Marriage and Morals/Chapter XVII

The main purpose of marriage is to replenish the human population of the globe. Some marriage systems perform this task inadequately, some too adequately. It is from this point of view that I wish to consider sexual morality in the present chapter.

In a state of nature, the larger mammals require a considerable area per head to keep themselves alive. Consequently, the total population of any species of large wild mammal is small. The population of sheep and cows is considerable, but that is due to human agency. The population of human beings is quite out of proportion to that of any other large mammal. This, of course, is due to our skill. The invention of bows and arrows, the domestication of ruminants, the beginnings of agriculture, and the industrial revolution, all of them increased the number of persons who could subsist on a square mile. The last of these economic advances, as we know ​from statistics, was utilized for this purpose; in all likelihood the others were also. Man’s intelligence has been employed more to increase his numbers than for any other single purpose.

It is true that, as Mr. Carr Saunders has pointed out, the usual rule has been for population to be practically stationary, and an increase such as has occurred in the nineteenth century is a most exceptional phenomenon. We may suppose that something similar occurred in Egypt and Babylonia when they took to irrigation and careful agriculture. But in historical times there seems to have been nothing of the sort. All estimates of population before the nineteenth century are very conjectural, but in this matter they all concur. A rapidly increasing population is, therefore, a rare and exceptional phenomenon. If, as seems to be the case, the population is now again tending to become stationary in the most civilized countries, that only means that they have worked through an abnormal condition and reverted to the usual practice of mankind.

The great merit of Mr. Carr Saunders’s book on population consists in its pointing out that voluntary restriction has been practised ​in almost all ages and places, and has been more effective in preserving a stationary population than elimination through a high mortality. Possibly he somewhat overstates his case. In India and China, for example, it seems to be mainly the high death rate which prevents the population from increasing very rapidly. In China statistics are lacking, but in India they exist. The birth rate there is enormous, yet the population, as Mr. Carr Saunders himself points out, increases slightly more slowly than that of England. This is due mainly to infant mortality and plague and other grave diseases. I believe that China would show a similar state of affairs if statistics were available. In spite of these important exceptions, however, Mr. Carr Saunders’s thesis is undoubtedly true in the main. Various methods of limiting population have been practised. The simplest of these is infanticide, which has existed on a very large scale wherever religion has permitted it. Sometimes the practice has had such a firm hold that in accepting Christianity men have stipulated that it should not interfere with infanticide.^[1] ​The Doukhobors, who got into trouble with the Tsarist government for their refusal of military service on the ground that human life is sacred, subsequently got into trouble with the Canadian government for their tendency to the practice of infanticide. Other methods have, however, also been common. Among many races, a woman abstains from sexual intercourse not only during pregnancy, but during lactation, which is often prolonged for two or three years. This necessarily limits her fertility very considerably, especially among savages, who grow old much sooner than civilized races. The Australian aborigines practise an exceedingly painful operation which very much diminishes male potency and restricts fertility in a marked degree. As we know from Genesis,^[2] at least one definite birth control method was known and practised in antiquity, although it was disapproved of by the Jews, whose religion was always very anti-Malthusian. By the use of these various devices, men escaped the wholesale deaths from starvation which would have occurred if they had used their fecundity to the utmost.

Starvation has, nevertheless, played a con​siderable part in keeping population down; not so much, perhaps, under quite primitive conditions as among agricultural peasant communities of a not very advanced type. The famine in Ireland in 1846–7 was so severe that the population has never since attained anything like the level that it had reached before. Famines in Russia have been frequent, and that of 1921 is still fresh in the memory of every one. When I was in China in 1920, considerable portions of that country were suffering a famine quite as severe as the Russian famine of the following year, but the victims secured less sympathy than those of the Volga, because their misfortunes could not be attributed to Communism. Such facts show that population does sometimes increase up to and even beyond the limit of subsistence. This happens, however, especially where fluctuations are liable to diminish the amount of food suddenly and drastically.

Christianity, wherever it was believed, put an end to all checks upon the growth of population except continence. Infanticide was, of course, forbidden; so was abortion; and so were all contraceptive measures. It is true that the clergy and the monks and nuns were celi​bate, but I do not suppose that in mediæval Europe they formed so large a percentage of the population as unmarried women do in England at the present day. They did not, therefore, represent any statistically very important check upon fertility. Accordingly in the Middle Ages, as compared with ancient times, there was probably a larger number of deaths caused by destitution and pestilence. The population increased very slowly. A slightly higher rate of increase marked the eighteenth century, but with the nineteenth century a quite extraordinary change took place, and the rate of growth reached a height which it had probably never attained before. It is estimated that in 1066 England and Wales contained 26 persons per square mile. In 1801, this figure had risen to 153; in 1901 it had risen to 561. The increase during the nineteenth century is thus nearly four times as great as the increase from the Norman Conquest to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Nor does the increase of the population of England and Wales give an adequate picture of the facts, for during that period the British stock was peopling large parts of the world previously inhabited by a few savages.

​There is very little reason to attribute this increase of population to an increase in the birth rate. It is attributable rather to a decline in the death rate, due partly to the advance of medical science, but much more, I think, to the rising level of prosperity brought about by the industrial revolution, From the year 1841, when the birth rate began to be recorded in England, down to the years 1871–5, the birth rate was nearly constant, reaching, in the latter period, a maximum of 35.5. At this stage two events occurred. The first was the Education Act of 1870; the second, the prosecution of Bradlaugh for neo-Malthusian propaganda in 1878. One finds, accordingly, that the birth rate declined from that moment onward, at first slowly and then catastrophically. The Education Act began to afford the motive, since children were no longer such a lucrative investment; and Bradlaugh afforded the means. In the quinquennial period 1911–15, the birth rate had fallen to 23.6. In the first quarter of 1929, it had fallen to 16.5. The population of England is still slowly increasing owing to improvements in medicine and hygiene, but it is rapidly approaching a stationary ​figure.^[3] France, as every one knows, has had a virtually stationary population for a considerable time.

The fall in the birth rate has been very rapid and nearly universal throughout western Europe. The only exceptions have been backward countries such as Portugal. It has been more marked in urban than in rural communities. It began among the well-to-do, but has now penetrated to all classes in towns and industrial areas. The birth rate is still higher among the poor than among the well-to-do, but it is lower now in the poorest boroughs of London than it was ten years ago in the richest. This fall, as every one knows (although some will not admit it), is due to abortion and the use of contraceptives. There is no particular reason why it should stop at the point where it produces a stationary population. It may easily go on until the population begins to diminish, and the ultimate result may, for aught we can tell, be a virtual extinction of the most civilized races.

Before we can profitably discuss this prob​lem, it is necessary to be clear as to what we desire. There is in any given state of economic technique what Carr Saunders calls an optimum density of population, that is to say, a density which gives the maximum income per head. If the population falls below this level or rises above it, the general level of economic well-being is diminished. Broadly speaking, every advance in economic technique increases the optimum density of population. In the hunting stage, one person per square mile is about right, whereas in an advanced industrial country a population of several hundred per square mile is likely to be not excessive. There is reason to think that England, since the war, is overpopulated. One cannot say the same of France, still less of America. But it is not likely that France, or indeed any country of western Europe, would gain in average wealth by an increase of population. That being so, we have no reason, from an economic point of view, to desire that population should increase. Those who feel this desire are usually inspired by motives of nationalistic militarism, and the increase of population that they desire is not to be a permanent one, since it is to be wiped out as soon as they can get the war at which they ​are aiming. In fact, therefore, the position of these people is that it is better to restrict population by deaths on the battlefield than by contraceptives. This view is not one which can be entertained by any one who has thought it out, and those who seem to hold it do so only from muddle-headedness. Apart from arguments concerned with war, we have every reason to rejoice that the knowledge of birth-control methods is causing the population of civilized countries to become stationary.

The matter would, however, be quite otherwise if the population were actually to diminish, for a diminution, if it continues unchecked, means ultimate extinction, and we cannot desire to see the most civilized races of the world disappear. The use of contraceptives, therefore, is only to be welcomed if steps can be taken to confine it within such limits as will preserve the population at about its present level. I do not think there is any difficulty in this. The motives to family limitation are mainly, though not wholly, economic, and the birth rate could be increased by diminishing the expense of children, or, if this should prove necessary, by making them an actual source of income to their parents. Any such ​measure, however, in the present nationalistic world, would be very dangerous, since it would be used as a method of securing military preponderance. One can imagine all the leading military nations adding to the race of armaments a race of propagation, under the slogan: “The cannon must have their fodder.” Here, again, we are faced with the absolute necessity of an international government if civilization is to survive. Such a government, if it is to be effective in preserving the peace of the world, must pass decrees limiting the rate at which any military nation may increase its population. The hostility between Australia and Japan illustrates the gravity of this problem. The population of Japan increases very fast and that of Australia (apart from immigration) rather slowly. This causes a hostility which is exceedingly difficult to deal with, since apparently just principles can be appealed to by both sides in the dispute. It may, I think, be assumed that before very long throughout western Europe and America the birth rate will be such as to involve no increase in population, unless definite steps are taken by governments with that end in view. But it cannot be expected that the most powerful ​military nations will sit still while other nations reverse the balance of power by the mere process of breeding. Any international authority which is to do its work properly will therefore be obliged to take the population question into consideration, and to insist upon birth-control propaganda in any recalcitrant nation. Unless this is done the peace of the world cannot be secured.

The population question is thus twofold. We have to guard against too rapid an increase of population, and we have also to guard against a decrease. The former danger is old, and exists still in many countries, such as Portugal, Spain, Russia and Japan. The latter danger is new, and exists as yet only in Western Europe. It would also exist in America if America depended for its population upon breeding alone, but hitherto immigration has caused the population of America to increase at least as fast as is desirable, in spite of a very low birth rate among native-born Americans. The new danger, that of a dwindling population, is one to which our ancestral habits of thought are not adapted. It has been met by moral homilies and by laws against birth-control propaganda. Such methods, as the statis​tics show, are quite unavailing. The use of contraceptives has become part of the common practice of all civilized nations, and cannot now be eradicated. The habit of not facing facts where sex is concerned is so deeply rooted in governments and important persons that it cannot be expected to cease suddenly. It is, however, a very undesirable habit, and I think it may be hoped that, when those who are now young acquire positions of importance, they will be better in this respect than their fathers and grandfathers. One may hope that they will frankly recognize the inevitability of contraceptive practices, and their desirability so long as they do not cause an actual diminution of population. The proper course in any nation which is threatened with an actual decrease is obviously an experimental diminution of the financial burden of children until the point is reached where the birth rate is such as to maintain the existing population.

In this connection there is one respect in which our existing moral code might be altered with advantage. There are in England some two million more women than men, and these are condemned by law and custom to remain childless, which is undoubtedly to many of ​them a great deprivation. If custom tolerated the unmarried mother, and made her economic situation tolerable, it cannot be doubted that a great many of the women at present condemned to celibacy would have children. Strict monogamy is based upon the assumption that the numbers of the sexes will be approximately equal. Where this is not the case, it involves considerable cruelty to those whom arithmetic compels to remain single. And where there is reason to desire an increase in the birth rate, this cruelty may be publicly as well as privately undesirable.

As knowledge increases, it becomes more and more possible to control, by deliberate governmental action, forces which hitherto have seemed like forces of nature. Increase of population is one of these. Since the introduction of Christianity, it has been left to the blind operation of instinct. But the time is rapidly approaching when it will have to be deliberately controlled. In this matter, however, as before in regard to the State control of childhood, we have found that State interference, if it is to be beneficial, will have to be the interference of an international State, not of the competing militaristic States of the present day.