HQ
734.M471
1918




ALA






















BACKGROUNDS FOR SOCIAL
WORKERS         ji
V4BY
EDWARD JbN     M.A., PH.D., M.Sc.
Author4oi5 e Beginnings of Science"
RTI etVERT~rl
BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS






COPYRIGHT, 1918, By RICHARD G. BADGER
All Rights Reserved
Made in the United States of America
The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.




TO
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
IN TOKEN OF SINCEREST APPRECIATION FOR THE
SACRIFICES THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WILLING
TO MAKE IN ORDER THAT THEIR CHILDREN MIGHT
OBTAIN THOSE ADVANTAGES WHICH THEY THEMISELVES HAD TO FORGO








PREIFACE~


The desire to give to the public this little volume had
its origin "in the reading of the many articles written on
such subjects as, Marriage, Divorce, and Immnorality, which
appeared some years ago when the Royal Divorce Commission of England was sitting, and which desire then resulted in an article by the author, appearing in the Westminster Review of August, 191~3.
In 1916 the Dallas School of Civics and Philanthropy,
founded by Mr. Elmer Scott and placed under the superintendence of Miss Flora Saylor, asked the author to. deliver
a series of three lectures on "The Family" from the historical viewpoint, which three lectures form three chapters
of this book. Two other chapters have already appeared,
one each in the University of Dallas Quarterly and the University of Dallas Bulletin.
Especial thanks are due the Reverend Peter P. Finney,
C.M.,' Ph.D., professor of philosophy in the University of
Dallas, for reading the entire manuscript and offering many
valuable suggestions.
As the book is written with a purpose, I have not hesitated to. borrow anywhere and everywhere, and to, quote profusely if it seemed valuable that this should be done. Credit
has been given wherever another's work has been used and,
quite naturally, thanks are extended to- all these, and to the
Dallas School of Civics and Philanthropy which revived
so much of the author's interest in the things of which this
book treats.
EDWARD J. MENGE.
University of Dallas, January 18, 1918.
5








CONTENTS
CHAPTER                                         PAGE
PREFACE............   5
I INTRODUCTION...........           11
II TRAINING  2............                     24
III WHAT OUGHT WE TO Do?.......       42
IV BIRTH CONTROL..........          71
V STERILIZATION, SEX-INSTRUCTION, AND EUGENICS.  99
VI THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY........118
VII THE MEDIEVAL FAMILY........141
VIII THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION FAMILY. 164
IX SUMMARY............                    186
BIBLIOGRAPHY...........                  203








BACKGROUNDS FOR SOCIAL WORKERS








BACKGROUNDS FOR SOCIAL
WORKERS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
T   HIS little volume attempts to present a historic background on which social workers may build. It aims to
assist making possible a passing of judgment on the many
theories and methods proposed for the betterment of the
human race, by presenting something definite-some standard-by which to gauge that which one wishes to judge.
To be thrown in the midst of much reading on any given
subject without such gauge would be like finding oneself
in the midst of battle without a distinguishing mark by
which friend and foe might be differentiated. To distinguish such friend and foe among writers on social subjects
we must know one thing thoroughly, and that is the history
of the past. This knowledge of the past is the garb that
identifies our friends and the lack of it our enemies; but,
more than this, the firm facts of history at our command
build an impregnable fortress surrounding us and our
friends that makes it possible to meet the enemy one at a
time and vanquish them as they seek entrance to our mind's
citadel.
We are not advancing any new theories of how to improve
the race; we are only showing what must be remembered
11




Backgrounds for Social Workers


when any one wishes to advance such theories. We are not
here producing a text-book of history, of philosophy, of
sociology, or of any of the special sciences, but we are
attempting, within the smallest possible space, to give to
those who are interested in, and whose work is associated
with, Social Service an idea of the past, plus the stressed
points that have made the differences among the many and
various peoples and nations, as well as a foundation of
depth, rooted in all past time, that will not permit the one
who takes this information to heart to be swayed by every
passing idea of world-betterment regardless of whether there
be any ground upon which such theory rests.
We are attempting to show that progress, solely and
completely independent of this foundation, would not and
could not be progress; that for each individual to begin as
soon as he arrives at that age where reasoning is possible,
to work out all things for himself, even though he continue
to the ripest of old ages, would mean that such individual
had progressed no further than did his father, for, if each
began at the age of reason to think certain thoughts, and
did this independently, each generation's knowledge would
die out with that generation, and men would have to begin
anew; not from where the parent left off thinking, but at
the very beginning that such parent began, and consequently
each would end at practically the same point, depending only
on his thinking ability and his length of life. But this
would be only individual progress-there would be no Race
progress in such case. But here we note that it is now a
scientific dictum that acquired characteristics are not transmitted to offspring; that is, that any quality that a parent
may develop during his lifetime will not be inherited by his
child. For example, if one develop the arm muscles to the
fullest possible extent, the child of such parent will not




Introduction


inherit this development, but will in all probability be born
with an arm very much akin to the way the parent's arm
was at the time of his birth. Should, then, the child desire
a development of the same arm muscles, he would have to go
through the same process of exercises in order to obtain such
development. However, we do inherit that which often seems
least likely of transmission, namely, the standards, educational, moral, etc., of past times, or, what we usually call
Social Inheritance, which means that through the stories we
hear from parents and others, called tradition, and the writings of men who have long since passed from the living stage,
we are able to profit by what has already been done, and
to start where those of the past have left off. This alone
can make for any Progress worthy the name.
This being true, it quite naturally follows that he who
does not know anything of this past is bound by virtue of
that very fact to make any quantity of unpardonable errors, and to waste his life and his thoughts on things that
no individual could ever accomplish alone.
One must not, however, pick out of that past only those
things which one admires and object to all else; one must
not assume that the same act performed by two different
persons necessarily has the same motive behind it. The same
act and the same result may very often be the outcome of
many varying causes. One must not, for example, fail to
distinguish between those results and factors which were
the common heritage of a given century, and which had
nothing whatever to do with that century's beliefs and
philosophy, and the rules and promulgations of that institution which men of the middle ages accepted as their supreme court-the Church. We must appreciate the idea
thoroughly, that just as the supreme court of our own
land does not make any laws, nor propose them, but merely




Backgrounds for Social Workers


gives a ruling as to whether they are valid or not-that
is, upon their constitutionality, so also the Church gave
validity to the laws made in Christian countries by Christian rulers. It had nothing to do with, nor was it responsible
for, the making of laws or their enforcement by Christian
Emperors and Princes throughout the world. It 'had no
control over these. But because men did believe the Church
divinely instituted to validate a given law, being the chosen
instrument to guard the Divine Constitution, whenever a
law had such validation no man questioned it. He may have
questioned its value; he may have questioned its expediency,
but he never questioned its validity.
It is most essential that this point be not lost sight of;
that it was only as a supreme court of MORAL VALUES that
the Church stood for. All else, no matter how much it may
have been stressed by certain individual churchmen, was
secondary.
And this constitution of the Church was not arbitrary.
It was based on the very principles on which all laws are
based-that man owed all he had to his Creator, and that
it was therefore necessary for man, not being in direct
communication with his Creator to have an institution that
could, by having its most learned men unite, work out those
principles which reason and observation presented, and which
the great mass of men being unable to do for themselves,
were then bound to accept. And it was this that the Church
meant, both to Jew and Christian, and, we may add, even
to Pagans-a supreme court of moral values.
It is, however, easy to understand that, such being the
case, many Emperors and Princes made laws for their own
aggrandizement and therefore often these laws were directly
opposed to all that was moral, causing an almost constant
opposition by this great Spiritual Court. We must not




Introduction


15


blame the Church for that which was done in spite of her
powerful antagonism.
It was the fault of those individuals who desired to force
their own wills on the peoples of all Europe and Asia and
parts of Africa that caused the abuses to be brought in,
and it was the Church that stood out predominantly as the
defender of the human family-it stood as the only single
institution that was above all nations and races and constitutions of men-and which had for its validity the supreme sanction of that Creator from whom Emperors and
Princes and all men alike held their power, and to whom
all owed allegiance.
It does not matter in the least whether we are very fond
of this viewpoint; it does not matter in the least whether
we believe it, for neither fondness for a given thing nor
belief changes a truth. We must accept the facts that confront us, and, unless we do, the sooner we cease forming
opinions and passing judgment on anything and everything,
the better will the rest of mankind be.
It was in those days of long ago that men laid greater
stress on one's idea of the universe than on any other single
factor. Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton has well summed up the
differences between our own times and the middle ages in
these words:1 Now "a man's opinion on tram-cars matters;
his opinion on Boticelli matters; his opinion on all things
does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million
objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost.
Everything matters-except everything."
"Examples are scarcely needed of this total levity on the
subject of cosmic philosophy. Examples are scarcely needed
to show that whatever else we think of as affecting practical
affairs, we do not think it matters whether a man is a pes



Backgrounds for Social Workers


simist or an optimist, a Cartesian or a Hegelian, a materialist or a spiritualist. Let me, however, take a random instance. At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man
say, 'Life is not worth living.' We regard it as we regard the
statement that it is a fine day, nobody thinks that it can
possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the
world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the
world would stand on its head. Murderers would be given
medals for saving men from life; firemen would be denounced
for keeping men from death; poisons would be used as medicines; doctors would be called in when people are well; the
Royal Humane Society would be rooted out like a horde of
assassins. Yet we never speculate as to whether the conversational pessimist will strengthen or disorganise society;
for we are convinced that theories do not matter."
But President Hibbea of Princeton University has well
said 2 that "the doctrines of the schools become at last the
maxims of the crowd," which means only that the theories advanced by men who aim to teach others their particular viewpoint of life, at last are acted upon by men at large, and are
in all reality the complete cause of their action. That, just
as the doctrines of the French philosophers were the cause of
the horrors of the French Revolution, so theories of life,
or philosophies of life are the most potent of all ideas given
to man. At present we have an excellent example of such
carrying out of a theory on the part of the Bolsheviki of
Russia. Trotzky was welcomed to our shores and permitted
to advance any and all theories regardless of whether valid
or not, and then when our land is at war, and the unification
of Russia means much to us as an ally, he is permitted to
depart and do untold damage to our cause. But to men
at large theories do not matter!
"In the fifteenth century men cross-examined and tor



Introduction


mented a man because he preached some immoral attitude;
in the nineteenth century we feted and flattered Oscar Wilde
because he preached such an attitude, and then broke his
heart in penal servitude because he carried it out.    It
may be a question of which of the two methods was the more
cruel; there can be no question which was the more ludicrous.
The age of the Inquisition has not at least the disgrace of
having produced a society which made an idol of the very
same man for preaching the very same things which it made
him a convict for practicing."
"Our modern educationists are trying to bring about a
religious liberty without attempting to settle what is religion or what is liberty. If the old priests forced a statement on mankind, at least they previously took the trouble
to make it lucid. It has been left for the modern mobs of
Anglicans and Nonconformists to persecute for a doctrine
without even stating it."
An author of a pamphlet making the assertion that a picture of a drunkard's liver would be more efficacious in the
matter of teaching temperance than any prayer or praise,
called forth this from Mr. Chesterton: "In that picturesque expression, it seems to me, is perfectly embodied the
incurable morbidity of modern ethics. In that temple the
lights are low, the crowds kneel, the solemn anthems are uplifted. But that upon the altar to which men kneel is no
longer the perfect flesh, the body and substance of the perfect man; it is still flesh, but it is diseased. It is the drunkard's liver of the New Testament that is marred for us, which
we take in remembrance of him.
"Now it is this great gap in modern ethics, the absence
of vivid pictures of purity and spiritual triumph, which lies
at the back of the real objection felt by soý many sane
men to the realistic literature of the nineteenth century."




Backgrounds for Social Workers


What disgusts the ordinary man in the subjects chosen
by Ibsen, Maupassant and Zola, is not these author's plain
language, for that is precisely the language that great
quantities of men constantly use, but that these writers show
a complete absence of any "clear idealism." "Strong and
genuine religious sentiment has never had any objection to
realism, on the contrary, religion was the realistic thing,
the brutal thing, the thing that called names. This is the
great difference between some recent developments of Nonconformity and the great Puritanism of the seventeenth century. It was the whole point of the Puritans that they cared
nothing for decency. Modern Nonconformist newspapers
distinguish themselves by suppressing precisely those nouns
and adjectives which the founders of Nonconformity distinguished themselves by flinging at kings and queens. But
if it was the chief claim of religion that it spoke plainly about
evil, it was the chief claim of all that it spoke plainly about
good. The thing which is resented, and, as I think, rightly
resented, in that great modern literature of which Ibsen is
typical, is that white the eye that can perceive what are the
wrong things increases in an uncanny and devouring clarity,
the eye that sees what things are right is growing mistier
and mistier every moment, till it almost goes blind wvith
doubt." 11
"Every one of the popular phrases and ideals is a dodge
in order to, shirk the problem of what is good. We are fond
of talking about 'liberty'; that, as we talk of it, is a dodge
to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking
about 'progress'; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what
is good. We are fond of talking about 'education'; that
is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. The modern man
says, 'Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty.' This is logically rendered, 'Let us not decide




Introduction                1


19


what is good, but let it be good not to decide it.' He says,
'Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress.'
This, logically stated, means, 'Let us not settle what is good,
but let us settle, whether we are getting more of it.' He
says, 'Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the
hopes of the race, but in education.' This, clearly expressed,
means, 'We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it
to our children.' "
Mr. H. G. Wells, in his Mankind inm the Making "dismissed the ideals of art, religion, abstract morality, and the
rest, and says that he is going to consider men in their
chief function, the function of parenthood. He is going to
discuss life as a 'tissue of births.' He is not going to ask
what will produce satisfactory saints and heroes, but what
will produce satisfactory father and mothers. The whole is
set forward so sensibly that it is a few moments at least
before the reader realizes that it is another example of unconscious shirking. What is the good of begetting a. man
until we have settled what is the good of being a man?
You are merely handing on to him a problem you dare not
settle for yourself. It is as 'if a man were asked, 'What
is the use of a hammer?' and answered, 'To make other
hammers,' and when asked, 'And those hammers, what is
the use?' answered, 'To make hammers again.' Just as such
a man would be perpetually putting off the question of the
ultimate use of carpentry, so Mr. Wells and all the rest
of us are by these phrases successfully putting off the question of the ultimate value of human life."
We have quoted, Mr. Chesterton at some length, for he
has so well summed up not only the foibles and frailties of
modern reformers, but has also done that which is far
more rare-has shown wha~t it is that we of this age lack
and why.




Backgrounds for Social Workers


This little book is then for men and women who know
there is much to be done; who know that unless they take
it upon themselves to assist in the doing of those things
they probably will not be done, and to make them familiar
with the conditions of the past-with the successes and the
failures of ages long since gone-with the desires unfulfilled
of those who have taught generations now no more.
It has been written for those who desire to be right before
going ahead; who want to profit by the greatest thoughts
of all the world's greatest thinkers; who want to accomplish something that is enduring-something built upon the
solid rock of a firm philosophical foundation-that the
blasts of emotionalism and irresponsible theorizing may not
root from its ground-work.
It is written for those who are seeking something and
know what it is they are seeking.
It is written for those who want a WHY satisfactorily
answered when human betterment is discussed.
Mr. A. G. Gardiner, of the London Daily News, well sums
up the yearnings of the average man and woman seeking
for a betterment of all things without having first settled
what is good, in his characterization of the Reverend R. J.
Campbell,4 where he says, "It is not uncommon to hear him
dismissed as a rather crude mind rushing in where wiser men
fear to tread, and fighting out his doubts in the public eye.
There is a certain truth in the criticism. He is the ordinary man thinking furiously aloud. He is the preacher
wrestling with the plain man's doubts in the pulpit. He is
not so much fighting for the souls of his hearers as for
his own soul, and in that intense drama the man from the
counting house and the shop sees mirrored his own disquiet
and his own hunger. Perhaps he, too, out of this conflict,
may catch a vision of the promised land."




Introduction


Perhaps! That is exactly what most of us unfamiliar with
historic backgrounds, without sympathy for those men who
stressed the end for which man was created as the allimportant thing ever to hold before one as the guiding star,
have for our reward.
This is what we meant when discussing each individual's
attempt at working out his own salvation on all things
without beginning where others have left off-without the
historic background. It means that such a man, at the end
of his own career, is no further along than was his greatgrandfather at the same period of life. If progress is to
come at all, it can come only to the race when all that has
gone before is taken into consideration.
As Mr. Gardiner further says of him whom he is discussing, "He invites them out into the open in pursuit of
the rainbow. But to the soul adrift from the churches, yet
consumed with the hunger for some revelation that the world
cannot provide, the pursuit of the rainbow offers an emotion and a vision that stimulate if they do not satisfy."
"He has another defect. It is a certain feverishness of
the spirit. There is about him the sense of the hot, uneasy
pillow. The raw edges of life chafe him. He cannot escape
from the hair-shirt of this mortal vestment, and he cannot
endure it. Whatever is, is wrong."
"His head is grey in his youth, his eyes eloquent with some
nameless hunger, his face thin and pallid, his physique frail
as that of an ascetic of the desert, he stands before us a
figure of singular fascination and disquiet, a symbol of the
world's passionate yearning after the dimly apprehended
ideal, of its unquenchable revolt against the agonies of
men."
It is for men and women of this type, earnest, conscientious, firm in their desire to do good, withoubt knowing what




99


Backgrounds for Social Workers


good is; it is for men and women drawn out into the open
instead of being surrounded by the walls of philosophical
truth that this book has been written.
And lastly, it was written for those who, when one discusses the past and suggests the return of anything good
then existing, immediately think only of all the unpleasant
things likewise then existing, such as bad housing, bad sanitation and the lack of all the many comforts entirely brought
into our life in recent times, and who assume that were one
to restore a single ancient ideal, all that was bad at the
time of such ideal's existence must likewise be restored.
These minds, incapable of holding more than a single thought
at a given time, are, however, often confused with those who
are inclined to concentrate on one subject and therefore discuss nothing else and think of nothing else. This is entirely erroneous, for they should be classified with those children suffering with Dementia Precox because, as in that
disease, it is not astonishing that the individual knows so
much about one thing, but so astonishing that he knows so
little about everything else.
Let us just note that because the old Puritans destroyed
the stained glass windows in Oxford University, and because
a later generation of more sensible people restored them, it
does not follow that the living conditions prior to such
destruction either had to be brought back again or were
brought back again with their restoration. Because the
extremists at the time of the Reformation destroyed so much
that we now fain would have, it does not follow that we
must, should we restore the good things then taken from
us, have to take with them all that was bad.
And so we have arranged our work into a discussion of
what OUGHT to be done; when it OUGHT to be done; several
chapters on applying this WHEN and this WHAT to problems




In troduction                    23
daily confronting us, and lastly, we have devoted a chapter
each to a short and concise statement of historic backgrounds of the Primitive, Mediaeval, and Renaissance and
Reformation Families, ending with a chapter summarizing
all we have said, thereby aiding memory in its epitomizing.
NOTES
1. Heretics, by Gilbert K. Chesterton, John Lane Co., 1912,
pp. 11-87.
2. The Problems of Philosophy, by John Grier Hibben,
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898, p. 9.
8. Italics are ours.
4. Prophets, Priests and Kings, by A. G. Gardiner, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1914, pp. 240-243.




CHAPTER II


TRAINING
What It Means and When to Get It
F there be any one thing of greater importance in our
business intercourse with our neighbors than another, it
is to be able to tell whether the one with whom we are dealing
knows his subject-is an expert.
In the ordinary walks of life, there are thousands of things
that come to us in which we must seek expert advice. We
cannot all know the law, or medicine, or pharmacy, or soils,
or poisons, or what food is best suited for ourselves, or what
causes success in one and failure in another. We cannot
understand why it is that one man has a "streak of luck"
and another nothing but one dismal failure after another.
We cannot understand why it is that one man, though the
brightest in his class, should prove to be nothing but a
chronic bore and worthless scamp later on, and another
whom one of his teachers may have classified as below normal should have made a great name for himself. We cannot
understand why some twins may be so totally unlike, and
then again others so much alike in everything. We cannot
understand why a man of less training and education is
more successful in a large undertaking than another who
has had much better opportunities afforded him. We cannot understand why it is that great writers, for example,
of the past have often lived in garrets. We cannot understand why some fathers and mothers are constant chums to
24




Training


25


their sons and daughters, while in other cases they are not.
We cannot understand why sickness and misfortune seem
to follow in the wake of one family and not in another. We
cannot understand why some children are born healthy and
continue so, while others are born weak and sickly and
never seem to change. We cannot understand why those whbo
seem to take most medicine are constantly ill and those who
take little are in much better health; how some big robust
man who has never had a sick day in his life will suddenly
be taken with an illness, and die in a short space of time,
while a little woman who one would not suppose could live
another month, will live for a quarter of a century and
eventually be-come well. The man who loses his j ob every
time he gets one -is nonplussed as to, the reason, as is the
business man who sees a competitor daily take more and
more of his customers away. The man who finds when the
day's work is done his only consolation in drowning his troubles has difficulty in understanding how another can, under
the same circumstances, play golf, read a book or take to the
sloping paths beside the river's edge. The man who cannot
read a printed page longer than ten minutes before getting
nervous, cannot understand how another will, when sorrows
weigh greatest upon him, calmly take a volume of some of
the heaviest and to him most un-unders tand able reading,
and bring back that poise so necessary to a happy life.
The man who spends his time at cards, pool or other games
of similar nature cannot understand how another may seek
solace in religious pursuits. And the man whose ambition
it is to see his children in comfortable circumstances financially, cannot understand how his neighbor will spend every
dollar he has to give his children a schooling, instead of
investing it where these dollars will. bring in others immediately.




Backgrounds for Social Workers


The man who has himself started from the ranks cannot
understand why his son should not do likewise. The man
of one religious belief finds difficulty in understanding the
peculiar traits in his neighbor's mind that permit such a
different viewpoint. The man who later on in life finds his
children having little interest in his parents, complains about
them and cannot understand, while the woman who has slaved
and toiled for husband and offspring wonders why it is
that those for whom she has worked are not appreciative.
The father cannot understand why his sons care for other
things than he thinks he cared for when a boy, and so with
the mother and daughters. And, parents cannot understand
why it is that their children are shiftless, when father and
mother have always done everything for them, furnishing
their incomes, condoning their foibles, permitting every one
else to assist them, but not forcing them to help themselves.
And yet all of the things here mentioned have just come
to mind during the fifteen minutes we have been writing,
without attempting to find any extraordinary cases whatever.
If these come all unbidden, how many more thousands of
instances might be cited did one make an actual attempt to
find these seeming un-understandabilities in the human family?
We have said Expert Advice is one of the most important
things in life, and by expert advice we mean all those things
-every bit of useful information that is given, which experience proves to be correct, whether it be the best way to
build a house or to feed the baby; and, everyone who can
give this advice, not from what he thinks he has discovered
by experience, because that is just the reverse of expert, but,
who can give this enlightenment from experience, plus an
explanation of WHY it is true, is an expert in that particular matter.




Tranulng                 2


27


Observe here that we have said nothing about sincerity nor
intention. What we want is a truthful statement of the case
under consideration, plus the ability on the part of the adviser to give a valid reason for his suggestion. And the person who can do this is an expert in so far as that one
particular point is concerned.
Every one of the difficulties mentioned could have been explained and overcome had there been expert advice in each
case. The sum and substance of all education is simply and
solely to cause one to be able to tell when expert advice
is being given and when it is not. Remember, one may be
getting sincere advice that is, worth nothing-the nt ention of the person may be the best in the world and yet
everything he says be untrue and dangerous to follow. This
is the stumbling ground of the ordinary man; he cannot tell
the difference between sincerity and truth. He confuses results with the intent the adviser had in bringing about results.
He passes judgment on the number of copies of a book an
author sells, for example, instead of whether the author was
able to drive home to his readers what he wished to;irive
home. A man might become the most successful banker in
the country, and yet consider himself an utter failure, because all his life his aim and ambition had been to become
a great musician.
In order to construct a foundation on which to build,
let us just glance at the main organ of thought and call
attention to some of the laws that are most evident.
We find that the average weight of the male human brain
is as follows:
New-born child.........381 grammes, or about 12  ounces
Child at 1 year....... 945 grammes, or about 29~2 ounces
Child at 5 years....1263 grammes, or about 391/2, ounces




Backgrounds for Social Workers


Child at 10 years..... 1408 grammes, or about 44  ounces
Child at 15 years..... 1490 grammes, or about 461/2 ounces
Youth at 20 years..... 1445 grammes, or about 45  ounces
Man at 25 years..... 1431 grammes, or about 44 2-3 ounces
It is interesting to note that the greatest weight in the
male is attained at about 15 years of age. The female
brain reaches its maximum weight slightly earlier than this,
namely, between ten and fourteen.
Professor Halleck,' from whom we quote, well says that
It is probable that in most favored classes in the community, and especially in the case of those who keep the brain
properly exercised, the brain weight may keep on increasing
until the age of twenty, and possibly to a later period.
Venn measured the heads of Cambridge students at various
times and found that the head increased in size during the
entire course. This has not been shown to be true except
in the cases of those who give their brains regular exercise
in a judicious way. It is highly probable that such exercise
tends to prolong the period of nerve plasticity. The brains
furnishing the weight given above did not come from the
most favored classes, but they probably afford good average
data.
The brain certainly begins to decrease in weight in the
latter part of middle life and before old age can be fairly
said to have begun. No definite time can be set for the
beginning of this decrease; indeed, it probably begins at
different times with different people. The brain weights of
eminent men who died late in life tend to show that in their
case loss of weight is deferred to a late period. Their brains
were probably at birth of a superior kind, but the right
exercise, judiciously continued into old age, may have been
a factor in postponing the decline. Examinations of the
convolution immediately in front of the fissure of Rolando
have shown the fibres of association increase in number until
the age of thirty-three, when a decrease probably begins.




Training


Few if any tracts thus far examined indicate increase after
thirty-three, although decrease does not begin in some convolutions until considerably later. As these fibres are required to explain the physical side of thinking, and the association and correlation of activity in various parts of the
brain, we should naturally suppose that they would not
begin to decrease in number until late in life. The fact
that they do not increase after thirty-three agrees with
the conclusions of those who believe that no one gets an
absolutely new idea into his head after that time.
Early exercise of any kind seems to change the nerve
matter in surprising ways, so that its entire subsequent reactions toward certain objects may be afterwards changed.
Darwin gives some striking instances of this: "An animal
when once accustomed to an unnatural diet, which can
generally be affected only during youth, dislikes its proper
food, as Spallanzini found to be the case with a pigeon
which had been long fed on meat. The caterpillars of the
Bombyx hesperus feed in a state of nature on leaves of the
Cafe diable, but after having been reared on the Ailanthus,
they would not touch the Cafe diable, and actually died of
hunger."
Human beings afford instances almost as striking as
these. If a child is brought up on highly seasoned foods
and artificial drinks, he can hardly endure a change later,
although the former diet may be ruining his health.
Early training inexorably determines one's attitude toward the world, and even the comfort one takes in this or
that sphere.2
Even inanimate things can acquire the habit of making
wonderful reaction to stimuli. It is well known that the
wood of a Cremona violin, which had been used by the hands
of none but masters, gradually acquired a molecular tendency to harmonious resonance. When the instrument was
afterwards used by an ordinary player, he was astonished
to find that it had a tendency to play well of itself and
to refuse to respond to his mistakes by introducing the
amount of discord to which he was accustomed. The sooner
the idea is exploded that a child should not be taught until




Backgrounds for Social Workers


he can see the why and wherefore of things, the better it
will be for the world.
To show how dangerous it is to leave an individual's training until he is old enough to think out the reason for it,
we quote from the foremost living psychologist, Professor
Wm. Wundt, who says, "The old metaphysical prejudice that
man 'always thinks' has not yet entirely disappeared. I
myself am inclined to hold that man really thinks very
little and very seldom. Many an action which looks like
a manifestation of intelligence most surely originates in association."
Continuing Professor Halleck's statements:
Acquired tastes are frequently the source of many of the
pleasures of life. There are many things in which we have
taken no interest originally, things which are positively distasteful at the start, but from these we often grow to receive
much enjoyment. From repeated exercise, the nervous system acquires new storage facilities, and new pleasures are the
result of using this stored energy.
The entrance to most studies is attended with painful labor; but after awhile they become sources of positive pleasure. It has been well said that acquired tastes are so many
acquired ways of getting pleasure from things which are
distasteful. Raw oysters, tomatoes, and pickled olives are
physical instances. Many studies furnish mental illustrations.
It may be hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but it is
still harder work to get him to enjoy them.
Lack of fitting exercise at the time when the nervous system is ripe for response is dwarfing in the case of human
beings.
It is true that some vocations are subject to less routine
than others, and some are for that reason more enjoyable.
The student in many lines does not keep repeating the same
facts, but he proceeds from new truth to new truth, fre



Traiýning                     31
quently making novel discoveries as long as he lives. The
bookkeeper, on the other hand, is constantly busy with
-the same numerals.
The use, of well-rested organs is the basis of the pleasure-,seeker's universal search for novelty; not absolute newness,
but new arrangements of activities which have been customary, but not lately repeated; restoration of stimuli which
for some time past have not acted upon us.
There is a further reason for the early development of as
-many capacities as possible, for these may afterward be-come the by-paths of enjoyment. Later on in life we cannot
mark out new paths, but we can traverse old ones with, much
pleasure. If we store force in our youthful brain cells by
*giving them full sensory exercise. and having them make
the proper motor responses thereto, a renewal of these forms
of action will be pleasurable later in life. The man who
has been away from the country for many years finds great
-enjoyment in again identifying the birds by their song, in
hearing the wind sighing through the pines, in recognizing
a wild flower beside a murmuring brook. This will prove
true only in case he has passed through these experiences
in youth. Action on entirely new lines is generally irksome
after the nervous system has passed the plastic stage; but
the repetition of former enjoyable actions will then fail
to give pleasure.
Summing up, we find that all it means is that at about
fifteen the average boy, and from ten to thirteen, the average
girl, has as large a brain as he or she ever will have; that at
thirty-three all the that reminds me part of the brain has
finished growing, that is, the association fibres have assumed
the form and position they are going to assume for life.
Let us get the full value of the f acts. This means, as
Professor Halleck has so, well shown, that unless we, get
all our foundations for training before, we are not going to
get any af ter, we are fully grown. Again, this, means that
Ohat, man or woman who does not do his studying, who does




Backgrounds for Social Workers


not obtain his instructions in principles, who does not regulate his mode of life before this time, will never have it regulated except by pressure brought on him from the outside.
And just as we now classify the feeble-minded by saying they
are of a mental age of five, ten, or fifteen years, regardless of
the time they may have spent on earth, so, too, we should
classify human beings at large, according to when they
stopped developing mentally; those who have stopped studying (bear in mind, not those who have stopped going to
school), at the age of ten, remain ten years of age mentally
the rest of their days.3
Here the name of Thomas Edison will come to the mind
of an objector. Did he not do some of his finest work after
thirty-three? Of course he did, and so did most of the
great men who have ever lived, but all the work these men
did after thirty-three was to apply the laws and principles
which they obtained before they were thirty-three.
No man has time to put into practice all he learns. Just
to try to work out the applications of the laws of one small
high school text-book of physics would take all the mechanical genius of the greatest men many centuries to perform.
But they would not be working on new principles-on new
laws-they would simply be applying what they had already
learned.
If, as just stated, it takes centuries to apply in their
fulness even a few laws, how much more time would it not
take to apply those occurring during a single span of life?
No one man can do everything, so we must take most of our
learning at second hand-we must accept expert's views, on
matters at large, but we must not forget that while the
statement is often made that experts disagree, this is not
entirely true. Men who call themselves experts do disagree
and must, by virtue of the fact of their being unfamiliar with




Training


their subject, but real experts do not disagree on ultimate
laws and principles-they only disagree on some of their applications, and even on these not to so considerable an extent
as is commonly supposed. Likewise it must not be forgotten
that by logically following out a very small disagreement,
many diverging viewpoints may be obtained. We must go
down to bed-rock-to fundamentals-whenever we start a
discussion.
And so our whole system of education is adjusted for the
purpose of differentiating the true from the false, i.e.,
of learning how to tell an expert when one needs one-to
know a MAN when one sees one. But in addition to this there
is one other point usually lost sight of. An education is for
the purpose of narrowing; not broadening, as is usually
stated. A totally uneducated man will talk about anything
and everything with equal interest, but a trained man has
had his field of vision narrowed; although that particular
field has been brightened and enlarged. One sees a smaller
area, but everything within that area has become multiplied
in size many times. Let us illustrate. If one look through
a microscope, one's vision as far as area is concerned becomes much less, but the object looked at becomes clearer
and more distinct. Education is the microscope of the intellect and its object is to work out what Cardinal Newman
meant by a gentleman, whom he defined as one who knows
something about everything, everything about something,
and who never wilfully or maliciously injures any one.
Holding in mind, then, the questions seeking an answer,
as expressed in our first paragraphs; how the brain works,
and consequently when training must be given, as well as
what it is that any education worthy the name seeks to
impart, we may set about trying to find the best method of
imparting that instruction to the growing mind.




Bac kgrounds, for Social Workers


We recall an especially pointed remark of Mr. Chesterton
that there are two ways of teaching boys to be good; one, by
holding up to them the horrors of the diseases they might
bring to themselves if they live an evil life, as well as the
depths of degradation to which they might fall, while the
other was, by keeping before their minds the pure life of the
Virgin Mary. And, he adds, that there may be a great difference of opinion as to which is the more effective, but there can
be no difference of opinion as to which is the more wholesome.
These are the two great methods of training when all is
said and done-whether it is best to teach by showing the
injuries that may come from following out a certain line
of thought and action, or whether it is best to present ideals
toward which the growing youth may strive.
We believe in Ideals.
For, in the one case there is produced that type of individual whose morality consists in not being found out;
whose ideas, ideals and principles of life may be summed up
by the statement of a young man, a product of this very
training, "I may not be moral but I know I'm hygienic."
Constant drilling on principles and fundamentals is essential: explaining the WHY of it all as soon as the student
is able to understand, but above all to give a thorough
grounding in principles. To give him as many interests as
possible, consistent with sufficient time for repetition, until
the subject is known fully and completely, so, as to put
aside brain deterioration until the latest possible moment.
It is the lack of several interests that causes bigotry and
that type of narrowness that is ever to be condemnednot the narrowness of the funnel type of which we have
spoken, that narrows the field in which one works, but broadens the outlook. It is the lack of mental exercise during all




T raining


the years the brain is plastic that makes it impossible for
so many men to do anything except one thing-it is the
reason we have so many people who are bores, because they
can talk only of Mexico, if that happens to be their particular subject, or only of pool, or only of golf, or only
of autoing, etc.
As Professor Halleck has said, we cannot later in life
make any new paths for ourselves. Unless we make them in
youth and then go over them again later in life we shall
find nothing but constant disappointments throughout our
career.
A good illustration used in a recent number of the Unpopular Review makes the matter clear: if men complain that
their wives are extravagant, they have no one but themselves to blame, for had they not liked extravagant girls
they would not have married them. Women who do not
marry are usually not extravagant.
Regarding the "un-understandabilities" we have mentioned
in our first paragraphs, we may say, that the answer as
to the reasons for failure and success may be found in the
study of Psychology; in regard to health and disease and
the differences between children, in Biology; while Education
will explain matters as they relate to parents and their offspring after the child is born.
Let us understand that life is very complex, and that we
must always be wary of him who attempts to make us
believe that with a few mottoes, and a single theory, he can
make over humanity.
We must understand that after the plastic period of life
is past, the child is bound to be shiftless and worthless, unless he has been made to depend upon himself, and not have
his parents do all his tasks for him. If he has not had to
work out his own problems and has not had some degree of




Backgrounds for Social Workers


actual work and effort piled upon him, he will have no taste
for effort afterward, and consequently will seek to shirk and
evade his every task. If he has been allowed to do as he
likes instead of being forced to do many things that are
distasteful to him, he will be dissatisfied with life, and not
realizing (for he has by this very lack of doing distasteful
tasks, prevented himself from realizing) what life actually is,
he will place the blame wrongly, and become decidedly anarchistic in thought, insisting that others who are happy
should be forced to abdicate their happiness and accept these
very ideas which have driven him to his pessimistic stand.
The mother who has toiled and slaved for husband and children will quite naturally find them unappreciative, for a husband wants a companion and not a slave, whether he knows
it or not, and the child having been taught by the example
of its mother that she considers it her duty to take upon
her shoulders all its worries and even physical efforts, accepts this as being a mother's duty, and thereafter expects
her to continue doing its work, for, whatever is regularly
seen, becomes a commonplace, and the child, never having
known what it means to give up things for others, cannot
appreciate-never having been taught appreciation; and
to teach this is as important as the multiplication table.
It can readily be seen that any training worthy the name
must be given during the plastic period of youth, and we
must see to it that the pupil obtains those principles and
laws then, which are later to be applied in his everyday life,
so he may not be misled by condemning that which is right
and choosing that which is evil-so he may, when occasion
demands, be able to pass true and correct judgment on men
and their methods-so he may KNOw an Expert when he
meets him-so he may KNOW A MAN WHEN HE SEES ONE.
We must not judge by first impressions; we must not as



Training


37


sume that if we do not like a man, he is on that account
worthless. He may be, but it does not necessarily follow.
Nor must we assume the reverse, that because he is personally
agreeable to us, does it necessarily follow that he possesses
that requisite knowledge and wisdom which make him a worthy leader whom we may safely follow. We must not assume that because water is clear, and cold, and sparkling,
it is not dangerous; the travelers whose bones are whitening on the sands of Death Valley thought that; they were
perfectly sincere in thinking so, but entirely wrong, and
because they were wrong, not because they were sincere, did
they meet their death.
We know that our bodies have to retain a certain temperature or we cannot live. We know further that when the
weather is cold our blood is driven inward, but remains just
as warm as it was before, simply because of the fact that it
gets further from the surface of the body where it would have
to come in contact with the cold; yet, how many men realize
that, for example, if they take a drink of an alcoholic stimulant in cold weather and feel warmer, they are actually
colder. For the alcohol sends the blood back from the interior out to the surface where it becomes cold and returns
much cooler than before. This example alone shows how
foolish it is to depend on what one feels. What we need
to know is what is true, what is valid, what ought to be done,
and when it ought to be done; and this information can only
be obtained by experiencing it all oneself, which we know is
impossible, or by profiting by the experience of others as
summarized and epitomized by capable teachers-that is by
men who are experts in their respective fields.
If one cannot tell a good physician from a bad one; if one
cannot tell a good lawyer from a bad one, if one does not
know whom to follow and when, one is going to suffer from




Ba ckgrou'nds for Soci-al Workers


some of the examples of "un-und ers tand abilities" we have
mentioned.
NOTES
1. The Education of the Central Nervous System, by Reuben
Post Halleck.
2. Here it is well to call attention to the many erroneous statements constantly being propounded as to why girls go wrong.
United States Commissioner of Labor, Charles P. Neill, in
1911, conducted an investigation. The results may be found in
Senate Document 645., page 82, where we find this:
"The first result of such an inquiry was naturally great diversity, but soon, out of the medley of varying opinions collected,
two striking facts became apparent. (1) Not one person consulted had given occupational influences as a leading cause of
immorality, and only two laid any particular stress upon them as
subsidiary causes. (2) Not one worker assigned poverty or low
wages as a direct and immediate cause of immorality. It was
agreed that indirectly their influence is great, but in the whole
inquiry only five cases were found in which the workers reporting them believed that the women had been driven into wrongdoing by want."
And on page 114 of the same report we find the following:
"But principally these studies seem to indicate that these
women., the more intelligent class of female wrong-doers, go
wrong because of causes operativ~e long before they enter the industrial world. Their downfall is due to moral causes, to their
inheritance and ea~rly training, or to lack of training. Their entrance into the industrial world was not responsible for the existence of their unfortunate tendencies., and in the maj ority of cases
it did not even furnish the occasion for their manifestation."
All subsequent reports really had their basis in this one from
which we have j ust quoted, and all seem to come to the same conclusion. The American Journal of Sociology for July, 1913,
reviewing this report says:
"Immorality among women, of which a separate study is here
made., seems to be due chiefly to the influence of early training or
lack of training and to defective mentality. Low wages and
poverty were found not to be direct causes of immorality, but to
have some indirect influence."
Dr. Helen Wilson read a paper at one of the International




Training


Congresses which met at Paris in 1913, presenting the same conclusions arrived at by her from a study of one thousand cases of
fallen women; then adds:
"Slight as is the connection between occupation and criminality, even less connection can be traced, according to this report,
between occupation and morality. The investigator found that
there was a general belief that shop-girls of the poorer sort were
more prone to go wrong than any other class, but the actual
figures did not support this belief, which seemed to be founded
on a priori reasoning."
The work of the investigators of the Civic Federation of New
York for 1913, is very complete and thoroughgoing. It says
there is no "important connection between occupation and immorality, or even between want and immorality."
This same report also says:
"Our own observation and experience would indicate that the
most important contributing causes of immorality of girls are:
Weakness of mind and will; individual temperament; immoral
associates; lack of religious and ethical training; injurious home
influences; cramped living accommodations, rendering privacy
difficult; lack of industrial efficiency; idleness; unwillingness to
accept available employment; love of finery and pleasure; unwholesome amusements and inexperience and ignorance of social
temptations.
"Low wages are a bad thing for men and women; it deprives
them of many things that would help to make them happier; but
low wages and the misery that follows in its wake never make
and never will make a good woman bad. We have the fallen
woman among the elite of the world as we have it in the slums,
among the overfed as often as among the underfed, among the
wealthy and cultured, as well as among the poor and illiterate.
Immorality is not a thing of class."
Turning then to Kneeland's Commercialized Prostitution in
New York City (1913) there is a statement by Katherine Bennett
Davis of the New York State Reformatory for Women (page
185).
"Two hundred and seventy-nine girls gave 671 reasons. We
have grouped them as well as we can. The surprising thing is
that very few directly economic reasons are given. It might be
supposed that in friendly conversation, a girl would wish to make
the greatest possible excuse for herself, and that the one most
ready to hand would be the inability to earn a living. But in
only nineteen cases was this given as an excuse; and by referring




40


Backgrounds for Social Workers


to a similar table for street cases, it will be noticed that only 139
out of 1,106 gave a directly economic reason."
Dr. Abraham Flexner, in his Prostitution in Europe, says, on
pages 83 to 84:
"We are in a position now to judge the part played by economic
pressure. The preponderance of servants suggests the proper
interpretation; for the servant does not lack food or shelter, and
her services are everywhere in demand. She does not therefore
resort to prostitution as an alternative to starvation. Animated
by a natural desire to excuse their conduct, as most human beings
are, the direct pressure of need is rarely assigned by prostitutes
in exculpation of their conduct. Mrs. Bramwell Booth, than
whom there is no more competent or sympathetic authority, found
out of 150 successive and unusually varied cases only two per
cent who explained their prostitution by inability to earn a livelihood; Stromberg discovered among 462 enrolled women at Dorpat only one who protested poverty as her justification; Kinkus,
studying the incomes of 1,550 Berlin women before embarking
on the life, decides that 1,389 had earned enough for selfsupport."
And on pages 263 to 264 of the report of the Chicago Vice
Commission (1911) we read:
"Among these causes a few may be enumerated. The economic stress of industrial life on unskilled workers, with its enfeebling influence on the will-power, the large number of seasonal
trades in which women are especially engaged; unhappy homes;
careless and ignorant parents; broken promises; love of ease and
luxury; the craving for excitement and change; lack of both
ethical teaching ana religious conviction; ignorance of hygiene;
all these are more or less contributing causes. But above all is
the fact that 'commercialized vice' is now a business in which but
a small part of the profits are paid to the women, who are exploited for the benefit of, certain groups of men; and parallel
with this is the further fact that certain classes of women have
discovered that luxuries and ease come to them when they sell
their bodies, rather than the work of their hands,-'It is the
easiest way.' "
Italics, wherever used are ours. And we are indebted to the
little paper Our Sunday Visitor for the collection of these statements.
Here is the outstanding fact: That in every single instance
where investigations have been made, the investigator has come
to the conclusion, from the evidence submitted, that it was early




Traning


41


training, lack of proper parental care, home surroundings, and
all that goes with it, such as lack of ethical instruction and religious conviction, that caused by far the great mass of girls to
go wrong, when it was not feeble-mindedness. This brings forth
the point to be made in the following chapter, that unless such
religious training is given as not only to tell what should be done,
but why it should be done and why it must necessarily be right
to do it, the young man or woman has neither valid motive nor
justification for living a moral life.
8. The question comes to mind here that if one enters the business world, does he not obtain just as able a training as though he
continued at school? Does not the average business man, by his
contact with others and the working out of the details necessary
to success obtain as much, if not more than does he who takes to
books mostly?
The question may be answered by showing the similarity between the studying of any single line of commercial work with
the studying for any profession without the necessary underlying
principles that make for real worth and greatness in all walks of
life. It would be like studying nothing but geology, without any
regard to general reading and writing, and mathematics, and the
host of other subjects in the school's curriculum. One must have
all his principles before entering special fields, or, in specializing,
whether it be in business, or law, or medicine, or engineering, or
theology, the individual becomes one of those men who only know
enough to know one thing.
Professor James Hulme Canfield, in The College Student and
His Problems (Macmillan), tells of Chauncey Depew, who says
that though he knew many self-made men, he never yet knew one
who did not feel uncomfortable in the presence of cultured
people and who would not give every dollar he had that his sons
and daughters might not feel the same.




CHAPTER III


WHAT OUGHT WE TO DO?
WE have shown why it is that unless the individual
obtains his training in fundamental principles during
the time of his brain's plasticity and his association fibres'
formation, he is not going to have any principles, and the
value of having principles, at least in the practical world, is
well stated by Mr. Chesterton, who says that a landlady
ought to be much more particular in regard to her prospective boarder's philosophy than in whether he paid his bills,
for, if he had the right philosophy-that is, the right principles-he would always pay his bills; whereas, he may have
paid them in the past, only the more readily to obtain greater
credit and run up much larger ones that he never expected
to pay.
But of all principles that are important, the one of RIGHT
and WRONG comes into boldest relief. The use of the word
OUGHT is with us daily. It is said a law ought to be made
to overcome this or that proceeding; a man ought to be
prosecuted for doing this or that thing; birth control ought
to be taught, or ought not to be; the study of eugenics ought
to be made a compulsory matter, and sex hygiene ought
to be taught in our schools.
But what does this OUGHT mean? How are we to delve
deep enough into the conditions of things at large to be
able to find validity for our OUGHT? That is the question of
questions, for, with a satisfactory answer to this, many of
42




What Ought We to Do?


43


our difficulties will right themselves, and there will be much
less conflict in the various methods advanced for bettering
the human race. Validity and the points stressed, form the
key--the only key-that can unlock even the mysteries of
racial differences and give us a historical background for
any study of social life we might care to undertake. It is the
"open sesame" of racial psychology.
Let us, then, hurl ourselves in the midst of battle and call
attention to the fact that when all systems of ethics-all
ideas of WHY some things are right and others wrong-are
summed up, we find the reasons assigned resolve themselves
into two great types, known as the Transcendental and the
Utilitarian.
Transcendentalism means that the reasons for our ideas
of Right and Wrong, though starting with the senses, transcend any sensuous element-are beyond and above it.
That man was created by God, and God being his First
Cause, the object and end of man's life must be to know
God and to serve Him. That the ultimate end for which
man has been put on earth is again to be united with his
Creator, and to this end he must order all his thoughts and
acts by the moral discipline of the Ideal as set forth to him
by his interpretation of what that Ideal might be. It accounts for three essentials of morals: Why am I bound to
do anything at all?  What am I bound to do, and to what
end? It found the ground of obligation or duty in the
relation of the Created to the Creator, of man to God.
For, if man is a creature of God, to God he owes himself,
and all that he is, all that he has. And this is the ground
of all duty, to self, to family, to state, to society. If man
is bound to regulate his individual and his domestic life in
harmony with the moral law, it is because of his responsibility to Him from whom he holds himself and his family.
If he is bound to obey the Church in spiritual matters, it
is because the Church has been commissioned to teach and




Backgrounds for Social Workers


discipline him. If he is bound to obey the State in secular
matters, it is because the State derives the power of its
authority from God. And to neither Church nor State can
he be bound except by reason of the authority that comes
from God.
So far we have a historic aspect of the reasons men assigned for Right and Wrong, as it applied to their livesindependently of any given sect or branch of religion. With
the advent of Christianity, we have a sort of revivification, a
recoloring of the canvas of history, but not a new picture.
Here and there were added brighter colors, which in turn
brought out details that had always been in the picture, but
on account of the shading had not been so easily seen.
The Christian writers upheld the thesis that morality
teaches that the law of God is known partly through reason
and partly through supernatural revelation, but that both
are integral and essential parts of the law of God, though
revealed through different mediums; "each has its reason
in one and the same order of things, emanates from one and
the same authority, for one and the same ultimate end."
But if the law of God perceived by natural reason or promulgated by supernatural revelation, does not contain within
itself its obligation, neither does it furnish the end or purpose of the law. The law is not the reason of duty, nor is
it the ground of obligation. To what end, then, should the
law be obeyed? To the end for which God created man.
God is the first as well as the final cause, to the end that
man may attain to the end for which he was created--
complete union with God.
Further, the theory of Christian ethics, postulating of
man an understanding of good, and free will in the choice
or rejection of good, carries with it logically inevitable
implication of merit and demerit, of reward and punishment
beyond the grave. It says to the just man that to him
will be given the reward of happiness, and to the unjust,




What Ought We to Do?


that to him will be meted out the punishment of suffering.
For, "to the vast majority of mankind the doing of duty for
duty's sake is too bright and good for human nature's daily
food." This prospective compensation or retribution is the
emotivation to good and the restraint on the evil inclinations of man.
Such in brief is the content of historic and Christian
ethics. It is founded on principles that are directly affirmed
to man in the act of the soul's creation, principles that are
revealed to his reason by "the light that illumines every
man that cometh into the world," principles that are conformable to reason because both they and reason proceed
from God and God cannot contradict Himself, principles
that are absolute, eternal, immutable, because they are
what God eternally thinks.'
So much for a summary of what those who believe in an
absolute standard of Right and Wrong hold, and what they
stress. Many writers have misunderstood what is actually
held by the Transcendentalists; such were Descartes, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who make the great founders of this
philosophy appear as establishing a system of ethics based
on purely arbitrary law and irrational blind will. This is
incorrect. The doctrine is defended on the basis: that the
"fundamental principles of morality are not merely legal, or
dependent upon the arbitrary will of God. The righteousness of moral action is rooted in the very nature of God.
Ideas of Right and Wrong are fundamentally the immutable
thoughts of the Divine mind, ratified by the Divine will,
and strengthened as motives of human conduct by Divine
promise. Descartes taught that the essences of.things are
determined by the Divine will. But all the mediaeval thinkers,
following the leadership of Thomas of Aquinas, have taught
that the essences of things are independent of the Divine
will and that just as God could not create a square circle,




Backgrounzds for Social Workers


so neither could He declare an action that is by its nature
wrong-such as blasphemy-right, or an action that is by its
nature right-such as Divine worship-wrong."
We must, therefore, be wary of those who seek to subvert
this great system by teaching that morality is purely a
matter of precept.
The opposite viewpoint is that of Utilitarianism, which
may be summed up from Herbert Spencer's doctrines, for
Spencer was the high priest par excellence of Utilitarianism. Utilitarians, as exemplified by Mr. Spencer, hold:
That "it is absurd to speak of eternal principles of Right
and Wrong, these being purely human conceptions, without meaning when applied to the nature of things. Virtue
is founded on expedience; not on a direct calculation of what
is expedient, but on the registration of it in the organism.
What is called moral obligation has its authority, in part,
from this instinct, and, in part, from the action of human
law and public opinion. All that does happen, happens by
that redistribution of matter and motion which constitutes
evolution; a process of beneficent necessity, the cause whereof is neither moral nor immoral. There is no such thing
as a real human personality, but only a succession of states
of consciousness. Free will is a subjective and objective
delusion, and man having no power of choosing the least
pleasurable of two courses, all moral conduct is determined
by the surplus of agreeable feeling, either in the present
agent or in his ancestors. Self-sacrifice is a higher egoistic
satisfaction. Altruism need not imply self-sacrifice, and in
the ideal state never will. To this should be added, in order
to make the sketch complete, that in the principle 'outer
relations produce inner relations,' we have 'an explanation
of the advance from the simplest to the most complex cognitions'; 'from the simplest to the most complex feelings';
attraction and repulsion transform themselves into the phenomena of egoism and altruism, and morality results from
the persistence of force." 2




What Ought We to Do?


47


And this is the Utilitarian doctrine in a nutshell.
As we have said at the beginning of this chapter, it is
necessary to accept one or the other of these theories if we
are to have any valid causes assigned as to WHY a given
thing is right or wrong, and it is absolutely essential that
we do have some validity for our ideas if we wish to place
ourselves on any higher level than the rest of the animal
world; for, whereas, we all admit that the anatomical or
physical structure of some animals and men is very much
alike, we all likewise admit that the one great distinguishing
feature between men and the lower forms of animals consists
in man's ability to rise to greater heights in the mental realm
-in the thought world.
There are some animal psychologists who believe they have
evidence that animals do considerable thinking also, but
this is largely because these men do not give their words3
the same meaning as those who' take the opposite view; but,
just now we are not arguing this particular point. What
we are insisting upon is this: that just in so far as a man
does think-that is, just in so far as he obtains a valid
reason for his acts and theories, is he removed from the lower
forms of animal existence. We all admit this; the abler a
man is, the more intellect do we credit him with, and the
higher do we place him among other human beings. So in
continuing, let us always keep in mind that this ability to
find valid reasons for his acts is the gauge by which we can
judge an individual's relative standing among men, and it
is also the gauge that separates him from the brute creation.
Animals work by instinct-that is, they do what they do
because they are so constituted that they cannot help tbhemselves-there is no responsibility to be placed upon them
mentally, and consequently there can never be any question of
morals or ethics among them. But, though man also does,




Backgrounds for Social Workers


probably most of his acts by instinct, he'does not do them
ALL that way; he is responsible--he has some choice-no
matter how limited that may be. It is upon this fact that he
has some choice, we pass judgment-that we can justly
seek for the intention of the accused whenever a. crime has
been committed. It does not matter whether we are able to
find the intent or not, it does not matter how difficult it may
be to tell whether the person accused committed the act
willfully or accidentally, this factor must be taken into consideration, and we rightly look down with pity on the mental
status of those savage tribes who are so low in the scale of
intelligence that they insist on the life of a member of the
tribe or family of him who has accidentally killed one of their
own members, being unable to make any distinction between
intentional and accidental killing; who can only see that a
death has occurred, and some one must pay the penalty.
Just in so f ar as a person is able to make fine distinctions
is he trained in his particular line. To make the matter
clearer: Supposing a person were asked the relative values
of various pieces of silk, he who could not distinguish but
three different types when twelve were present would not
be as able to pass judgment as he who could distinguish the
twelve. We are not trying to contend that he who merely
tries to juggle with words is he who can distinguish most
in the intellectual world, but we do insist that a man tell
what his words mean, so that there will be no. misunderstanding. An~d we do not mean that one who can find most
words that will add more darkness than light to a given
question is the more eminent, but we do mean that ONLY
WHEN THERE ARE VARIOUS DIFFERENCES,, he who can distinguish them is the abler man in that particular field, though
it be the only one in which he may be.
This being true, it must follow that just in so, far as one




What Ought We to Do?


49


can give a valid reason WHY his acts and thoughts and
words are correct, does he distinguish himself from the lower
animals. To again make this matter clear, we may say
that in view of the fact that the great mass of acts performed by animals as well as men are instinctive, still, though,
they may be performed by instinct, or may originate through
instinctive processes, it requires intelligence if reasons are
to be assigned and explanations given,-and reasons and explanations are demanded of man alone. An act that is purely instinctive is done without any regard to Right and
Wrong-it is performed simply because the organism performing it is built to perform it and cannot do otherwise.
An act of this kind cannot be right or wrong, because when
one cannot help himself, there is no responsibility, and, there
being no responsibility, there can be no swch thing as Right
or Wrong. Let us take a dog, or a cow, doing an act because it feels like it-because there is an instinctive process
or nervous impulse that makes it want to do this. We do
not consider the matter of responsibility in passing judgment, consequently we neither praise nor blame. So, too,
if a person act simply because he feels like it-because he
wants to act-without any further reason-because he instinctively feels he must act, without thinking of what the
act is, what it means, and why he does it, as well as the
result that may follow, he certainly cannot be classified any
higher in the intellectual world than the dog or cow. It is
only in so far as he can assign a reason for the faith that is
in him, for the act he is to perform, that he deserves consideration from a human viewpoint-from an intellectual
viewpoint. It is for this reason that an emotional individual, no matter how sincere, no matter how able he may
be to carry forth his doctrines, will do so much harm;
because, following in the footsteps of the irrational animal




Backgrounds for Social Workers


instead of the rational, he does not reckon the results that
flow from his act. No man is justified in doing merely what
he wishes; merely what he desires; merely what he feels like
doing; unless he can assign a reason for it, and, unless he
can, he ceases to carry the right of having his ideas being
considered worthy of human notice. These men are on the
mental level of the lower animals, f or it is only by the reasoning faculty that one can distinguish even the highest
forms of animal from the human.
Having -defined the two great systems of explaining why
Right and Wrong are right and wrong, and shown that only
on accepting one of them can any one's opinions be deemed
worthy of notice, let us take up the evidences f or each in a
very brief manner.
First, if there is a God, absolute, eternal, good, there can
be no doubt as to the Transcendent alists standing on the
safest ground.
Second, if that God created the human race as well as
everything else that exists, there can be no doubt. of an
obligation existing between Creator and the rational creature.
Th~ird, if a man is a rational animal-that is, if he is only
distinguishable from the lower animals by his power of reasoning (even though he may not use his distinguishing power
very often), it must follow that the laws of conduct as well
as the laws of everything else, must be apprehended through
this ability at reasoning, and these laws must be so arranged
as to be understandable and have a meaning to the collective
reason of intelligent human beings-that, is, one must find
one~ s first principles, and then logrically build up one's
ideas so they have a meaning.
Fourth,, that if man is a reasoning animal, all men have
this ability of reasoning in common, though some may have




What Ought We to Do?


51


much more of it than others; and,
Fifth, if all men have the faculty, the use of which distinguishes them from the lower forms of animals, it is only in
so far as this faculty is used that men may consider themselves above other forms of living creatures. This has been
summed up poetically by some one in these words: Life
sleeps in the plant, dreams in the animal and comes to full
blossom in the human family.
Now, as Herbert Spencer himself has said:
"Judging whether another proves his position is a widely
different thing from proving your own. To establish a general law requires an extensive knowledge of the phenomena
to be generalized, but to decide whether an alleged general
law is established by the evidence assigned merely requires
an adequate reasoning faculty. Especially is such the case
when the premises do not warrant the conclusion."
There are many men with wonderfully acute minds; minds
that can see the greatest number of possible applications to
a law; minds that can, it seems, intuitively see the many
ramifications into which a given act may and does lead; and,
because of this scintillating brilliance-because of the immense number of rays from their intellect lighting up so
many paths-we are ofttimes blinded to the fact that it is
only a great area they cover, but, that penetration is not
theirs. They are acute, but not profound. As Lord Macaulay somewhere says, we must not confuse the poisonous effect
of the venom on the arrow's point with the strength with
which the bow was drawn. But the very breadth of such
minds startles and confuses. Few men are analytic, and on
that account it is the acute mind that leads most men
astray. It is this type of mind that spreads over so much
territory, that it sees nothing deeply; which throws aside
fundamental principles, for fundamentals require depth, and




Backgrounds for Social JWorkers


where there is no depth there can be no principles. Brilliancy, and sparkling intellectual effervescence have usurped
the place of profundity.
We can readily understand this, however, when we remember what has been said on the necessity of training in fundamentals-in principles-during the plastic period of youth.
These acutely minded men have not had this training, or it
has been applied in a most narrow field, and this narrow
field, spreading out as the years went on, became the only
vision their eyes could behold-all else was out of focus.
And, just as everything outside the focus of the camera is
blurred, so, too, with the camera of the intellect-just as the
brilliancy of that which is in focus outshines all the blurred
parts, these men having concentrated so long on the picture, forget that because a thing is blurred and cannot be
minutely examined, and does not clearly show, does not
mean that it doesn't exist. In fact, it means just the reverse-that the blurred part does exist-but that he who
looks is burdened by a limited sight.
Our chapter of "The Ideal" 4 has covered the first and
second statements.   The third, fourth and fifth will be
accepted as they stand.
But as the minds of those who hold the Utilitarian viewpoint have not received the proper training during the
plastic period, or at least but a portion of what should
have been given, the argument has largely descended to
this:
If, as the Transcendentalists hold, the whole code of
morality is obtained through our interpretation of the natural and the supernatural law, it follows that there can be
no morality without Religion, because Religion means the
relation of man to his Maker, and if there be no Maker, there
can be no supernatural law, and, therefore, any code of




What Ough~t We to Do?             5


53


morals that is acceptable must come from what reason alone
tells us, or what reason alone can interpret from the actual
experience of everyday life.
There a-re many very able men who, hold that morality
had no relation whatever to Religion in the days gone by.
There are those who hold that if it is necessary for one
to have a God by all means have one, but that it shows a
better and higher form of moral fibre if He isn't needed.
How are we going to adjust these seemingly conflicting
ideas? Are these men fools who object to the very prin-.
ciples on which their opponents insist? By no means. Many
of them are more brilliant than those who are defending a
so-under doctrine, but brilliancy has nothing to do with
TRUTH. A thing remains just as true if every man on the
side of Right should prove to be foolish, and a thing remains
an untruth, even though, every able thinker in the world
object to it. What does it matter as to the truth or untruth
of the fact, if only an idiot see a man's body disappear in a
mass of quicklime, and all the keepers at the institution
where this idiot is confined insist that it be not so? Let us
get away from the absurd notion that because a learned man
says a thing, that makes it true. Spencer's statement quoted
above is perfectly correct-that all it takes to disprove a
man's theory is to show it is not logical, and, by the very
reasons that make reason worth anything must it fall by
its own absurdity.
These men whose brilliancy of intellect exceeds their depth,
whose lack of fundamental principles puts everything out
of focus, may speak with the utmost authority on that
which lies within their focus, but on nothing else. They
cease to be brilliant or great or authoritative on anything
except their field. Do not misunderstand this. Some men
are versatile, and have more than one line of work in focus,




54


54       Backcgrounds, for Social Workers


but not very many of them have.
And when these men say religion had nothing to do with
morality they are right in what they mean, but wrong in
what they say. For they have mistaken some particular
form of religion for Religion. They have not taken the
time to find out what their opponents actually mean, and
j ump into the fray to fight but a windmill which they have
quixotically transformed into a giant. It is perfectly true
that morality is independent of any one particular form of
religion. The particular sect or form of faith one may acknowledge merely interprets what it considers. morality
means. But one must have something to interpret before
interpretation is possible. Morality T~as always existent,
regardless of any changing interpretation different forms of
religions may have placed upon it.
If there be no religion-that is, if there be no relation of
man to his Maker-there can be no obligation of any kind,
f or it can validly be asked by what right any one man or
set of men can ask obedience of another man or set of men.
There is no. right in such a case-only the force of superior strength.
But, it is objected, are not men moral without religion?
Is not Professor Huxley's contention true, "I do not for one
moment admit that morality is not strong enough to hold
its own"? Did he not show by his own life of extreme fairness in his discussions to both friend and enemy, that he was
better and much more moral, at least in this respect, than
were many of the so-calIled Trans cendentalists?
Mr. W. S. Lilly ha~s well said in answer, that "the vital
question is not what this accomplished physicist will admit,
but what., as a matter of f act, does happen, and from the
nature of the case must happen. No doubt Professor Huxley, emancipated f rom belief in angel or spirit, still guides




What Ought We to Do?


55


himself by the same ethical rules as before.    I do not
myself know anything of the early training of this illustrious man. But I suppose that, like the rest of us, he was
brought up upon the Catechism. At all events, I am quite
sure that he is the product of many generations of Christian
progenitors. What M. Renan happily calls the moral sap
of the old belief-'la seve morale de la vielle croyance'still courses through his spiritual being. His materialism
takes credit for virtues springing from quite another source.
"He knows, far better than I do, the influence of heredity
and of environment upon character. He is well aware how
deeply rooted in the past are those ethical principles whereby human life is still largely governed, even among materialists. The question is, can you uproot those principles
and expect them to flourish upon quite different soil? Morality, in Professor Huxley, I can well believe, is strong
enough to hold its own. But will it be strong enough in
Professor Huxley's great-grandchildren? 'It takes several
generations of Christian morality to get into the blood,'
the missionaries in Samoa told Baron von Hiibner. It will
doubtless take several generations for Christian morality to
get out of the blood. And then? Not, indeed, that I am
now pleading for Christianity. Still less am I pleading for
any special form of it. There is little in Christian morality
that is exclusively Christian. And I am not prepared to
assert that many of the most precious of the ethical elements
of our civilization might not survive a general decay of
specifically Christian doctrines. I am at present merely
pointing to the fact that as the metaphysical dogmas, enumerated in a previous page, have lost their hold upon the
popular mind, the ethical conceptions for which they served
as a basis have fallen into discredit."9
Here lies the crux of the whole matter, for without a




Backgrounds for Social Workers


reasonable motive for doing right, one cannot validly claim
credit for rightness.  Observe the difference between the
moral and the intellectual realm, so often confused. Morals
have to do with guilt or innocence of a responsible human
being, when being judged for the committal of an act that
is unlawful in the moral order, and which was deliberately
done. Here INTENT and SINCERITY are paramount, but the
intellectual question with which we would be concerned in
this case is, "Have I the mental ability to give a valid
reason as to why this particular act is wrong or right, as
the case may be?" In other words, in the moral realm it
is a question of guilt or innocence; in the intellectual, of
mental ability at reasoning. The one is, "Did I or did I
not obey the law?" The other is, "Why should the law be
what it is?"
It is not the result of an act so much that counts in
the moral realm; it is the intent of the actor. That a man
may have been killed is only right or wrong in so far as
the intent which brought the killing about was right or
wrong. Were it an accident there certainly could be no
question of morality. Yes, even in case of war, let us suppose a man is caught and convicted of a most heinous offense, and from all appearances and all the evidence, the
same thing would continuously occur, were he set at liberty. There are no prisons in camp. It may be right on
the principle of self-defense, to even insist on his being
killed.
A man must follow the dictates of his conscience and
here he must be sincere or he is to be condemned, but he must
have a certain conscience; that is, he must have taken all
steps necessary to obtain proof that he is correct in his
judgment. In other words, a man must sincerely follow out
the dictates of the still, small voice, but he must just as




What Ought We to Do?               5


57


surely obtain all that knowledge and information which
it is essential every person as a member of human society
must have. We may even allow his instincts and emotions
to furnish the power that drives him on, in whatever acts he
perform, but, unless the intellect guide the driving force, and
he remain within the speed limit, he is bound, sooner or
later, to run amuck. We mean by this that his instincts,
with which he was born as well as those later acquired, which
have largely resulted in his likes and dislikes, are valid
sources of power to cause action, but his thought capacity is
the engineer that should be the guide, and the moral law
is in this case used to exemplify the speed limit.
If all this be borne in mind, it can readily be seen that
without some valid reason for living a moral life-that is,
without Religion (not some particular sect, or some pa~rticular form of religion. )-there can be nothing moral or
immoral. No matter how good a life a person may lead,
if he do so simply because he feels that way, there is neither
moral nor intellectual fibre present-it is all a, matter of
pure emotionalism, and that person is just as much to be
condemned as is the person who lives an evil life for the
same reason-namely, that he feels like it. It is the intention of the actor that must be taken into consideration. All
our laws admit this, but simply because it is often very difficult to find this intention, and sometimes impossible, there
are those who forget that we, nevertheless, have to look for
it if we are to pass judgment with any degree of validity.
And whether a person perform an act, either good or bad,
if it be done without moral intent, and without the ability
to know why it is being done, the intellectual level of that
person falls to the lowest possible human ebb, and sometimes
below even the human. To do. a thing willfully because one
knows it to be right is good, and to do a thing because one




Backgrounds for Social Workers


knows it to be evil is bad. It is the intention, and not the
act, that must be discussed whenever we have for our subjectmatter MORAL RIGHT and WRONG.
As we have shown, no man or set of men can claim allegiance to their doctrine unless they accept a Superior Being
to whom they owe an obligation, and from whose works
they are able, by their reasoning faculties, to discover a law.
Just in so far as this Supreme Being's discovered laws are
then cast aside, does there exist any Wrong, and, this being
so, any theories adduced to substantiate a form of belief not
resting on an obligation to a Creator, in any moral code
must be based on the principle of force-of the majority
or the strongest insisting on the minority or the weaker
in doing what it considers should be done. In fact, it is but
the deification of brute force.
We must not forget that majorities have nothing whatever to do with Right or Wrong, or with Truth. It cannot
matter what a majority might say about mosquitoes infecting human beings with malaria. If mosquitoes produce malaria in the human being, they will go on doing so regardless
of whether every man, woman and child in the country votes
that they do not. Truth is not and cannot be subject to
vote. And, as far as Right and Wrong are concerned, if
there is a Supreme Being we owe Him allegiance, for if He
is the first and ultimate cause of our being, we have an
obligation existing, that, no matter if the entire universe
unite in rejecting, is still there.
In the Utilitarian viewpoint, as Bentham expressed it,
Crime is really a miscalculation, an error in arithmetic. And
Mr. John Morley says, "Moral principles, when they are
true, are at bottom only registered generalizations from experience," and, "human society is not an organism, but a
machine-just as the individual men of whom it is composed




What Ought We to Do?


59


are machines, a kind of company, as some one has happily
expressed it, which insures against risks by applying the
principles of solidarity and reciprocity, the taxes being the
premium" (p. 43).
In this field one sees very fully the doctrine "that the
end justifies the means," which is so often attributed to the
Jesuits, but which no one has yet been able to show any
Jesuit, or, for that matter, any intelligent individual who
believed in an absolute standard of morals, ever did approve.
Mr. Lecky has aptly observed that the only charge Utilitarians can bring against vice is imprudence, and when,
as in our own day, this doctrine has been taught in the
schools, is it any wonder that so many consider that crime
consists only in being found out, not in its committal?
"Certain to me is the reasonableness of the universe. It.
is cosmos, not chaos. Be its final cause immeasurably distant from our knowledge, yet every part of the process
through which it moves is found, when examined, to be intelligible. 'Nothing is that errs from law.'   There are
mysteries, indeed, and locked doors everywhere. As Hegel
saw, every convex is concave, and every concave convex.
But this is not contradiction nor unreason. Certain also to
me is the supremacy of duty. Whatever is doubtful, of this
I am ineffably sure, that right I must do, whatever the result; that on the side of right I must be whether it triumph or not" (p. 59).
And it is on the basis of reason that our ideas of Right
and Wrong must rest. Again quoting Mr. Lilly, who is
speaking of Utilitarians, "No sort of compromise, no kind
of modus vivendi, appears to me possible between the two
schools of Transcendentalism and Materialism. I admit, indeed, that we may learn much from many teachers whose




Backgrounds for Social Workers


theories I judge false. Let us gladly accept these facts.
Let us narrowly scrutinize their arguments. The writers
whom I have in view, however admirable in other respects,
are assuredly great corrupters of words. Too often they exhibit the smallest power of distinguishing between a nude
hypothesis and a proved conclusion. They omit necessary
links in their reasoning, as when, for example, they pass at a
bound over the unbridged gulf between automatic consciousness and deliberate volition. They tell us, perhaps not quite
accurately, that the brain is the organ of thought, and they
proceed to argue as though they had demonstrated that it
is the cause of thought, and that intellect is a mere 'cerebral
phenomenon.' They talk glibly of causation, as if they
knew all about it, overlooking their entire inability to analyze the causal nexus" (p. 61).
We might say, as some chemist has well said, regarding
the formation of things chemically, we have the same idea
of the process itself that a man would have about Hamlet
were he to enter the theater just as the curtain rose when
that drama was to be performed, then leave immediately and
re-enter just as it fell. We know nothing about the process
itself. We see our own acts and then we see the results,
but the how and why of the process we do not know.
There is no doubt that all theories after Spencer's time
will have to take the facts he so industriously collected into
consideration, as well as his speculations into which he fitted
them, but this is entirely different from assuming that his
particular form of evolution on which all his theory rests
will be accepted.
Let us then sum up. Utilitarianism is based simply and
solely on the pleasure-pain concept. Simply on How one
feels. It is, therefore, purely emotional, and not deserving
intellectual consideration,  Bentham says, "Pleasure and




What Ought We to Do?


61


Pain govern the world. It is for these two sovereign masters alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as
to determine what we shall do."
But, as Mr. Lilly answers, "Well, but surely the pleasure and pain which come home to the individual are his
individual pleasure and pain. The idea of duty differs by
the whole diameter of existence from the idea of delectation.
But they tell us, 'Our sole experimental and scientific criterion of human action-the greatest happiness of the greatest number-does carry with it an obligation. The precept
really is: Work for the general advantage, for you will
find your own advantage in doing so.' To this I reply first:
Where is the obligation, the binding tie? In place of it
you present me with nothing but a mere motive. And in
the second place I observe that the proposition on which
the motive is based is untenable. It is by no means universally true that by working for the general advantage I
shall find my own. On the contrary, upon many occasions,
the general advantage points one way and my private advantage another. Nay, is it too much to say that my own
private and personal advantage will seldom be identical
with the general advantage in a world where the struggle
for existence and the survival of the fittest are the primary
laws?" (pp. 49-50).
And again: "As Mr. Lecky has said, the only 'charge
Utilitarians can bring against vice is imprudence.' But even
supposing that the charge could be sustained, prudence is one
thing, duty another. Prudence rests upon the calculations
of self-love. Duty means abnegation of self and obedience
to the unconditioned command of Right. The first note of
the moral law, as of all law, is obligation. To sacrifice
my private gratification to the general welfare may be an
admirable rule if it comes to me in the name of Right. Not




62


Backgrounds for Social Workers


so if it appeals to me in the name of Utility. I ask what is
useful for myself, for my own delectation. Why should I
not, if man is merely a pleasurable animal? Do not mistake me. I grant pleasure is a mighty spring of individual life. I admit that it is a good at which the human will
legitimately aim. But I deny that it is the source of ethics.
The only morality you can derive from it is the morality of
money, for which pleasures, physical and intellectual, of all
kinds may be purchased" (pp. 48-49).
The moral law is the very raison d'etre of government.
"Man as man, has no claim upon my obedience. Only to
the law of Right, speaking through human ministers, is my
obedience due. And here is to be found the underlying principle which makes criminal justice just. The moral law
apprehended, not made, by our practical reason, implies
that right is rewarded and wrong punished. That, as we
have seen, is involved in the very conception of law. Penal
jurisprudence is simply a moral judgment exhibited in visible form. Thus Aquinas, with his usual clearness and precision: 'The law of nature'-the law arising by Divine Reason, which is the nature of things-'proclaims that he who
offends should be punished. But to define that this or that
punishment should be inflicted upon him is a determination
drawn from the law of nature by human law' " (p. 129).
"A man has not a right to do what he likes with his
own. He only has a right to do what he ought with his
own; which, after all, is his own in a very qualified sense.
The only things which a man can in strictness call his
own-and even here he is under the law of conscienceare his spiritual, intellectual and physical faculties. The
material object on which he exercises these faculties is subject to a higher ownership than his; to the indefeasible
title of the human race, represented to him by the com



What Ought We to Do?                   63
munity in which he lives. Of the material surroundings which
he calls 'mine,' he is but a usufructuary, a trustee. The ultimate and inalienable ownership of what Aristotle called 'the
bounty of nature,' is in the human race" (p. 197).
And all this discussion means is that without religion there
can. be no morality, and we believe we have shown that this
viewpoint alone can be true. But we must not confuse some
form of religion with Religion, for there is "little in Christian morality that is exclusively Christan. And I am not
prepared to assert that many of the most precious of the
ethical elements of our civilization might not survive a general decay of specifically Christian dogmas. My present contention is more general. It is this: That morality can have
root only in the spiritual nature of man. If, from that
happy soil, watered by the River of Life, and refreshed by
the dews of heaven, you transplant it to the rocks and sands
of Materialism, wither and die it must" (p. 244).
"What the Christian religion did for morality was chiefly
to touch it with celestial fire, to vivify it by the idea of
self-sacrifice, and to point to the Supreme Example of selfsacrifice; to enable man to 'erect himself above himself,' by
exhibiting a standard of perfection, and by supplying supernatural motives for the imitation of that standard" (p.
212).
Christianity has "changed men's lives by changing their
ideals of life" (p. 213).
Taking all the things into consideration that we have been
attempting to make clear in this chapter, it will be seen
why one may so easily run adrift in the field of telling others
what OUGHT to be done, for, if we wish to be sure we are
right in telling others what OUGHT to be done, we must
bear in mind all of the following:
We never perform a single act without a motive, by which




64


64       Backgrounds, for Social Workers


is meant, as the Century Dictionary well expresses it, "A
mental state or process which induces an act of volition;
a determining impulse; specifically, a desire for something;
a gratification contemplated as the final cause of action."
It is that particular something, be it what it may-instinct,
impulse, reason, etc.-which causes the act performed. And
"6a reason is that which addresses the rational nature by
way of argument for either belief or choice; an inducement
leads one by his desire f or good: as to hold an additional
inducement. An incentive urges one on, like martial music.
An impulse drives one on, but is transitory."
All the motive means is the reason the act is committed;
but we must not forget that it may be a bad reason or a good
one. A traveler among the Esquimaux observed that parents did not punish their children, and, asking the reason,
was informed that it was because the children's grandmothers' souls were present in the children, and, it was
to be implied f rom this that it would be unf air to punish
the grandmother, when it was only the child who. committed
the fault. It might have been argued f rom. an hereditary
viewpoint that that was all the more reason the grandmothers should have been punished f or having such grandchildren. But here is a flagrant example of bad reasoning,
though this was f or the refraining from an act, which,
of course, sometimes requires more effort than performing
one when the temptation is great.
What we must keep in mind, then, is that, we have a motive
for everything we do, but we must be able to assigu a, VALID
reason for the motive, if we are to be considered worthy the
name of a rational being.
Having gotten thus far, we must attempt to find whether
the carrying out of our motive is just and right. That is,
after finding- our motive and the validity for it, we must




What Ought We to Do?


65


know that the act we are going to perform on account of the
motive is not unlawful, from a moral standpoint. It will be
observed that we have two orders or planes of thought. One
regarding the motive, which may be purely emotional or
intellectual: the other the moral, which concerns itself solely
and only with whether a thing is right or wrong. The intellectual plane or order concerns itself only with whether the
laws of reason have been followed, either in the moral plane,
or in the emotional, or in the purely physical.
Right and wrong are engaged in two different ways by the
two great classes into which the thought-world has divided
itself. One, the Transcendentalists, who believe in a Supreme
Being and obtain all their laws through the intellect, after
accepting this premise; and, consequently base all ideas of
Right and Wrong on the relationship of the created to the
Creator, while the Utilitarians do not accept a Supreme
Being, and base their theory of Right and Wrong on the
accumulated experience of mankind, finding only that wrong
which in the long run resolves itself into pain for either the
individual performing the act, or the race.
No matter which one of these two viewpoints we accept,
every act, if it is to have any justification must be gauged by
one of these theories.
But this only shows whether the act is Right or Wrong.
It does not show the degree of guilt of the one who performs
it. That is a totally different problem. Let us illustrate.
If a man perform an act that is in the sphere of doubtfulness
as to whether or not it breaks a man-made law, we have a
grand jury appointed to ascertain whether there is sufficient
evidence to warrant bringing the offender to trial. Remember, there is no question of guilt. It is merely a question of
whether the act the accused is supposed to have committed
comes under the law. Later, at the trial, all the evidence is




66


Backgrounds for Social Workers


brought in on both sides, and the question of whether the act
was actually committed, is adjusted, while still later the third
factor enters-namely, what was the intent 5 of the accused
when he performed the act-not his motive; the motive is
what the detective wants when he is attempting to find why
the act was committed; but what we want to know is what
did the accused actually intend doing? Did he want to perform an unlawful act? Or was it accidental and unintentional? The intent will be taken into consideration as to
the punishment he is to receive. But now comes a fourth
factor, and that is, even if he intended to do the thing he
did, even if there be no question that he did it, or that he
did break a law, he may not have known the law, and therefore, though intending the act, did not intend breaking any
law, and might conscientiously say that had he known the
law he would never have committed the act. Let us examine
these things in slightly more detail.
We have already explained motive, and the theories of
how we gauge Right and Wrong, that is, WHY the act is
done and whether it be Right or Wrong.
Then comes the question of whether the individual whom
we are to judge actually committed the act. Here all evidence must be brought in, and upon the evidence alone must
this question be adjusted.
Next, comes the question, "What was intended by the person performing the act or teaching a theory?" Here we
want to know the good or evil character of the accused. If
he is misunderstood in his teaching, or if his act is misinterpreted, he can rightly insist that the Judge and jury have
not gotten his intention, that even though evil flow from his
act it was unforeseen and could not have been avoidedthat is, that it was accidental and not intentional wrongdoing.




What Ought We to Do?


67


But, here, of all places, we say, "Yes, but you broke the
law," only to be answered: "True, but I did not know there
was such a ruling. I did not KNOW I was breaking a law.
Had I known it was forbidden, I should not have performed
the act." And all of us who know anything about law at all,
know that we have a maxim that reads: "Ignorance of the
law excuses no man." Which means simply this: that even if
one be perfectly sincere in performing an act or teaching a
theory, if one has not taken the precaution to find what the
law is, all one's sincerity counts for naught; and, in fact,
to be sincere in such a case is really more damaging to
humanity than to be insincere, for by virtue of that sincerity, men and women are influenced to do that which in
and of itself is unlawful.
All of this will be readily acknowledged by any thinking
person, and as we have shown in our first chapter that one's
principles-one's method of thought-is made part and
parcel of oneself only during the plastic period of life, it
follows that unless the proper training is then given, none
of these things which we have just said can be understood,
and no depth can be attained, no matter how brilliant the
individual may be, nor no matter how acute.
It does not mean that in every act of life all of these
things must be thought of and worked out, but it does mean
that when we attempt to teach others what to do-when we
attempt to bring about the making of a new law or the
repeal of an old one-unless these things are taken into consideration, those who are advocating such measures show
such mental caliber, or lack of it, that none but those who in
turn are on their same intellectual level will follow.
This does not mean that each leader, each advocate of a
change must know all things philosophical. It only means
that if he cannot understand these simple differences, he need




Backgrounds for Social Workers


not flatter himself on his thinking powers, and those who
follow him may flatter themselves still less.
NOTES
1. This excellent summary, which we have changed just enough
to present the most important points, we owe to Raymond D.
Roehl, Ph.D., late professor of history at the University of
Dallas, and now in charge of sanitation at Camp Bowie for his
regiment, the 144th.
2. This summary of the Utilitarian viewpoint, as well as all
page numbers after the quotations which follow, are from, and
refer to, W. S. Lilly's volume On Right and WVrong (London,
1892).
3. The dog and horse are usually presented as proof of intelligence in the philosophical sense of the word by those who
believe that animals can reason. The dog is punished for doing
something and does not do it again, or he is rewarded and constantly responds to a call so that the reward is again forthcoming. No one disputes that all animals have memory, at least all
higher forms of them. What is disputed is, that they reason.
And so the question resolves itself down to "Did he (the dog)
know why he was rewarded or why punished, and act accordingly? If so, the evidence from this and many such experiments
fails to indicate the fact; while the following investigation of the
association processes in the dog demonstrates the formation of
typical associations in the complete absence of rational processes.
"It is well known that under certain circumstances the mouth
waters, which is only a familiar way of saying that the flow of
saliva into the mouth has increased. The sight of food-even the
thought of some appetizing dish-and a number of other causes
may produce this result, which is in every case due to the stimulation of the salivary glands. Among the effective stimuli, one of
the most convenient for experimental purposes, is hydrochloric
acid, a few drops of which, under the tongue, produces a definite
increase in the secretion of the parotid gland-which may be
remembered as the seat of trouble when one suffers from mumps.
"Now it is possible, by a slight operation, to divert the flow
of saliva from the parotid gland away from the mouth to the
exterior, so that the rate and character of the flow may be accurately observed. A method is thus obtained not only for estimating the effect of various stimulating substances upon the




What Ought We to, Do?


69


salivary glands, but, which is far more significant, for measuring
in concrete physiological terms the processes that take place in
the higher centers of the brain. Suppose, now, that as a few
drops of hydrochloric acid are placed under the tongue, a whistle
of a given pitch is blown. Suppose, further, that this simultaneous application of acid and sound is repeated as many, let
us say, as twenty times. Then suppose that at the next trial, the
acid is abandoned, but the whistle is sounded as usual. Repeated
experiments have shown that under such favorable conditions the
sound of the whistle, which at first produced no appreciable effect
upon the salivary glands, now distinctly accelerates the flow of
saliva. That this is an example of the establishment of a new
association without the aid of reason follows from the fact that
the mouth waters without consideration, as a result of reflex
stimulation of the salivary glands which the animal concerned
may even quite fail to notice.
"The mechanical preciseness of this association is especially
emphasized by the fact that it obtains only for whistles of the
same pitch. Even the most trifling differences in this respect reflect themselves in the rate of the salivary flow- The association
involves a particular tone, not sound in general. It is an association of a very definite, circumscribed type. It exhibits nothing
of that adaptability which makes behavior of tool-using animals
so noteworthy.
"Yet it is just this type of cerebration that is involved in a
vast number of our everyday actions. We even make a boast of
it. This man has voted with one political party so long that his
dogged loyalty has become his political virtue. That man believes that the duelling code to which he has been brought up is
a necessary part of the library of every gentleman. We may
have learned to like figs and olives, but we still eschew horse
flesh. We are assured that many of the processes by which foods
are prepared for the market are irrational, but we continue to
demand them. We estimate our guests by their table manners.
And we give our favor to a soft falsehood, snubbing a harsh
truth. We prescribe not only the canons of dress, but the esthetic
taste. We know what we like-alas. We set the limits of polite
conversation. We even dictate terms of thought itself.. We
persecute the genius who would enlighten our ignorance, because
his ways are strange. We applaud the demagogue for speaking
the fluent language of our own mediocrity. And we marvel at our
intelligence.
"We may be rational animals, but a large proportion of our




Backgrounds, for Social Workers


formal education consists in learning, like the dog, to do new
tricks."
(From Instinct and the Rational Life, by Professor Harry
Beal Torrey, in The Scientific Monthly, January, 1917, pp.
64-66.)
The point to be remembered is', that though we are rational,
we do probably most of our acts by this associative reflex method
and use little reason, but because we do not do much reasoning
does not follow that we do none. And because many of the acts
we perform can be performed by irrational animals, it does not
follow that they even perform them for the same reasons we do.
As Professor Win. Wundt, has well said, "Animals never reason,
humans but seldom."
4. The Beginnings of Science, by Edward J. Menge, Richard
G. Badger, Chapter IX. The Ideal..5. That the "intent" is of utmost importance in passing judgment on an individual., may be easily shown by calling attention
to such an instance as a person's working for the Single Standard
of morality. While it is of the utmost importance that there be a
single standard, and every intelligent person concedes it, yet
there are many who ought to be most seriously condemned for
advocating it. For, if one fights for a single standard in order
that women may sow their wild oats., instead of that men must
cease doing so, it is most readily seen that both parties working
for what they consider the same thing, are yet at opposite poles
when the moral situation is taken into consideration.




CHAPTER IV


BIRTH CONTROL
S CI ENCE means systematized knowledge. It is a, method
of obtaining through, the gathering of facts, sufficient
materials on which to found theories, which are hamimered
into shape by mental tools known as the~laws of Logic. Its
object is to control the forces of nature, and to. prophesy
what in a given case will result when certain things are done.
The Physical Sciences concern themselves only with what
is true and false, not with what is right and wrong. It is
this confusing of our terminology that. brings about so many
misunderstandings. Whether a thing stated is a physical
fact or not, must always rest with the laboratory sciences;
that is, we must have the knowledge of several of our senses
to satisfy us of its truthfulness. Whether the meanings we
then apply to, these facts are correct or not, must rest with
the Philosophical Science called Logic. But whether a thing
be right or wrong can never be obtained from laboratory
facts. We can by laboratory evidence only find whether in
a particular case certain things work out better than others.
It is f or this reason that we must have a, definitiondo RIGHT
and WRONG. This we have given in our chapter "What
Ought We to Do?" Right and Wrong are in the Moral
Order. The truth, or falsity of a, fact lies largely in the
Physical Order, and the truth, or falsity of a Theory lies
entirely in the Logical Order, after the facts have been
proven.
71




Backgrounds for Social Workers


It will be observed that there is some slight complexity
here, and it will consequently be understood that unless all
t'hese complex things be taken into consideration there is no
obtaining validity for anything we say.
That this complexity of the problem is one of the most
important in the field of intellectuality can be demonstrated
very easily by any one who will take Mr. W. S. Lilly's volume on Right and Wlroing,' which was written for English College men and women, and hand it to practically any
physician, lawyer or engineer he happens to know and see
whether such person can read it understandingly. Now let
us consider for the moment that only about one person in a
hundred in this land of ours receives a college training, and
when one further realizes that by far the great majority of
these enter law, medicine, or engineering, if these men who
have had exceptional opportunities can not understand even.a volume that was not written for technical students but for
professional men like themselves, what hope is there that
others who have had less training can understand? The fact
is that very few of the one per cent of the American people
who have had opportunities have ever had much philosophical
training, and consequently they can not know when they are
being led along erroneous paths in the realm of things outside their own profession that concern the human race
vitally. They can not know, when they accept as their purveyor of facts, a man who is not a scientist. They can not
know, when they are accepting a man who is not logical even
when he has his facts correct, or if he be logical whether he
has accepted wrong premises on which to begin his reasoning, and they do not know on what basis Right and Wrong
rest, and so can not validly decide when a thing ought to be
done or not.
Very nearly the entire output of books on education for




Birth Control


73


years past is entirely worthless simply on account of their
authors' having accepted the notion, now disproved, that the
child passes through the historical advancement of the
race,2 and, consequently our educational texts will largely
have to be re-written.
An example can be found in medicine. For years iodoform gauze was used as an antiseptic dressing, whereas,
now it is being entirely discarded by those who know, because
it is a most excellent breeder, if anything, of the very germs
it was expected to prevent from breeding. It is still used a
great deal, and will be by some of the older men for years,
but that does not change the fact of its being very bad for
the usage to which it is applied.
Non-valid reasoning comes forth constantly in our magazines and journals. Just now one of the popular subjects
that is under discussion happens to be Birth Control. There
are any quantity of similar matters discussed in as absurd a
manner before the public, but we choose this one to bring
home the truth of our statements. It is our object to show
how to obtain a validity for one's findings in any discussion
of this or similar nature.
When a youth comes to us with a suggestion and plans
for a perpetual-motion machine and we inform him that it
won't work, he probably asks: "Have you tried it?" To
which we of course answer in the negative, and then he
wants to know how we know it won't work. The answer is
given that all any schooling can do is to present fundamental principles on which to build, and with which to work.
We learn certain laws that we apply in after life. There is
a rule of Physics that says there can be no more work gotten
out of a machine than is put into it, and even then one must
allow some loss for friction on the part of the machine.
Now if one accepts this physical law, and there has never




Backgrounds for Social Workers


been an exception to it proven, it is perfectly foolish to
attempt a perpetual motion machine.     If one does not
accept the law, there is only one thing to do and that is to
try out the plan.
So it is with everything else we want to reason about. We
must take our law if there be one, and ascertain whether it
is correct. If it is, and the subject for discussion comes
under it, we must judge accordingly. We need not try it
out in actual practice. No man could even begin to apply
in a dozen lifetimes the laws he obtains in a few pages of a
single text-book of High School physics or chemistry.
Remembering this, how absurd are the various discussions
we read on both sides of the question we are writing about!
One is almost inclined to say "Lord deliver us from our
friends," for it almost seems that those who may have the
Right mostly on their side, by their poor logic, by their
intense emotionalism, by their calling those who disagree
with them unpleasant names, and by insinuating all manner
of things, are quite likely to drive defenders of the very cause
they are defending into the opposite camp.
None of the discussions that the writer has seen go down
to fundamentals, that is, to the question of WHAT is RIGHT
and what is WRONG. Many of the writers and speakers tell
us that it is right to bring about Birth Control, but how can
that be answered until we know what RIGHT and WRONG
are? How can one judge whether this or that man is guilty
of perjury before one knows what perjury is?
Then they fail to define at the outset of their articles
exactly what they mean by Birth Control, and, consequently
the reader reads any emotional meaning into the lines he
wishes. Practically no one disagrees with the idea of Birth
Control, so there is no question on that score at all. The
whole argument pertains to the methods used for that pur



Birth Control


75


pose.  The writer knows of no defensible law, physical,
natural, or supernatural, that forces one to perform the act
by which birth may be produced. The question does not
pertain to abstaining from sexual contact. The whole question is whether or not it is Right on any basis of right and
wrong principles to use artificial means by which to prevent
conception from taking place, either by killing the male
sperm, or preventing it from reaching the female ovum.
This is the question.
We have shown what RIGHT and WRONG mean. We have
shown that regardless of a slight difference of expression
and nomenclature, there are only two possible principles
on which RIGHT and WRONG can rest, so that all there is left
to do is to show whether from either or both of these principles Birth Control by artificial means is right, and if not,
why not.
First, we shall take up the Transcendentalist viewpoint
and then the Utilitarian. The Transcendentalist insists
that if there be a Supreme Being, one has obtained his own
reasoning power by virtue of this Supreme Being, and just
in so far as one uses it, does one approach that Divine Ideal
for which man was put upon this earth, and which it is his
end to attain-his final goal. To those who go further and
accept a revelation as shown by the Scriptures, the argument is drawn from Genesis Chap. XXXVIII, which apparently shows that it was God's will that the destruction of
the male seed should not be.
But it is not necessary to go to the Scriptures for those
who accept a Supreme Being and do not accept the Bible
as an inspired work. The whole subject can be based on
what is called the Natural Law. This means in this case,
not that it is an offense to control any natural instinct or
subject, as some writers seem to think, such as to cut one's




Backgrounds for Social Workers


hair or shave, but, that one who performs an act must be
willing to abide by the laws, which nature shows to be there
by having established a penalty as a consequence of the act.
This is the point to be remembered. One may control
nature all one wishes, but if one notes in nature a penalty
when. one of her laws is broken, it follows that if he who performs the act is unwilling to pay the penalty nature demands, he by that very shirking of responsibility is breaking that first principle from which we obtain any validity
for responsibility, and consequently he is bound, little by
little to cast aside other principles as well. For, if one is
unwilling to abide by the consequences of his own act, how
can he in the name of reason expect others to trust him,
for, trust is certainly engendered by our belief in the individual's willingness to be held entirely responsible for his
every word and act.
How can a wife expect anything but lies from a husband,
or a husband from a wife, who is willing to enter into an
agreement with another and not keep that agreement, even
though it be implied and not definitely expressed, as this is
in marriage, for example. For, isn't that all the whole thing
amounts to? If one does not keep the agreement one has
made, that is, breaks his solemn promise, on what basis can
one accept, or expect truthfulness in anything in life? It
is this cowardly shirking of the responsibility that is
assumed at the time of the agreement that man and woman
mate, that they assist each other and adhere to each other,
that is brought into question, even on those who adopt
the rightfulness of contraceptive devices, for there is no
contraceptive device known that is infallible, so, if one or
both of the mates accept the principle of the right to limit
by artificial means the number of their offspring, and as it
can not always be done, it means that human life has not




Birth Control


only a limited value, it means that it has none, for the
constant perversion of the natural instinctive processes in
the body will psychically throw into the focus of attention
only one thing, and that is "Not Wanted."  So even after
conception has taken place, there being no principles to
begin with as to what make right and wrong, there is no
valid reason why abortion should not be committed. That
is, if every individual is the measure of right and wrong,
and there is no great fundamental underlying principle,
there is no such thing as a standard of OUGHT, and, consequently, whatever one wishes to do, OUGHT to be done. If
one desires the death of another, why not kill him?
So much for Transcendental opinion. Now what about
the Utilitarian viewpoint? This, as has been explained,
when summed up means that whatever gives pleasure and
does not injure the individual nor the race is RIGHT and
should be done.
It is a sort of pleasure-pain theory.. It pleases the individual who uses contraceptive devices to prevent conception.
This is self-evident or it would not be done, but, as far as
the writer knows, there isn't a single writer of repute who
accepts the pure pleasure-pain idea of right and wrong,
aside from the act's value to the race; and not only that,
but, all insist on the greatest quantity of pleasure to the
individual or race in the long run-not on the immediate
pleasure. Somewhere, if we remember correctly, Spencer
himself has said that this Utilitarian idea only holds good
for optimists. That is, unless one be sure that the majority
of human kind can always be trusted to do what is right,
one can not even accept this Utilitarian viewpoint. We
recall the answer of an old professor to one of his students
asking the meanings of optimism and its opposite in about
this manner:




Backgrounds for Social Workers


Student: "What is Pessimism?"
Professor: "The faith of cowards."
Student: "And what is Optimism?"
Professor: "The faith of fools."
There is a happy medium in all things, and he who takes
either extreme deserves this classification of the professor's.
We shall come back to this matter of being optimistic in
regard to humanity at large, shortly. Just now we want to
examine whether or not the using of artificial means to prevent conception is injurious to the individual, then we shall
see how it affects the race.
In the first place the whole Utilitarian idea of right and
wrong assumes that people know what is best for themselves
regardless of any knowledge oil the subject, but any person
with the least bit of intelligence knows that this is about the
most absurd idea possible. We know that it was an inherent
something which has made the child in ages past come
through life in fairly good condition regardless of the ignorance of our mothers. We read a great deal about the oldfashioned mother, but throwing all sentiment aside, we know
that our mothers certainly were hopelessly ignorant when it
came to bringing up children. They mothered their children,
they overfed them, and killed them, because they assumed
that mother-instinct without knowledge would take care of
the baby. They kept them bundled up, they gave them little
air, and if nature didn't know so much more than mothers
did there would be mighty few of us here to-day even to
discuss the matter.
A man is sure he is warmer because in cold weather he
takes a drink of whiskey and feels warmer, but any one who
has studied physiology at all, knows that cold contracts
the blood vessels on the outside of the body driving the
blood inward so it may be farthest removed from the cold




Birth Control


exterior; and an alcoholic stimulant will merely drive the
blood back again to the surface where one feels its warmth,,
but, the blood being thus brought nearer the surface cools
much more quickly than it would further inward, causing the
whole temperature to be lowered. We know that we can not
tell by the taste of the food that it has typhoid germs in
it; that cool, sparkling drinking water did not spare the
lives of those poor prospectors, in Death Valley, misled by
assuming that what seemed good must be.
So, we must not forget that most of the nerves through
which we feel sensations of pain, for example, are in the
outer regions of the body, where we need them, as no doubt
this is nature's way of telling when there is something
wrong, in order that we may help to overcome the difficulties
which prevent nature from working aright. The interior
regions of our body are not so supplied with pain carriers.
In fact we know of a case where a pointed piece of wire
placed in the uterus for years gave no local pain to the
individual at all, though it did cause considerable weakness
in the body at large, which later caused the wire's, being
found and removed.
The point to be borne in mind is this, that the pain carriers in the interior of the body, and the uterus is classified
as an interior organ, are not like those in the exterior parts.
This means that there may be constant injury accumulated,
without the individual knowing anything about it, until such
time as the cumulative effects are shown.
A mechanical device is bound to irritate the delicate
mucous lining of the orifice, and, as has been well pointed
out by acute observers that with married women especially,
there is a tendency to cancerous growths towards middle
age, which may very easily be ascribed to the accumulated
effects of constant mechanical irritation.




Backgrounds for Social Workers


It must further be borne in mind that when it comes to
sex matters, as some one has said, "nearly all men are liars."
That is, there is no one living who knows much about this
particular thing because most people shield themselves from
what they feel need not be known, though the very thing
they fail to mention may be the cause of the difficulties with
which they are suffering. This is the reason that medical
men can not learn much regarding this particular matter.
And it requires hundreds of men, observing hundreds of
authenticated cases, before we can build any acceptable
theory thereon. All we know now is that thousands of women
have cancerous growths and thousands of others have serious difficulties after they have been married for some years.
Natural acts do not injure, in so far as we know, if not
overdone. The eyelid closes over the eye many times a
minute throughout our entire waking life, and yet there is
no friction that causes difficulty unless a foreign substance
that irritates be injected.
Further, if the sexual act be purely and entirely a matter
of calculation, it means that there is no spontaneity, and it
becomes only an act to satisfy a passion, which, when satisfied, makes the man of little value as a companion to his
wife. Too many wives know that all their husbands find of
interest in them now is the sexual part, and they also know
what a state of nervousness and dissatisfaction and often
desire for death this brings with it, and if it does not lead
to actual suicide, it does to separation; but do they attribute this to the proper cause? They do not know that there
are certain foods, like rice for example, which must not be
polished, or it gives to those that eat it a horrible disease
known as beriberi. Why? Because what are called vitamines have been destroyed. What is the relationship between
this and what we are discussing? It is so often stated that




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81


only one sperm fertilizes an egg and the rest are destroyed.
Is this true? No one knows. It is very possible, as many
believe, that these sperm are not destroyed, but just as
only one egg in the little fresh water animal Hydra grows in
the midst of several and then grows large by using the
others for nourishment, until they are entirely absorbed, so,
too, the female may need these sperm to be absorbed in her
body to give her all that is needed when' motherhood is to
be granted her. We know now that what a few years ago
were considered useless organs,-the ductless glands-manufacture a substance that assists other glands in performing
their functions. For example, without the thyroid gland
no one can live, and yet if a piece of living thyroid be placed
somewhere in the body, even though this piece come from
another animal, the individual will live.  It produces a
chemical substance that assists the other life-keeping organs
in working order.
In other words it is very possible that a woman may completely wreck her physical existence by shirking motherhood. The fear with which sexual intercourse must needs be
indulged-the nervous strain-when both parties are not
entirely willing to abide by the consequences is good cause
for nervous and mental break-downs. It is well known that
among women who go insane the greatest percentage of any
single class are farmer's wives.3 These are statistical facts.
It doesn't matter in the least whether one believes them or
not.
Why do farmers' wives go insane more than other women?
It is probable that those who favor Birth Control by artificial means will say on account of bearing children. It
may be, but it is more likely that it is simply and solely
from the fact that up to this time farmers have not cared
much for things intellectual. They have worked out part




Backgrounds for Social Workers


of their energy in the fields, and after the woman has likewise exhausted herself in the kitchen, the man's whole remaining desire was sexuality, after which sleep took him
until the following morning. In other words, all the wife
saw of her husband was while he was eating, sleeping and
indulging in sexuality. Is it any wonder that she should
think of him as a part of the cattle, and be so disgusted with
herself for having married him and seeing no hope for the
future-no mutual enjoyment of each other's companythat she should do the only thing a decent woman could do
under the circumstances, namely, go insane-where she can
live in a world that is her own and not be bothered by the
facts in the case?
And here is the crux of this particular question. Would
it, if the above be the explanation, make matters better to
use contraceptive devices? Would it not mean that, as none
of them is infallible, she would have to suffer the same fears,
and would it not even mean this, that all restraints being
removed from the man, he would indulge in the sexual act
even more than he had before? In fact it would make her
more of a sexual slave than ever.
The recently issued report of the British National Birth
Rate Commission on the declining Birth Rate,4 says:
"We regret that we are unable to present a definite pronouncement as to the physical consequences of the use of
these devices. The printed evidence which follows does not
enable a dogmatic statement to be made as to these, and in
view of the fact that medical investigation on this subject is
difficult and in large measure has only recently been made,
it is not surprising that no definite medical conclusion can
be drawn."
Twenty-four of the commissioners signed an addition to
the report, acknowledging that there are some questions,




Birth Control


"which deserve more thorough and general consideration
than we have been able to give them." Among these is the
following: "Is any mode of restriction except voluntary
abstinence from marital relations moral and religious?"
Dr. Amand Routh, who testified before the board, said:
"I have no doubt that prevention of maternity by
artificial methods, invariably produces physical, mental, and
I think, moral harm to both, if they both agree to it. The
act is incomplete. It is not a spontaneous act, and if the act
ceases before the proper crisis, as it were, the nrervous system suffers enormously if the habit is continued long. And
the result often is that there is a great deal of congestion
produced by the woman, at all events. I know nothing
about the physical results in the case of the man, but in the
woman the result is that the pelvic organs become congested
and catarrhal, the womb becomes enlarged, and the result
is that later on, when the parents are perhaps better off and
want a child they are not able to have one."
And another witness of experience, Dr. Mary Scharlieb,
said she did not think there was any physical injury. But
to the question, "Having regard to hysteria and allied diseases, would you not agree that although physical injury
may. not be present, yet nevertheless, serious injury does
arise?" the witness replied, "Certainly."
Besides the cumulative physical injuries of which we have
spoken; besides the mental injuries mentioned, there is still
a third injury that one can not neglect, namely, that whenever an act, such as the sexual one, is not complete on the
part of both, it has only partially 'satisfied, and, consequently the desire is still there, causing a far greater repetition of the act than otherwise. In fact it is this which
may injure the male as much, if not more, than the female.
This, by the way, is one of the principal reasons why the old




Backgrounds for Social Workers


moralists objected to self-abuse. Not that the act in and
of itself physically was much worse than intercourse, but,
not completing the desire which it attempts to complete, it
causes a constant repetition of the act, thus weakening by
the very abuse of a legitimate instinct, all powers which
should be used for a very definite purpose.
So much for what effect artificial means may have upon
the individual who practices it.
Now, as to what effect it will have upon the race. Here
we may refer to our case of optimism. The whole theory
of voluntary birth control by artificial means has for its
object the attainment of "Wanted" children, who, it is
assumed, because the parents will be able to give more care
and funds for their education, will consequently be of better
quality than those that come in quantities.
Let us first take up the case of optimism in this regard.
We know that if there ever was a time when we hear Democracy deified it is now. The people at large should, by
numerical majorities, decide all questions. This idea placed
in the minds of men will of course mean that whenever the
majority decide on how to run things, they will by sheer
power of number be able to enforce it. Now it so happens
that the United States Census of 1910 tells us that the
number of those who have to be supported by the State in
this country due to idiocy, insanity, and criminality, as well
as those in the almshouses is summed up as follows:
January 1, 1910, in institutions, feeble-minded..  20,731
Admitted during 1910...................        3,825
January 1, 1910, in insane institutions........  187,791
Admitted during 1910....................      60,769
January 1, 1910, paupers in almshouses......    84,198
Admitted during 1910..................        88,313
January 1, 1910, criminals in prison..........  111,498




Birth Control                  8


85


Committed in 1910 5........................479,787
Total of all feeble-minded, insane, paupers and
criminals in institutions end of 1910..........1,036,912
In view of the fact that we have a growing population and
that those under state care increase in grea~ter proportion
than the increase in population, we shall be safe in assuming
that at least the same number of state dependents came to
the notice of the authorities each year after 1910 as in that
year. So that by the end of 1917, we would have a total
of 5,465,770, since the account given above is for 1910, and
the table below for the seven years since 1910.
3,825 feeble-minded committed in 1910, making in seven years...................M6775
60,769 insane committed in 1910; in seven years  425,383
88,313 paupers committed in 1910; in seven
years............................ 618,191
479,787 criminals committed in 1910; in seven
years............................ 3,358,509
Total of the number of people being unable to
care for themselves, or dangerous t~o society
incarcerated in seven years..................4,428.,858
If practically four and one half millions of our people
have had to be set aside in this way in seven years, it will
be observed that in one generation of thirty-three years almost five times this many will be placed under state supervision. That is, twenty millions of men, women and children
in less than a hundred million are idiots, insane, paupers and
criminals. The reason we have included paupers is that
many of the states have not yet made any preparation for
the care of the feeble-minded, and most states have prac



Backgrounds for Social Workers


tically not one half sufficient preparation for the insane,
so that prisons and almshouses swarm with sub-normal mentalities. It is likewise interesting to note that of all paupers
up to 1910 over one third were below fifty-five years of age,
showing lack of mentality in being able to make their own
way.
An objection may be raised: "You have kept every individual inmate incarcerated during the entire seven years.
Surely there are many that die, and more that are discharged. Criminals are sentenced to one, two, three, or
more years; about 25 per cent of the insane leave asylum
walls each year, and many feeble-minded are dismissed in
order that their own families or friends may care for them."
We wish particularly to impress upon the reader that we
have taken these into consideration and, therefore, we have
not mentioned them, for, paradoxical as it may sound, this
has nothing to do with the point we are discussing, which
is the bringing of children into the world who, by being
brought up by these same people will in all probability
follow in the foot-steps of their parents. It is the discharged ones that do the damage. It is during the time the
feeble-minded go home on a visit once or twice a year that
they breed, and undo all that segregation was intended for.
There are practically no homes for the feeble-minded who
have not long waiting lists, so that as soon as there is room
others may be placed. This means that none of those who
are protected by friends and family and who have never
been placed in an institution are counted at all.
Further, when one realizes that only when a person becomes so insane and so bad criminally that he is a nuisance
and a danger to his neighbors, do they take it upon themselves to have him cared for by the state, we can see that
there must be many more who are not quite so bad as these




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who are incarcerated, but, who are on the borderland, and
who may with any degree of overwrought excitement or
undue hardships or suffering become one of these very
serious cases at any time. And, as far as criminality is
concerned, it is only necessary to note that probably not
one of ten wilful murderers is convicted. So that it has
been said that for every one person incarcerated, there are
ten that ought to be.
It is of course true that many of these commitments will
be the same individual, and if we take a period of thirtythree years, probably one half of those in prisons are what
are known as repeaters-they have been committed many
times for various offenses. But even after taking away one
half of the number of criminals incarcerated as "repeaters,"
during just eight years (1910 to 1917 inclusive), we still
have about three millions, or about five times that many,
namely, fifteen million, in thirty-three years. No matter how
many die-the fact remains that in that space of time they
belonged to one of these four classes.
No matter how much we hate this-no matter how untrue
we should like to have it, our sentiment is bound to be
knocked in the head when we are confronted with definite
statements of figures that we can ourselves substantiate.
Now let us go on a little further. We know that everywhere and always those in high places have been the first
to limit their offspring. We know that the feeble-minded
and the insane, as well as those worst criminals, who neither
know what should or should not be done, and who hate
society at large to such an extent as not to care, are going
to continue propagating their kind. 6 It does not take any
great quantity of foresight to be able to see that if our
educated leaders average less than two children to the
family, and it is probable that few couples would have more




88


Backgrounds for Social Workers


than two if they could conscientiously obstruct impregnation, and, knowing from experience that all children born
do not live to maturity, it means that there will not in the
one generation that follows us be as many educated people
as there are now. It means that one must have the fullest
and most foolish idea of optimism possible if one believes
that the defectives, who do not themselves know nor care
what they do, are going to limit their offspring, and consequently in two or three generations the majority of feebleminded and insane will control those who are sane. For it
so happens, that feeble-mindedness and insanity run in
families, 7 and probably the majority of children born of
such parents become sub-normal.
Stop to consider what three million feeble-minded, insane
and criminals would do in the realm of begetting mental
defectives if they were free, and then remember that these
people, especially the criminals and insane are not incarcerated constantly; that some of the insane, for example, are
allowed leave of absence, and returning home, again breed;
that the feeble-minded who are incarcerated visit their homes
from time to time again preventing the carrying out of the
very reason for their segregation.
But it is said, "what about sterilization?" Well, let us
speak of sterilizing; how are we going to prevent our country
even in two or three generations from being overrun with
those who have only some traits that are far below normal,
and these apparently innocent, not sufficiently serious to
warrant sterilization? Three million men and women of this
stripe will breed at least twice their own number every generation.8 In two generations we shall have twelve million more
beside the parents who may then still be living. What will
happen, let us say in two hundred years? Our leaders will
continue to grow less by at least one half, on account of




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birth control. This means that in two generations alone, if
we have eighty millions of good sound sensible people now,
who are decreasing by one half in each generation, there will
be only forty million normal people after the first generation,
and one half of these, or twenty million after the second.
This means that in two generations alone, with no increase in
the "not wanted" type shall the normal and sub-normal be
almost equal. Does it take long, under such circumstances,
to bring about race destruction?
This is merely thinking of our own people. What about
the Asiatic hordes with their more than half the entire
population of the globe in their lands? Are they going to
simultaneously obstruct their birth rate? If not, it will be
the same with this land of ours as it was with Rome and
Greece. It was in those lands of the past that the birth rate
fell until the neighboring tribes were the more powerful. All
history, all experience, all reason, displays the absolute
hopelessness of the race, if voluntary birth control come into
general vogue.
So from either point of view of the only two possible
gauges of Right and Wrong, it is morally indefensible.
Any possible defense, as we have clearly shown can only
come from an anarchistical viewpoint that no one counts
but oneself-from a pure deification of individual desirewhich in turn means the doctrine of might-the doctrine of
the lowest savage in the scale of intellectual existence.
Aside from the unrighteousness of the entire cause, there
are effects that simply can not be gauged, and on which we
can only speculate, but on which the speculltion is nevertheless rife with what it will mean for our children's children.
We have shown how voluntary birth control would wipe
out our families of brains and intellect-our families in
whom the strains run that have contributed all there is to




Backgrounds for Social Workers


our civilization, and how it will allow the few remaining ones
by virtue of their numerical minority to be ruled by a
numerical majority of brutes, imbeciles, insane and criminals. We know what effect example has on children. We
have shown in our first chapter that unless during the plastic
period of life the examples and principles of a virtuous life
are instilled they can not come afterwards; but, what are
we to say when seeing everywhere about them the great
numbers of sub-normals living the most degenerate lifethese people, many of them, to borrow a phrase from Dr.
David Starr Jordan-have the intellect of a goose and the
morals of a hog-what, we ask, is to give the child that
backing in his trying to live a moral life when all about him
is seen the majority doing just the opposite of what he has
been trained to do, and when he likewise has been taught
that majorities rule? In other words some of the writers
for Birth Control actually sink to this intellectual level when
they say that birth control is practiced by multitudes now,
and argue from this that because many do a thing it is
right to do it. Will not the average child, even when born
with average intelligence, seeing the lack of all moral standard about him, not be influenced by such an absurd as well
as degenerate viewpoint? It means that it will make of even
the intellectual few, except those with an almost superhuman
will power, and a genius for clear and accurate thinking,
degenerates also, as it will and can lead only to that type
of morality, which believes crime consists in being found
out, and not in its committal. To this type of person
murder will not be wrong.
Further, when no value is placed on human life in its
very beginning-mark well, we are not confusing abortion
with prevention, by no means; but the human mind is so
constituted that the constant and recurring thought brought




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up before it that it is right to prevent births, lessens the
value of the life that is prevented-it makes one think of the
embryo as not a life until it is actually born, but there is absolutely not one iota more of reason for assuming that the
killing of the child five minutes before it is born is not just as
much murder as five minutes afterward, and if five minutes
before, why not an hour, a day, a week, a month or three, six,
or nine months? Those who discuss this matter without taking into consideration the many factors that enter into the
whole scheme, and who are unable to appreciate the way the
human nervous system is constituted, do not deserve very
serious consideration.
There still remain several points usually brought up by
those who favor the artificial restriction of conception.
First, that it will tend to decrease the death rate. Mr.
J. Hudson Mallory 9 has well shown the absurdity of this
statement in a recent contribution to the subject, when he
says:
"Decreased mortality may offset a lowered birth-rate
only to a certain point, but not beyond that. Incidentally,
don't overlook the fact that the lowered mortality throughout the world generally is the result of hygiene and not of
the bearing of a few children. But when you come right
down and analyse the whole problem, what do you find?
"Certainly a decreasing mortality rate goes with a lowered birth-rate because there are not so many to die. And
the death-rate will fall to nothing after the birth-rate falls
to nothing, for there will be no more people on earth to die.
This cheerful little thought never seems to have occurred to
our friends who really appear to believe in this pretty
theory. Do you still claim that a lowered death-rate offsets
a lowered birth-rate?
"A temporarily decreased mortality can only mean that




Backgrounds for Social Workers


people are living longer, postponing death. But there will
come a limit to this extension of life, and when we get to
that place the death-rate will stop falling. There is only
one way in which a future population can be supplied, and
that is by having babies born. The death-rate has nothing
to do with it. Fewer babies mean a smaller population,
irrespective of any juggling with mortality statistics, and
you know it."
Second, we have the claim constantly made that the birth
of fewer babies would tend to make these babies better.
That sounds very interesting and there is only one point
that we can bring against it, and that is that it isn't true. 10
Those who know anything about biology at all (and
those who do not, have no moral right to an opinion on a
subject they know nothing about) know very well that
the ovary, that little organ in which the eggs of every
mammal are contained, has all of the eggs in it at the time
of birth of the offspring that it is ever going to have. In
other words, every child is born from an egg, just as is the
chicken, the difference being that in the human and other
mammals the eggs remain in the body of the mother and
after being fertilized by the male sperm grow to embryological maturity.  While with birds, the eggs, whether
fertilized or not, pass out of the body of the mother, and
on that account must have enough nourishment within the
shell to keep the little chick alive until such time as it can
lead its own life. The human egg derives the needed nourishment from the mother during the time of gestation and
consequently need not be anywhere nearly as large as the
hen's egg. In fact the real egg of the hen is just that little
part that usually floats on top of the yolk regardless of the
position in which one holds the egg.
There are a good many thousands of eggs in the human




Birth, Control


ovary. Probably some twenty to thirty thousand in each
of the two,'but only between two hundred and four hundred
of them ripen during the sexual life, which, by the way lasts
about thirty-two years in woman. And it is only one of these
ripened eggs that is fertilized by the male sperm when it
comes in contact with the egg during the time elapsing between the egg's leaving the ovary and its arrival at the
uterus.
There is no possible way of telling which egg will be fertilized at any time. There is no telling whether that particular
egg is normal or not. Of the thousands of sperm that enter
the orifice at one time there is no telling which one of the
thousands will strike the egg. Let us make this clearer: of
four hundred possible eggs that may be fertilized during the
sexual life, at each conception there is a possibility of one
out of, let us say, a million sperm meeting it. Of these sperm
there may be half that are abnormal, or, there may not be.
The egg to be fertilized was already there, as we have stated,
at the time of the birth of the mother, so the egg can not be
changed. The sperm, however, keep on multiplying in the
father, with a result which may be summed up like this:
During the sexual life, with let us say sexual contact twice
a month for thirty-two years, means twenty-four times a
year, or seven hundred and sixty-eight times during that
period. There being probably at least a million sperm
emitted each time, this will mean that if two children are
to be chosen by the parents each one stands a chance of
two in seven hundred and sixty-eight millions of becoming
what one hopes for. A rather slim betting chance it will
be admitted. In other words, this whole argument that we
can get quality by having fewer babies is not only fallacious
but absolutely absurd.
And now for the weakest point in the discussion, but prob



Backgrounds for Social Workers


ably one as frequently used as any. It is interesting to note
that the editor of the very magazine that contained the
excellent article by Mr. Mallory from which we have quoted,
should have used this argument in a previous number of his
journal, namely, that in view of the fact that two thirds of
the medical men at a New York meeting voted against the
advisability of giving promiscuous instruction so as to teach
people how artificially to restrict their families, and a
record of these same physicians showed each had less than
two children-that because these men did not practice what
they preached, they were wrong in their preaching. How
any one with two thirds of the average intelligence, can not
see the difference between a standard of right and wrong,
and what men do that is wrong, is beyond understanding.
In accordance with a doctrine of this nature, every man,
because he himself does not live up to the laws both human
and divine, ought to teach that these laws are wrong, or at
least suggest they don't exist. This is the same type of
mind which, when it notes any one objecting to certain forms
of the nude in art, assumes that the one who objects, must
have an immoral mind-in other words, this type of individual in scientific parlance is said to be able to see only
one cause for every effect, and in any argument his opinion
is never admitted as worthy of notice, for any one who can
not understand that there may be many reasons why a certain effect is brought abowt-that a dozen different men may
have performed the very same act, but every one of them
with a different motive,-is not deserving of mental consideration. In fact this type of mind is extremely immoral; for
in addition to being very narrow and bigoted, it passes judgment on the basis of what it knows would be the reason
it would object if it did object, to that type of art. It
means only this, that having the "white and black" view of




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95


life, one must either see it "my" way, or be in error-that
in this manner we obtain an easy gauge by which to judge
right and wrong. Easy it is, but no one need flatter himself
on his thinking powers who uses it.
And now for a question that in so far as the author knows
no one urging birth control by artificial means, has yet
answered. If, as we have shown, each man must accept his
own individual standard as the measure of his acts if he
favor, such methods, and does not take humanity or any
member of humanity into consideration who does not fit in
with his viewpoint; if, further, consequently there is no
Right or Wrong, every OUGHT ceases to exist-if, this is
the viewpoint taken, as it must be, from this standpoint,
since all the writings of these men and women based on sentiment and merely personal prejudices either directly express
something of that nature, or imply it, or take it for granted
-if, we repeat, this is our background that we are to keep
in mind-and, as there is so much more suffering than happiness among people the world over, and there is nothing
but a long dreamless sleep when we shuffle off this mortal
coil, why in the name of all the angels in heaven above, and
the demons down under the sea, or the lack of them, should
one not immediately prevent any further suffering, by killing off all the third of humanity which has been shown to
belong to the submerged; and why not kill all our cripples,
and why not prevent any further births at all-for surely,
if there is nothing-absolutely nothing but the happiness of
this life-and there is mighty little of it here, even though
we be of most fortunate birth-why not see to it that the
race ceases to exist at once, and thereby save our children
all the troubles and worries, and disease and unhappiness
that is mortal's daily share?




Backgrounds for Social Workers


NOTES
1. On Right and Wrong, by W. S. Lilly, Chapman & Hall,
London.
2. "In pedagogy it is also the theory of descent rather than the
selection theory which has been drawn on for some rather remarkable developments in child-study and instruction.     Unfortunately it is exactly on that weakest of the three foundation
pillars of descent, namely, the science of embryology with its
Miillerian-Haeckelian recapitulation theory or biogenetic law,
that the child-study pedagogues have builded. The species recapitulates in the ontogeny (development) of each of its individuals the course or history of its phylogeny (descent or evolution). Hence the child corresponds in different periods of its
development to the phyletic stages in the descent of man. As the
child is fortunately well by its fish, dog, and monkey stages before it comes into the care of the pedagogue, he has to concern
himself only with its safe progress through the various stages of
prehistoric and barbarous man. Detect the precise phyletic stage,
cave-man, stone-age man, hunter, roamer, pastoral man, agriculturist, and treat with the little barbarian accordingly! What
simplicity. Only one trouble here for the pedagogue; the recapitulation theory is mostly wrong; and what is right in it is
mostly covered up by the wrong part, that few biologists longer
have any confidence in discovering the right. What then of our
generalising friends, the pedagogues?
"Finally in sociology, more particularly biological sociology.
Here again, to my eyes, much biological sociology rests on two
very insecure bases: (1) a too slight acquaintance with biology
on the part of the biological sociologist, and, (2) an acceptance
of, and confidence in, certain biological theories which are certainly unwarranted, and are not at all shared by biologists themselves. Biological science contains much that is proved and certain; but also much that is nothing more than a working hypothesis, provisional theory, and anticipatory generalisation. As
the proved part is largely of the nature of facts of observation,
isolated and unrelated, and the.unproved part is composed of the
large and sweeping generalisations, the plausible, provisional
explanations, such as the various theories of heredity, of the results of struggle, of the development of mutual aid, etc., that
is, is exactly the sort of material that the sociologist needs to
weave into his biological foundations for the sociologic study of




Birth Control                      97
man, it is exactly this unproved part of biology that the searching
sociologist carries home with him from his excursions into the
biological field. The recapitulation theory looms up large and
familiar in biological sociology; it is mostly discredited in biology.
The inheritance of acquired characters serves as a basis for much
sociology; most biologists believe it impossible. The selection
theories are gospel to some sociologists; they are the principal
moot points in present-day sociology. And so on. Biology is
not yet come to that stage in its development where it can offer
many solidly founded generalisations on which other sciences can
build. The theory of descent is one such safe great generalisation; but perhaps Darwinism is not another. At least many
scholars do not believe that it is."
(From Darwinism To-day, by Vernon L. Kellogg, Henry Holt
& Co., 1907, pp. 21-22.)
3. It is difficult to obtain reliable information on this point, as
the United States Census does not classify women very well, but
what we have found was taken from the statistics gathered in
Texas and appearing in the Dallas News, February 10 and 13,
1916.
4. As quoted by the Rev. T. Slater, S. J., of St. Bruno's College, St. Asaph, Wales; in the Ecclesiastical Review, November,
1916, p. 535.
5. It will be observed that there has been an immense increase
in criminals. When it is considered that during 1910 alone, 521.7
persons out of every 100,000 population were committed to the
care of a penal institution, whereas January 1, 1910, there were
in institutions of this type only 121.2 out of every 100,000, and in
1890, there were 131.5 out of every 100,000, we can readily
form one or two conclusions that are startling.
It was during these years that many homes for insane and
feeble-minded were erected and so, many that were classified as
in penal institutions in 1890 would not now be so classified, which
makes the remarkable increase in criminals stand forth all the
more in comparison with that time.
What then is the cause of this immense increase? There are
various reasons that may be suggested, but absolutely none that
can compare with the fact that there is little religious training
now given that makes for solid conviction of what is Right and
what is Wrong; and, as we have already shown, the child not being taught how to have an absolute standard of Right and
Wrong, can only come to the conclusion, if he think at all, that
his opinion is as good as another's, and-he follows his own in



98


Backgrounds for Social Workers


clination.
6. "The average number of children born in a family is four,
whereas in these degenerates we find 7.8 each, and if the stillborn children are included, the disproportion is still more striking, as the average number of children born in each family is
brought up to 8.4."
Tredgold: Report of Royal Commission in England, Part 6,
page 199, as cited in Feeble-mindedness and Insanity. A series
of Addresses and Special Studies reported at the National Conference of Charities and Correction.
Issued from   Office of Publication, 315 Plymouth Court.
Chicago, 25 cents.
7. But because it runs in families does not mean that it is inherited.  See Chapter on Sterilization, Sex-Instruction and
Eugenics.
8. We have already called attention to the fact that this type
of individual breeds at the rate of 7.8 children to the family.
9. The Menace of Birth-Control, Physical Culture Magazine,
1\Iay, 1917.
10. That fewer children are not by any means better than
many, is well illustrated by the fact that clergymen have large
families, and though usually very poor, a magazine writer of a
short time ago, called attention to the fact that in "Who's Who,"
there were the names of more clergymen's sons and daughters
who had attained eminence in their chosen fields than from any
other single class.




CHAPTER V


STERILIZATION, SEX-INSTRUCTION, AND EUGENICS
N this chapter we shall discuss the subjects mentioned in
its title in our usual way. First defining what we mean
by the terms, then stating the facts and finally giving the
conclusions that flow from the facts.
By sterilization is meant the making of an incision in the
lower portion of the abdomen of the female and tieing off
the uterine tubes, which carry the egg from the ovary to
womb, so that no egg can have an outlet as it ripens, and
consequently cannot be fertilized; or, if the subject be a
male, by tieing off the two ducts called the vasa deferentia
so that no sperm (the male seed that fertilizes the female
egg) can be transmitted by the male to the female, thus
successfully blocking any possible impregnation. In either
case it is possible to remove partially or entirely either
uterine tubes or vasa deferentia respectively.
So much for what sterilization means. Now let us observe
the reasons assigned as to why it should be put into practice.
It is said this should be brought into effect so that criminals,
insane, and feeble-minded may be prevented from breeding
their own kind and foisting many more like themselves upon
the public at large.
Further, the reason it is believed that sterilization will
effect the elimination of these undesirables is because it has
been observed that in great numbers of instances, children
have in turn become dependents on society and have followed
99




100


Backgrounds for Social Workers


in the self-same footprints of parents, and that this being
the case it must follow that children inherit the insanity,
feeble-mindedness, or criminal tendencies of their parents.
"Inheriting" means various things to different people.
Biologically it means, not as most people seem to think,
that the child is born with something the parents have
acquired during their respective lives, but that at the very
moment of conception-that is, just at the precise instant
the sperm of the father meets the ripened egg of the mother
which is descending through the uterine tubes, the supposedly inherited characteristic that is being discussed
must then and there be part and parcel of the beginnings of
the child. The female egg, we must remember is not the
child; neither is the sperm, but as soon as the two meet,
the child that is to be has life, and begins its growth. Life
is there in all its completeness, but not in the same form that
it later assumes; just as the child at the moment of birth is
just as much an individual as it ever becomes, though it by
no means possesses the same form that it does twenty years
hence.
It is not difficult to see that as soon as the sperm has
fertilized the egg, the father is a more or less negligible
factor, for, notwithstanding the death of the father, the
child will go on developing just the same as though that
father continued living. There is absolutely nothing further
given the child from the moment of conception by the father
so far as inheritance is concerned, and it must therefore follow that if all the child is to inherit from the father is not already present in that tiny sperm that fertilized the egg, it
cannot be inherited from the paternal side.
On the mother's side it is not easy for most men and
women to understand that the self-same rule holds true,
and that simply because the child is carried in the mother's




Sterilizationi, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics  101
body during the entire period of gestation, does not mean
anything except that it receives nourishment from the
mother. Whatever the child is to develop into has already
been adjusted. There is a continuing of that something
that sent the spark of life on its embryological tour. In
other words, whatever the child inherits from its mother
must be present in the tiny egg that is loosened and thrown
out of the ovary when ripe, and which, then meeting the
sperm from the father, becomes fertilized. Again let us
say, so that it will be clearly understood, that all that is
meant by inheritance is that at the very instant conception
takes place, all that the child does, and can possibly, inherit
is already present in the egg of the mother and the sperm
of the father. If anything is added later-if for example
any change results from an adverse position of the fertilized egg during the period of gestation, this is not inherited,
but is due to some mechanical defect, to malnutrition or to
some micro-organism.
Everything given to the embryo after conception is simply
nourishment and has nothing to do with inheritance.
All this means is that in order to inherit any parental
characteristic, it is necessary that that characteristic be
already present in the sperm of the father or the egg of
the mother before fertilization takes place.
Now let us state the argument for sterilization which
runs something like this: The state, in order to safeguard
society and protect itself against criminals, insane and
feeble-minded who may later injure society, or be a burden
upon them, has the right to use means which (1) are not
intrinsically wrong but are (2) morally necessary. And
sterilization not being intrinsically wrong and being morally
necessary for the protection of society, the state should
impose it upon the types of persons mentioied.




Backgrounds for Social Workers


Here is what has to be considered when a matter of this
kind is being discussed:
(1) We have to take into consideration whether the
state has the right to impose sterilization.
(2) We have to ask whether sterilization is intrinsically
wrong.
(3) Is it morally necessary?
(4) We are advocating this measure in order that no
child shall inherit criminality, insanity or feeble-mindedness.
(5) Have we proven that the child does inherit these
things, or does it only seem it does?
(6) What if it should be proven beyond doubt that these
things, especially feeble-mindedness and insanity are diseases, with which offspring are infected-that is, are actual
germ infections-and not inherited?
(7) Would it not mean then that the very end for which
we had made these laws would be lost, and consequently we
had been doing grave wrong by mutilating men and women
and making a huge laboratory of the state in which'unfortunates were merely being thrust in order to attempt substantiating very doubtful theories?
(8) Could one in justice speak of Right in any matter
where an innocent person were made to suffer, for a doubtful end?
(9) From the moral viewpoint, if we actually believe that
a deliberate sin is bad and justly to be condemned, what if
it should be proven that sterilization, especially of males,
creates a far greater sexual desire than before, and consequently causes more immorality than formerly? Remember that sterilization does not make it impossible to have
sexual intercourse. It merely makes impregnation impossible. And if a criminal, after being sterilized was set at
liberty, who had seduced any number of young girls before




Sterilization, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics   103
he was sterilized, a greater desire being now present than
formerly, he would seduce still more.
(10) And if we remember this fact we must, if (9) should
be proved, accept sterilization with the implication that we
do not believe in morality-that we do not believe in any
true worth-whileness,-but that as long as impregnation
does not take place virtue still remains intact.
(11) Have we a right to impose a greater desire for that
which we condemn, upon a person who is already a criminal, or unable to overcome his many temptations in the
everyday world without such additional one being added?
If we can find a satisfactory answer to these questions we
shall have some solid foundation on which to build.
First, no one disputes the fact that the State has the
right to impose upon its members that which in and of itself
is not intrinsically wrong, and which will not injure any
innocent persons, so that there may be brought about an
end which in and of itself is not wrong.
Second, sterilization in and of itself is in all probability
not intrinsically wrong.
Third, as to moral necessity, it is first necessary to prove
that the thing for which sterilization is applied, can be
accomplished. We do not mean that it is necessary to prove
that sterilization sterilizes. That would be absurd, being
pure tautology. We are here referring to the ultimate
end in view-that is, the prevention of criminality, irsanity
and feeble-mindedness. 1 Again, we must first prove that
these things are inherited. Has this been proven? We shall
answer shortly, but until this is proven there can be no
question of moral necessity, and consequently we cannot
discuss the point as to the State's right in the matter. The
Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth questions are
embodied in the one just explained.




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Backgrounds for Social JWorkers


Ninth and Tenth, does sexual purity count for anything,
or if not what does? Do we not believe in actual morality?
T'hat is, in such a thing as goodness, as purity, as virtue, as
worth-whileness? Or do we confuse actualities with simply
not being found out?
Eleventh, we must not forget that in no system of Ethics
yet accepted by intelligent persons has it been shown to be
justifiable that an innocent person could be justly injured
so that others might not be, and in no system has it been
proven that it is just to instil a greater temptation to do
wrong than was formerly present.
We may, and should segregate constantly and permanently those people who are a menace to society and who
might breed children like themselves, for that is merely a
matter of self-defense on the part of society, and as such
is, and must be justifiable. But this is a totally different
matter from saying that society has the right to inflict
a personal mutilation upon some member in order to prevent something from occurring, which it has not yet been
proved would occur. That is, there is no Right, based on
any principles of Ethics yet discovered, which would permit
cutting off the right hand of one you knew might later use
that right hand to injure you. It would be justifiable to
bar his way from approaching; it might be right to incarcerate him, but it requires no great intellect to see the
difference between this and an actual mutilation, not only
to prevent injury, but to mutilate for a purpose that was
not yet at all clear as to its occurrence.
The insane and feeble-minded are not responsible for
their acts-that is, can'not justly be punished for what
they do-they may be incarcerated, for that is merely
separating them from the rest of society so that no, injury
will come by them, and if that be considered as a punish



Sterilization, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics  105
ment, it is only so incidentally. The imprisonment is not
for the purpose of punishment in this case, but merely to
keep them from injurying themselves and others. Now as
these persons are not responsible, and therefore cannot
justly be 'punished it would be unjustly punishing them
were they legally mutilated.
Another factor enters when we discuss the criminal.
Here responsibility has been proved and punishment is due.
There might be an argument in a case of this kind but
there can be nothing said in favor of justice, if those who
are irresponsible are to suffer punishment for things they
cannot help.
Here Eugenics must be brought in. All this word means
is "happily born." If sterilization be practiced, it is an
attempt to prevent those from being born who may become
a nuisance to society.  Eugenics takes just the reverse
point of view and attempts to find laws by which healthy
and normal children may come into existence. It is therefore seen that both of these viewpoints are intimately interwoven. The one is to prevent not-wanted children, the
other is to assist in procuring wanted children.
Knowing what the term "Eugenics" means, we are now
prepared to discuss the methods suggested by which these
happily-born children ar'e to come into existence. Probably
the best statement of the case from the methodical viewpoint
is that given by the Eugenics Education Society of England: "the study of agencies under social control that may
impair or improve the qualities of future generations either
physically or mentally."
The scientific foundation for the whole Eugenic idea is
based on what is called the Mendelian theory, whose principal laws are those of (1) Dominancy and (2) Recession.
"According to the law of dominancy, a pronounced quality




Backgrounds for Social Workers


or characteristic in either parent will show itself in all the
second generation and in one-fourth of all future generations; whilst, according to the law of recession, there
remains latent in the second generation the characteristic or
quality opposed to the dominant characteristic or quality
in three-fourths of the offspring, in one-fourth of which it
will always recur in subsequent offspring and two-fourths
of which it will recur in the same proportion as the dominating quality."
Now let us discuss the subject of Mental Diseases, which
may be broadly classified into two groups, namely Amentia
and Insanity, amentia meaning that he who suffers from
it has never had a developed mind, that is, is an idiot or
feeble-minded from birth, while by insanity we mean those
cases which have been more or less normal, and later lost
this mental normality.
As insanity comes after a mind has already had some
development, it can come about only through one of two
causes; it must be due to either accident or disease, whereas
in the case of amentia, that is, where the individual is born
without a mind capable of development, it is assumed that
neither accident nor disease has anything to do with it.
But, as Dr. Flick says:
There is no scientific evidence that imbecility, feeble-mindedness, and idiocy are fundamentally different from insanity.  The former are said to be due to an arrested
development of the brain, and the latter to disease or injury. That the arrested development of the brain has not
been due to disease or injury, or even that imbecility, feeblemindedness, and idiocy are always the result of arrested
development of the brain, has not been proved. In truth,
we know very little accurately and definitely yet about abnormalities and their causes.




Sterilization, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics    107
It is because the heredity of mental diseases has been
believed by the world that the eugenist has jumped to the
conclusion that he has a, cure for them.     He is logical
enough when he says that if amentia and insanity are hereditary, we can stamp them out by sterilizing the men and
women who are suffering from them. As he is not responsible for the premises of the syllogism, we can forgive him
for his false conclusions, but we must not permit ourselves
to be drawn into a sociological blunder by a division of responsibility for an error. Without conceding that sterilization would be the proper remedy for the prevention of
mental disease even if they were hereditary, the point whether they are hereditary should certainly be settled first.
So far as I know there is not a scintilla of scientific evidence to prove that they are hereditary.
And here let us be sure to remember our explanation of
what heredity means; namely, only that which is transmitted
from either parent to the embryo at the precise moment of
conception.
Whatever comes to the offspring extraneous and extrinsic
to the primary cell is essentially an acquisition from contact, nutrition, or mechanical interference.  It makes no
difference whether the acquisition is made during ante-natal
or post-natal life, it cannot be set down in the category of
inheritances.
It is true that the normality, the vigor, and the healthfulness of the parent influence the normality, the vigor, and
the healthfulness of the primary cell (the fertilized egg
which is growing into a child), but a defective primary cell,
whilst it may lead to inviability (inability to live after leaving the mother's womb) and even to deformity; cannot
give rise to the conditions which are known as diseases. Moreover, defectiveness in the primary cell does not arise from
an inherent quality of the parent but from malnutrition,
from sexual wastefulness, or from a discase which affects
either all the cells of the body or the cell-making functions




Backgrounds for Social Workers


of the body. None of these fundamental causes of defectiveness can be dealt with in a general way by a general rule
of action, since each is individual in some particular person
and can only be dealt with in that person. Alteration of
form cannot be transmitted except in so far as it is physiological; and physical deformity due to nutritional or organic causes may occur in the offspring of the best-formed
parents.
The last word in scientific medicine seems to indicate that
the conditions which we call diseases, in whatever part of
the body they may occur, are due either to the action of
micro-organisms, to malnutrition, or to physical injury.
Whatever the cause, they fall outside of the category of inheritances under the laws of biology.
Are amentia and insanity diseases? If they are not diseases, what are they? In the light of present knowledge,
it would certainly be difficult to give a rational explanation of them upon any other hypothesis than that they
are diseases.
In that most valuable report of Dr. I-. J. Sommer, Jr.,
on 1180 post-mortems of the insane at the State Hospital
for the Insane, Norristown, Pa., there are accurately recorded many facts which point unmistakably to the conclusion
that amentia and insanity are diseases. The records are
not quite complete, as in many of the cases the tissues and
membranes of the brain were apparently not studied. In
all except seventeen cases, however, an histological study
of the important organs of the body was made and in 842
of these cases a thorough study of the membranes of the
brain was made. In all of the cases in which there was a
record, 1163 in number, a change in one or more of the
serous membranes of the body was recorded, and in 842
cases in which the brain had been examined, there was
either chronic leptomeningitis (inflammation of the pia and
arachnoid coverings of the brain or spinal cord) or pachymeningitis (inflammation of the dura mater) or both. It
may be worth while mentioning here for those who are
not familiar with technical terms that leptomeningitis and
pachymeningitis mean a change in the inner and outer mem



Sterilization, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics  109
branes of the brain respectively, due usually to the action
of micro-organisms or the toxines of micro-organisms inhabiting the brain or its membranes or important organs
of the body. Most of the cases had one serous membrane
of the body affected; a great many had tuberculosis; some
had cancer; and a great many had nephritis. The serous
membrane lining the inside of the heart was quite commonly
affected. As the kidneys are chiefly concerned with the
elimination of toxines from the body, the frequent breakingdown of these organs in mental diseases is in itself ground
for suspicion that toxines in some way are responsible for the
conditions.
Dr. D. J. McCarthy's work at the Henry Phipps Institute also throws some light upon the cause of insanity,
showing that the toxines which come from     tuberculosis,
whether from the tubercle bacillus itself or from the microorganisms which are associated with it, set up changes in
the membranes of the brain and in all probability cause
insanity. In an histological study of 287 brains of people
who had died of tuberculosis, he found acute leptomeningitis 49 times. In his clinical study of the cases he found
a change in mentality in a great many patients, which in
quite a number amounted to insanity.
In the 1180 cases reported on by Dr. Sommer, 49 were
cases of amentia, and of these 44 were cases of imbecility
and five of idiocy. The same changes in the serous membranes existed in these cases as in the cases of insanity
and they were the same in the youngest as in the oldest.
In a female idiot of twenty months, there was leptomeningitis and pachymeningitis and there was a chronic inflammation of the inside lining of the heart. In an imbecile
girl twelve years old there were chronic pachymeningitis,
chronic changes in the valves of the heart, with chronic
changes in the liver, kidneys, and spleen.
Admitting that it has not been proved that the changes
in the membranes and tissues of the brain and in other
serous membranes are the cause of amentia and insanity
or even bear any causative relationship to it, the existence
of these changes in all cases of amentia and insanity and




Backgrounds for Social Workers


their absence in the majority of people who die from other
diseases, give us a working hypothesis and throw serious
doubt upon the theory of heredity.    To say the least,
these findings remove all doubt as to these conditions being
diseases.
A micro-organic origin of mental diseases would be more
in harmony with what is now definitely and accurately known
about disease generally than is heredity, and it would
not come in conflict with biology, as heredity does. The
theory of the heredity of disease is gradually crumbling
away in the light of our knowledge of bacteriology and is
daily becoming more evident that even the transmission of
such border-land conditions as night-blindness, color-blindness, albinism, etc., will have to be reconsidered. All of
these phenomena can be better explained upon the hypothesis of micro-organic action than upon that of heredity. The
micro-organic theory would even explain the phenomena of
heredity better than heredity can.
With the heredity of mental diseases in doubt, there
is no reason for sterilizing people who suffer from these
conditions; and it is therefore unnecessary to weigh the
prospective good that might come from sterilization against
the prospective evil which would come from it. The burden is upon those who advocate extraordinary measures to
prove that such measures are justifiable.
Does Eugenics offer us anything for the prevention of
mental diseases?  Yes, but not by way of sterilization.
We can improve future generations by preserving those
who now exist as normal human beings and guarding them
against degeneracy. For this purpose we must keep in mind
the fundamental principles underlying reproduction: (1)
that like produces like; (2) that the quality of offspring
may be raised or lowered by nutrition; and (3) that the
primary cells which unite to form a new being may be influenced by both the physical and moral life of the parents.
In the interest of Eugenics we must improve the conditions of life; we must make it possible for each human
being to earn his daily bread without more exertion than
is consistent with good health; we must so enlighten the




Sterilization, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics   111
people that they will live as human beings in harmony
with the great God of the universe; and we must seek to
meet the difficulties and solve the problems which come with
an artificial life. Civilization brings its burdens as well
as its pleasures and its enjoyments. Living in houses close
together in vast numbers brings us many pleasures, both
physical and intellectual, but it also exposes us to diseases
and leads us into, evil way. Science, art, and organization
must protect us against the diseases, and religion must
keep us in the right path.
For good progeny we must lead clean, healthy lives
under sanitary conditions in a good moral atmosphere
We must have healthy food; we must have light, airy, welldrained houses; we must have broad, clean streets; we must
protect our women and children against excessive hours of
labor and against labor at improper times and periods. We
must get for the working man a living wage; we must
discourage the excessive use of alcohol and tobacco; we
must protect our young people against the insidious, pernicious influence of open vice; and we must encourage simplicity and discourage ostentation. Let us talk less about
the moron and the helpless victim of poverty and more
about the Christian hero and the reward of patient struggle
against difficulties.
By all odds the most important factor in Eugenics is
purity. Sexual dissipation causes degeneracy in the offspring, whereas chastity and continency exercise a buildingup influence. Foerster, one of the greatest living sociologists, a Protestant, tells us that the celibacy of the Catholic priests and sisters is one of the greatest influences for
good progeny in the world at the present day because it
keeps before the world in concrete form the great heroic
virtue of chastity. Whatever upholds morality undoubtedly
makes for good progeny, and whatever breaks down morality leads to degeneracy.
The influence of Eugenics for the prevention of mental
diseases may be exercised through legal enactment in those
matters which have to do with better food supply, better
housing and better sanitary conditions, but will have to be




Backgrounds for Social Workers


reached through religion in those matters which depend
upon moral uplift.   Sterilization of those suffering from
amentia and insanity can lead nowhere because it applies
the remedy at the wrong end. It seeks to cure an evil by
eliminating the result rather than the cause.  Moreover,
sterilizing the imbecile and the feeble-minded would undoubtedly throw into society another element of moral degradation, which in the end would lead to more degeneracy.
Segregation of the feeble-minded and of all those who are
suffering from amentia of any kind is not only justifiable,
but is a duty. Reproduction by these people should be
prevented in this way, not because they would transmit their
disease to their offspring but because they cannot give a
proper environment to their offspring for development into
good citizenship.  Society has a right to protect itself
against pauperism and crime as well as against disease.
In this connection it will not be untimely nor out of
place to utter a word of warning to over-zealous workers
in the field of prevention of social diseases.  Knowledge
alone will not protect against these diseases and knowledge
without religion may lead to sexual profligacy as well as
these diseases. The sane method of preventing these diseases is to register them, open our hospitals to them, and
require every one who contracts them to recover completely
before exercising the right of manhood and womanhood.
Let there be more candor and openness among those who
have the diseases and less talk to the innocent who know
nothing about them   and who are entitled to protection
without shock to their sense of modesty and decency.
We have quoted from this article of Dr. Flick's at great
length, but he has so well, so succinctly, and so understandingly explained his viewpoint, that we consider every word
of it essential.
In regard to teaching the child matters of sex, nearly all
are agreed that he should know all that is necessary for
correct living, but not many seem able to agree on the




Sterilization, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics


113


method best to be pursued, or on who the teacher shall be.
To tell a child that evil consequences will flow from his act,
even though they be painted in the most terrible colors,
will not restrain him very often. There must be other factors present, namely, a DESIRE to want to do that which
should be done, and a knowledge of what is good and what
is bad; but, in order to obtain this knowledge he must have
some notion of what Validity means and how it is to be
applied to the rules which are laid down for his guidance;
for it surely does not bespeak good sense on the part of child
or grown-up to accept whatever is told him without question,
simply because it is told him. He must be able to authenticate it-to validate it.
And when we think of these things we find we are confronted with the problem "Who shall be the child's instructor?" Shall it be the physician? If so, the boy or girl
being instructed feels and knows that his teacher speaks
only from a knowledge of consequences. All it can possibly
mean to the child is that if he lead an immoral life disease
may be his share. There is no validity for the underlying
reasons as to why a moral life should be led, given him.
Should the clergyman be the instructor? Here, if the
informant have a thorough training and not be a sentimentalist, the child might obtain valid reasons for living a
moral life, but as the clergyman is usually quite ignorant
of many of the things that the child should know, he does
not speak with sufficient understanding, and usually hasn't
that hold on the child's imagination that is essential to
make what is told him "stick."  Then there is the further
complication that should the clergyman say anything about
consequences that are misunderstood by the child, and, a
physician at some future time deny these consequences, if
the child be an average one, he will consequently assume that




Backgrounds for Social Workers


all the clergyman said was untrue.
Shall the school-teacher instruct? If so, it will in most
cases be en masse. It is well known by all who have even
had the smallest amount of experience in this matter that if
this be done, it but opens the way for those conversations
between boys and girls which lead to the very opposite
consequences of those we are trying to produce.
Shall the parent be the instructor? Probably all will
agree that an affirmative answer can be given to this question, but, then the question comes to mind "How many
parents know enough to do this intelligently?" For if it is
to be done at all it must be done correctly; that is, scientifically, thoroughly and above all honestly. There must
be no exaggeration of consequences, or, as soon as the child
discovers that what has been told him was exaggerated, he
will discount everything the parent has said.
As just stated, probably all will agree that the parent
is the proper instructor in so delicate a matter as things
pertaining to sex, but, first it is necessary that parents
should know. And how to teach parents will be the important thing for those who work along these lines. It
might be well to have the clergyman, provided always of
course, that he be a man of refinement and education, give
these instructions to men and women before the marriage
ceremony is performed when both bride and groom are
together, or if a physician is sought as the instructor, it
must be insisted upon that unless he can present a valid
reason for what he says it must not be accepted. He must
be able to explain fully and completely the WHY of what
he says or it must not be followed.
If however the child is ready for instruction we must
give it, and in that case if the parent know of any person
having the necessary training and the ability to explain




Sterilization, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics  115
without shock to the child, let him ask that person to impart
such knowledge individually. Further, in the study at
school of such subjects as physiology and biology, provided
that the sexes be kept separate, much information can be
imparted by those who are not only able to state the facts,
but who can assign a reason for those facts, and for the
conclusions that are drawn from them.
But whatever the manner of instruction, the all-important
thing to remember is that the child must obtain all of his
methods of thought before he is fifteen years of age. That
is, he must be constantly and always taught that principles
count, and only principles. That no theory or idea is to be
followed unless its validity can be demonstrated on fundamental principles. And if he is always and ever made to
state his WHY for everything he says and does, it will be
possible for him to understand what is later told him. If
he does not have this training one cannot even explain
these matters to him when he is about to be married, for he
cannot understand. And not being able to understand he
brings up his children in the same way that he has been
brought up.
Unless morality be instilled before the child is fifteen,
that is, unless the child is taught the difference between
doing a thing because it is right and should be done, and
doing it because evil consequences flow, he will never distinguish between the two-in other words no matter how
good a life he may lead it will be an immoral one, for the
only reason he lives the life he does is because of his cowardice-his fear of consequences.
But if he is to have any morality he must not only know
what is right and wrong, he must know WHY it is right and
wrong. He must not be taught that a thing is right or
wrong because his church teaches it, or because the bible




Backgrounds for Social Workers


says so. He must be shown that if it is right or wrong and
his church or the bible say so, it is because, in and of itself,
aside from all individual sects and books it is still right and
wrong and that the church and the bible find their authority for what is right and wrong in and under the same ideas
of first principles and logic that every man finds them.
That is, that the very basic laws that are part and parcel
of every individual are the foundations on which a logical
superstructure must be built, or, in other words, the very
fact that man can reason forces him to accept the consequences of such reasoning and if he always checks it up with
his logic to see that it is correct it will be the guide that
keeps him in the path of rightness.
The child must be shown that what he is told to do as
being right is not a mass of law and command arbitrarily
placed before him, which others have read and are now
trying to foist upon him, but that deep down underneath,
there are eternal reasons for these commands-that even if
all Christianity and the bible be swept away, we should still
come to the self-same conclusions we have been discussing,
because the human faculty of reasoning would not let us do
otherwise. We should still have to decide whether there is
sufficient proof of a Supreme Being, and if there be one,
that we owe him an obligation on which all ideas of dutythat is of right and wrong-are built, or, if we do not accept
this idea of a Creator, we must accept the Utilitarian
principle, and we have seen that this doctrine holds good
only for optimists, that is, only for those who due to their
inherited Transcendental teachings have formed during their
plastic period of life the Transcendental morals and continued in accord therewith, even after they have thrown aside
the very reason for accepting them.




Sterilization, Sex-Instruction, and Eugenics


117


NOTES
1. "Compulsory surgical sterilization of all defectives is proposed as a radical method for preventing the hereditary transmission of feeble-mindedness. At least six states have passed
laws authorizing or requiring this operation. In no state, however, has this remedy been applied on a large scale. There are
many objections to this plan. The friends of the patients are not
willing to have the operation performed. The normal "carriers"
of defect would not be affected. The presence of these sterile
people in the community, with unimpaired sexual desire and
capacity, would be a direct encouragement of vice and a prolific
source of venereal disease. Sterilization would not be a safe and
effective substitute for permanent segregation and control.
"It is probable that education in the broadest sense will be
the most effective method in a rational movement for the diminution of feeble-mindedness. The public generally should be intelligently informed as to the extent, causation and significance
by means of suitable literature, popular lectures and other means.
There is now great demand for such information from woman's
clubs, church societies, charitable organizations, etc.  General
knowledge of this subject in a community will insure the rational
protection and control of the feeble-minded persons in that community."
From The Burden of Feeble-mindedness, by Walter E. Fernald, M. D. Publication No. 4, Massachusetts Society for Mental
Hygiene, pp. 12-13. Italics are ours.
2. Eugenics and Mental Diseases, by Lawrence F. Flick,
M.D., in The Ecclesiastical Review, August, 1914.
It is also from this article that the lengthy quotation immediately following is taken.




CHAPTER VI


THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY
H AVING shown when instruction must be given and
foundations laid; having shown how to determine what
is Right and what Wrong; having shown how to apply this
knowledge in the discussion of sociological problems, we
come to a consideration of that very important institution
known as the Family-the unit on which practically all
sociology is built. And, in order that those engaged in
social work may know at least a brief history of that institution, scientifically considered, that is, considered from the
historical, biological, and psychological as well as economic
viewpoints, we shall discuss in this chapter the Primitive,
and in the two following the Medieval, and Renaissance
and Reformation Families, respectively.
Let us first then define what is meant by science. It
means "systematized knowledge," and the Sciences have come
to be used as designating all laboratory branches of knowledge in our various curricula. Philosophy means finding
the ultimate reasons for all things; in other words, Philosophy takes all the facts of all the sciences and builds
them into one complete whole. To put it in still another
way, Science gathers the facts and Philosophy tells what
these facts mean, so that we may in all strictness say,
that there is no difference whatever between the two terms
taken in their fullest and widest significance. They are
merely the names given to the two great divisions of studies
118




The Primitive Family


pertaining to Life.
Science gathers the facts, to which Logic (borrowed from
Philosophy) must be added before we can obtain any meaning at all as to what the facts mean. 1
Let us then for the moment consider WHY we want to
gather these facts and weave them together. Professor
Carr of the University of Chicago tersely puts it into these
words "to control and to prophesy." This seems as short
and as easily rememberable as anything we have yet found.
We are desirous of gathering all the facts pertaining to
the particular subject in question, then finding from Philosophy what they mean, as well as their relation to all other
facts of other branches of Science, and the reason we are
desirous of doing all this is in order that we may be able
to control the particular fields under observation and to
prophesy what will occur in that field under any and all
circumstances.
It follows that we must find an acceptable starting point
and so we have come to consider only those particular acts
or things, or processes which can be duplicated in the laboratory as coming under what are called the Natural Sciences
but which the man of the street thinks of as the only possible
meaning of the word "Science." No matter how true we may
believe a thing to be, no matter what evidence we believe
we have for such truth, unless that particular thing can
be guided, and harnessed, and made to react in the same way
each time, under the same laboratory conditions, we throw
it out of court. It may be true, in fact far more true than
anything we have in the laboratory, but we have agreed
as scientists only to discuss those things on which we can
definitely experiment with physical methods.
Let us call particular attention to this point, as it is
bound to make considerable difference in our reading should




Backgrounds for Social Workers


it be neglected. An example comes to mind. Suppose two
friends, agreeing quite well on all subjects save politics, find
that were this subject discussed, all friendship would cease,
agree among themselves that under no circumstances is that
subject to enter into any of their conversations. Now
such a case is not only conceivable but is quite often found.
And this is exactly the situation with scientists. They cannot agree on aught save laboratory evidence.
It must not be forgotten that first they are men with all
the frailties and foibles, emotions and prejudices that men
have, and secondarily only are they scientists, so that no
matter in what field of work men may engage, their prejudices follow them, so that Walter Bagehot has well said
that as soon as a man becomes famous he also becomes a
nuisance, because he carries so many of his youthful prejudices with him, and, of course, by virtue of his now
exalted position in one field of endeavor, his words, even when
erroneous, carry great weight to a majority of people.
Scientific men have agreed that they will begin with some
theory or hypothesis that fits in with laboratory evidence:
this does not mean that there is nothing further back and
far more deep than this laboratory evidence; it does not
mean that those who oppose this method of taking only
laboratory evidence may not be far more correct than those
who accept it, but it is an agreement, and laboratory men
have used this agreement as their beginnings when things
scientific are to be discussed.
And, just as it does not follow from the non-discussion
of politics that there is no such thing as politics, so also it
does not follow that because we do not in laboratory science
discuss certain things, that these things are non-existent
or as real in their effect on making humanity what it is,
as the very experiments we constantly perform in our




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121


laboratories.
Professor William James was referring to this when he
very definitely stated in his Briefer Course in Psychology 2
that those who oppose the determinist viewpoint which he
uses have the better of the argument, and he for one is
willing to accede it, yet, for his laboratory work it is
better to adhere to the less probable view. This may cause
the asking of a similar question to one the writer heard
asked during a graduate course in psychology, when a
middle-aged man, after listening to the lecturer for some
three or four weeks daily expound various psychological
theories and as often show them to be untenable, felt the
necessity of something positive, and asked if there were then
nothing positive in psychology, receiving the answer, that
it all depended on whether the inquirer were doing graduate
or undergraduate work. If the latter, then everything the
instructor said was true; if, however, graduate work was
being done, then nothing the instructor said was so, for, in
graduate work each individual was supposed to be sufficiently mature and sufficiently well-grounded in fundamentals
'to be able to, pick the dross from any theory and find the
gold that was left, should there be any.
All this foreword bears most vitally on every subject
discussed in a scientific spirit, which merely means, in an
orderly, step-by-step manner, gathering only accepted facts,
weeding out here and there the so-called "facts" that are
really only clever guesses, and not allowing anything to
creep in that is not well authenticated and definitely proven
-unless such matter be admitted as a guess and so stated.
Under no circumstances must we admit that because the
particular guess is plausible is it correct. There may be a
dozen other very plausible ways from the true one, which
caused a given thing's existence, but there can be only one




Backgrounds for Social Workers


true way in which it did come into existence in one particular case, though many factors may have to be taken into
account to find that cause.
Here, then, we come to some of the starting-points with
which we are likely to meet in studying anything pertaining
to the human family. One of these starting-points accepted
by many is that humanity as a whole has constantly progressed from much humbler beginnings and has finally
attained its present high state, and will continue progressing until an almost ideal humanity will be reached.
Another view held by a still greater number of people
throughout the world than the just mentioned one is that
man was originally in a very healthy state of all good things,
but that he has gone backward through the ages he has spent
on this globe of ours.
And still another idea prevalent among a considerable
class of men and women is that men sprang from some type
of remote ancestor akin to the higher apes, but not an ape,
and that by tracing the development of the human race from
the lower to the higher forms of animal life, we see and
understand how this gradual change took place. And it is
from the group who accept this viewpoint we have a subgrouping of men and women who hold that this general
theory of remote lower-type ancestors developing into higher
forms is proved by the supposed fact of the child passing
through a sort of recapitulation of all past ancestral stages
during its pre-birth period, and after birth passing through
the stages of the human-family's progress; that is, he is a
real savage early in life, later he appears just on the verge
of civilization and ultimately he actually becomes a fullfledged member of civilized society.
Then there are the theories as to the cause of the immense difference in children.   One school insists that




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123


heredity is the all-important factor, the other that environment counts for most.
And lastly we have the various schools with their many
suggestions as to what methods are best in bringing about
any desired change.
In the final analysis, Science is really a method. So we
have (1) The radicals, who wish to throw aside the entire
heritage of the past and start anew with unworked and
often unworkable theories; (2) The conservatives, who believe that we may with proper care and caution study
profitably what we have had, note the faults of the past
and build up slowly but more lastingly a permanent structure that will improve mankind; (3) A sort of progressive,
who takes part of the radical and part of the conservative
methods; (4) The biologists, who almost lean toward pessimism when it comes to improving mankind; and (5) the
psychologists, who believe that though each child is born
with certain definite tendencies and instincts (tendencies
of nerve-arcs to function) one can, by controlling these
nerves-by forcing an activity constantly along the path
one wishes it to follow-cause the more frequent activity
of the one one wishes developed over the natural tendency,
to become the stronger; that is, the natural tendency becomes relatively weakened, though in and of itself it may
remain as strong as it originally was.   In fact if this
psychological viewpoint were untrue, there could be no
education possible, and all social workers might as well
throw up their hands in despair.
Fortunately, however, it is more true that the biologic
idea, though it must be admitted that there can be no progress made with any person if the material to work upon
is not there, and that material on which to work is biological.
It is essential that these viewpoints be remembered, for,




Backgrounds for Social Workers


in reading the literature of any subject such as the Family,
one is bound constantly to meet with references to them,
and we must be able to discern not only what is true and
what is not, but we must be able to understand what a vast
difference in his conclusions will be noticeable, when one or
the other of these viewpoints is used on which a writer
begins his reasoning, or we cannot have either accuracy or
value in our studies.
Again, if all viewpoints and methods are studied, one must
be very careful not to choose a single writer and taking his
references and following them out, assume that one has a
wide range of knowledge, for very often men quote only
those who agree with them, and to follow out only such
references as agree means that instead of broadening it has
narrowed one. Under such circumstances a person reading
a hundred volumes may still only have seen one viewpoint.
Bearing these things in mind, we shall call attention first,
to the fact that all institutions are the lengthened shadows
of one man or one group of men, and second, that notwithstanding the many books and pamphlets written on the
subject under discussion taking as their beginnings and their
viewpoint that everything including the family has evolved
from a much lower and simpler form than the present, we
hold with George Bernard Shaw, that were one to take a
man of ten thousand years ago and dress him in our latest
fashion, give him our language so he could express himself,
one could never know that he was of any generation but
our own in so far as the working of his mind was concerned.
He quite naturally would not be acquainted with our many
inventions, but, given the same facts, he would arrive at the
same conclusions by the same method we do. That is, no
matter how we may apply the term evolution in other fields,
in the method of thought there has been none, for if there




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125


were,-if men thought differently in the long ages past than
now, we could not, simply by virtue of our thinking differently, know anything about their "Whys." We could not
set ourselves up to say that we know why they did as they
did, and unless we can do this, all history and all ideas of
how the family or any other institution came into existence
and progressed are out of the question.
And thirdly, we must hold with Professor Spaulding of
Leland Stanford, Jr., University, that the Ideal, that is
"Perfection" has not evolved. There has been no change
whatever in the Ideal, though our ideals of the Ideal may,
and undoubtedly have changed many a time in accordance
with our varying capacities for understanding what was
meant by the term.
If these very important ideas be kept in mind we have a
point with which to start the study of the Primitive Family,
or any other primitive institution that will lead us somewhere definitely, and that by virtue of the fact that we
know that with the same knowledge and under the same
circumstances we should have acted similarly.
Each race or tribe has about the same biological equipment, but we find in one land certain things considered more
important than in another, and the less important matters,
on account of disuse for many ages, cease to be thought of
any value whatever in due time. For example, among certain primitive men, almost the entire tribe is color-blind,
being unable to distinguish between red and green. It can
readily be imagined that so long as practically all are colorblind, it doesn't matter in the least to that particular tribe
whether some one of them should not be. It is unimportant,
whereas to a railroad man, such lack of ability at distinguishing two colors of vital importance in railroad work
would prove of great consequence,




Backgrounds for Social Workers


In each tribe there has been some one man or set of men
who have taken leadership upon themselves, and it is to
these leaders we owe whatever laws there are. Examples in
historic times are Solon, Lycurgus and Moses.       These
leaders probably felt they were closer to the Ideal than
others and it was such leaders who gave emphasis to certain
traits of tribal life. This was the beginning of what later
became the written law. And it is in this fact of stressing
certain points that we shall, in all probability, find the
explanation of the many changes that have taken place
in our conception of the Family as an institution. That is,
in the fact that there is no difference in the methods of
thinking of any tribe or nation, any seeming difference is due
to some particular point being more stressed than another,
making a very great difference ultimately, and making that
particular difference which we use as the gauge to assign
such tribe or nation its status in the scale of civilization.
Again, all it means is that given a definite premise even
a savage by the very fact that he belongs to the human
family is more or less logical, and consequently must follow
out to the very end, horrible as that end sometimes seems
to us, the important ideas that his tribe stresses, and which
would lead even ourselves to the same conclusion did we
stress the same points. He is not necessarily unreasonable
in his conclusions, he is often wrong in the point stressed.
Now we are ready to set forth the various types of families found among primitive peoples, using the term primitive,
not in the sense of prehistoric man, for it is reasonable to
state that before man began writing about himself, we can
know little about him for that very reason; but as referring
to those tribes and peoples who are now living in what we
term a primitive state, that is without a written law and
without a complete social government based on a written law.




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127


The term "Family" we shall use in the sense of a, husband
with all his wives and children, or a wife with all her husbands and children. There is another sense in which the
term is often used, namely, as meaning those particular
groups which trace their lineage from a common ancestor.
But this will not here enter in the discussion. The word
"Marriage" means a union of male and female which "does
not cease with the act of procreation."
We obtain our information on these subject mostly from
accounts of travelers and the records of missionaries, and
in recent years from especially trained investigators' researches. Beside these sources, we often find in the writings of the past, accounts of what ancient authors thought
about the then uncivilized tribes with whom they were
thrown in contact, and there are some writers who obtain
their conclusions by searching for analogies between men
and some of the higher animals. And it is because authorities are largely interested in different viewpoints and stress
only certain traits in which they are interested, or which
they particularly abominate, that gives rise to such varying
and often hopeless as well as contradictory conclusions of
sociologists.
Of the great general types of marriage we have polygamy, polyandry, and monogamy. The first type existing in
the past in regions where wars destroyed the lives of many
men, leaving a disproportionate number of women, or where
plentiful food caused a disproportionate number of girls
being born.
Polyandry, that is, where one wife had several husbands,
existed in but few places at any time and to-day exists in
still fewer; only in those cold or mountainous regions where
the reverse conditions mentioned under polygamy held sway
-where it was with difficulty that each man could support




Backgrounds for Social Workers


a wife and family.
Monogamy, or one husband having but one wife, is and
probably was the prevailing type, and even in those regions
where polygamy is still practiced, monogamy is the general
rule, only the chief or leading men being able to support
so large a family as would necessarily result where one
husband took unto himself many wives.
Bachofen in 1861, presented his theory of promiscuous
relationship in the distant past, which he called "Mutterrecht," meaning thereby that in prehistoric times men and
women lived in general sex relationship and as the father of
a child could not at any time be known, the descent had to
be reckoned through the mother, who of course always knew
her own child. And, this was the cause, as time went on,
of mothers waxing strong in the community and taking to
themselves great power, developing what is called a Matriarchal system of government.
The evidence for this view as Professor Goodsell 3 has well
summed up is: "(1) A few ancient authors and some modern
travelers have described savages, low in scale of civilization, who are said to be quite promiscuous in sex relations;
(2) certain savage groups at the present day have curious
customs which are alleged to be survivals from a period of
complete promiscuity."
In contradistinction to this view, Westermarck in his
famous work on The History of Hutman Marriage brings
forth the following: "(1) that no case of people living in
unrestricted sexual communism can be found to-day; (2)
that the customs which point to promiscuity admit of different and more satisfactory explanations. For example,
'wife lending,' as found among savage peoples, is probably
traceable to their exaggerated ideas of the, duty of hospitality; and the deflowering of brides by the priest might




The Primitive Family               129
reasonably be regarded as conferring honor upon the marriage.  The more the matter is investigated, the more
questionable it becomes that primitive groups generally
lived in a condition of absolute promiscuity, although a
great laxity in marital relations undoubtedly prevailed
among them."
Sir Henry Maine developed a theory of what he termed
the "Patriarchal Family," and the reasons for his theory
are, primarily, that as we find traces among the Ancients
of the father having almost absolute power, and the male
always being the one who inherited both name and station
through his father, it followed that this must have been the
original type of family, but Professor Thomas in his article
"Relation of Sex to Primitive Social Control" 4 conclusively
shows that in most regions and among most tribes the reverse of Sir Henry's theory is true in that there is scarcely
a case on record where traces of the Matriarchal system are
not found.
Professor Westermarck has come to the conclusion that
the single pair marriage was the original form and was due
to the following reasons: (1) that it is the more common
type of marriage among the higher animals and birds;a union entered into and continued for life; (2) there are
the inherent jealousies of men and brutes which would insist
on single ownership; and (3) that the various cases of
polygamy and polyandry are really offshoots from the single
pair, and not the reverse, in so far as they already denote
a higher conception of "classes" among the people, as only
those who were "above" their fellow tribesmen in point of
social station indulged in this form of marriage.
Grosse, in his Die Formen der Famile und die Formen der
Wirtschaft, seems to think, and develops an interesting
theory upon his thought, that food supply was the dominat



Backgrounds for Social Workers


ing factor in what method of family life any particular
group or locality would develop. That is, during the pastoral stage men took whatever they could and the difficulties
of finding sufficient food for more than himself and one wife
caused man to have only one-resulted in the monogamous
marriage; but during the agricultural. stage, when women
did most of the work, each man tried to obtain as many
workers as possible and so he who had most wives became
the wealthiest. It might however be said that the reverse
conclusion might also be valid in this case, that the wealthier
a man was the more wives he could afford to keep. And it
is well to bear in mind that in nearly all cases it was the
man wealthier in this world's goods who did practice
polygamy; the poor man was always monogamous.
Another thing to remember is that all races and tribes
have not passed through the self-same stages as have their
contemporaries, and some of them may have even gone backwards to former conditions of living. And we must also
remember that we shall not arrive at a just and true conclusion if we take only the industrial viewpoint, as does
Grosse, or the sociological viewpoint as do many others, to
the exclusion of the most important factor of all, namely the
Psychological. That is, the desires, the emotions, and the
mental values placed on the many and various forms of
social intercourse and ideas by the different peoples; in
short the important point to be kept in memory is that
among men at large it is in the intellectual plane rather
than the purely sensist that the greatest differences arise,
and it is in this field that we must seek our reasons for
differences, for man is immeasurably removed from the very
highest types of animal forms by his faculty of speech and
his ability at forming concepts and having general ideals.
Continuing, we shall discuss the Matriarchal form of




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131


family life. It is in this system that kinship is traced
through the mother, though some tribes practicing this
method have all property descend from father to sons, as,
for example, among the Fijians and many other groups of
the Pacific Islanders, as well as among the West Australians.
We see that here is a combination of Patriarchal and Matriarchal forms, and it may be that we are meeting with a
transitional period in these cases.
Among the Malays where the maternal system holds
sway the husband only visits "his wife's abode occasionally,"
she still retaining her old rights among her own people, and
he among his.
Professor Goodsell sums up woman's position at this time
in these words: "Concerning the whole vexed question of
woman's status under the metronymic system the following
conclusions seem fairly well established:
(1) In those instances where the husband lived and
served among his wife's kindred the position of the woman
was relatively high. She was protected by her male relatives from unjust divorce, from abuse and from gross overwork.
(2) On the other hand, it should be remembered that the
maternal kinship system does not imply that women were
in supreme control of the household, nor even that they
held a determining voice in the management of the affairs
of the kinship group or clan. This view of female supremacy
or of a matriarchate has been maintained by Bachofen and
other writers, but has not been satisfactorily established.
On the contrary the evidence goes to show that, even when
name, rank and property descended through the mother,
she was not always the controlling force in the household.
Rather it was a woman's older brother, her father, or even
her husband who had the deciding voice in all important




Backgrounds for Social Workers


matters and who determined the training and arranged the
marriages of the children."
Most authorities seem to hold that the paternal system
followed the maternal, though, as Professor Goodsell says,
some of our very lowest tribes, such as the Fuegians of
South America, the Todas of India and some Australian
tribes, have this system, without any evidence remaining of
there ever having been a maternal system preceding it.
The paternal type seems to have developed, according to
those who hold to a well regulated and systematic series
of steps by which men rise from one social level to another,
by a sort of division of labor, a better understanding of the
part the father played in generation, and the consequent
feeling of assistance that was essential to the welfare of the
mother and child. It is under the paternal system that the
idea prevailed, wherever polygamy existed, that there was
little or no kinship between children of the same father,
though uterine brothers and sisters were supposed to be of
the closest possible relationship. Such views would readily
suggest customs then beginning, whereby certain individuals
were not permitted to mate with certain others, as in this
case, between uterine brother and sister, producing ultimately the tribal rules of exogamy, meaning simply that
one's mate must be sought outside the members of one's
immediate tribe.
It is further supposed that because it devolved upon
woman to bear children, which bound her to the home more
closely than man, it fell to her lot to care for all things in
and about the home, including the tilling of the fields. Men,
in the meantime, hunted, fished and made war. In fact it
is during this period that some writers hold we may seek for
the beginnings of modern inventions; that it is here that the
first farming implements had their birth in woman's fertile




The Primitive Family               133
mind. Working hard and long in the fields there first came
to her mind the thought of the assistance a crooked stick
might give, then a stone was attached forming a hoe; later
the discovery that certain kinds of stone would not crack
when heated-the direct forerunner of our cooking utensils.
The making of all these things slightly changed and improved, later developed into regular trades taken over by
men, and claimed credit for by them as proof of masculine
ingenuity.
Under this system, too, a certain number of cattle or an
amount of money was exchanged for the bride, probably in
many cases tending to the conception on the part of the
husband of an actual slavish ownership in the wife, though
there is in all probability evidence enough to show that in
any quantity of cases, the matter was not looked upon as a
selling of the bride at all, but that inasmuch as parents
were to be deprived of a valued possession in the loss of
their daughter, they were entitled to some recompense, the
whole process being considered a necessary evil of which
parents had to make the most of; in fact it might be considered somewhat analogous to a case in which a railroad,
being the cause of an injury or death, renders an amount
of money to the injured, or his heirs in case of death, not
in payment for the injury or the death, for that of course
could never be paid for in terms of money, but, inasmuch
as the injury or death is a fact, one simply has to make
the most of it and accept whatever recompense seems somewhat compatible with such death or injury. It seems reasonable to accept this view, for there are tribes among the
Indians who gave a certain amount of blankets and other
valuables, only to receive gifts in turn of equal value.
Westermarck, Darwin and Grosse, all seem agreed that
in the very primitive stages woman really had considerable




Backgrounds for Social Workers


choice in her acceptance of a husband and that the male
appeared as an ardent wooer, just as he does in our own
time. And any reason why most savage tribes of the present
day do not permit this free choice is said to be that they are
not by any means living under primitive conditions now and
have not been for great lengths of time.
Divorce is very frequent among some tribes, such as the
Kurnai of Australia, and some of our own Dacotah Indians.
Freedom of choice is common among the Maoris of New
Zealand, the Creeks and the Puebloes.
"Indeed there is some reason to believe, as Howard has
suggested, that marriage began in free choice, passed
through the stage of contract and purchase arranged by
family or clan, and with the decay of the kinship group
and paternal power, became very slowly, once more an individual matter as in modern times."
With some forms of polygamy we are all familiar from
biblical accounts, as well as that still practiced under the
Mohammedan and Chinese regimes, though even here it
seems to be dwindling constantly.   But with polyandry
we are not so familiar. This practice is "confined at the
present time to a very few groups, notably to the Todas of
India and the inhabitants of portions of Ceylon and Thibet."
As we have already suggested, this is in all probability due
to a disproportion of the sexes. It is interesting to note
that these tribes marry endogamously, that is, they intermarry within their own tribes. This endogamy apparently
increases "the proportion of male births, and thus may well
be a factor in the development of polyandrous marriages."
In many tribes all over the world divorce is free and easy;
in others it is not. Dr. Ruskin, the Arctic explorer, tells the
writer that among the Esquimaux there is no divorce of
which he has ever heard, except with the single exception




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135


where at the expiration of the first year of married life,
should the bride not have given birth to a child. Under such
circumstances the husband returns her to her mother, all
the men of the tribe contributing to her support while the
young husband seeks another spouse.
It is a curious fact that some of the rudest people of
whom we have any knowledge do not permit divorce under
any circumstances. Such are the Veddahs of Ceylon and
the Papuans of the Island of New Guinea, among whom
death alone may serve to unloose the bond of marriage.
As to the men, their greater powers of organization and
co-operation in a common pursuit, especially such as war,
developed a larger social and political vision than in woman,
whose "feminine virtues and accomplishments most emphasized in all ages have been precisely those relatively individualistic ones developed by the domestic wife and mother.
Therefore it is not strange that women as a whole have a
more restricted social interest and vision than men."
Now, as to why in certain cases the mother's name was
used and men traced their ancestry through the maternal
side: Devas thinks it due to the fact that there was easy
divorce, making the mother the only permanent member of
a family, for she might have from ten to twenty husbands.
Consequently, if the children were to have any ancestry at
all, it would have to be traced through the mother. Other
factors entering were: making the eldest daughter mistress
of the household or heiress and thereby, by some years
sooner bring a male worker into the home of the parents;
or, kings may have wanted to give their daughters in marriage to one of lower rank and then raise the husband's
social status. In fact in Spain at present a man is ennobled
by marrying one of noble birth.
As all marriages and families are but variations of the




Backgrounds for Social Workers


different types we have presented, whether they be developed
later into Egyptian, Chinese, Grecian, Roman or more
modern types, it is fitting that some conclusions be drawn
from the facts so far presented.
In ancient times, for example, in Egypt, women had occupied the very highest places, but it is easily seen that men
had ruled before women had, and that the women even
while actually ruling considered it an anomaly for them to
do so, for we find them wearing artificial beards to make
them appear the more masculine.
Of masculine anomalies we find regions, again, where the
father being considered the all-important member of the
household and the child taking all that was good that he
possessed from the father, this idea was carried out to such
an extent that at the birth of a child the father had to
take to bed and spend some days with the infant while the
-mother was forced to continue her usual work.
Not only these anomalies but all the many changes that:make family life different in different regions and among
(different peoples have come about, in the opinion of the
author, through neither social nor economic reasons but
almost entirely through psychological; for, just as in our
own country some historian of the future ages while exploring in the regions of Utah may uncover corner stones of
great buildings containing records of polygamy and conclude from these that in the year of grace, 1918, the people
who occupied this region were just passing through the very
infant stages of civilization, so we have been judging the
past, instead of realizing that it was but the mental make-up
of the individuals who lived in a given region that caused
them to follow some leader; in this case, Joseph Smith.
There is no proof that any race or tribe of people passed
through certain stages, definite and always akin, until they




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137


came to a higher vision; but it is more than likely that, cast
off from the mother-land on account of rebelling against
certain ideas there held, these groups followed some leader,
who set up a new order of things; and, as we have no record
of any nation whatever that has become civilized, except in
so far as it has come in contact with another more civilized
than itself, if science teaches anything at all it teaches that
natural laws always hold good, and that we must believe in
the continuity of the underlying and inherent causes in
things-then, we must as readily believe that there was
somewhere a group of people who had come into existence
with a very advanced stage of thought, and who has left its
mark on civilization; and it follows that those races which
are on much lower levels than their neighbors are not those
who did not reach the heights, but those who have fallen
from them, their ancestors once having stood much above
their descendants.
An interesting side-light is had in the case of the Fuegians
of South America whom Darwin considered the lowest of
races, but who Professor Max Miiller found had a vocabulary
of over thirty-thousand words, showing that even here
amongst the lowest was proof positive of a decided descent. 5
After only a few generations in our own mountains of
Kentucky we find a people still continuing family feuds and
whose standards of living are far from what we should wish
them, yet whose ancestors came there but a very short while
back-short in so far as history is concerned-but being
isolated from the people of the surrounding country, due
to mountain barriers, they came to fall far below their
relatives in other regions where social intercourse is far
more easy. If such cases are found directly, we might almost
say, in our line of vision, and resulting from only three or
four generations' removal from the parent stock, what will




Backgrounds for Social Workers


not people sink to when that removal is placed at ten or
twenty generations or more?
Professor John Watson of Johns Hopkins University,6
a recognized psychologist and ardent disciple of that branch
of modern psychology called behaviorism, who of all people
certainly believes in a decided advance among men, says, that
in so far as language is concerned, man is immeasurably
separated from the rest of the animal kingdom, and adds in
a deprecatory manner, and "yet we find scientificallyminded men still searching for the missing link."
Summing up then, we find that man came into existence
some time in the past, the exact age of which we do not know,
in a very complete form and with a very complete idea of
many things and above all with a language and an intellect,
so that even where man does the same things that do the
animals, he may and can do them for totally different
reasons; namely, he follows a leader because he (the individual) thinks, and through thinking decides to a certain
extent for himself that that particular individual is to be
followed.
And it is this following a leader in the realms of ideasof thought-that is the main reason for the great divergencies at present existing in marriage, as well as in the
many theories held by various men to explain these divergencies.
And these theories took different bents by being held by
different tribes or races who separated from the parent
stem and then dispersed to all parts of the world. Those
of like temperament or mentality, drawn by a common bond
became separate tribes and nations in turn, or sometimes,
forced by lack of food and severe climatic conditions to
leave the place of their fathers, left under the guidance of
some leader who had sprung up amongst them, and whose




The Primitive Family


139


peculiarity of mind or temperament became then embodied
in the customs of such tribe, when that leader had become a
sacred memory.
These leaders were called by various names among different people and at different times. Sometimes he was poet,
then priest, again medicine-man, and often a great warrior
or strong man, but always the ideas of this individual added
to that of preceding leaders influenced the people and became part of the tradition which later was embodied into
actual laws, punishment being meted out to all who would
not obey the venerated customs.
And, if we will only think of this common origin of our
laws and customs we can readily and easily understand why,
among different peoples, separated from each other and
following different leaders who stressed different points,
there should be a seeming gulf of great breadth holding them
apart, which, nevertheless, is only due to the fact that all
men are alike in their method of thought, even though they
are not in the choice of subjects they think about; and we
should then realize also that we, too, should come to the selfsame conclusions as many a savage did, were we to start
with the same premises.
If then, by morals we mean the idea of Right and Wrong
"written upon the human heart"-that is, conscience, and by
Ethics we mean the interpretation of morals, we must admit
that in all ages and times men have followed their conscience,
and as Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace well says in the last
volume 7 that issued from his pen, there has been not one
particle of moral progress among men since the beginnings
of history.




140         Backgrounds for Social Workers
NOTES.
1. The Beginnings of Science, by Edward J. Menge. Richard
G. Badger. Chapters IV and V.
2. Psychology, Briefer Course, by Wm. James, in the American
Science Series, Henry Holt & Co. 1892, p. 461.
3. The Family as a Social and Educational Institution, by
Willystine Goodsell. The Macmillan Co., 1915.
All quotations from Professor Goodsell, in any of the following
chapters, are to be found in this volume.
4. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. III. 1897-98, p. 754.
5. See Article "The Savage," in The Nineteenth Century,
January, 1885, p. 120.
6. Behavior, an Introduction to Comparative Psychology,
p. 320, by John Watson. Henry Holt & Co.
7. Social Environment and Moral Progress, by Alfred Russel
Wallace. London, 1913.




CHAPTER VII


THE MEDIEVAL FAMILY
J UST as with the Primitive Family, so in studying the
Medieval, we must define our terms and show wha-t
points are to be stressed in order that our explanation of
changes and divergencies taking place between different
peoples may be understood. We must, consequently, constantly keep in mind the four salient points of our immediately preceding chapter, namely: (1) that every
institution is the lengthened shadow of a man or group. of
men; (2) that all divergencies are due to the stressing by a
people of some one point in preference to another, which
later on, by constantly following out logically to where the
stressed point leads, causes an immense difference, in their
lives; (~3) that science means only proven knowledge, and
natural science means only the gathering of facts that can
be. proven in the laboratory; while (4) philosophy, the queen
of sciences, weaves these facts into a, meaningful whole and
interprets our facts for us.
With these important points in memory we, may continue. Harding, in his Essentials of Medieval and Modern
History, well says, that the Middle Ages should be used in
the plural, for there were really three of them; the first
from the year ~375 to ablout 800, an epoch of transition, the
"time of invading Germans and the subjects of the Roman
Empire were being fused into one people, and where the
remains of classical civilization, the institutions of the Ger141




Backgrounds for Social Workers


manic barbarians, and Christianity were combining to form
the culture of medieval Europe.
"(2) The typical Middle Ages begin with the renewal
of the Western Empire of Charlemagne (800) and lasts
till about 1300. It is the age of feudalism, of the might of
a church organization ruling every form of human activity,
of great struggles between Popes and Emperors.
"(3) The third division is an epoch of transition, from
about 1300 to about 1500. It is the time of the Renaissance
or 're-birth,' when men's minds were made free and when
state, church, art, literature, industry and society took on
new forms."
Our discussion of the Primitive Family covered the different types of marriage and family organizations up to
and through the first period of the Middle Ages, for, while
the barbarian tribes were still overrunning Europe, the same
types of marriage prevailed that had obtained just prior
thereto; and, while in Greece and Rome separate forms of
marriage arose and slight differences were evident, still the
same theories were yet held that had been held before; the
differences in the working out of these theories, however,
were due to the difference of stressing one of the following:
the individual, the family, or the state. In Greece during
that period where the state was considered supreme, we
find under Solon the, laws by which boys were taken at a
very early period and brought up by the state and not in
the family. In later Grecian times, and in Rome as well,
these laws were not accepted, and consequently the boy
could again be trained by his own immediate family.
An ancient practice which comes to mind here as an excellent illustration of what following out an erroneously
stressed point may lead to is that of phallic worship, where
fecundity being considered the all-important factor-the




The Medieval Family


stressed point-the organs of generation became the object
of worship on the part of those who held this theory, and
with it came naturally a consequent lewdness and a licentious
ritual.
Then, where slavery existed and women were not free,
there could be little question of sexual morality, for being
owned, completely and fully by a master, the female slave
needs must do what that master commanded. It has been
said in conjunction with this, that when conditions of this
nature prevailed, every opening of new baths in ancient cities
was really the opening of a new place of lewdness, while
women at large, caring for naught but luxurious living and
feeling that bearing children would detract from such living,
yet unable to still the instinctive promptings of their nature,
suckled young animals, not even excluding serpents.
Into a world of this kind came Christianity. Starting
from lowly beginnings it fought long and hard against one
of the most corrupt civilizations of which history has left
any record; and how hard it fought we can imagine, when,
to-day after almost two thousand years, though winning
those in high places to its altar, it has not yet been able
to cast out from even those nations who publicly profess
it, the same instinctive tendencies that had made the past so
corrupt; tendencies which because they are instinctive, are
considered right.
We have already shown that Right and Wrong have
nothing whatever to do with instinct as here considered, and
that any answer to problems of this kind can only be solved
by accepting one of the two viewpoints under which all
ethics fall, namely the Transcendental or the Utilitarian.
Christianity was persecuted, but during the period of
persecution waxed strong; for, men and women seeing these
humblest of persons-these who had no social standing




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whatever, and who on that account were considered devoid of
all those things that made pagan life worth while (that is,
were devoid of all individual as well as collective bravery),
who always bowed down in humble acceptance of whatever
burdens were placed upon them-stand forth under all manner of punishment and calmly pray in their hour of trial to
be permitted to suffer still more, must have, and did have a
marvelous effect upon the oppressors, attracting many of
these self-same persecutors to the Christian ranks. It was
the beginning of the idea in that sodden civilization that
there must be some truth in the theory that only the Soul
matters.
This again illustrates the suggestions previously made
that an institution was but the lengthened shadow of a man
or group of men. Christianity was the lengthened shadow of
Him who founded it. And as Christ had stressed the Soul
in all things, so as this new religion gained ground, men and
women felt that all things except the soul were but as
dross. For if there were a soul, and man is only on earth
an infinitesimal period when looked at with the idea of
eternity in mind, it was surely the better part of wisdom to
care little for anything except those things which would
make for a better and more lasting gain to that soul, and
give it an everlasting place of contentment and happiness in
the eternal world to come.
Unless this point is looked at with sympathy there is no
understanding, nor can one even obtain a remote idea of
what the Middle Ages stood for. And there can be no background for the study of how we have attained many of our
present theories and ideas which are the direct outcome of
these ages-which mean so much to us now, yet had their
very birth in that past time of which we are writing.
The Middle Ages were an age of Fai.th in.God. We lad




The Medieval Family


145


almost said: "Were an age of Faith." Of course they were
an age of Faith. Every age is. But the Middle Ages were
an age of Faith in God. This is what sets aside this particular period from our own times. They had Faith in
God, we have Faith in Science.
There would be considerable difficulty for the average
man to tell what was meant by science, and those whom he
would classify as scientists would in nearly every case be
stricken from such list by scientists themselves, for there is
an immense difference between the real scientist, who is
usually entirely unknown except to his colleagues in the
same fields of work, and the man who, with a smattering of
scientific terms and a desire to make converts to some doctrine of his own, keeps his name and work before the public
so continually that from sheer force of seeing his name in
print so often, men begin to believe he must be one of the
greatest, if not the greatest, scientist living.
To repeat then, the Middle Ages were ages of Faith in
God. Our own age is just as blind in its Faith as was
that, only we have placed it in Natural Science.
In discussing this very suggestion as to whether there is
more or less superstition in the world now than formerly,
with one of the great scientists of America, the writer upheld the thesis that there is just as much of it prevalent
to-day as there ever was, his opponent contending that this
was often supposed because men forgot that when the same
act was done for a different purpose it was not the same
act; for example, if men of two hundred years ago didn't
want flies on their food because. they were afraid the devil
was in them, that was a clear case of superstition; whereas
men of to-day didn't want flies on their food because they
carried various germs to that food, and this, though it resulted in the same act of exterminating the flies, was thor



146


Backgrounds for Social Workers


oughly correct, thoroughly scientific and not superstitious
at all. To which we were forced to reply, that in view of
the fact that most men knew no more about germs than they
did about the devil, it still remained a case of blind faith
and rank superstition, man only having transferred his allegiance from God to Science.
The next point to understand is that when we discuss the
Middle Ages we mean not only a point or period of time,
but a geographical region as well. We mean Europe during the years mentioned. It is from Europeans that we
spring-it is the European ideas that have influenced us in
all we have done and in all we have accomplished, and had
they not been, we should, of course, not be; and had they
had other ideas, and, had they stressed other -points than
those they did,.we should now likewise have entirely different viewpoints than we have.
Europe became in 800 the Holy Roman Empire-that is,
it became Germany, which embraced nearly all continental
Europe. The names that lands have taken unto themselves
are often confusing to minds whose training has not made
them familiar with the reasons for such names' adoption.
So let us not confuse this term "Roman" with the old citystate of Rome which had long ceased to be an empire; the
city alone retained the name of "Rome."
The Holy Roman Empire, or Germany, came into existence in the year 800 under Charlemagne and consisted of
practically all Europe that made any claims to civilization
at all; and it was Charlemagne who wove together this great
unwieldy mass of one empire under one Emperor and the
spiritual control of the Pope.
Those who are unfamiliar with Church history, which, of
course, means those unfamiliar with the history of the Middle Ages especially, must first realize that it is most essen



The Medieval Family


147


tial that they understand the dual viewpoint in the philosophy of life that men of that age held. All men and
women who considered themselves Christians with the one
exception of the Eastern Church (that is, those under the
Grecian Bishops) likewise considered themselves under the
spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope.
There was no such thing conceivable to men of that time as
even a branch of the Christian Church if it did not accept
the same dogmas as the mother church. Even the Eastern
Church, the one exception of which we have just spoken
which did not acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, still
held to all the dogmas that the Western Church (that is, all
who acknowledged papal supremacy) held, and the very
supremacy of which we have just spoken was only cast aside
by the Eastern Church at this very period of which we are
speaking.'
But the point to bear in mind is this, that every belief held
by any geographical division of the Church was held by all.
A National Church did not mean then what it does now,
when we speak of the National Church of England or of
Russia, meaning approximately that the head of the state
is also head of the church. What was meant then by
an English Church or an Irish Church or any church with
a national prefix added, was simply that as to matters of
local import, the bishops and clergy of that particular country spoke of themselves as distinct from others. It was
merely a convenient form of geographical location and had
absolutely nothing whatever to do with any differences of
dogma. Among Catholics we find this in very common usage
to-day where the Irish Church, the Spanish Church and the
Italian Church designate only those Catholics in Ireland,
in Spain or in Italy, though all acknowledge allegiance to
the Roman See. We must never lose sight of this fact, or




Backgrounds for Social Workers


we are bound to make considerable error in our interpretation of any history we may read that pertains to times
Medieval.  The word Church, then, as used during the
entire period we are discussing in this chapter means solely
and only the Roman Catholic Church under jurisdiction of
the Pope, who held sway in the ancient city of Rome.
As to the dual point of view to which we have called
attention, this means, that in matters spiritual the Church
was supreme, and that in matters temporal the Emperor
was supreme. But, if, as we can readily see, even in our
own day we have but to read the great mass of literature
daily pouring forth from the press, to find that men cannot
yet separate these two things in what we term the most
enlightened age that has ever existed, the one side accusing
the other of being unable to be good citizens because they
owe spiritual allegiance to a foreign pontiff, how much more
must this have been misunderstood in days so long ago?
All that can be said in such cases is that a mind incapable
of separating the spiritual from the temporal, never can
grasp the historical aspect at all, and, consequently, all
argument is lost. Further, if we of this age can find so
many who can not understand this dual viewpoint, we are
bound to conclude that there were indeed few who could
make this distinction a thousand years ago; but it was to
the minds that could that this separation appealed, and it
was because often in the highest places came unworthy and
incapable men who could not make the distinction,-or, if
they could, felt that desire for all-embracing power so
keenly that nothing was permitted to stand in their way,
and who tried to usurp both authorities,-that caused such
constant friction between the two orders. It is fortunate
that no one holding such a view ultimately succeeded, but
the many attempts made to embody both temporal and spir



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149


itual leadership in one person was the cause of most of the
long and bloody wars fought during these periods.
Again, it was the great stress laid upon the spiritual side
of life that held men's minds in sway, and which led to their
so valiantly fighting for the non-union of these two great
ideas in one individual or in one set of men, and which permits us our spiritual freedom to-day.
"It should be remembered that the struggling company
of early Christians, striving as they were to realize on
earth the pure ethical teachings of their Master, found
themselves in the midst of a corrupt and degenerate society,
the leaders of which were in many instances shamelessly
licentious," says Professor Goodsell,2 and while this is perfectly true, the conclusions he reaches from this fact, that
it was due to the early Church Fathers placing the stress
on the spiritual side, that men and women came to look
upon marriage as purely sexual and only permitted, though
by no means to be praised, are not true, and shows all-tooplainly that he has not caught the spirit of these same
Church Fathers.
This is easily understood when it is realized that there
were seven Sacraments 3 the Church taught and held, and one
of these was marriage. As a Sacrament means a sacred
sign definitely instituted by Christ which the Church is
bound to uphold, and which she has ever considered her
choicest possession, it can be seen that marriage was looked
upon in a very different light from what we should be led
to believe from following the writings of the author quoted.
Holy Orders (ordination to the Priesthood) is also a Sacrament, and as it was known to require a much severer
battle with one's lower and baser nature to worthily fulfill
the exalted station to which a priest was ordained, it was
then, as it is now, considered the more worthy spiritual




150


Backgrounds for Social Workers


life-that is, the life which, due to its hardships, its restrictions, its intense internal struggles which must be fought
so often, bespeak a soul that must be more chastened than
one who permits his passions greater play. And simply
because the fathers spoke in spiritual language, and now
there are so few who do not translate everything into
physical terms, it is almost hopeless to show that because
one upholds a very high standard in one field of ideas, it
does not follow that because another field is different, it
must therefore be worse, simply because it is different.
Marriage, too, had its devotees in the ancient days, but
let us not forget, as Ripley in his European Races well
says, that every one of us is the descendant of men and
women who cared nothing whatever about things intellectual or things religious; and, being descendants of such
parents how can we understand many of the viewpoints of
the past-those viewpoints having been given us by the intellectuals of the past?
There were really only two careers open to men, one that
of the army, the other that of the Church. The soldier
cared not for intellectual pursuits; he was anxious to conrtrol, to wield earthly power. And so every man as well as
woman who cared anything for intellectual pursuits, who
cared anything for study, for anything that did not savor
of mere controlling other human beings for the satisfaction
of possessing power, entered the religious life, and as such
became celibates. That is, in EVERY GENERATION, every
intellectual individual died without leaving any descendants.
This was very bad     from  a worldly viewpoint, but it
meant something very important to one who does not
care for the worldly viewpoint. It meant that through
many generations we have seen men and women leave everything they had to f6llow their Ideal, and it means much




The Medieval Family15


151


more than the average writer dreams it does; for it means
that on the ONLY EVIDENCE THAT MODERN MEN ACCEPT
-LABORATORY EVIDENCE-has it been proven that men
and women could live a clean and Chaste life.     This
is the crowning achievement of the celibate religious
view.  It has been proved a success and it has further been proved that the loftiest ideals we have and the
most wonderful institutions that have descended to us and
of which we are justly proud, came from these men and
women. It ha~s shown that clean living and high thinking
and beneficent results are not strangers to each other. To
these men and women we owe our hospitals, the most beautiful masterpieces of sculpture, of art, of architecture, of
education, of philosophy, and we even owe them the beginnings of the Natural Sciences, for these same Natural
Sciences of which modern man is so. proud, must be traced
back to the monk Roger Bacon, so often confused with his
namesake, Sir Francis, who lived in Queen Elizabeth's era.
And while Professor Goodsell truly says: "From the beginning of its history the early Church clearly recognized
the spiritual equality of women and men," for a~s Clement
of Alexandria wrote: "The virtue of both men and women is
the same," he thinks that the Church was too far in advance
of its time and that it took over a thousand years to, make
men realize this even partially. We might add that most
men have not yet realized it.
But here we must obtain another very essential point,
namely, the Validity that these men had for the laws they
followed. It is one tbing to be a king, a totally different
thing to play the part of one on the stage. And so, whatever law was made in the spiritual world, due to the Pope
being considered the supreme pa-stor and representative of
Christ on earth, that law having papal sanction meant that




Backgrounds for Social Workers


that was proof positive that it was valid. No man questioned such a law's validity, the only thing ever questioned
was whether it was expedient.
We have shown already that only in so far as a Creator
is accepted can there be absolute validity to any law; and
if the Creator in and of Himself is the cause of all law to
which men owe obedience, his personal representative upon
this earth meant something that most of us of this age can.hardly appreciate. But without constantly remembering
this point, our study of the family during, preceding, and
immediately following the Reformation will prove most farcical. In the pre-reformation days men and women accepted the Pope as the legitimate successor of St. Peter and
the personal representative of Christ, and as such his words
had the utmost validity. That is, he was the supreme court
in matters spiritual and moral, while those who set up laws
that did not have his sanction, were only playing the game,
and did not even have authority for the game.
The Church, then, by virtue of its supremacy in spiritual
matters, laid down the laws as to who might marry and who
might not. That is, it was very definitely stated that no
one within the seventh degree of blood-relationship should
be allowed to mate, this, however, in due time came to be
changed to the third degree; that is, within as close a relationship as cousins.
But as soon as laws of this nature were promulgated,
as well as those relating to divorce, we meet with the dual
viewpoint again. The difference between the rulings of the
Church and the laws of Christian Emperors often came
into direct conflict, which, of course, was the rifest cause
of trouble between the followers of these two great powers.
The Church always contending that as the Emperor or
Prince was a follower of Christ he had no right to make




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any law that was contrary to what Christ taught, and what
Christ taught being treasured and kept by the Church and
the Church having been instituted for just this purpose, it
logically followed that only the Church had the right to pronounce on the validity of any law from the Christian constitutional viewpoint. That is, as we have already said, the
Church was considered by herself as well as by all followers
of Christ as the Supreme Court of moral values; the teachings of Christ as embodied in the Scriptures and in tradition
being the Constitution by which she was alone bound, she
having no right whatever to make any additions to or subtractions from the said Constitution.
But it must not be forgotten that this Constitution dealt
only with things moral and things spiritual. In the matter of Church government-that is, in the discipline the
Church lay down for its own clergy and its members, merely
as discipline and not as dogma-the Church had a perfect
right at any and all times to make any changes she saw fit.
This is another point often misunderstood-the difference
between the Church's two-fold work, one her own constitution governing what should and must be done to remain or
to become a member of the Church as a society, and the
other, her position as the Supreme Court of Moral Values,
governed, in turn, by the Christian Constitution, namely,
the Scriptures and tradition.
So the Church had not only to fight those Emperors and
Princes who opposed her, but there were many customs
which on account of their long usage had become so part
and parcel of the people that it was with the greatest difficulty they could be thrown aside, and where a particular
ruler felt the need of assistance in times of war of another
powerful leader, it was but natural that he should not be
particularly anxious to antagonize his muchly-needed ally,




Backgrounds for Social Workers


should that ally be fighting the Church. Human nature was
the same then as now, and as all those particularly interested in matters spiritual had already entered the Church
the rulers and warriors were largely men of great strength
of will, with little thought and still less care for those moral
values which we now prize so highly.
Such conditions, for example, as abortion, infanticide and
child exposure were by no means uncommon, and all this
the Church had to oppose against the most severe inherent
prejudices. Professor Goodsell thinks that the "doctrine of
the Church concerning the damnation of the unbaptized,
constituted an important motive for its condemnation of
child murder in all forms." It is interesting to note that
no such doctrine existed, however, until the time of the Reformation, the Church merely holding then as it does now
that the unbaptized do not see God. There was no question
of damnation.
In regard to divorce. The Church has never granted
her members the right to divorce each other and remarry
during the life of either spouse with the single exception
of what is called the Pauline privilege, which will be explained shortly. And so-called facts purporting to gainsay
this, are taken from the laws of some so-called Christian
ruler, but never from the Church.
The Church, as the Church, has never sanctioned divorce,
though here and there before the Church definitely defined
what she meant by the term, there may have been individual
churchmen who did sanction it. The one possible exception
mentioned and known as the Pauline Privilege 4 means that
in accordance with what St. Paul taught, there might bewhen one is married to an unbeliever and cannot, due to that
unbeliever's insistence on his spouse giving up the Christian life, or his not permitting the practice of the Christian




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faith-an annulment of the marriage.
There was and is a separation allowed where the grounds
are sufficient, so that husband and wife may live apart, but
under no circumstances may a remarriage be indulged in,
except in the single instance mentioned above.
Lastly, that which is often called a "divorce" by writers
unfamiliar with the Church's teachings is, where a so-called
marriage has taken place in opposition to well defined laws
against such contract. In such case, as no marriage has
taken place, there can be no divorce; it is merely a question
of whether or not the individuals were really married to
begin with. Surely it is a considerable misnomer to call a
thing a divorce when no marriage has taken place!
But with all this continual opposition between Church
and Rulers, here are a few things the Church was able to
accomplish in spite of that opposition, by sufficiently influencing Christian Emperors to place on their statute
books as laws:
"Husband and wife were made equal before the law.
Children were not permitted to be exposed, to be killed
or to be taken by panderers and brought up as prostitutes and criminals.
Permission of father to kill his grown-up child was
abolished.
Children could not be sold into slavery except in cases of
extreme destitution.
The father was no longer permitted to act as judge over
the life and limb of his family.
A father could no longer surrender his son to the injured
party in a law suit, and so rid himself of all responsibility
for his son's acts and fines."




Backgrounds for Social Workers


The writer from whom we quote, seems to think that
all these things were but a continuation of tendencies that
the older Romans had already begun, and that the only
thing Christianity did was to instill a few new ideas as to
prohibited degrees of marriage, celibacy, and those things
that followed from the introduction of these two ideas. We
believe, however, that we have already shown the inability
to accept this view, if we are to throw ourselves into the
spirit of the time and understand what these men and
women were actually trying to do, and why they were doing
what they did.
Monogamy was, of course, the Christian rule, and at first
the customs attending marriage were of more or less similar
type, there being what we might term the general continental plan, and that evolved in England, which, cut off as it
was from the continent, became more and more insulated and
its customs developed along somewhat different paths from
those of the continent, but always based on the self-same religious belief, for, being in communion with the Roman
See, there was no change in any marriage laws that all
Christendom had; the changes were merely in customs attending the ceremony which had nothing whatever to do
with religious beliefs.
The people on the continent traced their relationship
through both father and mother, so that all those having
the same grand-parents and even going three generations
beyond, were considered as belonging to the same family.
The Continentals called this group the sippe, while the
Anglo-Saxons spoke of it as the moegth.
This family group punished its own members and others
who injured any member of their group, just as do those
who practice feudalism to-day.
The father probably lost considerable of his power over




The Medieval Family


his family about the beginning of Charlemagne's era, for
we have a statute of the "Danish King Cnut, whose oftquoted law runs as follows: 'And let no one compel either
woman or maiden to him whom she herself mislikes, nor for
money sell her --  '
Boys were considered of age, at this time, when they were
twelve. So, too, were the girls, but the father still had
charge of handling the girl's property, and still, probably,
represented her in all legal dealings.
Then came the type of marriage called Beweddung and
Gifta. The first meant that there was an agreement between the father of the girl and the prospective husband as
to what presents he should make the parents of the bride.
The latter meant the actual giving of the bride to the
groom, a survival of which is still seen in the Anglican
Ritual.
Then came what was called the "morning gift," and first,
probably but a trifle, later becoming, however, of vast importance. This was the gift given the bride on the first
succeeding morning after the marriage, by the groom, and
signified that he accepted her for all time as his wife.
Ultimately the morning gift became more valuable than anything else about marriage and came to be a sort of "provision for the wife to be handed over to her at the death
of her husband."
Second marriages were, to a large extent, discouraged,
and at certain periods many widows and, no doubt, widowers also, sought the monastary immediately after the death
of their spouse, probably regretting it later when the first
days of grief had passed away and they,found their old
life again appealing to them. It may be, 'and undoubtedly
was, largely due to these people that abuses crept into some.of the monasteries, for, not having the spiritual.vcation,




Backgrounds for Social Workers


these people chafed under the strict rule they had accepted
and caused untold difficulties for which those innocent had
to suffer.
Women, both on the Continent and in England, owned
their morning-gift as well as all things actually given them,
this being called the gerade. Such things as "house, linen,
furniture, ornaments, money, sometimes even the poultry
tended by the bride before her marriage and the sheep her
hands had shorn. This personal property of the wife descended strictly to the female heirs." In England women
held joint possession of the land with their husbands, while
on the Continent they did not hold real property, though
probably even in England the husband had control of it
during his lifetime.
The home was the center of industry. The men fought
and jousted, hunted and fished as always.    The women
of the higher classes especially did embroidery work which
is still famous where any remnants of it can be found. And
that one characteristic of women is not a modern development may be understood from an account of Bishop Aldheim
"in a quaint eighth-century work in praise of virginity where
he complains of the vanity of Anglo-Saxon women who
sought to arrange delicately their waving locks, curled artificially by the curling-iron, with their cheeks dyed red with
stibium."
Women were sometimes admitted as members of the
guilds, even being given their husband's place when the master-workman died.
And then came the second period of the Middle Ages with
what is called the Feudal system. During this period everything was judged by men at large in accordance with what
service a man could render his lord and master in times
of war. Petty rulers and Barons sprang up everywhere,




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159


each with his own fortified castle and his own retainers.
The Castle was in reality an entire village, and with the
great isolation in which the family had to, live, the father
was bound to be thrown in very direct companionship with
his family more than ever before, and it may be that it was
only when this period was reached that by daily contact
with wife and children the tenderer emotions that unite
husband and wife were aroused, and the beginnings of the
first real home-life as we now understand it were brought
about.
That there was a. charm of companionship, dignified, yet
simple, we learn from  the following letter, written by
Stephen of Blois, quoted by Harding, 5 "a powerful French
noble, brother-in-law of the English king, wrote from before
Antioch in March, 1098," while on one of the Crusades:
"Count Stephen to Adele, his sweetest and most amiable
wife, to his children, and to all his vassals of all ranks, his
greetings and blessing:
"You may be very sure, dearest, that the messenger whom
I sent left me before Antioch safe and unharmed and
through God's grace in the greatest prosperity. Already
at that time we had been continuously advancing for twentythree weeks, toward the home of our Lord Jesus. You may
know for certain, my beloved, that of gold, silver and many
other kinds of riches I now have twice as much as your love
has assigned to me when I left you."
Then after telling her the news, he ends with these words:
"These which I write you are only a, few of the things,
dearest, of the many which we have done. And because I
am not able to tell you, dearest, what is in my mind, I charge
you to, do right, to carefully watch over your land, to do
your duty as you ought to your children and your vassals.
You will certainly see me just as soon as I can possibly




Backgrounds for Social Workers


return to you. Farewell."
As time went by, and we reach the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, the wife could not only inherit, but often assumed
her position in the knightly regime and controlled her vassals and assisted her overlord in procuring the proper number of men for his armies.
The position of women had gone down somewhat at the
beginning of feudal times, to later develop into the most
intense admiration possible to all women, even those far
from comely, by all men. It was at this time that men considered it an honor to be deemed worthy of even being permitted to fight with a woman's name upon their lips or some
token of hers on helmet or covering the heart.
Later, children of nobles were exchanged and Pages and
Damoiselles came into existence, the former to serve their
master and mistress by doing humble service, by being
taught loyalty and obedience. At fourteen the boy became a squire with ideals of loyalty to Church, lord and
lady, and if he showed himself especially able, would have
knighthood conferred upon him when he was twenty-one.
The girls learned to weave and embroider, while later in
the afternoon they would step into the "quaint gardens"
and be joined by the pages and squires. "It is highly probable that most of these young women received some education in reading, writing and in the French language." But
the troubadours kept them informed of the deeds of valor,
of the history, of the love-songs, romances and epics of their
day and time, and above all, the girls were taught not to
shrink from the sight of blood, and to be ever helpful in
nursing and bandaging when required.
The working classes were divided into three different
grades; there were the tradesmen or merchants, the free.
farmers, and the serfs. The latter "were bound to the soil




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161


and owed clearly defined services in labor to their overlord."
Among the merchant class or Burghers, as they were called,
there was for some time a coarseness, but as time went by
and they were able to procure the benefits of refinements,
they naturally copied their lords, for "like master, like man"
almost always holds true, and if we can procure a good and
true account of those who walked in the higher regions
of life, we can always be sure, that sooner or later, those in
the lower walks will follow them.
All the Middle Ages stood for, all that they meant, all
that they wrought, is too vast a subject for so short a
sketch as here given, but we have attempted to present the
spirit of the times, at least, so that those who desire to read
deeply may the better understand.
It is essential that the intense spiritual attitude of these
times be grasped, otherwise we cannot even understand the
marvelous perfection men of that day wrought in even their
material productions, much less in their ideas that have so
profoundly influenced us of later times. Just as an example,
let us consider their architecture. We do not find, that in
places unseen, the workmanship is any less perfect than in
places where minutest detail is caught by every passing eye;
in fact, far up on the summits of their steeples, hundreds of
feet above the pavement "where only God and the Angels
can see" is the delicate handling of the idea to be expressed
in stone--as worthy of praise and as admirable in every way
as is that which comes directly and constantly before the
gaze of an admiring public.
And it was this spirit of perfection-this striving toward
a definite Ideal as held up to that age by the Church, that
made for the attempt at an ideal marriage state as well as
an Ideal in every other field of endeavor.
But then came the revival of Pagan literature--the en



Backgrounds for Social Workers


trance of the "New Learning" as it was called-the study
of old Grecian and Roman writings, and the content of these
writings holding up the old Pagan Ideals as contradistinguished from the Christian, influenced men and women tremendously. The people at large, finding the multitude reading and speaking of these ideals, assumed as the majority
usually does, that because a thing is constantly met with,
it must be right. They did not have the ability to understand the beauties of style and form of the literature, thinking only of its content, of its looseness in all things moral,
of its total depravity in things spiritual, and began again
to follow these centuries-before-discarded theories. These
theories, being made a part of their every-day life, caused
the undermining of the family, which up until that time
had been considered of greatest sacramental character, and
these theories also laid the foundations on which the socalled reformers of the time of the Reformation builded.
Let us then remember that during the Middle Ages men
attained the very highest conceptions of woman-kind; attained an openness and a frankness by which every man
might fight for every woman, and all considered marriage a
Sacrament that made the love of man and woman rise from
mere sexual union to the most sacred heights.
As always, when any new idea is promulgated, many who
accept it go to extremes. So, too, in the Middle Ages
there were many extremes, many absurdities, but the beauty
of the age taken as a whole; the intensity of making all
things romantic; the bringing of those in the immediate
family very close to each other on account of all living in
the same great castle; the firm knowledge possessed by each
that on the spiritual side of things they KNEW what was
Right and what Wrong, because no difference of opinion
entered into the matter, for God had arranged a living head




The Medieval Family


for His Church as a preserver of the law who could make no
errors in matters of Faith, but who could and did interpret
what all words meant when any dispute arose. All this
made for a family life and a National life of wondrous
beauty and positiveness. It led into no vagaries of thought
by one man or woman saying: "I think this should be done
or that," for when it came to Right and Wrong in the Moral
order, there was a Validity to every law that none could
question.
This, then, is to be remembered, that due to this validity
there was no mental struggle within oneself when an act
was to be performed as to its Rightness or Wrongnessthere was not the misunderstanding that is now so current
because people are brought up under such different conditions and with such varying educations.
NOTES.
1. See following articles:  "Orthodox Church," "Eastern
Churches," "Greek Church," "Heresy and Schism," sub-title,
"Russia," in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
"Orthodox Eastern Church," Vol. 20, p. 334, Encylopedia
Britannica, where it is stated that "the final break came in 1054."
2. The Family as a Social and Educational Institution, by
Willystine Goodsell. (Macmillan.)
3. See any account on "Sacraments" whether it be in any of
the small Catholic Catechisms, or under that title in any good
encyclopedia.
4. See Article "Divorce" Sub-title "The Pauline Privilege."
Vol. V, pp. 60-61, The Catholic Encyclopedia.
5. Essentials of Medieval and Modern History, by S. B. Harding, 1905.




CHAPTER VIII


THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION FAMILY
N our chapter on the Primitive Family we called attention to four stressed points, namely, (1) That every
institution is the lengthened shadow of a man or set of men;
(2) that the only difference there existed between nations
and races was that of stressing some one or more points in
preference to others; (3) that Science means gathering
facts and proving them by laboratory evidence; and (4)
that Philosophy means weaving these facts into a complete
whole in order to give meaning to the facts gathered.
In our chapter on the Medieval Family we stressed one
particular point and that was that after all the four factors
above mentioned had been considered, there was still one
great outstanding thing to be kept in mind, namely, that the
people in Medieval times believed they had a Validity for
all things they did regarding Right and Wrong, that could
never be brought into question.
In this chapter we wish to call attention to three additional things that must ever be kept in mind if a discussion is to have scientific value. (1) We must have all the
facts in any given case before we can pass a judgment of
value; (2) we must have only such a one pass judgment as
is capable of doing so; that is, only one who knows his
Logic and knows it well is at all competent to read meanings into the facts after we have gathered them, and even
if he knows his Logic he must have that range of vision
164




The Renaissance and Reformation Family


and breadth of knowledge as well as depth which makes him
capable of ascertaining whether the premise itself is correct;
and (3) the one passing such judgment must not be dishonest. For, surely it is not only possible, but pre-eminently
probable that a man may stand very high in any walk of
life, and as such he would possibly fulfill the first two qualifications, yet, having a theory of his own to bolster up, he
might, though possibly unconsciously, see only the favorable
side. We have an excellent example of this very thing in
one of our well-known scientists, namely, Professor Ernst
Haeckel of Jena, whose deliberate falsifications of photographs in order to make his own favorite theory of Recapitulation the more probable,' has called down upon his
shoulders the hearty condemnation of other scientists; but,
we find that thousands ot people drink in his every word as
absolutely proven knowledge.
In history we have a very similar case. We must not forget that immediately after the Reformation began in England, laws were placed upon the statute books prohibiting
everything Catholic. Remember, however, that the doctrines of the English and the Roman Church did not change
immediately, but as England developed a State Religion,
and men of that time were unable to grasp the possibility
of a separation of state and Church, it was treason to
teach anything pertaining to, religion that did not meet with
the entire approval of the then existing government, for it
was assumed that anything that did not bolster up and defend the state religion was undermining the very foundations on which the government itself rested. England's punishment for treason consisted of hanging, drawing, and
quartering-a punishment so exceedingly unpleasant even
to contemplate, that it would take a mighty brave man to
either write or teach history impartially under such condi



166


Backgrounds for Social Workers


tions, and even if it were written or taught, the writings
would be destroyed as the writer and teacher likewise
would be.
Under the circumstances it was not very natural that
many men should risk their lives,-though some did. The
result of such conditions being that the children brought up
under a limited and one-sided instruction, and having it constantly drilled into them that all that did not make for the
greater glory of Anglicanism was erroneous, by very force
of repetition began to believe it, and the second generation
then following, very honestly taught its offspring in turn
what they themselves had been taught, still making matters a little worse, for, when things go on from one generation to another, there is always a little touch here and there
added to. round out the ignominy of those one considers.
enemies, and likewise a little touch to round out and make
more acceptable the things one wishes to make a part of a
people's daily belief.
But here is the gist of the matter. From the time of the
Reformation until about 1829, no man dared to write history of any kind in England that spoke the truth. Do not
imagine that the men and women had suddenly turned dishonest. They did not. They simply dared not speak of
anything except the English Church when historic subjects
were discussed, except to give rather unpleasant comparisons. The children being brought up under such a regime,
quite naturally accepted what was given them, for men at
large believe that if all the schools teach a thing it must
be true. Before Columbus' time, the dominant schools
taught the earth was flat. It is easy to draw one's own
comparisons.
As England is cut off from the mainland, the English
people, except for those few who traveled, were unable to




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167


obtain any true accounts of general history,.except what
their own government allowed them to obtain. It may be
objected that the English were always great travelers.
True, but the men who did the traveling were not scholars
as a whole, often, in fact, they were not even able to read
and write, and it is only those who can give their ideas
to a much larger world than mere personal contact affords
whose influence is far-reaching. We wish, therefore, to impress most thoroughly upon the reader this fact, that any
book written in English and published in England for nearly
three hundred years, except as to matters purely English
happening on English soil and having no relationship whatever to history or the Church, must be accepted with the
utmost caution, and all its statements checked up as to
accuracy before being in turn quoted.
As every historian takes the works of his predecessors
for his guides and profits by their work, we find untold numbers of writers of to-day, boldly and freely copying every
detail of these writers of warped history, and palming it off
as historical and factual.2
It was not until the early part of the nineteenth century
that some of our American men went to- Germany to study,
and from that time on we in this country got a broader
basis of information in our American schools; not because they studied in Germany rather than in any other
foreign land, for had they gone to France or Italy or any
other region where scholars were to, be found, and where
English was not the mother-tongue, they would, in all probability, have obtained approximately the same viewpoint.
We can readily understand, however, why it is so easy
"to present false history to those whose mother-tongue is
English, for, of all people on the face of the globe, probably the Americans and the English, as a people, are the




Backgrounds for Social Workers


poorest linguists, and consequently, reading only their own
language, the world might be full of truth, but because
it does not appear in our native tongue we know nothing
of it.
This lack of any language outside our own is no doubt
one great factor in foreigners' thinking us extremely boorish
and uneducated. But as we speak English, we are on that
account in extremely close relationship with the Motherland, and we have consequently read only these unreliable
English volumes, and drawn all our conclusions therefrom.
How can we, under such conditions and circumstances, have
a valid and correct view of life?
So much for our evidence of why we have accepted the
many things that are not true. Let us give an example of
what we mean and show how what we have said is working
out now-to-day-in the very       schools which teach our
teachers to again instruct the youth of the land.
Here is a quotation from Compayr6's History of Pedagogy, used as a text-book in many of our normal schools
throughout the country. Under the title of "The Intellectual Feebleness of the Middle Age," we find this stated:
"In 1291, of all monks in the convent of St. Gall, there
was not one who could read or write. It was so difficult
to find notaries public, that acts had to be passed verbally.
The barons took pride in their ignorance. Even after the
efforts of the Twelfth Century, instruction remained a luxury for the common people; it was the privilege of the ecclesiastics and even they did not carry it very far. The
Benedictines confess that mathematics were studied only
for the purpose of calculating the date of Easter."
This book of Compayre's which has been translated by
the president of one of our State Normal Schools is meant
to show by inference that from this example quoted we can




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169


correctly conclude that all the monks of the Middle Ages
were an ignorant, worthless lot. In the original French
edition, however, the statement is made that there was but
one monk who could read and write. The learned translator
has improved somewhat upon this, by adding the touch here
and there, we spoke of above, and making it read that there
was none who could read or write. In fact, in the year 1291
of which Compayre is writing, "there were over twenty thousand students at the University of Paris, almost as many at
the University of Bologna, and over five thousand... at
the University of Oxford, though all Europe at this time
did not have a population of more than fifteen million people."  So much for showing that in proportion to population the universities were better attended then than nowAs to the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland; this famous
establishment was directly in the path of every warring
band that came to conquer; it suffered until from one of
the most exalted types of what a monastery should be, it
became a home for aged warriors, until by the time of which
Compayre speaks, this is practically all that it was. In
order to live there, these old soldiers had to wear the monkish gown, but, to take this as a fact from which to draw
the conclusions that have been drawn, is rather far-fetched
to say the least, and-we must not forget that this example
is taken from a book which is Now in use and one which has
been put on the list of REQUIRED volumes to be read in many
Normal Schools.3
This presents an excellent example of using but one or
two facts from which to draw a conclusion, neglecting all
the others. It presents further an excellent example of how
minds are poisoned at the very fountain-head of learning--
at those schools which instruct our teachers how to teach,
and it makes clear our three factors regarding which we




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Backgrounds for Social Workers


are here writing: that is, the necessity of knowing all the
facts; of having only those pass judgment who are capable;
and of not permitting one who has a theory to bolster up to
write our text-books.
The periods we have so far covered in our short sketch
of the Family has brought us up to about the year 1300.
We shall now discuss the years 1300 to 1500 which may
conveniently be called the period of the Renaissance, or
Re-birth. It was during this interval of two hundred years
that many things were crystallizing into that which was suddenly to burst asunder the ties that had held men to a
moral code for the ages past. The very name of Renaissance-Re-birth-has been criticised time and again on account of its leading those unfamiliar with conditions immediately preceding this time, to assume that a great change
took place all at once, instead of carrying with it the idea
that whatever change there was, was a growing one, taking
two hundred years to accomplish.
As stated in the Medieval Family, the Greek and Roman
literatures were again being read, and as Greeks and
Romans could only have written about Greek and Roman
Ideals-about Greek and Roman life-and as these ideals
were all based on Pagan concepts with no understanding of
the underlying basis for moral laws as we understand them,
the reading of that literature brought into existence various
groups and cliques who made a study of particular authors
and subjects, just as do Browning Clubs and Shakespeare
Clubs in our own day. The ladies of Italy and France kept
a salon where men and women gathered. Loose sexual relationship being a very prominent subject of the ancient authors read, it followed that discussions upon this subject were
very common at any of these salons.
Now, if every one speaks of and reads this type of litera



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ture, it is but natural that many of the ideals expressed
by the authors read should come into common practice,
and consequently we find that it is at this age that licentiousness flourished.
Harding says that the Renaissance made "men's minds
free," and if we mean that it removed all moral restraint,
this is true; if, however, we mean something different by the
use of "free" than to cut down every law of decency, it
would be well not to accept Harding's statement. A new
Hedonism-that is, a philosophy that considers pleasure
the only important aim in life-came into existence, and as
we have shown, it is the philosophy of life that a man has,
that makes for all the difference in the world in his thought
and his action.
It was at this time also that men and women took that
part of these ancient authors which appealed to them most,
as we do in every age, and made it a part of everyday life.
In this case it.was the doctrine of Platonic love that appealed. And it is this same idea of Platonic love that was
one of the very greatest factors in tearing down the sacredness of marriage.
It was quite natural among the many, married only because it was the proper thing to do, that they should then
choose some other person than their spouse to whom to give
this idyllic love. It was a dangerous practice, for, while
there is no doubt of its possibility, there are very few who
can love platonically. But once this idea, of an idyllic love
was stressed and constantly discussed, and then practiced,
it made great inroads among all classes of people. It meant,
however, that unable to, grasp the pure ideal of Plato's
thoughts, these people remotely felt they believed in a thing
that men at large can never understand, and, finding it led
into a physical and forbidden love, used this theory of an




Backgrounds for Social Workers


Ideal to cover up and excuse their sins. But, this Platonic
love, so-called, loosened the hold that the laws of the Church
had upon the people, and the common man and woman, seeing those in the higher walks of life act so constantly and
so openly in purely licentious ways, soon came to feel, that
if those who were more learned and had greater responsibilities toward their inferiors, considered this action right,
they, too, were justified in following.
The next step in tearing down the laws that made marriage sacred came with the advent of Luther after 1517.
We do not know how his opposition to authority would
have resulted at any other time; we do know how it resulted coming just when it did-just when people's minds
were poisoned with this Renaissance doctrine of Pagan
Ideals; coming, as it did, when due to a laxness in morals,
with which the Church had absolutely nothing whatever to
do as we have sufficiently shown, men and women were seeking for an excuse for rendering INVALID those laws which
must still have given their consciences a pang real often,
even amidst their revels.
So in 1517 the fight began and some three years later
Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. This was the beginning of the more intensive tearing down of all that made
any moral law valid. Remember that up to this time no
one disputed the validity of the laws made by the Church
in the spiritual order of things. Men objected to some of
the laws, but never for a moment did they object to their
validity when passed on as constitutional by the Church.
Luther, being backed by German Princes, was able to take
a stand directly opposite to this ancient viewpoint, and with
the soil so well prepared by the Renaissance, with the people
seeking an excuse for loose living, it did not take long before the various duchies and principalities took sides in the




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173


matter.
When the prince of the land has as much sway over his
people as he then had, the people being obliged to depend
almost wholly on that prince for a livelihood and knowing
he had the power of life and death over them, quite naturally,
unless they were of the very bravest, acknowledged their
prince's religion. Those who didn't were either beheaded
or banished, so, after all, whatever religion the prince claimed
was bound to be the religion of his people, and when we remember that it was usually those in the highest places, such
as princes, who wanted an excuse for their riotous living, the
conclusion is obvious.
Further, as soon as Luther's doctrine came into existence that marriage was not a matter for the Church to
discuss, it being a purely secular affair to be adjusted by
each community for itself,4 it does not take any considerable quantity of intellect to understand that men at large,
seeing varying and often absolutely opposite laws in contiguous cities, came to consider the matter of stating definitely What is Right and What is Wrong as hopeless, and
gave themselves up to not accepting any ruling at all in the
matter.
It is easy to understand and imagine what state morals
were in; why it was that great civil wars tore the nation,
and even when peace was finally brought about, that those
who had had one or two generations' training of no principles, should cause untold suffering of all kinds, for these
men recognized no valid law of morals whatever. Wives,
mothers, and children were abandoned. Luther himself allowed Phillip, Landgrave of Hesse, to live in a bigamous
state,5 and suggested that as long as it did not give scandal and become known, it did not matter. The only definite
conclusion we can come to in a case of this nature is that




Back~groundis for Social Workers


wrong does not exist as a wrong, it is only being found out
tha~t it is to be condemned.
The doctrine that Faith and Faith alone was what
counted, became another factor in tearing down the idea of
responsibility for one's acts, Luther himself acknowledging
that he put the word "alone" into his translation of the
Bible after the word "Faith." This placed the idea in men' s
minds that acts were of no value-the exact thing these
men of loose living had been looking for to justify their
evil deeds. Likewise, if acts do not count, men and women
could not possibly have any very exalted idea of marriage,
where the acts of constancy, of protection and o~f love are all
important.
It was now that Germany was becoming infected with the
Pagan ideals which had been ripening in Italy and France
for over two centuries, but which never obtained any spiritual validity there, such as they were to find in, Germany, by
having rulers follow Luther's doctrines and making these
ideals, or rather the lack of them, a part of the Christian
Religion. It was here, also, we find that coarseness -sprung
forth in the daily literature of the continent, such coarseness, that we of` this day, with all our intense love of freedom of expression, would never tolerate. Even such language as Luther himself used in his Table Talks, dare not
be printed in English lest the books come under the law
against obscene literature.
Most of us are hero-worshippers. We consider some man
a decidedly great individual, and then, of course, we very
foolishly want to believe only what is good of him. This is
an absurdity. One who wants to, know the truth; one who
has any desire whatever for a scientific discussion of any
subject, must have no, wants or desires in his findings; he
must take whatever is proved. Emotionalism is not for




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him.
Another thing that makes for a difficult separation of
matters into separate compartments of the mind is this:
that during and immediately succeeding the period of
which we are speaking there came into existence a great
many of our physical comforts and scientific inventions that
an older generation had never known. Wealth was being
accumulated. Great and luxurious palaces were erected and
a sort of etiquette was being born; that is, an etiquette as
we now understand it. These people of the past had cared
little for sanitation, for evil-smells arising from an unwashed body; for the higher classes used perfumes to overcome all this, while the lower lived so much of their time
in the open that they did not mind it. It was the beginning of stressing another point, that of sanitation and that
of etiquette. First it was how a person was to act while
eating; even Erasmus, that greatest of scholars of the
Renaissance, wrote on this subject, and said that no gentleman would lick his plate at table. Another writer announces
it is bad form to pick one's teeth with a knife, and there is
a great painting which, if we remember correctly, is placed
in the National Gallery in London, showing various royal
personages at table, in which Mary, Queen of Scots, is
shown in the process of picking her teeth, though in this
case, she is actually using a tooth-pick.
Queen Elizabeth was also the first queen, if we remember rightly, who wore stockings.
We mention these things, because so many people assume
that because it was an age of great activity, that all these
comforts which we certainly do not wish to do away with,
were caused by the Renaissance and the Reformation, instead of realizing that they were but a product of the time
and merely   contemporaneous with the moral changes,




Backgrounds for Social Workers


neither one being the cause of the other.
We have stated the doctrines of the Church on the
Family in our immediately preceding chapter, and called
attention to the laws that kept the Family on the exalted
plane it occupied during the Middle Ages.
Let us quote Professor Goodsell, whose order of arrangement we have followed. He looks with a very favorable eye
upon Luther and the reformers, so his testimony is of more
value in this matter than were it written by one who is not
in sympathy with that period. He says that Luther made
the whole marriage matter a "temporal business" with which
the Church should not interfere, but should rather "leave
to each city and state its own usages and customs in this
regard."   (Luther's  Preface to the Short Catechism,
1529.)
Now, remembering what has just been said about the
conclusions that the ordinary man and woman will draw,
and are bound to draw, when each community has different
and often contradictory laws, we can easily understand how
and why and when much of the validity for right living was
destroyed, and how and why and when the institution of
marriage lost its hold on modern man.
Dr. Kish6 quotes Luther as saying that should there be
no children born in a family, the wife should, in such case,
suggest illicit relationship with some friend of the family or
with the husband's brother.
Goodsell says that "the student of the period (under discussion) is particularly impressed by four current ideas and
customs with respect to betrothal and marriage: (1) The
popular sentiment concerning the nature of marriage; (2)
the predominant part played by parents in arranging the
marriage; (3) the early age at which betrothal and marriage ceremonies were performed; (4) the view that be



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177


trothal was a binding contract second only to marriage in
its dissolubility.
Marriages came to be looked at from no other viewpoint
than as a mere breeding arrangement, by which one might
legally procure a maiden from some family of good standing thus assuring healthy children. A sort of Eugenic idea,
except that it was rather one-sided, people seeming to forget,
or not taking into account, at least, the fact that diseases of
the father as just as likely to affect children as are those of
the mother.
Remembering also that there was great docility among
women at the time of which we are writing, we are not sure
but that the words "love, honor and obey" came only after
the Reformation, and that not by the Mother Church, but
by those who separated from her; remembering also Luther's
doctrines as to marriage being of value only in so far as
children were born; remembering King Cnute's ruling that
no woman Was to be forced to mate with any she "misliked,"
we get a slightly different angle of vision when looking over
what the Reformation did in so far as women and marriage
is concerned, from what we have usually been taught to
believe.
We forget that there were women professors in some of
the great universities before the Reformation, but that there
were none since then until very recently.
We forget that in all the homes of the well-to-do there
were private tutors for the children, both boys and girls
receiving the same instruction, which made possible so many
brilliant women.
Read the accounts of child-marriages, especially in England, in the Sixteenth Century that Professor Goodsell cites.
Such cases as "Roland Dutton, married to Margaret Stanley when he was nine years of age and she but five." They




Backgrounds for Social Workers


living apart then until the age of puberty. In this particular case the young groom absolutely refused to accept
his wife, and probably the courts dissolved the partnership.
The records are filled with child marriages.
During these latter times the husband became supreme;
and, may we not validly draw the conclusion, that it was
also due to the loosening of the bonds of validity by the
Reformers, that removed the binding force of all law, and
the husband being in control, it was his desire that something be done to hold at least his women-folk in check
which caused the passage "to love, honor and obey" being
put in the marriage ritual?
"A French writer of the Sixteenth Century thus describes what should be the attitude of a woman to her husband: 'To pay honor, reverence and respect to her husband,
as to her master and sovereign lord... obedience in all
things just and lawful, adapting herself and bending to the
habits and disposition of her husband, like the useful mirror
which faithfully reflects the face, having no private purpose, love or thought;... she must be in all and through
all with the husband... wash his feet, keep his house.' "
(Charron, la Sagesse.)
No doubt women often did not receive just treatment,
but there is also no doubt that there were many men and
women who did really grow to love each other after being
married, and there is likewise no doubt of those who were
not swayed by the Reformation doctrines still believing in
moral equality; for we find at this period such a law, as
Northern Italy had, that a man was punished for adultery
by the loss of an eye.
All living conditions were far from pleasant at this period.
Erasmus has said that he thought the plague in England
was "partly due to the incommodius form and bad exposi



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tion of the houses, to the filthiness of the streets and to the
sluttishness within doors. The floors are commonly of clay,
strewed with rushes, under which lies, unmolested, an ancient
collection  of beer, grease, fragments, excrements...
everything that is nasty."
In the homes the housewife spent her time in waiting on
her husband and doing everything that could there be done,
from curing meats, dipping candles, making soap, making
bread, doing the family cooking, to brewing the drinks, of
which latter alone Markham in The English Housewife
(1683) mentions twenty-two different beverages.
A factor that often lent itself to misunderstanding was
that during the period of which we are writing a marriage
made in the present tense was final and valid. That is,
any one saying to one of the opposite sex before witnesses:
"I do take thee for my lawfully wedded wife" or "husband"
as the case may be, became by virtue of that statement
legally married. The Reformers, seemingly being unable to
understand the difference between this and the idea of telling
another that one would marry them at some time in the
future, confused the two things; that is, the statement made
in the present tense and that made to be consummated at
some future time, and great disputes arose.
Professor Goodsell finds fault with the Church for allowing a divorce, as he calls it, in a case where a lady brought
proof before the ecclesiastical court that her first husband
had not died when she thought he did, and was actually alive
three years after the second marriage ceremony was performed. But surely if she brought this proof, even if it
came from perjured witnesses, as far as the court was concerned, if it did not know of the perjury, how could it
have rendered any other decision than to declare the second
marriage invalid? For, there being a husband already,




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the lady in question could not, in accordance with the existing law, take unto herself another during his lifetime. But
we are constantly finding just this type of reasoning among
writers otherwise exceptionally able.
Let us review, then, what has been said. We find that it
was the casting aside of all that made for validity that
brought about the downfall of the Family, and it was this
casting aside of validity plus the re-entry of a literature
that again introduced Pagan Ideals in men's lives with all
its looseness of morals that weakened the sacredness of the
tie that is called marriage.
The Puritans tried to overcome this looseness by extremely rigid laws, but they were unsuccessful with their
methods, though their aim was commendable. They did
not succeed because they did not have the proper perspective-they did not have a historic background, that is, they
did not understand the real and deep causes, and so, erroneously assumed that a mere civil enactment could and would
make men good. And lastly, they failed because they lacked
the validity, and the ability of establishing that validity
which the old Church ever claimed as its own.
Dr. Foerster, professor of Education in the University of
Vienna, in his Marriage and the Sex Problem (1912), covers
the ground for the older Ethics with its doctrine of validity
that gave men and women something definite to lean upon.
He well says in regard to voluntary restriction of the number of children born into one family, for example, that the
"most excessive production of children could not endanger
women so greatly or so deeply undermine the true necessities of their existence as will the artificial restriction of
the family. For such methods unleash the male sex passion
by relieving it of all sense of responsibility for the results
of its indulgence. The true cure for the evils of excessive




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childbirth is to be found in man's mastery of his sexual
nature which shall ensure the liberation of the woman from
every species of sexual slavery," and Professor Goodsell
sums up what many sociologists hold in criticism of this
and similar passages, in these words: "But when full recognition of the sanity of many of Dr. Foerster's positions has
been accorded, it is probable that the reader will feel dissatisfied with his solution of the problems of sex and marriage. In the first place, few educated men and women of
the present day will be willing to surrender their individual
judgment, trained more or less, to unbiased conclusions, into
the keeping of the Church, and to return to the religious
idea of marriage as a sacrament whose form is a sacred
symbol."
We have sufficiently shown, we believe, that it is a man's
philosophy of life that counts, and this philosophy is a
psychological and spiritual matter. Now what Professor
Foerster is trying to convey is not as Professor Goodsell
seems to think, an attempt to give up passing judgments,
and assigning our intellectual practices into the keeping of
some institution, simply as an institution, and simply because it is considered best that such should be done. It
means this, and this only, that if we go deep enough in
our thinking and if we think clearly enough, and follow out
our thoughts to their logical conclusion, we come to exactly
the same viewpoint that does the Church. It means, we
shall be in accord with the Church's ancient teachings if we
define our terms clearly, and then work out logically what
we are bound to accept if logic and thought mean anything;
it means that if we are thoroughly scientific, which means
that we accept all the facts in the case as presented through
our senses, and then use our philosophy to tell what all the
facts mean, we shall find we come to exactly the point the




Backgrounds for Social Workers


Church has come to. But we must be very careful not to
begin with any preconceived notions and inherited prejudices, or we shall arrive at truth only by accident, and
an accident of this nature is not at all likely to occur.
That the idea here presented, and ably defended by Dr.
Foerster, does appeal to educated men is shown by the very
fact that men such as Professor Foerster defend it, and
there are few men who rank higher in their respective fields
of work than does this same writer. That it does appeal
to educated men is shown by Professor William James's
statement in his Pluralistic Universe, where he admits that
unless he accepts the Scholastic Philosophy, life must be
conceded illogical. That it does appeal to educated men is
shown by the fact that Professor de Wulf has been brought
from the University of Louvain to Harvard to instruct
students in this philosophy. That it does appeal to educated men is shown by the fact that Johns Hopkins University offered a professorship to the Jesuits in Scholastic
Philosophy which hovewer they declined.    That it does
appeal to educated men is shown by the fact that Columbia
University has been listening to lectures on   Scholastic
Philosophy recently, and that in England great crowds
attend lectures on this self-same subject whenever given.
That it does appeal to educated men is shown most conclusively by the great number of volumes coming from the
press on Scholastic Philosophy each year.
We do see, then, that in all the walks of education-in
our most renowned institutions of higher learning--that
that philosophy based on common-sense--the only philosophy which takes into consideration the entire field of
human life, but does not permit the extremes and the
vagaries of either idealism or materialism to hold the mind
in thrall-has made its impress, and is rapidly coming back




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into its own by those who are willing to start at the very
simplest beginnings and take, regardless of whether it be
pleasant or not, all the facts into consideration and follow
wherever logic leads.
Daily men are coming back to that philosophy which
takes things physical and things spiritual into consideration, granting each its proper sphere, but which attempts to
find and understand the relationship between these spheres;
not denying either's existence simply because one may not be
able to understand more than one point of view.
When this philosophy is taught our boys and girls again,
when Social Workers understand it, their words will ring
with truth, and they will not only know whereof they speak,
but they will know that they know, and be able to give an
account for the faith that is in them; they will be able unhesitatingly, to give an intelligent reason for their acts
based on firm intellectual and historical evidences.
They will not then take to themselves with such avidity
every new theory, simply because it is plausible. It is of
plausible things we must usually beware, for it requires
trained minds to catch the underlying falsity, should there
be falsity there, and there are but few such minds abroad.
So with all we have said held in mind, let us summarize:
(1) It is essential that we remember the past history of
the Family.
(2) It is essential that we have Validity for every act and
theory by which we wish to influence others.
(3) We must have all the facts in a given case before
being able to pass judgment.
(4) We must know the relationship between the facts
gathered as well as the relationship between the branches of
science in which the facts have been found.
(5) We must accept no man as an authority until it has




Backgrounds for Social JWorkers


first been shown that he is honest; that he knows this philespphy of the entirety of which we have just spoken, lest he,
by only seeing one side of a discussion, lose that relationship
on which we have, laid so much stress.
If all this be kept in mind and lived up to, one not only
understands that the Church holds only what any man would
hold, did he start with the same premises and draw his conclusions logically, but one is able to understand even the
sacredness of marriage without accepting any religious faith
of any kind, for one would understand that in the act
of procreation God has made man and woman partners with
himself, in that He has made it possible for them to assist
in the act of creating a new human being--to bring forth
another living image of God. And any union based upon
such an exalted plane, if entered into with. that idea in view
and dominated with that spirit, must be sacred if the word
means anything at all.
To attempt to. put all we have said on the Family in one
or two lines we may say that with the history of the Family
at our command, with the philosophy of common sense as
our guide, we can again make the Family that Sacred Institution which it once was and which most of us regret it is,
all too-often, not at the present time.
That is, without the proper backgrounds and without the
proper philosophy of life we make people only a little better
physically, a little better from a sanitary viewpoint; but,
spiritually and morally, where all progress comes from, we
leave them exactly where they were, or even worse than they
were, for any faculty of the human being not constantly
used is bound to atrophy, and this is as true of morals and
spirituality as of an arm or a hand.




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NOTES
1. See Note 8, Chapter V, in The Beginnings of Science, by
Edward J. Menge.
2. It is well to refer to an Englishman in regard to this. Dr.
James Gairdner, of which the London Athenaeum says: "There
is no living writer more thoroughly equipped for producing a
trust-worthy work on the English Reformation than Dr. Gairdner
(non-catholic). Now that the one man in England who has the
whole of the facts at his fingers' ends, has spoken with such deliberation, no decent writer, however stanchly anti-papist in his
convictions, ought to cite Legh or Layton to substantiate tales of
the vicious lives of the monks. 'It was only after an able and
despotic king,' says Gairdner, 'had proved himself stronger than
the spiritual power of Rome that the people of England were
divorced from their Roman allegiance; and there is abundant
evidence that they were divorced from it against their will.' "
See also, Article on Dr. Gairdner, in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
3. The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries, by James J.
Walsh, pp. 67-70.
4. See Luther, by Hartmann Grisar, S. J. Translated by E.
M. Lamond. Published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co.,
Ltd., London, 1913. (6 volumes.)
The value of this biography consists in actual quotations from
Luther's own works as well as from the works of his disciples,
and not in a mass of opinions collected by those who are antagonistic to the German Reformer. These quotations are definitely
cited, word for word, with page and volume from which they are
taken, so that any disputed or doubtful quotation may be substantiated.
5. See any account of Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, in any
good encyclopedia.
6. The Sexual Life of Woman, by Dr. E. H. Kish. Rebmans.




CHAPTER IX


SUMMARY
THE object of all training is to obtain those particularly valid principles upon which all our evidence must
rest for anything we wish to prove.
It is therefore essential that we know what science and
philosophy mean, for science is our method, and proof is
accepted only in so far as we have followed the rules laid
down by it, plus our logical interpretation of the facts thus
found.
In the study of anything in the nature of social problems
it is essential that we stand off far enough to obtain perspective-and this perspective can be obtained only by
knowing the history of the institutions we wish to study.
Those then who write on any social subject without regard for this history of the past must not be taken seriously.
We are seeking some kind of gauge by which to measure
the worth of a writer on social subjects.
We are trying to show the difference between acuteness
and depth.
Our terms must be defined. For example, we must think
of progress as something that starts very definitely somewhere and carries us forward from that point. We must
distinguish between individual progress and race progress.
The latter alone counting if we mean any actual getting forward, for we have shown that individual progress must
necessarily end at practically the same point for each per186




Summary


187


son, thus making no true progress at all.
The value of a knowledge of the past is twofold, i. e., to
avoid the errors into which others have fallen, and prevent
the waste of our efforts on dreams and theories that cannot
succeed.
We must be able to distinguish between those things which
occur in the lives of a people due to the mere occasion of
living at the particular time they did, and the results that
flowed from a philosophy of life they held.
We must be able to understand the terms men and women
used as referring to things and conditions of their particular time, and not read into them what these terms may
mean to us now.
We must understand what was meant by such a term as
the Church, namely, a Supreme Court of Moral Values that
merely stated whether a law made by Christian princes was
constitutional or not, and, that this Constitution was a logical development of what Christ taught.
Every one accepted the Church as such Supreme Court,
and consequently laws had a validity when sanctioned by
the Church they do not now have.
The Divine Constitution was not arbitrary as so many
believe, but was the working out of those logical laws which
every normal man uses constantly; and the findings of this
Court were the same that any man by mere virtue of the fact
that he was a man would have to come to were he passing
judgment on similar cases with the same knowledge of the
past that these men possessed.
In fact all the laws of this constitution were based on
exactly the same principles that make any of our thinking
logical and valid to-day.
But there were those who fought the Church for selfish
ends, and these being very powerful at times, and having




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Backlgrounds for Social Workers


many vassals, laws were set up and enforced by these men in
direct opposition to the Church who had the authority but
not the power to enforce her findings.
It is to these opponents of the Church that the enemies of
the Church point when finding fault with her.
It does not matter whether we like these things or not.
Any one who defends or rejects a fact because of personal
like or dislike must never be considered worthy of discussing
anything intelligently.
It is a custom now-a-days not to discuss universal principles, for the minute a man begins to think deeply, and finds
principles, he has a religion, and religion with many is taboo.
President Hibben well says that the doctrines of the
schools at last become the maxims of the crowd; it is therefore of the utmost importance that we pay the strictest
attention to what is being taught in our schools to-day.
We laugh at the men of the past, but those who come
after us will have more occasion to laugh at us; for, those
of the past persecuted a man for his principles, while we
praise and fete him for what he teaches and then most
inconsistently throw him into prison for following out
the principles he taught.
Our ability to "perceive what are the wrong things increase in an uncanny and devouring clarity," while "the
eye that sees clearly what things are right is growing
mistier and mistier every moment, till it almost goes blind
with doubt."
What is the good of discussing what should be done to
bring better and better men into the world until we have
first settled what is the good of being a man?
On what basis can we discuss what is Right and what is
Wrong?
And let us not, due to our association of physical com



Summary


189


forts originating at a certain period of histdry with the
ideas then held, assume that if we see past ideas of more
value than those of the present again being suggested, it
means the coming back of the days when physical comforts
are to be thrown aside.
We must know what training means, and that the brain
must have its regular exercise constantly during the growing
period so that it will continue developing, just as muscular
exercise is necessary to arm development.
Let us not forget that the brain reaches its maximum size
close on to when the child is fifteen years of age, and that
what he has been taught during these years remains with
him longest.
Further, that likewise, what has been left untaught, will
be very likely to remain untaught.
That, consequently not knowing the principles underlying great events, and likewise not knowing his own ignorance, the individual without proper training becomes the
worst enemy society has to cope with; for, imagining he
knows when he is ignorant, he carries conviction with him
by the mere fierceness of his onslaught alone, and not by
his reasoning.
Often, too, this type of person is a good neighbor and
a genial companion, and works havoc in his community by
being placed in positions of power on account of these traits,
when he possesses no knowledge of the department over
which he presides.
In other words, there is an immense difference between a
good, honest, and firm man, and a man who KNOWS.
We must obtain all of our principles during our early
years. Later we only apply what we have learned in youth.
Intellectual training alone without philosophical and religious convictions can make a man hygienic but never moral.




190


Backgrounds for Social Workers


It is this lack of a complete training, always excepting
feeble-mindedness, that is the principal cause of both boys
and girls going wrong, as is sufficiently evidenced by the
facts quoted.
Very few persons continue studying after leaving school;
in other words, by mere non-usage of their brain power, the
older these people become the more atrophied and worthless
their opinions.
But to pass an opinion of whether a certain thing ought
to be taught or not, requires a knowledge of the principles
on which Right and Wrong rest.
These are two only: either one must accept the Transcendental viewpoint which accepts a Creator and takes the
ultimate end for which man was created into consideration,
or one must accept the Utilitarian standard which has for
its primal fact the doctrine of delectation,-that is, pleasure.
But pleasure and duty are not by any means synonymous,
and the Utilitarian doctrine holds good only for optimists.
All are agreed that a second factor likewise enters,
namely, that only what is pleasurable in the long run is
important.
Having our theories of Right and Wrong we apply them
to one or two prominent social problems.
Birth control is one of these problems. By it is meant
that by ARTIFICIAL MEANS the sperm of the father is to be
killed or prevented from reaching the egg of the mother of
the not-wanted babe.
This is not to be confused with abortion. It is not killing
an infant-it is preventing such infant from coming into
being.
But the very agreement entered into by the contracting
parties in marriage implies that they mean what they say
-that they are responsible for the act of marriage, just as




Summary


191


all our daily acts in any civilized state are dependent upon
our assuming responsibility for our own acts and allowing
a like responsibility to others with whom we have to come
in contact.
Without responsibility for his every act and deed, no man
is worthy of notice in any civilized society.
By Natural Law we mean only that a man must be willing
to assume responsibility for his every act and deed, or he
cannot be trusted in anything, as no one will know where
to draw the line.
If, further, nature shows there is a penalty for breaking
any natural law, we have a double assurance that we are
correct in respecting it.
In the practice of birth control by artificial means, we
find penalties attached, such as dissatisfaction on the part
of the parties affected, and cumulative physical and psychical effects that are entirely too serious to be neglected.
Further, the practice of such method takes away all
restraint from the male, producing a more frequent sexual
desire than otherwise, and thus again injures the woman.
Still further, keeping the idea of "not-wanted" in the
foreground it works upon the mind of the couple constantly,
lessening the value of human life, until little by little it
seems to possess no value at all; and, thus also breaks
down the very first barrier that makes a man responsible
for his every act and deed. For, having thrown aside responsibility for his act in this instance, little by little he
throws it aside in other instances.
Because a practice of this kind may be indulged in by
many has absolutely nothing whatever to do with whether
it is right or not.
It is necessary to take one or both of our Principles on
which Right and Wrong rest, or we cannot validly pass an




Backgrounds for Social Workers


opinion in a case of this nature.
We have shown how birth control by artificial means
breaks a natural law and undermines the very principle on
which responsibility for one's acts and deeds rest, thus showing it to be wrong from the Transcendental viewpoint.
We have shown that it is physically hurtful, and even
aside from such physical injury, injures in the long run both
the parties practicing it and the race, by tearing down the
barriers of responsibility for one's acts, increasing the feebleminded, insane and criminal types, while it decreases the
number of sound and healthy children.
Consequently it is opposed to the Utilitarian principles of
Right.
We have called attention further to the fact that with a
training such as the average individual receives, which
teaches him that majorities settle the matter of Right and
Wrong, when the increase in feeble-minded, insane and criminals shall have taken place, it will be by criminals, insane,
and ignorance that even the children of the sound parents
will be controlled.
Still further, Asia with its more than half the population
of the entire globe will then be in a position to seek an outlet for its overflowing peoples, who, by sheer force of numbers will crowd our children from their native soil.
So that from every conceivable angle, birth control by
artificial means must be considered thoroughly indefensible.
With Sterilization, we must first settle our principles of
Right and Wrong as we did in discussing birth control.
Are we ever permitted to mete out punishment for the acts
of any person who is not responsible for his actions? If
so, it would be permissible for every warring nation to cut
off the hands of all male children lest at some future time
they bear arms against their conquerors.




Summary


193


Insane and feeble-minded are not responsible for their
acts, therefore it is morally unlawful to punish them. They
may be segregated so as to prevent injury to themselves and
others, and, if this be considered a punishment, it is only so
incidentally. They were not segregated for the purpose of
punishment.
As to the insane and feeble-minded a further reason may
also be assigned as to their not being sterilized, though the
one stated is amply sufficient. It has not yet been proved
that these things are inherited, though most texts seem to
consider that it has been. The authors of these volumes
assume this primarily on account of having observed that
children from subnormal parents often follow in their parents' footsteps. But this can be laid to training in any
number of cases, and not to heredity. It seems from all the
evidence so far gathered that feeble-mindedness and insanity are due to a micro-organism.
This leaves only the criminals to consider when discussing
sterilization. But, it has been shown, that sterilization may
create a greater sexual desire in the sterilized male than
was formerly there. If we stop to consider what this means,
we find we are really injuring ourselves more than we are
benefited by this operation.
Sterilization does not prevent the individual from having
sexual intercourse; and, all checks being removed, and a
greater desire being instilled, at least in the male, if he had
criminal tendencies before, and had seduced any girls prior
to his sterilization, he will quite naturally be inclined to
seduce many more afterward.
And, on moral grounds, it is causing him to, due to his
lack of will power, commit more sin than formerly, by producing greater desires without any corresponding increase in
will power.




194


Backgrounds for Social Workers


As to Eugenics, which means to be "happily-born" we
have the interesting biological fact to contend with that the
vast number of eggs and sperm from which a possible
fertilization may spring, make the chance so slight of ever
getting the ones we want to meet each other, that we cannot
even dream of such chance being fulfilled.
In regard to Sex-hygiene, all are agreed that the child
should be taught, but the problem is, who is to be the
teacher?
Very few men or women are capable of doing this. Parents are the logical ones to give such information, but to do
this, parents themselves must be trained. This information
should come from one who has a thorough knowledge of
both the moral and the natural law. A comprehensive volume that will do this is needed, and this instruction to parents
should come at the time of marriage.
The child must be made to feel and to know that, as has
already been said, morals are not mere matters of arbitrary
law; that they do not obtain their validity because Church
or Bible says so, but that underlying both Church and Bible
are these selfsame verities and principles to which the
Church and Bible but give expression, and parents must be
able to see that without Religion there can be no morality,
but they must not confuse Religion with some form of
Religion.
The child must not be told a lot of things that are not so.
In classes of biology there is much opportunity to teach
some of these things, provided the sexes are kept separate,
or, it may produce but an opening for salacious conversations.
The child must be shown the difference between being
moral and being hygienic. That no matter how good a life
he lead, if he does not do this intelligently and intentionally




Summary


195


because it is good and moral, he is very immoral. It is the
intention that counts.
Having shown how to apply, as well as how to find the
necessary principles with which to begin any study of social
problems, we then consider the most important institution
with which things social deal,-the family.
Here we take up the history and state of the primitive
family, showing what is meant by primitive, and how the
evidence for our conclusions is obtained.
Then we consider the principal theories which various
writers assume as true before starting their discussion.
The child being born with certain nerv-arcs having a
tendency to function in certain definite paths, all teaching
is but changing these pathways; that is, teaching means
forming associative habits. But if a prejudice of any kind
has been associated with anything taught, it will always
come forth at any future time whenever any idea is presented that is even remotely connected with the original
thing taught.
This is as true of what one's notions of evolutionary
theories happen to be as it is of what one reads into history.
It is therefore important in all study not to choose a
single writer or a single group of writers to follow, for
most men are inclined to quote only those who favor their
own viewpoints.
There has been no evolution in either perfection itself or
in man's method of thought. That is, he is a logical animal,
whether he will it or not.
The stressing of one or more points is all that makes any
psychological difference 3 that exists between nations and
peoples.
By the term Family is meant a husband with all his wives
and children, or a wife with all her husbands and children,




196


Backgrounds for Social Workers


though it is often used in another sense, meaning those particular groups which trace their lineage from a common
ancestor.
There are three types of marriage, namely, polygamy,
polyandry, and monogamy; meaning respectively, having
several wives, having several husbands, and having either
only one wife or one husband.
The various theories advanced to explain the history of
the family are principally the Matriarchal, the Patriarchal,
and the Economic.
Not enough attention is given to the psychological aspect
of the case; that is, to the desires, emotions, and the mental
and spiritual values that people have placed on certain
theories of men.
Evidence seems to point to the woman having had considerable choice in earliest times in choosing her mate.
Some tribes and nations standing on equal planes in the
intellectual scale, allow divorce and some do not.
Darwin considered the Fuegians lowest in the scale of
intelligence, while Professor Max Miiller in investigating
these people found they had a language of such wealth of
expression that it was conclusively proven that they must
have occupied a much higher state of existence at some time
in the remote past, showing that there are ups and downs
in the lives of nations as there are in the lives of individuals,
and, leading us to accept the dictum of Alfred Russel
Wallace, who says in his last book, that so far as evidence
is concerned, man has not made one particle of moral progress since the beginnings of history.
In discussing the family during the middle ages, we must
remember that there are really three divisions to this period:
375 to 800, 800 to 1300 and 1300 to 1500.
But the entire middle ages were ages of Faith in God, at




Summaty


l97


contradistinguished from the present age, which is an age
of Faith in Science.
The Church during this period began its distinct sway
over the greater part of Europe which brought civilization
out of chaos.
Up to about 800 (the era of Charlemagne) the entire
Christian world was of one faith. It was shortly after this
time that the Eastern Church separated from the Western,
both however to this day holding nearly all doctrines in
common, showing that what is held to-day by these two
great divisions of Christianity must have been held by the
Church universal during the time preceding such separation.
We must not confuse the temporal power of an individual
with the spiritual. We must not confuse laws made and enforced by so-called Christian princes with those laws which
the Church made on distinctly church matters for her own
members.
Marriage was always a sacrament to the ancient Church.
So was ordination to the priesthood. And as it required
greater strength of character and will power to live truly
as a celibate, it was considered of greater dignity to receive
the sacrament of orders than of marriage, but marriage
being a sacrament, it was a divine sign instituted by Christ,
and consequently, held in great honor.
The men of the past stressed the spiritual side of all
things and as we of the present day interpret everything in
physical terms, most of us fail to catch their vision or their
viewpoint.
We must not forget that there were only two careers open
to men. The army and the Church. Every one who cared
for anything intellectual at all took orders, while those who
did not entered the army; so, the intellectuals of all these cen



198


Backgrounds for Social Workers


turies being celibates, all of us are the descendants of men
who cared nothing for anything but power. In fact under
such a regime, all the intellectuals died out in each generation, and a new group of men handled the reins in each
succeeding generation.
The Church always taught the equality of man and
woman in her province-that of morals.
The Church considers marriage a mere natural contract
before the dawn of the Christian era; a sacrament after
that time, and as such, marriage must be amenable to her
jurisdiction.
A few of the things the Church was able to do during
these great days were, abolition of abortion, infanticide,
and child exposure, as well as preventing the father from
selling any member of his family into slavery, or from having the power of life and death over them.
No divorce with privilege of remarriage during the lifetime of one's spouse was permitted. And any statements
made to the contrary are based on the inability of the writer
to understand the difference between a divorce proper and
a court's finding a marriage illegal; that is, that it did not
exist at all-that the parties in question had never been
married.
The single exception to this is known as the Pauline
Privilege which means only, that when one is married to an
unbeliever and such unbeliever will not consent to the Christian living according to his faith, the believer need not live
alone thereafter.
The second period of the Middle Ages saw the birth of the
Feudal System. Entire villages were encased in great walls,
making almost one castle, where the lord and his family
lived with his retainers. This bringing the family in extreme close relationship, probably brought forth a greater




Summary


199


appreciation of the opposite sex by men and women, and
led to a noble family life, but also to a great exaggeration
of womankind in many ways.
The lower classes always copy those in higher places and
if we can obtain a good knowledge of the upper and ruling
classes, we may always be sure that sooner or later those
in the lower walks of life will follow.
The aim of the period was to obtain perfection, as exemplified by the wonderful achievements in every field of
endeavor.
The last portion of the Middle Ages, 1300 to 1500, is
known as the Renaissance, or Re-birth, lasting, as it will be
observed, for two hundred years, during which time the old
pagan literature was again brought forward, instilling into
the minds of men and women Pagan ideals, loose sexual
relationships, and Platonic love, opening the way for the
Lutheran Reformation and all that went with it.
We speak the English language, and most of us are not
linguists, so, all our information has been garnered by
reading what was written in English. But England from the
time of the Reformation up to well into the last century did
not permit any one to write the truth when it reacted unfavorably toward the government or the English people.
In fact English history has been deliberately falsified.
Historians are unable to check up every statement of their
predecessors, and so copy what those who have gone before
have written, thus perpetuating an error.
We have an example in our own land of such misstatements in Compayre's History of Education, which leads to
an entirely erroneous opinion regarding the time of which
he writes, by withholding certain very important knowledge.
We must therefore seek in other languages for reliable
information, and we must be able to see the difference be



200


Backgrounds for Social Workers


tween an opinion expressed by the historian, and an actual
quotation from some writer of the past showing what he
himself taught or believed.
As has been said, the Renaissance brought forth sensual
ideals, which, having nothing higher than the gratification
of the mere senses as an ideal, sank to pure sexuality.
With men and women thinking only of things sexual and
sensual, any training there was left of the past must have
caused a pang of conscience every once in a while, and
produced a desire for some justification for throwing aside
all those moral ideals of a bygone time.
Luther appeared at the psychological moment.       His
doctrine that marriage was not a sacrament and was a
matter for each state and city to adjust for itself, as well
as his teaching that Faith alone justified, caused all men and
women who sought an excuse for immoral acts to find it here.
No matter what Luther may have meant by this doctrine, no
matter how much his followers may try to explain it away,
the fact remains that men and women of his day found his
doctrines very pleasing to their comfort of mind.
His further doctrine that any woman not a mother after
due time had elasped should call on friend or brother of
the husband, to father a prospective child, did not add anything to the dignity of marriage.
Conditions became worse until the Puritans tried to overcome them   by legislation.  They were correct in their
desire but erroneous in their method.
Dr. Foerster's book is full of excellent suggestions of
great importance in social work, and should be in every one's
library.
We must not make the mistake of Professor Goodsell, in
assuming that Professor Foerster is trying to make individuals give their intelligence into the keeping of the Church




Summary


9101


or any other institution; but, we must realize that he is
seeking to have men and women go down to the very roots
of the matter under discussion, or, as we should put it,-to,
take up the study of Scholastic Philosophy again-which
cannot but help to clear up so many superficial and absurd
theories that are cast afloat every so often.
It is as erroneous to take this view of Professor Goodsell's as it is to assume that because we insist upon the study
of grammar we are trying to prevent speech. We are but
trying to make speech correct, and so by the study of
Scholastic Philosophy we are but trying to put our reasonings into such form that they will have that same validity
for men and women at large now, that the approval of
the Church in the past had for the people of that day and
time.
Apparently this is realized and appreciated by several
of our largest universities, where lectures in, Scholastic
Philosophy are now conducted.
And finally, we must always remember, that until we have
all the facts in a given case, a man with sufficient intelligence
to understand and interpret them, and a lack of prejudice
in searching for results, we may not validly say that we are
sure we are right in anything.








BIBLIOGRAPHY
To Be Purchased and Used Constantly
On Right and Wrong, W. S. Lilly. (London, 1892.)
Chapman & Hall.
The Education of the Central Nervous System, Reuben
Post Halleck.
The Beginnings of Science, Edward J. Menge. Richard
G. Badger, 1918.
Marriage and the Sex Problem, F. W. Foerster (New
York, 1912).
A History of the Family as a Social and Educational
Institution, Willystine Goodsell, Macmillan, 1915.
Social Problems, Ezra Thayer Towne, Macmillan, 1917.
Problems of Philosophy, John Grier Hibben, Scribner's.
A Manual of Scholastic Philosophy, by Cardinal Mercier,
B. Herder.
Eugenics, by Dr. Lawrence F. Flick, Published by Joseph
McVey.
The Church and Eugenics, Rev. T. J. Gerrard, B. Herder
(1912).
Volumes and Articles for General Reference
The History of Human Marriage (1901), E. Westermarck.
A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Chiefly in Enggland and the United States (1914), Geo. Elliott Howard.
This volume contains an excellent bibliography.
203




204


204           Bibliography


Studies in Family Life, C. S. Devas (London, 1886),
Burns and Oates.
The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centunries, James J.
Walsh.
The most comprehensive discussion of sterilization known
to the writer took place in the columns of the Ecclesiastical
Review during the various issues from 1911-1913, from both
a philosophical, moral and medical standpoint. Most of this
discussion, men of all nations taking part therein, had to be
conducted in a common language, so, while some of the
articles appeared in English, the greater part thereof were
written in Latin.
See also all articles on such subjects as Family, Divorce,
Sociology, Right, Wrong, Morality, Ethics, Science, Philosophy, etc., in the following Encyclopedias: The Encyclopedia Britannica, The Catholic Encyclopedia, The
Jewish, Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics.
Consult the Periodical Index in any Public Library, to find
dates, and Journals in which articles written on any of the
subjects mentioned in this book are discussed pro and con.
Chapter XII, in The Beginnings of Science above mentioned, gives a very comprehensive list of volumes to. be- read
which bear a vital relationship to the chapters in this blook,
while at the end of each chapter in Professor Goodsell's
volume on the Family an excellent bibliography is given for
those who wish to go deeply into the study of that subject.




INDEX


Acquired Characteristics not transmitted, 12
Acquired Characteristics not transmitted, Note 2, Ch. IV
Act done for different purposes, a
different act, 145
Acute minds, 51
Age of Faith, 144
Alcoholic stimulant, 37
Aldheim, Bishop, 158
Altruism, 46
Amentia, 106
Americans, poor linguists, 167
American Schools, 167
American   Journal of Sociology,
Note 4, Ch. VI
American   Journal of Sociology,
Note 2, Ch. II
Amusements, unwholesome, Note 2,
Ch. II
Anarchy, birth of, 36
Anarchistical viewpoint, 89
Animal intelligence, 47
Animal intelligence, Note 3, Ch.
III
Anglican Ritual, 157
Anglo-Saxons, 156
Application of laws and principles,
39
Aquinas, Thomas of, 45, 62
Aristotle, 63
Arrested brain development, 106
Association, confused with intelligence, 30
Association fibres, 28, 31, 49


Athenaeum, Note 2, Ch. VIII
Australian Tribes, 132
Bachofen, 128, 131
Bacon, Roger, 151
Bacon, Sir Francis, 151
Bagehot, Walter, 190
Behavior, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, Note 6, Ch.
VI
Benedictines, 168
Beneficent necessity, 46
Bentham, 58, 60
Berlin, Note 2, Ch II
Beweddung, 157
Bible, 75, 115, 174
Bigotry, 34
Biology, 35
Biological Theories, Note 2, Ch. IV
Birth Control, 71, 180
Blurring does not mean non-existence, 52
Bologna, University of, 169
Bolsheviki, 16
Booth, Mrs. Bramwell, Note 2, Ch.
II
Bores, 35
Brain, arrested development, 106
Brain, changes in, in insanity, 108
Brain, not cause of thought, 60
Brain, needs regular exercise, 28,
29
Brain weights, 27
Brain weight decreases early, 28
Brilliant men on side of error, 53


205




206


Index


Britannica, Encyclopedia, Note 1,
Ch. VII
Britannica, Encyclopedia, Note 2,
Ch. VIII
British National Birth Rate Commission, 82
Browning Clubs, 170
Burden    of   Feeble-mindedness,
Note 1, Ch. V
Burghers, 161
Business world does not give same
education as does schooling, Note
3, Ch. II
Cambridge students' brains, 28
Campbell, Rev. R. J., 20
Canfield, James Hulme, Note 3,
Ch. II
Catholic Encyclopedia, Note 1, Ch.
VII
Catholic Encyclopedia, Note 4, Ch.
VII
Celibacy, 111, 151
Ceylon, 134
Charlemagne, 142, 146, 157
Charron, la Sagesse, 178
Chesterton, Gilbert K., 15, 34, 42
Chicago Vice Commission, Note 2,
Ch. II
Child Marriages, 176
Child must work out own tasks, 35
Child-study, Note 2, Ch. IV
Chinese, 134, 136
Christ, 144
Christianity, 44, 55, 142
Christian Ethics not purely arbitrary, 45
Christian hero to be held up as an
example, 111
Christian morality, 63
Christian Constitution, 153
Church, The, 13
Church Fathers, 149


Church, Eastern Orthodox, Note 1,
Ch. VII
Church, English, 147
Church, Greek, Note 1, Ch. VII
Church, Italian, 147
Church, Heresy and Schism, Note
1, Ch. VII
Church, Irish, 147
Church, position of, being cast
aside cause of modern ideas of
laxity of marriage relation, 180
Church, Spanish, 147
Church, what it did during Middle
Ages, 155
Church, as a Supreme Court of
moral values, 14
Church's two-fold work, 153
Church's teaching same as that any
intelligent man would come to,
starting with the same premises,
181
Church's constitution not arbitrary,
14
Civic Federation of New    York,
Note 2, Ch. II
Classification of Sociologists, 123
Clear Idealism, 18
Clement of Alexandria, 151
Clergyman's children, Note 10, Ch.
IV
Cnut, Danish King's Law, 157
College Student, The, and his problems, Note 3, Ch. II
Columbia University, 182
Commercialized vice, Note 2, Ch.
II
Common Heritage of a century not
to be confused with Church's
doctrines, 13
Compayr6, 168
Conscience, 56
Cramped   living  accommodations
Note 2, Ch. II




Index


207


Craving for excitement, Note 2,
Ch. II
Creator, 14
Creeks, 134
Crime, a miscalculation, 58
Criminality, 84
Criminals, 99
Crime consists in being found out,
90
Crusades, 159
Dacotah Indians, 133
Dallas News, Note 3, Ch. IV
Damoiselles, 160
Darwin, 29, 133, 137
Darwinism, Note 2, Ch. IV
Davis, Katherine Bennett, Note 2,
Ch. II
Death Valley, 37
Defective Mentality, Note 2, Ch. II
Dementia Precox, 22
Depew, Chauncey, Note 2, Ch. II
Descartes, 45
Determinist, 121
Devas, 135
de Wulf, Prof., 182
Diet, 29
Difference between Men and Animals Psychological, 47
Difference between similar appearing acts consists in difference of
purpose in performing them, 94
Distinguishing ability important, 48
Divine Constitution, 14
Divorce, Note 4, Ch. VII
Divorce, misunderstanding of term,
155
Doctrines of the Schools become at
last the Maxims of the Crowd,
16
Dog, Experiment on, Note 3, Ch.
III
Dominancy, 105


Dorpat, Note 2, Ch. II
Dual Viewpoint, 148, 152
Dutton, Rolland, 177
Duty, 43, 61
Duty differs from delectation, 61
Early Training, 67, 90, 115, Note 2,
Ch. II
Early exercise on brain, 29
Early training determines one's attitude toward world, 29
Early training determines one's
later enjoyments, 31
Eastern Church, 147, Note 1, Ch.
VII
Ecclesiastical Review, Note 2, Ch.
V, Note 4, Ch. IV
Economic reasons for immorality,
Note 2, Ch. II
Edison, Thomas, 32
Education, 18, 27, 33, 35, Note 2,
Ch. IV
Education narrows, 33
Education of the Central Nervous
System, Note 1, Ch. II
Education, Many books on, are
worthless, 72
Egoism, 46
Egyptian, 136
Elizabeth, Queen, 175
Emotionalism, 65
End for which man was made, 43
End justifies the means, 59
Endogamy, 134
England, 156, 158, 165, 182
English Housewife, 179
English, Histories in English Language untruthful, 166
English, poor linguists, 167
English Reformation, Note 2, Ch.
VIII
Erasmus, 175, 178
Esquimaux, 64, 134




Index


Essences of things independent of
Divine will, 45
Ethics, 43, 44, 139, 180
Ethics of animals, 47
Ethics, modern, what it lacks, 17
Ethics not due to pleasure-pain
concepts, 62
Ethical conceptions discredited, 55
Eugenics, 99, 105, 110
Eugenics Education Society, 105
Eugenics and    Mental Diseases,
Note 2, Ch. V
Europe, 146, 169
European Races, 150
Evolution, Note 2, Ch. IV, 46
Exogamy, 132
Experts, 24, 26, 36
Experts disagreeing, 32
Extravagant girls, 35
Eye that sees what things are right,
growing mistier, 18
Facts, 118, 164
Faith, Age of, 144
Faith alone justifies, 174
Fallen women not confined to poor,
Note 2, Ch. II
Family, Meaning of, 127
Family, Primitive, 118
Family, The, as a Social and Educational Institution, Note 3, Ch.
VI
Families, Types of, 126
Father's part in inheritance, 100
Fathers and Mothers, 19
Father takes to bed with infant,
136
Feeble-minded, 32, 99, 104, 106,
Feeble-minded, Burden of, Note 1,
Ch. V
Feeble-mindedness a Disease, 102
Feelings not to be depended upon,
07


Fernald, Walter E., Note 1, Ch. V
Feudal System, 157
Fewer children do not insure better quality, 93
Fijians, 131
Flexner, Dr. Abraham, Note 2, Ch.
II
Flick, Dr. Lawrence, Note 2, Ch.
V, 106
Foerster, 111, 180
Foundations of Learning must be
laid early, 31
France, 167, 170, 174
Free Farmers, 161
Free Will a delusion, 46
French Revolution, 16
Fuegians, 132, 137
Gairdner, Note 2, Ch. VIII
Gardiner, A. G., 20, 21, Note 4,
Ch. I
Gauge of Intellect, 47
General good not personal good, 61
Germans, 141
Germany, 146, 167, 174
Gifta, 157
Good of being a man, 19
Goodsell, Willystine, 128, 149, 176,
Note 3, Ch. VI
Gradation of man's removal from
the lower animals is adjudged by
his thinking capacity, 47
Greece, 89, 136, 142
Greek Literature, 170
Grisar, Hartman, Note 4, Ch. VIII
Ground of all obligation, 43
Grosse, 129, 130, 133
Haeckel, 'Prof. Ernst, 165
Halleck, Reuben Post, 28
Hamlet, 60
Harding, 141, 159, 171
Harvard University, 182




Index


209


Hedonism, 171
Hegel, 59
Heredity, 107, 110
Heretics, Note 1, Ch. I
Hibben, John Grier, Note 2, Ch.
I.
Histological changes, 108
Histories in English Language untruthful, 166
Historians quote those who have
gong before whether true or untrue, 167
History of Human Marriage, 128
History of Pedagogy, 168
Holy Orders, 149
Holy Roman Empire, 146
Hope of Race, 19
Howard, 134
Hiibner, Baron von, 55
Huxley, Professor, 54
Hysteria, 83
Ibsen, 18
Ideals, 34, 43, 52, 63, 75, 111, 125,
126, 150, 161
Ideals, Pagan, 162, 174, 180
Idealism, Clear, absence of, distinguishing feature of realistic literature, 18
Idiocy, 84, 106
Idleness, Note 2, Ch. II
Ignorance of Social Temptations,
Note 2., Ch. II
Ignorant Parents, Note 2, Ch. II
"I may not be moral but I know
I'm hygienic," 34
Immoral associates, Note 2, Ch. II
Immorality, Economic reasons for,
Note 2, Ch. II
Inconsistency of modern viewpoint,
17
Individual Temperament, Note 2,
Ch. II


Inexperience, Note 2, Ch. II
Infant damnation, 154
Information; where obtained, 127
Inhefiting, 100
Injury may accumulate before becoming known, 79
Injurious home influences, Note 2,
Ch. II
Insane, 84, 99, 104, 106
Insanity a disease, 102
Insanity among farmers' wives, 81
Insanity, Inheritance of, 100
Instinct and the Rational Life,
Note 3, Ch. III
Intellect, Gauge of, 47
Intelligence, Association confused
with, 30
Intent, 48, 56, 57, 66, Note 5, Ch.
III
International Congress at Paris,
Note 2, Ch. II
Irish Church, 147
Italy, 167, 170, 174, 178
Italian Church, 147
James, Win., 121, 182, Note 2, Ch.
VI
Jesuits, 59, 182
Johns Hopkins University, 138, 182
Jordan, David Starr, 90
Kellogg, Vernon L., Note 2, Ch. IV
Kentucky, 137
Kinkus, Note 2, Ch. II
Kish, Dr. F. H., 176, Note 6, Ch.
VIII
Kneeland's Commercialized Prostitution in New York City, Note 2,
Chap. II
Knowledge alone does not protect,
112
Kurnai of Australia, 134




210


Index


Lack of Ethical Training, Note 2,
Ch. II
Lack of Moral Training, Note 2,
Ch. II
Lack of Religious Training, Note
2, Ch. II
Law of God known through both
Reason and Revelation, 44
Laws not arbitrary, 116
Laws not the reason for duty,
44
Laws formerly unquestioned when
validated by the Church, 14
Laws, written, 126
Learning, the New, 162
Lecky, 59, 61
Legh, Note 2, Ch. VIII
Leyton, Note 2, Ch. VIII
Leo X, pope, 172
"Like master, like man," 161
Lilly, W. S., 54, 59, 61, 72, Note 1,
Ch. IV; Note 2, Ch. III
Literature, Pagan, 161
Living a clean life may be immoral, 115
Logic, 71
London Daily News, 20
Louvain, University of, 182
Love of ease, Note 2, Ch. II
Love of finery and pleasure, Note
2, Ch. II
Love, honor and obey, 177, 178
Low wages, Note 2, Ch. II
Lowered mortality due to Birth
Control, 91
Luther, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, Note
4, Ch. VIII
Luther's Table-Talks, 174
Lycurgus, 126
Macaulay, Lord, 51
McCarthy, Dr. D. J., 109
Maine, Sir Henry, 129


Majorities have nothing to do with
Right and Wrong or with Truth
in the Moral order, 58
Malays, 131
Mallory, J. Hudson, 91, 94
Mankind in the Making, 19
Man's final goal, 75
Maoris, 134
Markham, 179
Marriage, 149, 162
Marriage, Child, 176
Marriage, Meaning of, 127
Marriage, and the Sex Problem, 180
Marriage, a matter of city legislation, 173
Marriage, History of human, 128
Mary, Queen of Scots, 175
Mary, Virgin, 34
Massachusetts Society for Mental
Hygiene, Note 1, Ch. V
Materialism, 59
Matriarchal System, 128
Maupassant, 18
Meanings, 118
Medieval and Modern History, Essentials of, 141
Medieval Family, 141
Men and Animals, difference is
psychological, 47
Menace of Birth Control, Note 9,
Ch. IV
Mendelian Theory, 105
Menge, Edward J., Note 4, Ch. III
Mentality, Defective, Note 2, Ch.
II
Mental    development   stoppage
should be gauge of intellectual
age, 32
Mental diseases, 106
Merit and demerit, 44
Middle Ages, 141, 148
Middle Ages, Intellectual feebleness of, 168




Index


211


Middle Ages, Dual Viewpoint of,
148
Micro-organic Theory of Insanity,
110
Minds, Acute, 51
Missing Link no longer sought, 138
Moegth, 156
Mohammedan, 134
Morals, 56, 102, 103, 111, 139, 153
Moral Law is apprehended not
made, 62
Morality, Christian, 63
Morality, rooted in the spiritual
nature of man, 63
Morality, Single standard of, Note
5, Ch. III
Morbidity of Modern Ethics, 17
Morley, John, 58
Morning gift, 157
Moron, 111
Moses, 126
Mother's part in inheritance, 100
Motive, 63
Miller, Professor Max, 137
Millerian-Haeckelian  Recapitulation Theory, Note 2, Ch. IV
Mutilation not justifiable except as
punishment, 105
Mutterrecht, 128
National Church, 147
Natural Law, 75
Natural Science, 119
Neill, Charles P., Note 9, Ch. II
New arrangements of customary
activities as source of pleasure,
31
Newman, John Henry, 33
New York State Reformatory for
Women, Note 2, Ch. II
Nietzsche, 45
No   evolution  in  methods   of
thought, 124


No one justified in doing what he
feels like doing because of such
feeling alone, 50, 77
No morality without religion, 52,
54
No new ideas after the age of
thirty-three, 29
Not necessary to try a thing before
knowing whether it will work or
not, 73
Obligation, 54, 58, 61, 62, 116
Obligation, Ground of, 43
Objection to realistic literature in
Nineteenth Century, 17
Occupation and Criminality, Note
2, Ch. II
On Right and Wrong, Note 1, Ch.
IV
On Right and Wrong, Note 2, Ch.
III
Orthodox, Eastern Church, Note 1,
Ch. VII
Ought, 42, 77
Our Sunday Visitor, Note 2, Ch.
II
"Outer relations produce inner Relations," 46
Oxford University, 22, 169
Pacific Islanders, 131
Pagan Ideals, 162, 174, 180
Pain-Carrying Nerves, 79
Pages, 160
Papuans, 135
Parenthood, 19
Paris, University of, 169
Patriarchal System, 129
Past, to bring back its good points
does not imply its evil ones must
be brought back also, 22
Pauline Privilege, 154, Note 4, Ch.
VII




Inder


Paupers, 85
Pedagogy, 168, Note 2, Ch. IV
Perpetual Motion, 73
Phillip, Landgrave of Hesse, 173
Philosophy, 71, 118
Phipps, Henry, Institute, 109
Physical Culture Magazine, Note 9,
Ch. IV
Physical Sciences, 71
Platonic Love, 171
Pleasure-pain concept, 60, 65, 77,
171
Plausibility not Correctness, 121
Pluralistic Universe, 182
Popular phrases are dodges to
shirk problem of good, 18
Possibilities of desired egg and
sperm meeting, 93
Poverty, Note 2, Ch. II
Primitive, meaning of, 126
Problems of Philosophy, Note 2,
Ch. I
Progress, 12, 18, 19, 21
Prophets, Priests and Kings, Note
4, Ch. I
Prostitution, Note 2, Ch. II
Proving one's position, 51
Psychology, 35, 121, 130, 136, Note
2, Ch. VI
Puebloes, 134
Puritans, 18, 22, 180
Racial Differences, 43
Rainbow, Chasing the, 21
Reading, Much, unless well-chosen,
may narrow one, 124
Reason, 64
Reason   for laws opposing the
Church, 14
Reasoning, 116
Reasoning, may be good or bad,
64


Recapitulation theory, 165
Recession, 105
Reformation, 22, 152, 154, 162, 165
Relation of Sex to Primitive Social Control, 129
Religion, 18, 54, 111
Religion, Chief claim of, 18
Religion not to be confused with
some form of Religion, 54
Renaissance, 142, 170, 183
Renaissance   and   Reformation
Family; Summary, 183
Renan, M., 55
Right and Wrong, 42, 46, 71, 74,
102, 115, 139, 162
Right and Wrong, On, Note 1 Ch.
IV; Note 2, Ch. III
Right and Wrong, purely human
conceptions, 46
Right to do that which one will
with one's own, 62
Ripley, 150
Roehl, Raymond D., Note 1, Ch.
III
Rome, 89, 136, 141, 142, 146
Roman Catholic Church, 148
Roman Literature, 170
Routh, Dr. Amand, 83
Royal Commission    in  England,
Note 6, Ch. IV
Ruskin, Dr., 134
Russia, 147, Note 1, Ch. VII
Sacraments, 149, 162, Note 3, Ch.
VII
St. Gall, Monastery of, 168
Salons, 170
Sanitation and Table Etiquette,
175
Schism and Heresy, Note 1, Ch.
VII
Scholastic Philosophy, 182




Index


213


Schools, Because a thing is taught
in them does not make it true,
166
Schopenhauer, 45
Science, 71, 118, 119, 120
Science, Natural, 119
Science, Natural, Starting point in,
120
Scientists agree to accept laboratory evidence only, 120
Scientific Monthly, Note 3, Ch. III
Scripture, 75
Selection Theories, Note 2, Ch. IV
Self-abuse, 84
Self-made men uncomfortable in
the presence of those who have
had a better education, Note 3,
Ch. II
Serfs, 161
Servants, Note 2, Ch. II
Sex Instruction, 99, 112, 113
Shakespeare Clubs, 170
Sharlieb, Dr. Mary, 83
Shaw, George Bernard, 124
Shop-girls, Note 2, Ch. II
Sippe, 156
Slater, T., Note 4, Ch. IV
Sincerity, 27, 37, 56, 67
Sincerity, not to be confused with
Truth, 27
Single Standard of Morality, Note
5, Ch. III
Smith, Joseph, 136
Sociology, American Journal of,
Note 2, Ch. II; Note 4, Ch. VI
Sociological Starting Points, 122
Sociologists, Classification of, 123
Social Disease, 112
Social Environment and     Morar
Progress, Note 7, Ch. VI
Social Inheritance, 13
Social Workers, 183
Solon, 126, 142


Sommers, Dr. H. J., Jr., 108
Soul important, 144
Spain, 135
Spallanzini, 29
Spanish Church, 147
Spaulding, Professor, 125
Spencer, Herbert, 46, 51, 53, 60, 77
Standard of Right and Wrong, 94,
Note 5, Ch. IV
Stanford, Leland, Jr., University,
125
Stanley, Margaret, 177
State Hospital for the Insane,
Morristown, Pa., 108
Stephen of Blois, 159
Sterilization, 88, 99, 107, 110, 112,
Note 1, Ch. V
Sterilization, Cause of additional
degeneracy, 112
Sterilization, Why imposed, 102
Stressing a point, 43, 126, 139
Stressing man's ultimate end, 21
Stressing man's spiritual side, 149
Stromberg, Note 2, Ch. II
Success, 27
Superstition, 145
Supreme Court of Moral Values,
153
Systematized Knowledge, 118
Test of intellect is in ability at
reasoning, 56
Thibet, 134
Thirteenth, The, Greatest of Centuries, Note 3, Ch. VIII
Thirty-three years, age at which
brain  probably  begins to decrease, 28
Thomas, W. I., 129
Tissue of Births, 19
Todas of India, 132, 134
Torrey, Harry Beal, Note 3, Ch.
III




Index


Training, 24, 67
Transcendentalism, 43, 52, 59, 65,
75, 116
Tredgold, Note 6, Ch. IV
Trotzky, 16
Troubadours, 160
Truth, 53, 71
Truth not changed by our varying
opinions of it, 15
Two things that are different, not
necessarily better or worse than
each other, 150
Two ways of teaching, 34
Unhappy Homes, Note 2, Ch. II
United States Census, 1910, 84,
Note 3, Ch. IV
United States Commissioner of Labor, Note 2, Ch. II
University of Dallas, Note 1, Ch.
III
Unpopular Review, 35
Un-understandabilities, 24
Utah, 136
Utilitarianism, 43, 52, 46, 60, 65, 75,
77, 116
Utilitarianism holds good only for
Optimists, 77
Valid reason for living a moral
life, 57, Note 2, Ch. II
Valid claim of credit for rightness
depends upon    reasonable and
valid motive, 55
Validity, 151, 163, 180
Validity  of Church   being  cast
aside, reason for modern ideas
of non-sanctity of marriage, 180
Validity in the Spiritual world, 151
Veddahs of Ceylon, 135
Venereal Disease, Note 1, Ch. V


Venn, 28
Vice, 111, Note 2, Ch. II; Note 1,
Ch. V
Vice, Commercialized, Note 2, Ch.
II
Vice Commission, Chicago, Note 2,
Ch. II
Virtue called expedience, 46
Virtues are wrongly credited, 55
Wallace, Alfred Russel, 139
Walsh, Dr. James J., Note 3, Ch.
VIII
Watson, Professor John, 138
Weakness of Mind and Will, Note
2, Ch. II
Wells, H. G., 19
West Australians, 131
Westermarck, P r o f e s s o r, 128,
133
Western Church, 147
What am I bound to do? 43
What is good? 19
What must be borne in mind when
passing judgments? 63
What is resented in modern realistic literature? 18
Why am I bound to do anything at
all? 43
Why girls go wrong, Note 2, Ch. II
Why should one be moral? 62
Widows and widowers, 157
Wilson, Dr. Helen, Note 2, Ch. If
Wilde, Oscar, 17
Women wear artificial beards, 136
Working classes, 161
Wundt, Professor Wm., 30, Note 3,
Ch. 3
Wulf, de, Professor, 182


Zola, 18






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