The Relationship of the Science of Procreation to the Art of Love—­Sexual Desire and Sexual Pleasure as the Conditions of Conception—­Reproduction Formerly Left to Caprice and Lust—­The Question of Procreation as a Religious Question—­The Creed of Eugenics—­Ellen Key and Sir Francis Galton—­Our Debt to Posterity—­The Problem of Replacing Natural Selection—­The Origin and Development of Eugenics—­The General Acceptance of Eugenical Principles To-day—­The Two Channels by Which Eugenical Principles are Becoming Embodied in Practice—­The Sense of Sexual Responsibility in Women—­The Rejection of Compulsory Motherhood—­The Privilege of Voluntary Motherhood—­Causes of the Degradation of Motherhood—­The Control of Conception—­Now Practiced by the Majority of the Population in Civilized Countries—­The Fallacy of “Racial Suicide”—­Are Large Families a Stigma of Degeneration?—­Procreative Control the Outcome of Natural and Civilized Progress—­The Growth of Neo-Malthusian Beliefs and Practices—­Facultative Sterility as Distinct from Neo-Malthusianism—­The Medical and Hygienic Necessity of Control of Conception—­Preventive Methods—­Abortion—­The New Doctrine of the Duty to Practice Abortion—­How Far is this Justifiable?—­Castration as a Method of Controlling Procreation—­Negative Eugenics and Positive Eugenics—­The Question of Certificates for Marriage—­The Inadequacy of Eugenics by Act of Parliament—­The Quickening of the Social Conscience in Regard to Heredity—­Limitations to the Endowment of Motherhood—­The Conditions Favorable to Procreation—­Sterility—­The Question of Artificial Fecundation—­The Best Age of Procreation—­The Question of Early Motherhood—­The Best Time for Procreation—­The Completion of the Divine Cycle of Life.

We have seen that the art of love has an independent and amply justifiable right to existence apart, altogether, from procreation.  Even if we still believed—­as all men must once have believed and some Central Australians yet believe[421]—­that sexual intercourse has no essential connection with the propagation of the race it would have full right to existence.  In its finer manifestations as an art it is required in civilization for the full development of the individual, and it is equally required for that stability of relationships which is nearly everywhere regarded as a demand of social morality.

When we now turn to the second great constitutional factor of marriage, procreation, the first point we encounter is that the art of love here also has its place.  In ancient times the sexual congruence of any man with any woman was supposed to be so much a matter of course that all questions of love and of the art of love could be left out of consideration.  The propagative act might, it was thought, be performed as impersonally, as perfunctorily, as the early Christian Fathers imagined it had been performed in Paradise.  That view is no longer acceptable.  It fails to commend itself to men, and still less to women.  We know that in civilization at all events—­and it is often indeed the same among savages—­erethism is not always easy between two persons selected at random, nor even when they are more specially selected.  And we also know, on the authority of very distinguished gynaecologists, that it is not in very many cases sufficient even to effect coitus, it is also necessary to excite orgasm, if conception is to be achieved.