Sexual hygiene as social hygiene — Its foundation by Darwin — Recent works — “Reproductive hygiene” — Degeneration and regeneration (hereditary taint and hereditary enfranchisement) — Possibility of the disappearance of morbid tendencies — “Eugenics” (Galton) — Love’s choice and sexual selection — Principles — Darwin’s prescriptions regarding sexual selection — Prohibition of marriage — Inheritance of morbid tendencies and morbid constitutions — Danger of alcoholism for the offspring — Families of drinkers — Direct influence of alcohol upon the germ-plasm — Observations on this subject — Syphilis as a cause of racial degeneration — Syphilis and the duration of life — Degenerative effects of tuberculosis — Direct infection — Inheritance of the tubercular habit of body — Mental disorders, diatheses, and malignant tumours — Nervous disorders — Inheritable atrophy of the female mammary glands — Recent works on this subject — Effect of excessive youth or excessive age of the married pair — Influence of blood-relationship — Significance of breeding in-and-in in relation to the evolution of the race — The dangers of too close blood-relationship — Importance of spiritual qualities in relation to love’s choice — The breeding of talent — Importance of this in relation to the woman’s question — In relation to the improvement of the race — Greater resisting powers possessed by women towards degenerative influences — A quotation from Carl Vogt — Unfavourable influence of coercive marriage morality and of mammonism — Importance of racial hygiene and of the sexual sense of responsibility.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Sexual hygiene in individual relationships has already been discussed in previous chapters, and more especially in those upon the prophylaxis and suppression of venereal diseases, upon the question of sexual abstinence, upon sexual education, and upon the use of methods for the prevention of pregnancy. Here we merely propose to deal shortly with the social relationships of the hygiene of the sexual life. After Darwin, more particularly in his work on the “Descent of Man,” had published fundamental observations regarding the social importance of sexual hygiene, other writers, influenced by recent anthropological and ethnological research, occupied themselves with these problems, more especially Hegar,[741] A. Ploetz,[742] and R. Kossmann;[743] the subjects considered by these writers have been aptly comprised under the name “reproductive hygiene,” which constitutes a part of general racial biology.
Unfortunately, racial biology, as Max Gruber[744] justly remarks, has formed exaggerated estimates of the ideas of “degeneration” and “hereditary taint”; and, on the other hand, the complementary ideas of “regeneration” and “hereditary enfranchisement” have been unduly neglected. And yet it is certain that these latter influences are continually in active operation in the direction of the resanation and invigoration of the race: that the introduction of new and healthy blood is competent to bring about reanimation and regeneration, even in degenerate families. Gruber says with justice (“Hygiene of the Sexual Life,” p. 55, 1905):
“Completely normal, and entirely free from hereditary taint, no single human being can be; and, on the other hand, experience teaches us, that just as morbid tendencies make their appearance in certain families, so also they may disappear from these families. Many of these tendencies can be rendered ineffective by a suitably chosen mode of life for the individual; and by means of repeated crossing with stems which are free from these particular taints, the morbid tendency can be led to disappear, unless the degenerative impulse is too powerful.”
The recognition of this fact does not in the least diminish the great importance of purposive choice in love and marriage; nor does it diminish the sense of sexual responsibility in relation to the great fact of heredity. But the recognition of the fortunate fact of hereditary enfranchisement supports, on the other hand, all our endeavours in the direction of rational “eugenics” (Galton),[745] in accordance with which we must, as Nietzsche says, not merely reproduce, but produce in an upward direction (“nicht bloss fort-, sondern auch hinaufpflanzen sollen”).
The central problem of reproductive hygiene is that of love’s choice, of sexual selection. It is a most difficult task, one which is rarely fulfilled to the utmost, for the right man to find the right woman, so that their individualities may in every respect correspond to and complement one another. In most cases it is necessary to be contented with relative harmony, and with sufficient health on both sides. The laws of a refined, differentiated marriage choice have not yet been discovered. Havelock Ellis[746] has instituted exhaustive researches on this subject, without, however, attaining any positive result. He was only able to establish the general proposition, that in love’s choice identity of race and of individual characters (homogamy), and at the same time unlikeness in the secondary sexual characters (heterogamy), are to be preferred. In other respects, however, very various and complicated influences are determinative in sexual selection. Havelock Ellis also detected a natural disinclination towards love between blood-relatives, which, however, he regards as merely due to the customary life in close association from childhood onwards.
Darwin propounded the principle for sexual selection, that both sexes should avoid marriage when in any pronounced degree they were defective, either physically or mentally. Upon this idea rests the old and widely diffused custom of killing or exposure of sickly children, as well as the more recent prohibitions of marriage in certain States of the American Union—for example, Michigan, in which the marriage (also sexual union for procreative purposes?) is forbidden on the part of those mentally diseased and of those who are infected with tubercle or syphilis.[747]
The most important fundamental principle, however, of rational reproductive hygiene is, without doubt, that only healthy individuals should pair, or, at any rate, those only whose abnormalities or diseases, if any, would not injure their offspring, physically or mentally. Not in disease itself, but in the inheritance of disease, lies the great danger for the deterioration of the family and the race. It is for this reason that the study of the inheritance of morbid predispositions and morbid constitutions is of such enormous importance in racial biology.