CHAPTER XVI[ToC]
THE SEXUAL QUESTION IN POLITICS AND IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
Power and money have always been the principal aims of politics. Political economy is a science which deals with the great family of nations and their conditions of existence. Based on history, statistics and observation, it seeks for the laws which govern the production, consumption and division of goods, labor and its products, the social organization of nations, their health, the increase or decrease of the population, the death-rate, birth-rate, etc.
I cannot here enter into the details of the domestic economy of the nation, as this is beyond my province. I may, however, point out that this science has too much neglected the natural sciences, owing to its traditional connection with politics.
In 1881 Cognetti de Martiis[11] had already attempted to apply the ideas of evolution to political economy. Recently, Prof. Eugene Schwiedland of Vienna treated the same subject in an interesting study of the ideas of want and desire in human psychology.[12] So far, it is only the quantity and not the quality of men which has been taken into account, originating from the false idea that man made in God's image can only come into the world in a perfect state. If he was often malformed in body and mind, this was the fault of his sins. Even hereditary degeneration to the third and fourth generation was considered as divine punishment for the sins of the fathers on the children.
War.—The despots of olden times, like those of to-day, have always regarded men as instruments of their ambition or even as food for cannon. When Napoleon I established a bounty for large families, he was no doubt thinking of the number of soldiers he could make for the use of his son. He had good reason to provide for the replenishment of the ranks of his army. The mental quality of the individuals mattered little to him. Wars are a harmful factor in human selection, for they destroy or mutilate the fittest in the prime of life, while leaving the unfit and the aged.
Moreover, we have already seen to what an extent the quality and even the quantity of soldiers suffer from venereal disease and alcohol. After certain long wars the male population has been decimated to such a point that polygamy had to be resorted to to reconstitute the nation. It is, therefore, obvious that wars have a bad influence on the sexual relations of men, and hence on the quantity, or what is still worse, the quality of a nation.