WEBVTT 1 00:00:01.080 --> 00:00:05.519 Chapter nine B of Anticipations. This is a LibriVox recording. 2 00:00:05.799 --> 00:00:09.240 All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more 3 00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:15.720 information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Anticipations 4 00:00:15.800 --> 00:00:22.199 by H. G. Wells, Chapter nine B. And the type 5 00:00:22.239 --> 00:00:24.920 of men that I conceive emerging in the coming years 6 00:00:25.480 --> 00:00:28.519 will deal simply and logically, not only with the business 7 00:00:28.559 --> 00:00:33.399 of death, but with birth. That presently sexual morality of 8 00:00:33.439 --> 00:00:37.119 the civilized world is the most illogical and incoherent system 9 00:00:37.159 --> 00:00:42.960 of wild permissions and insane prohibitions, foolish tolerance, and ruthless 10 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:48.359 cruelty that it is possible to imagine. Our current civilization 11 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:52.479 is a sexual lunatic, and it has lost its reason 12 00:00:52.520 --> 00:00:55.679 in this respect under the stresses of the new birth 13 00:00:55.719 --> 00:00:59.119 of things, largely through the difficulties that have stood in 14 00:00:59.159 --> 00:01:02.719 the way and do still, in a diminishing degree, stand 15 00:01:02.799 --> 00:01:05.760 in the way of any sane discussion of the matter 16 00:01:05.879 --> 00:01:09.840 as a whole. To approach it is to approach excitement. 17 00:01:10.519 --> 00:01:13.519 So few people seemed to be leading happy and healthy 18 00:01:13.599 --> 00:01:18.040 sexual lives that to mention the very word sexual is 19 00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:21.840 to set them stirring, to brighten the eye, lower the voice, 20 00:01:22.159 --> 00:01:26.079 and blanch or flush the cheek with a flavor of guilt. 21 00:01:26.959 --> 00:01:29.920 We are all, as it were, keeping our secrets and 22 00:01:30.120 --> 00:01:34.680 hiding our shames. One of the most curious revelations of 23 00:01:34.719 --> 00:01:37.879 this fact occurred only a few years ago, when the 24 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:41.400 artless outpourings and fiction of certain young women, who had 25 00:01:41.400 --> 00:01:44.319 failed to find light on problems that pressed upon them 26 00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:47.840 for solution, and which it was certainly their business as 27 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:52.280 possible wives and mothers to solve, roused all sorts of 28 00:01:52.359 --> 00:01:58.000 respectable people to a quite insane vehemence of condemnation. Now 29 00:01:58.319 --> 00:02:02.439 there are excellent reasons and a permanent necessity for the 30 00:02:02.480 --> 00:02:07.079 preservation of decency, and for a far more stringent suppression 31 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:10.199 of matter that is merely intended to excite than at 32 00:02:10.280 --> 00:02:13.800 present obtains. And the chief of these reasons lies in 33 00:02:13.840 --> 00:02:17.199 the need of preserving the young from a premature awakening, 34 00:02:17.800 --> 00:02:22.159 and indeed in the interests of civilization in positively delaying 35 00:02:22.199 --> 00:02:26.319 the period of awakening, retarding maturity, and lengthening the period 36 00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:31.000 of growth and preparation as much as possible. But purity 37 00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:35.719 and innocence may be prolonged too late. Innocence is really 38 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:38.919 no more becoming to adults than a rattle or a 39 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:43.800 rubber consoler, and the bashfulness that hampers this discussion, that 40 00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:46.879 permits it only in a furtive, silly sort of way, 41 00:02:47.240 --> 00:02:51.520 has its ugly consequences in shames and cruelties, in miserable 42 00:02:51.560 --> 00:02:56.360 households and pitiful crises, in the production of countless, needless 43 00:02:56.360 --> 00:03:01.360 and unhappy lives. Indeed, too often we carry our decency 44 00:03:01.479 --> 00:03:04.759 so far as to make it suggestive and stimulating in 45 00:03:04.840 --> 00:03:08.319 a non natural way. We invest the plain business of 46 00:03:08.360 --> 00:03:13.560 reproduction with a mystic religious quality far more unwholesome than 47 00:03:13.560 --> 00:03:18.680 a savage nakedness could possibly be the essential aspect of 48 00:03:18.719 --> 00:03:22.719 all this wild and windy business of the sexual relations is, 49 00:03:22.919 --> 00:03:27.639 after all births. Upon this plain fact, the people of 50 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:32.400 the emergent New Republic will unhesitatingly go. The pre eminent 51 00:03:32.520 --> 00:03:36.039 value of sexual questions and morality lies in the fact 52 00:03:36.039 --> 00:03:39.960 that the lives which will constitute the future are involved. 53 00:03:40.719 --> 00:03:44.000 If they are not involved, if we can dissociate this 54 00:03:44.159 --> 00:03:48.039 relationship from this issue, then sexual questions become of no 55 00:03:48.120 --> 00:03:51.759 more importance than the morality of one's deportment at chess 56 00:03:52.439 --> 00:03:56.400 or the general morality of outdoor games. Indeed, then the 57 00:03:56.520 --> 00:04:00.439 question of sexual relationships would be entirely on all falls 58 00:04:00.520 --> 00:04:04.000 with and probably very analogous to the question of golf. 59 00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:07.479 In each case, it would be for the medical man 60 00:04:07.520 --> 00:04:10.479 and the psychologist to decide how far the thing was 61 00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:13.919 wholesome and permissible, and how far it was an aggressive, 62 00:04:14.039 --> 00:04:17.399 bad habit and an absorbing waste of time and energy. 63 00:04:18.319 --> 00:04:21.560 An able bodied man continually addicted to love making that 64 00:04:21.639 --> 00:04:24.680 had no result in offspring would be just as silly 65 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:28.240 and morally objectionable as an able bodied man who devoted 66 00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:31.800 his chief energies to hitting little balls over golf links, 67 00:04:32.519 --> 00:04:36.199 but no more. Both would probably be wasting the lives 68 00:04:36.199 --> 00:04:40.319 of other human beings. The golfer must employ his caddy. 69 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:43.600 It is entirely the matter of births, and a further 70 00:04:43.639 --> 00:04:47.959 consideration to be presently discussed, that makes this analogy untrue. 71 00:04:48.680 --> 00:04:51.360 It does not, however, make it so untrue as to 72 00:04:51.439 --> 00:04:54.399 do away with the probability that, in many cases the 73 00:04:54.439 --> 00:04:58.040 emergent men of the new time will consider sterile gratification 74 00:04:58.399 --> 00:05:03.360 a moral and legitimate thing. Saint Paul tells us that 75 00:05:03.399 --> 00:05:06.040 it is better to marry than to burn, but to 76 00:05:06.079 --> 00:05:09.120 beget children on that account will appear, I imagine to 77 00:05:09.160 --> 00:05:13.920 those coming men as an absolutely loathsome proceeding. They will 78 00:05:13.959 --> 00:05:17.199 stifle no spread of knowledge that will diminish the swarming 79 00:05:17.279 --> 00:05:21.000 misery of childhood in the slums. They will regard the 80 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:24.959 disinclination of the witless society woman to become a mother 81 00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:29.480 as a most amiable trait in her folly. In our 82 00:05:29.639 --> 00:05:32.959 bashful is about these things, we talk an abominable lot 83 00:05:32.959 --> 00:05:36.839 of nonsense. All this uproar one hears about the rapid 84 00:05:36.920 --> 00:05:40.560 multiplication of the unfit and the future of the lower 85 00:05:40.680 --> 00:05:45.160 races takes on an entirely different complexion. Directly, we face known, 86 00:05:45.319 --> 00:05:50.160 if indelicate facts. Most of the human types that by 87 00:05:50.199 --> 00:05:54.600 civilized standards are undesirable are quite willing to die out 88 00:05:54.680 --> 00:05:58.040 through such suppressions if the world will only encourage them 89 00:05:58.079 --> 00:06:01.959 a little. They multiply in sheer ignorance, but they do 90 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:05.560 not desire multiplication even now, and they can easily be 91 00:06:05.639 --> 00:06:09.480 made to dread it. Sensuality aims not at life, but 92 00:06:09.600 --> 00:06:12.800 at itself. I believe that the men of the New 93 00:06:12.839 --> 00:06:17.120 Republic will deliberately shape their public policy along these lines. 94 00:06:17.800 --> 00:06:21.439 They will route out and illuminate urban rookeries and all 95 00:06:21.480 --> 00:06:24.959 places where the base can drift to multiply. They will 96 00:06:24.959 --> 00:06:27.920 contrive a land legislation that will keep the black or 97 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:31.519 yellow or mean white squatter on the move. They will 98 00:06:31.560 --> 00:06:33.839 see to it that no parent can make a profit 99 00:06:33.879 --> 00:06:36.879 out of a child, so that child bearing shall cease 100 00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:41.000 to be a hopeful speculation for the unemployed poor. And 101 00:06:41.079 --> 00:06:43.319 they will make the maintenance of a child the first 102 00:06:43.399 --> 00:06:46.199 charge upon the parents who have brought it into the world. 103 00:06:47.199 --> 00:06:50.839 Only in this way can progress escape being clogged by 104 00:06:50.839 --> 00:06:54.800 the products of the security it creates. The development of 105 00:06:54.839 --> 00:06:58.519 science has lifted femine and pestilence from the shoulders of man, 106 00:06:58.959 --> 00:07:02.439 and it will yet lift war for some other end 107 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:04.959 than to give him a spell of promiscuous and finely 108 00:07:05.040 --> 00:07:11.600 cruel and horrible reproduction. No doubt, the sentimentalist in all, 109 00:07:11.680 --> 00:07:14.639 whose moral sense has been vigorously trained in the old 110 00:07:14.680 --> 00:07:18.720 school will find this rather a dreadful suggestion. It amounts 111 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:21.480 to saying that for the abyss to become a hotbed 112 00:07:21.560 --> 00:07:25.399 of sterile immorality will fall in with the deliberate policy 113 00:07:25.439 --> 00:07:28.360 of the ruling class in the days to come. At 114 00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:32.040 any rate, it will be a terminating evil. At present, 115 00:07:32.120 --> 00:07:35.240 the abyss is a hotbed breeding undesirable and too often 116 00:07:35.279 --> 00:07:40.279 fearfully miserable children, that is something more than a sentimental 117 00:07:40.279 --> 00:07:44.959 horror under the really very horrible morality of today, the 118 00:07:45.079 --> 00:07:50.639 spectacle of a mean, spirited, undersized, diseased little man, quite 119 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:54.519 incapable of earning a decent living even for himself, married 120 00:07:54.600 --> 00:07:58.959 to some underfed, ignorant, ill shaped, plain and diseased little woman, 121 00:07:59.560 --> 00:08:02.360 and gold of the lives of ten or twelve ugly 122 00:08:02.519 --> 00:08:07.399 ailing children is regarded as an extremely edifying spectacle, and 123 00:08:07.480 --> 00:08:10.920 the two parents consider their reproductive excesses as giving them 124 00:08:10.920 --> 00:08:14.920 a distinct claim upon less thick hund and more prosperous people. 125 00:08:15.959 --> 00:08:20.040 Benevolent persons throw themselves with peculiar ardour into a case 126 00:08:20.079 --> 00:08:23.439 of this sort, and quite passionate efforts are made to 127 00:08:23.439 --> 00:08:27.560 strengthen the mother against further eventualities and protect the children 128 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:32.120 until they attain to neubile years, until the attention of 129 00:08:32.159 --> 00:08:35.639 the benevolent persons is presently distracted by a new case. 130 00:08:37.279 --> 00:08:41.080 Yet so powerful is the suggestion of current opinions that 131 00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:44.720 few people seem to see nowadays just what a horrible 132 00:08:44.759 --> 00:08:48.000 and criminal thing this sort of family, seen from the 133 00:08:48.039 --> 00:08:54.200 point of view of social physiology, appears, and directly such 134 00:08:54.279 --> 00:08:58.240 principles as these come into effective operation, and I believe 135 00:08:58.279 --> 00:09:00.600 that the next hundred years will see this new phase 136 00:09:00.639 --> 00:09:04.519 of the human history beginning. There will recommence a process 137 00:09:04.559 --> 00:09:08.360 of physical and mental improvement in mankind, a raising and 138 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:11.879 elaboration of the average man that has virtually been in 139 00:09:11.919 --> 00:09:16.360 suspense during the greater portion of the historical period. It 140 00:09:16.440 --> 00:09:19.440 is possible that in the last hundred years, in the 141 00:09:19.480 --> 00:09:22.519 more civilized states of the world, the average of humanity 142 00:09:22.879 --> 00:09:28.639 has positively fallen. All our philanthropists, all our religious teachers, 143 00:09:29.039 --> 00:09:31.840 seem to be in a sort of informal conspiracy to 144 00:09:31.879 --> 00:09:36.759 preserve an atmosphere of mystical ignorance about these matters, which, 145 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:40.159 in view of the irresistible nature of the sexual impulse, 146 00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:45.919 results in a swelling tide of miserable little lives. Consider 147 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:49.159 what it will mean to have perhaps half the population 148 00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:53.240 of the world in every generation restrained from or tempted 149 00:09:53.279 --> 00:09:58.559 to evade reproduction. This thing, this euthanasia of the weak 150 00:09:58.600 --> 00:10:03.159 and sensual, is possible on the principles that will probably 151 00:10:03.240 --> 00:10:06.519 animate the predominant classes of the new time. It will 152 00:10:06.559 --> 00:10:09.440 be permissible, and I have little or no doubt that 153 00:10:09.480 --> 00:10:14.879 in the future it will be planned and achieved. If 154 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:18.320 birth were all the making of a civilized man, the 155 00:10:18.360 --> 00:10:21.000 men of the future, on the general principles we have 156 00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:25.120 imputed to them, would under no circumstances find the birth 157 00:10:25.159 --> 00:10:28.639 of a child healthy in body and brain more than 158 00:10:28.679 --> 00:10:33.120 the most venial of offenses. But birth gives only the 159 00:10:33.159 --> 00:10:37.960 beginning the raw material of a civilized man. The perfect 160 00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:42.279 civilized man is not only a sound, strong body, but 161 00:10:42.320 --> 00:10:46.320 a very elaborate fabric of mind. He is a fabric 162 00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:50.840 of moral suggestions that become mental habits, a magazine of 163 00:10:50.919 --> 00:10:55.759 more or less systematized ideas, a scheme of knowledge and training, 164 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:59.720 and an esthetic culture. He is the child not only 165 00:10:59.759 --> 00:11:02.840 of parents, but of a home and of an education. 166 00:11:03.879 --> 00:11:07.919 He has to be carefully guarded from physical and moral contagions. 167 00:11:08.639 --> 00:11:12.840 A reasonable probability of ensuring home and education and protection 168 00:11:13.120 --> 00:11:16.600 without any parasitic dependence on people outside the kin of 169 00:11:16.600 --> 00:11:20.480 the child, will be a necessary condition to a moral 170 00:11:20.519 --> 00:11:25.240 birth under such general principles as we have supposed now. 171 00:11:25.600 --> 00:11:29.639 This sweeps out of reason any such promiscuity of healthy people, 172 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:33.440 as the late mister Grant Allen is supposed to have advocated. 173 00:11:34.039 --> 00:11:36.399 But so far as I can understand, him did not. 174 00:11:37.720 --> 00:11:40.080 But whether it works out to the taking over of 175 00:11:40.120 --> 00:11:43.559 the permanent monogamic marriage of the old morality as a 176 00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:48.200 going concern is another matter. Upon this matter I must 177 00:11:48.200 --> 00:11:50.399 confess my views of the trend of things in the 178 00:11:50.440 --> 00:11:54.960 future do not seem to be finely shaped. The question 179 00:11:55.120 --> 00:12:00.799 involves very obscure physiological and psychological considerations. A man who 180 00:12:00.799 --> 00:12:03.879 aims to become a novelist naturally prize into these matters 181 00:12:03.879 --> 00:12:07.320 whenever he can, but the vital facts are very often 182 00:12:07.399 --> 00:12:10.600 hard to come by. It is probable that a great 183 00:12:10.679 --> 00:12:12.960 number of people could be pared off in couples who 184 00:12:12.960 --> 00:12:16.960 would make permanently happy and successful monogamic homes for their 185 00:12:17.039 --> 00:12:20.919 sound and healthy children. At any rate, if a certain 186 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:24.200 freedom of regrouping were possible within a time limit. This 187 00:12:24.399 --> 00:12:27.559 might be so. But I am convinced that a large 188 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:31.279 proportion of married couples in the world to day are 189 00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:35.960 not completely and happily matched, that there is much mutual limitation, 190 00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:41.240 mutual annulment, and mutual exasperation. Home with an atmosphere of 191 00:12:41.320 --> 00:12:44.799 contention is worse than none for the child. And it 192 00:12:44.879 --> 00:12:47.440 is the interest of the child, and that alone, that 193 00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:50.840 will be the test of all these things. I do 194 00:12:50.879 --> 00:12:54.799 not think that the arrangement in couples is universally applicable, 195 00:12:55.320 --> 00:12:58.799 or that celibacy tempered by sterile vice should be its 196 00:12:58.840 --> 00:13:02.480 only alternative. Nor can I see why the union of 197 00:13:02.559 --> 00:13:07.360 two childless people should have an indissoluble permanence or prohibit 198 00:13:07.600 --> 00:13:11.600 an ampler grouping. The question is greatly complicated by the 199 00:13:11.600 --> 00:13:16.279 economic disadvantage of women, which makes wifehood the chief feminine profession, 200 00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:19.519 while only for an incidental sort of man is marriage 201 00:13:19.519 --> 00:13:22.240 a source of income, And further by the fact that 202 00:13:22.279 --> 00:13:25.639 most women have a period of maximum attractiveness, after which 203 00:13:25.679 --> 00:13:29.399 it would be grossly unfair to cast them aside. From 204 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:32.519 the point of view we are discussing, the efficient mother, 205 00:13:32.559 --> 00:13:34.919 who can make the best of her children, is the 206 00:13:34.960 --> 00:13:38.519 most important sort of person in the state. She is 207 00:13:38.559 --> 00:13:43.200 a primary necessity to the coming civilization. Can the wife 208 00:13:43.240 --> 00:13:46.360 in any sort of polygamic arrangement or a woman of 209 00:13:46.399 --> 00:13:50.080 no assured status attain to the maternal possibilities of the 210 00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:56.159 ideal monogamic wife. One is disposed to answer no. But then, 211 00:13:56.759 --> 00:14:00.840 on the other hand, does the ordinary monogamic wife do that? 212 00:14:02.159 --> 00:14:04.440 We are dealing with the finer people of the future 213 00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:09.480 strongly individualized people who will be much freer from stereotyped 214 00:14:09.600 --> 00:14:13.200 moral suggestions and much less inclined to be dealt with 215 00:14:13.320 --> 00:14:19.559 wholesale than the people of today. I have already shown 216 00:14:19.720 --> 00:14:23.399 cause in these anticipations to expect a period of disorder 217 00:14:23.399 --> 00:14:27.879 and hypocrisy in matters of sexual morality. I am inclined 218 00:14:27.919 --> 00:14:30.360 to think that when the new Republic emerges on the 219 00:14:30.399 --> 00:14:33.039 other side of this disorder, there will be a great 220 00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:36.600 number of marriage contracts possible between men and women, and 221 00:14:36.720 --> 00:14:39.039 that the strong arm of the state will insist only 222 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:43.240 upon one thing, the security and welfare of the child. 223 00:14:43.960 --> 00:14:46.559 The inevitable removal of births from the sphere of an 224 00:14:46.679 --> 00:14:51.159 uncontrollable providence to the category of deliberate acts will enormously 225 00:14:51.279 --> 00:14:54.679 enhance the responsibility of the parent and of the state 226 00:14:54.720 --> 00:14:58.559 that has failed to adequately discourage the philoprogenitiveness of the 227 00:14:58.639 --> 00:15:03.559 parent towards the the child. Having permitted the child to 228 00:15:03.559 --> 00:15:07.240 come into existence, public policy and the older standard of 229 00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:11.440 justice alike demand under these new conditions that it must 230 00:15:11.480 --> 00:15:15.279 be fed, cherished, and educated, not merely up to the 231 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:19.519 respectable minimum, but to the full height of its possibilities. 232 00:15:20.639 --> 00:15:24.200 The state will therefore be the reserved guardian of all children. 233 00:15:25.080 --> 00:15:28.639 If they are being undernourished, if their education is being neglected, 234 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:32.360 the state will step in take over the responsibility of 235 00:15:32.399 --> 00:15:36.960 their management, and enforce their charge upon the parents. The 236 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:40.440 first liability of a parent will be to his child, 237 00:15:40.600 --> 00:15:44.080 and for his child, even the dues of that darling 238 00:15:44.120 --> 00:15:47.039 of our current law, the landlord will stand second to that. 239 00:15:48.360 --> 00:15:51.480 This conception of the responsibility of the parents and the 240 00:15:51.519 --> 00:15:55.200 state to the child and the future runs quite counter 241 00:15:55.279 --> 00:15:59.879 to the general ideas of today. These general ideas disc 242 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:04.480 distort grim realities. Under the most pious and amiable professions, 243 00:16:04.799 --> 00:16:07.399 all the Christian states of today are, as a matter 244 00:16:07.440 --> 00:16:12.639 of fact, engaged in slave breeding. The chief result, though 245 00:16:12.639 --> 00:16:15.720 of course it is not the intention of the activities 246 00:16:15.720 --> 00:16:18.919 of priests and moralist today in these matters, is to 247 00:16:19.039 --> 00:16:22.399 lure a vast multitude of little souls into this world, 248 00:16:22.639 --> 00:16:26.960 for whom there is neither sufficient food, nor love, nor schools, 249 00:16:27.039 --> 00:16:30.120 nor any prospect at all in life, but the insufficient 250 00:16:30.200 --> 00:16:34.600 bread of servitude. It is a result that endears religion 251 00:16:34.639 --> 00:16:38.919 and purity to the sweating employer, and leads unimaginative bishops 252 00:16:38.919 --> 00:16:41.600 who have never missed a meal in their lives, and 253 00:16:41.639 --> 00:16:45.080 who know nothing of the indescribable bitterness of a handicapped 254 00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:48.879 entry into this world to draw a complacent contrast with 255 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:53.480 irreligious France. It is a result that must necessarily be 256 00:16:53.519 --> 00:16:57.159 recognized in its reality and faced by these men who 257 00:16:57.200 --> 00:17:00.279 will presently emerge to rule the world, Men who will 258 00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:04.920 have neither the plea of ignorance, nor moral stupidity, nor 259 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:11.920 dogmatic revelation to excuse such elaborate cruelty, And having set 260 00:17:11.960 --> 00:17:15.279 themselves in these ways to raise the quality of human birth, 261 00:17:15.759 --> 00:17:18.440 the new Republicans will see to it that the children 262 00:17:18.480 --> 00:17:21.680 who do at last effectually get born come into a 263 00:17:21.720 --> 00:17:27.480 world of spacious opportunity. The half educated, unskilled pretenders professing 264 00:17:27.480 --> 00:17:31.920 impossible creeds and propounding ridiculous curricula, to whom the unhappy 265 00:17:31.960 --> 00:17:35.160 parents of today must needs and trust the intelligences of 266 00:17:35.200 --> 00:17:39.480 their children. These heavy handed barber surgeons of the mind, 267 00:17:40.119 --> 00:17:44.839 these schoolmasters, with their ragtag and bobtail of sweated and 268 00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:50.240 unqualified assistance, will be succeeded by capable, self respecting men 269 00:17:50.240 --> 00:17:53.920 and women, constituting the most important profession of the world, 270 00:17:54.960 --> 00:18:00.279 the windy pretenses of forming character, supplying moral training, and 271 00:18:00.359 --> 00:18:03.960 so forth under which the educationalist of to day conceals 272 00:18:03.960 --> 00:18:06.359 the fact that he is incapable of his proper task 273 00:18:06.440 --> 00:18:10.039 of training, developing, and equipping the mind. Will no longer 274 00:18:10.039 --> 00:18:13.400 be made by the teacher, nor will the teacher be 275 00:18:13.440 --> 00:18:17.440 permitted to subordinate his duties to the entirely irrelevant business 276 00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:22.319 of his pupil's sports. The teacher will teach and confine 277 00:18:22.359 --> 00:18:25.799 his moral training beyond enforcing truth and discipline, to the 278 00:18:25.880 --> 00:18:28.839 exhibition of a capable person doing his duty as well 279 00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:31.759 as it can be done. He will know that his 280 00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:35.160 utmost province is only a part of the educational process, 281 00:18:35.640 --> 00:18:39.160 that equally important educational influences are the home and the 282 00:18:39.200 --> 00:18:42.920 world of thought about the pupil and himself. The whole 283 00:18:42.920 --> 00:18:46.039 world will be thinking and learning. The old idea of 284 00:18:46.319 --> 00:18:49.960 completing one's education will have vanished with the fancy of 285 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.640 a static universe. Every school will be a preparatory school, 286 00:18:54.920 --> 00:18:59.119 every college. The school and college will probably give only 287 00:18:59.160 --> 00:19:02.720 the keys and a baratus. Have thought a necessary language, 288 00:19:02.799 --> 00:19:08.000 or so thoroughly done a sound mathematical training, drawing a 289 00:19:08.039 --> 00:19:11.599 wide and reason view of philosophy, some good exercises and 290 00:19:11.680 --> 00:19:15.000 dialectics a training in the use of those stores of 291 00:19:15.079 --> 00:19:18.720 fact that science has made so equipped. The young man 292 00:19:18.759 --> 00:19:21.240 and young women will go on to the technical school 293 00:19:21.279 --> 00:19:25.119 of their chosen profession, and to the criticism of contemporary 294 00:19:25.160 --> 00:19:29.119 practice for their special efficiency, and to the literature of 295 00:19:29.200 --> 00:19:35.079 contemporary thought for their general development. And while the emergent 296 00:19:35.119 --> 00:19:38.759 New Republic is deciding to provide for the swarming inferiority 297 00:19:38.799 --> 00:19:42.720 of the abyss and developing the morality and educational system 298 00:19:42.759 --> 00:19:45.559 of the future. In this fashion, it will be attacking 299 00:19:45.599 --> 00:19:49.000 that mass of irresponsible property that is so unavoidable and 300 00:19:49.039 --> 00:19:54.240 so threatening under present conditions. The attack will of course 301 00:19:54.319 --> 00:19:57.440 be made along lines that the developing science of economics 302 00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:00.759 will trace in the days immediately before us. A scheme 303 00:20:00.799 --> 00:20:05.799 of death duties and of heavy graduated taxes upon irresponsible incomes, 304 00:20:06.400 --> 00:20:10.400 with perhaps in addition, a system of terminable liability for 305 00:20:10.440 --> 00:20:13.599 borrowers will probably suffice to control the growth of this 306 00:20:13.759 --> 00:20:19.559 creditor aliphanticis. The detailed contrivances are for the specialists to make. 307 00:20:20.559 --> 00:20:22.920 If there is such a thing as bitterness in the 308 00:20:22.960 --> 00:20:26.160 public acts of the New Republicans, it will probably be 309 00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:29.000 found in the measures that will be directed against those 310 00:20:29.200 --> 00:20:33.279 who are parasitic, or who attempt to be parasitic upon 311 00:20:33.319 --> 00:20:37.480 the social body, either by means of gambling, by manipulating 312 00:20:37.480 --> 00:20:42.359 the medium of exchange, or by such interventions upon legitimate transactions, 313 00:20:42.440 --> 00:20:45.880 as for example, the legal trade Union in Great Britain 314 00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:50.160 contrives in the case of house, property and land, simply 315 00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:53.160 because he fails more often than he succeeds. There is 316 00:20:53.200 --> 00:20:56.759 still a disposition among sentimental people to regard the gambler 317 00:20:56.880 --> 00:21:00.640 or the speculator as rather a dashing, advance, enterous sort 318 00:21:00.640 --> 00:21:04.440 of person, and to contrast his picturesque gallantry with the 319 00:21:04.480 --> 00:21:08.359 sober certainties of honest men. The men of the New 320 00:21:08.400 --> 00:21:11.640 Republic will be obtuse to the glamour of such romance. 321 00:21:12.039 --> 00:21:14.720 They will regard the gambler simply as a mean creature 322 00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:17.279 who hangs about the social body in the hope of 323 00:21:17.319 --> 00:21:21.039 getting something for nothing, who runs risks to filter the 324 00:21:21.079 --> 00:21:25.160 possessions of other men exactly as a thief does. They 325 00:21:25.200 --> 00:21:28.279 will put the two on a footing, and the generous gambler, 326 00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:31.440 like the kindly drunkard, in the face of their effectual 327 00:21:31.480 --> 00:21:34.839 provision for his little weakness, will cease to complain that 328 00:21:34.920 --> 00:21:39.200 his worst enemy is himself, and in dealing with speculation, 329 00:21:39.640 --> 00:21:42.039 the new Republic will have the power of an assured 330 00:21:42.119 --> 00:21:45.519 faith and purpose, and the resources of an economic science 331 00:21:45.799 --> 00:21:49.519 that is as yet only in its infancy. In such matters, 332 00:21:49.559 --> 00:21:53.799 the new Republic will entertain no superstition of lasar Fare. 333 00:21:54.519 --> 00:21:58.359 Money and credit are as much human contrivances as bicycles, 334 00:21:58.920 --> 00:22:02.279 and as liable to its expansion and modification as any 335 00:22:02.359 --> 00:22:07.559 other sort of prevalent but imperfect machine. And how will 336 00:22:07.599 --> 00:22:12.079 the new Republic treat the inferior races? How will it 337 00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:14.759 deal with the black How will it deal with the 338 00:22:14.839 --> 00:22:18.319 yellow man? How will it tackle that alleged termite in 339 00:22:18.359 --> 00:22:22.960 the civilized woodwork? The jew certainly not as races at all. 340 00:22:23.880 --> 00:22:26.599 It will aim to establish, and it will, at last, 341 00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:31.279 though probably only after a second century has passed, establish 342 00:22:31.599 --> 00:22:34.599 a world state with a common language and a common 343 00:22:34.680 --> 00:22:39.640 rule all over the world. Its roads, its standards, its laws, 344 00:22:39.720 --> 00:22:43.759 and its apparatus of control will run. It will, i 345 00:22:43.880 --> 00:22:47.400 have said, make the multiplication of those who fall behind 346 00:22:47.440 --> 00:22:51.920 a certain standard of social efficiency unpleasant and difficult. And 347 00:22:52.039 --> 00:22:55.240 it will have cast aside any coddling laws to save 348 00:22:55.319 --> 00:23:01.599 adult men from themselves. Footnote v Day, mister Archdall reads 349 00:23:01.680 --> 00:23:07.799 excellent and suggestive book, The Present Evolution of Man end footnote. 350 00:23:08.279 --> 00:23:11.640 It will tolerate no dark corners where the people of 351 00:23:11.680 --> 00:23:17.400 the Abyss may fester, no vast diffused slums of peasant proprietors, 352 00:23:17.960 --> 00:23:22.759 no stagnant plague preserves. Whatever men may come into its 353 00:23:22.759 --> 00:23:27.599 efficient citizenship. It will let come white, black, red or brown. 354 00:23:28.200 --> 00:23:32.200 The efficiency will be the test, and the Jew also 355 00:23:32.319 --> 00:23:35.519 it will treat as any other man. It is said 356 00:23:35.559 --> 00:23:38.839 that the Jew is incurably a parasite on the apparatus 357 00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:42.720 of credit. If there are parasites on the apparatus of credit, 358 00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:45.480 that is a reason for the legislative cleaning of the 359 00:23:45.519 --> 00:23:48.759 apparatus of credit. But it is no reason for the 360 00:23:48.759 --> 00:23:51.839 special treatment of the Jew. If the Jew has a 361 00:23:51.880 --> 00:23:56.480 certain incurable tendency to social parasitism, and we make social 362 00:23:56.519 --> 00:24:00.559 parasitism impossible, we shall abolish the Jew. And if he 363 00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:03.880 has not, there is no need to abolish the Jew. 364 00:24:04.880 --> 00:24:07.279 We are much more likely to find we have abolished 365 00:24:07.319 --> 00:24:12.000 the Caucasian solicitor. I really do not understand the exceptional 366 00:24:12.039 --> 00:24:15.480 attitude people take up against the Jews. There is something 367 00:24:15.599 --> 00:24:19.319 very ugly about many Jewish faces, but there are Gentile faces, 368 00:24:19.440 --> 00:24:22.839 just as coarse and gross. The Jew asserts himself in 369 00:24:22.880 --> 00:24:27.000 relation to his nationality with a singular tactlessness. But it 370 00:24:27.039 --> 00:24:30.720 is hardly for the English to blame that many Jews 371 00:24:30.759 --> 00:24:34.240 are intensely vulgar in dress and bearing, materialistic in thought 372 00:24:34.519 --> 00:24:37.960 and cunning, and base in method, but no more so 373 00:24:38.279 --> 00:24:42.599 than many Gentiles. The Jew is mentally and physically precocious, 374 00:24:42.680 --> 00:24:45.400 and he ages and dies sooner than the average European. 375 00:24:45.640 --> 00:24:48.960 But in that, and in a certain disingenuousness, he is 376 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:53.240 simply on all fours with the short, dark Welsh. He 377 00:24:53.359 --> 00:24:56.279 foregathers with those of his own nation and favors them 378 00:24:56.319 --> 00:25:00.400 against the stranger. But so do the Scotch. I see 379 00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:04.359 nothing in his curious, dispersed nationality to dread or dislike. 380 00:25:05.160 --> 00:25:09.720 He is a remnant and legacy of medievalism, a sentimentalist, perhaps, 381 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:13.279 but no furtive plotter against the present progress of things. 382 00:25:14.160 --> 00:25:18.039 He was the medieval liberal. His persistent existence gave the 383 00:25:18.119 --> 00:25:21.680 lie to Catholic pretensions all through the days of their ascendency, 384 00:25:22.119 --> 00:25:24.200 and to day he gives the lie to all our 385 00:25:24.279 --> 00:25:29.079 yapping nationalisms and sketches in his dispersed sympathies the coming 386 00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:32.240 of the world state. He has never been known to 387 00:25:32.279 --> 00:25:35.440 burke a school. Much of the Jew's usury is no 388 00:25:35.599 --> 00:25:39.359 more than social scavenging. The Jew will probably lose much 389 00:25:39.400 --> 00:25:43.039 of his particularism, inter marry with gentiles, and cease to 390 00:25:43.079 --> 00:25:45.759 be a physically distinct element in human affairs in the 391 00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:48.960 century or so. But much of his moral tradition will, 392 00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:53.920 I hope, never die. And for the rest those swarms 393 00:25:53.920 --> 00:25:56.799 of black and brown and dirty white and yellow people 394 00:25:57.079 --> 00:26:01.279 who do not come into the new needs of efficiency, well, 395 00:26:01.359 --> 00:26:04.920 the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and 396 00:26:05.039 --> 00:26:07.839 I take it they will have to go. The whole 397 00:26:07.960 --> 00:26:10.599 tenorant meaning of the world as I see it, is 398 00:26:10.680 --> 00:26:13.799 that they have to go. So far as they fail 399 00:26:13.880 --> 00:26:17.519 to develop sane, vigorous, and distinctive personalities for the great 400 00:26:17.559 --> 00:26:20.440 world of the future, it is their portion to die 401 00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:26.559