The reproductive instinct, on the other hand, may be thwarted by antagonistic forces—by the selfishness of parents who shun their responsibilities, or of mothers who dread the pains and perils of child-bearing; by the greed of parents who would endow old age rather than foster youth; by the desire of women to enjoy independence rather than seek marriage; by the too early emancipation of children, which leaves to the parents no gains and no joys beyond the cost and trouble of upbringing; by insufficient house-room or exorbitant taxation, or by any one of a thousand causes.
Thus the considerations that influence reproduction are infinitely varied, and being of a social character they are neither necessary nor permanent, nor yet universal. They may very well be defeated by motives that belong to the social order, and this is just what happens. And it is at least possible to conceive of a state of society where religious faith has vanished and patriotism is dead, where the family lasts only for one generation, and where all land has been appropriated so that the calling of the father is denied to the son; where existence has again become nomadic and suffering unbearable, and where marriage, easily annulled by divorce, has become more or less of a free union. In such a community, with all incentives to reproduction removed and all antagonistic forces in full operation, the birth-rate would fall to zero. And if all nations have not yet arrived at this stage they all seem to be tending towards it. It is true that a new social environment may give rise to new motives. We believe that it will, but as yet we are ignorant of the nature of these promptings.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the sexual instinct plays quite a secondary rôle in the procreation of the human species. Nature doubtless has united the two instincts by giving them the same organs, and those who believe in final causes can admire the ruse which Nature has adopted for securing the preservation of the species by coupling generation with sexual attraction. But man has displayed ingenuity even greater than Nature’s by separating the two functions. He now finds that (since he has known how to get rid of reproduction) he can gratify his lust without being troubled by the consequences. The fears of Malthus have vanished: the other spectre, race suicide, is new casting a gloom over the land.
Malthus’s condemnation of such practices was of little avail. Other moralists more indulgent than the master have given them their sanction by endeavouring to show that this is the only way in which men can perform a double function, on the one hand giving full scope to sexual instinct in accordance with the physiological and psychological laws of their being, and on the other taking care not to leave such a supreme duty as that of child-bearing to mere chance and not to impose upon womankind such an exhausting task as that of maternity save when freely and voluntarily undertaken. This is quite contrary to the pastor’s teaching concerning moral restraint. The Neo-Malthusians, on the other hand, consider his teaching very immoral, as being contrary to the laws of physiology, infected with ideas of Christian asceticism, and altogether worse than the evil it seeks to remedy. His rule of enforced celibacy might, in their opinion, involve more suffering even than want of food, and late marriages simply constitute an outrage upon morality by encouraging prostitution and increasing the number of illegitimate births. The Neo-Malthusians[306] persist in regarding themselves as his disciples because they think that he clearly demonstrated, despite himself perhaps, that the exercise of the blind instinct of reproduction must result in the multiplication of human beings who are faced by want and disease and liable to sudden extinction or slow degradation, and that the only way of avoiding this is to check the instinct.
There is reason to believe, however, that were Malthus now alive he would not be a Neo-Malthusian. He would not have willingly pardoned his disciples the perpetration of sexual frauds which enable man to be freed from the responsibilities which Nature intended him to bear. Nevertheless we must recognise that the concessions which he made prepared the way for this further development.
Malthus did not seem to realise the full import of these delicate questions which contributed so powerfully to the overthrow of his doctrine. Especially is this true of the emphasis which he laid upon chastity, involving as he thought abstention from the joys of marriage. Such celibacy he would impose only upon the poor.[307] The rich are obviously so circumstanced that children cannot be a hindrance. We know well enough that it was in the interests of the poor themselves that Malthus imposed his cruel law “not to bring beings into the world for whom the means of support cannot be found.” But that does not prevent its emphasising in the most heartless fashion imaginable the inequality of their conditions, forcing the poor to choose between want of bread and celibacy. Malthus gave a quietus to the old song which eulogises love in a cottage as the very acme of happiness. It is only just to remark, however, that he does not go so far as to put an interdict upon marriage altogether, which is actually the case in some countries. The old liberal economist asserts himself here. He sees clearly enough that, leaving aside all humanitarian considerations, the remedy offered would be worse than the evil, for its only result would be a diminution in the number of legitimate children and an increase in the number of those born out of wedlock.[308]
When telling the poor that they themselves were the authors of their misery,[309] because of their improvident habits, their early marriages, and their large families, and that no written law, no institution, and no effort of charity could in any way remedy it, he failed to realise that he was furnishing the propertied classes with a good pretext for dissociating themselves from the fate of the working classes.[310] And during the century which has passed since he wrote the way to every comprehensive scheme of socialistic or communistic organisation has been barred and every projected reform which claimed to ameliorate the condition of the poor effectively thwarted by the argument that the only result would be to increase the number of participators as well as the amount to be distributed, and that consequently no one would be any the better off.
Whatever opposition Malthus’s doctrines may have aroused, his teaching has long since become a part and parcel of economic science. Occasionally it has thwarted legitimate claims, while at other times it has been used to buttress some well-known Classical doctrine, such as the law of rent or the wages fund theory. On more than one occasion it has done service in the defence of family life and private property, two institutions which are supposed to act as effective checks upon the growth of population, because of the responsibilities which they involve.[311]
The population question has lost none of its importance, although it has somewhat changed its aspect. What Malthus called the preventive check has got such a hold of almost every country that modern economists and sociologists are concerned not so much with the question of an unlimited growth of population as with the regular and universal decline of the birth-rate. Everyone is further agreed that the causes must be social.
It is not enough to say that the cause is a deliberate determination of parents to have no children or to have only a limited number. The question is, Why do they decide to have none or to limit their family to a certain number only? Why is this limitation more marked in France than elsewhere, and why is it more pronounced there to-day than it was say two or three generations ago? The special causes which apply to the France of to-day must somehow be discovered, and such causes may be expected to be less active elsewhere. It may be that Paul Leroy-Beaulieu is right when he claims that the progress of civilisation must always mean a declining birth-rate, because the fresh needs and desires and the extra expenditure which it necessarily involves are incompatible with the duties and responsibilities of maternity. It is possible that it diminishes as democracy advances, because the latter strengthens the telescopic faculty and quickens the desire to rise in the social scale as rapidly and as effectively as possible. M. Dumont, who advocates this view, has happily named it the law of capillarity. More precise causes are sometimes invoked, but they vary according to the particular school that formulates them. Le Play