It might be contended that the very fact that certain individuals withdraw from reproductive activities is sufficient proof of their lack of normal emotional reactions adapting them to the performance of those functions. But a clearer insight shows that the group standards permit the exercise of the reproductive activities only in accord with arbitrary regulations which have coalesced in the institutions of marriage and the family. These institutions have been developed to fit a definite ideal of manhood and womanhood which grew up out of a manner of thinking in accord with taboo control and ignorant superstitions rather than in harmony with the actual facts of the situation. Now that we are facing reality and trying to rationalize our thinking, we find that the variation from these masculine and feminine ideals does not necessarily imply biological or psychological abnormality, since the ideals were themselves established without reference to biological and psychological data.
The traditional marriage and family arrangement tends to enforce a selection of individuals who conform most nearly to these artificial types as parents for the succeeding generations. It is not at all certain that such a selection is advantageous to the group. It would seem rather that in so complex a social system as that of the present day with its increasing division of labour on other than purely sexual distinctions, we need a variety of types of individuals adapted to the varied activities of modern life.
If society is to successfully meet the present situation it must utilize its psychological insight to remedy conditions which are obviously dysgenic and detrimental to the welfare of the race. If the egoistic and highly individualized modern man and woman are induced to sacrifice personal ambitions in the interests of reproduction, for instance, it will only be because society has learned to turn those same egoistic impulses to its own ends. This will never be accomplished by the forces of tradition or by any such superimposed method of control as conscription for parenthood. There is too much of a spirit of freedom and individual liberty in the social mind to-day for any such measure to meet with success. The same spirit of freedom which formerly burst the bonds of superstition and entered into the world of science is now as impatient of restraint of its emotional life as it formerly was of restriction of its intellectual search for the truth.
Therefore society can no longer depend upon taboo standards crystallized into institutionalized forms as a means of control. It must appeal to more rational motives if it expects to have any degree of influence over its most intelligent and energetic members. Only when the production of eugenic offspring brings the same social approval and reward that is meted out for other activities will the ineradicable and irrespressible egoistic desires that now prevent individuals from assuming the responsibilities of family life be enlisted in the very cause to which they are now so hostile. When the same disapproval is manifested for the shirking of reproductive activities by the eugenically fit that is now directed toward lack of patriotism in other lines, the number of voluntary celibates in society will be materialy decreased.
The greatest triumph of society in the manipulation of the sexual and reproductive life of its members will come when it is able to condition the emotional reaction of the individual by the substitution of the eugenic ideal for the parental fixation and to focus the sentiment of romantic love upon eugenic traits. When this is accomplished, the selection of the mate will at least be favourable for racial regeneration even if individual disharmonies are not entirely eliminated. That there are great difficulties in the way of this accomplishment may be admitted at the outset. The conditioned responses to be broken down and replaced are for the most part formed in early childhood, and have had a long period in which to become firmly impressed upon the organism. But psychological experiments have proven that even the best established conditioned reactions can be broken down and others substituted in their place, so that the situation is not so hopeless. When we recollect that for ages the traditional ideals of masculinity and femininity have been conditioning the emotional life of men and women to respond to their requirements with a remarkable degree of success, there is ground for the belief that the same forces of suggestion and imitation may be turned to more rational ends and utilized as an effective means of social therapy.
If we are to have a more rationalized form of social control, then, it will undoubtedly take into consideration the necessity of forming the socially desirable conditionings of the emotional life. The importance of the emotional reactions for social progress has been very well summarized by Burgess, who says that emotion can be utilized for breaking down old customs and establishing new ones, as well as for the conservation of the mores. Society can largely determine around what stimuli the emotions can be organized, this author continues, and the group has indeed always sought to control the stimuli impinging upon its members. One policy has been to eliminate objectionable stimuli, as in the outlawing of the saloon. The other is to change the nature of the affective response of the individual to certain stimuli in the environment where the natural or organic responses would be at variance with conduct considered socially desirable.[[3]]
Modern psychological knowledge enables us to understand the mechanism of this last method of social control as the building up of the conditioned emotional response. If our civilization is to endure it must learn to apply this method of control to the sex life of the individual so that reproduction will fall to the lot of the most desirable eugenic stock instead of being left to the workings of chance as it is at the present time.
From the viewpoint of individual psychology, one of the principal problems of the erotic life is to find a smooth transition from the romantic love of the courtship period to the less ethereal emotions of the married state. Indirectly, this is also socially significant, because of the overwhelming effect of the home environment in shaping the reactions of the next generation. As a rule, only the children who have grown up in a happy and wholesome atmosphere of sincere parental comradeship and affection can have an entirely sane and healthy reaction to their own erotic functions in later years.
Although romantic love in its present expression may often lead to uncongenial marriages and even involve dysgenic mating, its æsthetic and refining influences are such as to make it desirable in spite of these drawbacks. Its influence upon literature has been noted by Bloch[[2]] while its potency in the formation of a deep and tender feeling between men and women has been elaborately discussed by Finck.[[4]] Thus it is evident that its individual and social advantages more than balance its disadvantages.
Unfortunately, with the entrance into the marital relationship and the release of the erotic emotion into natural channels so that it no longer seeks the vicarious outlets which were partly supplied in the idealization of the lovers, there is a tendency for this romantic element to fade from their affection. The conjugal affection which replaces it is built on quite other foundations. It is not composed of day dreams about the beloved, but is wrought out of mutual interests, of joys and sorrows shared together, of the pleasure of unrestricted companionship, and of the common care of offspring. The danger lies in the possibility that these foundations for conjugal love will not have been lain by the time that romantic sentiments begin to grow dim. It is this crisis in the married life which seems disappointing in the afterglow of the engagement and honeymoon.