Private Sex Advice to Women: For Young Wives and those who Expect to be Married

by Robert B. Armitage

But, as leading Eugenists have pointed out, the new science does not confine its attention to the subject of preventive measures, important as they are—it also directs its attention to the constructive phase of the subject, i. e., the production of better children. While Eugenics strives to prevent the unfit from flooding the race with unfit progeny, it at the same time strives to educate the race so that the fit may bear and rear better offsprings. It is not sufficient merely to eliminate the unfit—we must also improve, and still further render fit, the fit members of the race. The fit must not be allowed to remain merely the fit—we must evolve a fitter—and ever move onward toward the realization of the ideal of the fittest. We must not only strive to eliminate the beast in the race of men—we must also aid the race to unfold in the direction of the super-man.

The Eugenists know that much of the talk concerning Race Suicide is not only futile and uncalled for, but is also in a sense misleading and actually dangerous. The real danger of Race Suicide comes not from the decreasing birth-rate, but from the excessive, ignorant, and unscientific bearing and rearing of children by unfit parents. It is not so much a matter of how many children are born, as of how they are born, what kind of children they are, and how they are reared physically, mentally and morally, and how many survive. It is not so much that the lower death-rate be avoided, says the Eugenist, as it is that the higher death-rate be overcome. The intelligent stockbreeder grasps this scientific law of the Eugenists when he endeavors to produce the best young, and then to take care of them that they survive and reach a healthy maturity. To the Eugenist, it is not so much a question of "more," but of "better"—not so much a question of quantity as of quality—not so much a question of production, but of conservation and preservation.

Dr. Saleeby refers to the death-rate of London, which is but 16 to the 1000, as compared to that of Bombay, which is 79 to the 1000. He adds: "It is asserted that in many large Indian cities the infant mortality approaches one-half of all the children born. What it amounts to in such cities as Canton and Pekin we can only surmise with horror. * * * * Unless it be supposed by bishops and others, then, that a peculiar value attaches to the production of a baby shortly to be buried, the suggestion evidently is the same as that to which every humanitarian and social and patriotic impulse guides us, namely, the reduction of the death-rate, and especially of infant mortality. * * * * Hence the Eugenists and the Episcopal Bench may join hands so far as the reduction of the death-rate is concerned, and the only persons with whom a practical quarrel remains are those who applaud the mother who boasts that she has buried twelve."

The Eugenists urge that if the principles applied to plant-life by that master of his science, Luther Burbank, were applied to the production and rearing of young human life, in a few generations we should have a race so far advanced beyond the present average as to be almost god-like by comparison. But this means a far different thing from the ideal of merely "more children"—it requires the manifestation of the ideal of "better children," well born, carefully reared, well nourished, and scientifically educated. And this rearing, nourishing, and education must not be confined to the physical part of the child's nature—it must proceed along the three-fold line of physical, mental, and moral culture.

The Eugenists have been actively concerned with the question of the prevention of the transmission of undesirable qualities to offspring. They have held that while crime is more frequently rather the result of evil environment than of criminal heredity, nevertheless there is a large class of children who are "born criminals"—that is, born with such a decided tendency toward criminal acts that the slightest influence of environment may, and often does, serve to kindle into a blaze the undesirable and criminal characteristics.

Dr. Saleeby says of this: "In the face of the work of Lombroso and his school, exaggerated though some of their conclusions may be, we cannot dispute the existence of born criminals and the criminal type. There are undoubtedly many such persons in modern society. There is an abundance of crime which no education, practiced or imaginable, would eliminate. Present day psychology and medicine and, for the matter of that, ordinary common-sense, can readily distinguish cases at both extremes—the mattoid or semi-insane criminal at one end, and the decent citizen who yields to exceptional temptation at the other end."

The Eugenists quote as an instance of the above contention the celebrated case of Max Jukes, a notorious criminal and drunkard, who as the records show us was the ancestor of a foul brood of descendants which cost the State of New York over a million dollars in seventy-five years. Among these descendants were 200 thieves and murderers; 285 subject to idiocy, blindness or deafness; 90 prostitutes; and 300 children born prematurely. It is possible that a portion of this evil result was caused not alone by bad heredity but, at least in part, by the suggestion of the environment, and the influence of example of the parents; but even so, the primal cause was that Max Jukes, the notoriously unfit ancestor, was allowed to propagate this evil brood, destined to be born and reared under the most adverse conditions and environment.

The Eugenists also place great importance upon the prevention of insane persons becoming parents. To those who consider that this is but an exceptional and rare occurrence, the Eugenists reply that a large percentage of insane patients in asylums have a family history showing insanity in one or both parents; that reports show that there are thousands of feeble-minded women in every large city allowed to (yes, often actually compelled to) bear children to their husbands or male companions.

Ribot says: "Every work on insanity is a plea for heredity." Maudsley says: "More than one-fourth and less than one-half of all insanity is heredity." Riddell says: "Of the great causes of insanity, alcoholism is perhaps the greatest, while morbid heredity ranks next. Insanity is largely the result of degeneracy. Most persons who become mentally deranged are the offspring of neurotic, drunken, insane or feeble-minded parents." While it by no means follows that one must manifest traits of insanity or mental disturbance simply because one of his parents suffered from a like trouble—and we believe that many a one has frightened himself into those conditions by pure auto-suggestion inspired by a one-sided belief in heredity—still it is unquestionably true that a fair mind must concede that wisdom and a proper sense of right and justice would require that parents of unsound mental tendencies should not be permitted to bring into the world children who might inherit a tendency toward a like, or worse, condition.