Dr. Toulouse has devoted a whole volume to the results of a minute personal examination of Zola, the novelist, and another to Poincaré, the mathematician. Such minute investigations are at present confined to men of genius, but some day, perhaps, we shall consider that from the eugenic standpoint all men are men of genius.
43
Sterilization for social ends was introduced in Switzerland a few years ago, in order to enable some persons with impaired self-control to be set at liberty and resume work without the risk of adding to the population defective members who would probably be a burden on the community. It was performed with the consent of the subjects (in some cases at their urgent request) and their relations, so requiring no special legislation, and the results are said to be satisfactory. In some American States sterilization for some classes of defective persons has been established by statute, but it is difficult to obtain reliable information as regards the working and the results of such legislation.
44
When Professor Giddings speaks of the "goal of mankind," it must, of course, be remembered, he is using a bold metaphor in order to make his meaning clearer. Strictly speaking, mankind has no "goals," nor are there any ends in Nature which are not means to further ends.
45
This chapter was written so long ago as 1888, and published in the Westminster Review in the following year. I have pleasure in here including it exactly as it was originally written, not only because it has its proper place in the present volume, but because it may be regarded as a programme which I have since elaborated in numerous volumes. The original first section has, however, been omitted, as it embodied a statement of the matriarchal theory which, in view of the difficulty of the subject and the wide differences of opinion about it, I now consider necessary to express more guardedly (see, for a more recent statement, Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. x). With this exception, and the deletion of two insignificant footnotes, no changes have been made. After the lapse of a quarter of a century I find nothing that I seriously wish to withdraw and much that I now wish to emphasize.
46
The following passage summarizes this Appeal: "The simple and modest request is, that they may be permitted equal enjoyments with men, provided they can, by the free and equal development and exercise of their faculties, procure for themselves such enjoyments. They ask the same means that men possess of acquiring every species of knowledge, of unfolding every one of their faculties of mind and body that can be made tributary to their happiness. They ask every facility of access to every art, occupation, profession, from the highest to the lowest, without one exception, to which their inclinations and talents may direct and may fit them to occupy. They ask the removal of all restraints and exclusions not applicable to men of equal capacities. They ask for perfectly equal political, civil, and domestic rights. They ask for equal obligations and equal punishments from the law with men in case of infraction of the same law by either party. They ask for an equal system of morals, founded on utility instead of caprice and unreasoning despotism, in which the same action, attended with the same consequences, whether done by man or woman, should be attended with the same portion of approbation or disapprobation; in which every pleasure, accompanied or followed by no preponderant evil, should be equally permitted to women and to men; in which every pleasure accompanied or followed by preponderant evil should be equally censured in women and in men."
47
A period of transition not the less necessary although it is certainly disastrous and tends to produce an unwholesome tension between the sexes so long as men and women do not receive equal payment for equal work. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," as a working man in Blackburn lately put it, "but when the thing of beauty takes to doing the work for 16s. a week that you have been paid 22s. for, you do not feel as if you cannot live without possessing that thing of beauty all to yourself, or that you are willing to lay your life and your fortune (when you have one) at its feet." On the other hand, the working girl in the same town often complains that a man will not look at a girl unless she is a "four-loom weaver," earning, that is, perhaps, 20s. or 25s. a week.
48
See the very interesting work of Alfred Espinas, Des Sociétés Animales, which contains many fruitful suggestions for the student of human sociology.
49
The subtle and complex character of the sexual relationships in a high civilization, and the unhappy results of their State regulation, was well expressed by Wilhehm von Humboldt in his Ideen zu einen Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen, so long ago as 1792: "A union so closely allied with the very nature of the respective individuals must be attended with the most hurtful consequences when the State attempts to regulate it by law, or, through the force of its institutions, to make it repose on anything save simple inclination. When we remember, moreover, that the State can only contemplate the final results of such regulations on the race, we shall be still more ready to admit the justice of this conclusion. It may reasonably be argued that a solicitude for the race only conducts to the same results as the highest solicitude for the most beautiful development of the inner man. For after careful observation it has been found that the uninterrupted union of one man with one woman is most beneficial to the race, and it is likewise undeniable that no other union springs from true, natural, harmonious love. And further, it may be observed that such love leads to the same results as those very relations which law and custom tend to establish. The radical error seems to be that the law commands; whereas such a relation cannot mould itself according to external arrangements, but depends wholly on inclination; and wherever coercion or guidance comes into collision with inclination, they divert it still farther from the proper path. Wherefore it appears to me that the State should not only loosen the bonds in this instance, and leave ampler freedom to the citizen, but that it should entirely withdraw its active solicitude from the institution of marriage, and both generally and in its particular modifications, should rather leave it wholly to the free choice of the individuals, and the various contracts they may enter into with respect to it. I should not be deterred from the adoption of this principle by the fear that all family relations might be disturbed, for although such a fear might be justified by considerations of particular circumstances and localities, it could not fairly be entertained in an inquiry into the nature of men and States in general. For experience frequently convinces us that just where law has imposed no fetters, morality most surely binds; the idea of external coercion is one entirely foreign to an institution which, like marriage, reposes only on inclination and an inward sense of duty; and the results of such coercive institutions do not at all correspond to the intentions in which they originate."
50
Such register should, as Bertillon rightly insisted, be of the most complete description—setting forth all the anthropological traits of the contracting parties—so that the characteristics of a human group at any time and place may be studied and compared. Registration of this kind would, beside its more obvious convenience, form an almost indispensable guide to the higher evolution of the race. I may here add that I have assumed, perhaps too rashly, that the natural tendency among civilized men and women is towards a monogamic and more or less permanent union; preceded, it may be in most individuals, by a more restless period of experiment. Undoubtedly, many variations will arise in the future, leading to more complex relationships. Such variations cannot be foreseen, and when they arise they will still have to prove their stability and their advantage to the race.
51
As among geese, and, occasionally, it is said, among elephants.
52
In 1787 Condorcet declared (Lettres d'un Bourgeois de New Haven, Lettre II) that women ought to have absolutely the same rights as men, and he repeated the same statement emphatically in 1790, in an article "Sur l'Admission des Femmes au Droit de Cité," published in the Journal de la Société de 1789. It must be added that Condorcet was not a democrat, and neither to men nor to women would he grant the vote unless they were proprietors.
53
Léopold Lacour has given a full and reliable account of Olympe de Gouges (who was born at Montauban in 1755) in his Trois Femmes de la Révolution, 1900.
