Havelock Ellis, eugenicist

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Abstract

This article examines the contributions made towards eugenic thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Havelock Ellis (1859–1939). Ellis was a significant social reformer who worked on the problems of sexuality from a scientific–naturalist secular perspective. In the later phases of his work, after he had completed much of his writing on sexuality, Ellis concentrated on issues of feminism and eugenics—problems he thought were interlinked. In this paper, I integrate his ideas about these subjects, and consider the ways in which Ellis and other liberal social reformers created a ‘eugenic subject’ in order to frame their arguments about social problems.

Introduction

Eugenics was rarely far from the surface of the writings of sexologist Havelock Ellis. Often explicit, and regularly skirting around the edges of the debates concerning ‘the race’ and its future in those writings which were not directly concerned with the topic, it is clear that eugenics represented for Ellis the most significant interface between individual sexual expression, the species and the state—an interface he would later call the ‘most intimate of all relations’ (Draznin, 1992, p. 134). This standpoint is clear in the oft-cited General Preface to his Studies in the psychology of sex, (hereafter, Studies) written in 1897, in which he noted:

I regard sex as the central problem of life. And now that the problem of religion has practically been settled, and that the problem of labour has at least been placed on a practical foundation, the question of sex—with the racial questions that rest on it—stands before the coming generations as the chief problem for solution. (Ellis & Symonds, 2007, p. 3)

In addition to offering much new sexological knowledge in his Studies, Ellis engaged with some significant aspects of the problem of sex via eugenic speculation. Such engagement is shown by Ellis’s various positions in the Eugenics Society: he was a Member between 1907 and his death in 1939 (and elected Fellow 1937, at the same time as his election as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians); he was on the Society’s Council in 1916, and on the Consultative Council 1937. He was also on the General Committee of the First International Eugenics Congress 1912.1 For Ellis, who was famously reclusive from public life, these activities demonstrate a political commitment that was uncommon in other of his activities (other than his writings). Further, this political direction increased as Ellis completed his sexological studies and began to popularize his eugenic views, which he regarded as a logical extension of the early works.

The purpose of this paper is to draw together these strands of Ellis’s eugenic thinking, from scientific texts about sexuality through to pieces written for general audiences. It will place these writings in Ellis’s individual context, showing the development of his opinions. Ellis’s ideas are shown to rest upon the principles of scientific naturalism espoused by other radical secularists of the Victorian period who also strove to treat natural objects through a scientific rather than abstract way (see Turner, 1974), but with a particular modernist interest in the emerging human sciences that gave weight to his eugenic as well as to his sexological interests. Ellis’s project amounted to treating humans as objects of science. It will be seen that a number of Ellis’s intellectual commitments—to scientific naturalism, to secularism, to individual rights, and to liberal education—were maintained throughout his life, and shaped his attitudes—and the attitudes of his readers and followers—to the issues of eugenics and social regeneration.

Section snippets

Ellis’s intellectual development

Ellis considered himself a spiritual person, both in his early life as a devout Christian, and later as a utopian philosopher of human relationships. After his youthful reading of David Strauss’s Der alte und der neue glaube (1872), Ernst Renan’s La vie de Jésus (1863), and the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, he fell away from Christianity, disconcerted by the dogmatism of established religion, although not entirely accepting the materialism of Renan and Strauss. In 1875, Ellis moved to Sydney,

Ellis’s sexological writings

Ellis first addressed eugenics (albeit indirectly) in his scientific works on sexuality, although as was typical with many sexological discourses of the period, this emphasis on heredity in relation to sexual perversion was not the same as a eugenic manifesto. In the co-authored Sexual inversion (with John Addington Symonds, 1897), Ellis expounded ideas about distinct races and variable stocks. This viewpoint derived from his idea that sexual desire was largely determined through heredity

Ellis’s eugenic writings

After his Studies, a number of Ellis’s writings were directed towards the increasing popularity of eugenics in modern Britain. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, a time when the empire was expanding (especially in Africa), and when the Eugenics Education Society was founded (1907, changing its name to the Eugenics Society in 1926), Ellis increased his eugenic output. One of the first actions taken was as a part of a debate on eugenics at the Sociological Society, published in

Ellis’s later eugenic writings

Having set out his position on eugenics, Ellis contributed a number of non-specialist articles that addressed various aspects of the problem. Topics addressed included the eugenic issues raised by the First World War, the relationship between eugenics and contraception, and the relationship between the individual and the race. These will be addressed in turn to show how they expand Ellis’s earlier writings.

With the destruction of the ‘best stocks’ of all nations, the war brought the attention

Conclusion

In his writings on sexuality and eugenics, Ellis consistently pursued the idea that facts must be plainly put in order for them to be acted upon efficiently. Education was the only means by which social change could be brought about; the only means by which superstition and ignorance would be overcome. It is this spirit that led to both his voluminous Studies and his popular essays on a variety of subjects, including those on eugenics. It was also adherence to this ideal that led Ellis to

Manuscripts

Havelock Ellis Archives, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, Commonplace book 1, 1875–1877, A6904/3 and Commonplace book 3, 1875–1877, A6904/5

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