocracy of families, or of races, or of species--has
already ceased to be an aristocracy in any sound meaning of the term. We
need not regret its disappearance.
Do not, therefore, let us waste our time in crying over the dead roses
of the summer that is past. There is something morbid in the perpetual
groaning over that inevitable decay which is itself a part of all life.
Such a perpetual narrow insistence on one aspect of life is scarcely
sane. One suspects that these people are themselves of those stocks over
whose fate they grieve. Let us, therefore, mercifully leave them to
manure their dead roses in peace. They will soon be forgotten. The world
is for ever dying. The world is also for ever bursting with life. The
spring song of _Sursum corda_ easily overwhelms the dying autumnal wails
of the _Dies Iræ_.