Part 4 (2/2)
The morbid influence of parents is maximum when conception has taken place at the time of drunkenness of one or both parties. Those with hereditary alcoholism show a tendency to excess; half of them become alcoholics; a large number of cases of neurosis have their princ.i.p.al cause in alcoholic antecedents. The larger portion of the sons of alcoholics have convulsions in early infancy. Epilepsy is almost characteristic of the alcoholism of parents, when it is not an index of a nervous disposition of the whole family. The alcoholic delirium is more frequent in the descendants of alcoholics than in their parents, which indicates their intellectual degeneration.”
What has been said of alcoholism of course applies to the use of narcotics and other drugs. Galton cites a case in which ”a man who had had two healthy children acquired the cocaine habit, and while suffering from the symptoms of chronic poisoning engendered two idiots.” And yet had anyone publicly instructed the wife of this man regarding the use of contraceptives, such person would have been liable to imprisonment!
Another subject engaging the active attention of the Eugenists, and which is discussed to considerable extent in the privacy of their meetings, but which must be voiced only very carefully in the public prints owing to the ”murderous silence” which society prefers to maintain on the subject, is of the influence of venereal diseases as racial poisons transmissible to offspring. Dr. Saleeby has well said: ”No other disease can rival syphilis in its hideous influence upon parenthood and the future. But it is no crime for a man to marry, infect his innocent bride and their children; no crime against the laws of our lawgivers, but a heinous outrage against nature's decrees. When at last our laws are based on nature's laws, criminal marriages of this kind may be put an end to.”
The above stated facts are not pleasant reading for most persons, and many pa.s.s over them hurriedly, thereby hoping to escape the mental discomfort which the hearing and learning of unpleasant truths so often produce. But the subject will not down--it is forcing itself to the attention of the thinking members of society today in a manner which will admit of no escape. These facts must be faced, and steps must be taken by society to protect the race from degeneration and actual Race Suicide. And the Science of Eugenics is pointing the way.
Dr. Saleeby says of this phase of Eugenics: ”Negative Eugenics will seek to define the diseases and defects which are really hereditary; to name those the transmission of which is already known to occur, and to raise the average of the race by interfering as far as may be with the parenthood of persons suffering from these transmissible disorders.
Only thus can certain of the gravest evils of society, as, for instance, feeble-mindedness, insanity, and crime due to inherited degeneracy, be suppressed; and if Race-Culture were absolutely incapable of effecting anything whatever in the way of increasing the fertility of the worthiest cla.s.ses and individuals, its services in the negative direction here briefly outlined would be of incalculable value. To this policy we shall most certainly come; but here, as in other cases, I trust far more to the influence of an educated public opinion than in legislation; though there are certain forms of transmissible disease, interfering in no way with the responsibility of the individual, the transmission of which should be visited with the utmost rigor of the law, and regarded as utterly criminal, no less than sheer murder.”
But the Science of Eugenics is concerned not only with telling society what ”not to do”--it is equally concerned with telling it ”what to do.”
It has its Positive as well as its Negative side. After pointing out the evils of procreation on the part of the unfit, it then proceeds to tell the fit how to best serve the interests of the unborn. Eugenics is not satisfied with merely plucking out the foul weeds which have enc.u.mbered the fair garden of life--it seeks also to furnish to the real flowers better soil, and improved conditions, and to give them the benefit of the best selection, breeding and conditions, that they may evolve and improve into still more glorious products of nature's power.
The Eugenists earnestly advocate laws and public opinion tending to protect mothers and expectant mothers. They recognize the supremacy of motherhood, and aim to encourage and protect it. They decry the common indifference toward this function which is all important in the preservation and evolution of the race, and which neglect is well expressed in the complaint of Bouchacourt, who said: ”The dregs of the human species--the blind, the deaf-mute, the degenerate, the imbecile, the epileptic--are better protected than are pregnant women.”
The Eugenists believe in educating women for motherhood, and in protecting them from conditions which interfere with that important function of their life. They are not fully agreed upon the methods to be pursued in cases of expectant mothers whose lack of proper support prevents them from obtaining the proper nourishment, etc., but in a general way it may be said that they agree in holding that the expectant mother should be looked upon as the honored ward of the State, and should be properly provided for from the public funds.
The Eugenists also believe in educating the father, or prospective father. They hold that every man should be made acquainted with the duties and responsibilities of fatherhood, and should so conduct and order his life that the production and rearing of a family should result as a consummation of a long cherished ideal. The man should be taught to prepare himself, physically, mentally, and morally, for his coming responsibility to the race. He should also be taught to respect and regard motherhood, and to make it his business to secure and preserve the best possible conditions for the mother of his own children, and the mothers of other men's children, not as an act of mere sentiment, but as a public duty, a patriotic service, a racial obligation.
The Eugenists believe in teaching young men and young women on the subject of s.e.xual physiology and psychology. They hold that the race is now criminally negligent in such matters, and that young men and women, by the thousands, enter into the state of marriage and parenthood with no knowledge regarding the sacred functions which they are to bring into activity. They believe that the first requisite of scientific parenthood is and must be a sane knowledge of the physiology of s.e.x, and the psychology of s.e.x. There must be sane education concerning the s.e.xual organism, its laws, its functions, its normal and healthy condition, its anatomy, physiology and hygiene.
The average physician of several years' experience can tell tales of almost incredible ignorance on the part of persons who have recently entered into the relations.h.i.+p of marriage. In some cases the ignorance is more than a mere absence of knowledge, for it consists of an array of false-knowledge, untruthful ideas, of often serious importance. It is sad enough to think how the ignorance and false-knowledge may work results hurtful to the young couple themselves, but it is even sadder to realize that these same ignorant or wrongly-informed young persons must gain their real knowledge through sad experience which is to be paid for not only by themselves but also by their children. It is a hard saying, but true that ”the knowledge of the majority of young parents is gained by experience paid for by their unborn children.”
The Eugenists look forward to the coming of the day when it will be regarded as reprehensible to allow young persons to enter into the relations.h.i.+p of marriage without a sane, practical knowledge of their own reproductive organism and functions, and of their physiological duties to themselves, their companions in marriage, and to their children born or to be born. We may, in due time, see a practical realization of the ideal set forth by Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, who said: ”The State that makes a man study two years before a license as druggist is given; that makes a young lawyer or doctor study three years before being permitted to practice, ought to ask the young man or young woman to pa.s.s an equally rigid examination before license is given to found an American home, and set up an American family.”
This idea of the scientific preparation for parenthood is a new one for many, but the coming generations will recognize its importance to the individual and to the race. Many who recognize the influence of pre-natal culture in so far as is concerned the physical, mental, and moral condition of the mother during pregnancy, have failed to perceive that an equally important influence is exerted by the physical, mental and moral condition of BOTH PARENTS before the conception of the child.
These conditions are reflected, often very markedly, in the child, and an avoidance of consideration in this respect is often almost criminal negligence.
Eugenists deplore the haphazard way in which children are so often conceived. More care is often bestowed upon the conditions precedent to the conception of the domestic animals than is given by their owners to the conditions preceding the conception of their own offspring. Too often, while in the case of the domestic animals the utmost care is exercised regarding the arrangement for the breeding of valuable stock, the human offspring are mere ”accidents,” conceived without intention, forethought, or preparation; and too often is such conception undesired, regretted and unwelcome.
This state of affairs is utterly unworthy of civilized man with the knowledge of science at his command, and the intellect and will with which to carry out the plain dictates of reason and duty. Nature does her part unhindered in the case of the lower animals, and man should use her principles as a foundation upon which to build a structure which reason and intelligence should supply the materials. Instead of this, man too often discards Nature's plain rules entirely, and also refuses to use his reason, and, instead, allows himself to be ruled by selfish inclinations and desires, and ign.o.ble motives.
To those who may ask: ”But why should we give all this time, care and trouble to the young of the race--what is their claim upon us that demands so much of us in return for so little on their part?” the answer is plain. We should do this not alone because of the natural feeling of love for our own offspring which is innate in all normal human beings, but we should also do this because we owe a duty to the race in and which we are units--a duty which demands that we supply to the race the best material, and only the best, for its preservation, continuance, and betterment.
The spirit of the age is pointing out the direction indicated by Eugenics and scientific Birth Control. And it is a spirit in which the best mental and spiritual powers of man are called into action. A new consciousness--the ”race consciousness”--is awakening within the best of the race, and accompanying it is a new CONSCIENCE--a ”race conscience”--is manifesting within us, and is giving the individual a sense of right and wrong toward future generations, just as his earlier-awakened social conscience has opened his eyes to his duties toward his neighbors.
Man is beginning to feel that all men are his brothers, and that the future generations of men are in a sense his children. The new ideal of ”Let us build posterity worthily” has begun to supplant the old narrow idea humorously expressed in the famous bull of Sir Boyce Roche, who said, ”Why should we do anything for posterity--what has posterity ever done for us?”
As Dr. Saleeby has well said: ”If the struggle toward individual perfection be religious, so a.s.suredly is the struggle, less egoistic indeed, toward racial perfection. * * * And they that shall be of us shall build up the old waste places; for we shall raise up the foundations of many generations.”
And in all this, also, we find ever present the distinctive note of modern thought, viz., ”NOT MORE CHILDREN, BUT BETTER ONES; NOT MORE BIRTHS, BUT LESS DEATHS AND MORE SURVIVALS; NOT NUMERICAL BIRTH VALUES, BUT QUALITATIVE BIRTH VALUES AND NUMERICAL SURVIVAL VALUES.”
LESSON VII
PRE-NATAL INFLUENCES
<script>