The Fertility of the Unfit Part 7

My duty to my child is comprehended in my duty to society, _i.e._, to others. My duty to others is to increase the sum of the happiness of others, and bringing healthy children into the world not only creates beings capable of experiencing and enjoying pleasures, but adds to the sum of social happiness, by increasing the number of social units capable of rendering service to others.

The next great law of life is the law of race preservation. This law comprises the instinct to reproduction and the instinct of parental love. The first and chief function of these instincts in the animal economy is the perpetuation of the race. The preservation of self implies and comprehends the preservation of the race.

My first duty to myself is to preserve myself in health and happiness; but this is best fulfilled and realized in labouring for the health and happiness of others. If this be the universal law, I also am the recipient of others' care, therefore probably better tended and preserved. I save my life by losing it in others.

My second duty, though nominally to Society, is in reality to myself, and it is to preserve myself by preserving the race to which I belong.

Self-preservation therefore, is the first law of life, race preservation the second or subsidiary law.

To fulfil this second law, nature has placed on every normal healthy man and woman the sacred duty of reproducing their kind. Reproduction as a physiological process promotes, both directly and indirectly, the health, happiness and longevity of healthy men and women.

Statistics confirm the popular opinion "that the length of life, to the enjoyment of which a married person may look forward, is greater than that of the unmarried, both male and female at the same age."--(Coghlan).

It is a familiar observation that the mothers of large families of ten and even twice that number are not less healthy nor shorter lived because of the children they have borne. Pregnancy is a stimulus to vitality. Because another life has to be supported, all the vital powers are invigorated and rise to the occasion--the circulation increases, the heart enlarges in response to the extra work, and the a.s.similative powers of the body are greatly accelerated. During lactation also, the same extra vital work done is a stimulus to a physiological activity which is favourable to health and longevity. The expectancy of life in women is greater than in men all through life, the difference during the child-bearing period of life being about 2.2 years in favour of women.

Statistics and physicians from their observation agree in this, that the bearing of children by normal women, so far from being injurious to health, is as healthful, stimulating, and invigorating a function as the blooming of a flower, or the shedding of fruit, and a mother is no worse for the experience of maternity than is the plant or the tree for the fruit it bears.

The supreme law of society is the law of race-preservation, and the infraction of this law is a social crime. One's duty to society is a higher duty than to one's-self, but the lower duty comes first in our present stage of racial evolution. Instinct prompts to the one, reason--a higher and later, but less respected, faculty--prompts to the other.

But it can be shown that from an egoistic standpoint my duty to the State in this regard is my highest duty to myself.

The parental sacrifice necessary in rearing the normal number of children is infinitesimal compared with the parental advantage.

Parental love is a pa.s.sion as well as an instinct in normal men and women, and the full play of this pa.s.sion in its natural state is productive of the greatest happiness.

Vice may restrain, replace, or smother it, but nothing else can damage or adulterate this powerful pa.s.sion in the human heart.

Low level selfishness, love of low level luxury, diseased imaginings, and unreasonable dreads and fears, are some of the forms of vice that smother this n.o.ble pa.s.sion.

The pursuit of happiness and the higher forms of selfishness would naturally point to parentage.

The ectasy of parental love, the sweet response from little ones that rises as the fragrance of lovely flowers, self-realization in the comfort and joy of family life, the parental pride in the contemplation of effulgent youth, the sympathetic partners.h.i.+p in success, the repose of old age surrounded by filial manhood and womanhood, all go to make a surplus of pleasure over pain, that no other way of life can possibly supply.

What is the alternative?

To miss all this and live a barren life and a loveless old age. Perhaps to bear a child, that, for the need of the educative, elevating companions.h.i.+p of family mates is consumed by self, inheriting that vicious selfishness, which he by his birth defeated, and finding all the forces of nature focussed on his defect, like a pack of hounds that turn and rend an injured mate.

Or a family of one, after years of parental care and love, education and expense, dies or turns a rake, and the canker of remorse takes his place in the broken hearts.

Nature's laws are not broken with impunity--as a great Physician has said, "She never forgives and never forgets."

Self-preservation and race-preservation together const.i.tute the law of life, just as Conservation of Matter and Conservation of Energy const.i.tute the Law of Substance in Haeckels Monistic Philosophy, and the severest altruism will permit man to follow his highest self-interest in obedience to these laws. It is only a perverted and vicious self-interest that would tempt him to infraction.

That the vice of oliganthropy is growing amongst normal and healthy people is a painful and startling fact. In New Zealand the prevailing belief is that a number of children adds to the cares and responsibilities of life more than they add to its joys and pleasures, and many have come to think with John Stuart Mill, that a large family should be looked on with the same contempt as drunkenness.

CHAPTER VII.

WHO PREVENT.

_Desire for family limitation result of our social system._--_Desire and practice not uniform through all cla.s.ses._--_The best limit, the worst do not._--_Early marriages and large families._--_N.Z. marriage rates.

Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage._--_Good motives mostly actuate._--_All limitation implies restraint._--_Birth-rates vary inversely with prudence and self-control._--_The limited family usually born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well developed._--_Our worst citizens most prolific._--_Effect of poverty on fecundity._--_Effect of alcoholic intemperance._--_Effect of mental and physical defects._--_Defectives propagate their kind._--_The intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols const.i.tute the greatest danger to society._--_Character the resultant of two forces--motor impulse and inhibition._--_Chief criminal characteristic is defective inhibition._--_This defect is strongly hereditary._--_It expresses itself in unrestrained fertility._

It has been sufficiently demonstrated in preceding chapters, that the birth-rate has been, and is still rapidly declining. It has been sought to prove that this decline is chiefly due to voluntary means taken by married people to limit their families, and that the desire for this limitation is the result of our social system.

The important question now arises. Is the desire uniform through all cla.s.ses of Society, and is the practice of prevention uniform through all cla.s.ses?

In other words, is the decline in the birth-rate due to prevention in one cla.s.s more than in another, and if so which?

Experience and statistics force us to the startling conclusion, that the birth-rate is declining amongst the best cla.s.ses of citizens, and remains undisturbed amongst the worst.

Now the first-cla.s.s responsible for the decline includes those who do not marry, and those who marry late. The Michigan vital statistics for 1894 (p. 125) show that the mean number of children to each marriage at the age of 15-19 years is 6.75, at the age of 20-25 years it is 5.32, a difference of 1.44 in favour of delayed marriage for a period of five years.

In New Zealand the marriage rate has gone up from 5.97 per thousand persons living in 1888 to 7.67 in 1900.

This cla.s.s includes clerks with an income of 100 and under,--a large number with 150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.

It includes labourers with 75 a year and under, and many who receive 100.

Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.

Those who abstain from marriage for prudential reasons are as a rule good citizens. They are workers who realise their responsibilities in life, and shrink from undertaking duties which they feel they cannot adequately perform. By far the largest cla.s.s who practice prevention, consists of those who marry, and have one or two children, and limit their families to that number, for prudential, health, or selfish reasons.

These too are as a rule good citizens, and there are two qualities that so distinguish them. First, their prudence; they have no wish to burden the State with the care or support of their children. Their fixed determination is to support and educate them themselves, and they set themselves to the work with thriftiness and forethought.

In order to do this, however, it is essential that the family is limited to one, two, or three, as the case may be, and before it is too late, preventive measures are resorted to.

The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.

The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society.

But the birth-rate varies in an inverse ratio with these qualities. In those communities or sections of communities, where these qualities are conspicuous, will the birth-rate be correspondingly low.

There is another cla.s.s of people that has strong desires to keep free from the cares and expense of a large family. These are, too, good citizens and belong to good stock. They are those possessed of ambition to rise socially, politically, or financially, and they are a numerous body in New Zealand.

They are quite able to support and educate a fairly large family, but as children are hindrances, and increase the anxieties, the responsibilities and the expense, they must be limited to one or two.

There is still another cla.s.s that consists of the purely selfish and luxurious members of society, who find children a bother, who have to sacrifice some of the pleasures of life in order to rear them.

Now all those who prevent have some rational ground for prevention, and at least are possessed of sufficient self-control to give effect to their wish. They include the best citizens and the best stock, and from them would issue, if the reproductive faculty were unrestrained, the best progeny.

One grave aspect of this limitation is that, as a rule, the family is limited after the first one or two are born. The small families, say of two, are born when the parents are both young, and carefully compiled statistics prove that these are not the best offspring a couple can produce. Those born first in wedlock, are shorter and not so well developed as those born later in married life, when parents are more matured.

If it is substantially true, that the decline in the birth-rate is due to voluntary prevention, and that prevention implies prudence and self-control, it is safe to conclude that those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous, will be the most prolific.