Apart from the maternal side of woman's life there is her individual life to consider, and while this is of enormous importance to herself its chief interest to Eugenists (as such) is that only out of healthy and happy conditions of womanhood can a noble motherhood be expected to grow. Slave-mothers are apt to breed slave-children, and still worse for the race slave-women are disinclined to become mothers. It is of course unfair to see no distinction between slavery which professes no fine sentiment towards its chattel objects, and the refined system which places woman on a pedestal and worships her but denies her the elementary rights of citizenship. The Eugenist ideal of marriage is the union of equality, two citizens joining together in love and wisdom and with such sanction of the State and the Church as may be, with resultant harmony of life and its fruit in an increase of the truest wealth any State can possess, namely well-conceived, well-formed, and well-matured men and women.
In the Eugenist State there will be a determined enmity to the increased generations of the criminal, the weak-minded and the diseased. But if reform is forced on women by men, instead of being the spontaneous decision of a genuine democracy, the grossest tyranny will be perpetuated (however wise its object, humane its methods and Eugenic its result). A benevolent despotism might be endured in its disposition of the issues of war, the production of wealth, or the distribution of honours, nothing but the sovereign will of the people can be tolerated in the Eugenic field, and here if nowhere else woman being essentially concerned must have an equal voice with man. Where women cannot be convinced that Eugenic reform is in the interests of the race we must trust to personal persuasion, individual example and such public opinion as we are capable of influencing. The powers of the State must not be invoked in the face of popular protest, it will be to the interests of Eugenists that such protest shall be able to express itself in the ballot-box instead of by surreptitious evasion or mob-law.
The double standard in morals must go. Whatever our standard may be it must be colour-blind as regards sex. The modern feminist movement is in harmony with Eugenic science, in insisting on this point being made clear. For ages past masculine hypocrisy has been able to exact from the opposite sex a crushing worship of Mrs. Grundy, by the simple expedient of ruling men out of the conventions they dictated to women.
The time has come for a candid reconsideration of moral problems on the basis of sex-equality. It may be that some fine sentiments will vanish, perhaps women will descend from the dizzy height where they are supposed to dwell. Truth at least will gain, pretence will give place to reality and we shall be capable of postulating a new and better morality based on the essential facts of life. To the consideration of the best possible life for men and women must be added the Eugenic claims of the race. We live and die but the race continues, heirs of our perfection, inheritors of our defects. We pass, but we must think of those to whom this heritage passes. The strong woman mated to the strong man is proud of a posterity which will do them honour. The woman-movement aims at removing the obstacles to this endeavour. The tragedy of the woman's life is when either her own or her husband's unfitness to bear anything but a tainted stock is disregarded by law, custom and the brutality of lustful bestiality. She who might be, as she desires to be, the guardian of the nation's truest interests, is overpowered and compelled to be the medium of national pollution. This knowledge strengthens the women's agitation; the determination to end such a shameful degradation makes the women's movement irresistible.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EUGENICS
This little volume would sadly fail to convey its author's meaning if dogmatism stood in the way of persuasion, or authority seemed to be claimed for the tentative suggestions herein outlined. There is no immediate danger that Eugenic principles will suddenly rush society into extreme action. The probabilities are quite in the opposite direction. We shall continue to see what has always been observed by thinkers, namely, "Decency and custom starving truth, and blind authority beating with his staff the child which might have led him." Valuable experiments are delayed by prejudice, and Eugenists have only too good ground for complaint that the scientific spirit is thwarted by prejudiced opposition to new ideas. The very absence of dogmatism which characterises the genuine thinker serves as the basis of opposition in his experiments. Because he does not glibly guarantee universal success like a patent-pill advertiser nothing whatever is done to obtain a criterion of judging how far his reasonable proposals can succeed. The failure of all other attempts to improve the race may force upon the public the necessity of Eugenic experiments. As has been said more than once, philanthropy has failed, politics has failed, rescue work has failed, perhaps Eugenics may not fail, for it is based on the impregnable rock of science, it proceeds on the sound lines of prevention, it aims to start at the beginning of things, to build up a new race if not of supermen at least of sound healthy human beings.
The lethal chamber is not a Eugenic remedy. It is the last heart-broken despairing cry of the old unscientific system. It is the only final alternative to Eugenics. It means that man has failed. It has neither sense, sentiment, nor science for its justification. It substitutes murder for moral method. Eugenics on the other hand starts out with the principle that there is nothing so sacred as life. That the lethal chamber for the aged, diseased, infirm, and unfit is barbarous and immoral, that it is utterly indefensible, and would be absolutely ineffective if not ridiculously impracticable. There is not much need to waste further consideration on a project from which every healthy citizen naturally revolts. It has to be categorically repudiated lest it should be mistakenly regarded as a Eugenic proposal.