{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_25308/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_25308","id":"gutenberg_25308","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25308","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Eugenics"],"text":"Produced by Irma Spehar, Jeannie Howse and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This\nfile was produced from images generously made available\nby The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    +-----------------------------------------------------------+\n    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |\n    |                                                           |\n    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |\n    | been preserved.                                           |\n    |                                                           |\n    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |\n    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |\n    |                                                           |\n    +-----------------------------------------------------------+\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nEUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS\n\n\n\n\nEugenics and\nOther Evils\n\n\nBy\n\nG.K. Chesterton\n\n\nCassell and Company, Limited\nLondon, New York, Toronto & Melbourne\n1922\n\n\n\n\nTO THE READER\n\n\nI publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason\nconnected with the present situation; a reason which I should like\nbriefly to emphasise and make clear.\n\nThough most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are\nconceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of\npreliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before\nthe war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; when\neugenic babies (not visibly very distinguishable from other babies)\nsprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancy\nof Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr.\nBernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a man\nlike a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilisation,\nof intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be\nfound in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion\ntoo controversially, and it seems to me that I sometimes took it too\nseriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into\na more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism\nand strict social organisation.\n\nAnd then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might\nwell fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one,\nand was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And,\nanyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style.\nScientific officialism and organisation in the State which had\nspecialised in them, had gone to war with the older culture of\nChristendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would be\nhopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless.\nAs the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, it\ngrew more and more plain that the scientifically organised State was\nnot increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen would\never again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So I\nthought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind.\n\nI am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It has\ngradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the ruling\nclasses in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussia\nis a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nine\nyears old, most of their principles and proceedings are a great deal\nolder. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same\nbullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors\nthat have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. For\nthat reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect and\npublish these papers.\n\n                                                    G.K.C.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nPART I\n\nThe False Theory\n\nCHAPTER                                        PAGE\n\n1. WHAT IS EUGENICS?                                   3\n\n2. THE FIRST OBSTACLES                                12\n\n3. THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE                             22\n\n4. THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW                            31\n\n5. THE FLYING AUTHORITY                               46\n\n6. THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE                           61\n\n7. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT                    73\n\n8. A SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY                        82\n\n\nPART II\n\nThe Real Aim\n\n1. THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE                       91\n\n2. TRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP                           101\n\n3. TRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST                        114\n\n4. THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH                        126\n\n5. THE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE                        136\n\n6. THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY                            148\n\n7. THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM                   159\n\n8. THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GODS                     169\n\n9. A SHORT CHAPTER                                   180\n\n\n\n\nPart I\n\nTHE FALSE THEORY\n\n\n\n\nEugenics and Other Evils\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nWHAT IS EUGENICS?\n\n\nThe wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is\nno good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are\nmortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but\nsound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because\nmen moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before\nit exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the\nscheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried\nwhile it is in the air.\n\nThere exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as\ncollective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we\ncan make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford\nMovement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists;\nor the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing\nthat can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed.\nIt is called for convenience \"Eugenics\"; and that it ought to be\ndestroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that it\nmeans very different things to different people; but that is only\nbecause evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised\nwith high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued\nrhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is\nonly because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called \"The\nGracious Ones.\" I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions\nare entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely\nastonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil\nalways wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has\nin all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and\nabnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we\nall do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they\nare doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenics\nitself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas\nexist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming\nquickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a\nthousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no\nmore to be bargained about than poisoning.\n\nIt is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: though\nsome of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it. The movement\nconsists of two parts: a moral basis, which is common to all, and a\nscheme of social application which varies a good deal. For the moral\nbasis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with his\nknowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr.\nJohnson in that tower of vision), and if the baby was ill through\nhaving eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might be\ncalling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides of\nbabies whose diet had been far more deadly; but I should be justified.\nI could not be expected to know enough about his other patients to be\nobliged (or even entitled) to sacrifice to them the baby for whom I\nwas primarily and directly responsible. Now the Eugenic moral basis is\nthis; that the baby for whom we are primarily and directly responsible\nis the babe unborn. That is, that we know (or may come to know) enough\nof certain inevitable tendencies in biology to consider the fruit of\nsome contemplated union in that direct and clear light of conscience\nwhich we can now only fix on the other partner in that union. The one\nduty can conceivably be as definite as or more definite than the\nother. The baby that does not exist can be considered even before the\nwife who does. Now it is essential to grasp that this is a\ncomparatively new note in morality. Of course sane people always\nthought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the\nglory of God or according to the plan of Nature; but whether they\ncounted such children as God's reward for service or Nature's premium\non sanity, they always left the reward to God or the premium to\nNature, as a less definable thing. The only person (and this is the\npoint) towards whom one could have precise duties was the partner in\nthe process. Directly considering the partner's claims was the nearest\none could get to indirectly considering the claims of posterity. If\nthe women of the harem sang praises of the hero as the Moslem mounted\nhis horse, it was because this was the due of a man; if the Christian\nknight helped his wife off her horse, it was because this was the due\nof a woman. Definite and detailed dues of this kind they did not\npredicate of the babe unborn; regarding him in that agnostic and\nopportunist light in which Mr. Browdie regarded the hypothetical child\nof Miss Squeers. Thinking these sex relations healthy, they naturally\nhoped they would produce healthy children; but that was all. The\nMoslem woman doubtless expected Allah to send beautiful sons to an\nobedient wife; but she would not have allowed any direct vision of\nsuch sons to alter the obedience itself. She would not have said, \"I\nwill now be a disobedient wife; as the learned leech informs me that\ngreat prophets are often the children of disobedient wives.\" The\nknight doubtless hoped that the saints would help him to strong\nchildren, if he did all the duties of his station, one of which might\nbe helping his wife off her horse; but he would not have refrained\nfrom doing this because he had read in a book that a course of falling\noff horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem and\nChristian would have thought such speculations not only impious but\nutterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is not the\npoint here.\n\nThe point here is that a new school believes Eugenics _against_\nEthics. And it is proved by one familiar fact: that the heroisms of\nhistory are actually the crimes of Eugenics. The Eugenists' books and\narticles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should and\nmay come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feel\nthat marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children. But history\nis full of the praises of people who have held sacred such ties to\ninvalids; of cases like those of Colonel Hutchinson and Sir William\nTemple, who remained faithful to betrothals when beauty and health had\nbeen apparently blasted. And though the illnesses of Dorothy Osborne\nand Mrs. Hutchinson may not fall under the Eugenic speculations (I do\nnot know), it is obvious that they might have done so; and certainly\nit would not have made any difference to men's moral opinion of the\nact. I do not discuss here which morality I favour; but I insist that\nthey are opposite. The Eugenist really sets up as saints the very men\nwhom hundreds of families have called sneaks. To be consistent, they\nought to put up statues to the men who deserted their loves because of\nbodily misfortune; with inscriptions celebrating the good Eugenist\nwho, on his fiancee falling off a bicycle, nobly refused to marry her;\nor to the young hero who, on hearing of an uncle with erysipelas,\nmagnanimously broke his word. What is perfectly plain is this: that\nmankind have hitherto held the bond between man and woman so sacred,\nand the effect of it on the children so incalculable, that they have\nalways admired the maintenance of honour more than the maintenance of\nsafety. Doubtless they thought that even the children might be none\nthe worse for not being the children of cowards and shirkers; but this\nwas not the first thought, the first commandment. Briefly, we may say\nthat while many moral systems have set restraints on sex almost as\nsevere as any Eugenist could set, they have almost always had the\ncharacter of securing the fidelity of the two sexes to each other, and\nleaving the rest to God. To introduce an ethic which makes that\nfidelity or infidelity vary with some calculation about heredity is\nthat rarest of all things, a revolution that has not happened before.\n\nIt is only right to say here, though the matter should only be touched\non, that many Eugenists would contradict this, in so far as to claim\nthat there was a consciously Eugenic reason for the horror of those\nunions which begin with the celebrated denial to man of the privilege\nof marrying his grandmother. Dr. S.R. Steinmetz, with that creepy\nsimplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarks\nthat \"we do not yet know quite certainly\" what were \"the motives for\nthe horror of\" that horrible thing which is the agony of Oedipus. With\nentirely amiable intention, I ask Dr. S.R. Steinmetz to speak for\nhimself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or sister as\nseparate from other women; nor have I reached them by any curious\nresearches. I found them where I found an analogous aversion to eating\na baby for breakfast. I found them in a rooted detestation in the\nhuman soul to liking a thing in one way, when you already like it in\nanother quite incompatible way. Now it is perfectly true that this\naversion may have acted eugenically; and so had a certain ultimate\nconfirmation and basis in the laws of procreation. But there really\ncannot be any Eugenist quite so dull as not to see that this is not a\ndefence of Eugenics but a direct denial of Eugenics. If something\nwhich has been discovered at last by the lamp of learning is something\nwhich has been acted on from the first by the light of nature, this\n(so far as it goes) is plainly not an argument for pestering people,\nbut an argument for letting them alone. If men did not marry their\ngrandmothers when it was, for all they knew, a most hygienic habit; if\nwe know now that they instinctly avoided scientific peril; that, so\nfar as it goes, is a point in favour of letting people marry anyone\nthey like. It is simply the statement that sexual selection, or what\nChristians call falling in love, is a part of man which in the rough\nand in the long run can be trusted. And that is the destruction of the\nwhole of this science at a blow.\n\nThe second part of the definition, the persuasive or coercive methods\nto be employed, I shall deal with more fully in the second part of\nthis book. But some such summary as the following may here be useful.\nFar into the unfathomable past of our race we find the assumption\nthat the founding of a family is the personal adventure of a free man.\nBefore slavery sank slowly out of sight under the new climate of\nChristianity, it may or may not be true that slaves were in some sense\nbred like cattle, valued as a promising stock for labour. If it was so\nit was so in a much looser and vaguer sense than the breeding of the\nEugenists; and such modern philosophers read into the old paganism a\nfantastic pride and cruelty which are wholly modern. It may be,\nhowever, that pagan slaves had some shadow of the blessings of the\nEugenist's care. It is quite certain that the pagan freemen would have\nkilled the first man that suggested it. I mean suggested it seriously;\nfor Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in\nGreek. Among free men, the law, more often the creed, most commonly of\nall the custom, have laid all sorts of restrictions on sex for this\nreason or that. But law and creed and custom have never concentrated\nheavily except upon fixing and keeping the family when once it had\nbeen made. The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individual\nadventure outside the frontiers of the State. Our first forgotten\nancestors left this tradition behind them; and our own latest fathers\nand mothers a few years ago would have thought us lunatics to be\ndiscussing it. The shortest general definition of Eugenics on its\npractical side is that it does, in a more or less degree, propose to\ncontrol some families at least as if they were families of pagan\nslaves. I shall discuss later the question of the people to whom this\npressure may be applied; and the much more puzzling question of what\npeople will apply it. But it is to be applied at the very least by\nsomebody to somebody, and that on certain calculations about breeding\nwhich are affirmed to be demonstrable. So much for the subject itself.\nI say that this thing exists. I define it as closely as matters\ninvolving moral evidence can be defined; I call it Eugenics. If after\nthat anyone chooses to say that Eugenics is not the Greek for this--I\nam content to answer that \"chivalrous\" is not the French for \"horsy\";\nand that such controversial games are more horsy than chivalrous.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE FIRST OBSTACLES\n\n\nNow before I set about arguing these things, there is a cloud of\nskirmishers, of harmless and confused modern sceptics, who ought to be\ncleared off or calmed down before we come to debate with the real\ndoctors of the heresy. If I sum up my statement thus: \"Eugenics, as\ndiscussed, evidently means the control of some men over the marriage\nand unmarriage of others; and probably means the control of the few\nover the marriage and unmarriage of the many,\" I shall first of all\nreceive the sort of answers that float like skim on the surface of\nteacups and talk. I may very roughly and rapidly divide these\npreliminary objectors into five sects; whom I will call the\nEuphemists, the Casuists, the Autocrats, the Precedenters, and the\nEndeavourers. When we have answered the immediate protestation of all\nthese good, shouting, short-sighted people, we can begin to do justice\nto those intelligences that are really behind the idea.\n\nMost Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle\nthem, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of\ntranslating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the\nsame thing. Say to them \"The persuasive and even coercive powers of\nthe citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of\nlongevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate\nand intolerable, especially to the females\"; say this to them and they\nwill sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles.\nSay to them \"Murder your mother,\" and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet\nthe two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them\n\"It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once\nuseful distinction between the anthropoid _homo_ and the other\nanimals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be\nmodified also even in regard to the important question of the\nextension of human diet\"; say this to them, and beauty born of\nmurmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a\nsimple, manly, hearty way \"Let's eat a man!\" and their surprise is\nquite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing. Now, if\nanyone thinks these two instances extravagant, I will refer to two\nactual cases from the Eugenic discussions. When Sir Oliver Lodge spoke\nof the methods \"of the stud-farm\" many Eugenists exclaimed against the\ncrudity of the suggestion. Yet long before that one of the ablest\nchampions in the other interest had written \"What nonsense this\neducation is! Who could educate a racehorse or a greyhound?\" Which\nmost certainly either means nothing, or the human stud-farm. Or again,\nwhen I spoke of people \"being married forcibly by the police,\" another\ndistinguished Eugenist almost achieved high spirits in his hearty\nassurance that no such thing had ever come into their heads. Yet a few\ndays after I saw a Eugenist pronouncement, to the effect that the\nState ought to extend its powers in this area. The State can only be\nthat corporation which men permit to employ compulsion; and this area\ncan only be the area of sexual selection. I mean somewhat more than an\nidle jest when I say that the policeman will generally be found in\nthat area. But I willingly admit that the policeman who looks after\nweddings will be like the policeman who looks after wedding-presents.\nHe will be in plain clothes. I do not mean that a man in blue with a\nhelmet will drag the bride and bridegroom to the altar. I do mean that\nnobody that man in blue is told to arrest will even dare to come near\nthe church. Sir Oliver did not mean that men would be tied up in\nstables and scrubbed down by grooms. He meant that they would undergo\na less of liberty which to men is even more infamous. He meant that\nthe only formula important to Eugenists would be \"by Smith out of\nJones.\" Such a formula is one of the shortest in the world; and is\ncertainly the shortest way with the Euphemists.\n\nThe next sect of superficial objectors is even more irritating. I have\ncalled them, for immediate purposes, the Casuists. Suppose I say \"I\ndislike this spread of Cannibalism in the West End restaurants.\"\nSomebody is sure to say \"Well, after all, Queen Eleanor when she\nsucked blood from her husband's arm was a cannibal.\" What is one to\nsay to such people? One can only say \"Confine yourself to sucking\npoisoned blood from people's arms, and I permit you to call yourself\nby the glorious title of Cannibal.\" In this sense people say of\nEugenics, \"After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying\na mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists.\" Again one\ncan only answer, \"Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as\nare naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult in\nthe title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinction\nwill be rare.\" But surely anyone's common-sense must tell him that if\nEugenics dealt only with such extravagant cases, it would be called\ncommon-sense--and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded such\nabsurdities for unknown ages; and has never yet called it Eugenics.\nYou may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back;\nyou may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire;\nbut if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among\nliving men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved,\nthere would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no\nsuch thing as this book.\n\nI had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the\nIdealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good\nthey hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who\ngive us generally to understand that every modern reform will \"work\"\nall right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, and\nfor how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind their\nlooking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is the\nshadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does not\nexpect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people most\ncertainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it has\nleft their hands. Each man promises to be about a thousand policemen.\nIf you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, \"Oh, I\nwould certainly insist on this\"; or \"I would never go so far as that\";\nas if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever\ndone quite successfully--force men to forsake their sins. Of these it\nis enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any\nmore than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a\ndog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you\nhave put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not\nbe able to fulfil a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put\ninto it.\n\nAlong with such idealists should go the strange people who seem to\nthink that you can consecrate and purify any campaign for ever by\nrepeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocates\nhad in mind. These people will say \"So far from aiming at _slavery_,\nthe Eugenists are seeking _true_ liberty; liberty from disease and\ndegeneracy, etc.\" Or they will say \"We can assure Mr. Chesterton that\nthe Eugenists have _no_ intention of segregating the harmless; justice\nand mercy are the very motto of----\" etc. To this kind of thing\nperhaps the shortest answer is this. Many of those who speak thus are\nagnostic or generally unsympathetic to official religion. Suppose one\nof them said \"The Church of England is full of hypocrisy.\" What would\nhe think of me if I answered, \"I assure you that hypocrisy is\ncondemned by every form of Christianity; and is particularly\nrepudiated in the Prayer Book\"? Suppose he said that the Church of\nRome had been guilty of great cruelties. What would he think of me if\nI answered, \"The Church is expressly bound to meekness and charity;\nand therefore cannot be cruel\"? This kind of people need not detain us\nlong. Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; who\nflourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by the\nsolemn official who said the other day that he could not understand\nthe clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill, as it only extended the\nprinciples of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer\n\"Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws to\npersons without a trace of lunacy.\" This lucid politician finds an old\nlaw, let us say, about keeping lepers in quarantine. He simply alters\nthe word \"lepers\" to \"long-nosed people,\" and says blandly that the\nprinciple is the same.\n\nPerhaps the weakest of all are those helpless persons whom I have\ncalled the Endeavourers. The prize specimen of them was another M.P.\nwho defended the same Bill as \"an honest attempt\" to deal with a great\nevil: as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow\ncitizens as a kind of chemical experiment; in a state of reverent\nagnosticism about what would come of it. But with this fatuous notion\nthat one can deliberately establish the Inquisition or the Terror, and\nthen faintly trust the larger hope, I shall have to deal more\nseriously in a subsequent chapter. It is enough to say here that the\nbest thing the honest Endeavourer could do would be to make an honest\nattempt to know what he is doing. And not to do anything else until he\nhas found out. Lastly, there is a class of controversialists so\nhopeless and futile that I have really failed to find a name for them.\nBut whenever anyone attempts to argue rationally for or against any\nexistent and recognisable _thing_, such as the Eugenic class of\nlegislation, there are always people who begin to chop hay about\nSocialism and Individualism; and say \"_You_ object to all State\ninterference; _I_ am in favour of State interference. _You_ are an\nIndividualist; _I_, on the other hand,\" etc. To which I can only\nanswer, with heart-broken patience, that I am not an Individualist,\nbut a poor fallen but baptised journalist who is trying to write a\nbook about Eugenists, several of whom he has met; whereas he never met\nan Individualist, and is by no means certain he would recognise him if\nhe did. In short, I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the\nState to interfere to cure a great evil. I say that in this case it\nwould interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be\nturned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomless\nbotherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative\nadvantages of always turning to the right and always turning to the\nleft.\n\nAnd for the rest, there is undoubtedly an enormous mass of sensible,\nrather thoughtless people, whose rooted sentiment it is that any deep\nchange in our society must be in some way infinitely distant. They\ncannot believe that men in hats and coats like themselves can be\npreparing a revolution; all their Victorian philosophy has taught\nthem that such transformations are always slow. Therefore, when I\nspeak of Eugenic legislation, or the coming of the Eugenic State,\nthey think of it as something like _The Time Machine_ or _Looking\nBackward_: a thing that, good or bad, will have to fit itself to\ntheir great-great-great-grandchild, who may be very different and may\nlike it; and who in any case is rather a distant relative. To all\nthis I have, to begin with, a very short and simple answer. The\nEugenic State has begun. The first of the Eugenic Laws has already\nbeen adopted by the Government of this country; and passed with the\napplause of both parties through the dominant House of Parliament.\nThis first Eugenic Law clears the ground and may be said to proclaim\nnegative Eugenics; but it cannot be defended, and nobody has\nattempted to defend it, except on the Eugenic theory. I will call it\nthe Feeble-Minded Bill both for brevity and because the description\nis strictly accurate. It is, quite simply and literally, a Bill for\nincarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call\nmad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them\nweak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom this\nterm has not been conversationally applied by his own friends and\nrelatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives\nhave been lamentably lacking in spirit), it can be clearly seen that\nthis law, like the early Christian Church (to which, however, it\npresents points of dissimilarity), is a net drawing in of all kinds.\nIt must not be supposed that we have a stricter definition\nincorporated in the Bill. Indeed, the first definition of\n\"feeble-minded\" in the Bill was much looser and vaguer than the\nphrase \"feeble-minded\" itself. It is a piece of yawning idiocy about\n\"persons who though capable of earning their living under favourable\ncircumstances\" (as if anyone could earn his living if circumstances\nwere directly unfavourable to his doing so), are nevertheless\n\"incapable of managing their affairs with proper prudence\"; which is\nexactly what all the world and his wife are saying about their\nneighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for any kind of\nthought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing so very\nnovel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is vital\nis this: that the _defence_ of this crazy Coercion Act is a Eugenic\ndefence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that the\naim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists\ndo not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children.\nEvery tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who\nis eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as\nwere designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that\nis the point. England has forgotten the Feudal State; it is in the\nlast anarchy of the Industrial State; there is much in Mr. Belloc's\ntheory that it is approaching the Servile State; it cannot at present\nget at the Distributive State; it has almost certainly missed the\nSocialist State. But we are already under the Eugenist State; and\nnothing remains to us but rebellion.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE\n\n\nA silent anarchy is eating out our society. I must pause upon the\nexpression; because the true nature of anarchy is mostly\nmisapprehended. It is not in the least necessary that anarchy should\nbe violent; nor is it necessary that it should come from below. A\ngovernment may grow anarchic as much as a people. The more sentimental\nsort of Tory uses the word anarchy as a mere term of abuse for\nrebellion; but he misses a most important intellectual distinction.\nRebellion may be wrong and disastrous; but even when rebellion is\nwrong, it is never anarchy. When it is not self-defence, it is\nusurpation. It aims at setting up a new rule in place of the old rule.\nAnd while it cannot be anarchic in essence (because it has an aim), it\ncertainly cannot be anarchic in method; for men must be organised when\nthey fight; and the discipline in a rebel army has to be as good as\nthe discipline in the royal army. This deep principle of distinction\nmust be clearly kept in mind. Take for the sake of symbolism those two\ngreat spiritual stories which, whether we count them myths or\nmysteries, have so long been the two hinges of all European morals.\nThe Christian who is inclined to sympathise generally with\nconstituted authority will think of rebellion under the image of\nSatan, the rebel against God. But Satan, though a traitor, was not an\nanarchist. He claimed the crown of the cosmos; and had he prevailed,\nwould have expected his rebel angels to give up rebelling. On the\nother hand, the Christian whose sympathies are more generally with\njust self-defence among the oppressed will think rather of Christ\nHimself defying the High Priests and scourging the rich traders. But\nwhether or no Christ was (as some say) a Socialist, He most certainly\nwas not an Anarchist. Christ, like Satan, claimed the throne. He set\nup a new authority against an old authority; but He set it up with\npositive commandments and a comprehensible scheme. In this light all\nmediaeval people--indeed, all people until a little while ago--would\nhave judged questions involving revolt. John Ball would have offered\nto pull down the government because it was a bad government, not\nbecause it was a government. Richard II. would have blamed Bolingbroke\nnot as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, in\nthe useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from any\nrebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, in\nits first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I said\nbefore, it is often entirely silent.\n\nAnarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop\nyourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the\nnormal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar,\nextravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot\n_end_ these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family\nsits up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in the home if\nmembers of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It\nwas not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the\nslaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the\nslave-owners' point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the\nslaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is\nhistorically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a\npicnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I\nthink, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all\ntook what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat\nif swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are\nuncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return\nwithin rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the\nreally dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It is\nmagnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water--like\nNiagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening or\ndangerous or even destructive; it is that it cannot stop. Now it is\nplain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a\nsociety as easily as the society so ruled. And in modern England it is\nthe powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it--who are truly\npossessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense,\nis not too strong. The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is\ntalking nonsense; and it can't stop.\n\nNow it is perfectly plain that government ought to have, and must\nhave, the same sort of right to use exceptional methods occasionally\nthat the private householder has to have a picnic or to sit up all\nnight on New Year's Eve. The State, like the householder, is sane if\nit can treat such exceptions as exceptions. Such desperate remedies\nmay not even be right; but such remedies are endurable as long as they\nare admittedly desperate. Such cases, of course, are the communism of\nfood in a besieged city; the official disavowal of an arrested spy;\nthe subjection of a patch of civil life to martial law; the cutting of\ncommunication in a plague; or that deepest degradation of the\ncommonwealth, the use of national soldiers not against foreign\nsoldiers, but against their own brethren in revolt. Of these\nexceptions some are right and some wrong; but all are right in so far\nas they are taken as exceptions. The modern world is insane, not so\nmuch because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the\nnormal.\n\nWe see this in the vague extension of punishments like imprisonment;\noften the very reformers who admit that prison is bad for people\npropose to reform them by a little more of it. We see it in panic\nlegislation like that after the White Slave scare, when the torture of\nflogging was revived for all sorts of ill defined and vague and\nvariegated types of men. Our fathers were never so mad, even when they\nwere torturers. They stretched the man out on the rack. They did not\nstretch the rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burning\nthey may have seen witches everywhere--because their minds were fixed\non witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, because\ntheir minds were unfixed. While tying some very unpopular witch to the\nstake, with the firm conviction that she was a spiritual tyranny and\npestilence, they did not say to each other, \"A little burning is what\nmy Aunt Susan wants, to cure her of back-biting,\" or \"Some of these\nfaggots would do your Cousin James good, and teach him to play with\npoor girls' affections.\"\n\nNow the name of all this is Anarchy. It not only does not know what it\nwants, but it does not even know what it hates. It multiplies\nexcessively in the more American sort of English newspapers. When this\nnew sort of New Englander burns a witch the whole prairie catches\nfire. These people have not the decision and detachment of the\ndoctrinal ages. They cannot do a monstrous action and still see it is\nmonstrous. Wherever they make a stride they make a rut. They cannot\nstop their own thoughts, though their thoughts are pouring into the\npit.\n\nA final instance, which can be sketched much more briefly, can be\nfound in this general fact: that the definition of almost every crime\nhas become more and more indefinite, and spreads like a flattening and\nthinning cloud over larger and larger landscapes. Cruelty to children,\none would have thought, was a thing about as unmistakable, unusual\nand appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to cover\nalmost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The only\ndistinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in the\npoor, who generally can't help them, and not in the rich, who\ngenerally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. The\npoint here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod on\nthe bloody night of Innocents has come precious near being\nattributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in the\nTemple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kind\nmother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy children\nhad no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this an\nillegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all the\nhorror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes to\nparricide, could now be used against any son who had done any act that\ncould colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and so\naffected his health. Few of us would be safe.\n\nAnother case out of hundreds is the loose extension of the idea of\nlibel. Libel cases bear no more trace of the old and just anger\nagainst the man who bore false witness against his neighbour than\n\"cruelty\" cases do of the old and just horror of the parents that\nhated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports of\nthe less athletic rich--a variation on _baccarat_, a game of chance. A\nmusic-hall actress got damages for a song that was called \"vulgar,\"\nwhich is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my\nhandwriting \"rococo.\" A politician got huge damages because he was\nsaid to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that\nseductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story.\nSometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in his\nbusiness; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocer\nslanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it is\nclear that its exponents possess no power of distinction, or sense of\nproportion, by which they can draw the line between calling a woman a\npopular singer and calling her a bad lot; or between charging a man\nwith leading infants to Protection and leading them to sin and shame.\nBut the vital point to which to return is this. That it is not\nnecessarily, nor even specially, an anarchy in the populace. It is an\nanarchy in the organ of government. It is the magistrates--voices of\nthe governing class--who cannot distinguish between cruelty and\ncarelessness. It is the judges (and their very submissive special\njuries) who cannot see the difference between opinion and slander. And\nit is the highly placed and highly paid experts who have brought in\nthe first Eugenic Law, the Feeble-Minded Bill--thus showing that they\ncan see no difference between a mad and a sane man.\n\nThat, to begin with, is the historic atmosphere in which this thing\nwas born. It is a peculiar atmosphere, and luckily not likely to last.\nReal progress bears the same relation to it that a happy girl laughing\nbears to an hysterical girl who cannot stop laughing. But I have\ndescribed this atmosphere first because it is the only atmosphere in\nwhich such a thing as the Eugenist legislation could be proposed among\nmen. All other ages would have called it to some kind of logical\naccount, however academic or narrow. The lowest sophist in the Greek\nschools would remember enough of Socrates to force the Eugenist to\ntell him (at least) whether Midias was segregated because he was\ncurable or because he was incurable. The meanest Thomist of the\nmediaeval monasteries would have the sense to see that you cannot\ndiscuss a madman when you have not discussed a man. The most owlish\nCalvinist commentator in the seventeenth century would ask the\nEugenist to reconcile such Bible texts as derided fools with the other\nBible texts that praised them. The dullest shopkeeper in Paris in 1790\nwould have asked what were the Rights of Man, if they did not include\nthe rights of the lover, the husband, and the father. It is only in\nour own London Particular (as Mr. Guppy said of the fog) that small\nfigures can loom so large in the vapour, and even mingle with quite\ndifferent figures, and have the appearance of a mob. But, above all, I\nhave dwelt on the telescopic quality in these twilight avenues,\nbecause unless the reader realises how elastic and unlimited they are,\nhe simply will not believe in the abominations we have to combat.\n\nOne of those wise old fairy tales, that come from nowhere and flourish\neverywhere, tells how a man came to own a small magic machine like a\ncoffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one\nword and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I\nwish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the\nmill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers'\nmess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury\nand exaggeration, and sailors' tales should be taken with a grain of\nit. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then,\ntouching the word that stopped it, suddenly remembered that he forgot.\nThe tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like\nArctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom,\nwhere all the men lay drowned. And that (so says this fairy tale) is\nwhy the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For the\nfairy tales knew what the modern mystics don't--that one should not\nlet loose either the supernatural or the natural.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE LUNATIC AND THE LAW\n\n\nThe modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: that people do\nnot see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it may or may not be\nright to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivably be right to kill\na murderer because it is wrong to kill a man. If the hangman, having\ngot his hand in, proceeded to hang friends and relatives to his taste\nand fancy, he would (intellectually) unhang the first man, though the\nfirst man might not think so. Or thus again, if you say an insane man\nis irresponsible, you imply that a sane man is responsible. He is\nresponsible for the insane man. And the attempt of the Eugenists and\nother fatalists to treat all men as irresponsible is the largest and\nflattest folly in philosophy. The Eugenist has to treat everybody,\nincluding himself, as an exception to a rule that isn't there.\n\nThe Eugenists, as a first move, have extended the frontiers of the\nlunatic asylum: let us take this as our definite starting point, and\nask ourselves what lunacy is, and what is its fundamental relation to\nhuman society. Now that raw juvenile scepticism that clogs all thought\nwith catchwords may often be heard to remark that the mad are only the\nminority, the sane only the majority. There is a neat exactitude\nabout such people's nonsense; they seem to miss the point by magic.\nThe mad are not a minority because they are not a corporate body; and\nthat is what their madness means. The sane are not a majority; they\nare mankind. And mankind (as its name would seem to imply) is a\n_kind_, not a degree. In so far as the lunatic differs, he differs\nfrom all minorities and majorities in kind. The madman who thinks he\nis a knife cannot go into partnership with the other who thinks he is\na fork. There is no trysting place outside reason; there is no inn on\nthose wild roads that are beyond the world.\n\nThe madman is not he that defies the world. The saint, the criminal,\nthe martyr, the cynic, the nihilist may all defy the world quite\nsanely. And even if such fanatics would destroy the world, the world\nowes them a strictly fair trial according to proof and public law. But\nthe madman is not the man who defies the world; he is the man who\n_denies_ it. Suppose we are all standing round a field and looking at\na tree in the middle of it. It is perfectly true that we all see it\n(as the decadents say) in infinitely different aspects: that is not\nthe point; the point is that we all say it is a tree. Suppose, if you\nwill, that we are all poets, which seems improbable; so that each of\nus could turn his aspect into a vivid image distinct from a tree.\nSuppose one says it looks like a green cloud and another like a green\nfountain, and a third like a green dragon and the fourth like a green\ncheese. The fact remains: that they all say it _looks_ like these\nthings. It is a tree. Nor are any of the poets in the least mad\nbecause of any opinions they may form, however frenzied, about the\nfunctions or future of the tree. A conservative poet may wish to clip\nthe tree; a revolutionary poet may wish to burn it. An optimist poet\nmay want to make it a Christmas tree and hang candles on it. A\npessimist poet may want to hang himself on it. None of these are mad,\nbecause they are all talking about the same thing. But there is\nanother man who is talking horribly about something else. There is a\nmonstrous exception to mankind. Why he is so we know not; a new theory\nsays it is heredity; an older theory says it is devils. But in any\ncase, the spirit of it is the spirit that denies, the spirit that\nreally denies realities. This is the man who looks at the tree and\ndoes not say it looks like a lion, but says that it _is_ a lamp-post.\n\nI do not mean that all mad delusions are as concrete as this, though\nsome are more concrete. Believing your own body is glass is a more\ndaring denial of reality than believing a tree is a glass lamp at the\ntop of a pole. But all true delusions have in them this unalterable\nassertion--that what is not is. The difference between us and the\nmaniac is not about how things look or how things ought to look, but\nabout what they self-evidently are. The lunatic does not say that he\nought to be King; Perkin Warbeck might say that. He says he is King.\nThe lunatic does not say he is as wise as Shakespeare; Bernard Shaw\nmight say that. The lunatic says he _is_ Shakespeare. The lunatic\ndoes not say he is divine in the same sense as Christ; Mr. R.J.\nCampbell would say that. The lunatic says he _is_ Christ. In all cases\nthe difference is a difference about what is there; not a difference\ntouching what should be done about it.\n\nFor this reason, and for this alone, the lunatic is outside public\nlaw. This is the abysmal difference between him and the criminal. The\ncriminal admits the facts, and therefore permits us to appeal to the\nfacts. We can so arrange the facts around him that he may really\nunderstand that agreement is in his own interests. We can say to him,\n\"Do not steal apples from this tree, or we will hang you on that\ntree.\" But if the man really thinks one tree is a lamp-post and the\nother tree a Trafalgar Square fountain, we simply cannot treat with\nhim at all. It is obviously useless to say, \"Do not steal apples from\nthis lamp-post, or I will hang you on that fountain.\" If a man denies\nthe facts, there is no answer but to lock him up. He cannot speak our\nlanguage: not that varying verbal language which often misses fire\neven with us, but that enormous alphabet of sun and moon and green\ngrass and blue sky in which alone we meet, and by which alone we can\nsignal to each other. That unique man of genius, George Macdonald,\ndescribed in one of his weird stories two systems of space\nco-incident; so that where I knew there was a piano standing in a\ndrawing-room you knew there was a rose-bush growing in a garden.\nSomething of this sort is in small or great affairs the matter with\nthe madman. He cannot have a vote, because he is the citizen of\nanother country. He is a foreigner. Nay, he is an invader and an\nenemy; for the city he lives in has been super-imposed on ours.\n\nNow these two things are primarily to be noted in his case. First,\nthat we can only condemn him to a _general_ doom, because we only know\nhis _general_ nature. All criminals, who do particular things for\nparticular reasons (things and reasons which, however criminal, are\nalways comprehensible), have been more and more tried for such\nseparate actions under separate and suitable laws ever since Europe\nbegan to become a civilisation--and until the rare and recent\nre-incursions of barbarism in such things as the Indeterminate\nSentence. Of that I shall speak later; it is enough for this argument\nto point out the plain facts. It is the plain fact that every savage,\nevery sultan, every outlawed baron, every brigand-chief has always\nused this instrument of the Indeterminate Sentence, which has been\nrecently offered us as something highly scientific and humane. All\nthese people, in short, being barbarians, have always kept their\ncaptives captive until they (the barbarians) chose to think the\ncaptives were in a fit frame of mind to come out. It is also the plain\nfact that all that has been called civilisation or progress, justice\nor liberty, for nearly three thousand years, has had the general\ndirection of treating even the captive as a free man, in so far as\nsome clear case of some defined crime had to be shown against him.\nAll law has meant allowing the criminal, within some limits or other,\nto argue with the law: as Job was allowed, or rather challenged, to\nargue with God. But the criminal is, among civilised men, tried by one\nlaw for one crime for a perfectly simple reason: that the motive of\nthe crime, like the meaning of the law, is conceivable to the common\nintelligence. A man is punished specially as a burglar, and not\ngenerally as a bad man, because a man may be a burglar and in many\nother respects not be a bad man. The act of burglary is punishable\nbecause it is intelligible. But when acts are unintelligible, we can\nonly refer them to a general untrustworthiness, and guard against them\nby a general restraint. If a man breaks into a house to get a piece of\nbread, we can appeal to his reason in various ways. We can hang him\nfor housebreaking; or again (as has occurred to some daring thinkers)\nwe can give him a piece of bread. But if he breaks in, let us say, to\nsteal the parings of other people's finger nails, then we are in a\ndifficulty: we cannot imagine what he is going to do with them, and\ntherefore cannot easily imagine what we are going to do with him. If a\nvillain comes in, in cloak and mask, and puts a little arsenic in the\nsoup, we can collar him and say to him distinctly, \"You are guilty of\nMurder; and I will now consult the code of tribal law, under which we\nlive, to see if this practice is not forbidden.\" But if a man in the\nsame cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-water\nin the soup, what can we say? Our charge necessarily becomes a more\ngeneral one. We can only observe, with a moderation almost amounting\nto weakness, \"You seem to be the sort of person who will do this sort\nof thing.\" And then we can lock him up. The principle of the\nindeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. It\ndoes apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And it\napplies to nobody else.\n\nThe second thing to be noted is this: that it is only by the unanimity\nof sane men that we can condemn this man as utterly separate. If he\nsays a tree is a lamp-post he is mad; but only because all other men\nsay it is a tree. If some men thought it was a tree with a lamp on it,\nand others thought it was a lamp-post wreathed with branches and\nvegetation, then it would be a matter of opinion and degree; and he\nwould not be mad, but merely extreme. Certainly he would not be mad if\nnobody but a botanist could see it was a tree. Certainly his enemies\nmight be madder than he, if nobody but a lamplighter could see it was\nnot a lamp-post. And similarly a man is not imbecile if only a\nEugenist thinks so. The question then raised would not be his sanity,\nbut the sanity of one botanist or one lamplighter or one Eugenist.\nThat which can condemn the abnormally foolish is not the abnormally\nclever, which is obviously a matter in dispute. That which can condemn\nthe abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he begins\nto say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that we\nhave a right to treat him as the exception and not the rule. It is\nonly because we none of us profess to be anything more than man that\nwe have authority to treat him as something less.\n\nNow the first principle behind Eugenics becomes plain enough. It is\nthe proposal that somebody or something should criticise men with the\nsame superiority with which men criticise madmen. It might exercise\nthis right with great moderation; but I am not here talking about the\nexercise, but about the right. Its _claim_ certainly is to bring all\nhuman life under the Lunacy Laws.\n\nNow this is the first weakness in the case of the Eugenists: that they\ncannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by what\nauthority they do these things. They cannot see the exception is\ndifferent from the rule--even when it is misrule, even when it is an\nunruly rule. The sound sense in the old Lunacy Law was this: that you\ncannot deny that a man is a citizen until you are practically prepared\nto deny that he is a man. Men, and only men, can be the judges of\nwhether he is a man. But any private club of prigs can be judges of\nwhether he ought to be a citizen. When once we step down from that\ntall and splintered peak of pure insanity we step on to a tableland\nwhere one man is not so widely different from another. Outside the\nexception, what we find is the average. And the practical, legal shape\nof the quarrel is this: that unless the normal men have the right to\nexpel the abnormal, what particular sort of abnormal men have the\nright to expel the normal men? If sanity is not good enough, what is\nthere that is saner than sanity?\n\nWithout any grip of the notion of a rule and an exception, the general\nidea of judging people's heredity breaks down and is useless. For this\nreason: that if everything is the result of a doubtful heredity, the\njudgment itself is the result of a doubtful heredity also. Let it\njudge not that it be not judged. Eugenists, strange to say, have\nfathers and mothers like other people; and our opinion about their\nfathers and mothers is worth exactly as much as their opinions about\nours. None of the parents were lunatics, and the rest is mere likes\nand dislikes. Suppose Dr. Saleeby had gone up to Byron and said, \"My\nlord, I perceive you have a club-foot and inordinate passions: such\nare the hereditary results of a profligate soldier marrying a\nhot-tempered woman.\" The poet might logically reply (with\ncharacteristic lucidity and impropriety), \"Sir, I perceive you have a\nconfused mind and an unphilosophic theory about other people's love\naffairs. Such are the hereditary delusions bred by a Syrian doctor\nmarrying a Quaker lady from York.\" Suppose Dr. Karl Pearson had said\nto Shelley, \"From what I see of your temperament, you are running\ngreat risks in forming a connection with the daughter of a fanatic and\neccentric like Godwin.\" Shelley would be employing the strict\nrationalism of the older and stronger free thinkers, if he answered,\n\"From what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction in\nmarrying the great-niece of an old corpse of a courtier and\ndilettante like Samuel Rogers.\" It is only opinion for opinion. Nobody\ncan pretend that either Mary Godwin or Samuel Rogers was mad; and the\ngeneral view a man may hold about the healthiness of inheriting their\nblood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men do\nmarry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose that Dr. Karl\nPearson is any better judge of a bridegroom than the bridegroom is of\na bride.\n\nAn objection may be anticipated here, but it is very easily answered.\nIt may be said that we do, in fact, call in medical specialists to\nsettle whether a man is mad; and that these specialists go by\ntechnical and even secret tests that cannot be known to the mass of\nmen. It is obvious that this is true; it is equally obvious that it\ndoes not affect our argument. When we ask the doctor whether our\ngrandfather is going mad, we still mean mad by our own common human\ndefinition. We mean, is he going to be a certain sort of person whom\nall men recognise when once he exists. That certain specialists can\ndetect the approach of him, before he exists, does not alter the fact\nthat it is of the practical and popular madman that we are talking,\nand of him alone. The doctor merely sees a certain fact potentially in\nthe future, while we, with less information, can only see it in the\npresent; but his fact is our fact and everybody's fact, or we should\nnot bother about it at all. Here is no question of the doctor bringing\nan entirely new sort of person under coercion, as in the\nFeeble-Minded Bill. The doctor can say, \"Tobacco is death to you,\"\nbecause the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highly\ndemocratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of the\nindubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, \"Jones has\nthat twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house.\" But it is\nnot the medical detail we fear, but the moral upshot. We should say,\n\"Let him twitch, as long as he doesn't burn down the house.\" The\ndoctor may say, \"He has that look in the eyes, and he may take the\nhatchet and brain you all.\" But we do not object to the look in the\neyes as such; we object to consequences which, once come, we should\nall call insane if there were no doctors in the world. We should say,\n\"Let him look how he likes; as long as he does not look for the\nhatchet.\"\n\nNow, that specialists are valuable for this particular and practical\npurpose, of predicting the approach of enormous and admitted human\ncalamities, nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring us\none inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is a\ncalamity; or to call things calamities which common sense does not\ncall calamities. We call in the doctor to save us from death; and,\ndeath being admittedly an evil, he has the right to administer the\nqueerest and most recondite pill which he may think is a cure for all\nsuch menaces of death. He has not the right to administer death, as\nthe cure for all human ills. And as he has no moral authority to\nenforce a new conception of happiness, so he has no moral authority\nto enforce a new conception of sanity. He may know I am going mad; for\nmadness is an isolated thing like leprosy; and I know nothing about\nleprosy. But if he merely thinks my mind is weak, I may happen to\nthink the same of his. I often do.\n\nIn short, unless pilots are to be permitted to ram ships on to the\nrocks and then say that heaven is the only true harbour; unless judges\nare to be allowed to let murderers loose, and explain afterwards that\nthe murder had done good on the whole; unless soldiers are to be\nallowed to lose battles and then point out that true glory is to be\nfound in the valley of humiliation; unless cashiers are to rob a bank\nin order to give it an advertisement; or dentists to torture people to\ngive them a contrast to their comforts; unless we are prepared to let\nloose all these private fancies against the public and accepted\nmeaning of life or safety or prosperity or pleasure--then it is as\nplain as Punch's nose that no scientific man must be allowed to meddle\nwith the public definition of madness. We call him in to tell us where\nit is or when it is. We could not do so, if we had not ourselves\nsettled what it is.\n\nAs I wish to confine myself in this chapter to the primary point of\nthe plain existence of sanity and insanity, I will not be led along\nany of the attractive paths that open here. I shall endeavour to deal\nwith them in the next chapter. Here I confine myself to a sort of\nsummary. Suppose a man's throat has been cut, quite swiftly and\nsuddenly, with a table knife, at a small table where we sit. The\nwhole of civil law rests on the supposition that we are witnesses;\nthat we saw it; and if we do not know about it, who does? Now suppose\nall the witnesses fall into a quarrel about degrees of eyesight.\nSuppose one says he had brought his reading-glasses instead of his\nusual glasses; and therefore did not see the man fall across the table\nand cover it with blood. Suppose another says he could not be certain\nit was blood, because a slight colour-blindness was hereditary in his\nfamily. Suppose a third says he cannot swear to the uplifted knife,\nbecause his oculist tells him he is astigmatic, and vertical lines do\nnot affect him as do horizontal lines. Suppose another says that dots\nhave often danced before his eyes in very fantastic combinations, many\nof which were very like one gentleman cutting another gentleman's\nthroat at dinner. All these things refer to real experiences. There is\nsuch a thing as myopia; there is such a thing as colour-blindness;\nthere is such a thing as astigmatism; there is such a thing as\nshifting shapes swimming before the eyes. But what should we think of\na whole dinner party that could give nothing except these highly\nscientific explanations when found in company with a corpse? I imagine\nthere are only two things we could think: either that they were all\ndrunk, or they were all murderers.\n\nAnd yet there is an exception. If there were one man at table who was\nadmittedly _blind_, should we not give him the benefit of the doubt?\nShould we not honestly feel that he was the exception that proved the\nrule? The very fact that he could not have seen would remind us that\nthe other men must have seen. The very fact that he had no eyes must\nremind us of eyes. A man can be blind; a man can be dead; a man can be\nmad. But the comparison is necessarily weak, after all. For it is the\nessence of madness to be unlike anything else in the world: which is\nperhaps why so many men wiser than we have traced it to another.\n\nLastly, the literal maniac is different from all other persons in\ndispute in this vital respect: that he is the only person whom we can,\nwith a final lucidity, declare that we do not want. He is almost\nalways miserable himself, and he always makes others miserable. But\nthis is not so with the mere invalid. The Eugenists would probably\nanswer all my examples by taking the case of marrying into a family\nwith consumption (or some such disease which they are fairly sure is\nhereditary) and asking whether such cases at least are not clear cases\nfor a Eugenic intervention. Permit me to point out to them that they\nonce more make a confusion of thought. The sickness or soundness of a\nconsumptive may be a clear and calculable matter. The happiness or\nunhappiness of a consumptive is quite another matter, and is not\ncalculable at all. What is the good of telling people that if they\nmarry for love, they may be punished by being the parents of Keats or\nthe parents of Stevenson? Keats died young; but he had more pleasure\nin a minute than a Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson had\nlung-trouble; and it may, for all I know, have been perceptible to the\nEugenic eye even a generation before. But who would perform that\nillegal operation: the stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter\nbursting with good news, confiscating a hamper full of presents and\nprizes, pouring torrents of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this\nis a faint approximation for the Eugenic inaction of the ancestors of\nStevenson. This, however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson\nit is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he\ngot. If he had died without writing a line, he would have had more\nred-hot joy than is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I\nowe so much, let the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray that\nthe stars of the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered among\nthe days of the year, because it shut not up the doors of his mother's\nwomb? I respectfully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon my\nmouth.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE FLYING AUTHORITY\n\n\nIt happened one day that an atheist and a man were standing together\non a doorstep; and the atheist said, \"It is raining.\" To which the man\nreplied, \"What is raining?\": which question was the beginning of a\nviolent quarrel and a lasting friendship. I will not touch upon any\nheads of the dispute, which doubtless included Jupiter Pluvius, the\nNeuter Gender, Pantheism, Noah's Ark, Mackintoshes, and the Passive\nMood; but I will record the one point upon which the two persons\nemerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as an\natheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the mere\ndiction of a man, though he be speaking of clocks or cats or anything\nquite remote from theology. The mark of the atheistic style is that it\ninstinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are dead\nthings; that things have no souls. Thus they will not speak of waging\nwar, which means willing it; they speak of the \"outbreak of war,\" as\nif all the guns blew up without the men touching them. Thus those\nSocialists that are atheist will not call their international\nsympathy, sympathy; they will call it \"solidarity,\" as if the poor men\nof France and Germany were physically stuck together like dates in a\ngrocer's shop. The same Marxian Socialists are accused of cursing the\nCapitalists inordinately; but the truth is that they let the\nCapitalists off much too easily. For instead of saying that employers\npay less wages, which might pin the employers to some moral\nresponsibility, they insist on talking about the \"rise and fall\" of\nwages; as if a vast silver sea of sixpences and shillings was always\ngoing up and down automatically like the real sea at Margate. Thus\nthey will not speak of reform, but of development; and they spoil\ntheir one honest and virile phrase, \"the class war,\" by talking of it\nas no one in his wits can talk of a war, predicting its finish and\nfinal result as one calculates the coming of Christmas Day or the\ntaxes. Thus, lastly (as we shall see touching our special\nsubject-matter here) the atheist style in letters always avoids\ntalking of love or lust, which are things alive, and calls marriage or\nconcubinage \"the relations of the sexes\"; as if a man and a woman were\ntwo wooden objects standing in a certain angle and attitude to each\nother, like a table and a chair.\n\nNow the same anarchic mystery that clings round the phrase, \"_il\npleut_,\" clings round the phrase, \"_il faut_.\" In English it is\ngenerally represented by the passive mood in grammar, and the\nEugenists and their like deal especially in it; they are as passive in\ntheir statements as they are active in their experiments. Their\nsentences always enter tail first, and have no subject, like animals\nwithout heads. It is never \"the doctor should cut off this leg\" or\n\"the policeman should collar that man.\" It is always \"Such limbs\nshould be amputated,\" or \"Such men should be under restraint.\" Hamlet\nsaid, \"I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's\noffal.\" The Eugenist would say, \"The region kites should, if possible,\nbe fattened; and the offal of this slave is available for the dietetic\nexperiment.\" Lady Macbeth said, \"Give me the daggers; I'll let his\nbowels out.\" The Eugenist would say, \"In such cases the bowels should,\netc.\" Do not blame me for the repulsiveness of the comparisons. I have\nsearched English literature for the most decent parallels to Eugenist\nlanguage.\n\nThe formless god that broods over the East is called \"Om.\" The\nformless god who has begun to brood over the West is called \"On.\" But\nhere we must make a distinction. The impersonal word _on_ is French,\nand the French have a right to use it, because they are a democracy.\nAnd when a Frenchman says \"one\" he does not mean himself, but the\nnormal citizen. He does not mean merely \"one,\" but one and all. \"_On\nn'a que sa parole_\" does not mean \"_Noblesse oblige_,\" or \"I am the\nDuke of Billingsgate and must keep my word.\" It means: \"One has a\nsense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, should\nfeel honourable\"; and this, whether possible or no, is the purest\nambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, \"Conditions\nmust be altered\" or \"Ancestry should be investigated,\" or what not, it\nseems clear that they do not mean that the democracy must do it,\nwhatever else they may mean. They do not mean that any man not\nevidently mad may be trusted with these tests and re-arrangements, as\nthe French democratic system trusts such a man with a vote or a farm\nor the control of a family. That would mean that Jones and Brown,\nbeing both ordinary men, would set about arranging each other's\nmarriages. And this state of affairs would seem a little elaborate,\nand it might occur even to the Eugenic mind that if Jones and Brown\nare quite capable of arranging each other's marriages, it is just\npossible that they might be capable of arranging their own.\n\nThis dilemma, which applies in so simple a case, applies equally to\nany wide and sweeping system of Eugenist voting; for though it is true\nthat the community can judge more dispassionately than a man can judge\nin his own case, this particular question of the choice of a wife is\nso full of disputable shades in every conceivable case, that it is\nsurely obvious that almost any democracy would simply vote the thing\nout of the sphere of voting, as they would any proposal of police\ninterference in the choice of walking weather or of children's names.\nI should not like to be the politician who should propose a particular\ninstance of Eugenics to be voted on by the French people. Democracy\ndismissed, it is here hardly needful to consider the other old models.\nModern scientists will not say that George III., in his lucid\nintervals, should settle who is mad; or that the aristocracy that\nintroduced gout shall supervise diet.\n\nI hold it clear, therefore, if anything is clear about the business,\nthat the Eugenists do not merely mean that the mass of common men\nshould settle each other's marriages between them; the question\nremains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when they say\nthat this or that ought to be done. What is this flying and evanescent\nauthority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man who\nis the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's verb? In a large\nnumber of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenist\nmeans himself, and nobody else. Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A.H. Huth,\nactually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a great\ndeal of good could be done with a surgical knife, if we would only\nturn him loose with one. And this may be true. A great deal of good\ncould be done with a loaded revolver, in the hands of a judicious\nstudent of human nature. But it is imperative that the Eugenist should\nperceive that on that principle we can never get beyond a perfect\nbalance of different sympathies and antipathies. I mean that I should\ndiffer from Dr. Saleeby or Dr. Karl Pearson not only in a vast\nmajority of individual cases, but in a vast majority of cases in which\nthey would be bound to admit that such a difference was natural and\nreasonable. The chief victim of these famous doctors would be a yet\nmore famous doctor: that eminent though unpopular practitioner, Dr.\nFell.\n\nTo show that such rational and serious differences do exist, I will\ntake one instance from that Bill which proposed to protect families\nand the public generally from the burden of feeble-minded persons.\nNow, even if I could share the Eugenic contempt for human rights, even\nif I could start gaily on the Eugenic campaign, I should not begin by\nremoving feeble-minded persons. I have known as many families in as\nmany classes as most men; and I cannot remember meeting any very\nmonstrous human suffering arising out of the presence of such\ninsufficient and negative types. There seem to be comparatively few of\nthem; and those few by no means the worst burdens upon domestic\nhappiness. I do not hear of them often; I do not hear of them doing\nmuch more harm than good; and in the few cases I know well they are\nnot only regarded with human affection, but can be put to certain\nlimited forms of human use. Even if I were a Eugenist, then I should\nnot personally elect to waste my time locking up the feeble-minded.\nThe people I should lock up would be the strong-minded. I have known\nhardly any cases of mere mental weakness making a family a failure; I\nhave known eight or nine cases of violent and exaggerated force of\ncharacter making a family a hell. If the strong-minded could be\nsegregated it would quite certainly be better for their friends and\nfamilies. And if there is really anything in heredity, it would be\nbetter for posterity too. For the kind of egoist I mean is a madman\nin a much more plausible sense than the mere harmless \"deficient\"; and\nto hand on the horrors of his anarchic and insatiable temperament is a\nmuch graver responsibility than to leave a mere inheritance of\nchildishness. I would not arrest such tyrants, because I think that\neven moral tyranny in a few homes is better than a medical tyranny\nturning the state into a madhouse. I would not segregate them, because\nI respect a man's free-will and his front-door and his right to be\ntried by his peers. But since free-will is believed by Eugenists no\nmore than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenists\nno more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is about\nas sacred to Eugenists as it would be to King John, why do not _they_\nbring light and peace into so many human homes by removing a demoniac\nfrom each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Bill\ncall at the many grand houses in town or country where such nightmares\nnotoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the bad\nsquire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniac\nprize-fighter? I do not know; and there is only one reason I can think\nof, which must remain a matter of speculation. When I was at school,\nthe kind of boy who liked teasing half-wits was not the sort that\nstood up to bullies.\n\nThat, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention the\ncase of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give one\nout of the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individual\nopinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to\npropagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating trip\ntogether, we should separate at the very door; and if he had a\nthousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyone\nwho has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows that\nthe ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some little\nhobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad for\nchildren, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many more\npeople ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human nature\nto expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard,\ndull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as\nexercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would\nhave his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own\nmadman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another would\nwander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the\nterror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats\nand dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it\nseems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his\nown implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lesson\nwhich is hardest for him and me and for all our fallen race--the fact\nthat he is only himself.\n\nWe now pass from mere individual men who obviously cannot be trusted,\neven if they are individual medical men, with such despotism over\ntheir neighbours; and we come to consider whether the Eugenists have\nat all clearly traced any more imaginable public authority, any\napparatus of great experts or great examinations to which such risks\nof tyranny could be trusted. They are not very precise about this\neither; indeed, the great difficulty I have throughout in considering\nwhat are the Eugenist's proposals is that they do not seem to know\nthemselves. Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connect\nwith human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness of\ntheir definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans. The Eugenic\noptimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled and\nconfused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that it will be\nall right on the night. They have all the ancient despotism, but none\nof the ancient dogmatism. If they are ready to reproduce the secrecies\nand cruelties of the Inquisition, at least we cannot accuse them of\noffending us with any of that close and complicated thought, that arid\nand exact logic which narrowed the minds of the Middle Ages; they have\ndiscovered how to combine the hardening of the heart with a\nsympathetic softening of the head. Nevertheless, there is one large,\nthough vague, idea of the Eugenists, which is an idea, and which we\nreach when we reach this problem of a more general supervision.\n\nIt was best presented perhaps by the distinguished doctor who wrote\nthe article on these matters in that composite book which Mr. Wells\nedited, and called \"The Great State.\" He said the doctor should no\nlonger be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in his\nown words, \"the health adviser of the community.\" The same can be\nexpressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb that\nprevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that it\namounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. This\nthe writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. To\nwhich I rejoin that if everyone is ill the health adviser is ill too,\nand therefore cannot know how to cure that minimum of illness. This is\nthe fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine.\nPrevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man's head is not\nbetter than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing to\ncure it. And it is the same if a man is in revolt, even a morbid\nrevolt. Taking the heart out of him by slavery is not better than\nleaving the heart in him, even if you leave it a broken heart.\nPrevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse\nthan disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the\nextra exasperation of being quite well. I will ask God, but certainly\nnot man, to prevent me in all my doings. But the decisive and\ndiscussable form of this is well summed up in that phrase about the\nhealth adviser of society. I am sure that those who speak thus have\nsomething in their minds larger and more illuminating than the other\ntwo propositions we have considered. They do not mean that all\ncitizens should decide, which would mean merely the present vague and\ndubious balance. They do not mean that all medical men should decide,\nwhich would mean a much more unbalanced balance. They mean that a few\nmen might be found who had a consistent scheme and vision of a healthy\nnation, as Napoleon had a consistent scheme and vision of an army. It\nis cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men's\nmarriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize and\nsegregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a few\ngreat hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens, as\nnurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it is tyranny;\nbut tyranny is a workable thing. When we ask by what process such men\ncould be certainly chosen, we are back again on the old dilemma of\ndespotism, which means a man, or democracy which means men, or\naristocracy which means favouritism. But as a vision the thing is\nplausible and even rational. It is rational, and it is wrong.\n\nIt is wrong, quite apart from the suggestion that an expert on health\ncannot be chosen. It is wrong because an expert on health cannot\nexist. An expert on disease can exist, for the very reason we have\nalready considered in the case of madness, because experts can only\narise out of exceptional things. A parallel with any of the other\nlearned professions will make the point plain. If I am prosecuted for\ntrespass, I will ask my solicitor which of the local lanes I am\nforbidden to walk in. But if my solicitor, having gained my case, were\nso elated that he insisted on settling what lanes I should walk in; if\nhe asked me to let him map out all my country walks, because he was\nthe perambulatory adviser of the community--then that solicitor would\nsolicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me through\nwoodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues and\nattractive short-cuts, I shall turn on him with passion, saying: \"Sir,\nI pay you to know one particular puzzle in Latin and Norman-French,\nwhich they call the law of England; and you do know the law of\nEngland. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you know\nEngland. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was looking\nat it.\" As are the limits of the lawyer's special knowledge about\nwalking, so are the limits of the doctor's. If I fall over the stump\nof a tree and break my leg, as is likely enough, I shall say to the\nlawyer, \"Please go and fetch the doctor.\" I shall do it because the\ndoctor really has a larger knowledge of a narrower area. There are\nonly a certain number of ways in which a leg can be broken; I know\nnone of them, and he knows all of them. There is such a thing as being\na specialist in broken legs. There is no such thing as being a\nspecialist in legs. When unbroken, legs are a matter of taste. If the\ndoctor has really mended my leg, he may merit a colossal equestrian\nstatue on the top of an eternal tower of brass. But if the doctor has\nreally mended my leg he has no more rights over it. He must not come\nand teach me how to walk; because he and I learnt that in the same\nschool, the nursery. And there is no more abstract likelihood of the\ndoctor walking more elegantly than I do than there is of the barber or\nthe bishop or the burglar walking more elegantly than I do. There\ncannot be a general specialist; the specialist can have no kind of\nauthority, unless he has avowedly limited his range. There cannot be\nsuch a thing as the health adviser of the community, because there\ncannot be such a thing as one who specialises in the universe.\n\nThus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be married should\nbe obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-book, the\nexpression is neat; but it does not convey the real respects in which\nthe two things agree, and in which they differ. To begin with, of\ncourse, there is a great deal too much of the bank-book for the sanity\nof our commonwealth; and it is highly probable that the health-book,\nas conducted in modern conditions, would rapidly become as timid, as\nsnobbish, and as sterile as the money side of marriage has become. In\nthe moral atmosphere of modernity the poor and the honest would\nprobably get as much the worst of it if we fought with health-books as\nthey do when we fight with bank-books. But that is a more general\nmatter; the real point is in the difference between the two. The\ndifference is in this vital fact: that a monied man generally thinks\nabout money, whereas a healthy man does not think about health. If\nthe strong young man cannot produce his health-book, it is for the\nperfectly simple reason that he has not got one. He can mention some\nextraordinary malady he has; but every man of honour is expected to do\nthat now, whatever may be the decision that follows on the knowledge.\n\nHealth is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the impudence\nto understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostic has any\nright to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among other\nthings, that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things, by\nwhich they are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and any\nscientist who pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimate\nsanity, I will call the lowest of religious fanatics. I will allow him\nto understand the madman, for the madman is an exception. But if he\nsays he understands the sane man, then he says he has the secret of\nthe Creator. For whenever you and I feel fully sane, we are quite\nincapable of naming the elements that make up that mysterious\nsimplicity. We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we can\nconceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium by\nwhich, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling like\nprecipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing.\n\nWe conclude, therefore, that unless Eugenic activity be restricted to\nmonstrous things like mania, there is no constituted or constitutable\nauthority that can really over-rule men in a matter in which they are\nso largely on a level. In the matter of fundamental human rights,\nnothing can be above Man, except God. An institution claiming to come\nfrom God might have such authority; but this is the last claim the\nEugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking to\nrule men in such matters is like a man's right eye claiming to rule\nhim, or his left leg to run away with him. It is madness. We now pass\non to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenics\nto be done, with such cheerfulness as we may possess after discovering\nthat there is nobody to do it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE\n\n\nDr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in one of his\naddresses on this subject, and said that even I cannot produce any but\na feeble-minded child from a feeble-minded ancestry. To which I reply,\nfirst of all, that he cannot produce a feeble-minded child. The whole\npoint of our contention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed and\noutside opinion. There is such a thing as mania, which has always been\nsegregated; there is such a thing as idiotcy, which has always been\nsegregated; but feeble-mindedness is a new phrase under which you\nmight segregate anybody. It is essential that this fundamental fallacy\nin the use of statistics should be got somehow into the modern mind.\nSuch people must be made to see the point, which is surely plain\nenough, that it is useless to have exact figures if they are exact\nfigures about an inexact phrase. If I say, \"There are five fools in\nActon,\" it is surely quite clear that, though no mathematician can\nmake five the same as four or six, that will not stop you or anyone\nelse from finding a few more fools in Acton. Now weak-mindedness, like\nfolly, is a term divided from madness in this vital manner--that in\none sense it applies to all men, in another to most men, in another\nto very many men, and so on. It is as if Dr. Saleeby were to say,\n\"Vanity, I find, is undoubtedly hereditary. Here is Mrs. Jones, who\nwas very sensitive about her sonnets being criticised, and I found her\nlittle daughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment is\nconclusive, the demonstration is complete; there in the first\ngeneration is the artistic temperament--that is vanity; and there in\nthe second generation is dress--and that is vanity.\" We should answer,\n\"My friend, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit--especially\nwhen one has to listen to logic of your favourite kind. Obviously all\nhuman beings must value themselves; and obviously there is in all such\nvaluation an element of weakness, since it is not the valuation of\neternal justice. What is the use of your finding by experiment in some\npeople a thing we know by reason must be in all of them?\"\n\nHere it will be as well to pause a moment and avert one possible\nmisunderstanding. I do not mean that you and I cannot and do not\npractically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric or\nintermediate type, for which the word \"feeble-minded\" might be a very\nconvenient word, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinable\nfact of experience. In the same way we might speak, and do speak, of\nsuch and such a person being \"mad with vanity\" without wanting two\nkeepers to walk in and take the person off. But I ask the reader to\nremember always that I am talking of words, not as they are used in\ntalk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, in\nwarrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament. The distinction\nbetween the two is perfectly clear and practical. The difference is\nthat a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit the mark; it\nis all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the type should be\nrecognised; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the right man.\nBut it is by no means always to the interests of governments or\nofficials to hang the right man. The fact that they often do stretch\nwords in order to cover cases is the whole foundation of having any\nfixed laws or free institutions at all. My point is not that I have\nnever met anyone whom I should call feeble-minded, rather than mad or\nimbecile. My point is that if I want to dispossess a nephew, oust a\nrival, silence a blackmailer, or get rid of an importunate widow,\nthere is nothing in logic to prevent my calling them feeble-minded\ntoo. And the vaguer the charge is the less they will be able to\ndisprove it.\n\nOne does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resist\nsuch legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual world\nin order to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may be\nsuch a thing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is such\na thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in\nmere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits;\nbelieving that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason to\nsuppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. All that is mere\nrationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance and\nterror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but denies\nthere can be devils. The superstition is in the person who admits\nthere can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. Yet I should\ncertainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectly\nsimple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. The\nreason is that it is one thing to believe in witches, and quite\nanother to believe in witch-smellers. I have more respect for the old\nwitch-finders than for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting the\nfool of the family; because the witch-finders, according to their own\nconviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the\nstrong-minded--the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a\nraid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a\nrighteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of\nsin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and\ndespicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a\nwar upon the weak. It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being.\n\nWhen I said above that I believed in witches, but not in\nwitch-smellers, I stated my full position about that conception of\nheredity, that half-formed philosophy of fears and omens; of curses\nand weird recurrence and darkness and the doom of blood, which, as\npreached to humanity to-day, is often more inhuman than witchcraft\nitself. I do not deny that this dark element exists; I only affirm\nthat it is dark; or, in other words, that its most strenuous students\nare evidently in the dark about it. I would no more trust Dr. Karl\nPearson on a heredity-hunt than on a heresy-hunt. I am perfectly ready\nto give my reasons for thinking this; and I believe any well-balanced\nperson, if he reflects on them, will think as I do. There are two\nsenses in which a man may be said to know or not know a subject. I\nknow the subject of arithmetic, for instance; that is, I am not good\nat it, but I know what it is. I am sufficiently familiar with its use\nto see the absurdity of anyone who says, \"So vulgar a fraction cannot\nbe mentioned before ladies,\" or \"This unit is Unionist, I hope.\"\nConsidering myself for one moment as an arithmetician, I may say that\nI know next to nothing about my subject: but I know my subject. I know\nit in the street. There is the other kind of man, like Dr. Karl\nPearson, who undoubtedly knows a vast amount about his subject; who\nundoubtedly lives in great forests of facts concerning kinship and\ninheritance. But it is not, by any means, the same thing to have\nsearched the forests and to have recognised the frontiers. Indeed, the\ntwo things generally belong to two very different types of mind. I\ngravely doubt whether the Astronomer-Royal would write the best essay\non the relations between astronomy and astrology. I doubt whether the\nPresident of the Geographical Society could give the best definition\nand history of the words \"geography\" and \"geology.\"\n\nNow the students of heredity, especially, understand all of their\nsubject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born in\nthat brier-patch, and have really explored it without coming to the\nend of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question of\nwhat they are studying. Now I do not propose to rely merely on myself\nto tell them what they are studying. I propose, as will be seen in a\nmoment, to call the testimony of a great man who has himself studied\nit. But to begin with, the domain of heredity (for those who see its\nfrontiers) is a sort of triangle, enclosed on its three sides by three\nfacts. The first is that heredity undoubtedly exists, or there would\nbe no such thing as a family likeness, and every marriage might\nsuddenly produce a small negro. The second is that even simple\nheredity can never be simple; its complexity must be literally\nunfathomable, for in that field fight unthinkable millions. But yet\nagain it never is simple heredity: for the instant anyone is, he\nexperiences. The third is that these innumerable ancient influences,\nthese instant inundations of experiences, come together according to a\ncombination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is a\ncombination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on\nthe Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the\nsense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a\ngolden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the\nScandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face\nthat the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can\nnever be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every\nfeature, in every inch. In the person of the baby he may have gently\npulled his wife's nose. In the person of the baby he may have partly\nblacked his wife's eyes.\n\nThose are the three first facts of heredity. That it exists; that it\nis subtle and made of a million elements; that it is simple, and\ncannot be unmade into those elements. To summarise: you know there is\nwine in the soup. You do not know how many wines there are in the\nsoup, because you do not know how many wines there are in the world.\nAnd you never will know, because all chemists, all cooks, and all\ncommon-sense people tell you that the soup is of such a sort that it\ncan never be chemically analysed. That is a perfectly fair parallel to\nthe hereditary element in the human soul. There are many ways in which\none can feel that there is wine in the soup, as in suddenly tasting a\nwine specially favoured; that corresponds to seeing suddenly flash on\na young face the image of some ancestor you have known. But even then\nthe taster cannot be certain he is not tasting one familiar wine among\nmany unfamiliar ones--or seeing one known ancestor among a million\nunknown ancestors. Another way is to get drunk on the soup, which\ncorresponds to the case of those who say they are driven to sin and\ndeath by hereditary doom. But even then the drunkard cannot be certain\nit was the soup, any more than the traditional drunkard who is certain\nit was the salmon.\n\nThose are the facts about heredity which anyone can see. The upshot of\nthem is not only that a miss is as good as a mile, but a miss is as\ngood as a win. If the child has his parents' nose (or noses) that may\nbe heredity. But if he has not, that may be heredity too. And as we\nneed not take heredity lightly because two generations differ--so we\nneed not take heredity a scrap more seriously because two generations\nare similar. The thing is there, in what cases we know not, in what\nproportion we know not, and we cannot know.\n\nNow it is just here that the decent difference of function between Dr.\nSaleeby's trade and mine comes in. It is his business to study human\nhealth and sickness as a whole, in a spirit of more or less\nenlightened guesswork; and it is perfectly natural that he should\nallow for heredity here, there, and everywhere, as a man climbing a\nmountain or sailing a boat will allow for weather without even\nexplaining it to himself. An utterly different attitude is incumbent\non any conscientious man writing about what laws should be enforced or\nabout how commonwealths should be governed. And when we consider how\nplain a fact is murder, and yet how hesitant and even hazy we all grow\nabout the guilt of a murderer, when we consider how simple an act is\nstealing, and yet how hard it is to convict and punish those rich\ncommercial pirates who steal the most, when we consider how cruel and\nclumsy the law can be even about things as old and plain as the Ten\nCommandments--I simply cannot conceive any responsible person\nproposing to legislate on our broken knowledge and bottomless\nignorance of heredity.\n\nBut though I have to consider this dull matter in its due logical\norder, it appears to me that this part of the matter has been settled,\nand settled in a most masterly way, by somebody who has infinitely\nmore right to speak on it than I have. Our press seems to have a\nperfect genius for fitting people with caps that don't fit; and\naffixing the wrong terms of eulogy and even the wrong terms of abuse.\nAnd just as people will talk of Bernard Shaw as a naughty winking\nPierrot, when he is the last great Puritan and really believes in\nrespectability; just as (_si parva licet_ etc.) they will talk of my\nown paradoxes, when I pass my life in preaching that the truisms are\ntrue; so an enormous number of newspaper readers seem to have it fixed\nfirmly in their heads that Mr. H.G. Wells is a harsh and horrible\nEugenist in great goblin spectacles, who wants to put us all into\nmetallic microscopes and dissect us with metallic tools. As a matter\nof fact, of course, Mr. Wells, so far from being too definite, is\ngenerally not definite enough. He is an absolute wizard in the\nappreciation of atmospheres and the opening of vistas; but his answers\nare more agnostic than his questions. His books will do everything\nexcept shut. And so far from being the sort of man who would stop a\nman from propagating, he cannot even stop a full stop. He is not\nEugenic enough to prevent the black dot at the end of a sentence from\nbreeding a line of little dots.\n\nBut this is not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real\nblunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of\nmedals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds\nof public economy, to giving Mr. Wells only one medal _ob cives\nservatos_, I would give him a medal as the Eugenist who destroyed\nEugenics. For everyone spoke of him, rightly or wrongly, as a\nEugenist; and he certainly had, as I have not, the training and type\nof culture required to consider the matter merely in a biological and\nnot in a generally moral sense. The result was that in that fine book,\n\"Mankind in the Making,\" where he inevitably came to grips with the\nproblem, he threw down to the Eugenists an intellectual challenge\nwhich seems to me unanswerable, but which, at any rate, is unanswered.\nI do not mean that no remote Eugenist wrote upon the subject; for it\nis impossible to read all writings, especially Eugenist writings. I do\nmean that the leading Eugenists write as if this challenge had never\nbeen offered. The gauntlet lies unlifted on the ground.\n\nHaving given honour for the idea where it is due, I may be permitted\nto summarise it myself for the sake of brevity. Mr. Wells' point was\nthis. That we cannot be certain about the inheritance of health,\nbecause health is not a quality. It is not a thing like darkness in\nthe hair or length in the limbs. It is a relation, a balance. You have\na tall, strong man; but his very strength depends on his not being too\ntall for his strength. You catch a healthy, full-blooded fellow; but\nhis very health depends on his being not too full of blood. A heart\nthat is strong for a dwarf will be weak for a giant; a nervous system\nthat would kill a man with a trace of a certain illness will sustain\nhim to ninety if he has no trace of that illness. Nay, the same\nnervous system might kill him if he had an excess of some other\ncomparatively healthy thing. Seeing, therefore, that there are\napparently healthy people of all types, it is obvious that if you mate\ntwo of them, you may even then produce a discord out of two\ninconsistent harmonies. It is obvious that you can no more be certain\nof a good offspring than you can be certain of a good tune if you play\ntwo fine airs at once on the same piano. You can be even less certain\nof it in the more delicate case of beauty, of which the Eugenists talk\na great deal. Marry two handsome people whose noses tend to the\naquiline, and their baby (for all you know) may be a goblin with a\nnose like an enormous parrot's. Indeed, I actually know a case of this\nkind. The Eugenist has to settle, not the result of fixing one steady\nthing to a second steady thing; but what will happen when one toppling\nand dizzy equilibrium crashes into another.\n\nThis is the interesting conclusion. It is on this degree of knowledge\nthat we are asked to abandon the universal morality of mankind. When\nwe have stopped the lover from marrying the unfortunate woman he\nloves, when we have found him another uproariously healthy female whom\nhe does not love in the least, even then we have no logical evidence\nthat the result may not be as horrid and dangerous as if he had\nbehaved like a man of honour.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT\n\n\nLet us now finally consider what the honest Eugenists do mean, since\nit has become increasingly evident that they cannot mean what they\nsay. Unfortunately, the obstacles to any explanation of this are such\nas to insist on a circuitous approach. The tendency of all that is\nprinted and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true\nsense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it\nis always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article,\nand he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may\neven, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he\nthinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the\nnearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of\nclassical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to\nwrite it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where\nhe learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his\nstalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his\nthoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can\nbe delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth\ndelivering at all. The poor panting critic falls farther and farther\nbehind the motor-car of modern fact. Fifty years ago he was barely\nfifteen years behind the times. Fifteen years ago he was not more than\nfifty years behind the times. Just now he is rather more than a\nhundred years behind the times: and the proof of it is that the things\nhe says, though manifest nonsense about our society to-day, really\nwere true about our society some hundred and thirty years ago. The\nbest instance of his belated state is his perpetual assertion that the\nsupernatural is less and less believed. It is a perfectly true and\nrealistic account--of the eighteenth century. It is the worst possible\naccount of this age of psychics and spirit-healers and fakirs and\nfashionable fortune-tellers. In fact, I generally reply in eighteenth\ncentury language to this eighteenth century illusion. If somebody says\nto me, \"The creeds are crumbling,\" I reply, \"And the King of Prussia,\nwho is himself a Freethinker, is certainly capturing Silesia from the\nCatholic Empress.\" If somebody says, \"Miracles must be reconsidered in\nthe light of rational experience,\" I answer affably, \"But I hope that\nour enlightened leader, Hebert, will not insist on guillotining that\npoor French queen.\" If somebody says, \"We must watch for the rise of\nsome new religion which can commend itself to reason,\" I reply, \"But\nhow much more necessary is it to watch for the rise of some military\nadventurer who may destroy the Republic: and, to my mind, that young\nMajor Bonaparte has rather a restless air.\" It is only in such\nlanguage from the Age of Reason that we can answer such things. The\nage we live in is something more than an age of superstition--it is an\nage of innumerable superstitions. But it is only with one example of\nthis that I am concerned here.\n\nI mean the error that still sends men marching about disestablishing\nchurches and talking of the tyranny of compulsory church teaching or\ncompulsory church tithes. I do not wish for an irrelevant\nmisunderstanding here; I would myself certainly disestablish any\nchurch that had a numerical minority, like the Irish or the Welsh; and\nI think it would do a great deal of good to genuine churches that have\na partly conventional majority, like the English, or even the Russian.\nBut I should only do this if I had nothing else to do; and just now\nthere is very much else to do. For religion, orthodox or unorthodox,\nis not just now relying on the weapon of State establishment at all.\nThe Pope practically made no attempt to preserve the Concordat; but\nseemed rather relieved at the independence his Church gained by the\ndestruction of it: and it is common talk among the French clericalists\nthat the Church has gained by the change. In Russia the one real\ncharge brought by religious people (especially Roman Catholics)\nagainst the Orthodox Church is not its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, but\nits abject dependence on the State. In England we can almost measure\nan Anglican's fervour for his Church by his comparative coolness about\nits establishment--that is, its control by a Parliament of Scotch\nPresbyterians like Balfour, or Welsh Congregationalists like Lloyd\nGeorge. In Scotland the powerful combination of the two great sects\noutside the establishment have left it in a position in which it feels\nno disposition to boast of being called by mere lawyers the Church of\nScotland. I am not here arguing that Churches should not depend on the\nState; nor that they do not depend upon much worse things. It may be\nreasonably maintained that the strength of Romanism, though it be not\nin any national police, is in a moral police more rigid and vigilant.\nIt may be reasonably maintained that the strength of Anglicanism,\nthough it be not in establishment, is in aristocracy, and its shadow,\nwhich is called snobbishness. All I assert here is that the Churches\nare not now leaning heavily on their political establishment; they are\nnot using heavily the secular arm. Almost everywhere their legal\ntithes have been modified, their legal boards of control have been\nmixed. They may still employ tyranny, and worse tyranny: I am not\nconsidering that. They are not specially using that special tyranny\nwhich consists in using the government.\n\nThe thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is\nScience. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science.\nAnd the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the\ncreed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that\nreally is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by\npilgrims but by policemen--that creed is the great but disputed\nsystem of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in\nEugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the\nGovernment will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination,\nin its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much\nas baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite natural\nto our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to them\nmadness to enforce baptism.\n\nI am not frightened of the word \"persecution\" when it is attributed to\nthe churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I\nattribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If\nit means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory,\nincapable of final proof--then our priests are not now persecuting,\nbut our doctors are. The imposition of such dogmas constitutes a State\nChurch--in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied to\nany supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where the\nreligious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way or\nthat; and yet more where it is excluded from this or that public post.\nBut I cannot now recall any place where it is compelled by the\ncriminal law to go through the rite of the official religion. Even the\nYoung Turks did not insist on all Macedonians being circumcised.\n\nNow here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, in\nthe past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence,\nit has been at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixed\nand flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by their\nenemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But what\nare the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword to\nenforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions and\nbewildered answers that we have been studying in the last\nchapters--questions whose only interest is that they are trackless and\nmysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative and\nnew. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; and\ntherefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of science\nactually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he\npersecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his\ncreed, because it was unchangeable. The _savant_ enforces it violently\nbecause he may change it the next day.\n\nNow this is a new sort of persecution; and one may be permitted to ask\nif it is an improvement on the old. The difference, so far as one can\nsee at first, seems rather favourable to the old. If we are to be at\nthe merciless mercy of man, most of us would rather be racked for a\ncreed that existed intensely in somebody's head, rather than\nvivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone's head,\nand possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with a\nthumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with a\nvivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet that\nis the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. If\nI gave in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to\nprofess. But even if I yelled out _a credo_ when the Eugenists had me\non the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an\nextra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed\nquite a week ago.\n\nNow let no light-minded person say that I am here taking extravagant\nparallels; for the parallel is not only perfect, but plain. For this\nreason: that the difference between torture and vivisection is not in\nany way affected by the fierceness or mildness of either. Whether they\ngave the rack half a turn or half a hundred, they were, by hypothesis,\ndealing with a truth which they knew to be there. Whether they\nvivisect painfully or painlessly, they are trying to find out whether\nthe truth is there or not. The old Inquisitors tortured to put their\nown opinions into somebody. But the new Inquisitors torture to get\ntheir own opinions out of him. They do not know what their own\nopinions are, until the victim of vivisection tells them. The division\nof thought is a complete chasm for anyone who cares about thinking.\nThe old persecutor was trying to _teach_ the citizen, with fire and\nsword. The new persecutor is trying to _learn_ from the citizen, with\nscalpel and germ-injector. The master was meeker than the pupil will\nbe.\n\nI could prove by many practical instances that even my illustrations\nare not exaggerated, by many placid proposals I have heard for the\nvivisection of criminals, or by the filthy incident of Dr. Neisser.\nBut I prefer here to stick to a strictly logical line of distinction,\nand insist that whereas in all previous persecutions the violence was\nused to end _our_ indecision, the whole point here is that the\nviolence is used to end the indecision of the persecutors. This is\nwhat the honest Eugenists really mean, so far as they mean anything.\nThey mean that the public is to be given up, not as a heathen land for\nconversion, but simply as a _pabulum_ for experiment. That is the\nreal, rude, barbaric sense behind this Eugenic legislation. The\nEugenist doctors are not such fools as they look in the light of any\nlogical inquiry about what they want. They do not know what they want,\nexcept that they want your soul and body and mine in order to find\nout. They are quite seriously, as they themselves might say, the first\nreligion to be experimental instead of doctrinal. All other\nestablished Churches have been based on somebody having found the\ntruth. This is the first Church that was ever based on not having\nfound it.\n\nThere is in them a perfectly sincere hope and enthusiasm; but it is\nnot for us, but for what they might learn from us, if they could rule\nus as they can rabbits. They cannot tell us anything about heredity,\nbecause they do not know anything about it. But they do quite honestly\nbelieve that they would know something about it, when they had married\nand mismarried us for a few hundred years. They cannot tell us who is\nfit to wield such authority, for they know that nobody is; but they do\nquite honestly believe that when that authority has been abused for a\nvery long time, somebody somehow will be evolved who is fit for the\njob. I am no Puritan, and no one who knows my opinions will consider\nit a mere criminal charge if I say that they are simply gambling. The\nreckless gambler has no money in his pockets; he has only the ideas in\nhis head. These gamblers have no ideas in their heads; they have only\nthe money in their pockets. But they think that if they could use the\nmoney to buy a big society to experiment on, something like an idea\nmight come to them at last. That is Eugenics.\n\nI confine myself here to remarking that I do not like it. I may be\nvery stingy, but I am willing to pay the scientist for what he does\nknow; I draw the line at paying him for everything he doesn't know. I\nmay be very cowardly, but I am willing to be hurt for what I think or\nwhat he thinks--I am not willing to be hurt, or even inconvenienced,\nfor whatever he might happen to think after he had hurt me. The\nordinary citizen may easily be more magnanimous than I, and take the\nwhole thing on trust; in which case his career may be happier in the\nnext world, but (I think) sadder in this. At least, I wish to point\nout to him that he will not be giving his glorious body as soldiers\ngive it, to the glory of a fixed flag, or martyrs to the glory of a\ndeathless God. He will be, in the strict sense of the Latin phrase,\ngiving his vile body for an experiment--an experiment of which even\nthe experimentalist knows neither the significance nor the end.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nA SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY\n\n\nI have up to this point treated the Eugenists, I hope, as seriously as\nthey treat themselves. I have attempted an analysis of their theory as\nif it were an utterly abstract and disinterested theory; and so\nconsidered, there seems to be very little left of it. But before I go\non, in the second part of this book, to talk of the ugly things that\nreally are left, I wish to recapitulate the essential points in their\nessential order, lest any personal irrelevance or over-emphasis (to\nwhich I know myself to be prone) should have confused the course of\nwhat I believe to be a perfectly fair and consistent argument. To make\nit yet clearer, I will summarise the thing under chapters, and in\nquite short paragraphs.\n\nIn the first chapter I attempted to define the essential point in\nwhich Eugenics can claim, and does claim, to be a new morality. That\npoint is that it is possible to consider the baby in considering the\nbride. I do not adopt the ideal irresponsibility of the man who said,\n\"What has posterity done for us?\" But I do say, to start with, \"What\ncan we do for posterity, except deal fairly with our contemporaries?\"\nUnless a man love his wife whom he has seen, how shall he love his\nchild whom he has not seen?\n\nIn the second chapter I point out that this division in the conscience\ncannot be met by mere mental confusions, which would make any woman\nrefusing any man a Eugenist. There will always be something in the\nworld which tends to keep outrageous unions exceptional; that\ninfluence is not Eugenics, but laughter.\n\nIn the third chapter I seek to describe the quite extraordinary\natmosphere in which such things have become possible. I call that\natmosphere anarchy; but insist that it is an anarchy in the centres\nwhere there should be authority. Government has become ungovernable;\nthat is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that\nis, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our\ntime is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government. In\nthis atmosphere it is natural enough that medical experts, being\nauthorities, should go mad, and attempt so crude and random and\nimmature a dream as this of petting and patting (and rather spoiling)\nthe babe unborn.\n\nIn chapter four I point out how this impatience has burst through the\nnarrow channel of the Lunacy Laws, and has obliterated them by\nextending them. The whole point of the madman is that he is the\nexception that proves the rule. But Eugenics seeks to treat the whole\nrule as a series of exceptions--to make all men mad. And on that\nground there is hope for nobody; for all opinions have an author, and\nall authors have a heredity. The mentality of the Eugenist makes him\nbelieve in Eugenics as much as the mentality of the reckless lover\nmakes him violate Eugenics; and both mentalities are, on the\nmaterialist hypothesis, equally the irresponsible product of more or\nless unknown physical causes. The real security of man against any\nlogical Eugenics is like the false security of Macbeth. The only\nEugenist that could rationally attack him must be a man of no woman\nborn.\n\nIn the chapter following this, which is called \"The Flying Authority,\"\nI try in vain to locate and fix any authority that could rationally\nrule men in so rooted and universal a matter; little would be gained\nby ordinary men doing it to each other; and if ordinary practitioners\ndid it they would very soon show, by a thousand whims and quarrels,\nthat they were ordinary men. I then discussed the enlightened\ndespotism of a few general professors of hygiene, and found it\nunworkable, for an essential reason: that while we can always get men\nintelligent enough to know more than the rest of us about this or that\naccident or pain or pest, we cannot count on the appearance of great\ncosmic philosophers; and only such men can be even supposed to know\nmore than we do about normal conduct and common sanity. Every sort of\nman, in short, would shirk such a responsibility, except the worst\nsort of man, who would accept it.\n\nI pass on, in the next chapter, to consider whether we know enough\nabout heredity to act decisively, even if we were certain who ought to\nact. Here I refer the Eugenists to the reply of Mr. Wells, which they\nhave never dealt with to my knowledge or satisfaction--the important\nand primary objection that health is not a quality but a proportion of\nqualities; so that even health married to health might produce the\nexaggeration called disease. It should be noted here, of course, that\nan individual biologist may quite honestly believe that he has found a\nfixed principle with the help of Weissmann or Mendel. But we are not\ndiscussing whether he knows enough to be justified in thinking (as is\nsomewhat the habit of the anthropoid _Homo_) that he is right. We are\ndiscussing whether _we_ know enough, as responsible citizens, to put\nsuch powers into the hands of men who may be deceived or who may be\ndeceivers. I conclude that we do not.\n\nIn the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, I\nbelieve, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what the\nEugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what they\nwant. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire the\nestablishment of research; that is the making of it a thing official\nand compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it is\nonly research and not discovery. In short, they want a new kind of\nState Church, which shall be an Established Church of Doubt--instead\nof Faith. They have no Science of Eugenics at all, but they do really\nmean that if we will give ourselves up to be vivisected they may very\nprobably have one some day. I point out, in more dignified diction,\nthat this is a bit thick.\n\nAnd now, in the second half of this book, we will proceed to the\nconsideration of things that really exist. It is, I deeply regret to\nsay, necessary to return to realities, as they are in your daily life\nand mine. Our happy holiday in the land of nonsense is over; we shall\nsee no more its beautiful city, with the almost Biblical name of Bosh,\nnor the forests full of mares' nests, nor the fields of tares that are\nripened only by moonshine. We shall meet no longer those delicious\nmonsters that might have talked in the same wild club with the Snark\nand the Jabberwock or the Pobble or the Dong with the Luminous Nose;\nthe father who can't make head or tail of the mother, but thoroughly\nunderstands the child she will some day bear; the lawyer who has to\nrun after his own laws almost as fast as the criminals run away from\nthem; the two mad doctors who might discuss for a million years which\nof them has the right to lock up the other; the grammarian who clings\nconvulsively to the Passive Mood, and says it is the duty of something\nto get itself done without any human assistance; the man who would\nmarry giants to giants until the back breaks, as children pile brick\nupon brick for the pleasure of seeing the staggering tower tumble\ndown; and, above all, the superb man of science who wants you to pay\nhim and crown him because he has so far found out nothing. These\nfairy-tale comrades must leave us. They exist, but they have no\ninfluence in what is really going on. They are honest dupes and tools,\nas you and I were very nearly being honest dupes and tools. If we\ncome to think coolly of the world we live in, if we consider how very\npractical is the practical politician, at least where cash is\nconcerned, how very dull and earthy are most of the men who own the\nmillions and manage the newspaper trusts, how very cautious and averse\nfrom idealist upheaval are those that control this capitalist\nsociety--when we consider all this, it is frankly incredible that\nEugenics should be a front bench fashionable topic and almost an Act\nof Parliament, if it were in practice only the unfinished fantasy\nwhich it is, as I have shown, in pure reason. Even if it were a just\nrevolution, it would be much too revolutionary a revolution for modern\nstatesmen, if there were not something else behind. Even if it were a\ntrue ideal, it would be much too idealistic an ideal for our\n\"practical men,\" if there were not something real as well. Well, there\nis something real as well. There is no reason in Eugenics, but there\nis plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory,\nbut they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I\nreiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite\ninnocent instruments, there _are_ some, even among Eugenists, who by\nthis time know what they are doing. To them we shall not say, \"What is\nEugenics?\" or \"Where on earth are you going?\" but only \"Woe unto you,\nhypocrites, that devour widows' houses and for a pretence use long\nwords.\"\n\n\n\n\nPart II\n\nTHE REAL AIM\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE\n\n\nThe root formula of an epoch is always an unwritten law, just as the\nlaw that is the first of all laws, that which protects life from the\nmurderer, is written nowhere in the Statute Book. Nevertheless there\nis all the difference between having and not having a notion of this\nbasic assumption in an epoch. For instance, the Middle Ages will\nsimply puzzle us with their charities and cruelties, their asceticism\nand bright colours, unless we catch their general eagerness for\nbuilding and planning, dividing this from that by walls and\nfences--the spirit that made architecture their most successful art.\nThus even a slave seemed sacred; the divinity that did hedge a king,\ndid also, in one sense, hedge a serf, for he could not be driven out\nfrom behind his hedges. Thus even liberty became a positive thing like\na privilege; and even, when most men had it, it was not opened like\nthe freedom of a wilderness, but bestowed, like the freedom of a city.\nOr again, the seventeenth century may seem a chaos of contradictions,\nwith its almost priggish praise of parliaments and its quite barbaric\nmassacre of prisoners, until we realise that, if the Middle Ages was a\nhouse half built, the seventeenth century was a house on fire. Panic\nwas the note of it, and that fierce fastidiousness and exclusiveness\nthat comes from fear. Calvinism was its characteristic religion, even\nin the Catholic Church, the insistence on the narrowness of the way\nand the fewness of the chosen. Suspicion was the note of its\npolitics--\"put not your trust in princes.\" It tried to thrash\neverything out by learned, virulent, and ceaseless controversy; and it\nweeded its population by witch-burning. Or yet again: the eighteenth\ncentury will present pictures that seem utterly opposite, and yet seem\nsingularly typical of the time: the sack of Versailles and the \"Vicar\nof Wakefield\"; the pastorals of Watteau and the dynamite speeches of\nDanton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight\nof the idea of _tidying up_ which ran through the whole period, the\nquietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilisation, and\nsound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people\nhaving (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for\nits own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only a\nreadiness to employ it to get rid of unreason or disorder. With these\nepochs it is not altogether impossible to say that some such form of\nwords is a key. The epoch for which it is almost impossible to find a\nform of words is our own.\n\nNevertheless, I think that with us the keyword is \"inevitability,\" or,\nas I should be inclined to call it, \"impenitence.\" We are\nsubconsciously dominated in all departments by the notion that there\nis no turning back, and it is rooted in materialism and the denial of\nfree-will. Take any handful of modern facts and compare them with the\ncorresponding facts a few hundred years ago. Compare the modern Party\nSystem with the political factions of the seventeenth century. The\ndifference is that in the older time the party leaders not only really\ncut off each other's heads, but (what is much more alarming) really\nrepealed each other's laws. With us it has become traditional for one\nparty to inherit and leave untouched the acts of the other when made,\nhowever bitterly they were attacked in the making. James II. and his\nnephew William were neither of them very gay specimens; but they would\nboth have laughed at the idea of \"a continuous foreign policy.\" The\nTories were not Conservatives; they were, in the literal sense,\nreactionaries. They did not merely want to keep the Stuarts; they\nwanted to bring them back.\n\nOr again, consider how obstinately the English mediaeval monarchy\nreturned again and again to its vision of French possessions, trying\nto reverse the decision of fate; how Edward III. returned to the\ncharge after the defeats of John and Henry III., and Henry V. after\nthe failure of Edward III.; and how even Mary had that written on her\nheart which was neither her husband nor her religion. And then\nconsider this: that we have comparatively lately known a universal\norgy of the thing called Imperialism, the unity of the Empire the only\ntopic, colonies counted like crown jewels, and the Union Jack waved\nacross the world. And yet no one so much as dreamed, I will not say of\nrecovering, the American colonies for the Imperial unity (which would\nhave been too dangerous a task for modern empire-builders), but even\nof re-telling the story from an Imperial standpoint. Henry V.\njustified the claims of Edward III. Joseph Chamberlain would not have\ndreamed of justifying the claims of George III. Nay, Shakespeare\njustifies the French War, and sticks to Talbot and defies the legend\nof Joan of Arc. Mr. Kipling would not dare to justify the American\nWar, stick to Burgoyne, and defy the legend of Washington. Yet there\nreally was much more to be said for George III. than there ever was\nfor Henry V. It was not said, much less acted upon, by the modern\nImperialists; because of this basic modern sense, that as the future\nis inevitable, so is the past irrevocable. Any fact so complete as the\nAmerican exodus from the Empire must be considered as final for aeons,\nthough it hardly happened more than a hundred years ago. Merely\nbecause it has managed to occur it must be called first, a necessary\nevil, and then an indispensable good. I need not add that I do not\nwant to reconquer America; but then I am not an Imperialist.\n\nThen there is another way of testing it: ask yourself how many people\nyou have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who\nattacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the\nBritish elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate?\nHow few have we met who realised that British education can be\naltered, but British weather cannot? How few there were that knew that\nthe clouds were more immortal and more solid than the schools? For a\nthousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or\nthe ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? Indeed,\nthe very word proves my case by its unpromising and unfamiliar sound.\nAt the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform\nand Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; but nobody talks about\nrepeal. Our fathers did not talk of Free Trade, but of the Repeal of\nthe Corn Laws. They did not talk of Home Rule, but of the Repeal of\nthe Union. In those days people talked of a \"Repealer\" as the most\npractical of all politicians, the kind of politician that carries a\nclub. Now the Repealer is flung far into the province of an impossible\nidealism: and the leader of one of our great parties, having said, in\na heat of temporary sincerity, that he would repeal an Act, actually\nhad to write to all the papers to assure them that he would only amend\nit. I need not multiply instances, though they might be multiplied\nalmost to a million. The note of the age is to suggest that the past\nmay just as well be praised, since it cannot be mended. Men actually\nin that past have toiled like ants and died like locusts to undo some\nprevious settlement that seemed secure; but we cannot do so much as\nrepeal an Act of Parliament. We entertain the weak-minded notion that\nwhat is done can't be undone. Our view was well summarised in a\ntypical Victorian song with the refrain: \"The mill will never grind\nagain the water that is past.\" There are many answers to this. One\n(which would involve a disquisition on the phenomena of Evaporation\nand Dew) we will here avoid. Another is, that to the minds of simple\ncountry folk, the object of a mill is not to grind water, but to grind\ncorn, and that (strange as it may seem) there really have been\nsocieties sufficiently vigilant and valiant to prevent their corn\nperpetually flowing away from them, to the tune of a sentimental song.\n\nNow this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an\nintellectual fault; it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our\nmental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also\nour spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake. It was\nmere vanity in Mr. Brummell when he sent away trays full of\nimperfectly knotted neck-cloths, lightly remarking, \"These are our\nfailures.\" It is a good instance of the nearness of vanity to\nhumility, for at least he had to admit that they were failures. But it\nwould have been spiritual pride in Mr. Brummell if he had tied on all\nthe cravats, one on top of the other, lest his valet should discover\nthat he had ever tied one badly. For in spiritual pride there is\nalways an element of secrecy and solitude. Mr. Brummell would be\nsatanic; also (which I fear would affect him more) he would be badly\ndressed. But he would be a perfect presentation of the modern\npublicist, who cannot do anything right, because he must not admit\nthat he ever did anything wrong.\n\nThis strange, weak obstinacy, this persistence in the wrong path of\nprogress, grows weaker and worse, as do all such weak things. And by\nthe time in which I write its moral attitude has taken on something of\nthe sinister and even the horrible. Our mistakes have become our\nsecrets. Editors and journalists tear up with a guilty air all that\nreminds them of the party promises unfulfilled, or the party ideals\nreproaching them. It is true of our statesmen (much more than of our\nbishops, of whom Mr. Wells said it), that socially in evidence they\nare intellectually in hiding. The society is heavy with unconfessed\nsins; its mind is sore and silent with painful subjects; it has a\nconstipation of conscience. There are many things it has done and\nallowed to be done which it does not really dare to think about; it\ncalls them by other names and tries to talk itself into faith in a\nfalse past, as men make up the things they would have said in a\nquarrel. Of these sins one lies buried deepest but most noisome, and\nthough it is stifled, stinks: the true story of the relations of the\nrich man and the poor in England. The half-starved English proletarian\nis not only nearly a skeleton but he is a skeleton in a cupboard.\n\nIt may be said, in some surprise, that surely we hear to-day on every\nside the same story of the destitute proletariat and the social\nproblem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowding\nin the slums. It is granted; but I said the true story. Untrue\nstories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There is\nthe interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands,\nthe chap who has \"solidarity,\" and is always just going to abolish\nwar. The Marxian Socialists will tell you all about him; only he isn't\nthere. A common English workman is just as incapable of thinking of a\nGerman as anything but a German as he is of thinking of himself as\nanything but an Englishman. Then there is the opposite story; the\nstory of the horrid man who is an atheist and wants to destroy the\nhome, but who, for some private reason, prefers to call this\nSocialism. He isn't there either. The prosperous Socialists have homes\nexactly like yours and mine; and the poor Socialists are not allowed\nby the Individualists to have any at all. There is the story of the\nTwo Workmen, which is a very nice and exciting story, about how one\npassed all the public houses in Cheapside and was made Lord Mayor on\narriving at the Guildhall, while the other went into all the public\nhouses and emerged quite ineligible for such a dignity. Alas! for this\nalso is vanity. A thief might become Lord Mayor, but an honest workman\ncertainly couldn't. Then there is the story of \"The Relentless Doom,\"\nby which rich men were, by economic laws, forced to go on taking away\nmoney from poor men, although they simply longed to leave off: this is\nan unendurable thought to a free and Christian man, and the reader\nwill be relieved to hear that it never happened. The rich could have\nleft off stealing whenever they wanted to leave off, only this never\nhappened either. Then there is the story of the cunning Fabian who sat\non six committees at once and so coaxed the rich man to become quite\npoor. By simply repeating, in a whisper, that there are \"wheels within\nwheels,\" this talented man managed to take away the millionaire's\nmotor car, one wheel at a time, till the millionaire had quite\nforgotten that he ever had one. It was very clever of him to do this,\nonly he has not done it. There is not a screw loose in the\nmillionaire's motor, which is capable of running over the Fabian and\nleaving him a flat corpse in the road at a moment's notice. All these\nstories are very fascinating stories to be told by the Individualist\nand Socialist in turn to the great Sultan of Capitalism, because if\nthey left off amusing him for an instant he would cut off their heads.\nBut if they once began to tell the true story of the Sultan to the\nSultan, he would boil them in oil; and this they wish to avoid.\n\nThe true story of the sin of the Sultan he is always trying, by\nlistening to these stories, to forget. As we have said before in this\nchapter, he would prefer not to remember, because he has made up his\nmind not to repent. It is a curious story, and I shall try to tell it\ntruly in the two chapters that follow. In all ages the tyrant is hard\nbecause he is soft. If his car crashes over bleeding and accusing\ncrowds, it is because he has chosen the path of least resistance. It\nis because it is much easier to ride down a human race than ride up a\nmoderately steep hill. The fight of the oppressor is always a\npillow-fight; commonly a war with cushions--always a war for cushions.\nSaladin, the great Sultan, if I remember rightly, accounted it the\ngreatest feat of swordsmanship to cut a cushion. And so indeed it is,\nas all of us can attest who have been for years past trying to cut\ninto the swollen and windy corpulence of the modern compromise, that\nis at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day the\ncolour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palace\nwithin palace and garden within garden which makes the rich\nirresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance,\nthe wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception of\nluxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights,\nand walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not our\nhangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we not\nalready eugenists--that is, eunuch-makers? Do we not see the bright\neyes, the motionless faces, and all that presence of something that is\ndead and yet sleepless? It is the presence of the sin that is sealed\nwith pride and impenitence; the story of how the Sultan got his\nthrone. But it is not the story he is listening to just now, but\nanother story which has been invented to cover it--the story called\n\"Eugenius: or the Adventures of One Not Born,\" a most varied and\nentrancing tale, which never fails to send him to sleep.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP\n\n\nHe awoke in the Dark Ages and smelt dawn in the dark, and knew he was\nnot wholly a slave. It was as if, in some tale of Hans Andersen, a\nstick or a stool had been left in the garden all night and had grown\nalive and struck root like a tree. For this is the truth behind the\nold legal fiction of the servile countries, that the slave is a\n\"chattel,\" that is a piece of furniture like a stick or a stool. In\nthe spiritual sense, I am certain it was never so unwholesome a fancy\nas the spawn of Nietzsche suppose to-day. No human being, pagan or\nChristian, I am certain, ever thought of another human being as a\nchair or a table. The mind cannot base itself on the idea that a comet\nis a cabbage; nor can it on the idea that a man is a stool. No man was\never unconscious of another's presence--or even indifferent to\nanother's opinion. The lady who is said to have boasted her\nindifference to being naked before male slaves was showing off--or she\nmeant something different. The lord who fed fishes by killing a slave\nwas indulging in what most cannibals indulge in--a satanist\naffectation. The lady was consciously shameless and the lord was\nconsciously cruel. But it simply is not in the human reason to carve\nmen like wood or examine women like ivory, just as it is not in the\nhuman reason to think that two and two make five.\n\nBut there was this truth in the legal simile of furniture: that the\nslave, though certainly a man, was in one sense a dead man; in the\nsense that he was _moveable_. His locomotion was not his own: his\nmaster moved his arms and legs for him as if he were a marionette. Now\nit is important in the first degree to realise here what would be\ninvolved in such a fable as I have imagined, of a stool rooting itself\nlike a shrub. For the general modern notion certainly is that life and\nliberty are in some way to be associated with novelty and not standing\nstill. But it is just because the stool is lifeless that it moves\nabout. It is just because the tree is alive that it does stand still.\nThat was the main difference between the pagan slave and the Christian\nserf. The serf still belonged to the lord, as the stick that struck\nroot in the garden would have still belonged to the owner of the\ngarden; but it would have become a _live_ possession. Therefore the\nowner is forced, by the laws of nature, to treat it with _some_\nrespect; something becomes due from him. He cannot pull it up without\nkilling it; it has gained a _place_ in the garden--or the society. But\nthe moderns are quite wrong in supposing that mere change and holiday\nand variety have necessarily any element of this life that is the only\nseed of liberty. You may say if you like that an employer, taking all\nhis workpeople to a new factory in a Garden City, is giving them the\ngreater freedom of forest landscapes and smokeless skies. If it comes\nto that, you can say that the slave-traders took negroes from their\nnarrow and brutish African hamlets, and gave them the polish of\nforeign travel and medicinal breezes of a sea-voyage. But the tiny\nseed of citizenship and independence there already was in the serfdom\nof the Dark Ages, had nothing to do with what nice things the lord\nmight do to the serf. It lay in the fact that there were some nasty\nthings he could not do to the serf--there were not many, but there\nwere some, and one of them was eviction. He could not make the serf\nutterly landless and desperate, utterly without access to the means of\nproduction, though doubtless it was rather the field that owned the\nserf, than the serf that owned the field. But even if you call the\nserf a beast of the field, he was not what we have tried to make the\ntown workman--a beast with no field. Foulon said of the French\npeasants, \"Let them eat grass.\" If he had said it of the modern London\nproletariat, they might well reply, \"You have not left us even grass\nto eat.\"\n\nThere was, therefore, both in theory and practice, _some_ security for\nthe serf, because he had come to life and rooted. The seigneur could\nnot wait in the field in all weathers with a battle-axe to prevent the\nserf scratching any living out of the ground, any more than the man in\nmy fairy-tale could sit out in the garden all night with an umbrella\nto prevent the shrub getting any rain. The relation of lord and serf,\ntherefore, involves a combination of two things: inequality and\nsecurity. I know there are people who will at once point wildly to all\nsorts of examples, true and false, of insecurity of life in the Middle\nAges; but these are people who do not grasp what we mean by the\ncharacteristic institutions of a society. For the matter of that,\nthere are plenty of examples of equality in the Middle Ages, as the\ncraftsmen in their guild or the monks electing their abbot. But just\nas modern England is not a feudal country, though there is a quaint\nsurvival called Heralds' College--or Ireland is not a commercial\ncountry, though there is a quaint survival called Belfast--it is true\nof the bulk and shape of that society that came out of the Dark Ages\nand ended at the Reformation, that it did not care about giving\neverybody an equal position, but did care about giving everybody a\nposition. So that by the very beginning of that time even the slave\nhad become a slave one could not get rid of, like the Scotch servant\nwho stubbornly asserted that if his master didn't know a good servant\nhe knew a good master. The free peasant, in ancient or modern times,\nis free to go or stay. The slave, in ancient times, was free neither\nto go nor stay. The serf was not free to go; but he was free to stay.\n\nNow what have we done with this man? It is quite simple. There is no\nhistorical complexity about it in that respect. We have taken away his\nfreedom to stay. We have turned him out of his field, and whether it\nwas injustice, like turning a free farmer out of his field, or only\ncruelty to animals, like turning a cow out of its field, the fact\nremains that he is out in the road. First and last, we have simply\ndestroyed the security. We have not in the least destroyed the\ninequality. All classes, all creatures, kind or cruel, still see this\nlowest stratum of society as separate from the upper strata and even\nthe middle strata; he is as separate as the serf. A monster fallen\nfrom Mars, ignorant of our simplest word, would know the tramp was at\nthe bottom of the ladder, as well as he would have known it of the\nserf. The walls of mud are no longer round his boundaries, but only\nround his boots. The coarse, bristling hedge is at the end of his\nchin, and not of his garden. But mud and bristles still stand out\nround him like a horrific halo, and separate him from his kind. The\nMartian would have no difficulty in seeing he was the poorest person\nin the nation. It is just as impossible that he should marry an\nheiress, or fight a duel with a duke, or contest a seat at\nWestminster, or enter a club in Pall Mall, or take a scholarship at\nBalliol, or take a seat at an opera, or propose a good law, or protest\nagainst a bad one, as it was impossible to the serf. Where he differs\nis in something very different. He has lost what was possible to the\nserf. He can no longer scratch the bare earth by day or sleep on the\nbare earth by night, without being collared by a policeman.\n\nNow when I say that this man has been oppressed as hardly any other\nman on this earth has been oppressed, I am not using rhetoric: I have\na clear meaning which I am confident of explaining to any honest\nreader. I do not say he has been treated worse: I say he has been\ntreated differently from the unfortunate in all ages. And the\ndifference is this: that all the others were told to do something, and\nkilled or tortured if they did anything else. This man is not told to\ndo something: he is merely forbidden to do anything. When he was a\nslave, they said to him, \"Sleep in this shed; I will beat you if you\nsleep anywhere else.\" When he was a serf, they said to him, \"Let me\nfind you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else's\nfield.\" But now he is a tramp they say to him, \"You shall be jailed if\nI find you in anyone else's field: _but I will not give you a field_.\"\nThey say, \"You shall be punished if you are caught sleeping outside\nyour shed: _but there is no shed_.\" If you say that modern\nmagistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer with\nentire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two tramps\nwere summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the open\nair when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full fun\nof the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly produced\nabout twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, but\ndeliberately didn't. To which the policeman replied that twopence\nwould not have got them a bed: that they could not possibly have got a\nbed: and _therefore_ (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought to\nbe punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was much\nstruck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men for\nnot doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explain\nthat if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, they\nwould have left the court without a stain on their characters; but as\nthey could not avoid it, they were very much to blame. These things\nare being done in every part of England every day. They have their\nparallels even in every daily paper; but they have no parallel in any\nother earthly people or period; except in that insane command to make\nbricks without straw which brought down all the plagues of Egypt. For\nthe common historical joke about Henry VIII. hanging a man for being\nCatholic and burning him for being Protestant is a symbolic joke only.\nThe sceptic in the Tudor time could do something: he could always\nagree with Henry VIII. The desperate man to-day can do nothing. For\nyou cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the straws\nsticking out of his hair and says, \"Procure threepence from nowhere\nand I will give you leave to do without it.\"\n\nIf it be answered that he can go to the workhouse, I reply that such\nan answer is founded on confused thinking. It is true that he is free\nto go to the workhouse, but only in the same sense in which he is free\nto go to jail, only in the same sense in which the serf under the\ngibbet was free to find peace in the grave. Many of the poor greatly\nprefer the grave to the workhouse, but that is not at all my argument\nhere. The point is this: that it could not have been the general\npolicy of a lord towards serfs to kill them all like wasps. It could\nnot have been his standing \"Advice to Serfs\" to say, \"Get hanged.\" It\ncannot be the standing advice of magistrates to citizens to go to\nprison. And, precisely as plainly, it cannot be the standing advice of\nrich men to very poor men to go to the workhouses. For that would mean\nthe rich raising their own poor rates enormously to keep a vast and\nexpensive establishment of slaves. Now it may come to this, as Mr.\nBelloc maintains, but it is not the theory on which what we call the\nworkhouse does in fact rest. The very shape (and even the very size)\nof a workhouse express the fact that it was founded for certain quite\nexceptional human failures--like the lunatic asylum. Say to a man, \"Go\nto the madhouse,\" and he will say, \"Wherein am I mad?\" Say to a tramp\nunder a hedge, \"Go to the house of exceptional failures,\" and he will\nsay with equal reason, \"I travel because I have no house; I walk\nbecause I have no horse; I sleep out because I have no bed. Wherein\nhave I failed?\" And he may have the intelligence to add, \"Indeed, your\nworship, if somebody has failed, I think it is not I.\" I concede, with\nall due haste, that he might perhaps say \"me.\"\n\nThe speciality then of this man's wrong is that it is the only\nhistoric wrong that has in it the quality of _nonsense_. It could only\nhappen in a nightmare; not in a clear and rational hell. It is the top\npoint of that anarchy in the governing mind which, as I said at the\nbeginning, is the main trait of modernity, especially in England. But\nif the first note in our policy is madness, the next note is certainly\nmeanness. There are two peculiarly mean and unmanly legal mantraps in\nwhich this wretched man is tripped up. The first is that which\nprevents him from doing what any ordinary savage or nomad would\ndo--take his chance of an uneven subsistence on the rude bounty of\nnature.\n\nThere is something very abject about forbidding this; because it is\nprecisely this adventurous and vagabond spirit which the educated\nclasses praise most in their books, poems and speeches. To feel the\ndrag of the roads, to hunt in nameless hills and fish in secret\nstreams, to have no address save \"Over the Hills and Far Away,\" to be\nready to breakfast on berries and the daybreak and sup on the sunset\nand a sodden crust, to feed on wild things and be a boy again, all\nthis is the heartiest and sincerest impulse in recent culture, in the\nsongs and tales of Stevenson, in the cult of George Borrow and in the\ndelightful little books published by Mr. E.V. Lucas. It is the one\ntrue excuse in the core of Imperialism; and it faintly softens the\nsqualid prose and wooden-headed wickedness of the Self-Made Man who\n\"came up to London with twopence in his pocket.\" But when a poorer but\nbraver man with less than twopence in his pocket does the very thing\nwe are always praising, makes the blue heavens his house, we send him\nto a house built for infamy and flogging. We take poverty itself and\nonly permit it with a property qualification; we only allow a man to\nbe poor if he is rich. And we do this most savagely if he has sought\nto snatch his life by that particular thing of which our boyish\nadventure stories are fullest--hunting and fishing. The extremely\nsevere English game laws hit most heavily what the highly reckless\nEnglish romances praise most irresponsibly. All our literature is full\nof praise of the chase--especially of the wild goose chase. But if a\npoor man followed, as Tennyson says, \"far as the wild swan wings to\nwhere the world dips down to sea and sands,\" Tennyson would scarcely\nallow him to catch it. If he found the wildest goose in the wildest\nfenland in the wildest regions of the sunset, he would very probably\ndiscover that the rich never sleep; and that there are no wild things\nin England.\n\nIn short, the English ruler is always appealing to a nation of\nsportsmen and concentrating all his efforts on preventing them from\nhaving any sport. The Imperialist is always pointing out with\nexultation that the common Englishman can live by adventure anywhere\non the globe, but if the common Englishman tries to live by adventure\nin England, he is treated as harshly as a thief, and almost as harshly\nas an honest journalist. This is hypocrisy: the magistrate who gives\nhis son \"Treasure Island\" and then imprisons a tramp is a hypocrite;\nthe squire who is proud of English colonists and indulgent to English\nschoolboys, but cruel to English poachers, is drawing near that deep\nplace wherein all liars have their part. But our point here is that\nthe baseness is in the idea of _bewildering_ the tramp; of leaving\nhim no place for repentance. It is quite true, of course, that in the\ndays of slavery or of serfdom the needy were fenced by yet fiercer\npenalties from spoiling the hunting of the rich. But in the older case\nthere were two very important differences, the second of which is our\nmain subject in this chapter. The first is that in a comparatively\nwild society, however fond of hunting, it seems impossible that\nenclosing and game-keeping can have been so omnipresent and efficient\nas in a society full of maps and policemen. The second difference is\nthe one already noted: that if the slave or semi-slave was forbidden\nto get his food in the greenwood, he was told to get it somewhere\nelse. The note of unreason was absent.\n\nThis is the first meanness; and the second is like unto it. If there\nis one thing of which cultivated modern letters is full besides\nadventure it is altruism. We are always being told to help others, to\nregard our wealth as theirs, to do what good we can, for we shall not\npass this way again. We are everywhere urged by humanitarians to help\nlame dogs over stiles--though some humanitarians, it is true, seem to\nfeel a colder interest in the case of lame men and women. Still, the\nchief fact of our literature, among all historic literatures, is human\ncharity. But what is the chief fact of our legislation? The great\noutstanding fact of modern legislation, among all historic\nlegislations, is the forbidding of human charity. It is this\nastonishing paradox, a thing in the teeth of all logic and\nconscience, that a man that takes another man's money with his leave\ncan be punished as if he had taken it without his leave. All through\nthose dark or dim ages behind us, through times of servile stagnation,\nof feudal insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else that\ncan war down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was counted\nlawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries,\nin short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched and\nmended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is now\nforbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance if he could beg.\n\nNow it will be evident by this time that the interesting scientific\nexperiment on the tramp entirely depends on leaving him _no_ chance,\nand not (like the slave) one chance. Of the economic excuses offered\nfor the persecution of beggars it will be more natural to speak in the\nnext chapter. It will suffice here to say that they are mere excuses,\nfor a policy that has been persistent while probably largely\nunconscious, with a selfish and atheistic unconsciousness. That policy\nwas directed towards something--or it could never have cut so cleanly\nand cruelly across the sentimental but sincere modern trends to\nadventure and altruism. Its object is soon stated. It was directed\ntowards making the very poor man work for the capitalist, for any\nwages or none. But all this, which I shall also deal with in the next\nchapter, is here only important as introducing the last truth touching\nthe man of despair. The game laws have taken from him his human\ncommand of Nature. The mendicancy laws have taken from him his human\ndemand on Man. There is one human thing left it is much harder to take\nfrom him. Debased by him and his betters, it is still something\nbrought out of Eden, where God made him a demigod: it does not depend\non money and but little on time. He can create in his own image. The\nterrible truth is in the heart of a hundred legends and mysteries. As\nJupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Child\ncould be hidden from Herod--so the child unborn is still hidden from\nthe omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone is\nleft; and they seek his life to take it away.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST\n\n\nHe does not live in a dark lonely tower by the sea, from which are\nheard the screams of vivisected men and women. On the contrary, he\nlives in Mayfair. He does not wear great goblin spectacles that\nmagnify his eyes to moons or diminish his neighbours to beetles. When\nhe is more dignified he wears a single eyeglass; when more\nintelligent, a wink. He is not indeed wholly without interest in\nheredity and Eugenical biology; but his studies and experiments in\nthis science have specialised almost exclusively in _equus celer_, the\nrapid or running horse. He is not a doctor; though he employs doctors\nto work up a case for Eugenics, just as he employs doctors to correct\nthe errors of his dinner. He is not a lawyer, though unfortunately\noften a magistrate. He is not an author or a journalist; though he not\ninfrequently owns a newspaper. He is not a soldier, though he may have\na commission in the yeomanry; nor is he generally a gentleman, though\noften a nobleman. His wealth now commonly comes from a large staff of\nemployed persons who scurry about in big buildings while he is playing\ngolf. But he very often laid the foundations of his fortune in a very\ncurious and poetical way, the nature of which I have never fully\nunderstood. It consisted in his walking about the street without a hat\nand going up to another man and saying, \"Suppose I have two hundred\nwhales out of the North Sea.\" To which the other man replied, \"And let\nus imagine that I am in possession of two thousand elephants' tusks.\"\nThey then exchange, and the first man goes up to a third man and says,\n\"Supposing me to have lately come into the possession of two thousand\nelephants' tusks, would you, etc.?\" If you play this game well, you\nbecome very rich; if you play it badly you have to kill yourself or\ntry your luck at the Bar. The man I am speaking about must have played\nit well, or at any rate successfully.\n\nHe was born about 1860; and has been a member of Parliament since\nabout 1890. For the first half of his life he was a Liberal; for the\nsecond half he has been a Conservative; but his actual policy in\nParliament has remained largely unchanged and consistent. His policy\nin Parliament is as follows: he takes a seat in a room downstairs at\nWestminster, and takes from his breast pocket an excellent cigar-case,\nfrom which in turn he takes an excellent cigar. This he lights, and\nconverses with other owners of such cigars on _equus celer_ or such\nmatters as may afford him entertainment. Two or three times in the\nafternoon a bell rings; whereupon he deposits the cigar in an ashtray\nwith great particularity, taking care not to break the ash, and\nproceeds to an upstairs room, flanked with two passages. He then walks\ninto whichever of the two passages shall be indicated to him by a\nyoung man of the upper classes, holding a slip of paper. Having gone\ninto this passage he comes out of it again, is counted by the young\nman and proceeds downstairs again; where he takes up the cigar once\nmore, being careful not to break the ash. This process, which is known\nas Representative Government, has never called for any great variety\nin the manner of his life. Nevertheless, while his Parliamentary\npolicy is unchanged, his change from one side of the House to the\nother did correspond with a certain change in his general policy in\ncommerce and social life. The change of the party label is by this\ntime quite a trifling matter; but there was in his case a change of\nphilosophy or at least a change of project; though it was not so much\nbecoming a Tory, as becoming rather the wrong kind of Socialist. He is\na man with a history. It is a sad history, for he is certainly a less\ngood man than he was when he started. That is why he is the man who is\nreally behind Eugenics. It is because he has degenerated that he has\ncome to talking of Degeneration.\n\nIn his Radical days (to quote from one who corresponded in some ways\nto this type) he was a much better man, because he was a much less\nenlightened one. The hard impudence of his first Manchester\nIndividualism was softened by two relatively humane qualities; the\nfirst was a much greater manliness in his pride; the second was a much\ngreater sincerity in his optimism. For the first point, the modern\ncapitalist is merely industrial; but this man was also industrious.\nHe was proud of hard work; nay, he was even proud of low work--if he\ncould speak of it in the past and not the present. In fact, he\ninvented a new kind of Victorian snobbishness, an inverted\nsnobbishness. While the snobs of Thackeray turned Muggins into De\nMogyns, while the snobs of Dickens wrote letters describing themselves\nas officers' daughters \"accustomed to every luxury--except spelling,\"\nthe Individualist spent his life in hiding his prosperous parents. He\nwas more like an American plutocrat when he began; but he has since\nlost the American simplicity. The Frenchman works until he can play.\nThe American works until he can't play; and then thanks the devil, his\nmaster, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the\nEnglishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he\nnever worked at all. He becomes as far as possible another person--a\ncountry gentleman who has never heard of his shop; one whose left hand\nholding a gun knows not what his right hand doeth in a ledger. He uses\na peerage as an alias, and a large estate as a sort of alibi. A stern\nScotch minister remarked concerning the game of golf, with a terrible\nsolemnity of manner, \"the man who plays golf--he neglects his\nbusiness, he forsakes his wife, he forgets his God.\" He did not seem\nto realise that it is the chief aim of many a modern capitalist's life\nto forget all three.\n\nThis abandonment of a boyish vanity in work, this substitution of a\nsenile vanity in indolence, this is the first respect in which the\nrich Englishman has fallen. He was more of a man when he was at least\na master-workman and not merely a master. And the second important\nrespect in which he was better at the beginning is this: that he did\nthen, in some hazy way, half believe that he was enriching other\npeople as well as himself. The optimism of the early Victorian\nIndividualists was not wholly hypocritical. Some of the\nclearest-headed and blackest-hearted of them, such as Malthus, saw\nwhere things were going, and boldly based their Manchester city on\npessimism instead of optimism. But this was not the general case; most\nof the decent rich of the Bright and Cobden sort did have a kind of\nconfused faith that the economic conflict would work well in the long\nrun for everybody. They thought the troubles of the poor were\nincurable by State action (they thought that of all troubles), but\nthey did not cold-bloodedly contemplate the prospect of those troubles\ngrowing worse and worse. By one of those tricks or illusions of the\nbrain to which the luxurious are subject in all ages, they sometimes\nseemed to feel as if the populace had triumphed symbolically in their\nown persons. They blasphemously thought about their thrones of gold\nwhat can only be said about a cross--that they, being lifted up, would\ndraw all men after them. They were so full of the romance that anybody\ncould be Lord Mayor, that they seemed to have slipped into thinking\nthat everybody could. It seemed as if a hundred Dick Whittingtons,\naccompanied by a hundred cats, could all be accommodated at the\nMansion House. It was all nonsense; but it was not (until later) all\nhumbug.\n\nStep by step, however, with a horrid and increasing clearness, this\nman discovered what he was doing. It is generally one of the worst\ndiscoveries a man can make. At the beginning, the British plutocrat\nwas probably quite as honest in suggesting that every tramp carried a\nmagic cat like Dick Whittington, as the Bonapartist patriot was in\nsaying that every French soldier carried a marshal's _baton_ in his\nknapsack. But it is exactly here that the difference and the danger\nappears. There is no comparison between a well-managed thing like\nNapoleon's army and an unmanageable thing like modern competition.\nLogically, doubtless, it was impossible that every soldier should\ncarry a marshal's _baton_; they could not all be marshals any more\nthan they could all be mayors. But if the French soldier did not\nalways have a _baton_ in his knapsack, he always had a knapsack. But\nwhen that Self-Helper who bore the adorable name of Smiles told the\nEnglish tramp that he carried a coronet in his bundle, the English\ntramp had an unanswerable answer. He pointed out that he had no\nbundle. The powers that ruled him had not fitted him with a knapsack,\nany more than they had fitted him with a future--or even a present.\nThe destitute Englishman, so far from hoping to become anything, had\nnever been allowed even to be anything. The French soldier's ambition\nmay have been in practice not only a short, but even a deliberately\nshortened ladder, in which the top rungs were knocked out. But for\nthe English it was the bottom rungs that were knocked out, so that\nthey could not even begin to climb. And sooner or later, in exact\nproportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began to\nunderstand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their\nimpotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that his\nriches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could\nhave been strong enough to make him rich. It is this paradox, as we\nshall see, that creates the curious difference between him and every\nother kind of robber.\n\nI think it is no more than justice to him to say that the knowledge,\nwhere it has come to him, has come to him slowly; and I think it came\n(as most things of common sense come) rather vaguely and as in a\nvision--that is, by the mere look of things. The old Cobdenite\nemployer was quite within his rights in arguing that earth is not\nheaven, that the best obtainable arrangement might contain many\nnecessary evils; and that Liverpool and Belfast might be growing more\nprosperous as a whole in spite of pathetic things that might be seen\nthere. But I simply do not believe he has been able to look at\nLiverpool and Belfast and continue to think this: that is why he has\nturned himself into a sham country gentleman. Earth is not heaven, but\nthe nearest we can get to heaven ought not to _look_ like hell; and\nLiverpool and Belfast look like hell, whether they are or not. Such\ncities might be growing prosperous as a whole, though a few citizens\nwere more miserable. But it was more and more broadly apparent that it\nwas exactly and precisely _as a whole_ that they were not growing more\nprosperous, but only the few citizens who were growing more prosperous\nby their increasing misery. You could not say a country was becoming a\nwhite man's country when there were more and more black men in it\nevery day. You could not say a community was more and more masculine\nwhen it was producing more and more women. Nor can you say that a city\nis growing richer and richer when more and more of its inhabitants are\nvery poor men. There might be a false agitation founded on the pathos\nof individual cases in a community pretty normal in bulk. But the fact\nis that no one can take a cab across Liverpool without having a quite\ncomplete and unified impression that the pathos is not a pathos of\nindividual cases, but a pathos in bulk. People talk of the Celtic\nsadness; but there are very few things in Ireland that look so sad as\nthe Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery compared\nwith the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournful\nfriends to turn their attention to the pathos of Belfast. I think if\nthey hung up the harp that once in Lord Furness's factory, there would\nbe a chance of another string breaking.\n\nBroadly, and as things bulk to the eye, towns like Leeds, if placed\nbeside towns like Rouen or Florence, or Chartres, or Cologne, do\nactually look like beggars walking among burghers. After that\noverpowering and unpleasant impression it is really useless to argue\nthat they are richer because a few of their parasites get rich enough\nto live somewhere else. The point may be put another way, thus: that\nit is not so much that these more modern cities have this or that\nmonopoly of good or evil; it is that they have every good in its\nfourth-rate form and every evil in its worst form. For instance, that\ninteresting weekly paper _The Nation_ amiably rebuked Mr. Belloc and\nmyself for suggesting that revelry and the praise of fermented liquor\nwere more characteristic of Continental and Catholic communities than\nof communities with the religion and civilisation of Belfast. It said\nthat if we would \"cross the border\" into Scotland, we should find out\nour mistake. Now, not only have I crossed the border, but I have had\nconsiderable difficulty in crossing the road in a Scotch town on a\nfestive evening. Men were literally lying like piled-up corpses in the\ngutters, and from broken bottles whisky was pouring down the drains. I\nam not likely, therefore, to attribute a total and arid abstinence to\nthe whole of industrial Scotland. But I never said that drinking was a\nmark rather of the Catholic countries. I said that _moderate_ drinking\nwas a mark rather of the Catholic countries. In other words, I say of\nthe common type of Continental citizen, not that he is the only person\nwho is drinking, but that he is the only person who knows how to\ndrink. Doubtless gin is as much a feature of Hoxton as beer is a\nfeature of Munich. But who is the connoisseur who prefers the gin of\nHoxton to the beer of Munich? Doubtless the Protestant Scotch ask for\n\"Scotch,\" as the men of Burgundy ask for Burgundy. But do we find them\nlying in heaps on each side of the road when we walk through a\nBurgundian village? Do we find the French peasant ready to let\nBurgundy escape down a drain-pipe? Now this one point, on which I\naccept _The Nation's_ challenge, can be exactly paralleled on almost\nevery point by which we test a civilisation. It does not matter\nwhether we are for alcohol or against it. On either argument Glasgow\nis more objectionable than Rouen. The French abstainer makes less\nfuss; the French drinker gives less offence. It is so with property,\nwith war, with everything. I can understand a teetotaler being\nhorrified, on his principles, at Italian wine-drinking. I simply\ncannot believe he could be _more_ horrified at it than at Hoxton\ngin-drinking. I can understand a Pacifist, with his special scruples,\ndisliking the militarism of Belfort. I flatly deny that he can dislike\nit _more_ than the militarism of Berlin. I can understand a good\nSocialist hating the petty cares of the distributed peasant property.\nI deny that any good Socialist can hate them _more_ than he hates the\nlarge cares of Rockefeller. That is the unique tragedy of the\nplutocratic state to-day; it has _no_ successes to hold up against the\nfailures it alleges to exist in Latin or other methods. You can (if\nyou are well out of his reach) call the Irish rustic debased and\nsuperstitious. I defy you to contrast his debasement and superstition\nwith the citizenship and enlightenment of the English rustic.\n\nTo-day the rich man knows in his heart that he is a cancer and not an\norgan of the State. He differs from all other thieves or parasites for\nthis reason: that the brigand who takes by force wishes his victims to\nbe rich. But he who wins by a one-sided contract actually wishes them\nto be poor. Rob Roy in a cavern, hearing a company approaching, will\nhope (or if in a pious mood, pray) that they may come laden with gold\nor goods. But Mr. Rockefeller, in his factory, knows that if those who\npass are laden with goods they will pass on. He will therefore (if in\na pious mood) pray that they may be destitute, and so be forced to\nwork his factory for him for a starvation wage. It is said (and also,\nI believe, disputed) that Bluecher riding through the richer parts of\nLondon exclaimed, \"What a city to sack!\" But Bluecher was a soldier if\nhe was a bandit. The true sweater feels quite otherwise. It is when he\ndrives through the poorest parts of London that he finds the streets\npaved with gold, being paved with prostrate servants; it is when he\nsees the grey lean leagues of Bow and Poplar that his soul is uplifted\nand he knows he is secure. This is not rhetoric, but economics.\n\nI repeat that up to a point the profiteer was innocent because he was\nignorant; he had been lured on by easy and accommodating events. He\nwas innocent as the new Thane of Glamis was innocent, as the new Thane\nof Cawdor was innocent; but the King---- The modern manufacturer, like\nMacbeth, decided to march on, under the mute menace of the heavens.\nHe knew that the spoil of the poor was in his houses; but he could\nnot, after careful calculation, think of any way in which they could\nget it out of his houses without being arrested for housebreaking. He\nfaced the future with a face flinty with pride and impenitence. This\nperiod can be dated practically by the period when the old and genuine\nProtestant religion of England began to fail; and the average business\nman began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he\nwas, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to\nscepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way\nout. But in any case, the man who had made a mistake not only refused\nto unmake it, but decided to go on making it. But in this he made yet\nanother most amusing mistake, which was the beginning of all\nEugenics.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH\n\n\nBy a quaint paradox, we generally miss the meaning of simple stories\nbecause we are not subtle enough to understand their simplicity. As\nlong as men were in sympathy with some particular religion or other\nromance of things in general, they saw the thing solid and swallowed\nit whole, knowing that it could not disagree with them. But the moment\nmen have lost the instinct of being simple in order to understand it,\nthey have to be very subtle in order to understand it. We can find,\nfor instance, a very good working case in those old puritanical\nnursery tales about the terrible punishment of trivial sins; about how\nTommy was drowned for fishing on the Sabbath, or Sammy struck by\nlightning for going out after dark. Now these moral stories are\nimmoral, because Calvinism is immoral. They are wrong, because\nPuritanism is wrong. But they are not quite so wrong, they are not a\nquarter so wrong, as many superficial sages have supposed.\n\nThe truth is that everything that ever came out of a human mouth had a\nhuman meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such a\nfool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great-grandmothers\ntold a child he might be drowned by breaking the Sabbath, their souls\n(though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not\nin quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god\nwas a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form\nof religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it\ndid correspond to a certain reality in psychology which most people of\nany religion, or even of none, have felt a touch of at some time or\nother. Leaving out theological terms as far as possible, it is the\nsubconscious feeling that one can be wrong with Nature as well as\nright with Nature; that the point of wrongness may be a detail (in the\nsuperstitions of heathens this is often quite a triviality); but that\nif one is really wrong with Nature, there is no particular reason why\nall her rivers should not drown or all her storm-bolts strike one who\nis, by this vague yet vivid hypothesis, her enemy. This may be a\nmental sickness, but it is too human or too mortal a sickness to be\ncalled solely a superstition. It is not solely a superstition; it is\nnot simply superimposed upon human nature by something that has got on\ntop of it. It flourishes without check among non-Christian systems,\nand it flourishes especially in Calvinism, because Calvinism is the\nmost non-Christian of Christian systems. But like everything else that\ninheres in the natural senses and spirit of man, it has something in\nit; it is not stark unreason. If it is an ill (and it generally is),\nit is one of the ills that flesh is heir to, but he is the lawful\nheir. And like many other dubious or dangerous human instincts or\nappetites, it is sometimes useful as a warning against worse things.\n\nNow the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from the\nloss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathen\nmysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe\nin Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they\noverlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps\nJulius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in\nJupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of\nthat age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit\npersonal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are\nnot permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, while\nthe heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queer\ncoincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whether\nthey were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his own\nbrain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain such\nnotions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modern\nsceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural.\nAnd this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrant\nliterally pagan might possibly not have done.\n\nThere is one idea of this kind that runs through most popular tales\n(those, for instance, on which Shakespeare is so often based)--an idea\nthat is profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is what\nmay be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take my\nadvantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage.\nThus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reason\nto become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had a\nfallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. He\nforgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on it\ncan. Thus Shylock had a fallacy of physiology; he forgot that, if you\nbreak into the house of life, you find it a bloody house in the most\nemphatic sense. But the modern capitalist did not read fairy-tales,\nand never looked for the little omens at the turnings of the road. He\n(or the most intelligent section of him) had by now realised his\nposition, and knew in his heart it was a false position. He thought a\nmargin of men out of work was good for his business; he could no\nlonger really think it was good for his country. He could no longer be\nthe old \"hard-headed\" man who simply did not understand things; he\ncould only be the hard-hearted man who faced them. But he still\nmarched on; he was sure he had made no mistake.\n\nHowever, he had made a mistake--as definite as a mistake in\nmultiplication. It may be summarised thus: that the same inequality\nand insecurity that makes cheap labour may make bad labour, and at\nlast no labour at all. It was as if a man who wanted something from an\nenemy, should at last reduce the enemy to come knocking at his door in\nthe despair of winter, should keep him waiting in the snow to sharpen\nthe bargain; and then come out to find the man dead upon the doorstep.\n\nHe had discovered the divine boomerang; his sin had found him out. The\nexperiment of Individualism--the keeping of the worker half in and\nhalf out of work--was far too ingenious not to contain a flaw. It was\ntoo delicate a balance to work entirely with the strength of the\nstarved and the vigilance of the benighted. It was too desperate a\ncourse to rely wholly on desperation. And as time went on the terrible\ntruth slowly declared itself; the degraded class was really\ndegenerating. It was right and proper enough to use a man as a tool;\nbut the tool, ceaselessly used, was being used up. It was quite\nreasonable and respectable, of course, to fling a man away like a\ntool; but when it was flung away in the rain the tool rusted. But the\ncomparison to a tool was insufficient for an awful reason that had\nalready begun to dawn upon the master's mind. If you pick up a hammer,\nyou do not find a whole family of nails clinging to it. If you fling\naway a chisel by the roadside, it does not litter and leave a lot of\nlittle chisels. But the meanest of the tools, Man, had still this\nstrange privilege which God had given him, doubtless by mistake.\nDespite all improvements in machinery, the most important part of the\nmachinery (the fittings technically described in the trade as \"hands\")\nwere apparently growing worse. The firm was not only encumbered with\none useless servant, but he immediately turned himself into five\nuseless servants. \"The poor should not be emancipated,\" the old\nreactionaries used to say, \"until they are fit for freedom.\" But if\nthis downrush went on, it looked as if the poor would not stand high\nenough to be fit for slavery.\n\nSo at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree subconsciously, to\nthe man who had wagered all his wealth on the usefulness of the poor\nto the rich and the dependence of the rich on the poor. The time came\nat last when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below ceased to\nbe a supply, and began to be something like a wastage; ceased to be\nsomething like keeping foxhounds, and began alarmingly to resemble a\nnecessity of shooting foxes. The situation was aggravated by the fact\nthat these sexual pleasures were often the only ones the very poor\ncould obtain, and were, therefore, disproportionately pursued, and by\nthe fact that their conditions were often such that prenatal\nnourishment and such things were utterly abnormal. The consequences\nbegan to appear. To a much less extent than the Eugenists assert, but\nstill to a notable extent, in a much looser sense than the Eugenists\nassume, but still in some sort of sense, the types that were\ninadequate or incalculable or uncontrollable began to increase. Under\nthe hedges of the country, on the seats of the parks, loafing under\nthe bridges or leaning over the Embankment, began to appear a new race\nof men--men who are certainly not mad, whom we shall gain no\nscientific light by calling feeble-minded, but who are, in varying\nindividual degrees, dazed or drink-sodden, or lazy or tricky or tired\nin body and spirit. In a far less degree than the teetotallers tell\nus, but still in a large degree, the traffic in gin and bad beer\n(itself a capitalist enterprise) fostered the evil, though it had not\nbegun it. Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men who\nseemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesore\nin the market-place and a terror on the empty roads. The rich were\nafraid.\n\nMoreover, as I have hinted before, the act of keeping the destitute\nout of public life, and crushing them under confused laws, had an\neffect on their intelligences which paralyses them even as a\nproletariat. Modern people talk of \"Reason versus Authority\"; but\nauthority itself involves reason, or its orders would not even be\nunderstood. If you say to your valet, \"Look after the buttons on my\nwaistcoat,\" he may do it, even if you throw a boot at his head. But if\nyou say to him, \"Look after the buttons on my top-hat,\" he will not do\nit, though you empty a boot-shop over him. If you say to a schoolboy,\n\"Write out that Ode of Horace from memory in the original Latin,\" he\nmay do it without a flogging. If you say, \"Write out that Ode of\nHorace in the original German,\" he will not do it with a thousand\nfloggings. If you will not learn logic, he certainly will not learn\nLatin. And the ludicrous laws to which the needy are subject (such as\nthat which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, I\nthink, a great deal to do with a certain increase in their\nsheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrial\ninefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory,\na man actually acquitted by judge and jury could _then_ be examined by\ndoctors as to the state of his mind--presumably in order to discover\nby what diseased eccentricity he had refrained from the crime. In\nother words, when the police cannot jail a man who is innocent of\ndoing something, they jail him for being too innocent to do anything.\nI do not suppose the man is an idiot at all, but I can believe he\nfeels more like one after the legal process than before. Thus all the\nfactors--the bodily exhaustion, the harassing fear of hunger, the\nreckless refuge in sexuality, and the black botheration of bad\nlaws--combined to make the employee more unemployable.\n\nNow, it is very important to understand here that there were two\ncourses of action still open to the disappointed capitalist confronted\nby the new peril of this real or alleged decay. First, he might have\nreversed his machine, so to speak, and started unwinding the long rope\nof dependence by which he had originally dragged the proletarian to\nhis feet. In other words, he might have seen that the workmen had more\nmoney, more leisure, more luxuries, more status in the community, and\nthen trusted to the normal instincts of reasonably happy human beings\nto produce a generation better born, bred and cared for than these\ntortured types that were less and less use to him. It might still not\nbe too late to rebuild the human house upon such an architectural plan\nthat poverty might fly out of the window, with the reasonable prospect\nof love coming in at the door. In short, he might have let the English\npoor, the mass of whom were not weak-minded, though more of them were\ngrowing weaker, a reasonable chance, in the form of more money, of\nachieving their eugenical resurrection themselves. It has never been\nshown, and it cannot be shown, that the method would have failed. But\nit can be shown, and it must be closely and clearly noted, that the\nmethod had very strict limitations from the employers' own point of\nview. If they made the worker too comfortable, he would not work to\nincrease another's comforts; if they made him too independent, he\nwould not work like a dependent. If, for instance, his wages were so\ngood that he could save out of them, he might cease to be a\nwage-earner. If his house or garden were his own, he might stand an\neconomic siege in it. The whole capitalist experiment had been built\non his dependence; but now it was getting out of hand, not in the\ndirection of freedom, but of frank helplessness. One might say that\nhis dependence had got independent of control.\n\nBut there was another way. And towards this the employer's ideas\nbegan, first darkly and unconsciously, but now more and more clearly,\nto drift. Giving property, giving leisure, giving status costs money.\nBut there is one human force that costs nothing. As it does not cost\nthe beggar a penny to indulge, so it would not cost the employer a\npenny to employ. He could not alter or improve the tables or the\nchairs on the cheap. But there were two pieces of furniture (labelled\nrespectively \"the husband\" and \"the wife\") whose relations were much\ncheaper. He could alter the _marriage_ in the house in such a way as\nto promise himself the largest possible number of the kind of children\nhe did want, with the smallest possible number of the kind he did\nnot. He could divert the force of sex from producing vagabonds. And he\ncould harness to his high engines unbought the red unbroken river of\nthe blood of a man in his youth, as he has already harnessed to them\nall the wild waste rivers of the world.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE\n\n\nNow, if any ask whether it be imaginable that an ordinary man of the\nwealthier type should analyse the problem or conceive the plan, the\ninhumanly far-seeing plan, as I have set it forth, the answer is:\n\"Certainly not.\" Many rich employers are too generous to do such a\nthing; many are too stupid to know what they are doing. The eugenical\nopportunity I have described is but an ultimate analysis of a whole\ndrift of thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse his\nthoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string of\nrickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. But\nprosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even ask\nhimself whether he means \"How can I help them?\" or \"How can I use\nthem?\"--what he can still do for them, or what they could still do for\nhim. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more than\nthe former; he laments the breaking of the tools of Mammon much more\nthan the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossible\nto grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert that\nthere is one thing he doesn't think. He doesn't think, \"This man might\nbe as jolly as I am, if he need not come to me for work or wages.\"\n\nThat this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are\nmultitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity\nmiscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a\nsense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist\nindustrialism being sacrificed to any other object. By a curious\nrecurrent slip in the mind, as irritating as a catch in a clock,\npeople miss the main thing and concentrate on the mean thing. \"Modern\nconditions\" are treated as fixed, though the very word \"modern\"\nimplies that they are fugitive. \"Old ideas\" are treated as impossible,\nthough their very antiquity often proves their permanence. Some years\nago some ladies petitioned that the platforms of our big railway\nstations should be raised, as it was more convenient for the hobble\nskirt. It never occurred to them to change to a sensible skirt. Still\nless did it occur to them that, compared with all the female fashions\nthat have fluttered about on it, by this time St. Pancras is as\nhistoric as St. Peter's.\n\nI could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious\nassumption that life and sex must live by the laws of \"business\" or\nindustrialism, and not _vice versa_; examples from all the magazines,\nnovels, and newspapers. In order to make it brief and typical, I take\none case of a more or less Eugenist sort from a paper that lies open\nin front of me--a paper that still bears on its forehead the boast of\nbeing peculiarly an organ of democracy in revolt. To this a man writes\nto say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we\nhave educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper\nclasses prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to\nsign his letter \"Hopeful.\" Well, there are certainly many methods by\nwhich people in the upper classes prevent procreation; one of them is\nwhat used to be called \"platonic friendship,\" till they found another\nname for it at the Old Bailey. I do not suppose the hopeful gentleman\nhopes for this; but some of us find the abortion he does hope for\nalmost as abominable. That, however, is not the curious point. The\ncurious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, \"When\npeople have large families and small wages, not only is there a high\ninfantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are\nstunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a\ntime with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if\nthere were no unwanted children.\" You will observe that he tacitly\ntakes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately\nshared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of\nhuman life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries,\nthings to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted\nchildren; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the\nparents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do not\nwant to pay them properly. Doubtless, if you said to him directly,\n\"Are you in favour of low wages?\" he would say, \"No.\" But I am not, in\nthis chapter, talking about the effect on such modern minds of a\ncross-examination to which they do not subject themselves. I am\ntalking about the way their minds work, the instinctive trick and turn\nof their thoughts, the things they assume before argument, and the way\nthey faintly feel that the world is going. And, frankly, the turn of\ntheir mind is to tell the child he is not wanted, as the turn of my\nmind is to tell the profiteer he is not wanted. Motherhood, they feel,\nand a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good\nthings in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the\nmutilation of womanhood, and the massacre of men unborn, he signs\nhimself \"Hopeful.\" He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human\nannihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself\n\"Hopeless.\"\n\nThis is the first evidence of motive: the ubiquitous assumption that\nlife and love must fit into a fixed framework of employment, even (as\nin this case) of bad employment. The second evidence is the tacit and\ntotal neglect of the scientific question in all the departments in\nwhich it is not an employment question; as, for instance, the\nmarriages of the princely, patrician, or merely plutocratic houses. I\ndo not mean, of course, that no scientific men have rigidly tackled\nthese, though I do not recall any cases. But I am not talking of the\nmerits of individual men of science, but of the push and power behind\nthis movement, the thing that is able to make it fashionable and\npolitically important. I say, if this power were an interest in truth,\nor even in humanity, the first field in which to study would be in the\nweddings of the wealthy. Not only would the records be more lucid,\nand the examples more in evidence, but the cases would be more\ninteresting and more decisive. For the grand marriages have presented\nboth extremes of the problem of pedigree--first the \"breeding in and\nin,\" and later the most incongruous cosmopolitan blends. It would\nreally be interesting to note which worked the best, or what point of\ncompromise was safest. For the poor (about whom the newspaper\nEugenists are always talking) cannot offer any test cases so complete.\nWaiters never had to marry waitresses, as princes had to marry\nprincesses. And (for the other extreme) housemaids seldom marry Red\nIndians. It may be because there are none to marry. But to the\nmillionaires the continents are flying railway stations, and the most\nremote races can be rapidly linked together. A marriage in London or\nParis may chain Ravenna to Chicago, or Ben Cruachan to Bagdad. Many\nEuropean aristocrats marry Americans, notoriously the most mixed stock\nin the world; so that the disinterested Eugenist, with a little\ntrouble, might reveal rich stores of negro or Asiatic blood to his\ndelighted employer. Instead of which he dulls our ears and distresses\nour refinement by tedious denunciations of the monochrome marriages of\nthe poor.\n\nFor there is something really pathetic about the Eugenist's neglect of\nthe aristocrat and his family affairs. People still talk about the\npride of pedigree; but it strikes me as the one point on which the\naristocrats are almost morbidly modest. We should be learned Eugenists\nif we were allowed to know half as much of their heredity as we are\nof their hairdressing. We see the modern aristocrat in the most human\nposes in the illustrated papers, playing with his dog or parrot--nay,\nwe see him playing with his child, or with his grandchild. But there\nis something heartrending in his refusal to play with his grandfather.\nThere is often something vague and even fantastic about the\nantecedents of our most established families, which would afford the\nEugenist admirable scope not only for investigation but for\nexperiment. Certainly, if he could obtain the necessary powers, the\nEugenist might bring off some startling effects with the mixed\nmaterials of the governing class. Suppose, to take wild and\nhypothetical examples, he were to marry a Scotch earl, say, to the\ndaughter of a Jewish banker, or an English duke to an American parvenu\nof semi-Jewish extraction? What would happen? We have here an\nunexplored field.\n\nIt remains unexplored not merely through snobbery and cowardice, but\nbecause the Eugenist (at least the influential Eugenist)\nhalf-consciously knows it is no part of his job; what he is really\nwanted for is to get the grip of the governing classes on to the\nunmanageable output of poor people. It would not matter in the least\nif all Lord Cowdray's descendants grew up too weak to hold a tool or\nturn a wheel. It would matter very much, especially to Lord Cowdray,\nif all his employees grew up like that. The oligarch can be\nunemployable, because he will not be employed. Thus the practical and\npopular exponent of Eugenics has his face always turned towards the\nslums, and instinctively thinks in terms of them. If he talks of\nsegregating some incurably vicious type of the sexual sort, he is\nthinking of a ruffian who assaults girls in lanes. He is not thinking\nof a millionaire like White, the victim of Thaw. If he speaks of the\nhopelessness of feeble-mindedness, he is thinking of some stunted\ncreature gaping at hopeless lessons in a poor school. He is not\nthinking of a millionaire like Thaw, the slayer of White. And this not\nbecause he is such a brute as to like people like White or Thaw any\nmore than we do, but because he knows that _his_ problem is the\ndegeneration of the useful classes; because he knows that White would\nnever have been a millionaire if all his workers had spent themselves\non women as White did, that Thaw would never have been a millionaire\nif all his servants had been Thaws. The ornaments may be allowed to\ndecay, but the machinery _must_ be mended. That is the second proof of\nthe plutocratic impulse behind all Eugenics: that no one thinks of\napplying it to the prominent classes. No one thinks of applying it\nwhere it could most easily be applied.\n\nA third proof is the strange new disposition to regard the poor as a\n_race_; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies. It can be\nmost clearly seen by comparing it with the old, more individual,\ncharitable, and (as the Eugenists might say) sentimental view of\npoverty. In Goldsmith or Dickens or Hood there is a basic idea that\nthe particular poor person ought not to be so poor: it is some\naccident or some wrong. Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim are fairy princes\nwaiting for their fairy godmother. They are held as slaves, but rather\nas the hero and heroine of a Spanish or Italian romance were held as\nslaves by the Moors. The modern poor are getting to be regarded as\nslaves in the separate and sweeping sense of the negroes in the\nplantations. The bondage of the white hero to the black master was\nregarded as abnormal; the bondage of the black to the white master as\nnormal. The Eugenist, for all I know, would regard the mere existence\nof Tiny Tim as a sufficient reason for massacring the whole family of\nCratchit; but, as a matter of fact, we have here a very good instance\nof how much more practically true to life is sentiment than cynicism.\nThe poor are _not_ a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk\nabout breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact,\nwhat Dickens describes: \"a dustbin of individual accidents,\" of\ndamaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility. The class very\nlargely consists of perfectly promising children, lost like Oliver\nTwist, or crippled like Tiny Tim. It contains very valuable things,\nlike most dustbins. But the Eugenist delusion of the barbaric breed in\nthe abyss affects even those more gracious philanthropists who almost\ncertainly do want to assist the destitute and not merely to exploit\nthem. It seems to affect not only their minds, but their very\neyesight. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Alec Tweedie almost scornfully\nasks, \"When we go through the slums, do we see beautiful children?\"\nThe answer is, \"Yes, very often indeed.\" I have seen children in the\nslums quite pretty enough to be Little Nell or the outcast whom Hood\ncalled \"young and so fair.\" Nor has the beauty anything necessarily to\ndo with health; there are beautiful healthy children, beautiful dying\nchildren, ugly dying children, ugly uproarious children in Petticoat\nLane or Park Lane. There are people of every physical and mental type,\nof every sort of health and breeding, in a single back street. They\nhave nothing in common but the wrong we do them.\n\nThe important point is, however, that there is more fact and realism\nin the wildest and most elegant old fictions about disinherited dukes\nand long-lost daughters than there is in this Eugenist attempt to make\nthe poor all of a piece--a sort of black fungoid growth that is\nceaselessly increasing in a chasm. There is a cheap sneer at poor\nlandladies: that they always say they have seen better days. Nine\ntimes out of ten they say it because it is true. What can be said of\nthe great mass of Englishmen, by anyone who knows any history, except\nthat they have seen better days? And the landlady's claim is not\nsnobbish, but rather spirited; it is her testimony to the truth in the\nold tales of which I spoke: that she _ought not_ to be so poor or so\nservile in status; that a normal person ought to have more property\nand more power in the State than _that_. Such dreams of lost dignity\nare perhaps the only things that stand between us and the\ncattle-breeding paradise now promised. Nor are such dreams by any\nmeans impotent. I remember Mr. T.P. O'Connor wrote an interesting\narticle about Madame Humbert, in the course of which he said that\nIrish peasants, and probably most peasants, tended to have a\nhalf-fictitious family legend about an estate to which they were\nentitled. This was written in the time when Irish peasants were\nlandless in their land; and the delusion doubtless seemed all the more\nentertaining to the landlords who ruled them and the money-lenders who\nruled the landlords. But the dream has conquered the realities. The\nphantom farms have materialised. Merely by tenaciously affirming the\nkind of pride that comes after a fall, by remembering the old\ncivilisation and refusing the new, by recurring to an old claim that\nseemed to most Englishmen like the lie of a broken-down lodging-house\nkeeper at Margate--by all this the Irish have got what they want, in\nsolid mud and turf. That imaginary estate has conquered the Three\nEstates of the Realm.\n\nBut the homeless Englishman must not even remember a home. So far from\nhis house being his castle, he must not have even a castle in the air.\nHe must have no memories; that is why he is taught no history. Why is\nhe told none of the truth about the mediaeval civilisation except a few\ncruelties and mistakes in chemistry? Why does a mediaeval burgher never\nappear till he can appear in a shirt and a halter? Why does a mediaeval\nmonastery never appear till it is \"corrupt\" enough to shock the\ninnocence of Henry VIII.? Why do we hear of one charter--that of the\nbarons--and not a word of the charters of the carpenters, smiths,\nshipwrights and all the rest? The reason is that the English peasant\nis not only not allowed to have an estate, he is not even allowed to\nhave lost one. The past has to be painted pitch black, that it may be\nworse than the present.\n\nThere is one strong, startling, outstanding thing about Eugenics, and\nthat is its meanness. Wealth, and the social science supported by\nwealth, had tried an inhuman experiment. The experiment had entirely\nfailed. They sought to make wealth accumulate--and they made men\ndecay. Then, instead of confessing the error, and trying to restore\nthe wealth, or attempting to repair the decay, they are trying to\ncover their first cruel experiment with a more cruel experiment. They\nput a poisonous plaster on a poisoned wound. Vilest of all, they\nactually quote the bewilderment produced among the poor by their first\nblunder as a reason for allowing them to blunder again. They are\napparently ready to arrest all the opponents of their system as mad,\nmerely because the system was maddening. Suppose a captain had\ncollected volunteers in a hot, waste country by the assurance that he\ncould lead them to water, and knew where to meet the rest of his\nregiment. Suppose he led them wrong, to a place where the regiment\ncould not be for days, and there was no water. And suppose sunstroke\nstruck them down on the sand man after man, and they kicked and danced\nand raved. And, when at last the regiment came, suppose the captain\nsuccessfully concealed his mistake, because all his men had suffered\ntoo much from it to testify to its ever having occurred. What would\nyou think of the gallant captain? It is pretty much what I think of\nthis particular captain of industry.\n\nOf course, nobody supposes that all Capitalists, or most Capitalists,\nare conscious of any such intellectual trick. Most of them are as much\nbewildered as the battered proletariat; but there are some who are\nless well-meaning and more mean. And these are leading their more\ngenerous colleagues towards the fulfilment of this ungenerous evasion,\nif not towards the comprehension of it. Now a ruler of the Capitalist\ncivilisation, who has come to consider the idea of ultimately herding\nand breeding the workers like cattle, has certain contemporary\nproblems to review. He has to consider what forces still exist in the\nmodern world for the frustration of his design. The first question is\nhow much remains of the old ideal of individual liberty. The second\nquestion is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarian\nideas as may be implied in Socialism. The third is whether there is\nany power of resistance in the tradition of the populace itself. These\nthree questions for the future I shall consider in their order in the\nfinal chapters that follow. It is enough to say here that I think the\nprogress of these ideals has broken down at the precise point where\nthey will fail to prevent the experiment. Briefly, the progress will\nhave deprived the Capitalist of his old Individualist scruples,\nwithout committing him to his new Collectivist obligations. He is in a\nvery perilous position; for he has ceased to be a Liberal without\nbecoming a Socialist, and the bridge by which he was crossing has\nbroken above an abyss of Anarchy.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY\n\n\nIf such a thing as the Eugenic sociology had been suggested in the\nperiod from Fox to Gladstone, it would have been far more fiercely\nrepudiated by the reformers than by the Conservatives. If Tories had\nregarded it as an insult to marriage, Radicals would have far more\nresolutely regarded it as an insult to citizenship. But in the\ninterval we have suffered from a process resembling a sort of mystical\nparricide, such as is told of so many gods, and is true of so many\ngreat ideas. Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has\ndestroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it\nunlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they\nwere only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it\nundefended. Men merely finding themselves free found themselves free\nto dispute the value of freedom. But the important point to seize\nabout this reactionary scepticism is that as it is bound to be\nunlimited in theory, so it is bound to be unlimited in practice. In\nother words, the modern mind is set in an attitude which would enable\nit to advance, not only towards Eugenic legislation, but towards any\nconceivable or inconceivable extravagances of Eugenics.\n\nThose who reply to any plea for freedom invariably fall into a certain\ntrap. I have debated with numberless different people on these\nmatters, and I confess I find it amusing to see them tumbling into it\none after another. I remember discussing it before a club of very\nactive and intelligent Suffragists, and I cast it here for convenience\nin the form which it there assumed. Suppose, for the sake of argument,\nthat I say that to take away a poor man's pot of beer is to take away\na poor man's personal liberty, it is very vital to note what is the\nusual or almost universal reply. People hardly ever do reply, for some\nreason or other, by saying that a man's liberty consists of such and\nsuch things, but that beer is an exception that cannot be classed\namong them, for such and such reasons. What they almost invariably do\nsay is something like this: \"After all, what is liberty? Man must live\nas a member of a society, and must obey those laws which, etc., etc.\"\nIn other words, they collapse into a complete confession that they\n_are_ attacking all liberty and any liberty; that they _do_ deny the\nvery existence or the very possibility of liberty. In the very form of\nthe answer they admit the full scope of the accusation against them.\nIn trying to rebut the smaller accusation, they plead guilty to the\nlarger one.\n\nThis distinction is very important, as can be seen from any practical\nparallel. Suppose we wake up in the middle of the night and find that\na neighbour has entered the house not by the front-door but by the\nskylight; we may suspect that he has come after the fine old family\njewellery. We may be reassured if he can refer it to a really\nexceptional event; as that he fell on to the roof out of an aeroplane,\nor climbed on to the roof to escape from a mad dog. Short of the\nincredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for an\nextraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shall\nhardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistful\nfashion and says, \"After all, what is property? Why should material\nobjects be thus artificially attached, etc., etc.?\" We shall merely\nrealise that his attitude allows of his taking the jewellery and\neverything else. Or if the neighbour approaches us carrying a large\nknife dripping with blood, we may be convinced by his story that he\nkilled another neighbour in self-defence, that the quiet gentleman\nnext door was really a homicidal maniac. We shall know that homicidal\nmania is exceptional and that we ourselves are so happy as not to\nsuffer from it; and being free from the disease may be free from the\ndanger. But it will not soothe us for the man with the gory knife to\nsay softly and pensively \"After all, what is human life? Why should we\ncling to it? Brief at the best, sad at the brightest, it is itself but\na disease from which, etc., etc.\" We shall perceive that the sceptic\nis in a mood not only to murder us but to massacre everybody in the\nstreet. Exactly the same effect which would be produced by the\nquestions of \"What is property?\" and \"What is life?\" is produced by\nthe question of \"What is liberty?\" It leaves the questioner free to\ndisregard any liberty, or in other words to take any liberties. The\nvery thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he may\nchoose to do. If he gags a man to prevent him from indulging in\nprofane swearing, or locks him in the coal cellar to guard against his\ngoing on the spree, he can still be satisfied with saying, \"After all,\nwhat is liberty? Man is a member of, etc., etc.\"\n\nThat is the problem, and that is why there is now no protection\nagainst Eugenic or any other experiments. If the men who took away\nbeer as an unlawful pleasure had paused for a moment to define the\nlawful pleasures, there might be a different situation. If the men who\nhad denied one liberty had taken the opportunity to affirm other\nliberties, there might be some defence for them. But it never occurs\nto them to admit any liberties at all. It never so much as crosses\ntheir minds. Hence the excuse for the last oppression will always\nserve as well for the next oppression; and to that tyranny there can\nbe no end.\n\nHence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secret\nand sacred places of personal freedom, where no sane man ever dreamed\nof seeing it; and especially the sanctuary of sex. It is as easy to\ntake away a man's wife or baby as to take away his beer when you can\nsay \"What is liberty?\"; just as it is as easy to cut off his head as\nto cut off his hair if you are free to say \"What is life?\" There is no\nrational philosophy of human rights generally disseminated among the\npopulace, to which we can appeal in defence even of the most intimate\nor individual things that anybody can imagine. For so far as there was\na vague principle in these things, that principle has been wholly\nchanged. It used to be said that a man could have liberty, so long as\nit did not interfere with the liberty of others. This did afford some\nrough justification for the ordinary legal view of the man with the\npot of beer. For instance, it was logical to allow some degree of\ndistinction between beer and tea, on the ground that a man may be\nmoved by excess of beer to throw the pot at somebody's head. And it\nmay be said that the spinster is seldom moved by excess of tea to\nthrow the tea-pot at anybody's head. But the whole ground of argument\nis now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to\nothers by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking\nthe beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that the\nGovernment must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment\nthat is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between\nbeer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with\ntobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the\nhygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is\nto control the health of the community, he must necessarily control\nall the habits of all the citizens, and among the rest their habits in\nthe matter of sex.\n\nBut there is more than this. It is not only true that it is the last\nliberties of man that are being taken away; and not merely his first\nor most superficial liberties. It is also inevitable that the last\nliberties should be taken first. It is inevitable that the most\nprivate matters should be most under public coercion. This inverse\nvariation is very important, though very little realised. If a man's\npersonal health is a public concern, his most private acts are _more_\npublic than his most public acts. The official must deal _more_\ndirectly with his cleaning his teeth in the morning than with his\nusing his tongue in the market-place. The inspector must interfere\n_more_ with how he sleeps in the middle of the night than with how he\nworks in the course of the day. The private citizen must have much\n_less_ to say about his bath or his bedroom window than about his vote\nor his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a private\ndetective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in public\naffairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he should\nsneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All this\nand things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that the\nState must make itself responsible for the health of the citizen. But\nthe point is that the policeman must deal primarily and promptly with\nthe citizen in his relation to his home, and only indirectly and more\ndoubtfully with the citizen in his relation to his city. By the whole\nlogic of this test, the king must hear what is said in the inner\nchamber and hardly notice what is proclaimed from the house-tops. We\nhave heard of a revolution that turns everything upside down. But\nthis is almost literally a revolution that turns everything inside\nout.\n\nIf a wary reactionary of the tradition of Metternich had wished in the\nnineteenth century to reverse the democratic tendency, he would\nnaturally have begun by depriving the democracy of its margin of more\ndubious powers over more distant things. He might well begin, for\ninstance, by removing the control of foreign affairs from popular\nassemblies; and there is a case for saying that a people may\nunderstand its own affairs, without knowing anything whatever about\nforeign affairs. Then he might centralise great national questions,\nleaving a great deal of local government in local questions. This\nwould proceed so for a long time before it occurred to the blackest\nterrorist of the despotic ages to interfere with a man's own habits in\nhis own house. But the new sociologists and legislators are, by the\nnature of their theory, bound to begin where the despots leave off,\neven if they leave off where the despots begin. For them, as they\nwould put it, the first things must be the very fountains of life,\nlove and birth and babyhood; and these are always covered fountains,\nflowing in the quiet courts of the home. For them, as Mr. H.G. Wells\nput it, life itself may be regarded merely as a tissue of births. Thus\nthey are coerced by their own rational principle to begin all coercion\nat the other end; at the inside end. What happens to the outside end,\nthe external and remote powers of the citizen, they do not very much\ncare; and it is probable that the democratic institutions of recent\ncenturies will be allowed to decay in undisturbed dignity for a\ncentury or two more. Thus our civilisation will find itself in an\ninteresting situation, not without humour; in which the citizen is\nstill supposed to wield imperial powers over the ends of the earth,\nbut has admittedly no power over his own body and soul at all. He will\nstill be consulted by politicians about whether opium is good for\nChina-men, but not about whether ale is good for him. He will be\ncross-examined for his opinions about the danger of allowing Kamskatka\nto have a war-fleet, but not about allowing his own child to have a\nwooden sword. About all, he will be consulted about the delicate\ndiplomatic crisis created by the proposed marriage of the Emperor of\nChina, and not allowed to marry as he pleases.\n\nPart of this prophecy or probability has already been accomplished;\nthe rest of it, in the absence of any protest, is in process of\naccomplishment. It would be easy to give an almost endless catalogue\nof examples, to show how, in dealing with the poorer classes at least,\ncoercion has already come near to a direct control of the relations of\nthe sexes. But I am much more concerned in this chapter to point out\nthat all these things have been adopted in principle, even where they\nhave not been adopted in practice. It is much more vital to realise\nthat the reformers have possessed themselves of a _principle_, which\nwill cover all such things if it be granted, and which is not\nsufficiently comprehended to be contradicted. It is a principle\nwhereby the deepest things of flesh and spirit must have the most\ndirect relation with the dictatorship of the State. They must have it,\nby the whole reason and rationale upon which the thing depends. It is\na system that might be symbolised by the telephone from headquarters\nstanding by a man's bed. He must have a relation to Government like\nhis relation to God. That is, the more he goes into the inner\nchambers, and the more he closes the doors, the more he is alone with\nthe law. The social machinery which makes such a State uniform and\nsubmissive will be worked outwards from the household as from a\nhandle, or a single mechanical knob or button. In a horrible sense,\nloaded with fear and shame and every detail of dishonour, it will be\ntrue to say that charity begins at home.\n\nCharity will begin at home in the sense that all home children will be\nlike charity children. Philanthropy will begin at home, for all\nhouseholders will be like paupers. Police administration will begin at\nhome, for all citizens will be like convicts. And when health and the\nhumours of daily life have passed into the domain of this social\ndiscipline, when it is admitted that the community must primarily\ncontrol the primary habits, when all law begins, so to speak, next to\nthe skin or nearest the vitals--then indeed it will appear absurd that\nmarriage and maternity should not be similarly ordered. Then indeed it\nwill seem to be illogical, and it will be illogical, that love should\nbe free when life has lost its freedom.\n\nSo passed, to all appearance, from the minds of men the strange dream\nand fantasy called freedom. Whatever be the future of these\nevolutionary experiments and their effect on civilisation, there is\none land at least that has something to mourn. For us in England\nsomething will have perished which our fathers valued all the more\nbecause they hardly troubled to name it; and whatever be the stars of\na more universal destiny, the great star of our night has set. The\nEnglish had missed many other things that men of the same origins had\nachieved or retained. Not to them was given, like the French, to\nestablish eternal communes and clear codes of equality; not to them,\nlike the South Germans, to keep the popular culture of their songs;\nnot to them, like the Irish, was it given to die daily for a great\nreligion. But a spirit had been with them from the first which fenced,\nwith a hundred quaint customs and legal fictions, the way of a man who\nwished to walk nameless and alone. It was not for nothing that they\nforgot all their laws to remember the name of an outlaw, and filled\nthe green heart of England with the figure of Robin Hood. It was not\nfor nothing that even their princes of art and letters had about them\nsomething of kings incognito, undiscovered by formal or academic fame;\nso that no eye can follow the young Shakespeare as he came up the\ngreen lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost\nhimself among the lights of London. It is not for nothing that the\nvery roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down on\na map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the\nhome of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested\nupon its wood-lands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed\ndeparted, it matters little that it has been driven out by perversions\nit had itself permitted, by monsters it had idly let loose.\nIndustrialism and Capitalism and the rage for physical science were\nEnglish experiments in the sense that the English lent themselves to\ntheir encouragement; but there was something else behind them and\nwithin them that was not they--its name was liberty, and it was our\nlife. It may be that this delicate and tenacious spirit has at last\nevaporated. If so, it matters little what becomes of the external\nexperiments of our nation in later time. That at which we look will be\na dead thing alive with its own parasites. The English will have\ndestroyed England.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM\n\n\nSocialism is one of the simplest ideas in the world. It has always\npuzzled me how there came to be so much bewilderment and\nmisunderstanding and miserable mutual slander about it. At one time I\nagreed with Socialism, because it was simple. Now I disagree with\nSocialism, because it is too simple. Yet most of its opponents still\nseem to treat it, not merely as an iniquity but as a mystery of\niniquity, which seems to mystify them even more than it maddens them.\nIt may not seem strange that its antagonists should be puzzled about\nwhat it is. It may appear more curious and interesting that its\nadmirers are equally puzzled. Its foes used to denounce Socialism as\nAnarchy, which is its opposite. Its friends seemed to suppose that it\nis a sort of optimism, which is almost as much of an opposite. Friends\nand foes alike talked as if it involved a sort of faith in ideal human\nnature; why I could never imagine. The Socialist system, in a more\nspecial sense than any other, is founded not on optimism but on\noriginal sin. It proposes that the State, as the conscience of the\ncommunity, should possess all primary forms of property; and that\nobviously on the ground that men cannot be trusted to own or barter\nor combine or compete without injury to themselves. Just as a State\nmight own all the guns lest people should shoot each other, so this\nState would own all the gold and land lest they should cheat or\nrackrent or exploit each other. It seems extraordinarily simple and\neven obvious; and so it is. It is too obvious to be true. But while it\nis obvious, it seems almost incredible that anybody ever thought it\noptimistic.\n\nI am myself primarily opposed to Socialism, or Collectivism or\nBolshevism or whatever we call it, for a primary reason not\nimmediately involved here: the ideal of property. I say the ideal and\nnot merely the idea; and this alone disposes of the moral mistake in\nthe matter. It disposes of all the dreary doubts of the\nAnti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yet\ndrearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I do\nnot admit that private property is a concession to baseness and\nselfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the most\ntruly popular of all points of honour. But this, though it has\neverything to do with my plea for a domestic dignity, has nothing to\ndo with this passing summary of the situation of Socialism. I only\nremark in passing that it is vain for the more vulgar sort of\nCapitalist, sneering at ideals, to say to me that in order to have\nSocialism \"You must alter human nature.\" I answer \"Yes. You must alter\nit for the worse.\"\n\nThe clouds were considerably cleared away from the meaning of\nSocialism by the Fabians of the 'nineties; by Mr. Bernard Shaw, a\nsort of anti-romantic Quixote, who charged chivalry as chivalry\ncharged windmills, with Sidney Webb for his Sancho Panza. In so far as\nthese paladins had a castle to defend, we may say that their castle\nwas the Post Office. The red pillar-box was the immovable post against\nwhich the irresistible force of Capitalist individualism was arrested.\nBusiness men who said that nothing could be managed by the State were\nforced to admit that they trusted all their business letters and\nbusiness telegrams to the State.\n\nAfter all, it was not found necessary to have an office competing with\nanother office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or more\npicturesque postmen. It was not necessary to efficiency that the\npostmistress should buy a penny stamp for a halfpenny and sell it for\ntwopence; or that she should haggle and beat customers down about the\nprice of a postal order; or that she should always take tenders for\ntelegrams. There was obviously nothing actually impossible about the\nState management of national needs; and the Post Office was at least\ntolerably managed. Though it was not always a model employer, by any\nmeans, it might be made so by similar methods. It was not impossible\nthat equitable pay, and even equal pay, could be given to the\nPostmaster-General and the postman. We had only to extend this rule of\npublic responsibility, and we should escape from all the terror of\ninsecurity and torture of compassion, which hag-rides humanity in the\ninsane extremes of economic inequality and injustice. As Mr. Shaw put\nit, \"A man must save Society's honour before he can save his own.\"\n\nThat was one side of the argument: that the change would remove\ninequality; and there was an answer on the other side. It can be\nstated most truly by putting another model institution and edifice\nside by side with the Post Office. It is even more of an ideal\nrepublic, or commonwealth without competition or private profit. It\nsupplies its citizens not only with the stamps but with clothes and\nfood and lodging, and all they require. It observes considerable level\nof equality in these things; notably in the clothes. It not only\nsupervises the letters but all the other human communications; notably\nthe sort of evil communications that corrupt good manners. This twin\nmodel to the Post Office is called the Prison. And much of the scheme\nfor a model State was regarded by its opponents as a scheme for a\nmodel prison; good because it fed men equally, but less acceptable\nsince it imprisoned them equally.\n\nIt is better to be in a bad prison than in a good one. From the\nstandpoint of the prisoner this is not at all a paradox; if only\nbecause in a bad prison he is more likely to escape. But apart from\nthat, a man was in many ways better off in the old dirty and corrupt\nprison, where he could bribe turnkeys to bring him drink and meet\nfellow-prisoners to drink with. Now that is exactly the difference\nbetween the present system and the proposed system. Nobody worth\ntalking about respects the present system. Capitalism is a corrupt\nprison. That is the best that can be said for Capitalism. But it is\nsomething to be said for it; for a man is a little freer in that\ncorrupt prison than he would be in a complete prison. As a man can\nfind one jailer more lax than another, so he could find one employer\nmore kind than another; he has at least a choice of tyrants. In the\nother case he finds the same tyrant at every turn. Mr. Shaw and other\nrational Socialists have agreed that the State would be in practice\ngovernment by a small group. Any independent man who disliked that\ngroup would find his foe waiting for him at the end of every road.\n\nIt may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends\nrecommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as\ndecreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State could\nprovide homes and meals for all; on the other it was answered that\nthis could only be done by State officials who would inspect houses\nand regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the most\ninteresting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do\neverything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that\nhad ever been desired in it. Since it was supposed to gain equality at\nthe sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possible\nto sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed, there was not\nthe faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality.\nBut there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminate\nliberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and\ninterferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating those\nwhom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was the\nCapitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted in\nevery sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to the\nwiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easy to proceed more\npromptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gone\nthrough the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. After\nall, it was easy to inspect the house without having helped to build\nit; it was even possible, with luck, to inspect the house in time to\nprevent it being built. All that is described in the documents of the\nHousing Problem; for the people of this age loved problems and hated\nsolutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing the\ndinner. All that can be found in the documents of what is called\nTemperance Reform.\n\nIn short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the\ngood of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the\nbad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists\nthemselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over\nbodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic\ntyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a\nCapitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in the\nsmallest degree diminish the inequalities of a Capitalist State. It\nsimply destroyed such individual liberties as remained among its\nvictims. It did not enable any man to build a better house; it only\nlimited the houses he might live in--or how he might manage to live\nthere; forbidding him to keep pigs or poultry or to sell beer or\ncider. It did not even add anything to a man's wages; it only took\naway something from a man's wages and locked it up, whether he liked\nit or not, in a sort of money-box which was regarded as a\nmedicine-chest. It does not send food into the house to feed the\nchildren; it only sends an inspector into the house to punish the\nparents for having no food to feed them. It does not see that they\nhave got a fire; it only punishes them for not having a fireguard. It\ndoes not even occur to it to provide the fireguard.\n\nNow this anomalous situation will probably ultimately evolve into the\nServile State of Mr. Belloc's thesis. The poor will sink into slavery;\nit might as correctly be said that the poor will rise into slavery.\nThat is to say, sooner or later, it is very probable that the rich\nwill take over the philanthropic as well as the tyrannic side of the\nbargain; and will feed men like slaves as well as hunting them like\noutlaws. But for the purpose of my own argument it is not necessary to\ncarry the process so far as this, or indeed any farther than it has\nalready gone. The purely negative stage of interference, at which we\nhave stuck for the present, is in itself quite favourable to all these\neugenical experiments. The capitalist whose half-conscious thought and\ncourse of action I have simplified into a story in the preceding\nchapters, finds this insufficient solution quite sufficient for his\npurposes. What he has felt for a long time is that he must check or\nimprove the reckless and random breeding of the submerged race, which\nis at once outstripping his requirements and failing to fulfil his\nneeds. Now the anomalous situation has already accustomed him to\nstopping things. The first interferences with sex need only be\nnegative; and there are already negative interferences without number.\nSo that the study of this stage of Socialism brings us to the same\nconclusion as that of the ideal of liberty as formally professed by\nLiberalism. The ideal of liberty is lost, and the ideal of Socialism\nis changed, till it is a mere excuse for the oppression of the poor.\n\nThe first movements for intervention in the deepest domestic concerns\nof the poor all had this note of negative interference. Official\npapers were sent round to the mothers in poor streets; papers in which\na total stranger asked these respectable women questions which a man\nwould be killed for asking, in the class of what were called gentlemen\nor in the countries of what were called free men. They were questions\nsupposed to refer to the conditions of maternity; but the point is\nhere that the reformers did not begin by building up those economic or\nmaterial conditions. They did not attempt to pay money or establish\nproperty to create those conditions. They never give anything--except\norders. Another form of the intervention, and one already mentioned,\nis the kidnapping of children upon the most fantastic excuses of sham\npsychology. Some people established an apparatus of tests and trick\nquestions; which might make an amusing game of riddles for the family\nfireside, but seems an insufficient reason for mutilating and\ndismembering the family. Others became interested in the hopeless\nmoral condition of children born in the economic condition which they\ndid not attempt to improve. They were great on the fact that crime was\na disease; and carried on their criminological studies so successfully\nas to open the reformatory for little boys who played truant; there\nwas no reformatory for reformers. I need not pause to explain that\ncrime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.\n\nFinally one thing may be added which is at least clear. Whether or no\nthe organisation of industry will issue positively in a eugenical\nreconstruction of the family, it has already issued negatively, as in\nthe negations already noted, in a partial destruction of it. It took\nthe form of a propaganda of popular divorce, calculated at least to\naccustom the masses to a new notion of the shifting and re-grouping of\nfamilies. I do not discuss the question of divorce here, as I have\ndone elsewhere, in its intrinsic character; I merely note it as one of\nthese negative reforms which have been substituted for positive\neconomic equality. It was preached with a weird hilarity, as if the\nsuicide of love were something not only humane but happy. But it need\nnot be explained, and certainly it need not be denied, that the\nharassed poor of a diseased industrialism were indeed maintaining\nmarriage under every disadvantage, and often found individual relief\nin divorce. Industrialism does produce many unhappy marriages, for the\nsame reason that it produces so many unhappy men. But all the reforms\nwere directed to rescuing the industrialism rather than the happiness.\nPoor couples were to be divorced because they were already divided.\nThrough all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of\nsacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with\nthe modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest\npromptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and\ngathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled about\nthe chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts were\ninstantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to pour away\nthe wine.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GODS\n\n\nThe only place where it is possible to find an echo of the mind of the\nEnglish masses is either in conversation or in comic songs. The latter\nare obviously the more dubious; but they are the only things recorded\nand quotable that come anywhere near it. We talk about the popular\nPress; but in truth there is no popular Press. It may be a good thing;\nbut, anyhow, most readers would be mildly surprised if a newspaper\nleading article were written in the language of a navvy. Sometimes the\nPress is interested in things in which the democracy is also genuinely\ninterested; such as horse-racing. Sometimes the Press is about as\npopular as the Press Gang. We talk of Labour leaders in Parliament;\nbut they would be highly unparliamentary if they talked like\nlabourers. The Bolshevists, I believe, profess to promote something\nthat they call \"proletarian art,\" which only shows that the word\nBolshevism can sometimes be abbreviated into bosh. That sort of\nBolshevist is not a proletarian, but rather the very thing he accuses\neverybody else of being. The Bolshevist is above all a bourgeois; a\nJewish intellectual of the town. And the real case against industrial\nintellectualism could hardly be put better than in this very\ncomparison. There has never been such a thing as proletarian art; but\nthere has emphatically been such a thing as peasant art. And the only\nliterature which even reminds us of the real tone and talk of the\nEnglish working classes is to be found in the comic song of the\nEnglish music-hall.\n\nI first heard one of them on my voyage to America, in the midst of the\nsea within sight of the New World, with the Statue of Liberty\nbeginning to loom up on the horizon. From the lips of a young Scotch\nengineer, of all people in the world, I heard for the first time these\nimmortal words from a London music-hall song:--\n\n    \"Father's got the sack from the water-works\n      For smoking of his old cherry-briar;\n    Father's got the sack from the water-works\n      'Cos he might set the water-works on fire.\"\n\nAs I told my friends in America, I think it no part of a patriot to\nboast; and boasting itself is certainly not a thing to boast of. I\ndoubt the persuasive power of English as exemplified in Kipling, and\none can easily force it on foreigners too much, even as exemplified in\nDickens. I am no Imperialist, and only on rare and proper occasions a\nJingo. But when I hear those words about Father and the water-works,\nwhen I hear under far-off foreign skies anything so gloriously English\nas that, then indeed (I said to them), then indeed:--\n\n    \"I thank the goodness and the grace\n      That on my birth have smiled,\n    And made me, as you see me here,\n      A little English child.\"\n\nBut that noble stanza about the water-works has other elements of\nnobility besides nationality. It provides a compact and almost perfect\nsummary of the whole social problem in industrial countries like\nEngland and America. If I wished to set forth systematically the\nelements of the ethical and economic problem in Pittsburg or\nSheffield, I could not do better than take these few words as a text,\nand divide them up like the heads of a sermon. Let me note the points\nin some rough fashion here.\n\n1.--_Father._ This word is still in use among the more ignorant and\nill-paid of the industrial community; and is the badge of an old\nconvention or unit called the family. A man and woman having vowed to\nbe faithful to each other, the man makes himself responsible for all\nthe children of the woman, and is thus generically called \"Father.\" It\nmust not be supposed that the poet or singer is necessarily one of the\nchildren. It may be the wife, called by the same ritual \"Mother.\" Poor\nEnglish wives say \"Father\" as poor Irish wives say \"Himself,\" meaning\nthe titular head of the house. The point to seize is that among the\nignorant this convention or custom still exists. Father and the family\nare the foundations of thought; the natural authority still comes\nnatural to the poet; but it is overlaid and thwarted with more\nartificial authorities; the official, the schoolmaster, the\npoliceman, the employer, and so on. What these forces fighting the\nfamily are we shall see, my dear brethren, when we pass to our second\nheading; which is:--\n\n2.--_Got the Sack._ This idiom marks a later stage of the history of\nthe language than the comparatively primitive word \"Father.\" It is\nneedless to discuss whether the term comes from Turkey or some other\nservile society. In America they say that Father has been fired. But\nit involves the whole of the unique economic system under which Father\nhas now to live. Though assumed by family tradition to be a master, he\ncan now, by industrial tradition, only be a particular kind of\nservant; a servant who has not the security of a slave. If he owned\nhis own shop and tools, he could not get the sack. If his master owned\nhim, he could not get the sack. The slave and the guildsman know where\nthey will sleep every night; it was only the proletarian of\nindividualist industrialism who could get the sack, if not in the\nstyle of the Bosphorus, at least in the sense of the Embankment. We\npass to the third heading.\n\n3.--_From the Water-works._ This detail of Father's life is very\nimportant; for this is the reply to most of the Socialists, as the\nlast section is to so many of the Capitalists. The water-works which\nemployed Father is a very large, official and impersonal institution.\nWhether it is technically a bureaucratic department or a big business\nmakes little or no change in the feelings of Father in connection with\nit. The water-works might or might not be nationalised; and it would\nmake no necessary difference to Father being fired, and no difference\nat all to his being accused of playing with fire. In fact, if the\nCapitalists are more likely to give him the sack, the Socialists are\neven more likely to forbid him the smoke. There is no freedom for\nFather except in some sort of private ownership of things like water\nand fire. If he owned his own well his water could never be cut off,\nand while he sits by his own fire his pipe can never be put out. That\nis the real meaning of property, and the real argument against\nSocialism; probably the only argument against Socialism.\n\n4.--_For Smoking._ Nothing marks this queer intermediate phase of\nindustrialism more strangely than the fact that, while employers still\nclaim the right to sack him like a stranger, they are already\nbeginning to claim the right to supervise him like a son. Economically\nhe can go and starve on the Embankment; but ethically and hygienically\nhe must be controlled and coddled in the nursery. Government\nrepudiates all responsibility for seeing that he gets bread. But it\nanxiously accepts all responsibility for seeing that he does not get\nbeer. It passes an Insurance Act to force him to provide himself with\nmedicine; but it is avowedly indifferent to whether he is able to\nprovide himself with meals. Thus while the sack is inconsistent with\nthe family, the supervision is really inconsistent with the sack. The\nwhole thing is a tangled chain of contradictions. It is true that in\nthe special and sacred text of scripture we are here considering, the\nsmoking is forbidden on a general and public and not on a medicinal\nand private ground. But it is none the less relevant to remember that,\nas his masters have already proved that alcohol is a poison, they may\nsoon prove that nicotine is a poison. And it is most significant of\nall that this sort of danger is even greater in what is called the new\ndemocracy of America than in what is called the old oligarchy of\nEngland. When I was in America, people were already \"defending\"\ntobacco. People who defend tobacco are on the road to proving that\ndaylight is defensible, or that it is not really sinful to sneeze. In\nother words, they are quietly going mad.\n\n5.--_Of his old Cherry-briar._ Here we have the intermediate and\nanomalous position of the institution of Property. The sentiment still\nexists, even among the poor, or perhaps especially among the poor. But\nit is attached to toys rather than tools; to the minor products rather\nthan to the means of production. But something of the sanity of\nownership is still to be observed; for instance, the element of custom\nand continuity. It was an _old_ cherry-briar; systematically smoked by\nFather in spite of all wiles and temptations to Woodbines and gaspers;\nan old companion possibly connected with various romantic or diverting\nevents in Father's life. It is perhaps a relic as well as a trinket.\nBut because it is not a true tool, because it gives the man no grip on\nthe creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of his\nself-respect, at the mercy of the thing called the sack. When he gets\nthe sack from the water-works, it is only too probable that he will\nhave to pawn his old cherry-briar.\n\n6.--_'Cos he might set the water-works on fire._ And that single line,\nlike the lovely single lines of the great poets, is so full, so final,\nso perfect a picture of all the laws we pass and all the reasons we\ngive for them, so exact an analysis of the logic of all our\nprecautions at the present time, that the pen falls even from the\nhands of the commentator; and the masterpiece is left to speak for\nitself.\n\nSome such analysis as the above gives a better account than most of\nthe anomalous attitude and situation of the English proletarian\nto-day. It is the more appropriate because it is expressed in the\nwords he actually uses; which certainly do not include the word\n\"proletarian.\" It will be noted that everything that goes to make up\nthat complexity is in an unfinished state. Property has not quite\nvanished; slavery has not quite arrived; marriage exists under\ndifficulties; social regimentation exists under restraints, or rather\nunder subterfuges. The question which remains is which force is\ngaining on the other, and whether the old forces are capable of\nresisting the new. I hope they are; but I recognise that they resist\nunder more than one heavy handicap. The chief of these is that the\nfamily feeling of the workmen is by this time rather an instinct than\nan ideal. The obvious thing to protect an ideal is a religion. The\nobvious thing to protect the ideal of marriage is the Christian\nreligion. And for various reasons, which only a history of England\ncould explain (though it hardly ever does), the working classes of\nthis country have been very much cut off from Christianity. I do not\ndream of denying, indeed I should take every opportunity of affirming,\nthat monogamy and its domestic responsibilities can be defended on\nrational apart from religious grounds. But a religion is the practical\nprotection of any moral idea which has to be popular and which has to\nbe pugnacious. And our ideal, if it is to survive, will have to be\nboth.\n\nThose who make merry over the landlady who has seen better days, of\nwhom something has been said already, commonly speak, in the same\njovial journalese, about her household goods as her household gods.\nThey would be much startled if they discovered how right they are.\nExactly what is lacking to the modern materialist is something that\ncan be what the household gods were to the ancient heathen. The\nhousehold gods of the heathen were not only wood and stone; at least\nthere is always more than that in the stone of the hearth-stone and\nthe wood of the roof-tree. So long as Christianity continued the\ntradition of patron saints and portable relics, this idea of a\nblessing on the household could continue. If men had not domestic\ndivinities, at least they had divine domesticities. When Christianity\nwas chilled with Puritanism and rationalism, this inner warmth or\nsecret fire in the house faded on the hearth. But some of the embers\nstill glow or at least glimmer; and there is still a memory among the\npoor that their material possessions are something sacred. I know poor\nmen for whom it is the romance of their lives to refuse big sums of\nmoney for an old copper warming-pan. They do not want it, in any sense\nof base utility. They do not use it as a warming-pan; but it warms\nthem for all that. It is indeed, as Sergeant Buzfuz humorously\nobserved, a cover for hidden fire. And the fire is that which burned\nbefore the strange and uncouth wooden gods, like giant dolls, in the\nhuts of ancient Italy. It is a household god. And I can imagine some\nsuch neglected and unlucky English man dying with his eyes on the red\ngleam of that piece of copper, as happier men have died with their\neyes on the golden gleam of a chalice or a cross.\n\nIt will thus be noted that there has always been some connection\nbetween a mystical belief and the materials of domesticity; that they\ngenerally go together; and that now, in a more mournful sense, they\nare gone together. The working classes have no reserves of property\nwith which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religion\nwith which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they are\nunder the enormous disadvantage of being right without knowing it.\nThey hold their sound principles as if they were sullen prejudices.\nThey almost secrete their small property as if it were stolen\nproperty. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks to\nher husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolved\nto run away from her husband. Often she will cry as hopelessly, and\nas it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were a\nchild deprived of her doll. Indeed, a child in the street, crying for\nher lost doll, would probably receive more sympathy than she does.\n\nMeanwhile the fun goes on; and many such conflicts are recorded, even\nin the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking\nphilanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any\nnumber of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be\nflippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather\nfierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I\nknow that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives of\nsincere but confused compassion, and many more from a dull but not\ndishonourable medical or legal habit. But if I and those who agree\nwith me tend to some harshness and abruptness of condemnation, these\nworthy people need not be altogether impatient with our impatience. It\nis surely beneath them, in the scope of their great schemes, to\ncomplain of protests so ineffectual about wrongs so individual. I have\nconsidered in this chapter the chances of general democratic defence\nof domestic honour, and have been compelled to the conclusion that\nthey are not at present hopeful; and it is at least clear that we\ncannot be founding on them any personal hopes. If this conclusion\nleaves us defeated, we submit that it leaves us disinterested. Ours is\nnot the sort of protest, at least, that promises anything even to the\ndemagogue, let alone the sycophant. Those we serve will never rule,\nand those we pity will never rise. Parliament will never be surrounded\nby a mob of submerged grandmothers brandishing pawn-tickets. There is\nno trade union of defective children. It is not very probable that\nmodern government will be overturned by a few poor dingy devils who\nare sent to prison by mistake, or rather by ordinary accident. Surely\nit is not for those magnificent Socialists, or those great reformers\nand reconstructors of Capitalism, sweeping onward to their scientific\ntriumphs and caring for none of these things, to murmur at our vain\nindignation. At least if it is vain it is the less venal; and in so\nfar as it is hopeless it is also thankless. They have their great\ncampaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions,\nand the records of science and progress. They need not be angry with\nus, who plead for those who will never read our words or reward our\neffort, even with gratitude. They need surely have no worse mood\ntowards us than mystification, seeing that in recalling these small\nthings of broken hearts or homes, we are but recording what cannot be\nrecorded; trivial tragedies that will fade faster and faster in the\nflux of time, cries that fail in a furious and infinite wind, wild\nwords of despair that are written only upon running water; unless,\nindeed, as some so stubbornly and strangely say, they are somewhere\ncut deep into a rock, in the red granite of the wrath of God.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nA SHORT CHAPTER\n\n\nRound about the year 1913 Eugenics was turned from a fad to a fashion.\nThen, if I may so summarise the situation, the joke began in earnest.\nThe organising mind which we have seen considering the problem of slum\npopulation, the popular material and the possibility of protests, felt\nthat the time had come to open the campaign. Eugenics began to appear\nin big headlines in the daily Press, and big pictures in the\nillustrated papers. A foreign gentleman named Bolce, living at\nHampstead, was advertised on a huge scale as having every intention of\nbeing the father of the Superman. It turned out to be a Superwoman,\nand was called Eugenette. The parents were described as devoting\nthemselves to the production of perfect pre-natal conditions. They\n\"eliminated everything from their lives which did not tend towards\ncomplete happiness.\" Many might indeed be ready to do this; but in the\nvoluminous contemporary journalism on the subject I can find no\ndetailed notes about how it is done. Communications were opened with\nMr. H.G. Wells, with Dr. Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. Karl\nPearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefully\ncultivated in the parents. The problem of a sense of humour was felt\nto be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturally\nfearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientific\nas to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, they\nvisited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards George\nRobey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper reader,\nhowever, it looked as if the names of Metchnikoff and Steinmetz and\nKarl Pearson would soon be quite as familiar as those of Robey and\nLauder and Bard. Arguments about these Eugenic authorities, reports of\nthe controversies at the Eugenic Congress, filled countless columns.\nThe fact that Mr. Bolce, the creator of perfect pre-natal conditions,\nwas afterwards sued in a law-court for keeping his own flat in\nconditions of filth and neglect, cast but a slight and momentary\nshadow upon the splendid dawn of the science. It would be vain to\nrecord any of the thousand testimonies to its triumph. In the nature\nof things, this should be the longest chapter in the book, or rather\nthe beginning of another book. It should record, in numberless\nexamples, the triumphant popularisation of Eugenics in England. But as\na matter of fact this is not the first chapter but the last. And this\nmust be a very short chapter, because the whole of this story was cut\nshort. A very curious thing happened. England went to war.\n\nThis would in itself have been a sufficiently irritating interruption\nin the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment of\nEugenics. But a far more dreadful and disconcerting fact must be\nnoted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to war\nwith the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that very\nland of scientific culture from which the very ideal of a Superman had\ncome. She went to war with the whole of Dr. Steinmetz, and presumably\nwith at least half of Dr. Karl Pearson. She gave battle to the\nbirthplace of nine-tenths of the professors who were the prophets of\nthe new hope of humanity. In a few weeks the very name of a professor\nwas a matter for hissing and low plebeian mirth. The very name of\nNietzsche, who had held up this hope of something superhuman to\nhumanity, was laughed at for all the world as if he had been touched\nwith lunacy. A new mood came upon the whole people; a mood of\nmarching, of spontaneous soldierly vigilance and democratic\ndiscipline, moving to the faint tune of bugles far away. Men began to\ntalk strangely of old and common things, of the counties of England,\nof its quiet landscapes, of motherhood and the half-buried religion of\nthe race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making all\nthings vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awful\nactuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and the\nEugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one may\nsay so, funny.\n\nSuch a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given.\nThere was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfection\nthan any other the type of order and foresight that are the subject\nof this book. It had long been the model State of all those more\nrational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation of\nsociety. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform.\nAll the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudly\nborrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found it\nconvenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring and\nneutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had a\nprivilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had the\ngratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scale\nand very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionary\nidealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams;\nor to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to wait\nfor it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; but\nin the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silent\nfor five years.\n\nThe thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. It\nmight be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogether\nleave the memories of men; but men's memories are unstable things. It\nmay be that gradually these dazed dupes will gather again together,\nand attempt again to believe their dreams and disbelieve their eyes.\nThere may be some whose love of slavery is so ideal and disinterested\nthat they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment of\nthat broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But there\nare limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been once\ndeceived and a second time deceives himself. They have seen their\nparagons of science and organisation playing their part on land and\nsea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love of\nhumanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed the\ntestimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neither\nwould they believe though one rose from the dead; though all the\nmillions who died to destroy Prussianism stood up and testified\nagainst it.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\nAbnormal innocence and abnormal sin, alliance between, 4\n\nAbortion, open advocacy of, 138\n\nAffinity as a bar to marriage, 8\n\nAltruism, remarks on, 111\n\nAnarchy, definition of, 22, 23\n  the opposite of Socialism, 159\n\nAnglican Church, the, and question of disestablishment, 75\n\nAristocratic marriages, Eugenists and, 139 _et seq._\n\nAtheistic literary style, the, 46\n\nAuthority versus Reason, 132\n\nAutocrats, Eugenists as, 15\n\n\nBelloc, Mr., and the Servile State, 21, 165\n  rebuked by _The Nation_, 122\n\nBluecher, Marshal, an alleged saying of, 124\n\nBolce, Mr., the super-Eugenist, 180, 181\n\nBolshevists, and \"proletarian art,\" 169\n\nBrummell, Mr., vanity of, 96\n\nBurglary, punishment for, 36\n\n\nCalvinism, immorality of, 126, 127\n  in the Middle Ages, 92\n\nCalvinists and the doctrine of free-will, 52\n\nCapitalists, and workmen, 133\n  Socialists and, 47\n\nCasuists, Eugenists as, 14\n\nCatholic countries, and the drink traffic, 122\n\nCeltic sadness, and the desolation of Belfast, 121\n\nChesterton, G.K., and Socialism, 159 _et seq._\n  on H.G. Wells, 69\n  rebuked by _The Nation_, 122\n\nChildren, and non-eugenic unions, 7\n  cruelty to: punishment for, 26-7\n\nChristian conception of rebellion, the, 22, 23\n\nChristian religion as protector of the ideal of marriage, 175\n\nChristian serf, how he differed from a pagan slave, 102\n\nChristianity, and freedom, 10\n\nChurch teaching, compulsory, 75\n\nChurch, the, and question of disestablishment, 75\n\n\"Class War, the,\" and Socialists, 47\n\nCoercion, and control of sex-relationship, 155\n\nComic songs, and a sermon thereon, 169 _et seq._\n\nCompulsion, and sexual selection, 14, 155\n\nCompulsory education, 95\n  vaccination, 77\n\nConcordat, the, and the independence of the Roman Church, 75\n\nCriminals, difference between lunatics and, 34, 35\n  proposed vivisection of, 79\n  punishment of, 25 _et seq._, 35 _et seq._\n\nCriminology as a disease, 167\n\nCruelty to children, punishment for, 26-7\n\n\nDelusions, concrete and otherwise, 32 _et seq._\n\nDisestablishment, author's views on, 75\n\nDoctors, as health advisers of the community, 55, 58\n  limits to their knowledge, 57\n\n\nEducation, compulsory, 95\n\nEndeavourers, the, 17\n\nEnglish proletarians, anomalous attitude of, 175\n\nEstablishment, author's views on, 75 _et seq._\n\nEthics, as opposed to Eugenics, 7\n\nEugenic Law, the first, and negative Eugenics, 19, 28\n\nEugenic State, beginning of the, 19\n\nEugenics and employment, 141\n  author's conception of, 12\n  becomes a fashion, 180\n  beginning of, 125\n  different meanings of, 4\n  essence of, 4\n  first principle of, 38\n  general definition of, 10\n  meanness of the motive of, 136 _et seq._, 146\n  moral basis of, 5\n  the false theory of, 3 _et seq._\n  the real aim of, 91 _et seq._\n  versus Ethics, 7\n\nEugenist, true story of a, 114 _et seq._\n\nEugenists, and their new morality, 82\n  as Casuists, 14\n  as employers, 133, 137\n  as Euphemists, 12\n  their plutocratic impulses, 139 _et seq._\n  Mr. Wells' challenge to, 70\n  secret of what they really want, 73 _et seq._, 85\n\nEuphemists, Eugenists as, 12\n\n\nFabians, and Socialism, 160\n\nFeeble-Minded Bill, the, Eugenists and, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28, 51, 52\n\nFeeble-mindedness, Dr. Saleeby on, 61\n  hereditary, 62, 63\n\nFlogging, revival of, 25\n\nFoulon, and the French peasants, 103\n\nFreedom, Christianity and, 10\n\nFree-will disbelieved by Eugenists, 52\n\n\nGame laws, English, result of the, 110, 112\n\nGolf, a Scotch minister's opinion of, 117\n\nGreat War, the, outbreak of, and its effect on Eugenics, 181\n\n\nHealth, and what it is, 59\n  Mr. Wells' views on inheritance of, 70, 85-6\n  not necessarily allied with beauty, 144\n  \"Health adviser\" of society, the, 55, 58\n\nHereditary diseases, and marriage, 44\n\nHeredity, and feeble-mindedness, 62, 63\n  author's conception of, 64\n  incontestable proof of, 66\n  three first facts of, 66-7\n  unsatisfactory plight of students of, 66\n  uselessness of attempting to judge, 39\n\nHousebreaking, punishment for, 36\n\nHousehold gods of the heathen, 176\n\nHousing problem, the, 164\n\nHutchinson, Colonel and Mrs., the historic instance of, 7\n\nHuth, A.H., an admission by, 50\n\n\nIdealists (_see_ Autocrats)\n\nIdiotcy, segregation of, 61\n\nImperialism, and its aims, 93\n\nImprisonment, the State and, 25\n\nIncest, the crime of, 8, 9\n\nIndeterminate sentence, the, instrument of, 35\n  principle of, 37\n\nIndividualism, the experiment of, 130\n\nIndividualists, early Victorian, 118\n\nIntervention, Socialistic movements of, 166\n\nIrish peasants, T.P. O'Connor on, 144\n\nIrishman in Liverpool, the, 121\n\n\nJournalism and the Press of to-day, 73\n\n\nKindred and affinity, as a bar to marriage, 8\n\n\nLaw, the, and restrictions on sex, 10\n  and the indeterminate sentence, 35\n  and the lunatic, 31 _et seq._\n\nLibel, definition of, 28\n  loose extension of idea of, 27-8\n\nLiberty and scepticism, 148\n  the eclipse of, 149 _et seq._\n  the Eugenist's view of, 16\n\nLodge, Sir Oliver, and \"the stud farm,\" 13, 14\n\nLunacy, and Eugenic legislation, 17-20, 28, 29, 31 _et seq._\n  medical specialists as judges of, 40, 41\n\nLunacy Law, the old, 38\n\nLunacy Laws, the, extension of principle of, 17\n\nLunatic, the, and the law, 31 _et seq._\n\nLunatics, difference between criminals and, 34, 35\n\n\nMacdonald, George, and space co-incident, 34\n\nMadman, a, definition of, 32\n\nMadness, degrees of, 32\n  medical specialists and, 40, 41\n  the essence of, 44\n  (_See also_ Lunacy)\n\nMalthus, and his doctrine, 118\n\nMania, segregation of, 61\n\nMarriage, and question of hereditary disease, 44\n  the aim of, 5\n  the Christian religion and, 175\n\nMarriages, aristocratic, 139 _et seq._\n\nMarxian Socialists, and Capitalists, 47\n\nMaterialism, as the established church, 77\n  in speech, 46\n\nMaterialists, modern, 128\n\nMedical specialists and madness, 40, 41\n\nMendicancy laws, result of the, 113\n\nMetternich tradition, the, 154\n\nMidas, 129\n\nMiddle Ages, the, 91 _et seq._\n\nMidias, segregation of, 29\n\nMonogamy, author's views on, 176\n\nMorality, and restraints on sex, 8\n\n\nNeisser, Dr., 79\n\nNewspapers, anarchic tendency of modern, 26\n  decadence of present-day, 73\n\nNiagara, comparison of modern world with, 24\n\nNietzsche, 182\n\nNon-eugenic unions, and children, 7\n\n\nO'Connor, T.P., on the Irish peasants, 144\n\nOedipus, and his incestuous marriage, 8\n\nOm, the formless god of the East, 48\n\n_On_, meaning and use of the word, 48\n\nOsborne, Dorothy, and Sir William Temple, 7\n\n\nPagan slave, the, difference between Christian serf and, 102\n\nPearson, Dr. Karl, 50, 65, 181\n\nPeasant art, comic songs as an instance of, 170\n\nPersecution, author's views on, 77 _et seq._\n\n\"Platonic friendship,\" 138\n\nPolitics in the Middle Ages, 92\n\nPost Office, the State, 161\n  twin model of, 162\n\nPrecedenters, the, 17\n\nPress, the, criticisms of, 73, 169\n\nPrevention not better than cure, 55\n\nPreventive medicine, fallacy of, 55\n\nPrison system, the, 162\n\nProcreation, prevention of, 138\n\nProfiteering, author on, 124\n\n\"Proletarian art,\" 169\n\nProperty, author's views on, 160\n\nPunishment, extension of, 25\n\nPuritanical moral stories, immorality of, 126\n\n\nRealities, denial of, 33\n\nReason versus Authority, 132\n\nRebellion, Christian conception of, 23\n  meaning of, 22\n\nReform and Repeal, 95\n\n\"Relations of the sexes,\" atheists and, 47\n\nReligion in the Middle Ages, 92\n\nRepresentative Government, the procedure of, 116\n\nRockefeller, Mr., 124\n\nRussian Orthodox Church, the, and the State, 75\n\n\nSaladin, Sultan, 100\n\nSaleeby, Dr., 50\n  and a \"health-book,\" 58\n  and feeble-mindedness, 61\n  and heredity, 68\n\nSaturnalia, the Roman, 24\n\nScepticism, reactionary, 148\n\nScience and tyranny, 76\n\nScotland, Church of, 76\n\nScotland, drunkenness in, 122\n\nSegregation of strong-minded people, a suggested, 51\n\nSerf, the, different from pagan slave, 102\n\nServile State, the, Mr. Belloc's theory of, 21, 165\n\nSex-relationship, controlled by coercion, 155\n\nSexes, the, relations of, 47\n\nSexual selection a destruction of Eugenics, 9\n\nShaw, Bernard, 162\n  and Sidney Webb, 161\n  as Puritan, 69\n\nSlaves, breeding of, 10\n\nSlum children, Mrs. Alec Tweedie and, 143\n\nSmiles, Dr. Samuel, and the English tramp, 119\n\nSnobbishness, an inverted, 117\n\nSocialism as oppressor of the poor, 166\n\nSocialism, the transformation of, 159 _et seq._\n\nSocialist system, foundation of the, 159\n\nSocialists, and \"solidarity,\" 46\n  their view of the State, 163\n\nSpecialists (medical) and madness, 40, 41\n\nSpiritual pride, an example of, 96\n\nSpiritual world, the, author's belief in, 63\n\nState, the, and compulsion, 14\n  Socialist view of, 163\n\nStatistics, fundamental fallacy in use of, 61\n\nSteinmetz, Dr. R.S., 8, 181\n\nStevenson, R.L., and pre-natal conditions, 45\n\n\nTemperance Reform, 164\n\nTemple, Sir William, and Dorothy Osborne, 7\n\nTithes, question of, 75\n\nTory conception of anarchy, the, 22\n\nTramp, true history of a, 101 _et seq._\n\nTruant schools. Socialists and, 167\n\nTweedie, Mrs. Alec, and the children of the slums, 143\n\nTyranny of government by Science, 76\n\n\nVaccination, compulsory, 77\n\nVanity, hereditary--and other, 62\n\nVictorian Individualists, optimism of, 118\n  snobbishness, 117\n\n\nWages, \"rise and fall of,\" 47\n\nWebb, Sidney, and Bernard Shaw, 161\n\nWells, H.G., 55, 154\n  author's criticism of, 69-70\n  his \"Mankind in the Making,\" 70\n\nWhite Slave traffic, punishment for, 25\n\nWitchcraft, punishment for, 26\n\nWitch-hunting and witch burning, 63, 64\n\n\n\n\nPRINTED IN ENGLAND BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.4.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    +-----------------------------------------------------------+\n    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |\n    |                                                           |\n    | Page 62: pepole replaced with people                      |\n    | Page 65: undoubledly replaced with undoubtedly            |\n    |                                                           |\n    +-----------------------------------------------------------+\n\n       *       *       *       *       *","title":"Eugenics and Other Evils","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":48930}