Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

A Home Office Committee appointed.—The almost continuous protest of two months did, however, bear fruit, the Home Secretary appointing a Committee to consider the question of the amendment of the Inebriates Acts. But the legal brutalities described are still being perpetrated, and the future is being compromised. The London County Council may be advised to make arrangements for building a few score more schools for defective children in anticipation of the growing need which it is assuring.

Never again, when it is past, must we permit the present abominable policy. It is for public opinion to effect this, and public opinion has only to be directed to the case in order to realise its nature. If the reader pleases he may discount altogether the eugenic argument, though I believe that in the long run that is more important than any other. But if he confines his attention solely to the cruelties perpetrated upon these helpless women, infinitely more sinned against than sinning, and especially if he considers the testimony of Sir Alfred Reynolds above quoted, he will surely lend his aid to put an end to a state of affairs which is a disgrace to our civilisation. We talk of progress, and we are indeed incalculably indebted to our ancestors, but let any one consider the case of the poor child, now a wrecked woman, quoted above, and let him consider what it may be to be an heir of all the ages in the greatest city of the world to-day.

It will be sufficiently evident that if any warrant were needed for the formation of the Eugenics Education Society or for the publication of the present volume, it would be found only too abundantly in the outrage upon decency and morality and science and the future which is at present in perpetration. Further, if any warrant were required for the incessant reiteration of the principle that there is no wealth but life, it would be found in the fact that this outrage is being committed in the name of economy. Yet even if the sane and sober London ratepayer were saved a few shillings now, as he will not be, his children will have to pay pounds in the future for the support of these women's children. Economy, forsooth, when the rates of London benefited to the extent of £559,000 out of the sale of intoxicating liquors in 1905, and spent £8,000 in the maintenance of committed inebriates! Need one apologise for declaring again, that we require a new political economy which teaches that gold is for the purchase of life, and not life for the purchase of gold. For the public outrage under discussion, whereby an untold measure of life, present and to come, “breathing and to be,” is to be destroyed and defiled for a squabble over shillings, one can adequately quote only the words of Romeo to the apothecary: “There is thy gold; worse poison to men's souls, doing more murders in this loathsome world, than those poor compounds that thou may'st not sell.”

The last touches of art.—If this protest hurts any one's feelings, that cannot be helped. When the production of thousands of feeble-minded children is involved, the self-esteem of what Mr. George Meredith calls the “accepted imbecile” does not matter. The question is, How soon do we propose to rectify our present course in this respect?—a course which is a shame and a disgrace to our age and nation, and which shall in any case be placed on record in printed words, as well as in young children stamped with degeneracy—in order to point for future ages the question “An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia regitur orbis?” “With how little wisdom”—and, whilst perpetrating this shame, ignoring the one indisputable means by which legislation can and must check drunkenness, nearly all other measures having failed since Babylon was an Empire, they were quarrelling about a temperance measure, so-called, which regarded the question of transference of money from one pocket to another as vital, and ignored the one vital question, which is the question of life: a measure showing scarcely a sign, either in its text or in the words of its supporters or in the words of its opponents, that the question of the future race had ever entered into the head of a public man; a measure which left the protection of children from the public-house to the discretion of local magistrates; a measure which certainly, whatever else it might effect, could not have been more carefully drawn if its object were to promote that secret drinking amongst women[72] which means the poisoning of the racial life even before it sees the light. This, then, “mi fili,” was what was called practical statesmanship in the year 1908 of the Christian Era: and in order that no last touch might be wanted from the hand of ignorance and the blasphemous idolatry which worships gold to the neglect of the only true god, which is life, they announced just at this time the issue of a Royal Commission to enquire and report upon the manufacture and variations in the composition of whiskey. It has been a public joke for years past that no one can answer the question, “What is whiskey?” Well, then, I will answer the question, and we may save the labour of such commissions hereafter. Whiskey is a racial poison, and there is nothing else to know about it worth knowing for the future. Those who will never become, or can no longer become, fathers or mothers, may do as they please about whiskey, so far as the ideal of eugenics or race-culture is concerned. They may say, if they like, that their personal habits are their affair and concern no one else. Under the influence of whiskey they may, perhaps, even believe this. But for those who are to be the fathers and mothers of the future, such a plea is idle. The question is not solely their affair; it is the affair of the unborn, and we who champion the unborn are bound to say so.

The time will come when it is recognised that there are two classes of active mind in society: those who worship and uphold the past, and will always sacrifice the living to the dead, nay more, the unborn to the dead. The ultimate fate of these is the fate of her who looked backwards to the shame and destruction from which she had escaped. She was turned into a pillar of salt. And there are those who worship and work for the future, who will, without hesitation, sacrifice the interests of the dead (who are no longer interested) to those of the living and the coming race—nay, more, who will even sacrifice the interests of a few worthless living to those of many yet unborn, that they may be worthy. Let the dead bury their dead; let the worshippers of the dead and the dying ask themselves whether the life that is and the life that is to be do not demand their homage and service. Not until some such principles as these are recognised shall we rightly deal with the drink problem, amongst many others, and bring to it the mental and moral enlightenment which makes for life on the higher plane, just as surely and just as indispensably as the light of the sun creates all life whatsoever.

Mr. Balfour on legislation.—Surely the moral of this argument is clear. The most important, the most radical, the most practicable of all temperance measures is that which attacks the main source of supply of the drunkard. When a Licensing Bill is brought before the House of Commons, Mr. Balfour repeats the ancient piece of nonsense that you cannot make people moral by Act of Parliament—an assertion that any child can see to be a muddle. We may let that pass for the moment, but Mr. Balfour is a thinker, a student of biology, and heredity in especial, and he has lately been lecturing on “Decadence.” Might it not have been expected that such a man would take an opportunity to say what the humblest serious student of the subject would have said, and thereby to bring far more damaging criticism against the opposing party's bill than any he hinted at? He might have said, “Your bill, even if passed, will accomplish little, or relatively little, at great cost, because you have no grasp of the principles of the subject. You have no idea of what drunkenness really is. If your bill were worth a straw it would seek as a primary principle to safeguard the race by arresting the supply of potential drunkards. Your endless financial clauses deal merely with the re-distribution of money, but your bill has no clause that deals with the only business of governments, the creation and the economy of the only real wealth, which is human life.” That is what the ex-Premier did not say. He had plenty of passion, plenty of party-feeling to give fire to his words, but so far as knowledge is concerned or any conception of what alone is the wealth of nations, there was nothing to choose between Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith. Passion you must have if you are to do anything, but not party-passion: whereas if you have passion for life and for children, not only will it be effective, but, notwithstanding all that the psychologists tell us as to the vitiation of judgment by emotion, it will actually teach you the supreme and eternal truths.

In this book hitherto little has been said as to formal eugenic legislation. I believe with Etienne that it is opinion which governs the world: legislation in front of public opinion brings all law into contempt. But in his first speech opposing the Licensing Bill of 1908, Mr. Balfour, the author of the Licensing Bill of 1904, decried legislation. “Intemperance,” he said, “is a vice”: and legislation can do practically nothing in dealing with a vice. Plainly Mr. Balfour is ignorant of the nature of intemperance, which largely depends upon transmitted and inherent brain defect. He therefore lost his opportunity of pointing out in what fashion you can actually, notwithstanding the parrots, make people sober by Act of Parliament—viz., by forbidding parenthood to those whose children would almost certainly become drunkards. We who are not politicians, much less ex-Premiers, must make our own proposals then. Last year's criticism of the London County Council began, I believe, to educate public opinion to the necessary point. In the name of race-culture and the New Patriotism, in the name of morality and charity and science, we must demand, obtain and carry into effect the most stringent and comprehensive legislation, such as effectively to forbid parenthood on the part of the chronic inebriate. Ere long, the person who would have become a chronic inebriate will be cared for and protected during childhood and thereafter,—with the same result. This solution of the problem is denounced, says Dr. Archdall Reid,

“... as horrible, as Malthusian, as immoral, as impracticable.... The alternative is more horrible and more immoral still. If by any means we save the inebriates of this generation, but permit them to have offspring, future generations must deal with an increased number of inebriates.... The experience of many centuries has rendered it sufficiently plain, that while there is drink, there will be drunkards till the race be purged of them. We have therefore no real choice between Temperance Reform by the abolition of drink, and Temperance Reform by the elimination of the drunkard.... Which is the worse; that miserable drunkards shall bear wretched children to a fate of starvation and neglect and early death, or of subsequent drunkenness and crime, or that, by our deliberate act, the procreation of children shall be forbidden them? We are on the horns of a dilemma from which there is no escape.... But our time has seen the labours of Darwin. We know now the great secret. Science has given us knowledge and with it power. We have learnt that if we labour for the individual alone, we shall surely fail; but that if we make our sacrifice greater, if we labour for the race as well, we must succeed. Let us then by all means seek to save the individual drunkard; with all our power let us endeavour to make and keep him sober; but let us strive also to eradicate the type; for, as I have said, if we do it not quickly and with mercy, Nature will do it slowly and with infinite cruelty.”

Women and children first.—The noble cry on a sinking ship is “women and children first.” This perhaps is a plea for the service of helplessness as such, though it might be equally warranted as a demand for the sacrifice of the present to the future. And assuredly the cry for a sinking society must also be “women and children first.” It is well if the cry be raised when the ship of state is not yet sinking, but only water-logged or alcohol-logged. Temperance legislation and the agitation for temperance reform are themselves in need of reform. Their appalling record of failure—for it is such a record—should help even the fanatic, one thinks, to accept the introduction of the eugenic idea as a new principle of life for the temperance cause. In the present state of custom and opinion, the teetotaler cannot force his own wise habits upon the vast majority who do not agree with him. If he has an infinite amount of energy and resources, let him spend as much of both as he pleases upon the sort of propaganda with which we are familiar: he will, by the hypothesis, still have an infinite amount of both available for the cause to which the principle of race-culture would direct him. If, however, his energy and resources are finite,—if, indeed, they are by no means excessive in proportion to the urgent task which the ideal of race-culture asks of him, then let him not fritter away a moment or a penny or a breath until he has achieved the process of salvage or salvation which is expressed in the phrase “women and children first.” More accurately, perhaps, our cry must be “parents and possible parents first,” and this for present practical purposes is equivalent to “women and children first.”