The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

Along with the question of heredity stands that of the development of races. In the beginning of the Origin of Species Darwin showed how essential pure descent is for the production of a noble race. This theory is appealed to by a modern anti-Semitic writer, who represents the Jew as a typical example of pure race, an idea which one of the most conspicuous representatives of Judaism, Disraeli, has also expressed in the following words: "Race is everything; there is no other truth, and every race which carelessly allows mixed blood, perishes." Yet other specialists consider some racial mixture as highly advantageous to the offspring.

Professor Westermark has offered a good reason for the significance attached to beauty in the case of love, and therefore its importance for the race. He has shown how man has conceived physical beauty to be the full development of all of those characteristics which distinguish the human organism from the animal, and which mark sex distinctions, and, most of all, race distinctions. He thinks individuals with these characteristics are best suited for their life work. Accordingly it is the result of natural selection that exactly those individuals are found most beautiful and are most desired, who first as human beings best fulfil the general demands of the human organism, as sexual beings fulfil those of their sex, and as members of the race are best suited to the conditions which surround them. In the struggle for existence, those are overcome, who are descended from human beings, whose instincts of love are directed to individuals badly adapted to that struggle; while those who are victorious are children happily so adapted. In this way, taste has developed by which, what is best adapted to environment appears as the highest beauty. This is equivalent to health, the power to resist the attacks of the external world. While every considerable deviation from the pure type in sex and race, has a lesser degree of adaptability; that is of health, and also of beauty.

Another writer has used the foot as an example of this principle. The small, high-arched foot with the fine ankle is always, he says, regarded as the most beautiful. But such a foot is only combined with a fine, strong, and elastic bony structure. Such a foot besides has, by its great elasticity, a considerably higher power of bearing weight than the flat foot. The high-vaulted foot, in walking and jumping, increases the activity of the lungs and the heart. This again makes the walk elastic, strong, and easy, agile and stately. These traits, for the same reason as the beauty of the foot itself, are looked upon as a racial sign. This physical power and ease influence the mind, and produce self-confidence, and so increase the feeling of superiority and the joy of living, marks of distinction in human beings.

Whether the illustration in this special case holds good or not, it proves nothing against the truth of the theory on which it rests, and which is gradually becoming prevalent; the view I mean, according to which souls and bodies are mutually developed through adaptability to their surroundings.

So it is necessary not only to investigate what conditions give the best selection, but also what external ones strengthen or weaken the characteristics found in natural selection. We must again see the importance of bodily exercise. Painful experiences have taught us to prevent the consequences of overstrain, over-exertion in competitive imbecility, and mania for sport. Such results have specially shown themselves to be harmful for women in respect to motherhood. Sport and play, gymnastics and pedestrianism, life in nature and in the open air, a regenerated system of dancing, after the model of the Swedish peasant dances, will be most excellent bases for the physical and psychical renewal of the new generation.

In plans concerning this renewal, people have pointed to the influence of art; it has been shown how Burne-Jones created the new English type of woman. It was formed by an adaption to the quiet, distinguished style, by a process that went slowly on. This was the type regarded by him as the model one. It is maintained that we only need to see a pair of young English girls in front of one of his pictures, in order to notice how not only the faces but the expressions show a resemblance. The artist has impressed his trait on youth before it was conscious of it. Before these forms they grew up, they have seen them in their picture books, they have been dressed in clothes cut in the fashion of the master's pictures. There is another reason. Mothers of the present day are supposed to have passed on to their children the Burne-Jones type in the same way in which the charm of the Greeks was influenced by the beauty of their statuary. In antiquity it was believed, even in other details, (for example, in attaining the much-longed-for blonde hair) that this end could be secured by observing the proper directions.

As to the significance of external influences of this kind on mothers, there is too little material still to build up conclusions. On this point, learned men also disagree. I have only, therefore, incidentally mentioned this factor among others. All should be established before we can get a final and certain insight into the conditions of human birth. In the absence of scientific knowledge I can only refer to the literature and comprehensive investigations commenced in the preceding century, that throw light on the riddle of man's coming into the world. Many of these matters are still involved in obscurity. But man's spirit is resting on the waters; gradually a new creation will be called forth from them.

In connection with this, must be discussed the development of new ideas of law in these spheres. Heathen society in its hardness, exposed weak or crippled children. Christian society on the other hand, has gone so far in its mildness, that it prolongs the life of the child who is incurably ill, physically and psychically, even if he is misshapen and so becomes an hourly torment to himself and his surroundings. Yet respect for life is still not strong enough in a social order, which keeps up among other things, the death penalty and war, that one can without danger suggest the extinction of such a life. Only when death is inflicted through compassion, will the humanity of the future show itself in such a way, that the doctor under control and responsibility can painlessly extinguish such suffering. On the other hand, this Christian society still maintains the distinction between legitimate children and the children of sin, a distinction which more than anything else has helped to obstruct a real ethical conception of the duties of parents. Every child has the same rights in respect to both father and mother. Both parents have just the same obligation to every child. Until this is recognised there will be no basis for the future morality of the common life between man and woman. Some day society will look upon the arrangements of the love relation as the private affair of responsible individuals. Those who are lovers, those who are married will regard themselves as completely free, and will also be so regarded. Binding promises in respect of emotions, demands of exclusive possession over personality, have already come to be regarded by fine feeling and fully developed human beings as a relic of erotic sentiments on a lower plane. These sentiments were the outcome of desire for mastery, vanity, cruelty, and blind passion. People are beginning to see that perfect fidelity is only to be obtained by perfect freedom; that complete exchange of individuality can only take place in perfect freedom; that complete excellence can only come into being in perfect freedom. Each must cease to try to force and bend the emotions, opinions, habits, and inclinations of the other towards him- or herself. Each must regard the continuance of the feeling of the other as a happiness, not as a right. Each must regard the possible cessation of this feeling as a pain, not as an injustice. Only in this way can there arise between the two souls such pure, full, freedom that both can move with absolute independence, and complete unity.

Freedom is no danger to fidelity. The kind of fidelity required by the church and by the law has certainly been a notable means of education. But the method, as it is, is opposed to the end. For it has produced the feeling of possession. This has led to loss of respect in the worship of love. The requirements based on force have awakened hostility in soul and sense; the fear of public opinion has produced all sorts of dishonesty between man and wife, between them and the world. When the bonds of compulsion fall away feeling will be strengthened. For when the external supports of fidelity are wanting, the power required for it will come from the inner life. Although human beings will be exposed always to the possibility of serious mistakes about themselves and the object of their love; although time can always change human beings and their emotions; although, even in a marriage which has resulted from mutual love, conditions can arise which make Nietzsche's ideal legitimate, that it is better to break up the marriage than to be broken up by it; yet on the whole freedom will encourage fidelity, which itself will always have a support through the experience of its psychological and ethical value.

It is not through a series of lightly entered into and lightly dissolved connections that one is prepared for the happiness of great love. Voluntary fidelity is a sign of nobility, because it assumes the will to concentrate about the centre of life's meaning; because it signifies the unity with our own proper innermost ego. This is as true of fidelity in love as of all other kinds of fidelity. Only when love is the practical religion of the work-day, and the devotion of the holiday, when it is kept under the constant supervision of the soul, when it brings with it a constant growth, (why should not the fine old word "sanctification" be used) of personality, is love great. Then it comes into possession of a higher right than some earlier union, because it then means really fidelity and nothing else towards our own highest ego. But where it does not have this character, it does not possess this right. It is then a petty emotion even when it is made pardonable by great passion. The children which issue from temporary unions are often as imperfect as their origin. Great love is, as a young doctor once said, only that which grips so deeply, that after its loss one no longer feels as a whole, but as a half of a whole. Yet nature has protected itself against annihilation by giving the possibility of love more than once. But what nature's ideal is cannot be doubted. The race which would come into existence, provided young men and women were given the possibility of uniting when the first love took possession of them,—that love which is the deepest,—this race would be sound and strong, different from what our own race is now. But when young people love now they seldom have the means for union, and when they have the means, then that which leads them to the marriage union is not the deepest feeling they have ever felt, but only an impulse, which, even if real, is still only a substitute.