The Tyranny of Shams

by Joseph McCabe

The progress of this view will be assisted by two contemporary reforms of received opinion. One regards the economic dependence of woman on man, which I will discuss later. I need only recall here that some of the worst evils of our marriage-system—the scheming and bartering and linking for life—are due to this dependence. The other reform is the widespread and increasing rejection of the old idea that a woman must bear as many children as nature will permit her to have.

There is amongst us a disgusting amount of hypocrisy in regard to this question. The majority of educated people of all classes, even many of the clergy, now practise artificial limitation of the family, yet we proceed on the fiction that this is a disreputable practice. We turn into pornographic dépôts the shops which sell contraceptives, and we allow an antiquated law to be drastically enforced against men who would be decent purveyors of the things we use in secret. We have talked, and read journalistic articles, about “the dwindling population of France” for twenty years, though it is only within the last year or so that it has even slightly decreased; and the birth-rate alone shows that London and Berlin and every other great city are rapidly approaching the condition of Paris. We listen without protest to the lamentations of half-informed faddists on the limitation of the birth-rate in ancient Rome (where the practice was confined to a few, and proved an excellent means of saving the State by ridding it of a worn-out nobility) or the medieval republics of Italy. And while we perpetrate these and a hundred other follies, we know that the majority of us who are educated and unprejudiced find the practice humane and commendable. We would, it seems, rather leave frail girls to the mercy of quacks and dangerous operators than tell them openly what better-educated ladies do to avoid conception.

Yet we have not here even the excuse of an antique religious command. The Catholic Church, it is true, severely condemns the use of contraceptives, but one finds that its prohibition is based merely on the reasoning of medieval celibates. With those who argue that the practice is “against nature” one hardly needs to discuss. Half the distinctive things of civilisation are “against nature,” nor is there any reason why we should not depart from the ways of that ancient and unintelligent dame. Hardly less foolish is the alarm about our dwindling birth-rate. With every industry and profession already much overcrowded, we do not act very intelligently in censuring the modern restriction of production. But these are, to a great extent, either wholly insincere expressions or confused repetitions of ancient prejudices. In France, where a society arose for the checking of the practice, it was found that the members had an average of one child and a half in each family. A similar census among the writers and associations which attack Malthusianism in England might yield an instructive result.

One can understand the hostility to Malthusianism—or, rather, Neo-Malthusianism, since Malthus’s idea of restricting population by avoiding intercourse is unnecessarily heroic—in a country like Australia, which urgently requires population; though even in Australia the opposition is futile. One can understand such hostility in a land which has universal conscription, and neighbours with a superior army; though I have elsewhere pointed out the sensible and natural way to settle this difficulty. But it is quite irrational in such a city as London. Five-sixths of us, it has been demonstrated, do not attend church or take our code of life meekly from the clergy, as our fathers did; our labour-market is, in every division, enormously overcrowded; and our army is not affected by the dwindling birth-rate. Why, in these circumstances, should the women of England be asked to undergo the pain and sickness and weariness of a yearly birth, and wear out their lives in the rearing of a large family? Men have, as a rule, too little appreciation of the terrible burden they lay on their wives, but their own interest at least ought to weigh with them. Why be constrained to find the resources for rearing and educating a large family when a smaller family will give better chances to the children and conduce to the happiness of the home?

To these questions the only answer is an irrational outpouring of antique rhetoric. It is mere “lust” to have commerce without children: it is “selfish” to wish to live in greater comfort by restricting the family: it is “unnatural.” The man who would lessen the suffering of his companion in life, and obtain greater advantages and more loving care for his children by restricting their number, may smile at the futility of this kind of rhetoric. But it is surely time, in the second decade of the twentieth century, to meet it with a frank and curt declaration that we have, and will use, a right to any pleasure which this life affords, provided it hurt no one. The last trace of asceticism should be trodden underfoot. The medieval clergy were a body of a few fanatics leading an army of hypocrites. Their ideas have no place in our life. Love and joy and comradeship are in themselves as much ours as the scent of the rose or the flavour of wine. It is time that we echoed defiantly the sneering words of the apostle, and said: Yes, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. We are not likely to forget that life has other pleasures, of culture and art, besides those of the palate or of love. The supreme commandment is, as old Egypt said: “Thou shalt make no man weep.” The supreme virtue is to quicken the hearts of men with joy and fill their minds with truth. And the time will come when the clergy, reading aright for the first time the life of the ages of faith, will say: “We never insisted on our theoretical asceticism until those dour sceptics of the nineteenth century compelled us: the Middle Ages were the ages of liberty.”

The clergy are, in fact, in a dilemma. The cry of the hour is “social consequences.” There is a vast amount of doleful recalling of dead civilisations and prediction of coming woe; though England was never before so prosperous, solid, and free from crime. But dogmas have worn so thin that we must be pressed to maintain them, even if they are false, on social grounds. The answer is quite simple. If any social quality or rule of conduct is necessary for our welfare and happiness in this world, we need no dogmatic foundation for it. Men will see that virtue is its own reward. And if any rule of conduct in the Christian code is not based upon the actual exigencies of life, there will be no social consequences if we disregard it. The superstitions I have assailed belong to this latter category.

But a campaign against the artificial restriction of the birth-rate has recently been inaugurated on what are thought to be serious social grounds, and this leads me to a third and last reform which the family will undergo. I refer to the Eugenic movement. Let me first explain why this hostility of Eugenists to the restriction of the birth-rate seems a needless and illogical complication of their aims.

This hostility is usually expressed in the form of a fear that the restriction of births among the “better class” and unrestricted increase of the “lower class” must lead to deterioration. One would think that the proper remedy of this would be to recommend prudential restriction to the mass of the workers, as the Malthusian League endeavours to do. It is a strange social idealism which would urge over-production all round, with its train of domestic and industrial evils, instead of urging restriction all round. It would also be interesting to learn the average number of children to a family among these zealous Eugenists, and whether they do not find middle-class professions as overcrowded as the manual industries are. At all events, since it is now impossible to induce educated mothers to return to the virtuous and exacting industry of their Victorian predecessors, the best thing would be to educate the masses in a common-sense view of maternity and of their own interest.

It will suffice here, however, to deal with the saner side of the Eugenic movement. It proposes to eliminate bad human stock and promote the mating of good stocks. These are those who find it a degradation to introduce “the methods of the breeder” into human affairs, but the objection is merely silly. The methods of the modern breeder are an expression of intelligence, improving on nature; these old-fashioned folk would have us disregard the persuasion of intelligence and retain the crude methods of unintelligent nature. The serious question is: Is the Eugenic proposal sound and practicable?

As far as positive Eugenics, or the selection of good human stocks for breeding, is concerned, the recent evolution of the movement seems to show that no firm and practicable proposal can yet be formulated. The truth is that the movement is greatly enfeebled by a general reliance on disputed theories of heredity. Some Eugenists rely on Weismann’s theory: some on the Mendelist theory. They do not realise that scientific men are by no means agreed upon these theories, and it is a serious mistake to build on either. In England most of our biologists are Weismannists (in a broad sense), but there is more hostility to the theory in Germany and the United States, and both theories have lately had to confront grave difficulties. Any Eugenic proposal which is based on a theory of heredity must be regarded with reserve. The dogmatic statements of Professor Karl Pearson, for instance, in regard to the impossibility of altering by education the innate qualities of a child are entirely unwarranted. Heredity is still a mystery: and the relative importance of heredity and environment (or nature and nurture) is not yet determined.