It may be fitting, at this point, to refer to the experiment of the Oneida Community in establishing a system of scientific propagation, under the guidance of a man whose ability and distinction as a pioneer are only to-day beginning to be adequately recognized. John Humphrey Noyes was too far ahead of his own day to be recognized at his true worth; at the most, he was regarded as the sagacious and successful founder of a sect, and his attempts to apply eugenics to life only aroused ridicule and persecution, so that he was, unfortunately, compelled by outside pressure to bring a most instructive experiment to a premature end. His aim and principle are set forth in an Essay on Scientific Propagation, printed some forty years ago, which discusses problems that are only now beginning to attract the attention of the practical man, as within the range of social politics. When Noyes turned his vigorous and practical mind to the question of eugenics, that question was exclusively in the hands of scientific men, who felt all the natural timidity of the scientific man towards the realization of his proposals, and who were not prepared to depart a hair"s breadth from the conventional customs of their time. The experiment of Noyes, at Oneida, marked a new stage in the history of eugenics; whatever might be the value of the experiment-and a first experiment cannot well be final-with Noyes the questions of eugenics pa.s.sed beyond the purely academic stage in which, from the time of Plato, they had peacefully reposed. "It is becoming clear," Noyes states at the outset, "that the foundations of scientific society are to be laid in the scientific propagation of human beings." In doing this, we must attend to two things: blood (or heredity) and training; and he puts blood first. In that, he was at one with the most recent biometrical eugenists of to-day ("the nation has for years been putting its money on "Environment," when "Heredity" wins in a canter," as Karl Pearson prefers to put it), and at the same time revealed the breadth of his vision in comparison with the ordinary social reformer, who, in that day, was usually a fanatical believer in the influence of training and surroundings. Noyes sets forth the position of Darwin on the principles of breeding, and the step beyond Darwin, which had been taken by Galton. He then remarks that, when Galton comes to the point where it is necessary to advance from theory to the duties the theory suggests, he "subsides into the meekest conservatism." (It must be remembered that this was written at an early stage in Galton"s work.) This conclusion was entirely opposed to Noyes" practical and religious temperament. "Duty is plain; we say we ought to do it-we want to do it; but we cannot. The law of G.o.d urges us on; but the law of society holds us back. The boldest course is the safest. Let us take an honest and steady look at the law. It is only in the timidity of ignorance that the duty seems impracticable." Noyes antic.i.p.ated Galton in regarding eugenics as a matter of religion.
Noyes proposed to term the work of modern science in propagation "Stirpiculture," in which he has sometimes been followed by others. He considered that it is the business of the stirpiculturist to keep in view both quant.i.ty and quality of stocks, and he held that, without diminishing quant.i.ty, it was possible to raise the quality by exercising a very stringent discrimination in selecting males. At this point, Noyes has been supported in recent years by Karl Pearson and others, who have shown that only a relatively small portion of a population is needed to produce the next generation, and that, in fact, twelve per cent. of one generation in man produces fifty per cent. of the next generation. What we need to ensure is that this small reproducing section of the population shall be the best adapted for the purpose. "The quant.i.ty of production will be in direct proportion to the number of fertile females," as Noyes saw the question, "and the value produced, so far as it depends on selection, will be nearly in inverse proportion to the number of fertilizing males." In this matter, Noyes antic.i.p.ated Ehrenfels. The two principles to be held in mind were, "Breed from the best," and "Breed in-and-in," with a cautious and occasional introduction of new strains. (It may be noted that Reibmayr, in his recent Entwicklungsgeschichte des Genics und Talentes, argues that the superior races, and superior individuals, in the human species, have been produced by an unconscious adherence to exactly these principles.) "By segregating superior families, and by breeding these in-and-in, superior varieties of human beings might be produced, which would be comparable to the thoroughbreds in all the domestic races." He ill.u.s.trates this by the early history of the Jews.
Noyes finally criticises the present method, or lack of method, in matters of propagation. Our marriage system, he states, "leaves mating to be determined by a general scramble." By ignoring, also, the great difference between the s.e.xes in reproductive power, it "restricts each man, whatever may be his potency and his value, to the amount of production of which one woman, chosen blindly, may be capable." Moreover, he continues, "practically it discriminates against the best, and in favor of the worst; for, while the good man will be limited by his conscience to what the law allows, the bad man, free from moral check, will distribute his seed beyond the legal limits, as widely as he dares." "We are safe every way in saying that there is no possibility of carrying the two precepts of scientific propagation into an inst.i.tution which pretends to no discrimination, allows no suppression, gives no more liberty to the best than to the worst, and which, in fact, must inevitably discriminate the wrong way, so long as the inferior cla.s.ses are most prolific and least amenable to the admonitions of science and morality." In modifying our s.e.xual inst.i.tutions, Noyes insists there are two essential points to remember: the preservation of liberty, and the preservation of the home. There must be no compulsion about human scientific propagation; it must be autonomous, directed by self-government, "by the free choice of those who love science well enough to "make themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven"s sake."" The home, also, must be preserved, since "marriage is the best thing for man as he is;" but it is necessary to enlarge the home, for, "if all could learn to love other children than their own, there would be nothing to hinder scientific propagation in the midst of homes far better than any that now exist."
This memorable pamphlet contains no exposition of the precise measures adopted by the Oneida Community to carry out these principles. The two essential points were, as we know, "male continence" (see ante p. 553), and the enlarged family, in which all the men were the actual or potential mates of all the women, but no union for propagation took place, except as the result of reason and deliberate resolve. "The community," says H. J. Seymour, one of the original members (The Oneida Community, 1894, p. 5), "was a family, as distinctly separated from surrounding society as ordinary households. The tie that bound it together was as permanent, and at least as sacred, as that of marriage. Every man"s care, and the whole of the common property, was pledged for the maintenance and protection of the women, and the support and education of the children." It is not probable that the Oneida Community presented in detail the model to which human society generally will conform. But even at the lowest estimate, its success showed, as Lord Morely has pointed out (Diderot, vol. ii, p. 19), "how modifiable are some of these facts of existing human character which are vulgarly deemed to be ultimate and ineradicable," and that "the discipline of the appet.i.tes and affections of s.e.x," on which the future of civilization largely rests, is very far from an impossibility.
In many respects, the Oneida Community was ahead of its time,-and even of ours,-but it is interesting to note that, in the matter of the control of conception, our marriage system has come into line with the theory and practice of Oneida; it cannot, indeed, be said that we always control conception in accordance with eugenic principles, but the fact that such control has now become a generally accepted habit of civilization, to some extent deprives Noyes" criticism of our marriage system of the force it possessed half a century ago. Another change in our customs-the advocacy, and even the practice, of abortion and castration-would not have met with his approval; he was strongly opposed to both, and with the high moral level that ruled his community, neither was necessary to the maintenance of the stirpiculture that prevailed.
The Oneida Community endured for the s.p.a.ce of one generation, and came to an end in 1879, by no means through a recognition of failure, but by a wise deference to external pressure. Its members, many of them highly educated, continued to cherish the memory of the practices and ideals of the Community. Noyes Miller (the author of The Strike of a s.e.x, and Zuga.s.sant"s Discovery) to the last, looked with quiet confidence to the time when, as he antic.i.p.ated, the great discovery of Noyes would be accepted and adopted by the world at large. Another member of the Community (Henry J. Seymour) wrote of the Community long afterwards that "It was an antic.i.p.ation and imperfect miniature of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth."
Perhaps the commonest type of proposal or attempt to improve the biological level of the race is by the exclusion of certain cla.s.ses of degenerates from marriage, or by the encouragement of better cla.s.ses of the community to marry. This seems to be, at present, the most popular form of eugenics, and in so far as it is not effected by compulsion but is the outcome of a voluntary resolve to treat the question of the creation of the race with the jealous care and guardianship which so tremendously serious, so G.o.dlike, a task involves, it has much to be said in its favor and nothing against it.
But it is quite another matter when the attempt is made to regulate such an inst.i.tution as marriage by law. In the first place we do not yet know enough about the principles of heredity and the transmissibility of pathological states to enable us to formulate sound legislative proposals on this basis. Even so comparatively simple a matter as the relationship of tuberculosis to heredity can scarcely be said to be a matter of common agreement, even if it can yet be claimed that we possess adequate material on which to attain a common agreement. Supposing, moreover, that our knowledge on all these questions were far more advanced than it is, we still should not have attained a position in which we could lay down general propositions regarding the desirability or the undesirability of certain cla.s.ses of persons procreating. The question is necessarily an individual question, and it can only be decided when all the circ.u.mstances of the individual case have been fairly pa.s.sed in review.
The objection to any legislative and compulsory regulation of the right to marry is, however, much more fundamental than the consideration that our knowledge is at present inadequate. It lies in the extraordinary confusion, in the minds of those who advocate such legislation, between legal marriage and procreation. The persons who fall into such confusion have not yet learnt the alphabet of the subject they presume to dictate about, and are no more competent to legislate than a child who cannot tell A from B is competent to read.
Marriage, in so far as it is the partnership for mutual help and consolation of two people who in such partnership are free, if they please, to exercise s.e.xual union, is an elementary right of every person who is able to reason, who is guilty of no fraud or concealment, and who is not likely to injure the partner selected, for in that case society is ent.i.tled to interfere by virtue of its duty to protect its members. But the right to marry, thus understood, in no way involves the right to procreate. For while marriage per se only affects the two individuals concerned, and in no way affects the State, procreation, on the other hand, primarily affects the community which is ultimately made up of procreated persons, and only secondarily affects the two individuals who are the instruments of procreation. So that just as the individual couple has the first right in the question of marriage, the State has the first right in the question of procreation. The State is just as incompetent to lay down the law about marriage as the individual is to lay down the law about procreation.
That, however, is only one-half of the folly committed by those who would select the candidates for matrimony by statute. Let us suppose-as is not indeed easy to suppose-that a community will meekly accept the abstract prohibitions of the statute book and quietly go home again when the registrar of marriages informs them that they are shut out from legal matrimony by the new table of prohibited degrees. An explicit prohibition to procreate within marriage is an implicit permission to procreate outside marriage. Thus the undesirable procreation, instead of being carried out under the least dangerous conditions, is carried out under the most dangerous conditions, and the net result to the community is not a gain but a loss.
What seems usually to happen, in the presence of a formal legislative prohibition against the marriage of a particular cla.s.s, is a combination of various evils. In part the law becomes a dead letter, in part it is evaded by skill and fraud, in part it is obeyed to give rise to worse evils. This happened, for instance, in the Terek district of the Caucasus where, on the demand of a medical committee, priests were prohibited from marrying persons among whose relatives or ancestry any cases of leprosy had occurred. So much and such various mischief was caused by this order that it was speedily withdrawn.[452]
If we remember that the Catholic Church was occupied for more than a thousand years in the attempt to impose the prohibition of marriage on its priesthood,-an educated and trained body of men, who had every spiritual and worldly motive to accept the prohibition, and were, moreover, brought up to regard asceticism as the best ideal in life,[453]-we may realize how absurd it is to attempt to gain the same end by mere casual prohibitions issued to untrained people with no motives to obey such prohibitions, and no ideals of celibacy.
The hopelessness and even absurdity of effecting the eugenic improvement of the race by merely placing on the statute book prohibitions to certain cla.s.ses of people to enter the legal bonds of matrimony as at present const.i.tuted, reveals the weakness of those who undervalue the eugenic importance of environment. Those who affirm that heredity is everything and environment nothing seem strangely to forget that it is precisely the lower cla.s.ses-those who are most subjected to the influence of bad environment-who procreate most copiously, most recklessly, and most disastrously. The restraint of procreation, and a concomitant regard for heredity, increase pari pa.s.su with improvement of the environment and rise in social well-being. If even already it can be said that probably fifty per cent. of s.e.xual intercourse-perhaps the most procreatively productive moiety-takes place outside legal marriage, it becomes obvious that statutory prohibition to the unfit cla.s.ses to refrain from legal marriage merely involves their joining the procreating cla.s.ses outside legal matrimony. It is also clear that if we are to neglect the factor of environment, and leave the lower social cla.s.ses to the ignorance and recklessness which are the result of such environment, the only practical method of eugenics left open is that by castration and abortion. But this method-if applied on a wholesale scale as it would need to be[454] and without reference to the consent of the individual-is entirely opposed to modern democratic feeling. Thus those short-sighted eugenists who overlook the importance of environment are overlooking the only practical channel through which their aims can be realized. Attention to procreation and attention to environment are not, as some have supposed, antagonistic, but they play harmoniously into each other"s hands. The care for environment leads to a restraint on reckless procreation, and the restraint of procreation leads to improved environment.
Legislation on marriage, to be effectual, must be enacted in the home, in the school, in the doctor"s consulting room. Force is helpless here; it is education that is needed, not merely instruction, but the education of the conscience and will, and the training of the emotions.
Legal action may come in to further this process of education, though it cannot replace it. Thus it is very desirable that when there has been a concealment of serious disease by a party to a marriage such concealment should be a ground for divorce. Epilepsy may be taken as typical of the diseases which should be a bar to procreation, and their concealment equivalent to an annulment of marriage.[455] In the United States the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut laid it down in 1906 that the Superior Court has the power to pa.s.s a decree of divorce when one of the parties has concealed the existence of epilepsy. This weighty deliverence, it has been well said,[456] marks a forward step in human progress. There are many other seriously pathological conditions in which divorce should be p.r.o.nounced, or indeed, occur automatically, except when procreation has been renounced, for in that case the State is no longer concerned in the relationship, except to punish any fraud committed by concealment.
The demand that a medical certificate of health should be compulsory on marriage, has been especially made in France. In 1858, Diday, of Lyons, proposed, indeed, that all persons, without exception, should be compelled to possess a certificate of health and disease, a kind of sanitary pa.s.sport. In 1872, Bertillon (Art. "Demographic," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales) advocated the registration, at marriage, of the chief anthropological and pathological traits of the contracting parties (height, weight, color of hair and eyes, muscular force, size of head, condition of vision, hearing, etc., deformities and defects, etc.), not so much, however, for the end of preventing undesirable marriages, as to facilitate the study and comparison of human groups at particular periods. Subsequent demands, of a more limited and partial character, for legal medical certificates as a condition of marriage, have been made by Fournier (Syphilis et Mariage, 1890), Cazalis (Le Science et le Mariage, 1890), and Jullien (Blenorrhagie et Mariage, 1898). In Austria, Haskovec, of Prague ("Contrat Matrimonial et L"Hygiene Publique," Comptes-rendus Congres International de Medecine, Lisbon, 1906, Section VII, p. 600), argues that, on marriage, a medical certificate should be presented, showing that the subject is exempt from tuberculosis, alcoholism, syphilis, gonorrha, severe mental, or nervous, or other degenerative state, likely to be injurious to the other partner, or to the offspring. In America, Rosenberg and Aronstam argue that every candidate for marriage, male or female, should undergo a strict examination by a competent board of medical examiners, concerning (1) Family and Past History (syphilis, consumption, alcoholism, nervous, and mental diseases), and (2) Status Presens (thorough examination of all the organs); if satisfactory, a certificate of matrimonial eligibility would then be granted. It is pointed out that a measure of this kind would render unnecessary the acts pa.s.sed by some States for the punishment by fine, or imprisonment, of the concealment of disease. Ellen Key also considers (Liebe und Ehe, p. 436) that each party at marriage should produce a certificate of health. "It seems to me just as necessary," she remarks, elsewhere (Century of the Child, Ch. I), "to demand medical testimony concerning capacity for marriage, as concerning capacity for military service. In the one case, it is a matter of giving life; in the other, of taking it, although certainly the latter occasion has. .h.i.therto been considered as much the more serious."
The certificate, as usually advocated, would be a private but necessary legitimation of the marriage in the eyes of the civil and religious authorities. Such a step, being required for the protection alike of the conjugal partner and of posterity, would involve a new legal organization of the matrimonial contract. That such demands are so frequently made, is a significant sign of the growth of moral consciousness in the community, and it is good that the public should be made acquainted with the urgent need for them. But it is highly undesirable that they should, at present, or, perhaps, ever, be embodied in legal codes. What is needed is the cultivation of the feeling of individual responsibility, and the development of social antagonism towards those individuals who fail to recognize their responsibility. It is the reality of marriage, and not its mere legal forms, that it is necessary to act upon.
The voluntary method is the only sound way of approach in this matter. Duclaux considered that the candidate for marriage should possess a certificate of health in much the same way as the candidate for life a.s.surance, the question of professional secrecy, as well as that of compulsion, no more coming into one question than into the other. There is no reason why such certificates, of an entirely voluntary character, should not become customary among those persons who are sufficiently enlightened to realize all the grave personal, family, and social issues involved in marriage. The system of eugenic certification, as originated and developed by Galton, will const.i.tute a valuable instrument for raising the moral consciousness in this matter. Galton"s eugenic certificates would deal mainly with the natural virtues of superior hereditary breed-"the public recognition of a natural n.o.bility"-but they would include the question of personal health and personal apt.i.tude.[457]
To demand compulsory certificates of health at marriage is indeed to begin at the wrong end. It would not only lead to evasions and antagonisms but would probably call forth a reaction. It is first necessary to create an enthusiasm for health, a moral conscience in matters of procreation, together with, on the scientific side, a general habit of registering the anthropological, psychological, and pathological data concerning the individual, from birth onwards, altogether apart from marriage. The earlier demands of Diday and Bertillon were thus not only on a sounder but also a more practicable basis. If such records were kept from birth for every child, there would be no need for special examination at marriage, and many incidental ends would be gained. There is difficulty at present in obtaining such records from the moment of birth, and, so far as I am aware, no attempts have yet been made to establish their systematic registration. But it is quite possible to begin at the beginning of school life, and this is now done at many schools and colleges in England, America, and elsewhere, more especially as regards anthropological, physiological, and psychological data, each child being submitted to a thorough and searching anthropometric examination, and thus furnished with a systematic statement of his physical condition.[458] This examination needs to be standardized and generalized, and repeated at fixed intervals. "Every individual child," as is truly stated by Dr. Dukes, the Physician to Rugby School, "on his entrance to a public school should be as carefully and as thoroughly examined as if it were for life insurance." If this procedure were general from an early age, there would be no hardship in the production of the record at marriage, and no opportunity for fraud. The dossier of each person might well be registered by the State, as wills already are, and, as in the case of wills, become freely open to students when a century had elapsed. Until this has been done during several centuries our knowledge of eugenics will remain rudimentary.
There can be little doubt that the eugenic att.i.tude towards marriage, and the responsibility of the individual for the future of the race, is becoming more recognized. It is constantly happening that persons, about to marry, approach the physician in a state of serious anxiety on this point. Urquhart, indeed (Journal of Mental Science, April, 1907, p. 277), believes that marriages are seldom broken off on this ground; this seems, however, too pessimistic a view, and even when the marriage is not broken off the resolve is often made to avoid procreation. Clouston, who emphasizes (Hygiene of the Mind, p. 74) the importance of "inquiries by each of the parties to the life-contract, by their parents and their doctors, as to heredity, temperament, and health," is more hopeful of the results than Urquhart. "I have been very much impressed, of late years," he writes (Journal of Mental Science, Oct., 1907, p. 710), "with the way in which this subject is taking possession of intelligent people, by the number of times one is consulted by young men and young women, proposing to marry, or by their fathers or mothers. I used to have the feeling in the back of my mind, when I was consulted, that it did not matter what I said, it would not make any difference. But it is making a difference; and I, and others, could tell of scores of marriages which were put off in consequence of psychiatric medical advice."
Ellen Key, also, refers to the growing tendency among both men and women, to be influenced by eugenic consideration in forming partnerships for life (Century of the Child, Ch. I). The recognition of the eugenic att.i.tude towards marriage, the quickening of the social and individual conscience in matters of heredity, as also the systematic introduction of certification and registration, will be furthered by the growing tendency to the socialization of medicine, and, indeed, in its absence would be impossible. (See e.g., Havelock Ellis, The Nationalization of Health.) The growth of the State Medical Organization of Health is steady and continuous, and is constantly covering a larger field. The day of the private pract.i.tioner of medicine-who was treated, as Duclaux (L"Hygiene Sociale, p. 263) put it, "like a grocer, whose shop the customer may enter and leave as he pleases, and when he pleases"-will, doubtless, soon be over. It is now beginning to be felt that health is far too serious a matter, not only from the individual but also from the social point of view, to be left to private caprice. There is, indeed, a tendency, in some quarters, to fear that some day society may rush to the opposite extreme, and bow before medicine with the same unreasoning deference that it once bowed before theology. That danger is still very remote, nor is it likely, indeed, that medicine will ever claim any authority of this kind. The spirit of medicine has, notoriously, been rather towards the a.s.sertion of scepticism than of dogma, and the fanatics in this field will always be in a hopelessly small minority.
The general introduction of authentic personal records covering all essential data-hereditary, anthropometric and pathological-cannot fail to be a force on the side of positive as well as of negative eugenics, for it would tend to promote the procreation of the fit as well as restrict that of the unfit, without any legislative compulsion. With the growth of education a regard for such records as a preliminary to marriage would become as much a matter of course as once was the regard to the restrictions imposed by Canon law, and as still is a regard to money or to caste. A woman can usually refrain from marrying a man with no money and no prospects; a man may be pa.s.sionately in love with a woman of lower cla.s.s than himself but he seldom marries her. It needs but a clear general perception of all that is involved in heredity and health to make eugenic considerations equally influential.
A discriminating regard to the quality of offspring will act beneficially on the side of positive eugenics by subst.i.tuting the pernicious tendency to put a premium on excess of childbirth by the more rational method of putting a premium on the quality of the child. It has been one of the most unfortunate results of the mania for protesting against that decline of the birthrate which is always and everywhere the result of civilization, that there has been a tendency to offer special social or pecuniary advantages to the parents of large families. Since large families tend to be degenerate, and to become a tax on the community, since rapid pregnancies in succession are not only a serious drain on the strength of the mother but are now known to depreciate seriously the quality of the offspring, and since, moreover, it is in large families that disease and mortality chiefly prevail, all the interests of the community are against the placing of any premium on large families, even in the case of parents of good stock. The interests of the State are bound up not with the quant.i.ty but with the quality of its citizens, and the premium should be placed not on the families that reach a certain size but on the individual children that reach a certain standard; the attainment of this standard could well be based on observations made from birth to the fifth year. A premium on this basis would be as beneficial to a State as that on the merely numerical basis is pernicious.
This consideration applies with still greater force to the proposals for the "systematic endowment of motherhood" of which we hear more and more. So moderate and judicious a social reformer as Mr. Sidney Webb writes: "We shall have to face the problem of the systematic endowment of motherhood, and place this most indispensable of all professions upon an honorable economic basis. At present it is ignored as an occupation, unremunerated, and in no way honored by the State."[459] True as this statement is, it must always be remembered that an indispensable preliminary to any proposal for the endowment of motherhood by the State is a clear conception of the kind of motherhood which the State requires. To endow the reckless and indiscriminate motherhood which we see around us, to encourage, that is, by State aid, the production of citizens a large proportion of whom the State, if it dared, would like to destroy as unfit, is too ridiculous a proposal to deserve discussion.[460] The only sound reason, indeed, for the endowment of motherhood is that it would enable the State, in its own interests, to further the natural selection of the fit.
As to the positive qualities which the State is ent.i.tled to endow in its encouragement of motherhood, it is still too early to speak with complete a.s.surance. Negative eugenics tends to be ahead of positive eugenics; it is easier to detect bad stocks than to be quite sure of good stocks. Both on the scientific side and on the social side, however, we are beginning to attain a clearer realization of the end to be attained and a more precise knowledge of the methods of attaining it.[461]
Even when we have gained a fairly clear conception of the stocks and the individuals which we are justified in encouraging to undertake the task of producing fit citizens for the State, the problems of procreation are by no means at an end. Before we can so much as inquire what are the conditions under which selected individuals may best procreate, there is still the initial question to be decided whether those individuals are both fertile and potent, for this is not guaranteed by the fact that they belong to good stocks, nor is even the fact that a man and a woman are fertile with other persons any positive proof that they will be fertile with each other. Among the large ma.s.ses of the population who do not seek to make their unions legal until those unions have proved fertile, this difficulty is settled in a simple and practical manner. The question is, however, a serious and hazardous one, in the present state of the marriage law in most countries, for those cla.s.ses which are accustomed to bind themselves in legal marriage without any knowledge of their potency and fertility with each other. The matter is mostly left to chance, and as legal marriage cannot usually be dissolved on the ground that there are no offspring, even although procreation is commonly declared to be the chief end of marriage, the question a.s.sumes much gravity. The ordinary range of sterility is from seven to fifteen per cent. of all marriages, and in a very large proportion of these it is a source of great concern. This could be avoided, in some measure, by examination before marriage, and almost altogether by ordaining that, as it is only through offspring that a marriage has any concern for the State, a legal marriage could be dissolved, after a certain period, at the will of either of the parties, in the absence of such offspring.
It was formerly supposed that when a union proved infertile, it was the wife who was at fault. That belief is long since exploded, but, even yet, a man is generally far more concerned about his potency, that is, his ability to perform the mechanical act of coitus, than about his fertility, that is, his ability to produce living spermatozoa, though the latter condition is a much more common source of sterility. "Any man," says Arthur Cooper (British Medical Journal, May 11, 1907), "who has any s.e.xual defect or malformation, or who has suffered from any disease or injury of the genito-urinary organs, even though comparatively trivial or one-sided, and although his copulative power may be unimpaired, should be looked upon as possibly sterile, until some sort of evidence to the contrary has been obtained." In case of a sterile marriage, the possible cause should first be investigated in the husband, for it is comparatively easy to examine the s.e.m.e.n, and to ascertain if it contains active spermatozoa. Prinzing, in a comprehensive study of sterile marriages ("Die Sterilen Ehen," Zeitschrift fur Sozialwissenschaft, 1904, Heft 1 and 2), states that in two-fifths of sterile marriages the man is at fault; one-third of such marriages are the result of venereal diseases in the husband himself, or transmitted to the wife. Gonorrha is not now considered so important a cause of sterility as it was a few years ago; Schenk makes it responsible for only about thirteen per cent. sterile marriages (cf. Kisch, The s.e.xual Life of Woman). Pinkus (Archiv fur Gynakologie, 1907) found that of nearly five hundred cases in which he examined both partners, in 24.4 per cent. cases, the sterility was directly due to the husband, and in 15.8 per cent. cases, indirectly due, because caused by gonorrha with which he had infected his wife.
When sterility is due to a defect in the husband"s spermatozoa, and is not discovered, as it usually might be, before marriage, the question of impregnating the wife by other methods has occasionally arisen. Divorce on the ground of sterility is not possible, and, even if it were, the couple, although they wish to have a child, have not usually any wish to separate. Under these circ.u.mstances, in order to secure the desired end, without departing from widely accepted rules of morality, the attempt is occasionally made to effect artificial fecundation by injecting the s.e.m.e.n from a healthy male. Attempts have been made to effect artificial fecundation by various distinguished men, from John Hunter to Schwalbe, but it is nearly always very difficult to effect, and often impossible. This is easy to account for, if we recall what has already been pointed out (ante p. 577) concerning the influence of erotic excitement in the woman in securing conception; it is obviously a serious task for even the most susceptible woman to evoke erotic enthusiasm a propos of a medical syringe. Schwalbe, for instance, records a case (Deutsche Medizinisches Wochenschrift, Aug., 1908, p. 510) in which,-in consequence of the husband"s sterility and the wife"s anxiety, with her husband"s consent, to be impregnated by the s.e.m.e.n of another man,-he made repeated careful attempts to effect artificial fecundation; these attempts were, however, fruitless, and the three parties concerned finally resigned themselves to the natural method of intercourse, which was successful. In another case, recorded by Schwalbe, in which the husband was impotent but not sterile, six attempts were made to effect artificial fecundation, and further efforts abandoned on account of the disgust of all concerned.
Opinion, on the whole, has been opposed to the practice of artificial fecundation, even apart from the question of the probabilities of success. Thus, in France, where there is a considerable literature on the subject, the Paris Medical Faculty, in 1885, after some hesitation, refused Gerard"s thesis on the history of artificial fecundation, afterwards published independently. In 1883, the Bordeaux legal tribunal declared that artificial fecundation was illegitimate, and a social danger. In 1897, the Holy See also p.r.o.nounced that the practice is unlawful ("Artificial Fecundation before the Inquisition," British Medical Journal, March 5, 1898). Apart, altogether, from this att.i.tude of medicine, law, and Church, it would certainly seem that those who desire offspring would do well, as a rule, to adopt the natural method, which is also the best, or else to abandon to others the task of procreation, for which they are not adequately equipped.
When we have ascertained that two individuals both belong to sound and healthy stocks, and, further, that they are themselves both apt for procreation, it still remains to consider the conditions under which they may best effect procreation.[462] There arises, for instance, the question, often asked, What is the best age for procreation?
The considerations which weigh in answering this question are of two different orders, physiological, and social or moral. That is to say, that it is necessary, on the one hand, that physical maturity should have been fully attained, and the s.e.xual cells completely developed; while, on the other hand, it is necessary that the man shall have become able to support a family, and that both partners shall have received a training in life adequate to undertake the responsibilities and anxieties involved in the rearing of children. While there have been variations at different times, it scarcely appears that, on the whole, the general opinion as to the best age for procreation has greatly varied in Europe during many centuries. Hesiod indeed said that a woman should marry about fifteen and a man about thirty,[463] but obstetricians have usually concluded that, in the interests alike of the parents and their offspring, the procreative life should not begin in women before twenty and in men before twenty-five.[464] After thirty in women and after thirty-five or forty in men it seems probable that the best conditions for procreation begin to decline.[465] At the present time, in England and several other civilized countries, the tendency has been for the age of marriage to fall at an increasingly late age, on the average some years later than that usually fixed as the most favorable age for the commencement of the procreative life. But, on the whole, the average seldom departs widely from the accepted standard, and there seems no good reason why we should desire to modify this general tendency.
At the same time, it by no means follows that wide variations, under special circ.u.mstances, may not only be permissible, but desirable. The male is capable of procreating, in some cases, from about the age of thirteen until far beyond eighty, and at this advanced age, the offspring, even if not notable for great physical robustness, may possess high intellectual qualities. (See e.g., Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, pp. 120 et seq.) The range of the procreative age in women begins earlier (sometimes at eight), though it usually ceases by fifty, or earlier, in only rare cases continuing to sixty or beyond. Cases have been reported of pregnancy, or childbirth, at the age of fifty-nine (e.g., Lancet, Aug. 5, 1905, p. 419). Lepage (Comptes-rendus Societe d"Obstetrique de Paris, Oct., 1903) reports a case of a primipara of fifty-seven; the child was stillborn. Kisch (s.e.xual Life of Woman, Part II) refers to cases of pregnancy in elderly women, and various references are given in British Medical Journal, Aug. 8, 1903, p. 325.
Of more importance is the question of early pregnancy. Several investigators have devoted their attention to this question. Thus, Spitta (in a Marburg Inaugural Dissertation, 1895) reviewed the clinical history of 260 labors in primiparae of 18 and under, as observed at the Marburg Maternity. He found that the general health during pregnancy was not below the average of pregnant women, while the mortality of the child at birth and during the following weeks was not high, and the mortality of the mother was by no means high. Picard (in a Paris thesis, 1903) has studied childbirth in thirty-eight mothers below the age of sixteen. He found that, although the pelvis is certainly not yet fully developed in very young girls, the joints and bones are much more yielding than in the adult, so that parturition, far from being more difficult, is usually rapid and easy. The process of labor itself, is essentially normal in these cases, and, even when abnormalities occur (low insertion of the placenta is a common anomaly) it is remarkable that the patients do not suffer from them in the way common among older women. The average weight of the child was three kilogrammes, or about 6 pounds, 9 ounces; it sometimes required special care during the first few days after birth, perhaps because labor in these cases is sometimes slow. The recovery of the mother was, in every case, absolutely normal, and the fact that these young mothers become pregnant again more readily than primiparae of a more mature age, further contributes to show that childbirth below the age of sixteen is in no way injurious to the mother. Gache (Annales de Gynecologie et d"Obstetrique, Dec., 1904) has attended ninety-one labors of mothers under seventeen, in the Rawson Hospital, Buenos Ayres; they were of so-called Latin race, mostly Spanish or Italian. Gache found that these young mothers were by no means more exposed than others to abortion or to other complications of pregnancy. Except in four cases of slightly contracted pelvis, delivery was normal, though rather longer than in older primiparae. Damage to the soft parts was, however, rare, and, when it occurred, in every case rapidly healed. The average weight of the child was 3,039 grammes, or nearly 6 pounds. It may be noted that most observers find that very early pregnancies occur in women who begin to menstruate at an unusually early age, that is, some years before the early pregnancy occurs.
It is clear, however, that young mothers do remarkably well, while there is no doubt whatever that they bear unusually fine infants. Kleinwachter, indeed, found that the younger the mother, the bigger the child. It is not only physically that the children of young mothers are superior. Marro has found (p.u.b.erta, p. 257) that the children of mothers under 21 are superior to those of older mothers both in conduct and intelligence, provided the fathers are not too old or too young. The detailed records of individual cases confirm these results, both as regards mother and child. Thus, Milner (Lancet, June 7, 1902) records a case of pregnancy in a girl of fourteen; the labor pains were very mild, and delivery was easy. E. B. Wales, of New Jersey, has recorded the history (reproduced in Medical Reprints, Sept. 15, 1890) of a colored girl who became pregnant at the age of eleven. She was of medium size, rather tall and slender, but well developed, and began to menstruate at the age of ten. She was in good health and spirits during pregnancy, and able to work. Delivery was easy and natural, not notably prolonged, and apparently not unduly painful, for there were no moans or agitation. The child was a fine, healthy boy, weighing not less than eleven pounds. Mother and child both did well, and there was a great flow of milk. Whiteside Robertson (British Medical Journal, Jan. 18, 1902) has recorded a case of pregnancy at the age of thirteen, in a Colonial girl of British origin in Cape Colony, which is notable from other points of view. During pregnancy, she was anaemic, and appeared to be of poor development and doubtfully normal pelvic conformation. Yet delivery took place naturally, at full term, without difficulty or injury, and the lying-in period was in every way satisfactory. The baby was well-proportioned, and weighed 7 pounds. "I have rarely seen a primipara enjoy easier labor," concluded Robertson, "and I have never seen one look forward to the happy realization of motherhood with greater satisfaction."
The facts brought forward by obstetricians concerning the good results of early pregnancy, as regards both mother and child, have not yet received the attention they deserve. They are, however, confirmed by many general tendencies which are now fairly well recognized. The significant fact is known, for instance, that in mothers over thirty, the proportion of abortions and miscarriages is twice as great as in mothers between the ages of fifteen and twenty, who also are superior in this respect to mothers between the ages of twenty and thirty (Statistischer Jahrbuch, Budapest, 1905). It was, again, proved by Matthews Duncan, in his Goulstonian lecture, that the chances of sterility in a woman increase with increase of age. It has, further, been shown (Kisch, s.e.xual Life of Woman, Part II) that the older a woman at marriage, the greater the average interval before the first delivery, a tendency which seems to indicate that it is the very young woman who is in the condition most apt for procreation; Kisch is not, indeed, inclined to think that this applies to women below twenty, but the fact, observed by other obstetricians, that mothers under eighteen tend to become pregnant again at an unusually short interval, goes far to neutralize the exception made by Kisch. It may also be pointed out that, among children of very young mothers, the s.e.xes are more nearly equal in number than is the case with older mothers. This would seem to indicate that we are here in presence of a normal equilibrium which will decrease as the age of the mother is progressively disturbed in an abnormal direction.
The facility of parturition at an early age, it may be noted, corresponds to an equal facility in physical s.e.xual intercourse, a fact that is often overlooked. In Russia, where marriage still takes place early, it was formerly common when the woman was only twelve or thirteen, and Guttceit (Dreissig Jahre Praxis, vol. i, p. 324) says that he was a.s.sured by women who married at this age that the first coitus presented no especial difficulties.
There is undoubtedly, at the present time, a considerable amount of prejudice against early motherhood. In part, this is due to a failure to realize that women are s.e.xually much more precocious than men, physically as well as psychically (see ante p. 35). The difference is about five years. This difference has been virtually recognized for thousands of years, in the ancient belief that the age of election for procreation is about twenty, or less, for women, but about twenty-five for men; and it has more lately been affirmed by the discovery that, while the male is never capable of generation before thirteen, the female may, in occasional instances, become pregnant at eight. (Some of the recorded examples are quoted by Kisch.) In part, also, there is an objection to the a.s.sumption of responsibilities so serious as those of motherhood by a young girl, and there is the very reasonable feeling that the obligations of a permanent marriage tie ought not to be undertaken at an early age. On the other hand, apart from the physical advantages, as regards both mother and infant, on the side of early pregnancies, it is an advantage for the child to have a young mother, who can devote herself sympathetically and unreservedly to its interests, instead of presenting the pathetic spectacle we so often witness in the middle-aged woman who turns to motherhood when her youth and mental flexibility are gone, and her habits and tastes have settled into other grooves; it has sometimes been a great blessing even to the very greatest men, like Goethe, to have had a youthful mother. It would also, in many cases, be a great advantage for the woman herself if she could bring her procreative life to an end well before the age of twenty-five, so that she could then, unhampered by child-bearing and mature in experience, be free to enter on such wider activities in the world as she might be fitted for.
Such an arrangement of the procreative life of women would, obviously, only be a variation, and would probably be unsuited for the majority. Every case must be judged on its own merits. The best age for procreation will probably continue to be regarded as being, for most women, around the age of twenty. But at a time like the present, when there is an unfortunate tendency for motherhood to be unduly delayed, it becomes necessary to insist on the advantages, in many cases, of early motherhood.
There are other conditions favorable or unfavorable to procreation which it is now unnecessary to discuss in detail, since they have already been incidentally dealt with in previous volumes of these Studies. There is, for instance, the question of the time of year and the time of the menstrual cycle which may most properly be selected for procreation.[466] The best period is probably that when s.e.xual desire is strongest, which is the period when conception would appear, as a matter of fact, most often to occur. This would be in spring or early summer,[467] and immediately after (or shortly before) the menstrual period. The Chinese have observed that the last day of menstruation and the two following days-corresponding to the period of strus-const.i.tute the most favorable time for fecundation, and Bossi, of Genoa, has found that the great majority of successes in both natural and artificial fecundation occur at this period.[468] Sora.n.u.s, as well as the Talmud, a.s.signed the period about menstruation as the best for impregnation, and Susruta, the Indian physician, said that at this time pregnancy most readily occurs because then the mouth of the womb is open, like the flower of the water-lily to the sunshine.
We have now at last reached the point from which we started, the moment of conception, and the child again lies in its mother"s womb. There remains no more to be said. The divine cycle of life is completed.
[421]
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 330.
[422]
Academy of Medicine of Paris, March 31, 1908.
[423]
The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 405.
[424]
Population and Progress, p. 41.
[425]
Cf. Reibmayr, Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genics, Bd. II, p. 31.
[426]
"The debt that we owe to those who have gone before us," says Haycraft (Darwinism and Race Progress, p. 160), "we can only repay to those who come after us."