No More Learning

After
full examination of the evidence; the National Birth-rate Commission were
unanimously agreed "That the greater incidence of infant mortality upon the
less prosperous classes does not reduce their effective fertility to the
level of that of the wealthier classes. " [81] It is probable that this
Commission overestimated the extent to which birth control has contributed
to the declining birth-rate; but, even so, this does not alter the obvious
fact that artificial birth control, when adopted, reduces fertility to
a lower level than Nature intended. If language has any meaning, birth
control means a falling birth-rate, and a falling birth-rate means
depopulation. Here and there this evil practice may increase the material
prosperity of an individual, but it lowers the prosperity of the nation
by reducing the number of citizens. Moreover, as birth control is not
a prevailing vice amongst semi-civilised peoples, the adoption of this
practice by civilised nations means that the proportion of civilised to
uncivilised inhabitants of the world will be reduced. If birth control had
been extensively practised in the past the colonisation of the British
Empire would have been a physical impossibility; and to-day, in our
vast overseas dominions, are great empty spaces whose untilled soil and
excellent climate await a population. Is that population to be white, or
yellow? A question which to-day fills the Australian with apprehension.

(c) _A Danger to the Empire_

Many people are honestly perplexed by Neo-Malthusian propaganda, and are
honestly ignorant of the truth concerning the population and the food
supply of the British Empire. They think that _if_ the population is
increasing faster than the food supply, there is at least one argument in
favour of artificial birth control from a practical, although possibly not
from an ethical, point of view. They apply to that propaganda the ordinary
test of the world, namely, 'Will it work? ' rather than that other test
which asks, 'Is it right? ' The question I would put to people who reason in
that way, and they are many, is a very simple one. If it can be proved that
Neo-Malthusian propaganda is based on an absolute falsehood, will it not
follow that the chief argument in favour of artificial birth control has
been destroyed? Let us put this matter to the proof. Neo-Malthusians state
that the population of the Empire is increasing more rapidly than the
food supply. That is a definite statement. It is either true or false.
To discover the truth, it is necessary to refer to the Memorandum of the
Dominions Royal Commission, and it may be noted that publications of that
sort are not usually read by the general public to whom the Neo-Malthusians
appeal. The public are aware that the staff of life is made from wheat, but
they are not aware of the following facts, which prove that in this matter,
at any rate, Neo-Malthusian statements are absolutely false. In foreign
countries the increase of the wheat area is proceeding at practically the
same rate as the increase of population. Within the British Empire _the
wheat area is increasing more rabidly than the population_.

Between 1901 and 1911 the percentage increase of the wheat area _was nearly
seven times greater_ than the increase of population; and the percentage
increase in the actual production of wheat _was nearly twelve times
greater_ than the increase of population. As these facts alone completely
refute the Neo-Malthusian argument, it is advisable to reproduce here the
official statistics. [82]

"The requirements of wheat [83] for the United Kingdom and the extent
to which Home and overseas supplies contributed towards these
requirements during the period under review can be briefly summarised
by the following table, viz. :

Normal Supplies Proportion of supply
Annual requirements
average Home Overseas Home Overseas

Million Million Million Per Per
cwts cwts cwts cent cent
1901-5 138. 8 28. 7 110. 1 20. 7 79. 3
1906-10 143. 2 31. 9 111. 3 22. 3 77. 7
1911-13 149. 2 32. 9 116. 3 22. 1 77. 9

"The main sources of overseas supply are too well known to require
recapitulation here. The imports from the Dominions and India and their
proportionate contribution to the United Kingdom's total imports and
wheat requirements since 1901 have been as follows:

1901-5
Percentage
From Annual Total Total
average imports requirements

Million Per Per
cwts cent cent

Canada 10. 3 9. 2 7. 4
Australia 6. 6 5. 9 4. 8
New Zealand . 4 . 4 . 3
India 15. 5 13. 9 11. 2

32. 8 29. 4 23. 7


1906-10
Percentage
From Annual Total Total
average imports requirements

Million Per Per
cwts cent cent

Canada 17. 2 15. 1 12. 0
Australia 9. 4 8. 2 6. 6
New Zealand . 3 . 3 . 2
India 13. 3 11. 7 9. 3

32. 8 29. 4 23. 7


1911-13
Percentage
From Annual Total Total
average imports requirements

Million Per Per
cwts cent cent

Canada 24. 5 20. 5 16. 4
Australia 12. 6 10. 6 8. 4
New Zealand . 4 . 3 . 3
India 21. 5 18. 0 14. 4

59. 0 49. 4 39. 5

"The large increase in the proportion received from the Dominions is,
of course, mainly due to the great extension of wheat cultivation in
Western Canada since the beginning of the century. " [84]

_Future Supplies_

"As the United Kingdom is dependent for so large a proportion of its
wheat supplies on the surplus of oversea countries, it is of material
interest to examine whether this surplus is increasing, or whether the
growth of population is proceeding more rapidly than the extension of
the wheat-growing area.

"The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1912 estimated [85] that the
extension of the wheat area and the growth of population during the
period 1901-1911 was as follows:

Wheat area Percent Population. Percent
Wheat-growing age in age in
countries. 1901. 1911. crease 1901. 1911. crease

British Empire Thousand Thousand Thousands Thousands
(United Kingdom, acres. acres.
Canada,
Australia,
New Zealand,
and India). 34,696 50,490 +45. 5 283,385 302,154 + 6. 6
European
countries. 98,326 115,105 +17. 1 291,685 337,181 +15. 6
Others 67,908 81,408 +19. 9 139,927 168,818 +20. 6

"_It is important to find that, while in foreign countries, both
European and extra-European, the increase of wheat area is proceeding
at practically the same rate as the increase of population, in the
British Empire the wheat area is developing far more rapidly, so that
the Empire as a whole is becoming more self-supporting.

"The total production of wheat within the British Empire, which was
227,500,000 cwts. in 1901, had risen to 399,700,000 cwts. in 1911, an
increase of 75 per cent_.

"The relative yield per acre in 1911 was as follows:"

Yield per acre.

Average for five
years, 1906-10. 1911.
Bushels. Bushels.

United Kingdom 32. 88 32. 96
Canada 17. 56[86] 20. 80[87]
Australia 11. 74 9. 65[88]
New Zealand 28. 72 36. 73
India
(including Native States) 11. 44 12. 02

The foregoing facts destroy the chief Neo-Malthusian argument, and, as
birth control tends to extinguish the birth-rate, this Neo-Malthusian
propaganda is a menace to the Empire. In fact, the danger is very great for
the simple reason that the proportion of white people within the Empire is
very small.

"The British Empire's share of the world's people is very large, but it
mainly consists, it should be remembered, of Asiatics and African
natives. The Empire as a whole contains about 450 millions of the
world's 1,800 millions, made up roundly as follows:

United Kingdom 47,000,000
Self-governing Dominions 22,000,000
Rest of the Empire (chiefly India,
319 millions) 378,000,000
Total 447,000,000

"Of the great aggregate Empire population of 447 millions, the white
people account for no more than 65 millions. That is to say, outside
the United Kingdom itself the Empire has only 18 million white people,
or less than four million families. That figure, of course, includes
Boers, French-Canadians, and others of foreign extraction. This fact is
clearly not realized by those present-day Malthusians who assure us
that too many Britons are being born. " [89]

It is also well to remember that depopulation in Italy preceded the
disintegration of the Roman Empire. Historians have estimated that, while
under the Republic, Italy could raise an army of 800,000 men, under Titus
that number was halved.

Unfortunately there are some to whom this argument will not appeal, and
wandering about in our midst are a few lost souls, so bemused by the
doctrines of international finance that they see no virtue in patriotism
or, in other words, in the love that a man has for his own home. They are
unmoved by the story of sacrifice, of thrift, and of patient trust in
God that is told for instance in the history of the Protestant manses of
Scotland, where ministers on slender stipends brought up families of ten
and twelve, where the boys won scholarships at the universities, and where
women were the mothers of men.

These days have been recalled by Norman Macleod:

"The minister, like most of his brethren, soon took to himself a wife,
the daughter of a neighbouring 'gentleman tacksman,' and the
grand-daughter of a minister, well born and well bred; and never did
man find a help more meet for him. In that manse they lived for nearly
fifty years, and there were born to them sixteen children; yet neither
father nor mother could ever lay hand on a child and say, 'We wish this
one had not been. ' They were all a source of unmingled joy. . . . " [90]

"A 'wise' neighbour once remarked, 'That minister with his large family
will ruin himself, and if he dies they will be beggars. ' Yet there has
never been a beggar among then to the fourth generation. " [91]

How did they manage to provide for their children? In this pagan, spoon-fed
age, many people will laugh when they read the answer--in a family letter,
written more than a hundred years ago by a man who was poor:

"But the thought--I cannot provide for these! Take care, minister, the
anxiety of your affection does not unhinge that confidence with which
the Christian ought to repose upon the wise and good providence of
God! What though you are to leave your children poor and friendless?
Is the arm of the Lord shortened, that He cannot help? Is His ear
heavy, that He cannot hear? You yourself have been no more than an
instrument in the hand of His goodness; and is His goodness, pray,
bound up in your feeble arm? Do you what you can; leave the rest to
God. Let them be good, and fear the Lord, and keep His commandments,
and He will provide for them in His own way and in His own time. Why,
then, wilt thou be cast down, O my soul; why disquieted within me?
Trust thou in the Lord! Under all the changes and the cares and the
troubles of this life, may the consolations of religion support our
spirits. In the multitude of thoughts within me, Thy comforts O my
God, delight my soul! But no more of this preaching-like harangue, of
which, I doubt not, you wish to be relieved. Let me rather reply to
your letter, and tell you my news. " [92]

That letter was written by Norman Macleod, ordained in 1774, and minister
of the Church of Scotland in Morven for some forty years. His stipend was
£40, afterwards raised to £80. He had a family of sixteen. One of his sons
was minister in Campbelltown, and later in Glasgow. He had a family of
eleven. His eldest son was Chaplain to Queen Victoria, and wrote the
_Reminiscences of a Highland Parish_.

The birth controllers ask why we should bring up children at great cost and
trouble to ourselves, and they have been well answered by a non-Catholic
writer, Dr. W. E. Home. [93]

"One of my acquaintances refuses to have a second child because he
could not then play golf. Is there, then, no pleasure in children which
shall compensate for the troubles and expenses they bring upon you? I
notice that the penurious Roman Catholic French Canadian farmers are
spreading out of Quebec and occupying more and more of Ontario. I fancy
these hard-living parents would think their struggles to bring up their
large (ten to twenty) families worth while when they see how their
group is strengthening its position. If a race comes to find no
instinctive pleasure in children it will probably be swept away by
others more virile. One man will live where another will starve;
prudence and selfishness are not identical.

"In her book, _The Strength of a People_, Mrs. Bosanquet, who signed
the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, tells the story of two
girls in domestic service who became engaged. One was imprudent,
married at once, lived in lodgings, trusted to the Church and the
parish doctor to see her through her first confinement, had no
foresight or management, every succeeding child only added to her
worries, and her marriage was a failure. The other was prudent, did not
marry till, after six months, she and her fiancé had chosen a house and
its furniture. Then she married, and their house was their own careful
choice; every table and chair reminded them of the afternoon they had
had together when it was chosen; they were amusement enough to
themselves, and they saved their money for the expenses of her
confinement. He had not to seek amusement outside his home, did his
work with a high sanction and got promoted, and each child was only an
added pleasure. Idyllic; yes, but sometimes true. One of the happiest
men I have known was a Marine sergeant with ten children, and a bed in
his house for stray boys he thought he should help.

"One of my friends married young and had five children; this required
management. He certainly could not go trips, take courses and extra
qualifications, but he did his work all right, and his sons were there
to help in the war, and one of them has won a position of Imperial
usefulness far above that of his father or me. Is that no compensation
to his parents for old-time difficulties they have by now almost
forgotten? A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit. "

Dr. W. E. Home is right, and the Neo-Malthusian golfer is wrong. Moreover,
he is wrong as a golfer. Golf requires skill, a fine co-ordination of sight
and touch, much patience and self-control: and many unfortunate people lack
these qualities of mind and body, and are therefore unable to play this
game with pleasure to themselves or to others. Consequently every golfer,
no matter whether he accepts the hypothesis of Spencer or that of Weismann
concerning the inheritance of acquired characteristics, should rejoice to
see his large family in the links as a good omen for the future of this
game, although there be some other reasons that also justify the existence
of children.

_(d) The Dangers of Small Families_

In a Malthusian leaflet, written for the poor Dr. Binnie Dunlop states:

"You must at least admit that there would be nothing like the usual
poverty if married couples had only one child for every 20s. or so, a
week of wages. Yet the population would continue to increase rapidly,
because very few of the children of small families die or grow up
weakly; and it would become stronger, richer, and of course much
happier. " [94]

The false suggestion contained in his first sentence, namely that a high
birth-rate is the cause of poverty, has already been exposed (Chap. II),
and apparently Dr. Binnie Dunlop has never considered _why_ so many of the
English people should be so poor as to enable him to make use of their very
poverty in order to tempt them to adopt an evil method of birth control.
Moreover, his second contention, that a small family produces a higher type
of child, better fed, better trained, and healthier, than is found amongst
the children of large families is contrary to the following facts, as
stated by Professor Meyrick Booth:

"1.
A civilisation cannot be maintained with an average of less than
about four children per marriage; a smaller number will lead to actual
extinction.

"2. Much information exists tending to show that heredity strongly
favours the third, fourth, fifth, and subsequent children born to a
given couple, rather than the _first two_, who are peculiarly apt to
inherit some of the commonest physical and mental defects (upon this
important point the records of the University of London Eugenics
Laboratory should be consulted). A population with a low birth-rate
thus naturally tends to degenerate. _It is the normal, and not the
small family, that gives the best children_.

"3. The present differential birth-rate--high amongst the less
intelligent classes and low amongst the most capable families--so far
from leading upwards, is causing the race to breed to a lower type.

"4. The small family encourages the growth of luxury and the
development of what M. Leroy-Beaulieu calls _l'esprit arriviste_.

"5. The popular idea that _childbirth is injurious_ to a woman's health
is probably _quite erroneous_. Where the _birth-rate is high the health
of the woman is apparently better_ than where it is artificially low.

"6. A study of history does not show that nations with low birth-rates
have been able to attain to a higher level of civilisation. Such
nations have been thrust into the background by their hardier
neighbours. " [95]

Moreover, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, in _La Question de la Population_ [96] states
that those districts of France which show an exceptionally low birthrate
are distinguished by a peculiar atmosphere of materialism, and that their
inhabitants exhibit, in a high degree, an attitude of mind well named
_l'esprit arriviste_--the desire to concentrate on outward success, to push
on, to be climbers, to advance themselves and their children in fashionable
society. This spirit means the willing sacrifice of all ideals of ethics
or of patriotism to family egoism. To this mental attitude, and to the
corresponding absence of religion, he attributes the decline of population.
In conclusion the following evidence is quoted by Professor Meyrick Booth:

"The _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for July 1911 contains a valuable account,
by a doctor resident in Gascony, of the state of things in that part of
France (where, it will be remembered, the birth-rate is especially
low). He expresses with the utmost emphasis the conviction that the
Gascons are deteriorating, physically and mentally, and points out, at
the same time, that the decline of population has had an injurious
effect upon the economic condition of the country. 'L'hyponatalité est
une cause précise et directe de la dégénérescence de la race,' he
writes. And, dealing with the belief that a low birthrate will result
in the development of a superior type of child, he says: 'C'est une
illusion qui ne résiste pas à la lumière des faits tels que les montre
l'étude démographique de nos villages gascons. Depuis que beaucoup de
bancs restent vides à la petite école, les écoliers ne sont ni mieux
doués, ni plus travailleurs, et ils sont certainement moins vigoureux. '
And again, 'La quantité est en général la condition première et
souveraine de la qualité. '" [97]


Section 8. THE PLOT AGAINST CHRISTENDOM

All purposive actions are ultimately based on philosophy of one sort or
another. If, for example, we find a rich man founding hospitals for the
poor, we may assume that he believes in the principle of Charity. It
is, therefore, of prime importance to determine what kind of philosophy
underlies Neo-Malthusian propaganda. The birth controllers profess to
be actuated solely by feelings of compassion and of benevolence towards
suffering humanity; and it is on these grounds that they are appealing to
the Church of England to bless their work, or at least to lend to
their propaganda a cloak of respectability. Now, the very fact that
Neo-Malthusians are sincere in their mistaken and dangerous convictions
makes it all the more necessary that we should discover the doctrines
on which their propaganda was originally based; because, although their
economic fallacies were borrowed from Malthus, their philosophy came from a
different source.

This philosophy is to be found, naked and unashamed, in a book entitled
_The Elements of Social Science_. I have already referred to this work
as the Bible of Neo-Malthusians, and its teaching has been endorsed as
recently as 1905 by the official journal of the Malthusian League, as
witness the following eulogy, whose last lines recall the happy days of
Bret Harte in the Far West, and the eloquent periods of our old and valued
friend Colonel Starbottle:

"This work should be read by all followers of J. S. Mill, Garnier, and
the Neo-Malthusian school of economists. We could give a long criticism
of the many important chapters in this book; but, as we might be
considered as prejudiced in its favour because of our agreement with
its aims, we prefer to cite the opinion given by the editor of that
widely circulated and most enlightened paper _The Weekly Times and
Echo_, which appears in its issue of October 8. " [98]

Before quoting from the book an explanation is due to my readers. I do not
suggest that all of those who are to-day supporting the propaganda for
artificial birth control would agree with its foolish blasphemies and
drivelling imbecilities; but it is nevertheless necessary to quote these
things, because our birth controllers are too wise in their day and
generation to reveal to the public, still less to the Church of England,
_the philosophy on which Neo-Malthusianism was originally based, and from
which it has grown_. Moreover, the Malthusians claim that it was the author
of the _Elements of Social Science_ "who interested Mr. Charles Bradlaugh
and Mrs. Annie Besant in the question. " [99] Four quotations from the last
edition of the book will suffice:

"But this is a certain truth, that any human being, any one of us,
no matter how fallen and degraded, is an infinitely more glorious
and adorable being than any God that ever was or will be
conceived" (p. 413).

In justice to the memory of John Stuart Mill, whom Malthusians are ever
quoting, it should be noted that the foregoing blasphemy is nothing more
nor less than a burlesque of Positivism or of Agnosticism. The teaching of
Mill, Bain, and of Herbert Spencer was that the knowledge of God and of
His nature is impossible, because our senses are the _only_ source of
knowledge. Their reasoning was wrong--because a primary condition of all
knowledge is memory, in itself an intuition, because primary mathematical
axioms are intellectual intuitions, and because mind has the power of
abstraction; but, even so, not one of these men was capable of having
written the above-quoted passage. The next quotation refers to marriage.

"Marriage is based upon the idea that constant and unvarying love is
the only one which is pure and honourable, and which should be
recognised as morally good. But there could not be a greater error than
this. Love is, like all other human passions and appetites, subject to
change, deriving a great part of its force and continuance from variety
in its objects; and to attempt to fix it to an invariable channel is to
try to alter the laws of its nature"(p. 353).

That quotation is an example of how evil ideas may arise from muddled
thinking: because if the word "lust" be substituted for the word "love" in
the third sentence, the remaining forty-five words would merely convey a
simple truth, expressed by Kipling in two lines:

"For the more you 'ave known o' the others
The less will you settle to one. "

Very few people, I suppose, are so foolish as to believe that man is by
nature either a chaste or a constant animal, and indeed in this respect he
appears to his disadvantage when compared with certain varieties of birds,
which are _by nature_ constant to each other. On the other hand, millions
of people believe that man is able to overcome his animal nature; and for
the past two thousand years the civilised races of the world have held
that this is a goal towards which mankind should strive. In the opinion of
Christendom chastity and marriage are both morally good, but, according to
the philosophy of our Neo-Malthusian author, they are morally evil.

"Chastity, or complete sexual abstinence, so far from being a virtue,
is invariably a great natural sin" (p. 162).

Is it not obvious that to the writers of such passages love is synonymous
with animalism, with lust? It is by no means necessary to go to saints or
to moralists for a refutation of this Neo-Malthusian philosophy. Does any
decent ordinary man or woman agree with it? Ask the man in the street. Turn
the pages of our literature. Refer to Chaucer or Spenser, to Shakespeare or
Milton, refer to Fielding or Burns or Scott or Tennyson. Some of these men
were very imperfect; but they all knew the difference between lust and
love; and it is because they can tell us at least something of that which
is precious, enduring, ethereal, and divine in love that we read their
pages and honour their names. Not one of these men could have written the
following sentence:

"Marriage distracts our attention from the real sexual
duties, and this is one of its worst effects" (p. 366).

Now it is certain that if "the real sexual duties" are represented by
promiscuous fornication, then both marriage and chastity are evil things.
That philosophy is very old. From time immemorial--it has been advocated by
one of the most powerful intelligences in the universe. Such is the soil
on which the Neo-Malthusian fungus has grown--a soil that would rot the
foundations of Europe.

[Footnote 66: _The Lancet_, May 14, 1921, p. 1024]

[Footnote 67: _British Medical Journal_, 1921, vol. ii, p. 93. ]

[Footnote 68: _The Small Family System_, 2nd edit. , p. 2. ]

[Footnote 69: _Supplement to The British Medical Journal_, March 18, 1905,
p. 110. ]

[Footnote 70: _Common Sense on the Population Question_, by Teresa
Billington-Greig, p. 4. Published by the Malthusian League. ]

[Footnote 71: _Medico-Legal Society_, July 7, 1921. ]

[Footnote 72: _Suppl. Qu_. 49, Art. 6: "_Voluptates meretricias vir in
uxore quoerit quando nihil aliud in ea attendit quam quod in meretrice
attenderet_" (A husband seeks from his wife harlot pleasures when he asks
from her only what he might ask from a harlot). Quoted by the Rev. Vincent
McNabb, O. P. , _The Catholic Gazette_, September 1921, p. 195. ]

[Footnote 73: _British Medical Journal_, 1921, vol. ii, p. 169. ]

[Footnote 74: Reproduced in fourth edition, 1861. ]

[Footnote 75: _Essays in Medical Sociology_, 1899. Revised and printed
for private circulation, p. 95, (Copy in Library of Royal Society of
Medicine). ]

[Footnote 76: _British Medical Journal_, August 20, 1921, p. 302. ]

[Footnote 77: St. Matt. xviii. 6. ]

[Footnote 78: _Proceedings of the Medico-Legal Society_, July 7, 1921]

[Footnote 79: "That arrangement of society in which so considerable a
number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to
labour for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp
the whole community with the mark of such labour we call The Servile
State. "--Hilaire Belloc, _The Servile State_, 1912, p. 16. ]

[Footnote 80: The Secretary of the Malthusian League. Vide _The Declining
Birth-rate_, 1916, p. 89. ]

[Footnote 81: _The Declining Birth-rate_, 1916, p. 37. ]

[Footnote 82: Dominions Royal Commission, Memorandum and Tables relating to
the Food and Raw Material Requirements of the United Kingdom: prepared by
the Royal Commission on the Natural Resources, Trade, and Legislation of
Certain Portions of His Majesty's Dominions. November, 1915, pp. 1 and 2.
My italics--H. G. S. ]

[Footnote 83: i. e. grain, wheatmeal, and flour]

[Footnote 84: For particulars of this increase see Canada Year Book 1913,
p. 144. ]

[Footnote 85: See pp. 387-8 of [Cd. 6588]. ]

[Footnote 86: Average for period 1907-1910 and excluding British Columbia,
where the yield per acre in 1911, the only year for which figures are
available, averaged 29-37 bushels. ]

[Footnote 87: Including British Columbia. ]

[Footnote 88: Below the average. The yield per acre in 1912 was 12. 53
bushels, and in 1913 11. 18. ]

[Footnote 89: The Observer, Nov. 11, 1921. ]

[Footnote 90: _Reminiscences of a Highland Parish_, by Norman Macleod,
D. D. , 1876, p. 27. ]

[Footnote 91: Ibid. , p. 34. ]

[Footnote 92: Ibid. , p. 91. ]

[Footnote 93: British Medical Journal, August 13, 1921, p. 261. ]

[Footnote 94: Leaflet of the Malthusian League. ]

[Footnote 95: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, p. 153. My
italics. --H. G. S. ]

[Footnote 96: Quoted by Professor Meyrick Booth, _The Hibbert Journal_,
October 1914, p. 153. ]

[Footnote 97: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914. ]

[Footnote 98: _The Malthusian_, November 1905, p. 84]

[Footnote 99: C. V. Drysdale, O. B. E. , D. Sc. , _The Small Family System_,
1918, p. 150. ]




CHAPTER VIII


THE RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT AGAINST BIRTH CONTROL


Section 1. AN OFFENCE AGAINST THE LAW OF NATURE

Birth control is against the law of nature, which Christians believe to be
the reflection of the divine law in human affairs, and any violation of
this law was held to be vicious even by the ancient pagan world. To this
argument an advocate of birth control has made answer:

"We interfere with nature at every point--we shave, cut our hair, cook
our food, fill cavities in our teeth (or wear artificial teeth), clothe
ourselves, wear boots, hats, and wash our faces, so why should birth
alone be sacred from the touch and play of human moulding? " [100]

Why? For a very simple reason. Birth control belongs to the moral sphere;
it essentially affects man's progress in good, whereas all the other things
that he mentions have no more moral significance than has the practice of
agriculture. Regarded in the light of the law of nature they are neutral
actions, neither good nor bad in themselves, raising no question of right
or wrong, and having no real bearing on the accomplishment of human
destiny. To make no distinction between the merely physical law of nature
(expressed in the invariable tendency of everything to act according to
its kind) and the natural moral law which governs human conduct, is to
pronounce oneself a materialist. Yet even a materialist ought to denounce
the practice of birth control, as it violates the laws of nature which
regulate physical well-being. "But," says the materialist, "it is not
possible for anyone to act against nature, because all actions take place
_in_ nature, and therefore every act is a natural act. " Quite so: in that
sense murder is a natural act; even unnatural vice is a natural act. Will
any one defend them? There is a natural law in the physical world, and
there is a natural law in conscience--a law of right conduct. Certain
actions are under the control of the human will, which is able to rebel
against the moral law of nature, and the pagan poet Aeschylus traces all
human sorrow to "the perverse human will omnipresent. "

As birth control means the deliberate frustration of a natural act
which might have issued in a new life, it is an unnatural crime, and is
stigmatised by theologians as a sin akin to murder. To this charge birth
controllers further reply that millions of the elements of procreation are
destroyed by Nature herself, and that "to add one more to these millions
sacrificed by Nature is surely no crime. " This attempt at argument is
pathetic. If these people knew even the A. B. C. of biology, they would know
that millions of those elements are allowed to perish by Nature for a
definite purpose--namely, _to make procreation more certain_. It is in
order that the one may achieve the desired end that it is reinforced by
millions of others. Moreover, although millions of deaths in the world
occur every year from natural causes, it would nevertheless, I fear, be a
crime if I were to cause one more death by murdering a birth controller.


Section 2. REFLECTED IN THE NORMAL CONSCIENCE

In common with irrational animals we have instincts, appetites, and
passions; but, unlike the animals, we have the power to reflect whether an
action is right or wrong in itself apart from its consequences. This power
of moral judgment is called conscience; and it is conscience which reflects
the natural law (the Divine Nature expressed in creation). As conscience,
when violated, can and does give rise to an unpleasant feeling of shame in
the mind, we have good reason to believe that it exists for the purpose of
preventing us from doing shameful actions, just as our eyes are intended,
amongst other things, to prevent us from walking over precipices. Moreover,
if the conscience is active, instructed, and unbiassed, it will invariably
give the correct answer to any question of right or wrong.

It is possible to assert, without fear of contradiction, that no ordinary
decent man or woman approaches or begins the practice of artificial birth
control without experiencing at first unpleasant feelings of uneasiness,
hesitation, repugnance, shame, and remorse. Later on these feelings may be
overcome by habit, for the voice of conscience will cease when it has been
frequently ignored. This does not alter the fact that at first the natural
moral instincts of both men and women do revolt against these practices. To
the conscience of mankind birth control is a shameful action.


Section 3. EXPRESSED IN THE SCIENCE OF ETHICS

The dictates of conscience go to form the science of ethics.