The Task of Social Hygiene

It is scarcely necessary to show how the ancient customs associated with St. Valentine's Day are taken up again and placed on a higher plane by the great movement which is now beginning to shape itself among us. The old Valentine unions were made by a process of caprice tempered more or less by sound instincts and good sense. In the sexual selection of the future the same results will be attained by more or less deliberate and conscious recognition of the great laws and tendencies which investigation is slowly bringing to light. The new St. Valentine will be a saint of science rather than of folk-lore.

Whenever such statements as these are made it is always retorted that love laughs at science, and that the winds of passion blow where they list. 155 That, however, is by no means altogether true, and in any case it is far from covering the whole of the ground. It is hard to fight against human nature, but human nature itself is opposed to indiscriminate choice of mates. It is not true that any one tends to love anybody, and that mutual attraction is entirely a matter of chance. The investigations which have lately been carried out show that there are certain definite tendencies in this matter, that certain kinds of people tend to be attracted to certain kinds, especially that like are attracted to like rather than unlike to unlike, and that, again, while some kinds of people tend to be married with special frequency other kinds tend to be left unmarried. 156 Sexual selection, even when left to random influences, is still not left to chance; it follows definite and ascertainable laws. In that way the play of love, however free it may appear, is really limited in a number of directions. People do not tend to fall in love with those who are in racial respects a contrast to themselves; they do not tend to fall in love with foreigners; they do not tend to be attracted to the ugly, the diseased, the deformed. All these things may happen, but they are the exception and not the rule. These limitations to the roving impulses of love, while very real, to some extent vary at different periods in accordance with the ideals which happen to be fashionable. In more remote ages they have been still more profoundly modified by religious and social ideas; polygamy and polyandry, the custom of marrying only inside one's own caste, or only outside it, all these various and contradictory plans have been easily accepted at some place and some time, and have offered no more conscious obstacle to the free play of love than among ourselves is offered by the prohibition against marriage between near relations.

Those simple-minded people who talk about the blind and irresistible force of passion are themselves blind to very ordinary psychological facts. Passion—when it occurs—requires in normal persons cumulative and prolonged forces to impart to it full momentum. 157 In its early stages it is under the control of many influences, including influences of reason. If it were not so there could be no sexual selection, nor any social organization. 158

The eugenic ideal which is now developing is thus not an artificial product, but the reasoned manifestation of a natural instinct, which has often been far more severely strained by the arbitrary prohibitions of the past than it is ever likely to be by any eugenic ideals of the future. The new ideal will be absorbed into the conscience of the community, whether or not like a kind of new religion, 159 and will instinctively and unconsciously influence the impulses of men and women. It will do all this the more surely since, unlike the taboos of savage societies, the eugenic ideal will lead men and women to reject as partners only the men and women who are naturally unfit—the diseased, the abnormal, the weaklings—and conscience will thus be on the side of impulse.

It may indeed be pointed out that those who advocate a higher and more scientific conscience in matters of mating are by no means plotting against love, which is for the most part on their side, but rather against the influences that do violence to love: on the one hand, the reckless and thoughtless yielding to mere momentary desire, and, on the other hand, the still more fatal influences of wealth and position and worldly convenience which give a factitious value to persons who would never appear attractive partners in life were love and eugenic ideals left to go hand in hand. It is such unions, and not those inspired by the wholesome instincts of wholesome lovers, which lead, if not to the abstract "deterioration of the race," at all events in numberless cases to the abiding unhappiness of persons who choose a mate without realizing how that mate is likely to develop, nor what sort of children may probably be expected from the union. The eugenic ideal will have to struggle with the criminal and still more resolutely with the rich; it will have few serious quarrels with normal and well constituted lovers.

It will now perhaps be clear how it is that the eugenic conception of the improvement of the race embodies a new ideal. We are familiar with legislative projects for compulsory certificates as a condition of marriage. But even apart from all the other considerations which make such schemes both illusory and undesirable, these externally imposed regulations fail to go to the root of the matter. If they are voluntary, if they spring out of a fine eugenic aspiration, it is another matter. Under these conditions the method may be carried out at once. Professor Grasset has pointed out one way in which this may be effected. We cannot, he remarks, follow the procedure of a military conseil de revision and compulsorily reject the candidate for a definite defect. But it would be possible for the two families concerned to call a conference of their two family doctors, after examination of the would-be bride and bridegroom, permitting the doctors to discuss freely the medical aspects of the proposed union, and undertaking to accept their decision, without asking for the revelation of any secrets, the families thus remaining ignorant of the defect which prevented this union but might not prevent another union, for the chief danger in many cases comes from the conjunction of convergent morbid tendencies. 160 In France, where much power remains with the respective families, this method might be operative, provided complete confidence was felt in the doctors concerned. In some countries, such as England, the prospective couple might prefer to take the matter into their own hands, to discuss it frankly, and to seek medical advice on their own account; this is now much more frequently done than was formerly the case. But all compulsory projects of this kind, and indeed any mere legislation, cannot go to the root of the matter. For in the first place, what we need is a great body of facts, and a careful attention to the record and registration and statistical tabulation of personal and family histories. In the second place, we need that sound ideals and a high sense of responsibility should permeate the whole community, first its finer and more distinguished members and then, by the usual contagion that rules in such matters, the whole body of its members. 161 In time, no doubt, this would lead to concerted social action. We may reasonably expect that a time will come when if, for instance, an epileptic woman conceals her condition from the man she is marrying it would generally be felt that an offence has been committed serious enough to invalidate the marriage. We must not suppose that lovers would be either willing or competent to investigate each other's family and medical histories. But it would be at least as easy and as simple to choose a partner from those persons who had successfully passed the eugenic test—more especially since such persons would certainly be the most attractive group in the community—as it is for an Australian aborigine to select a conjugal partner from one social group rather than from any other. 162 It is a matter of accepting an ideal and of exerting our personal and social influence in the direction of that ideal. If we really seek to raise the level of humanity we may in this way begin to do so to-day.

NOTE ON THE LIFE-HISTORY RECORD

The extreme interest of a Life-History Record is obvious, even apart from its eventual scientific value. Most of us would have reason to congratulate ourselves had such records been customary when we were ourselves children. It is probable that this is becoming more generally realized, though until recently only the pioneers have here been active. "I started a Life-History Album for each of my children," writes Mr. F.H. Perrycoste in a private letter, "as soon as they were born; and by the time they arrive at man's and woman's estate they will have valuable records of their own physical, mental, and moral development, which should be of great service to them when they come to have children of their own, whilst the physical—in which are included, of course, medical—records may at any time be of great value to their own medical advisers in later life. I have reason to regret that some such Albums were not kept for my wife and myself, for they would have afforded the necessary data by which to 'size up' the abilities and conduct of our children. I know, for instance, pretty well what was my own Galtonian rank as a schoolboy, and I am constantly asking myself whether my boy will do as well, better, or worse. Now fortunately I do happen to remember roughly what stages I had reached at one or two transition periods of school-life; but if only such an Album had been kept for me, I could turn it up and check my boy against myself in each subject at each yearly stage. You will gather from this that I consider it of great importance that ample details of school-work and intellectual development should be entered in the Album. I find the space at my disposal for these entries insufficient, and consequently I summarize in the Album and insert a reference to sheets of fuller details which I keep; but it might be well, when another edition of the Album comes to be published, to agitate for the insertion of extra blank pages after the age of eight or nine, in order to allow of the transcription of full school-reports. However, the great thing is to induce people to keep an Album that will form the nucleus round which any number of fuller records can cluster."

It is not necessary that the Galtonian type of Album should be rigidly preserved, and I am indebted to "Henry Hamill," the author of The Truth We Owe to Youth, for the following suggestions as to the way in which such a record may be carried out:

"The book should not be a mere dry rigmarole, but include a certain appeal to sentiment. The subject should begin to make the entries himself when old enough to do so properly, i.e. so that the book will not be disfigured—though indeed the naivity of juvenile phrasing, etc., may be of a particular interest. From a graphological point of view, the evolution of the handwriting will be of interest; and if for no other reason, specimens of handwriting ought to appear in it from year to year, while the parent is still writing the other entries. There may now be a certain sacramental character in the life-history. The subject should be led to regard the book as a witness, and to perceive in it an additional reason for avoiding every act the mention of which would be a disfigurement of the history. At the same time, the nature of the witness may be made to correct the wrong notions prevailing as to the worthiness of acts, and to sanctify certain of them that have been foolishly degraded. Thus there may be left several leaves blank before the pages of forms for filling in anthropometric and physiological data, and the headings may be made to suggest a worthier way of viewing these things. For instance, there may be the indication 'Place and time of conception,' and a specimen entry may be of service to lead commonplace minds into a more reverent and poetical view than is now usual—such as the one I culled from the life-history of an American child: 'Our second child M– was conceived on Midsummer Day, under the shade of a friendly sycamore, beneath the cloudless blue of Southern California.' Or, instead of restricting the reference to the particular episode, it may refer to the whole chapter of Love which that episode adorned, more especially in the case of a first child, when a poetical history of the mating of the parents may precede. The presence of the idea that the book would some day be read by others than the intimate circle, would restrain the tendency of some persons to inordinate self-revelation and 'gush.' Such books as these would form the dearest heirlooms of a family, helping to knit its bonds firmer, and giving an insight into individual character which would supplement the more tangible data for the pedigree in a most valuable way. The photographs taken every three months or so ought to be as largely as possible nude. The gradual transition from childhood would help to prevent an abrupt feeling arising, and the practice would be a valuable aid to the rehabilitation of the nude, and of genuineness in our daily life, no matter in what respect. This leads to the difficult question of how far moral aspects should be entertained. 'To-day Johnnie told his first fib; we pretended to disbelieve everything else he said, and he began to see that lying was bad policy.' 'Chastised Johnnie for the first time for pulling the wings off a fly; he wanted to know why we might kill flies outright, but not mutilate them,' and so on. For in this way parents would train themselves in the psychology of education and character-building, though books by specially gifted parents would soon appear for their guidance.

"Of course, whatever relevant circumstances were available about the ante-natal period or the mother's condition would be noted (but who would expect a mother to note that she laced tight up to such and such a month? Perhaps the keeping of a log like this might act as a deterrent). Similarly, under diet and regimen, year by year, the assumption of breast-feeding—provision of columns for the various incidents of it—weight before and after feeding, etc., would have a great suggestive value.

"The provision under diet and regimen of columns for 'drug habits, if any'—tea, coffee, alcohol, nicotine, morphia, etc.—would have a suggestive value and operate in the direction of the simple life and a reverence for the body. Some good aphorisms might be strewed in, such as:

"'If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred' (Whitman).

"As young people circulate their 'Books of Likes and Dislikes,' etc., and thus in an entertaining way provide each other with insight into mutual character, so the Life-History need not be an arcanum—at least where people have nothing to be ashamed of. It would be a very trying ordeal, no doubt, to admit even intimate friends to this confidence. But as eugenics spread, concealment of taint will become almost impracticable, and the facts may as well be confessed. But even then there will be limitations. There might be an esoteric book for the individual's own account of himself. Such important items as the incidence of puberty (though notorious in some communities) could not well be included in a book open even to the family circle, for generations to come. The quiescence of the genital sense, the sedatives naturally occurring, important as these are, and occupying the consciousness in so large a degree, would find no place; nevertheless, a private journal of the facts would help to steady the individual, and prove a check against disrespect to his body.

"As the facts of individual evolution would be noted, so likewise would those of dissolution. The first signs of decay—the teeth, the elasticity of body and mind—would provide a valuable sphere for all who are disposed to the diary-habit. The journals of individuals with a gift for introspection would furnish valuable material for psychologists in the future. Life would be cleansed in many ways. Journals would not have to be bowdlerized, like Marie Bashkirtseff's, for the morbidity that gloats on the forbidden would have a lesser scope, much that is now regarded as disgraceful being then accepted as natural and right.

"The book might have several volumes, and that for the periods of infancy and childhood might need to be less private than the one for puberty. More, in his Utopia, demands that lovers shall learn to know each other as they really are, i.e. naked. That is now the most Utopian thing in More's Utopia. But the lovers might communicate their life-histories to each other as a preliminary.

"The whole plan would, of course, finally have to be over-hauled by the so-called 'man of the world.'"

Not everyone may agree with this conception of the Life-History Album and its uses. Some will prefer a severely dry and bald record of measurements. At the present time, however, there is room for very various types of such documents. The important point is to realize that, in some form or another, a record of this kind from birth or earlier is practicable, and constitutes a record which is highly desirable alike on personal, social, and scientific grounds.

VII

RELIGION AND THE CHILD

Religious Education in Relation to Social Hygiene and to Psychology—The Psychology of the Child—The Contents of Children's Minds—The Imagination of Children—How far may Religion be assimilated by Children?—Unfortunate Results of Early Religious Instruction—Puberty the Age for Religious Education—Religion as an Initiation into a Mystery—Initiation among Savages—The Christian Sacraments—The Modern Tendency as regards Religious Instruction—Its Advantages—Children and Fairy Tales—The Bible of Childhood—Moral Training.

It is a fact as strange as it is unfortunate that the much-debated question of the religious education of children is almost exclusively considered from the points of view of the sectarian and the secularist. In a discussion of this question we are almost certain to be invited to take part in an unedifying wrangle between Church and Chapel, between religion and secularism. That is the strange part of it, that it should seem impossible to get away from this sectarian dispute as to the abstract claims of varying religious bodies. The unfortunate part of it is that in this quarrel the interests of the community, the interests of the child, even the interests of religion are alike disregarded.

If we really desire to reach a sound conclusion on a matter which is unquestionably of great moment, both for the child and for the community of which he will one day become a citizen, we must resolutely put into the background, as of secondary importance, the cries of contending sects, religious or irreligious. The first place here belongs to the psychologist, who is building up the already extensive edifice of knowledge concerning the real nature of the child and the contents and growth of the youthful mind, and to the practical teacher who is in touch with that knowledge and can bring it to the test of actual experience. Before considering what drugs are to be administered we must consider the nature of the organism they are to be thrust into.

The mind of the child is at once logical and extravagant, matter-of-fact and poetic or rather mytho-p[oe]ic. This combination of apparent opposites, though it often seems almost incomprehensible to the adult, is the inevitable outcome of the fact that the child's dawning intelligence is working, as it were, in a vacuum. In other words, the child has not acquired the two endowments which chiefly give character to the whole body of the adult's beliefs and feelings. He is without the pubertal expansion which fills out the mind with new personal and altruistic impulses and transforms it with emotion that is often dazzling and sometimes distorting; and he has not yet absorbed, or even gained the power of absorbing, all those beliefs, opinions, and mental attitudes which the race has slowly acquired and transmitted as the traditional outcome of its experiences.

The intellectual processes of children, the attitude and contents of the child's mind, have been explored during recent years with a care and detail that have never been brought to that study before. This is not a matter of which the adult can be said to possess any instinctive or matter-of-course knowledge. Adults usually have a strange aptitude to forget entirely the facts of their lives as children, and children are usually, like peoples of primitive race, very cautious in the deliberate communication of their mental operations, their emotions, and their ideas. That is to say that the child is equally without the internally acquired complex emotional nature which has its kernel in the sexual impulse, and without the externally acquired mental equipment which may be summed up in the word tradition. But he possesses the vivid activities founded on the exercise of his senses and appetites, and he is able to reason with a relentless severity from which the traditionalized and complexly emotional adult shrinks back with horror. The child creates the world for himself, and he creates it in his own image and the images of the persons he is familiar with. Nothing is sacred to him, and he pushes to the most daring extremities—as it seems to the adult—the arguments derived from his own personal experiences. He is unable to see any distinction between the natural and the supernatural, and he is justified in this conviction because, as a matter of fact, he himself lives in what for most adults would be a supernatural atmosphere; most children see visions with closed and sometimes with open eyes; 163 they are not infrequently subject to colour-hearing and other synæsthetic sensations; and they occasionally hear hallucinatory voices. It is possible, indeed, that this is the case with all children in some slight degree, although the faculty dies out early and is easily forgotten because its extraordinary character was never recognized.

Of 48 Boston children, says Stanley Hall, 164 20 believed the sun, moon, and stars to live, 16 thought flowers could feel, and 15 that dolls would feel pain if burnt. The sky was found the chief field in which the children exercise their philosophic minds. About three-quarters of them thought the world a plain with the sky like a bowl turned over it, sometimes believing that it was of such thin texture that one could easily break through, though so large that much floor-sweeping was necessary in Heaven. The sun may enter the ground when it sets, but half the children thought that at night it rolls or flies away, or is blown or walks, or God pulls it higher up out of sight, taking it up into Heaven, according to some putting it to bed, and even taking off its clothes and putting them on again in the morning, or again, it is believed to lie under the trees at night and the angels mind it. God, of whom the children always hear so much, plays a very large part in these conceptions, and is made directly responsible for all cosmic phenomena. Thus thunder to these American children was God groaning or kicking or rolling barrels about, or turning a big handle, or grinding snow, or breaking something, or rattling a big hammer; while the lightning is due to God putting his finger out, or turning the gas on quick, or striking matches, or setting paper on fire. According to Boston children, God is a big, perhaps a blue, man, to be seen in the sky, on the clouds, in church, or even in the streets. They declare that God comes to see them sometimes, and they have seen him enter the gate. He makes lamps, babies, dogs, trees, money, etc., and the angels work for him. He looks like a priest, or a teacher, or papa, and the children like to look at him; a few would themselves like to be God. His house in the sky may be made of stone or brick; birds, children, and Santa Claus live with God.

Birds and beasts, their food and their furniture, as Burnham points out, all talk to children; when the dew is on the grass "the grass is crying," the stars are candles or lamps, perhaps cinders from God's stove, butterflies are flying pansies, icicles are Christmas candy. Children have imaginary play-brothers and sisters and friends, with whom they talk. Sometimes God talks with them. Even the prosiest things are vivified; the tracks of dirty feet on the floor are flowers; a creaking chair talks; the shoemaker's nails are children whom he is driving to school; a pedlar is Santa Claus.

Miss Miriam Levy once investigated the opinions of 560 children, boys and girls, between the ages of 4 and 14, as to how the man in the moon got there. Only 5 were unable to offer a serious explanation; 48 thought there was no man there at all; 50 offered a scientific explanation of the phenomena; but all the rest, the great majority, presented imaginative solutions which could be grouped into seventeen different classes.