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Page 23
Malthus, the great and good philanthropist of Harleybury, a great
moralist and Christian clergyman, urged that it was people's duty not to
mate and procreate until they had reasonable hope of being able easily
to rear, support, and educate the normal family of four, and, if that
were impossible, not to mate at all. As a Christian clergyman, Malthus
did not interpret the Divine command apart from the consequences of its
literal acceptance.
"Be fruitful," meant to Malthus reproduce your kind,--that implied not
only bringing babies into the world, but rearing them up to healthy,
robust, and prosperous manhood, with every prospect of continuing the
process.
"Multiply and replenish the earth" as a command to Noah, meant in the
mind of the Rector of Harleybury, "People the earth with men after your
own image."
Very little care would be required in Noah's time, with his fine
alluvial flats, and sparse population, but in Malthus's time the command
could not be fully carried out without labour, self-development, and
"moral restraint."
The physiological law is simple and blind, taking no cognisance of the
consequences, or the quality of the offspring produced. The divine
command is complex. It embodies the reproductive instinct, but restrains
and guides it in view of ultimate consequences.
So much for the views and teaching of Malthus. To him no ethical
standard was violated in preventing offspring by protracted continence,
or lifelong celibacy, provided the motive was the inability so to
provide for a family as to require no aid from the state. And it is
difficult to escape this conclusion. There is no ethical, Christian, or
social law, that directs a man or woman to procreate their kind if they
cannot, or have reasonable grounds to think they cannot, support their
offspring without aid from others.
There can be, therefore, no just law that decrees that men or women
shall marry under such circumstances. In fact most philanthropists think
they violate a social and ethical law if they do marry.
But, if with Paul, they resolve that it is better to marry than to burn,
is there any law that can or should prevent them selecting the
occasions of their union, with a view to limiting fertility.
Abstention is the voluntary hindrance of a desire, when that desire is
strongest in both sexes; and as such it limits happiness, and is in
consequence an evil _per se_. A motive that will control this desire
must be a strong one; such a motive is not necessarily bad. It may be
good or evil.
There can be no essential ethical difference between constant
continence, prior to marriage, and intermittent continence subsequent to
marriage, both practices having a similar motive.
If post nuptial restraint with a view to limiting offspring is wrong,
restraint from marriage with the same motive is wrong.
If delayed marriage in the interest of the individual and the State is
right, marriage with intermittent restraint is in the same interest, and
can as easily be defended.
The ethics of prevention by restraint must be judged by its
consequences. If unrestrained procreation will place children in a home
where the food and comfort are adequate to their healthful support and
development, then procreation is good,--good for the individual,
society, and the State.
If the conditions necessary to this healthful support and development,
can by individual or State effort be provided for all children born, it
is the duty of the individual and of the State to make that effort.
All persons of fair education and good intelligence know what those
conditions are, and if they procreate regardless of their absence, that
procreation is an evil, and prevention by restraint is the contrary
virtue.
It is not suggested, however, that all those who prevent, without or
within the marriage bond, do so from this worthy motive, nor is it
suggested that all those who prevent are not extravagant in their demand
for luxurious conditions for themselves and for their children.
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