Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

Dr. Wallace is a socialist, and he believes that only through socialism can we achieve “that perfect freedom of choice in marriage which will only be possible when all are economically equal, and no question of social rank or material advantage can have the slightest influence in determining that choice.” As I have said elsewhere, I would call myself neither a socialist nor an anti-socialist, but if labels are necessary, a eugenist and maternalist. As such, I can only say that this argument for socialism—that it is the necessary condition of eugenics or race-culture—is, for me, incomparably the best argument for that creed; and if it were proved that only through socialism could the utmost be made of women's choice of husbands, then no argument against socialism could have any appreciable weight at all. The fundamental and permanent argument against certain of the highly various and incompatible doctrines which, for our confusion, are commonly lumped together as socialism, is that they would arrest the process by which Nature rewards worth and permits it to perpetuate itself. If, then, it can be shown, as may or may not be the case, that only through socialism can male worth be most effectively chosen and male unworth be rejected for fatherhood, the supreme—that is, the eugenic—argument against socialism becomes the conclusive argument in its favour.

The field of choice.—But, however this may be, there can be no question that the eugenic purpose, as well as the happiness and elevation of individuals in the present, will be greatly served by whatever measures increase, to the utmost extent possible, the opportunities for choice in marriage afforded to women and also to men. One of the most amazing and satisfactory facts about marriage as at present practised is, I think, the large proportion—often estimated at seventy-five per cent.—of unions which, apart from any eugenic question, turn out happily, in Great Britain, at any rate. What makes this fact more amazing is the almost incredible limitation of the field of choice within which both sexes are still confined as a whole. If the reader will consider the cases most familiar to him or her, it will surely be admitted that the considerable success of marriage takes on an astonishing aspect when the present strait conditions of choice are taken into account. I am convinced that few more radical and far-reaching, because eugenic, reforms can be conceived than any which, in accordance with Dr. Wallace's argument, tend to widen the field of choice, and that not for one sex only but for both. He would be a rash man who ventured to allot superior value to the selection of man by woman rather than of woman by man, or vice versâ.

Quite apart from any deeper and more difficult reforms, such as Dr. Wallace alludes to, I am sure that even the mere widening of the field of choice, as such, is most desirable. To take an instance, which the reader may very likely think trivial and absurd, I have witnessed in my brief career as a hockey player two unions most happy and eugenic in every way, which entirely depended upon the existence of the amusement called mixed hockey—whereat the contracting parties met one another! It is not asserted that these two cases suffice for world-wide generalisation. They are merely cited as instances which set at least one hockey player thinking, even on the field—the field of choice. It is a great argument, because it is a eugenic argument, in favour of community of sports and amusements amongst young people of both sexes, that it does widen the field of choice in marriage, and that in doing so it also tends to favour those factors of selection which the eugenist would desire to see selected: and this especially as compared with the ball-room. I think that the reader will agree that the conditions, the “atmosphere,” the costume, and the other features of what young people call a “dance,” whilst undoubtedly serving the purpose of marriage and widening somewhat a field of choice which might otherwise be ludicrously and impracticably restricted, compare most unfavourably with the conditions of even the mixed hockey field, which, decried though they often be, are to my mind immeasurably healthier on every conceivable ground than those of the ball-room, and not least of all on the eugenic ground of the prominence gained by most desirable qualities, of which mere strength and energy and neuro-muscular skill are quite the least, whilst unselfishness, capacity for self-control, patience, real gallantry—as when a male “full back” refrains from hitting the ball with all his might against the toes of a girl “forward”—the sporting spirit and other true and radical virtues, are the greatest. It is undoubtedly the case that the personal factors, physical and psychical, which determine the mutual attraction of young people, have dependent upon them the whole of human destiny. In society to-day, what one may call the incidence of parenthood, upon which all the future necessarily depends, is determined by nothing other than the humanised form of what Darwin called “sexual selection.” Therefore, it is not trivial but supremely important to discuss the conditions under which the selection obtains.[53]

It has already been suggested that in order to enhance the eugenic value of marriage we should endeavour to widen the field of choice, at present ludicrously restricted by custom, class, religion, economic position, and so forth. The increased locomotion of to-day will be of real eugenic service to the race in this respect, I believe.

Then it has been hinted that young people should meet one another under conditions which make prominent the psychical and put the merely physical or animal into the background—e.g. on the hockey field or the ice or in the “literary circle,” rather than in the ball-room. This proposition accords, of course, with what has been said elsewhere as to that great factor of progress which I define as the enhancement of the survival-value of the psychical as against that of the physical. (Note the obvious sequence—survival-value, selection-value, marriage-value, parenthood-value, progress-value.) This proposition and the last might both be worked out, I believe, in considerable detail and not without profit.

Arguing on the same lines, we may agree that even such a small matter, usually considered wholly domestic, as the length of engagements, is of eugenic or racial importance. The eugenist, I think, must welcome long engagements simply because, though they may involve a reduced marriage-rate and a reduced birth-rate—the latter partly in consequence of the reduced marriage-rate, and partly because of the later age at marriage—they tend by the mere operation of time, as we say, to enhance the importance of the psychical and to reduce the importance of the physical factors which determine sexual attraction.

To these three points a fourth, of great importance, must be added. It is that we should favour, as far as possible, those factors of choice for marriage which are inherent, and therefore transmissible, as against those which are acquired, accidental, and therefore not transmissible, and therefore of no racial or eugenic importance. This, of course, is the point made by Dr. Wallace in the article quoted above—or at any rate it is involved in the point he makes. I simply mean that every time a marriage is brought about by, for instance, money, the eugenic value of marriage is at least nullified and may become actually anti-eugenic. Again I say, if Socialism, or the abolition of (un-natural) inheritance, be necessary in order that selection for marriage shall be determined by the possession of personal qualities of racial value rather than the power of the purse, which has always been a racial curse, then the sooner socialism is established the better.

The eugenic value of contemporary marriage.—The first purpose of this chapter has been to show that in marriage, wherever, and in so far as, it is determined by the mutual attractiveness of young people, there exists a eugenic factor in society to-day; and since the race is in effect recruited by the married people, this aspect of marriage deserves the closest study and attention. I commend this subject, the eugenic value of contemporary marriage, to the small but rapidly increasing number of students who realise that eugenics or race-culture will be the supreme science of the future, and who are now devoting themselves to its foundations. No more important and urgent enquiry can be undertaken at this stage. Which, for instance, is the more eugenic, the English system or the French?

The second purpose has been to show that one may believe in and work for eugenics or race-culture without proposing to overthrow all human institutions, or to adopt the methods of the stud-farm, or to initiate a vast campaign of surgery, or sensational and drastic legislation, or even, yet, the employment of marriage certificates. One or all of these things may have their place, now or hereafter; or may, on the other hand, be far worse than futile. But most assuredly it is possible now for the individual parent of marriageable children, for the clergyman, the leader of fashion, the doctor, not to start but to strengthen such by no means impotent eugenic forces as already exist in society, without outraging sentiment or custom—indeed, without attracting public attention to their action at all.

Eugenics has already suffered much at the hands of its so-called friends. It is to be hoped that a real service may be discharged by this attempt to show that on the highest, most accurate and scientific eugenic grounds, we may recognise, claim and welcome every father and mother who desire that the son or daughter whom they care for shall marry for psychical and not for physical love. Every such parent is a eugenist, in effect, though his sole motive may be the welfare of his individual child.