While the necessity of refraining from procreation is no longer a bar to marriage, the question of whether two persons ought to marry each other still remains in the majority of cases a serious question from the standpoint of positive as well as of negative eugenics, for the normal marriage cannot fail to involve children, as, indeed, its chief and most desirable end. We have to consider not merely what are the stocks or the individuals that are unfit to breed, but also what are these stocks or individuals that are most fit to breed, and under what conditions procreation may best be effected. The present imperfection of our knowledge on these questions emphasizes the need for care and caution in approaching their consideration.
It may be fitting, at this point, to refer to the experiment of the Oneida Community in establishing a system of scientific propagation, under the guidance of a man whose ability and distinction as a pioneer are only to-day beginning to be adequately recognized. John Humphrey Noyes was too far ahead of his own day to be recognized at his true worth; at the most, he was regarded as the sagacious and successful founder of a sect, and his attempts to apply eugenics to life only aroused ridicule and persecution, so that he was, unfortunately, compelled by outside pressure to bring a most instructive experiment to a premature end. His aim and principle are set forth in an Essay on Scientific Propagation, printed some forty years ago, which discusses problems that are only now beginning to attract the attention of the practical man, as within the range of social politics. When Noyes turned his vigorous and practical mind to the question of eugenics, that question was exclusively in the hands of scientific men, who felt all the natural timidity of the scientific man towards the realization of his proposals, and who were not prepared to depart a hair's breadth from the conventional customs of their time. The experiment of Noyes, at Oneida, marked a new stage in the history of eugenics; whatever might be the value of the experiment—and a first experiment cannot well be final—with Noyes the questions of eugenics passed beyond the purely academic stage in which, from the time of Plato, they had peacefully reposed. "It is becoming clear," Noyes states at the outset, "that the foundations of scientific society are to be laid in the scientific propagation of human beings." In doing this, we must attend to two things: blood (or heredity) and training; and he puts blood first. In that, he was at one with the most recent biometrical eugenists of to-day ("the nation has for years been putting its money on 'Environment,' when 'Heredity' wins in a canter," as Karl Pearson prefers to put it), and at the same time revealed the breadth of his vision in comparison with the ordinary social reformer, who, in that day, was usually a fanatical believer in the influence of training and surroundings. Noyes sets forth the position of Darwin on the principles of breeding, and the step beyond Darwin, which had been taken by Galton. He then remarks that, when Galton comes to the point where it is necessary to advance from theory to the duties the theory suggests, he "subsides into the meekest conservatism." (It must be remembered that this was written at an early stage in Galton's work.) This conclusion was entirely opposed to Noyes' practical and religious temperament. "Duty is plain; we say we ought to do it—we want to do it; but we cannot. The law of God urges us on; but the law of society holds us back. The boldest course is the safest. Let us take an honest and steady look at the law. It is only in the timidity of ignorance that the duty seems impracticable." Noyes anticipated Galton in regarding eugenics as a matter of religion.
Noyes proposed to term the work of modern science in propagation "Stirpiculture," in which he has sometimes been followed by others. He considered that it is the business of the stirpiculturist to keep in view both quantity and quality of stocks, and he held that, without diminishing quantity, it was possible to raise the quality by exercising a very stringent discrimination in selecting males. At this point, Noyes has been supported in recent years by Karl Pearson and others, who have shown that only a relatively small portion of a population is needed to produce the next generation, and that, in fact, twelve per cent. of one generation in man produces fifty per cent. of the next generation. What we need to ensure is that this small reproducing section of the population shall be the best adapted for the purpose. "The quantity of production will be in direct proportion to the number of fertile females," as Noyes saw the question, "and the value produced, so far as it depends on selection, will be nearly in inverse proportion to the number of fertilizing males." In this matter, Noyes anticipated Ehrenfels. The two principles to be held in mind were, "Breed from the best," and "Breed in-and-in," with a cautious and occasional introduction of new strains. (It may be noted that Reibmayr, in his recent Entwicklungsgeschichte des Genics und Talentes, argues that the superior races, and superior individuals, in the human species, have been produced by an unconscious adherence to exactly these principles.) "By segregating superior families, and by breeding these in-and-in, superior varieties of human beings might be produced, which would be comparable to the thoroughbreds in all the domestic races." He illustrates this by the early history of the Jews.
Noyes finally criticises the present method, or lack of method, in matters of propagation. Our marriage system, he states, "leaves mating to be determined by a general scramble." By ignoring, also, the great difference between the sexes in reproductive power, it "restricts each man, whatever may be his potency and his value, to the amount of production of which one woman, chosen blindly, may be capable." Moreover, he continues, "practically it discriminates against the best, and in favor of the worst; for, while the good man will be limited by his conscience to what the law allows, the bad man, free from moral check, will distribute his seed beyond the legal limits, as widely as he dares." "We are safe every way in saying that there is no possibility of carrying the two precepts of scientific propagation into an institution which pretends to no discrimination, allows no suppression, gives no more liberty to the best than to the worst, and which, in fact, must inevitably discriminate the wrong way, so long as the inferior classes are most prolific and least amenable to the admonitions of science and morality." In modifying our sexual institutions, Noyes insists there are two essential points to remember: the preservation of liberty, and the preservation of the home. There must be no compulsion about human scientific propagation; it must be autonomous, directed by self-government, "by the free choice of those who love science well enough to 'make themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake.'" The home, also, must be preserved, since "marriage is the best thing for man as he is;" but it is necessary to enlarge the home, for, "if all could learn to love other children than their own, there would be nothing to hinder scientific propagation in the midst of homes far better than any that now exist."
This memorable pamphlet contains no exposition of the precise measures adopted by the Oneida Community to carry out these principles. The two essential points were, as we know, "male continence" (see ante p. 553), and the enlarged family, in which all the men were the actual or potential mates of all the women, but no union for propagation took place, except as the result of reason and deliberate resolve. "The community," says H. J. Seymour, one of the original members (The Oneida Community, 1894, p. 5), "was a family, as distinctly separated from surrounding society as ordinary households. The tie that bound it together was as permanent, and at least as sacred, as that of marriage. Every man's care, and the whole of the common property, was pledged for the maintenance and protection of the women, and the support and education of the children." It is not probable that the Oneida Community presented in detail the model to which human society generally will conform. But even at the lowest estimate, its success showed, as Lord Morely has pointed out (Diderot, vol. ii, p. 19), "how modifiable are some of these facts of existing human character which are vulgarly deemed to be ultimate and ineradicable," and that "the discipline of the appetites and affections of sex," on which the future of civilization largely rests, is very far from an impossibility.
In many respects, the Oneida Community was ahead of its time,—and even of ours,—but it is interesting to note that, in the matter of the control of conception, our marriage system has come into line with the theory and practice of Oneida; it cannot, indeed, be said that we always control conception in accordance with eugenic principles, but the fact that such control has now become a generally accepted habit of civilization, to some extent deprives Noyes' criticism of our marriage system of the force it possessed half a century ago. Another change in our customs—the advocacy, and even the practice, of abortion and castration—would not have met with his approval; he was strongly opposed to both, and with the high moral level that ruled his community, neither was necessary to the maintenance of the stirpiculture that prevailed.
The Oneida Community endured for the space of one generation, and came to an end in 1879, by no means through a recognition of failure, but by a wise deference to external pressure. Its members, many of them highly educated, continued to cherish the memory of the practices and ideals of the Community. Noyes Miller (the author of The Strike of a Sex, and Zugassant's Discovery) to the last, looked with quiet confidence to the time when, as he anticipated, the great discovery of Noyes would be accepted and adopted by the world at large. Another member of the Community (Henry J. Seymour) wrote of the Community long afterwards that "It was an anticipation and imperfect miniature of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth."
Perhaps the commonest type of proposal or attempt to improve the biological level of the race is by the exclusion of certain classes of degenerates from marriage, or by the encouragement of better classes of the community to marry. This seems to be, at present, the most popular form of eugenics, and in so far as it is not effected by compulsion but is the outcome of a voluntary resolve to treat the question of the creation of the race with the jealous care and guardianship which so tremendously serious, so godlike, a task involves, it has much to be said in its favor and nothing against it.
But it is quite another matter when the attempt is made to regulate such an institution as marriage by law. In the first place we do not yet know enough about the principles of heredity and the transmissibility of pathological states to enable us to formulate sound legislative proposals on this basis. Even so comparatively simple a matter as the relationship of tuberculosis to heredity can scarcely be said to be a matter of common agreement, even if it can yet be claimed that we possess adequate material on which to attain a common agreement. Supposing, moreover, that our knowledge on all these questions were far more advanced than it is, we still should not have attained a position in which we could lay down general propositions regarding the desirability or the undesirability of certain classes of persons procreating. The question is necessarily an individual question, and it can only be decided when all the circumstances of the individual case have been fairly passed in review.
The objection to any legislative and compulsory regulation of the right to marry is, however, much more fundamental than the consideration that our knowledge is at present inadequate. It lies in the extraordinary confusion, in the minds of those who advocate such legislation, between legal marriage and procreation. The persons who fall into such confusion have not yet learnt the alphabet of the subject they presume to dictate about, and are no more competent to legislate than a child who cannot tell A from B is competent to read.