Science the Ally
"There is but one hope. Ignorance, poverty, and vice
must stop populating the world. This cannot be done by
moral suasion. This cannot be done by talk or example.
This cannot be done by religion or by law, by priest
or by hangman. This cannot be done by force, physical
or moral. To accomplish this there is but one way.
Science must make woman the owner, the mistress of herself.
Science, the only possible savior of mankind, must put it
in the power of woman to decide for herself whether she will
or will not become a mother."
—Robert G. Ingersoll
"Science is the great instrument of social change," wrote A. J.
Balfour in 1908; "all the greater because its object is not change
but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function,
amid the din of religious and political strife, is the most vital of
all revolutions which have marked the development of modern
civilization." The Birth Control movement has allied itself with
science, and no small part of its present propaganda is to awaken the
interest of scientists to the pivotal importance to civilization of
this instrument. Only with the aid of science is it possible to
perfect a practical method that may be universally taught. As Dean
Inge recently admitted: "We should be ready to give up all our
theories if science proved that we were on the wrong lines."
One of the principal aims of the American Birth Control League has
been to awaken the interest of scientific investigators and to point
out the rich field for original research opened up by this problem.
The correlation of reckless breeding with defective and delinquent
strains, has not, strangely enough, been subjected to close scientific
scrutiny, nor has the present biological unbalance been traced to its
root. This is a crying necessity of our day, and it cannot be
accomplished without the aid of science.
Secondary only to the response of women themselves is the awakened
interest of scientists, statisticians, and research workers in every
field. If the clergy and the defenders of traditional morality have
opposed the movement for Birth Control, the response of enlightened
scientists and physicians has been one of the most encouraging aids in
our battle.
Recent developments in the realm of science,—in psychology, in
physiology, in chemistry and physics—all tend to emphasize the
immediate necessity for human control over the great forces of nature.
The new ideas published by contemporary science are of the utmost
fascination and illumination even to the layman. They perform the
invaluable task of making us look at life in a new light, of searching
close at hand for the solution to heretofore closed mysteries of life.
In this brief chapter, I can touch these ideas only as they have
proved valuable to me. Professor Soddy's "Science and Life" is one
of the most inspiring of recent publications in this field; for this
great authority shows us how closely bound up is science with the
whole of Society, how science must help to solve the great and
disastrous unbalance in human society.
As an example: a whole literature has sprung into being around the
glands, the most striking being "The Sex Complex" by Blair Bell.
This author advances the idea of the glandular system as an integral
whole, the glands forming a unity which might be termed the generative
system. Thus is reasserted the radical importance of sexual health to
every individual. The whole tendency of modern physiology and
psychology, in a word, seems gradually coming to the truth that seemed
intuitively to be revealed to that great woman, Olive Schreiner, who,
in "Woman and Labor" wrote: "...Noble is the function of physical
reproduction of humanity by the union of man and woman. Rightly
viewed, that union has in it latent, other and even higher forms of
creative energy and life-dispensing power, and...its history on earth
has only begun; as the first wild rose when it hung from its stem with
its center of stamens and pistils and its single whorl of pale petals
had only begun its course, and was destined, as the ages passed, to
develop stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, till it assumed a
hundred forms of joy and beauty.
"And it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the
higher development of sexual life on earth, as man has so often had to
lead in other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those
very sexual conditions which in the past have crushed and trammeled
her, who is bound to lead the way and man to follow. So that it may
be at last that sexual love—that tired angel who through the ages has
presided over the march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and
feather-shafts broken and wings drabbled in the mires of lust and
greed, and golden locks caked over with the dust of injustice and
oppression—till those looking at him have sometimes cried in terror,
`He is the Evil and not the Good of life': and have sought if it were
not possible, to exterminate him—shall yet, at last, bathed from the
mire and dust of ages in the streams of friendship and freedom, leap
upwards, with white wings spread, resplendent in the sunshine of a
distant future—the essentially Good and Beautiful of human
existence."
To-day science is verifying the truth of this inspiring vision.
Certain fundamental truths concerning the basic facts of Nature and
humanity especially impress us. A rapid survey may indicate the main
features of this mysterious identity and antagonism.
Mankind has gone forward by the capture and control of the forces of
Nature. This upward struggle began with the kindling of the first
fire. The domestication of animal life marked another great step in
the long ascent. The capture of the great physical forces, the
discovery of coal and mineral oil, of gas, steam and electricity, and
their adaptation to the everyday uses of mankind, wrought the greatest
changes in the course of civilization. With the discovery of radium
and radioactivity, with the recognition of the vast stores of physical
energy concealed in the atom, humanity is now on the eve of a new
conquest. But, on the other side, humanity has been compelled to
combat continuously those great forces of Nature which have opposed it
at every moment of this long indomitable march out of barbarism.
Humanity has had to wage war against insects, germs, bacteria, which
have spread disease and epidemics and devastation. Humanity has had to
adapt itself to those natural forces it could not conquer but could
only adroitly turn to its own ends. Nevertheless, all along the line,
in colonization, in agriculture, in medicine and in industry, mankind
has triumphed over Nature.
But lest the recognition of this victory lead us to self-satisfaction
and complacency, we should never forget that this mastery consists to
a great extent in a recognition of the power of those blind forces,
and our adroit control over them. It has been truly said that we
attain no power over Nature until we learn natural laws and conform
and adapt ourselves to them.
The strength of the human race has been its ability not merely to
subjugate the forces of Nature, but to adapt itself to those it could
not conquer. And even this subjugation, science tells us, has not
resulted from any attempt to suppress, prohibit, or eradicate these
forces, but rather to transform blind and undirected energies to our
own purposes.
These great natural forces, science now asserts, are not all external.
They are surely concealed within the complex organism of the human
being no less than outside of it. These inner forces are no less
imperative, no less driving and compelling than the external forces of
Nature. As the old conception of the antagonism between body and soul
is broken down, as psychology becomes an ally of physiology and
biology, and biology joins hands with physics and chemistry, we are
taught to see that there is a mysterious unity between these inner and
outer forces. They express themselves in accordance with the same
structural, physical and chemical laws. The development of
civilization in the subjective world, in the sphere of behavior,
conduct and morality, has been precisely the gradual accumulation and
popularization of methods which teach people how to direct, transform
and transmute the driving power of the great natural forces.
Psychology is now recognizing the forces concealed in the human
organism. In the long process of adaptation to social life, men have
had to harness the wishes and desires born of these inner energies,
the greatest and most imperative of which are Sex and Hunger. From
the beginning of time, men have been driven by Hunger into a thousand
activities. It is Hunger that has created "the struggle for
existence." Hunger has spurred men to the discovery and invention of
methods and ways of avoiding starvation, of storing and exchanging
foods. It has developed primitive barter into our contemporary Wall
Streets. It has developed thrift and economy,—expedients whereby
humanity avoids the lash of King Hunger. The true "economic
interpretation of history" might be termed the History of Hunger.
But no less fundamental, no less imperative, no less ceaseless in its
dynamic energy, has been the great force of Sex. We do not yet know
the intricate but certainly organic relationship between these two
forces. It is obvious that they oppose yet reinforce each other,—
driving, lashing, spurring mankind on to new conquests or to certain
ruin. Perhaps Hunger and Sex are merely opposite poles of a single
great life force. In the past we have made the mistake of separating
them and attempting to study one of them without the other. Birth
Control emphasizes the need of re-investigation and of knowledge of
their integral relationship, and aims at the solution of the great
problem of Hunger and Sex at one and the same time.
In the more recent past the effort has been made to control,
civilize, and sublimate the great primordial natural force of sex,
mainly by futile efforts at prohibition, suppression, restraint, and
extirpation. Its revenge, as the psychoanalysts are showing us every
day, has been great. Insanity, hysteria, neuroses, morbid fears and
compulsions, weaken and render useless and unhappy thousands of humans
who are unconscious victims of the attempt to pit individual powers
against this great natural force. In the solution of the problem of
sex, we should bear in mind what the successful method of humanity has
been in its conquest, or rather its control of the great physical and
chemical forces of the external world. Like all other energy, that of
sex is indestructible. By adaptation, control and conscious
direction, we may transmute and sublimate it. Without irreparable
injury to ourselves we cannot attempt to eradicate it or extirpate it.
The study of atomic energy, the discovery of radioactivity, and the
recognition of potential and latent energies stored in inanimate
matter, throw a brilliant illumination upon the whole problem of sex
and the inner energies of mankind. Speaking of the discovery of
radium, Professor Soddy writes: "Tracked to earth the clew to a
great secret for which a thousand telescopes might have swept the sky
forever and in vain, lay in a scrap of matter, dowered with something
of the same inexhaustible radiance that hitherto has been the sole
prerogative of the distant stars and sun." Radium, this distinguished
authority tells us, has clothed with its own dignity the whole empire
of common matter.
Much as the atomic theory, with its revelations of the vast treasure
house of radiant energy that lies all about us, offers new hope in the
material world, so the new psychology throws a new light upon human
energies and possibilities of individual expression. Social
reformers, like those scientists of a bygone era who were sweeping the
skies with their telescopes, have likewise been seeking far and wide
for the solution of our social problems in remote and wholesale
panaceas, whereas the true solution is close at hand,—in the human
individual. Buried within each human being lies concealed a vast
store of energy, which awaits release, expression and sublimation. The
individual may profitably be considered as the "atom" of society.
And the solution of the problems of society and of civilization will
be brought about when we release the energies now latent and
undeveloped in the individual. Professor Edwin Grant Conklin
expresses the problem in another form; though his analogy, it seems to
me, is open to serious criticism. "The freedom of the individual
man," he writes,[1] "is to that of society as the freedom of the
single cell is to that of the human being. It is this large freedom
of society, rather than the freedom of the individual, which democracy
offers to the world, free societies, free states, free nations rather
than absolutely free individuals. In all organisms and in all social
organizations, the freedom of the minor units must be limited in order
that the larger unit may achieve a new and greater freedom, and in
social evolution the freedom of individuals must be merged more and
more into the larger freedom of society."
This analogy does not bear analysis. Restraint and constraint of
individual expression, suppression of individual freedom "for the
good of society" has been practised from time immemorial; and its
failure is all too evident. There is no antagonism between the good of
the individual and the good of society. The moment civilization is
wise enough to remove the constraints and prohibitions which now
hinder the release of inner energies, most of the larger evils of
society will perish of inanition and malnutrition. Remove the moral
taboos that now bind the human body and spirit, free the individual
from the slavery of tradition, remove the chains of fear from men and
women, above all answer their unceasing cries for knowledge that would
make possible their self-direction and salvation, and in so doing, you
best serve the interests of society at large. Free, rational and self-ruling personality would then take the place of self-made slaves, who
are the victims both of external constraints and the playthings of the
uncontrolled forces of their own instincts.
Science likewise illuminates the whole problem of genius. Hidden in
the common stuff of humanity lies buried this power of self-expression. Modern science is teaching us that genius is not some
mysterious gift of the gods, some treasure conferred upon individuals
chosen by chance. Nor is it, as Lombroso believed, the result of a
pathological and degenerate condition, allied to criminality and
madness. Rather is it due to the removal of physiological and
psychological inhibitions and constraints which makes possible the
release and the channeling of the primordial inner energies of man
into full and divine expression. The removal of these inhibitions, so
scientists assure us, makes possible more rapid and profound
perceptions,—so rapid indeed that they seem to the ordinary human
being, practically instantaneous, or intuitive. The qualities of
genius are not, therefore, qualities lacking in the common reservoir
of humanity, but rather the unimpeded release and direction of powers
latent in all of us. This process of course is not necessarily
conscious.
This view is substantiated by the opposite problem of feeble-mindedness. Recent researches throw a new light on this problem and
the contrasting one of human genius. Mental defect and feeble-mindedness are conceived essentially as retardation, arrest of
development, differing in degree so that the victim is either an
idiot, an imbecile, feeble-minded or a moron, according to the
relative period at which mental development ceases.
Scientific research into the functioning of the ductless glands and
their secretions throws a new light on this problem. Not long ago
these glands were a complete enigma, owing to the fact that they are
not provided with excretory ducts. It has just recently been shown
that these organs, such as the thyroid, the pituitary, the suprarenal,
the parathyroid and the reproductive glands, exercise an all-powerful
influence upon the course of individual development or deficiency.
Gley, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of glandular action, has
asserted that "the genesis and exercise of the higher faculties of
men are conditioned by the purely chemical action of the product of
these secretions. Let psychologists consider these facts."
These internal secretions or endocrines pass directly into the blood
stream, and exercise a dominating power over health and personality.
Deficiency in the thyroid secretion, especially during the years of
infancy and early childhood, creates disorders of nutrition and
inactivity of the nervous system. The particular form of idiocy known
as cretinism is the result of this deficiency, which produces an
arrest of the development of the brain cells. The other glands and
their secretions likewise exercise the most profound influence upon
development, growth and assimilation. Most of these glands are of
very small size, none of them larger than a walnut, and some—the
parathyroids—almost microscopic. Nevertheless, they are essential to
the proper maintenance of life in the body, and no less organically
related to mental and psychic development as well.
The reproductive glands, it should not be forgotten, belong to this
group, and besides their ordinary products, the germ and sperm cells
(ova and spermatozoa) form HORMONES which circulate in the blood and
effect changes in the cells of distant parts of the body. Through
these HORMONES the secondary sexual characters are produced, including
the many differences in the form and structure of the body which are
the characteristics of the sexes. Only in recent years has science
discovered that these secondary sexual characters are brought about by
the agency of these internal secretions or hormones, passed from the
reproductive glands into the circulating blood. These so-called
secondary characters which are the sign of full and healthy
development, are dependent, science tells us, upon the state of
development of the reproductive organs.
For a clear and illuminating account of the creative and dynamic power
of the endocrine glands, the layman is referred to a recently
published book by Dr. Louis Berman.[2] This authority reveals anew how
body and soul are bound up together in a complex unity. Our spiritual
and psychic difficulties cannot be solved until we have mastered the
knowledge of the wellsprings of our being. "The chemistry of the
soul! Magnificent phrase!" exclaims Dr. Berman. "It's a long, long
way to that goal. The exact formula is as yet far beyond our reach.
But we have started upon the long journey, and we shall get there.
"The internal secretions constitute and determine much of the
inherited powers of the individual and their development. They
control physical and mental growth, and all the metabolic processes of
fundamental importance. They dominate all the vital functions of man
during the three cycles of life. They cooperate in an intimate
relationship which may be compared to an interlocking directorate. A
derangement of their functions, causing an insufficiency of them, an
excess, or an abnormality, upsets the entire equilibrium of the body,
with transforming effects upon the mind and the organs. In short,
they control human nature, and whoever controls them, controls human
nature....
"Blood chemistry of our time is a marvel, undreamed of a generation
ago. Also, these achievements are a perfect example of the
accomplished fact contradicting a prior prediction and criticism. For
it was one of the accepted dogmas of the nineteenth century that the
phenomena of living could never be subjected to accurate quantitative
analysis." But the ethical dogmas of the past, no less than the
scientific, may block the way to true civilization.
Physiologically as well as psychologically the development of the
human being, the sane mind in the sound body, is absolutely dependent
upon the functioning and exercise of all the organs in the body. The
"moralists" who preach abstinence, self-denial, and suppression are
relegated by these findings of impartial and disinterested science to
the class of those educators of the past who taught that it was
improper for young ladies to indulge in sports and athletics and who
produced generations of feeble, undeveloped invalids, bound up by
stays and addicted to swooning and hysterics. One need only go out on
the street of any American city to-day to be confronted with the
victims of the cruel morality of self-denial and "sin." This
fiendish "morality" is stamped upon those emaciated bodies,
indelibly written in those emasculated, underdeveloped, undernourished
figures of men and women, in the nervous tension and unrelaxed muscles
denoting the ceaseless vigilance in restraining and suppressing the
expression of natural impulses.
Birth Control is no negative philosophy concerned solely with the
number of children brought into this world. It is not merely a
question of population. Primarily it is the instrument of liberation
and of human development.
It points the way to a morality in which sexual expression and human
development will not be in conflict with the interest and well-being
of the race nor of contemporary society at large. Not only is it the
most effective, in fact the only lever by which the value of the child
can be raised to a civilized point; but it is likewise the only method
by which the life of the individual can be deepened and strengthened,
by which an inner peace and security and beauty may be substituted for
the inner conflict that is at present so fatal to self-expression and
self-realization.
Sublimation of the sexual instinct cannot take place by denying it
expression, nor by reducing it to the plane of the purely
physiological. Sexual experience, to be of contributory value, must
be integrated and assimilated. Asceticism defeats its own purpose
because it develops the obsession of licentious and obscene thoughts,
the victim alternating between temporary victory over "sin" and the
remorse of defeat. But the seeker of purely physical pleasure, the
libertine or the average sensualist, is no less a pathological case,
living as one-sided and unbalanced a life as the ascetic, for his
conduct is likewise based on ignorance and lack of understanding. In
seeking pleasure without the exercise of responsibility, in trying to
get something for nothing, he is not merely cheating others but
himself as well.
In still another field science and scientific method now emphasize the
pivotal importance of Birth Control. The Binet-Simon intelligence
tests which have been developed, expanded, and applied to large groups
of children and adults present positive statistical data concerning
the mental equipment of the type of children brought into the world
under the influence of indiscriminate fecundity and of those fortunate
children who have been brought into the world because they are wanted,
the children of conscious, voluntary procreation, well nourished,
properly clothed, the recipients of all that proper care and love can
accomplish.
In considering the data furnished by these intelligence tests we
should remember several factors that should be taken into
consideration. Irrespective of other considerations, children who are
underfed, undernourished, crowded into badly ventilated and unsanitary
homes and chronically hungry cannot be expected to attain the mental
development of children upon whom every advantage of intelligent and
scientific care is bestowed. Furthermore, public school methods of
dealing with children, the course of studies prescribed, may quite
completely fail to awaken and develop the intelligence.
The statistics indicate at any rate a surprisingly low rate of
intelligence among the classes in which large families and
uncontrolled procreation predominate. Those of the lowest grade in
intelligence are born of unskilled laborers (with the highest birth
rate in the community); the next high among the skilled laborers, and
so on to the families of professional people, among whom it is now
admitted that the birth rate is voluntarily controlled.[3]
But scientific investigations of this type cannot be complete until
statistics are accurately obtained concerning the relation of
unrestrained fecundity and the quality, mental and physical, of the
children produced. The philosophy of Birth Control therefore seeks
and asks the cooperation of science and scientists, not to strengthen
its own "case," but because this sexual factor in the determination
of human history has so long been ignored by historians and
scientists. If science in recent years has contributed enormously to
strengthen the conviction of all intelligent people of the necessity
and wisdom of Birth Control, this philosophy in its turn opens to
science in its various fields a suggestive avenue of approach to many
of those problems of humanity and society which at present seem to
enigmatical and insoluble.
