Chapter XLI: Section 8: The Plot Against Christendom

All purposive actions are ultimately based on philosophy of one sort or another. If, for example, we find a rich man founding hospitals for the poor, we may assume that he believes in the principle of Charity. It is, therefore, of prime importance to determine what kind of philosophy underlies Neo-Malthusian propaganda. The birth controllers profess to be actuated solely by feelings of compassion and of benevolence towards suffering humanity; and it is on these grounds that they are appealing to the Church of England to bless their work, or at least to lend to their propaganda a cloak of respectability. Now, the very fact that Neo-Malthusians are sincere in their mistaken and dangerous convictions makes it all the more necessary that we should discover the doctrines on which their propaganda was originally based; because, although their economic fallacies were borrowed from Malthus, their philosophy came from a different source.

This philosophy is to be found, naked and unashamed, in a book entitled _The Elements of Social Science_. I have already referred to this work as the Bible of Neo-Malthusians, and its teaching has been endorsed as recently as 1905 by the official journal of the Malthusian League, as witness the following eulogy, whose last lines recall the happy days of Bret Harte in the Far West, and the eloquent periods of our old and valued friend Colonel Starbottle:

"This work should be read by all followers of J.S. Mill, Garnier, and
the Neo-Malthusian school of economists. We could give a long criticism
of the many important chapters in this book; but, as we might be
considered as prejudiced in its favour because of our agreement with
its aims, we prefer to cite the opinion given by the editor of that
widely circulated and most enlightened paper _The Weekly Times and
Echo_, which appears in its issue of October 8." [98]

Before quoting from the book an explanation is due to my readers. I do not suggest that all of those who are to-day supporting the propaganda for artificial birth control would agree with its foolish blasphemies and drivelling imbecilities; but it is nevertheless necessary to quote these things, because our birth controllers are too wise in their day and generation to reveal to the public, still less to the Church of England, _the philosophy on which Neo-Malthusianism was originally based, and from which it has grown_. Moreover, the Malthusians claim that it was the author of the _Elements of Social Science_ "who interested Mr. Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant in the question." [99] Four quotations from the last edition of the book will suffice:

"But this is a certain truth, that any human being, any one of us,
no matter how fallen and degraded, is an infinitely more glorious
and adorable being than any God that ever was or will be
conceived" (p. 413).

In justice to the memory of John Stuart Mill, whom Malthusians are ever quoting, it should be noted that the foregoing blasphemy is nothing more nor less than a burlesque of Positivism or of Agnosticism. The teaching of Mill, Bain, and of Herbert Spencer was that the knowledge of God and of His nature is impossible, because our senses are the _only_ source of knowledge. Their reasoning was wrong--because a primary condition of all knowledge is memory, in itself an intuition, because primary mathematical axioms are intellectual intuitions, and because mind has the power of abstraction; but, even so, not one of these men was capable of having written the above-quoted passage. The next quotation refers to marriage.

"Marriage is based upon the idea that constant and unvarying love is
the only one which is pure and honourable, and which should be
recognised as morally good. But there could not be a greater error than
this. Love is, like all other human passions and appetites, subject to
change, deriving a great part of its force and continuance from variety
in its objects; and to attempt to fix it to an invariable channel is to
try to alter the laws of its nature"(p. 353).

That quotation is an example of how evil ideas may arise from muddled thinking: because if the word "lust" be substituted for the word "love" in the third sentence, the remaining forty-five words would merely convey a simple truth, expressed by Kipling in two lines:

"For the more you 'ave known o' the others
The less will you settle to one."

Very few people, I suppose, are so foolish as to believe that man is by nature either a chaste or a constant animal, and indeed in this respect he appears to his disadvantage when compared with certain varieties of birds, which are _by nature_ constant to each other. On the other hand, millions of people believe that man is able to overcome his animal nature; and for the past two thousand years the civilised races of the world have held that this is a goal towards which mankind should strive. In the opinion of Christendom chastity and marriage are both morally good, but, according to the philosophy of our Neo-Malthusian author, they are morally evil.

"Chastity, or complete sexual abstinence, so far from being a virtue,
is invariably a great natural sin" (p. 162).

Is it not obvious that to the writers of such passages love is synonymous with animalism, with lust? It is by no means necessary to go to saints or to moralists for a refutation of this Neo-Malthusian philosophy. Does any decent ordinary man or woman agree with it? Ask the man in the street. Turn the pages of our literature. Refer to Chaucer or Spenser, to Shakespeare or Milton, refer to Fielding or Burns or Scott or Tennyson. Some of these men were very imperfect; but they all knew the difference between lust and love; and it is because they can tell us at least something of that which is precious, enduring, ethereal, and divine in love that we read their pages and honour their names. Not one of these men could have written the following sentence:

"Marriage distracts our attention from the real sexual
duties, and this is one of its worst effects" (p. 366).

Now it is certain that if "the real sexual duties" are represented by promiscuous fornication, then both marriage and chastity are evil things. That philosophy is very old. From time immemorial--it has been advocated by one of the most powerful intelligences in the universe. Such is the soil on which the Neo-Malthusian fungus has grown--a soil that would rot the foundations of Europe.

[Footnote 66: _The Lancet_, May 14, 1921, p. 1024]

[Footnote 67: _British Medical Journal_, 1921, vol. ii, p. 93.]

[Footnote 68: _The Small Family System_, 2nd edit., p. 2.]

[Footnote 69: _Supplement to The British Medical Journal_, March 18, 1905, p. 110.]

[Footnote 70: _Common Sense on the Population Question_, by Teresa Billington-Greig, p. 4. Published by the Malthusian League.]

[Footnote 71: _Medico-Legal Society_, July 7, 1921.]

[Footnote 72: _Suppl. Qu_. 49, Art. 6: "_Voluptates meretricias vir in uxore quoerit quando nihil aliud in ea attendit quam quod in meretrice attenderet_" (A husband seeks from his wife harlot pleasures when he asks from her only what he might ask from a harlot). Quoted by the Rev. Vincent McNabb, O.P., _The Catholic Gazette_, September 1921, p. 195.]

[Footnote 73: _British Medical Journal_, 1921, vol. ii, p. 169.]

[Footnote 74: Reproduced in fourth edition, 1861.]

[Footnote 75: _Essays in Medical Sociology_, 1899. Revised and printed for private circulation, p. 95, (Copy in Library of Royal Society of Medicine).]

[Footnote 76: _British Medical Journal_, August 20, 1921, p. 302.]

[Footnote 77: St. Matt. xviii. 6.]

[Footnote 78: _Proceedings of the Medico-Legal Society_, July 7, 1921]

[Footnote 79: "That arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labour for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labour we call The Servile State."--Hilaire Belloc, _The Servile State_, 1912, p. 16.]

[Footnote 80: The Secretary of the Malthusian League. Vide _The Declining Birth-rate_, 1916, p. 89.]

[Footnote 81: _The Declining Birth-rate_, 1916, p. 37.]

[Footnote 82: Dominions Royal Commission, Memorandum and Tables relating to the Food and Raw Material Requirements of the United Kingdom: prepared by the Royal Commission on the Natural Resources, Trade, and Legislation of Certain Portions of His Majesty's Dominions. November, 1915, pp. 1 and 2. My italics--H.G.S.]

[Footnote 83: i.e. grain, wheatmeal, and flour]

[Footnote 84: For particulars of this increase see Canada Year Book 1913, p. 144.]

[Footnote 85: See pp. 387-8 of [Cd. 6588].]

[Footnote 86: Average for period 1907-1910 and excluding British Columbia, where the yield per acre in 1911, the only year for which figures are available, averaged 29-37 bushels.]

[Footnote 87: Including British Columbia.]

[Footnote 88: Below the average. The yield per acre in 1912 was 12.53 bushels, and in 1913 11.18.]

[Footnote 89: The Observer, Nov. 11, 1921.]

[Footnote 90: _Reminiscences of a Highland Parish_, by Norman Macleod, D.D., 1876, p. 27.]

[Footnote 91: Ibid., p. 34.]

[Footnote 92: Ibid., p. 91.]

[Footnote 93: British Medical Journal, August 13, 1921, p. 261.]

[Footnote 94: Leaflet of the Malthusian League.]

[Footnote 95: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, p. 153. My italics.--H.G.S.]

[Footnote 96: Quoted by Professor Meyrick Booth, _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, p. 153.]

[Footnote 97: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914.]

[Footnote 98: _The Malthusian_, November 1905, p. 84]

[Footnote 99: C.V. Drysdale, O.B.E., D. Sc., _The Small Family System_, 1918, p. 150.]