Presented to the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
by the
ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE LIBRARY
1980
The Claims of the Coming Generation
The Claims of the Coming Generation
A consideration by
various writers
arranged by
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SIR JAMES MARCHANT, K.B.E., LL.D.
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LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1923
Printed in Great Britain by the Cheltenham Press, Ltd., Cheltenham.
DEDICATION
TO THE
REVD. PRINCIPAL A. E. GARVIE, M.A., D.D. Principal of New College, London University.
Dear Dr. Garvie,
You will remember that by the kind invitation of Lord Crewe we held our Seventeenth Annual Conference at Crewe House. The subject of the Conference was " The Claims of the Coming Generation," and the assembly was honoured by the presence of H.R.H. the late Princess Christian, who always took a great interest in our work, and whose kindly co-operation will now be missed by so many other philanthropic institutions.
This volume of essays is the outcome of that Conference, and I venture to dedicate it to you in token of your long and intimate association with the work of the National Birth-Rate Commission, the National Council for the Promotion of Race Renewal and its allied operations.
For many years, amid pressing duties, you have unstintedly- devoted your time to furthering our various investigations, and our reports bear the marks of your keen judgment and ripe scholarship. Will you be good enough to "look upon this dedication as an expression of our deep appreciation of your loyal and true friendship and guidance.
Yours very sincerely,
60 Gower Street, JAMES MARCHANT.
July, 1923.
Contents
Chapter page
I. The Right to be Well Born, by the
Very Rev. Dean Inge, D.D. . . i
II. The Betterment of Child Life, by Sir
Arthur Newsholme, K.G.B., M.D. 15
Late Principal Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, England, and Lecturer on Public Health at JohnsHopkins' Uni- versity, Baltimore, U.S.A.
III. The Value of Mental Hygiene, by Professor Sir Frederick W. Mott, K.B.E., M.D., LL.D, F.R.S. .. 37
Consulting Physician Charing Cross Hospital. Pathologist to the L.C.C., and Director of the Pathological Laboratory, Maudsley Hospital.
IV. The Sex-Instruction of the Young, by Professor J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., LL.D . . . . . . . . . . 73
Regius Professor of Natural History, Aberdeen University.
Chapter Page
V. The Future for Elementary Education,
by Sir James Yoxall, M.P. . . . . 98
Secretary of the National Union of Teachers.
VI. The Moral Training of Modern Girls, by
Dr. Mary Scharlieb, M.S., G.B.E. . . 109
VII. Training of the Young Citizen for Worthy Parenthood, by Dr. C. J. Bond, C.M.G., F.R.C.S 135
Vice-Chairman Medical Consultative Council.
VIII. The Religious Training of the Coming Generation, by the Rev. R. C. Gillie, M.A., D.G.L. .. .. 156
Ex-President of the Sunday School Union.
CHAPTER I
THE RIGHT TO BE WELL BORN By Dean Inge
Not long ago I read in a Roman Catholic newspaper, which was engaged in the congenial task of attacking eugenics, a statement that, strictly speaking, we have no duties to posterity, for posterity does not exist. The writer was perhaps an Irishman, who remembered that famous utterance of a compatriot, " Posterity has done nothing for me, why should I do any- thing for posterity ?" The philosophical theory of Time which seems to underlie the dictum of this journalist is, I believe, unorthodox ; the sentiment is certainly both ridiculous and immoral. Except for a politician who remembers that the unborn have no votes, the value of a human life in the twenty-first century is as great as that of a life in the twentieth. And if
2 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
a father thinks it his duty to give his children " a good start in life," we may surely remind him that a boy does not start in life when he leaves school, but when he makes his first appearance in the world, or even a little earlier. Every child has the right to be well born ; and if he is not well born it is for the public interest that he should not be born at all.
For some years after Sir Francis Galton founded Eugenics, the new science seemed to be flourishing, and the intelligent public showed an increasing interest in it. Since the beginning of the war it has languished and seems to be dying, not of ridicule but of indifference. The scientific study of heredity of course goes on, and new discoveries are made every year ; but the public absolutely refuses to treat it as a matter of practical importance.
This a is great disappointment to those who hoped that the nation was at last awakening to the danger of racial degeneracy and to the opportunities of racial improvement. The working faith of the age is in the efficacy of organised effort to improve the conditions of human fife ; and it might have been expected
THE RIGHT TO BE WELL BORN 3
that the improvement of human nature itself would have aroused at least as much interest as the amelioration of environment. But it has not been so. Environmental reform evokes enthusiasm ; it is the material of politics, and, in defiance of the whole teaching of the Gospel, of religion too. Christ regarded the apparatus of life with great indifference ; for Him character was everything, external conditions almost nothing ; and He was very emphatic that we cannot gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles. And yet in our day anyone who urges the importance of Nature against Nurture (to use Galton's convenient antithesis) runs the risk of being called a faddist, a heartless intellectualist, and an enemy of the working man. If these accusations are not enough, he is denounced as wishing to abolish marriage and substitute the method of the stud-farm. Archbishops declare that he cares more for brawn than for brain ; and he is made to feel that he is a very unpopular person, for whom any stick is good enough.
It is a pity, because the evil effects of suspend- ing natural selection without introducing any kind of rational selection to take its place, have
4 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
been proved up to the hilt. It is not disputed by anyone who has examined the facts that the feeble-minded are more prolific than the normal, and that their mental infirmity is transmitted with great regularity to their offspring. It is not disputed that insanity, deaf-mutism, cataract, haemophibia, and other diseases, run in families. The disastrous effects of contagious disease upon the next generation are well known. Nor on the other side is there any doubt that the country is blessed with many excellent stocks, which produce children of far more than average ability in each generation. These things are not in dispute ; they most intimately concern the happiness or misery of millions and the progress or decline of the nation as a whole.
If the subject were a dull one, it would be easier to understand the indifference of the public, though such indifference would in any case be foolish and culpable. But it is in fact intensely interesting. The laws of heredity are imperfectly known, but concrete examples may be found in any family. Let my readers trace their own pedigrees for three generations back, on the father's side and the mother's. Let them
THE RIGHT TO BE WELL BORN 5
note any special aptitude, say for music or mathematics, or scholarship, or science, or athletics, or success in business. Then let them note any defects, physical or moral, and observe how they have reappeared in different members of the same family. Such an inquiry will certainly confirm the truth of St. Paul's question : " What hast thou that thou didst not receive ? " In my own case, my observations have left no doubt whatever in my mind. One of my great grandfathers, a well-known scholar and divine n his day, has had in four generations eleven male descendants who have lived to grow up. Of these, ten have won scholarships at Oxford or Cambridge Colleges, and several of them have obtained fellowships and other academical honours. Six of them, including Archdeacon Ralph Churton himself, have become dignitaries of the Church of England, and three are included in the Dictionary of National Biography as men of letters. Whether these little distinctions are worth any more than the " points " for which collies are awarded prizes at a dog show, I do not know ; but a dog fancier would say that the family has bred absolutely true to type for
6 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
four generations. I believe that parallels to this record could be found in very many families, without appealing to the well-known instances of the inheritance of real genius, as in the Darwin pedigree.
Professor Karl Pearson has given his opinion, based on elaborate statistical research, that Nature is certainly five times, and possibly ten times, more important than Nurture in determin- ing the moral, intellectual, and physical characteristics of human beings. If this is so, the popular contempt for eugenics is worse than stupid ; it is a proof of downright intellectual barbarism.
If the importance of good breeding is admitted, — and no unprejudiced inquirer could come to any other conclusion — what can be done to utilise the knowledge which science has put into our hands ? What practical steps can be taken to improve the national stock, or at any rate to prevent its further degradation. For civilisa- tion at present is racially destructive ; it picks out the best and then sterilises them. Social aristocracies, which generally spring from at least one able ancestor, the " founder of the
THE RIGHT TO BE WELL BORN 7
family," have a tendency to die out ; and modern taxation seems to have been devised to extinguish the intellectual aristocracy. The birth-rate in the learned professions is the lowest in the country, and post-war conditions have made the lot of this class, all over Europe, quite desperate.
I fear that nothing is to be hoped for at present from legislation. Neither the character nor the intellectual attainments of the politicians who are thrown up by democracy inspire us with any confidence that they are likely to care for the welfare of posterity, or to realise the importance of race hygiene. And even if they were converted, they are impotent, being the nominees and slaves of some ignorant and selfish faction. A " Feeble Minded " Bill was got through with much difficulty ; no further legisla- tion in the interests of the race is to be looked for in our generation.
Nor is much to be expected from propagandist societies which, as experience has shown, exercise very little influence. They do not reach the public, and they received very little support from the most learned researchers in the subject, who seem afraid of being com-
8 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
promised by association with amateurs and popularisers.
I make my appeal to the medical profession. Our physicians and surgeons are a noble body of men, and they enjoy an amount of public confidence which is well deserved. But they have not used their collective authority in educating and influencing public opinion. They have issued no pronouncements backed by the whole weight of their authority. We are used to such pronouncements from the leaders of religious bodies, such as the Report of the Lam- beth Conference last year ; why do not the doctors issue declarations of the same kind ? They have moved in the right direction since the beginning of the war, in endeavouring to enlighten the public about the terrible conse- quences of venereal disease. They ought to have done this much earlier, as I ventured to hint when I preached in St. Paul's Cathedral to a Medical Congress shortly before the war. And now I urge that they should issue an official publication containing information in a popular form on all matters connected with marriage and heredity. It would be widely
THE RIGHT TO BE WELL BORN 9
read. . It would help to convince the public that these matters are really serious, and that the welfare both of the nation and of the families which compose it, depends to a large extent on the diffusion of knowledge and readiness to act upon it.
I will have the courage to draw up a list of subjects which such an official handbook should include. I am an ignorant layman in these matters ; almost any medical man could draw up a better synopsis. But I do not wish to leave my appeal quite vague, and I am convinced that even such an imperfect plan as I have traced out would have great value.
1. General laws of heredity, so far as known.
Explanation of Mendel's Law. Question of non-Mendelian inheritance.
2. Inherited tendency to certain diseases.
Incidence of heredity in insanity, idiocy, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, deaf-mutism, diseases of the middle ear, cataract, other diseases of the eye, gout, asthma, etc., diseases which are generally or frequently recessive (latent) in the female sex — haemophilia, colour-blindness, etc.
io CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
3. Question of inherited tendency to cancer
and tuberculosis.
4. Racial poisons. Venereal diseases. Ques-
tion of action of alcohol upon the germ plasm.
5. The " stigmata " of degeneracy and their
significance.
6. Inheritance of moral defects. Vice and
criminality in families.
7. Inheritance of desirable qualities. Stature,
good health, longevity. Intellectual capacity ; in what degree commonly transmitted. High character ; its trans- mission.
8. The most favourable age for marriage in
both sexes. Effects on the offspring of immature and senile marriages.
9. Alleged undesirability of cousinly mar-
riages. Consideration of the evidence on both sides. 10. Effects of race-mixture. Results of mis- cegenation between (a) different European or white stocks, (b) between whites and coloured races of various kinds, including the nations of the Far East.
THE RIGHT TO BE WELL BORN n
1 1 . Question of compulsory health certificates
before marriage. If adopted, what form would the certificate take ?
12. The best interval between births. Cases
where a further increase in the family is
contra-indicated. I have no doubt that the doctors would say " Half of these questions cannot be answered with any certainty ; we do not possess the knowledge to write your handbook." By all means let our experts err, if they must err, on the side of caution ; it would be unfortunate if rules were issued which had to be retracted afterwards. But the information that a point is doubtful is itself of value. Such questions as discouragements of marriages between first cousins, and " consumptive families " are con- stantly being raised, and the public has not yet access even to the inconclusive judgments of the medical profession on these important subjects. And there are surely many answers which could be given without hesitation. There are many families into which no well-instructed doctor would dream of marrying or allowing his children to marry if he could stop them. And the advice
12 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
given in the official hand-book would be keenly criticised ; evidence from all quarters would come in. The Government would find it advis- able to use the next Census for collecting infor- mation on controverted points ; and a new and revised edition might be issued every five years. The nation would be gradually educated, even up to the point of initiating legislation against obviously degenerative tendencies.
It cannot be too strongly insisted on that to pay exclusive attention to the environment and to neglect entirely the care of the race itself, can only lead to rapid deterioration. There is already a great danger of functional atrophy supervening on the substitution of the machine for the human brain and hands in modern industry. We have only to compare the physique and general appearance of the low-grade town dweller with that of the rural worker, in order to realise the danger with which civilisation is confronted. Life is becoming more complex, and the enfeebled products of long continued dysgenic processes are unable to cope with the increasing demands which an elaborate civilisa- tion makes upon its members.
THE RIGHT TO BE WELL BORN 13
%
A purely environmental policy has this among other drawbacks, that it is ruinously expensive. Whether we know it or not, the capable and industrious part of the population is heavily taxed for the maintenance of a vast number of useless mouths — social parasites of every kind who fasten on the community and suck its blood because they either will not or cannot support themselves. Our jails, hospitals, workhouses and slums are full of persons who could be turned into useful citizens only by " hatching them over again and hatching them different " ; and who, in the absence of a fairy godmother, had much better not have been hatched at all. The drain upon the industry of the country caused by the supposed necessity of maintaining all the inefhcients, is becoming too severe for the country to bear. It is tolerated at present because the burden is thrown almost entirely upon the class which pays the taxes and is not consulted about voting them. But this cannot continue long ; the masses will discover that the country cannot be burdened with the support of a swarm of parasites without saddling the whole of the working population with a mass of unrewarded
i4 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
labour. It is a condition which no country can afford. Sheer necessity will at last drive us to cruelties which a little foresight might have prevented.
The common objection that we do not know what to breed for is not serious. We know very well what we do not want to breed for, and we see object lessons in the result of haphazard procreation whenever we walk along the street. And without dreaming of such fantastic specialisa- tion as has sometimes been suggested — a method to which I believe there are fatal physiological objections — we do know the types of man and woman which we should like to see multiplied till they become the rule rather than the exception. The principle which we wish to nail to the mast is that the test of the welfare of a country, and of the success of its civilisation, is not the number of its population, nor the amount and diffusion of its wealth ; it is the quality of the men and women whom it produces.
CHAPTER II
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE
By Sir Arthur Newsholme
There is some inclination to exaggerate the influence of organised intervention, outside family life, in securing the physical well-being of our children, and to assume that parental care is usually incompetent when unassisted by official and voluntary agencies for promoting the health of the mother and her child. It is well, therefore, to premise one's observations by the statement that failures in parental care are the exception, not the rule, and by the further statement that — omitting the case of a few well-defined diseases of somewhat rare incidence — the efforts of eugenists to influence family alliances have insufficient scientific basis for the making of practical recommendations. Investigation on a much greater scale, checked
15
16 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
at each stage, is needed before results are obtained from the study of heredity which can be generally applied in improving the standard of national health and intelligence.
But although family life is usually successful, there are in every station of society, families which in the aggregate are responsible for a vast amount of physical deficiency and actual disease ; and this might have been prevented had intelli- gence and care been exercised, fortified by the instruction and individual counsel which volun- tary agencies and public health authorities can give ; and if economic and social circumstances had been such as to protect against privation, whether of food, clothing, nursing, or of medical attendance when required.
The facts of experience on which this statement is based have been displayed in governmental and local official reports, in which the relative position of each large and small area in the country in regard to both maternal and child mortality is set out and the black spots of squalor and disease are exposed to those who care to read. These reports show that out of a given number born the loss of life of children under five years of
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 17
age is heaviest in towns, is heavier in industrial than in non-industrial towns, is heaviest in the poorer and more squalid parts of towns and is doubled among illegitimate infants, and is nearly always terribly excessive among infants kept in institutions. The infant is a great indivi- dualist. It is demonstrable that this excess of child mortality, and the corresponding, or even greater excess of non-fatal disease and invalidism, is associated with evidences of municipal uncleanliness, with filth contaminations of back- yards and houses, with accumulations of organic refuse inviting swarms of flies ; and that when these conditions are improved there follows a reduction of the toll on child life. Defective housing conditions, with absence of conveniences for a cleanly life, no less than neglect by alcoholic or shiftless parents mean destruction of child life. The statement of conditions adverse to normal child life might be extended, but the preceding list serves to illustrate the magnitude of the field of preventive measures open to sanitary authorities, to social workers, and to parents. Child welfare work must not be thought of solely as a specialised department of
18 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
work ; for there are involved in it social problems of character and temperance, and of poverty in its multiform aspects, as well as the medical, epidemiological and hygienic considerations which enter into the prevention of disease in the mother and her infant.
We have already passed beyond the stage in which social and hygienic workers are satisfied with efforts directed solely to the infant. Healthy infancy and childhood for most children are only practicable if the mother's health is satis- factory ; and as bearing on this point, it is significant that, (i) under present conditions in England, one mother loses her life for every 250 infants born, in consequence of the risks and illnesses of child-bearing, and that (2) irrespective of any corresponding differences in personal fit- ness for maternity, these risks vary, being double in some parts of the country what they are in others. This is good evidence that a high pro- portion of the deaths from childbearing are avoidable. About half of them are due to sepsis, caused chiefly by dirt infection. In the modern lying-in hospitals deaths from this cause rarely occur, while in private medical and mid-
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 19
wifery practice they continue. The general result is that in England and Wales childbearing almost deserves to be classified as a dangerous occupa- tion ; and, as I pointed out some years ago, the annual number of lives of mothers lost from this cause is nearly equal to the number of deaths of men at the same age from all forms of accident, industrial and other. This fact, that the domestic life of women is as dangerous as the industrial life of the husband, so far as accidents are concerned, shows how urgent is the need for further action to protect the life and health of mothers and thus maintain the integrity of family life. Much is being done under the Maternity and Child Welfare schemes of local authorities. Action, however, has never been commensurate with the needs, and recently an effective official break has been placed on progress in this essential national work, in the false name of economy.
From this standpoint of the community, the loss of life of mother or infant is not the most serious burden on the community. The maimed in this battle are many times the killed ; and the excessive mortality in childhood and of
20 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
parents from childbearing must be regarded, not merely because of their direct significance, but also as terrible pointers to the damaged health, which may pursue mother and child through life.
The preventability of a large share of maternal mortality is shewn by an analysis of its causes ; and although this is not the place to discuss the causes in detail, it may be said with a high degree of probability that three-fourths of this mortality is due to sepsis, to insufficient or unskilled assistance in and after parturition, and to the failure to secure preventive treatment during pregnancy. As shewn by the great differences between infant mortality in town and country and in different towns, and in wards of the same town, there is no inherent difficulty in reducing infant mortality to one-half its present amount, which is already much lower than that experienced before the beginning of the 20th century.
Four diseases stand out as the chief enemies of life in the first year of life after birth ; one of them, syphilis, being also a principal cause of death before birth. These are syphilis, tuber- culosis, acute diarrhoea, and acute respiratory
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 21
infections — pneumonia and bronchitis. Measles and whooping cough come next, but are heavier causes of mortality in the next four years of life. These four categories exemplify the great possibilities of life and health-saving within reach. Although syphilis does not bulk largely in the death returns, it is one of the most serious enemies of healthy birth and of healthy child- hood ; gonorrhoea, the twin disease associated with sexual promiscuity, being the great cause of sterility. These two great social diseases are not likely to be reduced in insignificance until chastity and marital fidelity become the rule among men. In present efforts against venereal diseases — important and valuable as these are — there is perhaps too little prominence given to this point, and too little " drive " directed to educating public opinion to demand the same previous standard of sexual conduct for the bridegroom as for the bride. Public opinion is very powerful, and it could be brought to this point in not many years, if moral and religious teachers were to take their fit part in this work. Until this is achieved unhappy marriages will continue to be frequent, wives in large numbers
22 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
will continue to be invalided chronically by gonorrhoeal infection, and the insidious virus of syphilis will continue to pass from innocent mother to child, and one of the great causes of insanity and of premature arterial degeneration will persist.
In some of our large towns summer diarrhoea, one of the commonest causes of death in infancy, and a serious cause of enfeebled childhood and youth in those who survive attack by it, has already been reduced to a shadow of its former self. This has been marked, for example, in the city of New York, and critical examination of the figures for this city and for English cities shows that only a part of the reduction can be explained by a cycle of cooler and wetter summers. The reduction in this disease has been brought about by increased municipal and domestic cleanliness and particularly by the greater care bestowed on infant feeding. Summer diarrhoea is much rarer among the well-to-do than among the poor ; the difference between the two being explicable not so much by standard of intelligence, but more in terms of inequality of the service which mother and
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 23
infant can command. The efforts of child welfare centres and of health visitors have improved the prospects of infant health, not only by judicious and skilled advice, adapted to the needs of each case, but also by bringing nursing and medical assistance within reach, by securing better care of the domestic milk supply and increased cleanliness of the home and its surroundings.
Tuberculosis figures much more largely than syphilis in the infantile death returns, though it is doubtful whether this would be so if strictly accurate diagnosis and death returns were obtainable. Whether so or not, the importance of tuberculosis as a cause, not only of disfiguring and disabling gland, bone, and joint diseases, but also of acute illness and death in infancy, is too little recognised. The toll of this disease on life, in early childhood, in fact, until a few years ago, has been heavier than at any other time of life. At this age children are in the same position as the adults of remote com- munities, who prior to adult life have not been exposed to the tubercle bacillus. Their mortality from tuberculosis is very excessive. The fate
24 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
of children under English conditions of life, depends on whether they can be saved during early life from excessive doses of tubercle bacilli. With each added year of life occasional exposure to presumably smaller doses of infection reduces the proclivity to tuberculosis, and the problem, therefore, for the children of consumptive parents is one of segregation of the infective patient from the younger children, or of the children from the parent, until greater power of resistance to infection has become established. Short of such segregation, a rigid line of conduct on the part of the consumptive himself minimises risk. The avoidance of caressing, the protection of children from handling articles which have become con- taminated on the floor, and like precautions, would go far to reduce this serious cause of child mortality.
The prevention of acute catarrhs, often fol- lowed by pneumonia, is one of the most difficult problems of childhood. Adults with catarrhs indiscreetly expose their fellows to infection. Coughing, sneezing, and shaking hands after using a handkerchief, successfully spread these catarrhs. Where young children are concerned,
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 25
there are added risks of fondling, and it is not realised that a common catarrh in an adult may mean a fatal pneumonia in an infant. It will probably be many years before the general public realise and act upon the knowledge of these facts. Meanwhile, general domestic cleanli- ness and an approximation to open-air conditions of domestic life serve to reduce this danger, as well as that from tuberculosis.
It has been necessary to lay stress on these infections, to which measles and whooping cough should be added, because more than half of the total deaths of children under five years of age are caused by communicable diseases ; and because in the absence of possibilities of successful vaccination against most of these diseases and in view of the almost universal proclivity to them, we are dependent on municipal and familial measures of cleanliness and personal precautions for their reduction.
But although infections constitute the chief danger to health in early life, direct hygienic action for their prevention needs to be supple- mented in other directions. The problem of nutrition is the governing consideration in the
26 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
progress of the child. Infectious diseases are the chief enemies of nutrition under the best social circumstances ; but malnutrition opens the door to infection, and especially in tuberculosis, lowers the resistance to it.
It is here that the importance of school instruction in house-keeping and cookery appears, the teaching being of a character appropriate to the domestic circumstances of the taught. Similar more advanced teaching in continuation schools is even more important. But when such teaching has been given, the wife when first faced with the duties of maternity commonly depends for counsel on those about her, whose advice is often mischievous ; and for this reason further agencies are required. Even when the mother is intelligent and well-informed, she needs and usually welcomes sympathetic counsel and help from a skilled visitor, and is benefited by the medical advice given at an Infant Con- sultation, as well as by the exchange of news and intercourse with other mothers at the Con- sultation.
The mother in well-to-do circumstances can command the services of doctor and nurse as
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 27
required ; and her lack of knowledge and experience need not therefore be so serious as that of the wife of the wage-earner ; but in both instances the visits and services of a health visitor are generally welcomed ; there is every reason to regard it as important that the municipal or county Infant Consultation for healthy, as well as for sickly, children should be available for mothers and children of all social classes.
Mothers have much to learn from each other. The voluntary workers associated with these centres can be of much social service in the same work ; the success of Mr. Benjamin Broadbent's well-known experiment at Huddersfield depended not only on the instruction given to mothers, but also on the fact that the motives of conduct were touched, the force of sympathetic interest in the children was aroused, and public opinion was brought to bear to increase the efficiency of the mother's efforts. In successful child welfare work, such considerations as these have an important share in the benefit derived.
These motives have weight in the carrying out of exact details in the feeding of children, as well
28 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
as in securing the best food appropriate for each age. They tell in leading the mother to regulate her own diet before and after the birth of her infant, so as to ensure normal infancy, and to enable her to perform her maternal duties in the most perfect manner.
Recent investigations have shewn the import- ance of the dietary in the prevention of disease. Many infants are overfed, and too frequently fed, while in other instances the mother's milk or the artificial food given is inadequate in some essential element. There is now little reason to doubt that a child's health and especially its future dental health are determined in part, at least, by the health of the mother during pregnancy, and that special importance attaches to the mother's having a dietary which includes an adequate amount of milk and butter or cream, and of green, fresh vegetables.
Rickets is probably the most common disease to which young children are subject, and its prevention as well as its cure can be assured by the administration of cod-liver oil, demonstrating the relation of this disease to defective dietary. Rickets causes not only deformities of bones and
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 29
joints ; its presence increases the severity of attacks of measles and whooping cough, enhances the danger of pneumonia, and thus is a serious cause of child mortality.
One of the most important duties of the health visitor is to give advice which, if followed, will diminish the risk of the development of rickets ; and perhaps the most important function of the physician attached to each Infant Consultation is to detect the earliest indication of this disease and thus secure its arrest.
So far, consideration has been given chiefly to some of the physical causes of avoidable disease and disability in childhood. The better- ment of child life does not depend solely on these important considerations, but also on mental and moral factors, without which attempts at public health reform cannot have complete success.
Somewhat lop-sided views are commonly taught as to the importance of education as a means of preventing disease. From what is written in the previous paragraphs the import- ance of education in health matters is evident. Each mother, each father, each member of a sanitary or a poor law or an education authority,
30 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
each member of an Insurance Committee, and still more every Member of Parliament sadly needs instruction in the elements of health. But the knowledge of preventive medicine, among those who can secure its application, is already much greater than its application ; and although such knowledge needs to be further disseminated and impressed until each head of a family shall bring pressure to secure the needed reforms in administration of public affairs as well as in family hygiene, this is not the most urgent need. Tuberculosis can be reduced to a fraction of its present amount by undertaking on an adequate scale well-known measures for minimising infection and for removing conditions which favour infection. Similarly venereal diseases — second in importance only to tuberculosis as the enemy of childhood — can be brought under control by the universal application of the social and medical measures which we know are com- petent to secure this end.
As we possess the knowledge for the prevention and control of the chief diseases causing national inefficiency, why is this knowledge not applied ? It is axiomatic that disease in a community is
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 31
more costly than the measures required for its control. No person familiar with the facts will doubt the accuracy of this statement.
It cannot be stated with strict accuracy that the failure to apply our knowledge is caused chiefly by ignorance, in the sense that the majority of the population have not become acquainted with the rules and laws making for health. The knowledge is widely possessed, but it has not become part and parcel of the deepest convictions of mankind. The " public health conscience " remains incompletely developed. Theologians have distinguished between intellect- ual acquiescence in the tenets of religion and the living faith which leads to a saintly life. The position as regards health is somewhat similar. Otherwise legislators and administrators, whether official or elected, would surely suffer many sleepless nights in view of their terrible responsi- bility for the continuance of sanitary evils, and of an enormous mass of avoidable sickness and mortality.
This view appears to me to be important. It is too readily assumed that addresses to mothers' meetings, to senior girls in schools, at infant
32 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
welfare centres, and to other groups of persons will educate, educate, educate. These measures have their value, limited though it is. But it is well, as was advised by Oliver Wendell Holmes, to remove the intellectual membrana nictitans from our eyes, and realise that, in the public health world, as in our concerns generally, the triumph of character is greater than that of intellect.
The basic need is to train the behaviour of the individual under the varying circumstances of life, and this training, as intelligent mothers know, can and should begin in earliest infancy. The character of a person is largely formed before he passes his first lustrum. Habit formation cultivates the capacity to abstain from present pleasure for the sake of future benefit, and includes systematic appeal by example and by skilled psychological teaching to the complex motives of human nature, including self-interest, fear, pride, honour, aesthetics, and religion. The importance of such training in self control in preventing the diseases caused by sexual promiscuity, in abolishing alcoholism, and as a means of controlling acute and chronic infectious
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 33
and other diseases need not be stressed in detail. One of the most lamentable features of the Great War was the extent to which young girls in their early 'teens appeared to have lost their modesty and became the active propagators of venereal diseases.
For the explanation of such a phenomenon, after allowing for the abnormal excitement of war, we must assume a defective home life, with little or no parental moral force of character. Neither the mere radiation of affection on a child, nor the giving of useful information to it is competent to train it in unselfishness and moral restraint. To secure this result steady and persistent discipline, entirely consistent with happiness, is needed, both parental and scholastic. Leslie Mackenzie has described the early age of childhood as the growing point of society. The child is the future of the race ; and it is in guiding and safeguarding, physically and morally, this growing point that our main hope for betterment of child life and of future adult life lies.
So far we have considered only the main dangers to child welfare and the principles
34 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
underlying their avoidance. Nor has it been possible to discuss these more than sketchily and partially.
One may naturally be asked for a programme for securing child welfare. To give such a programme would be to undertake the task already outlined in official publications. What has been said suffices to show that the welfare of the child cannot be separated from that of the familv, and of the community in which he lives. Life in communities, especially in urban com- munities, has greatly increased the risks of child life. Efforts to improve the future welfare of the child, as by school attendance, have had no small influence in the same direction. On the other hand, communal life opens up possibilities of health and efficiency which would otherwise be unattainable. The school is an extension of the home for educational purposes, the local park or recreation ground and the allotment garden have a similar relation to the home, as also has the church, the concert room, the public reading room, and so on. The local hospital will ere long, it may be hoped, be the extension of the home, in which the treatment of acute and
THE BETTERMENT OF CHILD LIFE 35
disabling sickness as well as care in childbirth can be more satisfactorily undertaken than in the majority of homes.
It is evident that unless all members of the community take their share in the management of communal affairs the ideals adumbrated above will remain unrealised. A sense of responsible citizenship, the outcome of a sanitary conscience, is needed to secure the betterment of child life, in which all are concerned.
At the present time (1922) all efforts at better- ment of human conditions which imply expendi- ture of communal funds are being curtailed, by an apparently undiscriminating " rationing," on the basis of a percentage reduction of expendi- ture. Action on these lines is obviously irrational. It implies the bankruptcy of govern- mental policy. Ministers of Health have made themselves responsible for reduction in expendi- ture on active child welfare work, and have thus given the cue too successfully to local authorities to economise without regard to the relative importance of their several activities. To counteract this unfortunate result of unintelli- gence and panic, public pressure will be needed
36 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
to restore to the work calculated to secure the betterment of child life the efficiency it had previously attained. The public will doubtless apply this pressure when it is fully realised that failure to expend what is needed to promote child-welfare is wasteful parsimony and not economy. The fundamental waste is waste of health ; and attempts to economise which allow waste of human life, and permit disease unnecessarily to prevail, and measures for its control to remain in abeyance, are as unwise as the action of the man who, while still young, persists in living on the small capital which he has accumulated.
CHAPTER III
MENTAL HYGIENE
By Sir Frederick W. Mott, K.B.E., M.D.,
L.LD., F.R.S.
Before proceeding to discuss the subject of Mental Hygiene it is desirable to define the meaning of the term. Hygiene is used to imply sanitation in its varied aspects applied to bodily health, and the time-worn dictum of " Mens Sana in corpore sano " — a healthy mind in a healthy body — implies that if the body is healthy then the mind is healthy; but we know that there are numbers of people who suffer with bodily disease who nevertheless have a healthy mind, and again there are numbers of people who have a diseased or disordered mind, but so far as we can ascertain they have a healthy body, e.g., various types of neuroses, insanity and
37
38 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
delinquency. I do not thereby infer that insanity and functional neuroses are not associated with, and even dependent upon, some bio- chemical or bio-physical departure from the normal bodily functions, especially of the brain ; indeed my recent work on the primary dementia of adolescence shows that the symptoms of this mental disease can be explained by a progressive failure of bio-chemical processes affecting the brain and reproductive organs especially, but probably (though to a less degree) all the organs and tissues of the body ; and this is due to an inborn germinal defect. Yet examination of the brain, unless delicate micro-chemical methods of investigation are employed, reveals no changes which could account for the symptoms.
There is truth in the doctrine of the philosopher Lucretius, who in the De Rerum Natura, says " the mind is begotten with the body, grows up with it and grows old with it." The furniture of the mind is the memory store of our experiences and the bonds that unite them. The quantity and quality of the furniture of the mind depend firstly upon the inborn germinal raw material begotten with the body and derived from species,
MENTAL HYGIENE 39
sex, race and ancestry, giving each individual a predetermined biological plasticity to receive and store impressions and to react to them. This raw material of inheritance upon which psycho- physical energy, durability, educability, imagina- tion, temper, emotivity, moral and aesthetic sense so largely depend, is inborn. These funda- mentals of mind are begotten with the body and predetermine character and conduct, as was clearly proved by Francis Galton's inquiry into the history of similar and dissimilar twins, which showed that dissimilar twins brought up under the same environment remained dissimilar in mental and bodily characters, while similar twins brought up in different environment remained similar in mental and bodily characters. This is a convincing proof of the fact that the mind is begotten with the body, and logically leads to the consideration of neuropathic inheritance and mental disorders.
The manner in which the soil is cultivated is the work of Mental Hygiene, but it does not end here, for Eugenics or the promotion of suitable mating, and the prevention of procreation of the unfit are also of great importance. If inborn
40 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
good qualities are deficient or absent, there will be (in spite of favourable environment after birth) intellectual, aesthetic, or moral feeble- mindedness of various forms and gradations. Again, if there be inherited a disproportion and a lack of harmony and integration of these inborn factors of the raw material upon which mentality is based, an unbalanced mind is likely to develop which will show itself in various departures of conduct from that of the normal stable individual; it may be in the form of eccentricity, mysticism, fanaticism, or the psycho-neuroses, e.g., hysteria, neurasthenia, epilepsy, or the psychoses (the true insanities) as distinct from acquired organic brain disease, such as general paralysis of the insane.
That this tendency to departure from the normal well-balanced mind is largely a matter of inheritance, is shown by a study of family pedigrees for several generations, where all these variations from the normal may be found in different members of the ancestral stocks. In such a stock, however, it is not at all uncommon to find poetic and artistic genius in some of the members. There is always a tendency to end or
MENTAL HYGIENE 41
mend a degenerate stock by Mendelian segrega- tion, anticipation or antedating, and by natural selection and survival of the fittest. These natural means of elimination of weak types, poor in mind and body, have been counteracted during the Great War, for the mentally and physically fit have been killed off, and the unfit have been spared. War, under such conditions has not, as in olden days, led to the survival of the fittest. Unfavourable environmental influences may excite or reveal in one of its many forms of neurosis or psychosis the inborn feeble or unstable mind. The stress and terrors of the Great War showed that a large proportion of the civilian popu- lation were inefficient or unfit for military service on account of this inborn psychopathic tendency. Prior to the War there was a prevalent belief that Mental Hygiene meant only the treatment of feeble-mindedness and insanity, which are the most striking examples of mental ill-health. They were striking because the individuals so afflicted were anti-social; the State consequently assumed the responsibility of providing for the care of the feeble-minded and the insane by detention, but hitherto it has done little in the
42 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
way of prevention, and not enough in the way of cure. It is well known that a number of criminals, prostitutes and unemployables are recruited from the ranks of Mental Defectives, and this fact offers a striking proof of the necessity of segregation of such individuals at an early age. Due care should, however, be made to see that certification proceeds upon broad facts and principles of common sense, rather than upon the narrow tests of experts. The evidence for certification for feeble- mindedness should be that he or she can never be of civic worth in any capacity, or that the conduct of the individual shows him or her to be unfit for society and incapable of reform. It is well to point out that the higher grade imbeciles on account of being fertile are a greater social danger from a Eugenic point of view than the lower grades of imbeciles and idiots. Seeing that this is a matter which profoundly affects the Public Health and Welfare, it was surprising to find that the Ministry of Health, on the score of economy, has postponed the provision of accommodation for segregating the worst types of mental defectives.
MENTAL HYGIENE
43
The rooted objection to the treatment of early cases of insanity in asylums, and the stigma of being certified a lunatic and sent to an asylum without a period of probation had been growing in the public mind since before the war ; and when it was found that great numbers of soldiers were being discharged for shell-shock and war neuroses and psychoses, public feeling ran high against these men (who were believed to have become insane owing to the terrors, stress, and strain of war) being sent to lunatic asylums without a period of probation. Questions were asked in Parliament, and it was enacted that no soldier should be discharged and sent to an asylum, unless it could be shown that he was suffering from an incurable mental disease, e.g., general paralysis of the insane, or epileptic insanity. The same regulation applied to ex- service men under treatment by the Ministry of Pensions.
Naturally the public, not cognizant of the whole of the facts, wish to know why this principle, which worked well with the Army and the Ministry of Pensions, cannot be applied to the civilian population ? But the conditions are
44 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
different, for while a man was in the Army he was as safely under control as if he were certified. If he ran away he could be treated as a deserter. The Ministry of Pensions had not so much control ; still there was control, for the pensions could be withheld if suitable treatment were refused. Now the difficulty of the voluntary boarder is, that he cannot, however dangerous he may be to himself and others, be kept under restraint in a Mental Hospital for acute curable cases for more than twenty-four hours. It comes then to this, that either the State must provide legal machinery whereby certifiable cases can be detained for a period of probation with the consent of the friends and a visiting justice, and a commissioner to prevent the individual from wrongful detention, or the alternative is that he must be discharged to friends, they being told that the patient would have to be certified. This could either be done in the present way through the Relieving Officer, or a medical man from the outside could be called in to certify the patient under an urgency order followed by removal to an asylum for certified lunatics. If the patient had no friends a visiting justice might
MENTAL HYGIENE 45
suffice, and the patient would be handed over to the Relieving Officer and taken to the In- firmary and there certified and sent to an asylum. The former method is much more likely to succeed in getting the patient in the early curable stage. All cases that are not definitely diagnosable as incurable should, if sent to a County or Borough Asylum, be received in a hospital apart from the main building and treated on lines indicative of possible cure. Economic difficulties will arise, as there are but few asylums in which suitable buildings exist. It is a mere camouflage to call these asylums Mental Hospitals, the great majority of whose inmates are chronic incurable cases, unless they are pro- vided with, or affiliated with, a separate building for the care and treatment of early acute cases on hospital lines provided with the equipment necessary to conform to the advances made in medical science. Every Mental Hospital should have an outpatients' clinic attached or affiliated. Great advantages from both an economic and curative point of view might be expected from these out-patients' clinics. Patients could be discharged on trial earlier from the mental
46 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
hospitals and their progress watched. The treatment could be continued and prophylactic measures by social workers carried out. Another advantage would be that practitioners would send cases earlier and there would be less objection on the part of friends and by the patients themselves, than if they were being sent to the Infirmaries. It would be better if they were designated " Neurological and Psychiatric Clinics," as experience shows that much less objection would arise in getting borderland and early cases of mental disorder to attend if the word " Mental " were kept out of the title. An argument in favour of the association of " Neurological with Psychiatrical " is that there is no hard and fast line between the functional Neuroses and the Psychoses. They belong to one group of mental ill-health and instability ; this is shown by the fact tha* among savage and primitive, as well as civilised people in all parts of the world, these neuroses and psychoses exist, taking, however, a local colour according to race, customs, climate and habits. Moreover, as already stated, a study of pedigrees proves that a tendency to mental instability
MENTAL HYGIENE 47
shows itself in different members of the same stock by affecting them with various nervous and mental disorders. These facts show their biogenetic origin and that they are not products of civilisation. Under various formsof individual and collective stress the inborn mental instability is revealed in one form or another. It would be the business of these Clinics with a staff of trained doctors and social workers to find out the causes of mental ill-health of the patients attending, and by suitable mental and bodily treatment and advice enable, or endeavour to enable, such people to make adjustments to environment with a view to preventing them from becoming anti-social oruseless members of society. The War disclosed the great need of systematic teaching of Psychological medicine as part of the medical curriculum. In 1907 I strongly advocated* this teaching for post-graduates, and suggested that a diploma of psychological medicine should be instituted, for I felt sure that it would raise the tone of medical men employed in the care of the insane and lead to diagnosis and better treatment of mental disease
* Vol III Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry.
48 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
in the early curable stage. I also advocated the establishment of a psychiatrical clinic in London where the incipient and borderland cases could be seen and treated. I was convinced in 1907 that the institution of a diploma in psychological medicine would prove as valuable to this branch of medicine as the diploma of public health had been in promoting bodily health and sanitation, and I called upon the President of the Royal College of Physicians to try to induce the Royal Colleges to give such a diploma, but without success. Just prior to the war the Cambridge University led the way and instituted this, and now many universities and the Royal Colleges give diplomas of psychological medicine. What is now required is the systematic teaching of the subject. Four courses of psychological medicine have been completed, and the fifth course at the Maudsley Hospital is nearly completed. These classes have been well attended and a number of graduates have succeeded in obtaining the diploma in Psychological Medicine.
Sir George Newman, in an admirable report on medical education in 1920, stated " It is deplor- able that the English student of medicine should
MENTAL HYGIENE
49
have no opportunity of learning modern methods of psychiatry or of diagnosing incipient and undeveloped cases of mental disease." And yet in 191 3, Parliament imposed statutory duties upon the medical practitioner, among them being " He must be competent to diagnose all forms of mental disease." (Mental Deficiency Act, 191 3.) The public might ask, why did not the authorities previously insist upon proper training in this important branch of medical education, involving the liberty of the subject ? The effects of this neglect of training in this important branch of medicine was shown in conscripting for the war. In the report of the Ministry of National Service, physical fitness and unfitness only were considered.
In the preface previously alluded to,* after calling attention to Alcohol and Syphilis in the production of insanity, I stated that " a fruitful field of study in psychiatry would be those early cases of uncertifiable mental affection termed neurasthenia, psychasthenia, obsession, mild impulsive mania, melancholia, hysteria and hypochondria, which in many instances are
* Of the Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1907.
D
50 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
really the prodromal stages of a pronounced and permanent mental disorder. The poorer patients suffering with these conditions first come into the hands of the practitioner, the dispensary or infirmary doctor, and the out-patient physician at the general or special hospitals. The better class patients are sent by the practitioner to the neurologist ; the generality of the poorer, and sometimes the better class patients, are regarded by the medical man who has had no training in psychology as of little medical interest (for such patients do not, as a rule, benefit by drugs), and he finds it a wearisome task to listen to their stories, to ascertain their inborn tendencies, and to find out the truth of what has happened to account for their strange conduct indicative of their not feeling, thinking and acting in accord ance with the general usages of their social surroundings ; yet such patients may not be so anti-social as to be certifiable. Many of these cases are often in the hopeful and curable stage and these, if studied carefully by trained medico- psychologists, could not fail to yield valuable results in regard to our knowledge of the causation, prevention and cure of insanity.
MENTAL HYGIENE 51
Moreover, when the cases are followed up systematically, they would throw much light on prognosis in similar cases. The majority of cases which are admitted to the asylum have long passed the hopeful stage ; still there are a certain number of early curable cases, and these, I main- tain, would sometimes be much better if they had not been certified or sent to associate with chronic lunatics."
The above statement is quoted in full in the Lancet, March 15th, 1920, in an annotation entitled " The Genesis of the Maudsley Hospital." It is furthermore pointed out that the late Dr. Maudsley approached the London County Council through Sir Frederick Mott in 1907 and offered to give .£30,000 to the London County Council if they would build a hospital for the treatment of early acute curable mental cases with a view to their not being sent to the County Asylums. This hospital was also to be con- nected with the London University in order to promote teaching and research. The Hospital was completed in 1916 and served as the nucleus of the Neurological Clearing Hospital for the London district during the war ; it was after-
52 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
wards used for a year by the Ministry of Pensions. It has taken fifteen years for this to materialise after the Council had accepted the gift. Yet it is a beginning to recognise that early measures and treatment can show fruitful results. It is earnestly to be desired that the British will soon follow the example of the U.S.A. and France in the establishment of clinics and of Associations for organized work in Mental Hygiene and so prevent premature incarceration in asylums of many who are in the early curable stage.
No problem in Mental Hygiene is more important than an acquirement of self-control, and it is never too early to begin to inculcate this habit ; thus the child should be taught to acquire control of the primitive emotions of anger, of fear and of disgust in infancy and to limit or repress their motor reactions ; but their repression or suppression should in great measure be determined by the nature and intensity of the cause of the emotional disturbance. Crying and screaming of an infant is generally a protective appeal to the mother for relief of pain or the satisfaction of a natural desire or organic need, but this may become the expression of bad
MENTAL HYGIENE 53
temper ; thus a child that learns that it can get its own way in obtaining something it desires, against its parents' wishes, very soon contracts the bad habit of falling into a passion whenever it is thwarted. The indulgent mother, to stop the fits of crying, screaming, and outbursts of angry temper, too often yields to the child's will and gradually but surely a weakening in the development of self-control occurs which has a profound influence upon the development of character ; especially is this the case in a child with an inborn unstable temperament.
The emotion of fear is protective, and the instinctive reactions are flight and concealment : naturally, therefore, darkness is associated with this emotion, and it is not surprising that children and savages should have an inborn tendency to fear the dark. Seeing that there is this natural tendency of children to fear dark- ness, some discretion is required in overcoming the dread of a timid child to sleep in the dark and too rigidly forcing it to go to sleep without a light, especially if it has become accustomed to one in infancy, may cause suffering. The habit of having a light should be gradually
54 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
broken if it has been contracted. Much injury- is done to young children by ignorant nurses and servants frightening them by stories of ghosts and bogeys. Indeed the tempers and morals of many children have been ruined by mothers leaving the care of their children to ignorant and vicious nursemaids. Imitation and suggestion regarding sexual matters is an important problem to parents and requires careful attention to see that the developing mind is not contaminated by the acquirement of bad habits. The Jewish rite of circumcision by removing a cause of genital irritation and the acquirement of onanistic habits is a wise procedure.
Another bad habit, which may be contracted by the child in early life, is an unnatural desire for sympathy ; too often an only child of indulgent parents, sometimes under the cloak of a fondly supposed aesthetic or artistic tempera- ment, contracts the habit of soliciting sympathy and pays the penalty in later life by the unnatural development of the self-regarding sentiment, a precursor so frequently of functional nervous and mental disorders.
While it is highly desirable to train children to
MENTAL HYGIENE 55
exercise control over the primitive emotions, it is essential that they should not be so suppressed as to injure the natural spontaneousness of the child, for a child's greatest asset is its childishness. The natural expression of the emotions is motor reaction and when emotions or passions are pent up by voluntary restraint they are apt to lead to exhaustion of mind and body.
The suppression of the manifestation of fear or anger from fear of punishment may produce a sulky habit in the child and this pent up anger and fear may, in later life, tend to the formation of a character in which obstinacy, malice, hatred and revenge find a suitable soil for development.
A child in earliest infancy manifests by char- acteristic expression the emotion of disgust ; this emotion and its instinctive reaction of rejection of bitter, acrid and nauseous substances by spitting out and vomiting is protective in the highest degree ; thus it is natural for a child to show signs of disgust and anger when nasty medicines or unpalatable food are given to it. But children may acquire a habit of screaming and rejecting with tears and signs of anger wholesome food when it sees other food intended
56 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
for adults. Here the child, owing to the initiation of a bad habit, is behaving contrary to the instinct of preservation, and the only- course to adopt is to give it no food until its natural food is accepted. Too often, however, an indulgent or ignorant parent of an only child yields to its passion, and a bad habit is soon firmly installed, which may later be a determining cause of bodily ailments and weakened self- control.
Children are like many animals, naturally curious, and this instinct of curiosity is closely associated with the emotions of surprise and wonder. Curiosity in children manifests itself by inquisitiveness regarding the natural phenomena they observe and their causation ; too often this instinct in which science has its roots is repressed by " Don't ask questions," or possibly some foolish commonplace answer or fable is given to their inquiry, which upon reflection the child knows to be untrue. All natural phenomena, the result of perception, that the child is fit and capable of understanding should be explained, or the child should be told truthfully, " I can't explain," the fact observed
MENTAL HYGIENE 57
by it. It is, however, in my opinion, a mistake to lead the young child, as a general rule, too far into experiences that the adult alone can understand and appreciate in their full biological significance.
The dawn to the full development of the function of reproduction occupies four to five years, and during this period and coincident with the formation of the secondary bodily sexual characters, there is a complete mental revolution peculiar to each sex.
A new and potent source of psycho-physical energy comes into being, consequently, circum- stances and influences which promote or antagonize the normal evolution of pubertal development will exert a profound influence on the mind, the effects of which will leave a lasting impress upon the mentality of the individual. It follows that the disharmony between physio- logical impulses of the sex instinct and sociological conditions which exists in modern civilization is one of the great problems of mental hygiene. For although the sexual passion may not be revealed in conversation and even repressed in consciousness, yet the instinct is operating continuously as a deep and silent undercurrent
58 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
in the subconscious mind, profoundly influencing character and behaviour. Undoubtedly motives and conduct originate in the early periods of puberty from this unseen biological source con- nected with the evolution of the primal instinct of reproduction. The bio-chemical stimuli originating in the sex organs not only stimulate and energize all the cells and tissues in the body, but arouse in the brain the innate tendencies peculiar to each sex and their mutual attraction for the supreme biological end — the preservation of the species.
The mental attitude of the boy and girl presents no notable difference, but soon a disturbance, of which they do not know the cause, arrives, and with it an ill-defined awareness that something new has entered into their lives. Ideas, at first vague and indefinite, are experienced leading to desires and aspirations of which they do not appreciate the cause ; but many impressions which previously only interested the perceptual and intellectual faculties are now associated with strong affect manifested by vaso- motor and visceral disturbances. The senti- ments of pride and vanity are shown by a desire
MENTAL HYGIENE 59
for self-adornment, love of jewels, ornaments, and dress, especially in girls. In boys pride of adornment is shown by the desire of wearing military uniform or any other dress suggestive of combat or prowess in sport. This is a biological phase of sexual evolution common to men and animals. Combined with this is a love of praise and of being noticed by others.
The sentiments and passions connected with the sex instinct are more pronounced. Self- assertiveness or self-abasement in the presence of the opposite sex, and an amour propre which is easily wounded and followed by resentment are observable. Jealousy, that distress or resent- ment of the loss or suspected loss of the love of another of the opposite sex, having its origin in the sexual impulse, is felt by both youth and maid. The sight or recollection of individuals of the opposite sex arouses sentiments and passions previously unknown. A word, a gesture often suffices now to excite curiosity to the highest degree in an individual of the opposite sex ; at the same time there is often a loosening of the ties of old affections, and its cause being ill understood, often gives rise to a " shut-in
60 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
personality." The adolescent often feels, he knows not why, that family affections are insufficient, and there is need of the affections of others which, not knowing how to seek and obtain, leads to brooding and repression. The unconsciousness that the cause of their trouble is this biological unsatisfied instinct of attraction to the opposite sex often causes young people, and in particular girls, to devote themselves to religious or aesthetic observances, mysticism or fanaticism. Parents are not sufficiently aware of these psycho-physiological facts, and their biological significance.
Attraction to the opposite sex is spontaneously awakened and fantastic ideas arise in which the youth plays the part of a hero, while the girl imagines herself the object of the desires of a prince charming. This " building of castles in the air " is but an exaggerated expression of the sentiment of love, and is frequently visualised in drama. If the moral sense of the individual has been contaminated by suggestion or imita- tion, and sexual pleasures have been tasted, he frequently abandons himself without shame and without restraint to auto-erotism or even sexual
MENTAL HYGIENE 61
perversion. Sexual desire in the uncontaminated youth is, however, at first obscure, consisting of vague longings without fixation upon a particular object. Sooner or later, however, in the evolu- tion of adolescence the desired object arrives and the instinct of sexual attraction bursts forth in a flood of passion. This is well exemplified in the following lines of Cowper, who translated Milton's " May Day," written by the poet in 1628, when he was nineteen. " Then it was that Cupid drew his bow at a venture and smote the unsuspecting youth and pierced his unguarded heart."
(" with quiver at his side.")
" Now to her lips he clung, her eyelids now,
Then settled on her cheeks, or on her brow,
And with a thousand wounds from every part
Pierced and transfixed my undefended heart.
A fever new to me, of fierce desire
Now seized my soul, and I was all on fire."
The first effect upon the imagination of the
youth of the woman he first falls in love with
is that she is something divine, and an object
to be adored. Things which belong to her may
even be sacred and constitute for him true
62 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
fetishes, whilst in her actual presence he may be timid and abashed.
The maiden is more at ease with boys in the early period of pubertal development, and her early aspirations are to be admired and preferred. The desire to be loved and cherished comes later.
In the second stage of adolescence the essential differences which characterize the two sexes are more clearly manifested. All the psychic differences dependent upon racial and familial ancestry begin to show themselves in the conduct of the individual. The development of the personality will be more and more complete as sexual maturity progresses.
The pubertal crisis in the youth leads to exteriorization and affects more and more the life of external relation. The vaso-motor dis- turbances due to emotional conditions produce a more profound effect upon the mind and the consequent behaviour. New impressions in consciousness are resolved into feelings more elevated and free in character, and the result may be a self-esteem that regards at first serenely all obstacles to the pursuit of his dreams of
MENTAL HYGIENE 63
ambitions and desires. Frustration and dis- appointment may cause the peace of mind to give place to a turbulence which renders him recalcitrant, and causes him to regard all limitations to his liberty as insupportable. The psycho-physical energy of the sex instinct as it matures is displayed by boldness in desires and thoughts and courage in actions.
The sentiments peculiar to the individual personality clearly and forcibly assert themselves by opposition to parental obedience, familial and social customs and traditions, and tutelary authority. Reproaches are not readily tolerated, and irregularities of conduct are not infrequent which occur as frequently among the well-to-do as among the poorer classes. By virtue of better nutrition in the well-to-do classes, the sexual instinct develops earlier and delinquencies conse- quently may occur at an earlier age.
The psycho-physical energy of the sex impulse, manifested by an elated feeling of the personality, renders a youth sensitive to flattery and very susceptible to any suggestion which excites his admiration. Moreover, aspirations for a new life are aroused, and he may conceive numerous
64 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
ambitious projects, which, however, usually come to naught, and the result is that he readily passes from elated confidence to discouragement, which may be followed by hypochondriacal mental preoccupation, by mysticism or by a spurious socialism.
Any unforeseen psychic state may occur at this period of life, for the individual receives from the unconscious sphere impulses that reflexion and judgment are not yet able to control and regulate. There is at first an abyss between his aspirations and their realization, between what he desires and proposes and his powers of accom- plishment ; his hopes are then dashed by disillusion. But gradually with the lessons of experience, his aptitudes, his virtues, and his vices develop, and the differences of types due to varied inborn dispositions of race and ancestry become more and more clearly pronounced and accentuated.
In the female the course of development of adolescence presents notable differences to that of the male. Although she may be as sensitive as the male to impulses arising from the sex instinct, they exercise less effect on the intel-
MENTAL HYGIENE 65
lectual side of her nature, but more on the affective ; again, motor reaction is inhibited rather than excited. Such is in accordance with the passive role of the female in the operation of the sex instinct. Whilst the adolescent male reveals his sexual tendencies to action by what he does, the adolescent female seeks to attract and make obvious what she is. The passiveness of the adolescent female is only apparent ; it is the passivity of the magnet which attracts the iron which approaches it in its apparent immobility.
The difference between the nature of young women and young men reveals itself in their delinquencies and a comparison of causes of punishment in reformatory schools shows that boys and youths are punished more frequently for active faults, quarrels and theft, or attempted theft, whilst girls are more often punished on account of passive or negative delinquencies, such as laziness, negligence, or faults of propriety. There is one active fault which occurs in both males and females, and that is lying. The sex instinct of the female is in two forms, viz. :
(1) Amiability, which in an exaggerated form
66 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
is coquetry ; by this means she makes
herself more noticed by men, and attracts
them.
(2) Modesty, by which she ensures courtship.
Whilst the young man tends to rid himself of
his rival by force, the young woman seeks to
eclipse her rival by attractiveness. All that can
serve to satisfy this disposition of making herself
attractive is a natural feminine characteristic,
and that is whv in the most humble as in the most
elevated conditions of life, at all times, and in
all peoples, young women do not shrink from
any means to that end ; and will submit to any
form of physical discomfort or suffering to
increase their attractiveness.
Her emotivity, exhibited by her blushes, her tears, her cries, the rapid transition from joy to grief, all provide her with powerful means of enlisting sympathy. Again, timidity may be shown or caprice may be practised in a refined way to attract the attention of the male sex. In her deportment, in her work, in her amuse- ments, she never forgets to consider the effect she will produce upon others who are looking on. Another mental characteristic disposition is
MENTAL HYGIENE 67
modesty, which is represented by shame in the moral order, and by virginity in the physical. By these two qualities courtship is ensured, and the maternal mission of begetting children by a man who will share with her the responsibilities of their nurture and upbringing, is effected. It would thus seem that the amiability and attrac- tiveness of woman has served to favour the primal sexual instinct of propagation, her modesty has served to assure the preservation of the species. The development of the disposition of modesty in the female, and the conditions which favour it, has been a great factor in sexual selection, in social evolution and the progress of civilization. The weakening of this instinctive female disposi- tion at the present time is one of the great problems of mental hygiene.
The tender emotion connected with the maternal instinct so beautifully and divinely symbolised by the Madonna and Child, owing to the progressive development in all grades of society of the self-regarding sentiment, is greatly weakened. This is shown by promiscuous sexual intercourse and spread of venereal disease, late marriages and the universal practice, except
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68 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
among the poorer Roman Catholic population, of contraceptive methods, one remedy for which is the encouragement of early marriages of people healthy in mind and body endowed with the three attributes of civic worth obtainable in all grades of society, viz., courage, honesty and commonsense. This can be effected by all such being able to obtain a living wage, and a decent home to live in, whereby a contented healthy couple can bring up a healthy and contented family.
The three primal instincts common to men and animals, of self-preservation, propagation, and the instinct of the herd, are the springs from which the streams and rivers of mental activity have their source. The bond of union of the herd is based upon the willingness of each mem- ber to sacrifice self-interest and even life for the common good, and by thus doing directly to en- sure the preservation of the species and indirectly that of the individual. The herd instinct has played a most important part in peace and war, in fact the history of nations has depended upon it. This gregarious instinct has been the great stabilizing force in the fixation of traditions,
MENTAL HYGIENE 69
customs, and social usages of successive civiliza- tions in the world's history. Patriotism, morale and discipline have their roots in this instinct, yet every successive age has shown that progress in religions, ethics, the arts and sciences has originated in men and women with such a strong belief in their individual mentality that they were willing to court death, torture, or exile in their endeavour to overthrow traditional dogma and superstition, or to incur disapprobation by not conforming to the customs and social usages of the herd. Patriots, preachers, prophets, philosophers, artists and scientists have in all ages and all civilizations, at one time or another, been regarded by the herd either as bad men or mad men, when, inspired by imagination and courage of conviction they have refused to admit the accepted doctrines of the society in which they lived. What an inestimable benefit such men have conferred upon mankind ; for they have made the world's history and averted a petrified civilization. A just balance between the influence of the independent original and imaginative mind of the few, and the stabilizing influence of the collective mind of the many
70 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
is the secret of social progress. Mental Hygiene should, then, be largely concerned in ensuring this just balance by encouraging all those factors and conditions in education which support morale, discipline, self-sacrifice and esprit de corps in schools, in universities, in the Services, and in industries ; but it must be effected without repressing or destroying that independent imagination and originality in thought and purposive action which is essential for mental success or welfare. All games of skill in which the individual plays not for himself but the side, such as cricket and football, foster the right spirit and tend to an establishment of a code of honour in which the amour propre is centred not in the individual but in the school or university. The same applies to the regiment or the ship, and the great value of esprit de corps and morale was strikingly shown in the retreat from Mons of the Expeditionary Force. Again it was shown by the fact that the proportion of cases of shell shock and war neurosis in great measure directly depended upon the morale, discipline and esprit de corps of the regiment. The stabilizing force of the collective mind of a regiment with
MENTAL HYGIENE 71
high morale was always operating against individual fear and preventing it from being contagious.
Capital, whether it be represented by an individual, a Company, or the State, has a duty to perform to Labour, and Labour to Capital. Most of the discontent in the industrial army is due to mutual distrust of motives and the lack of a bond of union between labour and capital. Mental Hygiene can do much to allay this distrust, not only by the study of the grievances of labour as a whole, but by the study of grievances of individuals engaged in an industry ; for a discontented mind becomes a focus of spread of discontent. Mental Hygiene's task would be to see how far such an individual could be mentally rehabilitated by readjustment. The question whether the psycho-physical energy of the workman in an industry is being efficiently expended to the mutual benefit of capital and labour, with many other industrial problems of Mental Hygiene, forms part of the propaganda of the National Committee of the United States. The National Birthrate Commission and the National Council of Public Morals which it
72 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
established, cannot fail to see how important are these questions which I have lightly touched upon, and how they are directly and indirectly connected with the birth and upbringing of healthy, happy children.
CHAPTER IV
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG
By Professor J. Arthur Thomson, LL.D.
The subject of sex-instruction is so difficult that one would willingly leave it alone. Yet one dare not. Things as they are cannot be called satisfactory, — moral laxity is common, there are many shipwrecks, there is much tolerance of the unclean {e.g., " suggestive " stories and jokes), and there is an incalculable amount of unhappi- ness that has its roots in sex-disharmony. It would be unwarranted to conclude that these evils are all due to lack of sex-instruction ; but that they are partly due to this, is indicated by the often-repeated unanswerable reproach " You never told me."
Among primitive peoples there has often been elaborate sex-instruction, and there are present- day survivals of initiations and disciplines.
73
74 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
How far these were or are " on right lines" may be left an open question ; our point is simply that the idea of sex-instruction is no modern " fad." And if it be urged that our grand-parents received no sex-instruction, and yet became very pleasant and wholesome folk, it may be doubted whether we are not simply forgetting or unaware of much that was ugly and unhappy. Moreover it must be recognised that the outlook of youth upon life has greatly changed in two generations. Authority in every form counts for less ; many old sanctions and deterrents have almost disappeared ; there is a new freedom, often in every way delightful, between young people of opposite sex ; and there is a determination to make the life of the present a satisfaction in itself. Thus the question comes to be : What claims has the rising generation on us as regards sex-instruction ? Doing nothing at all does not seem to have worked by any means invariably well in the past ; it is not a promising policy for the future. What can be done ? The chief dangers to be guarded against need frank and courageous consideration. The sex instinct is deeply rooted in human nature,
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 75
much stronger in some persons than in others, and it may be ungovernable if violently awakened. What normally happens is that its expressions appear gradually, and are disciplined by having to force their way through the upper current of rationally controlled life and previously estab- lished social inhibitions. One of the dangers is that the awakening of sex-appetite may be sudden and inappropriate, carrying the young personality off his or her feet before it is realised what is happening. There are cases of hereditary violence of temper ; and the boy is warned that he must watch against this — a sleeping volcano within him — lest of a sudden he be guilty of manslaughter. So, it would not seem far-fetched to tell young people in a friendly non-alarmist way that they should be careful in playing with fire. The " instinct " of keeping themselves in hand and of not letting themselves go ; the social tradition of self-restraint and poise ; and the habit of self-control in things great and small — these, and higher factors still, are the counter- actives which happily keep most young people straight. But would it not be kinder to forewarn them that here in their voyage of life there may
76 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
suddenly arise " a violent wind Euroclydon." Another and familiar danger, especially on the male side, is that the sex-appetite grows so insistent and imperious that it comes between the rest of the personality and everything ; that it pre-occupies waking and sleeping ; and that, necessarily repressed, it finds abnormal relief in self-indulgence or in some pathological obsession. There is of course every gradation in the obsession and in the degree of self-abuse. As it seems to us, the advocates of sex-instruction have a strong case here. In some individuals the pre- occupation with thoughts about sex and with desires for sexual experience is largely due to the fact that legitimate curiosity was not gratified and that information on the subject came in a discoloured and dirty form, e.g., from companions. It came, as it were, contaminated with microbes and moulds which spread in the darkness. The soil which should bear a garden of roses, brings forth a crop of toadstools. Have not boys a claim to be told straightly about things ? Why should sex-knowledge creep in like a thief in the night ?
In regard to morbid sex-preoccupations we are
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 77
no longer fatalists. If things go far the school- physician knows and he can greatly help, — by explaining things, by encouraging those who are losing heart, or who think they are worse sinners than they are, by warning those who are callous and do not know what a wreck self-abuse will make of them, and, best of all, perhaps, by suggesting disciplines which make for increased fitness. The teacher also knows, and it is often open to him to be a stronger and wiser counsellor than a father can be. But a father can always tell his troubled son that he suffered much that way himself, and that he got the better of it by living a harder and a wider life.
Another danger is that the whole subject be left by itself, — mainly in darkness, mainly as a question of the night, mainly in isolation. Some people baulk at even a mention of the word sex — though it does not follow that their con- ception of the subject is particularly lofty. At the opposite extreme others drag sex in every- where as an interpretation of varied phases of behaviour, though it may be doubted whether they are not oftener wrong than right in their apprehension of how " sex " operates.
78 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
There is need, we think, of higher sex- instruction. Most normal people are vividly aware of a strong sex-appetite, activated by the passage of hormones from the reproductive organs, and demanding, usually in a somewhat generalised way, satisfaction. For our sex- impulse has little of the precise particulateness that we see in the instinctive behaviour of the bee when it leaves the dark hive for the first time and flies to the flowers " as to the manner born." Moreover the sex-appetite no longer exists in civilised man as a " bare naked " thing. In the course of time it has had many associated feelings and ideas linked to it, — feelings of devotion and self-forgetfulness, ideas of chivalry and gentleness, and much more besides. Now it is part of the higher sex-instruction ever to hitch the wagon to the star, to rivet the associa- tions that differentiate man from the rutting stag. And how is this to be done save by familiarising the growing mind with the great patterns of the past, — by persistently linking fondness to chivalry, and passion to idealisation. The roots are physiological, but even among animals they become bio-psychical. We must
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 79
be aware of these roots, as understanding of them as modern physiology can make us, as appreciative of them as we know how, but we must not be always digging them up and looking at them. That way perdition lies. We must guard their normality as the condition of the finer flowers of the spirit ; we must understand that physical fondness is only one factor in the complex of love.
We must regret as miserably unscientific the superstition that the love between man and woman is nothing more than a fleshly attraction. We must reject as a vulgarisation the suggestion that there is in love-making anything " funny," anything to snigger over. We must set our face against the story that brings out the satyr on a man's face or makes him utterly ashamed — for this is debasing the currency of normal human feeling. We know of course that most of us live too near the ground and that some seem never to get off it, but among simple people and poets, among workaday folk in the country and the makers of new knowledge alike, there is a grip of the truth that love is a flower of which the sex-impulses, often so redolent of the soil, are
80 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
the indispensable roots. How doubly wise was Thoreau's saying : " For him to whom sex is impure, there are no flowers in Nature." The educational point is familiar, — that as long as we are learning we are rivetting associations. We try to associate eating, not with having a good tuck in, but with an ideal of physical fitness ; let us try to associate sex with chivalry and nobility. But it is the actual rivetting that is so difficult.
There are various modes of sex instruction. There is much to be said, firstly, for sound biological training, which deals in their proper place with the facts of sex and reproduction in plants and animals, and deals with them in a detached way just as with the activities of muscle and nerve. To make the biological studies a means of surreptitiously dragging in " smut-jaws " is of course an abomination, spoiling good science and probably achieving nothing ethically. But scientific exposition of the natural processes of sex and reproduction clears the air ; depersonalises the subject, and sets the unmentioned human facts in the light of evolution. It is the experience of a professor
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 81
who has taught zoology to mixed classes of medical students for thirty years that only twice in that period has he noticed an unwhole- some snigger in the class, and it is possible that on these two occasions — which were momentary — there was some verbal absurdity or malaprop. A fact like this is an indication of the essential healthy-mindedness of our race.
What is gained from the biological approach ? The facts of sex and reproduction are seen as part of the business of life, as necessary for the continuance of the race, as part and parcel of the general economy of the organism. But there is more than that. There is an inclined plane of evolution on which to physical fondness there is added sensory attraction, and to that are associated psychical links and the strong ties of practical partnership. If we take a story like that of the courtship of the Great Crested Grebe, we shall find it difficult to evade, even if we wish, Dr. Julian Huxley's conclusion that " the court- ship ceremonies serve to keep the two birds of a pair together, and to keep them constant to each other." The courtship is justified by the strength of the emotional bond it establishes.
82 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
And is there not eloquence in the simple fact that in some birds, like the water-ouzel, the singing may outlast the breeding period ?
A second mode of approach may be called " physiological," differing from the " biological " in being primarily concerned with the human body. We refer to the kind of study so well expounded in Huxley's Elementary Lessons in Physiology — except that this famous book leaves out sex and reproduction altogether. This strikes one as extraordinarily British : " We do not like speaking about sex and reproduction ; it makes us uncomfortable ; it seems to go deeper in than the dividing asunder of joints and marrow ; it is a more intimate matter than the functions of the grey matter of the brain ; what shall we do ? Why, we shall leave it out altogether." And so, since 1866, when the book of many editions was first published, the subject has been left out. It comes very near a scientific he, this omission. It may not be a suggestio falsi ; it certainly looks like a suppressio veri, — and it is extraordinarily unlike Huxley. But one would like to know the whole history before judging any one.
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 83
A different note is struck in Prof. W. M. Bayliss's Principles of General Physiology, from which we venture to quote the following passage : " The mysterious power of the male has from the earliest times excited wonder and has, not unnaturally, become the object of religious worship. It is indeed greatly to be regretted that the sexual process should have become the subject of unseemly jesting. Of course, incidents of real humour may arise in any connection, without detriment to its essential solemnity, as witness the great art of Shake- speare. But I feel compelled to state my belief that much mischief is done by the habit of looking upon anything related to sex as, in itself, a matter for jesting, apart from any real humour. Possibly, the excessive secrecy and reticence maintained on the question are much to blame, and there is no doubt that the wider teaching of a proper physiology in schools will have a good effect in this direction. The almost universal ignorance of matters of the most vital importance to the community, as well as to the individual, is scarcely less than amazing. It is much to be hoped that in the
84 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
future the sexual process will be looked upon
as something essentially beautiful and good,
in fact as kuXo? in the old Greek sense. The
reader will surely not need to be reminded
that the love of man and woman has been the
motive force of many of the greatest and
noblest deeds in the world's history."
The words of this eminent authority should
be laid to heart. The time for " bowdlerising "
physiology should come to a speedy end. The
functions of sex and reproduction should be
discussed in the physiology class in the higher
school just as frankly and detachedly as the
functions of secretion and respiration. Moreover,
as the physiology lessons tend without any
sermonising to become practically hygienic,
taking advantage of the ideal of " fitness "
which is innate in so many ; so, and again without
sermonising, that portion which deals with sex
and reproduction should be allowed to make its
contribution. A sound physiology shows the
members of the body working together, " as
if they had a common concern for one another "
(to use St. Paul's words), and it must be very
unimaginative teaching which does not suggest
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 85
that the harmonious orchestration of the whole demands the control of other appetites besides hunger.
The Psychological approach, is a third useful method. A sound biological training, which sets the facts of sex in their proper perspective and in the light of evolution, will not make a clean thing out of an unclean, but it will go far to prevent sniggering and morbid brooding. Wholesome physiological discipline in the higher forms in school will not in itself make any one virtuous, but it will make vice more difficult. While there was generous exaggeration in the old saying " no man is knowingly vicious," there is no doubt as to the ethical value of letting daylight into a subject. But there is a third mode of sex-instruction which is often over- looked because we are slow to learn that a direct frontal attack is not always the most effective. The third method of sex-instruction is psycho- logical— trying to garrison the mind with nobility. The history of our race is rich in great stories of what men and women have done " for love " ; these should be part of the furnishings of the developing mind. When the mental gallery
86 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
becomes rich in fine pictures, some visual and others in the form of immortal verses, they must tend to crowd out the ugly sights which one cannot help seeing, which often remain with us for years as nauseating, yet almost ineradicable reminiscences. We turn from them with loathing and we meet them round the next corner ; we bury them deeply and they rise stinking from the dead. There are modern methods of dealing with these obscenities, but there is something in the old-fashioned plan of " crowding them out." Happy are those who know what Dr. Chalmers called " the expulsive power of a new affection." Sometimes there is an early but strong affec- tion which ennobles the whole nature — cleansing and salving, encouraging and invigorating — a genuine " rising in love." Even if it is not the final reaching out of the whole being to one's " own true love " — found at last — what is so poorly called " calf-love " is on the way of salvation, and to make game of it is the sin against the Holy Ghost. But even the " maiden passion for a maid " will be none the worse of being steeped in the " Idylls of the King." In a way it all comes back to the old wisdom :
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 87
" Keep the heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life."
Stated in generalised form, our thesis is simply that there is the highest value in all forms of education (religious, ethical and imaginative) which fill the mind with noble examples, which exalt the conception of human love by linking it to the chivalrous, the poetic, and the romantic, and which set a premium on self-control, courtesy, mutual respect, and healthy-minded- ness. What is most desired is not merely a negative chastity, though that is much, but an uplifted love. What is most desired is not merely refraining from self-indulgence and vice because they lessen physicological fitness, but a love of virtue for its own sake.
In the majority of cases, it seems to us, the lessons of history, which might be guiding-stars through life, do not " catch on " at all, and that is because their presentation is so predominantly intellectual, so inadequately emotional and dramatic. If history were better taught — taught so as to grip — the school would be full of hero-worship. Hence the promise, if we had only imagination and daring enough, in Dr. F. H.
88 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
Hayward's School Celebrations — getting into history through eye and ear, through the emotions and the dramatic sense, as well as through the intelligence.
No one can be really sure on a priori grounds of the results of, let us say, a course of instruction in sex-hygiene, in the higher forms in school. It is a matter for experiment, and the basis of experiment is not as yet large. But everyone is sure without further experiment that much good may be done in the guidance of adolescence by developing external pre-occupations and interests and real responsibilities ; by opening paths of legitimate excitement in work and play, in art and wholesome adventure, and in dramatic experiments ; and by manifold disciplines in enduring hardness, e.g., in scouting and boys' brigades, in girls' guildries, in climbing and swimming and exploring. To fill up the life is to crowd out evil. It is in the empty house that the evil spirits run riot.
The social approach is yet another avenue. It may seem premature to speak about the eugenic ideal in schools, but it cannot be premature to think about it. What is it after
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 89
all but the dream of a healthy nation — progressively healthy alike in body and mind ? No one in his senses would talk much about this ideal even in the highest classes in schools, but there are various ways of suggesting an ideal apart from direct inculcation. History brings us to face the problem of the decline and fall of nations, and one factor has repeatedly been a lowering of the standard of vigour. " The Roman Empire," says Seeley, " perished for lack of men." Prof. David Starr Jordan writes : " In the conquests of Rome, Fir, the real man, went forth to battle and to the work of foreign invasion ; Homo, the human being, remained in the farm and the workshop and begat the new generation." There were plenty of people — " people with too much guano in their com- position," as Emerson put it ; but even Julius Caesar noted that men were becoming terribly scarce. Prof. Seeck, a German historian of the downfall of the ancient world, says that it was due mainly to " the rooting out of the best." " Out of every hundred thousand strong men, eighty thousand were slain. Out of every hundred thousand weaklings, ninety to ninety-
go CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
five thousand were left to survive." " From the man who is left," Jordan sums up, " flows the current of human historv."
We are not saying that the factor of vigour was or is more than one factor in the decline of nations, but it is to be reckoned with ; and the historical illustrations give point to an insistence on its importance. The study of human heredity and evolution should begin in schools, and it is here that we find what gives some form of sex- instruction its paramount significance. For we begin to see that sex is much more than a personal matter, that it has a social aspect, that it has to do with the conservation of what we regard as of the highest value and with the happiness or misery of generations yet unborn. Every normal human being responds to the claims of the highest values — the true, the beautiful, and the good — the fuller embodiment of which throughout the body politic is progress in the highest sense. But what we have to make clear is that constitutional vigour throughout the race is a pre-condition of the higher progress. Not that the higher follows from the lower, but rather because the higher without the lower
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 91
cannot last. We are fortunate in Britain in being able to appeal to an innate ideal of personal fitness, but we must look forward to a broadening of this into a dream of racial vigour. That we should hold this ideal clearly is a claim that the next generation has on us. When it begins to sway men through and through — this vision of a nation positively healthy alike in mind and body ; when men come to care about this more than about anything else, they will make short work of difficulties and timidities. We must insist then, on the discovery of sound eugenic precepts, and we must hearken to what was said to an ancient people of high eugenic practice and ideal : " And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, — and when thou liest down and when thou risest up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes ; and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and upon thy gates."
So much, then, for the dominant factors which should rule sex instruction. Various practical
92 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
considerations emerge and it is important to emphasize some of these.
Better education is one. It will be seen that what we have counselled is an impersonal and indirect instruction through biological, physio- logical, literary, and historical studies. When one thinks of education as quietly as the mess we make of it will allow, it becomes clear that there are three paramount subjects in which everyone should be grounded. These are — (i) the history of the race, the real not regal history, including the achievements of art and science, literature and religion, and the stories of the makers and shapers of the world ; (2) the general routine of the world without, so that we can at any rate find our way about among stars and stones, plants and animals, and so that we understand what a scientific facing of facts really means ; and (3) the conditions of bodily and mental health and efficiency. If the rising generation is not getting any better grip of these essentials than we did, then there is something very far wrong. And everyone knows that there is. We still continue muddling along, without a grip of the history of our race, without
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 93
a scientific outlook on the extraordinarily interesting world around us, and without more than a vague knowledge of how to order our life aright. Now our point is that many of the mistakes young people make, much of the misery they bring upon themselves, and much of the poverty of their thoughts of love must be traced not to any recent changes in the sex-appetites and not to the repression of these in a dark corner of the mind, but to more generally mis- educated natures, which have been allowed to sink into slackness and boredom and to acquiesce in terribly limited interests and ambitions. There are, of course, hereditarily depraved types and others inherently soft and selfish, but this is not the way with the majority. It is not the hereditary " nature " but the external " nurture" that is mainly at fault.
Take evolution in man and in his social system. We know almost nothing in regard to the rate of evolution in different living creatures, except that some are very conservative and others very mutable. As regards man, all that we can say with security that he is subject to many intrinsic variations in his hereditary
94 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
nature and that his external or social heritage is still more variable. When the evolution of the social heritage, e.g., the ways of civilised society in eating and drinking, and in the relations of the sexes, is rapid, and it may be either up or down, it may come about that man fails to adjust himself with promptitude. And thus there arise disharmonies. A lasting adjustment between organism and environment is brought about solely by the sifting of germinal variations or mutations ; but a temporary adjustment may be effected more superficially by what are badly called " acquired characters," more correctly " somatic modifications." These are like dints or imprints, the direct result of peculiarities in nurture. Now if rapid evolution in the social heritage brings about, for instance, a much greater freedom between the sexes, one reaction may be ennoblement, while another may be individual over-sexing. Every new departure seems to have its pathological possible, every heaven its hell, and it is not a great change that turns the upward searching shoot into one which seeks the earth like a weeping willow. Now in cases like this, where we are dealing with
SEX INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG 95
adolescents who can more or less fend for them- selves, we can advise more boldly than in regard to pupils at school. The advice must be — more science, more science, and again more science. Let us have the facts before us, including the facts about racial poisons, and let us face them manfully.
Then there is the pathological consideration. In educational practice our first thought must always be for the great majority who are approxi- mately normal. We must not spoil the schooling of the main body of pupils by instruction prompted by our knowledge of delinquents and undesirables. Therefore we say, contrary to the advice of many, that in ordinary cases of sex- instruction in schools, we should ignore the pathological altogether ! When a youth leaving school comes to have a farewell talk and asks advice, then may be the time to tell him all we know that seems likely to be of use. But in ordinary circumstances, if we cannot leave the subject in the sunlight — where it belongs — let us leave it alone altogether.
Two cautions are worth expression. It is lamentably true that even mothers do not always
96 CLAIMS OF THE COMING GENERATION
tell their daughters what in common decency they ought to know. Here is a case where the instructor in personal and domestic hygiene, working under the school physician, must do her best. Yet it must be kept in mind that when the sex-instruction becomes intimate and personal there is a risk of bringing sex-feelings into the focus of consciousness prematurely — and prema- turely is not the word if there is no mating or motherhood after all, as happens too often in the present conditions with a disproportionately large number of women. Our final caution is the advisability of bearing in mind how little we old fogies know of the way in which the young mind looks at the whole question of sex. In this ignorance there is obvious danger !
To conclude appositely our brief treatment of a subject as important as it is difficult, a quota- tion is given from the little volume on Sex (Geddes & Thomson) in " The Home University Library." " Whether the sex-instruction is direct or indirect, through hygiene or through nature- study ; whether it is given by the parent or by the head of the school, by the science teacher or the school physician, or by lending simple
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booklets — care must be taken not to anticipate interest ; not to excite ; not to say what is untrue ; not to teach what will have to be unlearned afterwards ; not to make false mysteries (such as might be dispelled by watching the spawning frogs or by dusting the stigma of the lily with a pollen-laden brush) ; not to deal with the pathological ; not to frighten ; not to pretend that grown-ups are angels ; and, above all, not to say too much."
CHAPTER V
THE FUTURE FOR ELEMENTARY EDUCATION
By Sir James Yoxall
What in the rational order of national Educa- tion is the fit place and scope of the public elementary school ? No official answer to that question has yet been given in this country. An imposing-looking official volume has been published on " Preparatory Schools for Boys : their Place in English Public Education,"* but where is any corresponding official treatise on " The place "and scope of English Elementary Schools ?"
Concerning " The Place of the Preparatory School for Boys in Secondary Education in England," Sir Michael Sadler wrote that
* Special Reports on Educational Subjects, Vol. b : Board of
Education.
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" Opinions differ as to the degrees in which social distinctions might be lessened or removed by requiring, at least for the first stage of their education, the children of all classes of society to attend the public elementary schools. It is unlikely that such a requirement could be enforced unless public sentiment were overwhelm- ingly in favour of it, as public sentiment is not," he thought. The preparatory boarding school system, he reflected, " tends, far more than any day-school system can ever tend, to keep together in rather isolated communities boys drawn from the wealthier kind of homes," and this deprives such lads of the experience of mixing on equal terms, and measuring themselves intellectually with boys who " have felt the spur of poverty." Yet " it would be misleading to imply that fashion and social prejudice are the chief causes of the present practice. Careful sifting of comrades, and protection against indiscriminate influences, especially during childhood, are regarded by English parents generally as an advantage for their sons, as well as for their daughters." This he more stated than defended, but I see no prospect of the school segregation due to this
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feeling passing away. The practical question really is not whether the existing segregations can be dissipated and a new arrangement of schools — namely, a primary school for all social classes and a secondary school for all social classes — be set up, but whether that change is likely to be accomplished, or even seriously begun, during the present generation. And, if not, what should be done in respect of the public elementary schools meanwhile ; and what instructions should be issued by the Board of Education, and what the idea underlying those instructions should be ?
The Board of Education recognises differences between " elementary," " primary " and " pre- paratory " schools and classes, and a search through its official documents will discover that educationally the elementary ought to be, but for non-educational reasons cannot yet be, the school for all children of primary school age in its area. The elementary school, as a primary school with a particular field, must receive a separate treatment because it is to be a school for children who, most of them, will go to no other school, unless and until Day Continuation
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Schools are everywhere provided. It deals with children of ages between three and fifteen years, only a small percentage of whom will proceed to secondary, or day continuation, schools, or to evening schools, or to technological institutions : it is still the school for the commonalty as a whole.
Therefore the present scope and function of an elementary school appear to consist in giving to the great majority of its pupils all the specific teaching and training which they will ever receive ; preparing a few of its pupils to enter secondary or other later schools ; and scholas- tically preparing all its pupils, either wholly or partly, and as much as it may, for the duties, responsibilities and opportunities of industrial, political, intellectual, moral and spiritual life.
I might therefore claim chief importance for the primary school, for even yet there is no sure prospect of more than a small percentage of its pupils going on to places of secondary education, and I may disregard, as not upon the horizon yet, any change whereby the elementary school may become preparatory only, in the proper meaning of the word. The elementary school is the most
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important of all because a new meaning is being given to the phrase " The Governing classes." These are rapidly ceasing to consist of the few : they are becoming the bulk of the nation. So that the kind of school which used to educate Prime Ministers is no longer the most important kind of school, for elementary schools bear such responsibilities toward the million that the responsibilities of Public Schools to the myriad and to the nation are relatively small : as I wrote twelve years ago, " The people are ceasing to be the has peuple, and their education can no longer be treated de haut en has." At present, however, the Universities rule the curricula of the Public and Grammar Schools, as the Grammar Schools rule, to some extent, the curriculum for scholarship-winners from the elementary schools, and this goes de haut en has ; not only is there little organic relation between the curriculum of the elementary and the curriculum of the secondary schools — there is no fitting of them into their proper respective places.
Yet the work of the elementary school is, as a matter of fact, regulated de haut en has at the present time, and one can already see becoming
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realised the danger that the elementary school may be organized as a preparatory school for all its children, though it can only be preparatory for the relatively few of them who may proceed to a higher school. That it should be primary for those few is commendable, but what about the remainder — the bulk of the children in the school ? Is the curriculum for them to be conditioned by what the curriculum will be elsewhere for the few who go on to a higher school ? The mind is forced back on the con- ception that the school which is to be for the bulk of its children the only school, must be something more than primary, or preparatory to another, and must be made truly preparatory, so far as may be, with those children who leave it finally, for the whole of their future life.
Is it therefore mere enthusiasm on my part to claim that the elementary school ought to be magnified and dignified, so long as it is the one school for the bulk of the nation ? Such schools ought not to be coldly efficient only : they should inspire. The only schools which the new governing classes of the nation know require to be efficient and ennobled. The best that has
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been thought and done about other schools should surely be applied to them too ?
The historic continuity of a school's life, the genius loci, the spirit of the place, the carrying on of the torch, should give inspiration in the elementary schools, as well as in others. In many an elementary school this spirit now begins to gleam : it ought to burn in all. If the chief gift of a school is to be preparation for life, all the more need for that gift in the elementary school, the only school for the multitude ; and I claim that above all we need to ennoble, dignify, and glorify the place and function of the public elementary school.
I know of nobody who has discussed the " idea " of a public elementary school in such a way as a great English writer discussed " The Idea of an University," but obviously we need to perceive and follow such an " idea." As the elementary school cannot be " preparatory " in the technical sense of the word for more than few of its children yearly, it must be regarded as an independent entity, living a life of its own in a place of its own ; it should be a completely educative institution, so far as it can go.
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Curricula and tests for scholarships ought not to condition the teaching of the upper classes, therefore ; which should not be affected, necessarily, by circumstances and plans which govern schools to which most of the children in those classes will never go ; for much of the ennobling and magnifying which I advocate lies in the treatment of the upper classes as a crown to the whole school. If the school is to be an entity, it must not be reft of the classes which should give tone to the whole school ; and thus an elementary school ought always to include an " upper form." There should be continuity — prolongation of personality, so to say — between the other classes and this : all the children should feel themselves members of a School. And a school should throb with one life throughout, for out of this corporate life arises, like an emanation, the true " idea " of a school — any school.
How is this to be caught ? An elementary school should induce in its pupils " a liking for handiwork, housework, drawing, measuring, sewing, planning out, contriving and arranging, gardening, music, pictures, — a pleasure in bodily
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exercise, journeyings afoot, and organised games — a power of intelligent and accurate observa- tion, the lessons in temperance, modesty, the causes and preservation of health, civics, morak, and for religion." This is difficult — it is especially difficult in such a school.
Dr. I. B. Saxby has well outlined " the ulti- mate end of education " as " The production of efficient citizens," for an efficient citizen should be, he says, " able and willing (i) to keep himself fit and in good condition ; (2) to do his share of the world's work ; (3) to give his children the necessary care and training ; (4) to do his duty to his neighbours ; and (5) to occupy his leisure in such a way as to provide a desirable outlet for those of his longings which would otherwise remain unsatisfied."
How is this to be done ? Much is written just now against what is called literary education. But literature — and the love of it — are among the best aids in any school. What will help in all is the inducing of what the Introduction to the Day School Code calls " a taste for good and thoughtful study," so that the taught may delight in self-education during after-years.
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This, I think, is all-important. The flourishing of continuation schools, technological classes, schools of art, and so forth, depends upon it. So does the flourishing of the concert hall more than the music-hall, of the Free Library and the Art Gallery more than the public house. So does the flourishing of the nation as a whole. But how few critics of the work of the elementary schools yet recognise this ? They most of them demand instant results. The true function of the elementary school is much more to induce a delighted use of mental tools, than to teach narrowly the subjects upon which the mental tools are to be used. That an office boy should be instantly fit to be used as a junior clerk, on entering employment, was not the proper aim of the school which educated him : that is a matter of mere instruction — not of education. The true task of an educator is to reveal to the pupil how best to educate himself. Awaken curiosity, train observation, induce a love of reading in children, and we have put them in the true way to be self-educators all their lives, and to become efficient for all future duties, respectively. An " ambitious " curriculum is therefore not
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in place in an elementary school ; and the function there is to persuade to learn, not to instruct to know. " Simplify and intensify the curriculum " is, I think, the true maxim for an elementary school. And " dignify, magnify, glorify the name and mission of the school " is the true maxim of legislators and administrators for it.
Such is the claim of the schools called " Elementary." That adjective, badly chosen at first, has governed the idea of the school, and the school itself, too long. " Elementary " is not even regarded as being equivalent to "Primary" ; it has been regarded as necessarily equivalent to a narrowing and a depreciating of the work in elementary schools. " Thus far but no farther " and " something, but not too much " have been adages or practice. The proper claim of those schools is not yet conceded, and until it is conceded our whole system halts and lingers, socially and politically as well as educationally, and nationally as well as with each child.
CHAPTER VI
THE MORAL TRAINING OF MODERN
GIRLS By Dr. Mary Scharlieb
Whether for good or for evil, and whether we like it or dislike it, a great change has passed over the status and aims of our girls and women. Things were changing rapidly before the war, the spirit of the times was a totally different spirit from that which ruled young people some sixty or seventy years ago ; the current even then was setting towards a more complete realisation of self, a greater determination to self-government, and to the achievement of economic and social independence. This tendency has been strengthened by the circumstances, economic and social, that were the inevitable accompaniment of the great struggle through which we have passed. The circumstances of
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the country made it absolutely necessary that women and girls should to a great extent do the work and take the positions that formerly belonged to the men alone. The response made by our neophytes was a splendid and very real contribution to national safety, but, just as to every evil there is a corresponding good, so every advance and every development has to be bought at a price. In the case of the emancipated women and girls their newly developed strength and individuality, and their great capacity for national service was purchased at the price of the feminine dependence and the apparent unconsciousness of the facts of life that was characteristic of the young women of former generations. In all probability we are at present experiencing a transitional phase, and the national difficulties in adjusting the relations between employer and employed, between man and woman, and between parents and children may all work out into a new social fabric stronger, more useful, and more beautiful than that which we have known hitherto. Whether this is to be so or no depends very largely on the intelligent guidance and sympathy with which the older
MORAL TRAINING OF MODERN GIRLS in
generation are prepared to treat the young people of the present day. For the sake of national safety we cannot acquiesce in a state of mind in which
" Those behind cried ' Forward ! ' And those before cried c Back ! " We have long known that the years of adoles- cence are those of the most rapid change and the greatest instability in young people of both sexes. Psychologists, and especially those who specialised in the study of the problems of youth, insisted that the care and manage- ment of adolescents was a most important and a most difficult task. Many of us thought that we had some insight into the characteristics of the young, and that we were prepared to give them the sympathy and the comradeship they need. It is, however, certain that very few of us are really fitted to understand and to be helpful to the lads, and still more to the lasses, who are the product of our modern development and of our recent experiences. Those of us who have the welfare of the young most deeply at heart feel that the time has come to make a fresh study of their circumstances and of their
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psychology. In the present volume though — ■ from its compass — little can be done beyond drawing the attention of the public to this difficult and interesting subject, that little must, if possible, be useful.
Among the problems affecting young people which have been re-stated of late years and to the solution of which we must bring our best and most sympathetic intelligence, is that of sex. Up to recently parents, guardians and teachers, held that ignorance was the same thing as innocence ; they thought that they could hide the facts of life from the eyes of the young, that it was desirable that they should do so, and that well brought up young girls were absolutely without sex knowledge and sexual feeling. There is little doubt that young people have always known, or at any rate have always felt about these matters quite differently from what we thought they did. Deep down in the hearts of those we deemed blissfully unconscious and absolutely ignorant there was a misinterpreted but genuine sexual impulse, and an ill-defined, inaccurate knowledge of the subject. The excitement, the hero-worship, and the outward
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circumstance of girls and young women during the war and since the war have brought them face to face with these facts and have also greatly developed and accelerated the change in their moral and intellectual attitude.
It is useless for us to bewail the changes which we recognise, we cannot put back the hands of the clock even if it were well for us to do so. Probably it is better for the race that we cannot do this because there is reason to hope that when the difficult transition period is passed, and the seething, bubbling liquor of modern society quietens and clears, we shall find that there has been progress as well as change, and that real good has been evolved out of apparent evil. That this may be the case it is necessary for us to recognise sympathetically the attitude of mind assumed by our adolescents. The majority of them are keenly conscious of their own personality, and of their attributes not only as members of the human race but also as men and women. The evidence that they do recognise the essential facts of sex is to be found in the manner in which boys and girls react differently to the presence of members of their
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own sex and to that of members of the opposite sex. Some girls show this in undue bashfulness and awkwardness when they find themselves in the company of young males, whereas others show their reaction by noisy laughter, senseless giggling, or more pleasantly by an added grace- fulness and charm. Certainly few adolescent girls behave just the same when only other girls are present as they do in the company of lads and young men. It is to be remembered that in many instances the girls themselves do not realise and could not describe this change in their feelings, nor are they able to give any name to their new experience ; it is much more recognisable by a watchful mother or a wise teacher than by the girl herself. Another way in which sexual feeling is evinced is by the greater care bestowed on dress, the greater desire for ornament, and for enhanced powers of attraction. Evidence of this natural instinct is not only manifested in this way but may also be perceived in the greater pleasure felt in sharing the pursuits, the amusements, and the work of members of the opposite sex, e.g., dancing and singing and work of all kinds have a totally
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different and a greater value when they are shared by partners of opposite sexes.
One of the great dangers of the present day is that while sex knowledge is more widely diffused among the young, and while sex impulses are more easily recognised by them, those who should be their guides may fail to interpret these things aright, and that by want of sympathy they may precipitate the evils that they most wish to avoid. " 111 that Thou blessest is our good, and unblest good is ill " — by right guidance much that seems mere dross may be transmuted into pure metal.
We have to remember that while the sexual instinct is as natural and as little blameworthy as are those instincts which prompt us to eat, to drink, and to sleep, yet on the other hand undue or improper indulgence of this instinct is wrong and is sure to be followed by disaster ; just as is the case in the undue gratification of the instinct for food and other bodily necessities. The fact also remains that in the case of human beings who have the gift of reason and the power of self-control even the deepest and most primitive of our instincts can be, and must be,
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kept under control, and its manifestation and gratification must be made to depend on the sanction of circumstances. Decent people do not clamour for food nor proclaim their hunger at unsuitable times. Generations of self- government and self-control have bestowed upon the civilised races of mankind the gift, not only of moderation in the gratification of the appetite but also that degree of reticence and consideration for others that distinguishes the civilised man from the savage. While, therefore we freely admit the existence and the strength of our various instincts we are not to be brought into bondage of them. We can remain, and we must remain, the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls.
Therefore while there should be no attempt to reproduce the rigidity of the mid-Victorian regime, and while those who are responsible for the young girl's welfare must train themselves to feel sympathetic and respectful appreciation of her gifts and of her difficulties, it is necessary that they should insist that ideals of duty and self-control shall govern her daily life. The greatest injustice is done to our children if
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parents and guardians in abdicating their own sovereign prerogatives, fail to impress on young people the necessity of substituting self-govern- ment for parental rule. The result would be necessarily allied not to orderly republicanism but to chaotic Bolshevism — destructive to the interests of the young people and of Society at large.
The uprush into evident action of the divine afflatus, the imperious necessity to share in the work of creation, is not given only for the sake of perpetuating the race. It is also the vital spark which energises the creations of the mind, the sacred flame whence are kindled poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and all the arts whereby mankind is purified and warmed. Youth is the constructive phase of life, the time in which we are most capable of original work — the time for correction, co-ordination, and scientific research belongs to maturer years.
The right direction of the young girl's creative energy is a Godlike task. If we can " sublimate " her natural impulses into products that will fertilise the art and knowledge of the nation we shall have accomplished our life work.
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In all our plans for the welfare of our young girls and young women we have to remember the tripartite nature of man, and must do our utmost to secure the full and normal develop- ment of their bodies, their minds, and their souls. We have also to remember that in the case of the woman all the problems of employment, wage-earning capacity, of domicile, and of success in life, are complicated by her potential status as wife and mother.
The status and the duties of man as husband and father do not interfere with his chosen art, trade, profession, or calling, but the case of the woman is widely different. She may marry at any age, and should she marry much before fifty she may become a mother. The duties of housekeeper and of motherhood are incompatible with many of the vocations open to unmarried women, and when a woman employee marries, the Gordian knot, instead of being untied, is only brutally cut by dismissing her from her office as teacher, clerk, dispenser, gardener, or other employment outside her home.
The spirit of the age and the altered condition of the labour market have thrown many voca-
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tions open to women, and one of our most pressing problems is how we are to help them to prepare for their work, how the work and the worker are to be brought together, what provision ought to be made for the housing and general welfare of women workers, and on what principle are they to be remunerated for their work ?
Intellectually much has been accomplished to make adequate preparation for work possible. Elementary and Secondary Schools, Continua- tion schools and many scholarships provide a ladder for the more richly gifted children to ascend to the heights of Parnassus as represented by the standard of education in the modern Universities of the land. Much has also been done to throw open the more jealously guarded groves of Oxford and Cambridge.
Much has been achieved, but more remains to be accomplished. More scholarships are needed, especially for girls seeking to ascend the mountain by the steep and rough path from the Elementary School. The intellectual difficulties are severe enough to separate the worthy from the unfit, and the superadded crux of Res angusta Domi should be eliminated. Girls cannot do
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themselves or their teachers justice if they have to help to maintain themselves in addition to their professional studies.
In these days many young girls of the middle and the working classes are wage earners and at the same time are training for their life work. Training and the necessary study in connection with it make quite sufficient demand upon their somewhat unstable organisms, and it is not desirable that their brief evening leisure should be spent in extra study or in remunerative work. It would be far better for them, in body, soul, and spirit, if the two or three hours at their command in the evening were spent in outdoor games during the summer, and in singing, dancing, exercises and games, in the winter. Lads and lasses ought not to work too hard, but on the other hand aimless loitering and foolish gossip are very deleterious. In these respects the children of the working classes are better off than are those immediately above them in the social scale : they can nearly always command entrance into a Club or Guild, run in a more or less enlightened manner for their benefit, but one of the wants of the present-day society is
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similar opportunities for young girls preparing to be clerks, seamstresses, and teachers. It is true that their leisure is scanty, and that they are tired all over at the end of their hard-worked day, but such employment as might reasonably be called re-creation would be a better prepara- tion for refreshing sleep and for efficient work the next day than loitering and the dangerous companionship which are too frequently the only alternatives to absolute boredom.
Formerly the usual arrangement was that each family should meet after the toil of the day and find within its own circle refreshment and change, but those who know the spirit of the present-day adolescents know how impossible of realisation is any such ideal, and after all it is more natural that young people of neighbouring families should meet and amuse each other rather than that they should be expected to find refreshment and amusement in the company of those who have reached a different phase of life's experiences.
In advocating the provision of amusement and healthy occupations for our children's leisure moments we have to remember how special are the gifts of insight, sympathy, and knowledge
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that are necessary in those who aspire to help the young. As a rule those who sacrifice their own scanty leisure to run guilds, clubs and associations, are themselves too tired to be bright and inspiring, and in some instances they have too narrow an outlook on life to make their sacrifice really profitable. Again, it may be doubted whether the attempted segregation of the sexes in clubs and guilds is in the best interests of their members. Such an arrange- ment partakes too much of a conventual character : it is more natural and more whole- some for boys and girls to meet each other in a proper environment and under suitable super- vision. May we say with all reverence — " What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." As certainly as He made us in the beginning male and female, so surely does the human race only attain its best development when boy and girl, man and woman, are freely associated both in work and play. Such an arrangement, however, needs constant super- vision, and the wisest, most tactful care, in its management.
A great deficiency in our provision for
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enabling girls to profit by their education and to make the best of their abilities, is the want of suitable Hostels, Clubs, or Homes. The most economical, and in some ways the best, arrangement is for girls and young women to live with their parents and to contribute their share to the family exchequer as soon as they begin to enjoy economic independence. This is the cheapest method of housing girl students and women workers, but circumstances sometimes make it impossible and still more frequently make it undesirable.
The girl who lives at home is not unnaturally expected to enter into the joys, cares, and burdens of domestic life. She is called upon to help in times of sickness and other emergencies. Girls of the wealthier classes are also expected to take some share in the social occasions of the family and neighbourhood. Thus is created a conflict of duties, study and professional work on the one hand versus family duties and social demands on the other.
Such a conflict does not arise in the case of boys and men. They are expected to devote themselves to their study and to their work and
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are very properly blamed if they permit other claims to interfere with their manifest duty.
Girls living in a hostel or in a small community such as a residential Club are free from outside demands on their time, but they need to be constantly on the watch against selfish disregard of natural affection for home and family.
A hostel run for girls, if wisely and sympa- thetically managed, is usually better than a community run by girls on their own behalf. When a few young women club together, the burden of management must be borne among them, and they may sometimes suffer from the want of an older and more experienced woman such as the Lady Superintendent of a Hostel ought to be.
During the Great War many ladies received an admirably practical training in domestic economics and also in the far more difficult tasks of moral supervision and " mothering." As Chief Welfare Workers, as Superintendents of Voluntary Aid Detachments, and in many similar positions, women of good birth, breeding, and education, learned the very lessons that they might now once more turn to national account
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by mothering young women in various circum- stances. Among these ladies are individuals who seem specially endowed with an intuitive appreciation of the wants and desires of working girls, while others are fitted to find the right outlet for their culture and their motherly instincts in caring for girls and young women of their own social status.
The necessity for helping girls and young women to develop the angel and to cast out the ape is not limited to pregraduate days. The new privileges of women, such as political enfranchisement, and the opening to them of many new professions and callings, demand a totally new provision for their instruction and guidance. It has become necessary to teach our new voters the history not only of our Empire but also of other nations. They ought to have opportunities of studying such questions as Personal Hygiene, Municipal and Domestic Sanitation, Temperance, Social Purity, the Prevention of Disease, and many other matters on which individual health and national prosperity depend. They need information and guidance so that they may know why impurity, laxness of
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morals, and disregard of marriage vows, are serious dangers to the State. They also require the statement and the elucidation of such problems as infantile mortality, the morbidity of young children, and puerperal mortality. We must be prepared to tell them why we believe that continence in the unmarried is not only possible but healthy, and why chastity, mutual consideration, and a natural manner of life are the foundations, not only of the married happi- ness of individuals but also of Imperial safety.
Some people talk of superfluous women. There are none. We need the married women to guide our homes, to bear and rear our citizens, and to be mothers in our Israel.
We need the unmarried women as well as the married to be the spiritual mothers of the race. They are wanted in innumerable positions of trust and importance, such as those of teachers, doctors, nurses, welfare workers, inspectors of midwives, and of factories. Indeed it is not possible to enumerate the many honourable and adequately paid positions that are calling out to our women, nor is it possible at present to be thoroughly alive to the best methods of helping
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all women to prepare for that deeply interesting and many-sided blessing — " Life work."
In considering the training of our girls and women and in reviewing the difficulties of their preparation for their destiny it is impossible to overlook the primary and overwhelming call of wifehood and motherhood.
The deepest instincts of our nature unite with our oldest record to convince us that men and women were created as mutual complements — the man as the provider of the physical necessaries of existence and as the bestower of the germ of life — the woman as the guardian and distributor of food, clothes and warmth, the nurturer, the nurse, the primary teacher of the life to be. " Where thou art Caius — there am I Caia," as the Romans phrased the truth.
Alone the male principle, like the corn of wheat, must fall to the ground and die. Alone the female principle is sterile and unfruitful. Herein is the great principle of procreation. The Divine Gift is divided by the Creator between the male and the female so that neither can compass the design of creation alone. Both are equally called to the honour and happiness of
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procreation. On God's behalf and as His vice- regents they call new lives into being. Being so honoured, and being entrusted with so great a work and so divine a privilege both man and woman should look on fertilisation, conception, and the bearing of children as the highest earthly- duty and honour. From this it follows that there should be a careful preparation for parent- hood and that matrimony should be undertaken from the purest and highest motives.
Man shares with other animals the duty and joy of parenthood,he differs from them in the fact that his offspring have immortal souls, and that he is responsible for their spiritual and moral welfare as well as for the efficient care of their bodies.
At the present time there is a tendency to look on matrimony as a state to be enjoyed and not as a duty that demands fulfilment. Hence there is a somewhat widespread failure to make proper preparation for it. Young couples marry and do not bestow on themselves and on their probable children the wisdom and forethought that is exercised in the mating of valuable animals and the care that the scientific breeder lavishes on their offspring.
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Some sixty years ago the subject of sex rela- tions and of parenthood was left undiscussed, and young people who married had to find out for themselves the truths which so closely affect their married happiness. Now the fact of sex and all that it implies is more generally recog- nized, but even now many young couples are badly instructed and fail to understand the duties and the hygiene of matrimony. Mothers even now do not see that no girl should be permitted to marry without understanding the nature of the obligations she undertakes. Every prospective bride should have a confidential talk with her mother, or better, with some woman doctor, and each young couple should exchange medical certificates of health and of fitness for matrimony. If this instruction and this exchange of certificates became the usual practice there would be much less annoyance, disappointment and disease.
If the young are ignorant and careless with regard to the physical side of matrimony they are still more ignorant as to its moral and spiritual significance. The great majority of people look upon marriage not as a sacrament by
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which " character " is conferred, nor even as a civil contract legally binding on both parties, but merely as a custom which confers respecta- bility on a union which is to last so long as their pleasure in it endures — a union made by mutual consent for mutual convenience, to be dissolved by mutual consent when it becomes irksome.
The Christian takes our Lord's words, " they be no more twain but one flesh," in their simple meaning. By them he understands that char- acter is conferred, and that the crime, insanity, or desertion of one partner cannot dissolve the union. They twain are one fie sh — marriage, like parenthood, permanently alters an individual's status, and confers character, a " character " which may become a burden but cannot cease to exist.
Supposing that a couple are not Christians and that the union effected by the Registrar can be lawfully annulled by the Divorce Court is there any reason why this should not be done ? The chief reason against divorce in the case of civil marriages is that although individual relief from a burden may be gained it is at the expense, not only of the " innocent party " but also of
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the community. Individuals suffer from bereavement of the children of the union, and in some cases from loss of financial and social status. The State suffers from the relaxation of morals, from the injury done to the sanctity of marriage, and from the evil example set to citizens in general.
Another point on which young people are badly instructed is on the internal purity of marriage. A man and wife may live irre- proachable lives so far as their neighbours are concerned. They forsake all others and keep wholly to themselves, and yet they treat each other as instruments of pleasure only. They separate the joys of matrimony from its responsi- bilities. Such couples are also liable to incur injury because all abnormal function may lead to nervous injury. Their mode of life tends to injure the State. Whatever may be thought of over-population in theory, the British Empire is dangerously understocked with citizens, and so long as Canada, Australia, and other portions of our Estate are so seriously undermanned there can be no question as to the duty of young and healthy married couples.
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Many people are troubled as to the effect that modern conditions may have on the willingness of girls and women to fulfil their natural destiny as wives and mothers. It is feared that the greater independence and freedom of professional or other individualistic work may cause our girls to avoid the cares and burdens of matrimony.
Against this danger there are three main safeguards — the sex instinct, the mother instinct, the religious instinct. Instinct being inborn and a part of our natural outfit can seldom be disowned, granting the environment necessary for its fruition. Nearly all young girls feel an answering thrill to the devotion offered by their lovers. The desire for union is instinctive and imperative. It needs guidance and control rather than kindling. Young people of marriage- able age know intuitively that " it is not good for man to be alone," and many of them are in love with love long before they have a lover. The desire for union is natural to both men and women and is probably not less keen in the one than in the other, although the woman has been better taught the lessons of reticence and self control. The desire for offspring also is natural
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to both sexes, but attains its greatest develop- ment in the female, because the suffering and the burden of it falls chiefly on her. It is char- acteristic of the human race to love most deeply that which costs us most.
The third safeguard of marriage is the religious instinct. Religion, that is, the fear and love of a Supreme Being, is co-extensive with the human race. God is —
" Father of all ! In every age, by every clime adored
By saint, by savage, and by sage — Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."
This universal recognition of the fatherhood of God leads naturally to the cult of the father- hood and motherhood of man. Inasmuch as the human race knows that man alone and woman alone are unfruitful, it earnestly desires their union in the great work of procreation. From the dawn of our race until now the Priest, the State, and the Family, encourage marriage, and to each young couple is addressed the exhorta- tion " Be fruitful and multiply."
The advocates of Free Love are at one with the Churches in desiring union, but they possess
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a half-truth only, and having secured the union of man and woman they fail to make provision for the due care and development of the fruits of their union. Those who advocate the State maintenance and education of children ignore the medical fact that a child deprived of his mother has only half the normal chance of life and a mere fractional chance of healthy manhood.
The practical outlook for our girls and women is encouraging. We are passing through troublous times, but the national faith, hope, and charity will — even though it be through much tribulation — bring us safely through.
An ovation was decreed to the Roman general who, in spite of severe defeat never despaired of the salvation of his country. We are some- times tempted to think that our national doom has sounded and that the forces of disruption must triumph. Still there is reason to believe that " somehow good will be the final of all ill," and there is reason to hope that the new development of womanly power will call forth a fresh increase in her hereditary sense of duty and that our women collectively will work out the salvation of our Empire as St. Joan of Arc individually saved France.
CHAPTER VII
THE TRAINING OF THE YOUNG CITIZEN FOR WORTHY PARENTHOOD
By Dr. C. J. Bond
The future of the British race depends on the quality of our children.
This is the tremendous fact which we older citizens, immersed in the struggles and trials of daily life, are apt to overlook.
But if the true aim of life be " Self-expression " then it is certain that, in order to realise this fuller development, both for the individual and the community, we must take steps to safe- guard the quality and quantity of that Human Life which constitutes our only real wealth, and at the same time provide favourable opportunity for its growth and development.
We simply cannot afford to consign the control of the greatest industry we possess to chance,
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or to leave it in the hands of ignorant and careless persons.
The nation requires " Child fanciers " more than Dog fanciers, and " Homo-culture " as well as Horticulture and Agriculture.
Modern genetic investigations are shedding a new light on the old problem of Heredity, and one striking fact is emerging in ever-clearer significance, and that is the overwhelming importance of innate and racial qualities when weighed in the balance with more superficial and transitory environmental influences.
This means that it is of vital importance to arouse in our young citizens, who will be the parents of the next generation, an abiding sense of responsibility and duty in regard to the young life of the future — a " Racial Conscience " — which will prevent, apart from State enactments, the marriage of persons who, either from lack of nor- mal, or the possession of abnormal and undesirable innate qualities, are unfitted for parenthood ; a sense of responsibility for the welfare of mankind which will regard the begetting of feeble and diseased offspring as a crime against society and as an injury to the human race.
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Although the task of arousing this " Racial Conscience," and of developing and training our young adults for worthy parenthood, must rest chiefly on parents, teachers, and guardians of the young, still much more help could be given by the community acting as a whole, and by the State, than is yet realised.
We do not by any means fully appreciate the power of the " Group Mind," or make sufficient use of the influence of " Public Opinion " when dealing with our adolescent population.
The mental outlook and the conduct of young people from the age of puberty onwards, to sex matters, as to many other problems of life, is largely determined by the standard set, and the attitude taken up by the society, or group, to which the individual belongs. It is the " moral atmosphere," the " form," in the School, the College, the Workshop, the Factory, the Club, which sets the standard of life in each little world. This largely determines the character of the response made by the young student or worker to the demands and the temptations of daily life.
State departments responsible for the physical,
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mental, and moral welfare of the people, viz., the Ministries of Health and Education, might do much to mould this social conscience on right lines.
For instance, in the special field of the sex life of the community the State could employ the great influence of Public Opinion and the Group Mind to bring about an active disapproval by society of certain forms of anti-social conduct, such as indulgence in promiscuous sex inter- course. By so doing it would promote racial interests, by preventing the disease and the physical and moral damage which always accom- pany a lowered standard of life in the sex relationships between men and women.
Indulgence in promiscuous sex intercourse can no longer be regarded as a matter of individual concern only ; it must now be looked upon as an injury done to the life of the community, and as a form of anti-social conduct. Sexual immorality strikes a deadly blow at the welfare of society, because it tends to rob life of its chivalrous ideals, both in the unmarried and the married, it dulls the sense of " fatherhood in men, and motherhood in women." Until public
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opinion manifests active disapproval of prosti- tution and sexual immorality, venereal disease will continue to flourish.
The primary object of such a Ministerial pronouncement as is here suggested would be to induce public opinion to show active disapproval of this and other forms of anti-social conduct, by bringing home to the public intelligence the fact that the public-spirited and right-living sections of the population are now bearing the great burden of the cost of the free treatment of venereal disease, and of correcting the bad results which flow from sexual immorality, and other forms of self-indulgence on the part of some citizens.
Since this was written the Ministry of Health has issued a circular (202) to County and County Borough Councils advising the issue of leaflets pointing out to the Public the danger of Venereal Disease and the duty resting on every individual who runs the risk of contracting disease, to practise personal cleansing and to resort to medical advice.
It is not suggested that State action should be accompanied by threats of penal conse-
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quences, at any rate until the public mind and conscience has been aroused to the disastrous effects of sexual immorality and venereal disease on the welfare of society, and until the com- munity is prepared for further measures of control, such as the compulsory notification and compulsory treatment of venereal disease.
It is no doubt true that State interference and State control can only usefully advance pari-passu with the growth of public opinion but it is also true that State initiative can do much to mould and direct public opinion along right lines.
Although with the growing complexity and interdependence of modern social life much more will be accomplished by combined opinion and State influence in the future ; yet, for the immediate present, the chief responsibility for training our young citizens for parenthood and citizenship must fall on us as individual parents and teachers.
How then can we best set about our important task ?
Two considerations confront us at the outset. The first is that, dealing with average human
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material, with boys and girls of normal capacity, from average homes, training for parenthood, if it is to be useful, must rest upon a Physiological and a Psycho-logical foundation. It must have reference to the physical development of the body so as to enable it to carry out its life originating and life transmitting functions at the proper time, in a normal manner, and it must also include the formation of a healthy intel- lectual and emotional atmosphere, a mental and moral attitude in both teacher and pupil which will place the physiological facts in their right relationship and regard them from a proper standpoint.
And the second point is — that training for parenthood cannot be divorced from training for life as a whole.
Just as the focusing of attention and effort on one particular kind of occupation — the choice and the making of a career — depends on the wise use of special knowledge on the top of a general education, so preparation for parenthood must be regarded as a special form of duty and service which has its proper relations to other spheres of fife.
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Owing to the growing complexity of life under modern social conditions, and the interdepen- dence of the various sections of the population which make up a modern society, the physical health and the moral welfare of a community depend more and more on the conduct of its individual citizens. A growing intimacy of association arises between " Health " and " Conduct."
If they are to bring about any real improve- ment in the health or the morals of the people then those State departments which are intimately concerned with physical health and mental and moral welfare must extend their activities on the preventive side, so as to include some supervision and control over citizens whose anti-social conduct is responsible for disease and inefficiency, not only in sex matters but in other fields of life.
It is because the association between mis- conduct and disease is so direct in the sphere of the sex life that this affords a useful field for the State to try wise experimental action on preven- tive lines.
While our system of National Education has
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been backward in carrying out on any adequate scale the instruction of children and young adults ;n the duties, responsibilities, and privi- leges of citizenship, it has also largely ignored all responsibility in regard to one of the most important aspects of civic duty, the training of young adults for worthy parenthood.
Other writers will deal in more detail with the subject of sex instruction for the young ; in view, however, of the fact that English parents are not to-day instructing their children on any thought-out plan in sex matters, some way must be found of bringing home to the minds of parents the danger of ignorance, or we must entrust the duty and privilege of giving advice and instruction on these vital subjects to carefully selected and properly trained teachers or other suitable persons.
The lowered standard of sexual morality among young people of both sexes to-day, though accentuated by the War, is partly due to the fact that we have omitted in the past to impart knowledge concerning life and its transmission to our sons and daughters, just as we have failed to attach sufficient importance to instruction
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in the duties and responsibilities of citizenship in our scheme of national education as a whole.
Having touched upon the Psychological and Sociological sides of the subject there remains for brief consideration the Physiological aspect. There is first the influence of diet on growth and sexual development.
Recent investigations into the influence of food on bodily growth and nutrition have shown the great importance of certain dietetic sub- stances, small in amount, but of great physio- logical value.
These so-called "Accessory food factors " seem to reside only in those elements of food which have formed part of living plants, or which have been derived by animals from plants. They are readily diminished by age and ex- posure, and are destroyed by prolonged cooking, and in the process of sterilisation by heat. They are essential for the healthy growth of all the tissues and organs of the body, but they are peculiarly associated with the full development and harmonious working of certain organs which especially control growth and nutrition, such as
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the Thyroid, the Supra-renal and the Pituitary glands.
On the healthy development of the primary sex organs, — the ovary and testis, — depends the capacity of transmitting life to offspring, and on the same organs, in association with the secretions which are poured into the blood stream by the Thyroid, the Supra-renal and the Pituitary and other glands, depends also the full development of certain bodily features and mental attributes, — the so-called " secondary sex characters," which distinguish the male and the female sex.
We now know that certain diseases and developmental defects (for instance, Cretinism) which depend on an arrested development of one or other of these essential glands of internal secretion are also associated with sterility. The disease known as rickets, which affects growing children, though associated with other anti-hygienic con- ditions, is probably largely a food-deficiency disease, and rickets, through its deforming effect on the bony structure of the female pelvis, is responsible for serious complications arising during pregnancy and for much loss of infant life.
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Hence the importance of a diet for the nursing mother, the breast fed, and especially for the artificially-reared infant, and for the growing child, which contains not only tissue-forming and energy supplying constituents, but which also ensures an adequate supply of these vital accessory factors without which the full growth of important organs is arrested and normal sexual development does not take place.
Recent investigations have also shown that the part played by these accessory food factors in promoting normal growth and healthy develop- ment is greatly enhanced by exercise in the open air and by exposure to sunlight.
It is also very important that parents, teachers and adolescents should all understand something about the dual function of the sex glands.
The ovary and testis not only originate germ cells and thus perform a function of racial importance, they also elaborate an internal secretion which is poured into the blood stream, from puberty onwards to the close of the sexual life. It is this secretion which (in collaboration with that of other organs) promotes individual vigour and well-being, and also controls the
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development of the secondary sex characters previously mentioned.
The knowledge of this important fact that the sex glands carry out this dual function, outside the conscious control of the individual, should enable the young, and those interested in the welfare of the young, to understand, on physio- logical grounds, why it is that chastity during youth and adolescence is quite consistent with the attainment of health and vigour of body and mind. A knowledge of Physiology also explains how it comes about that premature stimulation and unnatural sexual excitement produce exhaustion, and prejudice the development of the higher feelings of chivalry and consideration for the other sex, and thus cloud the healthy emotional atmosphere which should surround the sexual life.
The importance of Recreation of the right kind, the bad effect of prolonged fatigue of mind or body which is not removed by rest, the influence of occupation, employment, and the home life in relation to training for parenthood, must also be mentioned.
The urbanisation of the English people which
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began during the last century has had an injurious effect on our racial life.
Eighty years ago rural life in our country villages and the slower speed at which industrial and educational processes were carried out, did not entail that prolonged and unequal strain of mind or body, or induce fatigue of a pathological as opposed to a physiological kind, which is now too often the concomitant of our modern city life.
The daily routine in the crowded office, ware- house, and factory to-day, especially for female workers, frequently consists of spells of work and fatigue interspersed with intervals for food or for amusement which too often only restimulate instead of refresh tired brains and muscles.
Much present day amusement is not recreation in the true sense of that word. It does not build up lost energy or provide for the laying up of stores of nutritive material, or help to dissipate waste products.
Some change of thought and occupation, together with rest of mind and body, are necessary for the carrying out of those hidden physiological processes which, for the mother,
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herald the advent and mark the entrance of a new life into the world. The conditions under which modern industrial and social life is carried on are, for too many women, inconsistent with happy or worthy motherhood.
And yet the future of England rests largely with the mothers of England. We should do well therefore carefully to consider whether the increasing employment in industry of large numbers of women who are wives and mothers is not calculated to prejudice worthy Parenthood, and to seriously endanger the welfare of the next generation.
One of the great social questions of the imme- diate future will be — How to harmonise our modern " Way of Life " with the interests of our children, who will become our future citizens. For unless we can succeed in harmonising these two vital interests the future of our country is dark indeed. Reared in the atmosphere of the one-roomed tenement, and of squalid streets, the town child has little opportunity for learning even the rudiments of sex morality.
" Play " has been well described as " a rehearsal of the business of Life."
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But " Play " for the city child has lost much of its meaning and significance. Through its dissociation from " Nature " and the lives of plants and animals it has also lost much of its aesthetic value. City life no longer provides that practical and sub-conscious element in education and training which is too often absent from the formal instruction imparted by the school teacher or the parent.
Hence we cannot afford to ignore the influence of healthy play and freedom in our scheme of national education. The industrial environment has robbed the leisure hours of our boys and girls of much of their re-creative value in the physical, the mental, and the moral sphere. It will be necessary not only to provide better facilities for rational amusement, but also to induce our young citizens to make a better use of leisure hours, if we are to look for any considerable improvement in our standard of sex morality.
The Racial Poisons, Alcoholism and Venereal Disease, must nor be ignored. No scheme of training for Parenthood can be regarded as satisfactory which omits all reference to those insidious diseases which destroy the health and
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happiness of many parents and blight the lives of offspring.
By some means or other, and at the appro- priate time, life-saving knowledge of the prevalence, the nature, and the manner of infection by venereal disease must be brought home to the mind and conscience of every boy and girl who is leaving the home world or the school world to enter on the larger world of life They must be enabled to appreciate the intimate association which exists between venereal disease, sexual immorality, and a loose standard of life and conduct with companions of the other sex. They must be warned of the pitfalls that lie in their path, and of the only true way of overcoming them by a life of chastity before marriage.
Young adults exposed to such dangers should also be told of the value of prompt resort to medical advice and treatment if self control should fail under the stress of temptation. They should be told that it is the duty of every indi- vidual who, in spite of the claims of sex morality, exposes himself or herself to the risk of infection, to take steps to get disinfected, treated, and
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cured, at the earliest possible opportunity, and that it is only by such prompt action that any amends can be made for the injury done to the community.
In conclusion, the question arises, to what extent, if at all, some knowledge of the methods employed for restricting the size of the family by artificial means should form part of the mental and moral equipment of young married persons, and of persons about to marry.
It cannot be denied that repeated child- bearing, without the necessary intervals for recuperation, for married couples with small incomes in working class homes, has had, and is having, disastrous effects, not only on the wife and mother, but also on the older children and the family as a whole.
On the other hand, refusal to bear and rear children may be the outcome of selfish motives. In such circumstances a childless marriage may deprive those concerned of many things of the utmost value in life. Moreover, the " only child " is apt to suffer seriously from lack of child companionship, and in other ways, from its isolated upbringing.
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Inasmuch then as the family forms the unit on which the State is built up, and since national welfare depends on a healthy family life, it is of the utmost importance to preserve the best traditions and the true interests of our homes.
The ideal would seem to be a family consisting of a moderate number of healthy children, spaced out at reasonable intervals, which can be reared by parents of moderate means in decency and comfort.
How then, under present-day conditions, which weigh so heavily on parenthood and family life, can such moderate sized families be secured without the risk of encouraging selfish- ness on the part of parents ?
Only, I think by a wise application of well- considered instruction, given in the right way to young married persons, as to the least harmful methods of exercising some control over the size of their families. Such instruction must also be accompanied with advice as to the serious drawbacks of the childless marriage, and the single child family, for both parents and offspring, and of the duty which rests on all healthy married citizens of taking their due share of the
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responsibility of providing for the life of the future.
The arousal in the minds and hearts of our people of a living Racial Conscience which will prevent selfish conduct in family life, is the only real corrective for the self-indulgence which is at the root of much of our individual and national troubles.
But before such knowledge can become general, and before it can be applied in the right way and in the right spirit, and with real regard to the true interests of family life and racial welfare, society must cease to label all those who apply such knowledge in everyday life as alike guilty of immoral conduct.
Discretion must be used in attaching both blame and responsibility.
Conduct in the sexual sphere must be judged by the same rules which apply to conduct in other spheres of human life — by the motive which inspires it, and by the effect it may have on individual and social and racial welfare.
It seems to be a part of the evolutionary scheme of things that socialised man shall play an increasing part and incur a growing responsi-
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bility in moulding his environment and in controlling his destiny. For this purpose two things are necessary : (1) Growth of knowledge, (2) The application of this wider knowledge to ends which will promote true welfare. There are some who would limit the growth of know- ledge, fearing its application to wrong ends. But man can only learn to control himself and his environment by knowing more about himself and about the outside world. It is only wisdom — the wise use of this wider knowledge — which can enable mankind to accomplish its true destiny. Let it be our part to promote the growth of knowledge and to aid in its wiser application.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF THE COMING GENERATION
By Rev. R. C. Gillie, M.A., D.C.L.
The trend of enlightened education in recent years has been unmistakably in the direction of emphasis on personality. The child is regarded more and more as a whole rather than as a bundle of faculties. The recognised aim of education is the development of the individual on all sides. To store the memory, to cultivate power of thought, to impart technical skill are seen to be insufficient and partial aims. The usefulness of each branch of instruction is judged by its contribution to the awakening and strengthening of personality rather than by the knowledge or facility acquired. Looking back over the history of compulsory elmentary educa- tion, four stages can be discerned. For a time,
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in many quarters the child was regarded as a storehouse to be filled with facts. The emphasis was on memory. Then it became clear that facts were useless unless they were rightly related to life. Attention was given to training the child to think. Further, it was recognised that it was inadvisable if not dangerous to cultivate the memory and develop power of thought without ethical training. It was seen to be foolish to heap fuel on the fire unless the flames were directed and controlled. Finally the conclusion has been reached that the proper business of the educationalist is not merely to train the memory or the mind or the conscience but to develop the whole personality of each potential citizen. The most important result of education is recognised to be the power and kind of impact which each child will make upon life.
It is true that another tendency, which is to some extent contrary to the prevailing trend, has made itself felt. There has been a continuous demand for technical education, for preparation of older children for some particular trade or craft. The so-called practical person has been
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insistent in urging this requirement. But the wider and deeper conception has prevailed. It is not denied to-day that the final value of a human being to his nation and to his race lies in the guided force which he contributes to life rather than in the skill with which he can handle a tool or add up a column of figures. There is no necessary contradiction between the central power and the channels through which it is applied. It is necessary that the channels and instruments of activity should be supplied, but personality, the focus and source of individual power, is the supreme consideration. One can always buy brains and technical skill, but personality is the treasure without price. Too often it is sought in vain. For a man's sake, and still more for the sake of his country and his race, the claims of personality are paramount.
The importance of this change of mind towards the aim of education becomes more evident when we remember that we have come to a period of highly developed mechanical civilisation. The more the activities of life are conducted and controlled by machinery, the greater the danger that the man at the machine
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may become but a wheel in a complete mechanism. This means both degradation and deterioration for a human being. If his working hours are confined to a single task, endlessly repeated, the greater the necessity that he should be fitted to use his hours of leisure to counterbalance the effects of such limitation ; otherwise the under- development of so much of his being will mean the perversion of his life as a whole. The less education is needed to fit one for one's task the more it is needed to fit one for one's life.
Another consideration enhances the import- ance of the development of personality. We have arrived at the great democratic era. The leading nations of the world with one or two exceptions, form democratic states. Control has been established from below rather than from above. The problem which amounts to a menace is whether personalities, great enough and in sufficient abundance, can be produced to comprehend and to control, to guide and to express the vast democracies of the modern world. The reverse of this problem is whether the units which make up these democracies can be so developed as to be capable of choosing and
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trusting suitable leaders. The danger has been to some degree recognised that the movement towards equality may cumber and counteract the movement towards freedom. Tyranny from below is as grave a peril as tyranny from above. If democracies are depersonalized, if they deserve increasingly the title " the masses," they will become either blind giants missing the high road which the race should tread, or alter- natively they will become the prey and the slave of the few, whose power will be accentuated immensely because exercised in the name of the many. Already in sections of the nation one can observe the desire for leaders and the fear of them in conffict. Safety is not to be found in increase of intelligence, unless with it there comes to be increase of personality, which means normal development of individual life. If the man in the street in his collective capacity is to occupy the throne with security to himself and others, he must grow at once more sensitive, and more understanding, more independent and more obedient.
In the strangely mingled life of our time it is also to be noted that when personality has been
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developed, it may easily be perverted through lack or neglect of right channels of expression. Some people are obsessed already by what has been called " the fetish of self-fulfilment." Consciousness of self becomes exaggerated until it amounts almost to a disease. For want of guidance and self-control, the conscious possessors of personality may become both feverish and morbid in their lust for self- determination. This twentieth century idea must be balanced by the complementary idea of fellowship and the controlling conviction of duty. The duty of service, both to neighbours and to the community must be impressed more urgently as more men come to self-realization and claim the right of self-determination. And social morality is imperfect without racial morality. Our responsibility must be recognised vertically as well as laterally. Men are under the obligation to live their lives for posterity as well as for the contemporary community. Otherwise, a nation, as its members become, in a fuller sense, persons, will be but a jungle growth in which each individual or class struggles for a place in the sun, heedless of the
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fate of others. What makes a jungle is not the richness of the soil or the character of the climate, but the lack of control and arrangement and direction in the abundant growth. There is someth ng terrifying in the thought of every human being acquiring what ought to be his normal vitality and vigour of nature, unless a widespread influence gives order and control to the vast society of virile individuals.
Approaching the subject of education from this angle, it is obvious that the question of the place and value of religion in both the school and the home assumes a new importance. There is a double challenge to be met by those who advocate secularization either in thought or in practice. Can the moral element in life be maintained over wide areas without religion ? Can the personality of the ordinary individual be developed and protected without religion ?
The study of comparative religion has made clear that there is no necessary connection between faith and morality. There have been religions which were both in thought and practice anti-moral. They exaggerated and also per- verted the sexual instinct. Other religions can
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only be described as non-moral. Their elaborate ceremonies and complicated ritual have borne little relation to the moral problems of life. The divisions of the faiths of mankind into three classes, nature-religions, ethical-religions, and redemptive-religions, may not provide a perfect classification, but it assists clearness of thought. The kind of morality which comes to be associated with any kind of religion depends upon the character of the God or gods worshipped in that religion. Human personality is depressed or expanded by religious worship according to the attitude of the Divine Person or persons presented to the mind of the worshipper.
It is taken for granted here that the Christian religion is both ethical and redemptive. It contributes both to moral health and to the release and enrichment of personality. The nearer we come to the origins of Christianity, the more unmistakable is this impression. What- ever deteriorations we can trace in particular centuries, whatever reformations have been or may be still necessary, the primary sources of influence, as they are discernible in the New Testament and especially in the life of Jesus
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Christ, are seen to be the fountains both of moral purity and personal power. It is a just criticism of some types of Christianity that they have laid undue emphasis on personal purity and too little on personality. But primitive Christianity was as remarkable for the enrichment of the ordinary individual as for the deodorizing of an immoral civilisation. The ground was not only cleansed, it was also fertilized. Fulness of life is as char- acteristic of the example and teaching of Jesus and His first followers as purity of thought and life. The exceeding worth of the human indivi- dual to a righteous and loving God was its fundamental conception. This conception developed personality as inevitably as it cleansed it. The authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ feeds the fountains of personal force as surely as it protects from perversion and exploitation the life thus enriched.
If the enquiry be made more exactly how the influence of pure Christianity will affect morality, the answer may be made in this way. It provides at once adequate ideals and adequate impulses for the pursuit of those ideals.
It will be questioned by few to-day that Jesus
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Christ is an embodied conscience for vast multi- tudes. His life presents with vividness and without any crudeness what the moral sense of mankind urges more vaguely and diffusely. There may be differences of interpretation as to details of His life and varying degrees of criticism in some minds concerning the validity and comprehensiveness of some of His concep- tions of duty, but modern intelligence finds in Him the supreme example of righteousness, goodwill and fidelity, of hope and faith and love. The striking feature which makes this life so pre-eminent as a means of moral education is the impression of reality its record conveys. A suggestion of perfection is not bought at the cost of blurred outlines. He is in no sense just a " moral mist." The actuality of the life of Jesus is as remarkable as its ideality. Therefore it lends itself admirably to the purposes of education.
But those who face the practical problems of child training see that for effective living, impelling force towards ideals is almost as requisite as the ideals themselves. To know both the good and the evil is not enough. " Ye
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shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil," was the lure of the deceiver and not a sound definition of divinity. Man is only godlike when knowing the good he chooses the good ; " know thyself " is not the keyword to self-mastery. It opens only the first gate on the pathway. The will to wholesomeness of life is equally important. Moral training halts half way unless it leads to the power-house of moral force.
This is recognised to-day by those who seek to guide young people through the great ex- periences of puberty. Rightly the importance of adequate instruction for children into the meaning of sex has been emphasized. That perversion of curiosity which makes the prurient mind is averted to a large extent by the timely communication of a knowledge of the body and its powers of reproduction. But only pedants can suppose that such knowledge is sufficient for protection against temptations to impurity of thought, speech and act. Warnings of the dangers incurred by misuse of sexual endowment are not always deterrent. Neither traditional and inherited modesty nor the constraints of decency imposed by group instincts will prevail
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against the pressure of temptations in circum- stances frequently occurring in modern life. There must be positive impulses and incitements which can only be imparted in their full strength by the varied appeals of the Christian faith. No misconception of Christianity is more fruitful of disaster than the idea that the chief function of religion is to provide moral truth with clearer outlines. Religion is an asset of morality chiefly because it provides reinforce- ment for the wavering will.
Possibly it may be disputed whether a secularized educational system will mean an impoverishment of moral ideals. It can scarcely be denied that the exclusion of the influences and impulses of the Christian religion will mean a depletion of moral force. This is not the place to discuss the sources or the channels of the force which Christianity supplies. It is sufficient to record its presence and its availableness. There is a creative force in genuine Christianity. Without that element none of its varying forms merits the name. They are not in the true succession.
The second challenging question may, however,
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be considered more important. If the governing aim of modern education is to develop personality we cannot afford to neglect any source from which an effective contribution can come. Children are born with varying potentialities of personality, just as with varying endowments of mental and physical power. But the most impor- tant fact in the individual life is not the original amount of possibility, but its awakening and its development. Moral transformations brought by religious conviction are often amazing. Equally amazing is the transformation of a trivial personality into one of weight and influence, or of a morbid personality into one of wholesome and beneficent activity, under the impact of the instructions and compulsions of the Christian faith. Such transformations are less dramatic than the sudden reversals of the current of life which are sometimes called con- version. They are none the less real. The expansion and the elevation of limited and commonplace personality are the least noted, but not the least important among the reactions of Christianity upon ordinary lives, least noted because in many cases gradual, not the least
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important because so often continuous and cumulative in their effect.
What takes place may be stated thus. Ex- pansion of personality is secured partly by releases and partly by restraints. Memories of failure, self-despising, a troubled conscience, instability of will, uncertainty as to future possibilities of life, — these are burdens which suppress personal force and lead steadily to a paralysing acquiescence in things as they are. Equally, dissipation of mental energy, feverish- ness of effort, the expenditure of life-force in abnormal experiences deplete a man's inward resources. Both releases and restraints are needed for wholesome development and sustained achievement. These can be supplied by the truths and aspirations of religion. The assurance of a Divine interest in each life, the permission to forget and the expulsive power of a new affection, a conscience at once more peaceful and sensitive are the direct products of the faith which is possible for the ordinary person, based as it is on the revelation of the character and purpose of God in Jesus Christ. Such con- victions deliver from the imprisonment of
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personality, of which unhealthful inhibitions are partly the source and partly the result. Personality is both emancipated and girded. It here becomes incumbent to say that the familiar contrast between " creed " and " conduct " is not only necessarily partial, it is also misleading. A creed is the crystallization of a living faith ; conduct is the fruit of living personality. The vital question is, " What is the effect of faith on personality ? " The answer is : a reasonable faith feeds personality and gives it both growth and form. What is true for the man and woman is n a measure true for the child. The records of the psychology of religion prove that the most sensitive age of the human spirit to religious influence lies between the ages of twelve and fifteen. If religion have a place at all in educa- tion, to neglect this favourable period is unscientific, if not absurd. Religion is an indispensable asset in Education if the individuals of the race are to become full grown and fully equipped for their multiplying responsibilities.
The practical question remains, Can religion be made a living force as well as an explicit element in the education of the child ? It cannot
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be disputed that the religious education of child- hood is largely a record of failure. Without accepting as finally authoritative the recent statement that no more than twenty per cent* of the young manhood of the nation are in any effective way under the influence of religion, such statistics are a beacon marking the futility of much effort. There is a threefold explanation of this lamentable fact. First, religious observ- ances have been regarded as belonging to the proprieties of life rather than to its necessities. This has coloured the attitude of the educa- tionalist. Bringing a perfunctory attention to the religious side of child life, he has regarded it much as the farmer regards his flower garden, giving it only intermittent attention, content as long as the rest of the land is tilled and made productive. Second, religious training has been committed to the hands of those with religious knowledge, without securing that they had a living religious experience as well. Religion has too often been taught like Chemistry and History, as if a knowledge of the main outlines was alone needful. The essential fact about a living religion, that it deals with the intercourse
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of persons, the high Divine Person and the lowly human person, has been blurred or obliterated. Third, the interests of denomina- tionalism have tended to override the interests of essential religion. Denominationalism, as has been truly said, is compounded of some of the noblest and some of the meanest of human instincts and convictions. It has won a good though scanty harvest, but not without working havoc. Both by its own limitations and by the quarrels it has provoked, it has obscured the true aims and essential truths of the Christian faith and has blunted its power of appeal to the child mind.
If such unwholesome conditions were inevitably permanent, however needful religion might be as an element in Education from the point of view of theory, it would be abandoned by many in practice. It is not too much to say that religious education as at present conducted sometimes robs the child of its natural appetite for such instruction and fills it with distaste. It is to the pupil just another subject requiring toilsome preparation, without promise of practical value, or on the other hand, a matter of no importance.
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But there are already signs of a more reasonable attitude to the problem on the part of thinking men. For one thing, in the past years in which the nations have been brought ruthlessly in contact with stark reality, religion has been seen by some to belong to the essential goods of life, difficult to acquire but well worthy acquiring. There is practical unanimity that it is not worth maintaining if it is but one of life's adornments. It may be that many people believe fewer truths, but they put more energy into their belief in these truths. It is not impossible to transmit this attitude to children. Education can be suffused by this spirit.
Further, there has been a development of fellowship and understanding between most branches of the Christian Church. In addition, at least in the younger generation, there has been an approximation to the same standpoint as regards efficient religious education. There is widespread agreement that religious instruc- tion should be given by teachers with personal conviction and experience. It is recognised as largely useless that a religion which has to do with the intercourse of persons should be taught
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by those without conscious contact with the most important Person, and it may be without belief in His existence. Modern emphasis on personality has thus affected religious thinking in a very practical way.
This measure of agreement in itself has counter- acted to some extent the animosities and cleavages caused by the denominationalist spirit. And a more powerful influence has been at work. The severe scrutiny of war and the after-effects of war have made more glaringly apparent that to teach denominationalism without making certain that underlying and universal religious truths have been acquired is to build a dwelling without foundations. Without yielding to the tempta- tion to view the situation with undue optimism, there is good hope that an era may dawn in which religion is used effectively in education.
In any case religious influences can be exercised in the home without these disabilities which have been mentioned. There is an urgent call that the new generation should not be deprived of this vital element in its upbringing, an element which has been proved to be not only the cement of society but also the inspiration of the
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individual. In a world in which a renaissance of personal morality is a clamant need, a renaissance of religious education is essential. The diffi- culties in the path of recognition of fundamental religious truth and of its communication in a vital fashion are not denied. But when men and women see the offspring of their union, preparing for a new world with its shattered hopes and unsubdued expectancy, it will be strange if they do not ponder with eagerness whether they dare leave these young lives without the most essential succours and heavenly reinforcements to fit them for their incalculable tasks. It will be strange if they do not find a way. If our civilisation is not to crumble or to be shattered by social catastrophe, there must be a new determination to secure for children this supremely important asset both for the develop- ment and protection of personality and for the rebuilding of the ordered life of the race.
THE CLAIMS OF THE COMING
GENERATE
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Edited by SIR I AMES M ARCHANT
KEGAN PAUL
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
HQ Marchant, (Sir) James
'55 The claims of the
M27 coming generation
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