Conference on Feeble-mindedness (_British Medical Journal_, October 3,
1911), "be expressed by cleft palate, cataract, or cerebral deficiency
of the pyramidal cells in the brain cortex, they may be produced, and,
when once produced, they are reproduced as readily as the perfected
structure of the face or eye or brain, if the gametes which contain
these potentialities unite to form the ovum. But Nature is not only the
producer. Given a fair field and no favour, natural selection would
leave no problem of the unfit to perplex the mind of man who looks
before and after. This we know cannot be, and we know, too, that we have
no longer the excuse of ignorance to cover the neglect of the new duties
which belong to the present epoch of civilization. We know now that we
have to deal with a growing group in our community who demand permanent
care and control as well for their own sakes as for the welfare of the
community. All are now agreed on the general principle of segregation,
but it is true that something more than this should be forthcoming. The
difficulties of theory are clearing up as our wider view obtains a
firmer grasp of our material, but the difficulties of practice are still
before us." These remarks correspond with the general results reached by
the Royal Commission on the Feeble-minded, which issued its voluminous
facts and conclusions in 1908.
[29] See, for instance, A.F. Tredgold, _Mental Deficiency_, 1908.
[30] The investigation of Bezzola showing that the maxima in the
conception of idiots occur at carnival time, and especially at the
vintage, has been held (especially by Forel) to indicate that alcoholism
of the parents at conception causes idiocy in the offspring. It may be
so. But it may also be that the licence of these periods enables the
defective members of the community to secure an amount of sexual
activity which they would be debarred from under normal conditions. In
that case the alcoholism would merely liberate, and not create, the
idiocy-producing mechanism.
[31] Godden, _Eugenics Review_, April, 1911.
[32] Feeble-mindedness and the other allied variations are not always
exactly repeated in inheritance. They may be transmuted in passing from
father to son, an epileptic father, for instance, having a feeble-minded
child. These relationships of feeble-mindedness have been clearly
brought out in an important investigation by Davenport and Weeks
(_Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_, November, 1911), who have for
the first time succeeded in obtaining a large number of really thorough
and precise pedigrees of such cases.
[33] It may be as well to point out once more that the possibility of
such limited depreciation must not be construed into the statement that
there has been any general "degeneration of the race." It maybe added
that the notion that the golden age lay in the past, and that our own
age is degenerate is not confined to a few biometricians of to-day; it
has commended itself to uncritical minds in all ages, even the greatest,
as far back as we can go. Montesquieu referred to this common notion
(and attempted to explain it) in his _Pensées Diverses_: "Men have such
a bad opinion of themselves," he adds, "that they have believed not only
that their minds and souls were degenerate, but even their bodies, and
that they were not so tall as the men of previous ages." It is thus
quite logically that we arrive at the belief that when mankind first
appeared, "there were giants on the earth in those days," and that Adam
lived to the age of nine hundred and thirty. Evidently no syndromes of
degenerescence there!
[34] The Superintendent of a large State School for delinquent girls in
America (as quoted in the Chicago Vice Commission's Report on _The
Social Evil in Chicago_, p. 229) says: "The girls who come to us
possessed of normal brain power, or not infected with venereal disease,
we look upon as a prize indeed, and we seldom fail to make a woman worth
while of a really normal girl, whatever her environment has been. But we
have failed in numberless cases where the environment has been all
right, but the girl was born wrong."
[35] See e.g. Havelock Ellis, _The Criminal_, 4th ed., 1910, chap IV.
[36] R.L. Dugdale, _The Jukes_, 4th ed., 1910. It is noteworthy that
Dugdale, who wrote nearly forty years ago, was concerned to prove the
influence of bad environment rather than of bad heredity. At that time
the significance of heredity was scarcely yet conceived. It remains
true, however, that bad heredity and bad environment constantly work
together for evil.
[37] Jörger, _Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschafts-Biologie_, 1905, p.
294. Criminal families are also recorded by Aubry, _La Contagion du
Meutre_.
[38] Even during school life this burden is serious. Mr. Bodey, Inspector
of Schools, states that the defective school child costs three times as
much as the ordinary school child.
[39] I have set forth these considerations more fully in a popular form
in _The Problem of the Regeneration of the Race_, the first of a series
of "New Tracts for the Times," issued under the auspices of the National
Council of Public Morals.
[40] C.B. Davenport, "Euthenics and Eugenics," _Popular Science Monthly_,
January, 1911.
[41] The use of the terms "fit" and "unfit" in a eugenic sense has been
criticized. It is said, for instance, that in a bad environment it may
be precisely the defective classes who are most "fit" to survive. It is
quite true that these terms are not well adapted to resist
hyper-critical attack. The persistence with which they are employed
seems, however, to indicate a certain "survival of the fittest." The
terms "worthy" and "unworthy," which some would prefer to substitute,
are unsatisfactory, for they have moral associations which are
misleading. Galton spoke of "civic worth" in this connection, and very
occasionally used the term "worthy" (with inverted commas), but he was
careful to point out (_Essays in Eugenics_, p. 35) that in eugenics "we
must leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion, not
entangling ourselves with the almost hopeless difficulties they raise as
to whether a character as a whole is good or bad."
[42] Dr. Toulouse has devoted a whole volume to the results of a minute
personal examination of Zola, the novelist, and another to Poincaré, the
mathematician. Such minute investigations are at present confined to men
of genius, but some day, perhaps, we shall consider that from the
eugenic standpoint all men are men of genius.
[43] Sterilization for social ends was introduced in Switzerland a few
years ago, in order to enable some persons with impaired self-control to
be set at liberty and resume work without the risk of adding to the
population defective members who would probably be a burden on the
community. It was performed with the consent of the subjects (in some
cases at their urgent request) and their relations, so requiring no
special legislation, and the results are said to be satisfactory. In
some American States sterilization for some classes of defective persons
has been established by statute, but it is difficult to obtain reliable
information as regards the working and the results of such legislation.
[44] When Professor Giddings speaks of the "goal of mankind," it must, of
course, be remembered, he is using a bold metaphor in order to make his
meaning clearer. Strictly speaking, mankind has no "goals," nor are
there any ends in Nature which are not means to further ends.
II
THE CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN[45]
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.
I
It was in the eighteenth century, the seed-time of modern ideas, that
our great-grandfathers became conscious of a discordant break in the
traditional conceptions of women's status. The vague cries of Justice,
Freedom, Equality, which were then hurled about the world, were here and
there energetically applied to women--notably in France by
Condorcet--and a new movement began to grow self-conscious and coherent.
Mary Wollstonecraft, after Aphra Behn the first really noteworthy
Englishwoman of letters, gave voice to this movement in England.
The famous and little-read _Vindication of the Rights of Women_,
careless and fragmentary as it is, and by no means so startling to us as
to her contemporaries, shows Mary Wollstonecraft as a woman of genuine
insight, who saw the questions of woman's social condition in their
essential bearings. Her intuitions need little modification, even though
a century of progress has intervened. The modern advocates of woman's
suffrage have little to add to her brief statement. She is far, indeed,
from the monstrous notion of Miss Cobbe, that woman's suffrage is the
"crown and completion" of all progress so far as women's movements are
concerned. She looks upon it rather as one of the reasonable conditions
of progress. It is pleasant to turn from the eccentric energy of so many
of the advocates of women's causes to-day, all engaged in crying up
their own particular nostrum, to the genial many-sided wisdom of Mary
Wollstonecraft, touching all subjects with equal frankness and delicacy.
The most brilliant and successful exponent of the new revolutionary
ideas--making Corinne and her prototype seem dim and ineffectual--was
undoubtedly George Sand. The badly-dressed woman who earned her living
by scribbling novels, and said to M. du Camp, as she sat before him in
silence rolling her cigarette, "Je ne dis rien parceque je suis bête,"
has exercised a profound influence throughout Europe, an influence
which, in the Sclavonic countries especially, has helped to give impetus
to the resolution we are now considering. And this not so much from any
definite doctrines that underlie her work--for George Sand's views on
such matters varied as much as her political views--as from her whole
temper and attitude. Her large and rich nature, as sometimes happens in
genius of a high order, was twofold; on the one hand, she possessed a
solid serenity, a quiet sense of power, the qualities of a _bonne
bourgeoise_, which found expression in her imperturbable calm, her
gentle look and low voice. And with this was associated a massive,
almost Rabelaisian temperament (one may catch glimpses of it in her
correspondence), a sane exuberant earthliness which delighted in every
manifestation of the actual world. On the other hand, she bore within
her a volcanic element of revolt, an immense disgust of law and custom.
Throughout her life George Sand developed her strong and splendid
individuality, not perhaps as harmoniously, but as courageously and as
sincerely as even Goethe.
Robert Owen, who, like Saint-Simon in France, gave so extraordinary an
impulse to all efforts at social reorganization, and who planted the
seed of many modern movements, could not fail to extend his influence to
the region of sex. A disciple of his, William Thompson, who still holds
a distinguished position in the history of the economic doctrines of
Socialism, wrote, under the inspiration of a woman (a Mrs. Wheeler),
and published in 1825, an _Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women,
against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to retain them in
Political, and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery_. It is a thorough
and logical, almost eloquent, demand for the absolute social equality of
the sexes.[46]
Forty years later, Mill, also inspired by a woman, published his
_Subjection of Women_. However partial and inadequate it may seem to us,
this was at that day a notable book. Mill's clear vision and feminine
sensibilities gave freshness to his observations regarding the condition
and capacity of women, while his reputation imparted gravity and
resonance to his utterances. Since then the signs in literature of the
breaking up of the status of women have become far too numerous to be
chronicled even in a volume. It is enough to have mentioned here some
typical initiatory names. Now, the movement may be seen at work
anywhere, from Norway to Italy, from Russia to California. The status
which women are now entering places them, not, as in the old communism,
in large measure practically above men, nor, as in the subsequent
period, both practically and theoretically in subordination to men. It
places them side by side, with like rights and like duties in relation
to society.
II
Condorcet, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Sand, Owen, Mill--these were
feathers on the stream. They indicated the forces that had their source
at the centre of social life. That historical movement which produced
mother-law probably owed its rise, as well as its fall, to demands of
subsistence and property--that is, to economic causes. The decay of the
subsequent family system, in which the whole power is concentrated in
the male head, is being produced by similar causes. The early communism,
and the modes of action and sentiment which it had produced, still
practically persisted long after the new system had arisen. In the
patriarchal family the woman still had a recognized sphere of work and a
recognized right to subsistence. It was not, indeed, until the sudden
development of the industrial system, and the purely individualistic
economics with which it was associated, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, that women in England were forced to realize that
their household industries were gone, and that they must join in that
game of competition in which the field and the rules had alike been
chosen with reference to men alone. The commercial and industrial
system, and the general diffusion of education that has accompanied it,
and which also has its roots in economic causes, has been the chief
motive force in revolutionizing the status of women; and the epoch of
unrestricted competition on masculine lines has been a necessary period
of transition.[47]
At the present time two great tendencies are visible in our social
organization. On the one hand, the threads of social life are growing
closer, and organization, as regards the simple and common means of
subsistence, is increasing. On the other hand, as regards the things
that most closely concern the individual person, the sphere of freedom
is being perpetually enlarged. Instead of every man digging a well for
his own use and at his own free pleasure, perhaps in a graveyard or a
cesspool, we consent to the distribution of water by a central
executive. We have carried social methods so far that, instead of
producing our own bread and butter, we prefer to go to a common bakery
and dairy. The same centralizing methods are extending to all those
things of which all have equal need. On the other hand, we exercise a
very considerable freedom of individual thought. We claim a larger and
larger freedom of individual speech and criticism. We worship any god we
choose, after any fashion we choose. The same individual freedom is
beginning to invade the sexual relationships. It is extending to all
those things in regard to which civilized men have become so variously
differentiated that they have no equal common needs. These two
tendencies, so far from being antagonistic, cannot even be carried out
under modern conditions of life except together. It is only by social
co-operation in regard to what is commonly called the physical side of
life that it becomes possible for the individual to develop his own
peculiar nature. The society of the future is a reasonable anarchy
founded on a broad basis of Collectivism.
It is not our object here to point out how widely these tendencies
affect men, but it is worth while to indicate some of their bearings on
the condition of women. While genuine productive industries have been
taken out of the hands of women who work under the old conditions, an
increasingly burdensome weight of unnecessary duties has been laid upon
them. Under the old communistic system, when a large number of families
lived together in one great house, the women combined to perform their
household duties, the cooking being done at a common fire. They had
grown up together from childhood, and combination could be effected
without friction. It is the result of the later system that the woman
has to perform all the necessary household duties in the most wasteful
manner, with least division of labour; while she has, in addition, to
perform a great amount of unnecessary work, in obedience to traditional
or conventional habits, which make it impossible even to perform the
simple act of dusting the rooms of a small house in less than perhaps an
hour and a half. She has probably also to accomplish, if she happens to
belong to the middle or upper classes, an idle round of so-called
"social duties." She tries to escape, when she can afford it, by
adopting the apparently simple expedient of paying other people to
perform these necessary and unnecessary household duties, but this
expedient fails; the "social duties" increase in the same ratio as the
servants increase and the task of overseeing these latter itself proves
formidable. It is quite impossible for any person under these conditions
to lead a reasonable and wholesome human life. A healthy life is more
difficult to attain for the woman of the ordinary household than for the
worker in a mine, for he at least, when the work of his set is over, has
two-thirds of the twenty-four hours to himself. The woman is bound by a
thousand Lilliputian threads from which there seems no escape. She often
makes frantic efforts to escape, but the combined strength of the
threads generally proves too strong. There can be no doubt that the
present household system is doomed; the higher standard of intelligence
demanded from women, the growth of interest in the problems of domestic
economy, the movement for association of labour, the revolt against the
survivals of barbaric complication in living--all these, which are
symptoms of a great economic revolution, indicate, the approach of a new
period.
The education of women is an essential part of the great movement we are
considering. Women will shortly be voters, and women, at all events in
England, are in a majority. We have to educate our mistresses as we once
had to educate our masters. And the word "education" is here used by no
means in the narrow sense. A woman may be acquainted with Greek and the
higher mathematics, and be as uneducated in the wider relationships of
life as a man in the like case. How much women suffer from this lack of
education may be seen to-day even among those who are counted as
leaders.
There are extravagances in every period of transition. Undoubtedly a
potent factor in bringing about a saner attitude will be the education
of boys and girls together. The lack of early fellowship fosters an
unnatural divergence of aims and ideals, and a consequent lack of
sympathy. It makes possible those abundant foolish generalizations by
men concerning "women," by women concerning "men." St. Augustine, at an
early period of his ardent career, conceived with certain friends the
notion of forming a community having goods in common; the scheme was
almost effected when it was discovered that "those little wives, which
some already had, and others would shortly have," objected, and so it
fell through. Perhaps the _mulierculæ_ were right. It is simply a rather
remote instance of a fundamental divergence amply illustrated before our
eyes. If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each
other's natures with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine
comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth. Another wholesome
reform, promoted by co-education, is the physical education of women. In
the case of boys special attention has generally been given to physical
education, and the lack of it is one among several artificial causes of
that chronic ill-health which so often handicaps women. Women must have
the same education as men, Miss Faithfull shrewdly observes, because
that is sure to be the best. The present education of boys cannot,
however, be counted a model, and the gradual introduction of
co-education will produce many wholesome reforms. If the intimate
association of the sexes destroys what remnant may linger of the
unhealthy ideal of chivalry--according to which a woman was treated as a
cross between an angel and an idiot--that is matter for rejoicing.
Wherever men and women stand in each other's presence the sexual
instinct will always ensure an adequate ideal halo.
III
The chief question that we have to ask when we consider the changing
status of women is: How will it affect the reproduction of the race?
Hunger and love are the two great motor impulses, the ultimate source,
probably, of all other impulses. Hunger--that is to say, what we call
"economic causes"--has, because it is the more widespread and constant,
though not necessarily the more imperious instinct, produced nearly all
the great zoological revolutions, including, as we have seen, the rise
and fall of that phase of human evolution dominated by mother-law. Yet
love has, in the form of sexual selection, even before we reach the
vertebrates, moulded races to the ideal of the female; and reproduction
is always the chief end of nutrition which hunger waits on, the supreme
aim of life everywhere.
If we place on the one side man, as we know him during the historical
period, and on the other, nearly every highly organized member of the
animal family, there appears, speaking roughly and generally, a distinct
difference in the relation which these two motor impulses bear to each
other. Among animals generally, economics are comparatively so simple
that it is possible to satisfy the nutritive instinct without putting
any hard pressure on the spontaneous play of the reproductive instinct.
And nearly everywhere it is the female who has the chief voice in the
establishment of sexual relationships. The males compete for the favour
of the female by the fascination of their odour, or brilliant colour, or
song, or grace, or strength, as revealed in what are usually
mock-combats. The female is, in these respects, comparatively
unaccomplished and comparatively passive. With her rests the final
decision, and only after long hesitation, influenced, it seems, by a
vaguely felt ideal resulting from her contemplation of the rivals, she
calls the male of her choice.[48] A dim instinct seems to warn her of the
pains and cares of maternity, so that only the largest promises of
pleasure can induce her to undertake the function of reproduction. In
civilized man, on the other hand, as we know him, the situation is to
some extent reversed; it is the woman who, by the display of her
attractions, competes for the favour of the man. The final invitation
does not come, as among animals generally, from the female; the decision
rests with the man. It would be a mistake to suppose that this change
reveals the evolution of a superior method; although it has developed
the beauty of women, it has clearly had its origin in economic causes.
The demands of nutrition have overridden those of reproduction; sexual
selection has, to a large extent, given place to natural selection, a
process clearly not for the advantage of the race. The changing status
of women, in bestowing economic independence, will certainly tend to
restore to sexual selection its due weight in human development.
In so doing it will certainly tend also to destroy prostitution, which
is simply one of the forms in which the merging of sexual selection in
natural selection has shown itself. Wherever sexual selection has free
play, unhampered by economic considerations, prostitution is
impossible. The dominant type of marriage is, like prostitution, founded
on economic considerations; the woman often marries chiefly to earn her
living; here, too, we may certainly expect profound modifications. We
have long sought to preserve our social balance by placing an
unreasonable licence in the one scale, an equally unreasonable
abstinence in the other; the economic independence of women, tending to
render both extremes unnecessary, can alone place the sexual
relationships on a sound and free basis.