The Task of Social Hygiene

By happy inspiration, or by chance, Galton made public his programme of eugenic research, in a paper read before the Sociological Society, on February 14, the festival of St. Valentine. Although the ancient observances of that day have now died out, St. Valentine was for many centuries the patron saint of sexual selection, more especially in England. It can scarcely be said that any credit in this matter belongs to the venerable saint himself; it was by an accident that he achieved his conspicuous position in the world. He was simply a pious Christian who was beheaded for his faith in Rome under Claudius. But it so happened that his festival fell at that period in early spring when birds were believed to pair, and when youths and maidens were accustomed to select partners for themselves or for others. This custom—which has been studied together with many allied primitive practices by Mannhard [154]—was not always carried out on February 14, sometimes it took place a little later. In England, where it was strictly associated with St. Valentine's Day, the custom was referred to by Lydgate, and by Charles of Orleans in the rondeaus and ballades he wrote during his long imprisonment in England. The name Valentins or Valentines was also introduced into France (where the custom had long existed) to designate the young couples thus constituted. This method of sexual selection, half playful, half serious, flourished especially in the region between England, the Moselle, and the Tyrol.

The essential part of the custom lay in the public choice of a fitting mate for marriageable girls. Sometimes the question of fitness resolved itself into one of good looks; occasionally the matter was settled by lot. There was no compulsion about these unions; they were often little more than a game, though at times they involved a degree of immorality which caused the authorities to oppose them. But very frequently the sexual selection thus exerted led to weddings, and these playful Valentine unions were held to be a specially favourable prelude to a happy marriage.

It is scarcely necessary to show how the ancient customs associated with St. Valentine's Day are taken up again and placed on a higher plane by the great movement which is now beginning to shape itself among us. The old Valentine unions were made by a process of caprice tempered more or less by sound instincts and good sense. In the sexual selection of the future the same results will be attained by more or less deliberate and conscious recognition of the great laws and tendencies which investigation is slowly bringing to light. The new St. Valentine will be a saint of science rather than of folk-lore.

Whenever such statements as these are made it is always retorted that love laughs at science, and that the winds of passion blow where they list. [155] That, however, is by no means altogether true, and in any case it is far from covering the whole of the ground. It is hard to fight against human nature, but human nature itself is opposed to indiscriminate choice of mates. It is not true that any one tends to love anybody, and that mutual attraction is entirely a matter of chance. The investigations which have lately been carried out show that there are certain definite tendencies in this matter, that certain kinds of people tend to be attracted to certain kinds, especially that like are attracted to like rather than unlike to unlike, and that, again, while some kinds of people tend to be married with special frequency other kinds tend to be left unmarried. [156] Sexual selection, even when left to random influences, is still not left to chance; it follows definite and ascertainable laws. In that way the play of love, however free it may appear, is really limited in a number of directions. People do not tend to fall in love with those who are in racial respects a contrast to themselves; they do not tend to fall in love with foreigners; they do not tend to be attracted to the ugly, the diseased, the deformed. All these things may happen, but they are the exception and not the rule. These limitations to the roving impulses of love, while very real, to some extent vary at different periods in accordance with the ideals which happen to be fashionable.

In more remote ages they have been still more profoundly modified by religious and social ideas; polygamy and polyandry, the custom of marrying only inside one's own caste, or only outside it, all these various and contradictory plans have been easily accepted at some place and some time, and have offered no more conscious obstacle to the free play of love than among ourselves is offered by the prohibition against marriage between near relations.

Those simple-minded people who talk about the blind and irresistible force of passion are themselves blind to very ordinary psychological facts. Passion—when it occurs—requires in normal persons cumulative and prolonged forces to impart to it full momentum. [157] In its early stages it is under the control of many influences, including influences of reason. If it were not so there could be no sexual selection, nor any social organization. [158]

The eugenic ideal which is now developing is thus not an artificial product, but the reasoned manifestation of a natural instinct, which has often been far more severely strained by the arbitrary prohibitions of the past than it is ever likely to be by any eugenic ideals of the future. The new ideal will be absorbed into the conscience of the community, whether or not like a kind of new religion, [159] and will instinctively and unconsciously influence the impulses of men and women. It will do all this the more surely since, unlike the taboos of savage societies, the eugenic ideal will lead men and women to reject as partners only the men and women who are naturally unfit—the diseased, the abnormal, the weaklings—and conscience will thus be on the side of impulse.

It may indeed be pointed out that those who advocate a higher and more scientific conscience in matters of mating are by no means plotting against love, which is for the most part on their side, but rather against the influences that do violence to love: on the one hand, the reckless and thoughtless yielding to mere momentary desire, and, on the other hand, the still more fatal influences of wealth and position and worldly convenience which give a factitious value to persons who would never appear attractive partners in life were love and eugenic ideals left to go hand in hand. It is such unions, and not those inspired by the wholesome instincts of wholesome lovers, which lead, if not to the abstract "deterioration of the race," at all events in numberless cases to the abiding unhappiness of persons who choose a mate without realizing how that mate is likely to develop, nor what sort of children may probably be expected from the union. The eugenic ideal will have to struggle with the criminal and still more resolutely with the rich; it will have few serious quarrels with normal and well constituted lovers.

It will now perhaps be clear how it is that the eugenic conception of the improvement of the race embodies a new ideal. We are familiar with legislative projects for compulsory certificates as a condition of marriage. But even apart from all the other considerations which make such schemes both illusory and undesirable, these externally imposed regulations fail to go to the root of the matter. If they are voluntary, if they spring out of a fine eugenic aspiration, it is another matter. Under these conditions the method may be carried out at once. Professor Grasset has pointed out one way in which this may be effected. We cannot, he remarks, follow the procedure of a military conseil de revision and compulsorily reject the candidate for a definite defect. But it would be possible for the two families concerned to call a conference of their two family doctors, after examination of the would-be bride and bridegroom, permitting the doctors to discuss freely the medical aspects of the proposed union, and undertaking to accept their decision, without asking for the revelation of any secrets, the families thus remaining ignorant of the defect which prevented this union but might not prevent another union, for the chief danger in many cases comes from the conjunction of convergent morbid tendencies. [160] In France, where much power remains with the respective families, this method might be operative, provided complete confidence was felt in the doctors concerned.

In some countries, such as England, the prospective couple might prefer to take the matter into their own hands, to discuss it frankly, and to seek medical advice on their own account; this is now much more frequently done than was formerly the case. But all compulsory projects of this kind, and indeed any mere legislation, cannot go to the root of the matter. For in the first place, what we need is a great body of facts, and a careful attention to the record and registration and statistical tabulation of personal and family histories. In the second place, we need that sound ideals and a high sense of responsibility should permeate the whole community, first its finer and more distinguished members and then, by the usual contagion that rules in such matters, the whole body of its members. [161] In time, no doubt, this would lead to concerted social action. We may reasonably expect that a time will come when if, for instance, an epileptic woman conceals her condition from the man she is marrying it would generally be felt that an offence has been committed serious enough to invalidate the marriage. We must not suppose that lovers would be either willing or competent to investigate each other's family and medical histories.

But it would be at least as easy and as simple to choose a partner from those persons who had successfully passed the eugenic test—more especially since such persons would certainly be the most attractive group in the community—as it is for an Australian aborigine to select a conjugal partner from one social group rather than from any other. [162] It is a matter of accepting an ideal and of exerting our personal and social influence in the direction of that ideal. If we really seek to raise the level of humanity we may in this way begin to do so to-day.