Population Psychology And Peace (Paperback)

POPULATION, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PEACE The Thinkers Library, No. 111. POPULATION, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PEACE By J. C. FLUGEL With an Introduction by C. E. M. JOAD LONDON WATTS CO., 5 6 JOHNSONS COURT, FLEET STREET, E. C. 4 INTRODUCTION By C. E. M. JOAD I AM not sure whether the most valuable thing about Professor Flugels book is not the air of quiet reason ableness with which it is pervaded. For it is indeed very quiet and very mild. Its mildness, however, is not that of the platitude insipid with veracity. On the contrary this is a book in which the mildness of the expression varies inversely with the pungency of the sense. A pervasive reasonableness, valuable in all works which are designed to appeal to the reason, has a special office to perform in its relation to the problems which Professor Flugel has chosen to discuss, for questions of population go to mens heads and the prospect of emptying cradles in particular is one at which they look through reddening spectacles. No doubt there is a number of reasons for this inflammation of mens intellects, and to some of them Professor Flugel makes reference in the text. There is, for example, the castration complex there is the vague fear of loss of national power and prestige there is the suggestion of decadence, with all its implications of unstated disagreeableness. Above all, I suggest, there are sentimentality and pride. Almost everybody thinks that his nation, class, country, college, school, or what not is better than anybody elses because he happens to belong to it. Vlll INTRODUCTION There is nobody like us we feel. Right Then the more there are like us, the better, the consequence being that anybody who suggests that it might not be such abad thing if we were fewer, is felt to be insulting us personally and resented accordingly. These considerations should place us under a special debt of gratitude to Professor Flugel for touching on these inflammatory matters without at the same time touching off the passions of those whom they normally inflame. For there seems to be little doubt that the birth rate, already too low to maintain the population at its existing level, will remain low whether we like it or not, and that, so far from becoming more numerous, we are destined to be fewer in all probability con siderably fewer. Professor Flugel, in agreement with Professor Harding see page 77, points out that there is no evidence for a biologically determined desire for children as such, Nature having sought to ensure the continuance of the species by endowing men with a strong urge towards the sexual act. In other words, sexual gratification is the bait on Natures hook and life the cost of the parents pleasure that the children are called upon to defray. But man, seeking as ever new ways to defeat Natures biological purposes, has invented birth control the effect of which is to enable him to enjoy the bait without swallowing the hook. It is my guess that nine out of every ten children who have ever been born into the world were, if not unwanted, at least unplanned. They occurred, not because their parents wanted children, but because one or both of them enjoyed sexual intercourse, of which children were the unavoidable products. Hence the question, INTRODUCTION ix Shall we have a child or not, is not a question which mankind has hitherto been able effectively to ask. Now, for the first time in history a choice is presented thequestion can be asked and is answered, in the great majority of cases, in the negative. The practice of birth control, already almost universal among the middle and upper classes, has still to spread to the lowest economic stratum of society when it does so, the production of children may be expected to grow even less. It is at this prospect, the prospect of other peoples empty cradles, that we are apt to run as it were intellectually amok, and it is precisely here that Professor Flugel can help us, help us perhaps not least by calming us...