The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

While children continue to be born in the cold atmosphere of duty, or in the stormy atmosphere of discord, while people continue to regard such marriages as moral, while people can transmit to their children all kinds of intellectual mutilation and bodily unsoundness, and their parents continue to be called honorable, so long will the world be without the slightest conception of that morality which will mould the new mankind.

This morality has still more exalted precepts. To-day it seldom happens that a young girl enters marriage in ignorance, but in my generation I know cases where the ignorance of the bride resulted in insanity. In another case this ignorance led to thoughts of suicide; in a third, the child was regarded with coldness by its mother; in the fourth, the child had abnormal psychic qualities. Still it is not sufficient for the ideal beauty of marriage and the harmony of the child that the woman knows in general what is before her. A young man said once to me that most marriages are spoilt at the very beginning, because the man brings with him the point of view and the habits of those degraded women, from whom he has received his initiation into love; frequently he annihilates forever the tenderest element in his relation to his wife. He damages the most beautiful factor in their mutual feelings. Man must learn to have reverence and patience, and I know men who have shown these characteristics really because they saw that their wives gave, as is not unfrequently the case, their souls and their hearts before their senses were awakened. Only the constant close association taught them to desire a completed marriage. A child should receive life only through this common impulse. Many children are born, as it is, in legalised prostitution, in legalised rape. Yet there is wanting in the consciences of many women and men, the slightest shadow of religious reverence, of æsthetic feeling before the greatest mystery of existence. And yet we continue in the name of morality to veil for youth the nakedness of nature and we neglect to inspire their feeling of devotion towards their own being as the shrine in which the mystery of life must some day be fulfilled.

In this mystery there are still hidden fields only penetrated by the intuition. Here and there a profound poet has surmised the innumerable affinities or repulsions which under changing spiritual and material dispositions with altering opinions, condition the life of love in modern human beings, the mystic influences which sometimes forever, sometimes partially, can change the deepest feeling. All these mystic influences, the tender woof of all these fine threads, will then be a part of the living fabric of the child. These secret processes explain the great differences between children of the same parents,—children who externally are born and brought up in quite similar conditions.

In all these promptings of instinct, in all these categorical imperatives of the nerves and the blood, human beings must be at the same time obedient listeners and strict masters. On this depends the future happiness of love, and with it a happier future race.

The people of to-day live under inherited morals and newly acquired transgressions of morality. Both must be conquered before soul and sense in love can become inseparable, or in other words, before this unity is recognised as the only possible moral basis of the relation between man and woman.

Talented men, as well as one-sided advocates of women's rights, think that the development will take quite a different course, after the low impulse which is at the basis of love has been laid bare and scientifically analysed. They say that the superior person will satisfy the impulse shamelessly and animally, without any emotional decoration; or he will isolate himself from its influence and devote to more noble purposes that vital power, that emotional capacity, which is now consumed by love.

Nothing impossible is to be found in this point of view. I have shown more than once that woman by her maternal functions, uses up so much physical and psychical energy, that in the sphere of intellectual production she must remain of less significance. What I at an earlier period assumed intuitively, has been substantiated since then by a specialist. A Finnish doctor has shown how the vital power of lower organisms, is concentrated in sexual production. But the higher man goes, so much more power is made free. This power which is not consumed in the production of new generations, can serve intellectual production. Each of the two different productive expressions of human vital action must to a certain extent limit the development of the power of the other, and restrict its capacity of work. The same writer contends that this is the natural cause of the more limited fertility of civilised man, and will be, according to the pessimists named above, the decisive factor in the prophesied downfall of love.

According to my conception of the word, it is love on the contrary, which will win the victory by the relative weakening of impulse, and by scientific analysis of the same. Men will no longer mistake impulse for love. Of course this impulse is always present in love, but in the same way in which the sculpture of the cave man is present in the work of Michael Angelo. Man will then, with all the powers of his being, be able to love, when love, according to the happy expression of Thoreau, is not a glow, but a light. Then he will see for the first time, what wealth life can have through love, when love becomes a happiness worthy of man because it becomes an æsthetic creation, a religious worship; when the completed unity of those who love is expressed in a new being,—a being that will some day be really grateful for the life it has received. Where the amelioration of the human race is concerned, the transformation of customs and feelings is always the essential thing. Influence of legislation in comparison with it is ever slight. But as has been said before, legislation has its role to play. Especially where there are diseases which can certainly be transmitted, society must interfere to restrict marriage. In Germany and America a good proposal has been made, for the period of transition in this direction. It is suggested that the law shall require as an obligatory condition for marriage, a certificate of a medical witness with complete data as to the health of both parties. Those who contract marriage will continue to have their freedom of choice but at least they would not enter ignorantly upon marriage as they do now, and expose themselves and their children to disastrous consequences. It appears to me to be at least as important for society to have a medical certificate as to capacity for marriage, as it is for military service. In the one case, we deal with giving life, in the other with taking it away. And although the latter has certainly been, up till now, regarded as a more serious occasion than the former, still an awakening social conscience should demand progress in this direction. It is conceivable that from this beginning new customs will develop; further legislation may be dispensed with; human beings will agree to sacrifice the most dangerous of all liberties, giving life to a defective offspring, while prohibition of marriage now would not hinder parenthood. For the great mass might continue, outside of marriage, to rob children of the possibilities of health and happiness, by burdening them with inherited diseases or bad tendencies.

Nietzsche, who knew little of love because he knew nothing of woman, and who therefore on this subject says little worthy of attention, has still spoken more profoundly on the subject of parenthood than any contemporary writer. He saw what impurity, what poverty are concealed under the name of marriage. He saw how meretricious, how ignorant education is. In his writings are to be found prophetical and poetical words describing the end aimed at in parenthood, and showing what true parenthood should be.

I will that thy victory and thy emancipation shall yearn for a child. Living memorials shalt thou build for thy victory, and for thy emancipation.

Thou must build upward to a height beyond thyself. But first I would have thee thyself built with a square foundation, body and soul.

See that through thee the race progresses, not continues only.

Let a true marriage help thee to this end.

A more exalted being must thou create, a being gifted with initiative like a wheel that turns itself. A creative principle shouldst thou create.

Marriage: I call marriage the will shared by two, to create the one,—the one that is in itself more than its creators. Reverence for one another, I call marriage; such reverence as is meet for those whose wills are united in this one act of will.