More than half of the second essay addresses “the most important condition for the perfection of the human breed”: “the selection of spouses.” Florinskii states categorically: “the qualities of offspring depend directly on the qualities of spouses” [20]. People have long recognized this truth, he claims, which is reflected in a number of proverbs and folk sayings, such as “an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” and “you reap what you sow.”
But before he goes any further in his examination of what he terms a “rational marriage,” Florinskii writes a long explanatory “aside”
addressed to his “female readers.” In fact, this aside looks more like a ploy designed (probably with Blagosvetlov’s assistance) to divert the attention of the censor from the subversive nature of the subsequent discussions. Florinskii slyly presents “a torrent of admonitions and objections” that “the beautiful sex” might unleash upon him:
How could [he], they would say, look so materially at marriage — the most sacred of life mysteries; so harshly and coldly view love, subordinating it — this whimsical and capricious child — to the laws of science and
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reason. Finally, how is it possible to see marriage in the same way as the breeding of domesticated animals with the goal of improving the stock!
This is beyond even the vagaries of materialism, this is cynicism! [20]
He claims that he understands this sort of indignation, but sees “its source in a series of misapprehensions,” which he wants to clarify.
“There is neither cynicism, nor materialism” in his views, he insists:
“I respect the sanctity of marriage and love and do not deny the latter its enchantments.” But, Florinskii warns his “female reader,” “an unnaturally developed sexual love could have very bad consequences for the progeny.” “Love, as any other need,” he asserts, “must submit to limitations, to the control of reason, because this feeling could develop abnormally and irrationally” [21]. He does not in the least deny the necessity of love in marriage, but insists that “not every love is natural, rational” and that sometimes love could lead to a “positively harmful”
marriage, not to mention “those marriages that go against science and reason.” He maintains that a correct choice of spouses depends on
“knowledge of those conditions under which it could be accomplished more easily (what’s cynical about that?).” He admits that “some could say that the issue of marriage cannot be considered from a purely hygienic viewpoint, that moral and societal conditions are equally important.”
But focusing on the physiological and hygienic sides of marriage, he does not reject other sides, “as the physiologist, examining functions of the human organism and ignoring human social and other relations, in no way denies the existence of such relations and undermines their importance” [22].
Florinskii reminds his “female readers” that “we need to remember that marriage must be seen not as a matter of personal gratification, but as a very important act of civic life, as a mystery of reproducing the human breed.” Therefore, the issues of marriage “must interest not only the two people [entering the marriage], but the entire society, science, and the law.” He is convinced that if people would “understand that a marriage between an old man and a young girl, or between a TB sufferer and an epileptic, is not merely a folly, but a crime,” they would avoid such irrational marriages, while “understanding the [necessary]
conditions of a normal marriage” would help “develop a true, rational taste” and thus lead to “rational marriage. ”
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The professor calls on his “female readers” not to “take offence” at his regular comparisons of “human sexual reproduction with the similar phenomena in animals.” Such comparisons, he states, “would seem improper” only to those who are “accustomed to thinking of themselves as the kings of nature, [who] imbibed with mother’s milk a conviction that there is nothing in common between them and animals.” But “a thoughtful reader” must recognize, Florinskii insists, that “the organic life of humans and animals is so close to one another that the majority of their physiological processes are nearly identical.” Therefore, while investigating these processes in humans, it is not only necessary, but very important “to use facts taken from animals, because they are much more accessible to experimental investigations and because in animals we could not only observe physiological processes, but also deliberately expose and direct them according to a particular purpose” [23]. The results of such experiments, he continues, could with full confidence be transferred to humans, thus we should not take offence, but instead value them. After this detailed exposition, he expects that his “female readers” “will not be horrified by the thought of the perfection of the human breed, of the rational matching of spouses, and such.”
Florinskii proposes to look at three sets of conditions that should be taken into account in “considering the issue of spousal choice (vybor suprugov)”: 1) the age of people entering marriage; 2) their moral and physical qualities, and 3) blood mixing. He states that “the question of at what age people should marry is as important as it is difficult to answer”
[23]. Nevertheless he is ready to offer some guidelines. Generally speaking, his advice is that people should enter marriage only after the organism’s development is completed. He suggests a median age for completing this process as 25 years for men, and twenty for women.
He claims that these figures do not mean that neither men, nor women are incapable of sexual life before that age. He provides numerous examples, many from his own clinical practice, of much earlier sexual maturity in both men and women. But is it sexual capacity (manifested by the onset of menstruation in females and nighttime ejaculations in males), he asks rhetorically, that is the real sign of their readiness to reproduce?
Florinskii presents evidence in support of two opposing viewpoints, first by those advocating for early marriage, and then by those arguing
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against it. Many observers have noted, he states, that “children of very young parents (not completely formed and strengthened) are distinguished by slow growth, weakness, and strong predisposition to disease.” Citing a voluminous article on “Animal husbandry as an argument for Darwin’s theory,” Florinskii notes that animal breeders have reported similar observations for a variety of domesticated animals, from dogs to chickens, and have also described various harmful consequences for the progenitors bred at too young an age.29 His personal observations of pregnancy and birthing in young women of around 16-17 years of age, however, do not fully support these views;
by all clinical indications, pregnancy, fetal development, and delivery were completely normal in this age group. Furthermore, he claims,
“all obstetricians know that the younger the woman who gives birth for the first time, the easier the delivery,” while “a woman who gives birth for the first time after the age of twenty-five rarely escapes needing some surgical obstetrics assistance” [25]. He suggests that, if we look at marriage only from a physiological point of view, “that is as sanctified by the law means of producing offspring,” and consider only the ability or the inability to reproduce, “then nothing would preclude marriage at the age of 17-18 for men, and 15-16 for women.” But, he cautions, we must also take into account “the moral side of marriage and the social conditions of family and society.” “Aside from sexual capability,” he states, people entering marriage “must have abilities and strengths for civic life, a certain amount of education, [and] a certain maturity of reason” [26]. Russian law allows marriage for women at sixteen and for men at eighteen, which, he contends, is not contrary to the physiological requirements, but not entirely corresponding to the social ones.
Many observers, Florinskii notes, argue that late marriages are often harmful to offspring, “despite the stable material conditions” that usually accompany such marriages: “Children born to the parents of advanced age … almost always have inborn (vrozhdennye) deficiencies of constitution — the result of the weakness of the parental organisms.”30 He then discusses the influence of “the age difference between husband and wife” on the quality of their offspring. He notes that “in the lower classes this difference usually ranges from two to three years, and in the educated class — from five to ten.” He considers these ranges to represent a physiological norm, since women age faster than men. “The ability to have children in women lasts till 40-45 years,” he states, “in
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The next set of conditions to be taken into account in a “rational marriage” is the morbidity (both physical and moral) of potential spouses. Since moral and physical characteristics are inherited, Florinskii posits, marriage should be arranged in such a way that relative deficiencies of spouses do not strengthen but weaken each other, “thus neutralizing the morbid (boleznennaia) heredity of both spouses” [32]. He declares forcefully that “from a medical viewpoint, marriages between two sickly, cachectic individuals must be forbidden. Otherwise, the weakening and degeneration of the stock will be unavoidable” [32].
At least one of the spouses, according to Florinskii, should have “a healthy constitution,” thus “suppressing the morbid heredity of the weaker element.” He is convinced that the growing number of people afflicted with “syphilis, tuberculosis, and scrofula, which weaken our population, speak volumes as a vivid reminder of our neglect of the rules of hygiene in marriage.”
Florinskii gives a long list of practical advice to prospective brides and grooms aimed at balancing out the weak and strong elements in their constitutions, temperaments, functioning of particular organs, heights, talents and moral characters, and hereditary predispositions to certain diseases. This lengthy list basically comes down to the suggestion that everyone should “strive to marry a person with contrary qualities”
and that “spouses’ physical deficiencies should not be identical with one another.” To support his views he cites the recommendation of the eminent French gynecologist and social hygienist Louis Alfred Becquerel:
“a strong, stout man, with dark skin and well-developed musculature should marry a blond [woman] with blue eyes, white and fine skin, and a lymphatic temperament.”31 Florinskii particularly emphasizes the importance of anatomical and physiological capability to producing men the exact limit is unknown, but in any case it lasts much longer than in women.” Therefore, he concludes, a marriage between spouses of the same age is not ideal, while a marriage between an older woman and a younger man is positively unfavorable.
But he saves most of his indignation for marriages between old men and very young women: “Everywhere in our society we see the sad facts of men of advanced age, even greybeards, marrying youngish girls,”
which, he states, “in equal measure defile the sanctity of matrimony and undermine public health”[31]. Florinskii’s indignation resonated with and perhaps was further amplified by the societal response to a painting by Vasilii Pukirev, titled The Unequal Marriage, that created a furor in the fall of 1863 in St. Petersburg (see fig. 3-1).
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Fig. 3-1. Vasilii Pukirev’s painting, The Unequal Marriage, 1862, oil on canvas, 173 x 136.5 cm. The painting was first presented at the 1863 annual exhibition by the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of the Fine Arts, which opened shortly after Florinskii’s return from his European tour. It earned Pukirev both professional (he was granted the title of the academy’s full member) and public acclaim. From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Pukirev_ner_brak.jpg. The original is in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
progeny, stating sternly that women with “a wrong form of pelvis that prevents normal birth should not get married” [33]. He is equally stern on the issue of hereditary disease: “Individuals suffering from serious hereditary diseases, such as, for instance, hereditary insanity, epilepsy, and so on, should abstain from the pleasures of married life” [33].32 All in all, he advises prospective spouses to choose “strong over weak, beautiful over ugly, smart over stupid, not sacrificing these significant qualities to petty benefits and calculations” [34].
“The rules of hygiene exist to distinguish the organism’s actual need from false and perverse ones,” Florinskii states categorically: “Following
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these hygienic rules could be very beneficial to individuals, families, and society at large.” Alas, he laments, “physicians are not invited to participate in discussions of marriage, or in creating laws pertaining to this subject.” Except for forbidding marriage among close relatives, he observes, “our laws do not prescribe any measures for the perfection of the physical status of humanity.” He calls on the public to take notice of this important issue: “society should proscribe, as it does in the cases of serious crimes, those anomalies of marriage which bring about deadly consequences for the next generation.” Public opinion, in Florinskii’s views, should be unequivocal: “why can’t we call a murderer a fifty-year-old man marrying a sixteen-year-fifty-year-old girl, or a parent suffering from TB or syphilis, as we call a person who takes somebody’s life or health for his personal gain.” He admonishes parents who are not concerned with passing on to the next generations their own afflictions and diseases, and promises to discuss in more detail “the consequences of irrational marriages in the essay on the degeneration of human stocks” [35].
Another set of considerations Florinskii offers as important for
“rational marriage” concerns “blood mixing” (pomes’ krovi). Generally speaking, he contends, “the inbred stocks of both animals and humans diminish.” He cites Darwin’s opinion that breeding close relatives decreases both the strength and the fecundity of a breed. He offers an example of the European aurochs, whose current population in Russia were descendants of just 500 animals that had remained alive in 1824. In the last forty years, due to interbreeding, the weight and height of the animals significantly decreased, attesting to their visible degeneration.33 Similar facts could be observed in human stocks, he maintains, when the lack of blood mixing leads to the degeneration and extinction of families and nations. “There is no doubt that in general a blood mixing has very favorable effects,” he states. “Isolate any estate,” and, as a result, “in its midst soon there will be accumulated so many physical and moral deficiencies that it will diminish, degenerate, burn out, and go extinct, as every organic body burns out” [36].
We do not know exactly how the blood mixing works, Florinskii concedes, but we can discern certain conditions that could facilitate or hinder it. The main among them is isolation. When isolation is absent, a “continuous exchange of physical and moral features” between different groups of people leads to the renewal of national strengths
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and to the leveling off of their particular deficiencies. Revisiting his earlier discussion of human variability, he identifies two main kinds of barriers that could affect blood mixing, which could work separately or in combination: geographical and social. He observes that the variety of climates, landscapes, and other environmental conditions in the Russian empire were conducive to the variable development of inhabitants in different locales. Until recently, he states, “the lack of roads and the close attachment of our people to a concrete locale” — he is obliquely referring to the serfdom here — worked against blood mixing among them, preserving these local varieties. “The way of life of our people (agriculture), insufficient entrepreneurship, and the lack of [investment]
capital and freedom (as a consequence of the serfdom),” he states, “were the causes of a far rarer mixing than there could have been” [38]. He hopes that “with the improvement of the transportation system and the increase in wealth, development, and freedom, the interactions among the inhabitants [of different locales] will improve, and then blood mixing and the renewal of provincial types will be much more noticeable.” He is convinced that the Russian people are in no danger of degeneration, for
“the diminution and degeneration of the type is possible in the future only under a very unfortunate political organization, namely, if the people’s initiative were suppressed completely, the interactions among separate provinces stopped, the existing disjunction of the masses increased even more, and separate locales became even more isolated,”
which, he states optimistically, “of course could not happen” [39].
Florinskii next considers various social barriers to blood mixing, stating that “social (soslovnye) prejudices” of particular groups could hinder blood mixing among them. He observes that, motivated by “true or false notions of their own worth,” these groups “think it improper to mix their own noble blood with a less noble, plebeian blood.” According to Florinskii, nothing could be farther from the truth, for “in the mixing of different estates (mezhsoslovnye pomesi), the better qualities of combining elements would dominate over worse ones, and therefore the more mixing occurs the more an estate’s deficiencies will be purified.”
Under opposite conditions, naturally, the consequences will too be opposite: “the mass of physical and moral defects will accumulate more and more, and in the end will lead to the diminution and degeneration of the estate.” This is why, he maintains, many aristocratic stocks have
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disappeared and continue to disappear. But, he states, “the fewer the prejudices against the plebeian origins, the better the chances for the moral and physical perfection of the stock” [41].
Political rights and freedoms, according to Florinskii, profoundly influence the success of mixing between different estates: “During serfdom one could not have expected the people to mix with the nobles.”
He is convinced that “the spread of literacy, the granting of the right to enter secondary and higher educational institutions, and the bestowing of a certain level of wealth and equal rights will serve as the Archimedes lever” in both promoting intercourse between different estates and stimulating the growth of the nation’s productive forces. As an example, he considers the fate of the social estate he himself had come from, the rural clergy. He notes that the majority of the clergy had come from the people (narod) and their way of life had been (and in many instances still is) not much different from that of the people. But since the clergy had access to education and the right to enter universities, they became much more important to the life of the country: “They occupy a prominent place in the ranks of scientists, litterateurs, artists, civil servants, and so on.” “But numerically the clergy is just a fraction of the people!” — he exclaims: “If the latter had the same access to education and civic activity, it goes without saying that a hundred-fold quantity of fresh and energetic forces would have entered our educated society,” which, he implies, would tremendously benefit the entire nation.
Florinskii notes that religious prejudices are also very powerful in preventing blood mixing. As a rule, each confession allows marriages only within its own faith. Thus, the Orthodox marry only the Orthodox,
Florinskii notes that religious prejudices are also very powerful in preventing blood mixing. As a rule, each confession allows marriages only within its own faith. Thus, the Orthodox marry only the Orthodox,