It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied. Nothing, it has been said, is so serious as l.u.s.t--to use the beautiful term which has been degraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure--and we have now to add that nothing is so full of play as love. Play is primarily the instinctive work of the brain, but it is brain activity united in the subtlest way to bodily activity. In the play-function of s.e.x two forms of activity, physical and psychic, are most exquisitely and variously and harmoniously blended. We here understand best how it is that the brain organs and the s.e.xual organs are, from the physiological standpoint, of equal importance and equal dignity. Thus the adrenal glands, among the most influential of all the ductless glands, are specially and intimately a.s.sociated alike with the brain and the s.e.x organs. As we rise in the animal series, brain and adrenal glands march side by side in developmental increase of size, and at the same time, s.e.xual activity and adrenal activity equally correspond.
Lovers in their play--when they have been liberated from the traditions which bound them to the trivial or the gross conception of play in love--are thus moving amongst the highest human activities, alike of the body and of the soul. They are pa.s.sing to each other the sacramental chalice of that wine which imparts the deepest joy that men and women can know. They are subtly weaving the invisible cords that bind husband and wife together more truly and more firmly than the priest of any church.
And if in the end--as may or may not be--they attain the climax of free and complete union, then their human play has become one with that divine play of creation in which old poets fabled that, out of the dust of the ground and in his own image, some G.o.d of Chaos once created Man.
CHAPTER VII
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE
I
The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the most intimate of all relations. It is a relation which almost amounts to ident.i.ty. Yet it somehow seems so vague, so abstract, as scarcely to concern us at all. It is only lately indeed that there has been formulated even so much as a science to discuss this relationship, and the duties which, when properly understood, it throws upon the individual. Even yet the word "Eugenics," the name of this science, and this art, sometimes arouses a smile. It seems to stand for a modern fad, which the superior person, or even the ordinary plebeian democrat, may pa.s.s by on the other side with his nose raised towards the sky. Modern the science and art of Eugenics certainly seem, though the term is ancient, and the Greeks of cla.s.sic days, as well as their successors to-day, used the word Eugeneia for n.o.bility or good birth. It was chosen by Francis Galton, less than fifty years ago, to express "the effort of Man to improve his own breed."
But the thing the term stands for is, in reality, also far from modern. It is indeed ancient and may even be nearly as old as Man himself.
Consciously or unconsciously, sometimes under pretexts that have disguised his motives even from himself, Man has always been attempting to improve his own quality or at least to maintain it. When he slackens that effort, when he allows his attention to be too exclusively drawn to other ends, he suffers, he becomes decadent, he even tends to die out.
Primitive eugenics had seldom anything to do with what we call "birth-control." One must not say that it never had. Even the mysterious mika operation of so primitive a race as the Australians has been supposed to be a method of controlling conception. But the usual method, even of people highly advanced in culture, has been simpler. They preferred to see the new-born infant before deciding whether it was likely to prove a credit to its parents or to the human race generally, and if it seemed not up to the standard they dealt with it accordingly. At one time that was regarded as a cruel and even inhuman method. To-day, when the most civilised nations of the world have devoted all their best energies to compet.i.tive slaughter, we may have learnt to view the matter differently.
If we can tolerate the wholesale murder and mutilation of the finest specimens of our race in the adult possession of all their apt.i.tudes we cannot easily find anything to disapprove in the merciful disposal of the poorest specimens before they have even attained conscious possession of their senses. But in any case, and whatever we may ourselves be pleased to think or not to think, it is certain that some of the most highly developed peoples of the world have practised infanticide. It is equally certain that the practise has not proved destructive to the emotions of humanity and affection. Even some of the lowest human races,--as we commonly estimate them,--while finding it necessary to put aside a certain proportion of their new-born infants, expend a degree of love and even indulgence on the children they bring up which is rarely found among so-called civilised nations.
There is no need, however, to consider whether or not infanticide is humane. We are all agreed that it is altogether unnecessary, and that it is seldom that even that incipient form of infanticide called abortion, still so popular among us, need be resorted to. Our aim now--so far at all events as mere ideals go--is not to destroy life but to preserve it; we seek to improve the conditions of life and to render unnecessary the premature death of any human creature that has once drawn breath.
It is indeed just here that we find a certain clash between the modern view of life and the view of earlier civilisations. The ancients were less careful than we claim to be of the individual, but they were more careful of the race. They cultivated eugenics after their manner, though it was a manner which we reprobate.[21] We pride ourselves, rightly or wrongly, on our care for the individual; during all the past century we claim to have been strenuously working for an amelioration of the environment which will make life healthier and pleasanter for the individual. But in the concentration of our attention on this altogether desirable end, which we are still far from having adequately attained, we have lost sight of that larger end, the well-being of the race and the amelioration of life itself, not merely of the conditions of life. The most we hope is that somehow the improvement of the conditions of the individual will incidentally improve the stock. These our practical ideals, which have flourished for a century past, arose out of the great French Revolution and were inspired by the maxim of that Revolution, as formulated by Rousseau, that "All men are born equal." That maxim, was overthrown half a century ago; the great biological movement of science, initiated by Darwin, showed that it was untenable. All men are not born equal. Everyone agrees about that now, but nevertheless the momentum of the earlier movement was so powerful that we still go on acting as though all men are, and always will be, born equal, and that we need not trouble ourselves about heredity but only about the environment.
[21] But this statement must not be left without important qualification. Thus the ancient Greeks (as Mossides has shown in _Ja.n.u.s_, 1913), not only their philosophers and statesmen, but also their women, often took the most enlightened interest in eugenics, and, moreover, showed it in practice. They were in many respects far in advance of us. They clearly realised, for instance, the need of a proper interval between conceptions, not only to ensure the health of women, but also the vigour of the offspring. It is natural that among every fine race eugenics should be almost an instinct or they would cease to be a fine race. It is equally natural that among our modern degenerates eugenics is an unspeakable horror, however much, as the psycho-a.n.a.lysts would put it, they rationalise that horror.
The way out of this clash of ideals--which has compelled us to hope impossibilities from the environment because we dreaded what seemed the only alternative--is, as we know, furnished by birth-control. An unqualified reliance on the environment, making it ever easier and easier for the feeblest and most defective to be born and survive, could only, in the long run, lead to the degeneration of the whole race. The knowledge of the practice of birth-control gives us the mastery of all that the ancients gained by infanticide, while yet enabling us to cherish that ideal of the sacredness of human life which we profess to honour so highly. The main difficulty is that it demands a degree of scientific precision which the ancients could not possess and might dispense with, so long as they were able to decide the eugenic claims of the infant by actual inspection. We have to be content to determine not what the infant is but when it be likely to be, and that involves a knowledge of the laws of heredity which we are only learning slowly to acquire. We may all in our humble ways help to increase that knowledge by giving it greater extension and more precision through the observations we are able to make on our own families. To such observations Galton attached great importance and strove in various ways to further them. Detailed records, physical and mental, beginning from birth, are still far from being as common as is desirable, although it is obvious that they possess a permanent personal and family private interest in addition to their more public scientific value. We do not need, and it would indeed be undesirable, to emulate in human breeding the achievements of a Luther Burbank. We have no right to attempt to impose on any human creature an exaggerated and one-sided development. But it is not only our right, it is our duty, or rather one may say, the natural impulse of every rational and humane person, to seek that only such children may be born as will be able to go through life with a reasonable prospect that they will not be heavily handicapped by inborn defect or special liability to some incapacitating disease. What is called "positive" eugenics--the attempt, that is, to breed special qualities--may well be viewed with hesitation. But so-called "negative"
eugenics--the effort to clear all inborn obstacles out of the path of the coming generation--demands our heartiest sympathy and our best co-operation, for as Galton, the founder of modern Eugenics, wrote towards the end of his life of this new science: "Its first object 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." We can seldom be absolutely sure what stocks should not propagate, and what two stocks should on no account be blended, but we can attain reasonable probability, and it is on such probabilities in every department of life that we are always called upon to act.
It is often said--I have said it myself--that birth-control when practised merely as a limitation of the family, scarcely suffices to further the eugenic progress of the race. If it is not deliberately directed towards the elimination of the worst stocks or the worst possibilities in the blending of stocks, it may even tend to diminish the better stocks since it is the better stocks that are least likely to propagate at random. This is true if other conditions remain equal. It is evident, however, that the other conditions will not remain equal, for no evidence has yet been brought forward to show that birth-control, even when practised without regard to eugenic considerations--doubtless the usual rule up to the present--has produced any degeneration of the race. On the contrary, the evidence seems to show that it has improved the race. The example of Holland is often brought forward as evidence in favour of such a tendency of birth-control, since in that country the wide-spread practise of birth-control has been accompanied by an increase in the health and stature of the people, as well as an increase in their numbers to a remarkable degree, for the fall in the birth-rate has been far more than compensated by the fall in the death-rate, while it is said that the average height of the population has increased by four inches. It is, indeed, quite possible to see why, although theoretically a random application of birth-control cannot affect the germinal possibilities of a community, in practise it may improve the somatic conditions under which the germinal elements develop. There will probably be a longer interval between the births of the children, which has been demonstrated by Ewart and others to be an important factor not only in preserving the health of the mother but in increasing the health and size of the child. The diminution in the number of the children renders it possible to bestow a greater amount of care on each child. Moreover, the better economic position of the father, due to the smaller number of individuals he has to support, makes it possible for the family to live under improved conditions as regards nourishment, hygiene, and comfort. The observance of birth-control is thus a far more effective lever for raising the state of the social environment and improving the conditions of breeding, than is direct action on the part of the community in its collective capacity to attain the same end. For however energetic such collective action may be in striving to improve general social conditions by munic.i.p.alising or State-supporting public utilities, it can never adequately counter-balance the excessive burden and wasteful expenditure of force placed on a family by undue child-production. It can only palliate them.
When, however, we have found reason to believe that, even if practised without regard to eugenic considerations, birth-control may yet act beneficially to promote good breeding, we begin to realise how great a power it may possess when consciously and deliberately directed towards that end. In eugenics, as already pointed out, there are two objects that may be aimed at: one called positive eugenics, that seeks to promote the increase of the best stocks amongst us; the other, called negative eugenics, which seeks to promote the decrease of the worst stocks. Our knowledge is still too imperfect to enable us to pursue either of these objects with complete certainty. This is especially so as regards positive eugenics, and since it seems highly undesirable to attempt to breed human beings, as we do animals, for points, when we are in the presence of what seem to us our finest human stocks, physically, morally, and intellectually, it is our wisest course just to leave them alone as much as we can. The best stocks will probably be also those best able to help themselves and in so doing to help others. But that is obviously not so as regards the worst stocks. It is, therefore, fortunate that the aim here seems a little clearer. There are still many abnormal conditions of which we cannot say positively that they are injurious to the race and that we should therefore seek to breed them out. But there are other conditions so obviously of evil import alike to the subjects themselves and to their descendants that we cannot have any reasonable doubt about them. There is, for instance, epilepsy, which is known to be transformed by heredity into various abnormalities dangerous alike to their possessors and to society.
There are also the p.r.o.nounced degrees of feeble-mindedness, which are definitely heritable and not only condemn those who reveal them to a permanent inapt.i.tude for full life, but const.i.tute a subtle poison working through the social atmosphere in all directions and lowering the level of civilisation in the community. Nowhere has this been so thoroughly studied and so clearly proved as in the United States. It is only necessary to mention Dr. C.B. Davenport of the Department of Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor (New York) who has carried on so much research in regard to the heredity of epilepsy and other inheritable abnormal conditions, and Dr. G.o.ddard of Vineland (New Jersey) whose work has ill.u.s.trated so fully the hereditary relationships of feeble-mindedness.
The United States, moreover, has seen the development of the system of social field-work which has rendered possible a more complete knowledge of family heredity than has ever before been possible on a large scale.
It is along such lines as these that our knowledge of the eugenic conditions of life will grow adequate and precise enough to form an effective guide to social conduct. Nature, and a due attention to laws of heredity in life, will then rank in equal honour to our eyes with nurture or that attention to the environmental conditions of life which we already regard as so important. A regard to nurture has led us to spend the greatest care on the preservation not only of the fit but the unfit, while meantime it has wisely suggested to us the desirability of segregating or even of sterilising the unfit. But the study of Nature leads us further and, as Galton said, "Eugenics rests on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and these only of the best stocks." That is to say that the only instrument by which eugenics can be made practically effective in the modern world is birth-control.
It is not scientific research alone, nor even the wide popular diffusion of knowledge, that will suffice to bring eugenics and birth-control, singly or in their due combination, into the course of our daily lives.
They need to be embodied in our instinctive impulses. Galton considered that eugenics must become a factor of religion and be regarded as a sacred and virile creed, while Ellen Key holds that the religions of the past must be superseded by a new religion which will be the awakening of the whole of humanity to a consciousness of the "holiness of generation." For my own part, I scarcely consider that either eugenics or birth-control can be regarded as properly a part of religion. Being of virtue and not of grace they belong more naturally to the sphere of morals. But here they certainly need to go far deeper than the mere intelligence of the mind can take them. They cannot become guides to conduct until their injunctions have been printed on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. The demands of the race must speak from within us, in the voice of conscience which we disobey at our peril. When that happens with regard to ascertained laws of racial well-being we may know that we are truly following, even though not in the letter, those great spirits, like Galton with his intellectual vision and Ellen Key with her inspired enthusiasm, who have pointed out new roads for the enn.o.blement of the race.
II
It may be well, before we go further, to look a little more closely into the suspicion and dislike which eugenics still arouses in many worthy old-fashioned people. To some extent that att.i.tude is excused, not only by the mistakes which in a new and complex science must inevitably be made even by painstaking students, but also by the rash and extravagant proposals of irresponsible and eccentric persons claiming without warrant to speak in the name of eugenics. Two thousand years ago the wild excesses of some early Christians furnished an excuse for the ancient world to view Christianity with contempt, although the extreme absence of such excesses has furnished still better ground for the modern world to maintain the same view. To-day such a work as _Le Haras Humain_ ("The Human Stud-farm") of Dr. Binet-Sangle, putting forward proposals which, whether beneficial or not, will certainly find no one to carry them out, similarly furnishes an excuse to those who would reject eugenics altogether. Utopian schemes have their value; we should be able to find inspiration in the most modern of them, just as we still do in Plato"s immortal _Republic_. But in this, as in other matters, we must exercise a little intelligence. We must not confuse the brilliant excursion of some solitary thinker with the well-grounded proposals of those who are concerned with the sober possibilities of actual life in our own time. People who are incapable of exercising a little shrewd commonsense in the affairs of life, and are in the habit of emptying out the baby with the bath, had better avoid touching the delicate problems connected with practical eugenics.
There is one prejudice already mentioned, due to lack of clear thinking, which deserves more special consideration because it is widespread among the socialistic democracy of several countries as well as among social reformers, and is directed alike against eugenics and birth-control. This prejudice is based on the ground that bad economic conditions and an unwholesome environment are the source of all social evils, and that a better distribution of wealth, or a vast scheme of social welfare, is the one thing necessary, when that is achieved all other things being added unto us, without any further trouble on our part. It is certainly impossible to over-rate the importance of the economic factor in society, or of a good environment. And it is true that eugenics alone, like birth-control alone, can effect little if the economic basis of society is unsound. But it is equally certain that the economic factor can never in itself suffice for fine living or even as a cure-all of social and racial diseases. Its value is not that it can effect these things but that it furnishes the favourable conditions for effecting them. He would be foolish indeed who went to the rich to find the example of good breeding and, as is well known, it is not with the rich that the future of the race lies. The fact is that under any economic system the responsible personal direction of the individual and the family remain equally necessary, and no progress is possible so long as the individual casts all responsibility away from himself on to the social group he forms part of. The social group, after all, is merely himself and the likes of himself. He is merely shifting the burden from his individual self to his collective self, and in so doing he loses more than he gains.
Thus there is always a sound core in that Individualism which has been preached so long and practised so energetically, especially in English-speaking lands, however great the abuse involved in its excesses.
It is still in the name of Individualism that the most brilliant antagonists of eugenics and of birth-control are wont to direct their attacks. The counsel of self-control and foresight in procreation, the restriction necessary to purify and raise the standard of the race, seem to the narrow and short-sighted advocates of a great principle an unwarrantable violation of the sacred rights of their individual liberty.
They have not yet grasped the elementary fact that the rights of the individual are the rights of all individuals, and that Individualism itself calls for a limitation of the freedom of the individual.
That is why even the most uncompromising Individualist must recognise an element of altruism, call it whatever name you will, Collectivism, Socialism, Communism, or merely the vague and long-suffering term, Democracy. One cannot a.s.sume Individualism for oneself unless one a.s.sumes it for the many. That is a great truth which goes to the heart of the whole complex problem of eugenics and birth-control. As Perrycoste has well argued,[22] biology is altogether against the narrow Individualism which seeks to oppose Collective Individualism. For if, in accordance with the most careful modern investigations, we recognise that heredity is supreme, that the qualities we have inherited from our ancestors count for more in our lives than anything we have acquired by our own personal efforts, then we have to admit that the capable man"s wealth is more the community"s property than his own, and, similarly, the incapable man"s poverty is more the community"s concern than his own. So that neither the capable nor the incapable are ent.i.tled to an unqualified power of freedom, and neither, likewise, are justly liable to be burdened by an unqualified responsibility. It is the duty of the community to draw on the powers of the fit and equally its duty to care for the unfit. In this way, Perrycoste, whose att.i.tude is that of the Rationalist, is led by science to a conclusion which is that of the Christian. We are all members each of the other, and still more are we members of those who went before us. The generations preceding us have not died to themselves but live in us, and we, whom they produced, live in each other and in those who will come after us. The problems of eugenics and of birth-control affect us all. In the face of these problems it is the voice of Man that speaks: "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me." However firmly we base ourselves on the principles of Individualism we are inevitably brought to the fundamental facts of eugenics which, if we fail to recognise, our Individualism becomes of no effect.
[22] F.H. Perrycoste, "Politics and Science," _Science Progress_, Jan., 1920.
But it is the same with Socialism, or by whatever name we chose to call the Collectivist activities of the community in social reform. Socialism also brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if we neglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments.
It is the more necessary to point this out since it is on the Socialist and Democratic side, much more frequently than on the Individualist side, that we find an indifferent or positively hostile att.i.tude towards eugenic considerations. Put social conditions on a sound basis, the people on this side often say, let all receive an adequate economic return for their work and be recognised as having a claim for an adequate share in the products of society, and there is no need to worry about the race or about the need for birth-control, all will go well of itself. There is not the slightest ground for any such comfortable belief.
This has been well shown by Dr. Eden Paul, himself a Socialist and even in sympathy with the extreme Left.[23] After setting forth the present conditions, with our excessive elimination of higher types, and undue multiplication of lower types, the racial degeneration caused by the faulty and anti-selective working of the marriage system in modern capitalist society, so that in our existing civilisation unconscious natural selection has largely ceased to work towards the improvement of the human breed, he proceeds to consider the possible remedies. The frequent impatience of the Socialist, and Social Reformers generally, with eugenic proposals has a certain degree of justification in the fact that many evils thoughtlessly attributed to inferiority of stock are really due to bad environment. But when the environment has been so far improved that all defects due to its badness are removed, we shall be face to face, without possibility of doubt, with bad inheritance as the sole remaining factor in the production of inefficient and anti-social members of the community. A socialist community must recognise the right to work and to maintenance of all its members, Eden Paul points out, but, he adds, a community which allowed this right to all defectives without imposing any restrictions in their perpetuation of themselves would deserve all the evils that would fall upon it. It is quite clear how intolerable the burden of these evils would be. A State that provided an adequate subsistence for all alike, the inefficient as well as the efficient, would encourage a racial degeneration, from excessive multiplication of the unfit, far more dangerous even than that of to-day.[24] Ability to earn the minimum wage, Eden Paul argues in agreement with H.G. Wells, must be the condition of the right to become a parent. "Unless the socialist is a eugenist as well, the socialist state will speedily perish from racial degradation."
[23] In an essay on "Eugenics, Birth Control, and Socialism" in _Population and Birth-Control: A Symposium_, edited by Eden and Cedar Paul.
[24] This is here and there beginning to be recognised. Thus, not long ago, the Hereford War Pensions Committee resolved not to issue a maternal grant for children born during a prolonged period of treatment allowance. Such a measure of course fails to meet the situation, for it is obvious that, when born, the children must be cared for. But it shows a glimmering recognition of the facts, and the people capable of such a recognition will, in time, come to see that the right way of meeting the situation is, not to neglect the children, but to prevent their conception. Mothers" Clinics for instruction in such prevention are now being established in England, through the advocacy of Mrs. Margaret Sanger and the actual initiative of Dr. Marie Stopes.
Thus it is essential that the eugenist, dealing with the hereditary factor of life, and the social reformer or socialist, dealing with the environmental factor, should supplement each other"s work. Neither can attain his end without the other"s help, for the eugenist alone cannot overcome the environmental factor, even perhaps increases it if he is an individualist in the narrow sense, and the socialist alone cannot overcome the bad hereditary factor, and will even increase it if he is no more than a socialist. The more socialist our State becomes the more essential becomes at the same time the adoption of eugenic practices as a working part of the State. "Socialism and eugenics must go hand in hand."
Perrycoste from his own point of view has independently reached the same conclusions. He is not, indeed, concerned with any "Socialist" community of the future but with the dangerous results which must inevitably follow the already established methods of social reform in our modern civilised States unless they are speedily checked by effective action based on eugenic knowledge. "If," he observes, "the community is to shoulder half or three-quarters of the burden of sustaining those degenerates who, through no fault of their own, are congenitally incompetent to maintain themselves in decent comfort, and is to render the life-pilgrimage of these unfortunates tolerable instead of a dreary nightmare, if it is to a.s.sume paternal charge of all the tens or hundreds of thousands of children whose parents cannot or will not provide adequately for them and is to guarantee to all such children as much education as they are capable of receiving, and a really fair start in life: then in sheer self-preservation the community must insist on, and rigidly enforce, its absolute claim to secure that no degeneracy or inheritable congenital defects shall persist beyond the present generation of degenerates, and that the community of fifty or seventy years hence shall have no incubus of mentally, or morally, or even physically, degenerate members--none but a few occasional sporadic morbid "sports" from the normal, which it, in turn, may effectively prevent from handing on their like." Unless the problem is squarely faced, Perrycoste concludes, national deterioration must increase and a permanently successful collectivist society is inherently impossible.
We are not now concerned with the details of any policy of eugenics and of birth-control, which I couple together because although a random birth-control by no means involves much, if any, eugenic progress, it is not easy under modern conditions to conceive any practical or effective policy of eugenics except through the instrumentation of birth-control. We here take it for granted that in this field the slow progress of scientific knowledge must be our guide. Premature legislation, rash and uninstructed action, will not lead to progress but are more likely to delay it. Yet even with imperfect knowledge, it is already of the first importance to evoke interest in the great issue here at stake and to do all that we can to arouse the individual conscience of every man and woman to his or her personal responsibility in this matter. That is here all taken for granted.
It seems necessary to consider the political aspect of eugenics because that aspect is frequently invoked, and a man"s att.i.tude towards this question is frequently determined beforehand by what he considers that Individualism or Socialism demands. We see that when the question is driven home our political att.i.tude makes no difference. It is only a shallow Individualism, it is only a still more shallow Socialism, which imagines that under modern social conditions the fundamental racial questions can be left to answer themselves.
III
Many years before the Great War, in all the most civilised countries of the World, there were those who raised the cry of "Race-Suicide!" In America this cry was more especially popularised by the powerful voice of Theodore Roosevelt, but in European countries there were similar voices raised in tones of virtuous indignation to denounce the same crime. Since the war other voices have been raised in even more high-pitched and feverish tones, but now they are less weighty and responsible voices, since to those who realise that at present there is not food enough to keep the population of the world from starvation it seems hardly compatible with sanity to advocate an increased rate of human production.
Now, though it is easy to do so, we must not belittle this cry of "Race-Suicide!" It is not usually accompanied by definite argument, but it a.s.sumes that birth-control is the method of such suicide, and that the first and most immediately dangerous result is that one"s own nation, whichever that may be, is placed in a position of alarming military inferiority to other nations, as a step towards the final extinction. It is useless to deny that it really is a serious matter if there is danger of the speedy disappearance of the human race from the earth by its own voluntary and deliberate action, and that within a measurable period of time--for if it were an immeasurable period there would be no occasion for any acute anxiety--the last man will perish from the world. This is what "Race-Suicide" means, and we must face the fact squarely.
It can scarcely be said, however, that the meaning of "Race-Suicide" has actually been squarely faced by those who have most vehemently raised that cry. Translated into more definite and precise terms this cry means, and is intended to mean: "We want more births." That is what it definitely means, and sometimes in the minds of those who make this demand it seems also to imply nothing more. Yet it implies a great number of other things.
It implies certain strain and probable ill-health on the mothers, it implies distress and disorder in the family, it implies, even if the additional child survives, a more acute industrial struggle, and it further involves in this case, by the stimulus it gives to over-population, the perpetual menace of militarism and war. What, however, even at the outset, more births most distinctly and most unquestionably imply is more deaths. It is nowadays so well known that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a high death-rate--the exceptions are too few to need attention--that it is unnecessary to adduce further evidence. It is only the intoxicated enthusiasts of the "Race-Suicide" cry who are able to overlook a fact of which they can hardly be ignorant. The model which they hold up for the public"s inspiration has on the obverse "More Births!" But on the reverse it bears "More Deaths!" It would be helpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts"
own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round and slightly vary the monotony of their propaganda by changing its form and crying out for "More Deaths!" "It is a hard thing," said Johnny Dunn, "for a man that has a house full of children to be left to the mercy of Almighty G.o.d."
If, however, we wish to consider the real significance of the facts, without regard for the wild cries of ignorant cranks, it is scarcely necessary to point out here that neither the birth-rate taken by itself, nor the death-rate taken by itself, will suffice to give us any measure even of the growth of the population, to say nothing of the progress of civilisation or the happiness of humanity. It is obvious that we must consider both gains and losses, and put one against the other, if we wish to ascertain the net result. We may roughly get a notion of what that result is by deducting the death-rate from the birth-rate and calling the remainder the survival-rate. If we are really concerned with the question of the alleged suicide of the race, and do not wish to be befooled, we must pay little attention to the birth-rate, for that by itself means nothing: we must concentrate on the survival-rate. Then we may soon convince ourselves, not only that the human race is not committing suicide, but that not even a single one of the so-called civilised nations of which it is mainly composed is committing suicide. Quite the contrary!
Every one of them, even France, where this peculiar "suicide" is supposed to be most actively at work, is yearly increasing in numbers.
It is interesting to note, moreover, that the French have been increasing faster, that is to say the survival-rate has been higher in recent years just before the war, when the birth-rate was at its lowest, than they were twenty years earlier, with a higher birth-rate. And if we take a wider sweep and consider the growth of the French population towards the end of the eighteenth century, we find the birth-rate estimated at the very high figure of 40. But the death-rate was nearly as high, the average duration of life was only half what it is now. So that the survival-rate in France at that time, with widely different rates of birth and death, was not much unlike it is now. The recent French birth-rate of 19 and less, which automatically causes the "Race-Suicide" marionette to dance with rage, is producing not far from the same result in growth of the population--we are not here concerned with the enormous difference in well being and happiness--as the extremely high rate of 40 which sends our marionettes leaping to the sky with joy. In war-time England, in 1917, the birth-rate sank to 17.8, yet the death-rate was at 14 and the increase of the population continued. The more the human race commits this kind of suicide, one is tempted to exclaim, the faster it grows!
It is, however, in the New World--as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand--that we find the most impressive evidence of the real criteria of the growth in population set up for judgment on the racial suicide cranks.
Canadian statistics bring out many points instructive even in their variation. Here we see not only unusual curves of rise and fall, but also p.r.o.nounced differences, due to the special peculiarities of the French population, most clearly in the Province of Quebec but also in some parts of the Province of Ontario. In Quebec the birth-rate some years ago was 35, and the death-rate 21, both rates high, and the survival-rate high at 14; recently the birth-rate has risen to 37 and the death-rate fallen to 17, with the result that the survival-rate of 20 is the highest in the world, though it must be noted that the high birth-rate is not likely to last long, since in Quebec, as elsewhere in the world, increasing urbanisation causes a decreasing birth-rate. In mainly English-speaking Ontario the birth-rate is much lower, about 24, but the death-rate is also lower, about 14, so that the fairly considerable survival-rate of 10 is obtained. But we note the highly significant fact that some thirty years or more ago the birth-rate was much lower, about 19, and yet the survival-rate was almost 9, nearly as high as to-day! The death-rate was then at 10, and nothing could be more instructive as to the real relationship that holds in this matter. There has been a great rise in the birth-rate and the only result, as someone has remarked, is a great increase in the population of the grave-yards. Equally instructive is it to compare various cities in this same Province, living under the same laws, and fairly similar social conditions. In the report of the Registrar-General of Ontario for 1916 I find that highest in birth-rate of cities in the Province stands Ottawa with a very considerable French population. But first also stands the same city for infant mortality, which is three times greater than in some other cities in the Province with a low birth-rate. Sault Ste. Marie, again with an enormous birth-rate, stands third for infant mortality. Canada shows us that, even if we regard the crude desire for a large growth of population as reasonable--and that is a considerable a.s.sumption--a high birth-rate is an uncertain prop to rest on.
Canada is an instructive example because we have some ground for believing that the difference between the English-speaking and French-speaking populations--the greater care of the former in procreation and the more recklessly destructive methods of the latter in attaining the same ends--are due to their different att.i.tudes towards the use of methods of birth-control. What the result of a general use of such methods is we know from the example already mentioned of Holland, where they are taught, officially recognised, and in general use, not only among the rich but among the poor. The result is that the birth-rate has been falling slowly and steadily for forty years. But the death-rate has also been falling and at a greater rate. So that the more the birth-rate has fallen the higher has been the rate of increase among the population.
It is perhaps in Australia and New Zealand that we find the most satisfactory proofs of the benefits of a falling birth-rate in relation to "Race-Suicide." The evidence may well appeal to us the more since it is precisely here that the race-suicide fanatic finds freest scope for his wrath. He looks gleefully at China with its prolific women, at Russia with its magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsense about birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is choked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of "Race-Suicide"
nearly in sight and the spectre of the Last Man rising before him. For there is no doubt about it, Australia and New Zealand contain a population which is gradually reaching the highest point yet known of democratic organisation and general social well-being, and the birth-rate has been falling with terrific speed. Sixty-years ago in the Australian Commonwealth it was nearly 44, only forty years ago in New Zealand it was 42. Now it is only about 26 in both lands. Yet the survival-rate, the actual growth of the population, is not so very much less with this low birth-rate than it was with the high birth-rate. For the death-rate has also fallen in both lands to about 10 (in New Zealand to 9) which is lower than any other country in the world. The result is that Australia and New Zealand, where (so it is claimed) preventives of conception are hawked from door to door, instead of being awful examples of "Race-Suicide,"
actually present the highest rate of race-increase in the world (only excepting Canada, where it is less firmly and less healthily based), nearly twice that of Great Britain and able at the present rate to double itself every 44 years. So much for "Race-Suicide."