Note CJ — Chapter XX · RULES OF EUGENICS

Any sex-order for breeding purposes must be a public institution, and such an institution would be the worst slavery history has ever seen. Mardach (The Tragedy of Man, twelfth scene) gives in his drama a true picture of the tyranny of such institutions. The hero and heroine of the drama are Adam and Eve, who are repeatedly reincarnated at different important periods in the history of the world but do not know who they are. At the different incarnations they always happen to meet and fall in love with each other. The last reincarnation on this earth takes place several thousand years after our present era. At the end of the twelfth scene, Adam is present, when the old man or judge of the town (called at that period Phalanster) disposes of children and wives. Two women, one of them the reincarnated Eve, arrive with their young children, and the judge, upon the advice of the scientist, decides which trade they should learn.

FIRST SCENE

Judge. Scientist! Examine the skulls of these two children.

Scientist. This child should be brought up to be a physician, the other to be a shepherd.

Judge. Out with them.

Eve. Do not touch him! This is my child. Who dares to tear him away from his mother-breast?

Judge. Take him away! Why tarry with him any longer?

Eve. My child, my child! Did not I nourish thee with my heart-blood? Where is the power that may rend this holy bond? Shall I disclaim thee forever, that thou mayest be lost in the crowd, and my searching eye, in restless fear, shall in vain look for thee among a hundred similar phalanster-types?

Adam. O friend, if ought is sacred to you, leave this child to his poor mother.

Judge. You play, oh stranger, a daring game! If we allow the revival of the conquered prejudice, formerly called the family, then the acquisitions of our present science will tumble at once.

Eve. What is to me your frozen science? May it fall, where nature’s voice speaks.

Judge. Well! will it be done soon? (The child is carried away.)

Eve. My child, my child! (Eve faints.)

SECOND SCENE

Judge. These two women are not mated yet. Those who wish them for pairing come forward.

Adam. Upon this woman make I claim.

Judge. Scientist! What is thy opinion?

Scientist. The man sentimental, the woman nervous, an unhealthy issue would be the result. This pair fits not together.

Adam. Still I shall not let her go, if she wishes me.

Eve. Magnanimous man, I am thine.

Adam. I love thee, oh woman, with the whole fervor of my heart!

Eve. Also I, this I feel, will forever love thee.

Scientist. Why, this is madness. Strange, indeed, to see reappear the spirit of bygone ages in our enlightened world. How comes this?

Adam. It is a late ray of light from paradise.

Judge. It is pitiable.

Adam. Pity us not. This madness is ours. We surely envy not you for your soberness. What in the world ever was great and noble was such madness, which is not confined by circumspect anxiety. The angel’s speech that sweetly sounds down to us from higher spheres is a safer proof of our soul’s affinity and kinship to the higher regions. We despise the low common dust of this earth, boldly searching the road to the higher spheres. (He holds Eve in close embrace.)

Judge. Why listen any longer to this nonsense. Away to the hospital with both of them.

This poetical fancy gives, nevertheless, a true picture of the conditions our descendants in future generations will have to contend with if the patriarchal doctrines of our radical sociologists should ever materialize. Their order of things must logically lead to the hardest and most bewildering tyranny mankind has ever known. The tyrannical Draconic laws will prescribe what to eat, what to drink, how long to sleep, how to mate, and what the children should be.

This is not a fancy-dream. Even in our free country the drift of the law-giving power is towards such conditions. In one State, it is allowed to drink tea or coffee, but not alcohol, although ten grains caffeine is already a deadly poison, but it will take many more grains alcohol to kill. In another State it is allowed to smoke cigars but not cigarettes, although of the three modes of using tobacco, snuffing, chewing and smoking, the cigar is the worst of the last mode, because, as a rule, it combines the effects of chewing and smoking. Another state forbids marriage without a physician’s certificate, although, if the marriage candidate wishes to conceal the truth, there is no physician living, Neisser, the discoverer of the gonococcus, and Wassermann with his test, included, who could tell with absolute certainty whether a man has been infected or not. Even if the candidate himself, having been infected, wishes to know whether he has been cured, the different tests are of such an elaborate nature that very few physicians, even in the metropolis, are able to make them. Still ignorance passes laws. Besides this, no law, forbidding marriage, can prevent mating and the propagation of the unfit. Even if the king, the representative of the law, should imprison his young daughter in a brazen tower, her Jupiter will find his way to her by a shower of gold.