(2) A dishonest fool who means to do wrong, and does it.
(3) A fool who does whichever of the two he finds most convenient in this or that regard.
We need not, therefore, take the anonymous writer very seriously, but I quote him because the incident throws a side-light upon the psychology of the half Christian. It would be as unwise as it is unnecessary to quote freely from any of the Neo-Malthusian publications. My business in this essay is to make it quite clear to readers that there is a powerful and able organization which is constantly producing literature teaching the limitation of families. There are now six or seven “Malthusian Leagues” in existence, in England, Holland, Germany, France, Belgium, and Spain, and a Woman’s International Branch uniting the women of these countries, while the printed matter issued by these organizations is enormous.
In the English journal to which I have been referring there are many advertisements of books and pamphlets in which the wording is undoubtedly designed to attract others than the earnest seeker after truth. I read, to give one example, that for eightpence post free I can obtain “The Strike of a Sex; or, Woman on Strike against the Male Sex for her ‘Magna Charta.’ One of the most advanced books ever published; intended to revolutionize public opinion on the relation of the sexes. Should be read by every person.”
And lower down in the same column I am informed that the publishers of this sort of thing not only sell books advocating Neo-Malthusian practices, but are also willing to provide the means for committing them.
So much for the unsavoury products of the Neo-Malthusian press, products which would make the gentle old clergyman of Haileybury turn away in loathing and disgust could he but see them. Large as the output of this pseudo-economic obscenity is, it does not reach a twentieth part of the people who are responsible for the decline of the birth-rate. They have derived their knowledge from another channel, from the instructions of the medical man or his lesser colleague the chemist.
The poorer classes who, a few years ago were ignorant of this propaganda, are now being instructed in it by the men from whom they buy their medicines. Doctors, in the majority of cases, are perfectly willing to explain to married people how they may avoid having children by means other than those of self-control. As a rule the medical man seems to have no conscience at all in this regard. His point of view is too often merely materialistic and concerned with nothing but physical function, and he has become in many cases, the active agent of the malignant forces which are sapping our national honour and prosperity. In discussing the question, more than one person has expressed his amazement at the readiness of doctors to explain and advocate the limitation of families. The doctors of England form one of the finest classes in the community. I will venture to say that very few men and women arrive at middle life without experiencing a lively feeling of gratitude, friendship, or even affection for some medical man. The devotion to his high calling, of even the average English doctor, is a fact in the lives of nearly all of us. It is the more surprising, and alarming also, when we realize, as inquirers are forced to realize, how wrong and mistaken the general attitude of the physician is towards this aspect of the sexual relations of men and women. It is said that infidelity is rife among those who are educated to cure our bodily ailments, that the agnostic habit of mind is frequent in this profession. I am not competent to judge of this, or to pronounce an opinion upon such a statement, though my own experience is directly opposed to it. But it is certain that until the last fifteen years the scientific temperament was disinclined to believe in anything it could not weigh, measure, analyze, touch, or see. Huxley, for example, was a striking instance of this position. But science has been revolutionized within the experience of one generation, and the “cock-sureness” has disappeared. We are all realizing that “unseen” simply means that which does not appeal to our sense of sight, or perhaps that which does not appeal to any of our senses. One of the most famous and honoured scientific men of to-day, Sir Oliver Lodge, says in regard to miracles, “I think we should hesitate very much before saying that they are impossible, because we do not know what may be the power of a great personality over natural forces.”
As the years go on, we may have great hopes that the regarding of psychology as just as much a necessary part of a doctor’s education as biology, or therapeutics will produce a better feeling among medical men in regard to the great question of which the statistics of the birth-rate form the gauge. Doctors will probably understand that harm done to the body and harm done to the soul react upon one another with remorseless certainty, and that there can be no real separation of spirit and matter. And directly this is understood we shall never find medical men recommending and assisting what Dr. Roux calls “sterile love” though some of us could find a very different name for it.
The layman unhesitatingly accepts the advice of his physician, and here “private judgment” hardly exists. If a priest tells a certain type of Englishman that Evening Communions spoil and maim our holiest sacrament, and are bad for the soul, he will resent it, and say that he will choose for himself in the matter. Yet if a doctor tells the same person that it is dangerous to eat mushrooms that have been gathered for more than two days, or that the irritation at his wrists is a symptom of uric acid in the blood, there will be no question of disbelief. The influence of doctors is incalculable, they rule us by our fear of death and our instinct of self-preservation, and rarely do we find that they abuse the trust reposed in them, or use their great power for ill always excepting the instance under discussion. When, therefore, the medical profession can be brought to see the preventive check system as it really is, when doctors understand that interference with natural laws induces a deterioration of character and temperament which eventually acts upon the body for its harm, and tends to race-degeneracy, then much will be gained. And when they progress still further in the coming reconciliation of science with the Christian Revelation, and own that the laws of God, set out and promulgated by His Holy Church, are no less binding than the laws made known by the revelation of science, then the battle will be half won. The final victory or defeat will be with the priests and ministers of every church and sect, the men who are the physicians of our souls.