The Task of Social Hygiene | Page 2

now bring forward may, however, be more properly regarded as a
presentation of the wider scheme of social reform out of which the
more special sex studies have developed. We are faced to-day by the
need for vast and complex changes in social organization. In these
changes the welfare of individuals and the welfare of communities are
alike concerned. Moreover, they are matters which are not confined to
the affairs of this nation or of that nation, but of the whole family of
nations participating in the fraternity of modern progress.
The word "progress," indeed, which falls so easily from our lips is not a
word which any serious writer should use without precaution. The
conception of "progress" is a useful conception in so far as it binds
together those who are working for common ends, and stimulates that
perpetual slight movement in which life consists. But there is no
general progress in Nature, nor any unqualified progress; that is to say,

that there is no progress for all groups along the line, and that even
those groups which progress pay the price of their progress. It was so
even when our anthropoid ancestors rose to the erect position; that was
"progress," and it gained us the use of hands. But it lost us our tails, and
much else that is more regrettable than we are always able to realize.
There is no general and ever-increasing evolution towards perfection.
"Existence is realized in its perfection under whatever aspect it is
manifested," says Jules de Gaultier. Or, as Whitman put it, "There will
never be any more perfection than there is now." We cannot expect an
increased power of growth and realization in existence, as a whole,
leading to any general perfection; we can only expect to see the
triumph of individuals, or of groups of individuals, carrying out their
own conceptions along special lines, every perfection so attained
involving, on its reverse side, the acquirement of an imperfection. It is
in this sense, and in this sense only, that progress is possible. We need
not fear that we shall ever achieve the stagnant immobility of a general
perfection.
The problems of progress we are here concerned with are such as the
civilized world, as represented by some of its foremost individuals or
groups of individuals, is just now waking up to grapple with. No doubt
other problems might be added, and the addition give a greater
semblance of completion to this book. I have selected those which
seem to me very essential, very fundamental. The questions of social
hygiene, as here understood, go to the heart of life. It is the task of this
hygiene not only to make sewers, but to re-make love, and to do both in
the same large spirit of human fellowship, to ensure finer individual
development and a larger social organization. At the one end social
hygiene may be regarded as simply the extension of an elementary
sanitary code; at the other end it seems to some to have in it the
glorious freedom of a new religion. The majority of people, probably,
will be content to admit that we have here a scheme of serious social
reform which every man and woman will soon be called upon to take
some share in.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.

CONTENTS
I.--INTRODUCTION PAGE The aim of Social Hygiene--Social
Reform--The Rise of Social Reform out of English Industrialism--The
Four Stages of Social Reform--(1) The Stage of Sanitation--(2) Factory
Legislation--(3) The Extension of the Scope of Education--(4)
Puericulture--The Scientific Evolution corresponding to these
Stages--Social Reform only Touched the Conditions of Life--Yet
Social Reform Remains highly Necessary--The Question of Infantile
Mortality and the Quality of the Race--The Better Organization of Life
Involved by Social Hygiene--Its Insistence on the Quality rather than
on the Conditions of Life--The Control of Reproduction--The Fall of
the Birth-rate in Relation to the Quality of the Population--The
Rejuvenation of a Society--The Influence of Culture and Refinement on
a Race--Eugenics--The Regeneration of the Race--The Problem of
Feeble-mindedness--The Methods of Eugenics--Some of the Problems
which Face us 1
II.--THE CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN
The Origin of the Woman Movement--Mary Wollstonecraft--George
Sand--Robert Owen--William Thompson--John Stuart Mill--The
Modern Growth of Social Cohesion--The Growth of Industrialism--Its
Influence in Woman's Sphere of Work--The Education of
Women--Co-education--The Woman Question and Sexual
Selection--Significance of Economic Independence--The State
Regulation of Marriage--The Future of Marriage--Wilhelm von
Humboldt--Social Equality of Women--The Reproduction of the Race
as a Function of Society--Women and the Future of Civilization 49
III.--THE NEW ASPECT OF THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT
Eighteenth-Century France--Pioneers of the Woman's Movement--The
Growth of the Woman's Suffrage Movement--The Militant Activities of
the Suffragettes--Their Services and Disservices to the
Cause--Advantages of Women's Suffrage--Sex Questions in

Germany--Bebel--The Woman's Rights Movement in Germany--The
Development of Sexual Science in Germany--The Movement for the
Protection of Motherhood--Ellen Key--The Question of
Illegitimacy--Eugenics--Women