Essays in War-Time: Further Studies in the Task of Social HygieneEllis, Havelock
Philosophy
Essays in War-Time: Further Studies in the Task of Social Hygiene
Ellis, Havelock
Eugenics; Sex; War
To-day the conditions have altogether altered, and even our own
feelings have altered. We no longer feel with the ancient Hebrew who
has bequeathed his ideals though not his practices to Christendom, that
to have as many wives and concubines and as large a family as possible
is both natural and virtuous, as well as profitable. We realise,
moreover, that the Divine Commands, so far as we recognise any such
commands, are not external to us, but are manifested in our own
deliberate reason and will. We know that to primitive men, who lacked
foresight and lived mainly in the present, only that Divine Command
could be recognisable which sanctified the impulse of the moment, while
to us, who live largely in the future, and have learnt foresight, the
Divine Command involves restraint on the impulse of the moment. We no
longer believe that we are divinely ordered to be reckless or that God
commands us to have children who, as we ourselves know, are fatally
condemned to disease or premature death. Providence, which was once
regarded as the attribute of God, we regard as the attribute of men;
providence, prudence, self-restraint--these are to us the
characteristics of moral men, and those persons who lack these
characteristics are condemned by our social order to be reckoned among
the dregs of mankind. It is a social order which in the sphere of
procreation could not be reached or maintained except by the systematic
control of offspring.
We may realise the difference between the morality of to-day and the
morality of the past when we come to details. We may consider, for
instance, the question of the chastity of women. According to the ideas
of the old morality, which placed the whole question of procreation
under the authority (after God) of men, women were in subjection to
men, and had no right to freedom, no right to responsibility, no right
to knowledge, for, it was believed, if entrusted with any of these they
would abuse them at once. That view prevails even to-day in some
civilised countries, and middle-class Italian parents, for instance,
will not allow their daughter to be conducted by a man even to Mass,
for they believe that as soon as she is out of their sight she will be
unchaste. That is their morality. Our morality to-day, however, is
inspired by different ideas, and aims at a different practice. We are
by no means disposed to rate highly the morality of a girl who is only
chaste so long as she is under her parents' eyes; for us, indeed, that
is much more like immorality than morality. We are to-day vigorously
pursuing a totally different line of action. We wish women to be
reasonably free, we wish them to be trained in the sense of
responsibility for their own actions, we wish them to possess
knowledge, more especially in that sphere of sex, once theoretically
closed to them, which we now recognise as peculiarly their own domain.
Nowadays, moreover, we are sufficiently well acquainted with human
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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