Id.... A. Dumas fils draws a true and piteous picture in which this element of the unintelligent overproduction of human beings has the largest share:—
“Il y a, et c’est la masse, les femmes du peuple et de la campagne suant du matin au soir pour gagner le pain quotidien, faisant ainsi ce que faisaient leurs mères, et mettant au monde, sans savoir pourquoi ni comment, des filles qui, à leur tour, feront comme elles, à moins que, plus jolies, et par conséquent plus insoumises, elles ne sortent du groupe par le chemin tentant et facile de la prostitution, mais où le labeur est encore plus rude. Le dos courbé sous le travail du jour, regardant la terre quand elles marchent, domptées par la misère, vaincues par l’habitude, asservies aux besoins des autres, ces créatures à forme de femme ne supposent que leur condition puisse être modifiée jamais. Elles n’ont pas le temps, elles n’ont jamais eu la faculté de penser et de réfléchir; à peine un souhait vague et bientôt refoulé de quelque chose de mieux! Quand la charge est trop lourde elles tombent, elles geignent comme des animaux terrassés, elles versent de grosses larmes à l’idée de laisser leurs petits sans ressources, ou elles remercient instinctivement la mort, c’est-à-dire le repos dont elles ont tant besoin.” (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” etc., p. 101.)
Id.... And again, the advanced biological writers say:—
“The statistician will doubtless long continue his fashion of confidently estimating the importance and predicting the survival of populations from their quantity and rate of reproduction alone; but at all this, as naturalists, we can only scoff. Even the most conventional exponent of the struggle for existence among us knows, with the barbarian conquerors of old, that ‘the thicker the grass, the easier it is mown,’ that ‘the wolf cares not how many the sheep may be.’ It is the most individuated type that prevails in spite, nay, in another sense, positively because of its slower increase; in a word, the survival of a species or family depends not primarily upon quantity, but upon quality. The future is not to the most numerous population, but to the most individuated....
“Apart from the pressure of population, it is time to be learning (1) That the annual child-bearing still so common, is cruelly exhaustive to the maternal life, and this often in actual duration as well as quality; (2) That it is similarly injurious to the standard of offspring; and hence, (3) That an interval of two clear years between births (some gynæcologists even go as far as three) is due alike to mother and offspring.” (It is to be noted that this period of three years is postulated as a necessity for the well-being of the offspring; it is by no means a recommendation to even a triennial maternity on the part of the mother, who is indeed to be, in all fulness, “free mistress of her person’s sacred plan,” with a duty to herself, as well as to her child). “It is time, therefore, as we heard a brave parson tell his flock lately, ‘to have done with that blasphemous whining which constantly tries to look at a motherless’ (ay, or sometimes even fatherless) ‘crowd of puny infants as a dispensation of mysterious providence.’ Let us frankly face the biological facts, and admit that such cases usually illustrate only the extreme organic nemesis of intemperance and improvidence, and these of a kind far more reprehensible than those actions to which common custom applies the names, since they are species-regarding vices, and not merely self-regarding ones, as the others at least primarily are....
“It seems to us, however, essential to recognise that the ideal to be sought after is not merely a controlled rate of increase, but regulated married lives.... We would urge, in fact, the necessity of an ethical rather than of a mechanical ‘prudence after marriage,’ of a temperance recognised to be as binding on husband and wife as chastity on the unmarried.... Just as we would protest against the dictum of false physicians who preach indulgence rather than restraint, so we must protest against regarding artificial means of preventing fertilisation as adequate solutions of sexual responsibility. After all, the solution is primarily one of temperance. It is no new nor unattainable ideal to retain, throughout married life, a large measure of that self-control which must always form the organic basis of the enthusiasm and idealism of lovers.”—Geddes and Thomson (“The Evolution of Sex,” Chap. XX.).
As a fitting exemplification of the words of the “parson” above narrated, compare the following verbatim extract from a conversation in this year of grace 1892. The —— referred to is a man about 35, middle-class, and of “good ‘education’” (!) The same description would also apply to the speaker, who said, “Poor —— is a brave fellow, and keeps up his head in the worst of luck. He has a lot of home troubles; he has lost three children, and his wife always has a bad time at the birth of each baby.”
No word of sympathy for the wife and mother, or even of recognition that it was really she who bore the pain at each “bad time.” As the children left alive still numbered two at the time of the speech, the whole incident can but imply—on the part of both actor and speaker—the hideous, even if unconscious, inhumanity so widely prevalent. Never will “high-born breed” be attained till such action of low-bred intellect is reprobated and amended; in accordance with the enunciated truth, that:—
“Especially in higher organisms, a distinction must obviously be drawn between the period at which it is possible for males and females to unite in fertile sexual union, and the period at which such union will naturally occur or will result in the fittest offspring.”—Geddes and Thomson (op. cit., p. 243).
7, 8.—“Not overworn with childward pain and care,