Woman and Womanhood | Page 3

their speeches and books, and have done so, and have subscribed to them, for years; but no one can refer me to a single passage in any of these where any feminist or suffragist, in Great Britain, at least, militant or non-militant, has set forth the principle, beside which all others are trivial, that the best women must be the mothers of the future.
Yet this which is thus ignored matters so much that other things matter only in so far as they affect it. As I have elsewhere maintained, the eugenic criterion is the first and last of every measure of reform or reaction that can be proposed or imagined. Will it make a better race? Will the consequence be that more of the better stocks, of both sexes, contribute to the composition of future generations? In other words, the very first thing that the feminist movement must prove is that it is eugenic. If it be so, its claims are unchallengeable; if it be what may contrariwise be called dysgenic, no arguments in its favour are of any avail. Yet the present champions of the woman's cause are apparently unaware that this question exists. They do not know how important their sex is.
Thinkers in the past have known, and many critics in the present, though unaware of the eugenic idea, do perceive, that woman can scarcely be better employed than in the home. Herbert Spencer, notably, argued that we must not include, in the estimate of a nation's assets, those activities of woman the development of which is incompatible with motherhood. To-day, the natural differences between individuals of both sexes, and the importance of their right selection for the transmission of their characters to the future, are clearly before the minds of those who think at all on these subjects. On various occasions I have raised this issue between Feminism and Eugenics, suggesting that there are varieties of feminism, making various demands for women which are utterly to be condemned because they not merely ignore eugenics, but are opposed to it, and would, if successful, be therefore ruinous to the race.
Ignored though it be by the feminist leaders, this is the first of questions; and in so far as any clear opinion on it is emerging from the welter of prejudices, that opinion is hitherto inimical to the feminist claims. Most notably is this the case in America, where the dysgenic consequences of the so-called higher education of women have been clearly demonstrated.
The mark of the following pages is that they assume the principle of what we may call Eugenic Feminism, and that they endeavour to formulate its working-out. It is my business to acquaint myself with the literature of both eugenics and feminism, and I know that hitherto the eugenists have inclined to oppose the claims of feminism, Sir Francis Galton, for instance, having lent his name to the anti-suffrage side; whilst the feminists, one and all, so far as Anglo-Saxondom is concerned--for Ellen Key must be excepted--are either unaware of the meaning of eugenics at all, or are up in arms at once when the eugenist--or at any rate this eugenist, who is a male person--mildly inquires: But what about motherhood? and to what sort of women are you relegating it by default?
I claim, therefore, that there is immediate need for the presentation of a case which is, from first to last, and at whatever cost, eugenic; but which also--or, rather, therefore--makes the highest claims on behalf of woman and womanhood, so that indeed, in striving to demonstrate the vast importance of the woman question for the composition of the coming race, I may claim to be much more feminist than the feminists.
The problem is not easily to be solved; otherwise we should not have paired off into insane parties, as on my view we have done. Nor will the solution please the feminists without reserve, whilst it will grossly offend that abnormal section of the feminists who are distinguished by being so much less than feminine, and who little realize what a poor substitute feminism is for feminity.
There is possible no Eugenic Feminism which shall satisfy those whose simple argument is that woman must have what she wants, just as man must. I do not for a moment admit that either men or women or children of a smaller growth are entitled to everything they want. "The divine right of kings," said Carlyle, "is the right to be kingly men"; and I would add that the divine right of women is the right to be queenly women. Until this present time, it was never yet alleged as a final principle of justice that whatever people wanted they were entitled to, yet that is the simple feminist demand in a very large number of cases. It is