The Task of Social Hygiene

141

The relationship is sometimes expressed by saying that the more highly differentiated the organism the fewer the offspring. According to Plate we ought to say that, the greater the capacity for parental care the fewer the offspring. This, however, comes to the same thing, since it is the higher organisms which possess the increased capacity for parental care. Putting it in the most generalized zoological way, diminished offspring is the response to improved environment. Thus in Man the decline of the birth-rate, as Professor Benjamin Moore remarks (British Medical Journal, August 20, 1910, p. 454), is "the simple biological reply to good economic conditions. It is a well-known biological law that even a micro-organism, when placed in unfavourable conditions as to food and environment, passes into a reproductive phase, and by sporulation or some special type produces new individuals very rapidly. The same condition of affairs in the human race was shown even by the fact that one-half of the births come from the least favourably situated one-quarter of the population. Hence, over-rapid birth-rate indicates unfavourable conditions of life, so that (so long as the population was on the increase) a lower birth-rate was a valuable indication of a better social condition of affairs, and a matter on which we should congratulate the country rather than proceed to condolences."

142

"The accumulations of racial experience tend to show," remarks Woods Hutchinson ("Animal Marriage," Contemporary Review, October, 1904), "that by the production of a smaller and smaller number of offspring, and the expenditure upon those of a greater amount of parental care, better results can be obtained in efficiency and capacity for survival."

143

Toulouse, Causes de la Folie, p. 91; Magri, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, fasc. vi-vii; Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, pp. 106 et seq.

144

Emile Macquart, "Mortalité, Natalité, Dépopulation," Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie, 1902.

145

It is interesting to observe how Lafcadio Hearn, during the last years of his life, was compelled, however unwillingly, to recognize this change. See e.g. his Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904, ch. XXI, on "Industrial Dangers." The Japanese themselves have recognized it, and it is the feeling of the decay of their ancient ideals which has given so great an impetus to new ethical movements, such as that, described as a kind of elevated materialism, established by Yukichi Fukuzawa (see Open Court, June, 1907).

146

Athenæum, October 7, 1911.

147

Dr. Scott Nearing, "Race Suicide versus Over-Population," Popular Science Monthly, January, 1911. And from the biological side Professor Bateson concludes (Biological Fact and the Structure of Society, p. 23) that "it is in a decline in the birth-rate that the most promising omen exists for the happiness of future generations."

148

Galton himself, the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, and the half-cousin of Charles Darwin, may be said to furnish a noble illustration of an unconscious process of eugenics. (He has set forth his ancestry in Memories of My Life.) On his death, the editor of the Popular Science Monthly wrote, referring to the fact that Galton was nominated to succeed William James in the honorary membership of an Academy of Science: "These two men are the greatest whom he has known. James possessed the more complicated personality; but they had certain common traits—a combination of perfect aristocracy with complete democracy, directness, kindliness, generosity, and nobility beyond all measure. It has been said that eugenics is futile because it cannot define its end. The answer is simple—we want men like William James and Francis Galton" (Popular Science Monthly, March, 1911.) Probably most of those who were brought, however slightly, in contact with these two fine personalities will subscribe to this conclusion.

149

Galton chiefly studied the families to which men of intellectual ability belong, especially in his Hereditary Genius and English Men of Science; various kinds of pathological families have since been investigated by Karl Pearson and his co-workers (see the series of Biometrika); the pedigrees of the defective classes (especially the feeble-minded and epileptic) are now being accurately worked out, as by Godden, at Vineland, New Jersey, and Davenport, in New York (see e.g. Eugenics Review, April, 1911, and Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, November, 1911).

150

"When once more the importance of good birth comes to be recognized in a new sense," wrote W.C.D. Whetham and Mrs. Whetham (in The Family and the Nation, p. 222), "when the innate physical and mental qualities of different families are recorded in the central sociological department or scientifically reformed College of Arms, the pedigrees of all will be known to be of supreme interest. It would be understood to be more important to marry into a family with a good hereditary record of physical and mental and moral qualities than it ever has been considered to be allied to one with sixteen quarterings."

151

The importance of such biographical records of aptitude and character are so great that some, like Schallmayer (Vererbung und Auslese, 2nd ed., 1910, p. 389) believe that they must be made universally obligatory. This proposal, however, seems premature.

152

In many undesigned and unforeseen ways these registers may be of immense value. They may even prove the means of overthrowing our pernicious and destructive system of so-called "education." A step in this direction has been suggested by Mr. R.T. Bodey, Inspector of Elementary Schools, at a meeting of the Liverpool branch of the Eugenics Education Society: "Education facilities should be carefully distributed with regard to the scientific likelihood of their utilization to the maximum of national advantage, and this not for economic reasons only, but because it was cruel to drag children from their own to a different sphere of life, and cruel to the class they deserted. Since the activities of the nation and the powers of the children were alike varied in kind and degree, the most natural plan would be to sort them both out, and then design a school system expressly in order to fit one to the other. At present there was no fixed purpose, but a perpetual riot of changes, resulting in distraction of mind, discontinuity of purpose, and increase of cost, while happiness decayed because desires grew faster than possessions or the sense of achievement. The only really scientific basis for a national system of education would be a full knowledge of the family history of each child. With more perfect classification of family talent the need of scholarships of transplantation would become less, for each of them was the confession of an initial error in placing the child. Then there would be more money to be spared for industrial research, travelling and art studentships, and other aids to those who had the rare gift of original thought" (British Medical Journal, November 18, 1911).

153

I should add that there is one obstacle, viz. expense. When the present chapter was first published in its preliminary form as an article in the Nineteenth Century and After (May, 1906), Galton, always alive to everything bearing on the study of Eugenics, wrote to me that he had been impressed by the generally sympathetic reception my paper had received, and that he felt encouraged to consider whether it was possible to begin giving such certificates at once. He asked for my views, among others, as to the ground which should be covered by such certificates. The programme I set forth was somewhat extensive, as I considered that the applicant must not only bring evidence of a sound ancestry, but also submit to anthropological, psychological, and medical examination. Galton eventually came to the conclusion that the expenses involved by the scheme rendered it for the present impracticable. My opinion was, and is, that though the charge for such a certificate might in the first place be prohibitive for most people, a few persons might find it desirable to seek, and advantageous to possess, such certificates, and that it is worth while at all events to make a beginning.

154

Mannhardt, Wald-und Feldkulte, 1875, Vol. I, pp. 422 et seq. I have discussed seasonal erotic festivals in a study of "The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity," Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. I.

155

Thus we read in a small popular periodical: "I am prepared to back human nature against all the cranks in Christendom. Human nature will endure a faddist so long as he does not interfere with things it prizes. One of these things is the right to select its partner for life. If a man loves a girl he is not going to give her up because she happens to have an aunt in a lunatic asylum or an uncle who has epileptic fits," etc. In the same way it may be said that a man will allow nothing to interfere with his right to eat such food as he chooses, and is not going to give up a dish he likes because it happens to be peppered with arsenic. It may be so, let us grant, among savages. The growth of civilization lies in ever-extended self-control guided by foresight.

156

I have summarized some of the evidence on these points, especially that showing that sexual attraction tends to be towards like persons and not, as was formerly supposed, towards the unlike, in Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. IV, "Sexual Selection in Man."

157

In other words, the process of tumescence is gradual and complex. See Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. III, "The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."

158

As Roswell Johnson remarks ("The Evolution of Man and its Control," Popular Science Monthly, January, 1910): "While it is undeniable that love when once established defies rational considerations, yet we must remark that sexual selection proceeds usually through two stages, the first being one of mere mutual attraction and interest. It is in this stage that the will and reason are operative, and here alone that any considerable elevation of standard may be effective."

159

Galton looked upon eugenics as fitted to become a factor in religion (Essays in Eugenics, p. 68). It may, however, be questioned whether this consummation is either probable or desirable. The same religious claim has been made for socialism. But, as Dr. Eden Paul remarks in a recent pamphlet on Socialism and Eugenics, "Whereas both Socialism and Eugenics are concerned solely with the application of the knowledge gained by experience to the amelioration of the human lot, it seems preferable to dispense with religious terminology, and to regard the two doctrines as complementary parts of the great modern movement known by the name of Humanism." Personally, I do not consider that either Socialism or Eugenics can be regarded as coming within the legitimate sphere of religion, which I have elsewhere attempted to define (Conclusion to The New Spirit).

160

J. Grasset, in Dr. A. Marie's Traité International de Psychologie Pathologique, 1910, Vol. I, p. 25. Grasset proceeds to discuss the principles which must guide the physician in such consultations.

161

This has been clearly realized by the German Society of Eugenics or "Racial Hygiene," as it is usually termed in Germany (Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassen-Hygiene), founded by Dr. Alfred Ploetz, with the co-operation of many distinguished physicians and men of science, "to further the theory and practice of racial hygiene." It is a chief aim of this Society to encourage the registration by the members of the biological and other physical and psychic characteristics of themselves and their families, in order to obtain a body of data on which conclusions may eventually be based; the members undertake not to enter on a marriage except they are assured by medical investigation of both parties that the union is not likely to cause disaster to either partner or to the offspring. The Society also admits associates who only occupy themselves with the scientific aspects of its work and with propaganda. In England the Eugenics Education Society (with its organ the Eugenics Review) has done much to stimulate an intelligent interest in eugenics.

162

How influential public opinion may be in the selection of mates is indicated by the influence it already exerts—in less than a century—in the limitation of offspring. This is well marked in some parts of France. Thus, concerning a rural district near the Garonne, Dr. Belbèze, who knows it thoroughly, writes (La Neurasthénie Rurale, 1911): "Public opinion does not at present approve of multiple procreation. Large families, there can be no doubt, are treated with contempt. Couples who produce a numerous progeny are looked on, with a wink, as 'maladroits,' which in this region is perhaps the supreme term of abuse.... Public opinion is all-powerful, and alone suffices to produce restraint, when foresight is not adequate for this purpose."

163

De Quincey in his Confessions of an Opium Eater referred to the power that many, perhaps most, children possess of seeing visions in the dark. The phenomenon has been carefully studied by G.L. Partridge (Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1898) in over 800 children. He found that 58.5 of them aged between thirteen and sixteen could see visions or images at night with closed eyes before falling asleep; of those aged six the proportion was higher. There seemed to be a maximum at the age of ten, and probably another maximum at a much earlier age. Among adults this tendency is rudimentary, and only found in a marked form in neurasthenic subjects or at moments of nervous exhaustion. See also Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams, chap. II.

164

G. Stanley Hall, "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891.

165

"The mother's face and voice are the first conscious objects as the infant soul unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of God to her child. All the religion of which the child is capable during this by no means brief stage of its development consists of these sentiments—gratitude, trust, dependence, love, etc.—now felt only for her, which are later directed towards God. The less these are now cultivated towards the mother, who is now their only fitting if not their only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felt towards God. This, too, adds greatly to the sacredness of the responsibilities of motherhood." (G. Stanley Hall, Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891, p. 199).

166

J. Morse, American Journal of Religious Psychology, 1911, p. 247.

167

Lobsien, "Kinderideale," Zeitschrift für Päd. Psychologie, 1903.

168

Mr. Edmond Holmes, formerly Chief Inspector of Elementary Education in England, has an instructive remark bearing on this point in his suggestive book, What Is and What Might be (1911, p. 88): "The first forty minutes of the morning session are given in almost every elementary school to what is called Religious Instruction. This goes on, morning after morning, and week after week. The fact that the English parent, who must himself have attended from 1500 to 2000 Scripture lessons in his schooldays, is not under any circumstance to be trusted to give religious instruction to his own children, shows that those who control the religious education of the youthful 'masses' have but little confidence in the effects of their system on the religious life and faith of the English people." Miss Harriet Finlay-Johnson, a highly original and successful elementary school teacher, speaks (The Dramatic Method of Teaching, 1911, p. 170) with equal disapproval of the notion that any moral value attaches to the ordinary school examinations in "Scripture."

169

If it were not so, England, after sixty years of National Schools, ought to be a devout nation of good Church people. Most of the criminals and outcasts have been taught in Church Schools. A clergyman, who points this out to me, adds: "I am heartily thankful that religion was never forced on me as a child. I do not think I had any religion, in the ethical sense, until puberty, or any conscious realization of religion, indeed, until nineteen." "The boy," remarks Holmes (op. cit., p. 100), "who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,' is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to himself, his inmost soul demands."

170

La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part V, Letter 3. In more recent times Ellen Key remarks in a suggestive chapter on "Religions Education" in her Century of the Child: "Nothing better shows how deeply rooted religion is in human nature than the fact that 'religious education' has not been able to tear it out."

171

J.S. Mill, Letters, Vol. II, p. 135.

172

Lancaster found ("The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence," Pedagogical Seminary, July, 1897) that among 598 individuals of both sexes in the United States, as many as 518 experienced new religious emotions between the ages of 12 and 20, only 80 having no such emotions at this period, so that more than 5 out of 6 have this experience; it is really even more frequent, for it has no necessary tendency to fall into conventional religious moulds.

173

Professor Starbuck, in his Psychology of Religion, has well brought together and clearly presented much of the evidence showing this intimate association between adolescence and religious manifestations. He finds (Chap. III) that in females there are two tidal waves of religious awakening, one at about 13, the other at 16, with a less significant period at 18; for males, after a wavelet at 12, the great tidal wave is at 16, followed by another at 18 or 19. Ruediger's results are fairly concordant ("The Period of Mental Reconstruction," American Journal of Psychology, July, 1907); he finds that in women the average age of conversion is 14, in men it is at 13 or 14, and again at 18.

174

G. Stanley Hall, "The Moral and Religious Training of Children and Adolescents," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891, p. 207. From the more narrowly religious side the undesirability of attempting to teach religion to children is well set forth by Florence Hayllar (Independent Review, Oct., 1906). She considers that thirteen is quite early enough to begin teaching children the lessons of the Gospels, for a child who acted in accordance with the Gospels would be "aggravating," and would generally be regarded as "an insufferable prig." Moreover, she points out, it is dangerous to teach young children the Christian virtues of charity, humility, and self-denial. It is far better that they should first be taught the virtues of justice and courage and self-mastery, and the more Christian virtues later. She also believes that in the case of the clergy who are brought in contact with children a preliminary course of child-study, with the necessary physiology and psychology, should be compulsory.

175

The varying opinions on this point have been fairly and clearly presented by Cheetham in his Hulsean lectures on the Mysteries Pagan and Christian.

176

Thus at the first Congress of Italian Women held at Rome in 1908—a very representative Congress, by no means made up of "feminists" or anti-clericals, and marked by great moderation and good sense—a resolution was passed against religious teaching in primary schools, though a subsequent resolution declared by a very large majority in favour of teaching the history of religions in secondary schools. These resolutions caused much surprise at the time to those persons who still cherish the superstition that in matters of religion women are blindly prejudiced and unable to think for themselves.

177

See e.g. an article by Halley Stewart, President of the Secular Education League, on "The Policy of Secular Education," Nineteenth Century, April, 1911.

178

So far as numbers go, the dominant religion of the British Empire, the religion of the majority, is Hinduism; Mohammedanism comes next.

179

"Not long ago," says Dr. L. Guthrie (Clinical Journal, 7th June, 1899), "I heard of a lady who, in her desire that her children should learn nothing but what was true, banished fairy tales from her nursery. But the children evolved from their own imagination fictions which were so appalling that she was glad to divert them with Jack-the-Giant-Killer."

180

In his interesting study of comparative education (The Making of Citizens, 1902, p. 194), Mr. R.E. Hughes, a school inspector, after discussing the methods of settling the difficulties of religious education in England, America, Germany, and France, reasonably concludes: "The solution of the religious problem of the schools of these four peoples lies in the future, but we believe it will be found not to be beyond human ingenuity to devise a scheme of moral and ethical training for little children which will be suitable. It is the moral principles underlying all conduct which the school should teach. Indeed, the school, to justify its existence, dare not neglect them. It will teach them, not dogmatically or by precept, but by example, and by the creation of a noble atmosphere around the child." Holmes also (op. cit., p. 276) insists that the teaching of patriotism and citizenship must be informal and indirect.

181

For a full discussion of the movement, see Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chaps. II and III.

182

Basedow (born at Hamburg 1723, died 1790) set forth his views on sexual education—which will seem to many somewhat radical and advanced even to-day—in his great treatise Elementarwerk (1774). His practical educational work is dealt with by Pinloche, La Réforme de l'Education en Allemagne au Dix-huitième Siècle.

183

The best of these papers have been printed in a volume entitled Am Lebensquell.

184

The elaborate and admirable initiation of boys among the natives of Torres Straits furnishes a good example of this education, and has been fully described by Dr. A.C. Haddon, Reports of the Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. V, chaps. VII and XII.

185

Moll in his wise and comprehensive work, The Sexual Life of the Child (German ed., p. 225), lays it down emphatically that "we must clearly realize at the outset that the complete exclusion of sexual stimuli in the education of children is impossible." He adds that the demands made by some "fanatics of hygiene" would be dangerous even if they were practicable. Games and physical exercises induce in many cases a considerable degree of sexual stimulation. But this need not cause us undue alarm, nor must we thereby be persuaded to change our policy of recommending such games and exercises.

186

See Frau Maria Lischnewska's excellent pamphlet, Geschlechtliche Belehrung der Kinder, first published in Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 4 and 5. This is perhaps the ablest statement of the argument in favour of giving the chief place in sexual hygiene to the teacher. Frau Lischnewska recognizes three factors in the movement for freeing the sexual activities from degradation: (1) medical, (2) economic, and (3) rational. But it is the last—in the broadest sense as a comprehensive process of enlightenment—which she regards as the chief. "The views and sentiments of people must be changed," she says. "The civilized man must learn to gaze at this piece of Nature with pure eyes; reverence towards it must early sink into his soul. In the absence of this fundamental renovation, medical and social measures will merely produce refined animals."