Part 14

Whatever the method adopted, there are certain conditions which it must fulfil, even apart from its effectiveness as a contraceptive, in order to be satisfactory. Most of these conditions may be summed up in one: the most satisfactory method is that which least interferes with the normal process of the act of intercourse. Every sexual act is, or should be, a miniature courtship, however long marriage may have lasted. No outside mental tension or nervous apprehension must be allowed to intrude. Any contraceptive proceeding which hastily enters the atmosphere of love immediately before or immediately after the moment of union is unsatisfactory and may be injurious. It even risks the total loss of the contraceptive result, for at such moments the intended method may be ineffectively carried out, or neglected altogether. No method can be regarded as desirable which interferes with the sense of satisfaction and relief which should follow the supreme act of loving union. No method which produces a nervous jar in one of the parties, even though it may be satisfactory to the other, should be tolerated. Such considerations must for some couples rule out certain methods. We cannot, however, lay down absolute rules, because methods which some couples may find satisfactory prove unsatisfactory in other cases. Experience, aided by expert advice, is the only final criterion.

When a contraceptive method is adopted under satisfactory conditions, with a due regard to the requirements of the individual couple, there is little room to fear that any injurious results will be occasioned. It is quite true that many physicians speak emphatically concerning the injurious results to husband or to wife of contraceptive devices. Although there has been exaggeration, and prejudice has often been imported into this question, and although most of the injurious results could have been avoided had trained medical help been at hand to advise better methods, there can be no doubt that much that has been said under this head is true. Considering how widespread is the use of these methods, and how ignorantly they have often been carried out, it would be surprising indeed if it were not true. But even supposing that the nervously injurious effects which have been traced to contraceptive practices were a thousandfold greater than they have been reported to be--instead of, as we are justified in believing, considerably less than they are reported--shall we therefore condemn contraceptive methods? To do so would be to ignore all the vastly greater evils which have followed in the past from unchecked reproduction. It would be a condemnation which, if we exercised it consistently, would destroy the whole of civilisation and place us back in savagery. For what device of man, since man had any history at all, has not proved sometimes injurious?

Every one of even the most useful and beneficent of human inventions has either exercised subtle injuries or produced appalling catastrophes. This is not only true of man's devices, it is true of Nature's in general. Let us take, for instance, the elevation of man's ancestors from the quadrupedal to the bipedal position. The experiment of making a series of four-footed animals walk on their hind-legs was very revolutionary and risky; it was far, far more beset by dangers than is the introduction of contraceptives; we are still suffering all sorts of serious evils in consequence of Nature's action in placing our remote ancestors in the erect position. Yet we feel that it was worth while; even those physicians who most emphasise the evil results of the erect position do not advise that we should go on all-fours. It is just the same with a great human device, the introduction of clothes. They have led to all sorts of new susceptibilities to disease and even tendencies to direct injury of many kinds. Yet no one advocates the complete disuse of all clothing on the ground that corsets have sometimes proved harmful. It would be just as absurd to advocate the complete abandonment of contraceptives on the ground that some of them have sometimes been misused. If it were not, indeed, that we are familiar with the lengths to which ignorance and prejudice may go we should question the sanity of anyone who put forward so foolish a proposition. Every great step which Nature and man have taken in the path of progress has been beset by dangers which are gladly risked because of the advantages involved. We have still to enumerate some of the immense advantages which Man has gained in acquiring a conscious and deliberate control of reproduction.

III.

BIRTH CONTROL IN RELATION TO MORALITY AND EUGENICS

Anyone who has followed this discussion so far will not easily believe that a tendency so deeply rooted in Nature as Birth Control can ever be in opposition to Morality. It can only seem to be so when we confuse the eternal principles of Morality, whatever they may be, with their temporary applications, which are always becoming modified in adaptation to changing circumstances.

We are often in danger of doing injustice to the morality of the past, and it is important, even in order to understand the morality of the present, that we should be able to put ourselves in the place of those for whom birth control was immoral. To speak of birth control as having been immoral in the past is, indeed, to underestimate the case; it was not only immoral, it was unnatural, it was even irreligious, it was almost criminal. We must remember that throughout the Christian world the Divine Command, "Increase and Multiply," has seemed to echo down the ages from the beginning of the world. It was the authoritative command of a tribal God who was, according to the scriptural narrative, addressing a world inhabited by eight people. From such a point of view a world's population of several thousand persons would have seemed inconceivably vast, though to-day by even the most austere advocate of birth limitation it would be allowed with a smile. But the old religious command has become a tradition which has survived amid conditions totally unlike those under which it arose. In comparatively modern times it has been reinforced from unexpected quarters, on the one hand by all the forces that are opposed to democracy and on the other by all the forces of would-be patriotic militarism, both alike clamouring for plentiful and cheap men.

Even science, under primitive conditions, was opposed to Birth Control. Creation was regarded as a direct process in which man's will had no part, and knowledge of nature was still too imperfect for the recognition of the fact that the whole course of the world's natural history has been an erection of barriers against wholesale and indiscriminate reproduction. Thus it came about that under the old dispensation, which is now for ever passing away, to have as many children as possible and to have them as often as possible--provided certain ritual prescriptions were fulfilled--seemed to be a religious, moral, natural, scientific, and patriotic duty.

To-day the conditions have altogether altered, and even our own feelings have altered. We no longer feel with the ancient Hebrew who has bequeathed his ideals though not his practices to Christendom, that to have as many wives and concubines and as large a family as possible is both natural and virtuous, as well as profitable. We realise, moreover, that the Divine Commands, so far as we recognise any such commands, are not external to us, but are manifested in our own deliberate reason and will. We know that to primitive men, who lacked foresight and lived mainly in the present, only that Divine Command could be recognisable which sanctified the impulse of the moment, while to us, who live largely in the future, and have learnt foresight, the Divine Command involves restraint on the impulse of the moment. We no longer believe that we are divinely ordered to be reckless or that God commands us to have children who, as we ourselves know, are fatally condemned to disease or premature death. Providence, which was once regarded as the attribute of God, we regard as the attribute of men; providence, prudence, self-restraint--these are to us the characteristics of moral men, and those persons who lack these characteristics are condemned by our social order to be reckoned among the dregs of mankind. It is a social order which in the sphere of procreation could not be reached or maintained except by the systematic control of offspring.

We may realise the difference between the morality of to-day and the morality of the past when we come to details. We may consider, for instance, the question of the chastity of women. According to the ideas of the old morality, which placed the whole question of procreation under the authority (after God) of men, women were in subjection to men, and had no right to freedom, no right to responsibility, no right to knowledge, for, it was believed, if entrusted with any of these they would abuse them at once. That view prevails even to-day in some civilised countries, and middle-class Italian parents, for instance, will not allow their daughter to be conducted by a man even to Mass, for they believe that as soon as she is out of their sight she will be unchaste. That is their morality. Our morality to-day, however, is inspired by different ideas, and aims at a different practice. We are by no means disposed to rate highly the morality of a girl who is only chaste so long as she is under her parents' eyes; for us, indeed, that is much more like immorality than morality. We are to-day vigorously pursuing a totally different line of action. We wish women to be reasonably free, we wish them to be trained in the sense of responsibility for their own actions, we wish them to possess knowledge, more especially in that sphere of sex, once theoretically closed to them, which we now recognise as peculiarly their own domain. Nowadays, moreover, we are sufficiently well acquainted with human nature to know, not only that at best the "chastity" merely due to compulsion or to ignorance is a poor thing, but that at worst it is really the most degraded and injurious form of unchastity. For there are many ways of avoiding pregnancy besides the use of contraceptives, and such ways can often only be called vicious, destructive to purity, and harmful to health. Our ideal woman to-day is not she who is deprived of freedom and knowledge in the cloister, even though only the cloister of her home, but the woman who, being instructed from early life in the facts of sexual physiology and sexual hygiene, is also trained in the exercise of freedom and self-responsibility, and able to be trusted to choose and to follow the path which seems to her right. That is the only kind of morality which seems to us real and worth while. And, in any case, we have now grown wise enough to know that no degree of compulsion and no depth of ignorance will suffice to make a girl good if she doesn't want to be good. So that, even as a matter of policy, it is better to put her in a position to know what is good and to act in accordance with that knowledge.

The relation of birth control to morality is, however, by no means a question which concerns women alone. It equally concerns men. Here we have to recognise, not only that the exercise of control over procreation enables a man to form a union of faithful devotion with the woman of his choice at an earlier age than would otherwise be possible, but it further enables him, throughout the whole of married life, to continue such relationship under circumstances which might otherwise render them injurious or else undesirable to his wife. That the influence thus exerted by preventive methods would suffice to abolish prostitution it would be foolish to maintain, for prostitution has other grounds of support. But even within the sphere of merely prostitutional relationships the use of contraceptives, and the precautions and cleanliness they involve, have an influence of their own in diminishing the risks of venereal disease, and while the interests of those who engage in prostitution are by some persons regarded as negligible, we must always remember that venereal disease spreads far beyond the patrons of prostitution and is a perpetual menace to others who may become altogether innocent victims. So that any influence which tends to diminish venereal disease increases the well-being of the whole community.

Apart from the relationship to morality, although the two are intimately combined, we are thus led to the relationship of birth control to eugenics, or to the sound breeding of the race. Here we touch the highest ground, and are concerned with our best hopes for the future of the world. For there can be no doubt that birth control is not only a precious but an indispensable instrument in moulding the coming man to the measure of our developing ideals. Without it we are powerless in the face of the awful evils which flow from random and reckless reproduction. With it we possess a power so great that some persons have professed to see in it a menace to the propagation of the race, amusing themselves with the idea that if people possess the means to prevent the conception of children they will never have children at all. It is not necessary to discuss such a grotesque notion seriously. The desire for children is far too deeply implanted in mankind and womankind alike ever to be rooted out. If there are to-day many parents whose lives are rendered wretched by large families and the miseries of excessive child-bearing, there are an equal number whose lives are wretched because they have no children at all, and who snatch eagerly at any straw which offers the smallest promise of relief to this craving. Certainly there are people who desire marriage, but--some for very sound and estimable reasons and others for reasons which may less well bear examination--do not desire any children at all. So far as these are concerned, contraceptive methods, far from being a social evil, are a social blessing. For nothing is so certain as that it is an unmixed evil for a community to possess unwilling, undesirable, or incompetent parents. Birth control would be an unmixed blessing if it merely enabled us to exclude such persons from the ranks of parenthood. We desire no parents who are not both competent and willing parents. Only such parents are fit to father and to mother a future race worthy to rule the world.

It is sometimes said that the control of conception, since it is frequently carried out immediately on marriage, will tend to delay parenthood until an unduly late age. Birth control has, however, no necessary result of this kind, and might even act in the reverse direction. A chief cause of delay in marriage is the prospect of the burden and expense of an unrestricted flow of children into the family, and in Great Britain, since 1911, with the extension of the use of contraceptives, there has been a slight but regular increase not only in the general marriage rate but in the proportion of early marriages, although the general mean age at marriage has increased. The ability to control the number of children not only enables marriage to take place at an early age but also makes it possible for the couple to have at least one child soon after marriage. The total number of children are thus spaced out, instead of following in rapid succession.

It is only of recent years that the eugenic importance of a considerable interval between births has been fully recognised, as regards not only the mother--this has long been realised--but also the children. The very high mortality of large families has long been known, and their association with degenerate conditions and with criminality. The children of small families in Toronto, Canada, are taller than those of larger families, as is also the case in Oakland, California, where the average size of the family is smaller than in Toronto. Of recent years, moreover, evidence has been obtained that families in which the children are separated from each other by intervals of more than two years are both mentally and physically superior to those in which the interval is shorter. Thus Ewart found in a northern English manufacturing town that children born at an interval of less than two years after the birth of the previous child remain notably defective, even at the age of six, both as regards intelligence and physical development. When compared with children born at a longer interval and with first-born children, they are, on the average, three inches shorter and three pounds lighter than first-born children. Such observations need to be repeated in various countries, but if confirmed it is obvious that they represent a fact of the most vital significance.

Thus when we calmly survey, in however summary a manner, the great field of life affected by the establishment of voluntary human control over the production of the race, we can see no cause for anything but hope. It is satisfactory that it should be so, for there can be no doubt that we are here facing a great and permanent fact in civilised life. With every rise in civilisation, indeed with all evolutionary progress whatever, there is what seems to be an automatic fall in the birth-rate. That fall is always normally accompanied by a fall in the death-rate, so that a low birth-rate frequently means a high rate of natural increase, since most of the children born survive. Thus in the civilised world of to-day, notwithstanding the low birth-rate which prevails as compared with earlier times, the rate of increase in the population is still, as Leroy-Beaulieu points out, appalling, nearly half a million a year in Great Britain, over half a million in Austro-Hungary, and three-quarters of a million in Germany. When we examine this excess of births in detail we find among them a large proportion of undesired and undesirable children. There are two opposed alternative methods working to diminish this proportion: the method of preventing conception, with which we have here been concerned, and the method of preventing live birth by producing abortion. There can be no doubt about the enormous extension of this latter practice in all civilised countries, even although some of the estimates of its frequency in the United States, where it seems especially to flourish, may be extravagant. The burden of excessive children on the overworked underfed mothers of the working classes becomes at last so intolerable that anything seems better than another child. "I'd rather swallow the druggist's shop and the man in it than have another kid," as, Miss Elderton reports, a woman in Yorkshire said.

Now there has of late years arisen a movement, especially among German women, for bringing abortion into honour and repute, so that it may be carried out openly and with the aid of the best physicians. This movement has been supported by lawyers and social reformers of high position. It may be admitted that women have an abstract right to abortion and that in exceptional cases that right should be exerted. Yet there can be very little doubt to most people that abortion is a wasteful, injurious, and almost degrading method of dealing with the birth-rate, a feeble apology for recklessness and improvidence. A society in which abortion flourishes cannot be regarded as a healthy society. Therefore, a community which takes upon itself to encourage abortion is incurring a heavy responsibility. I am referring more especially to the United States, where this condition of things is most marked. For, there cannot be any doubt about it, just as all those who work for birth control are diminishing the frequency of abortion, so every attempt to discourage birth control promotes abortion. We have to approach this problem calmly, in the light of Nature and reason. We have each of us to decide on which side we shall range ourselves. For it is a vital social problem concerning which we cannot afford to be indifferent.

There is here no desire to exaggerate the importance of birth control. It is not a royal road to the millennium, and, as I have already pointed out, like all other measures which the course of progress forces us to adopt, it has its disadvantages. Yet at the present moment its real and vital significance is acutely brought home to us.

Flinders Petrie, discussing those great migrations due to the unrestricted expansion of barbarous races which have devastated Europe from the dawn of history, remarks: "We deal lightly and coldly with the abstract facts, but they represent the most terrible tragedies of all humanity--the wreck of the whole system of civilisation, protracted starvation, wholesale massacre. Can it be avoided? That is the question, before all others, to the statesman who looks beyond the present time." Since Petrie wrote, only ten years ago, we have had occasion to realise that the vast expansions which he described are not confined to the remote past, but are at work and producing the same awful results, even at the very present hour. The great and only legitimate apology which has been put forward for the aggressive attitude of Germany in the present war has been that it was the inevitable expansive outcome of the abnormally high birth-rate of Germany in recent times; as Dr. Dernburg, not long ago, put it: "The expansion of the German nation has been so extraordinary during the last twenty-five years that the conditions existing before the war had become insupportable." In other words, there was no outlet but a devastating war. So we are called upon to repeat, with fresh emphasis, Petrie's question: Can it be avoided? All humanity, all civilisation, call upon us to take up our stand on this vital question of birth control. In so doing we shall each of us be contributing, however humbly, to

"one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves."

J.M. Coulter, The Evolution of Sex in Plants, 1915; Geoffrey Smith, "The Biology of Sex," Eugenics Review, April, 1914.

See, e.g., Geddes and Thomson, The Evolution of Sex, Ch. XX.; and T.H. Morgan, Heredity and Sex, Ch. I.

To quote one of the most careful investigators of this point, Northcote Thomas, among the Edo-speaking people of Nigeria, found that the average number of living children per husband was 2.7; including all children, alive and dead, the average number was per husband 4.5, and per wife 2.7. "Infant mortality is heavy" (Northcote Thomas, Anthropological Report of Edo-speaking People of Nigeria, 1910, Part I., pp. 15, 63).

The same end has been rather more mercifully achieved in earlier periods by infanticide (see Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, Vol. I., Ch. 17). It must not be supposed that infanticide was opposed to tenderness to children. Thus the Australian Dieyerie, who practised infanticide, were kind to children, and a mother found beating her child was herself beaten by her husband.

See Havelock Ellis, The Nationalisation of Health.

Similar results appear to follow in China where also the birth-rate is very high and the mortality very great. It is stated that physical development is much inferior and pathological defects more numerous among Chinese as compared with American students. (New York Medical Journal, Nov. 14th, 1914, p. 978.) The bad conditions which produce death in the weakest produce deterioration in the survivors.

The law is thus laid down by P. Leroy-Beaulieu (La Question de la Population, 1913, p. 233): "The first degree of prosperity in a rude population with few needs develops prolificness; a later degree of prosperity, accompanied by all the feelings and ideas stimulated by the development of education and a democratic environment, leads to a gradual reduction of prolificness."

This is too often forgotten. Birth control is a natural process, and though in civilised men, endowed with high intelligence, it necessarily works in some measure voluntarily and deliberately, it is probable that it still also works, as in the evolution of the lower animals, to some extent automatically. Sir Shirley Murphy (Lancet, Aug. 10th, 1912), while admitting that intentional restriction has been operative, remarks: "It does not appear to me that there is any more reason for ignoring the likelihood that Nature has been largely concerned in the reduction of births than for ignoring the effects of Nature in reducing the death-rate. The decline in both has points of resemblance. Both have been widely manifest over Europe, both have in the main declined in the period of 1871-1880, and indeed both appear to be behaving in like manner."

I do not overlook the fact that the artificial clothing of primitive man is in its origin mainly ornament, having myself insisted on that fact in discussing this point in "The Evolution of Modesty" (Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. I.). It is to be remembered that, in animals--and very conspicuously, for instance, in birds--natural clothing is also largely ornament of secondary sexual significance.