The following postulates relate to aberrations and dangers which are more partial or more local.
5. Pornography.—In Chapters V, X and XVIII, I have spoken of pornography, and in Chapter XVII, of its great danger to the development of a normal sexual life in youth. Although pornography owes much of its origin and development to the greed for gain, it must not be forgotten that, on the other hand, masculine eroticism tends to promote its mercantile interests. It is the duty of society to oppose the pornographic products of morbid eroticism, without imposing the least constraint on true art. The sexual appetite of man is on the average rather strong; we may even say that it is much too strong, compared with the social necessities of procreation. It is, therefore, quite superfluous to artificially stimulate it. The struggle against pornography must, therefore, be raised to the rank of a postulate.
We must not forget, however, that we shall contend with it much more successfully by fulfilling our first four postulates, and in raising the artistic ideal and feeling in man, than by direct measures of suppression. The latter should be limited to the most coarse and corrupt productions of pornography.
6. Politics and Sexual Life.—I need only remind the reader of the encroachments of politics on sexual life, and especially of the abuse of sexual influence in the domain of politics. It is needless to point out the necessity of opposing all useless intermeddling of the State in the sexual life of individuals by the aid of unjustifiable regulations, as well as all intervention in the natural sexual requirements of man (in marriage, etc.), when no individual or social interest is injured. What is much more difficult, is to prevent the pressure of sexual sympathies and antipathies, and especially of amorous passions in politics.
7. Venereal Disease.—There is need for a great combat with venereal disease and pathological corruptions of the sexual appetite. (Vide Chapters VIII, XIII and XIV.) Sexual criminals should be treated conjointly with the pathology of the sexual appetite, and in the same manner; for it is nearly always a question of anomalies of the human brain, which are impossible to improve or eliminate by punishment or other penal measures.
For the present, medical and administrative measures of restriction, undertaken by society against dangerous and degenerate individuals in the sexual domain, are the only possible remedy. We should also endeavor in the future to prevent such individuals from breeding and suppress the causes of blastophthoria, by the aid of our second postulate.
8. The Conflict of Human Races.—There remains a last postulate, extremely arduous and serious, which we have already mentioned. How is our Aryan race and its civilization to guard against the danger of being passively invaded and exterminated by the alarming fecundity of other human races? One must be blind not to recognize this danger. To estimate it at its proper value, it is not enough to put all "savages" and "barbarians" into one basket and all "civilized" into the other. The question is far more complicated than this. Many savage and semi-savage races become rapidly extinct on account of their comparative sterility. Europeans have introduced among them so much alcohol, venereal disease and other plagues, that they promptly perish from want of the power of resistance. This is the case with the Weddas, the Todas, the Redskins of North America, the Australian aboriginees, Malays and many others.
The question presents itself in another aspect with regard to negroes, who are very resistant and extremely prolific, and everywhere adapt themselves to civilized customs. But those who believe that negroes are capable of acquiring a higher civilization without undergoing a phylogenetic cerebral transformation for a hundred thousand years, are Utopians. I cannot here enter into the details of this question. It seems obvious to me, however, that in the already considerable time during which the American negroes have been under the influence of European culture, they ought to have often demonstrated their power of assimilating it and of developing it independently, according to their own genius, if their brains were capable of so doing. Instead of this, we find that negroes in the interior of the island of Haiti, formerly civilized by France, then abandoned to themselves, have, with the exception of a few mulattoes, reverted to the most complete barbarism, and have even barbarized the French language and Christianity, with which they had been endowed.
Compare with this the rapidity with which a civilized or civilizable race, depending on its innate energy, assimilates our culture with or without Christianity! We need only look at what has happened in Japan during the last thirty years, and what the Christian races of the Balkan countries have been doing after delivery from the yoke of the Turks—for example, the Roumanians, Bulgarians and Greeks.
It is by its fruits that we judge the value of the tree. The Japanese are a civilizable and civilized race, and must be treated as such. The negroes, on the contrary, are not so; that is to say, they are only by themselves capable of quite an inferior civilization, and only become adapted to our customs by a superficial veneer of civilization.