I proceed to give some examples of the teaching inculcated in the
journal, and in the first place quote from a review of _L’Instinct
d’Amour_, by Dr. Joanny Roux, a very distinguished French physician:--
“Must all who refuse to procreate refrain from love? How easy
it is to clothe one’s self in the robes of social purity when
replying to this question! The social purists tell the world
that chastity is obligatory if procreation be not intended. It
is impossible to carry out this view. The philosopher contents
himself with studying sterile love and its consequences. He
rejoices to think that thousands of infants are left out of the
world who would have been doomed to suffer. The inconveniences
resulting from some selfish people who refrain from parentage
are as nothing in the balance when weighed against the horrors
of indigence.
“Should we not, by acting thus, lead to a progressive
diminution of the population? Certainly; but that would be a
good thing. As if, forsooth, human progress depended on
quantity, and not on quality! Take China as an example of
quantity without quality. Some writers seem to wish that the
earth should be filled up with miserable and suffering people.
Malthus, that gentle clergyman, in 1798, was the first to
protest against such a view. Over-reproduction, he showed, was
the cause of poverty. He, however, thought the only remedy for
this was chastity, and was quite opposed to _sterile love_.
“To accept sterile love, some say, is to run counter to Nature
and natural morality. ‘No,’ says Dr. Roux, ‘it is the
preserving of these laws. In all cases where we construct
houses or warm ourselves, we get one law of Nature to defend us
against the other which injures us. We must not forget that our
instincts are fixed customs of very ancient date; and there can
be no doubt that man has the right to intervene in questions of
that sexual instinct if morality (_i. e._ happiness) requires
it of him.’”
When one reads these passages a flood of light as to the real
influence and direction of such teachings comes to us at once. The
writer, no doubt sincerely enough, assumes as an axiom of his whole
position, that there is no law but “Nature,” no morality but what he
calls “Natural Morality.” We are, in fact, under no obligations to
anything but the promptings of animal instinct which are part of our
human nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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