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ONE CHILD
 ONE CHILD
Do We Have a Right to More?

Sarah Conly

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of
Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research,
scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain
other countries

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

© Oxford University Press 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law,
by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization.
Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the
Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Conly, Sarah.
One child : do we have a right to more? / Sarah Conly.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978–0–19–020343–6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Family size—Moral and ethical
aspects. 2. Population—Environmental aspects. 3. Conservation of natural
resources. I. Title.
HQ760.C65 2016
304.6ʹ3—dc23
2015005671

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which
it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and popu-
lation would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling
it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I
sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content
to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to do it.
—John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

1. The Problem 1
2. The Right to a Family 32
3. The Right to Control Your Body 65
4. Sanctions 103
5. The Future 141
6. Unwanted Consequences 177
7. Conclusion: When? 217

Bibliography 233
Index 245
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the University of Chicago for allowing me to

spend the 2013–2014 year there as a Fellow in Law and Philosophy,
which gave me the opportunity to write this book and I also thank
Bowdoin College for granting me leave. I am grateful for student
and faculty comments at Harvard University, Princeton University,
the University of Wyoming, Umeå University, the University of
Chicago, Northwestern University, Davidson College, and Lone
Star College. I would also like to thank my Bowdoin colleague Jack
O’Brien for his great help. Finally, I owe an immeasurable debt to
Aidan Penn, who corrected mistakes of every order. Remaining
errors and misconceptions are entirely my own.
 [1]
THE PROBLEM

The biggest impact a U.S. citizen can have on global environment

problems, such as climate change, is having fewer children.
—David Biello, “Human Population Reaches
7 Billion—How Did This Happen, and Can It Go On?”
Scientific American, October 28, 2011

Despite investments in energy efficiency and cleaner energy

sources in the United States, in Europe and in developing coun-
tries like China, annual emissions of greenhouse gases have risen
almost twice as fast in the first decade of this century as they did
in the last decades of the 20th century. This places in serious jeop-
ardy the emissions target agreed upon in Rio to limit warming to
no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above
the preindustrial level. Beyond that increase, the world could face
truly alarming consequences. Avoiding that fate will require a
reduction of between 40 percent and 70 percent in greenhouse
gases by midcentury, which means embarking on a revolution in
the way we produce and consume energy.
That’s daunting enough, but here’s the key finding: The world
has only about 15 years left in which to begin to bend the emissions
curve downward.
—Editorial Board, New York Times, “Running Out of Time,”
April 20, 2014

1
 O ne C hild

I’m going to argue here that we don’t have a right to more than
one biological child. At this point in time, when the world around
us is in so much danger from environmental degradation, doing
just as our parents did—having as many children as we happen
to want—is no longer viable. Given the numbers we have now, it’s
just not an acceptable option. We are threatened with more popu-
lation than the planet can bear, and while the future is never cer-
tain, the best thing to do when great danger threatens is take steps
to avoid it. This is especially true when the danger is something
like overpopulation, because that’s the kind of danger that isn’t
certain until it’s too late to fix.
What does it mean to say we have no right to have more than
one child? The limitation to one child means that two people who
procreate should limit themselves to one child between them.
This, it is true, is less than replacement value—the population
will become smaller and smaller, so naturally this isn’t a course
we’d want to follow forever. I will argue below, though, that it is
the course we need to follow now, and until we have reduced our
population to a sustainable number.
To say we don’t have a right to do this means a number of
things. It recognizes that, as I will argue in Chapter 2, we don’t
have a fundamental interest in having more than one child. That
is, having more than one child isn’t something we need to live at
least a minimally decent life. It’s possible that we don’t really need
any biological child at all to lead a minimally decent life, but if we
do, we certainly don’t need more than one. We often say that if
someone has a fundamental interest in doing something they have
a claim on us to let them do that no matter what the costs, but hav-
ing lots of children just isn’t that kind of thing.
Of course, there are other kinds of rights. Often we say we have
a right to choose how to live, even when those individual choices

2
 T he P roblem

don’t reflect our fundamental interests—that’s why we can have a

right to do things that may be downright bad for us, if that’s what is
consistent with our own considered choices. This right to choose
one’s way of living, though, is limited by the harm it does to others.
We can certainly exercise rights in ways that are somewhat costly
to others, but not to the point where we are doing devastating
harm. In Chapter 3, I will argue that in these days, there is a suf-
ficient probability that unlimited procreation will be devastating,
and so our right to choose our way of living just doesn’t extend to
having more than one child.
And, since I support the view that we have no moral right
to have more than one child, I will also argue that government
legislation to limit how many children we have can be morally
permissible. It depends, of course, on exactly what the govern-
ment does: certain state actions would violate our rights no
matter what the reason for them (say, torture for wrongdoing).
I will argue, though, that while it would certainly be better if we
could reach population goals solely through voluntary actions,
there are restrictions that government can appropriately imple-
ment if voluntary efforts fall short. There are, of course, other
methods that we can promote, and if they work, we need do no
more. Economic development generally lowers the fertility rate.1
Access to contraception generally lowers the fertility rate. If
these prove sufficient, so much the better. If they are not enough,
though, then it is the role of the state to protect us, both those of
us now living and those who will live in the future. This is contro-
versial, but I will argue that it is consistent with what we actually
think is just and fair.
There are a number of claims I am not making here. I am not
arguing that those in the past or the present who have more than
one child are blameworthy. Some of the dangers we face now

3
 O ne C hild

couldn’t have been foreseen by people in the past.2 And now that it
is dangerous, many people don’t know this, and many people don’t
have the means to avoid pregnancy even if they knew it was dan-
gerous. Rather than blaming people, we need to educate people,
and where they don’t have the means to control procreation, we
need to help them so that they have the wherewithal to do that.
Nor am I arguing about what we have a legal right to do. What
legal rights we have depends on what the law is, and laws can be
changed and frequently are changed. In light of new circum-
stances, new information, and new moral beliefs we alter our laws
to better reflect our needs and our values. And, of course, the laws
we already have are subject to interpretation. Others have written
on whether American law as it now stands allows limiting procre-
ation, and I won’t be discussing that. 3 I will be talking about what
the law should be if it is to reflect moral rights, the rights of pro-
spective parents but also those others who are or will be members
of society.
Last, I am a philosopher, not a demographer, a statistician, an
economist, or an environmental scientist. While I use reliable and
up-to-date sources for facts, I don’t do my own research in any of
these areas. My argument is about what is morally permissible,
when and if overpopulation threatens. I do think that it threatens
now, but if it does not, and we will only need to worry about this
in the future, the question about what rights we do and don’t have
is still pertinent: this is a book about what morality requires if and
when we are threatened with a population that will cause devastat-
ing environmental harm. Again, I think we need to worry about
this now, but even if this is not true, it is something we need to
consider so that in the future we can determine our policies while
knowing what our rights and obligations are.

4
 T he P roblem

DISCUSSING DIFFICULT QUESTIONS

If we continue to let the population grow in the way that it has, we

will leave future humans with lives vastly inferior to our own, if
they are able to eke out a living at all.4 This hasn’t gone unnoticed.
The number of people we have, combined with our rate of con-
sumption, is already bad—more people at anything like the pres-
ent rate of consumption will be a disaster. But while many people
have offered suggestions as to how to cut back on the consumption
of material goods, and how to reduce the amount of greenhouse
gases and other pollution that we release into the air, the idea of
requiring limits on procreation has not been popular. That govern-
ment might restrict how many children we have is not generally
promoted.
The reasons for this are various. First, it is enormously unpop-
ular with those who rely on public opinion for their support.
Politicians don’t like to offend voters, on whom they depend.
Much as politicians hate to suggest that we might have to cut back
on our rate of consumption—much as they have difficulty backing
even mild measures, like increasing automobile efficiency—they
hate much, much more raising a topic that will be a red flag, popu-
lation control. Even environmental advocacy groups have avoided
discussing it, despite the obvious relevance to environmental
protection. 5
Second, the idea of suggesting that people don’t have a right
to have just as many children as they want seems deeply contrary
to ideals that many cherish. To some, such a suggestion is against
basic principles of religion; to some, it cuts against the privacy of
the home; to some, it is incompatible with the principles of per-
sonal autonomy that justify democracy.

5
 O ne C hild

Bill McKibben, in his charming and humane Maybe One,

argues that while it is best for the environment and for future
humans that many of us have no children, or at most one child,
government should not get involved. 6 McKibben is optimis-
tic about human nature, and thinks that enough people will be
sensitive to the moral arguments against procreation that they
will make up for those who have more than one or two children.
Even if this turns out to be true, which I, less impressed by the
generosity of human nature than McKibben, tend to doubt,
I think there is a question of whether it is the most fair way to
approach population limits. (See Chapter 2.) For McKibben,
as important as it is to limit population growth, government
intervention in family size would be “repugnant.” 7 In her more
recent Why Have Children? Christine Overall reaches the same
conclusion that McKibben argued for in 1998. 8 She thinks we
have a moral responsibility to limit procreation because of the
“global dangers” of not doing so, but says, “I am not suggesting
that this reproductive limit be legally required or enforceable
or that its violation be legally punishable”9 (emphasis hers), as
such restrictions, she later writes, would be “unconscionable.”10
What we should do if people fail to live up to their moral respon-
sibility she does not suggest. Naomi Klein, while excoriating the
environmental harm we are doing through current practices of
consumption, says population reduction is a “moral dead end.”11
Of course, we would all agree that if we don’t need to force
people to limit reproduction, we shouldn’t. At the same time, we
generally think a global danger merits some sort of enforceable
restriction on people, if that is the only way it can be averted. The
fact that it is painful, or even repugnant, to think about doesn’t
actually excuse us from thinking about it, given our options.
Instead, we need to think about how to make it as painless, as

6
 T he P roblem

little repugnant, and as respectful of individuals as possible, if we

do have to cross that bridge.

BACKGROUND: POPUL ATION

AND THE ENVIRONMENT

We’re familiar with the facts: the word population reached 7 bil-
lion in 2011. And we know that this has been an extraordinarily
rapid rise: the size of the world population increased during the
19th and 20th centuries from approximately 1 billion in 1825 to
7 billion in 2011. And, the greater the number of people the
rapider the increase will be: according to the 2012 “medium” pro-
jection of the United Nations, by as soon as 2050 the world will
have 9.6 billion people. But that’s a relatively optimistic forecast:
the same report says that the number could be higher, depending
largely on population policies for the next few years—policies it’s
up to us, as members of society, to determine.12
And as we read every day, this high population has resulted
in environmental damage: the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere is higher than it has ever been (but not higher than it
will be),13 and the climate is accordingly changing; species are lost
at a greater rate than they’ve ever been; the polar ice cap is melting,
and glaciers are melting, the sea level’s rising, and, at the same time
climate change and local use patterns have produced droughts and
water shortages. Meanwhile, even without global warming our
numbers create shortages of some basic foods: fishing stocks drop
dangerously because of overfishing, and as we use corn to supple-
ment our diminishing supply of fossil fuels, the price of corn for
eating goes up. While globally there is plenty of food, under our
present pattern of population growth and consumption the need

7
 O ne C hild

for food can be expected to increase drastically in the future: 40%

by 2030, 70% by 2050.14 Even if we can meet the overall global
demand, in individual locations a lack of food (due both to grow-
ing population and to climactic change resulting in drought) is
expected to produce starvation conditions.15 (And recently, the
United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has
raised doubts about the ability to satisfy global food demand.)16
The places we live in change, and for the worse; droughts wipe out
farmland, topsoil is lost almost at rates 10 to 40 times faster than it
is replaced, resulting in a loss of almost 37,000 square miles a year
of cropland.17 (Americans may be pleased to know that their loss
is less than that of some places. However, some of the hardest-hit
places are those we regard as the heart of the agricultural region,
including Iowa.)18 Meanwhile, megacities grow without the means
to make them run efficiently, resulting in huge slum populations
living without water or waste disposal (unless we act, “the slum
population worldwide is likely to grow annually by 6 million every
year . . . to reach a total of 889 million by 2020” (114)).19 Heat waves
increase, and are felt particularly acutely in these growing urban
centers.20 We run short of fossil fuels and of minerals, including
the uranium for the nuclear energy that might serve as a substitute
for fossil fuels.21 Shortages, and the prospect of future shortages,
result in political unrest, and as we know well, in war. If the pop-
ulation grows enough, these things will only get worse: however
careful we may be, we will use up our resources. It’s just inevitable.
We know all this—it’s in the papers every day. We know that
unchecked growth in our numbers will destroy the planet in
some sense and will make the lives of future humans, as Thomas
Hobbes might have said, poor, nasty, brutish, and very likely short.
But they will not be, as Hobbes described life in the uncivilized

8
 T he P roblem

state of nature, solitary: they will be lives in which we are very,

very crowded.22
If, on the other hand, we have a sufficiently small popula-
tion, we can avoid many of these ills. Some resources are sustain-
able: that is, if we use them at a slow enough rate, we don’t need
to run out of them, because they can be replenished—water, for
example, and topsoil, and fisheries and other foodstuffs. This isn’t
true of everything, of course: if we continue to use fossil fuels, we
will run out of them. They are finite and nonrenewable. However,
if we use them at a sufficiently slower rate, we can avoid most of
the effects of global warming that arise from their use, which will
in turn diminish many of our other losses. There is a certain rate
of carbon dioxide emissions that the atmosphere can accommo-
date, when combined with natural carbon dioxide “sinks” (such as
the rain forest).23 And of course, with fewer people, solar and wind
could supply a greater percentage of our energy needs.
Why do some of us doubt the need for fewer people? For one
thing, it’s just generally difficult for us to face change. It’s hard
to believe that what we’ve always done with impunity can in
fact be bad for us. We see how difficult it is to modify our diet to
include more vegetables and less sugar, or to switch to driving a
more fuel-efficient car, and those are things by which we benefit
ourselves, and relatively quickly. For thousands of years, growing
population seemed to bring benefits—a growing nation was seen
as a healthy nation. And individually, the birth of babies has been
celebrated as one of the finest moments of our lives, and without
any feeling that our personal joy might conflict with the good of
others. On the contrary, having a baby has been an intense per-
sonal joy that, happily, also helped build a growing, thriving soci-
ety. Given this, we naturally tend to think that what has been so

9
 O ne C hild

very good in the past will continue to be good in the future, even
when the evidence is against that.
And we’ve heard at least a few people cry wolf. Thomas
Malthus is almost as famous today for being wrong in his pre-
dictions about population as for his foresightedness in thinking
about it at all. In the 18th century, Malthus wrote his Essay on
the Principle of Population, which argued that growing popula-
tion would result in lower wages and higher food prices, until
such point that “distress” over lack of food would drive people
to refrain from marrying and having children. He was wrong:
along with the rising population we have had improvements in
agricultural technology, so that many of us have more food than
they had in Malthus’s day, rather than less. Then, in 1968, Paul
Ehrlich similarly predicted a population “bomb” that would
result in massive starvation in the 1970s, an alarming forecast
that proved to be quite false. 24 On the contrary, in the developed
world we are suffering from an obesity epidemic, and while local
areas may suffer from a lack of food, this is a problem of uneven
distribution, rather than a global lack of food. These failures com-
fort us. When we know that there have been false predictions in
the past, and when a new prediction is one we really don’t want to
believe, we tend to take refuge in a general skepticism that allows
us to avoid thinking about danger—in the same way, perhaps,
that some people continue to deny the reality of climate change
because it means we need to make “inconvenient” changes to our
ways of living.
Third, we have some grounds for optimism when it comes to
population. As things are now going, some parts of the globe (espe-
cially the United States, western Europe, Japan, and a few other
countries) have undergone a decline in birth rate. From 2005 to
2010, 47% of the world population had a total fertility rate of less

10
 T he P roblem

than 2.1 children per woman.25 (The fertility rate is the average
number of children a woman has over her lifetime.) In the United
States, for example, it has dropped pretty much to replacement
value: that is, on average, two children per two parents. Many peo-
ple hope that this trend will spread worldwide, and hope that if it
does, environmental catastrophe will be avoided simply by letting
people make the personal choices they naturally want to. We don’t
really need to think about rights and obligations when there’s no
conflict between what we ought to do and what we want to do.
None of this means we shouldn’t be thinking about what might
be needed, though. The fact that it’s difficult to change our way
of thinking is a problem we deal with every day when we get new
information, especially when it’s information we don’t want to
accept. Changing takes a lot of education and a lot of determina-
tion, but of course it is possible, if we steel ourselves to do it. And,
as I will discuss in Chapter 5, it’s certainly true that Malthus was
wrong, but it’s lazy thinking to conclude that if Malthus was wrong
in his particular prediction about population size, population size
can never be a problem. Avoiding a topic because it’s unpleasant, or
requires changing our ideas, or because someone once said some-
thing false about it isn’t something we want to let ourselves do if we
want to solve problems.
The fact that the fertility rate has been falling in some places is
relevant, though. However, it’s also complicated. Even if the birth
rate drops, there is something called “demographic momentum”
that means the population will continue to rise for a long time.
Even though the fertility rate has dropped for 47% of us, and even
assuming that it remains at that relatively low rate, the population
will continue to grow for another 40 years, as those who are young
go on to have their own children.26 When there is a large number
of young people who reproduce their own replacement value, that

11
 O ne C hild

obviously increases the population for quite a long time—we can’t

stop growth on a dime, which is why we need to plan ahead.
And although the birth rate has dropped in some parts of the
world, in others it has not, and we don’t yet know if it will. One-fifth
of the world’s present population lives in places where the total fer-
tility rate is closer to four children per woman than to two.27 The
United Nations’ estimation of future population growth is based
on the assumption that the present decline in birth rates seen in
some parts of the world will spread to other parts of the world, so
that these places will experience a decline in their birth rate, but of
course this is as yet uncertain. It will depend, in part, on what we
do to support it: there is a huge unmet need for contraception in
many parts of the world, and if this need continues to be unmet, we
cannot expect the decline in birth rate that we have experienced in
the United States and Europe.
This will require a fair amount of change. West Africa, for
example, has some of the highest fertility rates, and typically it
requires an increase in contraceptive use of 15% to reduce fertil-
ity by one birth per woman. If the pace of change in use observed
between 1991 and 2004 is maintained, it will take 25 years for fer-
tility in West Africa to a fall from its 2000–2005 level of births
from 5.6 to 4.6 births.28 This will take a certain political will on the
part of all concerned, including the will to spend money: there are
some 222 million women now who would like to have reliable con-
traception, but don’t.29 Of course, the longer we delay, the more
people there will be who want it, and the more it will cost to meet
everyone’s needs.
Furthermore, even in those places where the birth rate has
dropped, we don’t know if that will continue. Birth rates are sensi-
tive to economic pressure: kids cost a lot, and when people are low
in funds they tend to have fewer of them. We know that the birth

12
 T he P roblem

rate dropped during the Great Depression, but not much later we
had the baby boom. Both the Pew Research Center and the Max
Planck Institute, eminently reputable institutions, have found that
the most recent drop in the United States and Europe is a function
of the recession, and of unemployment in particular. 30 As the econ-
omy improves, we can expect people to have more children. We
already see evidence for this: the New York Times reports reports:

The sharp decline in the country’s fertility rate during the eco-
nomic downturn has come to an end, federal data show, as an
improving economy encouraged Americans to resume having
babies. The number of babies born in the United States in 2012
remained flat, the first time in five years that the number did
not significantly decline, according to the National Center for
Health Statistics. The leveling off capped a 9% decline in the
fertility rate from 2007 to 2011, a drop that demographers say
began after the recession took hold and Americans started feel-
ing less secure about their economic circumstances.
The decline “has come pretty close to grinding to a halt,”
said Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference
Bureau, a nonprofit research group. 31

Last, dropping the birth rate to replacement numbers at this

point is probably not enough to save the earth, and the people on
it, from environmental degradation. We’re doing plenty of harm
with the population we have: continuing with this population will,
all things being equal, produce at least as much harm as we already
have wreaked, and the effects of such harm are cumulative. We
need to think how best to encourage fewer than two children per
couple—how best to encourage, as long as it is necessary, having
just one child.

13
 O ne C hild

For this we want to be in a position to address not only the prac-

ticalities but the rights and obligations that are involved. The fact
that we can’t be sure exactly what the future holds doesn’t lessen
this requirement. One of the biggest moral questions, after all,
is what obligations we have when outcomes are uncertain: what
is our duty when we can’t be sure how much we can help? So it is
not time to sit back and relax. Without a discussion of population,
and what people have a right to in terms of procreation, birth rates
may vary according to the vicissitudes of culture or the economy,
rather than with regard to the carrying capacity of the planet. We
need to know what our rights are, and what our obligations are, in
order to make a reasonable decision as to what to do.

CONSUMPTION

There are those who think we don’t need to think about popula-
tion if we focus, instead, on reducing patterns of consumption.
This is reasonable—up to a point. We do need to cut back on con-
sumption of resources. If we didn’t consume so much, we wouldn’t
use up resources so quickly, and some of our resources could be
used sustainably. And it seems as if this shouldn’t be too difficult.
We know that many of us consume way more than we need. Many
in the Western world as well as in some parts of Asia are consum-
ing more per person than has ever happened in the history of the
world, and it is reasonable to believe that such consumption could
be reduced without any great sacrifice. After a certain point, con-
sumption produces diminishing marginal returns: the more you
consume, the less satisfaction you get from each new act of con-
sumption. It’s a huge step from having no shelter at all to having a
house, but the step from a very big house to a very, very big house

14
 T he P roblem

seems to provide only fleeting satisfaction—which may be why

people may feel driven to shore up their fading contentment by
buying a very, very, very big house. A lot of our accumulation of
goods in the Western world is based not so much on material need
as on the desire to maintain a certain social status. Status is for
most of us an important part of a satisfactory life, but basing status
on what things we own involves us in a never-ending possessions
race that doesn’t yield the lasting self-esteem we want. Without
the need to keep up with the Joneses we could relax and do some-
thing more fulfilling. And, of course, reducing some sorts of con-
sumption would be good for many of us in other ways, since eating
less generally, and less meat in particular, and walking and bik-
ing instead of driving, would greatly benefit our health. So at first
glance, cutting back on consumption is a win-win proposition.
Unfortunately, while true as far as it goes, this reasoning is
incomplete. First, when we speak of excess consumption, we speak
only of one part of the world. Elsewhere in the world, 1.3 billion
people live in what is termed “absolute poverty”: on less than $1.25
a day. 32 This existence on very little money translates into very little
food, and very little overall consumption of material goods. This is
abject, dehumanizing poverty. Obviously, we cannot expect such
people to cut back on their use of resources. 33 On the contrary, we
can only hope that they will consume considerably more: we have,
if anything, an obligation to help them, not hinder them, in their
quest for better material welfare. But of course, as they achieve more
acceptable levels of comfort, they use more resources. Charitable
institutions often rightly stress that the best response to hunger
is not the funds or food we can supply in a crisis, but the develop-
ment of a healthy local economy that supplies both employment
and goods. This is certainly true, but it is also true that this healthy
economy will use up many more resources per person. How much

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more will depend on what level of consumption they reach, but

experience indicates that those in developing nations tend to
aspire to the unsustainable consumption level exemplified at pres-
ent by the United States. One cannot blame people for wanting
what other people, no more deserving than themselves, have been
able to enjoy. While such a desire is not blameworthy, it nonethe-
less suggests a very dangerous increase in consumption. It is prob-
ably literally impossible for the whole world to live at the rate of
consumption the richer nations now enjoy, but it’s not impossible
we might do a huge amount of damage while trying.
And, these poorest countries often have the highest birth rates,
so the increased levels of consumption will be spread through a
rising population, at least in the short run. (In the long run, devel-
opment results in lower birth rates.) Again, this is not an argument
that the poor should stay poor: such inequality is morally unten-
able, and in the long run probably practically untenable as well. It’s
an argument that a significant portion of the globe should consume
much more than it now does.
This is one reason that cutting back on consumption, as vital
as it is for those of us who grossly overconsume, cannot cure all
our ills. Second, even if those of us who are the most conspicu-
ous consumers do cut back on our consumption of goods, each
child we have is likely to more than outweigh whatever cutbacks
we have made. Even if we drive less, and drive hybrid cars, and
live in relatively modest houses, introducing another consumer of
goods is a net loss to resources. 34 Our children will want their own
Priuses and their own (heated!) houses, their own electronics and
well-maintained roads and schools, and their children will want
their own Priuses and their own houses, and so forth.
Children would be a less of a strain on the environment, of
course, if we cut back really radically in the way we live. Perhaps if

16
 T he P roblem

we had children in a setting in which we had given up fossil fuels

altogether, and reduced our furniture, clothes, and food consump-
tion to closer to medieval levels, we would use no more than could
be replaced, even if the population continued to increase for a
while. No one is going to do that, though. It would introduce an
enormous amount of labor that we are very happy to have escaped,
and we’re not going back if we can help it. We’re happy to recycle
our lunch bags two or three times, when we actually remember to
do that. Change, when that change is easy to do and has no real
effect on our comfort, is relatively acceptable. (I say relatively,
because the truth is that while they may agree with it in theory,
even now most people don’t choose the most efficient cars, or the
most efficient light bulbs, or make other easy changes.) Giving up
on the technologies that actually do make a substantial difference
to our general ease just doesn’t seem likely.
Experience shows that while we aren’t willing to cut back
on consumption, we are willing to reduce the number of chil-
dren we have. We know this, because in places where contracep-
tion is culturally acceptable and readily available, the fertility
rate has been, as we have seen, dropping. This may be because
in households where both parents work, having children seems
more and more difficult: working two jobs leaves very little
time for childcare. Or, it may be in some cases that, even where
time is not so short we don’t think it’s worth the costs. Some
people—maybe a lot of people—would just rather have a more
comfortable lifestyle than a larger family. This may strike us as
a shocking thought, put so baldly, but certainly we find people
arguing that they cannot afford more children when what they
mean is that they cannot afford them without some sacrifice to
their lifestyle. Or, more generously, it may be that people want
to have fewer children in order to give each child they do have

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more advantages. Whatever the reason, we know that reducing

the fertility rate is something we actually are willing to do, since
a good number of people have done it voluntarily. It may, then,
be a more immediately successful area of focus than large, imme-
diate reductions in consumption, even though reducing fertility
sounds much more shocking. At the very least, it’s not something
that is deeply contrary to present practice.
Given all this, it makes sense that we should think now about
whether it can be morally permissible to interfere in human pro-
creation through state regulations as to family size, or whether
that impermissibly infringes on human rights. It is certainly to
be hoped that the population will become smaller more naturally,
and remain at a sustainable level, without anyone feeling that they
are being forced to sacrifice what they want for the sake of other
people’s welfare. But since we can’t count on this, we need to con-
sider the arguments for and against an unlimited right to have
children. Even if it is consumption and population in combina-
tion that pose our present danger, that doesn’t mean we’re justified
in having more children than the system can bear. Contributing
either part of the destructive combination is wrong, even if they’re
only harmful together. A match by itself might not burn down a
building—it might take both a match and gasoline. If you know
someone is dousing that building in gasoline, though, and you still
throw that match on it, you’ve done wrong.

CHAPTER OUTLINE
Chapters 2 and 3: Rights
It’s been widely said, including in the United Nations Declaration
of Human Rights, that we have a moral right to procreate, and

18
 T he P roblem

that this should be reflected in our laws. Perhaps we do. The

question, though, is whether a right to procreate gives us a right
to procreate just as many times as we might want. One hundred
and sixty countries have signed a covenant saying that citizens
have a right to food, but this is not taken to be a right to Roman
banquets every night—it’s a right to be able to access enough
food to meet our nutritional needs. 35 The right to work, also enu-
merated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, doesn’t
mean a right to the best job, or to lots of jobs at once. All these
rights have limited scope. Why think our right to procreation
should be unlimited?
In Chapters 2 and 3, I will discuss the right to have children,
and will argue that even if there is a right to procreate, it is not
unlimited. There are bases for legitimate rights claims, and I will
argue that when we look at the right to have children, the reasons
that underlie that right don’t extend to having whatever number
of children you may happen to want—don’t, indeed, extend to
having more than one per person. Having a need for something in
order to live a decent life may ground a right, but even if produc-
ing a child is essential (for some people) to have a decent life, you
don’t need multiple children for that. You don’t need to have a lot
of kids to get the benefits of childbearing—small families aren’t
inferior to big ones. And, as I will discuss in Chapter 3, while your
general right to control your body gives you a right to make a lot of
personal choices without intervention, it doesn’t give you a right to
make choices that inflict serious harms upon others. If we are in a
context where unrestricted childbearing is likely to ruin the lives
of others, you don’t have a right to do that. You don’t have a right
to act in that way even when you mean no harm by it, even when
you are only one of many inflicting the harm, and even when it is
a matter of religion.

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Chapter 4: Sanctions
In Chapter 4, I will discuss the different strategies we can employ
to encourage population limits. We want methods that are effec-
tive, that have as few costs as possible (including psychologi-
cal costs), and that are consistent with other rights held by the
individual. While I will argue that government restrictions,
complete with (appropriate) sanctions, can be morally accept-
able, it would be nicer all around if people voluntarily limited
procreation. We need, for one thing, education. In addition, we
can make the use of contraception more attractive by making it
cheaper and easier to get. We could also provide further incen-
tives such as tax breaks for those who have only one child, or
conversely, tax penalties for those who have more. And, if neces-
sary, we can simply make a law requiring that people limit them-
selves to one child.
This last is, of course, the most controversial. Government
interference in how many children we have seems fraught with
dangers. For most people, the idea of restrictions on how many
children you can have immediately conjures up pictures of China,
and the fear of forced sterilizations and forced abortions, and we
might well prefer to leave decisions in the hands of (even flawed)
individuals rather than to give the state the power to abuse our
rights in the pursuit of even a good social goal.
However, state interference doesn’t have to mean rights will
be abused. The fact that forced abortions and sterilizations are
wrong doesn’t mean that all state constraints on childbearing are
wrong. It means there are ways of regulating childbearing that are
immoral. Even if you don’t have the right to have as many chil-
dren as you may want, you have the right to be treated decently.
That doesn’t mean you can’t be sanctioned at all. Sanctions need

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 T he P roblem

to discourage dangerous behavior, but without violating the rights

of those who have acted wrongly. In this chapter I will discuss
ways of discouraging population growth that are effective but at
the same time respectful of human rights.

Chapter 5: The Future

However, even if the government can constrain how many chil-
dren you have without violating rights, there is a question whether
it is its business to do that. One thing that is always true is that
the future isn’t here yet. This raises a number of issues that are rel-
evant when we are deciding what people should be allowed to do.
Typically, when we decide whether the government should inter-
fere in someone’s actions, we do this by looking at the costs and the
benefits to those concerned. You want to have a great party with
really loud music, but you have many close neighbors who don’t
want to be bombarded with Queen. Laws are made that strive to
be balanced—you can play music loud enough that it can be heard
outside your house, but only up to a certain number of decibels.
We give reasonable consideration to the desires of all concerned.
But how much do we have to sacrifice for people who aren’t actu-
ally there? Most of the people who will benefit from our restrain-
ing how many children we have don’t actually exist yet, and many
people question whether we can have an obligation to nonexistent
people.
Now, this issue of future people can be exaggerated, because it’s
clear that environmental degradation is not simply something that
is going to happen in the future: it is happening now, and already
affects some people in very dire ways. As luck would have it, it so
far especially affects people in nonindustrialized nations who have
had no part in bringing it about, which in itself should convince us

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that we already have an obligation to change our ways, regardless

of our effect on those in the future. According to a recent report by
the World Bank, Bangladesh, which is insignificant on a global scale
in the production of greenhouse gases, will be one of the first to be
badly hit: it’s already experiencing worse flooding than previously,
and experts agree that it is threatened by much worse in the way
of floods, cyclones, rising sea levels, and very high temperatures. 36
As we know, many of the small island nations are also threatened,
also without having done anything close to what Americans and
western Europeans have done to cause the harm they will end up
suffering. So this is a present harm. And some of the people who
aren’t yet affected by environmental change are alive now, and will
be affected in their lifetime, as drought, heat waves, shortages of
fish stocks, growth of slums, and so on, increase, and reduction
in the birth rate could help these people avoid suffering that will
otherwise occur. So, even without regarding future generations,
we would have a case at least for making changes whose effect can
be felt in the next 80 years or so.
Still, it must be admitted that some of the most dire effects of
population and environmental degradation will be felt in genera-
tions as yet unborn, and this raises issues that don’t arise when
governments engage in more typical trade-offs between individu-
als. We would be giving something up for people who don’t yet
exist, who don’t yet have rights, and with whom we certainly can’t
be said to have any reciprocal agreements.
To some, this is straightforward enough: they will say that of
course we owe it to future generations to provide them with the
basic wherewithal for a good existence: if not the same advantages
we ourselves had, at least something close. This is more obviously
true if we can do that without great sacrifice. To others, though,
the idea that I can now have an obligation to someone who doesn’t

22
 T he P roblem

exist yet seems absurd. In Chapter 5, I will discuss the peculiar

moral problems that are attached to acting for the sake of the
future. I will argue that it’s reasonable to think future people do
have a claim on us. In particular, they have a claim on our gov-
ernment, because it is the role of the government to preserve the
welfare of the state, and that means it has an obligation to promote
the well-being not only of present individuals but those who will
come later. “Après nous, le déluge” is not an acceptable philosophy
of state action. We don’t think the government should be allowed
to act in a way that condemns our (even unborn!) grandchildren,
and that also holds true for those who come even later.

Chapter 6: Unwanted Consequences

So far, then, in Chapters 1–5, I will have discussed the right to have
children (Chs. 2–3), and second, whether state interference in how
many children we have can be justified (Chs. 4–5). In Chapter 6,
we will look not simply at theory but at practice, and in particular at
unwanted consequences that might occur if people took seriously
an obligation to have fewer children for the sake of those to come.

The Economy
One dire prediction is that the economy will collapse if we don’t
have an ever-increasing population: that economic growth is
required for a healthy economy, and that a growing population
is required for economic growth. Others, though, argue that for
a healthy economy to be predicated on constantly increasing
population is eventually self-defeating. Running out of resources
is itself a pretty dead-certain impediment to economic growth,
so we might as well acknowledge that continued population
growth isn’t something we can rely on forever as the foundation

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of a healthy economy. Given this, some thinkers are naturally

trying to think of new models. We need to design a steady-state
economy—one that is prosperous without growth. We will look
at the argument that it is possible, and necessary, to achieve pros-
perity without an endless increase in the number of consumers.
Failing to investigate economic models that don’t require this
kind of population increase is shortsighted, to put it most char-
itably, and once again, the time to explore new models for the
economy is before the one we are in has fallen under the weight
of its own requirements.

Cultural Survival
There has also been pressure for local population growth in places
where the fertility rate has dropped radically, on the grounds that
the survival of a culture depends on producing more children.
Sometimes this is put as a national interest, as in Russia, where
Vladimir Putin has put out a plea for Russians to produce more
children. The issue more generally, though, is not about the sur-
vival of a nation-state as a governmental entity (since national pop-
ulation numbers can often be buoyed by immigration) but about
the survival of a particular kind of person, persons who carry for-
ward a cultural project that may be seen as essential to the survival
of an ethnic group. I will argue, though, that some cultural change
is inevitable and not in itself a bad thing, and that in any case, the
survival of a culture does not depend on a particular kind of baby
being born in a particular location.

Sex Selection
Many people fear that a reduction in the numbers of children would
result in sex selection—fewer baby girls than baby boys through
elective embryo implantation, abortions, or even infanticide. The

24
 T he P roblem

fear is that if people can only have one child, they will too often
choose for that child to be a boy.
This is a complicated issue. It is certainly true that we don’t
want to promote either sexism or a disproportion in the numbers
of women. On the other hand, there is sex selection even in places
that don’t have a one-child policy. The basic problem is the sex-
ism that creates discrimination against women. As it happens, the
status of women generally rises as they have fewer children—they
are able to work more hours outside the home, and while there is
nothing intrinsically more worthwhile about working outside the
home than staying in the home and taking care of children, the
truth is it pays better, and better pay results in better social status
and greater individual empowerment. When women have a better
economic and social status, parents have less incentive to choose
to have boys. The effects of having fewer children, then, are mixed.
We will see that there are steps we can take to counter prejudice
against girls that would work even in a society that does have a
one-child policy. And, in the long run, we will see that what we
need to do to improve the status of women is to attack the root
causes of preference for boys, and if we do address that, the num-
ber of children a person has won’t dictate any sex preference.

Siblings
Is it bad to be an only child? Do children have a right to siblings?
Do we have an obligation to provide a child with siblings he or she
can grow up with?
Many people still have the belief that only children are both
unfortunate and, very often, morally inferior: lonely, but also
selfish and self-centered. Newer research, though, shows that
there is nothing inherently unfortunate, much less morally infe-
rior, about being an only child. Not surprisingly, the happiness

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and the character of only children depend primarily on the way

parents interact with them. And, of course, it will make a differ-
ence whether a child is an only child in a society that is structured
around multichild families, or in one that is designed around
one-child families. With a general social change, we can restruc-
ture our only kids’ social lives to make them maximally reward-
ing, and without the prospect of the losses that overpopulation
would bring.

Chapter 7: When?
Last, we need to think about when we want to implement such
changes, and when would be the right time to relax—that is, when
we will have reached a sustainable population. This, of course,
depends both on our beliefs about facts and about values: will vol-
untary restraint become widespread? How quickly? Will govern-
ment interference be necessary? What do we project in terms of
depletion of our resources? In terms of climate change? And what
is it that we are trying to avoid? A lack of fuel? A lack of food and
water? The end of solitude? The end of wilderness? The disappear-
ance of species?
The worst-case scenario is cataclysmic climate change, result-
ing in death and destruction, and condemning those unfortunate
enough to be born after us to lives that will be much worse than
our own. This, it seems to me, would clearly be an unacceptable
moral imposition on others, and would justify our restraining our
own actions. But some will argue (and I would agree with them)
that additional values should play a role in our decision-making.
Many people think that we should consider, for example, qualities
of enjoyment other than the misery that complete ecological col-
lapse would bring about. Even where we have sufficient material

26
 T he P roblem

well-being to get by, what about the experience of nature, and of

wilderness, and of solitude? More speculatively, what about the
value of species in their own right, aside from our enjoyment of
them—do we have an obligation to preserve them, and to preserve
them in their natural habitat, living their natural lives? What we
are trying to preserve clearly makes a difference in when and how
deeply we need to change our ways. In Chapter 7, I will discuss
the different values in question, and the strength of the obligations
they place on us.

CONCLUSION

It is time to talk about the right to have children and what that
means, so we will be prepared when and if push comes to shove.
Obviously, these issues are controversial, and their discussion is
painful; to some, it is offensive even to think about population
limits, much less to broach actual policy possibilities. Such avoid-
ance, though, is unintelligent. We know that it is inevitable that
if the population grows in the way it has so far, we will run out of
resources. Technological advances may delay this, but it’s hard to
see how they can allow us to avoid it entirely. Sure, it is possible
that something extraordinary will happen to prevent that: that we
will colonize other planets, say, before we have run out of fuel or
water. At present, though, there’s no other livable planet in sight,
so we pretty much need to plan around staying on this one. And
on this earth, unlimited population growth would be catastrophic.
Many things make this conversation difficult: the uncertainty
of the future, the pain of contemplating intervention in people’s
family life, and the pain of contemplating what may happen if
we don’t. But while these things make the conversation difficult,

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they aren’t reasons not to have the conversation. This book is one
attempt at such a discussion. The ultimate aim is simply to pro-
mote thoughtfulness, and recognition that the number of children
one has is no longer simply a private affair. We wish that it were!
It was lovely when all we considered was our own ability to raise
children well, with no thought to the rest of society. Those days
are gone for now, just as those days are gone when we could decide
how much fuel to burn, how much fresh water to use up, how many
animals we might kill, without any regard for the effect of that on
the future.
So we need to discuss these things. The time to decide on
morally permissible population policy is before state interfer-
ence is necessary, and if it is never necessary, so much the better.
It is a known truth that you can’t teach someone to swim once
he is already drowning; you need to teach him in calm water,
where help is at hand. If he never needs to use his skill to save
himself, the time was still well spent. For us, then, the time to
discuss the morality of reproduction is now, before the climate
is made unlivable, before ecosystems are destroyed, before wars
over resources that are scarce now, like oil, or too likely to be
scarce in the future, like fresh water, take away the leisure and
the composure we need to craft rational and humane policies.
The time to talk is now.

NOTES

1. Amartya Sen, “Fertility and Coercion,” University of Chicago Law Review, vol.
63, 1996, 1035–1061.
2. I have two children myself. Back in my childbearing years, we thought that
replacement value, two children per couple, was environmentally respon-
sible. If everyone had limited themselves to two, maybe it would have been.

28
 T he P roblem

3. See Carter J. Dillard, “Rethinking the Procreative Right,” Yale Human Rights
and Development Law Journal, vol. 10, 2007, 1–63; and Luke T. Lee, “Law,
Human Rights, and Population Policy,” in Population Policy, ed. Godfrey
Roberts, Praeger (New York) 1990, 1–20.
4. For example, “The Royal Society perceives two critical issues that must be
addressed quickly in order to establish a sustainable way of life for all people
and avoid undermining the wellbeing of future generations. The first is the
continuing expansion of the human population.” Royal Society, People and
the Planet, Royal Society Policy (London),, April 2012, 11. “Longer-term, the
stabilisation of the population is essential to avoid further exceeding plan-
etary limits and increasing poverty” (99). Nonetheless, the Royal Society
states that such reductions must depend entirely on voluntary efforts: while
“[i]‌n the long term a stabilised population is an essential prerequisite for indi-
viduals to flourish … this is by no means a coercive prescription” (102).
5. Mireya Navarro, “Breaking a Long Silence on Population Control,” New York
Times, October 31, 2011.
6. Bill McKibben, Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families, Plume (New York)
1998.
7. Ibid., 12.
8. Christine Overall, Why Have Children? MIT Press (Cambridge, MA) 2012.
9. Ibid., 184.
10. Ibid., 232.
11. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Simon and
Schuster (New York) 2014, 114n.
12. United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs, Population
Division, World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, Vol. II, Demographic
Profiles, 2013.
13. Justin Gillis, “Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears,” New
York Times, May 10, 2013; Ben Tracy, “Carbon Dioxide Levels Highest
in Recorded Human History,” CBS News, May 10, 2013, www.cbs.
com/8301-18563_162 _ 57883995/carbon-diox ide-levels-highest-in-
recorded-human-history.
14. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, “Prospects
for Food, Nutrition, Agriculture and Major Commodity Groups: World
Agriculture Towards 2030/2050,” Interim Report, Global Perspectives
Studies Unit, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
Rome, 2006.
15. For example, Niger, where the population may double in the next 20 years
(Royal Society: People and the Planet, 38).
16. Justin Gilis, “Climate Change Seen Posing Risk to Food Supplies,” New York
Times, November 1, 2013.

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17. David Pimental, “Soil Erosion: A Food and Environmental Threat,”

Environment, Development and Sustainability, vol. 8, 2006, 119–137. Pimental
estimates that over the last 40 years, 30% of arable land has become
unproductive.
18. New York Times, “Washing Away the Fields of Iowa,” May 4, 2011, Editorial.
19. United Nations, UN-Habitat, State of the World’s Cities 2010–2011—Cities
for All: Bridging the Urban Divide, Earthscan (London) 2011.
20. Brian Stone, The City and the Coming Climate: Climate Change in the Places We
Live, Cambridge University Press (New York) 2012. Stone notes that 70,000
died in Europe due to the 2003 heat wave, arguably a function of climate
change (12). Other experts agree that heat waves pose a greater danger to
human life than more dramatic, and more publicized, events like tornadoes,
earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.
21. Nafeez Ahmed, “The Coming Nuclear Energy Crunch,” Guardian, July
2, 2013.
22. See Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(New York) 2008.
23. Deborah Zabarenko, “Human Warming Hobbles Ancient Climate Cycle,”
Reuters, April 27, 2008, http://wwww.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/
idUSN2541737720080427.
24. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, Sierra Club / Ballantine Books
(New York) 1968.
25. United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs, Population
Division, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, Vol. II Demographic
Profiles, 2011, xxi.
26. Royal Society, People and the Planet, 11.
27. Ibid., 94.
28. J. G. Cleland, R. P. Ndugwa, and E. M. Zulu, “Family Planning in Sub-Saharan
Africa: Progress or Stagnation?” Bulletin of the World Health Organization,
vol. 89, #2, February 2011, 137–143.
29. Malcolm Potts, Rachel Weinrib, and Martha Campbell, “Why Bold Policies
for Family Planning Are Needed Now,” Contraception Journal (Association
of Reproductive Health Professionals), April 2013, http:www.arhp.org/
publications-and-resources/contraception-journal/april-2013.
30. Gretchen Livingston and D’Vera Cohn, “U.S. Birth Rate Decline Linked
to Recession,” April 6, 2010, Pew Research Center, Washington, DC; and
“Economic Crisis Lowers Birth Rates,” Max Planck Institute, Rostock, July
10, 2013.
31. Sabrina Tavernise, “Fertility Rate Stabilizes as the Economy Grows,” New
York Times, September 6, 2013.
32. World Bank, “World Bank Sees Progress against Extreme Poverty, but
Flags Vulnerabilities,” Press Release No. 2012/297/DEC, World Bank,
Washington, DC, February 29, 2012.

30
 T he P roblem

33. “For one billion people who live in extreme poverty, and a further billion who
are so poor as to be malnourished, the chief drivers of consumption are the
attainment of adequate living standards, including basic commodities and
services.” Royal Society, People and the Planet, 57.
34. Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Shlax, “Reproduction and the Carbon
Legacies of Individuals,” Global Environmental Change, vol. 19, 2009,
14–20; Brian C. O’Neill and Lee Wexler, “The Greenhouse Externality to
Childbearing: A Sensitivity Analysis,” Climactic Change, vol. 47, 2000,
283–324; Charles A.S. Hall et al., “Environmental Consequences of Having
a Baby in the United States,” Population and Environment, vol. 15, #6, 1994,
505–524.
35. The right to food is articulated in the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, which so far as 160 sovereign signatories.
36. World Bank, Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts and the
Case for Resilience, World Bank (Washington, D.C.) 2013, xxii.

31
 [2]
THE RIGHT TO A FAMILY

Blood is thicker than water.

—English proverb

RIGHTS

We talk about rights a lot, and the range of things that get claimed
as rights is vast: we debate whether there is a right to die, a right to
bear arms, a right to gay marriage, or a right to healthcare; we agree
that there is a right to religious freedom, to free speech, and equal
treatment, while disagreeing a lot on exactly what these come to
in action. Some people claim a right to be forgotten online, and in
2013 US secretary of state John Kerry told a crowd of German stu-
dents that Americans “have the right to be stupid.”1 We use claims
about rights to emphasize the importance of an issue because we
agree that rights are important, and that they should be respected.
How we know when we have a right remains, however, very hard
to articulate, not just because we have poor powers of articulation,
but because in a deep sense it’s hard to understand when we have a
right to something and when we don’t. We need at least some idea
of what it means to have a right, though, if we are going to figure out
whether we have a right to have as many children as we choose.2

32
 T he R ight to a Family

First, of course, there are two different kinds of rights, legal and
moral. Some of the questions just mentioned are debated largely in
legal terms: whether, for example, the US Constitution guarantees
a legal right to gun ownership. Legal rights can certainly be difficult
to understand, but on the whole we do at least have a handle on
where they come from. Laws are made by humans, be it a king or a
congress of citizens. This means that while there are many debates
about the interpretation of a particular statute or ruling, we at
least know where to look to get a grasp on what the law entails. In
the United States, for example, there is a lot of debate on how the
Constitution should be understood, but at least we know that when
we try to understand whether there is a right for individuals to own
assault weapons, we should look at the Second Amendment.
Moral rights are more difficult. Moral rights are generally
understood not to have been created through an act of will, but
rather to arise somehow from the moral standing of the entity
whose rights are in question. Even those people who think of
human rights as “God-given” don’t understand God’s will to have
been arbitrary, but rather based on something about humans that
means we should get peculiar consideration. This means that
when it comes to discerning moral rights, we don’t have any handy
authority to which we may turn when we need to know if someone
actually has a moral right to something. Instead, we need to think.
We need to figure it out ourselves, and this hasn’t been easy.
To say we have a right to something is, after all, a very strong
statement. Generally, to claim a right is to make a claim on other
people, a demand that they must treat you in certain ways. We
believe we have a moral obligation to respect rights, and that that
obligation is so strong that third parties can intervene and force
someone who has failed to respect a right to amend his ways.
Not all moral obligations are like this. I really ought to write a

33
 O ne C hild

thank-you note to the person who gave me a wedding present, but

no one thinks it’s okay to chain me to a chair to make me do that.
Much as my friend deserves to hear from me, I’m not violating a
right when I don’t send her a note, even if I am doing something
morally wrong. If, on the other hand, someone has a right, her
claim on my action is much stronger: a right provides a “trump,”
as legal theorist Ronald Dworkin has put it.3 It outweighs (mere)
desires or needs, so that the rights-holder is entitled to that to which
he has a right, in the way that, say, my friend’s reasonable expecta-
tion of a thank-you note definitely does not entitle her to have one.
As another leading rights theorist has put it, “A right provides the
rational basis for a justified demand.”4 It is because this demand
is justified that we typically think it’s okay, or even required,
for third parties to interfere when you fail to respect someone’s
right—rights are so important that we should, as a group, work for
their enforcement.
If people have a right to have more than one child, then the
default assumption is that any effort to prevent us from having
more than one would be morally wrong, and that anyone who
tried to prevent us from having them could justifiably be stopped.
Is the right to have children like this?

INTERESTS

To know whether there is a right to procreation, and if so, what

exactly it is a right to, we need to know what conditions give
you a right to something. Since the introduction of the notion of
rights into Western discourse, more theories about their justifi-
cation have developed than we could possibly review here even
if we wanted to, and it would be fruitless to entertain them all.

34
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
said to be even more powerful than the natural productions.
Artificial musk, for example, is one thousand times stronger than
natural musk, Parker tells us. Deite, on the other hand, says that the
smell of artificial musk is not equal to that of the natural! Indeed,
according to this authority, although synthetic perfumes play an
important part in the concocting of scents, there are only a few of
them which can be used instead of the natural product. What
happens is that the artificial and the natural are generally used in
combination. Thus the “mignonette” of the shops is prepared by
passing geraniol, an artificial odorivector made from citronella oil,
over the natural mignonette flowers, the resulting product being an
essence smelling strongly of mignonette, and not at all of geraniol.
One or two, as we said, are purely artificial imitations; coumarin,
for example, the “new-mown hay” of sentimental memory, which
used to be obtained from the tonka bean, is now entirely made up by
the synthetic chemist. But for all the more subtle essences we have
still to rely upon Nature’s laboratory. The manufacturer steps in and
distils the precious essential oil certainly, but it is from flowers that
he obtains it. Attar of roses, for instance, contains, in addition to
natural geraniol, a number of other ingredients which have so far
escaped analysis, a hundred thousand roses supplying only an ounce
of it. In like manner a ton of orange blossom yields but thirty to forty
ounces of the odorous essential oil.
Many of the costly plant perfumes come from tropical or semi-
tropical countries, such as Ceylon, Mexico, and Peru. But tropical
perfumes, though strong, lack the delicacy of those found in
temperate climates. Cannes, on the Riviera, gives us roses, acacias,
jasmine and neroli; from Nimes come thyme, rosemary, and
lavender oil; from Nizza, on the Italian Riviera, we get violets; from
Sicily, oranges and lemons; from Italy, iris and bergamot. English
lavender, until quite recently the most highly esteemed, came from
the towns of Hitchin and Mitcham. But I am informed that the
growing of lavender in England is no longer pursued with the same
success as formerly, and we have to regret the disappearance of this
old and truly English industry.
The natural musk, curiously enough, which comes from the musk-
deer of Tibet, is not used in making musk perfume. It is, however,
widely employed in the perfumer’s art, as it has the curious property
of enhancing the strength of other perfumes and of rendering them
permanent. Civet, also an animal product, being “the very uncleanly
flux” of the civet cat, has similar properties. It is added to other
perfumes to strengthen them (“to set them off,” as it were) and to
render them more stable.
But the most curious, and also one of the most ancient of perfumes
is ambergris, which is a fatty, wax-like substance found floating in
the sea or washed ashore. It comes from places as far apart as the
west coast of Ireland, China, and South America. The origin of this
substance was for long a mystery. But we know now that it consists
of the undigested remnants of cephalopods (squids and octopuses)
swallowed by the spermaceti whale. Ambergris is used, like musk
and civet, to render other scents durable.
But while the victory of the chemist is by no means so complete as
it is in the matter of the dyestuffs, research is steadily going on, and
the next few years will almost certainly witness an evergrowing
conquest over this department of natural chemistry.
In the meantime chemists are applying themselves to the creation
of new varieties of perfume, and, if we may judge from those
disseminated by certain ladies in public places, with a success that
startles and even irritates us. Compared with them, the love-philtres
of olden days must have been but feeble things.
“How d’you know you’re in the right ’bus?” asked the ’bus
conductor of the blind man who was confidently boarding his
vehicle.
“This is the Maida Vale ’bus,” was the contemptuous reply. “I
knows it by the smell o’ musk.”

The inexhaustible capacity of the olfactory organ, to which we

alluded above, is by no means its only marvel. It is also of the most
wonderful delicacy, equalling, even if it does not surpass, in this
respect, the sensitiveness of the eye to light.
This property of the smell-organ has been scientifically estimated.
There are many ways of doing so, that by means of Zwaardemaker’s
olfactometer being perhaps the most popular:
 “This consists of two tubes that slide one within the other, and so shaped that
one end of the inner tube may be applied to the nostril. The odorous material is
carried on the inner surface of the outer tube. When the inner tube, which is
graduated, is slipped into the outer one so as to cover completely its inner face, and
air is drawn into the nostril through the tube, the odorous surface, being covered,
gives out no particles, and no odour is perceived. By adjusting the inner tube in
relation to the outer one, whereby more or less of the odorous surface is exposed, a
point can be found where minimum stimulation occurs. The amount of odorous
substance delivered under these circumstances to the air current has been
designated by Zwaardemaker as an olfactie, the unit of olfactory stimulation.
Having determined for a given substance the area necessary for the delivery of one
olfactie, doubling that surface by an appropriate movement of the inner tube will
produce a stimulus of two olfacties, and so forth. Thus a graded series of measured
olfactory stimuli can easily be obtained. Further, by using outer tubes carrying
different odorous substances various comparisons can be instituted as measured in
olfacties” (Parker).

Instruments more elaborate and of greater accuracy have, as a

matter of fact, been devised and used, but they need not detain us.
The results obtained by these and other methods of determining
the minimum stimulus of olfaction are certainly astonishing, and
reveal as nothing else can the delicate acuteness of the sense.
Fischer and Penzoldt found that they could plainly smell one
milligram of chlorphenol evaporated in a room of 230 cubic metres
capacity. This is equivalent to 1/230,000,000 of a milligram to each
cubic centimetre of air, or, assuming 50 cubic centimetres of air as
the minimum needed for olfaction, the amount of chlorphenol
capable of exciting sensation is 1/4,600,000 of the thousandth part
of a gram—approximately 1/276,000,000 of a grain!
Many other odours have been similarly tested, and although there
is much numerical discrepancy in the records made by different
observers, all agree as to the extreme delicacy of the sense. (For
vanillin and mercaptan, see p. 39.)
Those experiments and estimations explain how it comes about
that many odours (musk, for example) may go on giving off their
scent until they part with the whole of it without undergoing any
appreciable loss of weight.
Thus there is no chemical test known to us so delicate as olfaction.
 It has been found, for example, that over-assiduous efforts at
filtering and purifying the air used for ventilation so as to remove all
noxious chemical and bacterial ingredients defeat their own end.
Such air, although to our artificial tests absolutely clean and pure,
seems to the sense of smell to lack freshness. And the nose is right.
The tests are wrong. For sojourn in such an atmosphere induces
lassitude and torpor of mind, as members of the Houses of
Parliament, where this method has been tried, know to their cost—
and ours.
But albeit so highly sensitive to minute traces, the sense
occasionally fails to perceive a highly concentrated odour.
For example, every one is aware that a bunch of violets which is
filling a room with its fragrance seems when held to the nose to have
no smell at all, or at the most to have but a vague, indefinable sort of
odour.
The effect, as a matter of fact, varies with the perfume employed.
Some, like violets, have no smell at all. Others give a different smell
when concentrated from what they give when dilute. Muskone, for
one, the essential constituent of musk, has an odour of pines when
concentrated; and storax, a delightful perfume when dilute, is
disagreeable when too powerful, and so on.
It is to be noted that the disagreeable character of these last is not
due to the mental “cloying” or “sickening” of excessive sweetness; it
is a definite odour. Nor is the anosmia for concentrated violets due to
the exhaustion of the sense.
Heyninx, comparing, as we shall see, olfaction with vision, believes
the indefinite odour of concentrated violets to be akin to the absence
of colour in white light. But this explanation seems to me to be
improbable, since the effect is due not to the combination of a
number of odours, as white light is the combination of all the colours
of the spectrum, but to the overpowering influence of a single odour.
Indeed, none of the other senses shows the same phenomenon. If
we happen to catch a momentary glimpse of the noonday sun, we
plainly see a disc of intense light (it is pale blue in colour to my eye),
surrounded by a fiery halo, before it blinds us. In the same way,
when a gun is fired close to the ear, we hear the sound before we are
deafened by it.
 It is for such reasons that perfumers never sniff at a bottle of scent;
they take a little, rub it on the back of the hand, and then wait until
the spirit has evaporated before they proceed to smell it.

The exquisite delicacy of the sense might lead us to suppose that

the olfactory organ must be quick at responding to its proper
stimulus. But such is not the case. It is, on the other hand, relatively
“slow in the uptake.”
Gleg has estimated that the reaction time for auditory sensation is
from 0·12 to 0·15 of a second, whereas the reaction time for smell is
as much as 0·5 of a second, only one sensory stimulus being slower,
that of pain, namely, which occupies 0·9 of a second.

Odours are conveyed to the olfactory end-organ in the air we

breathe. Before they can rise into the air from the odorivector (the
odorous body) and be transported they must, it is clear, pass into the
vaporous or gaseous state. (In the case of fish, of course, the odour
must undergo solution, that is pass into the liquid state.) Many of the
natural properties manifested by smells have been related to this
transformation into vapour.
Everybody knows how rich garden scents become after a shower. It
has been claimed that this results from the lightening of the
atmosphere by the storm, in consequence of which the diffusion of
odorous vapours, following the law that governs the diffusibility of
gases, is facilitated. But some of the effect must be due, one would
think, partly to the impact of the raindrops breaking up and
dispersing the halo of perfumed air that surrounds each flower, and
partly also to the evaporation of the rain-water that has absorbed
these floral emanations.
We are told also that during the night and in the chill of early
morning the air is less charged with odours because cold checks the
diffusion of gases. This may be true enough for some odours, but I
am inclined to think that the fact is not stated with perfect accuracy,
as there are certain perfumes, that of the tobacco-plant for one and
that of the night-scented stock for another, which are most prevalent
after nightfall. And it has always seemed to me that Mother Earth is
never so nicely perfumed as on a cool September morning, although
I should never be inclined to call any morning “incense-breathing,”
like Gray, for anything less like incense could scarcely be imagined.
There is no doubt, however, that frost seals up all odorivectors and
renders the air quite odourless.
A physical law appertaining to gases is also invoked to explain the
“clinging” of odours. Many, if not all, solids and liquids when
exposed to air and other gases adsorb (cause to adhere) to their
surfaces a thin, dense layer or film of the gas. If now that gas
happens to contain an odour, or is itself odorous, the odour must
also be adsorbed, and so in the case of porous materials, such as
fabrics, permeated by the odour, it lingers tenaciously in their
depths.
Odorous bodies in the solid or powdered form are known to retain
their perfume for prolonged periods. Look how long a sandal-wood
box remains aromatic. This property is supposed to depend upon the
lowered vapour tension of the odorous molecules in the depths of the
solid or powder, in virtue of which they rise into the air, or evaporate,
but slowly.
It would seem to be natural to suppose that, as vaporisation plays
such an important part in the dissemination of odours, the volatile
bodies and liquids would be more odorous than the nonvolatile. But,
as Zwaardemaker has pointed out, this is by no means always the
case. Many substances of low volatility are nevertheless highly
odorous, and vice versâ.

We turn now for a moment to consider the behaviour of the

odorous vapour in the nose.
As it passes through the nose the current of inspired air sweeps
along the lower and middle regions only; the upper or olfactory
region is not directly traversed. But almost certainly some of the air
is diverted up into the olfactory region in light eddies, and the act of
sniffing, which is a short inspiration abruptly begun and ended, and
which we instinctively resort to when trying to detect a faint odour, is
obviously of a nature to propel side-streams or eddies up into the
olfactory zone. One is reminded of the production of smoke rings
from a box.
 We smell not only during inspiration, however, but also during
expiration, the latter conveying to the olfactory region the flavours of
food and drink.
Flavours, that is to say the olfactory elements of so-called “taste,”
are not appreciated to the full until after deglutition. To most of us,
although experts and connoisseurs can determine it by smelling the
wine in the glass, the bouquet of port has really no meaning until
after it is drunk, simply because the expiratory current of air as it
ascends through the throat into the nose receives the concentrated
vapours of the warmed volatile higher alcohols which are clinging
about the fauces.
We may here remark that although we are usually able to perceive
that the odour and the flavour of a sapid food or drink are akin to
each other, the sensation of the odour anticipating that of the
flavour, yet they are by no means always identical. They may strike
us as do a plain and a coloured version of the same print. Sometimes
the flavour seems to be the more powerful, sometimes the odour.
Nearly all bouillons, for example, possess a flavour more rich and full
than the odour they give off with their steam. On the other hand,
valerian has a strong, objectionable smell, which, strange to say,
becomes subdued and relatively tolerable when that medicine is
being swallowed.

It is a curious fact, well known to expert “tasters,” that if the eyes

are kept closed during the test, the delicacy of appreciation of
flavours, and also of the smell of the wine in the glass, is entirely lost.
I cannot suggest any explanation for this curious phenomenon.

Anosmia, absence of smell, which is the next topic for our

consideration, is a not uncommon defect. It is generally the result of
some form of nasal obstruction, such as a bad “cold in the head,” as
Æsop’s fox was clever enough to remember. This type is temporary
and remediable. But there are other forms that are due to nerve-
disease, and for these nothing can be done.
A congenital anosmia is occasionally met with, and a curious
partial anosmia, reminding us of colour-blindness or tone-deafness.
I myself know people who cannot smell coal-gas unless it is very
strong, and I once knew a cook,—a cook who couldn’t smell a bad
egg!
Albinos are said to be congenitally anosmic, and there was
recorded many years ago by Hutchison the case of a negro who,
gradually losing all his pigment, became anosmic in consequence
(cited by Ogle). As the sustentacular cells of the olfactory area
contain granules of pigment (see Chapter II.), we are forced to
conclude that it must exercise a highly important function in the
perception of odours. We shall see later on that its presence is
supposed by some to support the theory that odour is a specific
ethereal vibration similar to light.

We turn now to discuss the real nature of odour, a section of our

subject which is still theoretical and highly problematical.

Having accomplished so much in the art of perfumery, the chemist

ought, one would think, to be able to tell us whether or not there is
any relationship or correspondence between odour and chemical
constitution.
When investigation of this point was begun, a hopeful fact came to
light, as it was pointed out that certain bodies of similar chemical
composition had all the same kind of smell. These were the
compounds of arsenic, bismuth, and phosphorus, all of which smell
of garlic. But it was soon realised that this fact was of little or no
significance, as the oxides of many of the metals, although quite
different from the former group, also smell of garlic. To these we may
add the instance of water and sulphuretted hydrogen, two substances
which are related chemically, as their formulæ show (H2O and H2S),
and yet one of them is odourless, While the other has a strong,
unpleasant smell. Finally, according to Deite, natural and artificial
musk have nothing in common but their smell. Chemically they are
quite different.
The property of odour, then, does not depend upon the Chemical
constitution of bodies.
 The next question that arises is: Do bodies exhaling the same kind
of odour resemble each other in the structure of their molecules? In
other words, can odour be related to molecular structure?
To the chemist all matter is made up of atoms and molecules. The
elements, bodies which cannot be broken up by chemical action into
any simpler form, are composed of atoms. On the other hand, when
elements combine to form a compound, the unit of the new body,
composed as it is of two or more atoms of different elements linked
together, is known as a molecule. (Probably the elements also exist in
the molecular state, the atoms of which they are composed being
linked together in groups.) Both atoms and molecules are, of course,
very minute in size.

For reasons we need not enter into here, the molecule is held to
have a certain structural form, which form is indicated by what is
known as a graphic formula. The graphic formula of water, one of the
simplest, may be written as H—O—H, and we may regard it as having
a linear form. (Modern views indicate that it is not a simple line, but
in two planes.)
Many molecules, however, particularly those of the organic
compounds, are highly complex, and their structural form must be
very different from that of water.
The question, then, now before us is: Does odour bear any
relationship to the molecular structure of bodies? And again it has
been maintained that a clue to the problem of the real nature of
odour lies here.
There is a well-known series of chemical bodies known as the
“aromatics,” by reason of the fact that they possess strong smells
more or less similar in quality. With regard to this series, which is
made up of groups of what are known as radicles which occupy
definite positions on a molecule shaped like a ring—the benzene ring,
as it is called—Henning, a German observer, has expressed the
opinion that the odour depends, not upon the radicles as such, but
upon the position they occupy on the ring.
Transferring his argument to odorous bodies in general, and
taking six groups as embracing all (spicy, flowery, fruity, resinous,
burnt, and foul), he associates each of these types with some feature
in the constitution of the molecule which is common to all the
members of each group.
To enter more fully into this branch of the subject would carry us
too deeply into chemistry. I shall content myself therefore with
saying that Henning’s views have received considerable support from
scientific chemists and have led to several interesting and suggestive
developments.

Heyninx, however, criticising this theory, points out that

hydrocyanic (or prussic) acid and nitrobenzol, two substances with
the same smell, have each a molecular structure in no way
resembling the other.
The graphic formulæ of these bodies, which I give here, plainly
show the difference between them:
H—C≡N (hydrocyanic acid) and

(T. H. Fairbrother, to whom I am indebted for much information

on the chemistry of olfaction, would dispose of this criticism of
Hcyninx’s by denying that the odours of those two substances are
identical. See later, p. 132.)

Chemistry, then, having, according to the critics, failed us, we turn

to the allied science of physics. Physics deals with matter in its
ultimate state, beginning, so to speak, where chemistry, with its work
of changes and combinations, ceases, and taking us deep into the
heart of matter independent of its chemical properties and
behaviour.
We have seen that, chemically speaking, elements and their
compounds exist as molecules made up of atoms. Now molecules
may be minute, and atoms even more minute, but in “electrons,” the
name given to the last divisible particle of matter known to the
physicist, we are dealing with minuteness inconceivable. Sir Oliver
Lodge has said that if an atom could be expanded to fill a space equal
to that of the entire solar system, the electrons composing it would
each be the size of an orange! There is supposed, indeed, to be an
atomic “system” composed of a central nucleus like the sun, with
electrons revolving round it, the nucleus having a positive, and the
revolving particles a negative, electric charge. Further (whether in
virtue of these moving electrons or otherwise is not quite clear), the
molecule is supposed to be in a state of constant vibration.
The physical theory of odour, then, refers that quality to the
vibration of the molecule. It suggests that the molecules of an
odorous body passing in the gaseous or, in fishes, the liquid state
into the olfactory region of the nose, are there received by the film of
mucus in which the olfactory hairs lie, and stimulate these hairs by
their molecular vibration. No chemical change is supposed to take
place, only, as it were, a mechanical stimulation, comparable to the
mechanical stimulation of the retina by the waves of light.
A recent development of the theory which we owe to Heyninx, a
Belgian scientist, brings the process very closely into harmony with
what occurs in the eye. According to this authority, olfaction is in
reality a perception of ethereal undulations of the same character as
the undulations of light, these undulations being provoked by the
intra-molecular vibrations of the odorous vapour in the nasal mucus
and transmitted to the olfactory hairs not by immediate contact, but
through the medium of the ether.
We owe this last suggestion to the curious fact, but recently
discovered, that many odorous substances (in their gaseous form in
the air) absorb the rays of ultra-violet light.
In order to make clear what this means, we must say a preliminary
word regarding the spectrum and spectrum analysis.
 The passage of a beam of white light through a glass prism breaks
it up into its component parts, beginning with red, then orange,
yellow, green, blue, and ending with violet. Beyond the violet end of
the spectrum we know there are rays invisible to us, but capable of
acting on a photographic plate. These are called the ultra-violet rays.
In like manner, beyond the red end of the spectrum we know there
are also rays, likewise invisible to us, but perceptible by our tactile
sense as heat. These are called the infra-red rays.
Now, the rate of vibration of all these different rays, visible and
invisible, has been estimated, and they increase in frequency from
the infra-red, which are the slowest, to the ultra-violet, which are the
most rapid.
As we have already said, it has recently been shown that the
odorous vapours absorb certain ultra-violet rays. That is to say, when
the beam of light is directed through a chamber containing the
odorous vapour before entering the prism, what are known as
absorption-bands—vertical black lines in the white—appear in the
photograph of the spectrum.
Similar lines are seen, as a matter of fact, in the visible spectrum of
sunlight, and as these correspond in position with the spectrum
given by chemical elements in an incandescent gaseous state, it is
supposed that they are produced by the absorption of the
corresponding light-rays by these gases in the solar atmosphere.
The physical explanation given of this phenomenon is that the
molecules of the gas in the sun absorb such light-rays as are equal in
rate of vibration to the rate of their own vibrating molecule.
In the same way, Heyninx and others argue that the odorous
vapour is composed of molecules which are vibrating with a period
equal to that of the light-rays they absorb.
Moreover, since the position of the absorption-band in the
photograph varies, lying in some cases nearer to the visible violet and
in others further away from it, and since this position varies with the
particular fundamental odour employed, it is suggested that not only
do the molecules vibrate with a period equal to that of the ultra-
violet rays they absorb, but as this vibration varies in rate, so it is to
this variation that we must ascribe the differences in odours. This is
analogous, of course, to the appreciation of colour by the eye. One
odorous molecule, that is to say, like the colour red, having a slower
rate of vibration, will give rise to one kind of smell; another, like the
colour yellow, with a more rapid rate, will give rise to another kind of
smell, and so on for all the fundamental odours. Heyninx, indeed,
goes so far as to fix the position in the olfactory gamut of all
fundamental odours, and to base upon it the classification we have
already considered.
It is supposed, that is to say, that the vibrations of the odorous
molecule set up undulations in the ether, and that it is those ethereal
undulations that stimulate the olfactory hairs, just as ethereal
undulations emanating from a luminous source stimulate the retina.
There is one great difference, however, between light and odour, a
difference admitted, we may mention, by the supporters of the
undulatory theory, but not emphasised by them. The difference is
this: in the case of visible light the ethereal undulations emanate
from a source at a distance (it may be like starlight at an enormous
distance) from the sensory end-organ, whereas in the case of odour
the undulation is supposed to be generated by the odorous molecule
in close proximity to the end-organ.
The theory makes no attempt to explain how the olfactory hairs
respond to these hypothetical ethereal waves.

Finally, we have the question of the olfactory pigment to consider,

and in this matter we cannot do better than follow the exposition of
William Ogle, an English physician who wrote as long ago as 1870.
As will be seen, he forestalls the modern undulatory theory of
olfaction in a remarkable manner.
Ogle contends that the presence of pigment must be of great
importance in the function for the following reasons:
First, the epithelium of the olfactory region is pigmented, while
that of the rest of the nasal chamber and sinuses is devoid of
colouring matter.
Secondly, there seems to be some correspondence between the
degree of pigmentation and the acuteness of smell, as the following
facts suggest:—
 In macrosmatic animals, such as the dog, cat, fox, sheep, and
rabbit, pigmentation extends over a larger space and is darker in tint
than in man. In these animals also the mucus covering the olfactory
area of the nose is itself pigmented.
We have seen that human albinos are anosmic, and the same is
probably true of animal albinos. But care is necessary in making
observations on suspected albinos in animals, as even when they are
altogether white a certain amount of black pigment remains about
the face and nose.
The following reports, however, would lead us to conclude that as
with man, so with the animals, a relative deficiency of pigment is
associated with a dull olfactory sense.
It is by smell that the herbivora detect and avoid plants which are
poisonous, and when poisoning does occur, it is usually a white
animal that suffers. In some parts of Virginia the farmers will only
rear black pigs, because, they say, the white ones eat and are
poisoned by the roots of Lachtanthus tinctoria. For the same reason
in the Tarentino only black sheep are reared.
Thirdly, the dark-skinned human races have a keener sense of
smell than the lighter races.
Fourthly, the sense grows more acute as we get older, as we have
already seen, and nasal pigmentation, it is said, also increases with
age.
As to the function of the olfactory pigment, Ogle remarks first of
all that odours are absorbed more readily by dark than by light
materials.
Pigment is also present in the labyrinth of the ear as well as in the
eye, and its presence in these organs seems to be essential to their
activity.
It is to be noted that the pigment does not occur on the nerve
structure in any of those end-organs, but external, though
contiguous to it. In the eye, it lies in contact with the rods and cones
of the retina; in the nose, with the olfactory hairs; in the ear, with the
terminal bodies of the auditory nerve.
Hence the pigment, he supposes, must be associated with the
reception of the sensory impressions.
 In the eye and the ear those impressions are undulatory in
character. That being so, he holds that the undulatory theory of
olfaction also is probably the correct one.
Ogle finishes with the remark that the theory would be
strengthened if it could be shown that pigment was specially suited
for the absorption and modification of undulations.
It is interesting to us to learn that claims are now being made that
pigment does possess the power necessitated by Ogle’s theory. At all
events, there is a theory of vision (Castelli’s) which claims for the
ocular pigment the power of absorbing and modifying light waves,
and Heyninx holds that the olfactory pigment possesses a similar
property.

Summing the whole matter up, then, we may say that the
undulatory theory of olfaction is, that an odorivector gives off in the
form of vapour (in the aerial medium) extremely attenuated portions
of its substance, too minute to be weighed, and that this vapour,
disseminated through the air, enters the nose in respiration, and,
being wafted up into the olfactory region, is received by the mucus
bathing the olfactory hairs, where, in virtue of the ultra-violet
radiations which proceed from its molecules and are modified by the
olfactory pigment, it acts on the hairs, setting up changes (it may be
also undulatory in nature) in them and in their cells, which changes
are transmitted thence by the olfactory nerves to the neurones or
nerve-cells of the olfactory bulb (or lobe) of the brain.

The undulatory theory of olfaction, then, as will be evident to the

reader, has a good deal in its favour. And in addition to what we have
already said of it as accounting for the absorption by odorous
vapours of ultra-violet rays, and as giving a hint regarding the
function of pigment in the olfactory area, there are also a number of
other phenomena which it seems to explain. We have seen, for
example, how one odorivector, such as musk or civet, may have the
property of enhancing the power of another, and this is a property
which is characteristic also of certain luminous conditions
(fluorescence, lumino-luminescence).
 Again, there is a harmony existing between certain of the
manufacturers’ primitive odours; “they go well together,” and are
employed for that reason in the art of perfumery. This resembles the
harmony existing in another class of undulations, the sound waves.
On the other hand, just as one sound may silence another by the
clashing of their waves, so one odour may “kill” or neutralise another
odour (iodoform and coffee, e.g.).
There are several other minor phenomena which are in agreement
with this theory. They need not detain us.

We turn now to the criticism of the undulatory theory of odour.

First of all, we shall dispose of an objection which, at first sight,
has a very serious aspect.
It may seem difficult to understand how vibrations which appear
to us when of a certain rate to be light should when they are of
another rate become to us smell. How can one and the same physical
condition produce sensations so different?
The same difference, however, is encountered when we pass to the
rays at the other end of the spectrum, the reds and infra-reds. On one
side of the dividing line we only perceive these as heat; on the other
side they also become light.
Obviously, the difference can only be due to the different character
of the sensory end-organ, the receptor of these vibrations. As Head
says: “Each peripheral end-organ is a specific resonator attuned to
some particular kind of physical vibration”—reminding us not only of
soundresonators, but also of wireless receivers, which are “tuned” or
accommodated to particular wave-lengths.
Thus, if red rays encounter certain tactile end-organs in the skin,
they are perceived by the mind as heat, and if they pass into the eye
and stimulate the retina, they are perceived as red light. In other
words, in whatsoever manner an end-organ is stimulated, it only
induces its own particular sensation.
How it comes about that the various end-organs induce such
different sensations is not yet known.
 The ultra-violet theory of olfaction, however, has to run the
gauntlet of much more serious criticism than the difficulty we have
just disposed of.
One great objection to it (to my mind) is that it fails to account for
another absorption phenomenon of which I have not yet made any
mention. It was first observed by Tyndall nearly fifty years ago.
On submitting odorous vapours to examination Tyndall found, not
that they absorbed ultra-violet rays, as this method is of quite recent
usage, but that they absorbed heat-rays, or the infra-red rays of the
spectrum. So that, if it be correct to say that odours set up ultra-
violet rays in the ether, we must be equally ready to credit them with
setting up infra-red rays also!
But there is another, and perhaps a stronger, objection to the
ultra-violet theory.
In the interesting and highly instructive schema drawn up by
Heyninx of the wave-lengths of ultra-violet absorbed by odours, we
find one or two discrepancies of a serious character.
For example, iodoform and cinnamic aldehyde show absorption-
bands occupying nearly the same position on the spectrum; and
presumably, therefore, these substances have the same molecular
vibration-rate. Yet their odours are not at all alike!
Again, acetone-methylnonic and butyric acids have precisely the
same absorption bands, and yet they also exhale totally different
odours.
But the most serious discrepancy remains. The absorption bands
of hydrocyanic acid and watery vapour (steam) have precisely the
same position in the spectrum, yet one of these has a highly
characteristic odour, and the other has none at all!
It is rather difficult, in view of these findings, to believe that this
absorption phenomenon can have anything to do with the quality of
odour.
My friend Mr. T. H. Fairbrother writes regarding this controversy:
—

“Whilst I do not for one moment suggest that the whole phenomena of smell can
be explained entirely in terms of chemical constitution, I do maintain that it has
much to do with it, and I certainly think that more valuable information about the
cause of various odours has been obtained from considerations of chemical
constitution than from the many extravagant physical theories which do not lead
us very far. In my view the physicists are begging the question, because they
usually postulate something which we cannot prove, and whilst it is possible that
the vibration of electrons causes smell, how much wiser does that statement make
us? One might easily say that it was possible that the bombardment of electrons
caused smell, etc. On the chemical side, however, we are bound down to
experimental facts, and we do know that esterification of carboxylic acids does
bring about a fruity odour invariably, etc. Chemical constitution cannot explain
fully all these phenomena, because chemical formulæ themselves are only
approximations, but the effect of groups in a nucleus has done much to help
synthetic production of odorous bodies. When the physicist can control the
vibrations of his electrons and make them rotate in accordance with his will, then
he may be able to synthesise new odours—till then we have no means of testing his
theories.”

The older view of olfaction—and many modern scientists, as we

see, still adhere to it—is that the odorous molecule acts as a chemical
reagent upon the olfactory hairs. And there is something to be said
for this opinion.
To begin with, no one doubts nowadays that odours are material.
They pass through the air as vapours, and they are known to travel
miles on the wind. That is to say, apart from those hypothetical
varieties of odour (if we can call them odour at all) discussed by
Fabre earlier in this book, odours do not emanate from a point and
disperse in all directions as light and sound do. Why then drag in the
ether? Is it not more probable that the odorous molecule acts on the
olfactory hairs by direct material contact, and that it sets up chemical
changes in them?
We are asked to believe that the ultra-violet rays of odour
stimulate the olfactory hairs as visible light-rays stimulate the retina.
But it must not be forgotten that in the eye those rays may induce
first of all chemical changes in the retina, just as they would act on
the silver salt of a photographic plate, and that it may be by these
changes that the retina is stimulated.
In the phenomenon of olfactory exhaustion, as we said in our first
chapter, we have a circumstance which suggests the presence of
some chemical reagent in the olfactory area.
 It may be, of course, that in the nose as well as in the eye the
process is a combination of chemical and physical changes. And in
any case we are here dealing with that obscure region where
chemistry and physics meet and mingle.
We have now come to the end of our discourse upon the theories of
odour, and it must be confessed that we are still very much in the
dark as to the nature of the odorous, and as to the manner in which it
excites the olfactory organ to activity.

Still more mysterious, however, is the process by which the

physical quality of odour becomes the sensation of the mind we call
smell.
The transmutation of a physical quality into a sensation is indeed
the great mystery of all our senses. Olfaction is not the only one
before which we throw up our hands, and this in spite of the detailed
and voluminous information which modern physiology, neurology,
and psychology place at our disposal, perhaps less in spite of this
information than because of it, seeing that the further our knowledge
extends the wider seems the unknown realm beyond. Our science is
an ever-expanding sphere, no doubt, but it is expanding into the
infinite.
How is it that the rhythmic vibration of matter becomes what we
call “sound,” or the rhythmic vibration of the ether “light”?
How does the physical pass into and become part of the psychic?
According to recent teaching, the physical can be followed as such
from the sensory end-organ itself as far as the first synapse, or
junction with the neurone. But there something happens; ... then it
reappears in a new guise, vibration becomes sensation, the physical
psychic, the objective subjective, the real ideal, the dead alive! In that
brief tumble of time what a miraculous transformation!
Modern science has cleared up much of the mystery of the
objective world, and although it may be far from the end of its
search, although, indeed, the search, one must think, can never
entirely elucidate the dense obscurity that envelops us on every side,
dark as a starless night around a candle, yet we already know this
much, that the real world is very different from the world depicted
for us by our senses.
 Only a little imagination is needed to convey us out of the magic
circle into which we have been born, and what a strange universe do
we then find ourselves in! Entangled in a meshwork of space-time
and permeated by whirling maelstroms of varied and innumerable
oscillations, we lose all hold on reality in the very act of grasping it.
But although we do possess some sort of vague notion as to the
constitution of the outer universe, before the inner we stand ignorant
and speechless.
Regarded as a machine, the brain, it is true, like the world without,
is reluctantly yielding up its secrets one by one. We are learning how
it works as a chemical factory, as a physical power-house, so that
already we can surmise that here also we have probably to deal with
a multiplicity of vibrations, of exquisitely minute transformations of
energy, of involved intercommunications, of deft though intricate
associations, of rapid yet permanent recordings and registrations.
We are now able to follow the undulations we term light, not only
into the eye, but into the brain itself, locating their central station in
the occipital lobe, whence their effects radiate all over the organism.
And in the case of olfaction Pawlow has taught us that its chief
vegetative function, the result of radiations from the olfactory central
station in the brain, is the arousing of the digestive glands to activity.
The first act of digestion is olfaction. But the routes which the
olfactory stimuli follow in the central nervous system and their
communications with other sensory paths are not yet known.
The secrets of the brain which have been disclosed to us, however
wonderful they may be, concern only, we must remember, the
machinery of the nervous system, that part, namely, which is of the
same nature and order as the objective world, of which indeed it is a
member. Hitherto have we come, but no further:
 “The traveller hails. The echoing walls respond.
And there the matter ends. The wilds beyond
Are broken rock and desert where no foot
Can venture on to trace a further route,
For none hath trodden or shall ever tread
This hither limbus of the outer dread.
Cloven abrupt, the absolute abyss
Falls sheer beneath us, fathoms fathomless,
And still high o’er us heaves the unclimbed hill,
And the unanswered questions front us still.”

The “thought” escapes us. Somewhere beyond the boundary of the

physical flits this elusive, this tantalising ghost. How it is acted upon
and how it reacts we know to some extent. But what the nature of its
action may be is more than we can determine.
Nay! A moment ago we lightly spoke of passing out of the magic
circle into which we have been born, and we forthwith proceeded to
talk as if we had in reality escaped from this our prison. But there is
no escape for us, of course. No man can jump out of his skin. There
undoubtedly are such things as “waves,” or “undulations,” or
“oscillations,” or “vibrations,” or whatever we like to call them. But
they are not what we imagine them to be. There is, we may suppose,
a four-dimensioned universe of “space-time.” But it is beyond our
conception. There is “objective reality,” in a word. But it is no reality
to us. Those very expressions, glibly used though they be, are but
metaphors—“pretendings” a child would call them—attempts to
bring the remote a little nearer to us, to clothe the uncouth in the
garments we ourselves wear; all of which is nothing but Maya—
illusion—shadowplay.
Let us not deceive ourselves. Along with the recent revelations of
physical science there comes, say certain modern philosophers, the
suspicion that the universe is irrational. At every point we are
brought up short by the unknowable.
For example, Einstein tells us that what we call the “ether” has no
existence. It is merely a “void.”—But how can we call that void which
contains something—undulations, to wit?
“Nay!” you argue; “the undulations traverse the ether, but they are
not it. The ether is a non-entity. It has no existence. It is nothing.”
 To which I reply: “But ‘nothing’ is an absolute term. It means ‘no
thing.’ How, then, can undulations, or anything else for that matter,
pass through nothing?”
“What nonsense!” you cry; “this kind of verbal poser is just the
silly old metaphysicians’ parlour game of playing with words.”
I know it is. But the word-play has its uses. It demonstrates to us
that words, language, logic, all alike, fail our thought, not so much
because those instruments are limited in power as because the
thought itself is lacking in precision and comprehensiveness.
It is when our word-play probes the expression that the vagueness
of the idea is made manifest. Our foil, even with the button on, goes
clean through the phantom.
The mind, in short, has not absorbed, nor can it absorb, the fact.
We seize a glass of water to drain it, and presently, like Alice, we find
ourselves swimming about in an ocean! Obviously the universe is
beyond our comprehension, a conclusion desperate if you like, yet
undeniable.
But how very annoying it is, after all our heavy labour, to hear the
ancient scoff of Zophar the Naamathite still ringing triumphant:
“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the
Almighty unto perfection?”
(Still we mean to go on trying!)

Yet of all the senses none surely is so mysterious as that of smell.

For, as we have shown, the nature of the emanations that stir it to
activity is still unknown; the simple structure of its end-organ
confronts us, like a sphinx, with silence; and after the reception of
the stimulus in the olfactory lobe of the brain its further connections
and communications still remain unsurveyed, albeit, as I have
already so amply displayed, its effects upon the psyche are both wide
and deep, at once obvious and subtle.
 CHAPTER IX
DUST OF THE ROSE PETAL

By way of relief from the exacting mental strain of the last chapter,
I have thought that the reader who has got this length might be
grateful for something more simple, and so it is not altogether
egotism that leads me to finish up with a few of the olfactory pictures
I cherish.

Before proceeding with the subject-matter proper of the chapter,

however, let me put in a plea for the conscious cultivation of the
sense of smell. But little more, I take it, is needed in this way than to
pay attention to the olfactory sensations that reach us, for the very
fact of taking note of them is sufficient probably to increase the
power and delicacy of olfaction, this being always the effect of the
mental process known as attention.
Smell may thus be easily cultivated and improved, and with the
increase in its appreciation of the world comes an enriching of the
other sense-impressions that is quite surprising.
It is possible that there is no substance in the natural world
entirely devoid of odour. At all events, after a time the amateur in
smell may find himself able, like Rousseau, to perceive perfumes
when other people do not notice any, and as a mark at which he can
aim let it be said that when he finds himself able to distinguish
streets from each other by their smell alone he has made some little
progress in the art.

The innate acuteness of the sense varies widely in different people.

Some go through life blunt to all but the coarser smells, while others
are gifted with a sensitiveness as delicate almost as that of a
macrosmatic animal. This is scarcely an exaggeration. I am
acquainted with people—English people—who are able to recognise
by olfaction not only different races and the two sexes, but even
different persons. One of those sensitives informs me that to her the
personal olfactory atmosphere is every whit as characteristic and
unmistakable as the play of features or the carriage of the figure.
Another remarkable feat within the capacity of human
macrosmatics, and one that seems almost incredible to the ordinary
individual, is that of being able to distinguish the clothing of
different persons by its aroma. Some can even recognise their own, a
remarkable circumstance in view of the almost universal rule that
each is anosmic to his own particular atmosphere.
It is true that we can get on quite well without smelling. Probably
congenital anosmia is the least crippling of all sense-deprivations.
But how much it enters into our enjoyment of life when we have once
possessed it is shown by the blankness that attends its loss; we feel
then as if a tint had been bleached out of the world.

At this juncture we may stay a moment to allude to the action of

tobacco on olfaction. There are few people nowadays who would
uphold King Jamie’s “Counterblaste,” wherein he denounces
smoking as—

“a custome loathsome to the Eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the Braine,
dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling
the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.”

But, in fact, regarding the influence of the tobacco-habit on the sense

there is a conflict of opinion. Some say it dulls olfaction; others, it
has no deleterious effect. My own experience would lead me to agree
with the former opinion.

We now proceed with our memories.

Who does not become a boy again when the fragrance of a
gardener’s bonfire fills the air? In my own case when I smell it my
eyes begin to smart and to water, and I hear the laughter and shouts
of my brothers as, daring the wrath of Olympus, we leap over the
blaze and land on the white powdery ash that rises in clouds around
us to the ruination of boots and clothing. It is always evening, “’twixt
the gloamin’ and the mirk.” The moon, still golden, is hung low in the
sky; the wind is sharp with a touch of frost, but the glare and the
glow of the embers reddens and warms us—at least that part of us we
turn to the fire. (Have you ever felt the fierce pleasure of being at
once scorched and frozen?)
In those few country places in Scotland where the old Beltane fires
of midsummer or midwinter are still kindled, children are
encouraged to pass through the smoke, that being good for their
health. The custom, frankly pagan, is probably the maimed rite of a
sacrifice of children to the old gods. That may be quite true, and yet I
concur in believing the practice to be beneficial. At all events, the
bonfires of so many years ago have left with me a memory that has
often recurred since, and always with healing on its wings.

Again, the fainter, keener odour of burning pine-wood combined

with the fanning sensation on the face of the cold wind of the dawn
always brings back to me a summer morning at the Swiss frontier
station of Pontarlier after an evening when vin ordinaire had induced
effects extraordinaire upon a youth unaccustomed to that fiery
beverage. Those, no doubt, were the days when nothing mattered
much. Nevertheless the fragrant coolness of that morning after
touches my aching brow to this day with the soothing gentleness of a
hand fraught with understanding and forgiveness.

Then what sea-lover is there but responds to the salt pungency of

seaweed on an empty beach?
It is an interesting fact that the smell of the sea may travel inland
for miles on a favouring breeze. With the south-west wind blowing
moist, I have in the heart of Lanarkshire repeatedly been stirred out
of everyday hebetude by the smell of the sea on the Ayrshire coast,
some thirty miles away. And Réné Bazin (in “Les Oberlé”) says you
can even smell it sometimes in Alsace, 250 miles from the
Mediterranean.
 Once, indeed, at King’s Cross, London, I beheld monstrous
railway-stations and muddy streets, with their motor-’buses, dingy
wayfarers, yelling newsboys and all, melting away into the glimmer
and space of the sea in a sort of magical transformation, just as mist
low-lying in Russell Square will turn at times those garish hotels into
sea-girt palaces.... Only this time there was no mist. There was,
indeed, no need of mist. For the spell of power was a sudden whiff of
the sea from far across the bricks, slates, and sooty chimneys.
But there is another sea-smell, equally powerful and much less
romantic. Can you endure the breath of hot oil and metal from the
engines of a steamer without a qualm?

If ever a boy has watched and helped the fishermen clean and tan
their nets, he will always after, as often as chance brings the smell to
his nostrils, revive again the pit in the ground and the gruff voices of
the heavy-booted men pulling the twisted net up and down, in and
out.

Or the bean-flowers’ boon?

This, as it happens, concerns also somebody else, but as she has
long since been lost in the crowd, I am not breaking any confidences
in recalling the scene.
We are standing together beside the gate of a hill plantation, and I
see a tall lady’s delicately cut profile against the sombre green and
brown of the fir-trees. Although the flush of the sunset has almost
entirely faded from the sky, it seems to be lingering yet a while on
her cheek as if reluctant to leave her. As for me, I am as keen to every
breath of emotion as the little loch below is to the slightest stir of air.
The time is past for talk, and I am watching her in silence. So I see
the thin curved nostril dilate a little, at once to be quietly restrained,
as if even this little display of feeling on her part were out of place,—
and then I also turn to look at the butterfly bean-flowers in the field
at our feet.
Now as often as the bean blooms, so does her memory.
 How powerfully associations affect our olfactory likes and dislikes
we hinted on a former page, and in this matter of smell-memories we
can observe the same effect. Smells which to others seem offensive
may, if they arouse a pleasant memory, borrow from it a tinge that
turns their offence into a joy for ever. In my own case iodine and the
rather irritating odour of bleaching powder are always welcome and
always sweet. Yet they recall nothing more interesting than the days
of childhood to me! On the other hand, perfumes generally
considered to be pleasant will be objectionable to us if they arouse
unhappy memories.

The most beautiful, however, are those which have been young
with us, and yet have never forsaken us, by continual refreshment
keeping an eternal youth. And of all the odours in life none surely is
so rich both in retrospect and in prospect as the smell of books to
him who loves them. The cosy invitation of a library! Not a public
library, needless to say, where the intimate appeal is lost in a jumble
of smells—dust, paste, ink and clammy overcoats. Such public
mixtures the bookworm, that solitary self-centred individual, must,
by reason of his shyness, ever consistently shun. But usher him into
the private room of a private house where books, many books, have
reposed for many years. Then go away and leave him to it.
The smell of a room full of books is slow to form. Like the bouquet
of wine, it must ripen. You have to wait. But if you are able to wait,
then one fine day you will be welcomed there by the snuggest smell
in all the world, which, when once it comes, will for ever remain, like
rooks in a clump of elms. I know a few houses where this most
seductive of all perfumes has resided for untold years, and whence it
will never depart as long as our immemorial England endures. But
alas! like most people, I have only been a fleeting visitor to those
nooks of enchantment, and have had to wait myself not once, but
many times, as often indeed as I have shifted my roof-tree, for that
ancient fusty atmosphere. There is, I fear, no way of hastening the
appearance of this beckoning finger to oblivion. We need not linger
over the analysis of this particular odour. Book-lovers know it.
Others don’t care.
“You are a reader, I see,” said an observant doctor to me once.
 “How d’you know that?” I asked in surprise, as we had just met for
the first time.
“I know it,” was his reply, “by the caressing way you took up that
book!”
Your real bookworm loves all books. Like the modern genius, he is
amoral. But unlike the genius, his amorality, simple soul, is confined
within the four walls of a library. He could never, I am sure, bring
himself to agree with André Theuriet, who in “La Chanoinesse”
depicts

“les Bijoux indiscrets auprès des œuvres de Duclos; Candide, Jacques la

Fataliste et le Sophia voisinant de Restif de la Brétonne à deux pas de l’Emile, et
les Aventures du Chevalier de Faublas—une nouveauté—non loin de l’Histoire
philosophique des Indes,”

all of which books, by a kind of moral exercise of his imagination we

cannot sufficiently deplore, he found exhaling “une odeur de volupté
perverse, quelque chose comme le parfum aphrodisiac des seringes
et des tubereuses dans une chambre close.”

Every dwelling-house has its own peculiar atmosphere, sometimes

agreeable, sometimes not. But, whatever its quality, so characteristic
and persistent are some of them that I am sure a blind man would
always be able to tell them by the smell alone. Few of us may be
gifted with the analytical nose of a Charles Dickens to detect the
ingredients that make up a complex domiciliary atmosphere, but
everybody must have noticed that basement houses smell differently
from bungalows, the former greeting you with a harmonious blend of
earthiness, soapsuds, and sinks.
Nay! The house you live in has a separate odour for each room: the
drawing-room with its chintzes; the snuggery with its stale tobacco,
and, perhaps, like an insinuating nudge, with a whiff of the stronger
alcohols; the bedrooms, if your housekeeper knows her business,
with the freshness of well-aired linen.
The very days of the week have each its own particular olfactory
mark, dating from our childhood: Sundays (in Scotland), peppermint
followed by roast beef and richness; Mondays, pickles and soapsuds;
Tuesday, the damp airs from the washing hung up to dry;
Wednesdays, warmth and beeswax from the laundry, with ever and
anon the thump of the flat iron; Thursdays, bread new from the
baker and the washing of floors with soft soap—“Mind yer feet,
now!”—Fridays, jam-boiling and the never-to-be-forgotten aroma of
oat-cakes on the girdle; Saturdays—but Saturday is a day of wind and
banging doors, of tops and dust; all its smells are out of doors.

Shops, too! What of the coffee-shop?—Who does not pause a

moment at that door when the beans are roasting? One of the richest
of all odours that; curious how you lose it in the beverage! Then there
is the ironmonger’s, where the sharp smell of steel strikes, by some
strange reflex, the upper incisor teeth and gums; the oil and colour
shop, with its putty, turpentine, and general clamminess; and, last
and best of all, the druggist’s!
What about the fried fish-shop? Faugh! I once for a reason
connected with my calling had cause to spend a whole night in a
room above a fish-shop—once only. The next time (there never will
be a next time, she swears, but there always is)—the next time I
happened, curiously enough, to arrive late!
But although houses and rooms and, as we hinted, streets also, all
smell differently, each town and city has its own peculiar
fundamental odour. There is a town in Yorkshire that smells of
“mungo.” I know another that smells of mineral oil, and many that
exhale the dank smell of the coal-mine.
London has a smell of its own, a fundamental familiar odour,
which, by the way, has changed of late. Twenty years ago it was
faintly acid with a background of horses and harness. To-day it is a
mixture of tar and burned lubricating oil, by no means so pleasant.
In addition to these, however, there is another and less prominent
odour characteristic of the London atmosphere, which I confess I
cannot describe.

“Once upon a time, some forty years ago, there lived at Highgate, which then still
retained some of the characters of a village, a lady who declared that when a yellow
fog drifted up from London she could detect the smell of tobacco smoke in it. To
most people the odour is flatly that of coal smoke, which is perhaps always more or
less to be perceived in London air. This at any rate would seem to have been the
opinion of Edward Jenner, if we may trust a note made by Farington in his diary
for 1809, which is being printed in the Morning Post. Farington’s note is as
follows:
“‘Dr. Jenner observed to Lawrence that He could by smelling at His
Handkerchief on going out of London ascertain when he came into an atmosphere
untainted by the London air. His method was to smell at His Handkerchief
occasionally, and while He continued within the London atmosphere He could
never be sensible of any taint upon it; but, for instance, when He approached
Blackheath and took His Handkerchief out of His pocket where it had not been
exposed to the better air of that situation—His sense of smelling having become
more pure he could perceive the taint. His calculation was that the air of London
affected that in the vicinity to the distance of three miles’” (The Lancet).

Paris, in like manner, has its own peculiar aroma. Lord Frederick
Hamilton analyses it correctly into “one-half wood-smoke, one-
quarter roasting coffee, and one-quarter drains.” But for myself the
Paris air always brings a curious half-suppressed feeling of
excitement, part of it pleasure, part apprehension, as if something
tremendous were about to happen. But here perhaps we cross the
border-line between conscious sensation and subconscious
stimulation.
Rome is a city of candles and incense mingled with the dry
mustiness of crumbling skeletons.
In Edinburgh you encounter here and there the smell of old
Scotland. Thatch enters into its make-up, why I cannot tell you. But
the cold grey metropolis still preserves the soul of the thatch, a cosy
sensation that is prone to bring tears to the eyes of the returning
exile.
In Glasgow damp soot struggles with the smell of the Bromielaw
for the mastery.
Dublin mingles the warm, rich aroma of Guinness’s Brewery with
the cold smell of a corpse from the Liffey.
Those are the cities I know best myself. But I have often been told,
and can quite believe it, that every city has its own particular
atmosphere.

Some days, both in a city and in the country, are as rich and full of
odours as a Turner picture is rich and various in colour. Other days
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