[CHAPTER VIII.
OBLIGATION IN PARENTHOOD.]
Our conclusion, based on the evidence detailed in the preceding chapters, has been that our race, viewed from a physiological standpoint, is not on the way towards improvement.
I do not feel that this is an alarmist view of the question, even though it points in the direction of both the physical and intellectual degeneration of our countrymen. It is a view based upon facts, and forced upon us by the knowledge of our surroundings gained impartially in other fields. Still, all social problems are of extreme complexity, and one must not lay too much stress upon any individual effort to gauge them. It will be sufficient for all practical purposes if attention has been drawn to these questions, and a serious inquiry started.
It may be urged that, after all, the fears expressed are groundless in view of other facts not understood, and that humanity, if left to itself, will continue for another few thousand years making no important change in its innate racial qualities. But even if this is so, there is one point which stands out clearly in this discussion; and about this point there need be no shadow of doubt, for of its truth, humanity has had wide experience. It is, that we can improve our race by adopting the one and only adequate expedient, that of carrying on the race through our best and most worthy strains. We can be as certain of our result as the gardener who hoes away the weeds and plants good seed, and who knows that he can produce the plants he wants by his care in the selection of the seed. The human animal varies as much or more than the dog or pigeon, and there can be no doubt that just as by selection, all the varieties of dogs and pigeons have been bred from one or two original stocks, so races of men could be produced as different from ourselves as the tumbler from the wood pigeon, or the bulldog from the old Sussex hound.
[Are we prepared to carry out Selective Methods?]
So much for the extreme possibilities of the future, which we need hardly consider; for the present, humanity would be glad enough to be represented by men and women of our best types, sound in lung and limb and brain, full of bodily vigour and capable of enjoying exercise both of body and of mind. One cannot for a moment doubt that, by selection, England in a hundred years might have its average man and woman as well endowed in body and mind as are the best of us to-day. This is not much to claim, for this potent agent selection has formed the higher animals and man himself from lower forms, and has evolved the multitudinous varieties of structure and form we see around us. What we may more reasonably doubt is whether our countrymen will have intelligence and unselfishness enough to bring this about, to sow where others will reap, to distract their thoughts from the pursuit of self-interest and turn their attention to a course of action which will produce its results when their individual lives have passed away.
[Rights of the Individual, and Obligations to the Community.]
But even here the outlook seems hopeful, for no historical fact is more striking than the gradual subordination of individual interests to those of the community, which for many years has been going on. The clamorous appeals for personal rights are giving way to a growing sense of obligation and a desire to further the interests of others. At a time when the labouring classes had too little power of establishing their claims to just treatment and proper consideration, the sense of public obligation was naturally not so strong. Men and women were struggling, and very rightly, for what unjustly was withheld from them; for though men had united in communities for self-interest and self-defence, wealth and its transmission had set up barriers between those who felt their equality as men, and who resented social disqualifications due probably to the ill fortune of their ancestors; under these circumstances men thought and talked more about their rights than about their obligations.
Long ago, when the family or clan formed a unit, the right of the father over the children and the women was a part of a very necessary discipline upon which probably the existence of all depended. These ideas have very naturally survived, for custom clings with wonderful pertinacity, and we have had the strange spectacle of the house divided against itself, the father clinging to his old rights, the wife and children clamouring for their new ones. As an instance which illustrates how long the woman continued to be viewed as part of the property of her husband, it is but necessary to recall the fact that only since the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1858 was it rendered impossible for a husband after deserting his wife to return to her and lawfully possess himself of all the property she had herself acquired during the time of his desertion. So too with our old ideas regarding parental rights, which were so tenacious a survival that until as late as 1891 a father could not forfeit these either by contract or neglect. Before the Act to amend the law relating to the custody of children passed in March, 1891, a man who had deserted his children could afterwards insist on their returning to him, and, although a reprobate in every way, he could claim them from the parish or custodian who had been responsible for their upbringing. These and many other injustices have been and are being removed, and it must be remembered that this has been done not by a forcible adjustment gained by strength of numbers, but by the force of public opinion and the sense of justice of all classes and of both sexes. The rights have been given, they have not been taken; the poor have had rich men on their side, and the promoters of women’s independence and advancement have in large numbers been the men themselves. It is true that much unnecessary inequality remains, and that we treat certain sections of the community in a most undesirable fashion—witness the herding of the profligate with the unfortunate or aged pauper—but the very fact that justice has come as the result of claims put forward and recognised as just, rather than at the point of the sword in open rebellion of the many against the few, shows that as a nation we are instinct with the feeling of obligation. There is a feeling that whatever is right will ultimately be done, that so-called injustices are survivals of past ages from which emancipation must take place, and that all we have to encounter is that right and necessary conservatism which adapts itself slowly and cautiously to changing conditions of things, clinging to that which is because the present is the best to which we have yet achieved, yet willing to change this for what we have reason to believe will be really better. With this modern development of the sense of obligation, we may anticipate that all those who are really dependent upon their own actions will be seriously considered, and have their welfare fully assured.