The other quite humane method of prevention of propagation is simple sterilization. The slight operation of vasectomy, respectively salpingectomy, does not give the least inconvenience nor does it alter in the least the mental or bodily character of the operated individual. This small operation has no more effect upon the person, in regard to his potency, than an obliteration of the vas deferens in the male or of the Fallopian tube in the female; and these obliterations cause so little inconvenience that they remain, as a rule, unknown to the man or woman. They are only accidentally discovered when the patients apply for the treatment of their sterility.
Hence all intelligent people who have some hereditary taint should be taught to renounce propagation by this method. Those with a neuropathic diathesis or with an alcoholic diathesis, or who show an inability to learn in school, or those in whose families are found cases of dementia praecox, maniac-depressive insanity, or those suffering from incurable inheritable diseases, such as tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis, hemophilia, color blindness, albinism, in short of such diseases that do not impair their judgment, ought to preclude themselves from parenthood by voluntarily submitting to this mild operation before marriage.
Those, whose judgment is materially impaired to realize the seriousness of their propagation, such as the incurable insane, inherent epileptics, the born deaf-mutes, the idiots, imbeciles, and feeble-minded, should forcibly undergo this operation. Even the dull and idle should be deprived of the chance of propagating their kind by means of sterilization. These incompetents and degenerates furnish the material from which the ranks of the habitual criminals and prostitutes are recruited. Since we have learned that the great horde of defectives is due to unfit matings and that indolent strains arise by the mating of indolent persons, society has a right and even a duty to weed out these delinquent, defective and dependent classes by the prevention of the procreation of the various defective offspring.
The third method of preventing propagation is castration. Sterilization does not deprive the individual of his desire for congressus nor of the ability to perform the same, nor of the faculty of experiencing libido. Hence the murderous and erotically degenerated criminal classes will remain a menace to society until they are deprived not only of the potency of procreation but also of the potency concarnationis and of experiencing libido. The method of castration, therefore, should be reserved as a penalty for the outspoken habitual brutal criminal, the rapist, the confirmed inebriate, the incorrigible burglar or gunman, the gibbering idiot, or imbecile cretin with the inherited tendency to crime, and the unstable erotopath. The offspring of this class are predestined to be degenerates, and one of the two operations is imperatively indicated. It is preferable that the testicles or ovaries should perish in such individuals than that their morbidity should be propagated. In the interest of the patients themselves the more radical operation is to be recommended. Spayed animals are always easier controlled. Just as gelding of the bull and stallion changes the vigorous, powerful, spirited animals into the comparatively quiet, docile ox and horse, so may the unsexing or castration of the unfit have a beneficial quieting effect upon the ferocious, currish, stupid human semi-animal.[CK]
The defectives, when at large, will always find mating facilities even with the healthy, and thereby drag fresh blood into the vortex of disease. The progeny of defective parentage are always defective. Two imbecile parents will never produce a perfectly normal child. A superior mated with an inferior may sometimes reproduce the normal, but, as a rule, the progeny of this crossing will also be defective. The eradication of every kind of degeneracy is hence the solemn duty of society to relieve the burden of the community, and by the reduction of the lower types in each successive generation, degeneracy could be weeded out of human society.
The other method of the realization of a superior humanity is the positive breeding of superior offspring. But this method of the stock-farm is so antagonistic to our conception of personal liberty that any liberty-loving nation will prefer panmixia or blood-chaos, with the freedom to choose their mates by means of love or even infatuation, to the patriarchic slavery of being mated like race-horses.[CL]
There is no need for a revolutionary change of the marriage relations as proposed by the different brands of race-culture. The ultimate apotheosis of the world will never be reached by the superman on the terms of Nietzsche. The novel and revolutionary doctrine as to choice of parents has sprung in essentially unbalanced minds. If only those undesirables who become a public charge, either in prisons or in asylums—and sooner or later they all land there—are one way or another prevented from the propagation of their kind, the anti-selection, now at work, would cease. The degeneration of the human race could be stopped, even under the present conditions of human cultivation.
[CHAPTER XXI]
SEX-HYGIENE FOR ADULTS
Engagement.—The boy and girl who, by the proper and circumspect management of home and school, have succeeded to remain pure and chaste until their marriageable age need certain lessons in sexual hygiene to secure the desired happiness in their future married life.