We must not forget that among our brutal, yet human ancestors the struggle for life demanded the cruel and wanton exposure or slaughter of all weak and decrepit individuals, and that epidemic diseases, plagues, and pests ravaged the peoples without mercy. Of course our present civilization has put up a barrier against all this. Yet, for that very reason the blind and thoughtless propagation of degenerate, tainted, and enfeebled individuals is another atrocious danger to society. But then the sexual appetite cannot be legislated out of existence or killed by repressive measures.
Quite recently it has been scientifically demonstrated that absolute sterilization can be produced by the application of the Roentgen Ray, but at what period of treatment this result may be obtained still remains an unsettled question, thus leaving the possibility of incurring the risk of effecting only a doubtful degeneration of the germs.
We can but consider all legislation and all police measures which are intended to regulate the sexual intercourse in the human family, as absolute failures, as inhuman, in fact as down-right detrimental to the race. Exacting laws have never improved the morals of any race or nation; hypocrisy and secret evasion are the only results obtained. It would be better by far if steps were taken to enlighten the masses on the questions of sexual heredity and degeneration. Wisdom of this kind does not corrupt. It is rather the unrestricted power of capital and wealth that brings the rot into the community. Healthy people should be made to know that a large number of sound, industrious children is a blessing, in fact, riches to the family, but on the one condition only, viz.: that they are not relegated to detestable slavery through the overbearing suppression of capital.
When the dignity of labor shall once have been raised on the pedestal of worship now occupied by Mammon, there will no longer be need for complaint about small families and decreasing birth-rates, such as we hear so much at the present day in France and in the United States.
A few examples might throw some light on this subject.
(1) Dr. Pelman of Bonn, assisted by the local authorities, made an inquiry into the progeny of a certain Ada Jurke (born in 1740, died in the beginning of the nineteenth century), who was hereditarily tainted, a drunkard and a degenerate. Her descendants down to the present time number 834 persons. The lives of 709 of these individuals have been officially recorded as follows: 106 were illegitimate children; 142 were mendicants and tramps; 64 were unable to perform any kind of work towards their own support and became a charge to the community; 181 of the women were prostitutes; 7 persons were convicted of murder and 69 of other crimes. All this within a period of 75 years at a cost to the state, according to the public records, of five millions of marks (about $1,250,000) in the shape of monetary support, jail and law expenses, claims for damages, etc., etc.
(2) Dr. Jörger, Director of the Insane Asylum at Waldhaus, by Chur, in Switzerland, followed up in a similar fashion the history of a family of vagrants. The full report may be found under the title of "The Zero Family," in the Archiv für Gesellschaft's-u. Rassenbiologie, 1905, Heft 4, page 494 et seq. It is sad to read of the untold misery, profligacy, and distress spread broadcast by this family, not to speak of the many crimes committed by its members.
It is depressing to witness how sheer ignorance and callousness to the interests of the human race at large allow such people to multiply without let or hindrance. The unfortunate part about it all is that this species of humanity is on the steady increase. They really form the principal hearths whence emanate our criminal classes, that fill our jails, our Charity Homes, our Hospitals, our Sanatoria, our Insane Asylums. They breed and multiply not because it affords them a special pleasure to procreate crime, insanity, and degeneracy, but because no one takes the trouble to instruct them in the perniciousness of bringing into this world offspring that can only find and themselves again disseminate misery, want, and wretchedness; or to teach them how to prevent this calamity.
(3) Still another category of dangerous elements is becoming more numerous every day. I refer to the neurasthenics. Heredity is an important factor here, too, as every neurologist is able to attest from his own daily observations. The worst feature about this peril is the fact that neurotics as a rule suffer from excess of sexual appetite, whilst they are sorely lacking the power of self-control, circumstances which often enough lead to crime, insanity, and suicide. Untold thousands of them, unaware of the fearful consequences of hereditary impairment, go on bringing into this world children destined to unhappiness and suffering. It is noteworthy too that these nervous wrecks generally intermarry. Does not this account to a large extent for the great number of unhappy marriages recorded nowadays?
Of course, it is quite evident that under such pitiable conditions, the hereditary taints become increasingly aggravated. If the patients have money, which is very often the case, they prove profitable customers of the "nerve-specialist," and likewise of the endless chain of private sanatoria for nervous diseases. It is a sad spectacle indeed. My own experience has taught me that nine out of ten of these unfortunate beings have families, because they are ignorant of the dangers of heredity, and unfamiliar with the safe and proper means for preventing conception. Why not teach them? A few cases may suffice.