The choice of a mate.

  • Ludovici, Anthony M. (Anthony Mario), 1882-1971.
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The choice of a mate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/546 (page 25)
    PITY: GOOD AND BAD Thus to-day, a girl from any class, but particularly from the uneducated class (now thoroughly saturated with Christian values, although but rarely Church-going) advised by an anti- Socratic, like myself, to refrain from marrying a physiologically botched man, replies instantly : “ Oh, poor chap, he can’t help it! ” Presumably a man can help being a thief, a seducer, a murderer. But he cannot help being a congenital degenerate. Therefore, since no moral stigma attaches to congenital degeneracy, no stigma whatever attaches to it. It is washed out because it cannot form the subject of an indictment. This shows how the purely moral valuation promotes de generacy and disease. For, in assessing the value of a mate, the modern person is prepared to forgive stigmata which are nobody’s fault, and quite forgets that in thus soft-heartedly forgiving, he or she is cruelly foisting an undesirable parent on his or her offspring. Add to this Christian pity, which is quite indiscriminate and makes people react with love and charity to all who suffer, irrespective of their value to posterity, and you have a combination of evils which makes complete degeneracy a calculable certainty. In any relation Christian pity is sentimental self-indulgence, but in mating it is criminal self-indulgence. This does not mean that as an emotion pity should be sup pressed altogether. The Church tried to malign Nietzsche by falsely interpreting him as having made this claim. It simply means that it should be differently conditioned from the way Christianity has conditioned it. It should not be indiscriminate and uncontrolled. It should not be turned chiefly towards human rubbish. And it should not be self-indulgent. The quality of pity should be measured according to the worth to humanity and posterity of the creature pitied. The farmer cares not a rap for the “ rights ” of weeds, or whether they can help being weeds. He pities the nobler plant in its struggle against the ignoble, and refuses to sacrifice the former to the latter. Every sixpence paid by a desirable couple in taxation and rates for the upkeep of human rubbish is a sacrifice of the greater to the less, and if such a desirable couple curtail their family to meet national expenditure for degenerates, we plainly kill the best to save the worst.