Plato and motherhood.—Thus eugenics must repudiate not only the ideas of Mr. Shaw on this subject, but the teaching of Plato, from whom Mr. Shaw's ideas on this particular subject are apparently derived. It is in the fifth book of his Republic that the pioneer eugenist lays down his ideas for race-culture. He realised, indeed, the importance, after birth, of the nurture of children—“it is of considerable, nay, of the utmost importance to the State, when this is rightly performed or otherwise;” and he refers also to their nurture while very young, “in the period between their generation and their education, which seems to be the most troublesome of all.” His method involved a complete community of wives and children amongst the guardians of the State, and on no account were the parents to know their own children nor the children their parents. The best were to be chosen for parents, on the analogy of animal race-culture by man. The children of inferior parents were to be killed. The others were to be conveyed to the common nursery of the city, but every precaution was to be taken that no mother should know her own child. This practice was to be the cardinal point of the Republic and “the cause of the greatest good to the city.”
We see here, then, that the very first proposals for race-culture involved the destruction of marriage and the family, and a total denial of the value of the psychical aspects of motherhood and fatherhood alike. Plato's first critic, however, his own great pupil Aristotle, devoted the best part of his work, the Politics, to showing that the suggestions of Plato were not only wrong in themselves, but would not secure his end. Aristotle showed, in the words of Mr. Barker, that “the destruction of the family, and the substitution in its place of one vast clan, would lead but to the destruction of warm feelings, and the substitution of a sentiment which is to them as water is to wine.... So with the system of common marriage, as opposed to monogamy. The one encourages at best a poor and shadowy sentiment, while it denies to man the satisfaction of natural instinct and the education of family life; the other is natural and right, both because it is based on those instincts, and because it satisfies the moral nature of man, in giving him objects of permanent yet vivid interest above and beyond himself.” The truth of this matter is that the rest may reason and welcome—but we fathers know.
Marriage a eugenic instrument.—It has definitely to be stated, then, that the abolition of marriage and the family is in no degree whatever a part of the eugenic proposal. We desire to achieve race-culture by and through marriage, on the lines which indeed many lower races of men successfully practise at the present day. We must make parenthood more responsible, not less so. It will afterwards be shown that the suggested incompatibility between marriage and the family, on the one hand, and race-culture or eugenics on the other, does not exist. It will be shown that we have in marriage not only the greatest instrument of race-culture that has yet been employed—half-consciously—by man, but also an instrument supremely fitted, and indeed without a rival, for the conscious, deliberate, and scientific intentions of modern eugenists. The applicability of marriage for this purpose will be shown by reference to actual facts. Mr. Galton himself has shown how effectively an educated public opinion can employ marriage for the purposes of race-culture, its services to which have indeed led to its evolution. It has furthermore to be added that only the formation of public opinion can ever lead to the ideal which we desire. This opinion already exists in some degree as regards one or two transmissible diseases, and, though without adequate scientific warrant, as regards the marriage of first cousins. In these respects it is not without some measure of effectiveness, and the fact is of the utmost promise.
“Marriage,” said Goethe, “is the origin and the summit of all civilisation.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the family rather than marriage. The childless marriage may be and often is a thing of the utmost beauty and value to the individuals concerned, but it is certainly not the origin of civilisation, and if it be its summit it is also its grave. The eugenic support of marriage, therefore, depends upon a belief in the family, and that form of marriage will commend itself which provides the best form of family. From the point of view of certain eugenists, polygamy would be desirable in many cases, as extending the parental opportunities of the man of fine physique or intellectual distinction. The problem remains, however, as to the nurture of the children so obtained, and historical study returns us a very clear answer as to the relative merits of the polygamous family and the monogamous family. It is this last that pre-eminently justifies itself on the score of its services to childhood and therefore to the race. Its survival is a matter of absolute certainty, because of its survival-value. Neither Plato nor Mr. Shaw, nor any kind of collectivist legislation will permanently abolish it.
The principle of maternalism.—The merits of monogamy can be defined in terms of the principle which I would venture to call maternalism—the principle of the permanent and radical importance of motherhood and whatever institutions afford it the greatest aid.
Maternalism would point, I think, to the supreme paradox that the dominant creature of the earth is born of woman, and born the most absolutely helpless of all living creatures whatsoever, animal or vegetable; it would note that this utter dependence upon others, mother or foster-mother, is not only the most unqualified known, but the longest maintained; it would observe that of all the human beings now alive, all that have lived, all that are to be, not one could survive its birth for twenty-four hours but for motherhood; it would note that only motherhood has rendered possible the development of instinct into that intelligence which, itself dependent upon motherhood for the possibility of its development, has dependent upon it the fact that the earth is now man's and the fulness thereof; and to the advocates of all the political -isms that can be named, and the small proportion of them that can be defined, it would apply its specific criterion: Do you regard the safeguarding and the ennoblement of motherhood as the proximate end of all political action, the end through which the ultimate ends, the production and recognition of human worth, can alone be attained; do you realise that marriage is invaluable because it makes for the enthronement of motherhood as nothing else ever did or can; do you realise that, metaphors about State maternity notwithstanding, the State has neither womb nor breasts, these most reverend and divine of all vital organs being the appanage of the individual mother alone?
The maternalist principle being assumed, and the value of monogamy on the ground that it supports motherhood by fatherhood, the forthcoming discussion as to the possibilities of race-culture will assume the persistence of monogamy and will centre upon the possibility of selecting or rejecting, for the purposes of race-culture, those who are available for entrance into the marriage state. The reader who has not studied social anthropology—and this is true of nearly all the critics of eugenics, very few of whom have studied anything—will be astounded, I believe, to discover the practically unlimited extent to which public opinion, whether or not formulated as law, has always been capable of controlling marriage, and therefore, race-culture.
Proposed definition of marriage.—Recognising the existence of subhuman marriage, we may be at a loss to define marriage as distinguished from sex-relations in general. It is that form of sex-relation which involves or is adapted to common parental care of the offspring—the support of motherhood by fatherhood.