1920 having right and being right

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Having Right and Being RightAuthor(s): Juliet Everts RobbSource: International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jan., 1920), pp. 196-212Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2377263.

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196 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.

HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT.JULIET EVERTS ROBB.

IS it obliquity of moral vision or is it only clumsiness oftongue that leads us to confound two so different con-cepts as those which lie behind our expressions "having aright" and "being right?" The Frenchman, with his moredelicate and accurate linguistic instrument, feels a strongdistinction between "J'ai le droit" and "J'ai raison," andknows how infinitely more important is "raison" than"droit." A large and growing contingent of English-speaking men and women are eliminating the higher moralmeaning from the word "right" and using it only to denoteprivilege or defiance. Defense of the right of the individ-ual to do with his life what he will, scorn of the idea thatconduct is bound up with the past and with the future, orcorrelated with anything distinguishable from self, is widelyprevalent. Especially is there demand for the repeal of allsex restrictions. "I have the right even to bear a child,-and no questions asked," says the unmarried woman."I have the right to be childless for any reason that mayseem good to me, or for no reason but that I choose it so,"says the married egoist, male or female. Always thestatement, "I have a right "-never the question, "AmI right?" Modern fiction and drama are seething withthis septic ferment; and one has only to be a bit of a sensi-tive to register its coursing through the veins of society.The trained nurse attending a friend of my sister wasasked by a young lady for instruction in some method ofbirth-control. Quite frankly she said, "I have as muchright to sex-enjoyment as any married woman, but, ofcourse, I must not have children."A maiden confided to a friend of mine that she longedintensely for a child and thought she had every right tobear one. My friend, who is too sympathetic to deny any-thing greatly wished for, agreed with her and advised

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HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT. 197carrying out the idea. She saw no wrong in the principleof the thing.

Among my more or less near acquaintances are two menwho have, each, after marrying and begetting children byone woman, become enamoured of another. In each casethe wife has been forced to divorce the husband in orderthat he might-respectably-marry her successor. Hischildren were left with their mother. These men are un-conscious of offense: they do not know that mothers shouldnot be required or allowed to rear their children alone: tothem children are a mere incident-a sort of impositionwhich their wives put upon them and of which a grant ofmoney clearly rids them.Not long ago, after heated discourse to the effect thatall social ills were due to legal marriage and marriage cus-toms, a woman of better than average intelligence said tome, "The oftener the marriage law is flouted the sooner itwill be done away with." (As who should say, "If enoughpeople got roaring drunk at once there would be no moreliquor regulation and everything would be thoroughlyjoyful.")Of the many childless wives whom I know one hasrefused motherhood because of unwillingness to endurephysical pain; another, a star in the theatrical firmamentwhen I was young, because of the superior claim of hercareer. Once, in her early wedded life, this woman, byaccident, became pregnant. The infant was still-born.I never heard her mention it, but her actor husband be-wailed the loss of two weeks and a sum of money.Curious persons who inquire in certain circles who andwhat Sylvia is are told that she is this or that by occupationand that she "lives with" Urban, or that she used to "livewith" Urban but is now "living with" Astro. It is neversaid that she is the mistress of Urban or of Astro-thatwould imply that she had sold herself for money. Of thisSylvia is incapable. The people who "live together" forma pact of equals on a basis of mutual passion or congenialtastes. Either is free to leave it at the firstmoment of dislike.



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198 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.And now comes a professor of philosophy to say, on the

pages of THE INTERNATIONAL OURNALOF ETHICS1, that"marriage is an end in itself." Here is another equivoca-tion. What the professor really says is that sex intercourse,purified and perfumed by fastidiousness, is an end in itself.He treats it very gracefully as "a personal intimacy of aunique and precious kind" "replete with significance" and"making a rich contribution to the content of life," whichhaving been "found desirable" should be "cultivated andextended." This in a paper on birth-control which is whatthe physicians in the hospitals for insane call the "excitingcause" of the present article. The advocate of the furthercultivation and extension of the sex-relation would un-doubtedly accord it the honor which a public avowal ofintention implies, but his context shows that it is not mar-riage which he holds to be an end in itself. Marriage, inits universally accepted sense, is nothing if not a means.It is a safeguard to wife and child and has no other signifi-cance. To say that marriage-meaning the sex-relation-is an end in itself is to join hands with Urban and Sylvia.Each of the individuals cited is the type of a group andthese groups, differing somewhat in ultimate objects and indetails of procedure, have in common the belief that in allthat has to do with sex every human is a law unto himself.In a way one must agree with them. Every man has aright, in the sense in which they claim right, to be a crimi-nal or a fool, or anything else that appeals to him-but arethey right?To be right is to be in harmony with that force, not our-selves yet inseparable from ourselves, by which we liveeven while we dispute its dictates. Human speech aboutthis power must, necessarily, be figurative. Let it beclearly understood that the use of a name for it, printed withlower case or capital, is solely for purposes of easier diction.The superstitious ancients called the unknown power fate;the devout endow it with infallibility, but with human

'Birth-Control, by WarrenFite. This paper appearedin October, 1916,but rankles still in my memory. J. E. R.



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HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT. 199partiality, and call it God; the skeptical treat it with anassumption of patronage and call it nature. Since we musthave a name, this seems the best to me, because it suggestsneither a senseless automatism nor a blinding halo; butNature, even thus personified, does not present to my minda person, but a force, indefinable but integrally a part ofconsciousness. Commenting on the use of the word Natureas a philosophic term Dr. Tufts says, "The point is thatyou can prove almost anything from 'nature' and it is thedistinctive characteristic of moral conduct not to acceptstandards from nature or from any other source but toweigh and measure and finally set up standards on the basisof intelligent choice." But if you can prove anything bynature you can also justify anything by choice. And whatis the criterion of the intelligence of a choice? We canneither weigh nor measure without a previously fixedstandard. To what can the choices of men be referred forjudgment as to their intelligence if not to this somethingthat is not themselves? Nature may not be synonymouswith right, but what we know of Nature's ideals is certainlyall that we know of right. Many things, indeed, may beproved-or seem to be proved-from Nature, but not theone thing that would put an end to this discussion. Itcannot be proved that the universe is dead. There is,incontrovertibly, an incessantly functioning force to whichopposition and hindrance and delay are as atmosphericfriction to the meteor, imparting brilliance,-a force which,like the hope of Prometheus, " creates out of its own wreckthe thing it contemplates." To aid this contemplatedthing-so far as possible to prevent wreckage-this is,surely, the part of wisdom. Permit me then, as the easiestway of expressing my thought, to say that to be right isto be in harmony with Nature.Be it admitted that the ways of Nature are mysterious,that she seems, oftentimes, a devious and a stumbling guide.She has, in the past, insistently impelled her humans topromiscuity; at this hour she is leading them just a littlebeyond polygamy-simultaneous polygamy, that is; con-Vol. XXX.-No. 2. 6



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200 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.secutive polygamy is still quite "good form"-but throughthe ages of ages she has held to one unmistakable and un-changing purpose: to bring forth a man able to balancejustly and to choose wisely among her permissions-forNature has no decalogue, only conditioned possibilities-and so to perfect himself. Why she should wish to do this,why she follows her incomprehensible methods, we maynot and we need not know. The answer to all our whys issimply, "It is so." When humanity shall have reachedmore nearly that perfection, perhaps-but that is anothermatter. Here and now we are occupied with what we canclearly see of Nature's design.For this purpose sex was evolved and the potency of itsspell is not a generous contribution to the jocundity of lifebut the measure ofv he determination not to be thwarted.There must be new being and ever new being. Save asthey affect her aims Nature cares not at all for Sylvia'sattachment to Urban or to Astro, or whether their prefer-ences in cigarettes or interior decoration or even in thehigher forms of literature and art agree, or whether he sup-plies her or denies her the sensations she "cannot live with-out," or for her intensity of "temperament," or for his"wonderful talent" for something or other. None ofthese things is an object in itself. The revelations and cre-ations of the fine arts, the discoveries and achievements ofscience, the assiduous cultivation of body and mind, every-thing that enhances the healthy zest of life, is, of course,valuably contributive to the desired consummation: butthis goal must never be lost from view. What Naturerequires of Urban and Sylvia, of Jonathan and Maria, ischildren.

The regulation of productivity in accordance with othernatural tendencies, physical and social, is unquestionablyadvisable-the prolificacy of earlier periods being no longernecessary-but this must be done in consultation, as itwere, with Nature; as we prune and clip and feed andtrain our garden plants in order to obtain the finest, ratherthan the fullest, bloom. This is not rebellion against but



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HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT. 201alliance with Nature. Entirely to circumvent her designis to defeat our own most selfish ends, to fall short of ful-filment, to reduce our garden to colorless, perfumeless,fruitless failure. We are at liberty to do this. We maychoose among various lines of conduct, in ignorance or indespite of Nature's conditions, or in awareness and inharmony with them: and we experience the inevitable con-sequences. The conditions are unappealable.Dr. Fite says, in his interesting but very depressing paper(depression may be an "exciting cause"), "But I hold thatthe ways of Nature are authoritative for men only so faras they commend themselves to human intelligence in thesatisfaction of humanly appreciable needs. . . . Sofar as the ways of Nature can be comprehended by us, itis both our right and our duty, as intelligent beings, tocontrol them for our own uses."But if our own uses be not also Nature's uses they arefutile. Man has, indeed, outgrown the estate of a merebiological specimen; he has been admitted to confidenceand to partnership with Nature. It is within his powerto increase or to squander the firm's capital. If he wastehis share he will be cast out and the business will go onwithout him. Nature must carry on: If we leave her onlythe Hun and the Bolshevik as material, why, so much theworse for us.There is a test for all social theories and propositions:"Is this in line with Nature's effort; will it bring weal tothe future generations?'" Everything else is relative andtransitory. Nothing else, though it may cover, for themoment, the visible earth and sky, is of any intrinsic orpermanent importance. Dr. Fite says, again, "The socialargument for fruitfulness and multiplication rests, in thelast analysis, not upon the needs of a self-conscious human-ity, but upon the external demands of a personified Nature: "to which it must be replied that only to a very superfi-cially conscious humanity can the demands of Nature seemexternal.What answer to these demands is made by those, for



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202 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.instance, who would abolish marriage? The free-unionsare, almost always, intentionally childless. A child requiresthought and care that might be spent in the pursuit ofsome dazzling will-o'-the-wisp. A child makes it moredifficult to shift companionship with changing mood.The "liberated" ones, who claim obedience to the naturalwhile contemning the social law, follow Nature while shebeckons with alluring gesture and honeyed smile, butwhen she takes them by the hand to lead them over a bitof rugged road they draw back. They are by no means allgross voluptuaries, but they are all frank egoists. "Imust live my own life" is their motto, and "my own life"means, in their mouths, unqualified self-indulgence.Their ideals are sensuous dreams. They see with theeyes of the body, not of the mind. Clear vision does notderive from dreams, but from active exercise in wakingrealities-as the creative brain is nourished not by alcoholbut by bread.What answer is being made by the woman who assertsthat motherhood is honorable under any circumstances,who desires maternity but protests against the impositionof a ceremony-a "patter of words" -and the fetters ofwifehood as the sine qua non of respectability? Society,she declares, is mistaken in supposing that a woman whogives birth to an unauthorized child is, necessarily, ofcoarse appetites and loose morality-ignoring the widedistance between the mother by unwelcome accident andthe mother by her own volition. These women mightseem to balance, were they given their way, the shirkers ofmaternity: but consider, for a moment, this latter-dayproclamation of "woman's rights." Unmarried maternityinvolves, always, secrecy as to the child's father. Men donot willingly acknowledge illegitimate children. Theirfierce sense of private ownership drives them to exact thattheir acknowledged offspring be mothered by their legalwives. A man can not be sure that the child of his para-mour is also his. Speeches are being made, short storiesand long novels are being written, to sustain the doctrine



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HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT. 203that a woman's will to maternity is authority enough andthat the name of her infant's father concerns no one, noteven the child. Mothers by their own election, it is said,are good mothers. So they may be, within the limits oftheir feminine capacities, but they are only partially con-forming with Nature, since they are blind to the interestof the child whom they, not being wives, bring into theworld unfathered.A boy who does not know his father intimately, who doesnot feel that he is a precious care and a fond hope to hisfather, is injured, no matter how devoted a mother he mayhave. The girl who is exclusively mother-bred loses some-thing essential-close acquaintance with a masculine mind,love and respect for mental maleness with no tincture of thesexual. There prevails a crippling lack of appreciation ofthe extent to which the absence of paternal influence isdeleterious to children. Even in homes where they aremore or less warmly welcomed they are, usually, 99 percent the mother's. They are reared, from the cradle to thecollege, by women, and the girls are, for the most part,woman-taught in college. This is a double mistake: itdeprives the fathers and defrauds the children.If such a condition is found, even in the family, what ofthe progenitor of the half-orphan whose mother is unmar-ried? When I asked my friend who was carried away bythe idea that motherhood needs no official sanction, butis self-justified, if she were willing to lend her husband forthe project, she cried out, "O, no " But the father of thelittle one would be some one's man-or he would be a freeman who should stand, unless he were a contemptiblecoward, openly and gladly and sustainingly, beside themother of his child.And what of the child? We are always left, by thestory-tellers, with these chance-conceived infants, who areto exalt unwedded maternity, in their rosy, dimpling baby-hood: we are not allowed to follow them to adolescence andthen to look into their tormented minds. When the son ofthe unringed mother begins to question, will she tell him

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204 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.the truth? Will she say, "I wanted a baby for my enjoy-ment: that should be enough for you: your father had hispleasure of me and we parted; you may look forward to thesame privilege: so to deal with women is the meaning ofmanhood?" They do not so express themselves in thestories: they put on rings and call themselves widows.Yet the defense by the unmarried woman of the right tobear is, in a way, a hopeful thing. It is the half-smotheredprotest of Nature against the "civilization" that threatensto neutralize even her magic of love. It is enhearteningbecause it shows a savable vitality; it is pathetic becauseits demands are so short-sighted.Indisputably there must be marriage-public, purposeful,legal. That stage of evolution is not yet in sight when thefuture of the race can be trusted to instinct or to enlightenedprinciple. The element of chance is far too preponderantin our reproduction, as it is.But why should I, who am of the present, trouble myselfabout the future of the race? Did the preceeding genera-tions take thought for me? No. Yet behold the greatand glorious creature that I am Dr. Fite is not satisfiedwith any answer he can give himself to this kind of ques-tioning. He says, "If the civilization of the future is to bemerely a repetition of what it has come to, now-and somewise persons tell us that it will never be different-then itseems to me clearly better that the race should not goon. . . . In any case it should be clear that a lifeprocess which consists only in a series of sacrifices-thepresent generation sacrificing itself for the next, and soon ad infinitum-is an absurd conclusion for a race ofsupposedly rational beings." So it is; but the absurditylies not in the relation of one generation to the next-essential, unavoidable, not subject to human criticism-but in the use of the word "sacrifice." The situation callsfor a stirring word like "realization." "Manhood beginswhen we have in any way made truce with Necessity:begins, even, when we have surrendered to Necessity, asthe most part only do: but begins joyfully and hopefully



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HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT. 205only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity andthus, in reality, triumphed over it and felt that in Necessitywe are free."'I To deny the authority of Nature is notrational: as well seek to annul the motherhood of thewoman who bore us: and Nature's decree, written in longpages of physical and social history, is Many more andalways better children from the fit, fewer and much betterchildren from the less fit-none at all only from theobviously unfit.

To remain, voluntarily, childless, to renounce the priv-ilege and to refuse the responsibility of parenthood, forany reason but the altruistic one of unfitness, is to be not aquickening stream but a stagnant pool. No man, nowoman, can reach full spiritual stature without matingand natural fruition. No life that was ever lived wasworth while for the mere living of it. It is safe to say thatno man arrives at sixty years, crowded though his daysmay have been with activities and successes and pleasures,who does not realize, perhaps with astonishment, that therehas crept into his heart the knowledge that nothing isreally worth living for but the children-his own, if he beso blessed; those of his neighbors in the palaces and in theslums, if he have been denied. I have heard it said by anold physician of national reputation, the father of a largefamily. I have heard a childless man whose books areknown in all the schools of America declare, "I would giveany success I am capable of winning to have had a daugh-ter." I have heard a worn out harlot, who had sold herpotential motherhood to the devil, first for pleasure thenfor money, lament in her age, "If only I had a child " Ihave heard a well-beloved actress say to one of her com-pany who marvelled at her enthusiasm, which never failed,even before a thin and unintelligent audience, "The publiclong ago lost all meaning to me. I play, always, for mychildren." Dr. Fite gives a half-hearted assent to thisthought. He holds children to be "a source of intelligent

1Carlyle.



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206 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.satisfactionand an enrichmentof personallife." No morethan only this? With such a statement, save that I shouldgreatly enlargeand intensify it, and with his advocacy ofbirth-control,but from a different view-point, I am inagreement. Most of what he says in great primer, as itwere, I should say, if I said it at all, in nonpareil, andthe thoughts which he accords a pale bourgeoisI shouldutter in great primer. The idea that race-improvementis a distant thing with whichwe, in this present life, haveno concern has surely been put to silence in these lastfour years. It has taken the rest of the worldmerely tocheck the one civilized nation which breeds conscien-tiously.There is, however, more than a grain of justice in theindictment of our marriage customs by the feminists.Does any known ceremonydenote the real object of mar-riage and bind to its promotive conditions? No and no.It is not enough to make the best of marriage-we shouldmake our marriage the best. Legal marriage meansexclusivesex-rightsconferredby the woman in exchangeforcertainimmunities. The man placeshimselfunderobliga-tion to furnishherwith shelter,food,clothing,amusement;to protect her reputation; to be responsible for her inevery way; to value, moreover, her flesh so highly that heshall be foreversatisfiedtherewith,no matter how greatlyits charm may vary or diminish. She promises to bealways responsive to him and cold to every other male.These crudities are overlaid with religioussentiment andromantic illusion, but, since the earliest record, this hasbeen the intent of the contract,and the law, in this latestyearof ourLord,still treatsmarriageas paid-forsex-monop-oly. The one unfailing ground for divorce-in New Yorkthe only ground-is "infidelity," and everywhere thehusband must support his wife whatever she may be orbecome-a spendthrift,a slattern, a shrew, a maniac. Solong as he cannotprove that she is guilty of adulteryhe isliable for all her expenses. If she divorce him he muststill pay, even if she marry a second husband, unless she



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HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT. 207waive her claim. He pays her for being his wife and forhaving beenhis wife,sometimesfor havingmerely promisedto be his wife, or forhaving thought that he meant to makeher his wife. This is placing too high a premiumon thecarnal in woman.Our civil and religious ceremonies, alike, bind the con-tracting parties for life and exact a promiseto love eachother so long as they both shall live. Instead of anyinquiry into motives or qualifications he man and woman,who may have been brought together by animal appetiteor by ambition or greed, or even by despair,are bidden topromisethat they will love each other forever. How canany human being, even in the ecstasy of a first passion-perhapsespecially such a one-promise to love? The verb"to love" is defective: it has but two tenses-the presentand the past. "I shall love?" Impossible Still moreso, "I will love." To swear it is perjury. One could asreliably promise that all the fruits of the union should begreen-eyed girls. Love does last.through long lives, butnot because it was promised.As to the religiousaspect of marriage: he end held beforethe bride and groomby the episcopalrite, whichis typical,is the attainment of eternal life for themselves, not thecreation of new life; and they promise to serve each other,not to give the best that is theirs by inheritance and thebest that may become theirs by earnest endeavor to thebearing and rearing of a family. Now personal immor-tality concerns the individual as an individual-it hasnothing to do with marriage, nor has marriage with it.If personal gratification and "cherishing" were, as is sogenerallybelieved, the object of marriage,there would be,truly, no call for public vows. Save for the well-beingoftheir childrenand, under present conditions, the financialsupport of the wife, why should society care whether twoweretogether or apart? Inherentin every legal enactmentis the protection of the child-most especially in all sexlegislation. Why not do, consciously and deliberately,and therefore much more thoroughly and expeditiously,



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208 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.that which we are really doing, under natural compulsion,but blindly and imperfectly and, often, painfully?

In the nuptial vows should be embodied the intention ofparenthood, which involves the determination to remaintogether, in spite of whatever disappointment or dissatis-faction, with mutual willingness to adjust and compromise,until the children attain self-dependence. It may be said,with some reason, that the covenant to "live together afterGod's holy ordinance" implies the bearing of children; butthe words are not definitive enough. They are understoodas a recommendation to sex-fidelity, not to procreation.For some unfathomable reason the first is thought to be aproper exhortation while the second would offend a brideof to-day-let us hope not one of to-morrow.Mothers and sisters and friends consult, endlessly andrapturously, with the prospective bride as to her trousseau,but how often is there premarital consideration of the girl'sequipment for motherhood? We have, happily, passed theday when the very idea of sex lay, even between motherand daughter, as a kind of shameful secret: the youngwoman who consents to marriage knows what she is goingto, but the natural result is comparatively unimportant.When her choice of a husband is announced to her parentsthey do not ask, "Is he sound and sane and magnanimous?Is it probable that his children will be worthy members ofthe human family?" Their questions are, instead, "Doyou love him? Will he make you happy? Can he supportyou?" The prospective groom is more than likelyto receiveonly felicitations on the prettiness and charm of his fiance.The word "eugenics" floats about in the air from time totime, but it has never taken hold of people's minds. Itexcites ridicule rather than respect-and yet in it lies salva-tion. Our professor of philosophy says, "We call it prosti-tution to sacrifice the personal choice for pecuniary gain;from the personal standpoint, biology aside, it seems notless prostitution when the end is the propagation of thespecies. Certainly a proposal of marriage in these disin-terested terms would seem horrible and grotesque." But



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HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT. 209biology cannot be set aside; call it what we will, the end isthe propagation of the species; and with the added consider-ation of children personal choice, so far from being elimi-nated, becomes infinitely more precious and honorable.In any woman worthy to be chosen "I love and trust you-Will you be my wife and the mother of my sons anddaughters?-I am sure that you will be a joy to me and ablessing to them" would certainly waken as glad responseas the pleadings of hungry passion and the protestations ofimpossible devotion which have become conventional. ToIsaac and Rebekah marriage meant a long line of inheritorsof qualities and faiths and principles; to Reginald andMillicent it means only-each other.This is the logical outcome of our purblind worship of"love." The apotheosis of sex-love is one of humanity'sgravest errors. Sex-love is a tricksy sprite, a conjuror, nota deity. There is a god named Love at whose altar he whoserves may gain supernal wisdom and boundless joy, butthe best of us have wasted the time gathering posies andplaying together outside instead of entering his temple; ifwe have passed within the doors we have mistaken thevestibule for the holy of holies: the worst of us have nevereven approached the sacred grove, but, in the stolen anddishonored name of love, have built altars to our sensesand tended them with ill-omened rites.Passion for passion's sake has always figured predomi-nantly in poetry, drama and fiction. Formerly a thin veil ofsweetness and delicacy was thrown about it: now thatspeech has violated the old prohibitions and found itselfunrebuked the baseness of the common concept of love isdaily revealed. The present tendency in literature, if notyet in conversation, is to glorify nakedness and abandonedsensuality. In a measure this is prophetic of health-likethe draining of a sore-but literature has gone far too farin the development of its favorite theme. "Love isenough" is a pernicious falsehood. That he or she has"loved much" is not sufficient excuse for any and everydereliction, as it has been, in the code of the scribbler, for



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210 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.so long. Nothing more alarmingly betrays mental andmoral disorder than the renunciation of self-control whichthe modernists are at pains to depict as a splendid move-ment toward liberty.It is time that mankind should begin to try to grow abovesexuality-to rule and use it, instead of being driven by it.For one who follows the novelists and dramatists and thereports in the daily press of idiotic and sinful marriages andfoolish or scandalous divorces, it is hard to hope that humancreatures will ever be able to restrain themselves withinthe bonds of reason and health-but it is only a matter ofconviction. Man has disciplined other natural impulses.He no longer attacks the stranger who approaches him; heno longer eats whenever his eye lights upon food-becausehe has discovered that personal happiness is enhanced byfraternal relations with his fellows and by temperance indiet. In this other matter we are not only individuallyself-indulgent to an unsafe degree, we are a generation ofpanders; if not through deliberate action at least throughtoleration. By every public and shameless means, bylicentiousness pictured on bill-boards and "movie" screensand enacted in theaters, by over-emphasized passion in thegreater number of stories, by our dress, by an almostuniversal sympathy-ranging from jocose to sentimental-with any excess that calls itself "love," we keep theconsciousness of sex poignantly alive in our young people-often to the exclusion of everything else.And we do next to nothing to counteract these influences.In the schools the young are trained to mechanical effi-ciency, something of patriotism and something of civic spiritis recommended: on the subject of parenthood the facultiesare mute. Mere prohibition is never effective, warning iswasted breath: unless we cultivate the sentiment of father-hood and motherhood, unless we make the better thingseem the more delightful thing, we labor in vain. Wemust make the greater need "humanly appreciable"; thereis no urgency about the "cultivation and extension" of thelesser. The profitable use and enjoyment of love is a mat-



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HAVING RIGHT AND BEING RIGHT. 211ter of slow education and, therefore, the immediate affairof all teachers, public and private; very particularly ofauthors, editors, playwrights and preachers-and, withthem, of each one of us who compose the publicwhichtheyaddress.We must openthe eyes of ouryoung people,not to path-ologicalhorrors-that is not helpful teaching-but to thetrue and beautiful significanceof love as the means to anoble and joyous end. Under good conditions love is afragrantblossom, the precursorof delectable fruit: we areletting it degenerate nto a noxious weed. There is a strongmovement toward what is termed"enlightenment"of theyoung, but so far as I have observed it is followed byincrease of darkness. Such light is too lurid to revealtruth. Can we not make youth to know-rightly? It ismost apt in learningso muchof the subjectas is profitless-or worse. We must bind the young to life by strongrealities, insteadof letting them drift and blunderabout inthe mists of imagination,goaded by pangswhichwe takepains to sharpen for them. We should help them tothink and to act as human beings-not merelyas possible"lovers"-foster in them not the sickly, emotional self-consciousnessthat drools,"I live for love, I live for love,I live for love, for love I die"-but the spirit that sings,"And when Italy's made, for what end is it done if we havenot a son?"When only the generationsso rearedsurvive there willbe a differentmarriagevow and betterconditionsof weddedlife. Not all will be parents, perhaps,but those who arenot will think of childlessnessas a misfortune. Womenwill realize anew the old truth, which the daughters ofto-day, preoccupiedwith their extraordinaryachievementsin hitherto untried fields, appear to have forgotten: thatthereis nothingin this worldbraverorfinerormore roman-tic than motherhood. Therewill be no unmarriedmothersbecauseall womenwill know that, while every womanhas,theoretically,the right to motherhood,no woman is rightwho bearsa child underany but the best auspiciesfor the



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212 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS.child, and that these include the support and personalinfluence of a father: because, moreover, all men, will knowthat he who is not the agent of progress becomes a causeof retrogression-that he who avoids fatherhood for thesake of his own ease and pleasure is like a track athletewhom conceit of his excellent body has made mad and whosesilly feet lift him up and down, up and down, but nevercarry him forward, and who finally falls, to become dustunder the feet of more faithful runners.

There is no danger of killing glamour and making life asandy desert. Nature will see to it that her witchery doesnot go stale. Being right does not imply a neutral sub-mission to sodden duty and the death of personal ambition-a cold, gray selflessness. On the contrary, it means anirresistible reason for the utmost possible acquirement ofknowledge and power and the most assiduous cultivationof gifts. It means an infinite, elastic expansion insteadof a hard and brittle intensification of happiness; not the"sacrifice" of each generation to the next and so on forever-more, but the possession by each generation not only ofits own experience but of all the eternities.

JULIET EVERTS ROBB.NEW YORK.


1920 having right and being right

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