Fruits of Philosophy

Showing how desirable it is, both in a political and a social point of view, for mankind to be able to limit at WILL THE NUMBER OF THEIR OFFSPRING, WITHOUT SACRIFICING THE PLEASURE THAT ATTENDS THE GRATIFICATION OF THE REPRODUCTIVE INSTINCT.

First.--In a political point of view.-If population be not restrained by some great physical calamity, such as we have reason to hope will not hereafter be visited upon the children of men, or by some moral restraint, the time will come when the earth cannot support its inhabitants. Population unrestrained will double three times in a century. Hence, computing the present population of the earth at 1,000 millions, there would be at the end of 100 years from the present time, 8,000 millions.

At the end of 200 years, 64,000 millions.

" " 300 " 512,000 "

And so on, multiplying by eight for every additional hundred years. So that in 500 years from the present time there would be thirty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty eight times as many inhabitants as at present. If the natural increase should go on without check for 1,500 years, one single pair would increase to more than thirty-five thousand one hundred and eighty-four times as many as the present population of the whole earth!

Some check then there must be, or the time will come when millions will be born but to suffer and to perish for the necessaries of life. To what an inconceivable amount of human misery would such a state of things give rise! And must we say that vice, war, pestilence and famine are desirable to prevent it? Must the friends of temperance and domestic happiness stay their efforts? Must peace societies excite to war and bloodshed? Must the physician cease to investigate the nature of contagion, and to search for the means of destroying its baneful influence? Must he that becomes diseased be marked as a victim to die for public good, without the privilege of making an effort to restore him to health? And in case of a failure of crops in one part of the world, must the other parts withhold the means of supporting life that the far greater evil of excessive population throughout the world may be prevented? Can there be no effectual moral restraint, attended with far less human misery than such physical calamities as these? Most surely there can. But what is it? Malthus, an English writer on the subject of population, gives us none but celibacy to a late age. But how foolish it is to suppose that men and women will become as monks and nuns during the very holiday of their existence, and abjure during the fairest years of life the nearest and dearest of social relations, to avert a catastrophe which they and perhaps their children will not live to witness. But, besides being ineffectual, or if effectual, requiring a great sacrifice of enjoyment, this restraint is highly objectionable on the score of its demoralizing tendency. It would give rise to a frightful increase of prostitution, of intemperance and onanism, and prove destructive to health and moral feelings. In spite of preaching, human nature will ever remain the same; and that restraint which forbids the gratification of the reproductive instinct will avail but little with the mass of mankind. The checks to be hereafter mentioned are the only moral restraints to population known to the writer that are unattended with serious objections.

Besides starvation, with all its accompanying evils, overpopulation is attended with other public evils, of which may be mentioned, ignorance and slavery. Where the mass of the people must toil incessantly to obtain support, they must remain ignorant; and where ignorance prevails, tyranny reigns.*

* The scientific part of Malthus' Doctrine of Population is

not very clearly or correctly given in the above passages.

His great theory, now or generally held by the most eminent

political economists, is that the increase of population is

always powerfully checked in old countries by the difficulty

in increasing the supply of food; that the existing evils of

poverty and low wages are really at bottom caused by this

check, and are brought about by the pressure of population

on the soil, and the continual overstocking of the labor

markets with laborers; and hence that the only way in which

society can escape from poverty, with all its miseries, is

by putting a strong restraint on their natural powers of

multiplication. "It is not in the nature of things," he

says, "that any permanent and general improvement in the

condition of the poor can be effected without an increase in

the preventive checks to population."-G. R.

Second-In a social point of view.-"Is it not notorious that the families of the married often increase beyond which a regard for the young beings coming into the world, and the happiness of those who give them birth, would dictate. In how many instances does the hard-working father, and more especially the mother, of a poor family remain slave throughout their lives, tugging at the oar of incessant labor, toiling to live, and living to toil; when, if their offspring had been limited to two or three only, they might have enjoyed comfort and comparative affluence? How often is the health of the mother, giving birth every year to an infant-happy if it be not twins-and compelled to toil on, even at those times when nature imperiously calls for some relief from daily drudgery,-how often is the mother's comfort, health, nay, even her life, thus sacrificed? Or if care and toil have weighed down the spirit, and at length broken the health of the father; how often is the widow left unable, with the most virtuous intentions, to save her fatherless offspring from becoming degraded objects of charity, or profligate votaries of vice!

"Nor is this all. Many women are so constituted that they cannot give birth to healthy, sometimes not to living children. Is it desirable, is it moral, that such women should become pregnant? Yet this is continually the case. Others there are who ought never to become parents; because, if they do, it is only to transmit to their offspring grievous hereditary diseases, which render such offspring mere subjects of misery throughout their sickly existence. Yet such women will not lead a life of celibacy. They marry. They become parents, and the sum of human misery is increased by their doing so. But it is folly to expect that we can induce such persons to live the lives of Shakers. Nor is it necessary; all that duty requires of them is to refrain from becoming parents. Who can estimate the beneficial effect which a rational moral restraint may thus have on the health and beauty and physical improvement of our race throughout future generations?"

Let us now turn our attention to the case of unmarried youth.

"Almost all young persons, on reaching the age of maturity, desire to marry. That heart must be very cold, or very isolated, that does not find some object on which to bestow its affections. Thus, early marriage would be almost universal did not prudential consideration interfere. The young man thinks, 'I cannot marry yet; I cannot support a family. I must make money first, and think of a matrimonial settlement afterwards.'

"And so he goes to making money, fully and sincerely resolved in a few years to share it with her whom he now loves. But passions are strong and temptations great. Curiosity, perhaps, introduces him into the company of those poor creatures whom society first reduces to a dependence on the most miserable of mercenary trades, and then curses for being what she has made them. There his health and moral feelings are alike made shipwreck. The affections he had thought to treasure up for their first object are chilled by dissipation and blunted by excess. He scarcely retains a passion but avarice. Years pass on-years of profligacy and speculation-and his wish is accomplished, his fortune is made. Where now are the feelings and resolve of his youth?

'Like the dew on the mountain,

Like the foam on the river,

Like the bubbles on the fountain,

They are gone-and forever.'

"He is a man of pleasure, a man of the world. He laughs at the romance of his youth, and marries a fortune. If gaudy equipage and gay parties confer happiness, he is happy. But if these be only the sunshine on the stormy sea below, he is a victim to that system of morality which forbids a reputable connection until the period when provision has been made for a large expected family. Had he married the first object of his choice, and simply delayed becoming a father until his prospects seemed to warrant it, how different might have been his lot. Until men and women are absolved from the fear of becoming parents, except when they themselves desire it, they will ever form mercenary and demoralizing connections, and seek in dissipation the happiness they might have found in domestic life.

"I know that this, however common, is not a universal case. Sometimes the heavy responsibilities of a family are incurred at all risks; and who shall say how often a life of unremitting toil and poverty is the consequence. Sometimes, if even rarely, the young mind does hold its first resolves. The youth plods through years of cold celibacy and solitary anxiety, happy if, before the best hours of his life are gone and its warmest feelings withered, he may return to claim the reward of his forbearance and his industry. But even in this comparatively happy case, shall we count for nothing the years of ascetic sacrifice at which after happiness is purchased? The days of youth are not too many, nor its affections too lasting. We may, indeed, if a great object require it, sacrifice the one and mortify the other. But is this, in itself, desirable? Does not wisdom tell us that such a sacrifice is a dead loss-to the warm-hearted often a grievous one? Does not wisdom bid us temperately enjoy the springtimes of life, 'while the evil day come not, nor the years draw nigh, when we shall say we have no pleasure in them?'

"Let us say, then, if we will, that the youth who thus sacrifices the present for the future, chooses wisely between the two evils, profligacy and asceticism. This is true. But let us not imagine the lesser evil to be good. It is not good for man to be alone. It is for no man or woman's happiness or benefit that they should be condemned to Shakerism. It is a violence done to the feelings and an injury to the character. A life of rigid celibacy, though infinitely preferable to a life of dissipation, is yet fraught with many evils. Peevishness, restlessness, vague longings and instability of character, are amongst the least of these. The mind is unsettled, and the judgment warped. Even the very instinct which is thus mortified assumes an undue importance, and occupies a portion of the thoughts which does not of right or nature belong to it, and which, during a life of satisfied affection, it would not obtain."

In many instances, the genital organs are rendered so irritable by the repletion to which unnatural continency gives rise, and by the much thinking caused by such repletion, as to induce a disease known to medical men by the name of Gonorrhoea Dormientium. It consists in an emission or discharge of the semen during sleep. This discharge is immediately excited in most instances by a lascivious dream, but such dream is caused by the repletion and irritability of the genital organs. It is truly astonishing to what a degree of mental anguish the disease gives rise in young men. They do not understand the nature, or rather, the cause of it. They think it depends on a weakness-indeed, the disease is often called a "seminal weakness"-and that the least gratification in a natural way would but serve to increase it. Their anxiety about it weakens the whole system. This weakness they erroneously attribute to the discharges; they think themselves totally disqualified for entering into or enjoying the married state. Finally, the genital and mental organs act and react upon each other so perniciously as to cause a degree of nervousness, debility, emaciation and melancholy-in a word, wretchedness that sets description at defiance. Nothing is so effectual in curing this diseased state of a body and mind in young men as marriage. All restraint, fear and solicitude should be removed.

"Inasmuch, then, as the scruples of incurring heavy responsibilities deter from forming moral connections and encourage intemperance and prostitution, the knowledge which enables man to limit the number of his offspring would, in the present state of things, save much unhappi-ness and prevent many crimes. Young persons sincerely attached to each other, and who might wish to marry, should marry early, merely resolving not to become parents until prudence permitted it. The young man, instead of solitary toil and vulgar dissipation, would enjoy the society and the assistance of her he has chosen as his companion; and the best years of life, whose pleasures never return, would not be squandered in riot, nor lost through mortification."*

* The passages quoted are from Robert Dale Owen's "Moral

Physiology."