IV. PROPER MATING

The Purpose of Mating.—Even from the individual standpoint, mating has more purpose than merely satisfying the love instinct. It is one of the two undisputed methods of human immortality. Even after death, a man or woman lives on in the lives of others who have been affected by what he has been, or done, or said, or written. As Samuel Butler words it,

Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again, Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.

But more than this, men and women live on in their children. There is an actual continuity of life here, in the germ passed on from the parents to the child. In the race, we have been alive since life began; in the race we shall live as long as our human strain persists, which may be as long as life exists. Since this is one of our conscious purposes, it lies upon us to make sure that our children have parents fit in every way to bear the future. This brings up the matter of the selection of the mate, from a broader angle.

If this is our conscious purpose, there is a deeper unconscious, instinctive purpose which is the same as the tendency of the social body, the race, itself: namely, the perpetuity of the race. It can only reproduce itself through its individual members; each man or woman is an outpost in the eternal struggle of the living organisms to continue to alter as much as possible of the lifeless into the living. From the standpoint of the race, the choice of fit mates to give birth to the future generations of men is all essential.

Our matings, it must be remembered, are largely haphazard. Accidents of propinquity, property-determined provisions of our parents, sentiments of pity or anger at another woman or man, these often determine a life mate. There is little opportunity granted today for the young man or woman to know truly the proposed mate, although this situation is clearing; there is no methodical investigation as to whether the mate in mind is unfitted physically or otherwise. This demands more attention than man has yet given it. Marriages are not made in heaven, despite the wide belief; they are blundered into on earth, in the majority of cases. Mere desire, mere animal passion or natural love, comes easily; unfortunately or fortunately, it often goes as easily; and if, in the meantime, marriage has been entered into, a wreckage of happiness is inevitable. It is not easy for man or woman to develop an abiding conjugal love. Marry at leisure, and do not repent, is no fool’s counsel.

Eugenics.—The young man, then, is confronted with the question, what sort of woman should I mate with? His own deepest instincts will aid here; but they are far from enough. In general, the greatest happiness comes from a union of opposites, in appearance, temperament, and all. Yet individual needs often run counter to this. Nor, from the standpoint of the future, should an immense and overpowering love always control, unless the man is willing to forfeit in some cases all chances of having children. The racial aspect of the question is gradually being studied by the science and practice of eugenics.

Eugenics is the science of good breeding; of having children well born. Its formulator, Francis Galton, defined it as “the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race.” In another work Galton expanded this, saying that the aim of eugenics is

“to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering productivity of the Fit, by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children.”

There is matter for investigation here, rather than wholesale acceptance. This cuts right across the personal aspect of selection for marriage; it comes perilously close to being an unwarrantable attempt to interfere with human freedom. Yet to an increasing extent this science is coming into the world’s legislation; and, while it will work some hardships, even unnecessary ones, the aim is no hardship.

Saleeby, pupil of Galton, divided eugenics unnecessarily into (1) positive, or encouraging worthy parenthood; (2) negative, or discouraging unworthy parenthood, and (3) preventive, “efforts made to stand between parenthood and racial poisons, that is, substances which are liable to originate degeneracy in healthy stocks.” His (3) is really a subhead of (2). Extreme advocates of eugenics say flatly that “we should rather bring the propagation of the race to the level of the stud farm, than that it should go on in the old haphazard way which surely leads to catastrophe.” Luckily, mankind will hardly follow this demagogic platform, even though we recall the legislative enactment of prohibition and the creation of the statutory crime of teaching Darwinism in an American college or school. It is true that we do not want science for domestic animals, and chance for men; but there is such a thing as attractive legislation, as opposed to prohibitive legislation; legislation offering an inducement to conduct held socially desirable, rather than legislation affixing a penalty to conduct held socially undesirable.

Scientifically, such legislation is based upon the Mendelian conception of heredity. And there are extreme cases where science should, tentatively at least, insist upon the enactment of statutory prohibitions, not of mating, but of child-bearing. A simple operation today alters man or woman so as to render them incapable of having children; in the cases suggested below, this may have to be applied. Switzerland, in ten years, largely abolished a particular type of cretin, or feeble-minded, that had flourished there, by negative eugenics. It is a matter for scientific investigation as to whether such traits as feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, dipsomania, and syphilis are inheritable in such proportion that prohibition of offspring should be applied. Science, which once held consumption inheritable, has reversed its position today; on any of these questions it may reverse itself, thereby requiring an alteration in the eugenics law.

Eugenics in the Future.—There are shrewd observers who do not view eugenics as tolerantly as we have done. Bertrand Russell, in his “Icarus,” says the eugenics will undoubtedly be adopted.

“This power will be used, at first, to diminish imbecility, a most desirable object. But probably, in time, opposition to the government will be taken to prove imbecility, so that rebels of all kinds will be sterilized. Epileptics, consumptives, dipsomaniacs and so on will gradually be included; in the end, there will be a tendency to include all who fail to pass the usual school examinations.”

The result, he says, will be to increase the average intelligence, and to decrease really exceptional intelligence. With charming impertinence he proceeds to the alteration that may take place in moral standards, by which one man may be permitted to be the sire of a vast progeny by many different mothers. Yet such reforms, he mourns, will be handed over to the average official to administer; it will not be the type desired by the modern eugenist who may be selected as the father of the future, but Prime Ministers and Bishops may be picked to be the fathers of half the next generation. His serious point is that government control of the matter will probably be used to produce a servile population, convenient to rulers but incapable of initiative.

Viscount Haldane, a greater scientist (at least in biological fields) and a more brilliant critic, indicates that eugenics may come in by a pleasanter though more startling route. By 1950, he anticipates the production of the first ectogenetic child, or child born from a womb withdrawn from the mother’s body, for all of the embryonic period. By a simple operation, he prophecies that science will be able to remove an ovary from a woman, and keep it growing in a suitable fluid for as long as twenty years, producing a fresh ovum every month, of which 90 per cent can be fertilized, the embryos grown successfully for nine months, and then brought out into the air. The falling birthrate among many nations will be a strong argument for the adoption of this ectogenesis, and birth from the woman’s body may become as antiquated as the horse-buggy in an era of motor cars. This total separation of sexual love and reproduction will, he holds, profoundly affect current morality. The choice of superior parents for the next generation will advance each generation,

“from the increased output of first-class music to the decreased convictions for theft,”

as he wittily summarizes.

So the foremost thinkers of today deal with eugenics. What the scientists will offer is suggested here; what the state and national legislatures may do with scientific discoveries is a far different matter. Things may not move as briskly as Russell and Haldane anticipate. But the individual should favor all positive eugenics, that is, adequate medical inspection of each prospective party to a mating, and mating only with the physically and mentally fit, in the widest sense.

Birth Control.—The question of birth control, disputed as it is, should be mentioned here. Knowledge of methods of artificial prevention of conception is now widely known among the rich, and largely among the well-to-do. It is in many localities a crime to furnish this information; even a doctor may not disseminate it. The poor, who need the information most, do not generally possess it; and at least one great religion teaches that it is immoral.

Any form of abortion, or killing the growing embryo still in the womb, has aspects resembling murder. Its morality is a matter for investigation. But the prevention of conception is on another footing entirely. Continued continence is impractical and contrary to the best interests of the individuals who compose the social group; contra-conceptual devices are harmless, and economically and physically necessary in many instances. The laws on the subject will be repealed by an enlightened community.