And it is not only in themselves that the feebleminded are a burden on the present generation and a menace to future generations. They are seen to be often a more serious danger when we realize that in large measure they form the reservoir from which the predatory classes are recruited. This is for instance the case as regards the fallen. Feebleminded girls of fairly high grade may often be said to be predestined to immorality if left to themselves, not because they are vicious, but because they are weak and have little power of resistance. They cannot properly weigh their actions against the results of their actions, and even if they are intelligent enough to do that, they are still too weak to regulate their actions accordingly. Moreover, even when, as so often happens among the high grade feebleminded, they are quite able and willing to work, after they have lost their respectability by having a child, the opportunities of work become more restricted and they drift into prostitution. Criminality again is associated with feeblemindedness in the most intimate way. Not only do criminals tend to belong to large families, but the families that produce feebleminded offspring also produce criminals. P. 40.
Closely related to the great feebleminded class, and from time to time falling into crime are the inmates of workhouses, tramps and the unemployable. The so-called able-bodied inmates of our workhouses are frequently found on medical examination to be more than 50% cases of mental defectives, equally so whether they are men or women. P. 42.
We have found that this movement for social reform, while it has been inevitable and necessary, and is even yet by no means at an end, is not fulfilling, and cannot fulfil the expectations of those who set it in motion. It has even had the altogether undesigned and unexpected result of increasing the burden it was intended to remove. Whatever the exact action of natural selection may be, as soon as we begin to interfere with it, and improve the conditions of life by caring for the unfit, enabling them to survive and to propagate their like, as they will not fail to do, insofar as they belong to the unfit stocks, then we are certainly, without intending it, doing our best to lower the level of life. We increase, or at best retain the unfit, while at the same time we burden the fit with the task of providing for the unfit. In this way we deteriorate the general quality of life in the next generation, except insofar as our improvement of the environment may enable some to remain fit, who under less favorable conditions would join the unfit. It is now possible for us to realize how the way lies open to the next great forward step in social reform. On the one hand the progressive movement of improvement in the conditions of life, by proceeding steadily back, as we have seen, to the conditions before birth, renders the inevitable next step a deliberate controlled life itself. On the other hand, the new social feeling which has been generated by the task of improving the conditions of life, and of caring for those who are unable to care for themselves, has made possible a new explanation of responsibility to the race. We have realized practically and literally that we are “our brother’s keepers.” We are beginning to realize that we are the keepers of our children of the race that is to come after us. Our sense of social responsibility is becoming a sense of racial responsibility. It is that enlarged sense of responsibility which renders possible what we call the regeneration of the race. We cannot lay too much stress on this sense of responsibility for it is its growth which alone renders possible any regeneration of the race. So far as practical results are concerned, it is not enough for men of science to investigate the facts and the principles of heredity and to attempt to lay down the laws of eugenics, as the science which deals with the improvement of the race is now called. It is not alone enough for moralists to preach. The hope of the future lies in the slow development of those habits, those social instincts arising inevitably out of the actual facts of life, and deeper than science, deeper than morals. The new sense of responsibility, not only for the human lives that now are, but the new human lives that are to come, is a social instinct of this fundamental nature. Therein lies its vitality and its promise. It is only of recent years that it has been rendered possible. Until lately, the methods of propagating the race continued to be the same as those of savages thousands of years ago. Children “came” and their parents disclaimed all responsibility for their coming; the children were sent by God, and if they all turned out to be idiots, the responsibility was God’s. That is all changed now. It is we who are more immediately the creators of men. We generate the race; we alone can regenerate the race. We have learned that in this, as in other matters, the Divine Force works through us and that we are not entitled to cast the burden of our evil actions on to any higher Power. The voluntary control of the number of offspring which is now becoming the rule in all civilized countries in every part of the world has been a matter of concern to some people, who have realized that however desirable under the conditions, it may be abused. But there are two points about it which they should do well always to bear in mind. In the first place, it is the inevitable result of the advance in civilization. Reckless abandonment to the impulse of the moment, and careless indifference to the morrow, the selfish gratification of individual desire at the expense of probable suffering to lives that will come after, this may seem beautiful to some people, but it is not civilization. All civilization involves an ever-increasing forethought for others, even for others who are yet unborn. In the second place, it is not only inevitable, but it furnishes us with the one available lever for raising the level of our race. In classic days, as in the East, it was possible to consider infanticide as a permissible method for attaining this end. That is no longer possible to us. We must go further back. We must control the beginnings of life. And that is a better method, even a more civilized method, for it involves greater forethought, and a finer sense of the value of life. To-day, all classes in the community, save the lowest and most unfit, exercise some degree of forethought and control in regulating the size of their families. That it should be precisely the unfit who procreate in the most reckless manner is a lamentable fact, but it is not a hopeless fact, and there is no need for the desperate remedy of urging the fit to reduce themselves in this matter to the level of the unfit. That would merely be a backward movement of civilization. It is education, sobriety, and some degree of well-being which lead to the control of the size of families, and as it is social amelioration which brings this result about, it is a result that we may view with equanimity. It used to be feared that a falling birth rate was a national danger. We now know that this is not the case, for not only does a falling birth rate lead to a falling death rate, but in this matter no nation moves by itself. Civilization is international, though one nation may be a little before or behind another. Hitherto France has been ahead, but all other nations have followed. In Germany, for instance, sometimes regarded as a rival of England, the birth rate has fallen just as in England. Russia indeed is an exception, but Russia is not only behind England, but behind Germany in the march of civilization; its birth rate is high, its death rate is high; a large proportion of its population live on the verge of famine. We are not likely to take Russia as our guide in this matter; we have gone through that stage long ago. But at the stage we have now reached it is no longer a question of gaining control over the production of the new generation, but of using that control, and of using it in such a way that we may help to leave the world better than we found it. “What has posterity done for me that I should do anything for posterity,” someone is said to have asked? The answer is that to the human race that went before him he owes everything, and that he can only repay the debt to those who come after him. There is more than one way in which we can repay our debt to the race, but there is no better way than by leaving behind us those who are fit to carry on the tasks of life to higher ends than we have ourselves perhaps been able to attain. Children have been without value in the world because there have been too many of them; they have been produced by a blind and helpless instinct, and have been allowed to die by the hundred thousand. For more than half a century after the era of social reform set in there was no decline at all in the enormous infant mortality. It has only now begun, as the inevitable accompaniment of the decline in the birth rate. Not the least service done by the fall in the birth rate has been to teach us the worth of our children. We possess the power, if we will, deliberately and consciously to create a new race, to mold the world of the future. As we realize our responsibility we see that our new power of control is not merely for the end of limiting the quantity of human life, perhaps for a selfish object, but for the high end of improving its quality. It is in our power not only to generate life, but, if we will, to regenerate life. If we realize that possibility, and if we understand how the course of civilization has now brought it within our grasp, we have reached the heart of our problem. Our greatest foe, apart from indifference, is ignorance. Even science in this field is only beginning to feel its way, while the mass have still to unlearn many prejudices of the past. P. 48–54.
Galton, during the last years of his life, believed that we are approaching a time when eugenic considerations will become a factor of religion, and when our existing religious conceptions will be reinterpreted in the light of a sense of social needs, so enlarged as to include the needs of the race which is to come. Certainly for those who have been taught to believe that man was in the first place created by God, it should not be difficult to realize the divine nature of the task of human creation which has since been placed in the hands of man, to recognize it as a practical part of religion, and to cherish a sense of its responsibility. P. 63.
THE SEXUAL QUESTION. August Forel. A Scientific, Psychological, Hygienic and Sociological Study. Translated by C. F. Marshall, M.D., F.R.C.S. Late Assistant Surgeon to the Hospital for Diseases of the Skin. London.
August Forel: Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa; Doctor of Laws honoris causa. Born September 1848 at Morges, Switzerland. Educated at University of Zurich and Vienna. In 1873 assistant physician at the district insane asylum at Munich; 1877, Privat-dozent at the University; 1879, Privat-dozent and then Professor at Zurich, and until 1898 Director of the State Insane Asylum at Burgholzli near Zurich. Works: Experience et remarques crit. sur les sensations des insectes (in 4 vol. of Recueil Zoolog. suisse Genf. 1886–7) Giftapparat u. d. Analdrusen der Ameisen, 1878; Les Fourmis de la Suisse, 1874; Errichtg. v. Trinkerasylen, 1891; D. Hypnotismus; Gehirn und Seele; Hygiene der Nerven und des Geistes; Die Sexuelle Frage; Verbrecher und Konstit. Seelenabnormitat; Ges. Hirnanah. Abhandl; Sinnesleben d. Insekten; Kulturstrebungen der Gegenwart.
He discovered in 1885 the seat of the auditory nerves in the brain; researches into the psychology of ants.
We must not forget that among our brutal, yet human ancestors, the struggle for life demanded the cruel and wanton exposure or slaughter of all weak and decrepit individuals, and that epidemic diseases, plagues, and pests ravaged the peoples without mercy. Of course our present civilization has put up a barrier against all this. Yet for that very reason, the blind and thoughtless propagation of degenerate, tainted and enfeebled individuals is another atrocious danger to society. But then the sexual appetite cannot be legislated out of existence, or killed by repressive measures. We can but consider all legislation and all police measures which are intended to regulate the sexual intercourse in the human family as absolute failures, as inhuman, in fact as downright detrimental to the race. Exacting laws have never improved the morals of any race or nation, hypocrisy and secret evasion are the only results obtained. It would be better by far if steps were taken to enlighten the masses on the questions of sexual heredity and degeneration. Wisdom of this kind does not corrupt.
The law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person. And we should sit still and watch our civilization go into decay and fall to pieces without raising the cry of warning and applying the remedy?
The sexual appetite is very pronounced in tuberculous persons. They marry and beget children in the most wanton fashion. The law cannot and does not prevent them, and the carnal instinct is not to be killed. What is to be done when law and religion forbid the application of preventive measures and even prosecute the person that recommends them? Local diseases and pathological conditions in the woman (at times in man also) within wedlock, may render parturition and immediate danger to the life of the mother or of the child, or of both together. Surely in such cases it is the bounden duty of the physician to intervene and counsel against, nay absolutely forbid impregnation. Well, how is it to be done? Must husband and wife who love each other be separated? It would be unnatural, in fact it is quite impossible. Or should they abandon sexual intercourse altogether and live like brother and sister? Well, a few exceptionally cold natures may have will power enough to carry into effect such a pact. But in 99 out of 100 cases the interdict of the sexual act sends the husband to satisfy his cravings elsewhere and contract disease, or he falls in love with another woman and wrecks home and family. Similar conditions may be brought about by other causes as well. Take for instance, the poor working man, or mechanic, who has already six or seven children, and whose wife is unusually fertile, giving birth to children year after year. The wages of the father do not suffice to properly support them all. The food that can be purchased with the slender means is not at all adequate. Rent and other bills fall behind and they get in debt. They are both young yet. What is to be done? If they follow the natural law there will be an increase in the family every year. Moreover, these ever-recurring labors weaken the constitution of the mother and sap away her strength. Starvation? Sexual continence in wedlock? It is curious indeed to hear rich men, well fed clergymen, pious zealots and reformers, leaning back in comfortable chairs discussing this burning question and bewailing the immorality of the common people. Statistics prove that these very people who extol to the poor all the blessings of a poor family never live up to their teachings, either in theory or in practice. The majority of these apostles of morality have no children at all or at the utmost two or three. Why should that be so? What interesting reading it would make if the sexual history of these persons were followed up and printed.