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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugenics and Other Evils, by G. K. Chesterton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Eugenics and Other Evils
+
+Author: G. K. Chesterton
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2008 [EBook #25308]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS ***
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+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Špehar, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
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+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
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+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+EUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS
+
+
+
+
+Eugenics and
+Other Evils
+
+
+By
+
+G.K. Chesterton
+
+
+Cassell and Company, Limited
+London, New York, Toronto & Melbourne
+1922
+
+
+
+
+TO THE READER
+
+
+I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason
+connected with the present situation; a reason which I should like
+briefly to emphasise and make clear.
+
+Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are
+conceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of
+preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before
+the war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; when
+eugenic babies (not visibly very distinguishable from other babies)
+sprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancy
+of Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr.
+Bernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a man
+like a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilisation,
+of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be
+found in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion
+too controversially, and it seems to me that I sometimes took it too
+seriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into
+a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism
+and strict social organisation.
+
+And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might
+well fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one,
+and was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And,
+anyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style.
+Scientific officialism and organisation in the State which had
+specialised in them, had gone to war with the older culture of
+Christendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would be
+hopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless.
+As the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, it
+grew more and more plain that the scientifically organised State was
+not increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen would
+ever again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So I
+thought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind.
+
+I am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It has
+gradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the ruling
+classes in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussia
+is a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nine
+years old, most of their principles and proceedings are a great deal
+older. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same
+bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors
+that have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. For
+that reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect and
+publish these papers.
+
+                                                    G.K.C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+
+The False Theory
+
+CHAPTER                                        PAGE
+
+1. WHAT IS EUGENICS?                                   3
+
+2. THE FIRST OBSTACLES                                12
+
+3. THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE                             22
+
+4. THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW                            31
+
+5. THE FLYING AUTHORITY                               46
+
+6. THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE                           61
+
+7. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT                    73
+
+8. A SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY                        82
+
+
+PART II
+
+The Real Aim
+
+1. THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE                       91
+
+2. TRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP                           101
+
+3. TRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST                        114
+
+4. THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH                        126
+
+5. THE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE                        136
+
+6. THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY                            148
+
+7. THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM                   159
+
+8. THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GODS                     169
+
+9. A SHORT CHAPTER                                   180
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+
+THE FALSE THEORY
+
+
+
+
+Eugenics and Other Evils
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WHAT IS EUGENICS?
+
+
+The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is
+no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are
+mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but
+sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because
+men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before
+it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the
+scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried
+while it is in the air.
+
+There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as
+collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we
+can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford
+Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists;
+or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing
+that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed.
+It is called for convenience "Eugenics"; and that it ought to be
+destroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that it
+means very different things to different people; but that is only
+because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised
+with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued
+rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is
+only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called "The
+Gracious Ones." I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions
+are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely
+astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil
+always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has
+in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and
+abnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we
+all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they
+are doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenics
+itself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas
+exist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming
+quickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a
+thousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no
+more to be bargained about than poisoning.
+
+It is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: though
+some of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it. The movement
+consists of two parts: a moral basis, which is common to all, and a
+scheme of social application which varies a good deal. For the moral
+basis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with his
+knowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr.
+Johnson in that tower of vision), and if the baby was ill through
+having eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might be
+calling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides of
+babies whose diet had been far more deadly; but I should be justified.
+I could not be expected to know enough about his other patients to be
+obliged (or even entitled) to sacrifice to them the baby for whom I
+was primarily and directly responsible. Now the Eugenic moral basis is
+this; that the baby for whom we are primarily and directly responsible
+is the babe unborn. That is, that we know (or may come to know) enough
+of certain inevitable tendencies in biology to consider the fruit of
+some contemplated union in that direct and clear light of conscience
+which we can now only fix on the other partner in that union. The one
+duty can conceivably be as definite as or more definite than the
+other. The baby that does not exist can be considered even before the
+wife who does. Now it is essential to grasp that this is a
+comparatively new note in morality. Of course sane people always
+thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the
+glory of God or according to the plan of Nature; but whether they
+counted such children as God's reward for service or Nature's premium
+on sanity, they always left the reward to God or the premium to
+Nature, as a less definable thing. The only person (and this is the
+point) towards whom one could have precise duties was the partner in
+the process. Directly considering the partner's claims was the nearest
+one could get to indirectly considering the claims of posterity. If
+the women of the harem sang praises of the hero as the Moslem mounted
+his horse, it was because this was the due of a man; if the Christian
+knight helped his wife off her horse, it was because this was the due
+of a woman. Definite and detailed dues of this kind they did not
+predicate of the babe unborn; regarding him in that agnostic and
+opportunist light in which Mr. Browdie regarded the hypothetical child
+of Miss Squeers. Thinking these sex relations healthy, they naturally
+hoped they would produce healthy children; but that was all. The
+Moslem woman doubtless expected Allah to send beautiful sons to an
+obedient wife; but she would not have allowed any direct vision of
+such sons to alter the obedience itself. She would not have said, "I
+will now be a disobedient wife; as the learned leech informs me that
+great prophets are often the children of disobedient wives." The
+knight doubtless hoped that the saints would help him to strong
+children, if he did all the duties of his station, one of which might
+be helping his wife off her horse; but he would not have refrained
+from doing this because he had read in a book that a course of falling
+off horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem and
+Christian would have thought such speculations not only impious but
+utterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is not the
+point here.
+
+The point here is that a new school believes Eugenics _against_
+Ethics. And it is proved by one familiar fact: that the heroisms of
+history are actually the crimes of Eugenics. The Eugenists' books and
+articles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should and
+may come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feel
+that marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children. But history
+is full of the praises of people who have held sacred such ties to
+invalids; of cases like those of Colonel Hutchinson and Sir William
+Temple, who remained faithful to betrothals when beauty and health had
+been apparently blasted. And though the illnesses of Dorothy Osborne
+and Mrs. Hutchinson may not fall under the Eugenic speculations (I do
+not know), it is obvious that they might have done so; and certainly
+it would not have made any difference to men's moral opinion of the
+act. I do not discuss here which morality I favour; but I insist that
+they are opposite. The Eugenist really sets up as saints the very men
+whom hundreds of families have called sneaks. To be consistent, they
+ought to put up statues to the men who deserted their loves because of
+bodily misfortune; with inscriptions celebrating the good Eugenist
+who, on his fiancée falling off a bicycle, nobly refused to marry her;
+or to the young hero who, on hearing of an uncle with erysipelas,
+magnanimously broke his word. What is perfectly plain is this: that
+mankind have hitherto held the bond between man and woman so sacred,
+and the effect of it on the children so incalculable, that they have
+always admired the maintenance of honour more than the maintenance of
+safety. Doubtless they thought that even the children might be none
+the worse for not being the children of cowards and shirkers; but this
+was not the first thought, the first commandment. Briefly, we may say
+that while many moral systems have set restraints on sex almost as
+severe as any Eugenist could set, they have almost always had the
+character of securing the fidelity of the two sexes to each other, and
+leaving the rest to God. To introduce an ethic which makes that
+fidelity or infidelity vary with some calculation about heredity is
+that rarest of all things, a revolution that has not happened before.
+
+It is only right to say here, though the matter should only be touched
+on, that many Eugenists would contradict this, in so far as to claim
+that there was a consciously Eugenic reason for the horror of those
+unions which begin with the celebrated denial to man of the privilege
+of marrying his grandmother. Dr. S.R. Steinmetz, with that creepy
+simplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarks
+that "we do not yet know quite certainly" what were "the motives for
+the horror of" that horrible thing which is the agony of Oedipus. With
+entirely amiable intention, I ask Dr. S.R. Steinmetz to speak for
+himself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or sister as
+separate from other women; nor have I reached them by any curious
+researches. I found them where I found an analogous aversion to eating
+a baby for breakfast. I found them in a rooted detestation in the
+human soul to liking a thing in one way, when you already like it in
+another quite incompatible way. Now it is perfectly true that this
+aversion may have acted eugenically; and so had a certain ultimate
+confirmation and basis in the laws of procreation. But there really
+cannot be any Eugenist quite so dull as not to see that this is not a
+defence of Eugenics but a direct denial of Eugenics. If something
+which has been discovered at last by the lamp of learning is something
+which has been acted on from the first by the light of nature, this
+(so far as it goes) is plainly not an argument for pestering people,
+but an argument for letting them alone. If men did not marry their
+grandmothers when it was, for all they knew, a most hygienic habit; if
+we know now that they instinctly avoided scientific peril; that, so
+far as it goes, is a point in favour of letting people marry anyone
+they like. It is simply the statement that sexual selection, or what
+Christians call falling in love, is a part of man which in the rough
+and in the long run can be trusted. And that is the destruction of the
+whole of this science at a blow.
+
+The second part of the definition, the persuasive or coercive methods
+to be employed, I shall deal with more fully in the second part of
+this book. But some such summary as the following may here be useful.
+Far into the unfathomable past of our race we find the assumption
+that the founding of a family is the personal adventure of a free man.
+Before slavery sank slowly out of sight under the new climate of
+Christianity, it may or may not be true that slaves were in some sense
+bred like cattle, valued as a promising stock for labour. If it was so
+it was so in a much looser and vaguer sense than the breeding of the
+Eugenists; and such modern philosophers read into the old paganism a
+fantastic pride and cruelty which are wholly modern. It may be,
+however, that pagan slaves had some shadow of the blessings of the
+Eugenist's care. It is quite certain that the pagan freemen would have
+killed the first man that suggested it. I mean suggested it seriously;
+for Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in
+Greek. Among free men, the law, more often the creed, most commonly of
+all the custom, have laid all sorts of restrictions on sex for this
+reason or that. But law and creed and custom have never concentrated
+heavily except upon fixing and keeping the family when once it had
+been made. The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individual
+adventure outside the frontiers of the State. Our first forgotten
+ancestors left this tradition behind them; and our own latest fathers
+and mothers a few years ago would have thought us lunatics to be
+discussing it. The shortest general definition of Eugenics on its
+practical side is that it does, in a more or less degree, propose to
+control some families at least as if they were families of pagan
+slaves. I shall discuss later the question of the people to whom this
+pressure may be applied; and the much more puzzling question of what
+people will apply it. But it is to be applied at the very least by
+somebody to somebody, and that on certain calculations about breeding
+which are affirmed to be demonstrable. So much for the subject itself.
+I say that this thing exists. I define it as closely as matters
+involving moral evidence can be defined; I call it Eugenics. If after
+that anyone chooses to say that Eugenics is not the Greek for this--I
+am content to answer that "chivalrous" is not the French for "horsy";
+and that such controversial games are more horsy than chivalrous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE FIRST OBSTACLES
+
+
+Now before I set about arguing these things, there is a cloud of
+skirmishers, of harmless and confused modern sceptics, who ought to be
+cleared off or calmed down before we come to debate with the real
+doctors of the heresy. If I sum up my statement thus: "Eugenics, as
+discussed, evidently means the control of some men over the marriage
+and unmarriage of others; and probably means the control of the few
+over the marriage and unmarriage of the many," I shall first of all
+receive the sort of answers that float like skim on the surface of
+teacups and talk. I may very roughly and rapidly divide these
+preliminary objectors into five sects; whom I will call the
+Euphemists, the Casuists, the Autocrats, the Precedenters, and the
+Endeavourers. When we have answered the immediate protestation of all
+these good, shouting, short-sighted people, we can begin to do justice
+to those intelligences that are really behind the idea.
+
+Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle
+them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of
+translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the
+same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers of
+the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of
+longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate
+and intolerable, especially to the females"; say this to them and they
+will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles.
+Say to them "Murder your mother," and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet
+the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them
+"It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once
+useful distinction between the anthropoid _homo_ and the other
+animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be
+modified also even in regard to the important question of the
+extension of human diet"; say this to them, and beauty born of
+murmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a
+simple, manly, hearty way "Let's eat a man!" and their surprise is
+quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing. Now, if
+anyone thinks these two instances extravagant, I will refer to two
+actual cases from the Eugenic discussions. When Sir Oliver Lodge spoke
+of the methods "of the stud-farm" many Eugenists exclaimed against the
+crudity of the suggestion. Yet long before that one of the ablest
+champions in the other interest had written "What nonsense this
+education is! Who could educate a racehorse or a greyhound?" Which
+most certainly either means nothing, or the human stud-farm. Or again,
+when I spoke of people "being married forcibly by the police," another
+distinguished Eugenist almost achieved high spirits in his hearty
+assurance that no such thing had ever come into their heads. Yet a few
+days after I saw a Eugenist pronouncement, to the effect that the
+State ought to extend its powers in this area. The State can only be
+that corporation which men permit to employ compulsion; and this area
+can only be the area of sexual selection. I mean somewhat more than an
+idle jest when I say that the policeman will generally be found in
+that area. But I willingly admit that the policeman who looks after
+weddings will be like the policeman who looks after wedding-presents.
+He will be in plain clothes. I do not mean that a man in blue with a
+helmet will drag the bride and bridegroom to the altar. I do mean that
+nobody that man in blue is told to arrest will even dare to come near
+the church. Sir Oliver did not mean that men would be tied up in
+stables and scrubbed down by grooms. He meant that they would undergo
+a less of liberty which to men is even more infamous. He meant that
+the only formula important to Eugenists would be "by Smith out of
+Jones." Such a formula is one of the shortest in the world; and is
+certainly the shortest way with the Euphemists.
+
+The next sect of superficial objectors is even more irritating. I have
+called them, for immediate purposes, the Casuists. Suppose I say "I
+dislike this spread of Cannibalism in the West End restaurants."
+Somebody is sure to say "Well, after all, Queen Eleanor when she
+sucked blood from her husband's arm was a cannibal." What is one to
+say to such people? One can only say "Confine yourself to sucking
+poisoned blood from people's arms, and I permit you to call yourself
+by the glorious title of Cannibal." In this sense people say of
+Eugenics, "After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying
+a mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists." Again one
+can only answer, "Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as
+are naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult in
+the title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinction
+will be rare." But surely anyone's common-sense must tell him that if
+Eugenics dealt only with such extravagant cases, it would be called
+common-sense--and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded such
+absurdities for unknown ages; and has never yet called it Eugenics.
+You may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back;
+you may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire;
+but if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among
+living men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved,
+there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no
+such thing as this book.
+
+I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the
+Idealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good
+they hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who
+give us generally to understand that every modern reform will "work"
+all right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, and
+for how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind their
+looking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is the
+shadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does not
+expect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people most
+certainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it has
+left their hands. Each man promises to be about a thousand policemen.
+If you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, "Oh, I
+would certainly insist on this"; or "I would never go so far as that";
+as if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever
+done quite successfully--force men to forsake their sins. Of these it
+is enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any
+more than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a
+dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you
+have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not
+be able to fulfil a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put
+into it.
+
+Along with such idealists should go the strange people who seem to
+think that you can consecrate and purify any campaign for ever by
+repeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocates
+had in mind. These people will say "So far from aiming at _slavery_,
+the Eugenists are seeking _true_ liberty; liberty from disease and
+degeneracy, etc." Or they will say "We can assure Mr. Chesterton that
+the Eugenists have _no_ intention of segregating the harmless; justice
+and mercy are the very motto of----" etc. To this kind of thing
+perhaps the shortest answer is this. Many of those who speak thus are
+agnostic or generally unsympathetic to official religion. Suppose one
+of them said "The Church of England is full of hypocrisy." What would
+he think of me if I answered, "I assure you that hypocrisy is
+condemned by every form of Christianity; and is particularly
+repudiated in the Prayer Book"? Suppose he said that the Church of
+Rome had been guilty of great cruelties. What would he think of me if
+I answered, "The Church is expressly bound to meekness and charity;
+and therefore cannot be cruel"? This kind of people need not detain us
+long. Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; who
+flourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by the
+solemn official who said the other day that he could not understand
+the clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill, as it only extended the
+principles of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer
+"Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws to
+persons without a trace of lunacy." This lucid politician finds an old
+law, let us say, about keeping lepers in quarantine. He simply alters
+the word "lepers" to "long-nosed people," and says blandly that the
+principle is the same.
+
+Perhaps the weakest of all are those helpless persons whom I have
+called the Endeavourers. The prize specimen of them was another M.P.
+who defended the same Bill as "an honest attempt" to deal with a great
+evil: as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow
+citizens as a kind of chemical experiment; in a state of reverent
+agnosticism about what would come of it. But with this fatuous notion
+that one can deliberately establish the Inquisition or the Terror, and
+then faintly trust the larger hope, I shall have to deal more
+seriously in a subsequent chapter. It is enough to say here that the
+best thing the honest Endeavourer could do would be to make an honest
+attempt to know what he is doing. And not to do anything else until he
+has found out. Lastly, there is a class of controversialists so
+hopeless and futile that I have really failed to find a name for them.
+But whenever anyone attempts to argue rationally for or against any
+existent and recognisable _thing_, such as the Eugenic class of
+legislation, there are always people who begin to chop hay about
+Socialism and Individualism; and say "_You_ object to all State
+interference; _I_ am in favour of State interference. _You_ are an
+Individualist; _I_, on the other hand," etc. To which I can only
+answer, with heart-broken patience, that I am not an Individualist,
+but a poor fallen but baptised journalist who is trying to write a
+book about Eugenists, several of whom he has met; whereas he never met
+an Individualist, and is by no means certain he would recognise him if
+he did. In short, I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the
+State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say that in this case it
+would interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be
+turned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomless
+botherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative
+advantages of always turning to the right and always turning to the
+left.
+
+And for the rest, there is undoubtedly an enormous mass of sensible,
+rather thoughtless people, whose rooted sentiment it is that any deep
+change in our society must be in some way infinitely distant. They
+cannot believe that men in hats and coats like themselves can be
+preparing a revolution; all their Victorian philosophy has taught
+them that such transformations are always slow. Therefore, when I
+speak of Eugenic legislation, or the coming of the Eugenic State,
+they think of it as something like _The Time Machine_ or _Looking
+Backward_: a thing that, good or bad, will have to fit itself to
+their great-great-great-grandchild, who may be very different and may
+like it; and who in any case is rather a distant relative. To all
+this I have, to begin with, a very short and simple answer. The
+Eugenic State has begun. The first of the Eugenic Laws has already
+been adopted by the Government of this country; and passed with the
+applause of both parties through the dominant House of Parliament.
+This first Eugenic Law clears the ground and may be said to proclaim
+negative Eugenics; but it cannot be defended, and nobody has
+attempted to defend it, except on the Eugenic theory. I will call it
+the Feeble-Minded Bill both for brevity and because the description
+is strictly accurate. It is, quite simply and literally, a Bill for
+incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call
+mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them
+weak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom this
+term has not been conversationally applied by his own friends and
+relatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives
+have been lamentably lacking in spirit), it can be clearly seen that
+this law, like the early Christian Church (to which, however, it
+presents points of dissimilarity), is a net drawing in of all kinds.
+It must not be supposed that we have a stricter definition
+incorporated in the Bill. Indeed, the first definition of
+"feeble-minded" in the Bill was much looser and vaguer than the
+phrase "feeble-minded" itself. It is a piece of yawning idiocy about
+"persons who though capable of earning their living under favourable
+circumstances" (as if anyone could earn his living if circumstances
+were directly unfavourable to his doing so), are nevertheless
+"incapable of managing their affairs with proper prudence"; which is
+exactly what all the world and his wife are saying about their
+neighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for any kind of
+thought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing so very
+novel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is vital
+is this: that the _defence_ of this crazy Coercion Act is a Eugenic
+defence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that the
+aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists
+do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children.
+Every tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who
+is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as
+were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that
+is the point. England has forgotten the Feudal State; it is in the
+last anarchy of the Industrial State; there is much in Mr. Belloc's
+theory that it is approaching the Servile State; it cannot at present
+get at the Distributive State; it has almost certainly missed the
+Socialist State. But we are already under the Eugenist State; and
+nothing remains to us but rebellion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE
+
+
+A silent anarchy is eating out our society. I must pause upon the
+expression; because the true nature of anarchy is mostly
+misapprehended. It is not in the least necessary that anarchy should
+be violent; nor is it necessary that it should come from below. A
+government may grow anarchic as much as a people. The more sentimental
+sort of Tory uses the word anarchy as a mere term of abuse for
+rebellion; but he misses a most important intellectual distinction.
+Rebellion may be wrong and disastrous; but even when rebellion is
+wrong, it is never anarchy. When it is not self-defence, it is
+usurpation. It aims at setting up a new rule in place of the old rule.
+And while it cannot be anarchic in essence (because it has an aim), it
+certainly cannot be anarchic in method; for men must be organised when
+they fight; and the discipline in a rebel army has to be as good as
+the discipline in the royal army. This deep principle of distinction
+must be clearly kept in mind. Take for the sake of symbolism those two
+great spiritual stories which, whether we count them myths or
+mysteries, have so long been the two hinges of all European morals.
+The Christian who is inclined to sympathise generally with
+constituted authority will think of rebellion under the image of
+Satan, the rebel against God. But Satan, though a traitor, was not an
+anarchist. He claimed the crown of the cosmos; and had he prevailed,
+would have expected his rebel angels to give up rebelling. On the
+other hand, the Christian whose sympathies are more generally with
+just self-defence among the oppressed will think rather of Christ
+Himself defying the High Priests and scourging the rich traders. But
+whether or no Christ was (as some say) a Socialist, He most certainly
+was not an Anarchist. Christ, like Satan, claimed the throne. He set
+up a new authority against an old authority; but He set it up with
+positive commandments and a comprehensible scheme. In this light all
+mediæval people--indeed, all people until a little while ago--would
+have judged questions involving revolt. John Ball would have offered
+to pull down the government because it was a bad government, not
+because it was a government. Richard II. would have blamed Bolingbroke
+not as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, in
+the useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from any
+rebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, in
+its first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I said
+before, it is often entirely silent.
+
+Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop
+yourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the
+normal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar,
+extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot
+_end_ these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family
+sits up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in the home if
+members of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It
+was not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the
+slaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the
+slave-owners' point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the
+slaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is
+historically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a
+picnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I
+think, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all
+took what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat
+if swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are
+uncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return
+within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the
+really dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It is
+magnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water--like
+Niagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening or
+dangerous or even destructive; it is that it cannot stop. Now it is
+plain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a
+society as easily as the society so ruled. And in modern England it is
+the powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it--who are truly
+possessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense,
+is not too strong. The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is
+talking nonsense; and it can't stop.
+
+Now it is perfectly plain that government ought to have, and must
+have, the same sort of right to use exceptional methods occasionally
+that the private householder has to have a picnic or to sit up all
+night on New Year's Eve. The State, like the householder, is sane if
+it can treat such exceptions as exceptions. Such desperate remedies
+may not even be right; but such remedies are endurable as long as they
+are admittedly desperate. Such cases, of course, are the communism of
+food in a besieged city; the official disavowal of an arrested spy;
+the subjection of a patch of civil life to martial law; the cutting of
+communication in a plague; or that deepest degradation of the
+commonwealth, the use of national soldiers not against foreign
+soldiers, but against their own brethren in revolt. Of these
+exceptions some are right and some wrong; but all are right in so far
+as they are taken as exceptions. The modern world is insane, not so
+much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the
+normal.
+
+We see this in the vague extension of punishments like imprisonment;
+often the very reformers who admit that prison is bad for people
+propose to reform them by a little more of it. We see it in panic
+legislation like that after the White Slave scare, when the torture of
+flogging was revived for all sorts of ill defined and vague and
+variegated types of men. Our fathers were never so mad, even when they
+were torturers. They stretched the man out on the rack. They did not
+stretch the rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burning
+they may have seen witches everywhere--because their minds were fixed
+on witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, because
+their minds were unfixed. While tying some very unpopular witch to the
+stake, with the firm conviction that she was a spiritual tyranny and
+pestilence, they did not say to each other, "A little burning is what
+my Aunt Susan wants, to cure her of back-biting," or "Some of these
+faggots would do your Cousin James good, and teach him to play with
+poor girls' affections."
+
+Now the name of all this is Anarchy. It not only does not know what it
+wants, but it does not even know what it hates. It multiplies
+excessively in the more American sort of English newspapers. When this
+new sort of New Englander burns a witch the whole prairie catches
+fire. These people have not the decision and detachment of the
+doctrinal ages. They cannot do a monstrous action and still see it is
+monstrous. Wherever they make a stride they make a rut. They cannot
+stop their own thoughts, though their thoughts are pouring into the
+pit.
+
+A final instance, which can be sketched much more briefly, can be
+found in this general fact: that the definition of almost every crime
+has become more and more indefinite, and spreads like a flattening and
+thinning cloud over larger and larger landscapes. Cruelty to children,
+one would have thought, was a thing about as unmistakable, unusual
+and appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to cover
+almost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The only
+distinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in the
+poor, who generally can't help them, and not in the rich, who
+generally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. The
+point here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod on
+the bloody night of Innocents has come precious near being
+attributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in the
+Temple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kind
+mother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy children
+had no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this an
+illegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all the
+horror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes to
+parricide, could now be used against any son who had done any act that
+could colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and so
+affected his health. Few of us would be safe.
+
+Another case out of hundreds is the loose extension of the idea of
+libel. Libel cases bear no more trace of the old and just anger
+against the man who bore false witness against his neighbour than
+"cruelty" cases do of the old and just horror of the parents that
+hated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports of
+the less athletic rich--a variation on _baccarat_, a game of chance. A
+music-hall actress got damages for a song that was called "vulgar,"
+which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my
+handwriting "rococo." A politician got huge damages because he was
+said to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that
+seductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story.
+Sometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in his
+business; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocer
+slanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it is
+clear that its exponents possess no power of distinction, or sense of
+proportion, by which they can draw the line between calling a woman a
+popular singer and calling her a bad lot; or between charging a man
+with leading infants to Protection and leading them to sin and shame.
+But the vital point to which to return is this. That it is not
+necessarily, nor even specially, an anarchy in the populace. It is an
+anarchy in the organ of government. It is the magistrates--voices of
+the governing class--who cannot distinguish between cruelty and
+carelessness. It is the judges (and their very submissive special
+juries) who cannot see the difference between opinion and slander. And
+it is the highly placed and highly paid experts who have brought in
+the first Eugenic Law, the Feeble-Minded Bill--thus showing that they
+can see no difference between a mad and a sane man.
+
+That, to begin with, is the historic atmosphere in which this thing
+was born. It is a peculiar atmosphere, and luckily not likely to last.
+Real progress bears the same relation to it that a happy girl laughing
+bears to an hysterical girl who cannot stop laughing. But I have
+described this atmosphere first because it is the only atmosphere in
+which such a thing as the Eugenist legislation could be proposed among
+men. All other ages would have called it to some kind of logical
+account, however academic or narrow. The lowest sophist in the Greek
+schools would remember enough of Socrates to force the Eugenist to
+tell him (at least) whether Midias was segregated because he was
+curable or because he was incurable. The meanest Thomist of the
+mediæval monasteries would have the sense to see that you cannot
+discuss a madman when you have not discussed a man. The most owlish
+Calvinist commentator in the seventeenth century would ask the
+Eugenist to reconcile such Bible texts as derided fools with the other
+Bible texts that praised them. The dullest shopkeeper in Paris in 1790
+would have asked what were the Rights of Man, if they did not include
+the rights of the lover, the husband, and the father. It is only in
+our own London Particular (as Mr. Guppy said of the fog) that small
+figures can loom so large in the vapour, and even mingle with quite
+different figures, and have the appearance of a mob. But, above all, I
+have dwelt on the telescopic quality in these twilight avenues,
+because unless the reader realises how elastic and unlimited they are,
+he simply will not believe in the abominations we have to combat.
+
+One of those wise old fairy tales, that come from nowhere and flourish
+everywhere, tells how a man came to own a small magic machine like a
+coffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one
+word and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I
+wish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the
+mill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers'
+mess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury
+and exaggeration, and sailors' tales should be taken with a grain of
+it. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then,
+touching the word that stopped it, suddenly remembered that he forgot.
+The tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like
+Arctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom,
+where all the men lay drowned. And that (so says this fairy tale) is
+why the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For the
+fairy tales knew what the modern mystics don't--that one should not
+let loose either the supernatural or the natural.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW
+
+
+The modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: that people do
+not see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it may or may not be
+right to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivably be right to kill
+a murderer because it is wrong to kill a man. If the hangman, having
+got his hand in, proceeded to hang friends and relatives to his taste
+and fancy, he would (intellectually) unhang the first man, though the
+first man might not think so. Or thus again, if you say an insane man
+is irresponsible, you imply that a sane man is responsible. He is
+responsible for the insane man. And the attempt of the Eugenists and
+other fatalists to treat all men as irresponsible is the largest and
+flattest folly in philosophy. The Eugenist has to treat everybody,
+including himself, as an exception to a rule that isn't there.
+
+The Eugenists, as a first move, have extended the frontiers of the
+lunatic asylum: let us take this as our definite starting point, and
+ask ourselves what lunacy is, and what is its fundamental relation to
+human society. Now that raw juvenile scepticism that clogs all thought
+with catchwords may often be heard to remark that the mad are only the
+minority, the sane only the majority. There is a neat exactitude
+about such people's nonsense; they seem to miss the point by magic.
+The mad are not a minority because they are not a corporate body; and
+that is what their madness means. The sane are not a majority; they
+are mankind. And mankind (as its name would seem to imply) is a
+_kind_, not a degree. In so far as the lunatic differs, he differs
+from all minorities and majorities in kind. The madman who thinks he
+is a knife cannot go into partnership with the other who thinks he is
+a fork. There is no trysting place outside reason; there is no inn on
+those wild roads that are beyond the world.
+
+The madman is not he that defies the world. The saint, the criminal,
+the martyr, the cynic, the nihilist may all defy the world quite
+sanely. And even if such fanatics would destroy the world, the world
+owes them a strictly fair trial according to proof and public law. But
+the madman is not the man who defies the world; he is the man who
+_denies_ it. Suppose we are all standing round a field and looking at
+a tree in the middle of it. It is perfectly true that we all see it
+(as the decadents say) in infinitely different aspects: that is not
+the point; the point is that we all say it is a tree. Suppose, if you
+will, that we are all poets, which seems improbable; so that each of
+us could turn his aspect into a vivid image distinct from a tree.
+Suppose one says it looks like a green cloud and another like a green
+fountain, and a third like a green dragon and the fourth like a green
+cheese. The fact remains: that they all say it _looks_ like these
+things. It is a tree. Nor are any of the poets in the least mad
+because of any opinions they may form, however frenzied, about the
+functions or future of the tree. A conservative poet may wish to clip
+the tree; a revolutionary poet may wish to burn it. An optimist poet
+may want to make it a Christmas tree and hang candles on it. A
+pessimist poet may want to hang himself on it. None of these are mad,
+because they are all talking about the same thing. But there is
+another man who is talking horribly about something else. There is a
+monstrous exception to mankind. Why he is so we know not; a new theory
+says it is heredity; an older theory says it is devils. But in any
+case, the spirit of it is the spirit that denies, the spirit that
+really denies realities. This is the man who looks at the tree and
+does not say it looks like a lion, but says that it _is_ a lamp-post.
+
+I do not mean that all mad delusions are as concrete as this, though
+some are more concrete. Believing your own body is glass is a more
+daring denial of reality than believing a tree is a glass lamp at the
+top of a pole. But all true delusions have in them this unalterable
+assertion--that what is not is. The difference between us and the
+maniac is not about how things look or how things ought to look, but
+about what they self-evidently are. The lunatic does not say that he
+ought to be King; Perkin Warbeck might say that. He says he is King.
+The lunatic does not say he is as wise as Shakespeare; Bernard Shaw
+might say that. The lunatic says he _is_ Shakespeare. The lunatic
+does not say he is divine in the same sense as Christ; Mr. R.J.
+Campbell would say that. The lunatic says he _is_ Christ. In all cases
+the difference is a difference about what is there; not a difference
+touching what should be done about it.
+
+For this reason, and for this alone, the lunatic is outside public
+law. This is the abysmal difference between him and the criminal. The
+criminal admits the facts, and therefore permits us to appeal to the
+facts. We can so arrange the facts around him that he may really
+understand that agreement is in his own interests. We can say to him,
+"Do not steal apples from this tree, or we will hang you on that
+tree." But if the man really thinks one tree is a lamp-post and the
+other tree a Trafalgar Square fountain, we simply cannot treat with
+him at all. It is obviously useless to say, "Do not steal apples from
+this lamp-post, or I will hang you on that fountain." If a man denies
+the facts, there is no answer but to lock him up. He cannot speak our
+language: not that varying verbal language which often misses fire
+even with us, but that enormous alphabet of sun and moon and green
+grass and blue sky in which alone we meet, and by which alone we can
+signal to each other. That unique man of genius, George Macdonald,
+described in one of his weird stories two systems of space
+co-incident; so that where I knew there was a piano standing in a
+drawing-room you knew there was a rose-bush growing in a garden.
+Something of this sort is in small or great affairs the matter with
+the madman. He cannot have a vote, because he is the citizen of
+another country. He is a foreigner. Nay, he is an invader and an
+enemy; for the city he lives in has been super-imposed on ours.
+
+Now these two things are primarily to be noted in his case. First,
+that we can only condemn him to a _general_ doom, because we only know
+his _general_ nature. All criminals, who do particular things for
+particular reasons (things and reasons which, however criminal, are
+always comprehensible), have been more and more tried for such
+separate actions under separate and suitable laws ever since Europe
+began to become a civilisation--and until the rare and recent
+re-incursions of barbarism in such things as the Indeterminate
+Sentence. Of that I shall speak later; it is enough for this argument
+to point out the plain facts. It is the plain fact that every savage,
+every sultan, every outlawed baron, every brigand-chief has always
+used this instrument of the Indeterminate Sentence, which has been
+recently offered us as something highly scientific and humane. All
+these people, in short, being barbarians, have always kept their
+captives captive until they (the barbarians) chose to think the
+captives were in a fit frame of mind to come out. It is also the plain
+fact that all that has been called civilisation or progress, justice
+or liberty, for nearly three thousand years, has had the general
+direction of treating even the captive as a free man, in so far as
+some clear case of some defined crime had to be shown against him.
+All law has meant allowing the criminal, within some limits or other,
+to argue with the law: as Job was allowed, or rather challenged, to
+argue with God. But the criminal is, among civilised men, tried by one
+law for one crime for a perfectly simple reason: that the motive of
+the crime, like the meaning of the law, is conceivable to the common
+intelligence. A man is punished specially as a burglar, and not
+generally as a bad man, because a man may be a burglar and in many
+other respects not be a bad man. The act of burglary is punishable
+because it is intelligible. But when acts are unintelligible, we can
+only refer them to a general untrustworthiness, and guard against them
+by a general restraint. If a man breaks into a house to get a piece of
+bread, we can appeal to his reason in various ways. We can hang him
+for housebreaking; or again (as has occurred to some daring thinkers)
+we can give him a piece of bread. But if he breaks in, let us say, to
+steal the parings of other people's finger nails, then we are in a
+difficulty: we cannot imagine what he is going to do with them, and
+therefore cannot easily imagine what we are going to do with him. If a
+villain comes in, in cloak and mask, and puts a little arsenic in the
+soup, we can collar him and say to him distinctly, "You are guilty of
+Murder; and I will now consult the code of tribal law, under which we
+live, to see if this practice is not forbidden." But if a man in the
+same cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-water
+in the soup, what can we say? Our charge necessarily becomes a more
+general one. We can only observe, with a moderation almost amounting
+to weakness, "You seem to be the sort of person who will do this sort
+of thing." And then we can lock him up. The principle of the
+indeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. It
+does apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And it
+applies to nobody else.
+
+The second thing to be noted is this: that it is only by the unanimity
+of sane men that we can condemn this man as utterly separate. If he
+says a tree is a lamp-post he is mad; but only because all other men
+say it is a tree. If some men thought it was a tree with a lamp on it,
+and others thought it was a lamp-post wreathed with branches and
+vegetation, then it would be a matter of opinion and degree; and he
+would not be mad, but merely extreme. Certainly he would not be mad if
+nobody but a botanist could see it was a tree. Certainly his enemies
+might be madder than he, if nobody but a lamplighter could see it was
+not a lamp-post. And similarly a man is not imbecile if only a
+Eugenist thinks so. The question then raised would not be his sanity,
+but the sanity of one botanist or one lamplighter or one Eugenist.
+That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is not the abnormally
+clever, which is obviously a matter in dispute. That which can condemn
+the abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he begins
+to say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that we
+have a right to treat him as the exception and not the rule. It is
+only because we none of us profess to be anything more than man that
+we have authority to treat him as something less.
+
+Now the first principle behind Eugenics becomes plain enough. It is
+the proposal that somebody or something should criticise men with the
+same superiority with which men criticise madmen. It might exercise
+this right with great moderation; but I am not here talking about the
+exercise, but about the right. Its _claim_ certainly is to bring all
+human life under the Lunacy Laws.
+
+Now this is the first weakness in the case of the Eugenists: that they
+cannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by what
+authority they do these things. They cannot see the exception is
+different from the rule--even when it is misrule, even when it is an
+unruly rule. The sound sense in the old Lunacy Law was this: that you
+cannot deny that a man is a citizen until you are practically prepared
+to deny that he is a man. Men, and only men, can be the judges of
+whether he is a man. But any private club of prigs can be judges of
+whether he ought to be a citizen. When once we step down from that
+tall and splintered peak of pure insanity we step on to a tableland
+where one man is not so widely different from another. Outside the
+exception, what we find is the average. And the practical, legal shape
+of the quarrel is this: that unless the normal men have the right to
+expel the abnormal, what particular sort of abnormal men have the
+right to expel the normal men? If sanity is not good enough, what is
+there that is saner than sanity?
+
+Without any grip of the notion of a rule and an exception, the general
+idea of judging people's heredity breaks down and is useless. For this
+reason: that if everything is the result of a doubtful heredity, the
+judgment itself is the result of a doubtful heredity also. Let it
+judge not that it be not judged. Eugenists, strange to say, have
+fathers and mothers like other people; and our opinion about their
+fathers and mothers is worth exactly as much as their opinions about
+ours. None of the parents were lunatics, and the rest is mere likes
+and dislikes. Suppose Dr. Saleeby had gone up to Byron and said, "My
+lord, I perceive you have a club-foot and inordinate passions: such
+are the hereditary results of a profligate soldier marrying a
+hot-tempered woman." The poet might logically reply (with
+characteristic lucidity and impropriety), "Sir, I perceive you have a
+confused mind and an unphilosophic theory about other people's love
+affairs. Such are the hereditary delusions bred by a Syrian doctor
+marrying a Quaker lady from York." Suppose Dr. Karl Pearson had said
+to Shelley, "From what I see of your temperament, you are running
+great risks in forming a connection with the daughter of a fanatic and
+eccentric like Godwin." Shelley would be employing the strict
+rationalism of the older and stronger free thinkers, if he answered,
+"From what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction in
+marrying the great-niece of an old corpse of a courtier and
+dilettante like Samuel Rogers." It is only opinion for opinion. Nobody
+can pretend that either Mary Godwin or Samuel Rogers was mad; and the
+general view a man may hold about the healthiness of inheriting their
+blood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men do
+marry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose that Dr. Karl
+Pearson is any better judge of a bridegroom than the bridegroom is of
+a bride.
+
+An objection may be anticipated here, but it is very easily answered.
+It may be said that we do, in fact, call in medical specialists to
+settle whether a man is mad; and that these specialists go by
+technical and even secret tests that cannot be known to the mass of
+men. It is obvious that this is true; it is equally obvious that it
+does not affect our argument. When we ask the doctor whether our
+grandfather is going mad, we still mean mad by our own common human
+definition. We mean, is he going to be a certain sort of person whom
+all men recognise when once he exists. That certain specialists can
+detect the approach of him, before he exists, does not alter the fact
+that it is of the practical and popular madman that we are talking,
+and of him alone. The doctor merely sees a certain fact potentially in
+the future, while we, with less information, can only see it in the
+present; but his fact is our fact and everybody's fact, or we should
+not bother about it at all. Here is no question of the doctor bringing
+an entirely new sort of person under coercion, as in the
+Feeble-Minded Bill. The doctor can say, "Tobacco is death to you,"
+because the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highly
+democratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of the
+indubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, "Jones has
+that twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house." But it is
+not the medical detail we fear, but the moral upshot. We should say,
+"Let him twitch, as long as he doesn't burn down the house." The
+doctor may say, "He has that look in the eyes, and he may take the
+hatchet and brain you all." But we do not object to the look in the
+eyes as such; we object to consequences which, once come, we should
+all call insane if there were no doctors in the world. We should say,
+"Let him look how he likes; as long as he does not look for the
+hatchet."
+
+Now, that specialists are valuable for this particular and practical
+purpose, of predicting the approach of enormous and admitted human
+calamities, nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring us
+one inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is a
+calamity; or to call things calamities which common sense does not
+call calamities. We call in the doctor to save us from death; and,
+death being admittedly an evil, he has the right to administer the
+queerest and most recondite pill which he may think is a cure for all
+such menaces of death. He has not the right to administer death, as
+the cure for all human ills. And as he has no moral authority to
+enforce a new conception of happiness, so he has no moral authority
+to enforce a new conception of sanity. He may know I am going mad; for
+madness is an isolated thing like leprosy; and I know nothing about
+leprosy. But if he merely thinks my mind is weak, I may happen to
+think the same of his. I often do.
+
+In short, unless pilots are to be permitted to ram ships on to the
+rocks and then say that heaven is the only true harbour; unless judges
+are to be allowed to let murderers loose, and explain afterwards that
+the murder had done good on the whole; unless soldiers are to be
+allowed to lose battles and then point out that true glory is to be
+found in the valley of humiliation; unless cashiers are to rob a bank
+in order to give it an advertisement; or dentists to torture people to
+give them a contrast to their comforts; unless we are prepared to let
+loose all these private fancies against the public and accepted
+meaning of life or safety or prosperity or pleasure--then it is as
+plain as Punch's nose that no scientific man must be allowed to meddle
+with the public definition of madness. We call him in to tell us where
+it is or when it is. We could not do so, if we had not ourselves
+settled what it is.
+
+As I wish to confine myself in this chapter to the primary point of
+the plain existence of sanity and insanity, I will not be led along
+any of the attractive paths that open here. I shall endeavour to deal
+with them in the next chapter. Here I confine myself to a sort of
+summary. Suppose a man's throat has been cut, quite swiftly and
+suddenly, with a table knife, at a small table where we sit. The
+whole of civil law rests on the supposition that we are witnesses;
+that we saw it; and if we do not know about it, who does? Now suppose
+all the witnesses fall into a quarrel about degrees of eyesight.
+Suppose one says he had brought his reading-glasses instead of his
+usual glasses; and therefore did not see the man fall across the table
+and cover it with blood. Suppose another says he could not be certain
+it was blood, because a slight colour-blindness was hereditary in his
+family. Suppose a third says he cannot swear to the uplifted knife,
+because his oculist tells him he is astigmatic, and vertical lines do
+not affect him as do horizontal lines. Suppose another says that dots
+have often danced before his eyes in very fantastic combinations, many
+of which were very like one gentleman cutting another gentleman's
+throat at dinner. All these things refer to real experiences. There is
+such a thing as myopia; there is such a thing as colour-blindness;
+there is such a thing as astigmatism; there is such a thing as
+shifting shapes swimming before the eyes. But what should we think of
+a whole dinner party that could give nothing except these highly
+scientific explanations when found in company with a corpse? I imagine
+there are only two things we could think: either that they were all
+drunk, or they were all murderers.
+
+And yet there is an exception. If there were one man at table who was
+admittedly _blind_, should we not give him the benefit of the doubt?
+Should we not honestly feel that he was the exception that proved the
+rule? The very fact that he could not have seen would remind us that
+the other men must have seen. The very fact that he had no eyes must
+remind us of eyes. A man can be blind; a man can be dead; a man can be
+mad. But the comparison is necessarily weak, after all. For it is the
+essence of madness to be unlike anything else in the world: which is
+perhaps why so many men wiser than we have traced it to another.
+
+Lastly, the literal maniac is different from all other persons in
+dispute in this vital respect: that he is the only person whom we can,
+with a final lucidity, declare that we do not want. He is almost
+always miserable himself, and he always makes others miserable. But
+this is not so with the mere invalid. The Eugenists would probably
+answer all my examples by taking the case of marrying into a family
+with consumption (or some such disease which they are fairly sure is
+hereditary) and asking whether such cases at least are not clear cases
+for a Eugenic intervention. Permit me to point out to them that they
+once more make a confusion of thought. The sickness or soundness of a
+consumptive may be a clear and calculable matter. The happiness or
+unhappiness of a consumptive is quite another matter, and is not
+calculable at all. What is the good of telling people that if they
+marry for love, they may be punished by being the parents of Keats or
+the parents of Stevenson? Keats died young; but he had more pleasure
+in a minute than a Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson had
+lung-trouble; and it may, for all I know, have been perceptible to the
+Eugenic eye even a generation before. But who would perform that
+illegal operation: the stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter
+bursting with good news, confiscating a hamper full of presents and
+prizes, pouring torrents of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this
+is a faint approximation for the Eugenic inaction of the ancestors of
+Stevenson. This, however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson
+it is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he
+got. If he had died without writing a line, he would have had more
+red-hot joy than is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I
+owe so much, let the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray that
+the stars of the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered among
+the days of the year, because it shut not up the doors of his mother's
+womb? I respectfully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon my
+mouth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE FLYING AUTHORITY
+
+
+It happened one day that an atheist and a man were standing together
+on a doorstep; and the atheist said, "It is raining." To which the man
+replied, "What is raining?": which question was the beginning of a
+violent quarrel and a lasting friendship. I will not touch upon any
+heads of the dispute, which doubtless included Jupiter Pluvius, the
+Neuter Gender, Pantheism, Noah's Ark, Mackintoshes, and the Passive
+Mood; but I will record the one point upon which the two persons
+emerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as an
+atheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the mere
+diction of a man, though he be speaking of clocks or cats or anything
+quite remote from theology. The mark of the atheistic style is that it
+instinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are dead
+things; that things have no souls. Thus they will not speak of waging
+war, which means willing it; they speak of the "outbreak of war," as
+if all the guns blew up without the men touching them. Thus those
+Socialists that are atheist will not call their international
+sympathy, sympathy; they will call it "solidarity," as if the poor men
+of France and Germany were physically stuck together like dates in a
+grocer's shop. The same Marxian Socialists are accused of cursing the
+Capitalists inordinately; but the truth is that they let the
+Capitalists off much too easily. For instead of saying that employers
+pay less wages, which might pin the employers to some moral
+responsibility, they insist on talking about the "rise and fall" of
+wages; as if a vast silver sea of sixpences and shillings was always
+going up and down automatically like the real sea at Margate. Thus
+they will not speak of reform, but of development; and they spoil
+their one honest and virile phrase, "the class war," by talking of it
+as no one in his wits can talk of a war, predicting its finish and
+final result as one calculates the coming of Christmas Day or the
+taxes. Thus, lastly (as we shall see touching our special
+subject-matter here) the atheist style in letters always avoids
+talking of love or lust, which are things alive, and calls marriage or
+concubinage "the relations of the sexes"; as if a man and a woman were
+two wooden objects standing in a certain angle and attitude to each
+other, like a table and a chair.
+
+Now the same anarchic mystery that clings round the phrase, "_il
+pleut_," clings round the phrase, "_il faut_." In English it is
+generally represented by the passive mood in grammar, and the
+Eugenists and their like deal especially in it; they are as passive in
+their statements as they are active in their experiments. Their
+sentences always enter tail first, and have no subject, like animals
+without heads. It is never "the doctor should cut off this leg" or
+"the policeman should collar that man." It is always "Such limbs
+should be amputated," or "Such men should be under restraint." Hamlet
+said, "I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's
+offal." The Eugenist would say, "The region kites should, if possible,
+be fattened; and the offal of this slave is available for the dietetic
+experiment." Lady Macbeth said, "Give me the daggers; I'll let his
+bowels out." The Eugenist would say, "In such cases the bowels should,
+etc." Do not blame me for the repulsiveness of the comparisons. I have
+searched English literature for the most decent parallels to Eugenist
+language.
+
+The formless god that broods over the East is called "Om." The
+formless god who has begun to brood over the West is called "On." But
+here we must make a distinction. The impersonal word _on_ is French,
+and the French have a right to use it, because they are a democracy.
+And when a Frenchman says "one" he does not mean himself, but the
+normal citizen. He does not mean merely "one," but one and all. "_On
+n'a que sa parole_" does not mean "_Noblesse oblige_," or "I am the
+Duke of Billingsgate and must keep my word." It means: "One has a
+sense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, should
+feel honourable"; and this, whether possible or no, is the purest
+ambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, "Conditions
+must be altered" or "Ancestry should be investigated," or what not, it
+seems clear that they do not mean that the democracy must do it,
+whatever else they may mean. They do not mean that any man not
+evidently mad may be trusted with these tests and re-arrangements, as
+the French democratic system trusts such a man with a vote or a farm
+or the control of a family. That would mean that Jones and Brown,
+being both ordinary men, would set about arranging each other's
+marriages. And this state of affairs would seem a little elaborate,
+and it might occur even to the Eugenic mind that if Jones and Brown
+are quite capable of arranging each other's marriages, it is just
+possible that they might be capable of arranging their own.
+
+This dilemma, which applies in so simple a case, applies equally to
+any wide and sweeping system of Eugenist voting; for though it is true
+that the community can judge more dispassionately than a man can judge
+in his own case, this particular question of the choice of a wife is
+so full of disputable shades in every conceivable case, that it is
+surely obvious that almost any democracy would simply vote the thing
+out of the sphere of voting, as they would any proposal of police
+interference in the choice of walking weather or of children's names.
+I should not like to be the politician who should propose a particular
+instance of Eugenics to be voted on by the French people. Democracy
+dismissed, it is here hardly needful to consider the other old models.
+Modern scientists will not say that George III., in his lucid
+intervals, should settle who is mad; or that the aristocracy that
+introduced gout shall supervise diet.
+
+I hold it clear, therefore, if anything is clear about the business,
+that the Eugenists do not merely mean that the mass of common men
+should settle each other's marriages between them; the question
+remains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when they say
+that this or that ought to be done. What is this flying and evanescent
+authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man who
+is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's verb? In a large
+number of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenist
+means himself, and nobody else. Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A.H. Huth,
+actually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a great
+deal of good could be done with a surgical knife, if we would only
+turn him loose with one. And this may be true. A great deal of good
+could be done with a loaded revolver, in the hands of a judicious
+student of human nature. But it is imperative that the Eugenist should
+perceive that on that principle we can never get beyond a perfect
+balance of different sympathies and antipathies. I mean that I should
+differ from Dr. Saleeby or Dr. Karl Pearson not only in a vast
+majority of individual cases, but in a vast majority of cases in which
+they would be bound to admit that such a difference was natural and
+reasonable. The chief victim of these famous doctors would be a yet
+more famous doctor: that eminent though unpopular practitioner, Dr.
+Fell.
+
+To show that such rational and serious differences do exist, I will
+take one instance from that Bill which proposed to protect families
+and the public generally from the burden of feeble-minded persons.
+Now, even if I could share the Eugenic contempt for human rights, even
+if I could start gaily on the Eugenic campaign, I should not begin by
+removing feeble-minded persons. I have known as many families in as
+many classes as most men; and I cannot remember meeting any very
+monstrous human suffering arising out of the presence of such
+insufficient and negative types. There seem to be comparatively few of
+them; and those few by no means the worst burdens upon domestic
+happiness. I do not hear of them often; I do not hear of them doing
+much more harm than good; and in the few cases I know well they are
+not only regarded with human affection, but can be put to certain
+limited forms of human use. Even if I were a Eugenist, then I should
+not personally elect to waste my time locking up the feeble-minded.
+The people I should lock up would be the strong-minded. I have known
+hardly any cases of mere mental weakness making a family a failure; I
+have known eight or nine cases of violent and exaggerated force of
+character making a family a hell. If the strong-minded could be
+segregated it would quite certainly be better for their friends and
+families. And if there is really anything in heredity, it would be
+better for posterity too. For the kind of egoist I mean is a madman
+in a much more plausible sense than the mere harmless "deficient"; and
+to hand on the horrors of his anarchic and insatiable temperament is a
+much graver responsibility than to leave a mere inheritance of
+childishness. I would not arrest such tyrants, because I think that
+even moral tyranny in a few homes is better than a medical tyranny
+turning the state into a madhouse. I would not segregate them, because
+I respect a man's free-will and his front-door and his right to be
+tried by his peers. But since free-will is believed by Eugenists no
+more than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenists
+no more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is about
+as sacred to Eugenists as it would be to King John, why do not _they_
+bring light and peace into so many human homes by removing a demoniac
+from each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Bill
+call at the many grand houses in town or country where such nightmares
+notoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the bad
+squire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniac
+prize-fighter? I do not know; and there is only one reason I can think
+of, which must remain a matter of speculation. When I was at school,
+the kind of boy who liked teasing half-wits was not the sort that
+stood up to bullies.
+
+That, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention the
+case of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give one
+out of the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individual
+opinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to
+propagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating trip
+together, we should separate at the very door; and if he had a
+thousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyone
+who has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows that
+the ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some little
+hobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad for
+children, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many more
+people ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human nature
+to expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard,
+dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as
+exercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would
+have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own
+madman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another would
+wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the
+terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats
+and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it
+seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his
+own implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lesson
+which is hardest for him and me and for all our fallen race--the fact
+that he is only himself.
+
+We now pass from mere individual men who obviously cannot be trusted,
+even if they are individual medical men, with such despotism over
+their neighbours; and we come to consider whether the Eugenists have
+at all clearly traced any more imaginable public authority, any
+apparatus of great experts or great examinations to which such risks
+of tyranny could be trusted. They are not very precise about this
+either; indeed, the great difficulty I have throughout in considering
+what are the Eugenist's proposals is that they do not seem to know
+themselves. Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connect
+with human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness of
+their definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans. The Eugenic
+optimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled and
+confused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that it will be
+all right on the night. They have all the ancient despotism, but none
+of the ancient dogmatism. If they are ready to reproduce the secrecies
+and cruelties of the Inquisition, at least we cannot accuse them of
+offending us with any of that close and complicated thought, that arid
+and exact logic which narrowed the minds of the Middle Ages; they have
+discovered how to combine the hardening of the heart with a
+sympathetic softening of the head. Nevertheless, there is one large,
+though vague, idea of the Eugenists, which is an idea, and which we
+reach when we reach this problem of a more general supervision.
+
+It was best presented perhaps by the distinguished doctor who wrote
+the article on these matters in that composite book which Mr. Wells
+edited, and called "The Great State." He said the doctor should no
+longer be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in his
+own words, "the health adviser of the community." The same can be
+expressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb that
+prevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that it
+amounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. This
+the writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. To
+which I rejoin that if everyone is ill the health adviser is ill too,
+and therefore cannot know how to cure that minimum of illness. This is
+the fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine.
+Prevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man's head is not
+better than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing to
+cure it. And it is the same if a man is in revolt, even a morbid
+revolt. Taking the heart out of him by slavery is not better than
+leaving the heart in him, even if you leave it a broken heart.
+Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse
+than disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the
+extra exasperation of being quite well. I will ask God, but certainly
+not man, to prevent me in all my doings. But the decisive and
+discussable form of this is well summed up in that phrase about the
+health adviser of society. I am sure that those who speak thus have
+something in their minds larger and more illuminating than the other
+two propositions we have considered. They do not mean that all
+citizens should decide, which would mean merely the present vague and
+dubious balance. They do not mean that all medical men should decide,
+which would mean a much more unbalanced balance. They mean that a few
+men might be found who had a consistent scheme and vision of a healthy
+nation, as Napoleon had a consistent scheme and vision of an army. It
+is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men's
+marriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize and
+segregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a few
+great hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens, as
+nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it is tyranny;
+but tyranny is a workable thing. When we ask by what process such men
+could be certainly chosen, we are back again on the old dilemma of
+despotism, which means a man, or democracy which means men, or
+aristocracy which means favouritism. But as a vision the thing is
+plausible and even rational. It is rational, and it is wrong.
+
+It is wrong, quite apart from the suggestion that an expert on health
+cannot be chosen. It is wrong because an expert on health cannot
+exist. An expert on disease can exist, for the very reason we have
+already considered in the case of madness, because experts can only
+arise out of exceptional things. A parallel with any of the other
+learned professions will make the point plain. If I am prosecuted for
+trespass, I will ask my solicitor which of the local lanes I am
+forbidden to walk in. But if my solicitor, having gained my case, were
+so elated that he insisted on settling what lanes I should walk in; if
+he asked me to let him map out all my country walks, because he was
+the perambulatory adviser of the community--then that solicitor would
+solicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me through
+woodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues and
+attractive short-cuts, I shall turn on him with passion, saying: "Sir,
+I pay you to know one particular puzzle in Latin and Norman-French,
+which they call the law of England; and you do know the law of
+England. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you know
+England. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was looking
+at it." As are the limits of the lawyer's special knowledge about
+walking, so are the limits of the doctor's. If I fall over the stump
+of a tree and break my leg, as is likely enough, I shall say to the
+lawyer, "Please go and fetch the doctor." I shall do it because the
+doctor really has a larger knowledge of a narrower area. There are
+only a certain number of ways in which a leg can be broken; I know
+none of them, and he knows all of them. There is such a thing as being
+a specialist in broken legs. There is no such thing as being a
+specialist in legs. When unbroken, legs are a matter of taste. If the
+doctor has really mended my leg, he may merit a colossal equestrian
+statue on the top of an eternal tower of brass. But if the doctor has
+really mended my leg he has no more rights over it. He must not come
+and teach me how to walk; because he and I learnt that in the same
+school, the nursery. And there is no more abstract likelihood of the
+doctor walking more elegantly than I do than there is of the barber or
+the bishop or the burglar walking more elegantly than I do. There
+cannot be a general specialist; the specialist can have no kind of
+authority, unless he has avowedly limited his range. There cannot be
+such a thing as the health adviser of the community, because there
+cannot be such a thing as one who specialises in the universe.
+
+Thus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be married should
+be obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-book, the
+expression is neat; but it does not convey the real respects in which
+the two things agree, and in which they differ. To begin with, of
+course, there is a great deal too much of the bank-book for the sanity
+of our commonwealth; and it is highly probable that the health-book,
+as conducted in modern conditions, would rapidly become as timid, as
+snobbish, and as sterile as the money side of marriage has become. In
+the moral atmosphere of modernity the poor and the honest would
+probably get as much the worst of it if we fought with health-books as
+they do when we fight with bank-books. But that is a more general
+matter; the real point is in the difference between the two. The
+difference is in this vital fact: that a monied man generally thinks
+about money, whereas a healthy man does not think about health. If
+the strong young man cannot produce his health-book, it is for the
+perfectly simple reason that he has not got one. He can mention some
+extraordinary malady he has; but every man of honour is expected to do
+that now, whatever may be the decision that follows on the knowledge.
+
+Health is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the impudence
+to understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostic has any
+right to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among other
+things, that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things, by
+which they are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and any
+scientist who pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimate
+sanity, I will call the lowest of religious fanatics. I will allow him
+to understand the madman, for the madman is an exception. But if he
+says he understands the sane man, then he says he has the secret of
+the Creator. For whenever you and I feel fully sane, we are quite
+incapable of naming the elements that make up that mysterious
+simplicity. We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we can
+conceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium by
+which, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling like
+precipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing.
+
+We conclude, therefore, that unless Eugenic activity be restricted to
+monstrous things like mania, there is no constituted or constitutable
+authority that can really over-rule men in a matter in which they are
+so largely on a level. In the matter of fundamental human rights,
+nothing can be above Man, except God. An institution claiming to come
+from God might have such authority; but this is the last claim the
+Eugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking to
+rule men in such matters is like a man's right eye claiming to rule
+him, or his left leg to run away with him. It is madness. We now pass
+on to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenics
+to be done, with such cheerfulness as we may possess after discovering
+that there is nobody to do it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE
+
+
+Dr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in one of his
+addresses on this subject, and said that even I cannot produce any but
+a feeble-minded child from a feeble-minded ancestry. To which I reply,
+first of all, that he cannot produce a feeble-minded child. The whole
+point of our contention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed and
+outside opinion. There is such a thing as mania, which has always been
+segregated; there is such a thing as idiotcy, which has always been
+segregated; but feeble-mindedness is a new phrase under which you
+might segregate anybody. It is essential that this fundamental fallacy
+in the use of statistics should be got somehow into the modern mind.
+Such people must be made to see the point, which is surely plain
+enough, that it is useless to have exact figures if they are exact
+figures about an inexact phrase. If I say, "There are five fools in
+Acton," it is surely quite clear that, though no mathematician can
+make five the same as four or six, that will not stop you or anyone
+else from finding a few more fools in Acton. Now weak-mindedness, like
+folly, is a term divided from madness in this vital manner--that in
+one sense it applies to all men, in another to most men, in another
+to very many men, and so on. It is as if Dr. Saleeby were to say,
+"Vanity, I find, is undoubtedly hereditary. Here is Mrs. Jones, who
+was very sensitive about her sonnets being criticised, and I found her
+little daughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment is
+conclusive, the demonstration is complete; there in the first
+generation is the artistic temperament--that is vanity; and there in
+the second generation is dress--and that is vanity." We should answer,
+"My friend, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit--especially
+when one has to listen to logic of your favourite kind. Obviously all
+human beings must value themselves; and obviously there is in all such
+valuation an element of weakness, since it is not the valuation of
+eternal justice. What is the use of your finding by experiment in some
+people a thing we know by reason must be in all of them?"
+
+Here it will be as well to pause a moment and avert one possible
+misunderstanding. I do not mean that you and I cannot and do not
+practically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric or
+intermediate type, for which the word "feeble-minded" might be a very
+convenient word, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinable
+fact of experience. In the same way we might speak, and do speak, of
+such and such a person being "mad with vanity" without wanting two
+keepers to walk in and take the person off. But I ask the reader to
+remember always that I am talking of words, not as they are used in
+talk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, in
+warrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament. The distinction
+between the two is perfectly clear and practical. The difference is
+that a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit the mark; it
+is all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the type should be
+recognised; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the right man.
+But it is by no means always to the interests of governments or
+officials to hang the right man. The fact that they often do stretch
+words in order to cover cases is the whole foundation of having any
+fixed laws or free institutions at all. My point is not that I have
+never met anyone whom I should call feeble-minded, rather than mad or
+imbecile. My point is that if I want to dispossess a nephew, oust a
+rival, silence a blackmailer, or get rid of an importunate widow,
+there is nothing in logic to prevent my calling them feeble-minded
+too. And the vaguer the charge is the less they will be able to
+disprove it.
+
+One does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resist
+such legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual world
+in order to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may be
+such a thing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is such
+a thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in
+mere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits;
+believing that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason to
+suppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. All that is mere
+rationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance and
+terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but denies
+there can be devils. The superstition is in the person who admits
+there can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. Yet I should
+certainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectly
+simple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. The
+reason is that it is one thing to believe in witches, and quite
+another to believe in witch-smellers. I have more respect for the old
+witch-finders than for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting the
+fool of the family; because the witch-finders, according to their own
+conviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the
+strong-minded--the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a
+raid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a
+righteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of
+sin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and
+despicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a
+war upon the weak. It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being.
+
+When I said above that I believed in witches, but not in
+witch-smellers, I stated my full position about that conception of
+heredity, that half-formed philosophy of fears and omens; of curses
+and weird recurrence and darkness and the doom of blood, which, as
+preached to humanity to-day, is often more inhuman than witchcraft
+itself. I do not deny that this dark element exists; I only affirm
+that it is dark; or, in other words, that its most strenuous students
+are evidently in the dark about it. I would no more trust Dr. Karl
+Pearson on a heredity-hunt than on a heresy-hunt. I am perfectly ready
+to give my reasons for thinking this; and I believe any well-balanced
+person, if he reflects on them, will think as I do. There are two
+senses in which a man may be said to know or not know a subject. I
+know the subject of arithmetic, for instance; that is, I am not good
+at it, but I know what it is. I am sufficiently familiar with its use
+to see the absurdity of anyone who says, "So vulgar a fraction cannot
+be mentioned before ladies," or "This unit is Unionist, I hope."
+Considering myself for one moment as an arithmetician, I may say that
+I know next to nothing about my subject: but I know my subject. I know
+it in the street. There is the other kind of man, like Dr. Karl
+Pearson, who undoubtedly knows a vast amount about his subject; who
+undoubtedly lives in great forests of facts concerning kinship and
+inheritance. But it is not, by any means, the same thing to have
+searched the forests and to have recognised the frontiers. Indeed, the
+two things generally belong to two very different types of mind. I
+gravely doubt whether the Astronomer-Royal would write the best essay
+on the relations between astronomy and astrology. I doubt whether the
+President of the Geographical Society could give the best definition
+and history of the words "geography" and "geology."
+
+Now the students of heredity, especially, understand all of their
+subject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born in
+that brier-patch, and have really explored it without coming to the
+end of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question of
+what they are studying. Now I do not propose to rely merely on myself
+to tell them what they are studying. I propose, as will be seen in a
+moment, to call the testimony of a great man who has himself studied
+it. But to begin with, the domain of heredity (for those who see its
+frontiers) is a sort of triangle, enclosed on its three sides by three
+facts. The first is that heredity undoubtedly exists, or there would
+be no such thing as a family likeness, and every marriage might
+suddenly produce a small negro. The second is that even simple
+heredity can never be simple; its complexity must be literally
+unfathomable, for in that field fight unthinkable millions. But yet
+again it never is simple heredity: for the instant anyone is, he
+experiences. The third is that these innumerable ancient influences,
+these instant inundations of experiences, come together according to a
+combination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is a
+combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on
+the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the
+sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a
+golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the
+Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face
+that the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can
+never be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every
+feature, in every inch. In the person of the baby he may have gently
+pulled his wife's nose. In the person of the baby he may have partly
+blacked his wife's eyes.
+
+Those are the three first facts of heredity. That it exists; that it
+is subtle and made of a million elements; that it is simple, and
+cannot be unmade into those elements. To summarise: you know there is
+wine in the soup. You do not know how many wines there are in the
+soup, because you do not know how many wines there are in the world.
+And you never will know, because all chemists, all cooks, and all
+common-sense people tell you that the soup is of such a sort that it
+can never be chemically analysed. That is a perfectly fair parallel to
+the hereditary element in the human soul. There are many ways in which
+one can feel that there is wine in the soup, as in suddenly tasting a
+wine specially favoured; that corresponds to seeing suddenly flash on
+a young face the image of some ancestor you have known. But even then
+the taster cannot be certain he is not tasting one familiar wine among
+many unfamiliar ones--or seeing one known ancestor among a million
+unknown ancestors. Another way is to get drunk on the soup, which
+corresponds to the case of those who say they are driven to sin and
+death by hereditary doom. But even then the drunkard cannot be certain
+it was the soup, any more than the traditional drunkard who is certain
+it was the salmon.
+
+Those are the facts about heredity which anyone can see. The upshot of
+them is not only that a miss is as good as a mile, but a miss is as
+good as a win. If the child has his parents' nose (or noses) that may
+be heredity. But if he has not, that may be heredity too. And as we
+need not take heredity lightly because two generations differ--so we
+need not take heredity a scrap more seriously because two generations
+are similar. The thing is there, in what cases we know not, in what
+proportion we know not, and we cannot know.
+
+Now it is just here that the decent difference of function between Dr.
+Saleeby's trade and mine comes in. It is his business to study human
+health and sickness as a whole, in a spirit of more or less
+enlightened guesswork; and it is perfectly natural that he should
+allow for heredity here, there, and everywhere, as a man climbing a
+mountain or sailing a boat will allow for weather without even
+explaining it to himself. An utterly different attitude is incumbent
+on any conscientious man writing about what laws should be enforced or
+about how commonwealths should be governed. And when we consider how
+plain a fact is murder, and yet how hesitant and even hazy we all grow
+about the guilt of a murderer, when we consider how simple an act is
+stealing, and yet how hard it is to convict and punish those rich
+commercial pirates who steal the most, when we consider how cruel and
+clumsy the law can be even about things as old and plain as the Ten
+Commandments--I simply cannot conceive any responsible person
+proposing to legislate on our broken knowledge and bottomless
+ignorance of heredity.
+
+But though I have to consider this dull matter in its due logical
+order, it appears to me that this part of the matter has been settled,
+and settled in a most masterly way, by somebody who has infinitely
+more right to speak on it than I have. Our press seems to have a
+perfect genius for fitting people with caps that don't fit; and
+affixing the wrong terms of eulogy and even the wrong terms of abuse.
+And just as people will talk of Bernard Shaw as a naughty winking
+Pierrot, when he is the last great Puritan and really believes in
+respectability; just as (_si parva licet_ etc.) they will talk of my
+own paradoxes, when I pass my life in preaching that the truisms are
+true; so an enormous number of newspaper readers seem to have it fixed
+firmly in their heads that Mr. H.G. Wells is a harsh and horrible
+Eugenist in great goblin spectacles, who wants to put us all into
+metallic microscopes and dissect us with metallic tools. As a matter
+of fact, of course, Mr. Wells, so far from being too definite, is
+generally not definite enough. He is an absolute wizard in the
+appreciation of atmospheres and the opening of vistas; but his answers
+are more agnostic than his questions. His books will do everything
+except shut. And so far from being the sort of man who would stop a
+man from propagating, he cannot even stop a full stop. He is not
+Eugenic enough to prevent the black dot at the end of a sentence from
+breeding a line of little dots.
+
+But this is not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real
+blunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of
+medals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds
+of public economy, to giving Mr. Wells only one medal _ob cives
+servatos_, I would give him a medal as the Eugenist who destroyed
+Eugenics. For everyone spoke of him, rightly or wrongly, as a
+Eugenist; and he certainly had, as I have not, the training and type
+of culture required to consider the matter merely in a biological and
+not in a generally moral sense. The result was that in that fine book,
+"Mankind in the Making," where he inevitably came to grips with the
+problem, he threw down to the Eugenists an intellectual challenge
+which seems to me unanswerable, but which, at any rate, is unanswered.
+I do not mean that no remote Eugenist wrote upon the subject; for it
+is impossible to read all writings, especially Eugenist writings. I do
+mean that the leading Eugenists write as if this challenge had never
+been offered. The gauntlet lies unlifted on the ground.
+
+Having given honour for the idea where it is due, I may be permitted
+to summarise it myself for the sake of brevity. Mr. Wells' point was
+this. That we cannot be certain about the inheritance of health,
+because health is not a quality. It is not a thing like darkness in
+the hair or length in the limbs. It is a relation, a balance. You have
+a tall, strong man; but his very strength depends on his not being too
+tall for his strength. You catch a healthy, full-blooded fellow; but
+his very health depends on his being not too full of blood. A heart
+that is strong for a dwarf will be weak for a giant; a nervous system
+that would kill a man with a trace of a certain illness will sustain
+him to ninety if he has no trace of that illness. Nay, the same
+nervous system might kill him if he had an excess of some other
+comparatively healthy thing. Seeing, therefore, that there are
+apparently healthy people of all types, it is obvious that if you mate
+two of them, you may even then produce a discord out of two
+inconsistent harmonies. It is obvious that you can no more be certain
+of a good offspring than you can be certain of a good tune if you play
+two fine airs at once on the same piano. You can be even less certain
+of it in the more delicate case of beauty, of which the Eugenists talk
+a great deal. Marry two handsome people whose noses tend to the
+aquiline, and their baby (for all you know) may be a goblin with a
+nose like an enormous parrot's. Indeed, I actually know a case of this
+kind. The Eugenist has to settle, not the result of fixing one steady
+thing to a second steady thing; but what will happen when one toppling
+and dizzy equilibrium crashes into another.
+
+This is the interesting conclusion. It is on this degree of knowledge
+that we are asked to abandon the universal morality of mankind. When
+we have stopped the lover from marrying the unfortunate woman he
+loves, when we have found him another uproariously healthy female whom
+he does not love in the least, even then we have no logical evidence
+that the result may not be as horrid and dangerous as if he had
+behaved like a man of honour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT
+
+
+Let us now finally consider what the honest Eugenists do mean, since
+it has become increasingly evident that they cannot mean what they
+say. Unfortunately, the obstacles to any explanation of this are such
+as to insist on a circuitous approach. The tendency of all that is
+printed and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true
+sense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it
+is always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article,
+and he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may
+even, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he
+thinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the
+nearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of
+classical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to
+write it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where
+he learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his
+stalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his
+thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can
+be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth
+delivering at all. The poor panting critic falls farther and farther
+behind the motor-car of modern fact. Fifty years ago he was barely
+fifteen years behind the times. Fifteen years ago he was not more than
+fifty years behind the times. Just now he is rather more than a
+hundred years behind the times: and the proof of it is that the things
+he says, though manifest nonsense about our society to-day, really
+were true about our society some hundred and thirty years ago. The
+best instance of his belated state is his perpetual assertion that the
+supernatural is less and less believed. It is a perfectly true and
+realistic account--of the eighteenth century. It is the worst possible
+account of this age of psychics and spirit-healers and fakirs and
+fashionable fortune-tellers. In fact, I generally reply in eighteenth
+century language to this eighteenth century illusion. If somebody says
+to me, "The creeds are crumbling," I reply, "And the King of Prussia,
+who is himself a Freethinker, is certainly capturing Silesia from the
+Catholic Empress." If somebody says, "Miracles must be reconsidered in
+the light of rational experience," I answer affably, "But I hope that
+our enlightened leader, Hébert, will not insist on guillotining that
+poor French queen." If somebody says, "We must watch for the rise of
+some new religion which can commend itself to reason," I reply, "But
+how much more necessary is it to watch for the rise of some military
+adventurer who may destroy the Republic: and, to my mind, that young
+Major Bonaparte has rather a restless air." It is only in such
+language from the Age of Reason that we can answer such things. The
+age we live in is something more than an age of superstition--it is an
+age of innumerable superstitions. But it is only with one example of
+this that I am concerned here.
+
+I mean the error that still sends men marching about disestablishing
+churches and talking of the tyranny of compulsory church teaching or
+compulsory church tithes. I do not wish for an irrelevant
+misunderstanding here; I would myself certainly disestablish any
+church that had a numerical minority, like the Irish or the Welsh; and
+I think it would do a great deal of good to genuine churches that have
+a partly conventional majority, like the English, or even the Russian.
+But I should only do this if I had nothing else to do; and just now
+there is very much else to do. For religion, orthodox or unorthodox,
+is not just now relying on the weapon of State establishment at all.
+The Pope practically made no attempt to preserve the Concordat; but
+seemed rather relieved at the independence his Church gained by the
+destruction of it: and it is common talk among the French clericalists
+that the Church has gained by the change. In Russia the one real
+charge brought by religious people (especially Roman Catholics)
+against the Orthodox Church is not its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, but
+its abject dependence on the State. In England we can almost measure
+an Anglican's fervour for his Church by his comparative coolness about
+its establishment--that is, its control by a Parliament of Scotch
+Presbyterians like Balfour, or Welsh Congregationalists like Lloyd
+George. In Scotland the powerful combination of the two great sects
+outside the establishment have left it in a position in which it feels
+no disposition to boast of being called by mere lawyers the Church of
+Scotland. I am not here arguing that Churches should not depend on the
+State; nor that they do not depend upon much worse things. It may be
+reasonably maintained that the strength of Romanism, though it be not
+in any national police, is in a moral police more rigid and vigilant.
+It may be reasonably maintained that the strength of Anglicanism,
+though it be not in establishment, is in aristocracy, and its shadow,
+which is called snobbishness. All I assert here is that the Churches
+are not now leaning heavily on their political establishment; they are
+not using heavily the secular arm. Almost everywhere their legal
+tithes have been modified, their legal boards of control have been
+mixed. They may still employ tyranny, and worse tyranny: I am not
+considering that. They are not specially using that special tyranny
+which consists in using the government.
+
+The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is
+Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science.
+And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the
+creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that
+really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by
+pilgrims but by policemen--that creed is the great but disputed
+system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in
+Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the
+Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination,
+in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much
+as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite natural
+to our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to them
+madness to enforce baptism.
+
+I am not frightened of the word "persecution" when it is attributed to
+the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I
+attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If
+it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory,
+incapable of final proof--then our priests are not now persecuting,
+but our doctors are. The imposition of such dogmas constitutes a State
+Church--in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied to
+any supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where the
+religious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way or
+that; and yet more where it is excluded from this or that public post.
+But I cannot now recall any place where it is compelled by the
+criminal law to go through the rite of the official religion. Even the
+Young Turks did not insist on all Macedonians being circumcised.
+
+Now here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, in
+the past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence,
+it has been at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixed
+and flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by their
+enemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But what
+are the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword to
+enforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions and
+bewildered answers that we have been studying in the last
+chapters--questions whose only interest is that they are trackless and
+mysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative and
+new. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; and
+therefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of science
+actually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he
+persecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his
+creed, because it was unchangeable. The _savant_ enforces it violently
+because he may change it the next day.
+
+Now this is a new sort of persecution; and one may be permitted to ask
+if it is an improvement on the old. The difference, so far as one can
+see at first, seems rather favourable to the old. If we are to be at
+the merciless mercy of man, most of us would rather be racked for a
+creed that existed intensely in somebody's head, rather than
+vivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone's head,
+and possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with a
+thumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with a
+vivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet that
+is the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. If
+I gave in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to
+profess. But even if I yelled out _a credo_ when the Eugenists had me
+on the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an
+extra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed
+quite a week ago.
+
+Now let no light-minded person say that I am here taking extravagant
+parallels; for the parallel is not only perfect, but plain. For this
+reason: that the difference between torture and vivisection is not in
+any way affected by the fierceness or mildness of either. Whether they
+gave the rack half a turn or half a hundred, they were, by hypothesis,
+dealing with a truth which they knew to be there. Whether they
+vivisect painfully or painlessly, they are trying to find out whether
+the truth is there or not. The old Inquisitors tortured to put their
+own opinions into somebody. But the new Inquisitors torture to get
+their own opinions out of him. They do not know what their own
+opinions are, until the victim of vivisection tells them. The division
+of thought is a complete chasm for anyone who cares about thinking.
+The old persecutor was trying to _teach_ the citizen, with fire and
+sword. The new persecutor is trying to _learn_ from the citizen, with
+scalpel and germ-injector. The master was meeker than the pupil will
+be.
+
+I could prove by many practical instances that even my illustrations
+are not exaggerated, by many placid proposals I have heard for the
+vivisection of criminals, or by the filthy incident of Dr. Neisser.
+But I prefer here to stick to a strictly logical line of distinction,
+and insist that whereas in all previous persecutions the violence was
+used to end _our_ indecision, the whole point here is that the
+violence is used to end the indecision of the persecutors. This is
+what the honest Eugenists really mean, so far as they mean anything.
+They mean that the public is to be given up, not as a heathen land for
+conversion, but simply as a _pabulum_ for experiment. That is the
+real, rude, barbaric sense behind this Eugenic legislation. The
+Eugenist doctors are not such fools as they look in the light of any
+logical inquiry about what they want. They do not know what they want,
+except that they want your soul and body and mine in order to find
+out. They are quite seriously, as they themselves might say, the first
+religion to be experimental instead of doctrinal. All other
+established Churches have been based on somebody having found the
+truth. This is the first Church that was ever based on not having
+found it.
+
+There is in them a perfectly sincere hope and enthusiasm; but it is
+not for us, but for what they might learn from us, if they could rule
+us as they can rabbits. They cannot tell us anything about heredity,
+because they do not know anything about it. But they do quite honestly
+believe that they would know something about it, when they had married
+and mismarried us for a few hundred years. They cannot tell us who is
+fit to wield such authority, for they know that nobody is; but they do
+quite honestly believe that when that authority has been abused for a
+very long time, somebody somehow will be evolved who is fit for the
+job. I am no Puritan, and no one who knows my opinions will consider
+it a mere criminal charge if I say that they are simply gambling. The
+reckless gambler has no money in his pockets; he has only the ideas in
+his head. These gamblers have no ideas in their heads; they have only
+the money in their pockets. But they think that if they could use the
+money to buy a big society to experiment on, something like an idea
+might come to them at last. That is Eugenics.
+
+I confine myself here to remarking that I do not like it. I may be
+very stingy, but I am willing to pay the scientist for what he does
+know; I draw the line at paying him for everything he doesn't know. I
+may be very cowardly, but I am willing to be hurt for what I think or
+what he thinks--I am not willing to be hurt, or even inconvenienced,
+for whatever he might happen to think after he had hurt me. The
+ordinary citizen may easily be more magnanimous than I, and take the
+whole thing on trust; in which case his career may be happier in the
+next world, but (I think) sadder in this. At least, I wish to point
+out to him that he will not be giving his glorious body as soldiers
+give it, to the glory of a fixed flag, or martyrs to the glory of a
+deathless God. He will be, in the strict sense of the Latin phrase,
+giving his vile body for an experiment--an experiment of which even
+the experimentalist knows neither the significance nor the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY
+
+
+I have up to this point treated the Eugenists, I hope, as seriously as
+they treat themselves. I have attempted an analysis of their theory as
+if it were an utterly abstract and disinterested theory; and so
+considered, there seems to be very little left of it. But before I go
+on, in the second part of this book, to talk of the ugly things that
+really are left, I wish to recapitulate the essential points in their
+essential order, lest any personal irrelevance or over-emphasis (to
+which I know myself to be prone) should have confused the course of
+what I believe to be a perfectly fair and consistent argument. To make
+it yet clearer, I will summarise the thing under chapters, and in
+quite short paragraphs.
+
+In the first chapter I attempted to define the essential point in
+which Eugenics can claim, and does claim, to be a new morality. That
+point is that it is possible to consider the baby in considering the
+bride. I do not adopt the ideal irresponsibility of the man who said,
+"What has posterity done for us?" But I do say, to start with, "What
+can we do for posterity, except deal fairly with our contemporaries?"
+Unless a man love his wife whom he has seen, how shall he love his
+child whom he has not seen?
+
+In the second chapter I point out that this division in the conscience
+cannot be met by mere mental confusions, which would make any woman
+refusing any man a Eugenist. There will always be something in the
+world which tends to keep outrageous unions exceptional; that
+influence is not Eugenics, but laughter.
+
+In the third chapter I seek to describe the quite extraordinary
+atmosphere in which such things have become possible. I call that
+atmosphere anarchy; but insist that it is an anarchy in the centres
+where there should be authority. Government has become ungovernable;
+that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that
+is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our
+time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government. In
+this atmosphere it is natural enough that medical experts, being
+authorities, should go mad, and attempt so crude and random and
+immature a dream as this of petting and patting (and rather spoiling)
+the babe unborn.
+
+In chapter four I point out how this impatience has burst through the
+narrow channel of the Lunacy Laws, and has obliterated them by
+extending them. The whole point of the madman is that he is the
+exception that proves the rule. But Eugenics seeks to treat the whole
+rule as a series of exceptions--to make all men mad. And on that
+ground there is hope for nobody; for all opinions have an author, and
+all authors have a heredity. The mentality of the Eugenist makes him
+believe in Eugenics as much as the mentality of the reckless lover
+makes him violate Eugenics; and both mentalities are, on the
+materialist hypothesis, equally the irresponsible product of more or
+less unknown physical causes. The real security of man against any
+logical Eugenics is like the false security of Macbeth. The only
+Eugenist that could rationally attack him must be a man of no woman
+born.
+
+In the chapter following this, which is called "The Flying Authority,"
+I try in vain to locate and fix any authority that could rationally
+rule men in so rooted and universal a matter; little would be gained
+by ordinary men doing it to each other; and if ordinary practitioners
+did it they would very soon show, by a thousand whims and quarrels,
+that they were ordinary men. I then discussed the enlightened
+despotism of a few general professors of hygiene, and found it
+unworkable, for an essential reason: that while we can always get men
+intelligent enough to know more than the rest of us about this or that
+accident or pain or pest, we cannot count on the appearance of great
+cosmic philosophers; and only such men can be even supposed to know
+more than we do about normal conduct and common sanity. Every sort of
+man, in short, would shirk such a responsibility, except the worst
+sort of man, who would accept it.
+
+I pass on, in the next chapter, to consider whether we know enough
+about heredity to act decisively, even if we were certain who ought to
+act. Here I refer the Eugenists to the reply of Mr. Wells, which they
+have never dealt with to my knowledge or satisfaction--the important
+and primary objection that health is not a quality but a proportion of
+qualities; so that even health married to health might produce the
+exaggeration called disease. It should be noted here, of course, that
+an individual biologist may quite honestly believe that he has found a
+fixed principle with the help of Weissmann or Mendel. But we are not
+discussing whether he knows enough to be justified in thinking (as is
+somewhat the habit of the anthropoid _Homo_) that he is right. We are
+discussing whether _we_ know enough, as responsible citizens, to put
+such powers into the hands of men who may be deceived or who may be
+deceivers. I conclude that we do not.
+
+In the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, I
+believe, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what the
+Eugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what they
+want. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire the
+establishment of research; that is the making of it a thing official
+and compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it is
+only research and not discovery. In short, they want a new kind of
+State Church, which shall be an Established Church of Doubt--instead
+of Faith. They have no Science of Eugenics at all, but they do really
+mean that if we will give ourselves up to be vivisected they may very
+probably have one some day. I point out, in more dignified diction,
+that this is a bit thick.
+
+And now, in the second half of this book, we will proceed to the
+consideration of things that really exist. It is, I deeply regret to
+say, necessary to return to realities, as they are in your daily life
+and mine. Our happy holiday in the land of nonsense is over; we shall
+see no more its beautiful city, with the almost Biblical name of Bosh,
+nor the forests full of mares' nests, nor the fields of tares that are
+ripened only by moonshine. We shall meet no longer those delicious
+monsters that might have talked in the same wild club with the Snark
+and the Jabberwock or the Pobble or the Dong with the Luminous Nose;
+the father who can't make head or tail of the mother, but thoroughly
+understands the child she will some day bear; the lawyer who has to
+run after his own laws almost as fast as the criminals run away from
+them; the two mad doctors who might discuss for a million years which
+of them has the right to lock up the other; the grammarian who clings
+convulsively to the Passive Mood, and says it is the duty of something
+to get itself done without any human assistance; the man who would
+marry giants to giants until the back breaks, as children pile brick
+upon brick for the pleasure of seeing the staggering tower tumble
+down; and, above all, the superb man of science who wants you to pay
+him and crown him because he has so far found out nothing. These
+fairy-tale comrades must leave us. They exist, but they have no
+influence in what is really going on. They are honest dupes and tools,
+as you and I were very nearly being honest dupes and tools. If we
+come to think coolly of the world we live in, if we consider how very
+practical is the practical politician, at least where cash is
+concerned, how very dull and earthy are most of the men who own the
+millions and manage the newspaper trusts, how very cautious and averse
+from idealist upheaval are those that control this capitalist
+society--when we consider all this, it is frankly incredible that
+Eugenics should be a front bench fashionable topic and almost an Act
+of Parliament, if it were in practice only the unfinished fantasy
+which it is, as I have shown, in pure reason. Even if it were a just
+revolution, it would be much too revolutionary a revolution for modern
+statesmen, if there were not something else behind. Even if it were a
+true ideal, it would be much too idealistic an ideal for our
+"practical men," if there were not something real as well. Well, there
+is something real as well. There is no reason in Eugenics, but there
+is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory,
+but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I
+reiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite
+innocent instruments, there _are_ some, even among Eugenists, who by
+this time know what they are doing. To them we shall not say, "What is
+Eugenics?" or "Where on earth are you going?" but only "Woe unto you,
+hypocrites, that devour widows' houses and for a pretence use long
+words."
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+
+THE REAL AIM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE
+
+
+The root formula of an epoch is always an unwritten law, just as the
+law that is the first of all laws, that which protects life from the
+murderer, is written nowhere in the Statute Book. Nevertheless there
+is all the difference between having and not having a notion of this
+basic assumption in an epoch. For instance, the Middle Ages will
+simply puzzle us with their charities and cruelties, their asceticism
+and bright colours, unless we catch their general eagerness for
+building and planning, dividing this from that by walls and
+fences--the spirit that made architecture their most successful art.
+Thus even a slave seemed sacred; the divinity that did hedge a king,
+did also, in one sense, hedge a serf, for he could not be driven out
+from behind his hedges. Thus even liberty became a positive thing like
+a privilege; and even, when most men had it, it was not opened like
+the freedom of a wilderness, but bestowed, like the freedom of a city.
+Or again, the seventeenth century may seem a chaos of contradictions,
+with its almost priggish praise of parliaments and its quite barbaric
+massacre of prisoners, until we realise that, if the Middle Ages was a
+house half built, the seventeenth century was a house on fire. Panic
+was the note of it, and that fierce fastidiousness and exclusiveness
+that comes from fear. Calvinism was its characteristic religion, even
+in the Catholic Church, the insistence on the narrowness of the way
+and the fewness of the chosen. Suspicion was the note of its
+politics--"put not your trust in princes." It tried to thrash
+everything out by learned, virulent, and ceaseless controversy; and it
+weeded its population by witch-burning. Or yet again: the eighteenth
+century will present pictures that seem utterly opposite, and yet seem
+singularly typical of the time: the sack of Versailles and the "Vicar
+of Wakefield"; the pastorals of Watteau and the dynamite speeches of
+Danton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight
+of the idea of _tidying up_ which ran through the whole period, the
+quietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilisation, and
+sound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people
+having (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for
+its own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only a
+readiness to employ it to get rid of unreason or disorder. With these
+epochs it is not altogether impossible to say that some such form of
+words is a key. The epoch for which it is almost impossible to find a
+form of words is our own.
+
+Nevertheless, I think that with us the keyword is "inevitability," or,
+as I should be inclined to call it, "impenitence." We are
+subconsciously dominated in all departments by the notion that there
+is no turning back, and it is rooted in materialism and the denial of
+free-will. Take any handful of modern facts and compare them with the
+corresponding facts a few hundred years ago. Compare the modern Party
+System with the political factions of the seventeenth century. The
+difference is that in the older time the party leaders not only really
+cut off each other's heads, but (what is much more alarming) really
+repealed each other's laws. With us it has become traditional for one
+party to inherit and leave untouched the acts of the other when made,
+however bitterly they were attacked in the making. James II. and his
+nephew William were neither of them very gay specimens; but they would
+both have laughed at the idea of "a continuous foreign policy." The
+Tories were not Conservatives; they were, in the literal sense,
+reactionaries. They did not merely want to keep the Stuarts; they
+wanted to bring them back.
+
+Or again, consider how obstinately the English mediæval monarchy
+returned again and again to its vision of French possessions, trying
+to reverse the decision of fate; how Edward III. returned to the
+charge after the defeats of John and Henry III., and Henry V. after
+the failure of Edward III.; and how even Mary had that written on her
+heart which was neither her husband nor her religion. And then
+consider this: that we have comparatively lately known a universal
+orgy of the thing called Imperialism, the unity of the Empire the only
+topic, colonies counted like crown jewels, and the Union Jack waved
+across the world. And yet no one so much as dreamed, I will not say of
+recovering, the American colonies for the Imperial unity (which would
+have been too dangerous a task for modern empire-builders), but even
+of re-telling the story from an Imperial standpoint. Henry V.
+justified the claims of Edward III. Joseph Chamberlain would not have
+dreamed of justifying the claims of George III. Nay, Shakespeare
+justifies the French War, and sticks to Talbot and defies the legend
+of Joan of Arc. Mr. Kipling would not dare to justify the American
+War, stick to Burgoyne, and defy the legend of Washington. Yet there
+really was much more to be said for George III. than there ever was
+for Henry V. It was not said, much less acted upon, by the modern
+Imperialists; because of this basic modern sense, that as the future
+is inevitable, so is the past irrevocable. Any fact so complete as the
+American exodus from the Empire must be considered as final for æons,
+though it hardly happened more than a hundred years ago. Merely
+because it has managed to occur it must be called first, a necessary
+evil, and then an indispensable good. I need not add that I do not
+want to reconquer America; but then I am not an Imperialist.
+
+Then there is another way of testing it: ask yourself how many people
+you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who
+attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the
+British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate?
+How few have we met who realised that British education can be
+altered, but British weather cannot? How few there were that knew that
+the clouds were more immortal and more solid than the schools? For a
+thousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or
+the ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? Indeed,
+the very word proves my case by its unpromising and unfamiliar sound.
+At the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform
+and Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; but nobody talks about
+repeal. Our fathers did not talk of Free Trade, but of the Repeal of
+the Corn Laws. They did not talk of Home Rule, but of the Repeal of
+the Union. In those days people talked of a "Repealer" as the most
+practical of all politicians, the kind of politician that carries a
+club. Now the Repealer is flung far into the province of an impossible
+idealism: and the leader of one of our great parties, having said, in
+a heat of temporary sincerity, that he would repeal an Act, actually
+had to write to all the papers to assure them that he would only amend
+it. I need not multiply instances, though they might be multiplied
+almost to a million. The note of the age is to suggest that the past
+may just as well be praised, since it cannot be mended. Men actually
+in that past have toiled like ants and died like locusts to undo some
+previous settlement that seemed secure; but we cannot do so much as
+repeal an Act of Parliament. We entertain the weak-minded notion that
+what is done can't be undone. Our view was well summarised in a
+typical Victorian song with the refrain: "The mill will never grind
+again the water that is past." There are many answers to this. One
+(which would involve a disquisition on the phenomena of Evaporation
+and Dew) we will here avoid. Another is, that to the minds of simple
+country folk, the object of a mill is not to grind water, but to grind
+corn, and that (strange as it may seem) there really have been
+societies sufficiently vigilant and valiant to prevent their corn
+perpetually flowing away from them, to the tune of a sentimental song.
+
+Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an
+intellectual fault; it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our
+mental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also
+our spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake. It was
+mere vanity in Mr. Brummell when he sent away trays full of
+imperfectly knotted neck-cloths, lightly remarking, "These are our
+failures." It is a good instance of the nearness of vanity to
+humility, for at least he had to admit that they were failures. But it
+would have been spiritual pride in Mr. Brummell if he had tied on all
+the cravats, one on top of the other, lest his valet should discover
+that he had ever tied one badly. For in spiritual pride there is
+always an element of secrecy and solitude. Mr. Brummell would be
+satanic; also (which I fear would affect him more) he would be badly
+dressed. But he would be a perfect presentation of the modern
+publicist, who cannot do anything right, because he must not admit
+that he ever did anything wrong.
+
+This strange, weak obstinacy, this persistence in the wrong path of
+progress, grows weaker and worse, as do all such weak things. And by
+the time in which I write its moral attitude has taken on something of
+the sinister and even the horrible. Our mistakes have become our
+secrets. Editors and journalists tear up with a guilty air all that
+reminds them of the party promises unfulfilled, or the party ideals
+reproaching them. It is true of our statesmen (much more than of our
+bishops, of whom Mr. Wells said it), that socially in evidence they
+are intellectually in hiding. The society is heavy with unconfessed
+sins; its mind is sore and silent with painful subjects; it has a
+constipation of conscience. There are many things it has done and
+allowed to be done which it does not really dare to think about; it
+calls them by other names and tries to talk itself into faith in a
+false past, as men make up the things they would have said in a
+quarrel. Of these sins one lies buried deepest but most noisome, and
+though it is stifled, stinks: the true story of the relations of the
+rich man and the poor in England. The half-starved English proletarian
+is not only nearly a skeleton but he is a skeleton in a cupboard.
+
+It may be said, in some surprise, that surely we hear to-day on every
+side the same story of the destitute proletariat and the social
+problem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowding
+in the slums. It is granted; but I said the true story. Untrue
+stories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There is
+the interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands,
+the chap who has "solidarity," and is always just going to abolish
+war. The Marxian Socialists will tell you all about him; only he isn't
+there. A common English workman is just as incapable of thinking of a
+German as anything but a German as he is of thinking of himself as
+anything but an Englishman. Then there is the opposite story; the
+story of the horrid man who is an atheist and wants to destroy the
+home, but who, for some private reason, prefers to call this
+Socialism. He isn't there either. The prosperous Socialists have homes
+exactly like yours and mine; and the poor Socialists are not allowed
+by the Individualists to have any at all. There is the story of the
+Two Workmen, which is a very nice and exciting story, about how one
+passed all the public houses in Cheapside and was made Lord Mayor on
+arriving at the Guildhall, while the other went into all the public
+houses and emerged quite ineligible for such a dignity. Alas! for this
+also is vanity. A thief might become Lord Mayor, but an honest workman
+certainly couldn't. Then there is the story of "The Relentless Doom,"
+by which rich men were, by economic laws, forced to go on taking away
+money from poor men, although they simply longed to leave off: this is
+an unendurable thought to a free and Christian man, and the reader
+will be relieved to hear that it never happened. The rich could have
+left off stealing whenever they wanted to leave off, only this never
+happened either. Then there is the story of the cunning Fabian who sat
+on six committees at once and so coaxed the rich man to become quite
+poor. By simply repeating, in a whisper, that there are "wheels within
+wheels," this talented man managed to take away the millionaire's
+motor car, one wheel at a time, till the millionaire had quite
+forgotten that he ever had one. It was very clever of him to do this,
+only he has not done it. There is not a screw loose in the
+millionaire's motor, which is capable of running over the Fabian and
+leaving him a flat corpse in the road at a moment's notice. All these
+stories are very fascinating stories to be told by the Individualist
+and Socialist in turn to the great Sultan of Capitalism, because if
+they left off amusing him for an instant he would cut off their heads.
+But if they once began to tell the true story of the Sultan to the
+Sultan, he would boil them in oil; and this they wish to avoid.
+
+The true story of the sin of the Sultan he is always trying, by
+listening to these stories, to forget. As we have said before in this
+chapter, he would prefer not to remember, because he has made up his
+mind not to repent. It is a curious story, and I shall try to tell it
+truly in the two chapters that follow. In all ages the tyrant is hard
+because he is soft. If his car crashes over bleeding and accusing
+crowds, it is because he has chosen the path of least resistance. It
+is because it is much easier to ride down a human race than ride up a
+moderately steep hill. The fight of the oppressor is always a
+pillow-fight; commonly a war with cushions--always a war for cushions.
+Saladin, the great Sultan, if I remember rightly, accounted it the
+greatest feat of swordsmanship to cut a cushion. And so indeed it is,
+as all of us can attest who have been for years past trying to cut
+into the swollen and windy corpulence of the modern compromise, that
+is at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day the
+colour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palace
+within palace and garden within garden which makes the rich
+irresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance,
+the wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception of
+luxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights,
+and walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not our
+hangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we not
+already eugenists--that is, eunuch-makers? Do we not see the bright
+eyes, the motionless faces, and all that presence of something that is
+dead and yet sleepless? It is the presence of the sin that is sealed
+with pride and impenitence; the story of how the Sultan got his
+throne. But it is not the story he is listening to just now, but
+another story which has been invented to cover it--the story called
+"Eugenius: or the Adventures of One Not Born," a most varied and
+entrancing tale, which never fails to send him to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+TRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP
+
+
+He awoke in the Dark Ages and smelt dawn in the dark, and knew he was
+not wholly a slave. It was as if, in some tale of Hans Andersen, a
+stick or a stool had been left in the garden all night and had grown
+alive and struck root like a tree. For this is the truth behind the
+old legal fiction of the servile countries, that the slave is a
+"chattel," that is a piece of furniture like a stick or a stool. In
+the spiritual sense, I am certain it was never so unwholesome a fancy
+as the spawn of Nietzsche suppose to-day. No human being, pagan or
+Christian, I am certain, ever thought of another human being as a
+chair or a table. The mind cannot base itself on the idea that a comet
+is a cabbage; nor can it on the idea that a man is a stool. No man was
+ever unconscious of another's presence--or even indifferent to
+another's opinion. The lady who is said to have boasted her
+indifference to being naked before male slaves was showing off--or she
+meant something different. The lord who fed fishes by killing a slave
+was indulging in what most cannibals indulge in--a satanist
+affectation. The lady was consciously shameless and the lord was
+consciously cruel. But it simply is not in the human reason to carve
+men like wood or examine women like ivory, just as it is not in the
+human reason to think that two and two make five.
+
+But there was this truth in the legal simile of furniture: that the
+slave, though certainly a man, was in one sense a dead man; in the
+sense that he was _moveable_. His locomotion was not his own: his
+master moved his arms and legs for him as if he were a marionette. Now
+it is important in the first degree to realise here what would be
+involved in such a fable as I have imagined, of a stool rooting itself
+like a shrub. For the general modern notion certainly is that life and
+liberty are in some way to be associated with novelty and not standing
+still. But it is just because the stool is lifeless that it moves
+about. It is just because the tree is alive that it does stand still.
+That was the main difference between the pagan slave and the Christian
+serf. The serf still belonged to the lord, as the stick that struck
+root in the garden would have still belonged to the owner of the
+garden; but it would have become a _live_ possession. Therefore the
+owner is forced, by the laws of nature, to treat it with _some_
+respect; something becomes due from him. He cannot pull it up without
+killing it; it has gained a _place_ in the garden--or the society. But
+the moderns are quite wrong in supposing that mere change and holiday
+and variety have necessarily any element of this life that is the only
+seed of liberty. You may say if you like that an employer, taking all
+his workpeople to a new factory in a Garden City, is giving them the
+greater freedom of forest landscapes and smokeless skies. If it comes
+to that, you can say that the slave-traders took negroes from their
+narrow and brutish African hamlets, and gave them the polish of
+foreign travel and medicinal breezes of a sea-voyage. But the tiny
+seed of citizenship and independence there already was in the serfdom
+of the Dark Ages, had nothing to do with what nice things the lord
+might do to the serf. It lay in the fact that there were some nasty
+things he could not do to the serf--there were not many, but there
+were some, and one of them was eviction. He could not make the serf
+utterly landless and desperate, utterly without access to the means of
+production, though doubtless it was rather the field that owned the
+serf, than the serf that owned the field. But even if you call the
+serf a beast of the field, he was not what we have tried to make the
+town workman--a beast with no field. Foulon said of the French
+peasants, "Let them eat grass." If he had said it of the modern London
+proletariat, they might well reply, "You have not left us even grass
+to eat."
+
+There was, therefore, both in theory and practice, _some_ security for
+the serf, because he had come to life and rooted. The seigneur could
+not wait in the field in all weathers with a battle-axe to prevent the
+serf scratching any living out of the ground, any more than the man in
+my fairy-tale could sit out in the garden all night with an umbrella
+to prevent the shrub getting any rain. The relation of lord and serf,
+therefore, involves a combination of two things: inequality and
+security. I know there are people who will at once point wildly to all
+sorts of examples, true and false, of insecurity of life in the Middle
+Ages; but these are people who do not grasp what we mean by the
+characteristic institutions of a society. For the matter of that,
+there are plenty of examples of equality in the Middle Ages, as the
+craftsmen in their guild or the monks electing their abbot. But just
+as modern England is not a feudal country, though there is a quaint
+survival called Heralds' College--or Ireland is not a commercial
+country, though there is a quaint survival called Belfast--it is true
+of the bulk and shape of that society that came out of the Dark Ages
+and ended at the Reformation, that it did not care about giving
+everybody an equal position, but did care about giving everybody a
+position. So that by the very beginning of that time even the slave
+had become a slave one could not get rid of, like the Scotch servant
+who stubbornly asserted that if his master didn't know a good servant
+he knew a good master. The free peasant, in ancient or modern times,
+is free to go or stay. The slave, in ancient times, was free neither
+to go nor stay. The serf was not free to go; but he was free to stay.
+
+Now what have we done with this man? It is quite simple. There is no
+historical complexity about it in that respect. We have taken away his
+freedom to stay. We have turned him out of his field, and whether it
+was injustice, like turning a free farmer out of his field, or only
+cruelty to animals, like turning a cow out of its field, the fact
+remains that he is out in the road. First and last, we have simply
+destroyed the security. We have not in the least destroyed the
+inequality. All classes, all creatures, kind or cruel, still see this
+lowest stratum of society as separate from the upper strata and even
+the middle strata; he is as separate as the serf. A monster fallen
+from Mars, ignorant of our simplest word, would know the tramp was at
+the bottom of the ladder, as well as he would have known it of the
+serf. The walls of mud are no longer round his boundaries, but only
+round his boots. The coarse, bristling hedge is at the end of his
+chin, and not of his garden. But mud and bristles still stand out
+round him like a horrific halo, and separate him from his kind. The
+Martian would have no difficulty in seeing he was the poorest person
+in the nation. It is just as impossible that he should marry an
+heiress, or fight a duel with a duke, or contest a seat at
+Westminster, or enter a club in Pall Mall, or take a scholarship at
+Balliol, or take a seat at an opera, or propose a good law, or protest
+against a bad one, as it was impossible to the serf. Where he differs
+is in something very different. He has lost what was possible to the
+serf. He can no longer scratch the bare earth by day or sleep on the
+bare earth by night, without being collared by a policeman.
+
+Now when I say that this man has been oppressed as hardly any other
+man on this earth has been oppressed, I am not using rhetoric: I have
+a clear meaning which I am confident of explaining to any honest
+reader. I do not say he has been treated worse: I say he has been
+treated differently from the unfortunate in all ages. And the
+difference is this: that all the others were told to do something, and
+killed or tortured if they did anything else. This man is not told to
+do something: he is merely forbidden to do anything. When he was a
+slave, they said to him, "Sleep in this shed; I will beat you if you
+sleep anywhere else." When he was a serf, they said to him, "Let me
+find you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else's
+field." But now he is a tramp they say to him, "You shall be jailed if
+I find you in anyone else's field: _but I will not give you a field_."
+They say, "You shall be punished if you are caught sleeping outside
+your shed: _but there is no shed_." If you say that modern
+magistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer with
+entire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two tramps
+were summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the open
+air when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full fun
+of the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly produced
+about twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, but
+deliberately didn't. To which the policeman replied that twopence
+would not have got them a bed: that they could not possibly have got a
+bed: and _therefore_ (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought to
+be punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was much
+struck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men for
+not doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explain
+that if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, they
+would have left the court without a stain on their characters; but as
+they could not avoid it, they were very much to blame. These things
+are being done in every part of England every day. They have their
+parallels even in every daily paper; but they have no parallel in any
+other earthly people or period; except in that insane command to make
+bricks without straw which brought down all the plagues of Egypt. For
+the common historical joke about Henry VIII. hanging a man for being
+Catholic and burning him for being Protestant is a symbolic joke only.
+The sceptic in the Tudor time could do something: he could always
+agree with Henry VIII. The desperate man to-day can do nothing. For
+you cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the straws
+sticking out of his hair and says, "Procure threepence from nowhere
+and I will give you leave to do without it."
+
+If it be answered that he can go to the workhouse, I reply that such
+an answer is founded on confused thinking. It is true that he is free
+to go to the workhouse, but only in the same sense in which he is free
+to go to jail, only in the same sense in which the serf under the
+gibbet was free to find peace in the grave. Many of the poor greatly
+prefer the grave to the workhouse, but that is not at all my argument
+here. The point is this: that it could not have been the general
+policy of a lord towards serfs to kill them all like wasps. It could
+not have been his standing "Advice to Serfs" to say, "Get hanged." It
+cannot be the standing advice of magistrates to citizens to go to
+prison. And, precisely as plainly, it cannot be the standing advice of
+rich men to very poor men to go to the workhouses. For that would mean
+the rich raising their own poor rates enormously to keep a vast and
+expensive establishment of slaves. Now it may come to this, as Mr.
+Belloc maintains, but it is not the theory on which what we call the
+workhouse does in fact rest. The very shape (and even the very size)
+of a workhouse express the fact that it was founded for certain quite
+exceptional human failures--like the lunatic asylum. Say to a man, "Go
+to the madhouse," and he will say, "Wherein am I mad?" Say to a tramp
+under a hedge, "Go to the house of exceptional failures," and he will
+say with equal reason, "I travel because I have no house; I walk
+because I have no horse; I sleep out because I have no bed. Wherein
+have I failed?" And he may have the intelligence to add, "Indeed, your
+worship, if somebody has failed, I think it is not I." I concede, with
+all due haste, that he might perhaps say "me."
+
+The speciality then of this man's wrong is that it is the only
+historic wrong that has in it the quality of _nonsense_. It could only
+happen in a nightmare; not in a clear and rational hell. It is the top
+point of that anarchy in the governing mind which, as I said at the
+beginning, is the main trait of modernity, especially in England. But
+if the first note in our policy is madness, the next note is certainly
+meanness. There are two peculiarly mean and unmanly legal mantraps in
+which this wretched man is tripped up. The first is that which
+prevents him from doing what any ordinary savage or nomad would
+do--take his chance of an uneven subsistence on the rude bounty of
+nature.
+
+There is something very abject about forbidding this; because it is
+precisely this adventurous and vagabond spirit which the educated
+classes praise most in their books, poems and speeches. To feel the
+drag of the roads, to hunt in nameless hills and fish in secret
+streams, to have no address save "Over the Hills and Far Away," to be
+ready to breakfast on berries and the daybreak and sup on the sunset
+and a sodden crust, to feed on wild things and be a boy again, all
+this is the heartiest and sincerest impulse in recent culture, in the
+songs and tales of Stevenson, in the cult of George Borrow and in the
+delightful little books published by Mr. E.V. Lucas. It is the one
+true excuse in the core of Imperialism; and it faintly softens the
+squalid prose and wooden-headed wickedness of the Self-Made Man who
+"came up to London with twopence in his pocket." But when a poorer but
+braver man with less than twopence in his pocket does the very thing
+we are always praising, makes the blue heavens his house, we send him
+to a house built for infamy and flogging. We take poverty itself and
+only permit it with a property qualification; we only allow a man to
+be poor if he is rich. And we do this most savagely if he has sought
+to snatch his life by that particular thing of which our boyish
+adventure stories are fullest--hunting and fishing. The extremely
+severe English game laws hit most heavily what the highly reckless
+English romances praise most irresponsibly. All our literature is full
+of praise of the chase--especially of the wild goose chase. But if a
+poor man followed, as Tennyson says, "far as the wild swan wings to
+where the world dips down to sea and sands," Tennyson would scarcely
+allow him to catch it. If he found the wildest goose in the wildest
+fenland in the wildest regions of the sunset, he would very probably
+discover that the rich never sleep; and that there are no wild things
+in England.
+
+In short, the English ruler is always appealing to a nation of
+sportsmen and concentrating all his efforts on preventing them from
+having any sport. The Imperialist is always pointing out with
+exultation that the common Englishman can live by adventure anywhere
+on the globe, but if the common Englishman tries to live by adventure
+in England, he is treated as harshly as a thief, and almost as harshly
+as an honest journalist. This is hypocrisy: the magistrate who gives
+his son "Treasure Island" and then imprisons a tramp is a hypocrite;
+the squire who is proud of English colonists and indulgent to English
+schoolboys, but cruel to English poachers, is drawing near that deep
+place wherein all liars have their part. But our point here is that
+the baseness is in the idea of _bewildering_ the tramp; of leaving
+him no place for repentance. It is quite true, of course, that in the
+days of slavery or of serfdom the needy were fenced by yet fiercer
+penalties from spoiling the hunting of the rich. But in the older case
+there were two very important differences, the second of which is our
+main subject in this chapter. The first is that in a comparatively
+wild society, however fond of hunting, it seems impossible that
+enclosing and game-keeping can have been so omnipresent and efficient
+as in a society full of maps and policemen. The second difference is
+the one already noted: that if the slave or semi-slave was forbidden
+to get his food in the greenwood, he was told to get it somewhere
+else. The note of unreason was absent.
+
+This is the first meanness; and the second is like unto it. If there
+is one thing of which cultivated modern letters is full besides
+adventure it is altruism. We are always being told to help others, to
+regard our wealth as theirs, to do what good we can, for we shall not
+pass this way again. We are everywhere urged by humanitarians to help
+lame dogs over stiles--though some humanitarians, it is true, seem to
+feel a colder interest in the case of lame men and women. Still, the
+chief fact of our literature, among all historic literatures, is human
+charity. But what is the chief fact of our legislation? The great
+outstanding fact of modern legislation, among all historic
+legislations, is the forbidding of human charity. It is this
+astonishing paradox, a thing in the teeth of all logic and
+conscience, that a man that takes another man's money with his leave
+can be punished as if he had taken it without his leave. All through
+those dark or dim ages behind us, through times of servile stagnation,
+of feudal insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else that
+can war down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was counted
+lawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries,
+in short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched and
+mended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is now
+forbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance if he could beg.
+
+Now it will be evident by this time that the interesting scientific
+experiment on the tramp entirely depends on leaving him _no_ chance,
+and not (like the slave) one chance. Of the economic excuses offered
+for the persecution of beggars it will be more natural to speak in the
+next chapter. It will suffice here to say that they are mere excuses,
+for a policy that has been persistent while probably largely
+unconscious, with a selfish and atheistic unconsciousness. That policy
+was directed towards something--or it could never have cut so cleanly
+and cruelly across the sentimental but sincere modern trends to
+adventure and altruism. Its object is soon stated. It was directed
+towards making the very poor man work for the capitalist, for any
+wages or none. But all this, which I shall also deal with in the next
+chapter, is here only important as introducing the last truth touching
+the man of despair. The game laws have taken from him his human
+command of Nature. The mendicancy laws have taken from him his human
+demand on Man. There is one human thing left it is much harder to take
+from him. Debased by him and his betters, it is still something
+brought out of Eden, where God made him a demigod: it does not depend
+on money and but little on time. He can create in his own image. The
+terrible truth is in the heart of a hundred legends and mysteries. As
+Jupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Child
+could be hidden from Herod--so the child unborn is still hidden from
+the omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone is
+left; and they seek his life to take it away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST
+
+
+He does not live in a dark lonely tower by the sea, from which are
+heard the screams of vivisected men and women. On the contrary, he
+lives in Mayfair. He does not wear great goblin spectacles that
+magnify his eyes to moons or diminish his neighbours to beetles. When
+he is more dignified he wears a single eyeglass; when more
+intelligent, a wink. He is not indeed wholly without interest in
+heredity and Eugenical biology; but his studies and experiments in
+this science have specialised almost exclusively in _equus celer_, the
+rapid or running horse. He is not a doctor; though he employs doctors
+to work up a case for Eugenics, just as he employs doctors to correct
+the errors of his dinner. He is not a lawyer, though unfortunately
+often a magistrate. He is not an author or a journalist; though he not
+infrequently owns a newspaper. He is not a soldier, though he may have
+a commission in the yeomanry; nor is he generally a gentleman, though
+often a nobleman. His wealth now commonly comes from a large staff of
+employed persons who scurry about in big buildings while he is playing
+golf. But he very often laid the foundations of his fortune in a very
+curious and poetical way, the nature of which I have never fully
+understood. It consisted in his walking about the street without a hat
+and going up to another man and saying, "Suppose I have two hundred
+whales out of the North Sea." To which the other man replied, "And let
+us imagine that I am in possession of two thousand elephants' tusks."
+They then exchange, and the first man goes up to a third man and says,
+"Supposing me to have lately come into the possession of two thousand
+elephants' tusks, would you, etc.?" If you play this game well, you
+become very rich; if you play it badly you have to kill yourself or
+try your luck at the Bar. The man I am speaking about must have played
+it well, or at any rate successfully.
+
+He was born about 1860; and has been a member of Parliament since
+about 1890. For the first half of his life he was a Liberal; for the
+second half he has been a Conservative; but his actual policy in
+Parliament has remained largely unchanged and consistent. His policy
+in Parliament is as follows: he takes a seat in a room downstairs at
+Westminster, and takes from his breast pocket an excellent cigar-case,
+from which in turn he takes an excellent cigar. This he lights, and
+converses with other owners of such cigars on _equus celer_ or such
+matters as may afford him entertainment. Two or three times in the
+afternoon a bell rings; whereupon he deposits the cigar in an ashtray
+with great particularity, taking care not to break the ash, and
+proceeds to an upstairs room, flanked with two passages. He then walks
+into whichever of the two passages shall be indicated to him by a
+young man of the upper classes, holding a slip of paper. Having gone
+into this passage he comes out of it again, is counted by the young
+man and proceeds downstairs again; where he takes up the cigar once
+more, being careful not to break the ash. This process, which is known
+as Representative Government, has never called for any great variety
+in the manner of his life. Nevertheless, while his Parliamentary
+policy is unchanged, his change from one side of the House to the
+other did correspond with a certain change in his general policy in
+commerce and social life. The change of the party label is by this
+time quite a trifling matter; but there was in his case a change of
+philosophy or at least a change of project; though it was not so much
+becoming a Tory, as becoming rather the wrong kind of Socialist. He is
+a man with a history. It is a sad history, for he is certainly a less
+good man than he was when he started. That is why he is the man who is
+really behind Eugenics. It is because he has degenerated that he has
+come to talking of Degeneration.
+
+In his Radical days (to quote from one who corresponded in some ways
+to this type) he was a much better man, because he was a much less
+enlightened one. The hard impudence of his first Manchester
+Individualism was softened by two relatively humane qualities; the
+first was a much greater manliness in his pride; the second was a much
+greater sincerity in his optimism. For the first point, the modern
+capitalist is merely industrial; but this man was also industrious.
+He was proud of hard work; nay, he was even proud of low work--if he
+could speak of it in the past and not the present. In fact, he
+invented a new kind of Victorian snobbishness, an inverted
+snobbishness. While the snobs of Thackeray turned Muggins into De
+Mogyns, while the snobs of Dickens wrote letters describing themselves
+as officers' daughters "accustomed to every luxury--except spelling,"
+the Individualist spent his life in hiding his prosperous parents. He
+was more like an American plutocrat when he began; but he has since
+lost the American simplicity. The Frenchman works until he can play.
+The American works until he can't play; and then thanks the devil, his
+master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the
+Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he
+never worked at all. He becomes as far as possible another person--a
+country gentleman who has never heard of his shop; one whose left hand
+holding a gun knows not what his right hand doeth in a ledger. He uses
+a peerage as an alias, and a large estate as a sort of alibi. A stern
+Scotch minister remarked concerning the game of golf, with a terrible
+solemnity of manner, "the man who plays golf--he neglects his
+business, he forsakes his wife, he forgets his God." He did not seem
+to realise that it is the chief aim of many a modern capitalist's life
+to forget all three.
+
+This abandonment of a boyish vanity in work, this substitution of a
+senile vanity in indolence, this is the first respect in which the
+rich Englishman has fallen. He was more of a man when he was at least
+a master-workman and not merely a master. And the second important
+respect in which he was better at the beginning is this: that he did
+then, in some hazy way, half believe that he was enriching other
+people as well as himself. The optimism of the early Victorian
+Individualists was not wholly hypocritical. Some of the
+clearest-headed and blackest-hearted of them, such as Malthus, saw
+where things were going, and boldly based their Manchester city on
+pessimism instead of optimism. But this was not the general case; most
+of the decent rich of the Bright and Cobden sort did have a kind of
+confused faith that the economic conflict would work well in the long
+run for everybody. They thought the troubles of the poor were
+incurable by State action (they thought that of all troubles), but
+they did not cold-bloodedly contemplate the prospect of those troubles
+growing worse and worse. By one of those tricks or illusions of the
+brain to which the luxurious are subject in all ages, they sometimes
+seemed to feel as if the populace had triumphed symbolically in their
+own persons. They blasphemously thought about their thrones of gold
+what can only be said about a cross--that they, being lifted up, would
+draw all men after them. They were so full of the romance that anybody
+could be Lord Mayor, that they seemed to have slipped into thinking
+that everybody could. It seemed as if a hundred Dick Whittingtons,
+accompanied by a hundred cats, could all be accommodated at the
+Mansion House. It was all nonsense; but it was not (until later) all
+humbug.
+
+Step by step, however, with a horrid and increasing clearness, this
+man discovered what he was doing. It is generally one of the worst
+discoveries a man can make. At the beginning, the British plutocrat
+was probably quite as honest in suggesting that every tramp carried a
+magic cat like Dick Whittington, as the Bonapartist patriot was in
+saying that every French soldier carried a marshal's _baton_ in his
+knapsack. But it is exactly here that the difference and the danger
+appears. There is no comparison between a well-managed thing like
+Napoleon's army and an unmanageable thing like modern competition.
+Logically, doubtless, it was impossible that every soldier should
+carry a marshal's _baton_; they could not all be marshals any more
+than they could all be mayors. But if the French soldier did not
+always have a _baton_ in his knapsack, he always had a knapsack. But
+when that Self-Helper who bore the adorable name of Smiles told the
+English tramp that he carried a coronet in his bundle, the English
+tramp had an unanswerable answer. He pointed out that he had no
+bundle. The powers that ruled him had not fitted him with a knapsack,
+any more than they had fitted him with a future--or even a present.
+The destitute Englishman, so far from hoping to become anything, had
+never been allowed even to be anything. The French soldier's ambition
+may have been in practice not only a short, but even a deliberately
+shortened ladder, in which the top rungs were knocked out. But for
+the English it was the bottom rungs that were knocked out, so that
+they could not even begin to climb. And sooner or later, in exact
+proportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began to
+understand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their
+impotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that his
+riches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could
+have been strong enough to make him rich. It is this paradox, as we
+shall see, that creates the curious difference between him and every
+other kind of robber.
+
+I think it is no more than justice to him to say that the knowledge,
+where it has come to him, has come to him slowly; and I think it came
+(as most things of common sense come) rather vaguely and as in a
+vision--that is, by the mere look of things. The old Cobdenite
+employer was quite within his rights in arguing that earth is not
+heaven, that the best obtainable arrangement might contain many
+necessary evils; and that Liverpool and Belfast might be growing more
+prosperous as a whole in spite of pathetic things that might be seen
+there. But I simply do not believe he has been able to look at
+Liverpool and Belfast and continue to think this: that is why he has
+turned himself into a sham country gentleman. Earth is not heaven, but
+the nearest we can get to heaven ought not to _look_ like hell; and
+Liverpool and Belfast look like hell, whether they are or not. Such
+cities might be growing prosperous as a whole, though a few citizens
+were more miserable. But it was more and more broadly apparent that it
+was exactly and precisely _as a whole_ that they were not growing more
+prosperous, but only the few citizens who were growing more prosperous
+by their increasing misery. You could not say a country was becoming a
+white man's country when there were more and more black men in it
+every day. You could not say a community was more and more masculine
+when it was producing more and more women. Nor can you say that a city
+is growing richer and richer when more and more of its inhabitants are
+very poor men. There might be a false agitation founded on the pathos
+of individual cases in a community pretty normal in bulk. But the fact
+is that no one can take a cab across Liverpool without having a quite
+complete and unified impression that the pathos is not a pathos of
+individual cases, but a pathos in bulk. People talk of the Celtic
+sadness; but there are very few things in Ireland that look so sad as
+the Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery compared
+with the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournful
+friends to turn their attention to the pathos of Belfast. I think if
+they hung up the harp that once in Lord Furness's factory, there would
+be a chance of another string breaking.
+
+Broadly, and as things bulk to the eye, towns like Leeds, if placed
+beside towns like Rouen or Florence, or Chartres, or Cologne, do
+actually look like beggars walking among burghers. After that
+overpowering and unpleasant impression it is really useless to argue
+that they are richer because a few of their parasites get rich enough
+to live somewhere else. The point may be put another way, thus: that
+it is not so much that these more modern cities have this or that
+monopoly of good or evil; it is that they have every good in its
+fourth-rate form and every evil in its worst form. For instance, that
+interesting weekly paper _The Nation_ amiably rebuked Mr. Belloc and
+myself for suggesting that revelry and the praise of fermented liquor
+were more characteristic of Continental and Catholic communities than
+of communities with the religion and civilisation of Belfast. It said
+that if we would "cross the border" into Scotland, we should find out
+our mistake. Now, not only have I crossed the border, but I have had
+considerable difficulty in crossing the road in a Scotch town on a
+festive evening. Men were literally lying like piled-up corpses in the
+gutters, and from broken bottles whisky was pouring down the drains. I
+am not likely, therefore, to attribute a total and arid abstinence to
+the whole of industrial Scotland. But I never said that drinking was a
+mark rather of the Catholic countries. I said that _moderate_ drinking
+was a mark rather of the Catholic countries. In other words, I say of
+the common type of Continental citizen, not that he is the only person
+who is drinking, but that he is the only person who knows how to
+drink. Doubtless gin is as much a feature of Hoxton as beer is a
+feature of Munich. But who is the connoisseur who prefers the gin of
+Hoxton to the beer of Munich? Doubtless the Protestant Scotch ask for
+"Scotch," as the men of Burgundy ask for Burgundy. But do we find them
+lying in heaps on each side of the road when we walk through a
+Burgundian village? Do we find the French peasant ready to let
+Burgundy escape down a drain-pipe? Now this one point, on which I
+accept _The Nation's_ challenge, can be exactly paralleled on almost
+every point by which we test a civilisation. It does not matter
+whether we are for alcohol or against it. On either argument Glasgow
+is more objectionable than Rouen. The French abstainer makes less
+fuss; the French drinker gives less offence. It is so with property,
+with war, with everything. I can understand a teetotaler being
+horrified, on his principles, at Italian wine-drinking. I simply
+cannot believe he could be _more_ horrified at it than at Hoxton
+gin-drinking. I can understand a Pacifist, with his special scruples,
+disliking the militarism of Belfort. I flatly deny that he can dislike
+it _more_ than the militarism of Berlin. I can understand a good
+Socialist hating the petty cares of the distributed peasant property.
+I deny that any good Socialist can hate them _more_ than he hates the
+large cares of Rockefeller. That is the unique tragedy of the
+plutocratic state to-day; it has _no_ successes to hold up against the
+failures it alleges to exist in Latin or other methods. You can (if
+you are well out of his reach) call the Irish rustic debased and
+superstitious. I defy you to contrast his debasement and superstition
+with the citizenship and enlightenment of the English rustic.
+
+To-day the rich man knows in his heart that he is a cancer and not an
+organ of the State. He differs from all other thieves or parasites for
+this reason: that the brigand who takes by force wishes his victims to
+be rich. But he who wins by a one-sided contract actually wishes them
+to be poor. Rob Roy in a cavern, hearing a company approaching, will
+hope (or if in a pious mood, pray) that they may come laden with gold
+or goods. But Mr. Rockefeller, in his factory, knows that if those who
+pass are laden with goods they will pass on. He will therefore (if in
+a pious mood) pray that they may be destitute, and so be forced to
+work his factory for him for a starvation wage. It is said (and also,
+I believe, disputed) that Blücher riding through the richer parts of
+London exclaimed, "What a city to sack!" But Blücher was a soldier if
+he was a bandit. The true sweater feels quite otherwise. It is when he
+drives through the poorest parts of London that he finds the streets
+paved with gold, being paved with prostrate servants; it is when he
+sees the grey lean leagues of Bow and Poplar that his soul is uplifted
+and he knows he is secure. This is not rhetoric, but economics.
+
+I repeat that up to a point the profiteer was innocent because he was
+ignorant; he had been lured on by easy and accommodating events. He
+was innocent as the new Thane of Glamis was innocent, as the new Thane
+of Cawdor was innocent; but the King---- The modern manufacturer, like
+Macbeth, decided to march on, under the mute menace of the heavens.
+He knew that the spoil of the poor was in his houses; but he could
+not, after careful calculation, think of any way in which they could
+get it out of his houses without being arrested for housebreaking. He
+faced the future with a face flinty with pride and impenitence. This
+period can be dated practically by the period when the old and genuine
+Protestant religion of England began to fail; and the average business
+man began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he
+was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to
+scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way
+out. But in any case, the man who had made a mistake not only refused
+to unmake it, but decided to go on making it. But in this he made yet
+another most amusing mistake, which was the beginning of all
+Eugenics.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH
+
+
+By a quaint paradox, we generally miss the meaning of simple stories
+because we are not subtle enough to understand their simplicity. As
+long as men were in sympathy with some particular religion or other
+romance of things in general, they saw the thing solid and swallowed
+it whole, knowing that it could not disagree with them. But the moment
+men have lost the instinct of being simple in order to understand it,
+they have to be very subtle in order to understand it. We can find,
+for instance, a very good working case in those old puritanical
+nursery tales about the terrible punishment of trivial sins; about how
+Tommy was drowned for fishing on the Sabbath, or Sammy struck by
+lightning for going out after dark. Now these moral stories are
+immoral, because Calvinism is immoral. They are wrong, because
+Puritanism is wrong. But they are not quite so wrong, they are not a
+quarter so wrong, as many superficial sages have supposed.
+
+The truth is that everything that ever came out of a human mouth had a
+human meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such a
+fool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great-grandmothers
+told a child he might be drowned by breaking the Sabbath, their souls
+(though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not
+in quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god
+was a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form
+of religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it
+did correspond to a certain reality in psychology which most people of
+any religion, or even of none, have felt a touch of at some time or
+other. Leaving out theological terms as far as possible, it is the
+subconscious feeling that one can be wrong with Nature as well as
+right with Nature; that the point of wrongness may be a detail (in the
+superstitions of heathens this is often quite a triviality); but that
+if one is really wrong with Nature, there is no particular reason why
+all her rivers should not drown or all her storm-bolts strike one who
+is, by this vague yet vivid hypothesis, her enemy. This may be a
+mental sickness, but it is too human or too mortal a sickness to be
+called solely a superstition. It is not solely a superstition; it is
+not simply superimposed upon human nature by something that has got on
+top of it. It flourishes without check among non-Christian systems,
+and it flourishes especially in Calvinism, because Calvinism is the
+most non-Christian of Christian systems. But like everything else that
+inheres in the natural senses and spirit of man, it has something in
+it; it is not stark unreason. If it is an ill (and it generally is),
+it is one of the ills that flesh is heir to, but he is the lawful
+heir. And like many other dubious or dangerous human instincts or
+appetites, it is sometimes useful as a warning against worse things.
+
+Now the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from the
+loss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathen
+mysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe
+in Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they
+overlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps
+Julius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in
+Jupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of
+that age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit
+personal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are
+not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, while
+the heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queer
+coincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whether
+they were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his own
+brain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain such
+notions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modern
+sceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural.
+And this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrant
+literally pagan might possibly not have done.
+
+There is one idea of this kind that runs through most popular tales
+(those, for instance, on which Shakespeare is so often based)--an idea
+that is profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is what
+may be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take my
+advantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage.
+Thus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reason
+to become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had a
+fallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. He
+forgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on it
+can. Thus Shylock had a fallacy of physiology; he forgot that, if you
+break into the house of life, you find it a bloody house in the most
+emphatic sense. But the modern capitalist did not read fairy-tales,
+and never looked for the little omens at the turnings of the road. He
+(or the most intelligent section of him) had by now realised his
+position, and knew in his heart it was a false position. He thought a
+margin of men out of work was good for his business; he could no
+longer really think it was good for his country. He could no longer be
+the old "hard-headed" man who simply did not understand things; he
+could only be the hard-hearted man who faced them. But he still
+marched on; he was sure he had made no mistake.
+
+However, he had made a mistake--as definite as a mistake in
+multiplication. It may be summarised thus: that the same inequality
+and insecurity that makes cheap labour may make bad labour, and at
+last no labour at all. It was as if a man who wanted something from an
+enemy, should at last reduce the enemy to come knocking at his door in
+the despair of winter, should keep him waiting in the snow to sharpen
+the bargain; and then come out to find the man dead upon the doorstep.
+
+He had discovered the divine boomerang; his sin had found him out. The
+experiment of Individualism--the keeping of the worker half in and
+half out of work--was far too ingenious not to contain a flaw. It was
+too delicate a balance to work entirely with the strength of the
+starved and the vigilance of the benighted. It was too desperate a
+course to rely wholly on desperation. And as time went on the terrible
+truth slowly declared itself; the degraded class was really
+degenerating. It was right and proper enough to use a man as a tool;
+but the tool, ceaselessly used, was being used up. It was quite
+reasonable and respectable, of course, to fling a man away like a
+tool; but when it was flung away in the rain the tool rusted. But the
+comparison to a tool was insufficient for an awful reason that had
+already begun to dawn upon the master's mind. If you pick up a hammer,
+you do not find a whole family of nails clinging to it. If you fling
+away a chisel by the roadside, it does not litter and leave a lot of
+little chisels. But the meanest of the tools, Man, had still this
+strange privilege which God had given him, doubtless by mistake.
+Despite all improvements in machinery, the most important part of the
+machinery (the fittings technically described in the trade as "hands")
+were apparently growing worse. The firm was not only encumbered with
+one useless servant, but he immediately turned himself into five
+useless servants. "The poor should not be emancipated," the old
+reactionaries used to say, "until they are fit for freedom." But if
+this downrush went on, it looked as if the poor would not stand high
+enough to be fit for slavery.
+
+So at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree subconsciously, to
+the man who had wagered all his wealth on the usefulness of the poor
+to the rich and the dependence of the rich on the poor. The time came
+at last when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below ceased to
+be a supply, and began to be something like a wastage; ceased to be
+something like keeping foxhounds, and began alarmingly to resemble a
+necessity of shooting foxes. The situation was aggravated by the fact
+that these sexual pleasures were often the only ones the very poor
+could obtain, and were, therefore, disproportionately pursued, and by
+the fact that their conditions were often such that prenatal
+nourishment and such things were utterly abnormal. The consequences
+began to appear. To a much less extent than the Eugenists assert, but
+still to a notable extent, in a much looser sense than the Eugenists
+assume, but still in some sort of sense, the types that were
+inadequate or incalculable or uncontrollable began to increase. Under
+the hedges of the country, on the seats of the parks, loafing under
+the bridges or leaning over the Embankment, began to appear a new race
+of men--men who are certainly not mad, whom we shall gain no
+scientific light by calling feeble-minded, but who are, in varying
+individual degrees, dazed or drink-sodden, or lazy or tricky or tired
+in body and spirit. In a far less degree than the teetotallers tell
+us, but still in a large degree, the traffic in gin and bad beer
+(itself a capitalist enterprise) fostered the evil, though it had not
+begun it. Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men who
+seemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesore
+in the market-place and a terror on the empty roads. The rich were
+afraid.
+
+Moreover, as I have hinted before, the act of keeping the destitute
+out of public life, and crushing them under confused laws, had an
+effect on their intelligences which paralyses them even as a
+proletariat. Modern people talk of "Reason versus Authority"; but
+authority itself involves reason, or its orders would not even be
+understood. If you say to your valet, "Look after the buttons on my
+waistcoat," he may do it, even if you throw a boot at his head. But if
+you say to him, "Look after the buttons on my top-hat," he will not do
+it, though you empty a boot-shop over him. If you say to a schoolboy,
+"Write out that Ode of Horace from memory in the original Latin," he
+may do it without a flogging. If you say, "Write out that Ode of
+Horace in the original German," he will not do it with a thousand
+floggings. If you will not learn logic, he certainly will not learn
+Latin. And the ludicrous laws to which the needy are subject (such as
+that which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, I
+think, a great deal to do with a certain increase in their
+sheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrial
+inefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory,
+a man actually acquitted by judge and jury could _then_ be examined by
+doctors as to the state of his mind--presumably in order to discover
+by what diseased eccentricity he had refrained from the crime. In
+other words, when the police cannot jail a man who is innocent of
+doing something, they jail him for being too innocent to do anything.
+I do not suppose the man is an idiot at all, but I can believe he
+feels more like one after the legal process than before. Thus all the
+factors--the bodily exhaustion, the harassing fear of hunger, the
+reckless refuge in sexuality, and the black botheration of bad
+laws--combined to make the employee more unemployable.
+
+Now, it is very important to understand here that there were two
+courses of action still open to the disappointed capitalist confronted
+by the new peril of this real or alleged decay. First, he might have
+reversed his machine, so to speak, and started unwinding the long rope
+of dependence by which he had originally dragged the proletarian to
+his feet. In other words, he might have seen that the workmen had more
+money, more leisure, more luxuries, more status in the community, and
+then trusted to the normal instincts of reasonably happy human beings
+to produce a generation better born, bred and cared for than these
+tortured types that were less and less use to him. It might still not
+be too late to rebuild the human house upon such an architectural plan
+that poverty might fly out of the window, with the reasonable prospect
+of love coming in at the door. In short, he might have let the English
+poor, the mass of whom were not weak-minded, though more of them were
+growing weaker, a reasonable chance, in the form of more money, of
+achieving their eugenical resurrection themselves. It has never been
+shown, and it cannot be shown, that the method would have failed. But
+it can be shown, and it must be closely and clearly noted, that the
+method had very strict limitations from the employers' own point of
+view. If they made the worker too comfortable, he would not work to
+increase another's comforts; if they made him too independent, he
+would not work like a dependent. If, for instance, his wages were so
+good that he could save out of them, he might cease to be a
+wage-earner. If his house or garden were his own, he might stand an
+economic siege in it. The whole capitalist experiment had been built
+on his dependence; but now it was getting out of hand, not in the
+direction of freedom, but of frank helplessness. One might say that
+his dependence had got independent of control.
+
+But there was another way. And towards this the employer's ideas
+began, first darkly and unconsciously, but now more and more clearly,
+to drift. Giving property, giving leisure, giving status costs money.
+But there is one human force that costs nothing. As it does not cost
+the beggar a penny to indulge, so it would not cost the employer a
+penny to employ. He could not alter or improve the tables or the
+chairs on the cheap. But there were two pieces of furniture (labelled
+respectively "the husband" and "the wife") whose relations were much
+cheaper. He could alter the _marriage_ in the house in such a way as
+to promise himself the largest possible number of the kind of children
+he did want, with the smallest possible number of the kind he did
+not. He could divert the force of sex from producing vagabonds. And he
+could harness to his high engines unbought the red unbroken river of
+the blood of a man in his youth, as he has already harnessed to them
+all the wild waste rivers of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE
+
+
+Now, if any ask whether it be imaginable that an ordinary man of the
+wealthier type should analyse the problem or conceive the plan, the
+inhumanly far-seeing plan, as I have set it forth, the answer is:
+"Certainly not." Many rich employers are too generous to do such a
+thing; many are too stupid to know what they are doing. The eugenical
+opportunity I have described is but an ultimate analysis of a whole
+drift of thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse his
+thoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string of
+rickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. But
+prosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even ask
+himself whether he means "How can I help them?" or "How can I use
+them?"--what he can still do for them, or what they could still do for
+him. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more than
+the former; he laments the breaking of the tools of Mammon much more
+than the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossible
+to grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert that
+there is one thing he doesn't think. He doesn't think, "This man might
+be as jolly as I am, if he need not come to me for work or wages."
+
+That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are
+multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity
+miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a
+sense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist
+industrialism being sacrificed to any other object. By a curious
+recurrent slip in the mind, as irritating as a catch in a clock,
+people miss the main thing and concentrate on the mean thing. "Modern
+conditions" are treated as fixed, though the very word "modern"
+implies that they are fugitive. "Old ideas" are treated as impossible,
+though their very antiquity often proves their permanence. Some years
+ago some ladies petitioned that the platforms of our big railway
+stations should be raised, as it was more convenient for the hobble
+skirt. It never occurred to them to change to a sensible skirt. Still
+less did it occur to them that, compared with all the female fashions
+that have fluttered about on it, by this time St. Pancras is as
+historic as St. Peter's.
+
+I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious
+assumption that life and sex must live by the laws of "business" or
+industrialism, and not _vice versa_; examples from all the magazines,
+novels, and newspapers. In order to make it brief and typical, I take
+one case of a more or less Eugenist sort from a paper that lies open
+in front of me--a paper that still bears on its forehead the boast of
+being peculiarly an organ of democracy in revolt. To this a man writes
+to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we
+have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper
+classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to
+sign his letter "Hopeful." Well, there are certainly many methods by
+which people in the upper classes prevent procreation; one of them is
+what used to be called "platonic friendship," till they found another
+name for it at the Old Bailey. I do not suppose the hopeful gentleman
+hopes for this; but some of us find the abortion he does hope for
+almost as abominable. That, however, is not the curious point. The
+curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "When
+people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high
+infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are
+stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a
+time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if
+there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly
+takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately
+shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of
+human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries,
+things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted
+children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the
+parents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do not
+want to pay them properly. Doubtless, if you said to him directly,
+"Are you in favour of low wages?" he would say, "No." But I am not, in
+this chapter, talking about the effect on such modern minds of a
+cross-examination to which they do not subject themselves. I am
+talking about the way their minds work, the instinctive trick and turn
+of their thoughts, the things they assume before argument, and the way
+they faintly feel that the world is going. And, frankly, the turn of
+their mind is to tell the child he is not wanted, as the turn of my
+mind is to tell the profiteer he is not wanted. Motherhood, they feel,
+and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good
+things in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the
+mutilation of womanhood, and the massacre of men unborn, he signs
+himself "Hopeful." He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human
+annihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself
+"Hopeless."
+
+This is the first evidence of motive: the ubiquitous assumption that
+life and love must fit into a fixed framework of employment, even (as
+in this case) of bad employment. The second evidence is the tacit and
+total neglect of the scientific question in all the departments in
+which it is not an employment question; as, for instance, the
+marriages of the princely, patrician, or merely plutocratic houses. I
+do not mean, of course, that no scientific men have rigidly tackled
+these, though I do not recall any cases. But I am not talking of the
+merits of individual men of science, but of the push and power behind
+this movement, the thing that is able to make it fashionable and
+politically important. I say, if this power were an interest in truth,
+or even in humanity, the first field in which to study would be in the
+weddings of the wealthy. Not only would the records be more lucid,
+and the examples more in evidence, but the cases would be more
+interesting and more decisive. For the grand marriages have presented
+both extremes of the problem of pedigree--first the "breeding in and
+in," and later the most incongruous cosmopolitan blends. It would
+really be interesting to note which worked the best, or what point of
+compromise was safest. For the poor (about whom the newspaper
+Eugenists are always talking) cannot offer any test cases so complete.
+Waiters never had to marry waitresses, as princes had to marry
+princesses. And (for the other extreme) housemaids seldom marry Red
+Indians. It may be because there are none to marry. But to the
+millionaires the continents are flying railway stations, and the most
+remote races can be rapidly linked together. A marriage in London or
+Paris may chain Ravenna to Chicago, or Ben Cruachan to Bagdad. Many
+European aristocrats marry Americans, notoriously the most mixed stock
+in the world; so that the disinterested Eugenist, with a little
+trouble, might reveal rich stores of negro or Asiatic blood to his
+delighted employer. Instead of which he dulls our ears and distresses
+our refinement by tedious denunciations of the monochrome marriages of
+the poor.
+
+For there is something really pathetic about the Eugenist's neglect of
+the aristocrat and his family affairs. People still talk about the
+pride of pedigree; but it strikes me as the one point on which the
+aristocrats are almost morbidly modest. We should be learned Eugenists
+if we were allowed to know half as much of their heredity as we are
+of their hairdressing. We see the modern aristocrat in the most human
+poses in the illustrated papers, playing with his dog or parrot--nay,
+we see him playing with his child, or with his grandchild. But there
+is something heartrending in his refusal to play with his grandfather.
+There is often something vague and even fantastic about the
+antecedents of our most established families, which would afford the
+Eugenist admirable scope not only for investigation but for
+experiment. Certainly, if he could obtain the necessary powers, the
+Eugenist might bring off some startling effects with the mixed
+materials of the governing class. Suppose, to take wild and
+hypothetical examples, he were to marry a Scotch earl, say, to the
+daughter of a Jewish banker, or an English duke to an American parvenu
+of semi-Jewish extraction? What would happen? We have here an
+unexplored field.
+
+It remains unexplored not merely through snobbery and cowardice, but
+because the Eugenist (at least the influential Eugenist)
+half-consciously knows it is no part of his job; what he is really
+wanted for is to get the grip of the governing classes on to the
+unmanageable output of poor people. It would not matter in the least
+if all Lord Cowdray's descendants grew up too weak to hold a tool or
+turn a wheel. It would matter very much, especially to Lord Cowdray,
+if all his employees grew up like that. The oligarch can be
+unemployable, because he will not be employed. Thus the practical and
+popular exponent of Eugenics has his face always turned towards the
+slums, and instinctively thinks in terms of them. If he talks of
+segregating some incurably vicious type of the sexual sort, he is
+thinking of a ruffian who assaults girls in lanes. He is not thinking
+of a millionaire like White, the victim of Thaw. If he speaks of the
+hopelessness of feeble-mindedness, he is thinking of some stunted
+creature gaping at hopeless lessons in a poor school. He is not
+thinking of a millionaire like Thaw, the slayer of White. And this not
+because he is such a brute as to like people like White or Thaw any
+more than we do, but because he knows that _his_ problem is the
+degeneration of the useful classes; because he knows that White would
+never have been a millionaire if all his workers had spent themselves
+on women as White did, that Thaw would never have been a millionaire
+if all his servants had been Thaws. The ornaments may be allowed to
+decay, but the machinery _must_ be mended. That is the second proof of
+the plutocratic impulse behind all Eugenics: that no one thinks of
+applying it to the prominent classes. No one thinks of applying it
+where it could most easily be applied.
+
+A third proof is the strange new disposition to regard the poor as a
+_race_; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies. It can be
+most clearly seen by comparing it with the old, more individual,
+charitable, and (as the Eugenists might say) sentimental view of
+poverty. In Goldsmith or Dickens or Hood there is a basic idea that
+the particular poor person ought not to be so poor: it is some
+accident or some wrong. Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim are fairy princes
+waiting for their fairy godmother. They are held as slaves, but rather
+as the hero and heroine of a Spanish or Italian romance were held as
+slaves by the Moors. The modern poor are getting to be regarded as
+slaves in the separate and sweeping sense of the negroes in the
+plantations. The bondage of the white hero to the black master was
+regarded as abnormal; the bondage of the black to the white master as
+normal. The Eugenist, for all I know, would regard the mere existence
+of Tiny Tim as a sufficient reason for massacring the whole family of
+Cratchit; but, as a matter of fact, we have here a very good instance
+of how much more practically true to life is sentiment than cynicism.
+The poor are _not_ a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk
+about breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact,
+what Dickens describes: "a dustbin of individual accidents," of
+damaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility. The class very
+largely consists of perfectly promising children, lost like Oliver
+Twist, or crippled like Tiny Tim. It contains very valuable things,
+like most dustbins. But the Eugenist delusion of the barbaric breed in
+the abyss affects even those more gracious philanthropists who almost
+certainly do want to assist the destitute and not merely to exploit
+them. It seems to affect not only their minds, but their very
+eyesight. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Alec Tweedie almost scornfully
+asks, "When we go through the slums, do we see beautiful children?"
+The answer is, "Yes, very often indeed." I have seen children in the
+slums quite pretty enough to be Little Nell or the outcast whom Hood
+called "young and so fair." Nor has the beauty anything necessarily to
+do with health; there are beautiful healthy children, beautiful dying
+children, ugly dying children, ugly uproarious children in Petticoat
+Lane or Park Lane. There are people of every physical and mental type,
+of every sort of health and breeding, in a single back street. They
+have nothing in common but the wrong we do them.
+
+The important point is, however, that there is more fact and realism
+in the wildest and most elegant old fictions about disinherited dukes
+and long-lost daughters than there is in this Eugenist attempt to make
+the poor all of a piece--a sort of black fungoid growth that is
+ceaselessly increasing in a chasm. There is a cheap sneer at poor
+landladies: that they always say they have seen better days. Nine
+times out of ten they say it because it is true. What can be said of
+the great mass of Englishmen, by anyone who knows any history, except
+that they have seen better days? And the landlady's claim is not
+snobbish, but rather spirited; it is her testimony to the truth in the
+old tales of which I spoke: that she _ought not_ to be so poor or so
+servile in status; that a normal person ought to have more property
+and more power in the State than _that_. Such dreams of lost dignity
+are perhaps the only things that stand between us and the
+cattle-breeding paradise now promised. Nor are such dreams by any
+means impotent. I remember Mr. T.P. O'Connor wrote an interesting
+article about Madame Humbert, in the course of which he said that
+Irish peasants, and probably most peasants, tended to have a
+half-fictitious family legend about an estate to which they were
+entitled. This was written in the time when Irish peasants were
+landless in their land; and the delusion doubtless seemed all the more
+entertaining to the landlords who ruled them and the money-lenders who
+ruled the landlords. But the dream has conquered the realities. The
+phantom farms have materialised. Merely by tenaciously affirming the
+kind of pride that comes after a fall, by remembering the old
+civilisation and refusing the new, by recurring to an old claim that
+seemed to most Englishmen like the lie of a broken-down lodging-house
+keeper at Margate--by all this the Irish have got what they want, in
+solid mud and turf. That imaginary estate has conquered the Three
+Estates of the Realm.
+
+But the homeless Englishman must not even remember a home. So far from
+his house being his castle, he must not have even a castle in the air.
+He must have no memories; that is why he is taught no history. Why is
+he told none of the truth about the mediæval civilisation except a few
+cruelties and mistakes in chemistry? Why does a mediæval burgher never
+appear till he can appear in a shirt and a halter? Why does a mediæval
+monastery never appear till it is "corrupt" enough to shock the
+innocence of Henry VIII.? Why do we hear of one charter--that of the
+barons--and not a word of the charters of the carpenters, smiths,
+shipwrights and all the rest? The reason is that the English peasant
+is not only not allowed to have an estate, he is not even allowed to
+have lost one. The past has to be painted pitch black, that it may be
+worse than the present.
+
+There is one strong, startling, outstanding thing about Eugenics, and
+that is its meanness. Wealth, and the social science supported by
+wealth, had tried an inhuman experiment. The experiment had entirely
+failed. They sought to make wealth accumulate--and they made men
+decay. Then, instead of confessing the error, and trying to restore
+the wealth, or attempting to repair the decay, they are trying to
+cover their first cruel experiment with a more cruel experiment. They
+put a poisonous plaster on a poisoned wound. Vilest of all, they
+actually quote the bewilderment produced among the poor by their first
+blunder as a reason for allowing them to blunder again. They are
+apparently ready to arrest all the opponents of their system as mad,
+merely because the system was maddening. Suppose a captain had
+collected volunteers in a hot, waste country by the assurance that he
+could lead them to water, and knew where to meet the rest of his
+regiment. Suppose he led them wrong, to a place where the regiment
+could not be for days, and there was no water. And suppose sunstroke
+struck them down on the sand man after man, and they kicked and danced
+and raved. And, when at last the regiment came, suppose the captain
+successfully concealed his mistake, because all his men had suffered
+too much from it to testify to its ever having occurred. What would
+you think of the gallant captain? It is pretty much what I think of
+this particular captain of industry.
+
+Of course, nobody supposes that all Capitalists, or most Capitalists,
+are conscious of any such intellectual trick. Most of them are as much
+bewildered as the battered proletariat; but there are some who are
+less well-meaning and more mean. And these are leading their more
+generous colleagues towards the fulfilment of this ungenerous evasion,
+if not towards the comprehension of it. Now a ruler of the Capitalist
+civilisation, who has come to consider the idea of ultimately herding
+and breeding the workers like cattle, has certain contemporary
+problems to review. He has to consider what forces still exist in the
+modern world for the frustration of his design. The first question is
+how much remains of the old ideal of individual liberty. The second
+question is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarian
+ideas as may be implied in Socialism. The third is whether there is
+any power of resistance in the tradition of the populace itself. These
+three questions for the future I shall consider in their order in the
+final chapters that follow. It is enough to say here that I think the
+progress of these ideals has broken down at the precise point where
+they will fail to prevent the experiment. Briefly, the progress will
+have deprived the Capitalist of his old Individualist scruples,
+without committing him to his new Collectivist obligations. He is in a
+very perilous position; for he has ceased to be a Liberal without
+becoming a Socialist, and the bridge by which he was crossing has
+broken above an abyss of Anarchy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY
+
+
+If such a thing as the Eugenic sociology had been suggested in the
+period from Fox to Gladstone, it would have been far more fiercely
+repudiated by the reformers than by the Conservatives. If Tories had
+regarded it as an insult to marriage, Radicals would have far more
+resolutely regarded it as an insult to citizenship. But in the
+interval we have suffered from a process resembling a sort of mystical
+parricide, such as is told of so many gods, and is true of so many
+great ideas. Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has
+destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it
+unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they
+were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it
+undefended. Men merely finding themselves free found themselves free
+to dispute the value of freedom. But the important point to seize
+about this reactionary scepticism is that as it is bound to be
+unlimited in theory, so it is bound to be unlimited in practice. In
+other words, the modern mind is set in an attitude which would enable
+it to advance, not only towards Eugenic legislation, but towards any
+conceivable or inconceivable extravagances of Eugenics.
+
+Those who reply to any plea for freedom invariably fall into a certain
+trap. I have debated with numberless different people on these
+matters, and I confess I find it amusing to see them tumbling into it
+one after another. I remember discussing it before a club of very
+active and intelligent Suffragists, and I cast it here for convenience
+in the form which it there assumed. Suppose, for the sake of argument,
+that I say that to take away a poor man's pot of beer is to take away
+a poor man's personal liberty, it is very vital to note what is the
+usual or almost universal reply. People hardly ever do reply, for some
+reason or other, by saying that a man's liberty consists of such and
+such things, but that beer is an exception that cannot be classed
+among them, for such and such reasons. What they almost invariably do
+say is something like this: "After all, what is liberty? Man must live
+as a member of a society, and must obey those laws which, etc., etc."
+In other words, they collapse into a complete confession that they
+_are_ attacking all liberty and any liberty; that they _do_ deny the
+very existence or the very possibility of liberty. In the very form of
+the answer they admit the full scope of the accusation against them.
+In trying to rebut the smaller accusation, they plead guilty to the
+larger one.
+
+This distinction is very important, as can be seen from any practical
+parallel. Suppose we wake up in the middle of the night and find that
+a neighbour has entered the house not by the front-door but by the
+skylight; we may suspect that he has come after the fine old family
+jewellery. We may be reassured if he can refer it to a really
+exceptional event; as that he fell on to the roof out of an aeroplane,
+or climbed on to the roof to escape from a mad dog. Short of the
+incredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for an
+extraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shall
+hardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistful
+fashion and says, "After all, what is property? Why should material
+objects be thus artificially attached, etc., etc.?" We shall merely
+realise that his attitude allows of his taking the jewellery and
+everything else. Or if the neighbour approaches us carrying a large
+knife dripping with blood, we may be convinced by his story that he
+killed another neighbour in self-defence, that the quiet gentleman
+next door was really a homicidal maniac. We shall know that homicidal
+mania is exceptional and that we ourselves are so happy as not to
+suffer from it; and being free from the disease may be free from the
+danger. But it will not soothe us for the man with the gory knife to
+say softly and pensively "After all, what is human life? Why should we
+cling to it? Brief at the best, sad at the brightest, it is itself but
+a disease from which, etc., etc." We shall perceive that the sceptic
+is in a mood not only to murder us but to massacre everybody in the
+street. Exactly the same effect which would be produced by the
+questions of "What is property?" and "What is life?" is produced by
+the question of "What is liberty?" It leaves the questioner free to
+disregard any liberty, or in other words to take any liberties. The
+very thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he may
+choose to do. If he gags a man to prevent him from indulging in
+profane swearing, or locks him in the coal cellar to guard against his
+going on the spree, he can still be satisfied with saying, "After all,
+what is liberty? Man is a member of, etc., etc."
+
+That is the problem, and that is why there is now no protection
+against Eugenic or any other experiments. If the men who took away
+beer as an unlawful pleasure had paused for a moment to define the
+lawful pleasures, there might be a different situation. If the men who
+had denied one liberty had taken the opportunity to affirm other
+liberties, there might be some defence for them. But it never occurs
+to them to admit any liberties at all. It never so much as crosses
+their minds. Hence the excuse for the last oppression will always
+serve as well for the next oppression; and to that tyranny there can
+be no end.
+
+Hence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secret
+and sacred places of personal freedom, where no sane man ever dreamed
+of seeing it; and especially the sanctuary of sex. It is as easy to
+take away a man's wife or baby as to take away his beer when you can
+say "What is liberty?"; just as it is as easy to cut off his head as
+to cut off his hair if you are free to say "What is life?" There is no
+rational philosophy of human rights generally disseminated among the
+populace, to which we can appeal in defence even of the most intimate
+or individual things that anybody can imagine. For so far as there was
+a vague principle in these things, that principle has been wholly
+changed. It used to be said that a man could have liberty, so long as
+it did not interfere with the liberty of others. This did afford some
+rough justification for the ordinary legal view of the man with the
+pot of beer. For instance, it was logical to allow some degree of
+distinction between beer and tea, on the ground that a man may be
+moved by excess of beer to throw the pot at somebody's head. And it
+may be said that the spinster is seldom moved by excess of tea to
+throw the tea-pot at anybody's head. But the whole ground of argument
+is now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to
+others by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking
+the beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that the
+Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment
+that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between
+beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with
+tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the
+hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is
+to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control
+all the habits of all the citizens, and among the rest their habits in
+the matter of sex.
+
+But there is more than this. It is not only true that it is the last
+liberties of man that are being taken away; and not merely his first
+or most superficial liberties. It is also inevitable that the last
+liberties should be taken first. It is inevitable that the most
+private matters should be most under public coercion. This inverse
+variation is very important, though very little realised. If a man's
+personal health is a public concern, his most private acts are _more_
+public than his most public acts. The official must deal _more_
+directly with his cleaning his teeth in the morning than with his
+using his tongue in the market-place. The inspector must interfere
+_more_ with how he sleeps in the middle of the night than with how he
+works in the course of the day. The private citizen must have much
+_less_ to say about his bath or his bedroom window than about his vote
+or his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a private
+detective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in public
+affairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he should
+sneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All this
+and things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that the
+State must make itself responsible for the health of the citizen. But
+the point is that the policeman must deal primarily and promptly with
+the citizen in his relation to his home, and only indirectly and more
+doubtfully with the citizen in his relation to his city. By the whole
+logic of this test, the king must hear what is said in the inner
+chamber and hardly notice what is proclaimed from the house-tops. We
+have heard of a revolution that turns everything upside down. But
+this is almost literally a revolution that turns everything inside
+out.
+
+If a wary reactionary of the tradition of Metternich had wished in the
+nineteenth century to reverse the democratic tendency, he would
+naturally have begun by depriving the democracy of its margin of more
+dubious powers over more distant things. He might well begin, for
+instance, by removing the control of foreign affairs from popular
+assemblies; and there is a case for saying that a people may
+understand its own affairs, without knowing anything whatever about
+foreign affairs. Then he might centralise great national questions,
+leaving a great deal of local government in local questions. This
+would proceed so for a long time before it occurred to the blackest
+terrorist of the despotic ages to interfere with a man's own habits in
+his own house. But the new sociologists and legislators are, by the
+nature of their theory, bound to begin where the despots leave off,
+even if they leave off where the despots begin. For them, as they
+would put it, the first things must be the very fountains of life,
+love and birth and babyhood; and these are always covered fountains,
+flowing in the quiet courts of the home. For them, as Mr. H.G. Wells
+put it, life itself may be regarded merely as a tissue of births. Thus
+they are coerced by their own rational principle to begin all coercion
+at the other end; at the inside end. What happens to the outside end,
+the external and remote powers of the citizen, they do not very much
+care; and it is probable that the democratic institutions of recent
+centuries will be allowed to decay in undisturbed dignity for a
+century or two more. Thus our civilisation will find itself in an
+interesting situation, not without humour; in which the citizen is
+still supposed to wield imperial powers over the ends of the earth,
+but has admittedly no power over his own body and soul at all. He will
+still be consulted by politicians about whether opium is good for
+China-men, but not about whether ale is good for him. He will be
+cross-examined for his opinions about the danger of allowing Kamskatka
+to have a war-fleet, but not about allowing his own child to have a
+wooden sword. About all, he will be consulted about the delicate
+diplomatic crisis created by the proposed marriage of the Emperor of
+China, and not allowed to marry as he pleases.
+
+Part of this prophecy or probability has already been accomplished;
+the rest of it, in the absence of any protest, is in process of
+accomplishment. It would be easy to give an almost endless catalogue
+of examples, to show how, in dealing with the poorer classes at least,
+coercion has already come near to a direct control of the relations of
+the sexes. But I am much more concerned in this chapter to point out
+that all these things have been adopted in principle, even where they
+have not been adopted in practice. It is much more vital to realise
+that the reformers have possessed themselves of a _principle_, which
+will cover all such things if it be granted, and which is not
+sufficiently comprehended to be contradicted. It is a principle
+whereby the deepest things of flesh and spirit must have the most
+direct relation with the dictatorship of the State. They must have it,
+by the whole reason and rationale upon which the thing depends. It is
+a system that might be symbolised by the telephone from headquarters
+standing by a man's bed. He must have a relation to Government like
+his relation to God. That is, the more he goes into the inner
+chambers, and the more he closes the doors, the more he is alone with
+the law. The social machinery which makes such a State uniform and
+submissive will be worked outwards from the household as from a
+handle, or a single mechanical knob or button. In a horrible sense,
+loaded with fear and shame and every detail of dishonour, it will be
+true to say that charity begins at home.
+
+Charity will begin at home in the sense that all home children will be
+like charity children. Philanthropy will begin at home, for all
+householders will be like paupers. Police administration will begin at
+home, for all citizens will be like convicts. And when health and the
+humours of daily life have passed into the domain of this social
+discipline, when it is admitted that the community must primarily
+control the primary habits, when all law begins, so to speak, next to
+the skin or nearest the vitals--then indeed it will appear absurd that
+marriage and maternity should not be similarly ordered. Then indeed it
+will seem to be illogical, and it will be illogical, that love should
+be free when life has lost its freedom.
+
+So passed, to all appearance, from the minds of men the strange dream
+and fantasy called freedom. Whatever be the future of these
+evolutionary experiments and their effect on civilisation, there is
+one land at least that has something to mourn. For us in England
+something will have perished which our fathers valued all the more
+because they hardly troubled to name it; and whatever be the stars of
+a more universal destiny, the great star of our night has set. The
+English had missed many other things that men of the same origins had
+achieved or retained. Not to them was given, like the French, to
+establish eternal communes and clear codes of equality; not to them,
+like the South Germans, to keep the popular culture of their songs;
+not to them, like the Irish, was it given to die daily for a great
+religion. But a spirit had been with them from the first which fenced,
+with a hundred quaint customs and legal fictions, the way of a man who
+wished to walk nameless and alone. It was not for nothing that they
+forgot all their laws to remember the name of an outlaw, and filled
+the green heart of England with the figure of Robin Hood. It was not
+for nothing that even their princes of art and letters had about them
+something of kings incognito, undiscovered by formal or academic fame;
+so that no eye can follow the young Shakespeare as he came up the
+green lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost
+himself among the lights of London. It is not for nothing that the
+very roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down on
+a map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the
+home of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested
+upon its wood-lands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed
+departed, it matters little that it has been driven out by perversions
+it had itself permitted, by monsters it had idly let loose.
+Industrialism and Capitalism and the rage for physical science were
+English experiments in the sense that the English lent themselves to
+their encouragement; but there was something else behind them and
+within them that was not they--its name was liberty, and it was our
+life. It may be that this delicate and tenacious spirit has at last
+evaporated. If so, it matters little what becomes of the external
+experiments of our nation in later time. That at which we look will be
+a dead thing alive with its own parasites. The English will have
+destroyed England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM
+
+
+Socialism is one of the simplest ideas in the world. It has always
+puzzled me how there came to be so much bewilderment and
+misunderstanding and miserable mutual slander about it. At one time I
+agreed with Socialism, because it was simple. Now I disagree with
+Socialism, because it is too simple. Yet most of its opponents still
+seem to treat it, not merely as an iniquity but as a mystery of
+iniquity, which seems to mystify them even more than it maddens them.
+It may not seem strange that its antagonists should be puzzled about
+what it is. It may appear more curious and interesting that its
+admirers are equally puzzled. Its foes used to denounce Socialism as
+Anarchy, which is its opposite. Its friends seemed to suppose that it
+is a sort of optimism, which is almost as much of an opposite. Friends
+and foes alike talked as if it involved a sort of faith in ideal human
+nature; why I could never imagine. The Socialist system, in a more
+special sense than any other, is founded not on optimism but on
+original sin. It proposes that the State, as the conscience of the
+community, should possess all primary forms of property; and that
+obviously on the ground that men cannot be trusted to own or barter
+or combine or compete without injury to themselves. Just as a State
+might own all the guns lest people should shoot each other, so this
+State would own all the gold and land lest they should cheat or
+rackrent or exploit each other. It seems extraordinarily simple and
+even obvious; and so it is. It is too obvious to be true. But while it
+is obvious, it seems almost incredible that anybody ever thought it
+optimistic.
+
+I am myself primarily opposed to Socialism, or Collectivism or
+Bolshevism or whatever we call it, for a primary reason not
+immediately involved here: the ideal of property. I say the ideal and
+not merely the idea; and this alone disposes of the moral mistake in
+the matter. It disposes of all the dreary doubts of the
+Anti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yet
+drearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I do
+not admit that private property is a concession to baseness and
+selfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the most
+truly popular of all points of honour. But this, though it has
+everything to do with my plea for a domestic dignity, has nothing to
+do with this passing summary of the situation of Socialism. I only
+remark in passing that it is vain for the more vulgar sort of
+Capitalist, sneering at ideals, to say to me that in order to have
+Socialism "You must alter human nature." I answer "Yes. You must alter
+it for the worse."
+
+The clouds were considerably cleared away from the meaning of
+Socialism by the Fabians of the 'nineties; by Mr. Bernard Shaw, a
+sort of anti-romantic Quixote, who charged chivalry as chivalry
+charged windmills, with Sidney Webb for his Sancho Panza. In so far as
+these paladins had a castle to defend, we may say that their castle
+was the Post Office. The red pillar-box was the immovable post against
+which the irresistible force of Capitalist individualism was arrested.
+Business men who said that nothing could be managed by the State were
+forced to admit that they trusted all their business letters and
+business telegrams to the State.
+
+After all, it was not found necessary to have an office competing with
+another office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or more
+picturesque postmen. It was not necessary to efficiency that the
+postmistress should buy a penny stamp for a halfpenny and sell it for
+twopence; or that she should haggle and beat customers down about the
+price of a postal order; or that she should always take tenders for
+telegrams. There was obviously nothing actually impossible about the
+State management of national needs; and the Post Office was at least
+tolerably managed. Though it was not always a model employer, by any
+means, it might be made so by similar methods. It was not impossible
+that equitable pay, and even equal pay, could be given to the
+Postmaster-General and the postman. We had only to extend this rule of
+public responsibility, and we should escape from all the terror of
+insecurity and torture of compassion, which hag-rides humanity in the
+insane extremes of economic inequality and injustice. As Mr. Shaw put
+it, "A man must save Society's honour before he can save his own."
+
+That was one side of the argument: that the change would remove
+inequality; and there was an answer on the other side. It can be
+stated most truly by putting another model institution and edifice
+side by side with the Post Office. It is even more of an ideal
+republic, or commonwealth without competition or private profit. It
+supplies its citizens not only with the stamps but with clothes and
+food and lodging, and all they require. It observes considerable level
+of equality in these things; notably in the clothes. It not only
+supervises the letters but all the other human communications; notably
+the sort of evil communications that corrupt good manners. This twin
+model to the Post Office is called the Prison. And much of the scheme
+for a model State was regarded by its opponents as a scheme for a
+model prison; good because it fed men equally, but less acceptable
+since it imprisoned them equally.
+
+It is better to be in a bad prison than in a good one. From the
+standpoint of the prisoner this is not at all a paradox; if only
+because in a bad prison he is more likely to escape. But apart from
+that, a man was in many ways better off in the old dirty and corrupt
+prison, where he could bribe turnkeys to bring him drink and meet
+fellow-prisoners to drink with. Now that is exactly the difference
+between the present system and the proposed system. Nobody worth
+talking about respects the present system. Capitalism is a corrupt
+prison. That is the best that can be said for Capitalism. But it is
+something to be said for it; for a man is a little freer in that
+corrupt prison than he would be in a complete prison. As a man can
+find one jailer more lax than another, so he could find one employer
+more kind than another; he has at least a choice of tyrants. In the
+other case he finds the same tyrant at every turn. Mr. Shaw and other
+rational Socialists have agreed that the State would be in practice
+government by a small group. Any independent man who disliked that
+group would find his foe waiting for him at the end of every road.
+
+It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends
+recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as
+decreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State could
+provide homes and meals for all; on the other it was answered that
+this could only be done by State officials who would inspect houses
+and regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the most
+interesting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do
+everything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that
+had ever been desired in it. Since it was supposed to gain equality at
+the sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possible
+to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed, there was not
+the faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality.
+But there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminate
+liberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and
+interferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating those
+whom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was the
+Capitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted in
+every sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to the
+wiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easy to proceed more
+promptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gone
+through the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. After
+all, it was easy to inspect the house without having helped to build
+it; it was even possible, with luck, to inspect the house in time to
+prevent it being built. All that is described in the documents of the
+Housing Problem; for the people of this age loved problems and hated
+solutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing the
+dinner. All that can be found in the documents of what is called
+Temperance Reform.
+
+In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the
+good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the
+bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists
+themselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over
+bodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic
+tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a
+Capitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in the
+smallest degree diminish the inequalities of a Capitalist State. It
+simply destroyed such individual liberties as remained among its
+victims. It did not enable any man to build a better house; it only
+limited the houses he might live in--or how he might manage to live
+there; forbidding him to keep pigs or poultry or to sell beer or
+cider. It did not even add anything to a man's wages; it only took
+away something from a man's wages and locked it up, whether he liked
+it or not, in a sort of money-box which was regarded as a
+medicine-chest. It does not send food into the house to feed the
+children; it only sends an inspector into the house to punish the
+parents for having no food to feed them. It does not see that they
+have got a fire; it only punishes them for not having a fireguard. It
+does not even occur to it to provide the fireguard.
+
+Now this anomalous situation will probably ultimately evolve into the
+Servile State of Mr. Belloc's thesis. The poor will sink into slavery;
+it might as correctly be said that the poor will rise into slavery.
+That is to say, sooner or later, it is very probable that the rich
+will take over the philanthropic as well as the tyrannic side of the
+bargain; and will feed men like slaves as well as hunting them like
+outlaws. But for the purpose of my own argument it is not necessary to
+carry the process so far as this, or indeed any farther than it has
+already gone. The purely negative stage of interference, at which we
+have stuck for the present, is in itself quite favourable to all these
+eugenical experiments. The capitalist whose half-conscious thought and
+course of action I have simplified into a story in the preceding
+chapters, finds this insufficient solution quite sufficient for his
+purposes. What he has felt for a long time is that he must check or
+improve the reckless and random breeding of the submerged race, which
+is at once outstripping his requirements and failing to fulfil his
+needs. Now the anomalous situation has already accustomed him to
+stopping things. The first interferences with sex need only be
+negative; and there are already negative interferences without number.
+So that the study of this stage of Socialism brings us to the same
+conclusion as that of the ideal of liberty as formally professed by
+Liberalism. The ideal of liberty is lost, and the ideal of Socialism
+is changed, till it is a mere excuse for the oppression of the poor.
+
+The first movements for intervention in the deepest domestic concerns
+of the poor all had this note of negative interference. Official
+papers were sent round to the mothers in poor streets; papers in which
+a total stranger asked these respectable women questions which a man
+would be killed for asking, in the class of what were called gentlemen
+or in the countries of what were called free men. They were questions
+supposed to refer to the conditions of maternity; but the point is
+here that the reformers did not begin by building up those economic or
+material conditions. They did not attempt to pay money or establish
+property to create those conditions. They never give anything--except
+orders. Another form of the intervention, and one already mentioned,
+is the kidnapping of children upon the most fantastic excuses of sham
+psychology. Some people established an apparatus of tests and trick
+questions; which might make an amusing game of riddles for the family
+fireside, but seems an insufficient reason for mutilating and
+dismembering the family. Others became interested in the hopeless
+moral condition of children born in the economic condition which they
+did not attempt to improve. They were great on the fact that crime was
+a disease; and carried on their criminological studies so successfully
+as to open the reformatory for little boys who played truant; there
+was no reformatory for reformers. I need not pause to explain that
+crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.
+
+Finally one thing may be added which is at least clear. Whether or no
+the organisation of industry will issue positively in a eugenical
+reconstruction of the family, it has already issued negatively, as in
+the negations already noted, in a partial destruction of it. It took
+the form of a propaganda of popular divorce, calculated at least to
+accustom the masses to a new notion of the shifting and re-grouping of
+families. I do not discuss the question of divorce here, as I have
+done elsewhere, in its intrinsic character; I merely note it as one of
+these negative reforms which have been substituted for positive
+economic equality. It was preached with a weird hilarity, as if the
+suicide of love were something not only humane but happy. But it need
+not be explained, and certainly it need not be denied, that the
+harassed poor of a diseased industrialism were indeed maintaining
+marriage under every disadvantage, and often found individual relief
+in divorce. Industrialism does produce many unhappy marriages, for the
+same reason that it produces so many unhappy men. But all the reforms
+were directed to rescuing the industrialism rather than the happiness.
+Poor couples were to be divorced because they were already divided.
+Through all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of
+sacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with
+the modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest
+promptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and
+gathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled about
+the chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts were
+instantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to pour away
+the wine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GODS
+
+
+The only place where it is possible to find an echo of the mind of the
+English masses is either in conversation or in comic songs. The latter
+are obviously the more dubious; but they are the only things recorded
+and quotable that come anywhere near it. We talk about the popular
+Press; but in truth there is no popular Press. It may be a good thing;
+but, anyhow, most readers would be mildly surprised if a newspaper
+leading article were written in the language of a navvy. Sometimes the
+Press is interested in things in which the democracy is also genuinely
+interested; such as horse-racing. Sometimes the Press is about as
+popular as the Press Gang. We talk of Labour leaders in Parliament;
+but they would be highly unparliamentary if they talked like
+labourers. The Bolshevists, I believe, profess to promote something
+that they call "proletarian art," which only shows that the word
+Bolshevism can sometimes be abbreviated into bosh. That sort of
+Bolshevist is not a proletarian, but rather the very thing he accuses
+everybody else of being. The Bolshevist is above all a bourgeois; a
+Jewish intellectual of the town. And the real case against industrial
+intellectualism could hardly be put better than in this very
+comparison. There has never been such a thing as proletarian art; but
+there has emphatically been such a thing as peasant art. And the only
+literature which even reminds us of the real tone and talk of the
+English working classes is to be found in the comic song of the
+English music-hall.
+
+I first heard one of them on my voyage to America, in the midst of the
+sea within sight of the New World, with the Statue of Liberty
+beginning to loom up on the horizon. From the lips of a young Scotch
+engineer, of all people in the world, I heard for the first time these
+immortal words from a London music-hall song:--
+
+    "Father's got the sack from the water-works
+      For smoking of his old cherry-briar;
+    Father's got the sack from the water-works
+      'Cos he might set the water-works on fire."
+
+As I told my friends in America, I think it no part of a patriot to
+boast; and boasting itself is certainly not a thing to boast of. I
+doubt the persuasive power of English as exemplified in Kipling, and
+one can easily force it on foreigners too much, even as exemplified in
+Dickens. I am no Imperialist, and only on rare and proper occasions a
+Jingo. But when I hear those words about Father and the water-works,
+when I hear under far-off foreign skies anything so gloriously English
+as that, then indeed (I said to them), then indeed:--
+
+    "I thank the goodness and the grace
+      That on my birth have smiled,
+    And made me, as you see me here,
+      A little English child."
+
+But that noble stanza about the water-works has other elements of
+nobility besides nationality. It provides a compact and almost perfect
+summary of the whole social problem in industrial countries like
+England and America. If I wished to set forth systematically the
+elements of the ethical and economic problem in Pittsburg or
+Sheffield, I could not do better than take these few words as a text,
+and divide them up like the heads of a sermon. Let me note the points
+in some rough fashion here.
+
+1.--_Father._ This word is still in use among the more ignorant and
+ill-paid of the industrial community; and is the badge of an old
+convention or unit called the family. A man and woman having vowed to
+be faithful to each other, the man makes himself responsible for all
+the children of the woman, and is thus generically called "Father." It
+must not be supposed that the poet or singer is necessarily one of the
+children. It may be the wife, called by the same ritual "Mother." Poor
+English wives say "Father" as poor Irish wives say "Himself," meaning
+the titular head of the house. The point to seize is that among the
+ignorant this convention or custom still exists. Father and the family
+are the foundations of thought; the natural authority still comes
+natural to the poet; but it is overlaid and thwarted with more
+artificial authorities; the official, the schoolmaster, the
+policeman, the employer, and so on. What these forces fighting the
+family are we shall see, my dear brethren, when we pass to our second
+heading; which is:--
+
+2.--_Got the Sack._ This idiom marks a later stage of the history of
+the language than the comparatively primitive word "Father." It is
+needless to discuss whether the term comes from Turkey or some other
+servile society. In America they say that Father has been fired. But
+it involves the whole of the unique economic system under which Father
+has now to live. Though assumed by family tradition to be a master, he
+can now, by industrial tradition, only be a particular kind of
+servant; a servant who has not the security of a slave. If he owned
+his own shop and tools, he could not get the sack. If his master owned
+him, he could not get the sack. The slave and the guildsman know where
+they will sleep every night; it was only the proletarian of
+individualist industrialism who could get the sack, if not in the
+style of the Bosphorus, at least in the sense of the Embankment. We
+pass to the third heading.
+
+3.--_From the Water-works._ This detail of Father's life is very
+important; for this is the reply to most of the Socialists, as the
+last section is to so many of the Capitalists. The water-works which
+employed Father is a very large, official and impersonal institution.
+Whether it is technically a bureaucratic department or a big business
+makes little or no change in the feelings of Father in connection with
+it. The water-works might or might not be nationalised; and it would
+make no necessary difference to Father being fired, and no difference
+at all to his being accused of playing with fire. In fact, if the
+Capitalists are more likely to give him the sack, the Socialists are
+even more likely to forbid him the smoke. There is no freedom for
+Father except in some sort of private ownership of things like water
+and fire. If he owned his own well his water could never be cut off,
+and while he sits by his own fire his pipe can never be put out. That
+is the real meaning of property, and the real argument against
+Socialism; probably the only argument against Socialism.
+
+4.--_For Smoking._ Nothing marks this queer intermediate phase of
+industrialism more strangely than the fact that, while employers still
+claim the right to sack him like a stranger, they are already
+beginning to claim the right to supervise him like a son. Economically
+he can go and starve on the Embankment; but ethically and hygienically
+he must be controlled and coddled in the nursery. Government
+repudiates all responsibility for seeing that he gets bread. But it
+anxiously accepts all responsibility for seeing that he does not get
+beer. It passes an Insurance Act to force him to provide himself with
+medicine; but it is avowedly indifferent to whether he is able to
+provide himself with meals. Thus while the sack is inconsistent with
+the family, the supervision is really inconsistent with the sack. The
+whole thing is a tangled chain of contradictions. It is true that in
+the special and sacred text of scripture we are here considering, the
+smoking is forbidden on a general and public and not on a medicinal
+and private ground. But it is none the less relevant to remember that,
+as his masters have already proved that alcohol is a poison, they may
+soon prove that nicotine is a poison. And it is most significant of
+all that this sort of danger is even greater in what is called the new
+democracy of America than in what is called the old oligarchy of
+England. When I was in America, people were already "defending"
+tobacco. People who defend tobacco are on the road to proving that
+daylight is defensible, or that it is not really sinful to sneeze. In
+other words, they are quietly going mad.
+
+5.--_Of his old Cherry-briar._ Here we have the intermediate and
+anomalous position of the institution of Property. The sentiment still
+exists, even among the poor, or perhaps especially among the poor. But
+it is attached to toys rather than tools; to the minor products rather
+than to the means of production. But something of the sanity of
+ownership is still to be observed; for instance, the element of custom
+and continuity. It was an _old_ cherry-briar; systematically smoked by
+Father in spite of all wiles and temptations to Woodbines and gaspers;
+an old companion possibly connected with various romantic or diverting
+events in Father's life. It is perhaps a relic as well as a trinket.
+But because it is not a true tool, because it gives the man no grip on
+the creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of his
+self-respect, at the mercy of the thing called the sack. When he gets
+the sack from the water-works, it is only too probable that he will
+have to pawn his old cherry-briar.
+
+6.--_'Cos he might set the water-works on fire._ And that single line,
+like the lovely single lines of the great poets, is so full, so final,
+so perfect a picture of all the laws we pass and all the reasons we
+give for them, so exact an analysis of the logic of all our
+precautions at the present time, that the pen falls even from the
+hands of the commentator; and the masterpiece is left to speak for
+itself.
+
+Some such analysis as the above gives a better account than most of
+the anomalous attitude and situation of the English proletarian
+to-day. It is the more appropriate because it is expressed in the
+words he actually uses; which certainly do not include the word
+"proletarian." It will be noted that everything that goes to make up
+that complexity is in an unfinished state. Property has not quite
+vanished; slavery has not quite arrived; marriage exists under
+difficulties; social regimentation exists under restraints, or rather
+under subterfuges. The question which remains is which force is
+gaining on the other, and whether the old forces are capable of
+resisting the new. I hope they are; but I recognise that they resist
+under more than one heavy handicap. The chief of these is that the
+family feeling of the workmen is by this time rather an instinct than
+an ideal. The obvious thing to protect an ideal is a religion. The
+obvious thing to protect the ideal of marriage is the Christian
+religion. And for various reasons, which only a history of England
+could explain (though it hardly ever does), the working classes of
+this country have been very much cut off from Christianity. I do not
+dream of denying, indeed I should take every opportunity of affirming,
+that monogamy and its domestic responsibilities can be defended on
+rational apart from religious grounds. But a religion is the practical
+protection of any moral idea which has to be popular and which has to
+be pugnacious. And our ideal, if it is to survive, will have to be
+both.
+
+Those who make merry over the landlady who has seen better days, of
+whom something has been said already, commonly speak, in the same
+jovial journalese, about her household goods as her household gods.
+They would be much startled if they discovered how right they are.
+Exactly what is lacking to the modern materialist is something that
+can be what the household gods were to the ancient heathen. The
+household gods of the heathen were not only wood and stone; at least
+there is always more than that in the stone of the hearth-stone and
+the wood of the roof-tree. So long as Christianity continued the
+tradition of patron saints and portable relics, this idea of a
+blessing on the household could continue. If men had not domestic
+divinities, at least they had divine domesticities. When Christianity
+was chilled with Puritanism and rationalism, this inner warmth or
+secret fire in the house faded on the hearth. But some of the embers
+still glow or at least glimmer; and there is still a memory among the
+poor that their material possessions are something sacred. I know poor
+men for whom it is the romance of their lives to refuse big sums of
+money for an old copper warming-pan. They do not want it, in any sense
+of base utility. They do not use it as a warming-pan; but it warms
+them for all that. It is indeed, as Sergeant Buzfuz humorously
+observed, a cover for hidden fire. And the fire is that which burned
+before the strange and uncouth wooden gods, like giant dolls, in the
+huts of ancient Italy. It is a household god. And I can imagine some
+such neglected and unlucky English man dying with his eyes on the red
+gleam of that piece of copper, as happier men have died with their
+eyes on the golden gleam of a chalice or a cross.
+
+It will thus be noted that there has always been some connection
+between a mystical belief and the materials of domesticity; that they
+generally go together; and that now, in a more mournful sense, they
+are gone together. The working classes have no reserves of property
+with which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religion
+with which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they are
+under the enormous disadvantage of being right without knowing it.
+They hold their sound principles as if they were sullen prejudices.
+They almost secrete their small property as if it were stolen
+property. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks to
+her husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolved
+to run away from her husband. Often she will cry as hopelessly, and
+as it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were a
+child deprived of her doll. Indeed, a child in the street, crying for
+her lost doll, would probably receive more sympathy than she does.
+
+Meanwhile the fun goes on; and many such conflicts are recorded, even
+in the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking
+philanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any
+number of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be
+flippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather
+fierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I
+know that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives of
+sincere but confused compassion, and many more from a dull but not
+dishonourable medical or legal habit. But if I and those who agree
+with me tend to some harshness and abruptness of condemnation, these
+worthy people need not be altogether impatient with our impatience. It
+is surely beneath them, in the scope of their great schemes, to
+complain of protests so ineffectual about wrongs so individual. I have
+considered in this chapter the chances of general democratic defence
+of domestic honour, and have been compelled to the conclusion that
+they are not at present hopeful; and it is at least clear that we
+cannot be founding on them any personal hopes. If this conclusion
+leaves us defeated, we submit that it leaves us disinterested. Ours is
+not the sort of protest, at least, that promises anything even to the
+demagogue, let alone the sycophant. Those we serve will never rule,
+and those we pity will never rise. Parliament will never be surrounded
+by a mob of submerged grandmothers brandishing pawn-tickets. There is
+no trade union of defective children. It is not very probable that
+modern government will be overturned by a few poor dingy devils who
+are sent to prison by mistake, or rather by ordinary accident. Surely
+it is not for those magnificent Socialists, or those great reformers
+and reconstructors of Capitalism, sweeping onward to their scientific
+triumphs and caring for none of these things, to murmur at our vain
+indignation. At least if it is vain it is the less venal; and in so
+far as it is hopeless it is also thankless. They have their great
+campaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions,
+and the records of science and progress. They need not be angry with
+us, who plead for those who will never read our words or reward our
+effort, even with gratitude. They need surely have no worse mood
+towards us than mystification, seeing that in recalling these small
+things of broken hearts or homes, we are but recording what cannot be
+recorded; trivial tragedies that will fade faster and faster in the
+flux of time, cries that fail in a furious and infinite wind, wild
+words of despair that are written only upon running water; unless,
+indeed, as some so stubbornly and strangely say, they are somewhere
+cut deep into a rock, in the red granite of the wrath of God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A SHORT CHAPTER
+
+
+Round about the year 1913 Eugenics was turned from a fad to a fashion.
+Then, if I may so summarise the situation, the joke began in earnest.
+The organising mind which we have seen considering the problem of slum
+population, the popular material and the possibility of protests, felt
+that the time had come to open the campaign. Eugenics began to appear
+in big headlines in the daily Press, and big pictures in the
+illustrated papers. A foreign gentleman named Bolce, living at
+Hampstead, was advertised on a huge scale as having every intention of
+being the father of the Superman. It turned out to be a Superwoman,
+and was called Eugenette. The parents were described as devoting
+themselves to the production of perfect pre-natal conditions. They
+"eliminated everything from their lives which did not tend towards
+complete happiness." Many might indeed be ready to do this; but in the
+voluminous contemporary journalism on the subject I can find no
+detailed notes about how it is done. Communications were opened with
+Mr. H.G. Wells, with Dr. Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. Karl
+Pearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefully
+cultivated in the parents. The problem of a sense of humour was felt
+to be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturally
+fearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientific
+as to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, they
+visited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards George
+Robey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper reader,
+however, it looked as if the names of Metchnikoff and Steinmetz and
+Karl Pearson would soon be quite as familiar as those of Robey and
+Lauder and Bard. Arguments about these Eugenic authorities, reports of
+the controversies at the Eugenic Congress, filled countless columns.
+The fact that Mr. Bolce, the creator of perfect pre-natal conditions,
+was afterwards sued in a law-court for keeping his own flat in
+conditions of filth and neglect, cast but a slight and momentary
+shadow upon the splendid dawn of the science. It would be vain to
+record any of the thousand testimonies to its triumph. In the nature
+of things, this should be the longest chapter in the book, or rather
+the beginning of another book. It should record, in numberless
+examples, the triumphant popularisation of Eugenics in England. But as
+a matter of fact this is not the first chapter but the last. And this
+must be a very short chapter, because the whole of this story was cut
+short. A very curious thing happened. England went to war.
+
+This would in itself have been a sufficiently irritating interruption
+in the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment of
+Eugenics. But a far more dreadful and disconcerting fact must be
+noted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to war
+with the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that very
+land of scientific culture from which the very ideal of a Superman had
+come. She went to war with the whole of Dr. Steinmetz, and presumably
+with at least half of Dr. Karl Pearson. She gave battle to the
+birthplace of nine-tenths of the professors who were the prophets of
+the new hope of humanity. In a few weeks the very name of a professor
+was a matter for hissing and low plebeian mirth. The very name of
+Nietzsche, who had held up this hope of something superhuman to
+humanity, was laughed at for all the world as if he had been touched
+with lunacy. A new mood came upon the whole people; a mood of
+marching, of spontaneous soldierly vigilance and democratic
+discipline, moving to the faint tune of bugles far away. Men began to
+talk strangely of old and common things, of the counties of England,
+of its quiet landscapes, of motherhood and the half-buried religion of
+the race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making all
+things vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awful
+actuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and the
+Eugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one may
+say so, funny.
+
+Such a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given.
+There was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfection
+than any other the type of order and foresight that are the subject
+of this book. It had long been the model State of all those more
+rational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation of
+society. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform.
+All the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudly
+borrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found it
+convenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring and
+neutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had a
+privilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had the
+gratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scale
+and very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionary
+idealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams;
+or to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to wait
+for it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; but
+in the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silent
+for five years.
+
+The thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. It
+might be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogether
+leave the memories of men; but men's memories are unstable things. It
+may be that gradually these dazed dupes will gather again together,
+and attempt again to believe their dreams and disbelieve their eyes.
+There may be some whose love of slavery is so ideal and disinterested
+that they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment of
+that broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But there
+are limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been once
+deceived and a second time deceives himself. They have seen their
+paragons of science and organisation playing their part on land and
+sea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love of
+humanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed the
+testimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neither
+would they believe though one rose from the dead; though all the
+millions who died to destroy Prussianism stood up and testified
+against it.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Abnormal innocence and abnormal sin, alliance between, 4
+
+Abortion, open advocacy of, 138
+
+Affinity as a bar to marriage, 8
+
+Altruism, remarks on, 111
+
+Anarchy, definition of, 22, 23
+  the opposite of Socialism, 159
+
+Anglican Church, the, and question of disestablishment, 75
+
+Aristocratic marriages, Eugenists and, 139 _et seq._
+
+Atheistic literary style, the, 46
+
+Authority versus Reason, 132
+
+Autocrats, Eugenists as, 15
+
+
+Belloc, Mr., and the Servile State, 21, 165
+  rebuked by _The Nation_, 122
+
+Blücher, Marshal, an alleged saying of, 124
+
+Bolce, Mr., the super-Eugenist, 180, 181
+
+Bolshevists, and "proletarian art," 169
+
+Brummell, Mr., vanity of, 96
+
+Burglary, punishment for, 36
+
+
+Calvinism, immorality of, 126, 127
+  in the Middle Ages, 92
+
+Calvinists and the doctrine of free-will, 52
+
+Capitalists, and workmen, 133
+  Socialists and, 47
+
+Casuists, Eugenists as, 14
+
+Catholic countries, and the drink traffic, 122
+
+Celtic sadness, and the desolation of Belfast, 121
+
+Chesterton, G.K., and Socialism, 159 _et seq._
+  on H.G. Wells, 69
+  rebuked by _The Nation_, 122
+
+Children, and non-eugenic unions, 7
+  cruelty to: punishment for, 26-7
+
+Christian conception of rebellion, the, 22, 23
+
+Christian religion as protector of the ideal of marriage, 175
+
+Christian serf, how he differed from a pagan slave, 102
+
+Christianity, and freedom, 10
+
+Church teaching, compulsory, 75
+
+Church, the, and question of disestablishment, 75
+
+"Class War, the," and Socialists, 47
+
+Coercion, and control of sex-relationship, 155
+
+Comic songs, and a sermon thereon, 169 _et seq._
+
+Compulsion, and sexual selection, 14, 155
+
+Compulsory education, 95
+  vaccination, 77
+
+Concordat, the, and the independence of the Roman Church, 75
+
+Criminals, difference between lunatics and, 34, 35
+  proposed vivisection of, 79
+  punishment of, 25 _et seq._, 35 _et seq._
+
+Criminology as a disease, 167
+
+Cruelty to children, punishment for, 26-7
+
+
+Delusions, concrete and otherwise, 32 _et seq._
+
+Disestablishment, author's views on, 75
+
+Doctors, as health advisers of the community, 55, 58
+  limits to their knowledge, 57
+
+
+Education, compulsory, 95
+
+Endeavourers, the, 17
+
+English proletarians, anomalous attitude of, 175
+
+Establishment, author's views on, 75 _et seq._
+
+Ethics, as opposed to Eugenics, 7
+
+Eugenic Law, the first, and negative Eugenics, 19, 28
+
+Eugenic State, beginning of the, 19
+
+Eugenics and employment, 141
+  author's conception of, 12
+  becomes a fashion, 180
+  beginning of, 125
+  different meanings of, 4
+  essence of, 4
+  first principle of, 38
+  general definition of, 10
+  meanness of the motive of, 136 _et seq._, 146
+  moral basis of, 5
+  the false theory of, 3 _et seq._
+  the real aim of, 91 _et seq._
+  versus Ethics, 7
+
+Eugenist, true story of a, 114 _et seq._
+
+Eugenists, and their new morality, 82
+  as Casuists, 14
+  as employers, 133, 137
+  as Euphemists, 12
+  their plutocratic impulses, 139 _et seq._
+  Mr. Wells' challenge to, 70
+  secret of what they really want, 73 _et seq._, 85
+
+Euphemists, Eugenists as, 12
+
+
+Fabians, and Socialism, 160
+
+Feeble-Minded Bill, the, Eugenists and, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28, 51, 52
+
+Feeble-mindedness, Dr. Saleeby on, 61
+  hereditary, 62, 63
+
+Flogging, revival of, 25
+
+Foulon, and the French peasants, 103
+
+Freedom, Christianity and, 10
+
+Free-will disbelieved by Eugenists, 52
+
+
+Game laws, English, result of the, 110, 112
+
+Golf, a Scotch minister's opinion of, 117
+
+Great War, the, outbreak of, and its effect on Eugenics, 181
+
+
+Health, and what it is, 59
+  Mr. Wells' views on inheritance of, 70, 85-6
+  not necessarily allied with beauty, 144
+  "Health adviser" of society, the, 55, 58
+
+Hereditary diseases, and marriage, 44
+
+Heredity, and feeble-mindedness, 62, 63
+  author's conception of, 64
+  incontestable proof of, 66
+  three first facts of, 66-7
+  unsatisfactory plight of students of, 66
+  uselessness of attempting to judge, 39
+
+Housebreaking, punishment for, 36
+
+Household gods of the heathen, 176
+
+Housing problem, the, 164
+
+Hutchinson, Colonel and Mrs., the historic instance of, 7
+
+Huth, A.H., an admission by, 50
+
+
+Idealists (_see_ Autocrats)
+
+Idiotcy, segregation of, 61
+
+Imperialism, and its aims, 93
+
+Imprisonment, the State and, 25
+
+Incest, the crime of, 8, 9
+
+Indeterminate sentence, the, instrument of, 35
+  principle of, 37
+
+Individualism, the experiment of, 130
+
+Individualists, early Victorian, 118
+
+Intervention, Socialistic movements of, 166
+
+Irish peasants, T.P. O'Connor on, 144
+
+Irishman in Liverpool, the, 121
+
+
+Journalism and the Press of to-day, 73
+
+
+Kindred and affinity, as a bar to marriage, 8
+
+
+Law, the, and restrictions on sex, 10
+  and the indeterminate sentence, 35
+  and the lunatic, 31 _et seq._
+
+Libel, definition of, 28
+  loose extension of idea of, 27-8
+
+Liberty and scepticism, 148
+  the eclipse of, 149 _et seq._
+  the Eugenist's view of, 16
+
+Lodge, Sir Oliver, and "the stud farm," 13, 14
+
+Lunacy, and Eugenic legislation, 17-20, 28, 29, 31 _et seq._
+  medical specialists as judges of, 40, 41
+
+Lunacy Law, the old, 38
+
+Lunacy Laws, the, extension of principle of, 17
+
+Lunatic, the, and the law, 31 _et seq._
+
+Lunatics, difference between criminals and, 34, 35
+
+
+Macdonald, George, and space co-incident, 34
+
+Madman, a, definition of, 32
+
+Madness, degrees of, 32
+  medical specialists and, 40, 41
+  the essence of, 44
+  (_See also_ Lunacy)
+
+Malthus, and his doctrine, 118
+
+Mania, segregation of, 61
+
+Marriage, and question of hereditary disease, 44
+  the aim of, 5
+  the Christian religion and, 175
+
+Marriages, aristocratic, 139 _et seq._
+
+Marxian Socialists, and Capitalists, 47
+
+Materialism, as the established church, 77
+  in speech, 46
+
+Materialists, modern, 128
+
+Medical specialists and madness, 40, 41
+
+Mendicancy laws, result of the, 113
+
+Metternich tradition, the, 154
+
+Midas, 129
+
+Middle Ages, the, 91 _et seq._
+
+Midias, segregation of, 29
+
+Monogamy, author's views on, 176
+
+Morality, and restraints on sex, 8
+
+
+Neisser, Dr., 79
+
+Newspapers, anarchic tendency of modern, 26
+  decadence of present-day, 73
+
+Niagara, comparison of modern world with, 24
+
+Nietzsche, 182
+
+Non-eugenic unions, and children, 7
+
+
+O'Connor, T.P., on the Irish peasants, 144
+
+Oedipus, and his incestuous marriage, 8
+
+Om, the formless god of the East, 48
+
+_On_, meaning and use of the word, 48
+
+Osborne, Dorothy, and Sir William Temple, 7
+
+
+Pagan slave, the, difference between Christian serf and, 102
+
+Pearson, Dr. Karl, 50, 65, 181
+
+Peasant art, comic songs as an instance of, 170
+
+Persecution, author's views on, 77 _et seq._
+
+"Platonic friendship," 138
+
+Politics in the Middle Ages, 92
+
+Post Office, the State, 161
+  twin model of, 162
+
+Precedenters, the, 17
+
+Press, the, criticisms of, 73, 169
+
+Prevention not better than cure, 55
+
+Preventive medicine, fallacy of, 55
+
+Prison system, the, 162
+
+Procreation, prevention of, 138
+
+Profiteering, author on, 124
+
+"Proletarian art," 169
+
+Property, author's views on, 160
+
+Punishment, extension of, 25
+
+Puritanical moral stories, immorality of, 126
+
+
+Realities, denial of, 33
+
+Reason versus Authority, 132
+
+Rebellion, Christian conception of, 23
+  meaning of, 22
+
+Reform and Repeal, 95
+
+"Relations of the sexes," atheists and, 47
+
+Religion in the Middle Ages, 92
+
+Representative Government, the procedure of, 116
+
+Rockefeller, Mr., 124
+
+Russian Orthodox Church, the, and the State, 75
+
+
+Saladin, Sultan, 100
+
+Saleeby, Dr., 50
+  and a "health-book," 58
+  and feeble-mindedness, 61
+  and heredity, 68
+
+Saturnalia, the Roman, 24
+
+Scepticism, reactionary, 148
+
+Science and tyranny, 76
+
+Scotland, Church of, 76
+
+Scotland, drunkenness in, 122
+
+Segregation of strong-minded people, a suggested, 51
+
+Serf, the, different from pagan slave, 102
+
+Servile State, the, Mr. Belloc's theory of, 21, 165
+
+Sex-relationship, controlled by coercion, 155
+
+Sexes, the, relations of, 47
+
+Sexual selection a destruction of Eugenics, 9
+
+Shaw, Bernard, 162
+  and Sidney Webb, 161
+  as Puritan, 69
+
+Slaves, breeding of, 10
+
+Slum children, Mrs. Alec Tweedie and, 143
+
+Smiles, Dr. Samuel, and the English tramp, 119
+
+Snobbishness, an inverted, 117
+
+Socialism as oppressor of the poor, 166
+
+Socialism, the transformation of, 159 _et seq._
+
+Socialist system, foundation of the, 159
+
+Socialists, and "solidarity," 46
+  their view of the State, 163
+
+Specialists (medical) and madness, 40, 41
+
+Spiritual pride, an example of, 96
+
+Spiritual world, the, author's belief in, 63
+
+State, the, and compulsion, 14
+  Socialist view of, 163
+
+Statistics, fundamental fallacy in use of, 61
+
+Steinmetz, Dr. R.S., 8, 181
+
+Stevenson, R.L., and pre-natal conditions, 45
+
+
+Temperance Reform, 164
+
+Temple, Sir William, and Dorothy Osborne, 7
+
+Tithes, question of, 75
+
+Tory conception of anarchy, the, 22
+
+Tramp, true history of a, 101 _et seq._
+
+Truant schools. Socialists and, 167
+
+Tweedie, Mrs. Alec, and the children of the slums, 143
+
+Tyranny of government by Science, 76
+
+
+Vaccination, compulsory, 77
+
+Vanity, hereditary--and other, 62
+
+Victorian Individualists, optimism of, 118
+  snobbishness, 117
+
+
+Wages, "rise and fall of," 47
+
+Webb, Sidney, and Bernard Shaw, 161
+
+Wells, H.G., 55, 154
+  author's criticism of, 69-70
+  his "Mankind in the Making," 70
+
+White Slave traffic, punishment for, 25
+
+Witchcraft, punishment for, 26
+
+Witch-hunting and witch burning, 63, 64
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.4.
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugenics and Other Evils, by G. K. Chesterton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Eugenics and Other Evils
+
+Author: G. K. Chesterton
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2008 [EBook #25308]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Špehar, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
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+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin">Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.</p>
+<p class="noin">Link to the Index added to the Table of Contents for the benefit of the reader.</p>
+<p class="noin" style="text-align: left;">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+For a complete list, please see the <span style="white-space: nowrap;"><a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>EUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<h1>Eugenics and<br />
+Other Evils</h1>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>G.K. Chesterton</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>Cassell and Company, Limited<br />
+London, New York, Toronto &amp; Melbourne<br />
+1922</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+<h3>TO THE READER</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason
+connected with the present situation; a reason which I should like
+briefly to emphasise and make clear.</p>
+
+<p>Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are
+conceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of
+preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before
+the war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; when
+eugenic babies (not visibly very distinguishable from other babies)
+sprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancy
+of Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr.
+Bernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a man
+like a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilisation,
+of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be
+found in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion
+too controversially, and it seems to me that I sometimes took it too
+seriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into
+a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism
+and strict social organisation.</p>
+
+<p>And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might
+well fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one,
+and was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And,
+anyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style.
+Scientific officialism and organisation in the State which had
+specialised in them, had gone to war with the older culture of
+Christendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would be
+hopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless.
+As the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, it
+grew more and more plain that the scientifically organised State was
+not increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen would
+ever again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So I
+thought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind.</p>
+
+<p>I am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It has
+gradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the ruling
+classes in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussia
+is a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nine
+years old, most of their principles and proceedings are a great deal
+older. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same
+bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors
+that have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. For
+that reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect and
+publish these papers.</p>
+
+<p class="right">G.K.C.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr />
+<br />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="70%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdc" colspan="3" style="font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold; padding-bottom: .5em;">PART I<br /><a href="#Part_I">The False Theory</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr" width="10%" style="font-size: 70%;">CHAPTER</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc" width="70%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="20%" style="font-size: 70%;">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">1.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">What is Eugenics?</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">3</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">2.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">The First Obstacles</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">12</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">3.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">The Anarchy from Above</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">22</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">4.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">The Lunatic and the Law</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">31</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">5.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">The Flying Authority</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">46</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">6.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">The Unanswered Challenge</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">61</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">7.</td>
+  <td class="tdscl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">The Established Church of Doubt</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">73</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">8.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">A Summary of a False Theory</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">82</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdc" colspan="3" style="font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em;">PART II<br /><a href="#Part_II">The Real Aim</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">1.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IA">The Impotence of Impenitence</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">91</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">2.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IIA">True History of a Tramp</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">101</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">3.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IIIA">True History of a Eugenist</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">114</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">4.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IVA">The Vengeance of the Flesh</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">126</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">5.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VA">The Meanness of the Motive</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">136</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">6.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIA">The Eclipse of Liberty</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">148</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">7.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIIA">The Transformation of Socialism</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">159</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">8.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIIIA">The End of the Household Gods</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">169</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">9.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IXA">A Short Chapter</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">180</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#INDEX">Index</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">185</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Part_I" id="Part_I"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>Part I</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FALSE THEORY<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span><br />
+
+<h2>Eugenics and Other Evils</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>WHAT IS EUGENICS?</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is
+no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are
+mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but
+sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because
+men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before
+it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the
+scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried
+while it is in the air.</p>
+
+<p>There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as
+collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we
+can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford
+Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists;
+or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing
+that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed.
+It is called for convenience "Eugenics"; and that it ought to be
+destroyed I propose to prove in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>the pages that follow. I know that it
+means very different things to different people; but that is only
+because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised
+with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued
+rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is
+only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called "The
+Gracious Ones." I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions
+are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely
+astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil
+always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has
+in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and
+abnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we
+all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they
+are doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenics
+itself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas
+exist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming
+quickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a
+thousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no
+more to be bargained about than poisoning.</p>
+
+<p>It is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: though
+some of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it. The movement
+consists of two parts: a moral basis, which is common to all, and a
+scheme of social application which varies a good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>deal. For the moral
+basis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with his
+knowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr.
+Johnson in that tower of vision), and if the baby was ill through
+having eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might be
+calling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides of
+babies whose diet had been far more deadly; but I should be justified.
+I could not be expected to know enough about his other patients to be
+obliged (or even entitled) to sacrifice to them the baby for whom I
+was primarily and directly responsible. Now the Eugenic moral basis is
+this; that the baby for whom we are primarily and directly responsible
+is the babe unborn. That is, that we know (or may come to know) enough
+of certain inevitable tendencies in biology to consider the fruit of
+some contemplated union in that direct and clear light of conscience
+which we can now only fix on the other partner in that union. The one
+duty can conceivably be as definite as or more definite than the
+other. The baby that does not exist can be considered even before the
+wife who does. Now it is essential to grasp that this is a
+comparatively new note in morality. Of course sane people always
+thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the
+glory of God or according to the plan of Nature; but whether they
+counted such children as God's reward for service or Nature's premium
+on sanity, they always left the reward to God or the premium to
+Nature, as a less definable thing. The only <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>person (and this is the
+point) towards whom one could have precise duties was the partner in
+the process. Directly considering the partner's claims was the nearest
+one could get to indirectly considering the claims of posterity. If
+the women of the harem sang praises of the hero as the Moslem mounted
+his horse, it was because this was the due of a man; if the Christian
+knight helped his wife off her horse, it was because this was the due
+of a woman. Definite and detailed dues of this kind they did not
+predicate of the babe unborn; regarding him in that agnostic and
+opportunist light in which Mr. Browdie regarded the hypothetical child
+of Miss Squeers. Thinking these sex relations healthy, they naturally
+hoped they would produce healthy children; but that was all. The
+Moslem woman doubtless expected Allah to send beautiful sons to an
+obedient wife; but she would not have allowed any direct vision of
+such sons to alter the obedience itself. She would not have said, "I
+will now be a disobedient wife; as the learned leech informs me that
+great prophets are often the children of disobedient wives." The
+knight doubtless hoped that the saints would help him to strong
+children, if he did all the duties of his station, one of which might
+be helping his wife off her horse; but he would not have refrained
+from doing this because he had read in a book that a course of falling
+off horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem and
+Christian would have thought such speculations not only impious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>but
+utterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is not the
+point here.</p>
+
+<p>The point here is that a new school believes Eugenics <i>against</i>
+Ethics. And it is proved by one familiar fact: that the heroisms of
+history are actually the crimes of Eugenics. The Eugenists' books and
+articles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should and
+may come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feel
+that marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children. But history
+is full of the praises of people who have held sacred such ties to
+invalids; of cases like those of Colonel Hutchinson and Sir William
+Temple, who remained faithful to betrothals when beauty and health had
+been apparently blasted. And though the illnesses of Dorothy Osborne
+and Mrs. Hutchinson may not fall under the Eugenic speculations (I do
+not know), it is obvious that they might have done so; and certainly
+it would not have made any difference to men's moral opinion of the
+act. I do not discuss here which morality I favour; but I insist that
+they are opposite. The Eugenist really sets up as saints the very men
+whom hundreds of families have called sneaks. To be consistent, they
+ought to put up statues to the men who deserted their loves because of
+bodily misfortune; with inscriptions celebrating the good Eugenist
+who, on his fianc&eacute;e falling off a bicycle, nobly refused to marry her;
+or to the young hero who, on hearing of an uncle with erysipelas,
+magnanimously broke his word. What is perfectly plain is this: that
+mankind have hitherto <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>held the bond between man and woman so sacred,
+and the effect of it on the children so incalculable, that they have
+always admired the maintenance of honour more than the maintenance of
+safety. Doubtless they thought that even the children might be none
+the worse for not being the children of cowards and shirkers; but this
+was not the first thought, the first commandment. Briefly, we may say
+that while many moral systems have set restraints on sex almost as
+severe as any Eugenist could set, they have almost always had the
+character of securing the fidelity of the two sexes to each other, and
+leaving the rest to God. To introduce an ethic which makes that
+fidelity or infidelity vary with some calculation about heredity is
+that rarest of all things, a revolution that has not happened before.</p>
+
+<p>It is only right to say here, though the matter should only be touched
+on, that many Eugenists would contradict this, in so far as to claim
+that there was a consciously Eugenic reason for the horror of those
+unions which begin with the celebrated denial to man of the privilege
+of marrying his grandmother. Dr. S.R. Steinmetz, with that creepy
+simplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarks
+that "we do not yet know quite certainly" what were "the motives for
+the horror of" that horrible thing which is the agony of &OElig;dipus.
+With entirely amiable intention, I ask Dr. S.R. Steinmetz to speak for
+himself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or sister as
+separate from other women; nor have I reached <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>them by any curious
+researches. I found them where I found an analogous aversion to eating
+a baby for breakfast. I found them in a rooted detestation in the
+human soul to liking a thing in one way, when you already like it in
+another quite incompatible way. Now it is perfectly true that this
+aversion may have acted eugenically; and so had a certain ultimate
+confirmation and basis in the laws of procreation. But there really
+cannot be any Eugenist quite so dull as not to see that this is not a
+defence of Eugenics but a direct denial of Eugenics. If something
+which has been discovered at last by the lamp of learning is something
+which has been acted on from the first by the light of nature, this
+(so far as it goes) is plainly not an argument for pestering people,
+but an argument for letting them alone. If men did not marry their
+grandmothers when it was, for all they knew, a most hygienic habit; if
+we know now that they instinctly avoided scientific peril; that, so
+far as it goes, is a point in favour of letting people marry anyone
+they like. It is simply the statement that sexual selection, or what
+Christians call falling in love, is a part of man which in the rough
+and in the long run can be trusted. And that is the destruction of the
+whole of this science at a blow.</p>
+
+<p>The second part of the definition, the persuasive or coercive methods
+to be employed, I shall deal with more fully in the second part of
+this book. But some such summary as the following may here be useful.
+Far into the unfathomable past of our race we find <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>the assumption
+that the founding of a family is the personal adventure of a free man.
+Before slavery sank slowly out of sight under the new climate of
+Christianity, it may or may not be true that slaves were in some sense
+bred like cattle, valued as a promising stock for labour. If it was so
+it was so in a much looser and vaguer sense than the breeding of the
+Eugenists; and such modern philosophers read into the old paganism a
+fantastic pride and cruelty which are wholly modern. It may be,
+however, that pagan slaves had some shadow of the blessings of the
+Eugenist's care. It is quite certain that the pagan freemen would have
+killed the first man that suggested it. I mean suggested it seriously;
+for Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in
+Greek. Among free men, the law, more often the creed, most commonly of
+all the custom, have laid all sorts of restrictions on sex for this
+reason or that. But law and creed and custom have never concentrated
+heavily except upon fixing and keeping the family when once it had
+been made. The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individual
+adventure outside the frontiers of the State. Our first forgotten
+ancestors left this tradition behind them; and our own latest fathers
+and mothers a few years ago would have thought us lunatics to be
+discussing it. The shortest general definition of Eugenics on its
+practical side is that it does, in a more or less degree, propose to
+control some families at least as if they were families of pagan
+slaves. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>shall discuss later the question of the people to whom this
+pressure may be applied; and the much more puzzling question of what
+people will apply it. But it is to be applied at the very least by
+somebody to somebody, and that on certain calculations about breeding
+which are affirmed to be demonstrable. So much for the subject itself.
+I say that this thing exists. I define it as closely as matters
+involving moral evidence can be defined; I call it Eugenics. If after
+that anyone chooses to say that Eugenics is not the Greek for this&mdash;I
+am content to answer that "chivalrous" is not the French for "horsy";
+and that such controversial games are more horsy than chivalrous.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE FIRST OBSTACLES</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>Now before I set about arguing these things, there is a cloud of
+skirmishers, of harmless and confused modern sceptics, who ought to be
+cleared off or calmed down before we come to debate with the real
+doctors of the heresy. If I sum up my statement thus: "Eugenics, as
+discussed, evidently means the control of some men over the marriage
+and unmarriage of others; and probably means the control of the few
+over the marriage and unmarriage of the many," I shall first of all
+receive the sort of answers that float like skim on the surface of
+teacups and talk. I may very roughly and rapidly divide these
+preliminary objectors into five sects; whom I will call the
+Euphemists, the Casuists, the Autocrats, the Precedenters, and the
+Endeavourers. When we have answered the immediate protestation of all
+these good, shouting, short-sighted people, we can begin to do justice
+to those intelligences that are really behind the idea.</p>
+
+<p>Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle
+them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of
+translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the
+same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>even coercive powers of
+the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of
+longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate
+and intolerable, especially to the females"; say this to them and they
+will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles.
+Say to them "Murder your mother," and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet
+the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them
+"It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once
+useful distinction between the anthropoid <i>homo</i> and the other
+animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be
+modified also even in regard to the important question of the
+extension of human diet"; say this to them, and beauty born of
+murmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a
+simple, manly, hearty way "Let's eat a man!" and their surprise is
+quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing. Now, if
+anyone thinks these two instances extravagant, I will refer to two
+actual cases from the Eugenic discussions. When Sir Oliver Lodge spoke
+of the methods "of the stud-farm" many Eugenists exclaimed against the
+crudity of the suggestion. Yet long before that one of the ablest
+champions in the other interest had written "What nonsense this
+education is! Who could educate a racehorse or a greyhound?" Which
+most certainly either means nothing, or the human stud-farm. Or again,
+when I spoke of people "being married forcibly by the police," another
+distinguished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>Eugenist almost achieved high spirits in his hearty
+assurance that no such thing had ever come into their heads. Yet a few
+days after I saw a Eugenist pronouncement, to the effect that the
+State ought to extend its powers in this area. The State can only be
+that corporation which men permit to employ compulsion; and this area
+can only be the area of sexual selection. I mean somewhat more than an
+idle jest when I say that the policeman will generally be found in
+that area. But I willingly admit that the policeman who looks after
+weddings will be like the policeman who looks after wedding-presents.
+He will be in plain clothes. I do not mean that a man in blue with a
+helmet will drag the bride and bridegroom to the altar. I do mean that
+nobody that man in blue is told to arrest will even dare to come near
+the church. Sir Oliver did not mean that men would be tied up in
+stables and scrubbed down by grooms. He meant that they would undergo
+a less of liberty which to men is even more infamous. He meant that
+the only formula important to Eugenists would be "by Smith out of
+Jones." Such a formula is one of the shortest in the world; and is
+certainly the shortest way with the Euphemists.</p>
+
+<p>The next sect of superficial objectors is even more irritating. I have
+called them, for immediate purposes, the Casuists. Suppose I say "I
+dislike this spread of Cannibalism in the West End restaurants."
+Somebody is sure to say "Well, after all, Queen Eleanor when she
+sucked blood from her husband's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>arm was a cannibal." What is one to
+say to such people? One can only say "Confine yourself to sucking
+poisoned blood from people's arms, and I permit you to call yourself
+by the glorious title of Cannibal." In this sense people say of
+Eugenics, "After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying
+a mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists." Again one
+can only answer, "Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as
+are naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult in
+the title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinction
+will be rare." But surely anyone's common-sense must tell him that if
+Eugenics dealt only with such extravagant cases, it would be called
+common-sense&mdash;and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded such
+absurdities for unknown ages; and has never yet called it Eugenics.
+You may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back;
+you may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire;
+but if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among
+living men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved,
+there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no
+such thing as this book.</p>
+
+<p>I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the
+Idealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good
+they hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who
+give us generally to understand that every modern <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>reform will "work"
+all right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, and
+for how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind their
+looking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is the
+shadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does not
+expect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people most
+certainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it has
+left their hands. Each man promises to be about a thousand policemen.
+If you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, "Oh, I
+would certainly insist on this"; or "I would never go so far as that";
+as if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever
+done quite successfully&mdash;force men to forsake their sins. Of these it
+is enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any
+more than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a
+dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you
+have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not
+be able to fulfil a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put
+into it.</p>
+
+<p>Along with such idealists should go the strange people who seem to
+think that you can consecrate and purify any campaign for ever by
+repeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocates
+had in mind. These people will say "So far from aiming at <i>slavery</i>,
+the Eugenists are seeking <i>true</i> liberty; liberty from disease and
+degeneracy, etc." Or they will say "We can assure Mr. Chesterton <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>that
+the Eugenists have <i>no</i> intention of segregating the harmless; justice
+and mercy are the very motto of&mdash;&mdash;" etc. To this kind of thing
+perhaps the shortest answer is this. Many of those who speak thus are
+agnostic or generally unsympathetic to official religion. Suppose one
+of them said "The Church of England is full of hypocrisy." What would
+he think of me if I answered, "I assure you that hypocrisy is
+condemned by every form of Christianity; and is particularly
+repudiated in the Prayer Book"? Suppose he said that the Church of
+Rome had been guilty of great cruelties. What would he think of me if
+I answered, "The Church is expressly bound to meekness and charity;
+and therefore cannot be cruel"? This kind of people need not detain us
+long. Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; who
+flourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by the
+solemn official who said the other day that he could not understand
+the clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill, as it only extended the
+principles of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer
+"Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws to
+persons without a trace of lunacy." This lucid politician finds an old
+law, let us say, about keeping lepers in quarantine. He simply alters
+the word "lepers" to "long-nosed people," and says blandly that the
+principle is the same.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the weakest of all are those helpless persons whom I have
+called the Endeavourers. The prize <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>specimen of them was another M.P.
+who defended the same Bill as "an honest attempt" to deal with a great
+evil: as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow
+citizens as a kind of chemical experiment; in a state of reverent
+agnosticism about what would come of it. But with this fatuous notion
+that one can deliberately establish the Inquisition or the Terror, and
+then faintly trust the larger hope, I shall have to deal more
+seriously in a subsequent chapter. It is enough to say here that the
+best thing the honest Endeavourer could do would be to make an honest
+attempt to know what he is doing. And not to do anything else until he
+has found out. Lastly, there is a class of controversialists so
+hopeless and futile that I have really failed to find a name for them.
+But whenever anyone attempts to argue rationally for or against any
+existent and recognisable <i>thing</i>, such as the Eugenic class of
+legislation, there are always people who begin to chop hay about
+Socialism and Individualism; and say "<i>You</i> object to all State
+interference; <i>I</i> am in favour of State interference. <i>You</i> are an
+Individualist; <i>I</i>, on the other hand," etc. To which I can only
+answer, with heart-broken patience, that I am not an Individualist,
+but a poor fallen but baptised journalist who is trying to write a
+book about Eugenists, several of whom he has met; whereas he never met
+an Individualist, and is by no means certain he would recognise him if
+he did. In short, I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the
+State to interfere to cure a great evil. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>I say that in this case it
+would interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be
+turned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomless
+botherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative
+advantages of always turning to the right and always turning to the
+left.</p>
+
+<p>And for the rest, there is undoubtedly an enormous mass of sensible,
+rather thoughtless people, whose rooted sentiment it is that any deep
+change in our society must be in some way infinitely distant. They
+cannot believe that men in hats and coats like themselves can be
+preparing a revolution; all their Victorian philosophy has taught them
+that such transformations are always slow. Therefore, when I speak of
+Eugenic legislation, or the coming of the Eugenic State, they think of
+it as something like <i>The Time Machine</i> or <i>Looking Backward</i>: a thing
+that, good or bad, will have to fit itself to their
+great-great-great-grandchild, who may be very different and may like
+it; and who in any case is rather a distant relative. To all this I
+have, to begin with, a very short and simple answer. The Eugenic State
+has begun. The first of the Eugenic Laws has already been adopted by
+the Government of this country; and passed with the applause of both
+parties through the dominant House of Parliament. This first Eugenic
+Law clears the ground and may be said to proclaim negative Eugenics;
+but it cannot be defended, and nobody has attempted to defend it,
+except on the Eugenic theory. I will call it the Feeble-Minded Bill
+both for brevity and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>because the description is strictly accurate. It
+is, quite simply and literally, a Bill for incarcerating as madmen
+those whom no doctor will consent to call mad. It is enough if some
+doctor or other may happen to call them weak-minded. Since there is
+scarcely any human being to whom this term has not been
+conversationally applied by his own friends and relatives on some
+occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives have been
+lamentably lacking in spirit), it can be clearly seen that this law,
+like the early Christian Church (to which, however, it presents points
+of dissimilarity), is a net drawing in of all kinds. It must not be
+supposed that we have a stricter definition incorporated in the Bill.
+Indeed, the first definition of "feeble-minded" in the Bill was much
+looser and vaguer than the phrase "feeble-minded" itself. It is a
+piece of yawning idiocy about "persons who though capable of earning
+their living under favourable circumstances" (as if anyone could earn
+his living if circumstances were directly unfavourable to his doing
+so), are nevertheless "incapable of managing their affairs with proper
+prudence"; which is exactly what all the world and his wife are saying
+about their neighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for
+any kind of thought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing
+so very novel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is
+vital is this: that the <i>defence</i> of this crazy Coercion Act is a
+Eugenic defence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that
+the aim of the measure is to prevent any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>person whom these
+propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife
+or children. Every tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy,
+every rustic who is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such
+conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the
+situation; and that is the point. England has forgotten the Feudal
+State; it is in the last anarchy of the Industrial State; there is
+much in Mr. Belloc's theory that it is approaching the Servile State;
+it cannot at present get at the Distributive State; it has almost
+certainly missed the Socialist State. But we are already under the
+Eugenist State; and nothing remains to us but rebellion.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>A silent anarchy is eating out our society. I must pause upon the
+expression; because the true nature of anarchy is mostly
+misapprehended. It is not in the least necessary that anarchy should
+be violent; nor is it necessary that it should come from below. A
+government may grow anarchic as much as a people. The more sentimental
+sort of Tory uses the word anarchy as a mere term of abuse for
+rebellion; but he misses a most important intellectual distinction.
+Rebellion may be wrong and disastrous; but even when rebellion is
+wrong, it is never anarchy. When it is not self-defence, it is
+usurpation. It aims at setting up a new rule in place of the old rule.
+And while it cannot be anarchic in essence (because it has an aim), it
+certainly cannot be anarchic in method; for men must be organised when
+they fight; and the discipline in a rebel army has to be as good as
+the discipline in the royal army. This deep principle of distinction
+must be clearly kept in mind. Take for the sake of symbolism those two
+great spiritual stories which, whether we count them myths or
+mysteries, have so long been the two hinges of all European morals.
+The Christian who is inclined to sympathise generally <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>with
+constituted authority will think of rebellion under the image of
+Satan, the rebel against God. But Satan, though a traitor, was not an
+anarchist. He claimed the crown of the cosmos; and had he prevailed,
+would have expected his rebel angels to give up rebelling. On the
+other hand, the Christian whose sympathies are more generally with
+just self-defence among the oppressed will think rather of Christ
+Himself defying the High Priests and scourging the rich traders. But
+whether or no Christ was (as some say) a Socialist, He most certainly
+was not an Anarchist. Christ, like Satan, claimed the throne. He set
+up a new authority against an old authority; but He set it up with
+positive commandments and a comprehensible scheme. In this light all
+medi&aelig;val people&mdash;indeed, all people until a little while ago&mdash;would
+have judged questions involving revolt. John Ball would have offered
+to pull down the government because it was a bad government, not
+because it was a government. Richard II. would have blamed Bolingbroke
+not as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, in
+the useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from any
+rebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, in
+its first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I said
+before, it is often entirely silent.</p>
+
+<p>Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop
+yourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the
+normal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot
+<i>end</i> these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family
+sits up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in the home if
+members of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It
+was not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the
+slaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the
+slave-owners' point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the
+slaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is
+historically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a
+picnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I
+think, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all
+took what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat
+if swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are
+uncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return
+within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the
+really dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It is
+magnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water&mdash;like
+Niagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening or
+dangerous or even destructive; it is that it cannot stop. Now it is
+plain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a
+society as easily as the society so ruled. And in modern England it is
+the powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it&mdash;who are truly
+possessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense,
+is not too strong. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is
+talking nonsense; and it can't stop.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is perfectly plain that government ought to have, and must
+have, the same sort of right to use exceptional methods occasionally
+that the private householder has to have a picnic or to sit up all
+night on New Year's Eve. The State, like the householder, is sane if
+it can treat such exceptions as exceptions. Such desperate remedies
+may not even be right; but such remedies are endurable as long as they
+are admittedly desperate. Such cases, of course, are the communism of
+food in a besieged city; the official disavowal of an arrested spy;
+the subjection of a patch of civil life to martial law; the cutting of
+communication in a plague; or that deepest degradation of the
+commonwealth, the use of national soldiers not against foreign
+soldiers, but against their own brethren in revolt. Of these
+exceptions some are right and some wrong; but all are right in so far
+as they are taken as exceptions. The modern world is insane, not so
+much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the
+normal.</p>
+
+<p>We see this in the vague extension of punishments like imprisonment;
+often the very reformers who admit that prison is bad for people
+propose to reform them by a little more of it. We see it in panic
+legislation like that after the White Slave scare, when the torture of
+flogging was revived for all sorts of ill defined and vague and
+variegated types of men. Our fathers were never so mad, even when they
+were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>torturers. They stretched the man out on the rack. They did not
+stretch the rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burning
+they may have seen witches everywhere&mdash;because their minds were fixed
+on witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, because
+their minds were unfixed. While tying some very unpopular witch to the
+stake, with the firm conviction that she was a spiritual tyranny and
+pestilence, they did not say to each other, "A little burning is what
+my Aunt Susan wants, to cure her of back-biting," or "Some of these
+faggots would do your Cousin James good, and teach him to play with
+poor girls' affections."</p>
+
+<p>Now the name of all this is Anarchy. It not only does not know what it
+wants, but it does not even know what it hates. It multiplies
+excessively in the more American sort of English newspapers. When this
+new sort of New Englander burns a witch the whole prairie catches
+fire. These people have not the decision and detachment of the
+doctrinal ages. They cannot do a monstrous action and still see it is
+monstrous. Wherever they make a stride they make a rut. They cannot
+stop their own thoughts, though their thoughts are pouring into the
+pit.</p>
+
+<p>A final instance, which can be sketched much more briefly, can be
+found in this general fact: that the definition of almost every crime
+has become more and more indefinite, and spreads like a flattening and
+thinning cloud over larger and larger landscapes. Cruelty to children,
+one would have thought, was a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>thing about as unmistakable, unusual
+and appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to cover
+almost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The only
+distinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in the
+poor, who generally can't help them, and not in the rich, who
+generally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. The
+point here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod on
+the bloody night of Innocents has come precious near being
+attributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in the
+Temple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kind
+mother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy children
+had no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this an
+illegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all the
+horror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes to
+parricide, could now be used against any son who had done any act that
+could colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and so
+affected his health. Few of us would be safe.</p>
+
+<p>Another case out of hundreds is the loose extension of the idea of
+libel. Libel cases bear no more trace of the old and just anger
+against the man who bore false witness against his neighbour than
+"cruelty" cases do of the old and just horror of the parents that
+hated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports of
+the less athletic rich&mdash;a variation on <i>baccarat</i>, a game of chance. A
+music-hall actress got damages for a song that was called "vulgar,"
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my
+handwriting "rococo." A politician got huge damages because he was
+said to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that
+seductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story.
+Sometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in his
+business; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocer
+slanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it is
+clear that its exponents possess no power of distinction, or sense of
+proportion, by which they can draw the line between calling a woman a
+popular singer and calling her a bad lot; or between charging a man
+with leading infants to Protection and leading them to sin and shame.
+But the vital point to which to return is this. That it is not
+necessarily, nor even specially, an anarchy in the populace. It is an
+anarchy in the organ of government. It is the magistrates&mdash;voices of
+the governing class&mdash;who cannot distinguish between cruelty and
+carelessness. It is the judges (and their very submissive special
+juries) who cannot see the difference between opinion and slander. And
+it is the highly placed and highly paid experts who have brought in
+the first Eugenic Law, the Feeble-Minded Bill&mdash;thus showing that they
+can see no difference between a mad and a sane man.</p>
+
+<p>That, to begin with, is the historic atmosphere in which this thing
+was born. It is a peculiar atmosphere, and luckily not likely to last.
+Real progress bears the same relation to it that a happy girl laughing
+bears <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>to an hysterical girl who cannot stop laughing. But I have
+described this atmosphere first because it is the only atmosphere in
+which such a thing as the Eugenist legislation could be proposed among
+men. All other ages would have called it to some kind of logical
+account, however academic or narrow. The lowest sophist in the Greek
+schools would remember enough of Socrates to force the Eugenist to
+tell him (at least) whether Midias was segregated because he was
+curable or because he was incurable. The meanest Thomist of the
+medi&aelig;val monasteries would have the sense to see that you cannot
+discuss a madman when you have not discussed a man. The most owlish
+Calvinist commentator in the seventeenth century would ask the
+Eugenist to reconcile such Bible texts as derided fools with the other
+Bible texts that praised them. The dullest shopkeeper in Paris in 1790
+would have asked what were the Rights of Man, if they did not include
+the rights of the lover, the husband, and the father. It is only in
+our own London Particular (as Mr. Guppy said of the fog) that small
+figures can loom so large in the vapour, and even mingle with quite
+different figures, and have the appearance of a mob. But, above all, I
+have dwelt on the telescopic quality in these twilight avenues,
+because unless the reader realises how elastic and unlimited they are,
+he simply will not believe in the abominations we have to combat.</p>
+
+<p>One of those wise old fairy tales, that come from nowhere and flourish
+everywhere, tells how a man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>came to own a small magic machine like a
+coffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one
+word and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I
+wish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the
+mill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers'
+mess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury
+and exaggeration, and sailors' tales should be taken with a grain of
+it. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then,
+touching the word that stopped it, suddenly remembered that he forgot.
+The tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like
+Arctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom,
+where all the men lay drowned. And that (so says this fairy tale) is
+why the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For the
+fairy tales knew what the modern mystics don't&mdash;that one should not
+let loose either the supernatural or the natural.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>The modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: that people do
+not see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it may or may not be
+right to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivably be right to kill
+a murderer because it is wrong to kill a man. If the hangman, having
+got his hand in, proceeded to hang friends and relatives to his taste
+and fancy, he would (intellectually) unhang the first man, though the
+first man might not think so. Or thus again, if you say an insane man
+is irresponsible, you imply that a sane man is responsible. He is
+responsible for the insane man. And the attempt of the Eugenists and
+other fatalists to treat all men as irresponsible is the largest and
+flattest folly in philosophy. The Eugenist has to treat everybody,
+including himself, as an exception to a rule that isn't there.</p>
+
+<p>The Eugenists, as a first move, have extended the frontiers of the
+lunatic asylum: let us take this as our definite starting point, and
+ask ourselves what lunacy is, and what is its fundamental relation to
+human society. Now that raw juvenile scepticism that clogs all thought
+with catchwords may often be heard to remark that the mad are only the
+minority, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>the sane only the majority. There is a neat exactitude
+about such people's nonsense; they seem to miss the point by magic.
+The mad are not a minority because they are not a corporate body; and
+that is what their madness means. The sane are not a majority; they
+are mankind. And mankind (as its name would seem to imply) is a
+<i>kind</i>, not a degree. In so far as the lunatic differs, he differs
+from all minorities and majorities in kind. The madman who thinks he
+is a knife cannot go into partnership with the other who thinks he is
+a fork. There is no trysting place outside reason; there is no inn on
+those wild roads that are beyond the world.</p>
+
+<p>The madman is not he that defies the world. The saint, the criminal,
+the martyr, the cynic, the nihilist may all defy the world quite
+sanely. And even if such fanatics would destroy the world, the world
+owes them a strictly fair trial according to proof and public law. But
+the madman is not the man who defies the world; he is the man who
+<i>denies</i> it. Suppose we are all standing round a field and looking at
+a tree in the middle of it. It is perfectly true that we all see it
+(as the decadents say) in infinitely different aspects: that is not
+the point; the point is that we all say it is a tree. Suppose, if you
+will, that we are all poets, which seems improbable; so that each of
+us could turn his aspect into a vivid image distinct from a tree.
+Suppose one says it looks like a green cloud and another like a green
+fountain, and a third like a green dragon and the fourth like a green
+cheese. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>fact remains: that they all say it <i>looks</i> like these
+things. It is a tree. Nor are any of the poets in the least mad
+because of any opinions they may form, however frenzied, about the
+functions or future of the tree. A conservative poet may wish to clip
+the tree; a revolutionary poet may wish to burn it. An optimist poet
+may want to make it a Christmas tree and hang candles on it. A
+pessimist poet may want to hang himself on it. None of these are mad,
+because they are all talking about the same thing. But there is
+another man who is talking horribly about something else. There is a
+monstrous exception to mankind. Why he is so we know not; a new theory
+says it is heredity; an older theory says it is devils. But in any
+case, the spirit of it is the spirit that denies, the spirit that
+really denies realities. This is the man who looks at the tree and
+does not say it looks like a lion, but says that it <i>is</i> a lamp-post.</p>
+
+<p>I do not mean that all mad delusions are as concrete as this, though
+some are more concrete. Believing your own body is glass is a more
+daring denial of reality than believing a tree is a glass lamp at the
+top of a pole. But all true delusions have in them this unalterable
+assertion&mdash;that what is not is. The difference between us and the
+maniac is not about how things look or how things ought to look, but
+about what they self-evidently are. The lunatic does not say that he
+ought to be King; Perkin Warbeck might say that. He says he is King.
+The lunatic does not say he is as wise as Shakespeare; Bernard Shaw
+might <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>say that. The lunatic says he <i>is</i> Shakespeare. The lunatic
+does not say he is divine in the same sense as Christ; Mr. R.J.
+Campbell would say that. The lunatic says he <i>is</i> Christ. In all cases
+the difference is a difference about what is there; not a difference
+touching what should be done about it.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason, and for this alone, the lunatic is outside public
+law. This is the abysmal difference between him and the criminal. The
+criminal admits the facts, and therefore permits us to appeal to the
+facts. We can so arrange the facts around him that he may really
+understand that agreement is in his own interests. We can say to him,
+"Do not steal apples from this tree, or we will hang you on that
+tree." But if the man really thinks one tree is a lamp-post and the
+other tree a Trafalgar Square fountain, we simply cannot treat with
+him at all. It is obviously useless to say, "Do not steal apples from
+this lamp-post, or I will hang you on that fountain." If a man denies
+the facts, there is no answer but to lock him up. He cannot speak our
+language: not that varying verbal language which often misses fire
+even with us, but that enormous alphabet of sun and moon and green
+grass and blue sky in which alone we meet, and by which alone we can
+signal to each other. That unique man of genius, George Macdonald,
+described in one of his weird stories two systems of space
+co-incident; so that where I knew there was a piano standing in a
+drawing-room you knew there was a rose-bush growing in a garden.
+Something of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>this sort is in small or great affairs the matter with
+the madman. He cannot have a vote, because he is the citizen of
+another country. He is a foreigner. Nay, he is an invader and an
+enemy; for the city he lives in has been super-imposed on ours.</p>
+
+<p>Now these two things are primarily to be noted in his case. First,
+that we can only condemn him to a <i>general</i> doom, because we only know
+his <i>general</i> nature. All criminals, who do particular things for
+particular reasons (things and reasons which, however criminal, are
+always comprehensible), have been more and more tried for such
+separate actions under separate and suitable laws ever since Europe
+began to become a civilisation&mdash;and until the rare and recent
+re-incursions of barbarism in such things as the Indeterminate
+Sentence. Of that I shall speak later; it is enough for this argument
+to point out the plain facts. It is the plain fact that every savage,
+every sultan, every outlawed baron, every brigand-chief has always
+used this instrument of the Indeterminate Sentence, which has been
+recently offered us as something highly scientific and humane. All
+these people, in short, being barbarians, have always kept their
+captives captive until they (the barbarians) chose to think the
+captives were in a fit frame of mind to come out. It is also the plain
+fact that all that has been called civilisation or progress, justice
+or liberty, for nearly three thousand years, has had the general
+direction of treating even the captive as a free man, in so far as
+some clear case of some defined crime had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>to be shown against him.
+All law has meant allowing the criminal, within some limits or other,
+to argue with the law: as Job was allowed, or rather challenged, to
+argue with God. But the criminal is, among civilised men, tried by one
+law for one crime for a perfectly simple reason: that the motive of
+the crime, like the meaning of the law, is conceivable to the common
+intelligence. A man is punished specially as a burglar, and not
+generally as a bad man, because a man may be a burglar and in many
+other respects not be a bad man. The act of burglary is punishable
+because it is intelligible. But when acts are unintelligible, we can
+only refer them to a general untrustworthiness, and guard against them
+by a general restraint. If a man breaks into a house to get a piece of
+bread, we can appeal to his reason in various ways. We can hang him
+for housebreaking; or again (as has occurred to some daring thinkers)
+we can give him a piece of bread. But if he breaks in, let us say, to
+steal the parings of other people's finger nails, then we are in a
+difficulty: we cannot imagine what he is going to do with them, and
+therefore cannot easily imagine what we are going to do with him. If a
+villain comes in, in cloak and mask, and puts a little arsenic in the
+soup, we can collar him and say to him distinctly, "You are guilty of
+Murder; and I will now consult the code of tribal law, under which we
+live, to see if this practice is not forbidden." But if a man in the
+same cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-water
+in the soup, what can we say? Our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>charge necessarily becomes a more
+general one. We can only observe, with a moderation almost amounting
+to weakness, "You seem to be the sort of person who will do this sort
+of thing." And then we can lock him up. The principle of the
+indeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. It
+does apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And it
+applies to nobody else.</p>
+
+<p>The second thing to be noted is this: that it is only by the unanimity
+of sane men that we can condemn this man as utterly separate. If he
+says a tree is a lamp-post he is mad; but only because all other men
+say it is a tree. If some men thought it was a tree with a lamp on it,
+and others thought it was a lamp-post wreathed with branches and
+vegetation, then it would be a matter of opinion and degree; and he
+would not be mad, but merely extreme. Certainly he would not be mad if
+nobody but a botanist could see it was a tree. Certainly his enemies
+might be madder than he, if nobody but a lamplighter could see it was
+not a lamp-post. And similarly a man is not imbecile if only a
+Eugenist thinks so. The question then raised would not be his sanity,
+but the sanity of one botanist or one lamplighter or one Eugenist.
+That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is not the abnormally
+clever, which is obviously a matter in dispute. That which can condemn
+the abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he begins
+to say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that we
+have a right to treat him as the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>exception and not the rule. It is
+only because we none of us profess to be anything more than man that
+we have authority to treat him as something less.</p>
+
+<p>Now the first principle behind Eugenics becomes plain enough. It is
+the proposal that somebody or something should criticise men with the
+same superiority with which men criticise madmen. It might exercise
+this right with great moderation; but I am not here talking about the
+exercise, but about the right. Its <i>claim</i> certainly is to bring all
+human life under the Lunacy Laws.</p>
+
+<p>Now this is the first weakness in the case of the Eugenists: that they
+cannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by what
+authority they do these things. They cannot see the exception is
+different from the rule&mdash;even when it is misrule, even when it is an
+unruly rule. The sound sense in the old Lunacy Law was this: that you
+cannot deny that a man is a citizen until you are practically prepared
+to deny that he is a man. Men, and only men, can be the judges of
+whether he is a man. But any private club of prigs can be judges of
+whether he ought to be a citizen. When once we step down from that
+tall and splintered peak of pure insanity we step on to a tableland
+where one man is not so widely different from another. Outside the
+exception, what we find is the average. And the practical, legal shape
+of the quarrel is this: that unless the normal men have the right to
+expel the abnormal, what particular sort of abnormal men have the
+right to expel the normal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>men? If sanity is not good enough, what is
+there that is saner than sanity?</p>
+
+<p>Without any grip of the notion of a rule and an exception, the general
+idea of judging people's heredity breaks down and is useless. For this
+reason: that if everything is the result of a doubtful heredity, the
+judgment itself is the result of a doubtful heredity also. Let it
+judge not that it be not judged. Eugenists, strange to say, have
+fathers and mothers like other people; and our opinion about their
+fathers and mothers is worth exactly as much as their opinions about
+ours. None of the parents were lunatics, and the rest is mere likes
+and dislikes. Suppose Dr. Saleeby had gone up to Byron and said, "My
+lord, I perceive you have a club-foot and inordinate passions: such
+are the hereditary results of a profligate soldier marrying a
+hot-tempered woman." The poet might logically reply (with
+characteristic lucidity and impropriety), "Sir, I perceive you have a
+confused mind and an unphilosophic theory about other people's love
+affairs. Such are the hereditary delusions bred by a Syrian doctor
+marrying a Quaker lady from York." Suppose Dr. Karl Pearson had said
+to Shelley, "From what I see of your temperament, you are running
+great risks in forming a connection with the daughter of a fanatic and
+eccentric like Godwin." Shelley would be employing the strict
+rationalism of the older and stronger free thinkers, if he answered,
+"From what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction in
+marrying the great-niece of an old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>corpse of a courtier and
+dilettante like Samuel Rogers." It is only opinion for opinion. Nobody
+can pretend that either Mary Godwin or Samuel Rogers was mad; and the
+general view a man may hold about the healthiness of inheriting their
+blood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men do
+marry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose that Dr. Karl
+Pearson is any better judge of a bridegroom than the bridegroom is of
+a bride.</p>
+
+<p>An objection may be anticipated here, but it is very easily answered.
+It may be said that we do, in fact, call in medical specialists to
+settle whether a man is mad; and that these specialists go by
+technical and even secret tests that cannot be known to the mass of
+men. It is obvious that this is true; it is equally obvious that it
+does not affect our argument. When we ask the doctor whether our
+grandfather is going mad, we still mean mad by our own common human
+definition. We mean, is he going to be a certain sort of person whom
+all men recognise when once he exists. That certain specialists can
+detect the approach of him, before he exists, does not alter the fact
+that it is of the practical and popular madman that we are talking,
+and of him alone. The doctor merely sees a certain fact potentially in
+the future, while we, with less information, can only see it in the
+present; but his fact is our fact and everybody's fact, or we should
+not bother about it at all. Here is no question of the doctor bringing
+an entirely new sort of person under coercion, as in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>Feeble-Minded Bill. The doctor can say, "Tobacco is death to you,"
+because the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highly
+democratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of the
+indubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, "Jones has
+that twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house." But it is
+not the medical detail we fear, but the moral upshot. We should say,
+"Let him twitch, as long as he doesn't burn down the house." The
+doctor may say, "He has that look in the eyes, and he may take the
+hatchet and brain you all." But we do not object to the look in the
+eyes as such; we object to consequences which, once come, we should
+all call insane if there were no doctors in the world. We should say,
+"Let him look how he likes; as long as he does not look for the
+hatchet."</p>
+
+<p>Now, that specialists are valuable for this particular and practical
+purpose, of predicting the approach of enormous and admitted human
+calamities, nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring us
+one inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is a
+calamity; or to call things calamities which common sense does not
+call calamities. We call in the doctor to save us from death; and,
+death being admittedly an evil, he has the right to administer the
+queerest and most recondite pill which he may think is a cure for all
+such menaces of death. He has not the right to administer death, as
+the cure for all human ills. And as he has no moral authority to
+enforce a new conception of happiness, so he has no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>moral authority
+to enforce a new conception of sanity. He may know I am going mad; for
+madness is an isolated thing like leprosy; and I know nothing about
+leprosy. But if he merely thinks my mind is weak, I may happen to
+think the same of his. I often do.</p>
+
+<p>In short, unless pilots are to be permitted to ram ships on to the
+rocks and then say that heaven is the only true harbour; unless judges
+are to be allowed to let murderers loose, and explain afterwards that
+the murder had done good on the whole; unless soldiers are to be
+allowed to lose battles and then point out that true glory is to be
+found in the valley of humiliation; unless cashiers are to rob a bank
+in order to give it an advertisement; or dentists to torture people to
+give them a contrast to their comforts; unless we are prepared to let
+loose all these private fancies against the public and accepted
+meaning of life or safety or prosperity or pleasure&mdash;then it is as
+plain as Punch's nose that no scientific man must be allowed to meddle
+with the public definition of madness. We call him in to tell us where
+it is or when it is. We could not do so, if we had not ourselves
+settled what it is.</p>
+
+<p>As I wish to confine myself in this chapter to the primary point of
+the plain existence of sanity and insanity, I will not be led along
+any of the attractive paths that open here. I shall endeavour to deal
+with them in the next chapter. Here I confine myself to a sort of
+summary. Suppose a man's throat has been cut, quite swiftly and
+suddenly, with a table <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>knife, at a small table where we sit. The
+whole of civil law rests on the supposition that we are witnesses;
+that we saw it; and if we do not know about it, who does? Now suppose
+all the witnesses fall into a quarrel about degrees of eyesight.
+Suppose one says he had brought his reading-glasses instead of his
+usual glasses; and therefore did not see the man fall across the table
+and cover it with blood. Suppose another says he could not be certain
+it was blood, because a slight colour-blindness was hereditary in his
+family. Suppose a third says he cannot swear to the uplifted knife,
+because his oculist tells him he is astigmatic, and vertical lines do
+not affect him as do horizontal lines. Suppose another says that dots
+have often danced before his eyes in very fantastic combinations, many
+of which were very like one gentleman cutting another gentleman's
+throat at dinner. All these things refer to real experiences. There is
+such a thing as myopia; there is such a thing as colour-blindness;
+there is such a thing as astigmatism; there is such a thing as
+shifting shapes swimming before the eyes. But what should we think of
+a whole dinner party that could give nothing except these highly
+scientific explanations when found in company with a corpse? I imagine
+there are only two things we could think: either that they were all
+drunk, or they were all murderers.</p>
+
+<p>And yet there is an exception. If there were one man at table who was
+admittedly <i>blind</i>, should we not give him the benefit of the doubt?
+Should we not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>honestly feel that he was the exception that proved the
+rule? The very fact that he could not have seen would remind us that
+the other men must have seen. The very fact that he had no eyes must
+remind us of eyes. A man can be blind; a man can be dead; a man can be
+mad. But the comparison is necessarily weak, after all. For it is the
+essence of madness to be unlike anything else in the world: which is
+perhaps why so many men wiser than we have traced it to another.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the literal maniac is different from all other persons in
+dispute in this vital respect: that he is the only person whom we can,
+with a final lucidity, declare that we do not want. He is almost
+always miserable himself, and he always makes others miserable. But
+this is not so with the mere invalid. The Eugenists would probably
+answer all my examples by taking the case of marrying into a family
+with consumption (or some such disease which they are fairly sure is
+hereditary) and asking whether such cases at least are not clear cases
+for a Eugenic intervention. Permit me to point out to them that they
+once more make a confusion of thought. The sickness or soundness of a
+consumptive may be a clear and calculable matter. The happiness or
+unhappiness of a consumptive is quite another matter, and is not
+calculable at all. What is the good of telling people that if they
+marry for love, they may be punished by being the parents of Keats or
+the parents of Stevenson? Keats died young; but he had more pleasure
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>in a minute than a Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson had
+lung-trouble; and it may, for all I know, have been perceptible to the
+Eugenic eye even a generation before. But who would perform that
+illegal operation: the stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter
+bursting with good news, confiscating a hamper full of presents and
+prizes, pouring torrents of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this
+is a faint approximation for the Eugenic inaction of the ancestors of
+Stevenson. This, however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson
+it is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he
+got. If he had died without writing a line, he would have had more
+red-hot joy than is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I
+owe so much, let the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray that
+the stars of the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered among
+the days of the year, because it shut not up the doors of his mother's
+womb? I respectfully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon my
+mouth.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE FLYING AUTHORITY</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>It happened one day that an atheist and a man were standing together
+on a doorstep; and the atheist said, "It is raining." To which the man
+replied, "What is raining?": which question was the beginning of a
+violent quarrel and a lasting friendship. I will not touch upon any
+heads of the dispute, which doubtless included Jupiter Pluvius, the
+Neuter Gender, Pantheism, Noah's Ark, Mackintoshes, and the Passive
+Mood; but I will record the one point upon which the two persons
+emerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as an
+atheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the mere
+diction of a man, though he be speaking of clocks or cats or anything
+quite remote from theology. The mark of the atheistic style is that it
+instinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are dead
+things; that things have no souls. Thus they will not speak of waging
+war, which means willing it; they speak of the "outbreak of war," as
+if all the guns blew up without the men touching them. Thus those
+Socialists that are atheist will not call their international
+sympathy, sympathy; they will call it "solidarity," as if the poor men
+of France and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>Germany were physically stuck together like dates in a
+grocer's shop. The same Marxian Socialists are accused of cursing the
+Capitalists inordinately; but the truth is that they let the
+Capitalists off much too easily. For instead of saying that employers
+pay less wages, which might pin the employers to some moral
+responsibility, they insist on talking about the "rise and fall" of
+wages; as if a vast silver sea of sixpences and shillings was always
+going up and down automatically like the real sea at Margate. Thus
+they will not speak of reform, but of development; and they spoil
+their one honest and virile phrase, "the class war," by talking of it
+as no one in his wits can talk of a war, predicting its finish and
+final result as one calculates the coming of Christmas Day or the
+taxes. Thus, lastly (as we shall see touching our special
+subject-matter here) the atheist style in letters always avoids
+talking of love or lust, which are things alive, and calls marriage or
+concubinage "the relations of the sexes"; as if a man and a woman were
+two wooden objects standing in a certain angle and attitude to each
+other, like a table and a chair.</p>
+
+<p>Now the same anarchic mystery that clings round the phrase, "<i>il
+pleut</i>," clings round the phrase, "<i>il faut</i>." In English it is
+generally represented by the passive mood in grammar, and the
+Eugenists and their like deal especially in it; they are as passive in
+their statements as they are active in their experiments. Their
+sentences always enter tail first, and have no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>subject, like animals
+without heads. It is never "the doctor should cut off this leg" or
+"the policeman should collar that man." It is always "Such limbs
+should be amputated," or "Such men should be under restraint." Hamlet
+said, "I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's
+offal." The Eugenist would say, "The region kites should, if possible,
+be fattened; and the offal of this slave is available for the dietetic
+experiment." Lady Macbeth said, "Give me the daggers; I'll let his
+bowels out." The Eugenist would say, "In such cases the bowels should,
+etc." Do not blame me for the repulsiveness of the comparisons. I have
+searched English literature for the most decent parallels to Eugenist
+language.</p>
+
+<p>The formless god that broods over the East is called "Om." The
+formless god who has begun to brood over the West is called "On." But
+here we must make a distinction. The impersonal word <i>on</i> is French,
+and the French have a right to use it, because they are a democracy.
+And when a Frenchman says "one" he does not mean himself, but the
+normal citizen. He does not mean merely "one," but one and all. "<i>On
+n'a que sa parole</i>" does not mean "<i>Noblesse oblige</i>," or "I am the
+Duke of Billingsgate and must keep my word." It means: "One has a
+sense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, should
+feel honourable"; and this, whether possible or no, is the purest
+ambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, "Conditions
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>must be altered" or "Ancestry should be investigated," or what not, it
+seems clear that they do not mean that the democracy must do it,
+whatever else they may mean. They do not mean that any man not
+evidently mad may be trusted with these tests and re-arrangements, as
+the French democratic system trusts such a man with a vote or a farm
+or the control of a family. That would mean that Jones and Brown,
+being both ordinary men, would set about arranging each other's
+marriages. And this state of affairs would seem a little elaborate,
+and it might occur even to the Eugenic mind that if Jones and Brown
+are quite capable of arranging each other's marriages, it is just
+possible that they might be capable of arranging their own.</p>
+
+<p>This dilemma, which applies in so simple a case, applies equally to
+any wide and sweeping system of Eugenist voting; for though it is true
+that the community can judge more dispassionately than a man can judge
+in his own case, this particular question of the choice of a wife is
+so full of disputable shades in every conceivable case, that it is
+surely obvious that almost any democracy would simply vote the thing
+out of the sphere of voting, as they would any proposal of police
+interference in the choice of walking weather or of children's names.
+I should not like to be the politician who should propose a particular
+instance of Eugenics to be voted on by the French people. Democracy
+dismissed, it is here hardly needful to consider the other old models.
+Modern scientists <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>will not say that George III., in his lucid
+intervals, should settle who is mad; or that the aristocracy that
+introduced gout shall supervise diet.</p>
+
+<p>I hold it clear, therefore, if anything is clear about the business,
+that the Eugenists do not merely mean that the mass of common men
+should settle each other's marriages between them; the question
+remains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when they say
+that this or that ought to be done. What is this flying and evanescent
+authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man who
+is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's verb? In a large
+number of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenist
+means himself, and nobody else. Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A.H. Huth,
+actually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a great
+deal of good could be done with a surgical knife, if we would only
+turn him loose with one. And this may be true. A great deal of good
+could be done with a loaded revolver, in the hands of a judicious
+student of human nature. But it is imperative that the Eugenist should
+perceive that on that principle we can never get beyond a perfect
+balance of different sympathies and antipathies. I mean that I should
+differ from Dr. Saleeby or Dr. Karl Pearson not only in a vast
+majority of individual cases, but in a vast majority of cases in which
+they would be bound to admit that such a difference was natural and
+reasonable. The chief victim of these famous doctors would be a yet
+more famous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>doctor: that eminent though unpopular practitioner, Dr.
+Fell.</p>
+
+<p>To show that such rational and serious differences do exist, I will
+take one instance from that Bill which proposed to protect families
+and the public generally from the burden of feeble-minded persons.
+Now, even if I could share the Eugenic contempt for human rights, even
+if I could start gaily on the Eugenic campaign, I should not begin by
+removing feeble-minded persons. I have known as many families in as
+many classes as most men; and I cannot remember meeting any very
+monstrous human suffering arising out of the presence of such
+insufficient and negative types. There seem to be comparatively few of
+them; and those few by no means the worst burdens upon domestic
+happiness. I do not hear of them often; I do not hear of them doing
+much more harm than good; and in the few cases I know well they are
+not only regarded with human affection, but can be put to certain
+limited forms of human use. Even if I were a Eugenist, then I should
+not personally elect to waste my time locking up the feeble-minded.
+The people I should lock up would be the strong-minded. I have known
+hardly any cases of mere mental weakness making a family a failure; I
+have known eight or nine cases of violent and exaggerated force of
+character making a family a hell. If the strong-minded could be
+segregated it would quite certainly be better for their friends and
+families. And if there is really anything in heredity, it would be
+better for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>posterity too. For the kind of egoist I mean is a madman
+in a much more plausible sense than the mere harmless "deficient"; and
+to hand on the horrors of his anarchic and insatiable temperament is a
+much graver responsibility than to leave a mere inheritance of
+childishness. I would not arrest such tyrants, because I think that
+even moral tyranny in a few homes is better than a medical tyranny
+turning the state into a madhouse. I would not segregate them, because
+I respect a man's free-will and his front-door and his right to be
+tried by his peers. But since free-will is believed by Eugenists no
+more than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenists
+no more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is about
+as sacred to Eugenists as it would be to King John, why do not <i>they</i>
+bring light and peace into so many human homes by removing a demoniac
+from each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Bill
+call at the many grand houses in town or country where such nightmares
+notoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the bad
+squire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniac
+prize-fighter? I do not know; and there is only one reason I can think
+of, which must remain a matter of speculation. When I was at school,
+the kind of boy who liked teasing half-wits was not the sort that
+stood up to bullies.</p>
+
+<p>That, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention the
+case of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give one
+out of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individual
+opinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to
+propagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating trip
+together, we should separate at the very door; and if he had a
+thousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyone
+who has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows that
+the ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some little
+hobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad for
+children, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many more
+people ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human nature
+to expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard,
+dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as
+exercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would
+have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own
+madman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another would
+wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the
+terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats
+and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it
+seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his
+own implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lesson
+which is hardest for him and me and for all our fallen race&mdash;the fact
+that he is only himself.</p>
+
+<p>We now pass from mere individual men who obviously cannot be trusted,
+even if they are individual <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>medical men, with such despotism over
+their neighbours; and we come to consider whether the Eugenists have
+at all clearly traced any more imaginable public authority, any
+apparatus of great experts or great examinations to which such risks
+of tyranny could be trusted. They are not very precise about this
+either; indeed, the great difficulty I have throughout in considering
+what are the Eugenist's proposals is that they do not seem to know
+themselves. Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connect
+with human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness of
+their definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans. The Eugenic
+optimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled and
+confused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that it will be
+all right on the night. They have all the ancient despotism, but none
+of the ancient dogmatism. If they are ready to reproduce the secrecies
+and cruelties of the Inquisition, at least we cannot accuse them of
+offending us with any of that close and complicated thought, that arid
+and exact logic which narrowed the minds of the Middle Ages; they have
+discovered how to combine the hardening of the heart with a
+sympathetic softening of the head. Nevertheless, there is one large,
+though vague, idea of the Eugenists, which is an idea, and which we
+reach when we reach this problem of a more general supervision.</p>
+
+<p>It was best presented perhaps by the distinguished doctor who wrote
+the article on these matters in that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>composite book which Mr. Wells
+edited, and called "The Great State." He said the doctor should no
+longer be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in his
+own words, "the health adviser of the community." The same can be
+expressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb that
+prevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that it
+amounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. This
+the writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. To
+which I rejoin that if everyone is ill the health adviser is ill too,
+and therefore cannot know how to cure that minimum of illness. This is
+the fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine.
+Prevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man's head is not
+better than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing to
+cure it. And it is the same if a man is in revolt, even a morbid
+revolt. Taking the heart out of him by slavery is not better than
+leaving the heart in him, even if you leave it a broken heart.
+Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse
+than disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the
+extra exasperation of being quite well. I will ask God, but certainly
+not man, to prevent me in all my doings. But the decisive and
+discussable form of this is well summed up in that phrase about the
+health adviser of society. I am sure that those who speak thus have
+something in their minds larger and more illuminating than the other
+two propositions we have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>considered. They do not mean that all
+citizens should decide, which would mean merely the present vague and
+dubious balance. They do not mean that all medical men should decide,
+which would mean a much more unbalanced balance. They mean that a few
+men might be found who had a consistent scheme and vision of a healthy
+nation, as Napoleon had a consistent scheme and vision of an army. It
+is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men's
+marriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize and
+segregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a few
+great hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens, as
+nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it is tyranny;
+but tyranny is a workable thing. When we ask by what process such men
+could be certainly chosen, we are back again on the old dilemma of
+despotism, which means a man, or democracy which means men, or
+aristocracy which means favouritism. But as a vision the thing is
+plausible and even rational. It is rational, and it is wrong.</p>
+
+<p>It is wrong, quite apart from the suggestion that an expert on health
+cannot be chosen. It is wrong because an expert on health cannot
+exist. An expert on disease can exist, for the very reason we have
+already considered in the case of madness, because experts can only
+arise out of exceptional things. A parallel with any of the other
+learned professions will make the point plain. If I am prosecuted for
+trespass, I will ask my solicitor which of the local lanes I am
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>forbidden to walk in. But if my solicitor, having gained my case, were
+so elated that he insisted on settling what lanes I should walk in; if
+he asked me to let him map out all my country walks, because he was
+the perambulatory adviser of the community&mdash;then that solicitor would
+solicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me through
+woodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues and
+attractive short-cuts, I shall turn on him with passion, saying: "Sir,
+I pay you to know one particular puzzle in Latin and Norman-French,
+which they call the law of England; and you do know the law of
+England. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you know
+England. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was looking
+at it." As are the limits of the lawyer's special knowledge about
+walking, so are the limits of the doctor's. If I fall over the stump
+of a tree and break my leg, as is likely enough, I shall say to the
+lawyer, "Please go and fetch the doctor." I shall do it because the
+doctor really has a larger knowledge of a narrower area. There are
+only a certain number of ways in which a leg can be broken; I know
+none of them, and he knows all of them. There is such a thing as being
+a specialist in broken legs. There is no such thing as being a
+specialist in legs. When unbroken, legs are a matter of taste. If the
+doctor has really mended my leg, he may merit a colossal equestrian
+statue on the top of an eternal tower of brass. But if the doctor has
+really mended my leg <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>he has no more rights over it. He must not come
+and teach me how to walk; because he and I learnt that in the same
+school, the nursery. And there is no more abstract likelihood of the
+doctor walking more elegantly than I do than there is of the barber or
+the bishop or the burglar walking more elegantly than I do. There
+cannot be a general specialist; the specialist can have no kind of
+authority, unless he has avowedly limited his range. There cannot be
+such a thing as the health adviser of the community, because there
+cannot be such a thing as one who specialises in the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Thus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be married should
+be obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-book, the
+expression is neat; but it does not convey the real respects in which
+the two things agree, and in which they differ. To begin with, of
+course, there is a great deal too much of the bank-book for the sanity
+of our commonwealth; and it is highly probable that the health-book,
+as conducted in modern conditions, would rapidly become as timid, as
+snobbish, and as sterile as the money side of marriage has become. In
+the moral atmosphere of modernity the poor and the honest would
+probably get as much the worst of it if we fought with health-books as
+they do when we fight with bank-books. But that is a more general
+matter; the real point is in the difference between the two. The
+difference is in this vital fact: that a monied man generally thinks
+about money, whereas <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>a healthy man does not think about health. If
+the strong young man cannot produce his health-book, it is for the
+perfectly simple reason that he has not got one. He can mention some
+extraordinary malady he has; but every man of honour is expected to do
+that now, whatever may be the decision that follows on the knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Health is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the impudence
+to understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostic has any
+right to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among other
+things, that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things, by
+which they are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and any
+scientist who pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimate
+sanity, I will call the lowest of religious fanatics. I will allow him
+to understand the madman, for the madman is an exception. But if he
+says he understands the sane man, then he says he has the secret of
+the Creator. For whenever you and I feel fully sane, we are quite
+incapable of naming the elements that make up that mysterious
+simplicity. We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we can
+conceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium by
+which, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling like
+precipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing.</p>
+
+<p>We conclude, therefore, that unless Eugenic activity be restricted to
+monstrous things like mania, there is no constituted or constitutable
+authority that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>can really over-rule men in a matter in which they are
+so largely on a level. In the matter of fundamental human rights,
+nothing can be above Man, except God. An institution claiming to come
+from God might have such authority; but this is the last claim the
+Eugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking to
+rule men in such matters is like a man's right eye claiming to rule
+him, or his left leg to run away with him. It is madness. We now pass
+on to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenics
+to be done, with such cheerfulness as we may possess after discovering
+that there is nobody to do it.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>Dr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in one of his
+addresses on this subject, and said that even I cannot produce any but
+a feeble-minded child from a feeble-minded ancestry. To which I reply,
+first of all, that he cannot produce a feeble-minded child. The whole
+point of our contention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed and
+outside opinion. There is such a thing as mania, which has always been
+segregated; there is such a thing as idiotcy, which has always been
+segregated; but feeble-mindedness is a new phrase under which you
+might segregate anybody. It is essential that this fundamental fallacy
+in the use of statistics should be got somehow into the modern mind.
+Such people must be made to see the point, which is surely plain
+enough, that it is useless to have exact figures if they are exact
+figures about an inexact phrase. If I say, "There are five fools in
+Acton," it is surely quite clear that, though no mathematician can
+make five the same as four or six, that will not stop you or anyone
+else from finding a few more fools in Acton. Now weak-mindedness, like
+folly, is a term divided from madness in this vital manner&mdash;that in
+one sense <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>it applies to all men, in another to most men, in another
+to very many men, and so on. It is as if Dr. Saleeby were to say,
+"Vanity, I find, is undoubtedly hereditary. Here is Mrs. Jones, who
+was very sensitive about her sonnets being criticised, and I found her
+little daughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment is
+conclusive, the demonstration is complete; there in the first
+generation is the artistic temperament&mdash;that is vanity; and there in
+the second generation is dress&mdash;and that is vanity." We should answer,
+"My friend, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit&mdash;especially
+when one has to listen to logic of your favourite kind. Obviously all
+human beings must value themselves; and obviously there is in all such
+valuation an element of weakness, since it is not the valuation of
+eternal justice. What is the use of your finding by experiment in some
+people a thing we know by reason must be in all of them?"</p>
+
+<p>Here it will be as well to pause a moment and avert one possible
+misunderstanding. I do not mean that you and I cannot and do not
+practically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric or
+intermediate type, for which the word "feeble-minded" might be a very
+convenient word, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinable
+fact of experience. In the same way we might speak, and do speak, of
+such and such a person being "mad with vanity" without wanting two
+keepers to walk in and take the person off. But I ask the reader to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>remember always that I am talking of words, not as they are used in
+talk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, in
+warrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament. The distinction
+between the two is perfectly clear and practical. The difference is
+that a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit the mark; it
+is all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the type should be
+recognised; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the right man.
+But it is by no means always to the interests of governments or
+officials to hang the right man. The fact that they often do stretch
+words in order to cover cases is the whole foundation of having any
+fixed laws or free institutions at all. My point is not that I have
+never met anyone whom I should call feeble-minded, rather than mad or
+imbecile. My point is that if I want to dispossess a nephew, oust a
+rival, silence a blackmailer, or get rid of an importunate widow,
+there is nothing in logic to prevent my calling them feeble-minded
+too. And the vaguer the charge is the less they will be able to
+disprove it.</p>
+
+<p>One does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resist
+such legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual world
+in order to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may be
+such a thing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is such
+a thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in
+mere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>believing that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason to
+suppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. All that is mere
+rationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance and
+terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but denies
+there can be devils. The superstition is in the person who admits
+there can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. Yet I should
+certainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectly
+simple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. The
+reason is that it is one thing to believe in witches, and quite
+another to believe in witch-smellers. I have more respect for the old
+witch-finders than for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting the
+fool of the family; because the witch-finders, according to their own
+conviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the
+strong-minded&mdash;the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a
+raid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a
+righteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of
+sin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and
+despicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a
+war upon the weak. It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being.</p>
+
+<p>When I said above that I believed in witches, but not in
+witch-smellers, I stated my full position about that conception of
+heredity, that half-formed philosophy of fears and omens; of curses
+and weird recurrence and darkness and the doom of blood, which, as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>preached to humanity to-day, is often more inhuman than witchcraft
+itself. I do not deny that this dark element exists; I only affirm
+that it is dark; or, in other words, that its most strenuous students
+are evidently in the dark about it. I would no more trust Dr. Karl
+Pearson on a heredity-hunt than on a heresy-hunt. I am perfectly ready
+to give my reasons for thinking this; and I believe any well-balanced
+person, if he reflects on them, will think as I do. There are two
+senses in which a man may be said to know or not know a subject. I
+know the subject of arithmetic, for instance; that is, I am not good
+at it, but I know what it is. I am sufficiently familiar with its use
+to see the absurdity of anyone who says, "So vulgar a fraction cannot
+be mentioned before ladies," or "This unit is Unionist, I hope."
+Considering myself for one moment as an arithmetician, I may say that
+I know next to nothing about my subject: but I know my subject. I know
+it in the street. There is the other kind of man, like Dr. Karl
+Pearson, who undoubtedly knows a vast amount about his subject; who
+undoubtedly lives in great forests of facts concerning kinship and
+inheritance. But it is not, by any means, the same thing to have
+searched the forests and to have recognised the frontiers. Indeed, the
+two things generally belong to two very different types of mind. I
+gravely doubt whether the Astronomer-Royal would write the best essay
+on the relations between astronomy and astrology. I doubt whether the
+President of the Geographical Society could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>give the best definition
+and history of the words "geography" and "geology."</p>
+
+<p>Now the students of heredity, especially, understand all of their
+subject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born in
+that brier-patch, and have really explored it without coming to the
+end of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question of
+what they are studying. Now I do not propose to rely merely on myself
+to tell them what they are studying. I propose, as will be seen in a
+moment, to call the testimony of a great man who has himself studied
+it. But to begin with, the domain of heredity (for those who see its
+frontiers) is a sort of triangle, enclosed on its three sides by three
+facts. The first is that heredity undoubtedly exists, or there would
+be no such thing as a family likeness, and every marriage might
+suddenly produce a small negro. The second is that even simple
+heredity can never be simple; its complexity must be literally
+unfathomable, for in that field fight unthinkable millions. But yet
+again it never is simple heredity: for the instant anyone is, he
+experiences. The third is that these innumerable ancient influences,
+these instant inundations of experiences, come together according to a
+combination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is a
+combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on
+the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the
+sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the
+Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face
+that the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can
+never be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every
+feature, in every inch. In the person of the baby he may have gently
+pulled his wife's nose. In the person of the baby he may have partly
+blacked his wife's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Those are the three first facts of heredity. That it exists; that it
+is subtle and made of a million elements; that it is simple, and
+cannot be unmade into those elements. To summarise: you know there is
+wine in the soup. You do not know how many wines there are in the
+soup, because you do not know how many wines there are in the world.
+And you never will know, because all chemists, all cooks, and all
+common-sense people tell you that the soup is of such a sort that it
+can never be chemically analysed. That is a perfectly fair parallel to
+the hereditary element in the human soul. There are many ways in which
+one can feel that there is wine in the soup, as in suddenly tasting a
+wine specially favoured; that corresponds to seeing suddenly flash on
+a young face the image of some ancestor you have known. But even then
+the taster cannot be certain he is not tasting one familiar wine among
+many unfamiliar ones&mdash;or seeing one known ancestor among a million
+unknown ancestors. Another way is to get drunk on the soup, which
+corresponds to the case of those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>who say they are driven to sin and
+death by hereditary doom. But even then the drunkard cannot be certain
+it was the soup, any more than the traditional drunkard who is certain
+it was the salmon.</p>
+
+<p>Those are the facts about heredity which anyone can see. The upshot of
+them is not only that a miss is as good as a mile, but a miss is as
+good as a win. If the child has his parents' nose (or noses) that may
+be heredity. But if he has not, that may be heredity too. And as we
+need not take heredity lightly because two generations differ&mdash;so we
+need not take heredity a scrap more seriously because two generations
+are similar. The thing is there, in what cases we know not, in what
+proportion we know not, and we cannot know.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is just here that the decent difference of function between Dr.
+Saleeby's trade and mine comes in. It is his business to study human
+health and sickness as a whole, in a spirit of more or less
+enlightened guesswork; and it is perfectly natural that he should
+allow for heredity here, there, and everywhere, as a man climbing a
+mountain or sailing a boat will allow for weather without even
+explaining it to himself. An utterly different attitude is incumbent
+on any conscientious man writing about what laws should be enforced or
+about how commonwealths should be governed. And when we consider how
+plain a fact is murder, and yet how hesitant and even hazy we all grow
+about the guilt of a murderer, when we consider how simple an act is
+stealing, and yet how <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>hard it is to convict and punish those rich
+commercial pirates who steal the most, when we consider how cruel and
+clumsy the law can be even about things as old and plain as the Ten
+Commandments&mdash;I simply cannot conceive any responsible person
+proposing to legislate on our broken knowledge and bottomless
+ignorance of heredity.</p>
+
+<p>But though I have to consider this dull matter in its due logical
+order, it appears to me that this part of the matter has been settled,
+and settled in a most masterly way, by somebody who has infinitely
+more right to speak on it than I have. Our press seems to have a
+perfect genius for fitting people with caps that don't fit; and
+affixing the wrong terms of eulogy and even the wrong terms of abuse.
+And just as people will talk of Bernard Shaw as a naughty winking
+Pierrot, when he is the last great Puritan and really believes in
+respectability; just as (<i>si parva licet</i> etc.) they will talk of my
+own paradoxes, when I pass my life in preaching that the truisms are
+true; so an enormous number of newspaper readers seem to have it fixed
+firmly in their heads that Mr. H.G. Wells is a harsh and horrible
+Eugenist in great goblin spectacles, who wants to put us all into
+metallic microscopes and dissect us with metallic tools. As a matter
+of fact, of course, Mr. Wells, so far from being too definite, is
+generally not definite enough. He is an absolute wizard in the
+appreciation of atmospheres and the opening of vistas; but his answers
+are more agnostic than his questions. His books will do <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>everything
+except shut. And so far from being the sort of man who would stop a
+man from propagating, he cannot even stop a full stop. He is not
+Eugenic enough to prevent the black dot at the end of a sentence from
+breeding a line of little dots.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real
+blunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of
+medals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds
+of public economy, to giving Mr. Wells only one medal <i>ob cives
+servatos</i>, I would give him a medal as the Eugenist who destroyed
+Eugenics. For everyone spoke of him, rightly or wrongly, as a
+Eugenist; and he certainly had, as I have not, the training and type
+of culture required to consider the matter merely in a biological and
+not in a generally moral sense. The result was that in that fine book,
+"Mankind in the Making," where he inevitably came to grips with the
+problem, he threw down to the Eugenists an intellectual challenge
+which seems to me unanswerable, but which, at any rate, is unanswered.
+I do not mean that no remote Eugenist wrote upon the subject; for it
+is impossible to read all writings, especially Eugenist writings. I do
+mean that the leading Eugenists write as if this challenge had never
+been offered. The gauntlet lies unlifted on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Having given honour for the idea where it is due, I may be permitted
+to summarise it myself for the sake of brevity. Mr. Wells' point was
+this. That we cannot be certain about the inheritance of health,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>because health is not a quality. It is not a thing like darkness in
+the hair or length in the limbs. It is a relation, a balance. You have
+a tall, strong man; but his very strength depends on his not being too
+tall for his strength. You catch a healthy, full-blooded fellow; but
+his very health depends on his being not too full of blood. A heart
+that is strong for a dwarf will be weak for a giant; a nervous system
+that would kill a man with a trace of a certain illness will sustain
+him to ninety if he has no trace of that illness. Nay, the same
+nervous system might kill him if he had an excess of some other
+comparatively healthy thing. Seeing, therefore, that there are
+apparently healthy people of all types, it is obvious that if you mate
+two of them, you may even then produce a discord out of two
+inconsistent harmonies. It is obvious that you can no more be certain
+of a good offspring than you can be certain of a good tune if you play
+two fine airs at once on the same piano. You can be even less certain
+of it in the more delicate case of beauty, of which the Eugenists talk
+a great deal. Marry two handsome people whose noses tend to the
+aquiline, and their baby (for all you know) may be a goblin with a
+nose like an enormous parrot's. Indeed, I actually know a case of this
+kind. The Eugenist has to settle, not the result of fixing one steady
+thing to a second steady thing; but what will happen when one toppling
+and dizzy equilibrium crashes into another.</p>
+
+<p>This is the interesting conclusion. It is on this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>degree of knowledge
+that we are asked to abandon the universal morality of mankind. When
+we have stopped the lover from marrying the unfortunate woman he
+loves, when we have found him another uproariously healthy female whom
+he does not love in the least, even then we have no logical evidence
+that the result may not be as horrid and dangerous as if he had
+behaved like a man of honour.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>Let us now finally consider what the honest Eugenists do mean, since
+it has become increasingly evident that they cannot mean what they
+say. Unfortunately, the obstacles to any explanation of this are such
+as to insist on a circuitous approach. The tendency of all that is
+printed and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true
+sense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it
+is always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article,
+and he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may
+even, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he
+thinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the
+nearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of
+classical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to
+write it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where
+he learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his
+stalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his
+thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can
+be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth
+delivering at all. The poor panting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>critic falls farther and farther
+behind the motor-car of modern fact. Fifty years ago he was barely
+fifteen years behind the times. Fifteen years ago he was not more than
+fifty years behind the times. Just now he is rather more than a
+hundred years behind the times: and the proof of it is that the things
+he says, though manifest nonsense about our society to-day, really
+were true about our society some hundred and thirty years ago. The
+best instance of his belated state is his perpetual assertion that the
+supernatural is less and less believed. It is a perfectly true and
+realistic account&mdash;of the eighteenth century. It is the worst possible
+account of this age of psychics and spirit-healers and fakirs and
+fashionable fortune-tellers. In fact, I generally reply in eighteenth
+century language to this eighteenth century illusion. If somebody says
+to me, "The creeds are crumbling," I reply, "And the King of Prussia,
+who is himself a Freethinker, is certainly capturing Silesia from the
+Catholic Empress." If somebody says, "Miracles must be reconsidered in
+the light of rational experience," I answer affably, "But I hope that
+our enlightened leader, H&eacute;bert, will not insist on guillotining that
+poor French queen." If somebody says, "We must watch for the rise of
+some new religion which can commend itself to reason," I reply, "But
+how much more necessary is it to watch for the rise of some military
+adventurer who may destroy the Republic: and, to my mind, that young
+Major Bonaparte has rather a restless air." It is only in such
+language from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>the Age of Reason that we can answer such things. The
+age we live in is something more than an age of superstition&mdash;it is an
+age of innumerable superstitions. But it is only with one example of
+this that I am concerned here.</p>
+
+<p>I mean the error that still sends men marching about disestablishing
+churches and talking of the tyranny of compulsory church teaching or
+compulsory church tithes. I do not wish for an irrelevant
+misunderstanding here; I would myself certainly disestablish any
+church that had a numerical minority, like the Irish or the Welsh; and
+I think it would do a great deal of good to genuine churches that have
+a partly conventional majority, like the English, or even the Russian.
+But I should only do this if I had nothing else to do; and just now
+there is very much else to do. For religion, orthodox or unorthodox,
+is not just now relying on the weapon of State establishment at all.
+The Pope practically made no attempt to preserve the Concordat; but
+seemed rather relieved at the independence his Church gained by the
+destruction of it: and it is common talk among the French clericalists
+that the Church has gained by the change. In Russia the one real
+charge brought by religious people (especially Roman Catholics)
+against the Orthodox Church is not its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, but
+its abject dependence on the State. In England we can almost measure
+an Anglican's fervour for his Church by his comparative coolness about
+its establishment&mdash;that is, its control by a Parliament of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>Scotch
+Presbyterians like Balfour, or Welsh Congregationalists like Lloyd
+George. In Scotland the powerful combination of the two great sects
+outside the establishment have left it in a position in which it feels
+no disposition to boast of being called by mere lawyers the Church of
+Scotland. I am not here arguing that Churches should not depend on the
+State; nor that they do not depend upon much worse things. It may be
+reasonably maintained that the strength of Romanism, though it be not
+in any national police, is in a moral police more rigid and vigilant.
+It may be reasonably maintained that the strength of Anglicanism,
+though it be not in establishment, is in aristocracy, and its shadow,
+which is called snobbishness. All I assert here is that the Churches
+are not now leaning heavily on their political establishment; they are
+not using heavily the secular arm. Almost everywhere their legal
+tithes have been modified, their legal boards of control have been
+mixed. They may still employ tyranny, and worse tyranny: I am not
+considering that. They are not specially using that special tyranny
+which consists in using the government.</p>
+
+<p>The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is
+Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science.
+And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the
+creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that
+really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by
+pilgrims but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>by policemen&mdash;that creed is the great but disputed
+system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in
+Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the
+Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination,
+in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much
+as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite natural
+to our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to them
+madness to enforce baptism.</p>
+
+<p>I am not frightened of the word "persecution" when it is attributed to
+the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I
+attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If
+it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory,
+incapable of final proof&mdash;then our priests are not now persecuting,
+but our doctors are. The imposition of such dogmas constitutes a State
+Church&mdash;in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied to
+any supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where the
+religious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way or
+that; and yet more where it is excluded from this or that public post.
+But I cannot now recall any place where it is compelled by the
+criminal law to go through the rite of the official religion. Even the
+Young Turks did not insist on all Macedonians being circumcised.</p>
+
+<p>Now here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, in
+the past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence,
+it has been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixed
+and flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by their
+enemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But what
+are the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword to
+enforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions and
+bewildered answers that we have been studying in the last
+chapters&mdash;questions whose only interest is that they are trackless and
+mysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative and
+new. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; and
+therefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of science
+actually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he
+persecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his
+creed, because it was unchangeable. The <i>savant</i> enforces it violently
+because he may change it the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Now this is a new sort of persecution; and one may be permitted to ask
+if it is an improvement on the old. The difference, so far as one can
+see at first, seems rather favourable to the old. If we are to be at
+the merciless mercy of man, most of us would rather be racked for a
+creed that existed intensely in somebody's head, rather than
+vivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone's head,
+and possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with a
+thumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with a
+vivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet that
+is the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>If
+I gave in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to
+profess. But even if I yelled out <i>a credo</i> when the Eugenists had me
+on the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an
+extra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed
+quite a week ago.</p>
+
+<p>Now let no light-minded person say that I am here taking extravagant
+parallels; for the parallel is not only perfect, but plain. For this
+reason: that the difference between torture and vivisection is not in
+any way affected by the fierceness or mildness of either. Whether they
+gave the rack half a turn or half a hundred, they were, by hypothesis,
+dealing with a truth which they knew to be there. Whether they
+vivisect painfully or painlessly, they are trying to find out whether
+the truth is there or not. The old Inquisitors tortured to put their
+own opinions into somebody. But the new Inquisitors torture to get
+their own opinions out of him. They do not know what their own
+opinions are, until the victim of vivisection tells them. The division
+of thought is a complete chasm for anyone who cares about thinking.
+The old persecutor was trying to <i>teach</i> the citizen, with fire and
+sword. The new persecutor is trying to <i>learn</i> from the citizen, with
+scalpel and germ-injector. The master was meeker than the pupil will
+be.</p>
+
+<p>I could prove by many practical instances that even my illustrations
+are not exaggerated, by many placid proposals I have heard for the
+vivisection of criminals, or by the filthy incident of Dr. Neisser.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>But I prefer here to stick to a strictly logical line of distinction,
+and insist that whereas in all previous persecutions the violence was
+used to end <i>our</i> indecision, the whole point here is that the
+violence is used to end the indecision of the persecutors. This is
+what the honest Eugenists really mean, so far as they mean anything.
+They mean that the public is to be given up, not as a heathen land for
+conversion, but simply as a <i>pabulum</i> for experiment. That is the
+real, rude, barbaric sense behind this Eugenic legislation. The
+Eugenist doctors are not such fools as they look in the light of any
+logical inquiry about what they want. They do not know what they want,
+except that they want your soul and body and mine in order to find
+out. They are quite seriously, as they themselves might say, the first
+religion to be experimental instead of doctrinal. All other
+established Churches have been based on somebody having found the
+truth. This is the first Church that was ever based on not having
+found it.</p>
+
+<p>There is in them a perfectly sincere hope and enthusiasm; but it is
+not for us, but for what they might learn from us, if they could rule
+us as they can rabbits. They cannot tell us anything about heredity,
+because they do not know anything about it. But they do quite honestly
+believe that they would know something about it, when they had married
+and mismarried us for a few hundred years. They cannot tell us who is
+fit to wield such authority, for they know that nobody is; but they do
+quite honestly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>believe that when that authority has been abused for a
+very long time, somebody somehow will be evolved who is fit for the
+job. I am no Puritan, and no one who knows my opinions will consider
+it a mere criminal charge if I say that they are simply gambling. The
+reckless gambler has no money in his pockets; he has only the ideas in
+his head. These gamblers have no ideas in their heads; they have only
+the money in their pockets. But they think that if they could use the
+money to buy a big society to experiment on, something like an idea
+might come to them at last. That is Eugenics.</p>
+
+<p>I confine myself here to remarking that I do not like it. I may be
+very stingy, but I am willing to pay the scientist for what he does
+know; I draw the line at paying him for everything he doesn't know. I
+may be very cowardly, but I am willing to be hurt for what I think or
+what he thinks&mdash;I am not willing to be hurt, or even inconvenienced,
+for whatever he might happen to think after he had hurt me. The
+ordinary citizen may easily be more magnanimous than I, and take the
+whole thing on trust; in which case his career may be happier in the
+next world, but (I think) sadder in this. At least, I wish to point
+out to him that he will not be giving his glorious body as soldiers
+give it, to the glory of a fixed flag, or martyrs to the glory of a
+deathless God. He will be, in the strict sense of the Latin phrase,
+giving his vile body for an experiment&mdash;an experiment of which even
+the experimentalist knows neither the significance nor the end.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>A SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>I have up to this point treated the Eugenists, I hope, as seriously as
+they treat themselves. I have attempted an analysis of their theory as
+if it were an utterly abstract and disinterested theory; and so
+considered, there seems to be very little left of it. But before I go
+on, in the second part of this book, to talk of the ugly things that
+really are left, I wish to recapitulate the essential points in their
+essential order, lest any personal irrelevance or over-emphasis (to
+which I know myself to be prone) should have confused the course of
+what I believe to be a perfectly fair and consistent argument. To make
+it yet clearer, I will summarise the thing under chapters, and in
+quite short paragraphs.</p>
+
+<p>In the first chapter I attempted to define the essential point in
+which Eugenics can claim, and does claim, to be a new morality. That
+point is that it is possible to consider the baby in considering the
+bride. I do not adopt the ideal irresponsibility of the man who said,
+"What has posterity done for us?" But I do say, to start with, "What
+can we do for posterity, except deal fairly with our contemporaries?"
+Unless a man love his wife whom he has seen, how shall he love his
+child whom he has not seen?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>In the second chapter I point out that this division in the conscience
+cannot be met by mere mental confusions, which would make any woman
+refusing any man a Eugenist. There will always be something in the
+world which tends to keep outrageous unions exceptional; that
+influence is not Eugenics, but laughter.</p>
+
+<p>In the third chapter I seek to describe the quite extraordinary
+atmosphere in which such things have become possible. I call that
+atmosphere anarchy; but insist that it is an anarchy in the centres
+where there should be authority. Government has become ungovernable;
+that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that
+is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our
+time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government. In
+this atmosphere it is natural enough that medical experts, being
+authorities, should go mad, and attempt so crude and random and
+immature a dream as this of petting and patting (and rather spoiling)
+the babe unborn.</p>
+
+<p>In chapter four I point out how this impatience has burst through the
+narrow channel of the Lunacy Laws, and has obliterated them by
+extending them. The whole point of the madman is that he is the
+exception that proves the rule. But Eugenics seeks to treat the whole
+rule as a series of exceptions&mdash;to make all men mad. And on that
+ground there is hope for nobody; for all opinions have an author, and
+all authors have a heredity. The mentality of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>Eugenist makes him
+believe in Eugenics as much as the mentality of the reckless lover
+makes him violate Eugenics; and both mentalities are, on the
+materialist hypothesis, equally the irresponsible product of more or
+less unknown physical causes. The real security of man against any
+logical Eugenics is like the false security of Macbeth. The only
+Eugenist that could rationally attack him must be a man of no woman
+born.</p>
+
+<p>In the chapter following this, which is called "The Flying Authority,"
+I try in vain to locate and fix any authority that could rationally
+rule men in so rooted and universal a matter; little would be gained
+by ordinary men doing it to each other; and if ordinary practitioners
+did it they would very soon show, by a thousand whims and quarrels,
+that they were ordinary men. I then discussed the enlightened
+despotism of a few general professors of hygiene, and found it
+unworkable, for an essential reason: that while we can always get men
+intelligent enough to know more than the rest of us about this or that
+accident or pain or pest, we cannot count on the appearance of great
+cosmic philosophers; and only such men can be even supposed to know
+more than we do about normal conduct and common sanity. Every sort of
+man, in short, would shirk such a responsibility, except the worst
+sort of man, who would accept it.</p>
+
+<p>I pass on, in the next chapter, to consider whether we know enough
+about heredity to act decisively, even if we were certain who ought to
+act. Here I refer the Eugenists to the reply of Mr. Wells, which they
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>have never dealt with to my knowledge or satisfaction&mdash;the important
+and primary objection that health is not a quality but a proportion of
+qualities; so that even health married to health might produce the
+exaggeration called disease. It should be noted here, of course, that
+an individual biologist may quite honestly believe that he has found a
+fixed principle with the help of Weissmann or Mendel. But we are not
+discussing whether he knows enough to be justified in thinking (as is
+somewhat the habit of the anthropoid <i>Homo</i>) that he is right. We are
+discussing whether <i>we</i> know enough, as responsible citizens, to put
+such powers into the hands of men who may be deceived or who may be
+deceivers. I conclude that we do not.</p>
+
+<p>In the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, I
+believe, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what the
+Eugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what they
+want. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire the
+establishment of research; that is the making of it a thing official
+and compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it is
+only research and not discovery. In short, they want a new kind of
+State Church, which shall be an Established Church of Doubt&mdash;instead
+of Faith. They have no Science of Eugenics at all, but they do really
+mean that if we will give ourselves up to be vivisected they may very
+probably have one some day. I point out, in more dignified diction,
+that this is a bit thick.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>And now, in the second half of this book, we will proceed to the
+consideration of things that really exist. It is, I deeply regret to
+say, necessary to return to realities, as they are in your daily life
+and mine. Our happy holiday in the land of nonsense is over; we shall
+see no more its beautiful city, with the almost Biblical name of Bosh,
+nor the forests full of mares' nests, nor the fields of tares that are
+ripened only by moonshine. We shall meet no longer those delicious
+monsters that might have talked in the same wild club with the Snark
+and the Jabberwock or the Pobble or the Dong with the Luminous Nose;
+the father who can't make head or tail of the mother, but thoroughly
+understands the child she will some day bear; the lawyer who has to
+run after his own laws almost as fast as the criminals run away from
+them; the two mad doctors who might discuss for a million years which
+of them has the right to lock up the other; the grammarian who clings
+convulsively to the Passive Mood, and says it is the duty of something
+to get itself done without any human assistance; the man who would
+marry giants to giants until the back breaks, as children pile brick
+upon brick for the pleasure of seeing the staggering tower tumble
+down; and, above all, the superb man of science who wants you to pay
+him and crown him because he has so far found out nothing. These
+fairy-tale comrades must leave us. They exist, but they have no
+influence in what is really going on. They are honest dupes and tools,
+as you and I were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>very nearly being honest dupes and tools. If we
+come to think coolly of the world we live in, if we consider how very
+practical is the practical politician, at least where cash is
+concerned, how very dull and earthy are most of the men who own the
+millions and manage the newspaper trusts, how very cautious and averse
+from idealist upheaval are those that control this capitalist
+society&mdash;when we consider all this, it is frankly incredible that
+Eugenics should be a front bench fashionable topic and almost an Act
+of Parliament, if it were in practice only the unfinished fantasy
+which it is, as I have shown, in pure reason. Even if it were a just
+revolution, it would be much too revolutionary a revolution for modern
+statesmen, if there were not something else behind. Even if it were a
+true ideal, it would be much too idealistic an ideal for our
+"practical men," if there were not something real as well. Well, there
+is something real as well. There is no reason in Eugenics, but there
+is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory,
+but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I
+reiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite
+innocent instruments, there <i>are</i> some, even among Eugenists, who by
+this time know what they are doing. To them we shall not say, "What is
+Eugenics?" or "Where on earth are you going?" but only "Woe unto you,
+hypocrites, that devour widows' houses and for a pretence use long
+words."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span><br />
+<a name="Part_II" id="Part_II"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>Part II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE REAL AIM<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span><br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IA" id="CHAPTER_IA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE</h4>
+<br />
+
+
+<p>The root formula of an epoch is always an unwritten law, just as the
+law that is the first of all laws, that which protects life from the
+murderer, is written nowhere in the Statute Book. Nevertheless there
+is all the difference between having and not having a notion of this
+basic assumption in an epoch. For instance, the Middle Ages will
+simply puzzle us with their charities and cruelties, their asceticism
+and bright colours, unless we catch their general eagerness for
+building and planning, dividing this from that by walls and
+fences&mdash;the spirit that made architecture their most successful art.
+Thus even a slave seemed sacred; the divinity that did hedge a king,
+did also, in one sense, hedge a serf, for he could not be driven out
+from behind his hedges. Thus even liberty became a positive thing like
+a privilege; and even, when most men had it, it was not opened like
+the freedom of a wilderness, but bestowed, like the freedom of a city.
+Or again, the seventeenth century may seem a chaos of contradictions,
+with its almost priggish praise of parliaments and its quite barbaric
+massacre of prisoners, until we realise that, if the Middle Ages was a
+house half built, the seventeenth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>century was a house on fire. Panic
+was the note of it, and that fierce fastidiousness and exclusiveness
+that comes from fear. Calvinism was its characteristic religion, even
+in the Catholic Church, the insistence on the narrowness of the way
+and the fewness of the chosen. Suspicion was the note of its
+politics&mdash;"put not your trust in princes." It tried to thrash
+everything out by learned, virulent, and ceaseless controversy; and it
+weeded its population by witch-burning. Or yet again: the eighteenth
+century will present pictures that seem utterly opposite, and yet seem
+singularly typical of the time: the sack of Versailles and the "Vicar
+of Wakefield"; the pastorals of Watteau and the dynamite speeches of
+Danton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight
+of the idea of <i>tidying up</i> which ran through the whole period, the
+quietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilisation, and
+sound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people
+having (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for
+its own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only a
+readiness to employ it to get rid of unreason or disorder. With these
+epochs it is not altogether impossible to say that some such form of
+words is a key. The epoch for which it is almost impossible to find a
+form of words is our own.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I think that with us the keyword is "inevitability," or,
+as I should be inclined to call it, "impenitence." We are
+subconsciously dominated in all departments by the notion that there
+is no turning <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>back, and it is rooted in materialism and the denial of
+free-will. Take any handful of modern facts and compare them with the
+corresponding facts a few hundred years ago. Compare the modern Party
+System with the political factions of the seventeenth century. The
+difference is that in the older time the party leaders not only really
+cut off each other's heads, but (what is much more alarming) really
+repealed each other's laws. With us it has become traditional for one
+party to inherit and leave untouched the acts of the other when made,
+however bitterly they were attacked in the making. James II. and his
+nephew William were neither of them very gay specimens; but they would
+both have laughed at the idea of "a continuous foreign policy." The
+Tories were not Conservatives; they were, in the literal sense,
+reactionaries. They did not merely want to keep the Stuarts; they
+wanted to bring them back.</p>
+
+<p>Or again, consider how obstinately the English medi&aelig;val monarchy
+returned again and again to its vision of French possessions, trying
+to reverse the decision of fate; how Edward III. returned to the
+charge after the defeats of John and Henry III., and Henry V. after
+the failure of Edward III.; and how even Mary had that written on her
+heart which was neither her husband nor her religion. And then
+consider this: that we have comparatively lately known a universal
+orgy of the thing called Imperialism, the unity of the Empire the only
+topic, colonies <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>counted like crown jewels, and the Union Jack waved
+across the world. And yet no one so much as dreamed, I will not say of
+recovering, the American colonies for the Imperial unity (which would
+have been too dangerous a task for modern empire-builders), but even
+of re-telling the story from an Imperial standpoint. Henry V.
+justified the claims of Edward III. Joseph Chamberlain would not have
+dreamed of justifying the claims of George III. Nay, Shakespeare
+justifies the French War, and sticks to Talbot and defies the legend
+of Joan of Arc. Mr. Kipling would not dare to justify the American
+War, stick to Burgoyne, and defy the legend of Washington. Yet there
+really was much more to be said for George III. than there ever was
+for Henry V. It was not said, much less acted upon, by the modern
+Imperialists; because of this basic modern sense, that as the future
+is inevitable, so is the past irrevocable. Any fact so complete as the
+American exodus from the Empire must be considered as final for &aelig;ons,
+though it hardly happened more than a hundred years ago. Merely
+because it has managed to occur it must be called first, a necessary
+evil, and then an indispensable good. I need not add that I do not
+want to reconquer America; but then I am not an Imperialist.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another way of testing it: ask yourself how many people
+you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who
+attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the
+British elementary schools, as they would abuse <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>the British climate?
+How few have we met who realised that British education can be
+altered, but British weather cannot? How few there were that knew that
+the clouds were more immortal and more solid than the schools? For a
+thousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or
+the ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? Indeed,
+the very word proves my case by its unpromising and unfamiliar sound.
+At the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform
+and Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; but nobody talks about
+repeal. Our fathers did not talk of Free Trade, but of the Repeal of
+the Corn Laws. They did not talk of Home Rule, but of the Repeal of
+the Union. In those days people talked of a "Repealer" as the most
+practical of all politicians, the kind of politician that carries a
+club. Now the Repealer is flung far into the province of an impossible
+idealism: and the leader of one of our great parties, having said, in
+a heat of temporary sincerity, that he would repeal an Act, actually
+had to write to all the papers to assure them that he would only amend
+it. I need not multiply instances, though they might be multiplied
+almost to a million. The note of the age is to suggest that the past
+may just as well be praised, since it cannot be mended. Men actually
+in that past have toiled like ants and died like locusts to undo some
+previous settlement that seemed secure; but we cannot do so much as
+repeal an Act of Parliament. We entertain the weak-minded notion that
+what is done can't be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>undone. Our view was well summarised in a
+typical Victorian song with the refrain: "The mill will never grind
+again the water that is past." There are many answers to this. One
+(which would involve a disquisition on the phenomena of Evaporation
+and Dew) we will here avoid. Another is, that to the minds of simple
+country folk, the object of a mill is not to grind water, but to grind
+corn, and that (strange as it may seem) there really have been
+societies sufficiently vigilant and valiant to prevent their corn
+perpetually flowing away from them, to the tune of a sentimental song.</p>
+
+<p>Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an
+intellectual fault; it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our
+mental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also
+our spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake. It was
+mere vanity in Mr. Brummell when he sent away trays full of
+imperfectly knotted neck-cloths, lightly remarking, "These are our
+failures." It is a good instance of the nearness of vanity to
+humility, for at least he had to admit that they were failures. But it
+would have been spiritual pride in Mr. Brummell if he had tied on all
+the cravats, one on top of the other, lest his valet should discover
+that he had ever tied one badly. For in spiritual pride there is
+always an element of secrecy and solitude. Mr. Brummell would be
+satanic; also (which I fear would affect him more) he would be badly
+dressed. But he would be a perfect presentation of the modern
+publicist, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>who cannot do anything right, because he must not admit
+that he ever did anything wrong.</p>
+
+<p>This strange, weak obstinacy, this persistence in the wrong path of
+progress, grows weaker and worse, as do all such weak things. And by
+the time in which I write its moral attitude has taken on something of
+the sinister and even the horrible. Our mistakes have become our
+secrets. Editors and journalists tear up with a guilty air all that
+reminds them of the party promises unfulfilled, or the party ideals
+reproaching them. It is true of our statesmen (much more than of our
+bishops, of whom Mr. Wells said it), that socially in evidence they
+are intellectually in hiding. The society is heavy with unconfessed
+sins; its mind is sore and silent with painful subjects; it has a
+constipation of conscience. There are many things it has done and
+allowed to be done which it does not really dare to think about; it
+calls them by other names and tries to talk itself into faith in a
+false past, as men make up the things they would have said in a
+quarrel. Of these sins one lies buried deepest but most noisome, and
+though it is stifled, stinks: the true story of the relations of the
+rich man and the poor in England. The half-starved English proletarian
+is not only nearly a skeleton but he is a skeleton in a cupboard.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said, in some surprise, that surely we hear to-day on every
+side the same story of the destitute proletariat and the social
+problem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowding
+in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>the slums. It is granted; but I said the true story. Untrue
+stories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There is
+the interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands,
+the chap who has "solidarity," and is always just going to abolish
+war. The Marxian Socialists will tell you all about him; only he isn't
+there. A common English workman is just as incapable of thinking of a
+German as anything but a German as he is of thinking of himself as
+anything but an Englishman. Then there is the opposite story; the
+story of the horrid man who is an atheist and wants to destroy the
+home, but who, for some private reason, prefers to call this
+Socialism. He isn't there either. The prosperous Socialists have homes
+exactly like yours and mine; and the poor Socialists are not allowed
+by the Individualists to have any at all. There is the story of the
+Two Workmen, which is a very nice and exciting story, about how one
+passed all the public houses in Cheapside and was made Lord Mayor on
+arriving at the Guildhall, while the other went into all the public
+houses and emerged quite ineligible for such a dignity. Alas! for this
+also is vanity. A thief might become Lord Mayor, but an honest workman
+certainly couldn't. Then there is the story of "The Relentless Doom,"
+by which rich men were, by economic laws, forced to go on taking away
+money from poor men, although they simply longed to leave off: this is
+an unendurable thought to a free and Christian man, and the reader
+will be relieved to hear that it never happened. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>rich could have
+left off stealing whenever they wanted to leave off, only this never
+happened either. Then there is the story of the cunning Fabian who sat
+on six committees at once and so coaxed the rich man to become quite
+poor. By simply repeating, in a whisper, that there are "wheels within
+wheels," this talented man managed to take away the millionaire's
+motor car, one wheel at a time, till the millionaire had quite
+forgotten that he ever had one. It was very clever of him to do this,
+only he has not done it. There is not a screw loose in the
+millionaire's motor, which is capable of running over the Fabian and
+leaving him a flat corpse in the road at a moment's notice. All these
+stories are very fascinating stories to be told by the Individualist
+and Socialist in turn to the great Sultan of Capitalism, because if
+they left off amusing him for an instant he would cut off their heads.
+But if they once began to tell the true story of the Sultan to the
+Sultan, he would boil them in oil; and this they wish to avoid.</p>
+
+<p>The true story of the sin of the Sultan he is always trying, by
+listening to these stories, to forget. As we have said before in this
+chapter, he would prefer not to remember, because he has made up his
+mind not to repent. It is a curious story, and I shall try to tell it
+truly in the two chapters that follow. In all ages the tyrant is hard
+because he is soft. If his car crashes over bleeding and accusing
+crowds, it is because he has chosen the path of least resistance. It
+is because it is much easier to ride down a human race than ride <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>up a
+moderately steep hill. The fight of the oppressor is always a
+pillow-fight; commonly a war with cushions&mdash;always a war for cushions.
+Saladin, the great Sultan, if I remember rightly, accounted it the
+greatest feat of swordsmanship to cut a cushion. And so indeed it is,
+as all of us can attest who have been for years past trying to cut
+into the swollen and windy corpulence of the modern compromise, that
+is at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day the
+colour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palace
+within palace and garden within garden which makes the rich
+irresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance,
+the wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception of
+luxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights,
+and walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not our
+hangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we not
+already eugenists&mdash;that is, eunuch-makers? Do we not see the bright
+eyes, the motionless faces, and all that presence of something that is
+dead and yet sleepless? It is the presence of the sin that is sealed
+with pride and impenitence; the story of how the Sultan got his
+throne. But it is not the story he is listening to just now, but
+another story which has been invented to cover it&mdash;the story called
+"Eugenius: or the Adventures of One Not Born," a most varied and
+entrancing tale, which never fails to send him to sleep.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IIA" id="CHAPTER_IIA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>TRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>He awoke in the Dark Ages and smelt dawn in the dark, and knew he was
+not wholly a slave. It was as if, in some tale of Hans Andersen, a
+stick or a stool had been left in the garden all night and had grown
+alive and struck root like a tree. For this is the truth behind the
+old legal fiction of the servile countries, that the slave is a
+"chattel," that is a piece of furniture like a stick or a stool. In
+the spiritual sense, I am certain it was never so unwholesome a fancy
+as the spawn of Nietzsche suppose to-day. No human being, pagan or
+Christian, I am certain, ever thought of another human being as a
+chair or a table. The mind cannot base itself on the idea that a comet
+is a cabbage; nor can it on the idea that a man is a stool. No man was
+ever unconscious of another's presence&mdash;or even indifferent to
+another's opinion. The lady who is said to have boasted her
+indifference to being naked before male slaves was showing off&mdash;or she
+meant something different. The lord who fed fishes by killing a slave
+was indulging in what most cannibals indulge in&mdash;a satanist
+affectation. The lady was consciously shameless and the lord was
+consciously cruel. But it simply is not in the human <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>reason to carve
+men like wood or examine women like ivory, just as it is not in the
+human reason to think that two and two make five.</p>
+
+<p>But there was this truth in the legal simile of furniture: that the
+slave, though certainly a man, was in one sense a dead man; in the
+sense that he was <i>moveable</i>. His locomotion was not his own: his
+master moved his arms and legs for him as if he were a marionette. Now
+it is important in the first degree to realise here what would be
+involved in such a fable as I have imagined, of a stool rooting itself
+like a shrub. For the general modern notion certainly is that life and
+liberty are in some way to be associated with novelty and not standing
+still. But it is just because the stool is lifeless that it moves
+about. It is just because the tree is alive that it does stand still.
+That was the main difference between the pagan slave and the Christian
+serf. The serf still belonged to the lord, as the stick that struck
+root in the garden would have still belonged to the owner of the
+garden; but it would have become a <i>live</i> possession. Therefore the
+owner is forced, by the laws of nature, to treat it with <i>some</i>
+respect; something becomes due from him. He cannot pull it up without
+killing it; it has gained a <i>place</i> in the garden&mdash;or the society. But
+the moderns are quite wrong in supposing that mere change and holiday
+and variety have necessarily any element of this life that is the only
+seed of liberty. You may say if you like that an employer, taking all
+his workpeople to a new <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>factory in a Garden City, is giving them the
+greater freedom of forest landscapes and smokeless skies. If it comes
+to that, you can say that the slave-traders took negroes from their
+narrow and brutish African hamlets, and gave them the polish of
+foreign travel and medicinal breezes of a sea-voyage. But the tiny
+seed of citizenship and independence there already was in the serfdom
+of the Dark Ages, had nothing to do with what nice things the lord
+might do to the serf. It lay in the fact that there were some nasty
+things he could not do to the serf&mdash;there were not many, but there
+were some, and one of them was eviction. He could not make the serf
+utterly landless and desperate, utterly without access to the means of
+production, though doubtless it was rather the field that owned the
+serf, than the serf that owned the field. But even if you call the
+serf a beast of the field, he was not what we have tried to make the
+town workman&mdash;a beast with no field. Foulon said of the French
+peasants, "Let them eat grass." If he had said it of the modern London
+proletariat, they might well reply, "You have not left us even grass
+to eat."</p>
+
+<p>There was, therefore, both in theory and practice, <i>some</i> security for
+the serf, because he had come to life and rooted. The seigneur could
+not wait in the field in all weathers with a battle-axe to prevent the
+serf scratching any living out of the ground, any more than the man in
+my fairy-tale could sit out in the garden all night with an umbrella
+to prevent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>the shrub getting any rain. The relation of lord and serf,
+therefore, involves a combination of two things: inequality and
+security. I know there are people who will at once point wildly to all
+sorts of examples, true and false, of insecurity of life in the Middle
+Ages; but these are people who do not grasp what we mean by the
+characteristic institutions of a society. For the matter of that,
+there are plenty of examples of equality in the Middle Ages, as the
+craftsmen in their guild or the monks electing their abbot. But just
+as modern England is not a feudal country, though there is a quaint
+survival called Heralds' College&mdash;or Ireland is not a commercial
+country, though there is a quaint survival called Belfast&mdash;it is true
+of the bulk and shape of that society that came out of the Dark Ages
+and ended at the Reformation, that it did not care about giving
+everybody an equal position, but did care about giving everybody a
+position. So that by the very beginning of that time even the slave
+had become a slave one could not get rid of, like the Scotch servant
+who stubbornly asserted that if his master didn't know a good servant
+he knew a good master. The free peasant, in ancient or modern times,
+is free to go or stay. The slave, in ancient times, was free neither
+to go nor stay. The serf was not free to go; but he was free to stay.</p>
+
+<p>Now what have we done with this man? It is quite simple. There is no
+historical complexity about it in that respect. We have taken away his
+freedom to stay. We have turned him out of his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>field, and whether it
+was injustice, like turning a free farmer out of his field, or only
+cruelty to animals, like turning a cow out of its field, the fact
+remains that he is out in the road. First and last, we have simply
+destroyed the security. We have not in the least destroyed the
+inequality. All classes, all creatures, kind or cruel, still see this
+lowest stratum of society as separate from the upper strata and even
+the middle strata; he is as separate as the serf. A monster fallen
+from Mars, ignorant of our simplest word, would know the tramp was at
+the bottom of the ladder, as well as he would have known it of the
+serf. The walls of mud are no longer round his boundaries, but only
+round his boots. The coarse, bristling hedge is at the end of his
+chin, and not of his garden. But mud and bristles still stand out
+round him like a horrific halo, and separate him from his kind. The
+Martian would have no difficulty in seeing he was the poorest person
+in the nation. It is just as impossible that he should marry an
+heiress, or fight a duel with a duke, or contest a seat at
+Westminster, or enter a club in Pall Mall, or take a scholarship at
+Balliol, or take a seat at an opera, or propose a good law, or protest
+against a bad one, as it was impossible to the serf. Where he differs
+is in something very different. He has lost what was possible to the
+serf. He can no longer scratch the bare earth by day or sleep on the
+bare earth by night, without being collared by a policeman.</p>
+
+<p>Now when I say that this man has been oppressed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>as hardly any other
+man on this earth has been oppressed, I am not using rhetoric: I have
+a clear meaning which I am confident of explaining to any honest
+reader. I do not say he has been treated worse: I say he has been
+treated differently from the unfortunate in all ages. And the
+difference is this: that all the others were told to do something, and
+killed or tortured if they did anything else. This man is not told to
+do something: he is merely forbidden to do anything. When he was a
+slave, they said to him, "Sleep in this shed; I will beat you if you
+sleep anywhere else." When he was a serf, they said to him, "Let me
+find you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else's
+field." But now he is a tramp they say to him, "You shall be jailed if
+I find you in anyone else's field: <i>but I will not give you a field</i>."
+They say, "You shall be punished if you are caught sleeping outside
+your shed: <i>but there is no shed</i>." If you say that modern
+magistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer with
+entire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two tramps
+were summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the open
+air when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full fun
+of the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly produced
+about twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, but
+deliberately didn't. To which the policeman replied that twopence
+would not have got them a bed: that they could not possibly have got a
+bed: and <i>therefore</i> (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought to
+be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was much
+struck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men for
+not doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explain
+that if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, they
+would have left the court without a stain on their characters; but as
+they could not avoid it, they were very much to blame. These things
+are being done in every part of England every day. They have their
+parallels even in every daily paper; but they have no parallel in any
+other earthly people or period; except in that insane command to make
+bricks without straw which brought down all the plagues of Egypt. For
+the common historical joke about Henry VIII. hanging a man for being
+Catholic and burning him for being Protestant is a symbolic joke only.
+The sceptic in the Tudor time could do something: he could always
+agree with Henry VIII. The desperate man to-day can do nothing. For
+you cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the straws
+sticking out of his hair and says, "Procure threepence from nowhere
+and I will give you leave to do without it."</p>
+
+<p>If it be answered that he can go to the workhouse, I reply that such
+an answer is founded on confused thinking. It is true that he is free
+to go to the workhouse, but only in the same sense in which he is free
+to go to jail, only in the same sense in which the serf under the
+gibbet was free to find peace in the grave. Many of the poor greatly
+prefer the grave to the workhouse, but that is not at all my argument
+here. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>point is this: that it could not have been the general
+policy of a lord towards serfs to kill them all like wasps. It could
+not have been his standing "Advice to Serfs" to say, "Get hanged." It
+cannot be the standing advice of magistrates to citizens to go to
+prison. And, precisely as plainly, it cannot be the standing advice of
+rich men to very poor men to go to the workhouses. For that would mean
+the rich raising their own poor rates enormously to keep a vast and
+expensive establishment of slaves. Now it may come to this, as Mr.
+Belloc maintains, but it is not the theory on which what we call the
+workhouse does in fact rest. The very shape (and even the very size)
+of a workhouse express the fact that it was founded for certain quite
+exceptional human failures&mdash;like the lunatic asylum. Say to a man, "Go
+to the madhouse," and he will say, "Wherein am I mad?" Say to a tramp
+under a hedge, "Go to the house of exceptional failures," and he will
+say with equal reason, "I travel because I have no house; I walk
+because I have no horse; I sleep out because I have no bed. Wherein
+have I failed?" And he may have the intelligence to add, "Indeed, your
+worship, if somebody has failed, I think it is not I." I concede, with
+all due haste, that he might perhaps say "me."</p>
+
+<p>The speciality then of this man's wrong is that it is the only
+historic wrong that has in it the quality of <i>nonsense</i>. It could only
+happen in a nightmare; not in a clear and rational hell. It is the top
+point of that anarchy in the governing mind which, as I said at the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>beginning, is the main trait of modernity, especially in England. But
+if the first note in our policy is madness, the next note is certainly
+meanness. There are two peculiarly mean and unmanly legal mantraps in
+which this wretched man is tripped up. The first is that which
+prevents him from doing what any ordinary savage or nomad would
+do&mdash;take his chance of an uneven subsistence on the rude bounty of
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>There is something very abject about forbidding this; because it is
+precisely this adventurous and vagabond spirit which the educated
+classes praise most in their books, poems and speeches. To feel the
+drag of the roads, to hunt in nameless hills and fish in secret
+streams, to have no address save "Over the Hills and Far Away," to be
+ready to breakfast on berries and the daybreak and sup on the sunset
+and a sodden crust, to feed on wild things and be a boy again, all
+this is the heartiest and sincerest impulse in recent culture, in the
+songs and tales of Stevenson, in the cult of George Borrow and in the
+delightful little books published by Mr. E.V. Lucas. It is the one
+true excuse in the core of Imperialism; and it faintly softens the
+squalid prose and wooden-headed wickedness of the Self-Made Man who
+"came up to London with twopence in his pocket." But when a poorer but
+braver man with less than twopence in his pocket does the very thing
+we are always praising, makes the blue heavens his house, we send him
+to a house built for infamy and flogging. We take poverty itself and
+only permit it with a property qualification; we only allow a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>man to
+be poor if he is rich. And we do this most savagely if he has sought
+to snatch his life by that particular thing of which our boyish
+adventure stories are fullest&mdash;hunting and fishing. The extremely
+severe English game laws hit most heavily what the highly reckless
+English romances praise most irresponsibly. All our literature is full
+of praise of the chase&mdash;especially of the wild goose chase. But if a
+poor man followed, as Tennyson says, "far as the wild swan wings to
+where the world dips down to sea and sands," Tennyson would scarcely
+allow him to catch it. If he found the wildest goose in the wildest
+fenland in the wildest regions of the sunset, he would very probably
+discover that the rich never sleep; and that there are no wild things
+in England.</p>
+
+<p>In short, the English ruler is always appealing to a nation of
+sportsmen and concentrating all his efforts on preventing them from
+having any sport. The Imperialist is always pointing out with
+exultation that the common Englishman can live by adventure anywhere
+on the globe, but if the common Englishman tries to live by adventure
+in England, he is treated as harshly as a thief, and almost as harshly
+as an honest journalist. This is hypocrisy: the magistrate who gives
+his son "Treasure Island" and then imprisons a tramp is a hypocrite;
+the squire who is proud of English colonists and indulgent to English
+schoolboys, but cruel to English poachers, is drawing near that deep
+place wherein all liars have their part. But our point here is that
+the baseness is in the idea <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>of <i>bewildering</i> the tramp; of leaving
+him no place for repentance. It is quite true, of course, that in the
+days of slavery or of serfdom the needy were fenced by yet fiercer
+penalties from spoiling the hunting of the rich. But in the older case
+there were two very important differences, the second of which is our
+main subject in this chapter. The first is that in a comparatively
+wild society, however fond of hunting, it seems impossible that
+enclosing and game-keeping can have been so omnipresent and efficient
+as in a society full of maps and policemen. The second difference is
+the one already noted: that if the slave or semi-slave was forbidden
+to get his food in the greenwood, he was told to get it somewhere
+else. The note of unreason was absent.</p>
+
+<p>This is the first meanness; and the second is like unto it. If there
+is one thing of which cultivated modern letters is full besides
+adventure it is altruism. We are always being told to help others, to
+regard our wealth as theirs, to do what good we can, for we shall not
+pass this way again. We are everywhere urged by humanitarians to help
+lame dogs over stiles&mdash;though some humanitarians, it is true, seem to
+feel a colder interest in the case of lame men and women. Still, the
+chief fact of our literature, among all historic literatures, is human
+charity. But what is the chief fact of our legislation? The great
+outstanding fact of modern legislation, among all historic
+legislations, is the forbidding of human charity. It is this
+astonishing paradox, a thing in the teeth of all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>logic and
+conscience, that a man that takes another man's money with his leave
+can be punished as if he had taken it without his leave. All through
+those dark or dim ages behind us, through times of servile stagnation,
+of feudal insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else that
+can war down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was counted
+lawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries,
+in short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched and
+mended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is now
+forbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance if he could beg.</p>
+
+<p>Now it will be evident by this time that the interesting scientific
+experiment on the tramp entirely depends on leaving him <i>no</i> chance,
+and not (like the slave) one chance. Of the economic excuses offered
+for the persecution of beggars it will be more natural to speak in the
+next chapter. It will suffice here to say that they are mere excuses,
+for a policy that has been persistent while probably largely
+unconscious, with a selfish and atheistic unconsciousness. That policy
+was directed towards something&mdash;or it could never have cut so cleanly
+and cruelly across the sentimental but sincere modern trends to
+adventure and altruism. Its object is soon stated. It was directed
+towards making the very poor man work for the capitalist, for any
+wages or none. But all this, which I shall also deal with in the next
+chapter, is here only important as introducing the last truth touching
+the man of despair. The game laws have taken from him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>his human
+command of Nature. The mendicancy laws have taken from him his human
+demand on Man. There is one human thing left it is much harder to take
+from him. Debased by him and his betters, it is still something
+brought out of Eden, where God made him a demigod: it does not depend
+on money and but little on time. He can create in his own image. The
+terrible truth is in the heart of a hundred legends and mysteries. As
+Jupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Child
+could be hidden from Herod&mdash;so the child unborn is still hidden from
+the omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone is
+left; and they seek his life to take it away.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IIIA" id="CHAPTER_IIIA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>TRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>He does not live in a dark lonely tower by the sea, from which are
+heard the screams of vivisected men and women. On the contrary, he
+lives in Mayfair. He does not wear great goblin spectacles that
+magnify his eyes to moons or diminish his neighbours to beetles. When
+he is more dignified he wears a single eyeglass; when more
+intelligent, a wink. He is not indeed wholly without interest in
+heredity and Eugenical biology; but his studies and experiments in
+this science have specialised almost exclusively in <i>equus celer</i>, the
+rapid or running horse. He is not a doctor; though he employs doctors
+to work up a case for Eugenics, just as he employs doctors to correct
+the errors of his dinner. He is not a lawyer, though unfortunately
+often a magistrate. He is not an author or a journalist; though he not
+infrequently owns a newspaper. He is not a soldier, though he may have
+a commission in the yeomanry; nor is he generally a gentleman, though
+often a nobleman. His wealth now commonly comes from a large staff of
+employed persons who scurry about in big buildings while he is playing
+golf. But he very often laid the foundations of his fortune in a very
+curious and poetical way, the nature of which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>I have never fully
+understood. It consisted in his walking about the street without a hat
+and going up to another man and saying, "Suppose I have two hundred
+whales out of the North Sea." To which the other man replied, "And let
+us imagine that I am in possession of two thousand elephants' tusks."
+They then exchange, and the first man goes up to a third man and says,
+"Supposing me to have lately come into the possession of two thousand
+elephants' tusks, would you, etc.?" If you play this game well, you
+become very rich; if you play it badly you have to kill yourself or
+try your luck at the Bar. The man I am speaking about must have played
+it well, or at any rate successfully.</p>
+
+<p>He was born about 1860; and has been a member of Parliament since
+about 1890. For the first half of his life he was a Liberal; for the
+second half he has been a Conservative; but his actual policy in
+Parliament has remained largely unchanged and consistent. His policy
+in Parliament is as follows: he takes a seat in a room downstairs at
+Westminster, and takes from his breast pocket an excellent cigar-case,
+from which in turn he takes an excellent cigar. This he lights, and
+converses with other owners of such cigars on <i>equus celer</i> or such
+matters as may afford him entertainment. Two or three times in the
+afternoon a bell rings; whereupon he deposits the cigar in an ashtray
+with great particularity, taking care not to break the ash, and
+proceeds to an upstairs room, flanked with two passages. He then walks
+into whichever of the two passages shall be indicated to him by a
+young <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>man of the upper classes, holding a slip of paper. Having gone
+into this passage he comes out of it again, is counted by the young
+man and proceeds downstairs again; where he takes up the cigar once
+more, being careful not to break the ash. This process, which is known
+as Representative Government, has never called for any great variety
+in the manner of his life. Nevertheless, while his Parliamentary
+policy is unchanged, his change from one side of the House to the
+other did correspond with a certain change in his general policy in
+commerce and social life. The change of the party label is by this
+time quite a trifling matter; but there was in his case a change of
+philosophy or at least a change of project; though it was not so much
+becoming a Tory, as becoming rather the wrong kind of Socialist. He is
+a man with a history. It is a sad history, for he is certainly a less
+good man than he was when he started. That is why he is the man who is
+really behind Eugenics. It is because he has degenerated that he has
+come to talking of Degeneration.</p>
+
+<p>In his Radical days (to quote from one who corresponded in some ways
+to this type) he was a much better man, because he was a much less
+enlightened one. The hard impudence of his first Manchester
+Individualism was softened by two relatively humane qualities; the
+first was a much greater manliness in his pride; the second was a much
+greater sincerity in his optimism. For the first point, the modern
+capitalist is merely industrial; but this man was also industrious.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>He was proud of hard work; nay, he was even proud of low work&mdash;if he
+could speak of it in the past and not the present. In fact, he
+invented a new kind of Victorian snobbishness, an inverted
+snobbishness. While the snobs of Thackeray turned Muggins into De
+Mogyns, while the snobs of Dickens wrote letters describing themselves
+as officers' daughters "accustomed to every luxury&mdash;except spelling,"
+the Individualist spent his life in hiding his prosperous parents. He
+was more like an American plutocrat when he began; but he has since
+lost the American simplicity. The Frenchman works until he can play.
+The American works until he can't play; and then thanks the devil, his
+master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the
+Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he
+never worked at all. He becomes as far as possible another person&mdash;a
+country gentleman who has never heard of his shop; one whose left hand
+holding a gun knows not what his right hand doeth in a ledger. He uses
+a peerage as an alias, and a large estate as a sort of alibi. A stern
+Scotch minister remarked concerning the game of golf, with a terrible
+solemnity of manner, "the man who plays golf&mdash;he neglects his
+business, he forsakes his wife, he forgets his God." He did not seem
+to realise that it is the chief aim of many a modern capitalist's life
+to forget all three.</p>
+
+<p>This abandonment of a boyish vanity in work, this substitution of a
+senile vanity in indolence, this is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>first respect in which the
+rich Englishman has fallen. He was more of a man when he was at least
+a master-workman and not merely a master. And the second important
+respect in which he was better at the beginning is this: that he did
+then, in some hazy way, half believe that he was enriching other
+people as well as himself. The optimism of the early Victorian
+Individualists was not wholly hypocritical. Some of the
+clearest-headed and blackest-hearted of them, such as Malthus, saw
+where things were going, and boldly based their Manchester city on
+pessimism instead of optimism. But this was not the general case; most
+of the decent rich of the Bright and Cobden sort did have a kind of
+confused faith that the economic conflict would work well in the long
+run for everybody. They thought the troubles of the poor were
+incurable by State action (they thought that of all troubles), but
+they did not cold-bloodedly contemplate the prospect of those troubles
+growing worse and worse. By one of those tricks or illusions of the
+brain to which the luxurious are subject in all ages, they sometimes
+seemed to feel as if the populace had triumphed symbolically in their
+own persons. They blasphemously thought about their thrones of gold
+what can only be said about a cross&mdash;that they, being lifted up, would
+draw all men after them. They were so full of the romance that anybody
+could be Lord Mayor, that they seemed to have slipped into thinking
+that everybody could. It seemed as if a hundred Dick Whittingtons,
+accompanied by a hundred cats, could all be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>accommodated at the
+Mansion House. It was all nonsense; but it was not (until later) all
+humbug.</p>
+
+<p>Step by step, however, with a horrid and increasing clearness, this
+man discovered what he was doing. It is generally one of the worst
+discoveries a man can make. At the beginning, the British plutocrat
+was probably quite as honest in suggesting that every tramp carried a
+magic cat like Dick Whittington, as the Bonapartist patriot was in
+saying that every French soldier carried a marshal's <i>baton</i> in his
+knapsack. But it is exactly here that the difference and the danger
+appears. There is no comparison between a well-managed thing like
+Napoleon's army and an unmanageable thing like modern competition.
+Logically, doubtless, it was impossible that every soldier should
+carry a marshal's <i>baton</i>; they could not all be marshals any more
+than they could all be mayors. But if the French soldier did not
+always have a <i>baton</i> in his knapsack, he always had a knapsack. But
+when that Self-Helper who bore the adorable name of Smiles told the
+English tramp that he carried a coronet in his bundle, the English
+tramp had an unanswerable answer. He pointed out that he had no
+bundle. The powers that ruled him had not fitted him with a knapsack,
+any more than they had fitted him with a future&mdash;or even a present.
+The destitute Englishman, so far from hoping to become anything, had
+never been allowed even to be anything. The French soldier's ambition
+may have been in practice not only a short, but even a deliberately
+shortened ladder, in which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>the top rungs were knocked out. But for
+the English it was the bottom rungs that were knocked out, so that
+they could not even begin to climb. And sooner or later, in exact
+proportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began to
+understand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their
+impotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that his
+riches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could
+have been strong enough to make him rich. It is this paradox, as we
+shall see, that creates the curious difference between him and every
+other kind of robber.</p>
+
+<p>I think it is no more than justice to him to say that the knowledge,
+where it has come to him, has come to him slowly; and I think it came
+(as most things of common sense come) rather vaguely and as in a
+vision&mdash;that is, by the mere look of things. The old Cobdenite
+employer was quite within his rights in arguing that earth is not
+heaven, that the best obtainable arrangement might contain many
+necessary evils; and that Liverpool and Belfast might be growing more
+prosperous as a whole in spite of pathetic things that might be seen
+there. But I simply do not believe he has been able to look at
+Liverpool and Belfast and continue to think this: that is why he has
+turned himself into a sham country gentleman. Earth is not heaven, but
+the nearest we can get to heaven ought not to <i>look</i> like hell; and
+Liverpool and Belfast look like hell, whether they are or not. Such
+cities might be growing prosperous as a whole, though a few citizens
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>were more miserable. But it was more and more broadly apparent that it
+was exactly and precisely <i>as a whole</i> that they were not growing more
+prosperous, but only the few citizens who were growing more prosperous
+by their increasing misery. You could not say a country was becoming a
+white man's country when there were more and more black men in it
+every day. You could not say a community was more and more masculine
+when it was producing more and more women. Nor can you say that a city
+is growing richer and richer when more and more of its inhabitants are
+very poor men. There might be a false agitation founded on the pathos
+of individual cases in a community pretty normal in bulk. But the fact
+is that no one can take a cab across Liverpool without having a quite
+complete and unified impression that the pathos is not a pathos of
+individual cases, but a pathos in bulk. People talk of the Celtic
+sadness; but there are very few things in Ireland that look so sad as
+the Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery compared
+with the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournful
+friends to turn their attention to the pathos of Belfast. I think if
+they hung up the harp that once in Lord Furness's factory, there would
+be a chance of another string breaking.</p>
+
+<p>Broadly, and as things bulk to the eye, towns like Leeds, if placed
+beside towns like Rouen or Florence, or Chartres, or Cologne, do
+actually look like beggars walking among burghers. After that
+overpowering <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>and unpleasant impression it is really useless to argue
+that they are richer because a few of their parasites get rich enough
+to live somewhere else. The point may be put another way, thus: that
+it is not so much that these more modern cities have this or that
+monopoly of good or evil; it is that they have every good in its
+fourth-rate form and every evil in its worst form. For instance, that
+interesting weekly paper <i>The Nation</i> amiably rebuked Mr. Belloc and
+myself for suggesting that revelry and the praise of fermented liquor
+were more characteristic of Continental and Catholic communities than
+of communities with the religion and civilisation of Belfast. It said
+that if we would "cross the border" into Scotland, we should find out
+our mistake. Now, not only have I crossed the border, but I have had
+considerable difficulty in crossing the road in a Scotch town on a
+festive evening. Men were literally lying like piled-up corpses in the
+gutters, and from broken bottles whisky was pouring down the drains. I
+am not likely, therefore, to attribute a total and arid abstinence to
+the whole of industrial Scotland. But I never said that drinking was a
+mark rather of the Catholic countries. I said that <i>moderate</i> drinking
+was a mark rather of the Catholic countries. In other words, I say of
+the common type of Continental citizen, not that he is the only person
+who is drinking, but that he is the only person who knows how to
+drink. Doubtless gin is as much a feature of Hoxton as beer is a
+feature of Munich. But who is the connoisseur who prefers the gin of
+Hoxton to the beer of Munich? <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>Doubtless the Protestant Scotch ask for
+"Scotch," as the men of Burgundy ask for Burgundy. But do we find them
+lying in heaps on each side of the road when we walk through a
+Burgundian village? Do we find the French peasant ready to let
+Burgundy escape down a drain-pipe? Now this one point, on which I
+accept <i>The Nation's</i> challenge, can be exactly paralleled on almost
+every point by which we test a civilisation. It does not matter
+whether we are for alcohol or against it. On either argument Glasgow
+is more objectionable than Rouen. The French abstainer makes less
+fuss; the French drinker gives less offence. It is so with property,
+with war, with everything. I can understand a teetotaler being
+horrified, on his principles, at Italian wine-drinking. I simply
+cannot believe he could be <i>more</i> horrified at it than at Hoxton
+gin-drinking. I can understand a Pacifist, with his special scruples,
+disliking the militarism of Belfort. I flatly deny that he can dislike
+it <i>more</i> than the militarism of Berlin. I can understand a good
+Socialist hating the petty cares of the distributed peasant property.
+I deny that any good Socialist can hate them <i>more</i> than he hates the
+large cares of Rockefeller. That is the unique tragedy of the
+plutocratic state to-day; it has <i>no</i> successes to hold up against the
+failures it alleges to exist in Latin or other methods. You can (if
+you are well out of his reach) call the Irish rustic debased and
+superstitious. I defy you to contrast his debasement and superstition
+with the citizenship and enlightenment of the English rustic.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>To-day the rich man knows in his heart that he is a cancer and not an
+organ of the State. He differs from all other thieves or parasites for
+this reason: that the brigand who takes by force wishes his victims to
+be rich. But he who wins by a one-sided contract actually wishes them
+to be poor. Rob Roy in a cavern, hearing a company approaching, will
+hope (or if in a pious mood, pray) that they may come laden with gold
+or goods. But Mr. Rockefeller, in his factory, knows that if those who
+pass are laden with goods they will pass on. He will therefore (if in
+a pious mood) pray that they may be destitute, and so be forced to
+work his factory for him for a starvation wage. It is said (and also,
+I believe, disputed) that Bl&uuml;cher riding through the richer parts of
+London exclaimed, "What a city to sack!" But Bl&uuml;cher was a soldier if
+he was a bandit. The true sweater feels quite otherwise. It is when he
+drives through the poorest parts of London that he finds the streets
+paved with gold, being paved with prostrate servants; it is when he
+sees the grey lean leagues of Bow and Poplar that his soul is uplifted
+and he knows he is secure. This is not rhetoric, but economics.</p>
+
+<p>I repeat that up to a point the profiteer was innocent because he was
+ignorant; he had been lured on by easy and accommodating events. He
+was innocent as the new Thane of Glamis was innocent, as the new Thane
+of Cawdor was innocent; but the King&mdash;&mdash; The modern manufacturer, like
+Macbeth, decided to march on, under the mute menace of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>heavens.
+He knew that the spoil of the poor was in his houses; but he could
+not, after careful calculation, think of any way in which they could
+get it out of his houses without being arrested for housebreaking. He
+faced the future with a face flinty with pride and impenitence. This
+period can be dated practically by the period when the old and genuine
+Protestant religion of England began to fail; and the average business
+man began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he
+was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to
+scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way
+out. But in any case, the man who had made a mistake not only refused
+to unmake it, but decided to go on making it. But in this he made yet
+another most amusing mistake, which was the beginning of all
+Eugenics.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IVA" id="CHAPTER_IVA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>By a quaint paradox, we generally miss the meaning of simple stories
+because we are not subtle enough to understand their simplicity. As
+long as men were in sympathy with some particular religion or other
+romance of things in general, they saw the thing solid and swallowed
+it whole, knowing that it could not disagree with them. But the moment
+men have lost the instinct of being simple in order to understand it,
+they have to be very subtle in order to understand it. We can find,
+for instance, a very good working case in those old puritanical
+nursery tales about the terrible punishment of trivial sins; about how
+Tommy was drowned for fishing on the Sabbath, or Sammy struck by
+lightning for going out after dark. Now these moral stories are
+immoral, because Calvinism is immoral. They are wrong, because
+Puritanism is wrong. But they are not quite so wrong, they are not a
+quarter so wrong, as many superficial sages have supposed.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is that everything that ever came out of a human mouth had a
+human meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such a
+fool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great-grandmothers
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>told a child he might be drowned by breaking the Sabbath, their souls
+(though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not
+in quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god
+was a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form
+of religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it
+did correspond to a certain reality in psychology which most people of
+any religion, or even of none, have felt a touch of at some time or
+other. Leaving out theological terms as far as possible, it is the
+subconscious feeling that one can be wrong with Nature as well as
+right with Nature; that the point of wrongness may be a detail (in the
+superstitions of heathens this is often quite a triviality); but that
+if one is really wrong with Nature, there is no particular reason why
+all her rivers should not drown or all her storm-bolts strike one who
+is, by this vague yet vivid hypothesis, her enemy. This may be a
+mental sickness, but it is too human or too mortal a sickness to be
+called solely a superstition. It is not solely a superstition; it is
+not simply superimposed upon human nature by something that has got on
+top of it. It flourishes without check among non-Christian systems,
+and it flourishes especially in Calvinism, because Calvinism is the
+most non-Christian of Christian systems. But like everything else that
+inheres in the natural senses and spirit of man, it has something in
+it; it is not stark unreason. If it is an ill (and it generally is),
+it is one of the ills that flesh is heir to, but he is the lawful
+heir. And like many other <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>dubious or dangerous human instincts or
+appetites, it is sometimes useful as a warning against worse things.</p>
+
+<p>Now the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from the
+loss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathen
+mysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe
+in Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they
+overlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps
+Julius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in
+Jupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of
+that age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit
+personal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are
+not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, while
+the heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queer
+coincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whether
+they were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his own
+brain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain such
+notions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modern
+sceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural.
+And this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrant
+literally pagan might possibly not have done.</p>
+
+<p>There is one idea of this kind that runs through most popular tales
+(those, for instance, on which Shakespeare is so often based)&mdash;an idea
+that is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is what
+may be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take my
+advantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage.
+Thus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reason
+to become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had a
+fallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. He
+forgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on it
+can. Thus Shylock had a fallacy of physiology; he forgot that, if you
+break into the house of life, you find it a bloody house in the most
+emphatic sense. But the modern capitalist did not read fairy-tales,
+and never looked for the little omens at the turnings of the road. He
+(or the most intelligent section of him) had by now realised his
+position, and knew in his heart it was a false position. He thought a
+margin of men out of work was good for his business; he could no
+longer really think it was good for his country. He could no longer be
+the old "hard-headed" man who simply did not understand things; he
+could only be the hard-hearted man who faced them. But he still
+marched on; he was sure he had made no mistake.</p>
+
+<p>However, he had made a mistake&mdash;as definite as a mistake in
+multiplication. It may be summarised thus: that the same inequality
+and insecurity that makes cheap labour may make bad labour, and at
+last no labour at all. It was as if a man who wanted something from an
+enemy, should at last reduce the enemy to come knocking at his door in
+the despair of winter, should keep him waiting in the snow to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>sharpen
+the bargain; and then come out to find the man dead upon the doorstep.</p>
+
+<p>He had discovered the divine boomerang; his sin had found him out. The
+experiment of Individualism&mdash;the keeping of the worker half in and
+half out of work&mdash;was far too ingenious not to contain a flaw. It was
+too delicate a balance to work entirely with the strength of the
+starved and the vigilance of the benighted. It was too desperate a
+course to rely wholly on desperation. And as time went on the terrible
+truth slowly declared itself; the degraded class was really
+degenerating. It was right and proper enough to use a man as a tool;
+but the tool, ceaselessly used, was being used up. It was quite
+reasonable and respectable, of course, to fling a man away like a
+tool; but when it was flung away in the rain the tool rusted. But the
+comparison to a tool was insufficient for an awful reason that had
+already begun to dawn upon the master's mind. If you pick up a hammer,
+you do not find a whole family of nails clinging to it. If you fling
+away a chisel by the roadside, it does not litter and leave a lot of
+little chisels. But the meanest of the tools, Man, had still this
+strange privilege which God had given him, doubtless by mistake.
+Despite all improvements in machinery, the most important part of the
+machinery (the fittings technically described in the trade as "hands")
+were apparently growing worse. The firm was not only encumbered with
+one useless servant, but he immediately turned himself into five
+useless servants. "The poor should not be emancipated," the old
+reactionaries used to say, "until they are fit for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>freedom." But if
+this downrush went on, it looked as if the poor would not stand high
+enough to be fit for slavery.</p>
+
+<p>So at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree subconsciously, to
+the man who had wagered all his wealth on the usefulness of the poor
+to the rich and the dependence of the rich on the poor. The time came
+at last when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below ceased to
+be a supply, and began to be something like a wastage; ceased to be
+something like keeping foxhounds, and began alarmingly to resemble a
+necessity of shooting foxes. The situation was aggravated by the fact
+that these sexual pleasures were often the only ones the very poor
+could obtain, and were, therefore, disproportionately pursued, and by
+the fact that their conditions were often such that prenatal
+nourishment and such things were utterly abnormal. The consequences
+began to appear. To a much less extent than the Eugenists assert, but
+still to a notable extent, in a much looser sense than the Eugenists
+assume, but still in some sort of sense, the types that were
+inadequate or incalculable or uncontrollable began to increase. Under
+the hedges of the country, on the seats of the parks, loafing under
+the bridges or leaning over the Embankment, began to appear a new race
+of men&mdash;men who are certainly not mad, whom we shall gain no
+scientific light by calling feeble-minded, but who are, in varying
+individual degrees, dazed or drink-sodden, or lazy or tricky or tired
+in body and spirit. In a far less degree than the teetotallers tell
+us, but still in a large degree, the traffic in gin and bad <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>beer
+(itself a capitalist enterprise) fostered the evil, though it had not
+begun it. Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men who
+seemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesore
+in the market-place and a terror on the empty roads. The rich were
+afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, as I have hinted before, the act of keeping the destitute
+out of public life, and crushing them under confused laws, had an
+effect on their intelligences which paralyses them even as a
+proletariat. Modern people talk of "Reason versus Authority"; but
+authority itself involves reason, or its orders would not even be
+understood. If you say to your valet, "Look after the buttons on my
+waistcoat," he may do it, even if you throw a boot at his head. But if
+you say to him, "Look after the buttons on my top-hat," he will not do
+it, though you empty a boot-shop over him. If you say to a schoolboy,
+"Write out that Ode of Horace from memory in the original Latin," he
+may do it without a flogging. If you say, "Write out that Ode of
+Horace in the original German," he will not do it with a thousand
+floggings. If you will not learn logic, he certainly will not learn
+Latin. And the ludicrous laws to which the needy are subject (such as
+that which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, I
+think, a great deal to do with a certain increase in their
+sheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrial
+inefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory,
+a man actually acquitted by judge and jury could <i>then</i> be examined by
+doctors as to the state of his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>mind&mdash;presumably in order to discover
+by what diseased eccentricity he had refrained from the crime. In
+other words, when the police cannot jail a man who is innocent of
+doing something, they jail him for being too innocent to do anything.
+I do not suppose the man is an idiot at all, but I can believe he
+feels more like one after the legal process than before. Thus all the
+factors&mdash;the bodily exhaustion, the harassing fear of hunger, the
+reckless refuge in sexuality, and the black botheration of bad
+laws&mdash;combined to make the employee more unemployable.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is very important to understand here that there were two
+courses of action still open to the disappointed capitalist confronted
+by the new peril of this real or alleged decay. First, he might have
+reversed his machine, so to speak, and started unwinding the long rope
+of dependence by which he had originally dragged the proletarian to
+his feet. In other words, he might have seen that the workmen had more
+money, more leisure, more luxuries, more status in the community, and
+then trusted to the normal instincts of reasonably happy human beings
+to produce a generation better born, bred and cared for than these
+tortured types that were less and less use to him. It might still not
+be too late to rebuild the human house upon such an architectural plan
+that poverty might fly out of the window, with the reasonable prospect
+of love coming in at the door. In short, he might have let the English
+poor, the mass of whom were not weak-minded, though more of them were
+growing weaker, a reasonable chance, in the form of more money, of
+achieving their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>eugenical resurrection themselves. It has never been
+shown, and it cannot be shown, that the method would have failed. But
+it can be shown, and it must be closely and clearly noted, that the
+method had very strict limitations from the employers' own point of
+view. If they made the worker too comfortable, he would not work to
+increase another's comforts; if they made him too independent, he
+would not work like a dependent. If, for instance, his wages were so
+good that he could save out of them, he might cease to be a
+wage-earner. If his house or garden were his own, he might stand an
+economic siege in it. The whole capitalist experiment had been built
+on his dependence; but now it was getting out of hand, not in the
+direction of freedom, but of frank helplessness. One might say that
+his dependence had got independent of control.</p>
+
+<p>But there was another way. And towards this the employer's ideas
+began, first darkly and unconsciously, but now more and more clearly,
+to drift. Giving property, giving leisure, giving status costs money.
+But there is one human force that costs nothing. As it does not cost
+the beggar a penny to indulge, so it would not cost the employer a
+penny to employ. He could not alter or improve the tables or the
+chairs on the cheap. But there were two pieces of furniture (labelled
+respectively "the husband" and "the wife") whose relations were much
+cheaper. He could alter the <i>marriage</i> in the house in such a way as
+to promise himself the largest possible number of the kind of children
+he did want, with the smallest possible number of the kind he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>did
+not. He could divert the force of sex from producing vagabonds. And he
+could harness to his high engines unbought the red unbroken river of
+the blood of a man in his youth, as he has already harnessed to them
+all the wild waste rivers of the world.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VA" id="CHAPTER_VA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>Now, if any ask whether it be imaginable that an ordinary man of the
+wealthier type should analyse the problem or conceive the plan, the
+inhumanly far-seeing plan, as I have set it forth, the answer is:
+"Certainly not." Many rich employers are too generous to do such a
+thing; many are too stupid to know what they are doing. The eugenical
+opportunity I have described is but an ultimate analysis of a whole
+drift of thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse his
+thoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string of
+rickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. But
+prosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even ask
+himself whether he means "How can I help them?" or "How can I use
+them?"&mdash;what he can still do for them, or what they could still do for
+him. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more than
+the former; he laments the breaking of the tools of Mammon much more
+than the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossible
+to grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert that
+there is one thing he doesn't think. He doesn't think, "This man might
+be as jolly as I am, if he need not come to me for work or wages."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are
+multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity
+miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a
+sense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist
+industrialism being sacrificed to any other object. By a curious
+recurrent slip in the mind, as irritating as a catch in a clock,
+people miss the main thing and concentrate on the mean thing. "Modern
+conditions" are treated as fixed, though the very word "modern"
+implies that they are fugitive. "Old ideas" are treated as impossible,
+though their very antiquity often proves their permanence. Some years
+ago some ladies petitioned that the platforms of our big railway
+stations should be raised, as it was more convenient for the hobble
+skirt. It never occurred to them to change to a sensible skirt. Still
+less did it occur to them that, compared with all the female fashions
+that have fluttered about on it, by this time St. Pancras is as
+historic as St. Peter's.</p>
+
+<p>I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious
+assumption that life and sex must live by the laws of "business" or
+industrialism, and not <i>vice versa</i>; examples from all the magazines,
+novels, and newspapers. In order to make it brief and typical, I take
+one case of a more or less Eugenist sort from a paper that lies open
+in front of me&mdash;a paper that still bears on its forehead the boast of
+being peculiarly an organ of democracy in revolt. To this a man writes
+to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we
+have educated <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>the lower classes in the methods by which the upper
+classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to
+sign his letter "Hopeful." Well, there are certainly many methods by
+which people in the upper classes prevent procreation; one of them is
+what used to be called "platonic friendship," till they found another
+name for it at the Old Bailey. I do not suppose the hopeful gentleman
+hopes for this; but some of us find the abortion he does hope for
+almost as abominable. That, however, is not the curious point. The
+curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "When
+people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high
+infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are
+stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a
+time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if
+there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly
+takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately
+shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of
+human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries,
+things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted
+children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the
+parents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do not
+want to pay them properly. Doubtless, if you said to him directly,
+"Are you in favour of low wages?" he would say, "No." But I am not, in
+this chapter, talking about the effect on such modern minds of a
+cross-examination to which they do not subject <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>themselves. I am
+talking about the way their minds work, the instinctive trick and turn
+of their thoughts, the things they assume before argument, and the way
+they faintly feel that the world is going. And, frankly, the turn of
+their mind is to tell the child he is not wanted, as the turn of my
+mind is to tell the profiteer he is not wanted. Motherhood, they feel,
+and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good
+things in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the
+mutilation of womanhood, and the massacre of men unborn, he signs
+himself "Hopeful." He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human
+annihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself
+"Hopeless."</p>
+
+<p>This is the first evidence of motive: the ubiquitous assumption that
+life and love must fit into a fixed framework of employment, even (as
+in this case) of bad employment. The second evidence is the tacit and
+total neglect of the scientific question in all the departments in
+which it is not an employment question; as, for instance, the
+marriages of the princely, patrician, or merely plutocratic houses. I
+do not mean, of course, that no scientific men have rigidly tackled
+these, though I do not recall any cases. But I am not talking of the
+merits of individual men of science, but of the push and power behind
+this movement, the thing that is able to make it fashionable and
+politically important. I say, if this power were an interest in truth,
+or even in humanity, the first field in which to study would be in the
+weddings of the wealthy. Not only would the records be more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>lucid,
+and the examples more in evidence, but the cases would be more
+interesting and more decisive. For the grand marriages have presented
+both extremes of the problem of pedigree&mdash;first the "breeding in and
+in," and later the most incongruous cosmopolitan blends. It would
+really be interesting to note which worked the best, or what point of
+compromise was safest. For the poor (about whom the newspaper
+Eugenists are always talking) cannot offer any test cases so complete.
+Waiters never had to marry waitresses, as princes had to marry
+princesses. And (for the other extreme) housemaids seldom marry Red
+Indians. It may be because there are none to marry. But to the
+millionaires the continents are flying railway stations, and the most
+remote races can be rapidly linked together. A marriage in London or
+Paris may chain Ravenna to Chicago, or Ben Cruachan to Bagdad. Many
+European aristocrats marry Americans, notoriously the most mixed stock
+in the world; so that the disinterested Eugenist, with a little
+trouble, might reveal rich stores of negro or Asiatic blood to his
+delighted employer. Instead of which he dulls our ears and distresses
+our refinement by tedious denunciations of the monochrome marriages of
+the poor.</p>
+
+<p>For there is something really pathetic about the Eugenist's neglect of
+the aristocrat and his family affairs. People still talk about the
+pride of pedigree; but it strikes me as the one point on which the
+aristocrats are almost morbidly modest. We should be learned Eugenists
+if we were allowed to know <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>half as much of their heredity as we are
+of their hairdressing. We see the modern aristocrat in the most human
+poses in the illustrated papers, playing with his dog or parrot&mdash;nay,
+we see him playing with his child, or with his grandchild. But there
+is something heartrending in his refusal to play with his grandfather.
+There is often something vague and even fantastic about the
+antecedents of our most established families, which would afford the
+Eugenist admirable scope not only for investigation but for
+experiment. Certainly, if he could obtain the necessary powers, the
+Eugenist might bring off some startling effects with the mixed
+materials of the governing class. Suppose, to take wild and
+hypothetical examples, he were to marry a Scotch earl, say, to the
+daughter of a Jewish banker, or an English duke to an American parvenu
+of semi-Jewish extraction? What would happen? We have here an
+unexplored field.</p>
+
+<p>It remains unexplored not merely through snobbery and cowardice, but
+because the Eugenist (at least the influential Eugenist)
+half-consciously knows it is no part of his job; what he is really
+wanted for is to get the grip of the governing classes on to the
+unmanageable output of poor people. It would not matter in the least
+if all Lord Cowdray's descendants grew up too weak to hold a tool or
+turn a wheel. It would matter very much, especially to Lord Cowdray,
+if all his employees grew up like that. The oligarch can be
+unemployable, because he will not be employed. Thus the practical and
+popular exponent of Eugenics has his face always turned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>towards the
+slums, and instinctively thinks in terms of them. If he talks of
+segregating some incurably vicious type of the sexual sort, he is
+thinking of a ruffian who assaults girls in lanes. He is not thinking
+of a millionaire like White, the victim of Thaw. If he speaks of the
+hopelessness of feeble-mindedness, he is thinking of some stunted
+creature gaping at hopeless lessons in a poor school. He is not
+thinking of a millionaire like Thaw, the slayer of White. And this not
+because he is such a brute as to like people like White or Thaw any
+more than we do, but because he knows that <i>his</i> problem is the
+degeneration of the useful classes; because he knows that White would
+never have been a millionaire if all his workers had spent themselves
+on women as White did, that Thaw would never have been a millionaire
+if all his servants had been Thaws. The ornaments may be allowed to
+decay, but the machinery <i>must</i> be mended. That is the second proof of
+the plutocratic impulse behind all Eugenics: that no one thinks of
+applying it to the prominent classes. No one thinks of applying it
+where it could most easily be applied.</p>
+
+<p>A third proof is the strange new disposition to regard the poor as a
+<i>race</i>; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies. It can be
+most clearly seen by comparing it with the old, more individual,
+charitable, and (as the Eugenists might say) sentimental view of
+poverty. In Goldsmith or Dickens or Hood there is a basic idea that
+the particular poor person ought not to be so poor: it is some
+accident or some wrong. Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim are fairy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>princes
+waiting for their fairy godmother. They are held as slaves, but rather
+as the hero and heroine of a Spanish or Italian romance were held as
+slaves by the Moors. The modern poor are getting to be regarded as
+slaves in the separate and sweeping sense of the negroes in the
+plantations. The bondage of the white hero to the black master was
+regarded as abnormal; the bondage of the black to the white master as
+normal. The Eugenist, for all I know, would regard the mere existence
+of Tiny Tim as a sufficient reason for massacring the whole family of
+Cratchit; but, as a matter of fact, we have here a very good instance
+of how much more practically true to life is sentiment than cynicism.
+The poor are <i>not</i> a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk
+about breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact,
+what Dickens describes: "a dustbin of individual accidents," of
+damaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility. The class very
+largely consists of perfectly promising children, lost like Oliver
+Twist, or crippled like Tiny Tim. It contains very valuable things,
+like most dustbins. But the Eugenist delusion of the barbaric breed in
+the abyss affects even those more gracious philanthropists who almost
+certainly do want to assist the destitute and not merely to exploit
+them. It seems to affect not only their minds, but their very
+eyesight. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Alec Tweedie almost scornfully
+asks, "When we go through the slums, do we see beautiful children?"
+The answer is, "Yes, very often indeed." I have seen children in the
+slums quite pretty enough to be Little Nell or the outcast whom <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>Hood
+called "young and so fair." Nor has the beauty anything necessarily to
+do with health; there are beautiful healthy children, beautiful dying
+children, ugly dying children, ugly uproarious children in Petticoat
+Lane or Park Lane. There are people of every physical and mental type,
+of every sort of health and breeding, in a single back street. They
+have nothing in common but the wrong we do them.</p>
+
+<p>The important point is, however, that there is more fact and realism
+in the wildest and most elegant old fictions about disinherited dukes
+and long-lost daughters than there is in this Eugenist attempt to make
+the poor all of a piece&mdash;a sort of black fungoid growth that is
+ceaselessly increasing in a chasm. There is a cheap sneer at poor
+landladies: that they always say they have seen better days. Nine
+times out of ten they say it because it is true. What can be said of
+the great mass of Englishmen, by anyone who knows any history, except
+that they have seen better days? And the landlady's claim is not
+snobbish, but rather spirited; it is her testimony to the truth in the
+old tales of which I spoke: that she <i>ought not</i> to be so poor or so
+servile in status; that a normal person ought to have more property
+and more power in the State than <i>that</i>. Such dreams of lost dignity
+are perhaps the only things that stand between us and the
+cattle-breeding paradise now promised. Nor are such dreams by any
+means impotent. I remember Mr. T.P. O'Connor wrote an interesting
+article about Madame Humbert, in the course of which he said that
+Irish peasants, and probably most peasants, tended to have a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>half-fictitious family legend about an estate to which they were
+entitled. This was written in the time when Irish peasants were
+landless in their land; and the delusion doubtless seemed all the more
+entertaining to the landlords who ruled them and the money-lenders who
+ruled the landlords. But the dream has conquered the realities. The
+phantom farms have materialised. Merely by tenaciously affirming the
+kind of pride that comes after a fall, by remembering the old
+civilisation and refusing the new, by recurring to an old claim that
+seemed to most Englishmen like the lie of a broken-down lodging-house
+keeper at Margate&mdash;by all this the Irish have got what they want, in
+solid mud and turf. That imaginary estate has conquered the Three
+Estates of the Realm.</p>
+
+<p>But the homeless Englishman must not even remember a home. So far from
+his house being his castle, he must not have even a castle in the air.
+He must have no memories; that is why he is taught no history. Why is
+he told none of the truth about the medi&aelig;val civilisation except a few
+cruelties and mistakes in chemistry? Why does a medi&aelig;val burgher never
+appear till he can appear in a shirt and a halter? Why does a medi&aelig;val
+monastery never appear till it is "corrupt" enough to shock the
+innocence of Henry VIII.? Why do we hear of one charter&mdash;that of the
+barons&mdash;and not a word of the charters of the carpenters, smiths,
+shipwrights and all the rest? The reason is that the English peasant
+is not only not allowed to have an estate, he is not even allowed to
+have lost one. The past has to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>painted pitch black, that it may be
+worse than the present.</p>
+
+<p>There is one strong, startling, outstanding thing about Eugenics, and
+that is its meanness. Wealth, and the social science supported by
+wealth, had tried an inhuman experiment. The experiment had entirely
+failed. They sought to make wealth accumulate&mdash;and they made men
+decay. Then, instead of confessing the error, and trying to restore
+the wealth, or attempting to repair the decay, they are trying to
+cover their first cruel experiment with a more cruel experiment. They
+put a poisonous plaster on a poisoned wound. Vilest of all, they
+actually quote the bewilderment produced among the poor by their first
+blunder as a reason for allowing them to blunder again. They are
+apparently ready to arrest all the opponents of their system as mad,
+merely because the system was maddening. Suppose a captain had
+collected volunteers in a hot, waste country by the assurance that he
+could lead them to water, and knew where to meet the rest of his
+regiment. Suppose he led them wrong, to a place where the regiment
+could not be for days, and there was no water. And suppose sunstroke
+struck them down on the sand man after man, and they kicked and danced
+and raved. And, when at last the regiment came, suppose the captain
+successfully concealed his mistake, because all his men had suffered
+too much from it to testify to its ever having occurred. What would
+you think of the gallant captain? It is pretty much what I think of
+this particular captain of industry.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, nobody supposes that all Capitalists, or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>most Capitalists,
+are conscious of any such intellectual trick. Most of them are as much
+bewildered as the battered proletariat; but there are some who are
+less well-meaning and more mean. And these are leading their more
+generous colleagues towards the fulfilment of this ungenerous evasion,
+if not towards the comprehension of it. Now a ruler of the Capitalist
+civilisation, who has come to consider the idea of ultimately herding
+and breeding the workers like cattle, has certain contemporary
+problems to review. He has to consider what forces still exist in the
+modern world for the frustration of his design. The first question is
+how much remains of the old ideal of individual liberty. The second
+question is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarian
+ideas as may be implied in Socialism. The third is whether there is
+any power of resistance in the tradition of the populace itself. These
+three questions for the future I shall consider in their order in the
+final chapters that follow. It is enough to say here that I think the
+progress of these ideals has broken down at the precise point where
+they will fail to prevent the experiment. Briefly, the progress will
+have deprived the Capitalist of his old Individualist scruples,
+without committing him to his new Collectivist obligations. He is in a
+very perilous position; for he has ceased to be a Liberal without
+becoming a Socialist, and the bridge by which he was crossing has
+broken above an abyss of Anarchy.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIA" id="CHAPTER_VIA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>If such a thing as the Eugenic sociology had been suggested in the
+period from Fox to Gladstone, it would have been far more fiercely
+repudiated by the reformers than by the Conservatives. If Tories had
+regarded it as an insult to marriage, Radicals would have far more
+resolutely regarded it as an insult to citizenship. But in the
+interval we have suffered from a process resembling a sort of mystical
+parricide, such as is told of so many gods, and is true of so many
+great ideas. Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has
+destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it
+unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they
+were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it
+undefended. Men merely finding themselves free found themselves free
+to dispute the value of freedom. But the important point to seize
+about this reactionary scepticism is that as it is bound to be
+unlimited in theory, so it is bound to be unlimited in practice. In
+other words, the modern mind is set in an attitude which would enable
+it to advance, not only towards Eugenic legislation, but towards any
+conceivable or inconceivable extravagances of Eugenics.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>Those who reply to any plea for freedom invariably fall into a certain
+trap. I have debated with numberless different people on these
+matters, and I confess I find it amusing to see them tumbling into it
+one after another. I remember discussing it before a club of very
+active and intelligent Suffragists, and I cast it here for convenience
+in the form which it there assumed. Suppose, for the sake of argument,
+that I say that to take away a poor man's pot of beer is to take away
+a poor man's personal liberty, it is very vital to note what is the
+usual or almost universal reply. People hardly ever do reply, for some
+reason or other, by saying that a man's liberty consists of such and
+such things, but that beer is an exception that cannot be classed
+among them, for such and such reasons. What they almost invariably do
+say is something like this: "After all, what is liberty? Man must live
+as a member of a society, and must obey those laws which, etc., etc."
+In other words, they collapse into a complete confession that they
+<i>are</i> attacking all liberty and any liberty; that they <i>do</i> deny the
+very existence or the very possibility of liberty. In the very form of
+the answer they admit the full scope of the accusation against them.
+In trying to rebut the smaller accusation, they plead guilty to the
+larger one.</p>
+
+<p>This distinction is very important, as can be seen from any practical
+parallel. Suppose we wake up in the middle of the night and find that
+a neighbour has entered the house not by the front-door but by the
+skylight; we may suspect that he has come after the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>fine old family
+jewellery. We may be reassured if he can refer it to a really
+exceptional event; as that he fell on to the roof out of an aeroplane,
+or climbed on to the roof to escape from a mad dog. Short of the
+incredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for an
+extraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shall
+hardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistful
+fashion and says, "After all, what is property? Why should material
+objects be thus artificially attached, etc., etc.?" We shall merely
+realise that his attitude allows of his taking the jewellery and
+everything else. Or if the neighbour approaches us carrying a large
+knife dripping with blood, we may be convinced by his story that he
+killed another neighbour in self-defence, that the quiet gentleman
+next door was really a homicidal maniac. We shall know that homicidal
+mania is exceptional and that we ourselves are so happy as not to
+suffer from it; and being free from the disease may be free from the
+danger. But it will not soothe us for the man with the gory knife to
+say softly and pensively "After all, what is human life? Why should we
+cling to it? Brief at the best, sad at the brightest, it is itself but
+a disease from which, etc., etc." We shall perceive that the sceptic
+is in a mood not only to murder us but to massacre everybody in the
+street. Exactly the same effect which would be produced by the
+questions of "What is property?" and "What is life?" is produced by
+the question of "What is liberty?" It leaves the questioner free to
+disregard any liberty, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>or in other words to take any liberties. The
+very thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he may
+choose to do. If he gags a man to prevent him from indulging in
+profane swearing, or locks him in the coal cellar to guard against his
+going on the spree, he can still be satisfied with saying, "After all,
+what is liberty? Man is a member of, etc., etc."</p>
+
+<p>That is the problem, and that is why there is now no protection
+against Eugenic or any other experiments. If the men who took away
+beer as an unlawful pleasure had paused for a moment to define the
+lawful pleasures, there might be a different situation. If the men who
+had denied one liberty had taken the opportunity to affirm other
+liberties, there might be some defence for them. But it never occurs
+to them to admit any liberties at all. It never so much as crosses
+their minds. Hence the excuse for the last oppression will always
+serve as well for the next oppression; and to that tyranny there can
+be no end.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secret
+and sacred places of personal freedom, where no sane man ever dreamed
+of seeing it; and especially the sanctuary of sex. It is as easy to
+take away a man's wife or baby as to take away his beer when you can
+say "What is liberty?"; just as it is as easy to cut off his head as
+to cut off his hair if you are free to say "What is life?" There is no
+rational philosophy of human rights generally disseminated among the
+populace, to which we can appeal in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>defence even of the most intimate
+or individual things that anybody can imagine. For so far as there was
+a vague principle in these things, that principle has been wholly
+changed. It used to be said that a man could have liberty, so long as
+it did not interfere with the liberty of others. This did afford some
+rough justification for the ordinary legal view of the man with the
+pot of beer. For instance, it was logical to allow some degree of
+distinction between beer and tea, on the ground that a man may be
+moved by excess of beer to throw the pot at somebody's head. And it
+may be said that the spinster is seldom moved by excess of tea to
+throw the tea-pot at anybody's head. But the whole ground of argument
+is now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to
+others by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking
+the beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that the
+Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment
+that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between
+beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with
+tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the
+hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is
+to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control
+all the habits of all the citizens, and among the rest their habits in
+the matter of sex.</p>
+
+<p>But there is more than this. It is not only true that it is the last
+liberties of man that are being taken <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>away; and not merely his first
+or most superficial liberties. It is also inevitable that the last
+liberties should be taken first. It is inevitable that the most
+private matters should be most under public coercion. This inverse
+variation is very important, though very little realised. If a man's
+personal health is a public concern, his most private acts are <i>more</i>
+public than his most public acts. The official must deal <i>more</i>
+directly with his cleaning his teeth in the morning than with his
+using his tongue in the market-place. The inspector must interfere
+<i>more</i> with how he sleeps in the middle of the night than with how he
+works in the course of the day. The private citizen must have much
+<i>less</i> to say about his bath or his bedroom window than about his vote
+or his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a private
+detective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in public
+affairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he should
+sneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All this
+and things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that the
+State must make itself responsible for the health of the citizen. But
+the point is that the policeman must deal primarily and promptly with
+the citizen in his relation to his home, and only indirectly and more
+doubtfully with the citizen in his relation to his city. By the whole
+logic of this test, the king must hear what is said in the inner
+chamber and hardly notice what is proclaimed from the house-tops. We
+have heard of a revolution that turns everything upside down. But
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>this is almost literally a revolution that turns everything inside
+out.</p>
+
+<p>If a wary reactionary of the tradition of Metternich had wished in the
+nineteenth century to reverse the democratic tendency, he would
+naturally have begun by depriving the democracy of its margin of more
+dubious powers over more distant things. He might well begin, for
+instance, by removing the control of foreign affairs from popular
+assemblies; and there is a case for saying that a people may
+understand its own affairs, without knowing anything whatever about
+foreign affairs. Then he might centralise great national questions,
+leaving a great deal of local government in local questions. This
+would proceed so for a long time before it occurred to the blackest
+terrorist of the despotic ages to interfere with a man's own habits in
+his own house. But the new sociologists and legislators are, by the
+nature of their theory, bound to begin where the despots leave off,
+even if they leave off where the despots begin. For them, as they
+would put it, the first things must be the very fountains of life,
+love and birth and babyhood; and these are always covered fountains,
+flowing in the quiet courts of the home. For them, as Mr. H.G. Wells
+put it, life itself may be regarded merely as a tissue of births. Thus
+they are coerced by their own rational principle to begin all coercion
+at the other end; at the inside end. What happens to the outside end,
+the external and remote powers of the citizen, they do not very much
+care; and it is probable that the democratic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>institutions of recent
+centuries will be allowed to decay in undisturbed dignity for a
+century or two more. Thus our civilisation will find itself in an
+interesting situation, not without humour; in which the citizen is
+still supposed to wield imperial powers over the ends of the earth,
+but has admittedly no power over his own body and soul at all. He will
+still be consulted by politicians about whether opium is good for
+China-men, but not about whether ale is good for him. He will be
+cross-examined for his opinions about the danger of allowing Kamskatka
+to have a war-fleet, but not about allowing his own child to have a
+wooden sword. About all, he will be consulted about the delicate
+diplomatic crisis created by the proposed marriage of the Emperor of
+China, and not allowed to marry as he pleases.</p>
+
+<p>Part of this prophecy or probability has already been accomplished;
+the rest of it, in the absence of any protest, is in process of
+accomplishment. It would be easy to give an almost endless catalogue
+of examples, to show how, in dealing with the poorer classes at least,
+coercion has already come near to a direct control of the relations of
+the sexes. But I am much more concerned in this chapter to point out
+that all these things have been adopted in principle, even where they
+have not been adopted in practice. It is much more vital to realise
+that the reformers have possessed themselves of a <i>principle</i>, which
+will cover all such things if it be granted, and which is not
+sufficiently comprehended to be contradicted. It is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>a principle
+whereby the deepest things of flesh and spirit must have the most
+direct relation with the dictatorship of the State. They must have it,
+by the whole reason and rationale upon which the thing depends. It is
+a system that might be symbolised by the telephone from headquarters
+standing by a man's bed. He must have a relation to Government like
+his relation to God. That is, the more he goes into the inner
+chambers, and the more he closes the doors, the more he is alone with
+the law. The social machinery which makes such a State uniform and
+submissive will be worked outwards from the household as from a
+handle, or a single mechanical knob or button. In a horrible sense,
+loaded with fear and shame and every detail of dishonour, it will be
+true to say that charity begins at home.</p>
+
+<p>Charity will begin at home in the sense that all home children will be
+like charity children. Philanthropy will begin at home, for all
+householders will be like paupers. Police administration will begin at
+home, for all citizens will be like convicts. And when health and the
+humours of daily life have passed into the domain of this social
+discipline, when it is admitted that the community must primarily
+control the primary habits, when all law begins, so to speak, next to
+the skin or nearest the vitals&mdash;then indeed it will appear absurd that
+marriage and maternity should not be similarly ordered. Then indeed it
+will seem to be illogical, and it will be illogical, that love should
+be free when life has lost its freedom.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>So passed, to all appearance, from the minds of men the strange dream
+and fantasy called freedom. Whatever be the future of these
+evolutionary experiments and their effect on civilisation, there is
+one land at least that has something to mourn. For us in England
+something will have perished which our fathers valued all the more
+because they hardly troubled to name it; and whatever be the stars of
+a more universal destiny, the great star of our night has set. The
+English had missed many other things that men of the same origins had
+achieved or retained. Not to them was given, like the French, to
+establish eternal communes and clear codes of equality; not to them,
+like the South Germans, to keep the popular culture of their songs;
+not to them, like the Irish, was it given to die daily for a great
+religion. But a spirit had been with them from the first which fenced,
+with a hundred quaint customs and legal fictions, the way of a man who
+wished to walk nameless and alone. It was not for nothing that they
+forgot all their laws to remember the name of an outlaw, and filled
+the green heart of England with the figure of Robin Hood. It was not
+for nothing that even their princes of art and letters had about them
+something of kings incognito, undiscovered by formal or academic fame;
+so that no eye can follow the young Shakespeare as he came up the
+green lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost
+himself among the lights of London. It is not for nothing that the
+very roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>down on
+a map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the
+home of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested
+upon its wood-lands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed
+departed, it matters little that it has been driven out by perversions
+it had itself permitted, by monsters it had idly let loose.
+Industrialism and Capitalism and the rage for physical science were
+English experiments in the sense that the English lent themselves to
+their encouragement; but there was something else behind them and
+within them that was not they&mdash;its name was liberty, and it was our
+life. It may be that this delicate and tenacious spirit has at last
+evaporated. If so, it matters little what becomes of the external
+experiments of our nation in later time. That at which we look will be
+a dead thing alive with its own parasites. The English will have
+destroyed England.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIIA" id="CHAPTER_VIIA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>Socialism is one of the simplest ideas in the world. It has always
+puzzled me how there came to be so much bewilderment and
+misunderstanding and miserable mutual slander about it. At one time I
+agreed with Socialism, because it was simple. Now I disagree with
+Socialism, because it is too simple. Yet most of its opponents still
+seem to treat it, not merely as an iniquity but as a mystery of
+iniquity, which seems to mystify them even more than it maddens them.
+It may not seem strange that its antagonists should be puzzled about
+what it is. It may appear more curious and interesting that its
+admirers are equally puzzled. Its foes used to denounce Socialism as
+Anarchy, which is its opposite. Its friends seemed to suppose that it
+is a sort of optimism, which is almost as much of an opposite. Friends
+and foes alike talked as if it involved a sort of faith in ideal human
+nature; why I could never imagine. The Socialist system, in a more
+special sense than any other, is founded not on optimism but on
+original sin. It proposes that the State, as the conscience of the
+community, should possess all primary forms of property; and that
+obviously on the ground that men cannot be trusted to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>own or barter
+or combine or compete without injury to themselves. Just as a State
+might own all the guns lest people should shoot each other, so this
+State would own all the gold and land lest they should cheat or
+rackrent or exploit each other. It seems extraordinarily simple and
+even obvious; and so it is. It is too obvious to be true. But while it
+is obvious, it seems almost incredible that anybody ever thought it
+optimistic.</p>
+
+<p>I am myself primarily opposed to Socialism, or Collectivism or
+Bolshevism or whatever we call it, for a primary reason not
+immediately involved here: the ideal of property. I say the ideal and
+not merely the idea; and this alone disposes of the moral mistake in
+the matter. It disposes of all the dreary doubts of the
+Anti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yet
+drearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I do
+not admit that private property is a concession to baseness and
+selfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the most
+truly popular of all points of honour. But this, though it has
+everything to do with my plea for a domestic dignity, has nothing to
+do with this passing summary of the situation of Socialism. I only
+remark in passing that it is vain for the more vulgar sort of
+Capitalist, sneering at ideals, to say to me that in order to have
+Socialism "You must alter human nature." I answer "Yes. You must alter
+it for the worse."</p>
+
+<p>The clouds were considerably cleared away from the meaning of
+Socialism by the Fabians of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>'nineties; by Mr. Bernard Shaw, a
+sort of anti-romantic Quixote, who charged chivalry as chivalry
+charged windmills, with Sidney Webb for his Sancho Panza. In so far as
+these paladins had a castle to defend, we may say that their castle
+was the Post Office. The red pillar-box was the immovable post against
+which the irresistible force of Capitalist individualism was arrested.
+Business men who said that nothing could be managed by the State were
+forced to admit that they trusted all their business letters and
+business telegrams to the State.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it was not found necessary to have an office competing with
+another office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or more
+picturesque postmen. It was not necessary to efficiency that the
+postmistress should buy a penny stamp for a halfpenny and sell it for
+twopence; or that she should haggle and beat customers down about the
+price of a postal order; or that she should always take tenders for
+telegrams. There was obviously nothing actually impossible about the
+State management of national needs; and the Post Office was at least
+tolerably managed. Though it was not always a model employer, by any
+means, it might be made so by similar methods. It was not impossible
+that equitable pay, and even equal pay, could be given to the
+Postmaster-General and the postman. We had only to extend this rule of
+public responsibility, and we should escape from all the terror of
+insecurity and torture of compassion, which hag-rides humanity in the
+insane extremes of economic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>inequality and injustice. As Mr. Shaw put
+it, "A man must save Society's honour before he can save his own."</p>
+
+<p>That was one side of the argument: that the change would remove
+inequality; and there was an answer on the other side. It can be
+stated most truly by putting another model institution and edifice
+side by side with the Post Office. It is even more of an ideal
+republic, or commonwealth without competition or private profit. It
+supplies its citizens not only with the stamps but with clothes and
+food and lodging, and all they require. It observes considerable level
+of equality in these things; notably in the clothes. It not only
+supervises the letters but all the other human communications; notably
+the sort of evil communications that corrupt good manners. This twin
+model to the Post Office is called the Prison. And much of the scheme
+for a model State was regarded by its opponents as a scheme for a
+model prison; good because it fed men equally, but less acceptable
+since it imprisoned them equally.</p>
+
+<p>It is better to be in a bad prison than in a good one. From the
+standpoint of the prisoner this is not at all a paradox; if only
+because in a bad prison he is more likely to escape. But apart from
+that, a man was in many ways better off in the old dirty and corrupt
+prison, where he could bribe turnkeys to bring him drink and meet
+fellow-prisoners to drink with. Now that is exactly the difference
+between the present system and the proposed system. Nobody worth
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>talking about respects the present system. Capitalism is a corrupt
+prison. That is the best that can be said for Capitalism. But it is
+something to be said for it; for a man is a little freer in that
+corrupt prison than he would be in a complete prison. As a man can
+find one jailer more lax than another, so he could find one employer
+more kind than another; he has at least a choice of tyrants. In the
+other case he finds the same tyrant at every turn. Mr. Shaw and other
+rational Socialists have agreed that the State would be in practice
+government by a small group. Any independent man who disliked that
+group would find his foe waiting for him at the end of every road.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends
+recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as
+decreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State could
+provide homes and meals for all; on the other it was answered that
+this could only be done by State officials who would inspect houses
+and regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the most
+interesting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do
+everything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that
+had ever been desired in it. Since it was supposed to gain equality at
+the sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possible
+to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed, there was not
+the faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality.
+But there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminate
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>liberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and
+interferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating those
+whom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was the
+Capitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted in
+every sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to the
+wiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easy to proceed more
+promptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gone
+through the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. After
+all, it was easy to inspect the house without having helped to build
+it; it was even possible, with luck, to inspect the house in time to
+prevent it being built. All that is described in the documents of the
+Housing Problem; for the people of this age loved problems and hated
+solutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing the
+dinner. All that can be found in the documents of what is called
+Temperance Reform.</p>
+
+<p>In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the
+good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the
+bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists
+themselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over
+bodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic
+tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a
+Capitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in the
+smallest degree diminish the inequalities of a Capitalist State. It
+simply destroyed such individual liberties as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>remained among its
+victims. It did not enable any man to build a better house; it only
+limited the houses he might live in&mdash;or how he might manage to live
+there; forbidding him to keep pigs or poultry or to sell beer or
+cider. It did not even add anything to a man's wages; it only took
+away something from a man's wages and locked it up, whether he liked
+it or not, in a sort of money-box which was regarded as a
+medicine-chest. It does not send food into the house to feed the
+children; it only sends an inspector into the house to punish the
+parents for having no food to feed them. It does not see that they
+have got a fire; it only punishes them for not having a fireguard. It
+does not even occur to it to provide the fireguard.</p>
+
+<p>Now this anomalous situation will probably ultimately evolve into the
+Servile State of Mr. Belloc's thesis. The poor will sink into slavery;
+it might as correctly be said that the poor will rise into slavery.
+That is to say, sooner or later, it is very probable that the rich
+will take over the philanthropic as well as the tyrannic side of the
+bargain; and will feed men like slaves as well as hunting them like
+outlaws. But for the purpose of my own argument it is not necessary to
+carry the process so far as this, or indeed any farther than it has
+already gone. The purely negative stage of interference, at which we
+have stuck for the present, is in itself quite favourable to all these
+eugenical experiments. The capitalist whose half-conscious thought and
+course of action I have simplified into a story in the preceding
+chapters, finds this insufficient <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>solution quite sufficient for his
+purposes. What he has felt for a long time is that he must check or
+improve the reckless and random breeding of the submerged race, which
+is at once outstripping his requirements and failing to fulfil his
+needs. Now the anomalous situation has already accustomed him to
+stopping things. The first interferences with sex need only be
+negative; and there are already negative interferences without number.
+So that the study of this stage of Socialism brings us to the same
+conclusion as that of the ideal of liberty as formally professed by
+Liberalism. The ideal of liberty is lost, and the ideal of Socialism
+is changed, till it is a mere excuse for the oppression of the poor.</p>
+
+<p>The first movements for intervention in the deepest domestic concerns
+of the poor all had this note of negative interference. Official
+papers were sent round to the mothers in poor streets; papers in which
+a total stranger asked these respectable women questions which a man
+would be killed for asking, in the class of what were called gentlemen
+or in the countries of what were called free men. They were questions
+supposed to refer to the conditions of maternity; but the point is
+here that the reformers did not begin by building up those economic or
+material conditions. They did not attempt to pay money or establish
+property to create those conditions. They never give anything&mdash;except
+orders. Another form of the intervention, and one already mentioned,
+is the kidnapping of children upon the most fantastic excuses of sham
+psychology. Some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>people established an apparatus of tests and trick
+questions; which might make an amusing game of riddles for the family
+fireside, but seems an insufficient reason for mutilating and
+dismembering the family. Others became interested in the hopeless
+moral condition of children born in the economic condition which they
+did not attempt to improve. They were great on the fact that crime was
+a disease; and carried on their criminological studies so successfully
+as to open the reformatory for little boys who played truant; there
+was no reformatory for reformers. I need not pause to explain that
+crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.</p>
+
+<p>Finally one thing may be added which is at least clear. Whether or no
+the organisation of industry will issue positively in a eugenical
+reconstruction of the family, it has already issued negatively, as in
+the negations already noted, in a partial destruction of it. It took
+the form of a propaganda of popular divorce, calculated at least to
+accustom the masses to a new notion of the shifting and re-grouping of
+families. I do not discuss the question of divorce here, as I have
+done elsewhere, in its intrinsic character; I merely note it as one of
+these negative reforms which have been substituted for positive
+economic equality. It was preached with a weird hilarity, as if the
+suicide of love were something not only humane but happy. But it need
+not be explained, and certainly it need not be denied, that the
+harassed poor of a diseased industrialism were indeed maintaining
+marriage under <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>every disadvantage, and often found individual relief
+in divorce. Industrialism does produce many unhappy marriages, for the
+same reason that it produces so many unhappy men. But all the reforms
+were directed to rescuing the industrialism rather than the happiness.
+Poor couples were to be divorced because they were already divided.
+Through all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of
+sacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with
+the modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest
+promptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and
+gathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled about
+the chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts were
+instantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to pour away
+the wine.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIIIA" id="CHAPTER_VIIIA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GODS</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>The only place where it is possible to find an echo of the mind of the
+English masses is either in conversation or in comic songs. The latter
+are obviously the more dubious; but they are the only things recorded
+and quotable that come anywhere near it. We talk about the popular
+Press; but in truth there is no popular Press. It may be a good thing;
+but, anyhow, most readers would be mildly surprised if a newspaper
+leading article were written in the language of a navvy. Sometimes the
+Press is interested in things in which the democracy is also genuinely
+interested; such as horse-racing. Sometimes the Press is about as
+popular as the Press Gang. We talk of Labour leaders in Parliament;
+but they would be highly unparliamentary if they talked like
+labourers. The Bolshevists, I believe, profess to promote something
+that they call "proletarian art," which only shows that the word
+Bolshevism can sometimes be abbreviated into bosh. That sort of
+Bolshevist is not a proletarian, but rather the very thing he accuses
+everybody else of being. The Bolshevist is above all a bourgeois; a
+Jewish intellectual of the town. And the real case against industrial
+intellectualism could hardly be put better <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>than in this very
+comparison. There has never been such a thing as proletarian art; but
+there has emphatically been such a thing as peasant art. And the only
+literature which even reminds us of the real tone and talk of the
+English working classes is to be found in the comic song of the
+English music-hall.</p>
+
+<p>I first heard one of them on my voyage to America, in the midst of the
+sea within sight of the New World, with the Statue of Liberty
+beginning to loom up on the horizon. From the lips of a young Scotch
+engineer, of all people in the world, I heard for the first time these
+immortal words from a London music-hall song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Father's got the sack from the water-works<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For smoking of his old cherry-briar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Father's got the sack from the water-works<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Cos he might set the water-works on fire."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As I told my friends in America, I think it no part of a patriot to
+boast; and boasting itself is certainly not a thing to boast of. I
+doubt the persuasive power of English as exemplified in Kipling, and
+one can easily force it on foreigners too much, even as exemplified in
+Dickens. I am no Imperialist, and only on rare and proper occasions a
+Jingo. But when I hear those words about Father and the water-works,
+when I hear under far-off foreign skies anything so gloriously English
+as that, then indeed (I said to them), then indeed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I thank the goodness and the grace<br /></span><span class='pn'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+<span class="i2">That on my birth have smiled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And made me, as you see me here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A little English child."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But that noble stanza about the water-works has other elements of
+nobility besides nationality. It provides a compact and almost perfect
+summary of the whole social problem in industrial countries like
+England and America. If I wished to set forth systematically the
+elements of the ethical and economic problem in Pittsburg or
+Sheffield, I could not do better than take these few words as a text,
+and divide them up like the heads of a sermon. Let me note the points
+in some rough fashion here.</p>
+
+<p>1.&mdash;<i>Father.</i> This word is still in use among the more ignorant and
+ill-paid of the industrial community; and is the badge of an old
+convention or unit called the family. A man and woman having vowed to
+be faithful to each other, the man makes himself responsible for all
+the children of the woman, and is thus generically called "Father." It
+must not be supposed that the poet or singer is necessarily one of the
+children. It may be the wife, called by the same ritual "Mother." Poor
+English wives say "Father" as poor Irish wives say "Himself," meaning
+the titular head of the house. The point to seize is that among the
+ignorant this convention or custom still exists. Father and the family
+are the foundations of thought; the natural authority still comes
+natural to the poet; but it is overlaid and thwarted with more
+artificial authorities; the official, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>the schoolmaster, the
+policeman, the employer, and so on. What these forces fighting the
+family are we shall see, my dear brethren, when we pass to our second
+heading; which is:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>2.&mdash;<i>Got the Sack.</i> This idiom marks a later stage of the history of
+the language than the comparatively primitive word "Father." It is
+needless to discuss whether the term comes from Turkey or some other
+servile society. In America they say that Father has been fired. But
+it involves the whole of the unique economic system under which Father
+has now to live. Though assumed by family tradition to be a master, he
+can now, by industrial tradition, only be a particular kind of
+servant; a servant who has not the security of a slave. If he owned
+his own shop and tools, he could not get the sack. If his master owned
+him, he could not get the sack. The slave and the guildsman know where
+they will sleep every night; it was only the proletarian of
+individualist industrialism who could get the sack, if not in the
+style of the Bosphorus, at least in the sense of the Embankment. We
+pass to the third heading.</p>
+
+<p>3.&mdash;<i>From the Water-works.</i> This detail of Father's life is very
+important; for this is the reply to most of the Socialists, as the
+last section is to so many of the Capitalists. The water-works which
+employed Father is a very large, official and impersonal institution.
+Whether it is technically a bureaucratic department or a big business
+makes little or no change in the feelings of Father in connection with
+it. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>water-works might or might not be nationalised; and it would
+make no necessary difference to Father being fired, and no difference
+at all to his being accused of playing with fire. In fact, if the
+Capitalists are more likely to give him the sack, the Socialists are
+even more likely to forbid him the smoke. There is no freedom for
+Father except in some sort of private ownership of things like water
+and fire. If he owned his own well his water could never be cut off,
+and while he sits by his own fire his pipe can never be put out. That
+is the real meaning of property, and the real argument against
+Socialism; probably the only argument against Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>4.&mdash;<i>For Smoking.</i> Nothing marks this queer intermediate phase of
+industrialism more strangely than the fact that, while employers still
+claim the right to sack him like a stranger, they are already
+beginning to claim the right to supervise him like a son. Economically
+he can go and starve on the Embankment; but ethically and hygienically
+he must be controlled and coddled in the nursery. Government
+repudiates all responsibility for seeing that he gets bread. But it
+anxiously accepts all responsibility for seeing that he does not get
+beer. It passes an Insurance Act to force him to provide himself with
+medicine; but it is avowedly indifferent to whether he is able to
+provide himself with meals. Thus while the sack is inconsistent with
+the family, the supervision is really inconsistent with the sack. The
+whole thing is a tangled chain of contradictions. It is true that in
+the special <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>and sacred text of scripture we are here considering, the
+smoking is forbidden on a general and public and not on a medicinal
+and private ground. But it is none the less relevant to remember that,
+as his masters have already proved that alcohol is a poison, they may
+soon prove that nicotine is a poison. And it is most significant of
+all that this sort of danger is even greater in what is called the new
+democracy of America than in what is called the old oligarchy of
+England. When I was in America, people were already "defending"
+tobacco. People who defend tobacco are on the road to proving that
+daylight is defensible, or that it is not really sinful to sneeze. In
+other words, they are quietly going mad.</p>
+
+<p>5.&mdash;<i>Of his old Cherry-briar.</i> Here we have the intermediate and
+anomalous position of the institution of Property. The sentiment still
+exists, even among the poor, or perhaps especially among the poor. But
+it is attached to toys rather than tools; to the minor products rather
+than to the means of production. But something of the sanity of
+ownership is still to be observed; for instance, the element of custom
+and continuity. It was an <i>old</i> cherry-briar; systematically smoked by
+Father in spite of all wiles and temptations to Woodbines and gaspers;
+an old companion possibly connected with various romantic or diverting
+events in Father's life. It is perhaps a relic as well as a trinket.
+But because it is not a true tool, because it gives the man no grip on
+the creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of his
+self-respect, at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>mercy of the thing called the sack. When he gets
+the sack from the water-works, it is only too probable that he will
+have to pawn his old cherry-briar.</p>
+
+<p>6.&mdash;<i>'Cos he might set the water-works on fire.</i> And that single line,
+like the lovely single lines of the great poets, is so full, so final,
+so perfect a picture of all the laws we pass and all the reasons we
+give for them, so exact an analysis of the logic of all our
+precautions at the present time, that the pen falls even from the
+hands of the commentator; and the masterpiece is left to speak for
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Some such analysis as the above gives a better account than most of
+the anomalous attitude and situation of the English proletarian
+to-day. It is the more appropriate because it is expressed in the
+words he actually uses; which certainly do not include the word
+"proletarian." It will be noted that everything that goes to make up
+that complexity is in an unfinished state. Property has not quite
+vanished; slavery has not quite arrived; marriage exists under
+difficulties; social regimentation exists under restraints, or rather
+under subterfuges. The question which remains is which force is
+gaining on the other, and whether the old forces are capable of
+resisting the new. I hope they are; but I recognise that they resist
+under more than one heavy handicap. The chief of these is that the
+family feeling of the workmen is by this time rather an instinct than
+an ideal. The obvious thing to protect an ideal is a religion. The
+obvious thing to protect the ideal of marriage is the Christian
+religion. And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>for various reasons, which only a history of England
+could explain (though it hardly ever does), the working classes of
+this country have been very much cut off from Christianity. I do not
+dream of denying, indeed I should take every opportunity of affirming,
+that monogamy and its domestic responsibilities can be defended on
+rational apart from religious grounds. But a religion is the practical
+protection of any moral idea which has to be popular and which has to
+be pugnacious. And our ideal, if it is to survive, will have to be
+both.</p>
+
+<p>Those who make merry over the landlady who has seen better days, of
+whom something has been said already, commonly speak, in the same
+jovial journalese, about her household goods as her household gods.
+They would be much startled if they discovered how right they are.
+Exactly what is lacking to the modern materialist is something that
+can be what the household gods were to the ancient heathen. The
+household gods of the heathen were not only wood and stone; at least
+there is always more than that in the stone of the hearth-stone and
+the wood of the roof-tree. So long as Christianity continued the
+tradition of patron saints and portable relics, this idea of a
+blessing on the household could continue. If men had not domestic
+divinities, at least they had divine domesticities. When Christianity
+was chilled with Puritanism and rationalism, this inner warmth or
+secret fire in the house faded on the hearth. But some of the embers
+still glow or at least glimmer; and there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>is still a memory among the
+poor that their material possessions are something sacred. I know poor
+men for whom it is the romance of their lives to refuse big sums of
+money for an old copper warming-pan. They do not want it, in any sense
+of base utility. They do not use it as a warming-pan; but it warms
+them for all that. It is indeed, as Sergeant Buzfuz humorously
+observed, a cover for hidden fire. And the fire is that which burned
+before the strange and uncouth wooden gods, like giant dolls, in the
+huts of ancient Italy. It is a household god. And I can imagine some
+such neglected and unlucky English man dying with his eyes on the red
+gleam of that piece of copper, as happier men have died with their
+eyes on the golden gleam of a chalice or a cross.</p>
+
+<p>It will thus be noted that there has always been some connection
+between a mystical belief and the materials of domesticity; that they
+generally go together; and that now, in a more mournful sense, they
+are gone together. The working classes have no reserves of property
+with which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religion
+with which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they are
+under the enormous disadvantage of being right without knowing it.
+They hold their sound principles as if they were sullen prejudices.
+They almost secrete their small property as if it were stolen
+property. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks to
+her husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolved
+to run away from her husband. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>Often she will cry as hopelessly, and
+as it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were a
+child deprived of her doll. Indeed, a child in the street, crying for
+her lost doll, would probably receive more sympathy than she does.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the fun goes on; and many such conflicts are recorded, even
+in the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking
+philanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any
+number of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be
+flippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather
+fierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I
+know that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives of
+sincere but confused compassion, and many more from a dull but not
+dishonourable medical or legal habit. But if I and those who agree
+with me tend to some harshness and abruptness of condemnation, these
+worthy people need not be altogether impatient with our impatience. It
+is surely beneath them, in the scope of their great schemes, to
+complain of protests so ineffectual about wrongs so individual. I have
+considered in this chapter the chances of general democratic defence
+of domestic honour, and have been compelled to the conclusion that
+they are not at present hopeful; and it is at least clear that we
+cannot be founding on them any personal hopes. If this conclusion
+leaves us defeated, we submit that it leaves us disinterested. Ours is
+not the sort of protest, at least, that promises <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>anything even to the
+demagogue, let alone the sycophant. Those we serve will never rule,
+and those we pity will never rise. Parliament will never be surrounded
+by a mob of submerged grandmothers brandishing pawn-tickets. There is
+no trade union of defective children. It is not very probable that
+modern government will be overturned by a few poor dingy devils who
+are sent to prison by mistake, or rather by ordinary accident. Surely
+it is not for those magnificent Socialists, or those great reformers
+and reconstructors of Capitalism, sweeping onward to their scientific
+triumphs and caring for none of these things, to murmur at our vain
+indignation. At least if it is vain it is the less venal; and in so
+far as it is hopeless it is also thankless. They have their great
+campaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions,
+and the records of science and progress. They need not be angry with
+us, who plead for those who will never read our words or reward our
+effort, even with gratitude. They need surely have no worse mood
+towards us than mystification, seeing that in recalling these small
+things of broken hearts or homes, we are but recording what cannot be
+recorded; trivial tragedies that will fade faster and faster in the
+flux of time, cries that fail in a furious and infinite wind, wild
+words of despair that are written only upon running water; unless,
+indeed, as some so stubbornly and strangely say, they are somewhere
+cut deep into a rock, in the red granite of the wrath of God.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IXA" id="CHAPTER_IXA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>A SHORT CHAPTER</h4>
+<br />
+
+<p>Round about the year 1913 Eugenics was turned from a fad to a fashion.
+Then, if I may so summarise the situation, the joke began in earnest.
+The organising mind which we have seen considering the problem of slum
+population, the popular material and the possibility of protests, felt
+that the time had come to open the campaign. Eugenics began to appear
+in big headlines in the daily Press, and big pictures in the
+illustrated papers. A foreign gentleman named Bolce, living at
+Hampstead, was advertised on a huge scale as having every intention of
+being the father of the Superman. It turned out to be a Superwoman,
+and was called Eugenette. The parents were described as devoting
+themselves to the production of perfect pre-natal conditions. They
+"eliminated everything from their lives which did not tend towards
+complete happiness." Many might indeed be ready to do this; but in the
+voluminous contemporary journalism on the subject I can find no
+detailed notes about how it is done. Communications were opened with
+Mr. H.G. Wells, with Dr. Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. Karl
+Pearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefully
+cultivated in the parents. The problem <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>of a sense of humour was felt
+to be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturally
+fearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientific
+as to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, they
+visited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards George
+Robey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper reader,
+however, it looked as if the names of Metchnikoff and Steinmetz and
+Karl Pearson would soon be quite as familiar as those of Robey and
+Lauder and Bard. Arguments about these Eugenic authorities, reports of
+the controversies at the Eugenic Congress, filled countless columns.
+The fact that Mr. Bolce, the creator of perfect pre-natal conditions,
+was afterwards sued in a law-court for keeping his own flat in
+conditions of filth and neglect, cast but a slight and momentary
+shadow upon the splendid dawn of the science. It would be vain to
+record any of the thousand testimonies to its triumph. In the nature
+of things, this should be the longest chapter in the book, or rather
+the beginning of another book. It should record, in numberless
+examples, the triumphant popularisation of Eugenics in England. But as
+a matter of fact this is not the first chapter but the last. And this
+must be a very short chapter, because the whole of this story was cut
+short. A very curious thing happened. England went to war.</p>
+
+<p>This would in itself have been a sufficiently irritating interruption
+in the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment of
+Eugenics. But a far more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>dreadful and disconcerting fact must be
+noted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to war
+with the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that very
+land of scientific culture from which the very ideal of a Superman had
+come. She went to war with the whole of Dr. Steinmetz, and presumably
+with at least half of Dr. Karl Pearson. She gave battle to the
+birthplace of nine-tenths of the professors who were the prophets of
+the new hope of humanity. In a few weeks the very name of a professor
+was a matter for hissing and low plebeian mirth. The very name of
+Nietzsche, who had held up this hope of something superhuman to
+humanity, was laughed at for all the world as if he had been touched
+with lunacy. A new mood came upon the whole people; a mood of
+marching, of spontaneous soldierly vigilance and democratic
+discipline, moving to the faint tune of bugles far away. Men began to
+talk strangely of old and common things, of the counties of England,
+of its quiet landscapes, of motherhood and the half-buried religion of
+the race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making all
+things vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awful
+actuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and the
+Eugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one may
+say so, funny.</p>
+
+<p>Such a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given.
+There was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfection
+than any other the type of order and foresight that are the subject
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>of this book. It had long been the model State of all those more
+rational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation of
+society. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform.
+All the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudly
+borrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found it
+convenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring and
+neutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had a
+privilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had the
+gratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scale
+and very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionary
+idealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams;
+or to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to wait
+for it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; but
+in the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silent
+for five years.</p>
+
+<p>The thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. It
+might be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogether
+leave the memories of men; but men's memories are unstable things. It
+may be that gradually these dazed dupes will gather again together,
+and attempt again to believe their dreams and disbelieve their eyes.
+There may be some whose love of slavery is so ideal and disinterested
+that they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment of
+that broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But there
+are limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been once
+deceived and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>a second time deceives himself. They have seen their
+paragons of science and organisation playing their part on land and
+sea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love of
+humanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed the
+testimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neither
+would they believe though one rose from the dead; though all the
+millions who died to destroy Prussianism stood up and testified
+against it.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>INDEX<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<div class="block">
+<ul><li>Abnormal innocence and abnormal sin, alliance between, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Abortion, open advocacy of, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li>Affinity as a bar to marriage, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+<li>Altruism, remarks on, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li>Anarchy, definition of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>the opposite of Socialism, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Anglican Church, the, and question of disestablishment, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li>Aristocratic marriages, Eugenists and, <a href="#Page_139">139</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Atheistic literary style, the, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li>Authority versus Reason, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li>Autocrats, Eugenists as, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Belloc, Mr., and the Servile State, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>rebuked by <i>The Nation</i>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Bl&uuml;cher, Marshal, an alleged saying of, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+<li>Bolce, Mr., the super-Eugenist, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Bolshevists, and "proletarian art," <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li>Brummell, Mr., vanity of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li>Burglary, punishment for, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Calvinism, immorality of, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>in the Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Calvinists and the doctrine of free-will, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+<li>Capitalists, and workmen, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>Socialists and, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Casuists, Eugenists as, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Catholic countries, and the drink traffic, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+<li>Celtic sadness, and the desolation of Belfast, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Chesterton, G.K., and Socialism, <a href="#Page_159">159</a> <i>et seq.</i>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>on H.G. Wells, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+  <li>rebuked by <i>The Nation</i>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Children, and non-eugenic unions, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>cruelty to: punishment for, <a  href="#Page_26">26-7</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Christian conception of rebellion, the, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li>Christian religion as protector of the ideal of marriage, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+
+<li>Christian serf, how he differed from a pagan slave, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li>Christianity, and freedom, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+
+<li>Church teaching, compulsory, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li>Church, the, and question of disestablishment, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li>"Class War, the," and Socialists, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li>Coercion, and control of sex-relationship, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li>Comic songs, and a sermon thereon, <a href="#Page_169">169</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Compulsion, and sexual selection, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li>Compulsory education, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>vaccination, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Concordat, the, and the independence of the Roman Church, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li>Criminals, difference between lunatics and, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>proposed vivisection of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+  <li>punishment of, <a href="#Page_25">25</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Criminology as a disease, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li>Cruelty to children, punishment for, <a  href="#Page_26">26-7</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Delusions, concrete and otherwise, <a href="#Page_32">32</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Disestablishment, author's views on, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li>Doctors, as health advisers of the community, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>limits to their knowledge, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+  </ul>
+<br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Education, compulsory, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Endeavourers, the, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+<li>English proletarians, anomalous attitude of, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+
+<li>Establishment, author's views on, <a href="#Page_75">75</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Ethics, as opposed to Eugenics, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Eugenic Law, the first, and negative Eugenics, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+<li>Eugenic State, beginning of the, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li>Eugenics and employment, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>author's conception of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+  <li>becomes a fashion, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+  <li>beginning of, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+  <li>different meanings of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+  <li>essence of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+  <li>first principle of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+  <li>general definition of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+  <li>meanness of the motive of, <a href="#Page_136">136</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+  <li>moral basis of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+  <li>the false theory of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>the real aim of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>versus Ethics, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Eugenist, true story of a, <a href="#Page_114">114</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Eugenists, and their new morality, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>as Casuists, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+  <li>as employers, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+  <li>as Euphemists, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+  <li>their plutocratic impulses, <a href="#Page_139">139</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>Mr. Wells' challenge to, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+  <li>secret of what they really want, <a href="#Page_73">73</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Euphemists, Eugenists as, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Fabians, and Socialism, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li>Feeble-Minded Bill, the, Eugenists and, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+<li>Feeble-mindedness, Dr. Saleeby on, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>hereditary, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Flogging, revival of, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+<li>Foulon, and the French peasants, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li>Freedom, Christianity and, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+
+<li>Free-will disbelieved by Eugenists, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Game laws, English, result of the, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+<li>Golf, a Scotch minister's opinion of, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li>Great War, the, outbreak of, and its effect on Eugenics, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Health, and what it is, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>Mr. Wells' views on inheritance of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a  href="#Page_85">85-6</a></li>
+  <li>not necessarily allied with beauty, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+  <li>"Health adviser" of society, the, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Hereditary diseases, and marriage, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li>Heredity, and feeble-mindedness, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>author's conception of, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+  <li>incontestable proof of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+  <li>three first facts of, <a  href="#Page_66">66-7</a></li>
+  <li>unsatisfactory plight of students of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+  <li>uselessness of attempting to judge, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Housebreaking, punishment for, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+<li>Household gods of the heathen, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+<li>Housing problem, the, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Hutchinson, Colonel and Mrs., the historic instance of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Huth, A.H., an admission by, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Idealists (<i>see</i> Autocrats)</li>
+
+<li>Idiotcy, segregation of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li>Imperialism, and its aims, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+<li>Imprisonment, the State and, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+<li>Incest, the crime of, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Indeterminate sentence, the, instrument of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>principle of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Individualism, the experiment of, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li>Individualists, early Victorian, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Intervention, Socialistic movements of, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+<li>Irish peasants, T.P. O'Connor on, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li>Irishman in Liverpool, the, <a href="#Page_121">121</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Journalism and the Press of to-day, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Kindred and affinity, as a bar to marriage, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Law, the, and restrictions on sex, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>and the indeterminate sentence, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+  <li>and the lunatic, <a href="#Page_31">31</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Libel, definition of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>loose extension of idea of, <a  href="#Page_27">27-8</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Liberty and scepticism, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>the eclipse of, <a href="#Page_149">149</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>the Eugenist's view of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Lodge, Sir Oliver, and "the stud farm," <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Lunacy, and Eugenic legislation, <a  href="#Page_17">17-20</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a> <i>et seq.</i>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>medical specialists as judges of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Lunacy Law, the old, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li>Lunacy Laws, the, extension of principle of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+<li>Lunatic, the, and the law, <a href="#Page_31">31</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Lunatics, difference between criminals and, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Macdonald, George, and space co-incident, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+<li>Madman, a, definition of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Madness, degrees of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>medical specialists and, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+  <li>the essence of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+  <li>(<i>See also</i> Lunacy)</li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Malthus, and his doctrine, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Mania, segregation of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li>Marriage, and question of hereditary disease, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>the aim of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+  <li>the Christian religion and, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Marriages, aristocratic, <a href="#Page_139">139</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Marxian Socialists, and Capitalists, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li>Materialism, as the established church, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>in speech, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Materialists, modern, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li>Medical specialists and madness, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li>Mendicancy laws, result of the, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+<li>Metternich tradition, the, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li>Midas, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Middle Ages, the, <a href="#Page_91">91</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Midias, segregation of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+<li>Monogamy, author's views on, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+<li>Morality, and restraints on sex, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Neisser, Dr., <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li>Newspapers, anarchic tendency of modern, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>decadence of present-day, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Niagara, comparison of modern world with, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li>Nietzsche, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+<li>Non-eugenic unions, and children, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>O'Connor, T.P., on the Irish peasants, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li>&OElig;dipus, and his incestuous marriage, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+<li>Om, the formless god of the East, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li><i>On</i>, meaning and use of the word, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li>Osborne, Dorothy, and Sir William Temple, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Pagan slave, the, difference between Christian serf and, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li>Pearson, Dr. Karl, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Peasant art, comic songs as an instance of, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li>Persecution, author's views on, <a href="#Page_77">77</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>"Platonic friendship," <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li>Politics in the Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li>Post Office, the State, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>twin model of, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Precedenters, the, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+<li>Press, the, criticisms of, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li>Prevention not better than cure, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li>Preventive medicine, fallacy of, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li>Prison system, the, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+<li>Procreation, prevention of, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li>Profiteering, author on, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+<li>"Proletarian art," <a href="#Page_169">169</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Property, author's views on, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li>Punishment, extension of, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+<li>Puritanical moral stories, immorality of, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Realities, denial of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li>Reason versus Authority, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li>Rebellion, Christian conception of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>meaning of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Reform and Repeal, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li>"Relations of the sexes," atheists and, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li>Religion in the Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li>Representative Government, the procedure of, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li>Rockefeller, Mr., <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+<li>Russian Orthodox Church, the, and the State, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Saladin, Sultan, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li>Saleeby, Dr., <a href="#Page_50">50</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>and a "health-book," <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+  <li>and feeble-mindedness, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li>and heredity, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Saturnalia, the Roman, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li>Scepticism, reactionary, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li>Science and tyranny, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li>Scotland, Church of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li>Scotland, drunkenness in, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+<li>Segregation of strong-minded people, a suggested, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li>Serf, the, different from pagan slave, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li>Servile State, the, Mr. Belloc's theory of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li>Sex-relationship, controlled by coercion, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li>Sexes, the, relations of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li>Sexual selection a destruction of Eugenics, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Shaw, Bernard, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>and Sidney Webb, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+  <li>as Puritan, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Slaves, breeding of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+
+<li>Slum children, Mrs. Alec Tweedie and, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li>Smiles, Dr. Samuel, and the English tramp, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li>Snobbishness, an inverted, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li>Socialism as oppressor of the poor, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+<li>Socialism, the transformation of, <a href="#Page_159">159</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Socialist system, foundation of the, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Socialists, and "solidarity," <a href="#Page_46">46</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>their view of the State, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Specialists (medical) and madness, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li>Spiritual pride, an example of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li>Spiritual world, the, author's belief in, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li>State, the, and compulsion, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>Socialist view of, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Statistics, fundamental fallacy in use of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li>Steinmetz, Dr. R.S., <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Stevenson, R.L., and pre-natal conditions, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Temperance Reform, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Temple, Sir William, and Dorothy Osborne, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Tithes, question of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li>Tory conception of anarchy, the, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+<li>Tramp, true history of a, <a href="#Page_101">101</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Truant schools. Socialists and, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li>Tweedie, Mrs. Alec, and the children of the slums, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li>Tyranny of government by Science, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Vaccination, compulsory, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+<li>Vanity, hereditary&mdash;and other, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>Victorian Individualists, optimism of, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>snobbishness, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+  </ul>
+<br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Wages, "rise and fall of," <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li>Webb, Sidney, and Bernard Shaw, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li>Wells, H.G., <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>author's criticism of, <a  href="#Page_69">69-70</a></li>
+  <li>his "Mankind in the Making," <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>White Slave traffic, punishment for, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+<li>Witchcraft, punishment for, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+<li>Witch-hunting and witch burning, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">Printed in England by Cassell &amp; Company, Limited, London,
+E.C.4.</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
+<br />
+Page 62: &nbsp;pepole replaced with people<br />
+Page 65: &nbsp;undoubledly replaced with undoubtedly<br />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Eugenics and Other Evils, by G. K. Chesterton
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugenics and Other Evils, by G. K. Chesterton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Eugenics and Other Evils
+
+Author: G. K. Chesterton
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2008 [EBook #25308]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS ***
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+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar, Jeannie Howse and the Online
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+       *       *       *       *       *
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+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
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+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
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+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+EUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS
+
+
+
+
+Eugenics and
+Other Evils
+
+
+By
+
+G.K. Chesterton
+
+
+Cassell and Company, Limited
+London, New York, Toronto & Melbourne
+1922
+
+
+
+
+TO THE READER
+
+
+I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason
+connected with the present situation; a reason which I should like
+briefly to emphasise and make clear.
+
+Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are
+conceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of
+preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before
+the war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; when
+eugenic babies (not visibly very distinguishable from other babies)
+sprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancy
+of Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr.
+Bernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a man
+like a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilisation,
+of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be
+found in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion
+too controversially, and it seems to me that I sometimes took it too
+seriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into
+a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism
+and strict social organisation.
+
+And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might
+well fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one,
+and was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And,
+anyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style.
+Scientific officialism and organisation in the State which had
+specialised in them, had gone to war with the older culture of
+Christendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would be
+hopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless.
+As the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, it
+grew more and more plain that the scientifically organised State was
+not increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen would
+ever again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So I
+thought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind.
+
+I am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It has
+gradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the ruling
+classes in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussia
+is a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nine
+years old, most of their principles and proceedings are a great deal
+older. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same
+bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors
+that have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. For
+that reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect and
+publish these papers.
+
+                                                    G.K.C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+
+The False Theory
+
+CHAPTER                                        PAGE
+
+1. WHAT IS EUGENICS?                                   3
+
+2. THE FIRST OBSTACLES                                12
+
+3. THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE                             22
+
+4. THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW                            31
+
+5. THE FLYING AUTHORITY                               46
+
+6. THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE                           61
+
+7. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT                    73
+
+8. A SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY                        82
+
+
+PART II
+
+The Real Aim
+
+1. THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE                       91
+
+2. TRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP                           101
+
+3. TRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST                        114
+
+4. THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH                        126
+
+5. THE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE                        136
+
+6. THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY                            148
+
+7. THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM                   159
+
+8. THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GODS                     169
+
+9. A SHORT CHAPTER                                   180
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+
+THE FALSE THEORY
+
+
+
+
+Eugenics and Other Evils
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WHAT IS EUGENICS?
+
+
+The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is
+no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are
+mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but
+sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because
+men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before
+it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the
+scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried
+while it is in the air.
+
+There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as
+collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we
+can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford
+Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists;
+or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing
+that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed.
+It is called for convenience "Eugenics"; and that it ought to be
+destroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that it
+means very different things to different people; but that is only
+because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised
+with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued
+rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is
+only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called "The
+Gracious Ones." I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions
+are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely
+astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil
+always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has
+in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and
+abnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we
+all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they
+are doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenics
+itself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas
+exist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming
+quickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a
+thousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no
+more to be bargained about than poisoning.
+
+It is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: though
+some of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it. The movement
+consists of two parts: a moral basis, which is common to all, and a
+scheme of social application which varies a good deal. For the moral
+basis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with his
+knowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr.
+Johnson in that tower of vision), and if the baby was ill through
+having eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might be
+calling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides of
+babies whose diet had been far more deadly; but I should be justified.
+I could not be expected to know enough about his other patients to be
+obliged (or even entitled) to sacrifice to them the baby for whom I
+was primarily and directly responsible. Now the Eugenic moral basis is
+this; that the baby for whom we are primarily and directly responsible
+is the babe unborn. That is, that we know (or may come to know) enough
+of certain inevitable tendencies in biology to consider the fruit of
+some contemplated union in that direct and clear light of conscience
+which we can now only fix on the other partner in that union. The one
+duty can conceivably be as definite as or more definite than the
+other. The baby that does not exist can be considered even before the
+wife who does. Now it is essential to grasp that this is a
+comparatively new note in morality. Of course sane people always
+thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the
+glory of God or according to the plan of Nature; but whether they
+counted such children as God's reward for service or Nature's premium
+on sanity, they always left the reward to God or the premium to
+Nature, as a less definable thing. The only person (and this is the
+point) towards whom one could have precise duties was the partner in
+the process. Directly considering the partner's claims was the nearest
+one could get to indirectly considering the claims of posterity. If
+the women of the harem sang praises of the hero as the Moslem mounted
+his horse, it was because this was the due of a man; if the Christian
+knight helped his wife off her horse, it was because this was the due
+of a woman. Definite and detailed dues of this kind they did not
+predicate of the babe unborn; regarding him in that agnostic and
+opportunist light in which Mr. Browdie regarded the hypothetical child
+of Miss Squeers. Thinking these sex relations healthy, they naturally
+hoped they would produce healthy children; but that was all. The
+Moslem woman doubtless expected Allah to send beautiful sons to an
+obedient wife; but she would not have allowed any direct vision of
+such sons to alter the obedience itself. She would not have said, "I
+will now be a disobedient wife; as the learned leech informs me that
+great prophets are often the children of disobedient wives." The
+knight doubtless hoped that the saints would help him to strong
+children, if he did all the duties of his station, one of which might
+be helping his wife off her horse; but he would not have refrained
+from doing this because he had read in a book that a course of falling
+off horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem and
+Christian would have thought such speculations not only impious but
+utterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is not the
+point here.
+
+The point here is that a new school believes Eugenics _against_
+Ethics. And it is proved by one familiar fact: that the heroisms of
+history are actually the crimes of Eugenics. The Eugenists' books and
+articles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should and
+may come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feel
+that marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children. But history
+is full of the praises of people who have held sacred such ties to
+invalids; of cases like those of Colonel Hutchinson and Sir William
+Temple, who remained faithful to betrothals when beauty and health had
+been apparently blasted. And though the illnesses of Dorothy Osborne
+and Mrs. Hutchinson may not fall under the Eugenic speculations (I do
+not know), it is obvious that they might have done so; and certainly
+it would not have made any difference to men's moral opinion of the
+act. I do not discuss here which morality I favour; but I insist that
+they are opposite. The Eugenist really sets up as saints the very men
+whom hundreds of families have called sneaks. To be consistent, they
+ought to put up statues to the men who deserted their loves because of
+bodily misfortune; with inscriptions celebrating the good Eugenist
+who, on his fiancee falling off a bicycle, nobly refused to marry her;
+or to the young hero who, on hearing of an uncle with erysipelas,
+magnanimously broke his word. What is perfectly plain is this: that
+mankind have hitherto held the bond between man and woman so sacred,
+and the effect of it on the children so incalculable, that they have
+always admired the maintenance of honour more than the maintenance of
+safety. Doubtless they thought that even the children might be none
+the worse for not being the children of cowards and shirkers; but this
+was not the first thought, the first commandment. Briefly, we may say
+that while many moral systems have set restraints on sex almost as
+severe as any Eugenist could set, they have almost always had the
+character of securing the fidelity of the two sexes to each other, and
+leaving the rest to God. To introduce an ethic which makes that
+fidelity or infidelity vary with some calculation about heredity is
+that rarest of all things, a revolution that has not happened before.
+
+It is only right to say here, though the matter should only be touched
+on, that many Eugenists would contradict this, in so far as to claim
+that there was a consciously Eugenic reason for the horror of those
+unions which begin with the celebrated denial to man of the privilege
+of marrying his grandmother. Dr. S.R. Steinmetz, with that creepy
+simplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarks
+that "we do not yet know quite certainly" what were "the motives for
+the horror of" that horrible thing which is the agony of Oedipus. With
+entirely amiable intention, I ask Dr. S.R. Steinmetz to speak for
+himself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or sister as
+separate from other women; nor have I reached them by any curious
+researches. I found them where I found an analogous aversion to eating
+a baby for breakfast. I found them in a rooted detestation in the
+human soul to liking a thing in one way, when you already like it in
+another quite incompatible way. Now it is perfectly true that this
+aversion may have acted eugenically; and so had a certain ultimate
+confirmation and basis in the laws of procreation. But there really
+cannot be any Eugenist quite so dull as not to see that this is not a
+defence of Eugenics but a direct denial of Eugenics. If something
+which has been discovered at last by the lamp of learning is something
+which has been acted on from the first by the light of nature, this
+(so far as it goes) is plainly not an argument for pestering people,
+but an argument for letting them alone. If men did not marry their
+grandmothers when it was, for all they knew, a most hygienic habit; if
+we know now that they instinctly avoided scientific peril; that, so
+far as it goes, is a point in favour of letting people marry anyone
+they like. It is simply the statement that sexual selection, or what
+Christians call falling in love, is a part of man which in the rough
+and in the long run can be trusted. And that is the destruction of the
+whole of this science at a blow.
+
+The second part of the definition, the persuasive or coercive methods
+to be employed, I shall deal with more fully in the second part of
+this book. But some such summary as the following may here be useful.
+Far into the unfathomable past of our race we find the assumption
+that the founding of a family is the personal adventure of a free man.
+Before slavery sank slowly out of sight under the new climate of
+Christianity, it may or may not be true that slaves were in some sense
+bred like cattle, valued as a promising stock for labour. If it was so
+it was so in a much looser and vaguer sense than the breeding of the
+Eugenists; and such modern philosophers read into the old paganism a
+fantastic pride and cruelty which are wholly modern. It may be,
+however, that pagan slaves had some shadow of the blessings of the
+Eugenist's care. It is quite certain that the pagan freemen would have
+killed the first man that suggested it. I mean suggested it seriously;
+for Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in
+Greek. Among free men, the law, more often the creed, most commonly of
+all the custom, have laid all sorts of restrictions on sex for this
+reason or that. But law and creed and custom have never concentrated
+heavily except upon fixing and keeping the family when once it had
+been made. The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individual
+adventure outside the frontiers of the State. Our first forgotten
+ancestors left this tradition behind them; and our own latest fathers
+and mothers a few years ago would have thought us lunatics to be
+discussing it. The shortest general definition of Eugenics on its
+practical side is that it does, in a more or less degree, propose to
+control some families at least as if they were families of pagan
+slaves. I shall discuss later the question of the people to whom this
+pressure may be applied; and the much more puzzling question of what
+people will apply it. But it is to be applied at the very least by
+somebody to somebody, and that on certain calculations about breeding
+which are affirmed to be demonstrable. So much for the subject itself.
+I say that this thing exists. I define it as closely as matters
+involving moral evidence can be defined; I call it Eugenics. If after
+that anyone chooses to say that Eugenics is not the Greek for this--I
+am content to answer that "chivalrous" is not the French for "horsy";
+and that such controversial games are more horsy than chivalrous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE FIRST OBSTACLES
+
+
+Now before I set about arguing these things, there is a cloud of
+skirmishers, of harmless and confused modern sceptics, who ought to be
+cleared off or calmed down before we come to debate with the real
+doctors of the heresy. If I sum up my statement thus: "Eugenics, as
+discussed, evidently means the control of some men over the marriage
+and unmarriage of others; and probably means the control of the few
+over the marriage and unmarriage of the many," I shall first of all
+receive the sort of answers that float like skim on the surface of
+teacups and talk. I may very roughly and rapidly divide these
+preliminary objectors into five sects; whom I will call the
+Euphemists, the Casuists, the Autocrats, the Precedenters, and the
+Endeavourers. When we have answered the immediate protestation of all
+these good, shouting, short-sighted people, we can begin to do justice
+to those intelligences that are really behind the idea.
+
+Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle
+them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of
+translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the
+same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers of
+the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of
+longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate
+and intolerable, especially to the females"; say this to them and they
+will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles.
+Say to them "Murder your mother," and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet
+the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them
+"It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once
+useful distinction between the anthropoid _homo_ and the other
+animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be
+modified also even in regard to the important question of the
+extension of human diet"; say this to them, and beauty born of
+murmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a
+simple, manly, hearty way "Let's eat a man!" and their surprise is
+quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing. Now, if
+anyone thinks these two instances extravagant, I will refer to two
+actual cases from the Eugenic discussions. When Sir Oliver Lodge spoke
+of the methods "of the stud-farm" many Eugenists exclaimed against the
+crudity of the suggestion. Yet long before that one of the ablest
+champions in the other interest had written "What nonsense this
+education is! Who could educate a racehorse or a greyhound?" Which
+most certainly either means nothing, or the human stud-farm. Or again,
+when I spoke of people "being married forcibly by the police," another
+distinguished Eugenist almost achieved high spirits in his hearty
+assurance that no such thing had ever come into their heads. Yet a few
+days after I saw a Eugenist pronouncement, to the effect that the
+State ought to extend its powers in this area. The State can only be
+that corporation which men permit to employ compulsion; and this area
+can only be the area of sexual selection. I mean somewhat more than an
+idle jest when I say that the policeman will generally be found in
+that area. But I willingly admit that the policeman who looks after
+weddings will be like the policeman who looks after wedding-presents.
+He will be in plain clothes. I do not mean that a man in blue with a
+helmet will drag the bride and bridegroom to the altar. I do mean that
+nobody that man in blue is told to arrest will even dare to come near
+the church. Sir Oliver did not mean that men would be tied up in
+stables and scrubbed down by grooms. He meant that they would undergo
+a less of liberty which to men is even more infamous. He meant that
+the only formula important to Eugenists would be "by Smith out of
+Jones." Such a formula is one of the shortest in the world; and is
+certainly the shortest way with the Euphemists.
+
+The next sect of superficial objectors is even more irritating. I have
+called them, for immediate purposes, the Casuists. Suppose I say "I
+dislike this spread of Cannibalism in the West End restaurants."
+Somebody is sure to say "Well, after all, Queen Eleanor when she
+sucked blood from her husband's arm was a cannibal." What is one to
+say to such people? One can only say "Confine yourself to sucking
+poisoned blood from people's arms, and I permit you to call yourself
+by the glorious title of Cannibal." In this sense people say of
+Eugenics, "After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying
+a mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists." Again one
+can only answer, "Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as
+are naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult in
+the title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinction
+will be rare." But surely anyone's common-sense must tell him that if
+Eugenics dealt only with such extravagant cases, it would be called
+common-sense--and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded such
+absurdities for unknown ages; and has never yet called it Eugenics.
+You may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back;
+you may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire;
+but if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among
+living men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved,
+there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no
+such thing as this book.
+
+I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the
+Idealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good
+they hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who
+give us generally to understand that every modern reform will "work"
+all right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, and
+for how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind their
+looking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is the
+shadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does not
+expect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people most
+certainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it has
+left their hands. Each man promises to be about a thousand policemen.
+If you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, "Oh, I
+would certainly insist on this"; or "I would never go so far as that";
+as if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever
+done quite successfully--force men to forsake their sins. Of these it
+is enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any
+more than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a
+dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you
+have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not
+be able to fulfil a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put
+into it.
+
+Along with such idealists should go the strange people who seem to
+think that you can consecrate and purify any campaign for ever by
+repeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocates
+had in mind. These people will say "So far from aiming at _slavery_,
+the Eugenists are seeking _true_ liberty; liberty from disease and
+degeneracy, etc." Or they will say "We can assure Mr. Chesterton that
+the Eugenists have _no_ intention of segregating the harmless; justice
+and mercy are the very motto of----" etc. To this kind of thing
+perhaps the shortest answer is this. Many of those who speak thus are
+agnostic or generally unsympathetic to official religion. Suppose one
+of them said "The Church of England is full of hypocrisy." What would
+he think of me if I answered, "I assure you that hypocrisy is
+condemned by every form of Christianity; and is particularly
+repudiated in the Prayer Book"? Suppose he said that the Church of
+Rome had been guilty of great cruelties. What would he think of me if
+I answered, "The Church is expressly bound to meekness and charity;
+and therefore cannot be cruel"? This kind of people need not detain us
+long. Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; who
+flourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by the
+solemn official who said the other day that he could not understand
+the clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill, as it only extended the
+principles of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer
+"Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws to
+persons without a trace of lunacy." This lucid politician finds an old
+law, let us say, about keeping lepers in quarantine. He simply alters
+the word "lepers" to "long-nosed people," and says blandly that the
+principle is the same.
+
+Perhaps the weakest of all are those helpless persons whom I have
+called the Endeavourers. The prize specimen of them was another M.P.
+who defended the same Bill as "an honest attempt" to deal with a great
+evil: as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow
+citizens as a kind of chemical experiment; in a state of reverent
+agnosticism about what would come of it. But with this fatuous notion
+that one can deliberately establish the Inquisition or the Terror, and
+then faintly trust the larger hope, I shall have to deal more
+seriously in a subsequent chapter. It is enough to say here that the
+best thing the honest Endeavourer could do would be to make an honest
+attempt to know what he is doing. And not to do anything else until he
+has found out. Lastly, there is a class of controversialists so
+hopeless and futile that I have really failed to find a name for them.
+But whenever anyone attempts to argue rationally for or against any
+existent and recognisable _thing_, such as the Eugenic class of
+legislation, there are always people who begin to chop hay about
+Socialism and Individualism; and say "_You_ object to all State
+interference; _I_ am in favour of State interference. _You_ are an
+Individualist; _I_, on the other hand," etc. To which I can only
+answer, with heart-broken patience, that I am not an Individualist,
+but a poor fallen but baptised journalist who is trying to write a
+book about Eugenists, several of whom he has met; whereas he never met
+an Individualist, and is by no means certain he would recognise him if
+he did. In short, I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the
+State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say that in this case it
+would interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be
+turned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomless
+botherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative
+advantages of always turning to the right and always turning to the
+left.
+
+And for the rest, there is undoubtedly an enormous mass of sensible,
+rather thoughtless people, whose rooted sentiment it is that any deep
+change in our society must be in some way infinitely distant. They
+cannot believe that men in hats and coats like themselves can be
+preparing a revolution; all their Victorian philosophy has taught
+them that such transformations are always slow. Therefore, when I
+speak of Eugenic legislation, or the coming of the Eugenic State,
+they think of it as something like _The Time Machine_ or _Looking
+Backward_: a thing that, good or bad, will have to fit itself to
+their great-great-great-grandchild, who may be very different and may
+like it; and who in any case is rather a distant relative. To all
+this I have, to begin with, a very short and simple answer. The
+Eugenic State has begun. The first of the Eugenic Laws has already
+been adopted by the Government of this country; and passed with the
+applause of both parties through the dominant House of Parliament.
+This first Eugenic Law clears the ground and may be said to proclaim
+negative Eugenics; but it cannot be defended, and nobody has
+attempted to defend it, except on the Eugenic theory. I will call it
+the Feeble-Minded Bill both for brevity and because the description
+is strictly accurate. It is, quite simply and literally, a Bill for
+incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call
+mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them
+weak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom this
+term has not been conversationally applied by his own friends and
+relatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives
+have been lamentably lacking in spirit), it can be clearly seen that
+this law, like the early Christian Church (to which, however, it
+presents points of dissimilarity), is a net drawing in of all kinds.
+It must not be supposed that we have a stricter definition
+incorporated in the Bill. Indeed, the first definition of
+"feeble-minded" in the Bill was much looser and vaguer than the
+phrase "feeble-minded" itself. It is a piece of yawning idiocy about
+"persons who though capable of earning their living under favourable
+circumstances" (as if anyone could earn his living if circumstances
+were directly unfavourable to his doing so), are nevertheless
+"incapable of managing their affairs with proper prudence"; which is
+exactly what all the world and his wife are saying about their
+neighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for any kind of
+thought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing so very
+novel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is vital
+is this: that the _defence_ of this crazy Coercion Act is a Eugenic
+defence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that the
+aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists
+do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children.
+Every tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who
+is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as
+were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that
+is the point. England has forgotten the Feudal State; it is in the
+last anarchy of the Industrial State; there is much in Mr. Belloc's
+theory that it is approaching the Servile State; it cannot at present
+get at the Distributive State; it has almost certainly missed the
+Socialist State. But we are already under the Eugenist State; and
+nothing remains to us but rebellion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE
+
+
+A silent anarchy is eating out our society. I must pause upon the
+expression; because the true nature of anarchy is mostly
+misapprehended. It is not in the least necessary that anarchy should
+be violent; nor is it necessary that it should come from below. A
+government may grow anarchic as much as a people. The more sentimental
+sort of Tory uses the word anarchy as a mere term of abuse for
+rebellion; but he misses a most important intellectual distinction.
+Rebellion may be wrong and disastrous; but even when rebellion is
+wrong, it is never anarchy. When it is not self-defence, it is
+usurpation. It aims at setting up a new rule in place of the old rule.
+And while it cannot be anarchic in essence (because it has an aim), it
+certainly cannot be anarchic in method; for men must be organised when
+they fight; and the discipline in a rebel army has to be as good as
+the discipline in the royal army. This deep principle of distinction
+must be clearly kept in mind. Take for the sake of symbolism those two
+great spiritual stories which, whether we count them myths or
+mysteries, have so long been the two hinges of all European morals.
+The Christian who is inclined to sympathise generally with
+constituted authority will think of rebellion under the image of
+Satan, the rebel against God. But Satan, though a traitor, was not an
+anarchist. He claimed the crown of the cosmos; and had he prevailed,
+would have expected his rebel angels to give up rebelling. On the
+other hand, the Christian whose sympathies are more generally with
+just self-defence among the oppressed will think rather of Christ
+Himself defying the High Priests and scourging the rich traders. But
+whether or no Christ was (as some say) a Socialist, He most certainly
+was not an Anarchist. Christ, like Satan, claimed the throne. He set
+up a new authority against an old authority; but He set it up with
+positive commandments and a comprehensible scheme. In this light all
+mediaeval people--indeed, all people until a little while ago--would
+have judged questions involving revolt. John Ball would have offered
+to pull down the government because it was a bad government, not
+because it was a government. Richard II. would have blamed Bolingbroke
+not as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, in
+the useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from any
+rebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, in
+its first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I said
+before, it is often entirely silent.
+
+Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop
+yourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the
+normal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar,
+extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot
+_end_ these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family
+sits up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in the home if
+members of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It
+was not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the
+slaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the
+slave-owners' point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the
+slaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is
+historically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a
+picnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I
+think, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all
+took what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat
+if swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are
+uncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return
+within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the
+really dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It is
+magnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water--like
+Niagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening or
+dangerous or even destructive; it is that it cannot stop. Now it is
+plain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a
+society as easily as the society so ruled. And in modern England it is
+the powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it--who are truly
+possessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense,
+is not too strong. The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is
+talking nonsense; and it can't stop.
+
+Now it is perfectly plain that government ought to have, and must
+have, the same sort of right to use exceptional methods occasionally
+that the private householder has to have a picnic or to sit up all
+night on New Year's Eve. The State, like the householder, is sane if
+it can treat such exceptions as exceptions. Such desperate remedies
+may not even be right; but such remedies are endurable as long as they
+are admittedly desperate. Such cases, of course, are the communism of
+food in a besieged city; the official disavowal of an arrested spy;
+the subjection of a patch of civil life to martial law; the cutting of
+communication in a plague; or that deepest degradation of the
+commonwealth, the use of national soldiers not against foreign
+soldiers, but against their own brethren in revolt. Of these
+exceptions some are right and some wrong; but all are right in so far
+as they are taken as exceptions. The modern world is insane, not so
+much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the
+normal.
+
+We see this in the vague extension of punishments like imprisonment;
+often the very reformers who admit that prison is bad for people
+propose to reform them by a little more of it. We see it in panic
+legislation like that after the White Slave scare, when the torture of
+flogging was revived for all sorts of ill defined and vague and
+variegated types of men. Our fathers were never so mad, even when they
+were torturers. They stretched the man out on the rack. They did not
+stretch the rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burning
+they may have seen witches everywhere--because their minds were fixed
+on witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, because
+their minds were unfixed. While tying some very unpopular witch to the
+stake, with the firm conviction that she was a spiritual tyranny and
+pestilence, they did not say to each other, "A little burning is what
+my Aunt Susan wants, to cure her of back-biting," or "Some of these
+faggots would do your Cousin James good, and teach him to play with
+poor girls' affections."
+
+Now the name of all this is Anarchy. It not only does not know what it
+wants, but it does not even know what it hates. It multiplies
+excessively in the more American sort of English newspapers. When this
+new sort of New Englander burns a witch the whole prairie catches
+fire. These people have not the decision and detachment of the
+doctrinal ages. They cannot do a monstrous action and still see it is
+monstrous. Wherever they make a stride they make a rut. They cannot
+stop their own thoughts, though their thoughts are pouring into the
+pit.
+
+A final instance, which can be sketched much more briefly, can be
+found in this general fact: that the definition of almost every crime
+has become more and more indefinite, and spreads like a flattening and
+thinning cloud over larger and larger landscapes. Cruelty to children,
+one would have thought, was a thing about as unmistakable, unusual
+and appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to cover
+almost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The only
+distinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in the
+poor, who generally can't help them, and not in the rich, who
+generally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. The
+point here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod on
+the bloody night of Innocents has come precious near being
+attributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in the
+Temple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kind
+mother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy children
+had no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this an
+illegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all the
+horror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes to
+parricide, could now be used against any son who had done any act that
+could colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and so
+affected his health. Few of us would be safe.
+
+Another case out of hundreds is the loose extension of the idea of
+libel. Libel cases bear no more trace of the old and just anger
+against the man who bore false witness against his neighbour than
+"cruelty" cases do of the old and just horror of the parents that
+hated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports of
+the less athletic rich--a variation on _baccarat_, a game of chance. A
+music-hall actress got damages for a song that was called "vulgar,"
+which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my
+handwriting "rococo." A politician got huge damages because he was
+said to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that
+seductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story.
+Sometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in his
+business; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocer
+slanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it is
+clear that its exponents possess no power of distinction, or sense of
+proportion, by which they can draw the line between calling a woman a
+popular singer and calling her a bad lot; or between charging a man
+with leading infants to Protection and leading them to sin and shame.
+But the vital point to which to return is this. That it is not
+necessarily, nor even specially, an anarchy in the populace. It is an
+anarchy in the organ of government. It is the magistrates--voices of
+the governing class--who cannot distinguish between cruelty and
+carelessness. It is the judges (and their very submissive special
+juries) who cannot see the difference between opinion and slander. And
+it is the highly placed and highly paid experts who have brought in
+the first Eugenic Law, the Feeble-Minded Bill--thus showing that they
+can see no difference between a mad and a sane man.
+
+That, to begin with, is the historic atmosphere in which this thing
+was born. It is a peculiar atmosphere, and luckily not likely to last.
+Real progress bears the same relation to it that a happy girl laughing
+bears to an hysterical girl who cannot stop laughing. But I have
+described this atmosphere first because it is the only atmosphere in
+which such a thing as the Eugenist legislation could be proposed among
+men. All other ages would have called it to some kind of logical
+account, however academic or narrow. The lowest sophist in the Greek
+schools would remember enough of Socrates to force the Eugenist to
+tell him (at least) whether Midias was segregated because he was
+curable or because he was incurable. The meanest Thomist of the
+mediaeval monasteries would have the sense to see that you cannot
+discuss a madman when you have not discussed a man. The most owlish
+Calvinist commentator in the seventeenth century would ask the
+Eugenist to reconcile such Bible texts as derided fools with the other
+Bible texts that praised them. The dullest shopkeeper in Paris in 1790
+would have asked what were the Rights of Man, if they did not include
+the rights of the lover, the husband, and the father. It is only in
+our own London Particular (as Mr. Guppy said of the fog) that small
+figures can loom so large in the vapour, and even mingle with quite
+different figures, and have the appearance of a mob. But, above all, I
+have dwelt on the telescopic quality in these twilight avenues,
+because unless the reader realises how elastic and unlimited they are,
+he simply will not believe in the abominations we have to combat.
+
+One of those wise old fairy tales, that come from nowhere and flourish
+everywhere, tells how a man came to own a small magic machine like a
+coffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one
+word and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I
+wish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the
+mill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers'
+mess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury
+and exaggeration, and sailors' tales should be taken with a grain of
+it. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then,
+touching the word that stopped it, suddenly remembered that he forgot.
+The tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like
+Arctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom,
+where all the men lay drowned. And that (so says this fairy tale) is
+why the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For the
+fairy tales knew what the modern mystics don't--that one should not
+let loose either the supernatural or the natural.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW
+
+
+The modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: that people do
+not see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it may or may not be
+right to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivably be right to kill
+a murderer because it is wrong to kill a man. If the hangman, having
+got his hand in, proceeded to hang friends and relatives to his taste
+and fancy, he would (intellectually) unhang the first man, though the
+first man might not think so. Or thus again, if you say an insane man
+is irresponsible, you imply that a sane man is responsible. He is
+responsible for the insane man. And the attempt of the Eugenists and
+other fatalists to treat all men as irresponsible is the largest and
+flattest folly in philosophy. The Eugenist has to treat everybody,
+including himself, as an exception to a rule that isn't there.
+
+The Eugenists, as a first move, have extended the frontiers of the
+lunatic asylum: let us take this as our definite starting point, and
+ask ourselves what lunacy is, and what is its fundamental relation to
+human society. Now that raw juvenile scepticism that clogs all thought
+with catchwords may often be heard to remark that the mad are only the
+minority, the sane only the majority. There is a neat exactitude
+about such people's nonsense; they seem to miss the point by magic.
+The mad are not a minority because they are not a corporate body; and
+that is what their madness means. The sane are not a majority; they
+are mankind. And mankind (as its name would seem to imply) is a
+_kind_, not a degree. In so far as the lunatic differs, he differs
+from all minorities and majorities in kind. The madman who thinks he
+is a knife cannot go into partnership with the other who thinks he is
+a fork. There is no trysting place outside reason; there is no inn on
+those wild roads that are beyond the world.
+
+The madman is not he that defies the world. The saint, the criminal,
+the martyr, the cynic, the nihilist may all defy the world quite
+sanely. And even if such fanatics would destroy the world, the world
+owes them a strictly fair trial according to proof and public law. But
+the madman is not the man who defies the world; he is the man who
+_denies_ it. Suppose we are all standing round a field and looking at
+a tree in the middle of it. It is perfectly true that we all see it
+(as the decadents say) in infinitely different aspects: that is not
+the point; the point is that we all say it is a tree. Suppose, if you
+will, that we are all poets, which seems improbable; so that each of
+us could turn his aspect into a vivid image distinct from a tree.
+Suppose one says it looks like a green cloud and another like a green
+fountain, and a third like a green dragon and the fourth like a green
+cheese. The fact remains: that they all say it _looks_ like these
+things. It is a tree. Nor are any of the poets in the least mad
+because of any opinions they may form, however frenzied, about the
+functions or future of the tree. A conservative poet may wish to clip
+the tree; a revolutionary poet may wish to burn it. An optimist poet
+may want to make it a Christmas tree and hang candles on it. A
+pessimist poet may want to hang himself on it. None of these are mad,
+because they are all talking about the same thing. But there is
+another man who is talking horribly about something else. There is a
+monstrous exception to mankind. Why he is so we know not; a new theory
+says it is heredity; an older theory says it is devils. But in any
+case, the spirit of it is the spirit that denies, the spirit that
+really denies realities. This is the man who looks at the tree and
+does not say it looks like a lion, but says that it _is_ a lamp-post.
+
+I do not mean that all mad delusions are as concrete as this, though
+some are more concrete. Believing your own body is glass is a more
+daring denial of reality than believing a tree is a glass lamp at the
+top of a pole. But all true delusions have in them this unalterable
+assertion--that what is not is. The difference between us and the
+maniac is not about how things look or how things ought to look, but
+about what they self-evidently are. The lunatic does not say that he
+ought to be King; Perkin Warbeck might say that. He says he is King.
+The lunatic does not say he is as wise as Shakespeare; Bernard Shaw
+might say that. The lunatic says he _is_ Shakespeare. The lunatic
+does not say he is divine in the same sense as Christ; Mr. R.J.
+Campbell would say that. The lunatic says he _is_ Christ. In all cases
+the difference is a difference about what is there; not a difference
+touching what should be done about it.
+
+For this reason, and for this alone, the lunatic is outside public
+law. This is the abysmal difference between him and the criminal. The
+criminal admits the facts, and therefore permits us to appeal to the
+facts. We can so arrange the facts around him that he may really
+understand that agreement is in his own interests. We can say to him,
+"Do not steal apples from this tree, or we will hang you on that
+tree." But if the man really thinks one tree is a lamp-post and the
+other tree a Trafalgar Square fountain, we simply cannot treat with
+him at all. It is obviously useless to say, "Do not steal apples from
+this lamp-post, or I will hang you on that fountain." If a man denies
+the facts, there is no answer but to lock him up. He cannot speak our
+language: not that varying verbal language which often misses fire
+even with us, but that enormous alphabet of sun and moon and green
+grass and blue sky in which alone we meet, and by which alone we can
+signal to each other. That unique man of genius, George Macdonald,
+described in one of his weird stories two systems of space
+co-incident; so that where I knew there was a piano standing in a
+drawing-room you knew there was a rose-bush growing in a garden.
+Something of this sort is in small or great affairs the matter with
+the madman. He cannot have a vote, because he is the citizen of
+another country. He is a foreigner. Nay, he is an invader and an
+enemy; for the city he lives in has been super-imposed on ours.
+
+Now these two things are primarily to be noted in his case. First,
+that we can only condemn him to a _general_ doom, because we only know
+his _general_ nature. All criminals, who do particular things for
+particular reasons (things and reasons which, however criminal, are
+always comprehensible), have been more and more tried for such
+separate actions under separate and suitable laws ever since Europe
+began to become a civilisation--and until the rare and recent
+re-incursions of barbarism in such things as the Indeterminate
+Sentence. Of that I shall speak later; it is enough for this argument
+to point out the plain facts. It is the plain fact that every savage,
+every sultan, every outlawed baron, every brigand-chief has always
+used this instrument of the Indeterminate Sentence, which has been
+recently offered us as something highly scientific and humane. All
+these people, in short, being barbarians, have always kept their
+captives captive until they (the barbarians) chose to think the
+captives were in a fit frame of mind to come out. It is also the plain
+fact that all that has been called civilisation or progress, justice
+or liberty, for nearly three thousand years, has had the general
+direction of treating even the captive as a free man, in so far as
+some clear case of some defined crime had to be shown against him.
+All law has meant allowing the criminal, within some limits or other,
+to argue with the law: as Job was allowed, or rather challenged, to
+argue with God. But the criminal is, among civilised men, tried by one
+law for one crime for a perfectly simple reason: that the motive of
+the crime, like the meaning of the law, is conceivable to the common
+intelligence. A man is punished specially as a burglar, and not
+generally as a bad man, because a man may be a burglar and in many
+other respects not be a bad man. The act of burglary is punishable
+because it is intelligible. But when acts are unintelligible, we can
+only refer them to a general untrustworthiness, and guard against them
+by a general restraint. If a man breaks into a house to get a piece of
+bread, we can appeal to his reason in various ways. We can hang him
+for housebreaking; or again (as has occurred to some daring thinkers)
+we can give him a piece of bread. But if he breaks in, let us say, to
+steal the parings of other people's finger nails, then we are in a
+difficulty: we cannot imagine what he is going to do with them, and
+therefore cannot easily imagine what we are going to do with him. If a
+villain comes in, in cloak and mask, and puts a little arsenic in the
+soup, we can collar him and say to him distinctly, "You are guilty of
+Murder; and I will now consult the code of tribal law, under which we
+live, to see if this practice is not forbidden." But if a man in the
+same cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-water
+in the soup, what can we say? Our charge necessarily becomes a more
+general one. We can only observe, with a moderation almost amounting
+to weakness, "You seem to be the sort of person who will do this sort
+of thing." And then we can lock him up. The principle of the
+indeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. It
+does apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And it
+applies to nobody else.
+
+The second thing to be noted is this: that it is only by the unanimity
+of sane men that we can condemn this man as utterly separate. If he
+says a tree is a lamp-post he is mad; but only because all other men
+say it is a tree. If some men thought it was a tree with a lamp on it,
+and others thought it was a lamp-post wreathed with branches and
+vegetation, then it would be a matter of opinion and degree; and he
+would not be mad, but merely extreme. Certainly he would not be mad if
+nobody but a botanist could see it was a tree. Certainly his enemies
+might be madder than he, if nobody but a lamplighter could see it was
+not a lamp-post. And similarly a man is not imbecile if only a
+Eugenist thinks so. The question then raised would not be his sanity,
+but the sanity of one botanist or one lamplighter or one Eugenist.
+That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is not the abnormally
+clever, which is obviously a matter in dispute. That which can condemn
+the abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he begins
+to say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that we
+have a right to treat him as the exception and not the rule. It is
+only because we none of us profess to be anything more than man that
+we have authority to treat him as something less.
+
+Now the first principle behind Eugenics becomes plain enough. It is
+the proposal that somebody or something should criticise men with the
+same superiority with which men criticise madmen. It might exercise
+this right with great moderation; but I am not here talking about the
+exercise, but about the right. Its _claim_ certainly is to bring all
+human life under the Lunacy Laws.
+
+Now this is the first weakness in the case of the Eugenists: that they
+cannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by what
+authority they do these things. They cannot see the exception is
+different from the rule--even when it is misrule, even when it is an
+unruly rule. The sound sense in the old Lunacy Law was this: that you
+cannot deny that a man is a citizen until you are practically prepared
+to deny that he is a man. Men, and only men, can be the judges of
+whether he is a man. But any private club of prigs can be judges of
+whether he ought to be a citizen. When once we step down from that
+tall and splintered peak of pure insanity we step on to a tableland
+where one man is not so widely different from another. Outside the
+exception, what we find is the average. And the practical, legal shape
+of the quarrel is this: that unless the normal men have the right to
+expel the abnormal, what particular sort of abnormal men have the
+right to expel the normal men? If sanity is not good enough, what is
+there that is saner than sanity?
+
+Without any grip of the notion of a rule and an exception, the general
+idea of judging people's heredity breaks down and is useless. For this
+reason: that if everything is the result of a doubtful heredity, the
+judgment itself is the result of a doubtful heredity also. Let it
+judge not that it be not judged. Eugenists, strange to say, have
+fathers and mothers like other people; and our opinion about their
+fathers and mothers is worth exactly as much as their opinions about
+ours. None of the parents were lunatics, and the rest is mere likes
+and dislikes. Suppose Dr. Saleeby had gone up to Byron and said, "My
+lord, I perceive you have a club-foot and inordinate passions: such
+are the hereditary results of a profligate soldier marrying a
+hot-tempered woman." The poet might logically reply (with
+characteristic lucidity and impropriety), "Sir, I perceive you have a
+confused mind and an unphilosophic theory about other people's love
+affairs. Such are the hereditary delusions bred by a Syrian doctor
+marrying a Quaker lady from York." Suppose Dr. Karl Pearson had said
+to Shelley, "From what I see of your temperament, you are running
+great risks in forming a connection with the daughter of a fanatic and
+eccentric like Godwin." Shelley would be employing the strict
+rationalism of the older and stronger free thinkers, if he answered,
+"From what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction in
+marrying the great-niece of an old corpse of a courtier and
+dilettante like Samuel Rogers." It is only opinion for opinion. Nobody
+can pretend that either Mary Godwin or Samuel Rogers was mad; and the
+general view a man may hold about the healthiness of inheriting their
+blood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men do
+marry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose that Dr. Karl
+Pearson is any better judge of a bridegroom than the bridegroom is of
+a bride.
+
+An objection may be anticipated here, but it is very easily answered.
+It may be said that we do, in fact, call in medical specialists to
+settle whether a man is mad; and that these specialists go by
+technical and even secret tests that cannot be known to the mass of
+men. It is obvious that this is true; it is equally obvious that it
+does not affect our argument. When we ask the doctor whether our
+grandfather is going mad, we still mean mad by our own common human
+definition. We mean, is he going to be a certain sort of person whom
+all men recognise when once he exists. That certain specialists can
+detect the approach of him, before he exists, does not alter the fact
+that it is of the practical and popular madman that we are talking,
+and of him alone. The doctor merely sees a certain fact potentially in
+the future, while we, with less information, can only see it in the
+present; but his fact is our fact and everybody's fact, or we should
+not bother about it at all. Here is no question of the doctor bringing
+an entirely new sort of person under coercion, as in the
+Feeble-Minded Bill. The doctor can say, "Tobacco is death to you,"
+because the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highly
+democratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of the
+indubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, "Jones has
+that twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house." But it is
+not the medical detail we fear, but the moral upshot. We should say,
+"Let him twitch, as long as he doesn't burn down the house." The
+doctor may say, "He has that look in the eyes, and he may take the
+hatchet and brain you all." But we do not object to the look in the
+eyes as such; we object to consequences which, once come, we should
+all call insane if there were no doctors in the world. We should say,
+"Let him look how he likes; as long as he does not look for the
+hatchet."
+
+Now, that specialists are valuable for this particular and practical
+purpose, of predicting the approach of enormous and admitted human
+calamities, nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring us
+one inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is a
+calamity; or to call things calamities which common sense does not
+call calamities. We call in the doctor to save us from death; and,
+death being admittedly an evil, he has the right to administer the
+queerest and most recondite pill which he may think is a cure for all
+such menaces of death. He has not the right to administer death, as
+the cure for all human ills. And as he has no moral authority to
+enforce a new conception of happiness, so he has no moral authority
+to enforce a new conception of sanity. He may know I am going mad; for
+madness is an isolated thing like leprosy; and I know nothing about
+leprosy. But if he merely thinks my mind is weak, I may happen to
+think the same of his. I often do.
+
+In short, unless pilots are to be permitted to ram ships on to the
+rocks and then say that heaven is the only true harbour; unless judges
+are to be allowed to let murderers loose, and explain afterwards that
+the murder had done good on the whole; unless soldiers are to be
+allowed to lose battles and then point out that true glory is to be
+found in the valley of humiliation; unless cashiers are to rob a bank
+in order to give it an advertisement; or dentists to torture people to
+give them a contrast to their comforts; unless we are prepared to let
+loose all these private fancies against the public and accepted
+meaning of life or safety or prosperity or pleasure--then it is as
+plain as Punch's nose that no scientific man must be allowed to meddle
+with the public definition of madness. We call him in to tell us where
+it is or when it is. We could not do so, if we had not ourselves
+settled what it is.
+
+As I wish to confine myself in this chapter to the primary point of
+the plain existence of sanity and insanity, I will not be led along
+any of the attractive paths that open here. I shall endeavour to deal
+with them in the next chapter. Here I confine myself to a sort of
+summary. Suppose a man's throat has been cut, quite swiftly and
+suddenly, with a table knife, at a small table where we sit. The
+whole of civil law rests on the supposition that we are witnesses;
+that we saw it; and if we do not know about it, who does? Now suppose
+all the witnesses fall into a quarrel about degrees of eyesight.
+Suppose one says he had brought his reading-glasses instead of his
+usual glasses; and therefore did not see the man fall across the table
+and cover it with blood. Suppose another says he could not be certain
+it was blood, because a slight colour-blindness was hereditary in his
+family. Suppose a third says he cannot swear to the uplifted knife,
+because his oculist tells him he is astigmatic, and vertical lines do
+not affect him as do horizontal lines. Suppose another says that dots
+have often danced before his eyes in very fantastic combinations, many
+of which were very like one gentleman cutting another gentleman's
+throat at dinner. All these things refer to real experiences. There is
+such a thing as myopia; there is such a thing as colour-blindness;
+there is such a thing as astigmatism; there is such a thing as
+shifting shapes swimming before the eyes. But what should we think of
+a whole dinner party that could give nothing except these highly
+scientific explanations when found in company with a corpse? I imagine
+there are only two things we could think: either that they were all
+drunk, or they were all murderers.
+
+And yet there is an exception. If there were one man at table who was
+admittedly _blind_, should we not give him the benefit of the doubt?
+Should we not honestly feel that he was the exception that proved the
+rule? The very fact that he could not have seen would remind us that
+the other men must have seen. The very fact that he had no eyes must
+remind us of eyes. A man can be blind; a man can be dead; a man can be
+mad. But the comparison is necessarily weak, after all. For it is the
+essence of madness to be unlike anything else in the world: which is
+perhaps why so many men wiser than we have traced it to another.
+
+Lastly, the literal maniac is different from all other persons in
+dispute in this vital respect: that he is the only person whom we can,
+with a final lucidity, declare that we do not want. He is almost
+always miserable himself, and he always makes others miserable. But
+this is not so with the mere invalid. The Eugenists would probably
+answer all my examples by taking the case of marrying into a family
+with consumption (or some such disease which they are fairly sure is
+hereditary) and asking whether such cases at least are not clear cases
+for a Eugenic intervention. Permit me to point out to them that they
+once more make a confusion of thought. The sickness or soundness of a
+consumptive may be a clear and calculable matter. The happiness or
+unhappiness of a consumptive is quite another matter, and is not
+calculable at all. What is the good of telling people that if they
+marry for love, they may be punished by being the parents of Keats or
+the parents of Stevenson? Keats died young; but he had more pleasure
+in a minute than a Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson had
+lung-trouble; and it may, for all I know, have been perceptible to the
+Eugenic eye even a generation before. But who would perform that
+illegal operation: the stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter
+bursting with good news, confiscating a hamper full of presents and
+prizes, pouring torrents of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this
+is a faint approximation for the Eugenic inaction of the ancestors of
+Stevenson. This, however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson
+it is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he
+got. If he had died without writing a line, he would have had more
+red-hot joy than is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I
+owe so much, let the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray that
+the stars of the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered among
+the days of the year, because it shut not up the doors of his mother's
+womb? I respectfully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon my
+mouth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE FLYING AUTHORITY
+
+
+It happened one day that an atheist and a man were standing together
+on a doorstep; and the atheist said, "It is raining." To which the man
+replied, "What is raining?": which question was the beginning of a
+violent quarrel and a lasting friendship. I will not touch upon any
+heads of the dispute, which doubtless included Jupiter Pluvius, the
+Neuter Gender, Pantheism, Noah's Ark, Mackintoshes, and the Passive
+Mood; but I will record the one point upon which the two persons
+emerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as an
+atheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the mere
+diction of a man, though he be speaking of clocks or cats or anything
+quite remote from theology. The mark of the atheistic style is that it
+instinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are dead
+things; that things have no souls. Thus they will not speak of waging
+war, which means willing it; they speak of the "outbreak of war," as
+if all the guns blew up without the men touching them. Thus those
+Socialists that are atheist will not call their international
+sympathy, sympathy; they will call it "solidarity," as if the poor men
+of France and Germany were physically stuck together like dates in a
+grocer's shop. The same Marxian Socialists are accused of cursing the
+Capitalists inordinately; but the truth is that they let the
+Capitalists off much too easily. For instead of saying that employers
+pay less wages, which might pin the employers to some moral
+responsibility, they insist on talking about the "rise and fall" of
+wages; as if a vast silver sea of sixpences and shillings was always
+going up and down automatically like the real sea at Margate. Thus
+they will not speak of reform, but of development; and they spoil
+their one honest and virile phrase, "the class war," by talking of it
+as no one in his wits can talk of a war, predicting its finish and
+final result as one calculates the coming of Christmas Day or the
+taxes. Thus, lastly (as we shall see touching our special
+subject-matter here) the atheist style in letters always avoids
+talking of love or lust, which are things alive, and calls marriage or
+concubinage "the relations of the sexes"; as if a man and a woman were
+two wooden objects standing in a certain angle and attitude to each
+other, like a table and a chair.
+
+Now the same anarchic mystery that clings round the phrase, "_il
+pleut_," clings round the phrase, "_il faut_." In English it is
+generally represented by the passive mood in grammar, and the
+Eugenists and their like deal especially in it; they are as passive in
+their statements as they are active in their experiments. Their
+sentences always enter tail first, and have no subject, like animals
+without heads. It is never "the doctor should cut off this leg" or
+"the policeman should collar that man." It is always "Such limbs
+should be amputated," or "Such men should be under restraint." Hamlet
+said, "I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's
+offal." The Eugenist would say, "The region kites should, if possible,
+be fattened; and the offal of this slave is available for the dietetic
+experiment." Lady Macbeth said, "Give me the daggers; I'll let his
+bowels out." The Eugenist would say, "In such cases the bowels should,
+etc." Do not blame me for the repulsiveness of the comparisons. I have
+searched English literature for the most decent parallels to Eugenist
+language.
+
+The formless god that broods over the East is called "Om." The
+formless god who has begun to brood over the West is called "On." But
+here we must make a distinction. The impersonal word _on_ is French,
+and the French have a right to use it, because they are a democracy.
+And when a Frenchman says "one" he does not mean himself, but the
+normal citizen. He does not mean merely "one," but one and all. "_On
+n'a que sa parole_" does not mean "_Noblesse oblige_," or "I am the
+Duke of Billingsgate and must keep my word." It means: "One has a
+sense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, should
+feel honourable"; and this, whether possible or no, is the purest
+ambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, "Conditions
+must be altered" or "Ancestry should be investigated," or what not, it
+seems clear that they do not mean that the democracy must do it,
+whatever else they may mean. They do not mean that any man not
+evidently mad may be trusted with these tests and re-arrangements, as
+the French democratic system trusts such a man with a vote or a farm
+or the control of a family. That would mean that Jones and Brown,
+being both ordinary men, would set about arranging each other's
+marriages. And this state of affairs would seem a little elaborate,
+and it might occur even to the Eugenic mind that if Jones and Brown
+are quite capable of arranging each other's marriages, it is just
+possible that they might be capable of arranging their own.
+
+This dilemma, which applies in so simple a case, applies equally to
+any wide and sweeping system of Eugenist voting; for though it is true
+that the community can judge more dispassionately than a man can judge
+in his own case, this particular question of the choice of a wife is
+so full of disputable shades in every conceivable case, that it is
+surely obvious that almost any democracy would simply vote the thing
+out of the sphere of voting, as they would any proposal of police
+interference in the choice of walking weather or of children's names.
+I should not like to be the politician who should propose a particular
+instance of Eugenics to be voted on by the French people. Democracy
+dismissed, it is here hardly needful to consider the other old models.
+Modern scientists will not say that George III., in his lucid
+intervals, should settle who is mad; or that the aristocracy that
+introduced gout shall supervise diet.
+
+I hold it clear, therefore, if anything is clear about the business,
+that the Eugenists do not merely mean that the mass of common men
+should settle each other's marriages between them; the question
+remains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when they say
+that this or that ought to be done. What is this flying and evanescent
+authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man who
+is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's verb? In a large
+number of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenist
+means himself, and nobody else. Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A.H. Huth,
+actually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a great
+deal of good could be done with a surgical knife, if we would only
+turn him loose with one. And this may be true. A great deal of good
+could be done with a loaded revolver, in the hands of a judicious
+student of human nature. But it is imperative that the Eugenist should
+perceive that on that principle we can never get beyond a perfect
+balance of different sympathies and antipathies. I mean that I should
+differ from Dr. Saleeby or Dr. Karl Pearson not only in a vast
+majority of individual cases, but in a vast majority of cases in which
+they would be bound to admit that such a difference was natural and
+reasonable. The chief victim of these famous doctors would be a yet
+more famous doctor: that eminent though unpopular practitioner, Dr.
+Fell.
+
+To show that such rational and serious differences do exist, I will
+take one instance from that Bill which proposed to protect families
+and the public generally from the burden of feeble-minded persons.
+Now, even if I could share the Eugenic contempt for human rights, even
+if I could start gaily on the Eugenic campaign, I should not begin by
+removing feeble-minded persons. I have known as many families in as
+many classes as most men; and I cannot remember meeting any very
+monstrous human suffering arising out of the presence of such
+insufficient and negative types. There seem to be comparatively few of
+them; and those few by no means the worst burdens upon domestic
+happiness. I do not hear of them often; I do not hear of them doing
+much more harm than good; and in the few cases I know well they are
+not only regarded with human affection, but can be put to certain
+limited forms of human use. Even if I were a Eugenist, then I should
+not personally elect to waste my time locking up the feeble-minded.
+The people I should lock up would be the strong-minded. I have known
+hardly any cases of mere mental weakness making a family a failure; I
+have known eight or nine cases of violent and exaggerated force of
+character making a family a hell. If the strong-minded could be
+segregated it would quite certainly be better for their friends and
+families. And if there is really anything in heredity, it would be
+better for posterity too. For the kind of egoist I mean is a madman
+in a much more plausible sense than the mere harmless "deficient"; and
+to hand on the horrors of his anarchic and insatiable temperament is a
+much graver responsibility than to leave a mere inheritance of
+childishness. I would not arrest such tyrants, because I think that
+even moral tyranny in a few homes is better than a medical tyranny
+turning the state into a madhouse. I would not segregate them, because
+I respect a man's free-will and his front-door and his right to be
+tried by his peers. But since free-will is believed by Eugenists no
+more than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenists
+no more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is about
+as sacred to Eugenists as it would be to King John, why do not _they_
+bring light and peace into so many human homes by removing a demoniac
+from each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Bill
+call at the many grand houses in town or country where such nightmares
+notoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the bad
+squire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniac
+prize-fighter? I do not know; and there is only one reason I can think
+of, which must remain a matter of speculation. When I was at school,
+the kind of boy who liked teasing half-wits was not the sort that
+stood up to bullies.
+
+That, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention the
+case of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give one
+out of the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individual
+opinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to
+propagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating trip
+together, we should separate at the very door; and if he had a
+thousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyone
+who has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows that
+the ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some little
+hobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad for
+children, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many more
+people ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human nature
+to expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard,
+dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as
+exercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would
+have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own
+madman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another would
+wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the
+terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats
+and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it
+seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his
+own implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lesson
+which is hardest for him and me and for all our fallen race--the fact
+that he is only himself.
+
+We now pass from mere individual men who obviously cannot be trusted,
+even if they are individual medical men, with such despotism over
+their neighbours; and we come to consider whether the Eugenists have
+at all clearly traced any more imaginable public authority, any
+apparatus of great experts or great examinations to which such risks
+of tyranny could be trusted. They are not very precise about this
+either; indeed, the great difficulty I have throughout in considering
+what are the Eugenist's proposals is that they do not seem to know
+themselves. Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connect
+with human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness of
+their definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans. The Eugenic
+optimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled and
+confused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that it will be
+all right on the night. They have all the ancient despotism, but none
+of the ancient dogmatism. If they are ready to reproduce the secrecies
+and cruelties of the Inquisition, at least we cannot accuse them of
+offending us with any of that close and complicated thought, that arid
+and exact logic which narrowed the minds of the Middle Ages; they have
+discovered how to combine the hardening of the heart with a
+sympathetic softening of the head. Nevertheless, there is one large,
+though vague, idea of the Eugenists, which is an idea, and which we
+reach when we reach this problem of a more general supervision.
+
+It was best presented perhaps by the distinguished doctor who wrote
+the article on these matters in that composite book which Mr. Wells
+edited, and called "The Great State." He said the doctor should no
+longer be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in his
+own words, "the health adviser of the community." The same can be
+expressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb that
+prevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that it
+amounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. This
+the writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. To
+which I rejoin that if everyone is ill the health adviser is ill too,
+and therefore cannot know how to cure that minimum of illness. This is
+the fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine.
+Prevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man's head is not
+better than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing to
+cure it. And it is the same if a man is in revolt, even a morbid
+revolt. Taking the heart out of him by slavery is not better than
+leaving the heart in him, even if you leave it a broken heart.
+Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse
+than disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the
+extra exasperation of being quite well. I will ask God, but certainly
+not man, to prevent me in all my doings. But the decisive and
+discussable form of this is well summed up in that phrase about the
+health adviser of society. I am sure that those who speak thus have
+something in their minds larger and more illuminating than the other
+two propositions we have considered. They do not mean that all
+citizens should decide, which would mean merely the present vague and
+dubious balance. They do not mean that all medical men should decide,
+which would mean a much more unbalanced balance. They mean that a few
+men might be found who had a consistent scheme and vision of a healthy
+nation, as Napoleon had a consistent scheme and vision of an army. It
+is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men's
+marriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize and
+segregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a few
+great hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens, as
+nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it is tyranny;
+but tyranny is a workable thing. When we ask by what process such men
+could be certainly chosen, we are back again on the old dilemma of
+despotism, which means a man, or democracy which means men, or
+aristocracy which means favouritism. But as a vision the thing is
+plausible and even rational. It is rational, and it is wrong.
+
+It is wrong, quite apart from the suggestion that an expert on health
+cannot be chosen. It is wrong because an expert on health cannot
+exist. An expert on disease can exist, for the very reason we have
+already considered in the case of madness, because experts can only
+arise out of exceptional things. A parallel with any of the other
+learned professions will make the point plain. If I am prosecuted for
+trespass, I will ask my solicitor which of the local lanes I am
+forbidden to walk in. But if my solicitor, having gained my case, were
+so elated that he insisted on settling what lanes I should walk in; if
+he asked me to let him map out all my country walks, because he was
+the perambulatory adviser of the community--then that solicitor would
+solicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me through
+woodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues and
+attractive short-cuts, I shall turn on him with passion, saying: "Sir,
+I pay you to know one particular puzzle in Latin and Norman-French,
+which they call the law of England; and you do know the law of
+England. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you know
+England. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was looking
+at it." As are the limits of the lawyer's special knowledge about
+walking, so are the limits of the doctor's. If I fall over the stump
+of a tree and break my leg, as is likely enough, I shall say to the
+lawyer, "Please go and fetch the doctor." I shall do it because the
+doctor really has a larger knowledge of a narrower area. There are
+only a certain number of ways in which a leg can be broken; I know
+none of them, and he knows all of them. There is such a thing as being
+a specialist in broken legs. There is no such thing as being a
+specialist in legs. When unbroken, legs are a matter of taste. If the
+doctor has really mended my leg, he may merit a colossal equestrian
+statue on the top of an eternal tower of brass. But if the doctor has
+really mended my leg he has no more rights over it. He must not come
+and teach me how to walk; because he and I learnt that in the same
+school, the nursery. And there is no more abstract likelihood of the
+doctor walking more elegantly than I do than there is of the barber or
+the bishop or the burglar walking more elegantly than I do. There
+cannot be a general specialist; the specialist can have no kind of
+authority, unless he has avowedly limited his range. There cannot be
+such a thing as the health adviser of the community, because there
+cannot be such a thing as one who specialises in the universe.
+
+Thus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be married should
+be obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-book, the
+expression is neat; but it does not convey the real respects in which
+the two things agree, and in which they differ. To begin with, of
+course, there is a great deal too much of the bank-book for the sanity
+of our commonwealth; and it is highly probable that the health-book,
+as conducted in modern conditions, would rapidly become as timid, as
+snobbish, and as sterile as the money side of marriage has become. In
+the moral atmosphere of modernity the poor and the honest would
+probably get as much the worst of it if we fought with health-books as
+they do when we fight with bank-books. But that is a more general
+matter; the real point is in the difference between the two. The
+difference is in this vital fact: that a monied man generally thinks
+about money, whereas a healthy man does not think about health. If
+the strong young man cannot produce his health-book, it is for the
+perfectly simple reason that he has not got one. He can mention some
+extraordinary malady he has; but every man of honour is expected to do
+that now, whatever may be the decision that follows on the knowledge.
+
+Health is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the impudence
+to understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostic has any
+right to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among other
+things, that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things, by
+which they are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and any
+scientist who pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimate
+sanity, I will call the lowest of religious fanatics. I will allow him
+to understand the madman, for the madman is an exception. But if he
+says he understands the sane man, then he says he has the secret of
+the Creator. For whenever you and I feel fully sane, we are quite
+incapable of naming the elements that make up that mysterious
+simplicity. We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we can
+conceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium by
+which, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling like
+precipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing.
+
+We conclude, therefore, that unless Eugenic activity be restricted to
+monstrous things like mania, there is no constituted or constitutable
+authority that can really over-rule men in a matter in which they are
+so largely on a level. In the matter of fundamental human rights,
+nothing can be above Man, except God. An institution claiming to come
+from God might have such authority; but this is the last claim the
+Eugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking to
+rule men in such matters is like a man's right eye claiming to rule
+him, or his left leg to run away with him. It is madness. We now pass
+on to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenics
+to be done, with such cheerfulness as we may possess after discovering
+that there is nobody to do it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE
+
+
+Dr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in one of his
+addresses on this subject, and said that even I cannot produce any but
+a feeble-minded child from a feeble-minded ancestry. To which I reply,
+first of all, that he cannot produce a feeble-minded child. The whole
+point of our contention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed and
+outside opinion. There is such a thing as mania, which has always been
+segregated; there is such a thing as idiotcy, which has always been
+segregated; but feeble-mindedness is a new phrase under which you
+might segregate anybody. It is essential that this fundamental fallacy
+in the use of statistics should be got somehow into the modern mind.
+Such people must be made to see the point, which is surely plain
+enough, that it is useless to have exact figures if they are exact
+figures about an inexact phrase. If I say, "There are five fools in
+Acton," it is surely quite clear that, though no mathematician can
+make five the same as four or six, that will not stop you or anyone
+else from finding a few more fools in Acton. Now weak-mindedness, like
+folly, is a term divided from madness in this vital manner--that in
+one sense it applies to all men, in another to most men, in another
+to very many men, and so on. It is as if Dr. Saleeby were to say,
+"Vanity, I find, is undoubtedly hereditary. Here is Mrs. Jones, who
+was very sensitive about her sonnets being criticised, and I found her
+little daughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment is
+conclusive, the demonstration is complete; there in the first
+generation is the artistic temperament--that is vanity; and there in
+the second generation is dress--and that is vanity." We should answer,
+"My friend, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit--especially
+when one has to listen to logic of your favourite kind. Obviously all
+human beings must value themselves; and obviously there is in all such
+valuation an element of weakness, since it is not the valuation of
+eternal justice. What is the use of your finding by experiment in some
+people a thing we know by reason must be in all of them?"
+
+Here it will be as well to pause a moment and avert one possible
+misunderstanding. I do not mean that you and I cannot and do not
+practically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric or
+intermediate type, for which the word "feeble-minded" might be a very
+convenient word, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinable
+fact of experience. In the same way we might speak, and do speak, of
+such and such a person being "mad with vanity" without wanting two
+keepers to walk in and take the person off. But I ask the reader to
+remember always that I am talking of words, not as they are used in
+talk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, in
+warrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament. The distinction
+between the two is perfectly clear and practical. The difference is
+that a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit the mark; it
+is all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the type should be
+recognised; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the right man.
+But it is by no means always to the interests of governments or
+officials to hang the right man. The fact that they often do stretch
+words in order to cover cases is the whole foundation of having any
+fixed laws or free institutions at all. My point is not that I have
+never met anyone whom I should call feeble-minded, rather than mad or
+imbecile. My point is that if I want to dispossess a nephew, oust a
+rival, silence a blackmailer, or get rid of an importunate widow,
+there is nothing in logic to prevent my calling them feeble-minded
+too. And the vaguer the charge is the less they will be able to
+disprove it.
+
+One does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resist
+such legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual world
+in order to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may be
+such a thing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is such
+a thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in
+mere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits;
+believing that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason to
+suppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. All that is mere
+rationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance and
+terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but denies
+there can be devils. The superstition is in the person who admits
+there can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. Yet I should
+certainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectly
+simple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. The
+reason is that it is one thing to believe in witches, and quite
+another to believe in witch-smellers. I have more respect for the old
+witch-finders than for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting the
+fool of the family; because the witch-finders, according to their own
+conviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the
+strong-minded--the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a
+raid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a
+righteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of
+sin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and
+despicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a
+war upon the weak. It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being.
+
+When I said above that I believed in witches, but not in
+witch-smellers, I stated my full position about that conception of
+heredity, that half-formed philosophy of fears and omens; of curses
+and weird recurrence and darkness and the doom of blood, which, as
+preached to humanity to-day, is often more inhuman than witchcraft
+itself. I do not deny that this dark element exists; I only affirm
+that it is dark; or, in other words, that its most strenuous students
+are evidently in the dark about it. I would no more trust Dr. Karl
+Pearson on a heredity-hunt than on a heresy-hunt. I am perfectly ready
+to give my reasons for thinking this; and I believe any well-balanced
+person, if he reflects on them, will think as I do. There are two
+senses in which a man may be said to know or not know a subject. I
+know the subject of arithmetic, for instance; that is, I am not good
+at it, but I know what it is. I am sufficiently familiar with its use
+to see the absurdity of anyone who says, "So vulgar a fraction cannot
+be mentioned before ladies," or "This unit is Unionist, I hope."
+Considering myself for one moment as an arithmetician, I may say that
+I know next to nothing about my subject: but I know my subject. I know
+it in the street. There is the other kind of man, like Dr. Karl
+Pearson, who undoubtedly knows a vast amount about his subject; who
+undoubtedly lives in great forests of facts concerning kinship and
+inheritance. But it is not, by any means, the same thing to have
+searched the forests and to have recognised the frontiers. Indeed, the
+two things generally belong to two very different types of mind. I
+gravely doubt whether the Astronomer-Royal would write the best essay
+on the relations between astronomy and astrology. I doubt whether the
+President of the Geographical Society could give the best definition
+and history of the words "geography" and "geology."
+
+Now the students of heredity, especially, understand all of their
+subject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born in
+that brier-patch, and have really explored it without coming to the
+end of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question of
+what they are studying. Now I do not propose to rely merely on myself
+to tell them what they are studying. I propose, as will be seen in a
+moment, to call the testimony of a great man who has himself studied
+it. But to begin with, the domain of heredity (for those who see its
+frontiers) is a sort of triangle, enclosed on its three sides by three
+facts. The first is that heredity undoubtedly exists, or there would
+be no such thing as a family likeness, and every marriage might
+suddenly produce a small negro. The second is that even simple
+heredity can never be simple; its complexity must be literally
+unfathomable, for in that field fight unthinkable millions. But yet
+again it never is simple heredity: for the instant anyone is, he
+experiences. The third is that these innumerable ancient influences,
+these instant inundations of experiences, come together according to a
+combination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is a
+combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on
+the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the
+sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a
+golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the
+Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face
+that the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can
+never be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every
+feature, in every inch. In the person of the baby he may have gently
+pulled his wife's nose. In the person of the baby he may have partly
+blacked his wife's eyes.
+
+Those are the three first facts of heredity. That it exists; that it
+is subtle and made of a million elements; that it is simple, and
+cannot be unmade into those elements. To summarise: you know there is
+wine in the soup. You do not know how many wines there are in the
+soup, because you do not know how many wines there are in the world.
+And you never will know, because all chemists, all cooks, and all
+common-sense people tell you that the soup is of such a sort that it
+can never be chemically analysed. That is a perfectly fair parallel to
+the hereditary element in the human soul. There are many ways in which
+one can feel that there is wine in the soup, as in suddenly tasting a
+wine specially favoured; that corresponds to seeing suddenly flash on
+a young face the image of some ancestor you have known. But even then
+the taster cannot be certain he is not tasting one familiar wine among
+many unfamiliar ones--or seeing one known ancestor among a million
+unknown ancestors. Another way is to get drunk on the soup, which
+corresponds to the case of those who say they are driven to sin and
+death by hereditary doom. But even then the drunkard cannot be certain
+it was the soup, any more than the traditional drunkard who is certain
+it was the salmon.
+
+Those are the facts about heredity which anyone can see. The upshot of
+them is not only that a miss is as good as a mile, but a miss is as
+good as a win. If the child has his parents' nose (or noses) that may
+be heredity. But if he has not, that may be heredity too. And as we
+need not take heredity lightly because two generations differ--so we
+need not take heredity a scrap more seriously because two generations
+are similar. The thing is there, in what cases we know not, in what
+proportion we know not, and we cannot know.
+
+Now it is just here that the decent difference of function between Dr.
+Saleeby's trade and mine comes in. It is his business to study human
+health and sickness as a whole, in a spirit of more or less
+enlightened guesswork; and it is perfectly natural that he should
+allow for heredity here, there, and everywhere, as a man climbing a
+mountain or sailing a boat will allow for weather without even
+explaining it to himself. An utterly different attitude is incumbent
+on any conscientious man writing about what laws should be enforced or
+about how commonwealths should be governed. And when we consider how
+plain a fact is murder, and yet how hesitant and even hazy we all grow
+about the guilt of a murderer, when we consider how simple an act is
+stealing, and yet how hard it is to convict and punish those rich
+commercial pirates who steal the most, when we consider how cruel and
+clumsy the law can be even about things as old and plain as the Ten
+Commandments--I simply cannot conceive any responsible person
+proposing to legislate on our broken knowledge and bottomless
+ignorance of heredity.
+
+But though I have to consider this dull matter in its due logical
+order, it appears to me that this part of the matter has been settled,
+and settled in a most masterly way, by somebody who has infinitely
+more right to speak on it than I have. Our press seems to have a
+perfect genius for fitting people with caps that don't fit; and
+affixing the wrong terms of eulogy and even the wrong terms of abuse.
+And just as people will talk of Bernard Shaw as a naughty winking
+Pierrot, when he is the last great Puritan and really believes in
+respectability; just as (_si parva licet_ etc.) they will talk of my
+own paradoxes, when I pass my life in preaching that the truisms are
+true; so an enormous number of newspaper readers seem to have it fixed
+firmly in their heads that Mr. H.G. Wells is a harsh and horrible
+Eugenist in great goblin spectacles, who wants to put us all into
+metallic microscopes and dissect us with metallic tools. As a matter
+of fact, of course, Mr. Wells, so far from being too definite, is
+generally not definite enough. He is an absolute wizard in the
+appreciation of atmospheres and the opening of vistas; but his answers
+are more agnostic than his questions. His books will do everything
+except shut. And so far from being the sort of man who would stop a
+man from propagating, he cannot even stop a full stop. He is not
+Eugenic enough to prevent the black dot at the end of a sentence from
+breeding a line of little dots.
+
+But this is not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real
+blunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of
+medals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds
+of public economy, to giving Mr. Wells only one medal _ob cives
+servatos_, I would give him a medal as the Eugenist who destroyed
+Eugenics. For everyone spoke of him, rightly or wrongly, as a
+Eugenist; and he certainly had, as I have not, the training and type
+of culture required to consider the matter merely in a biological and
+not in a generally moral sense. The result was that in that fine book,
+"Mankind in the Making," where he inevitably came to grips with the
+problem, he threw down to the Eugenists an intellectual challenge
+which seems to me unanswerable, but which, at any rate, is unanswered.
+I do not mean that no remote Eugenist wrote upon the subject; for it
+is impossible to read all writings, especially Eugenist writings. I do
+mean that the leading Eugenists write as if this challenge had never
+been offered. The gauntlet lies unlifted on the ground.
+
+Having given honour for the idea where it is due, I may be permitted
+to summarise it myself for the sake of brevity. Mr. Wells' point was
+this. That we cannot be certain about the inheritance of health,
+because health is not a quality. It is not a thing like darkness in
+the hair or length in the limbs. It is a relation, a balance. You have
+a tall, strong man; but his very strength depends on his not being too
+tall for his strength. You catch a healthy, full-blooded fellow; but
+his very health depends on his being not too full of blood. A heart
+that is strong for a dwarf will be weak for a giant; a nervous system
+that would kill a man with a trace of a certain illness will sustain
+him to ninety if he has no trace of that illness. Nay, the same
+nervous system might kill him if he had an excess of some other
+comparatively healthy thing. Seeing, therefore, that there are
+apparently healthy people of all types, it is obvious that if you mate
+two of them, you may even then produce a discord out of two
+inconsistent harmonies. It is obvious that you can no more be certain
+of a good offspring than you can be certain of a good tune if you play
+two fine airs at once on the same piano. You can be even less certain
+of it in the more delicate case of beauty, of which the Eugenists talk
+a great deal. Marry two handsome people whose noses tend to the
+aquiline, and their baby (for all you know) may be a goblin with a
+nose like an enormous parrot's. Indeed, I actually know a case of this
+kind. The Eugenist has to settle, not the result of fixing one steady
+thing to a second steady thing; but what will happen when one toppling
+and dizzy equilibrium crashes into another.
+
+This is the interesting conclusion. It is on this degree of knowledge
+that we are asked to abandon the universal morality of mankind. When
+we have stopped the lover from marrying the unfortunate woman he
+loves, when we have found him another uproariously healthy female whom
+he does not love in the least, even then we have no logical evidence
+that the result may not be as horrid and dangerous as if he had
+behaved like a man of honour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT
+
+
+Let us now finally consider what the honest Eugenists do mean, since
+it has become increasingly evident that they cannot mean what they
+say. Unfortunately, the obstacles to any explanation of this are such
+as to insist on a circuitous approach. The tendency of all that is
+printed and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true
+sense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it
+is always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article,
+and he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may
+even, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he
+thinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the
+nearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of
+classical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to
+write it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where
+he learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his
+stalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his
+thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can
+be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth
+delivering at all. The poor panting critic falls farther and farther
+behind the motor-car of modern fact. Fifty years ago he was barely
+fifteen years behind the times. Fifteen years ago he was not more than
+fifty years behind the times. Just now he is rather more than a
+hundred years behind the times: and the proof of it is that the things
+he says, though manifest nonsense about our society to-day, really
+were true about our society some hundred and thirty years ago. The
+best instance of his belated state is his perpetual assertion that the
+supernatural is less and less believed. It is a perfectly true and
+realistic account--of the eighteenth century. It is the worst possible
+account of this age of psychics and spirit-healers and fakirs and
+fashionable fortune-tellers. In fact, I generally reply in eighteenth
+century language to this eighteenth century illusion. If somebody says
+to me, "The creeds are crumbling," I reply, "And the King of Prussia,
+who is himself a Freethinker, is certainly capturing Silesia from the
+Catholic Empress." If somebody says, "Miracles must be reconsidered in
+the light of rational experience," I answer affably, "But I hope that
+our enlightened leader, Hebert, will not insist on guillotining that
+poor French queen." If somebody says, "We must watch for the rise of
+some new religion which can commend itself to reason," I reply, "But
+how much more necessary is it to watch for the rise of some military
+adventurer who may destroy the Republic: and, to my mind, that young
+Major Bonaparte has rather a restless air." It is only in such
+language from the Age of Reason that we can answer such things. The
+age we live in is something more than an age of superstition--it is an
+age of innumerable superstitions. But it is only with one example of
+this that I am concerned here.
+
+I mean the error that still sends men marching about disestablishing
+churches and talking of the tyranny of compulsory church teaching or
+compulsory church tithes. I do not wish for an irrelevant
+misunderstanding here; I would myself certainly disestablish any
+church that had a numerical minority, like the Irish or the Welsh; and
+I think it would do a great deal of good to genuine churches that have
+a partly conventional majority, like the English, or even the Russian.
+But I should only do this if I had nothing else to do; and just now
+there is very much else to do. For religion, orthodox or unorthodox,
+is not just now relying on the weapon of State establishment at all.
+The Pope practically made no attempt to preserve the Concordat; but
+seemed rather relieved at the independence his Church gained by the
+destruction of it: and it is common talk among the French clericalists
+that the Church has gained by the change. In Russia the one real
+charge brought by religious people (especially Roman Catholics)
+against the Orthodox Church is not its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, but
+its abject dependence on the State. In England we can almost measure
+an Anglican's fervour for his Church by his comparative coolness about
+its establishment--that is, its control by a Parliament of Scotch
+Presbyterians like Balfour, or Welsh Congregationalists like Lloyd
+George. In Scotland the powerful combination of the two great sects
+outside the establishment have left it in a position in which it feels
+no disposition to boast of being called by mere lawyers the Church of
+Scotland. I am not here arguing that Churches should not depend on the
+State; nor that they do not depend upon much worse things. It may be
+reasonably maintained that the strength of Romanism, though it be not
+in any national police, is in a moral police more rigid and vigilant.
+It may be reasonably maintained that the strength of Anglicanism,
+though it be not in establishment, is in aristocracy, and its shadow,
+which is called snobbishness. All I assert here is that the Churches
+are not now leaning heavily on their political establishment; they are
+not using heavily the secular arm. Almost everywhere their legal
+tithes have been modified, their legal boards of control have been
+mixed. They may still employ tyranny, and worse tyranny: I am not
+considering that. They are not specially using that special tyranny
+which consists in using the government.
+
+The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is
+Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science.
+And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the
+creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that
+really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by
+pilgrims but by policemen--that creed is the great but disputed
+system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in
+Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the
+Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination,
+in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much
+as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite natural
+to our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to them
+madness to enforce baptism.
+
+I am not frightened of the word "persecution" when it is attributed to
+the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I
+attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If
+it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory,
+incapable of final proof--then our priests are not now persecuting,
+but our doctors are. The imposition of such dogmas constitutes a State
+Church--in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied to
+any supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where the
+religious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way or
+that; and yet more where it is excluded from this or that public post.
+But I cannot now recall any place where it is compelled by the
+criminal law to go through the rite of the official religion. Even the
+Young Turks did not insist on all Macedonians being circumcised.
+
+Now here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, in
+the past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence,
+it has been at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixed
+and flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by their
+enemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But what
+are the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword to
+enforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions and
+bewildered answers that we have been studying in the last
+chapters--questions whose only interest is that they are trackless and
+mysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative and
+new. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; and
+therefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of science
+actually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he
+persecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his
+creed, because it was unchangeable. The _savant_ enforces it violently
+because he may change it the next day.
+
+Now this is a new sort of persecution; and one may be permitted to ask
+if it is an improvement on the old. The difference, so far as one can
+see at first, seems rather favourable to the old. If we are to be at
+the merciless mercy of man, most of us would rather be racked for a
+creed that existed intensely in somebody's head, rather than
+vivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone's head,
+and possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with a
+thumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with a
+vivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet that
+is the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. If
+I gave in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to
+profess. But even if I yelled out _a credo_ when the Eugenists had me
+on the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an
+extra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed
+quite a week ago.
+
+Now let no light-minded person say that I am here taking extravagant
+parallels; for the parallel is not only perfect, but plain. For this
+reason: that the difference between torture and vivisection is not in
+any way affected by the fierceness or mildness of either. Whether they
+gave the rack half a turn or half a hundred, they were, by hypothesis,
+dealing with a truth which they knew to be there. Whether they
+vivisect painfully or painlessly, they are trying to find out whether
+the truth is there or not. The old Inquisitors tortured to put their
+own opinions into somebody. But the new Inquisitors torture to get
+their own opinions out of him. They do not know what their own
+opinions are, until the victim of vivisection tells them. The division
+of thought is a complete chasm for anyone who cares about thinking.
+The old persecutor was trying to _teach_ the citizen, with fire and
+sword. The new persecutor is trying to _learn_ from the citizen, with
+scalpel and germ-injector. The master was meeker than the pupil will
+be.
+
+I could prove by many practical instances that even my illustrations
+are not exaggerated, by many placid proposals I have heard for the
+vivisection of criminals, or by the filthy incident of Dr. Neisser.
+But I prefer here to stick to a strictly logical line of distinction,
+and insist that whereas in all previous persecutions the violence was
+used to end _our_ indecision, the whole point here is that the
+violence is used to end the indecision of the persecutors. This is
+what the honest Eugenists really mean, so far as they mean anything.
+They mean that the public is to be given up, not as a heathen land for
+conversion, but simply as a _pabulum_ for experiment. That is the
+real, rude, barbaric sense behind this Eugenic legislation. The
+Eugenist doctors are not such fools as they look in the light of any
+logical inquiry about what they want. They do not know what they want,
+except that they want your soul and body and mine in order to find
+out. They are quite seriously, as they themselves might say, the first
+religion to be experimental instead of doctrinal. All other
+established Churches have been based on somebody having found the
+truth. This is the first Church that was ever based on not having
+found it.
+
+There is in them a perfectly sincere hope and enthusiasm; but it is
+not for us, but for what they might learn from us, if they could rule
+us as they can rabbits. They cannot tell us anything about heredity,
+because they do not know anything about it. But they do quite honestly
+believe that they would know something about it, when they had married
+and mismarried us for a few hundred years. They cannot tell us who is
+fit to wield such authority, for they know that nobody is; but they do
+quite honestly believe that when that authority has been abused for a
+very long time, somebody somehow will be evolved who is fit for the
+job. I am no Puritan, and no one who knows my opinions will consider
+it a mere criminal charge if I say that they are simply gambling. The
+reckless gambler has no money in his pockets; he has only the ideas in
+his head. These gamblers have no ideas in their heads; they have only
+the money in their pockets. But they think that if they could use the
+money to buy a big society to experiment on, something like an idea
+might come to them at last. That is Eugenics.
+
+I confine myself here to remarking that I do not like it. I may be
+very stingy, but I am willing to pay the scientist for what he does
+know; I draw the line at paying him for everything he doesn't know. I
+may be very cowardly, but I am willing to be hurt for what I think or
+what he thinks--I am not willing to be hurt, or even inconvenienced,
+for whatever he might happen to think after he had hurt me. The
+ordinary citizen may easily be more magnanimous than I, and take the
+whole thing on trust; in which case his career may be happier in the
+next world, but (I think) sadder in this. At least, I wish to point
+out to him that he will not be giving his glorious body as soldiers
+give it, to the glory of a fixed flag, or martyrs to the glory of a
+deathless God. He will be, in the strict sense of the Latin phrase,
+giving his vile body for an experiment--an experiment of which even
+the experimentalist knows neither the significance nor the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY
+
+
+I have up to this point treated the Eugenists, I hope, as seriously as
+they treat themselves. I have attempted an analysis of their theory as
+if it were an utterly abstract and disinterested theory; and so
+considered, there seems to be very little left of it. But before I go
+on, in the second part of this book, to talk of the ugly things that
+really are left, I wish to recapitulate the essential points in their
+essential order, lest any personal irrelevance or over-emphasis (to
+which I know myself to be prone) should have confused the course of
+what I believe to be a perfectly fair and consistent argument. To make
+it yet clearer, I will summarise the thing under chapters, and in
+quite short paragraphs.
+
+In the first chapter I attempted to define the essential point in
+which Eugenics can claim, and does claim, to be a new morality. That
+point is that it is possible to consider the baby in considering the
+bride. I do not adopt the ideal irresponsibility of the man who said,
+"What has posterity done for us?" But I do say, to start with, "What
+can we do for posterity, except deal fairly with our contemporaries?"
+Unless a man love his wife whom he has seen, how shall he love his
+child whom he has not seen?
+
+In the second chapter I point out that this division in the conscience
+cannot be met by mere mental confusions, which would make any woman
+refusing any man a Eugenist. There will always be something in the
+world which tends to keep outrageous unions exceptional; that
+influence is not Eugenics, but laughter.
+
+In the third chapter I seek to describe the quite extraordinary
+atmosphere in which such things have become possible. I call that
+atmosphere anarchy; but insist that it is an anarchy in the centres
+where there should be authority. Government has become ungovernable;
+that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that
+is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our
+time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government. In
+this atmosphere it is natural enough that medical experts, being
+authorities, should go mad, and attempt so crude and random and
+immature a dream as this of petting and patting (and rather spoiling)
+the babe unborn.
+
+In chapter four I point out how this impatience has burst through the
+narrow channel of the Lunacy Laws, and has obliterated them by
+extending them. The whole point of the madman is that he is the
+exception that proves the rule. But Eugenics seeks to treat the whole
+rule as a series of exceptions--to make all men mad. And on that
+ground there is hope for nobody; for all opinions have an author, and
+all authors have a heredity. The mentality of the Eugenist makes him
+believe in Eugenics as much as the mentality of the reckless lover
+makes him violate Eugenics; and both mentalities are, on the
+materialist hypothesis, equally the irresponsible product of more or
+less unknown physical causes. The real security of man against any
+logical Eugenics is like the false security of Macbeth. The only
+Eugenist that could rationally attack him must be a man of no woman
+born.
+
+In the chapter following this, which is called "The Flying Authority,"
+I try in vain to locate and fix any authority that could rationally
+rule men in so rooted and universal a matter; little would be gained
+by ordinary men doing it to each other; and if ordinary practitioners
+did it they would very soon show, by a thousand whims and quarrels,
+that they were ordinary men. I then discussed the enlightened
+despotism of a few general professors of hygiene, and found it
+unworkable, for an essential reason: that while we can always get men
+intelligent enough to know more than the rest of us about this or that
+accident or pain or pest, we cannot count on the appearance of great
+cosmic philosophers; and only such men can be even supposed to know
+more than we do about normal conduct and common sanity. Every sort of
+man, in short, would shirk such a responsibility, except the worst
+sort of man, who would accept it.
+
+I pass on, in the next chapter, to consider whether we know enough
+about heredity to act decisively, even if we were certain who ought to
+act. Here I refer the Eugenists to the reply of Mr. Wells, which they
+have never dealt with to my knowledge or satisfaction--the important
+and primary objection that health is not a quality but a proportion of
+qualities; so that even health married to health might produce the
+exaggeration called disease. It should be noted here, of course, that
+an individual biologist may quite honestly believe that he has found a
+fixed principle with the help of Weissmann or Mendel. But we are not
+discussing whether he knows enough to be justified in thinking (as is
+somewhat the habit of the anthropoid _Homo_) that he is right. We are
+discussing whether _we_ know enough, as responsible citizens, to put
+such powers into the hands of men who may be deceived or who may be
+deceivers. I conclude that we do not.
+
+In the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, I
+believe, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what the
+Eugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what they
+want. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire the
+establishment of research; that is the making of it a thing official
+and compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it is
+only research and not discovery. In short, they want a new kind of
+State Church, which shall be an Established Church of Doubt--instead
+of Faith. They have no Science of Eugenics at all, but they do really
+mean that if we will give ourselves up to be vivisected they may very
+probably have one some day. I point out, in more dignified diction,
+that this is a bit thick.
+
+And now, in the second half of this book, we will proceed to the
+consideration of things that really exist. It is, I deeply regret to
+say, necessary to return to realities, as they are in your daily life
+and mine. Our happy holiday in the land of nonsense is over; we shall
+see no more its beautiful city, with the almost Biblical name of Bosh,
+nor the forests full of mares' nests, nor the fields of tares that are
+ripened only by moonshine. We shall meet no longer those delicious
+monsters that might have talked in the same wild club with the Snark
+and the Jabberwock or the Pobble or the Dong with the Luminous Nose;
+the father who can't make head or tail of the mother, but thoroughly
+understands the child she will some day bear; the lawyer who has to
+run after his own laws almost as fast as the criminals run away from
+them; the two mad doctors who might discuss for a million years which
+of them has the right to lock up the other; the grammarian who clings
+convulsively to the Passive Mood, and says it is the duty of something
+to get itself done without any human assistance; the man who would
+marry giants to giants until the back breaks, as children pile brick
+upon brick for the pleasure of seeing the staggering tower tumble
+down; and, above all, the superb man of science who wants you to pay
+him and crown him because he has so far found out nothing. These
+fairy-tale comrades must leave us. They exist, but they have no
+influence in what is really going on. They are honest dupes and tools,
+as you and I were very nearly being honest dupes and tools. If we
+come to think coolly of the world we live in, if we consider how very
+practical is the practical politician, at least where cash is
+concerned, how very dull and earthy are most of the men who own the
+millions and manage the newspaper trusts, how very cautious and averse
+from idealist upheaval are those that control this capitalist
+society--when we consider all this, it is frankly incredible that
+Eugenics should be a front bench fashionable topic and almost an Act
+of Parliament, if it were in practice only the unfinished fantasy
+which it is, as I have shown, in pure reason. Even if it were a just
+revolution, it would be much too revolutionary a revolution for modern
+statesmen, if there were not something else behind. Even if it were a
+true ideal, it would be much too idealistic an ideal for our
+"practical men," if there were not something real as well. Well, there
+is something real as well. There is no reason in Eugenics, but there
+is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory,
+but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I
+reiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite
+innocent instruments, there _are_ some, even among Eugenists, who by
+this time know what they are doing. To them we shall not say, "What is
+Eugenics?" or "Where on earth are you going?" but only "Woe unto you,
+hypocrites, that devour widows' houses and for a pretence use long
+words."
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+
+THE REAL AIM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE
+
+
+The root formula of an epoch is always an unwritten law, just as the
+law that is the first of all laws, that which protects life from the
+murderer, is written nowhere in the Statute Book. Nevertheless there
+is all the difference between having and not having a notion of this
+basic assumption in an epoch. For instance, the Middle Ages will
+simply puzzle us with their charities and cruelties, their asceticism
+and bright colours, unless we catch their general eagerness for
+building and planning, dividing this from that by walls and
+fences--the spirit that made architecture their most successful art.
+Thus even a slave seemed sacred; the divinity that did hedge a king,
+did also, in one sense, hedge a serf, for he could not be driven out
+from behind his hedges. Thus even liberty became a positive thing like
+a privilege; and even, when most men had it, it was not opened like
+the freedom of a wilderness, but bestowed, like the freedom of a city.
+Or again, the seventeenth century may seem a chaos of contradictions,
+with its almost priggish praise of parliaments and its quite barbaric
+massacre of prisoners, until we realise that, if the Middle Ages was a
+house half built, the seventeenth century was a house on fire. Panic
+was the note of it, and that fierce fastidiousness and exclusiveness
+that comes from fear. Calvinism was its characteristic religion, even
+in the Catholic Church, the insistence on the narrowness of the way
+and the fewness of the chosen. Suspicion was the note of its
+politics--"put not your trust in princes." It tried to thrash
+everything out by learned, virulent, and ceaseless controversy; and it
+weeded its population by witch-burning. Or yet again: the eighteenth
+century will present pictures that seem utterly opposite, and yet seem
+singularly typical of the time: the sack of Versailles and the "Vicar
+of Wakefield"; the pastorals of Watteau and the dynamite speeches of
+Danton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight
+of the idea of _tidying up_ which ran through the whole period, the
+quietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilisation, and
+sound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people
+having (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for
+its own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only a
+readiness to employ it to get rid of unreason or disorder. With these
+epochs it is not altogether impossible to say that some such form of
+words is a key. The epoch for which it is almost impossible to find a
+form of words is our own.
+
+Nevertheless, I think that with us the keyword is "inevitability," or,
+as I should be inclined to call it, "impenitence." We are
+subconsciously dominated in all departments by the notion that there
+is no turning back, and it is rooted in materialism and the denial of
+free-will. Take any handful of modern facts and compare them with the
+corresponding facts a few hundred years ago. Compare the modern Party
+System with the political factions of the seventeenth century. The
+difference is that in the older time the party leaders not only really
+cut off each other's heads, but (what is much more alarming) really
+repealed each other's laws. With us it has become traditional for one
+party to inherit and leave untouched the acts of the other when made,
+however bitterly they were attacked in the making. James II. and his
+nephew William were neither of them very gay specimens; but they would
+both have laughed at the idea of "a continuous foreign policy." The
+Tories were not Conservatives; they were, in the literal sense,
+reactionaries. They did not merely want to keep the Stuarts; they
+wanted to bring them back.
+
+Or again, consider how obstinately the English mediaeval monarchy
+returned again and again to its vision of French possessions, trying
+to reverse the decision of fate; how Edward III. returned to the
+charge after the defeats of John and Henry III., and Henry V. after
+the failure of Edward III.; and how even Mary had that written on her
+heart which was neither her husband nor her religion. And then
+consider this: that we have comparatively lately known a universal
+orgy of the thing called Imperialism, the unity of the Empire the only
+topic, colonies counted like crown jewels, and the Union Jack waved
+across the world. And yet no one so much as dreamed, I will not say of
+recovering, the American colonies for the Imperial unity (which would
+have been too dangerous a task for modern empire-builders), but even
+of re-telling the story from an Imperial standpoint. Henry V.
+justified the claims of Edward III. Joseph Chamberlain would not have
+dreamed of justifying the claims of George III. Nay, Shakespeare
+justifies the French War, and sticks to Talbot and defies the legend
+of Joan of Arc. Mr. Kipling would not dare to justify the American
+War, stick to Burgoyne, and defy the legend of Washington. Yet there
+really was much more to be said for George III. than there ever was
+for Henry V. It was not said, much less acted upon, by the modern
+Imperialists; because of this basic modern sense, that as the future
+is inevitable, so is the past irrevocable. Any fact so complete as the
+American exodus from the Empire must be considered as final for aeons,
+though it hardly happened more than a hundred years ago. Merely
+because it has managed to occur it must be called first, a necessary
+evil, and then an indispensable good. I need not add that I do not
+want to reconquer America; but then I am not an Imperialist.
+
+Then there is another way of testing it: ask yourself how many people
+you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who
+attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the
+British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate?
+How few have we met who realised that British education can be
+altered, but British weather cannot? How few there were that knew that
+the clouds were more immortal and more solid than the schools? For a
+thousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or
+the ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? Indeed,
+the very word proves my case by its unpromising and unfamiliar sound.
+At the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform
+and Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; but nobody talks about
+repeal. Our fathers did not talk of Free Trade, but of the Repeal of
+the Corn Laws. They did not talk of Home Rule, but of the Repeal of
+the Union. In those days people talked of a "Repealer" as the most
+practical of all politicians, the kind of politician that carries a
+club. Now the Repealer is flung far into the province of an impossible
+idealism: and the leader of one of our great parties, having said, in
+a heat of temporary sincerity, that he would repeal an Act, actually
+had to write to all the papers to assure them that he would only amend
+it. I need not multiply instances, though they might be multiplied
+almost to a million. The note of the age is to suggest that the past
+may just as well be praised, since it cannot be mended. Men actually
+in that past have toiled like ants and died like locusts to undo some
+previous settlement that seemed secure; but we cannot do so much as
+repeal an Act of Parliament. We entertain the weak-minded notion that
+what is done can't be undone. Our view was well summarised in a
+typical Victorian song with the refrain: "The mill will never grind
+again the water that is past." There are many answers to this. One
+(which would involve a disquisition on the phenomena of Evaporation
+and Dew) we will here avoid. Another is, that to the minds of simple
+country folk, the object of a mill is not to grind water, but to grind
+corn, and that (strange as it may seem) there really have been
+societies sufficiently vigilant and valiant to prevent their corn
+perpetually flowing away from them, to the tune of a sentimental song.
+
+Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an
+intellectual fault; it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our
+mental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also
+our spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake. It was
+mere vanity in Mr. Brummell when he sent away trays full of
+imperfectly knotted neck-cloths, lightly remarking, "These are our
+failures." It is a good instance of the nearness of vanity to
+humility, for at least he had to admit that they were failures. But it
+would have been spiritual pride in Mr. Brummell if he had tied on all
+the cravats, one on top of the other, lest his valet should discover
+that he had ever tied one badly. For in spiritual pride there is
+always an element of secrecy and solitude. Mr. Brummell would be
+satanic; also (which I fear would affect him more) he would be badly
+dressed. But he would be a perfect presentation of the modern
+publicist, who cannot do anything right, because he must not admit
+that he ever did anything wrong.
+
+This strange, weak obstinacy, this persistence in the wrong path of
+progress, grows weaker and worse, as do all such weak things. And by
+the time in which I write its moral attitude has taken on something of
+the sinister and even the horrible. Our mistakes have become our
+secrets. Editors and journalists tear up with a guilty air all that
+reminds them of the party promises unfulfilled, or the party ideals
+reproaching them. It is true of our statesmen (much more than of our
+bishops, of whom Mr. Wells said it), that socially in evidence they
+are intellectually in hiding. The society is heavy with unconfessed
+sins; its mind is sore and silent with painful subjects; it has a
+constipation of conscience. There are many things it has done and
+allowed to be done which it does not really dare to think about; it
+calls them by other names and tries to talk itself into faith in a
+false past, as men make up the things they would have said in a
+quarrel. Of these sins one lies buried deepest but most noisome, and
+though it is stifled, stinks: the true story of the relations of the
+rich man and the poor in England. The half-starved English proletarian
+is not only nearly a skeleton but he is a skeleton in a cupboard.
+
+It may be said, in some surprise, that surely we hear to-day on every
+side the same story of the destitute proletariat and the social
+problem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowding
+in the slums. It is granted; but I said the true story. Untrue
+stories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There is
+the interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands,
+the chap who has "solidarity," and is always just going to abolish
+war. The Marxian Socialists will tell you all about him; only he isn't
+there. A common English workman is just as incapable of thinking of a
+German as anything but a German as he is of thinking of himself as
+anything but an Englishman. Then there is the opposite story; the
+story of the horrid man who is an atheist and wants to destroy the
+home, but who, for some private reason, prefers to call this
+Socialism. He isn't there either. The prosperous Socialists have homes
+exactly like yours and mine; and the poor Socialists are not allowed
+by the Individualists to have any at all. There is the story of the
+Two Workmen, which is a very nice and exciting story, about how one
+passed all the public houses in Cheapside and was made Lord Mayor on
+arriving at the Guildhall, while the other went into all the public
+houses and emerged quite ineligible for such a dignity. Alas! for this
+also is vanity. A thief might become Lord Mayor, but an honest workman
+certainly couldn't. Then there is the story of "The Relentless Doom,"
+by which rich men were, by economic laws, forced to go on taking away
+money from poor men, although they simply longed to leave off: this is
+an unendurable thought to a free and Christian man, and the reader
+will be relieved to hear that it never happened. The rich could have
+left off stealing whenever they wanted to leave off, only this never
+happened either. Then there is the story of the cunning Fabian who sat
+on six committees at once and so coaxed the rich man to become quite
+poor. By simply repeating, in a whisper, that there are "wheels within
+wheels," this talented man managed to take away the millionaire's
+motor car, one wheel at a time, till the millionaire had quite
+forgotten that he ever had one. It was very clever of him to do this,
+only he has not done it. There is not a screw loose in the
+millionaire's motor, which is capable of running over the Fabian and
+leaving him a flat corpse in the road at a moment's notice. All these
+stories are very fascinating stories to be told by the Individualist
+and Socialist in turn to the great Sultan of Capitalism, because if
+they left off amusing him for an instant he would cut off their heads.
+But if they once began to tell the true story of the Sultan to the
+Sultan, he would boil them in oil; and this they wish to avoid.
+
+The true story of the sin of the Sultan he is always trying, by
+listening to these stories, to forget. As we have said before in this
+chapter, he would prefer not to remember, because he has made up his
+mind not to repent. It is a curious story, and I shall try to tell it
+truly in the two chapters that follow. In all ages the tyrant is hard
+because he is soft. If his car crashes over bleeding and accusing
+crowds, it is because he has chosen the path of least resistance. It
+is because it is much easier to ride down a human race than ride up a
+moderately steep hill. The fight of the oppressor is always a
+pillow-fight; commonly a war with cushions--always a war for cushions.
+Saladin, the great Sultan, if I remember rightly, accounted it the
+greatest feat of swordsmanship to cut a cushion. And so indeed it is,
+as all of us can attest who have been for years past trying to cut
+into the swollen and windy corpulence of the modern compromise, that
+is at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day the
+colour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palace
+within palace and garden within garden which makes the rich
+irresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance,
+the wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception of
+luxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights,
+and walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not our
+hangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we not
+already eugenists--that is, eunuch-makers? Do we not see the bright
+eyes, the motionless faces, and all that presence of something that is
+dead and yet sleepless? It is the presence of the sin that is sealed
+with pride and impenitence; the story of how the Sultan got his
+throne. But it is not the story he is listening to just now, but
+another story which has been invented to cover it--the story called
+"Eugenius: or the Adventures of One Not Born," a most varied and
+entrancing tale, which never fails to send him to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+TRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP
+
+
+He awoke in the Dark Ages and smelt dawn in the dark, and knew he was
+not wholly a slave. It was as if, in some tale of Hans Andersen, a
+stick or a stool had been left in the garden all night and had grown
+alive and struck root like a tree. For this is the truth behind the
+old legal fiction of the servile countries, that the slave is a
+"chattel," that is a piece of furniture like a stick or a stool. In
+the spiritual sense, I am certain it was never so unwholesome a fancy
+as the spawn of Nietzsche suppose to-day. No human being, pagan or
+Christian, I am certain, ever thought of another human being as a
+chair or a table. The mind cannot base itself on the idea that a comet
+is a cabbage; nor can it on the idea that a man is a stool. No man was
+ever unconscious of another's presence--or even indifferent to
+another's opinion. The lady who is said to have boasted her
+indifference to being naked before male slaves was showing off--or she
+meant something different. The lord who fed fishes by killing a slave
+was indulging in what most cannibals indulge in--a satanist
+affectation. The lady was consciously shameless and the lord was
+consciously cruel. But it simply is not in the human reason to carve
+men like wood or examine women like ivory, just as it is not in the
+human reason to think that two and two make five.
+
+But there was this truth in the legal simile of furniture: that the
+slave, though certainly a man, was in one sense a dead man; in the
+sense that he was _moveable_. His locomotion was not his own: his
+master moved his arms and legs for him as if he were a marionette. Now
+it is important in the first degree to realise here what would be
+involved in such a fable as I have imagined, of a stool rooting itself
+like a shrub. For the general modern notion certainly is that life and
+liberty are in some way to be associated with novelty and not standing
+still. But it is just because the stool is lifeless that it moves
+about. It is just because the tree is alive that it does stand still.
+That was the main difference between the pagan slave and the Christian
+serf. The serf still belonged to the lord, as the stick that struck
+root in the garden would have still belonged to the owner of the
+garden; but it would have become a _live_ possession. Therefore the
+owner is forced, by the laws of nature, to treat it with _some_
+respect; something becomes due from him. He cannot pull it up without
+killing it; it has gained a _place_ in the garden--or the society. But
+the moderns are quite wrong in supposing that mere change and holiday
+and variety have necessarily any element of this life that is the only
+seed of liberty. You may say if you like that an employer, taking all
+his workpeople to a new factory in a Garden City, is giving them the
+greater freedom of forest landscapes and smokeless skies. If it comes
+to that, you can say that the slave-traders took negroes from their
+narrow and brutish African hamlets, and gave them the polish of
+foreign travel and medicinal breezes of a sea-voyage. But the tiny
+seed of citizenship and independence there already was in the serfdom
+of the Dark Ages, had nothing to do with what nice things the lord
+might do to the serf. It lay in the fact that there were some nasty
+things he could not do to the serf--there were not many, but there
+were some, and one of them was eviction. He could not make the serf
+utterly landless and desperate, utterly without access to the means of
+production, though doubtless it was rather the field that owned the
+serf, than the serf that owned the field. But even if you call the
+serf a beast of the field, he was not what we have tried to make the
+town workman--a beast with no field. Foulon said of the French
+peasants, "Let them eat grass." If he had said it of the modern London
+proletariat, they might well reply, "You have not left us even grass
+to eat."
+
+There was, therefore, both in theory and practice, _some_ security for
+the serf, because he had come to life and rooted. The seigneur could
+not wait in the field in all weathers with a battle-axe to prevent the
+serf scratching any living out of the ground, any more than the man in
+my fairy-tale could sit out in the garden all night with an umbrella
+to prevent the shrub getting any rain. The relation of lord and serf,
+therefore, involves a combination of two things: inequality and
+security. I know there are people who will at once point wildly to all
+sorts of examples, true and false, of insecurity of life in the Middle
+Ages; but these are people who do not grasp what we mean by the
+characteristic institutions of a society. For the matter of that,
+there are plenty of examples of equality in the Middle Ages, as the
+craftsmen in their guild or the monks electing their abbot. But just
+as modern England is not a feudal country, though there is a quaint
+survival called Heralds' College--or Ireland is not a commercial
+country, though there is a quaint survival called Belfast--it is true
+of the bulk and shape of that society that came out of the Dark Ages
+and ended at the Reformation, that it did not care about giving
+everybody an equal position, but did care about giving everybody a
+position. So that by the very beginning of that time even the slave
+had become a slave one could not get rid of, like the Scotch servant
+who stubbornly asserted that if his master didn't know a good servant
+he knew a good master. The free peasant, in ancient or modern times,
+is free to go or stay. The slave, in ancient times, was free neither
+to go nor stay. The serf was not free to go; but he was free to stay.
+
+Now what have we done with this man? It is quite simple. There is no
+historical complexity about it in that respect. We have taken away his
+freedom to stay. We have turned him out of his field, and whether it
+was injustice, like turning a free farmer out of his field, or only
+cruelty to animals, like turning a cow out of its field, the fact
+remains that he is out in the road. First and last, we have simply
+destroyed the security. We have not in the least destroyed the
+inequality. All classes, all creatures, kind or cruel, still see this
+lowest stratum of society as separate from the upper strata and even
+the middle strata; he is as separate as the serf. A monster fallen
+from Mars, ignorant of our simplest word, would know the tramp was at
+the bottom of the ladder, as well as he would have known it of the
+serf. The walls of mud are no longer round his boundaries, but only
+round his boots. The coarse, bristling hedge is at the end of his
+chin, and not of his garden. But mud and bristles still stand out
+round him like a horrific halo, and separate him from his kind. The
+Martian would have no difficulty in seeing he was the poorest person
+in the nation. It is just as impossible that he should marry an
+heiress, or fight a duel with a duke, or contest a seat at
+Westminster, or enter a club in Pall Mall, or take a scholarship at
+Balliol, or take a seat at an opera, or propose a good law, or protest
+against a bad one, as it was impossible to the serf. Where he differs
+is in something very different. He has lost what was possible to the
+serf. He can no longer scratch the bare earth by day or sleep on the
+bare earth by night, without being collared by a policeman.
+
+Now when I say that this man has been oppressed as hardly any other
+man on this earth has been oppressed, I am not using rhetoric: I have
+a clear meaning which I am confident of explaining to any honest
+reader. I do not say he has been treated worse: I say he has been
+treated differently from the unfortunate in all ages. And the
+difference is this: that all the others were told to do something, and
+killed or tortured if they did anything else. This man is not told to
+do something: he is merely forbidden to do anything. When he was a
+slave, they said to him, "Sleep in this shed; I will beat you if you
+sleep anywhere else." When he was a serf, they said to him, "Let me
+find you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else's
+field." But now he is a tramp they say to him, "You shall be jailed if
+I find you in anyone else's field: _but I will not give you a field_."
+They say, "You shall be punished if you are caught sleeping outside
+your shed: _but there is no shed_." If you say that modern
+magistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer with
+entire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two tramps
+were summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the open
+air when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full fun
+of the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly produced
+about twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, but
+deliberately didn't. To which the policeman replied that twopence
+would not have got them a bed: that they could not possibly have got a
+bed: and _therefore_ (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought to
+be punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was much
+struck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men for
+not doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explain
+that if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, they
+would have left the court without a stain on their characters; but as
+they could not avoid it, they were very much to blame. These things
+are being done in every part of England every day. They have their
+parallels even in every daily paper; but they have no parallel in any
+other earthly people or period; except in that insane command to make
+bricks without straw which brought down all the plagues of Egypt. For
+the common historical joke about Henry VIII. hanging a man for being
+Catholic and burning him for being Protestant is a symbolic joke only.
+The sceptic in the Tudor time could do something: he could always
+agree with Henry VIII. The desperate man to-day can do nothing. For
+you cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the straws
+sticking out of his hair and says, "Procure threepence from nowhere
+and I will give you leave to do without it."
+
+If it be answered that he can go to the workhouse, I reply that such
+an answer is founded on confused thinking. It is true that he is free
+to go to the workhouse, but only in the same sense in which he is free
+to go to jail, only in the same sense in which the serf under the
+gibbet was free to find peace in the grave. Many of the poor greatly
+prefer the grave to the workhouse, but that is not at all my argument
+here. The point is this: that it could not have been the general
+policy of a lord towards serfs to kill them all like wasps. It could
+not have been his standing "Advice to Serfs" to say, "Get hanged." It
+cannot be the standing advice of magistrates to citizens to go to
+prison. And, precisely as plainly, it cannot be the standing advice of
+rich men to very poor men to go to the workhouses. For that would mean
+the rich raising their own poor rates enormously to keep a vast and
+expensive establishment of slaves. Now it may come to this, as Mr.
+Belloc maintains, but it is not the theory on which what we call the
+workhouse does in fact rest. The very shape (and even the very size)
+of a workhouse express the fact that it was founded for certain quite
+exceptional human failures--like the lunatic asylum. Say to a man, "Go
+to the madhouse," and he will say, "Wherein am I mad?" Say to a tramp
+under a hedge, "Go to the house of exceptional failures," and he will
+say with equal reason, "I travel because I have no house; I walk
+because I have no horse; I sleep out because I have no bed. Wherein
+have I failed?" And he may have the intelligence to add, "Indeed, your
+worship, if somebody has failed, I think it is not I." I concede, with
+all due haste, that he might perhaps say "me."
+
+The speciality then of this man's wrong is that it is the only
+historic wrong that has in it the quality of _nonsense_. It could only
+happen in a nightmare; not in a clear and rational hell. It is the top
+point of that anarchy in the governing mind which, as I said at the
+beginning, is the main trait of modernity, especially in England. But
+if the first note in our policy is madness, the next note is certainly
+meanness. There are two peculiarly mean and unmanly legal mantraps in
+which this wretched man is tripped up. The first is that which
+prevents him from doing what any ordinary savage or nomad would
+do--take his chance of an uneven subsistence on the rude bounty of
+nature.
+
+There is something very abject about forbidding this; because it is
+precisely this adventurous and vagabond spirit which the educated
+classes praise most in their books, poems and speeches. To feel the
+drag of the roads, to hunt in nameless hills and fish in secret
+streams, to have no address save "Over the Hills and Far Away," to be
+ready to breakfast on berries and the daybreak and sup on the sunset
+and a sodden crust, to feed on wild things and be a boy again, all
+this is the heartiest and sincerest impulse in recent culture, in the
+songs and tales of Stevenson, in the cult of George Borrow and in the
+delightful little books published by Mr. E.V. Lucas. It is the one
+true excuse in the core of Imperialism; and it faintly softens the
+squalid prose and wooden-headed wickedness of the Self-Made Man who
+"came up to London with twopence in his pocket." But when a poorer but
+braver man with less than twopence in his pocket does the very thing
+we are always praising, makes the blue heavens his house, we send him
+to a house built for infamy and flogging. We take poverty itself and
+only permit it with a property qualification; we only allow a man to
+be poor if he is rich. And we do this most savagely if he has sought
+to snatch his life by that particular thing of which our boyish
+adventure stories are fullest--hunting and fishing. The extremely
+severe English game laws hit most heavily what the highly reckless
+English romances praise most irresponsibly. All our literature is full
+of praise of the chase--especially of the wild goose chase. But if a
+poor man followed, as Tennyson says, "far as the wild swan wings to
+where the world dips down to sea and sands," Tennyson would scarcely
+allow him to catch it. If he found the wildest goose in the wildest
+fenland in the wildest regions of the sunset, he would very probably
+discover that the rich never sleep; and that there are no wild things
+in England.
+
+In short, the English ruler is always appealing to a nation of
+sportsmen and concentrating all his efforts on preventing them from
+having any sport. The Imperialist is always pointing out with
+exultation that the common Englishman can live by adventure anywhere
+on the globe, but if the common Englishman tries to live by adventure
+in England, he is treated as harshly as a thief, and almost as harshly
+as an honest journalist. This is hypocrisy: the magistrate who gives
+his son "Treasure Island" and then imprisons a tramp is a hypocrite;
+the squire who is proud of English colonists and indulgent to English
+schoolboys, but cruel to English poachers, is drawing near that deep
+place wherein all liars have their part. But our point here is that
+the baseness is in the idea of _bewildering_ the tramp; of leaving
+him no place for repentance. It is quite true, of course, that in the
+days of slavery or of serfdom the needy were fenced by yet fiercer
+penalties from spoiling the hunting of the rich. But in the older case
+there were two very important differences, the second of which is our
+main subject in this chapter. The first is that in a comparatively
+wild society, however fond of hunting, it seems impossible that
+enclosing and game-keeping can have been so omnipresent and efficient
+as in a society full of maps and policemen. The second difference is
+the one already noted: that if the slave or semi-slave was forbidden
+to get his food in the greenwood, he was told to get it somewhere
+else. The note of unreason was absent.
+
+This is the first meanness; and the second is like unto it. If there
+is one thing of which cultivated modern letters is full besides
+adventure it is altruism. We are always being told to help others, to
+regard our wealth as theirs, to do what good we can, for we shall not
+pass this way again. We are everywhere urged by humanitarians to help
+lame dogs over stiles--though some humanitarians, it is true, seem to
+feel a colder interest in the case of lame men and women. Still, the
+chief fact of our literature, among all historic literatures, is human
+charity. But what is the chief fact of our legislation? The great
+outstanding fact of modern legislation, among all historic
+legislations, is the forbidding of human charity. It is this
+astonishing paradox, a thing in the teeth of all logic and
+conscience, that a man that takes another man's money with his leave
+can be punished as if he had taken it without his leave. All through
+those dark or dim ages behind us, through times of servile stagnation,
+of feudal insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else that
+can war down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was counted
+lawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries,
+in short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched and
+mended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is now
+forbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance if he could beg.
+
+Now it will be evident by this time that the interesting scientific
+experiment on the tramp entirely depends on leaving him _no_ chance,
+and not (like the slave) one chance. Of the economic excuses offered
+for the persecution of beggars it will be more natural to speak in the
+next chapter. It will suffice here to say that they are mere excuses,
+for a policy that has been persistent while probably largely
+unconscious, with a selfish and atheistic unconsciousness. That policy
+was directed towards something--or it could never have cut so cleanly
+and cruelly across the sentimental but sincere modern trends to
+adventure and altruism. Its object is soon stated. It was directed
+towards making the very poor man work for the capitalist, for any
+wages or none. But all this, which I shall also deal with in the next
+chapter, is here only important as introducing the last truth touching
+the man of despair. The game laws have taken from him his human
+command of Nature. The mendicancy laws have taken from him his human
+demand on Man. There is one human thing left it is much harder to take
+from him. Debased by him and his betters, it is still something
+brought out of Eden, where God made him a demigod: it does not depend
+on money and but little on time. He can create in his own image. The
+terrible truth is in the heart of a hundred legends and mysteries. As
+Jupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Child
+could be hidden from Herod--so the child unborn is still hidden from
+the omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone is
+left; and they seek his life to take it away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST
+
+
+He does not live in a dark lonely tower by the sea, from which are
+heard the screams of vivisected men and women. On the contrary, he
+lives in Mayfair. He does not wear great goblin spectacles that
+magnify his eyes to moons or diminish his neighbours to beetles. When
+he is more dignified he wears a single eyeglass; when more
+intelligent, a wink. He is not indeed wholly without interest in
+heredity and Eugenical biology; but his studies and experiments in
+this science have specialised almost exclusively in _equus celer_, the
+rapid or running horse. He is not a doctor; though he employs doctors
+to work up a case for Eugenics, just as he employs doctors to correct
+the errors of his dinner. He is not a lawyer, though unfortunately
+often a magistrate. He is not an author or a journalist; though he not
+infrequently owns a newspaper. He is not a soldier, though he may have
+a commission in the yeomanry; nor is he generally a gentleman, though
+often a nobleman. His wealth now commonly comes from a large staff of
+employed persons who scurry about in big buildings while he is playing
+golf. But he very often laid the foundations of his fortune in a very
+curious and poetical way, the nature of which I have never fully
+understood. It consisted in his walking about the street without a hat
+and going up to another man and saying, "Suppose I have two hundred
+whales out of the North Sea." To which the other man replied, "And let
+us imagine that I am in possession of two thousand elephants' tusks."
+They then exchange, and the first man goes up to a third man and says,
+"Supposing me to have lately come into the possession of two thousand
+elephants' tusks, would you, etc.?" If you play this game well, you
+become very rich; if you play it badly you have to kill yourself or
+try your luck at the Bar. The man I am speaking about must have played
+it well, or at any rate successfully.
+
+He was born about 1860; and has been a member of Parliament since
+about 1890. For the first half of his life he was a Liberal; for the
+second half he has been a Conservative; but his actual policy in
+Parliament has remained largely unchanged and consistent. His policy
+in Parliament is as follows: he takes a seat in a room downstairs at
+Westminster, and takes from his breast pocket an excellent cigar-case,
+from which in turn he takes an excellent cigar. This he lights, and
+converses with other owners of such cigars on _equus celer_ or such
+matters as may afford him entertainment. Two or three times in the
+afternoon a bell rings; whereupon he deposits the cigar in an ashtray
+with great particularity, taking care not to break the ash, and
+proceeds to an upstairs room, flanked with two passages. He then walks
+into whichever of the two passages shall be indicated to him by a
+young man of the upper classes, holding a slip of paper. Having gone
+into this passage he comes out of it again, is counted by the young
+man and proceeds downstairs again; where he takes up the cigar once
+more, being careful not to break the ash. This process, which is known
+as Representative Government, has never called for any great variety
+in the manner of his life. Nevertheless, while his Parliamentary
+policy is unchanged, his change from one side of the House to the
+other did correspond with a certain change in his general policy in
+commerce and social life. The change of the party label is by this
+time quite a trifling matter; but there was in his case a change of
+philosophy or at least a change of project; though it was not so much
+becoming a Tory, as becoming rather the wrong kind of Socialist. He is
+a man with a history. It is a sad history, for he is certainly a less
+good man than he was when he started. That is why he is the man who is
+really behind Eugenics. It is because he has degenerated that he has
+come to talking of Degeneration.
+
+In his Radical days (to quote from one who corresponded in some ways
+to this type) he was a much better man, because he was a much less
+enlightened one. The hard impudence of his first Manchester
+Individualism was softened by two relatively humane qualities; the
+first was a much greater manliness in his pride; the second was a much
+greater sincerity in his optimism. For the first point, the modern
+capitalist is merely industrial; but this man was also industrious.
+He was proud of hard work; nay, he was even proud of low work--if he
+could speak of it in the past and not the present. In fact, he
+invented a new kind of Victorian snobbishness, an inverted
+snobbishness. While the snobs of Thackeray turned Muggins into De
+Mogyns, while the snobs of Dickens wrote letters describing themselves
+as officers' daughters "accustomed to every luxury--except spelling,"
+the Individualist spent his life in hiding his prosperous parents. He
+was more like an American plutocrat when he began; but he has since
+lost the American simplicity. The Frenchman works until he can play.
+The American works until he can't play; and then thanks the devil, his
+master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the
+Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he
+never worked at all. He becomes as far as possible another person--a
+country gentleman who has never heard of his shop; one whose left hand
+holding a gun knows not what his right hand doeth in a ledger. He uses
+a peerage as an alias, and a large estate as a sort of alibi. A stern
+Scotch minister remarked concerning the game of golf, with a terrible
+solemnity of manner, "the man who plays golf--he neglects his
+business, he forsakes his wife, he forgets his God." He did not seem
+to realise that it is the chief aim of many a modern capitalist's life
+to forget all three.
+
+This abandonment of a boyish vanity in work, this substitution of a
+senile vanity in indolence, this is the first respect in which the
+rich Englishman has fallen. He was more of a man when he was at least
+a master-workman and not merely a master. And the second important
+respect in which he was better at the beginning is this: that he did
+then, in some hazy way, half believe that he was enriching other
+people as well as himself. The optimism of the early Victorian
+Individualists was not wholly hypocritical. Some of the
+clearest-headed and blackest-hearted of them, such as Malthus, saw
+where things were going, and boldly based their Manchester city on
+pessimism instead of optimism. But this was not the general case; most
+of the decent rich of the Bright and Cobden sort did have a kind of
+confused faith that the economic conflict would work well in the long
+run for everybody. They thought the troubles of the poor were
+incurable by State action (they thought that of all troubles), but
+they did not cold-bloodedly contemplate the prospect of those troubles
+growing worse and worse. By one of those tricks or illusions of the
+brain to which the luxurious are subject in all ages, they sometimes
+seemed to feel as if the populace had triumphed symbolically in their
+own persons. They blasphemously thought about their thrones of gold
+what can only be said about a cross--that they, being lifted up, would
+draw all men after them. They were so full of the romance that anybody
+could be Lord Mayor, that they seemed to have slipped into thinking
+that everybody could. It seemed as if a hundred Dick Whittingtons,
+accompanied by a hundred cats, could all be accommodated at the
+Mansion House. It was all nonsense; but it was not (until later) all
+humbug.
+
+Step by step, however, with a horrid and increasing clearness, this
+man discovered what he was doing. It is generally one of the worst
+discoveries a man can make. At the beginning, the British plutocrat
+was probably quite as honest in suggesting that every tramp carried a
+magic cat like Dick Whittington, as the Bonapartist patriot was in
+saying that every French soldier carried a marshal's _baton_ in his
+knapsack. But it is exactly here that the difference and the danger
+appears. There is no comparison between a well-managed thing like
+Napoleon's army and an unmanageable thing like modern competition.
+Logically, doubtless, it was impossible that every soldier should
+carry a marshal's _baton_; they could not all be marshals any more
+than they could all be mayors. But if the French soldier did not
+always have a _baton_ in his knapsack, he always had a knapsack. But
+when that Self-Helper who bore the adorable name of Smiles told the
+English tramp that he carried a coronet in his bundle, the English
+tramp had an unanswerable answer. He pointed out that he had no
+bundle. The powers that ruled him had not fitted him with a knapsack,
+any more than they had fitted him with a future--or even a present.
+The destitute Englishman, so far from hoping to become anything, had
+never been allowed even to be anything. The French soldier's ambition
+may have been in practice not only a short, but even a deliberately
+shortened ladder, in which the top rungs were knocked out. But for
+the English it was the bottom rungs that were knocked out, so that
+they could not even begin to climb. And sooner or later, in exact
+proportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began to
+understand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their
+impotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that his
+riches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could
+have been strong enough to make him rich. It is this paradox, as we
+shall see, that creates the curious difference between him and every
+other kind of robber.
+
+I think it is no more than justice to him to say that the knowledge,
+where it has come to him, has come to him slowly; and I think it came
+(as most things of common sense come) rather vaguely and as in a
+vision--that is, by the mere look of things. The old Cobdenite
+employer was quite within his rights in arguing that earth is not
+heaven, that the best obtainable arrangement might contain many
+necessary evils; and that Liverpool and Belfast might be growing more
+prosperous as a whole in spite of pathetic things that might be seen
+there. But I simply do not believe he has been able to look at
+Liverpool and Belfast and continue to think this: that is why he has
+turned himself into a sham country gentleman. Earth is not heaven, but
+the nearest we can get to heaven ought not to _look_ like hell; and
+Liverpool and Belfast look like hell, whether they are or not. Such
+cities might be growing prosperous as a whole, though a few citizens
+were more miserable. But it was more and more broadly apparent that it
+was exactly and precisely _as a whole_ that they were not growing more
+prosperous, but only the few citizens who were growing more prosperous
+by their increasing misery. You could not say a country was becoming a
+white man's country when there were more and more black men in it
+every day. You could not say a community was more and more masculine
+when it was producing more and more women. Nor can you say that a city
+is growing richer and richer when more and more of its inhabitants are
+very poor men. There might be a false agitation founded on the pathos
+of individual cases in a community pretty normal in bulk. But the fact
+is that no one can take a cab across Liverpool without having a quite
+complete and unified impression that the pathos is not a pathos of
+individual cases, but a pathos in bulk. People talk of the Celtic
+sadness; but there are very few things in Ireland that look so sad as
+the Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery compared
+with the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournful
+friends to turn their attention to the pathos of Belfast. I think if
+they hung up the harp that once in Lord Furness's factory, there would
+be a chance of another string breaking.
+
+Broadly, and as things bulk to the eye, towns like Leeds, if placed
+beside towns like Rouen or Florence, or Chartres, or Cologne, do
+actually look like beggars walking among burghers. After that
+overpowering and unpleasant impression it is really useless to argue
+that they are richer because a few of their parasites get rich enough
+to live somewhere else. The point may be put another way, thus: that
+it is not so much that these more modern cities have this or that
+monopoly of good or evil; it is that they have every good in its
+fourth-rate form and every evil in its worst form. For instance, that
+interesting weekly paper _The Nation_ amiably rebuked Mr. Belloc and
+myself for suggesting that revelry and the praise of fermented liquor
+were more characteristic of Continental and Catholic communities than
+of communities with the religion and civilisation of Belfast. It said
+that if we would "cross the border" into Scotland, we should find out
+our mistake. Now, not only have I crossed the border, but I have had
+considerable difficulty in crossing the road in a Scotch town on a
+festive evening. Men were literally lying like piled-up corpses in the
+gutters, and from broken bottles whisky was pouring down the drains. I
+am not likely, therefore, to attribute a total and arid abstinence to
+the whole of industrial Scotland. But I never said that drinking was a
+mark rather of the Catholic countries. I said that _moderate_ drinking
+was a mark rather of the Catholic countries. In other words, I say of
+the common type of Continental citizen, not that he is the only person
+who is drinking, but that he is the only person who knows how to
+drink. Doubtless gin is as much a feature of Hoxton as beer is a
+feature of Munich. But who is the connoisseur who prefers the gin of
+Hoxton to the beer of Munich? Doubtless the Protestant Scotch ask for
+"Scotch," as the men of Burgundy ask for Burgundy. But do we find them
+lying in heaps on each side of the road when we walk through a
+Burgundian village? Do we find the French peasant ready to let
+Burgundy escape down a drain-pipe? Now this one point, on which I
+accept _The Nation's_ challenge, can be exactly paralleled on almost
+every point by which we test a civilisation. It does not matter
+whether we are for alcohol or against it. On either argument Glasgow
+is more objectionable than Rouen. The French abstainer makes less
+fuss; the French drinker gives less offence. It is so with property,
+with war, with everything. I can understand a teetotaler being
+horrified, on his principles, at Italian wine-drinking. I simply
+cannot believe he could be _more_ horrified at it than at Hoxton
+gin-drinking. I can understand a Pacifist, with his special scruples,
+disliking the militarism of Belfort. I flatly deny that he can dislike
+it _more_ than the militarism of Berlin. I can understand a good
+Socialist hating the petty cares of the distributed peasant property.
+I deny that any good Socialist can hate them _more_ than he hates the
+large cares of Rockefeller. That is the unique tragedy of the
+plutocratic state to-day; it has _no_ successes to hold up against the
+failures it alleges to exist in Latin or other methods. You can (if
+you are well out of his reach) call the Irish rustic debased and
+superstitious. I defy you to contrast his debasement and superstition
+with the citizenship and enlightenment of the English rustic.
+
+To-day the rich man knows in his heart that he is a cancer and not an
+organ of the State. He differs from all other thieves or parasites for
+this reason: that the brigand who takes by force wishes his victims to
+be rich. But he who wins by a one-sided contract actually wishes them
+to be poor. Rob Roy in a cavern, hearing a company approaching, will
+hope (or if in a pious mood, pray) that they may come laden with gold
+or goods. But Mr. Rockefeller, in his factory, knows that if those who
+pass are laden with goods they will pass on. He will therefore (if in
+a pious mood) pray that they may be destitute, and so be forced to
+work his factory for him for a starvation wage. It is said (and also,
+I believe, disputed) that Bluecher riding through the richer parts of
+London exclaimed, "What a city to sack!" But Bluecher was a soldier if
+he was a bandit. The true sweater feels quite otherwise. It is when he
+drives through the poorest parts of London that he finds the streets
+paved with gold, being paved with prostrate servants; it is when he
+sees the grey lean leagues of Bow and Poplar that his soul is uplifted
+and he knows he is secure. This is not rhetoric, but economics.
+
+I repeat that up to a point the profiteer was innocent because he was
+ignorant; he had been lured on by easy and accommodating events. He
+was innocent as the new Thane of Glamis was innocent, as the new Thane
+of Cawdor was innocent; but the King---- The modern manufacturer, like
+Macbeth, decided to march on, under the mute menace of the heavens.
+He knew that the spoil of the poor was in his houses; but he could
+not, after careful calculation, think of any way in which they could
+get it out of his houses without being arrested for housebreaking. He
+faced the future with a face flinty with pride and impenitence. This
+period can be dated practically by the period when the old and genuine
+Protestant religion of England began to fail; and the average business
+man began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he
+was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to
+scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way
+out. But in any case, the man who had made a mistake not only refused
+to unmake it, but decided to go on making it. But in this he made yet
+another most amusing mistake, which was the beginning of all
+Eugenics.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH
+
+
+By a quaint paradox, we generally miss the meaning of simple stories
+because we are not subtle enough to understand their simplicity. As
+long as men were in sympathy with some particular religion or other
+romance of things in general, they saw the thing solid and swallowed
+it whole, knowing that it could not disagree with them. But the moment
+men have lost the instinct of being simple in order to understand it,
+they have to be very subtle in order to understand it. We can find,
+for instance, a very good working case in those old puritanical
+nursery tales about the terrible punishment of trivial sins; about how
+Tommy was drowned for fishing on the Sabbath, or Sammy struck by
+lightning for going out after dark. Now these moral stories are
+immoral, because Calvinism is immoral. They are wrong, because
+Puritanism is wrong. But they are not quite so wrong, they are not a
+quarter so wrong, as many superficial sages have supposed.
+
+The truth is that everything that ever came out of a human mouth had a
+human meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such a
+fool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great-grandmothers
+told a child he might be drowned by breaking the Sabbath, their souls
+(though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not
+in quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god
+was a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form
+of religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it
+did correspond to a certain reality in psychology which most people of
+any religion, or even of none, have felt a touch of at some time or
+other. Leaving out theological terms as far as possible, it is the
+subconscious feeling that one can be wrong with Nature as well as
+right with Nature; that the point of wrongness may be a detail (in the
+superstitions of heathens this is often quite a triviality); but that
+if one is really wrong with Nature, there is no particular reason why
+all her rivers should not drown or all her storm-bolts strike one who
+is, by this vague yet vivid hypothesis, her enemy. This may be a
+mental sickness, but it is too human or too mortal a sickness to be
+called solely a superstition. It is not solely a superstition; it is
+not simply superimposed upon human nature by something that has got on
+top of it. It flourishes without check among non-Christian systems,
+and it flourishes especially in Calvinism, because Calvinism is the
+most non-Christian of Christian systems. But like everything else that
+inheres in the natural senses and spirit of man, it has something in
+it; it is not stark unreason. If it is an ill (and it generally is),
+it is one of the ills that flesh is heir to, but he is the lawful
+heir. And like many other dubious or dangerous human instincts or
+appetites, it is sometimes useful as a warning against worse things.
+
+Now the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from the
+loss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathen
+mysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe
+in Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they
+overlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps
+Julius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in
+Jupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of
+that age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit
+personal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are
+not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, while
+the heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queer
+coincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whether
+they were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his own
+brain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain such
+notions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modern
+sceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural.
+And this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrant
+literally pagan might possibly not have done.
+
+There is one idea of this kind that runs through most popular tales
+(those, for instance, on which Shakespeare is so often based)--an idea
+that is profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is what
+may be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take my
+advantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage.
+Thus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reason
+to become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had a
+fallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. He
+forgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on it
+can. Thus Shylock had a fallacy of physiology; he forgot that, if you
+break into the house of life, you find it a bloody house in the most
+emphatic sense. But the modern capitalist did not read fairy-tales,
+and never looked for the little omens at the turnings of the road. He
+(or the most intelligent section of him) had by now realised his
+position, and knew in his heart it was a false position. He thought a
+margin of men out of work was good for his business; he could no
+longer really think it was good for his country. He could no longer be
+the old "hard-headed" man who simply did not understand things; he
+could only be the hard-hearted man who faced them. But he still
+marched on; he was sure he had made no mistake.
+
+However, he had made a mistake--as definite as a mistake in
+multiplication. It may be summarised thus: that the same inequality
+and insecurity that makes cheap labour may make bad labour, and at
+last no labour at all. It was as if a man who wanted something from an
+enemy, should at last reduce the enemy to come knocking at his door in
+the despair of winter, should keep him waiting in the snow to sharpen
+the bargain; and then come out to find the man dead upon the doorstep.
+
+He had discovered the divine boomerang; his sin had found him out. The
+experiment of Individualism--the keeping of the worker half in and
+half out of work--was far too ingenious not to contain a flaw. It was
+too delicate a balance to work entirely with the strength of the
+starved and the vigilance of the benighted. It was too desperate a
+course to rely wholly on desperation. And as time went on the terrible
+truth slowly declared itself; the degraded class was really
+degenerating. It was right and proper enough to use a man as a tool;
+but the tool, ceaselessly used, was being used up. It was quite
+reasonable and respectable, of course, to fling a man away like a
+tool; but when it was flung away in the rain the tool rusted. But the
+comparison to a tool was insufficient for an awful reason that had
+already begun to dawn upon the master's mind. If you pick up a hammer,
+you do not find a whole family of nails clinging to it. If you fling
+away a chisel by the roadside, it does not litter and leave a lot of
+little chisels. But the meanest of the tools, Man, had still this
+strange privilege which God had given him, doubtless by mistake.
+Despite all improvements in machinery, the most important part of the
+machinery (the fittings technically described in the trade as "hands")
+were apparently growing worse. The firm was not only encumbered with
+one useless servant, but he immediately turned himself into five
+useless servants. "The poor should not be emancipated," the old
+reactionaries used to say, "until they are fit for freedom." But if
+this downrush went on, it looked as if the poor would not stand high
+enough to be fit for slavery.
+
+So at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree subconsciously, to
+the man who had wagered all his wealth on the usefulness of the poor
+to the rich and the dependence of the rich on the poor. The time came
+at last when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below ceased to
+be a supply, and began to be something like a wastage; ceased to be
+something like keeping foxhounds, and began alarmingly to resemble a
+necessity of shooting foxes. The situation was aggravated by the fact
+that these sexual pleasures were often the only ones the very poor
+could obtain, and were, therefore, disproportionately pursued, and by
+the fact that their conditions were often such that prenatal
+nourishment and such things were utterly abnormal. The consequences
+began to appear. To a much less extent than the Eugenists assert, but
+still to a notable extent, in a much looser sense than the Eugenists
+assume, but still in some sort of sense, the types that were
+inadequate or incalculable or uncontrollable began to increase. Under
+the hedges of the country, on the seats of the parks, loafing under
+the bridges or leaning over the Embankment, began to appear a new race
+of men--men who are certainly not mad, whom we shall gain no
+scientific light by calling feeble-minded, but who are, in varying
+individual degrees, dazed or drink-sodden, or lazy or tricky or tired
+in body and spirit. In a far less degree than the teetotallers tell
+us, but still in a large degree, the traffic in gin and bad beer
+(itself a capitalist enterprise) fostered the evil, though it had not
+begun it. Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men who
+seemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesore
+in the market-place and a terror on the empty roads. The rich were
+afraid.
+
+Moreover, as I have hinted before, the act of keeping the destitute
+out of public life, and crushing them under confused laws, had an
+effect on their intelligences which paralyses them even as a
+proletariat. Modern people talk of "Reason versus Authority"; but
+authority itself involves reason, or its orders would not even be
+understood. If you say to your valet, "Look after the buttons on my
+waistcoat," he may do it, even if you throw a boot at his head. But if
+you say to him, "Look after the buttons on my top-hat," he will not do
+it, though you empty a boot-shop over him. If you say to a schoolboy,
+"Write out that Ode of Horace from memory in the original Latin," he
+may do it without a flogging. If you say, "Write out that Ode of
+Horace in the original German," he will not do it with a thousand
+floggings. If you will not learn logic, he certainly will not learn
+Latin. And the ludicrous laws to which the needy are subject (such as
+that which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, I
+think, a great deal to do with a certain increase in their
+sheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrial
+inefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory,
+a man actually acquitted by judge and jury could _then_ be examined by
+doctors as to the state of his mind--presumably in order to discover
+by what diseased eccentricity he had refrained from the crime. In
+other words, when the police cannot jail a man who is innocent of
+doing something, they jail him for being too innocent to do anything.
+I do not suppose the man is an idiot at all, but I can believe he
+feels more like one after the legal process than before. Thus all the
+factors--the bodily exhaustion, the harassing fear of hunger, the
+reckless refuge in sexuality, and the black botheration of bad
+laws--combined to make the employee more unemployable.
+
+Now, it is very important to understand here that there were two
+courses of action still open to the disappointed capitalist confronted
+by the new peril of this real or alleged decay. First, he might have
+reversed his machine, so to speak, and started unwinding the long rope
+of dependence by which he had originally dragged the proletarian to
+his feet. In other words, he might have seen that the workmen had more
+money, more leisure, more luxuries, more status in the community, and
+then trusted to the normal instincts of reasonably happy human beings
+to produce a generation better born, bred and cared for than these
+tortured types that were less and less use to him. It might still not
+be too late to rebuild the human house upon such an architectural plan
+that poverty might fly out of the window, with the reasonable prospect
+of love coming in at the door. In short, he might have let the English
+poor, the mass of whom were not weak-minded, though more of them were
+growing weaker, a reasonable chance, in the form of more money, of
+achieving their eugenical resurrection themselves. It has never been
+shown, and it cannot be shown, that the method would have failed. But
+it can be shown, and it must be closely and clearly noted, that the
+method had very strict limitations from the employers' own point of
+view. If they made the worker too comfortable, he would not work to
+increase another's comforts; if they made him too independent, he
+would not work like a dependent. If, for instance, his wages were so
+good that he could save out of them, he might cease to be a
+wage-earner. If his house or garden were his own, he might stand an
+economic siege in it. The whole capitalist experiment had been built
+on his dependence; but now it was getting out of hand, not in the
+direction of freedom, but of frank helplessness. One might say that
+his dependence had got independent of control.
+
+But there was another way. And towards this the employer's ideas
+began, first darkly and unconsciously, but now more and more clearly,
+to drift. Giving property, giving leisure, giving status costs money.
+But there is one human force that costs nothing. As it does not cost
+the beggar a penny to indulge, so it would not cost the employer a
+penny to employ. He could not alter or improve the tables or the
+chairs on the cheap. But there were two pieces of furniture (labelled
+respectively "the husband" and "the wife") whose relations were much
+cheaper. He could alter the _marriage_ in the house in such a way as
+to promise himself the largest possible number of the kind of children
+he did want, with the smallest possible number of the kind he did
+not. He could divert the force of sex from producing vagabonds. And he
+could harness to his high engines unbought the red unbroken river of
+the blood of a man in his youth, as he has already harnessed to them
+all the wild waste rivers of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE
+
+
+Now, if any ask whether it be imaginable that an ordinary man of the
+wealthier type should analyse the problem or conceive the plan, the
+inhumanly far-seeing plan, as I have set it forth, the answer is:
+"Certainly not." Many rich employers are too generous to do such a
+thing; many are too stupid to know what they are doing. The eugenical
+opportunity I have described is but an ultimate analysis of a whole
+drift of thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse his
+thoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string of
+rickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. But
+prosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even ask
+himself whether he means "How can I help them?" or "How can I use
+them?"--what he can still do for them, or what they could still do for
+him. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more than
+the former; he laments the breaking of the tools of Mammon much more
+than the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossible
+to grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert that
+there is one thing he doesn't think. He doesn't think, "This man might
+be as jolly as I am, if he need not come to me for work or wages."
+
+That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are
+multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity
+miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a
+sense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist
+industrialism being sacrificed to any other object. By a curious
+recurrent slip in the mind, as irritating as a catch in a clock,
+people miss the main thing and concentrate on the mean thing. "Modern
+conditions" are treated as fixed, though the very word "modern"
+implies that they are fugitive. "Old ideas" are treated as impossible,
+though their very antiquity often proves their permanence. Some years
+ago some ladies petitioned that the platforms of our big railway
+stations should be raised, as it was more convenient for the hobble
+skirt. It never occurred to them to change to a sensible skirt. Still
+less did it occur to them that, compared with all the female fashions
+that have fluttered about on it, by this time St. Pancras is as
+historic as St. Peter's.
+
+I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious
+assumption that life and sex must live by the laws of "business" or
+industrialism, and not _vice versa_; examples from all the magazines,
+novels, and newspapers. In order to make it brief and typical, I take
+one case of a more or less Eugenist sort from a paper that lies open
+in front of me--a paper that still bears on its forehead the boast of
+being peculiarly an organ of democracy in revolt. To this a man writes
+to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we
+have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper
+classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to
+sign his letter "Hopeful." Well, there are certainly many methods by
+which people in the upper classes prevent procreation; one of them is
+what used to be called "platonic friendship," till they found another
+name for it at the Old Bailey. I do not suppose the hopeful gentleman
+hopes for this; but some of us find the abortion he does hope for
+almost as abominable. That, however, is not the curious point. The
+curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "When
+people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high
+infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are
+stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a
+time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if
+there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly
+takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately
+shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of
+human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries,
+things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted
+children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the
+parents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do not
+want to pay them properly. Doubtless, if you said to him directly,
+"Are you in favour of low wages?" he would say, "No." But I am not, in
+this chapter, talking about the effect on such modern minds of a
+cross-examination to which they do not subject themselves. I am
+talking about the way their minds work, the instinctive trick and turn
+of their thoughts, the things they assume before argument, and the way
+they faintly feel that the world is going. And, frankly, the turn of
+their mind is to tell the child he is not wanted, as the turn of my
+mind is to tell the profiteer he is not wanted. Motherhood, they feel,
+and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good
+things in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the
+mutilation of womanhood, and the massacre of men unborn, he signs
+himself "Hopeful." He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human
+annihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself
+"Hopeless."
+
+This is the first evidence of motive: the ubiquitous assumption that
+life and love must fit into a fixed framework of employment, even (as
+in this case) of bad employment. The second evidence is the tacit and
+total neglect of the scientific question in all the departments in
+which it is not an employment question; as, for instance, the
+marriages of the princely, patrician, or merely plutocratic houses. I
+do not mean, of course, that no scientific men have rigidly tackled
+these, though I do not recall any cases. But I am not talking of the
+merits of individual men of science, but of the push and power behind
+this movement, the thing that is able to make it fashionable and
+politically important. I say, if this power were an interest in truth,
+or even in humanity, the first field in which to study would be in the
+weddings of the wealthy. Not only would the records be more lucid,
+and the examples more in evidence, but the cases would be more
+interesting and more decisive. For the grand marriages have presented
+both extremes of the problem of pedigree--first the "breeding in and
+in," and later the most incongruous cosmopolitan blends. It would
+really be interesting to note which worked the best, or what point of
+compromise was safest. For the poor (about whom the newspaper
+Eugenists are always talking) cannot offer any test cases so complete.
+Waiters never had to marry waitresses, as princes had to marry
+princesses. And (for the other extreme) housemaids seldom marry Red
+Indians. It may be because there are none to marry. But to the
+millionaires the continents are flying railway stations, and the most
+remote races can be rapidly linked together. A marriage in London or
+Paris may chain Ravenna to Chicago, or Ben Cruachan to Bagdad. Many
+European aristocrats marry Americans, notoriously the most mixed stock
+in the world; so that the disinterested Eugenist, with a little
+trouble, might reveal rich stores of negro or Asiatic blood to his
+delighted employer. Instead of which he dulls our ears and distresses
+our refinement by tedious denunciations of the monochrome marriages of
+the poor.
+
+For there is something really pathetic about the Eugenist's neglect of
+the aristocrat and his family affairs. People still talk about the
+pride of pedigree; but it strikes me as the one point on which the
+aristocrats are almost morbidly modest. We should be learned Eugenists
+if we were allowed to know half as much of their heredity as we are
+of their hairdressing. We see the modern aristocrat in the most human
+poses in the illustrated papers, playing with his dog or parrot--nay,
+we see him playing with his child, or with his grandchild. But there
+is something heartrending in his refusal to play with his grandfather.
+There is often something vague and even fantastic about the
+antecedents of our most established families, which would afford the
+Eugenist admirable scope not only for investigation but for
+experiment. Certainly, if he could obtain the necessary powers, the
+Eugenist might bring off some startling effects with the mixed
+materials of the governing class. Suppose, to take wild and
+hypothetical examples, he were to marry a Scotch earl, say, to the
+daughter of a Jewish banker, or an English duke to an American parvenu
+of semi-Jewish extraction? What would happen? We have here an
+unexplored field.
+
+It remains unexplored not merely through snobbery and cowardice, but
+because the Eugenist (at least the influential Eugenist)
+half-consciously knows it is no part of his job; what he is really
+wanted for is to get the grip of the governing classes on to the
+unmanageable output of poor people. It would not matter in the least
+if all Lord Cowdray's descendants grew up too weak to hold a tool or
+turn a wheel. It would matter very much, especially to Lord Cowdray,
+if all his employees grew up like that. The oligarch can be
+unemployable, because he will not be employed. Thus the practical and
+popular exponent of Eugenics has his face always turned towards the
+slums, and instinctively thinks in terms of them. If he talks of
+segregating some incurably vicious type of the sexual sort, he is
+thinking of a ruffian who assaults girls in lanes. He is not thinking
+of a millionaire like White, the victim of Thaw. If he speaks of the
+hopelessness of feeble-mindedness, he is thinking of some stunted
+creature gaping at hopeless lessons in a poor school. He is not
+thinking of a millionaire like Thaw, the slayer of White. And this not
+because he is such a brute as to like people like White or Thaw any
+more than we do, but because he knows that _his_ problem is the
+degeneration of the useful classes; because he knows that White would
+never have been a millionaire if all his workers had spent themselves
+on women as White did, that Thaw would never have been a millionaire
+if all his servants had been Thaws. The ornaments may be allowed to
+decay, but the machinery _must_ be mended. That is the second proof of
+the plutocratic impulse behind all Eugenics: that no one thinks of
+applying it to the prominent classes. No one thinks of applying it
+where it could most easily be applied.
+
+A third proof is the strange new disposition to regard the poor as a
+_race_; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies. It can be
+most clearly seen by comparing it with the old, more individual,
+charitable, and (as the Eugenists might say) sentimental view of
+poverty. In Goldsmith or Dickens or Hood there is a basic idea that
+the particular poor person ought not to be so poor: it is some
+accident or some wrong. Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim are fairy princes
+waiting for their fairy godmother. They are held as slaves, but rather
+as the hero and heroine of a Spanish or Italian romance were held as
+slaves by the Moors. The modern poor are getting to be regarded as
+slaves in the separate and sweeping sense of the negroes in the
+plantations. The bondage of the white hero to the black master was
+regarded as abnormal; the bondage of the black to the white master as
+normal. The Eugenist, for all I know, would regard the mere existence
+of Tiny Tim as a sufficient reason for massacring the whole family of
+Cratchit; but, as a matter of fact, we have here a very good instance
+of how much more practically true to life is sentiment than cynicism.
+The poor are _not_ a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk
+about breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact,
+what Dickens describes: "a dustbin of individual accidents," of
+damaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility. The class very
+largely consists of perfectly promising children, lost like Oliver
+Twist, or crippled like Tiny Tim. It contains very valuable things,
+like most dustbins. But the Eugenist delusion of the barbaric breed in
+the abyss affects even those more gracious philanthropists who almost
+certainly do want to assist the destitute and not merely to exploit
+them. It seems to affect not only their minds, but their very
+eyesight. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Alec Tweedie almost scornfully
+asks, "When we go through the slums, do we see beautiful children?"
+The answer is, "Yes, very often indeed." I have seen children in the
+slums quite pretty enough to be Little Nell or the outcast whom Hood
+called "young and so fair." Nor has the beauty anything necessarily to
+do with health; there are beautiful healthy children, beautiful dying
+children, ugly dying children, ugly uproarious children in Petticoat
+Lane or Park Lane. There are people of every physical and mental type,
+of every sort of health and breeding, in a single back street. They
+have nothing in common but the wrong we do them.
+
+The important point is, however, that there is more fact and realism
+in the wildest and most elegant old fictions about disinherited dukes
+and long-lost daughters than there is in this Eugenist attempt to make
+the poor all of a piece--a sort of black fungoid growth that is
+ceaselessly increasing in a chasm. There is a cheap sneer at poor
+landladies: that they always say they have seen better days. Nine
+times out of ten they say it because it is true. What can be said of
+the great mass of Englishmen, by anyone who knows any history, except
+that they have seen better days? And the landlady's claim is not
+snobbish, but rather spirited; it is her testimony to the truth in the
+old tales of which I spoke: that she _ought not_ to be so poor or so
+servile in status; that a normal person ought to have more property
+and more power in the State than _that_. Such dreams of lost dignity
+are perhaps the only things that stand between us and the
+cattle-breeding paradise now promised. Nor are such dreams by any
+means impotent. I remember Mr. T.P. O'Connor wrote an interesting
+article about Madame Humbert, in the course of which he said that
+Irish peasants, and probably most peasants, tended to have a
+half-fictitious family legend about an estate to which they were
+entitled. This was written in the time when Irish peasants were
+landless in their land; and the delusion doubtless seemed all the more
+entertaining to the landlords who ruled them and the money-lenders who
+ruled the landlords. But the dream has conquered the realities. The
+phantom farms have materialised. Merely by tenaciously affirming the
+kind of pride that comes after a fall, by remembering the old
+civilisation and refusing the new, by recurring to an old claim that
+seemed to most Englishmen like the lie of a broken-down lodging-house
+keeper at Margate--by all this the Irish have got what they want, in
+solid mud and turf. That imaginary estate has conquered the Three
+Estates of the Realm.
+
+But the homeless Englishman must not even remember a home. So far from
+his house being his castle, he must not have even a castle in the air.
+He must have no memories; that is why he is taught no history. Why is
+he told none of the truth about the mediaeval civilisation except a few
+cruelties and mistakes in chemistry? Why does a mediaeval burgher never
+appear till he can appear in a shirt and a halter? Why does a mediaeval
+monastery never appear till it is "corrupt" enough to shock the
+innocence of Henry VIII.? Why do we hear of one charter--that of the
+barons--and not a word of the charters of the carpenters, smiths,
+shipwrights and all the rest? The reason is that the English peasant
+is not only not allowed to have an estate, he is not even allowed to
+have lost one. The past has to be painted pitch black, that it may be
+worse than the present.
+
+There is one strong, startling, outstanding thing about Eugenics, and
+that is its meanness. Wealth, and the social science supported by
+wealth, had tried an inhuman experiment. The experiment had entirely
+failed. They sought to make wealth accumulate--and they made men
+decay. Then, instead of confessing the error, and trying to restore
+the wealth, or attempting to repair the decay, they are trying to
+cover their first cruel experiment with a more cruel experiment. They
+put a poisonous plaster on a poisoned wound. Vilest of all, they
+actually quote the bewilderment produced among the poor by their first
+blunder as a reason for allowing them to blunder again. They are
+apparently ready to arrest all the opponents of their system as mad,
+merely because the system was maddening. Suppose a captain had
+collected volunteers in a hot, waste country by the assurance that he
+could lead them to water, and knew where to meet the rest of his
+regiment. Suppose he led them wrong, to a place where the regiment
+could not be for days, and there was no water. And suppose sunstroke
+struck them down on the sand man after man, and they kicked and danced
+and raved. And, when at last the regiment came, suppose the captain
+successfully concealed his mistake, because all his men had suffered
+too much from it to testify to its ever having occurred. What would
+you think of the gallant captain? It is pretty much what I think of
+this particular captain of industry.
+
+Of course, nobody supposes that all Capitalists, or most Capitalists,
+are conscious of any such intellectual trick. Most of them are as much
+bewildered as the battered proletariat; but there are some who are
+less well-meaning and more mean. And these are leading their more
+generous colleagues towards the fulfilment of this ungenerous evasion,
+if not towards the comprehension of it. Now a ruler of the Capitalist
+civilisation, who has come to consider the idea of ultimately herding
+and breeding the workers like cattle, has certain contemporary
+problems to review. He has to consider what forces still exist in the
+modern world for the frustration of his design. The first question is
+how much remains of the old ideal of individual liberty. The second
+question is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarian
+ideas as may be implied in Socialism. The third is whether there is
+any power of resistance in the tradition of the populace itself. These
+three questions for the future I shall consider in their order in the
+final chapters that follow. It is enough to say here that I think the
+progress of these ideals has broken down at the precise point where
+they will fail to prevent the experiment. Briefly, the progress will
+have deprived the Capitalist of his old Individualist scruples,
+without committing him to his new Collectivist obligations. He is in a
+very perilous position; for he has ceased to be a Liberal without
+becoming a Socialist, and the bridge by which he was crossing has
+broken above an abyss of Anarchy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY
+
+
+If such a thing as the Eugenic sociology had been suggested in the
+period from Fox to Gladstone, it would have been far more fiercely
+repudiated by the reformers than by the Conservatives. If Tories had
+regarded it as an insult to marriage, Radicals would have far more
+resolutely regarded it as an insult to citizenship. But in the
+interval we have suffered from a process resembling a sort of mystical
+parricide, such as is told of so many gods, and is true of so many
+great ideas. Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has
+destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it
+unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they
+were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it
+undefended. Men merely finding themselves free found themselves free
+to dispute the value of freedom. But the important point to seize
+about this reactionary scepticism is that as it is bound to be
+unlimited in theory, so it is bound to be unlimited in practice. In
+other words, the modern mind is set in an attitude which would enable
+it to advance, not only towards Eugenic legislation, but towards any
+conceivable or inconceivable extravagances of Eugenics.
+
+Those who reply to any plea for freedom invariably fall into a certain
+trap. I have debated with numberless different people on these
+matters, and I confess I find it amusing to see them tumbling into it
+one after another. I remember discussing it before a club of very
+active and intelligent Suffragists, and I cast it here for convenience
+in the form which it there assumed. Suppose, for the sake of argument,
+that I say that to take away a poor man's pot of beer is to take away
+a poor man's personal liberty, it is very vital to note what is the
+usual or almost universal reply. People hardly ever do reply, for some
+reason or other, by saying that a man's liberty consists of such and
+such things, but that beer is an exception that cannot be classed
+among them, for such and such reasons. What they almost invariably do
+say is something like this: "After all, what is liberty? Man must live
+as a member of a society, and must obey those laws which, etc., etc."
+In other words, they collapse into a complete confession that they
+_are_ attacking all liberty and any liberty; that they _do_ deny the
+very existence or the very possibility of liberty. In the very form of
+the answer they admit the full scope of the accusation against them.
+In trying to rebut the smaller accusation, they plead guilty to the
+larger one.
+
+This distinction is very important, as can be seen from any practical
+parallel. Suppose we wake up in the middle of the night and find that
+a neighbour has entered the house not by the front-door but by the
+skylight; we may suspect that he has come after the fine old family
+jewellery. We may be reassured if he can refer it to a really
+exceptional event; as that he fell on to the roof out of an aeroplane,
+or climbed on to the roof to escape from a mad dog. Short of the
+incredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for an
+extraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shall
+hardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistful
+fashion and says, "After all, what is property? Why should material
+objects be thus artificially attached, etc., etc.?" We shall merely
+realise that his attitude allows of his taking the jewellery and
+everything else. Or if the neighbour approaches us carrying a large
+knife dripping with blood, we may be convinced by his story that he
+killed another neighbour in self-defence, that the quiet gentleman
+next door was really a homicidal maniac. We shall know that homicidal
+mania is exceptional and that we ourselves are so happy as not to
+suffer from it; and being free from the disease may be free from the
+danger. But it will not soothe us for the man with the gory knife to
+say softly and pensively "After all, what is human life? Why should we
+cling to it? Brief at the best, sad at the brightest, it is itself but
+a disease from which, etc., etc." We shall perceive that the sceptic
+is in a mood not only to murder us but to massacre everybody in the
+street. Exactly the same effect which would be produced by the
+questions of "What is property?" and "What is life?" is produced by
+the question of "What is liberty?" It leaves the questioner free to
+disregard any liberty, or in other words to take any liberties. The
+very thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he may
+choose to do. If he gags a man to prevent him from indulging in
+profane swearing, or locks him in the coal cellar to guard against his
+going on the spree, he can still be satisfied with saying, "After all,
+what is liberty? Man is a member of, etc., etc."
+
+That is the problem, and that is why there is now no protection
+against Eugenic or any other experiments. If the men who took away
+beer as an unlawful pleasure had paused for a moment to define the
+lawful pleasures, there might be a different situation. If the men who
+had denied one liberty had taken the opportunity to affirm other
+liberties, there might be some defence for them. But it never occurs
+to them to admit any liberties at all. It never so much as crosses
+their minds. Hence the excuse for the last oppression will always
+serve as well for the next oppression; and to that tyranny there can
+be no end.
+
+Hence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secret
+and sacred places of personal freedom, where no sane man ever dreamed
+of seeing it; and especially the sanctuary of sex. It is as easy to
+take away a man's wife or baby as to take away his beer when you can
+say "What is liberty?"; just as it is as easy to cut off his head as
+to cut off his hair if you are free to say "What is life?" There is no
+rational philosophy of human rights generally disseminated among the
+populace, to which we can appeal in defence even of the most intimate
+or individual things that anybody can imagine. For so far as there was
+a vague principle in these things, that principle has been wholly
+changed. It used to be said that a man could have liberty, so long as
+it did not interfere with the liberty of others. This did afford some
+rough justification for the ordinary legal view of the man with the
+pot of beer. For instance, it was logical to allow some degree of
+distinction between beer and tea, on the ground that a man may be
+moved by excess of beer to throw the pot at somebody's head. And it
+may be said that the spinster is seldom moved by excess of tea to
+throw the tea-pot at anybody's head. But the whole ground of argument
+is now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to
+others by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking
+the beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that the
+Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment
+that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between
+beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with
+tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the
+hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is
+to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control
+all the habits of all the citizens, and among the rest their habits in
+the matter of sex.
+
+But there is more than this. It is not only true that it is the last
+liberties of man that are being taken away; and not merely his first
+or most superficial liberties. It is also inevitable that the last
+liberties should be taken first. It is inevitable that the most
+private matters should be most under public coercion. This inverse
+variation is very important, though very little realised. If a man's
+personal health is a public concern, his most private acts are _more_
+public than his most public acts. The official must deal _more_
+directly with his cleaning his teeth in the morning than with his
+using his tongue in the market-place. The inspector must interfere
+_more_ with how he sleeps in the middle of the night than with how he
+works in the course of the day. The private citizen must have much
+_less_ to say about his bath or his bedroom window than about his vote
+or his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a private
+detective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in public
+affairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he should
+sneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All this
+and things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that the
+State must make itself responsible for the health of the citizen. But
+the point is that the policeman must deal primarily and promptly with
+the citizen in his relation to his home, and only indirectly and more
+doubtfully with the citizen in his relation to his city. By the whole
+logic of this test, the king must hear what is said in the inner
+chamber and hardly notice what is proclaimed from the house-tops. We
+have heard of a revolution that turns everything upside down. But
+this is almost literally a revolution that turns everything inside
+out.
+
+If a wary reactionary of the tradition of Metternich had wished in the
+nineteenth century to reverse the democratic tendency, he would
+naturally have begun by depriving the democracy of its margin of more
+dubious powers over more distant things. He might well begin, for
+instance, by removing the control of foreign affairs from popular
+assemblies; and there is a case for saying that a people may
+understand its own affairs, without knowing anything whatever about
+foreign affairs. Then he might centralise great national questions,
+leaving a great deal of local government in local questions. This
+would proceed so for a long time before it occurred to the blackest
+terrorist of the despotic ages to interfere with a man's own habits in
+his own house. But the new sociologists and legislators are, by the
+nature of their theory, bound to begin where the despots leave off,
+even if they leave off where the despots begin. For them, as they
+would put it, the first things must be the very fountains of life,
+love and birth and babyhood; and these are always covered fountains,
+flowing in the quiet courts of the home. For them, as Mr. H.G. Wells
+put it, life itself may be regarded merely as a tissue of births. Thus
+they are coerced by their own rational principle to begin all coercion
+at the other end; at the inside end. What happens to the outside end,
+the external and remote powers of the citizen, they do not very much
+care; and it is probable that the democratic institutions of recent
+centuries will be allowed to decay in undisturbed dignity for a
+century or two more. Thus our civilisation will find itself in an
+interesting situation, not without humour; in which the citizen is
+still supposed to wield imperial powers over the ends of the earth,
+but has admittedly no power over his own body and soul at all. He will
+still be consulted by politicians about whether opium is good for
+China-men, but not about whether ale is good for him. He will be
+cross-examined for his opinions about the danger of allowing Kamskatka
+to have a war-fleet, but not about allowing his own child to have a
+wooden sword. About all, he will be consulted about the delicate
+diplomatic crisis created by the proposed marriage of the Emperor of
+China, and not allowed to marry as he pleases.
+
+Part of this prophecy or probability has already been accomplished;
+the rest of it, in the absence of any protest, is in process of
+accomplishment. It would be easy to give an almost endless catalogue
+of examples, to show how, in dealing with the poorer classes at least,
+coercion has already come near to a direct control of the relations of
+the sexes. But I am much more concerned in this chapter to point out
+that all these things have been adopted in principle, even where they
+have not been adopted in practice. It is much more vital to realise
+that the reformers have possessed themselves of a _principle_, which
+will cover all such things if it be granted, and which is not
+sufficiently comprehended to be contradicted. It is a principle
+whereby the deepest things of flesh and spirit must have the most
+direct relation with the dictatorship of the State. They must have it,
+by the whole reason and rationale upon which the thing depends. It is
+a system that might be symbolised by the telephone from headquarters
+standing by a man's bed. He must have a relation to Government like
+his relation to God. That is, the more he goes into the inner
+chambers, and the more he closes the doors, the more he is alone with
+the law. The social machinery which makes such a State uniform and
+submissive will be worked outwards from the household as from a
+handle, or a single mechanical knob or button. In a horrible sense,
+loaded with fear and shame and every detail of dishonour, it will be
+true to say that charity begins at home.
+
+Charity will begin at home in the sense that all home children will be
+like charity children. Philanthropy will begin at home, for all
+householders will be like paupers. Police administration will begin at
+home, for all citizens will be like convicts. And when health and the
+humours of daily life have passed into the domain of this social
+discipline, when it is admitted that the community must primarily
+control the primary habits, when all law begins, so to speak, next to
+the skin or nearest the vitals--then indeed it will appear absurd that
+marriage and maternity should not be similarly ordered. Then indeed it
+will seem to be illogical, and it will be illogical, that love should
+be free when life has lost its freedom.
+
+So passed, to all appearance, from the minds of men the strange dream
+and fantasy called freedom. Whatever be the future of these
+evolutionary experiments and their effect on civilisation, there is
+one land at least that has something to mourn. For us in England
+something will have perished which our fathers valued all the more
+because they hardly troubled to name it; and whatever be the stars of
+a more universal destiny, the great star of our night has set. The
+English had missed many other things that men of the same origins had
+achieved or retained. Not to them was given, like the French, to
+establish eternal communes and clear codes of equality; not to them,
+like the South Germans, to keep the popular culture of their songs;
+not to them, like the Irish, was it given to die daily for a great
+religion. But a spirit had been with them from the first which fenced,
+with a hundred quaint customs and legal fictions, the way of a man who
+wished to walk nameless and alone. It was not for nothing that they
+forgot all their laws to remember the name of an outlaw, and filled
+the green heart of England with the figure of Robin Hood. It was not
+for nothing that even their princes of art and letters had about them
+something of kings incognito, undiscovered by formal or academic fame;
+so that no eye can follow the young Shakespeare as he came up the
+green lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost
+himself among the lights of London. It is not for nothing that the
+very roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down on
+a map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the
+home of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested
+upon its wood-lands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed
+departed, it matters little that it has been driven out by perversions
+it had itself permitted, by monsters it had idly let loose.
+Industrialism and Capitalism and the rage for physical science were
+English experiments in the sense that the English lent themselves to
+their encouragement; but there was something else behind them and
+within them that was not they--its name was liberty, and it was our
+life. It may be that this delicate and tenacious spirit has at last
+evaporated. If so, it matters little what becomes of the external
+experiments of our nation in later time. That at which we look will be
+a dead thing alive with its own parasites. The English will have
+destroyed England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM
+
+
+Socialism is one of the simplest ideas in the world. It has always
+puzzled me how there came to be so much bewilderment and
+misunderstanding and miserable mutual slander about it. At one time I
+agreed with Socialism, because it was simple. Now I disagree with
+Socialism, because it is too simple. Yet most of its opponents still
+seem to treat it, not merely as an iniquity but as a mystery of
+iniquity, which seems to mystify them even more than it maddens them.
+It may not seem strange that its antagonists should be puzzled about
+what it is. It may appear more curious and interesting that its
+admirers are equally puzzled. Its foes used to denounce Socialism as
+Anarchy, which is its opposite. Its friends seemed to suppose that it
+is a sort of optimism, which is almost as much of an opposite. Friends
+and foes alike talked as if it involved a sort of faith in ideal human
+nature; why I could never imagine. The Socialist system, in a more
+special sense than any other, is founded not on optimism but on
+original sin. It proposes that the State, as the conscience of the
+community, should possess all primary forms of property; and that
+obviously on the ground that men cannot be trusted to own or barter
+or combine or compete without injury to themselves. Just as a State
+might own all the guns lest people should shoot each other, so this
+State would own all the gold and land lest they should cheat or
+rackrent or exploit each other. It seems extraordinarily simple and
+even obvious; and so it is. It is too obvious to be true. But while it
+is obvious, it seems almost incredible that anybody ever thought it
+optimistic.
+
+I am myself primarily opposed to Socialism, or Collectivism or
+Bolshevism or whatever we call it, for a primary reason not
+immediately involved here: the ideal of property. I say the ideal and
+not merely the idea; and this alone disposes of the moral mistake in
+the matter. It disposes of all the dreary doubts of the
+Anti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yet
+drearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I do
+not admit that private property is a concession to baseness and
+selfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the most
+truly popular of all points of honour. But this, though it has
+everything to do with my plea for a domestic dignity, has nothing to
+do with this passing summary of the situation of Socialism. I only
+remark in passing that it is vain for the more vulgar sort of
+Capitalist, sneering at ideals, to say to me that in order to have
+Socialism "You must alter human nature." I answer "Yes. You must alter
+it for the worse."
+
+The clouds were considerably cleared away from the meaning of
+Socialism by the Fabians of the 'nineties; by Mr. Bernard Shaw, a
+sort of anti-romantic Quixote, who charged chivalry as chivalry
+charged windmills, with Sidney Webb for his Sancho Panza. In so far as
+these paladins had a castle to defend, we may say that their castle
+was the Post Office. The red pillar-box was the immovable post against
+which the irresistible force of Capitalist individualism was arrested.
+Business men who said that nothing could be managed by the State were
+forced to admit that they trusted all their business letters and
+business telegrams to the State.
+
+After all, it was not found necessary to have an office competing with
+another office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or more
+picturesque postmen. It was not necessary to efficiency that the
+postmistress should buy a penny stamp for a halfpenny and sell it for
+twopence; or that she should haggle and beat customers down about the
+price of a postal order; or that she should always take tenders for
+telegrams. There was obviously nothing actually impossible about the
+State management of national needs; and the Post Office was at least
+tolerably managed. Though it was not always a model employer, by any
+means, it might be made so by similar methods. It was not impossible
+that equitable pay, and even equal pay, could be given to the
+Postmaster-General and the postman. We had only to extend this rule of
+public responsibility, and we should escape from all the terror of
+insecurity and torture of compassion, which hag-rides humanity in the
+insane extremes of economic inequality and injustice. As Mr. Shaw put
+it, "A man must save Society's honour before he can save his own."
+
+That was one side of the argument: that the change would remove
+inequality; and there was an answer on the other side. It can be
+stated most truly by putting another model institution and edifice
+side by side with the Post Office. It is even more of an ideal
+republic, or commonwealth without competition or private profit. It
+supplies its citizens not only with the stamps but with clothes and
+food and lodging, and all they require. It observes considerable level
+of equality in these things; notably in the clothes. It not only
+supervises the letters but all the other human communications; notably
+the sort of evil communications that corrupt good manners. This twin
+model to the Post Office is called the Prison. And much of the scheme
+for a model State was regarded by its opponents as a scheme for a
+model prison; good because it fed men equally, but less acceptable
+since it imprisoned them equally.
+
+It is better to be in a bad prison than in a good one. From the
+standpoint of the prisoner this is not at all a paradox; if only
+because in a bad prison he is more likely to escape. But apart from
+that, a man was in many ways better off in the old dirty and corrupt
+prison, where he could bribe turnkeys to bring him drink and meet
+fellow-prisoners to drink with. Now that is exactly the difference
+between the present system and the proposed system. Nobody worth
+talking about respects the present system. Capitalism is a corrupt
+prison. That is the best that can be said for Capitalism. But it is
+something to be said for it; for a man is a little freer in that
+corrupt prison than he would be in a complete prison. As a man can
+find one jailer more lax than another, so he could find one employer
+more kind than another; he has at least a choice of tyrants. In the
+other case he finds the same tyrant at every turn. Mr. Shaw and other
+rational Socialists have agreed that the State would be in practice
+government by a small group. Any independent man who disliked that
+group would find his foe waiting for him at the end of every road.
+
+It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends
+recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as
+decreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State could
+provide homes and meals for all; on the other it was answered that
+this could only be done by State officials who would inspect houses
+and regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the most
+interesting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do
+everything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that
+had ever been desired in it. Since it was supposed to gain equality at
+the sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possible
+to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed, there was not
+the faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality.
+But there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminate
+liberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and
+interferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating those
+whom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was the
+Capitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted in
+every sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to the
+wiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easy to proceed more
+promptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gone
+through the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. After
+all, it was easy to inspect the house without having helped to build
+it; it was even possible, with luck, to inspect the house in time to
+prevent it being built. All that is described in the documents of the
+Housing Problem; for the people of this age loved problems and hated
+solutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing the
+dinner. All that can be found in the documents of what is called
+Temperance Reform.
+
+In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the
+good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the
+bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists
+themselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over
+bodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic
+tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a
+Capitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in the
+smallest degree diminish the inequalities of a Capitalist State. It
+simply destroyed such individual liberties as remained among its
+victims. It did not enable any man to build a better house; it only
+limited the houses he might live in--or how he might manage to live
+there; forbidding him to keep pigs or poultry or to sell beer or
+cider. It did not even add anything to a man's wages; it only took
+away something from a man's wages and locked it up, whether he liked
+it or not, in a sort of money-box which was regarded as a
+medicine-chest. It does not send food into the house to feed the
+children; it only sends an inspector into the house to punish the
+parents for having no food to feed them. It does not see that they
+have got a fire; it only punishes them for not having a fireguard. It
+does not even occur to it to provide the fireguard.
+
+Now this anomalous situation will probably ultimately evolve into the
+Servile State of Mr. Belloc's thesis. The poor will sink into slavery;
+it might as correctly be said that the poor will rise into slavery.
+That is to say, sooner or later, it is very probable that the rich
+will take over the philanthropic as well as the tyrannic side of the
+bargain; and will feed men like slaves as well as hunting them like
+outlaws. But for the purpose of my own argument it is not necessary to
+carry the process so far as this, or indeed any farther than it has
+already gone. The purely negative stage of interference, at which we
+have stuck for the present, is in itself quite favourable to all these
+eugenical experiments. The capitalist whose half-conscious thought and
+course of action I have simplified into a story in the preceding
+chapters, finds this insufficient solution quite sufficient for his
+purposes. What he has felt for a long time is that he must check or
+improve the reckless and random breeding of the submerged race, which
+is at once outstripping his requirements and failing to fulfil his
+needs. Now the anomalous situation has already accustomed him to
+stopping things. The first interferences with sex need only be
+negative; and there are already negative interferences without number.
+So that the study of this stage of Socialism brings us to the same
+conclusion as that of the ideal of liberty as formally professed by
+Liberalism. The ideal of liberty is lost, and the ideal of Socialism
+is changed, till it is a mere excuse for the oppression of the poor.
+
+The first movements for intervention in the deepest domestic concerns
+of the poor all had this note of negative interference. Official
+papers were sent round to the mothers in poor streets; papers in which
+a total stranger asked these respectable women questions which a man
+would be killed for asking, in the class of what were called gentlemen
+or in the countries of what were called free men. They were questions
+supposed to refer to the conditions of maternity; but the point is
+here that the reformers did not begin by building up those economic or
+material conditions. They did not attempt to pay money or establish
+property to create those conditions. They never give anything--except
+orders. Another form of the intervention, and one already mentioned,
+is the kidnapping of children upon the most fantastic excuses of sham
+psychology. Some people established an apparatus of tests and trick
+questions; which might make an amusing game of riddles for the family
+fireside, but seems an insufficient reason for mutilating and
+dismembering the family. Others became interested in the hopeless
+moral condition of children born in the economic condition which they
+did not attempt to improve. They were great on the fact that crime was
+a disease; and carried on their criminological studies so successfully
+as to open the reformatory for little boys who played truant; there
+was no reformatory for reformers. I need not pause to explain that
+crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.
+
+Finally one thing may be added which is at least clear. Whether or no
+the organisation of industry will issue positively in a eugenical
+reconstruction of the family, it has already issued negatively, as in
+the negations already noted, in a partial destruction of it. It took
+the form of a propaganda of popular divorce, calculated at least to
+accustom the masses to a new notion of the shifting and re-grouping of
+families. I do not discuss the question of divorce here, as I have
+done elsewhere, in its intrinsic character; I merely note it as one of
+these negative reforms which have been substituted for positive
+economic equality. It was preached with a weird hilarity, as if the
+suicide of love were something not only humane but happy. But it need
+not be explained, and certainly it need not be denied, that the
+harassed poor of a diseased industrialism were indeed maintaining
+marriage under every disadvantage, and often found individual relief
+in divorce. Industrialism does produce many unhappy marriages, for the
+same reason that it produces so many unhappy men. But all the reforms
+were directed to rescuing the industrialism rather than the happiness.
+Poor couples were to be divorced because they were already divided.
+Through all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of
+sacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with
+the modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest
+promptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and
+gathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled about
+the chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts were
+instantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to pour away
+the wine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GODS
+
+
+The only place where it is possible to find an echo of the mind of the
+English masses is either in conversation or in comic songs. The latter
+are obviously the more dubious; but they are the only things recorded
+and quotable that come anywhere near it. We talk about the popular
+Press; but in truth there is no popular Press. It may be a good thing;
+but, anyhow, most readers would be mildly surprised if a newspaper
+leading article were written in the language of a navvy. Sometimes the
+Press is interested in things in which the democracy is also genuinely
+interested; such as horse-racing. Sometimes the Press is about as
+popular as the Press Gang. We talk of Labour leaders in Parliament;
+but they would be highly unparliamentary if they talked like
+labourers. The Bolshevists, I believe, profess to promote something
+that they call "proletarian art," which only shows that the word
+Bolshevism can sometimes be abbreviated into bosh. That sort of
+Bolshevist is not a proletarian, but rather the very thing he accuses
+everybody else of being. The Bolshevist is above all a bourgeois; a
+Jewish intellectual of the town. And the real case against industrial
+intellectualism could hardly be put better than in this very
+comparison. There has never been such a thing as proletarian art; but
+there has emphatically been such a thing as peasant art. And the only
+literature which even reminds us of the real tone and talk of the
+English working classes is to be found in the comic song of the
+English music-hall.
+
+I first heard one of them on my voyage to America, in the midst of the
+sea within sight of the New World, with the Statue of Liberty
+beginning to loom up on the horizon. From the lips of a young Scotch
+engineer, of all people in the world, I heard for the first time these
+immortal words from a London music-hall song:--
+
+    "Father's got the sack from the water-works
+      For smoking of his old cherry-briar;
+    Father's got the sack from the water-works
+      'Cos he might set the water-works on fire."
+
+As I told my friends in America, I think it no part of a patriot to
+boast; and boasting itself is certainly not a thing to boast of. I
+doubt the persuasive power of English as exemplified in Kipling, and
+one can easily force it on foreigners too much, even as exemplified in
+Dickens. I am no Imperialist, and only on rare and proper occasions a
+Jingo. But when I hear those words about Father and the water-works,
+when I hear under far-off foreign skies anything so gloriously English
+as that, then indeed (I said to them), then indeed:--
+
+    "I thank the goodness and the grace
+      That on my birth have smiled,
+    And made me, as you see me here,
+      A little English child."
+
+But that noble stanza about the water-works has other elements of
+nobility besides nationality. It provides a compact and almost perfect
+summary of the whole social problem in industrial countries like
+England and America. If I wished to set forth systematically the
+elements of the ethical and economic problem in Pittsburg or
+Sheffield, I could not do better than take these few words as a text,
+and divide them up like the heads of a sermon. Let me note the points
+in some rough fashion here.
+
+1.--_Father._ This word is still in use among the more ignorant and
+ill-paid of the industrial community; and is the badge of an old
+convention or unit called the family. A man and woman having vowed to
+be faithful to each other, the man makes himself responsible for all
+the children of the woman, and is thus generically called "Father." It
+must not be supposed that the poet or singer is necessarily one of the
+children. It may be the wife, called by the same ritual "Mother." Poor
+English wives say "Father" as poor Irish wives say "Himself," meaning
+the titular head of the house. The point to seize is that among the
+ignorant this convention or custom still exists. Father and the family
+are the foundations of thought; the natural authority still comes
+natural to the poet; but it is overlaid and thwarted with more
+artificial authorities; the official, the schoolmaster, the
+policeman, the employer, and so on. What these forces fighting the
+family are we shall see, my dear brethren, when we pass to our second
+heading; which is:--
+
+2.--_Got the Sack._ This idiom marks a later stage of the history of
+the language than the comparatively primitive word "Father." It is
+needless to discuss whether the term comes from Turkey or some other
+servile society. In America they say that Father has been fired. But
+it involves the whole of the unique economic system under which Father
+has now to live. Though assumed by family tradition to be a master, he
+can now, by industrial tradition, only be a particular kind of
+servant; a servant who has not the security of a slave. If he owned
+his own shop and tools, he could not get the sack. If his master owned
+him, he could not get the sack. The slave and the guildsman know where
+they will sleep every night; it was only the proletarian of
+individualist industrialism who could get the sack, if not in the
+style of the Bosphorus, at least in the sense of the Embankment. We
+pass to the third heading.
+
+3.--_From the Water-works._ This detail of Father's life is very
+important; for this is the reply to most of the Socialists, as the
+last section is to so many of the Capitalists. The water-works which
+employed Father is a very large, official and impersonal institution.
+Whether it is technically a bureaucratic department or a big business
+makes little or no change in the feelings of Father in connection with
+it. The water-works might or might not be nationalised; and it would
+make no necessary difference to Father being fired, and no difference
+at all to his being accused of playing with fire. In fact, if the
+Capitalists are more likely to give him the sack, the Socialists are
+even more likely to forbid him the smoke. There is no freedom for
+Father except in some sort of private ownership of things like water
+and fire. If he owned his own well his water could never be cut off,
+and while he sits by his own fire his pipe can never be put out. That
+is the real meaning of property, and the real argument against
+Socialism; probably the only argument against Socialism.
+
+4.--_For Smoking._ Nothing marks this queer intermediate phase of
+industrialism more strangely than the fact that, while employers still
+claim the right to sack him like a stranger, they are already
+beginning to claim the right to supervise him like a son. Economically
+he can go and starve on the Embankment; but ethically and hygienically
+he must be controlled and coddled in the nursery. Government
+repudiates all responsibility for seeing that he gets bread. But it
+anxiously accepts all responsibility for seeing that he does not get
+beer. It passes an Insurance Act to force him to provide himself with
+medicine; but it is avowedly indifferent to whether he is able to
+provide himself with meals. Thus while the sack is inconsistent with
+the family, the supervision is really inconsistent with the sack. The
+whole thing is a tangled chain of contradictions. It is true that in
+the special and sacred text of scripture we are here considering, the
+smoking is forbidden on a general and public and not on a medicinal
+and private ground. But it is none the less relevant to remember that,
+as his masters have already proved that alcohol is a poison, they may
+soon prove that nicotine is a poison. And it is most significant of
+all that this sort of danger is even greater in what is called the new
+democracy of America than in what is called the old oligarchy of
+England. When I was in America, people were already "defending"
+tobacco. People who defend tobacco are on the road to proving that
+daylight is defensible, or that it is not really sinful to sneeze. In
+other words, they are quietly going mad.
+
+5.--_Of his old Cherry-briar._ Here we have the intermediate and
+anomalous position of the institution of Property. The sentiment still
+exists, even among the poor, or perhaps especially among the poor. But
+it is attached to toys rather than tools; to the minor products rather
+than to the means of production. But something of the sanity of
+ownership is still to be observed; for instance, the element of custom
+and continuity. It was an _old_ cherry-briar; systematically smoked by
+Father in spite of all wiles and temptations to Woodbines and gaspers;
+an old companion possibly connected with various romantic or diverting
+events in Father's life. It is perhaps a relic as well as a trinket.
+But because it is not a true tool, because it gives the man no grip on
+the creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of his
+self-respect, at the mercy of the thing called the sack. When he gets
+the sack from the water-works, it is only too probable that he will
+have to pawn his old cherry-briar.
+
+6.--_'Cos he might set the water-works on fire._ And that single line,
+like the lovely single lines of the great poets, is so full, so final,
+so perfect a picture of all the laws we pass and all the reasons we
+give for them, so exact an analysis of the logic of all our
+precautions at the present time, that the pen falls even from the
+hands of the commentator; and the masterpiece is left to speak for
+itself.
+
+Some such analysis as the above gives a better account than most of
+the anomalous attitude and situation of the English proletarian
+to-day. It is the more appropriate because it is expressed in the
+words he actually uses; which certainly do not include the word
+"proletarian." It will be noted that everything that goes to make up
+that complexity is in an unfinished state. Property has not quite
+vanished; slavery has not quite arrived; marriage exists under
+difficulties; social regimentation exists under restraints, or rather
+under subterfuges. The question which remains is which force is
+gaining on the other, and whether the old forces are capable of
+resisting the new. I hope they are; but I recognise that they resist
+under more than one heavy handicap. The chief of these is that the
+family feeling of the workmen is by this time rather an instinct than
+an ideal. The obvious thing to protect an ideal is a religion. The
+obvious thing to protect the ideal of marriage is the Christian
+religion. And for various reasons, which only a history of England
+could explain (though it hardly ever does), the working classes of
+this country have been very much cut off from Christianity. I do not
+dream of denying, indeed I should take every opportunity of affirming,
+that monogamy and its domestic responsibilities can be defended on
+rational apart from religious grounds. But a religion is the practical
+protection of any moral idea which has to be popular and which has to
+be pugnacious. And our ideal, if it is to survive, will have to be
+both.
+
+Those who make merry over the landlady who has seen better days, of
+whom something has been said already, commonly speak, in the same
+jovial journalese, about her household goods as her household gods.
+They would be much startled if they discovered how right they are.
+Exactly what is lacking to the modern materialist is something that
+can be what the household gods were to the ancient heathen. The
+household gods of the heathen were not only wood and stone; at least
+there is always more than that in the stone of the hearth-stone and
+the wood of the roof-tree. So long as Christianity continued the
+tradition of patron saints and portable relics, this idea of a
+blessing on the household could continue. If men had not domestic
+divinities, at least they had divine domesticities. When Christianity
+was chilled with Puritanism and rationalism, this inner warmth or
+secret fire in the house faded on the hearth. But some of the embers
+still glow or at least glimmer; and there is still a memory among the
+poor that their material possessions are something sacred. I know poor
+men for whom it is the romance of their lives to refuse big sums of
+money for an old copper warming-pan. They do not want it, in any sense
+of base utility. They do not use it as a warming-pan; but it warms
+them for all that. It is indeed, as Sergeant Buzfuz humorously
+observed, a cover for hidden fire. And the fire is that which burned
+before the strange and uncouth wooden gods, like giant dolls, in the
+huts of ancient Italy. It is a household god. And I can imagine some
+such neglected and unlucky English man dying with his eyes on the red
+gleam of that piece of copper, as happier men have died with their
+eyes on the golden gleam of a chalice or a cross.
+
+It will thus be noted that there has always been some connection
+between a mystical belief and the materials of domesticity; that they
+generally go together; and that now, in a more mournful sense, they
+are gone together. The working classes have no reserves of property
+with which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religion
+with which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they are
+under the enormous disadvantage of being right without knowing it.
+They hold their sound principles as if they were sullen prejudices.
+They almost secrete their small property as if it were stolen
+property. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks to
+her husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolved
+to run away from her husband. Often she will cry as hopelessly, and
+as it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were a
+child deprived of her doll. Indeed, a child in the street, crying for
+her lost doll, would probably receive more sympathy than she does.
+
+Meanwhile the fun goes on; and many such conflicts are recorded, even
+in the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking
+philanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any
+number of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be
+flippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather
+fierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I
+know that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives of
+sincere but confused compassion, and many more from a dull but not
+dishonourable medical or legal habit. But if I and those who agree
+with me tend to some harshness and abruptness of condemnation, these
+worthy people need not be altogether impatient with our impatience. It
+is surely beneath them, in the scope of their great schemes, to
+complain of protests so ineffectual about wrongs so individual. I have
+considered in this chapter the chances of general democratic defence
+of domestic honour, and have been compelled to the conclusion that
+they are not at present hopeful; and it is at least clear that we
+cannot be founding on them any personal hopes. If this conclusion
+leaves us defeated, we submit that it leaves us disinterested. Ours is
+not the sort of protest, at least, that promises anything even to the
+demagogue, let alone the sycophant. Those we serve will never rule,
+and those we pity will never rise. Parliament will never be surrounded
+by a mob of submerged grandmothers brandishing pawn-tickets. There is
+no trade union of defective children. It is not very probable that
+modern government will be overturned by a few poor dingy devils who
+are sent to prison by mistake, or rather by ordinary accident. Surely
+it is not for those magnificent Socialists, or those great reformers
+and reconstructors of Capitalism, sweeping onward to their scientific
+triumphs and caring for none of these things, to murmur at our vain
+indignation. At least if it is vain it is the less venal; and in so
+far as it is hopeless it is also thankless. They have their great
+campaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions,
+and the records of science and progress. They need not be angry with
+us, who plead for those who will never read our words or reward our
+effort, even with gratitude. They need surely have no worse mood
+towards us than mystification, seeing that in recalling these small
+things of broken hearts or homes, we are but recording what cannot be
+recorded; trivial tragedies that will fade faster and faster in the
+flux of time, cries that fail in a furious and infinite wind, wild
+words of despair that are written only upon running water; unless,
+indeed, as some so stubbornly and strangely say, they are somewhere
+cut deep into a rock, in the red granite of the wrath of God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A SHORT CHAPTER
+
+
+Round about the year 1913 Eugenics was turned from a fad to a fashion.
+Then, if I may so summarise the situation, the joke began in earnest.
+The organising mind which we have seen considering the problem of slum
+population, the popular material and the possibility of protests, felt
+that the time had come to open the campaign. Eugenics began to appear
+in big headlines in the daily Press, and big pictures in the
+illustrated papers. A foreign gentleman named Bolce, living at
+Hampstead, was advertised on a huge scale as having every intention of
+being the father of the Superman. It turned out to be a Superwoman,
+and was called Eugenette. The parents were described as devoting
+themselves to the production of perfect pre-natal conditions. They
+"eliminated everything from their lives which did not tend towards
+complete happiness." Many might indeed be ready to do this; but in the
+voluminous contemporary journalism on the subject I can find no
+detailed notes about how it is done. Communications were opened with
+Mr. H.G. Wells, with Dr. Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. Karl
+Pearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefully
+cultivated in the parents. The problem of a sense of humour was felt
+to be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturally
+fearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientific
+as to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, they
+visited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards George
+Robey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper reader,
+however, it looked as if the names of Metchnikoff and Steinmetz and
+Karl Pearson would soon be quite as familiar as those of Robey and
+Lauder and Bard. Arguments about these Eugenic authorities, reports of
+the controversies at the Eugenic Congress, filled countless columns.
+The fact that Mr. Bolce, the creator of perfect pre-natal conditions,
+was afterwards sued in a law-court for keeping his own flat in
+conditions of filth and neglect, cast but a slight and momentary
+shadow upon the splendid dawn of the science. It would be vain to
+record any of the thousand testimonies to its triumph. In the nature
+of things, this should be the longest chapter in the book, or rather
+the beginning of another book. It should record, in numberless
+examples, the triumphant popularisation of Eugenics in England. But as
+a matter of fact this is not the first chapter but the last. And this
+must be a very short chapter, because the whole of this story was cut
+short. A very curious thing happened. England went to war.
+
+This would in itself have been a sufficiently irritating interruption
+in the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment of
+Eugenics. But a far more dreadful and disconcerting fact must be
+noted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to war
+with the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that very
+land of scientific culture from which the very ideal of a Superman had
+come. She went to war with the whole of Dr. Steinmetz, and presumably
+with at least half of Dr. Karl Pearson. She gave battle to the
+birthplace of nine-tenths of the professors who were the prophets of
+the new hope of humanity. In a few weeks the very name of a professor
+was a matter for hissing and low plebeian mirth. The very name of
+Nietzsche, who had held up this hope of something superhuman to
+humanity, was laughed at for all the world as if he had been touched
+with lunacy. A new mood came upon the whole people; a mood of
+marching, of spontaneous soldierly vigilance and democratic
+discipline, moving to the faint tune of bugles far away. Men began to
+talk strangely of old and common things, of the counties of England,
+of its quiet landscapes, of motherhood and the half-buried religion of
+the race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making all
+things vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awful
+actuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and the
+Eugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one may
+say so, funny.
+
+Such a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given.
+There was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfection
+than any other the type of order and foresight that are the subject
+of this book. It had long been the model State of all those more
+rational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation of
+society. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform.
+All the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudly
+borrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found it
+convenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring and
+neutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had a
+privilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had the
+gratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scale
+and very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionary
+idealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams;
+or to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to wait
+for it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; but
+in the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silent
+for five years.
+
+The thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. It
+might be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogether
+leave the memories of men; but men's memories are unstable things. It
+may be that gradually these dazed dupes will gather again together,
+and attempt again to believe their dreams and disbelieve their eyes.
+There may be some whose love of slavery is so ideal and disinterested
+that they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment of
+that broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But there
+are limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been once
+deceived and a second time deceives himself. They have seen their
+paragons of science and organisation playing their part on land and
+sea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love of
+humanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed the
+testimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neither
+would they believe though one rose from the dead; though all the
+millions who died to destroy Prussianism stood up and testified
+against it.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Abnormal innocence and abnormal sin, alliance between, 4
+
+Abortion, open advocacy of, 138
+
+Affinity as a bar to marriage, 8
+
+Altruism, remarks on, 111
+
+Anarchy, definition of, 22, 23
+  the opposite of Socialism, 159
+
+Anglican Church, the, and question of disestablishment, 75
+
+Aristocratic marriages, Eugenists and, 139 _et seq._
+
+Atheistic literary style, the, 46
+
+Authority versus Reason, 132
+
+Autocrats, Eugenists as, 15
+
+
+Belloc, Mr., and the Servile State, 21, 165
+  rebuked by _The Nation_, 122
+
+Bluecher, Marshal, an alleged saying of, 124
+
+Bolce, Mr., the super-Eugenist, 180, 181
+
+Bolshevists, and "proletarian art," 169
+
+Brummell, Mr., vanity of, 96
+
+Burglary, punishment for, 36
+
+
+Calvinism, immorality of, 126, 127
+  in the Middle Ages, 92
+
+Calvinists and the doctrine of free-will, 52
+
+Capitalists, and workmen, 133
+  Socialists and, 47
+
+Casuists, Eugenists as, 14
+
+Catholic countries, and the drink traffic, 122
+
+Celtic sadness, and the desolation of Belfast, 121
+
+Chesterton, G.K., and Socialism, 159 _et seq._
+  on H.G. Wells, 69
+  rebuked by _The Nation_, 122
+
+Children, and non-eugenic unions, 7
+  cruelty to: punishment for, 26-7
+
+Christian conception of rebellion, the, 22, 23
+
+Christian religion as protector of the ideal of marriage, 175
+
+Christian serf, how he differed from a pagan slave, 102
+
+Christianity, and freedom, 10
+
+Church teaching, compulsory, 75
+
+Church, the, and question of disestablishment, 75
+
+"Class War, the," and Socialists, 47
+
+Coercion, and control of sex-relationship, 155
+
+Comic songs, and a sermon thereon, 169 _et seq._
+
+Compulsion, and sexual selection, 14, 155
+
+Compulsory education, 95
+  vaccination, 77
+
+Concordat, the, and the independence of the Roman Church, 75
+
+Criminals, difference between lunatics and, 34, 35
+  proposed vivisection of, 79
+  punishment of, 25 _et seq._, 35 _et seq._
+
+Criminology as a disease, 167
+
+Cruelty to children, punishment for, 26-7
+
+
+Delusions, concrete and otherwise, 32 _et seq._
+
+Disestablishment, author's views on, 75
+
+Doctors, as health advisers of the community, 55, 58
+  limits to their knowledge, 57
+
+
+Education, compulsory, 95
+
+Endeavourers, the, 17
+
+English proletarians, anomalous attitude of, 175
+
+Establishment, author's views on, 75 _et seq._
+
+Ethics, as opposed to Eugenics, 7
+
+Eugenic Law, the first, and negative Eugenics, 19, 28
+
+Eugenic State, beginning of the, 19
+
+Eugenics and employment, 141
+  author's conception of, 12
+  becomes a fashion, 180
+  beginning of, 125
+  different meanings of, 4
+  essence of, 4
+  first principle of, 38
+  general definition of, 10
+  meanness of the motive of, 136 _et seq._, 146
+  moral basis of, 5
+  the false theory of, 3 _et seq._
+  the real aim of, 91 _et seq._
+  versus Ethics, 7
+
+Eugenist, true story of a, 114 _et seq._
+
+Eugenists, and their new morality, 82
+  as Casuists, 14
+  as employers, 133, 137
+  as Euphemists, 12
+  their plutocratic impulses, 139 _et seq._
+  Mr. Wells' challenge to, 70
+  secret of what they really want, 73 _et seq._, 85
+
+Euphemists, Eugenists as, 12
+
+
+Fabians, and Socialism, 160
+
+Feeble-Minded Bill, the, Eugenists and, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28, 51, 52
+
+Feeble-mindedness, Dr. Saleeby on, 61
+  hereditary, 62, 63
+
+Flogging, revival of, 25
+
+Foulon, and the French peasants, 103
+
+Freedom, Christianity and, 10
+
+Free-will disbelieved by Eugenists, 52
+
+
+Game laws, English, result of the, 110, 112
+
+Golf, a Scotch minister's opinion of, 117
+
+Great War, the, outbreak of, and its effect on Eugenics, 181
+
+
+Health, and what it is, 59
+  Mr. Wells' views on inheritance of, 70, 85-6
+  not necessarily allied with beauty, 144
+  "Health adviser" of society, the, 55, 58
+
+Hereditary diseases, and marriage, 44
+
+Heredity, and feeble-mindedness, 62, 63
+  author's conception of, 64
+  incontestable proof of, 66
+  three first facts of, 66-7
+  unsatisfactory plight of students of, 66
+  uselessness of attempting to judge, 39
+
+Housebreaking, punishment for, 36
+
+Household gods of the heathen, 176
+
+Housing problem, the, 164
+
+Hutchinson, Colonel and Mrs., the historic instance of, 7
+
+Huth, A.H., an admission by, 50
+
+
+Idealists (_see_ Autocrats)
+
+Idiotcy, segregation of, 61
+
+Imperialism, and its aims, 93
+
+Imprisonment, the State and, 25
+
+Incest, the crime of, 8, 9
+
+Indeterminate sentence, the, instrument of, 35
+  principle of, 37
+
+Individualism, the experiment of, 130
+
+Individualists, early Victorian, 118
+
+Intervention, Socialistic movements of, 166
+
+Irish peasants, T.P. O'Connor on, 144
+
+Irishman in Liverpool, the, 121
+
+
+Journalism and the Press of to-day, 73
+
+
+Kindred and affinity, as a bar to marriage, 8
+
+
+Law, the, and restrictions on sex, 10
+  and the indeterminate sentence, 35
+  and the lunatic, 31 _et seq._
+
+Libel, definition of, 28
+  loose extension of idea of, 27-8
+
+Liberty and scepticism, 148
+  the eclipse of, 149 _et seq._
+  the Eugenist's view of, 16
+
+Lodge, Sir Oliver, and "the stud farm," 13, 14
+
+Lunacy, and Eugenic legislation, 17-20, 28, 29, 31 _et seq._
+  medical specialists as judges of, 40, 41
+
+Lunacy Law, the old, 38
+
+Lunacy Laws, the, extension of principle of, 17
+
+Lunatic, the, and the law, 31 _et seq._
+
+Lunatics, difference between criminals and, 34, 35
+
+
+Macdonald, George, and space co-incident, 34
+
+Madman, a, definition of, 32
+
+Madness, degrees of, 32
+  medical specialists and, 40, 41
+  the essence of, 44
+  (_See also_ Lunacy)
+
+Malthus, and his doctrine, 118
+
+Mania, segregation of, 61
+
+Marriage, and question of hereditary disease, 44
+  the aim of, 5
+  the Christian religion and, 175
+
+Marriages, aristocratic, 139 _et seq._
+
+Marxian Socialists, and Capitalists, 47
+
+Materialism, as the established church, 77
+  in speech, 46
+
+Materialists, modern, 128
+
+Medical specialists and madness, 40, 41
+
+Mendicancy laws, result of the, 113
+
+Metternich tradition, the, 154
+
+Midas, 129
+
+Middle Ages, the, 91 _et seq._
+
+Midias, segregation of, 29
+
+Monogamy, author's views on, 176
+
+Morality, and restraints on sex, 8
+
+
+Neisser, Dr., 79
+
+Newspapers, anarchic tendency of modern, 26
+  decadence of present-day, 73
+
+Niagara, comparison of modern world with, 24
+
+Nietzsche, 182
+
+Non-eugenic unions, and children, 7
+
+
+O'Connor, T.P., on the Irish peasants, 144
+
+Oedipus, and his incestuous marriage, 8
+
+Om, the formless god of the East, 48
+
+_On_, meaning and use of the word, 48
+
+Osborne, Dorothy, and Sir William Temple, 7
+
+
+Pagan slave, the, difference between Christian serf and, 102
+
+Pearson, Dr. Karl, 50, 65, 181
+
+Peasant art, comic songs as an instance of, 170
+
+Persecution, author's views on, 77 _et seq._
+
+"Platonic friendship," 138
+
+Politics in the Middle Ages, 92
+
+Post Office, the State, 161
+  twin model of, 162
+
+Precedenters, the, 17
+
+Press, the, criticisms of, 73, 169
+
+Prevention not better than cure, 55
+
+Preventive medicine, fallacy of, 55
+
+Prison system, the, 162
+
+Procreation, prevention of, 138
+
+Profiteering, author on, 124
+
+"Proletarian art," 169
+
+Property, author's views on, 160
+
+Punishment, extension of, 25
+
+Puritanical moral stories, immorality of, 126
+
+
+Realities, denial of, 33
+
+Reason versus Authority, 132
+
+Rebellion, Christian conception of, 23
+  meaning of, 22
+
+Reform and Repeal, 95
+
+"Relations of the sexes," atheists and, 47
+
+Religion in the Middle Ages, 92
+
+Representative Government, the procedure of, 116
+
+Rockefeller, Mr., 124
+
+Russian Orthodox Church, the, and the State, 75
+
+
+Saladin, Sultan, 100
+
+Saleeby, Dr., 50
+  and a "health-book," 58
+  and feeble-mindedness, 61
+  and heredity, 68
+
+Saturnalia, the Roman, 24
+
+Scepticism, reactionary, 148
+
+Science and tyranny, 76
+
+Scotland, Church of, 76
+
+Scotland, drunkenness in, 122
+
+Segregation of strong-minded people, a suggested, 51
+
+Serf, the, different from pagan slave, 102
+
+Servile State, the, Mr. Belloc's theory of, 21, 165
+
+Sex-relationship, controlled by coercion, 155
+
+Sexes, the, relations of, 47
+
+Sexual selection a destruction of Eugenics, 9
+
+Shaw, Bernard, 162
+  and Sidney Webb, 161
+  as Puritan, 69
+
+Slaves, breeding of, 10
+
+Slum children, Mrs. Alec Tweedie and, 143
+
+Smiles, Dr. Samuel, and the English tramp, 119
+
+Snobbishness, an inverted, 117
+
+Socialism as oppressor of the poor, 166
+
+Socialism, the transformation of, 159 _et seq._
+
+Socialist system, foundation of the, 159
+
+Socialists, and "solidarity," 46
+  their view of the State, 163
+
+Specialists (medical) and madness, 40, 41
+
+Spiritual pride, an example of, 96
+
+Spiritual world, the, author's belief in, 63
+
+State, the, and compulsion, 14
+  Socialist view of, 163
+
+Statistics, fundamental fallacy in use of, 61
+
+Steinmetz, Dr. R.S., 8, 181
+
+Stevenson, R.L., and pre-natal conditions, 45
+
+
+Temperance Reform, 164
+
+Temple, Sir William, and Dorothy Osborne, 7
+
+Tithes, question of, 75
+
+Tory conception of anarchy, the, 22
+
+Tramp, true history of a, 101 _et seq._
+
+Truant schools. Socialists and, 167
+
+Tweedie, Mrs. Alec, and the children of the slums, 143
+
+Tyranny of government by Science, 76
+
+
+Vaccination, compulsory, 77
+
+Vanity, hereditary--and other, 62
+
+Victorian Individualists, optimism of, 118
+  snobbishness, 117
+
+
+Wages, "rise and fall of," 47
+
+Webb, Sidney, and Bernard Shaw, 161
+
+Wells, H.G., 55, 154
+  author's criticism of, 69-70
+  his "Mankind in the Making," 70
+
+White Slave traffic, punishment for, 25
+
+Witchcraft, punishment for, 26
+
+Witch-hunting and witch burning, 63, 64
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.4.
+
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