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Page 22
It must be remembered in this connection that fecundity and sexual
activity are not convertible terms.
It is certainly not true to say that the greater the fecundity of the
people the stronger their sexual instinct, or the greater the sexual
exercise.
A high fecundity does not depend on an inordinate sexual activity.
Fecundity depends on the child-bearing capacity of each female, and a
sexual union at an appropriate time once in two years between puberty
and the catamenia is compatible with the highest possible fecundity.
It would be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts,
to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of
sense, their fecundity would be modified in an appreciable degree.
CHAPTER VI.
ETHICS OF PREVENTION.
_Fertility the law of life.--Man interprets and controls this
law.--Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.--Malthus's
high ideal.--If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no
law.--Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.--Ethics of prevention judged
by consequences.--When procreation is a good and when an
evil.--Oligantrophy.--Artificial checks are physiological sins._
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He
him, male and female created He them, and God blessed them and God said
unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth.'"--(Genesis i., 27-28). This commandment was repeated to Noah and
his sons.
Whether Moses was recording the voice of God, or interpreting a
physiological law is immaterial to this aspect of a great social
question. The fact remains that in obedience to a great law of life, all
living things are fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and
multiplication in a state of nature is limited only by space and food.
In a state of nature, reproduction is automatic, and only in this state
is this physiological law, or this divine command obeyed.
The reason of man intervenes, and interprets, and modifies this law.
A community of men becomes a social organism, calls itself a State, and
limits the law of reproduction. It decrees that the sexes shall, if they
pair, isolate themselves in pairs, and live in pairs whether inclined to
so live or not.
If the State has a right so to interpret and limit the law of
reproduction, a principle in human affairs is established, and its
decree that individuals shall not mate before a certain age, or not mate
at all, is only a further application of the same principle. By the law
of reproduction a strong instinct, second only in force and universality
to the law of self-preservation, is planted in the sexes, and upon a
blind obedience to this force, the continuity of the race depends.
The tendency in the races of history has been to over-population, or to
a population beyond the food supply, and there is probably no race known
to history that did not at some one period of its rise or fall suffer
from over-population.
States have mostly been concerned, therefore, with restraining or
inhibiting the natural reproductive instinct of their subjects through
marriage laws which protect the State, by fixing paternal
responsibility. There were strong reasons why a State should not be
over-populated, and only one reason why it should not be
under-populated. That one reason was the danger of annihilation from
invasion.
Sparta was said to have suffered thus, because of under-population, and
passed a law encouraging large families. Alexander encouraged his
soldiers to intermarry with the women of conquered races, in order to
diminish racial differences and antagonism, and Augustus framed laws for
the discouragement of celibacy, but no law has ever been passed
decreeing that individuals must mate, or if they do mate that they shall
procreate.
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