CHAPTER V
PARENTAGE
The simple fact that the birth of a human being, the image of God, as religious people say, is in so many cases regarded as of very much less importance than that of a domestic animal, proves the degraded condition in which we live.—August Bebel.
The reproduction of species yields to no other special function of life in respect of importance and the wide scope of its vital issues. Notwithstanding that vast numbers of illegitimate children are born in every civilized country where monogamy reigns, this function of reproduction is popularly regarded as allied with marriage in the order of a natural and necessary consequence—a result irrespective of human will. Now scientific meliorism makes a clear distinction between marriage and parentage on the ground that, while the former comparatively is of insignificant importance to the interests of humanity in general, parentage is of vital moment to these interests; moreover, between the two there exists no integral or essential relation. On the one hand, progeny spring from unions not legalized by marriage; on the other, many married people, swayed by motives chiefly egoistic, but sometimes altruistic, are consciously exercising a voluntary restraint over propagation.
The late Matthew Arnold tells us that when gazing on one occasion in company with a benevolent man upon a multitude of slum children eaten up with disease, half-sized, half-fed, half-clothed, neglected by their parents, without health, without home, without hope, the good man said: “The one thing really needful is to teach these little ones to succour one another, if only with a cup of cold water.” Mr. Arnold promptly rejected that theory. “So long as the multitude of these poor children is perpetually swelling,” said he, “they must be charged with misery to themselves and us, whether they help one another with a cup of cold water or no, and the knowledge how to prevent them accumulating is what we want.” That knowledge is no longer inaccessible to man. There are known rational methods by which to keep the populating tendency within due limits, and at the same time to promote individual prudence, foresight and self-dependence.
Neo-Malthusianism, with its power of subjugating the law of population and deferring parentage, is a new key to the social position, and neo-Malthusian practice has already taken root in British society. The discovery is of vast significance, so great are its latent possibilities of promoting universal happiness. But as long as reproduction of human physical life is left to haphazard, and the rule of private, personal interests alone, without any honourable recognition, intelligent guidance, or moral and economic support, the immediate effect on national life is, and will continue to be, the very reverse of beneficial.
Matthew Arnold’s exhortation in respect of the slum children was: “We must let conscience play freely and simply upon the facts of the case; we must listen to what it tells us of the intelligible law of things as concerns these children, and what it tells us is that a man’s children are not really sent any more than the pictures upon his walls or the horses in his stable are sent, and that to bring people into the world when one cannot afford to keep them and oneself decently, or to bring more of them into the world than one can afford to keep thus, is by no means an accomplishment of the Divine Will or a fulfilment of nature’s simplest laws, but is contrary to reason and the will of God.” (Culture and Anarchy, p. 246.)
This remonstrance addressed to the rich (these alone have pictures on their walls and horses in their stables) may have had some effect, for certain it is that in the upper classes artificial checks to conception are now widely used, while slum children show no tendency to proportionately diminish in number. Individuals whose standard of living is high, and whose pecuniary means are small, or who are thoughtful, intelligent, prudent, either refrain from marriage, or, marrying, check propagation. The natural result is that children of the comparatively superior types are becoming numerically weaker than children of the thoughtless, reckless members of society who exercise their reproductive powers to the utmost. It is supremely important that we should recognize how parentage bears upon human life and happiness in far wider relations than either sexual union alone or marriage alone.
Maintenance of species has hitherto been accomplished at an enormous sacrifice of individual life. The requirement that there shall arise a full number of adults in successive generations is fulfilled by means which subordinate the existing and next succeeding members of the species in various degrees. (See Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology, vol. i. p. 621.)
Among low forms—inferior to the human organism—the germs of new individuals are produced in immense numbers, the larger part of the parental substance being sometimes transformed into these germs. Birth here may be immediately followed by the death of the parent organism, and an immense mortality of the young may take place—consequent on defenceless exposure, insufficient food and other untoward conditions. “Of a million minute ova left uncared for, the majority are destroyed before they are hatched, so that very few have considerable amounts of individual life.” (Ibid. p. 622.)
Throughout the course of evolution the natural order in moving from higher to higher types is a gradual decrease of this condition, viz. the sacrifice of individual life to the life of the species, and at the same time an increase of compensating pleasures allied with the reproductive function. When illustrating this natural order, Herbert Spencer points to the methods among fishes and amphibians contrasted with those among birds and mammals. The spawn of the former when safely deposited is generally left to its fate.[[3]] There is physical cost to adults with apparently no accompanying gratifications. Birds and mammals, however, carefully rear and tend their offspring. “The activities of parenthood are sources of agreeable emotions, just as are the activities which achieve self-sustentation.”