Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question

by Robert Dale Owen

This book will make its way through the whole United States. Curiosity and the notoriety which has already been given to the subject, will suffice at first to obtain for it circulation. The practical importance of the subject it treats of will do the rest. It needed but some one to start the stone; its own momentum will suffice to carry it forward.

But, if we could prevent the circulation of truth, why should we? We are not afraid of it ourselves. No man thinks his morality will suffer by it. Each feels certain that his virtue can stand any degree of knowledge. And is it not the height of egregious presumption in each to imagine that his neighbour is so much weaker than himself, and requires a bandage which he can do without? Most of all, is it presumptuous to suppose, that that knowledge which the man of the world can bear with impunity, will corrupt the young and the pure-hearted. It is the sullied conscience only that suggests such fears. Trust youth and innocence. Speak to them openly. Show them that you respect them, by treating them with confidence; and they will quickly learn to respect and to govern themselves. You enlist even their pride in your behalf; and you will soon see them make it their boast and their highest pleasure to merit your confidence. But watch them, and show your suspicion of them but once—and you are the jailor, who will keep his prisoners just as long as bars and bolts shall prevent their escape. The world was never made for a prison-house; it is too large and ill-guarded: nor were parents ever intended for goal-keepers; their very affections unfit them for the task.

There is no more beautiful sight upon earth, than a family among whom there are no secrets and no reserves: where the young people confide every thing to their elder friends—for such to them are their parents—and where the parents trust every thing to their children; where each thought is communicated as freely as it arises; and all knowledge given, as simply as it is received. If the world contain a prototype of that Paradise, where nature is said to have known no sin or impropriety, it is such a family; and if there be a serpent that can poison the innocence of its inmates, that serpent is Suspicion.

I ask no greater pleasure than thus to be the guardian and companion of young beings whose innocence shall speak to me as unreservedly as it thinks to itself; of young beings who shall never imagine that there is guilt in their thoughts, or sin in their confidence; and to whom, in return, I may impart every important and useful fact that is known to myself. Their virtue shall be of that hardy growth, which all facts tend to nourish and strengthen.

I put it to my readers, whether such a view of human nature, and such a mode of treating it, be not in accordance with the noblest feelings of their hearts. I put it to them, whether they have not felt themselves encouraged, improved, strengthened in every virtuous resolution, when they were generously trusted; and whether they have not felt abased and degraded, when they were suspiciously watched, and spied after, and kept in ignorance. If they find such feelings in their own hearts, let them not self-righteously imagine, that they only can be won by generosity, or that the nature of their fellow-creatures is different from their own.

There are other considerations connected with this subject, which farther attest the social advantages of the control I advocate. Human affections are mutable, and the sincerest of mortal resolutions may change.[^[23]] Every day furnishes instances of alienations, and of separations; sometimes almost before the honey-moon is well expired. In such cases of unsuitability, it cannot be considered desirable that there should be offspring; and the power of refraining from becoming parents until intimacy had, in a measure, established the likelihood of permanent harmony of views and feelings, must be confessed to be advantageous.

The limits which my numerous avocations prescribe to this little treatise, permit me not to meet every argument in detail, which ingenuity or prejudice might put forward. If the world were not actually afraid to think freely or to listen to the suggestions of common sense, three-fourths of what has already been said would be superfluous; for most of the arguments employed would occur spontaneously to any rational, reasoning being. But the mass of mankind have still, in a measure, every thing to learn on this subject. The world seems to me much to resemble a company of gourmands, who sit down to a plentiful repast, first very punctiliously saying grace over it; and then, under sanction of the priest’s blessing, think to gorge themselves with impunity; as conceiving, that gluttony after grace is no sin. So it is with popular customs and popular morality. Every thing is permitted, if external forms be but respected. Legal roguery is no crime, and ceremony-sanctioned excess no profligacy. The substance is sacrificed to the form, the virtue to the outward observance. The world troubles its head little about whether a man be honest or dishonest, so he knows how to avoid the penitentiary and escape the hangman. In like manner, the world seldom thinks it worth while to enquire whether a man be temperate or intemperate, prudent or thoughtless. It takes especial care to inform itself whether in all things he conforms to orthodox requirements; and, if he does, all is right. Thus men too often learn to consider an oath an absolution from all subsequent decencies and duties, and a full release from all after responsibilities. If a husband maltreat his wife, the offence is venal; for he premised it by making her, at the altar, an “honest woman.” If a married father neglect his children, it is a trifle; for grace was regularly said, before they were born.

So true is this, that if some heterodox moralist were to throw out the idea, that many of the rudenesses and jarrings, and much of the indifference and carelessness of each others’ feelings that is exhibited in married life, might be traced to the almost universal custom (in this country though not in France) of man and wife continually occupying the same bed—if he put it to us whether such a forced and too frequent familiarity were not calculated to lessen the charms and pleasures, and diminish the respectful regard and deference, which ought ever to characterize the intercourse of human beings—if, I say, some heretical preferrer of things to forms were to light upon and express some such unlucky idea as this, ten to one the married portion of the community would fall upon him without mercy, as an impertinent intermeddler in their most legitimate rights and prerogatives.

With such a world as this, it is a difficult matter to reason. After listening to all I have said, it may perhaps cut me short by reminding me, that nature herself declares it to be right and proper, that we should reproduce our species without calculation or restraint. I will ask, in reply, whether nature also declares it to be right and proper, that when the thermometer is at 96°, we should drink greedily of cold water, and drop down dead in the streets? Let the world be told, that if nature gave us our passions and propensities, she gave us also the power wisely to control them; and that, when we hesitate to exercise that power we descend to a level with the brute creation, and become the sport of fortune—the mere slaves of circumstance.[^[24]]

To one other argument it were not, perhaps, worth while to advert, but that it has been already speciously used to excite popular prejudice. It has been said, that to recommend to mankind prudential restraint in cases where children cannot be provided for, is an insult to the poor man; since all ought to be so circumstanced that they might provide amply for the largest family. Most assuredly all ought to be so circumstanced; but all are not. And there would be just as much propriety in bidding a poor man to go and take by force a piece of Saxony broadcloth from his neighbour’s store, because he ought to be able to purchase it, as to encourage him to go on producing children, because he ought to have wherewithal to support them. Let us exert every nerve to correct the injustice and arrest the misery that results from a vicious order of things; but, until we have done so, let us not, for humanity’s sake, madly recommend that which grievously aggravates the evil; which increases the burden on the present generation, and threatens with neglect and ignorance the next.