Part 4

SEX DETERMINATION

“Sex is the central problem of life.”—HAVELOCK ELLIS.

In reviewing the long and unenlightened past, one is tempted to ask whether Woman was not in league with the god of mystery to hide one of Nature’s simple laws from the knowledge and comprehension of man. Between woman and the possibility of instructive observation and the outward visible signs of its expression, there has seemed to exist an impenetrable barrier, so formidable as to baulk successfully every effort of the biologist. No doubt the educational system of bygone times contributed to the difficulties under which scientists laboured in dealing with the problems of sex. It was practically impossible for maid or matron to allow her thoughts or conversation to stray from the beaten track without subjecting herself to severe reproof from Mrs. Grundy. A source of information was thus suppressed, for women as well as men have as much right to use their own understanding in judging of truth as they have to use their own eyes to see their way.

Now girls are allowed to learn, and encouraged to think, and women allowed to speak and encouraged to act. Thus we are at last approaching an explanation of the determination of sex, because, depending on woman, and on woman alone, it can be solved only with her assistance. “Life,” says Professor Lester Ward, “begins as female. Life is feminine. In the woman is the ‘creative centre.’ That everything proceeds from the egg, the ‘vital focus,’ is the verdict of Biology.” In the ovum an egg alone is the germinal spot, the dawn of the future life. The theory that the sex of a child is fixed before the ovum is fertilised has now become an absolute certainty as a result of thousands of successful tests which have established it. The male, according to science, is not a sex-determining begetter: he is simply and only a fertilising agent.

It is not necessary here to give a complete list of all the theories for sex determination that have from time to time been advanced. One by one, without ceremony, we can conscientiously demolish them, thus clearing the ground of useless impedimenta and narrowing down the difficulties to be overcome. Many of these theories were based on experiments and observations made on rats, bees, tadpoles, ferns, and even sponges. Then again the health, age, environment, habits, and diet of parents were successively advanced, apparently on the principle that any peg is good enough to hang a hat on.

Perhaps Schenk’s theory beats the record for extravagance, though it gained at one time many adherents. According to his curious doctrine, sex is determined during the months of pregnancy or well after conception has taken place. Surely as wild a proposition as endeavouring to grow a rose from a poppy seed by cultivating the soil in which it is planted.

This does not mean that there is no such thing as paternal heredity, in other words, that physical or moral characteristics do not descend from father to son throughout the generations. On the contrary, modern biology has demonstrated that a father does transmit any weakness he may possess to his progeny in a heavy percentage of cases, and more especially that the female members of a family will partake of this weakness; just as the mother passes on any tendency to disease or weakness of her own to her male offspring. These facts have a very important bearing on the transmission of disease, and it is obvious that the power of pre-determining sex would tend to result in a strong and healthy race. If physical and mental deficiency in the male parent tends to be reproduced in the female offspring, and conversely in the male by a like deficiency in the female parent, it becomes simply imperative to ensure that in the former case only male children should be born and in the latter only female. A tubercular father need have little anxiety if he confines himself to sons only. A mentally deficient mother might without apprehension have a family of girls. With such possibilities open to us, we might even be willing to admit with Marcus Aurelius that “an accident is a misfortune, but bearing it well turns it to advantage.”

Since people who suffer from chronic disabilities will insist on producing offspring, let them at least make use of the essentially eugenic law which is offered here. Let them understand that henceforth, if they produce a specimen of humanity inheriting their own defects, they are alone to blame.

From time immemorial parents have accepted in silence, but in bitterness of spirit, the advent of offspring of an unwanted sex. In 70 per cent. of these cases, it is roughly estimated, a girl has arrived when a boy was hoped for. In 30 per cent. only was a girl wished for and a boy born. Prayer without some kind of forethought must surely be unavailing. Help thyself, and Heaven will help thee. It would be of interest to turn for a moment to the East—to India in particular—and survey the conditions of life that prevail there. The abject plight of a great proportion of the women is largely the result of their lack of childhood, for among orthodox Hindus every girl must be married before her eleventh year; great numbers are married earlier still, some as soon as—if not before—they are born! The conditions under which the widows live—and these number over 20,000,000—are too tragic to contemplate, so trivial is their market value. In no country in the world is the Man-Child so ardently desired, for he is regarded as the Salvation of the household, as it is he who will ultimately be called upon to officiate at the death-ceremonies of his parents, requisite for their re-birth, which to them represents their whole eternity.

In this great Dependency the mere whisper of sex-control evokes unlimited joy and enthusiasm among all who have heard of it and even faintly realised its possibilities.

Hitherto the ignorance of parents has been shared by a whole world of unobservant people, convinced “that the science of life and being is unattained and unattainable by these weak organs.”

That this helpless and hopeless outlook has resulted in the voluntary limitation of many families is illustrated to absolute demonstration by almost innumerable correspondents. “Were I to be sure of providing my husband with a son to carry on his name, I should most certainly bear another child” is a typical assurance. Most poignant in its pathos is the lament: “My husband refuses to let me start a child for fear it may be a girl, and my heart is literally breaking for want of children.” Yet another epistle, several pages long, expresses the sorrows of an older woman, starved by an incomplete motherhood: “If only,” she writes, “I could make sure of a girl to be a sister to my three growing boys, I should willingly try my luck once more. But my husband absolutely refuses to have a fourth son to rear and start in life.”

Do not these extracts, which can be multiplied indefinitely, prove how essential is the choice of sex, in view of the perilous inroad birth-control is making amongst the classes from which we draw our best human material?

It behoves us, as human beings, to accept life with some degree of responsibility, not as animals pushed along the path of procreation by blind instinct alone. If, in the space of a generation or two, we have secured to mankind a better equilibrium of birth-rate, we shall have helped to make the world a far better place, and totally abolished that crying social evil “the superfluous female.”

THE EUGENIC POINT OF VIEW

“The destiny of organised nature is amelioration, and who can tell its limits?”—EMERSON.

Eugenics is the Science of producing offspring of as perfect a type as possible, which must eventually result in the general betterment of the human race. So closely allied is moral welfare to physical that when the one is directly improved, the other, too, is proportionately benefited. “Ideals are the very soul of life,” and when they are high, the trend is towards progress. Unfortunately, between the theoretical and the practical side of all things there is a huge gap. The essence of practical eugenics lies in the application of rules, already in use for the benefit of domestic animals, which, when applied to man, will bring about a higher physical standard than has hitherto been reached.

According to Professor Punnett “permanent progress is a matter of gametes, not of training—the man is not made, but born.” Nature must therefore be helped in the creation of a finer and stronger human specimen by the selection of the fittest to fulfil the work of procreation. The diseased, the weak-minded, the consumptive and the crippled of the Universe would be prevented from producing offspring, and the race thus purged of necessarily inferior strains. The flotsam and jetsam of weakly humanity would die off after two or three generations, and but for sin and vice, which, like the poor, are ever with us, an utopian state of things would soon obtain. In other words, it only needs that human nature should be instructed and directed for all to be well with us, and eugenics, working on the principle that progress is a question of breeding rather than of pedagogics, would accomplish what has up to now defied us as impossible.

Unfortunately eugenists are all too apt to forget how great is the abyss separating the moral from the animal being in man. Much can be done to improve the physique of a whole nation, but it must be remembered that “the character of a generation is moulded by personality.” Until the end of time the morale of a people will be the cause rather than the effect, and here alone lies the divine spark that animates our whole physical being.

A happy antithesis to Eugenics is to be found—the science of psychotherapy, the essence of which has been summed up in the words, “It is fatal to trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain, instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart.” Here the moral being of Man is placed far above his physical or even mental being, which are in more or less complete subordination to his soul, according to the degree of his spiritual development. Heredity is disregarded as a negligible quantity. It is environment, suggestion, willpower, faith, that wholly influence, compass, and direct the well-being of man.

With eugenics, on the other hand, heredity is the most potent factor, and this is perhaps why the key-note of materialism runs through the whole gamut of this idealistic striving towards a more flawless humanity.

Heredity allows for little freedom; so it must be curtailed. Human nature must either be completely held in check, or transformed beyond recognition. A check is provided by the simple method of isolating those human beings who, as a result of disease, are unfit to bear or beget children. Thus in time the birth of mentally deficient creatures, who are prolific out of all proportion, would come to an end, and other forms of inferiority might in time be enormously reduced, and finally eradicated.

So far, so good, but there are other whisperings in eugenist circles, and particularly in their outer fringes, which deal with subjects so intimately human and personal that one is inclined to question the wisdom of attempting to rush in where angels have feared to tread. It is, for instance, not unusual to speak of the perfect mating of two physically superior beings who should produce perfect offspring. But so conspicuously inconsistent is human nature that often a healthy man will fall hopelessly in love with an inferior or even physically degenerate woman, and vice versa.

Then polygamy is hinted at; the strong man, as in Eastern countries, may remain mated to his love, but should wed another wife who will produce fine human stock. So, after a war, the strong man who survives will have two or even three wives to ensure the future welfare of the world. Such proposals have latterly been mooted by more than one writer, with so-called eugenists foremost among them. The decisive answer to all such schemes has been given in advance by Montesquieu, in his great work L’esprit des Lois. Very minutely and conclusively he has proved that polygamy never did, and never will, accomplish the desired end, and that it is invariably accompanied by race degeneracy and both mental and moral deterioration. It has appealed to some of the oldest civilisations all the world over, and, after devastating wars, plagues and famines, has been solemnly tried and encouraged. But from the national point of view, polygamy does not answer.

Family life, with all that it implies, is primarily responsible for the healthy moral and physical upbringing of normal human beings, and true family life can only exist in a state of unimpeachable monogamy. One father and one mother, welded together in a common desire to work for the good of their children, can alone produce a truly healthy and superior race.

In polygamy wifehood becomes a farce, and motherhood a mere animal function, generally limited to a single attempt, and followed usually by a state of lymphatic inertia and gross self-indulgence. The parental instinct here is blunted on both sides, and all that can reasonably be looked for in an institution so closely resembling the farmyard is a purely physical relationship between man and woman, mother and child. Marvellous results have been achieved in animal breeding by the coupling of superior males and females singled out for the sole purpose of providing superior progeny. As regards humanity this can never become a feasible condition and polygamy remains a form of barbarism or gross degeneracy. Turkey gives us a fair example of civilised polygamy. In her essay on the harem, Lady Cook describes the Turkish woman as being “the most depraved in the world.” My personal experience of Turkish society, which is not slight, has led me to a similar opinion; indeed, the results of polygamy on the race where it is practised to-day are too obvious to require further comment.

Shortly before he died, Mr. Montague Crackanthorpe, the eminent Eugenist, in a discussion on this subject, remarked, “There is no doubt that animal life, in its natural state, is essentially monogamous. How much more is man then by nature, let alone by civilisation, intended to generate after the highest form of monogamy.”

It has been proved too often to admit of doubt that the moral influence of the mother on her unborn infant is omnipotent. Prenatal sensations may well account for the whole trend of the child’s life. In the words of Dr. E. Sloan Chesser: “Socially, the mother is the basis of racial progress: ethically, enlightened motherhood is the strongest force in the world. Intelligent mother-love can alone bring about the inculcation of higher ideals of citizenship and social obligations.” The need of the hour is the training of mothers in the deeper questions of life, so that the new generation of men and women may have a sane and strong sense of human responsibility and a better understanding of international morality and friendship and the unity of the human race.