each other's presence the sexual instinct will always ensure an adequate ideal halo.
III
The chief question that we have to ask when we consider the changing status of women is: How will it affect the reproduction of the race? Hunger and love are the two great motor impulses, the ultimate source, probably, of all other impulses. Hunger—that is to say, what we call "economic causes"—has, because it is the more widespread and constant, though not necessarily the more imperious instinct, produced nearly all the great zoological revolutions, including, as we have seen, the rise and fall of that phase of human evolution dominated by mother-law. Yet love has, in the form of sexual selection, even before we reach the vertebrates, moulded races to the ideal of the female; and reproduction is always the chief end of nutrition which hunger waits on, the supreme aim of life everywhere.
If we place on the one side man, as we know him during the historical period, and on the other, nearly every highly organized member of the animal family, there appears, speaking roughly and generally, a distinct difference in the relation which these two motor impulses bear to each other. Among animals generally, economics are comparatively so simple that it is possible to satisfy the nutritive instinct without putting any hard pressure on the spontaneous play of the reproductive instinct. And nearly everywhere it is the female who has the chief voice in the establishment of sexual relationships. The males compete for the favour of the female by the fascination of their odour, or brilliant colour, or song, or grace, or strength, as revealed in what are usually mock-combats. The female is, in these respects, comparatively unaccomplished and comparatively passive. With her rests the final decision, and only after long hesitation, influenced, it seems, by a vaguely felt ideal resulting from her contemplation of the rivals, she calls the male of her choice. [48] A dim instinct seems to warn her of the pains and cares of maternity, so that only the largest promises of pleasure can induce her to undertake the function of reproduction. In civilized man, on the other hand, as we know him, the situation is to some extent reversed; it is the woman who, by the display of her attractions, competes for the favour of the man. The final invitation does not come, as among animals generally, from the female; the decision rests with the man. It would be a mistake to suppose that this change reveals the evolution of a superior method; although it has developed the beauty of women, it has clearly had its origin in economic causes. The demands of nutrition have overridden those of reproduction; sexual selection has, to a large extent, given place to natural selection, a process clearly not for the advantage of the race. The changing status of women, in bestowing economic independence, will certainly tend to restore to sexual selection its due weight in human development.
In so doing it will certainly tend also to destroy prostitution, which is simply one of the forms in which the merging of sexual selection in natural selection has shown itself. Wherever sexual selection has free play, unhampered by economic considerations, prostitution is impossible. The dominant type of marriage is, like prostitution, founded on economic considerations; the woman often marries chiefly to earn her living; here, too, we may certainly expect profound modifications. We have long sought to preserve our social balance by placing an unreasonable licence in the one scale, an equally unreasonable abstinence in the other; the economic independence of women, tending to render both extremes unnecessary, can alone place the sexual relationships on a sound and free basis.
The State regulation of marriage has undoubtedly played a large and important part in the evolution of society. At the present time the advantages of this artificial control no longer appear so obvious (even when the evidence of the law courts is put aside); they will vanish altogether when women have attained complete economic independence. With the disappearance of the artificial barriers in the way of friendship between the sexes and of the economic motive to sexual relationships—perhaps the two chief forces which now tend to produce promiscuous sexual intercourse, whether dignified or not with the name of marriage—men and women will be free to engage, unhampered, in the search, so complicated in a highly civilized condition of society, for a fitting mate. [49]
It is probable that this inevitable change will be brought about partly by the voluntary action of individuals, and in greater measure by the gradual and awkward method of shifting and ever freer divorce laws. The slow disintegration of State-regulated marriage from the latter cause may be observed now throughout the United States, where there is, on the whole, a developing tendency to frequency and facility of divorce. It is clear, however, that on this line marriage will not cease to be a concern to the State, and it may be as well to point out at once the important distinction between State-regulated and State-registered marriage. Sexual relationships, so long as they do not result in the production of children, are matters in which the community has, as a community, little or no concern, but as soon as a sexual relationship results in the pregnancy of the woman the community is at once interested. At this point it is clearly the duty of the State to register the relationship. [50]
It is necessary to remember that the kind of equality of the sexes towards which this change of status is leading, is social equality—that is, equality of freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less is it likeness. Men and women can only be alike mentally when they are alike in physical configuration and physiological function. Even complete economic equality is not attainable. Among animals which live in herds under the guidance of a leader, this leader is nearly always a male; there are few exceptions. [51] In woman, the long period of pregnancy and lactation, and the prolonged helplessness of her child, render her for a considerable period of her life economically dependent. On whom shall she be dependent? This is a question of considerable moment. According to the old conception of the family, all the members were slaves producing for the benefit of the owner, and it was natural that the wife should be supported by the husband when she is producing slaves for his service. But this conception is, as we have seen, no longer possible. It is clearly unfair also to compel the mother to depend on her own previous exertions. The reproduction of the race is a social function, and we are compelled to conclude that it is the duty of the community, as a community, to provide for the child-bearer when in the exercise of her social function she is unable to provide for herself. The woman engaged in producing a new member, who may be a source of incalculable profit or danger to the whole community, cannot fail to be a source of the liveliest solicitude to everyone in the community, and it was a sane and beautiful instinct that found expression of old in the permission accorded to a pregnant woman to enter gardens and orchards, and freely help herself. Whether this instinct will ever again be embodied in a new form, and the reproduction of the race be recognized as truly a social function, is a question which even yet lacks actuality. The care of the child-bearer and her child will at present continue to be a matter for individual arrangement. That it will be arranged much better than at present we may reasonably hope. On the one hand, the reckless multiplication of children will probably be checked; on the other hand, a large body of women will no longer be shut out from maternity. That the state should undertake the regulation of the birth-rate we can scarcely either desire or anticipate. Undoubtedly the community has an abstract right to limit the number of its members. It may be pointed out, however, that under rational conditions of life the process would probably be self-regulating; in the human races, and also among animals generally, fertility diminishes as the organism becomes highly developed. And, without falling back on any natural law, it may be said that the extravagant procreation of children, leading to suffering both to parents and offspring, carried on under existing social conditions, is largely the result of ignorance, largely of religious or other superstition. A more developed social state would not be possible at all unless the social instincts were strong enough to check the reckless multiplication of offspring. Richardson and others appear to advocate the special cultivation of a class of non-childbearing women. Certainly no woman who freely chose should be debarred from belonging to such a class. But reproduction is the end and aim of all life everywhere, and in order to live a humanly complete life, every healthy woman should have, not sexual relationships
