Abortion and infanticide are equally condemned by Eugenists, although on different grounds. Infanticide is murder. It destroys the life of an actual human being. Infanticide, though doubtless less reprehensible in degree than the lethal chamber idea, is in principle indistinguishable therefrom. It is the antithesis to the idea of Eugenics. The state which can contemplate child-murder without horror is far indeed from being a humane State. Sensitiveness to suffering is a sign of civilisation. Wherever we find a live human being, however hopeless its condition may appear, universal experience has shown us that man's advance from savagedom depends on his using all his resources to save the final spark of life which remains. "While there's life there's hope" is a maxim which is based on the greatest need of mankind. Eugenics deplores waste of effort that this entails, but there can be no doubt about its rightness or its justification by the universal consensus of progressive races. Abortion may be condemned on religious and moral grounds, but the overwhelming weight of medical opinion against it is based on physiological reasons. No woman can be guilty of this practice without the greatest risks of physical damage. She jeopardises her life immediately and she generally deteriorates her capacity for future usefulness. Eugenics will find a sphere of usefulness in the spread of this piece of saving knowledge. Unmarried mothers and mothers in all spheres of society are terribly ignorant of the dangers of this common death-trap. The mere fact that the sale and procuration of drugs and use of means for purposes of abortion are criminal acts is not sufficient. The idea is prevalent that it is only the police who have to be evaded. Our laws are not empiric, but their reason is seldom apparent to those who are expected to obey them. A few drugs, or a few pills—how easy it all seems—and how fatal. Eugenists do not want the law altered, but they want the added deterrent of reason. There may be a chance of evading the law, there is none of evading the bodily injury which inevitably accompanies abortion.
I have already shown that Malthusian arguments do not appeal to Eugenists. This is not to say that Malthusian methods are also condemned. Malthusian prognostications have not been fulfilled, its statistics have been superseded, and its conclusions modified by the process of the suns. The world does not contain too many people, it only contains too many of the wrong sort of people. Production has not only kept pace with population, it has raced it. Intensive cultivation, new treatments of the soil, scientific rotation of crops and scientific agriculture rendering rotation unnecessary, new economic inducements to cultivate hitherto waste lands, discoveries and inventions of all kinds have taken away from Malthusianism the unduly pessimistic philosophy with which it once tried to frighten the race. Malthusianism will always be remembered with gratitude, however, for its practical methods and for its refusing to confuse marriage with procreation. That distinction still needs to be borne in mind because otherwise half our Eugenic efforts will be wasted by directing ourselves to a problem which does not exist. It is impossible to assail the proposition that a moral married life is consistent with a prudential check on increased population. This prudential check need not necessarily be a material one. Even a Tolstoyan may be a married man. Abstinence in due season in the case of normal adults is or may be Nature's plan for increasing virility at other seasons. The most prolific parents may be pardoned for resting occasionally from their protracted persistency of race-production. Eugenists object to weakening virility by sacrificing fitness for mere numbers, but it is in the essence of their demand that the race shall, "increase and multiply and replenish the earth." The objection (which Eugenists share with the majority of the American public) to anything remotely resembling infanticide must have some definite proof of its sincerity. Eugenists denounce the New Decalogue of current morality which says:
"Thou shalt not kill,—but needs not strive
Officiously to keep alive."
The Eugenist does not desire to detract from the responsibility of parenthood, but rather to increase it. On the other hand whatever steps may be taken against neglectful, vicious or unnatural parents, the race interests demand that the child shall not suffer. A new responsibility must be added to parentage—the parent of the race is the State, which must be vigilant to protect the child from the faults and follies of fathers who fail in their most essential duties. A child should be guaranteed loving parents or failing these a never failing foster-parent, in a paternal State.
In the recognition of its duties as Step-mother, the State will in self-defence protect its maternal arms from the influx of undesirables. The universal endowment of Motherhood may be a socialist dream rather than a Eugenic practical proposal, but even the Eugenists' demand for the State to act as step-mother involves an expenditure which will probably amount to the cost of a national war. It is part of our case that the money spent is an investment certain to pay big dividends in the shape of increased national efficiency. It is in any case inevitable. Public sentiment cannot tolerate this idiotic waste of the noblest of all raw material. It will be not the least of its advantages that the State will at length be directly interested, financially and therefore most deeply, in stopping the supply of the unfit—a bad investment at the best, requiring a maximum of trouble, and a continuous source of damage. The sterilisation of the unfit has become a regular experience in a number of States. It has outlived its detractors wherever it has been practised. It remains necessary now only to convert its objectors in other States, and to gradually extend its beneficent operation and the sphere of its activities. Naturally it begins with the habitual criminal. Of absolute success in the States where it has been tried it will be far more effective when it is applied in the more populous centres and when it becomes impossible for the permanently criminal to escape its attention. Sterilisation as now recommended and performed by our highest scientific authorities is in no sense cruel, it is not even painful. It must not be confounded with the mutilations of earlier centuries, it leaves the person operated on possessed of every faculty for use and capacity for happiness, it only takes away the power of reproduction. The first extension of the plan has been to the certified hopeless idiot. These two classes and the inmates of homes for incurable drunkards represent a very easy definition of those who should be treated to this operation. In the case of the criminal it will enable very great mercy to be extended. Sterilisation will not be a mere added infliction of a degrading punishment, it will substitute an awful warning for a long imprisonment. Only those criminals will be sterilised whose chronic criminality is proved after repeated convictions and form a study of what facts are ascertainable as to their hereditary history. They will leave the jail knowing that society regards them as unworthy to be parents, or if they themselves are also too dangerous to be let at large their close confinement will be rarely necessary.
The Eugenist does not propose to extend the operation of sterilisation beyond the classes above mentioned. It does not, however, regard these as exhausting the categories of undesirable procreators. Already there are numerous suffering and semi-cured adults whose children would inherit the diseases, weaknesses, and evil tendencies of their ancestors. Tuberculosis, syphilis and St. Vitus's Dance sufferers are specimens of this class. As Eugenics advances we may learn more of the racial poisons, and a scientific black-list may be drawn up of those hereditary taints which inflict most harm on the community. Doctors should have to notify the authorities of these diseases and the patient should be encouraged to frankness and helped to a cure. In all such cases kind but firm warning must be given against procreation. The failure to heed such warning should inevitably result in imprisonment—a very short term will suffice, for with Eugenics established as a rule of society, the State could afford to be patient. The elimination of the unfit would make rapid strides, and the offspring of tainted parents evading the law in one generation would be less and less likely to escape in the next generation.
It may be that the State will be contented with the negative side of Eugenics. It may be that it is the more important because we are daily increasing the elements which if not checked will destroy our civilisation. Negative Eugenics is as imperative a necessity as the protection of our coasts from invasion or the destruction of potato blight.
Positive Eugenics represents the attempt to encourage breeding from every healthy stock. Its methods will vary with the views of society from time to time. Its machinery will be by State-interference or by private experimental enterprise according as socialist or individualist ideals are current. I do not wish to commit Eugenists who are by no means agreed on this point, but my personal view is that individual experiments cannot possibly go far beyond public opinion, whereas, "the State can do no wrong" if it endows, undertakes and is responsible for experiments limited in extent but far reaching in principle, so long as such experiments are based on scientific probabilities and are supported by enlightened competent judges and do not outrage the humane sentiment of the race. Drastic individual experiments, involving however few people, will always be subject to interference at critical moments by mobs, governments, vigilance societies, etc. It is not wise to ignore this factor; it is not necessary even to deprecate it; nay, it has its advantages. The omnipotence of the State rests not merely in its power of arms; a State experiment, even though not initiated by the people, can be stopped by the people. The electors' power ultimately to interfere makes for tolerance.
While drastic experiments must be left to democracy acting through its elected governors, there is ample scope for other features of positive Eugenics. One of these is the endowment of worthy young couples too poor otherwise to marry. The ideal of celibacy stands self-condemned. Where successful it means race-suicide, where unsuccessful it means hypocrisy and a thousand other horrors. What then can we think of the fact that millions of dollars have been spent in endowing monasteries, nunneries, brotherhoods and all the other ancient and modern forms of celibate stultification of probably perfectly potential parents. Add to these millions the other millions spent in endowing the worst and least capable in prisons, asylums and in often demoralising charities. Then bear in mind that the endowment of the healthy for Eugenic purposes, for the regeneration of mankind, is absolutely unknown. A millionaire who loves his kind could scarcely do better with his money than the establishment, under proper supervision, of a fund which would encourage human efficiency. There is no fame so lasting as the glory which would attach to such a fund. It would be greater than a Nobel name, its prizes would be more keenly competed for than for "Marathon" or "America" cups. Its winners would become a new aristocracy, and for the first time in the history of the world noble families would be founded on a blending of ancestral and personal merit, aristocratic, indeed, because the best become personally powerful, but absolutely democratic in that neither class, caste nor creed are allowed to count in the selection. From this aristocracy a new knighthood might be formed. Degeneration would mean exclusion. Improvement would mean increased honours. New standards of efficiency, mental, moral and physical, would be evolved for the guidance of the race. An American model of this kind would speedily find imitators abroad. The real struggle for race supremacy would be concentrated on the Eugenic groups. Competitions, challenges and contests between national groups might eclipse in interest all the other exhibits in future International Expositions.
The daily work of Eugenic education is independent of these short cuts to the Eugenics millennium. The dissemination of ascertained facts about heredity is urgently necessary. It may be news to many that there are hundreds of institutions throughout our land where accurate information has been carefully collected for many years. The antecedents of inmates of prisons, asylums and "homes" have been patiently scheduled, classified and studied. Only money and public interest are wanted to make this vital information known. Investigations of this kind need also to be made universal. It is not enough that institutions should relieve the present sufferers. They can only justify their existence by contributing to our desire for the eradication of suffering. It should be made a condition of public support that the most useful kind of inquiries should be made, and be placed at the disposal of all who are interested. It is useless throwing pages of undigested statistics at the public, this is mere waste of effort. With the facts and figures in existence and accessible, centres of scientific study such as a Eugenics laboratory should be, will be able to present to the public the living issues which those dead figures mean. It would, however, be contrary to the spirit of Eugenics to confine attention to the sadder side of statistics. It is of infinite importance that we should understand and cultivate fitness, and therefore we want the systematic collection of family histories relating to our noblest, best and worthiest. Here State-interference is out of place. Voluntary work on the part of enthusiastic Eugenists would soon succeed in obtaining information of great value. Few families would refuse to impart through private channels ancestral facts, particularly as the mere inquiry would imply a compliment. The Chinese worship of ancestors would have a modern scientific interpretation, in the honour which would be won by the founders of fine families, a study of whose history would be an inspiration and a help to the race.