Speaker 1: Chapter nine A of Anticipations. This is a LibriVox recording.
Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
Speaker 1: by Christopher Taylor Anticipations by H. G. Wells, Chapter nine A.
Speaker 1: The Faith, morals, and public Policy of the New Republic.
Speaker 1: If the surmise of a developing new Republic, a republic
Speaker 1: that must ultimately become a world's state of capable rational men,
Speaker 1: developing avidst the fading contours and colors of our existing
Speaker 1: nations and institutions, be indeed no idle dream, but an
Speaker 1: attainable possibility in the future. And to that end it
Speaker 1: is that the preceding anticipations have been mainly written. It
Speaker 1: becomes a speculation of very great interest to forecast something
Speaker 1: of the general shape, and something even of certain details,
Speaker 1: of that common body of opinion, which the New Republic,
Speaker 1: when it was last it discovers and declares itself will possess.
Speaker 1: Since we have supposed this new Republic will already be
Speaker 1: consciously and pretty freely controlling the general affairs of humanity
Speaker 1: before the century closes, its broad principles and opinions must
Speaker 1: necessarily shape and determine that still ampler future, of which
Speaker 1: the coming hundred years is but the opening phase. There
Speaker 1: are many processes, many aspects of things that are now,
Speaker 1: as it were, in the domain of natural laws and
Speaker 1: outside human control or controlled unintelligently and superstitiously, that in
Speaker 1: the future, in the days of the coming New Republic,
Speaker 1: will be definitely taken in hand as part of the
Speaker 1: general work of humanity. As indeed, already since the beginning
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century the control of pestilences has been
Speaker 1: taken in hand. And in particular there are certain broad
Speaker 1: questions much under discussion, to which thus far I have
Speaker 1: purposefully given a value disproportionately small. While the New Republic
Speaker 1: is gathering itself together and becoming aware of itself, that
Speaker 1: other great element, which I have called the people of
Speaker 1: the Abyss, will also have followed out its destiny for
Speaker 1: many decades. That development will be largely or entirely out
Speaker 1: of all human control. To the multiplying rejected of the
Speaker 1: white and yellow civilizations, there will have been added a
Speaker 1: vast proportion of the black and brown races, and collectively
Speaker 1: those masses will propound the general question what will you
Speaker 1: do with us, we hundreds of millions who cannot keep
Speaker 1: pace with you. If the New Republic emerges at all,
Speaker 1: it will emerge by grappling with this riddle. It must
Speaker 1: come into existence by the passes this sphinx will guard
Speaker 1: moreover the necessary results of the reaction of irresponsible wealth
Speaker 1: upon that infirm and dangerous thing, the human will. The
Speaker 1: spreading moral rot of gambling, which is associated with irresponsible wealth,
Speaker 1: will have been working out and will continue to work out,
Speaker 1: so long as there is such a thing as irresponsible
Speaker 1: wealth pervading the social body, That too, the New Republic must,
Speaker 1: in its very development overcome. In the Procesading chapter, it
Speaker 1: is clearly implicit that I believe that the New Republic,
Speaker 1: as its consciousness and influence developed together, will meet, check
Speaker 1: and control these things. But the broad principles upon which
Speaker 1: the control will go, the nature of the methods employed,
Speaker 1: still remain to be deduced. And to make that deduction,
Speaker 1: it is necessary that the primary conception of life, the
Speaker 1: fundamental religious and moral ideas of these predominant men of
Speaker 1: the new times, should first be considered. Now quite inevitably,
Speaker 1: these men will be religious men, being themselves as by
Speaker 1: the nature of the forces that have selected them. They
Speaker 1: will certainly be men of will and purpose. They will
Speaker 1: be disposed to find, and consequently they will find an
Speaker 1: effect of purpose in the totality of things. Either one
Speaker 1: must believe the universe to be one and systematic, and
Speaker 1: held together by some omnipresent quality, or one must believe
Speaker 1: it to be a casual aggregation and incoherent accumulation, with
Speaker 1: no unity whatsoever outside the unity of the personality. Regarding
Speaker 1: it all, science in most modern religious systems presuppose the former,
Speaker 1: and to believe the former is to anyone not too
Speaker 1: anxious to quibble to believe in God. But I believe
Speaker 1: these prevailing men of the future, like many of the
Speaker 1: saner men of today, having so formulated their fundamental belief,
Speaker 1: will presume to no knowledge whatever were presumed to no
Speaker 1: possibility of knowledge of the real being of God. They
Speaker 1: will have no positive definition of God at all. They
Speaker 1: will certainly not indulge in that something not ourselves that
Speaker 1: makes for righteousness, not defined, or any defective claptrap of
Speaker 1: that sort. They will content themselves with denying the self
Speaker 1: contradictory absurdities of an obstinately anthropomorphic theology. Footnote as for example,
Speaker 1: that God is an omniscient mind. This is the last
Speaker 1: vestige of that barbaric theology, which regarded God as a
Speaker 1: vigorous but uncertain, old gentleman with a beard and an
Speaker 1: inordinate lust for praise and propitiation. The modern idea is
Speaker 1: indeed scarcely more reasonable than what it is replaced. A
Speaker 1: mind thinks and feels and wills, it passes from phase
Speaker 1: to phase. Thinking and willing are a succession of mental
Speaker 1: states which follow and replace one another. But omniscience is
Speaker 1: a complete knowledge not only of the present state, but
Speaker 1: of all past and future states. Since it is all
Speaker 1: there at any moment, it cannot conceivably pass from phase
Speaker 1: to phase. It is stagnant, infinite, and eternal. An omniscient
Speaker 1: mind is as impossible. Therefore, as an ominipresent moving body,
Speaker 1: God is outside our mental scope. Only by faith can
Speaker 1: we attain him. Our most lucid moments serve only to
Speaker 1: render clearer his inaccessibility to our intelligence. We stand a
Speaker 1: little way up in a scale of existences that may
Speaker 1: indeed point towards him, but can never bring him to
Speaker 1: our scope. As the fullness of the conscious mental existence
Speaker 1: distance of a man stands to the subconscious activities of
Speaker 1: an amoeba or of a visceral ganglion cell. So our
Speaker 1: reason forces us to admit other possible mental existences may
Speaker 1: stand to us. But such an existence, inconceivably great as
Speaker 1: it would be to us, would be scarcely nearer that
Speaker 1: transcendental God in whom the serious men of the future
Speaker 1: will as a class believe end footnote. They will regard
Speaker 1: the whole of being within themselves in without as a
Speaker 1: sufficient revelation of God to their souls, and they will
Speaker 1: set themselves simply to that revelation, seeking its meaning towards
Speaker 1: themselves faithfully and courageously manifestly. The essential being of man
Speaker 1: in this life is his will. He exists consciously only
Speaker 1: to do. His main interest in life is the choice
Speaker 1: between alternatives, and since he moves through space and time
Speaker 1: to effects and consequences, a general purpose in space and
Speaker 1: time is the limit of his understanding. He can know
Speaker 1: God only under the semblance of a pervading purpose of
Speaker 1: which his own individual freedom of will is a part.
Speaker 1: But he can understand that the purpose that exists in
Speaker 1: space and time is no more God than a voice
Speaker 1: calling out from impenetrable darkness is a man. To men
Speaker 1: of the kinetic type, belief in God so manifests his
Speaker 1: purpose is irresistible. And to all lucid minds, the being
Speaker 1: of God, save as that general atmosphere of imperfectly apprehended
Speaker 1: purpose in which our individual wills operate, is incomprehensible to
Speaker 1: cling to any belief more detailed than this. To define
Speaker 1: and limit God in order to take hold of him,
Speaker 1: To detach one's self in parts of the universe, from
Speaker 1: God in some mysterious way, in order to reduce life
Speaker 1: to a dramatic antagonism is not faith but infirmity. Excessive
Speaker 1: strenuous belief is not faith. By faith, we disbelieve. And
Speaker 1: it is the drowning man and not the strong swimmer
Speaker 1: who clutches at the floating straw. It is in the
Speaker 1: nature of man. It is in the present purpose of
Speaker 1: things that the real world world of our experience and
Speaker 1: will should appear to us not only as a progressive
Speaker 1: existence in space and time, but as a scheme of
Speaker 1: good and evil, but choice the antagonism of good and evil.
Speaker 1: Just as much as the formulation of things in space
Speaker 1: and time is merely a limiting condition of human being,
Speaker 1: and in the thought of God as we conceive of
Speaker 1: him in the light of faith, this antagonism vanishes. God
Speaker 1: is no moralist, God is no partisan. He comprehends and
Speaker 1: cannot be comprehended. And our business is only with so
Speaker 1: much of His purpose as centers on our individual wills.
Speaker 1: So or in some such phrases, I believe these men
Speaker 1: of the New Republic will formulate the relationship to God.
Speaker 1: They will live to serve this purpose that presents Him
Speaker 1: without presumption and without fear, for the same spacious faith
Speaker 1: that will render the idea of erring their egotisms in
Speaker 1: God's presence through prayer, or of any such quite personal,
Speaker 1: intimate absurd, will render the idea of rascible, impunitive deity
Speaker 1: ridiculous and incredible. The men of the New Republic will
Speaker 1: hold and understand quite clearly the doctrine that in the
Speaker 1: real world of man's experience there is free will. They
Speaker 1: will understand that constantly, as a very condition of his existence,
Speaker 1: man is exercising choice between alternatives, and that a conflict
Speaker 1: between motives that have different moral values constantly arises. That
Speaker 1: conflict between predestination and free will, which is so puzzling
Speaker 1: to untrained minds, will not exist for them. They will
Speaker 1: know that in the real world of sensory experience, will
Speaker 1: is free, just as new sprung grass is green, wood hard,
Speaker 1: ice cold, and toothache painful. In the abstract world of
Speaker 1: reasoning science, there is no grain, no color at all,
Speaker 1: but certain lengths of vibration, no hardness but a certain
Speaker 1: reaction in molecules, no cold, and no pain, but c
Speaker 1: molecular consequences in the nerves that reach the misinterpreting mind.
Speaker 1: In the abstract world of reasoning science. Moreover, there is
Speaker 1: a rigid and inevitable sequence of cause and effect. Every
Speaker 1: act of man could be foretold to its uttermost detail,
Speaker 1: if only we knew him and all his circumstances fully.
Speaker 1: In the abstract world of reason science, all things exist now,
Speaker 1: potentially down to the last moment of infinite time. But
Speaker 1: the human will does not exist in this abstract world
Speaker 1: of reason science, in the world of atoms and vibrations
Speaker 1: that rigidly predestinate scheme of things in space and time.
Speaker 1: The human will exists in this world of men and women,
Speaker 1: in this world where the grass is green and desire beckons,
Speaker 1: and the choice is often so wide and clear between
Speaker 1: the sense of what is desirable and what is more
Speaker 1: widely and remotely right. In this world of sense of
Speaker 1: the daily life, these men will believe with an absolute
Speaker 1: conviction that there is free will and a personal moral
Speaker 1: responsibility in relation to that indistinctly seeing purpose, which is
Speaker 1: the sufficient revelation of God to them. So far as
Speaker 1: this sphere of being goes, the conception they will have
Speaker 1: of that purpose will necessarily determine their ethical scheme. It
Speaker 1: follows manifestly that if we do really believe in Almighty God,
Speaker 1: the more strenuously and successfully we seek in ourselves and
Speaker 1: his world to understand the order and progress of things,
Speaker 1: and the more clearly we apprehend His purpose, the more
Speaker 1: assured and systematic will our ethical basis become. If, like Huxley,
Speaker 1: we do not positively believe in God, then we may
Speaker 1: still cling to an ethical system which has become an
Speaker 1: organic part of our lives and habits, and finding it
Speaker 1: manifestly in conflict with the purpose of things. Speak of
Speaker 1: the non ethical order of the universe. But to any
Speaker 1: one whose mind is pervaded by faith in God, a
Speaker 1: non ethical universe in conflict with the incomprehensibly ethical soul
Speaker 1: of the agnostic is as incredible as a black horned devil,
Speaker 1: an active material anti god with hoofs, tail, pitchfork, and
Speaker 1: dunstan scorched nose. Complete. To believe completely in God is
Speaker 1: to believe in the final rightness of all being. The
Speaker 1: ethical system that condemns the ways of life is wrong
Speaker 1: or points to the ways of death is right. That continances.
Speaker 1: What the scheme of things condemns and condemns the general
Speaker 1: purpose in things as it is now revealed to us,
Speaker 1: must prepare to follow the theological edifice upon which it
Speaker 1: was originally based. If the universe is non ethical by
Speaker 1: our present standards, we must reconsider these standards and reconstruct
Speaker 1: our ethics. To hesitate to do so, however severe the
Speaker 1: conflict with old habits and traditions and sentiments may be,
Speaker 1: is to fall short of faith. Now so far as
Speaker 1: the intellectual life of the world goes, this present time
Speaker 1: is essentially the opening phase of a period of ethical reconstruction,
Speaker 1: a reconstruction of which the New Republic will possess a
Speaker 1: matured result. Throughout the nineteenth century there has been such
Speaker 1: a shattering and recasting of fundamental ideas of the preliminaries
Speaker 1: to ethical propositions as the world has never seen before.
Speaker 1: This breaking down and routing out of almost all the
Speaker 1: cardinal assumptions on which the minds of the eighteenth century
Speaker 1: dwelt securely is a process akin to, but independent of,
Speaker 1: the development of mechanism, whose consequences we have traced. It
Speaker 1: is a part of that process of vigorous and fearless
Speaker 1: criticism which is the reality of science, and of which
Speaker 1: the development of mechanism and all that revolution in physical
Speaker 1: and social conditions we have been tracing, is merely the
Speaker 1: vast imposing material byproduct at present. Indeed, its more obvious
Speaker 1: aspect on the moral and ethical side is destruction. Anyone
Speaker 1: could see the chips flying, but it still demands a
Speaker 1: certain faith and patience to see the form that ensues.
Speaker 1: But it is not destruction anymore that a sculptor's work
Speaker 1: is stone breaking. The first chapter in the history of
Speaker 1: this intellectual development, its definite and formal opening, coincides with
Speaker 1: the opening of the nineteenth century, in the publication of
Speaker 1: Malthus's Essay on Population. Malthus is one of those cardinal
Speaker 1: figures in intellectual history, who state definitely for all time
Speaker 1: things apparent enough after their formulation, but never effectively conceded before.
Speaker 1: He brought clearly and emphatically into the sphere of discussion
Speaker 1: a fatally important issue that has always been shirked and tabooed.
Speaker 1: Heretofore the fundamental fact that the main mass of the
Speaker 1: business of human life centers about reproduction. He stated in clear, hard, decent,
Speaker 1: and unavoidable argument, what presently Schopenhauer was to discover and
Speaker 1: proclaim in language. At times it would seem quite unfitted
Speaker 1: for translation into English. And having made a statement, Malthus
Speaker 1: left it in contact with its immediate results. Probably no
Speaker 1: more shattering book than the Essay on Population has ever been,
Speaker 1: or ever will be written. It was aimed at the
Speaker 1: facile liberalism of the deists and atheists of the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: It made as clear as daylight that all forms of
Speaker 1: social reconstruction, all dreams of earthly golden ages, must be
Speaker 1: either futile or insincere, or both, until the problems of
Speaker 1: human increase were manfully faced. It proffered no suggestions for
Speaker 1: facing them. In spite of the unpleasant associations of Malthus's name.
Speaker 1: It aims simply to wither the rationalistic utopias of the time,
Speaker 1: and by anticipation, all the communisms, socialisms, and earthly paradise
Speaker 1: movements that have since been so abundantly audible in the world.
Speaker 1: That was its aim and its immediate effect. Incidentally, it
Speaker 1: must have been a torturing soul trap for innumerable idealistic
Speaker 1: but intelligent souls. Its indirect effects have been altogether greater.
Speaker 1: Aiming at unorthodox dreamers, it has set forces in motion
Speaker 1: as have destroyed the very root ideas of orthodox righteousness
Speaker 1: in the Western world. Impinging on geological discovery, it awakened,
Speaker 1: almost simultaneously in the minds of Darwin and Wallace, that
Speaker 1: train of thought that found expression and demonstration at last
Speaker 1: in the theory of natural selection. As that theory has
Speaker 1: been more and more thoroughly assimilated and understood by the
Speaker 1: general mind, it has destroyed quietly but entirely the belief
Speaker 1: in human equality which is implicit in all the liberalizing
Speaker 1: movements of the world. In the place of an essential
Speaker 1: equality distorted only by tradition and early training, by the
Speaker 1: artifices of those devils of the liberal cosmogony, king craft
Speaker 1: and priest craft, and equality as little affected by color
Speaker 1: as the equality of a black chest pond and a
Speaker 1: white We discover that all been are individual and unique,
Speaker 1: and through long ranges of comparison, superior and inferior upon
Speaker 1: countless scores. It has become apparent that whole masses of
Speaker 1: human population are as a whole inferior in their claim
Speaker 1: upon the future to other masses, that they cannot be
Speaker 1: given opportunities or trusted with power as the superior peoples
Speaker 1: are trusted, that their characteristic weaknesses are contagious and detrimental
Speaker 1: to the civilizing fabric, and that the range of incapacity
Speaker 1: tempts and demoralizes the strong. To give them equality is
Speaker 1: to sink to their level. To protect and cherish them
Speaker 1: is to be swamped in their fecundity. The confident and
Speaker 1: optimistic radicalism of the earlier nineteenth century and the humanitarian,
Speaker 1: philanthropic type of liberalism have bogged themselves beyond hope. In
Speaker 1: these realizations, the socialist has shirked them as he shirked
Speaker 1: the older Cruximalthus. Liberalism is a thing of the past.
Speaker 1: It is no longer a doctrine, but a faction there
Speaker 1: must follow some new born thing, and as effectually has
Speaker 1: the mass of criticism that centers about Darwin destroyed the
Speaker 1: dogma the fall upon which the whole intellectual fabric of
Speaker 1: Christianity rests. For without a fall, there is no redemption,
Speaker 1: and the whole theory and meaning of the A Pauline
Speaker 1: system is vain. In conjunction with the wide vistas opened
Speaker 1: by geological and astronomical discovery, the nineteenth century has indeed
Speaker 1: lost the very habit of thought from which the belief
Speaker 1: in a fall arose. It is as if a hand
Speaker 1: had been put upon the head of the thoughtful man
Speaker 1: and had turned his eyes about from the past to
Speaker 1: the future in matters of intelligence, at least, if not
Speaker 1: yet in matters of ethics and conduct. This turning round
Speaker 1: has occurred. In the past. Thought was legal in its spirit.
Speaker 1: It deduced the present from pre existing prescription. It derived
Speaker 1: everything from the offenses and promises of the dead. The
Speaker 1: idea of a universe of expiation was the most natural
Speaker 1: theory amidst such processes. The purpose the older theologians saw
Speaker 1: in the world was no more than the revenge accentuated
Speaker 1: by the special treatment of a favored minority, of a
Speaker 1: mysteriously incompetent deity exasperated by an unsatisfactory creation. But modern
Speaker 1: thought is altogether too constructive and creative to tolerate such
Speaker 1: a conception. And in the vast past that is open
Speaker 1: to us it can find neither of fence nor promise,
Speaker 1: only a spacious scheme of events, opening out, perpetually, opening
Speaker 1: out with a quality of final purpose, as irresistible to
Speaker 1: most men's minds as it is incomprehensible, opening out with
Speaker 1: all that inexplicable quality of design that, for example, some
Speaker 1: great piece of music, some symphony of Beethoven's conveys we
Speaker 1: see future beyond future, and passed behind past. It has
Speaker 1: been like the coming of dawn, at first, a colorless dawn,
Speaker 1: clear and spacious, before which the mists whirl and fade,
Speaker 1: and there opens to our eyes, not the narrow passage,
Speaker 1: the definite end we had imagined, but the rocky ill,
Speaker 1: the fine path we follow high amidst this limitless prospect
Speaker 1: of space and time. At first, the dawn is cold.
Speaker 1: There is at times a quality of terror, almost in
Speaker 1: the cold clearness of the morning twilight. But insensibly its
Speaker 1: coldness passes, the sky is touched with fire, and presently
Speaker 1: up out of the day spring in the east, the
Speaker 1: sunlight will be pouring, and these men of the new
Speaker 1: Republic will be going about in the daylight of things
Speaker 1: assured and men's concern. Under this ampler view will no
Speaker 1: longer be to work out a system of penalties for
Speaker 1: the sins of dead men, but to understand and participate
Speaker 1: in this great development that now dawns on the human
Speaker 1: understanding the insoluble problems of pain and death gaunt incomprehensible
Speaker 1: facts as they were fall into place in the gigantic
Speaker 1: order that evolution unfolds. All things are integral. In the
Speaker 1: mighty scheme. The slain builds up the slayer, the wolf
Speaker 1: grooms the horse into swiftness, and the tiger calls for
Speaker 1: wisdom and courage out of man. All things are integral.
Speaker 1: But it has been left for man to be consciously integral,
Speaker 1: to take at last a share in the process, to
Speaker 1: have wills that have caught a harmony with the universal will.
Speaker 1: As sand grains flash into splinter under the blaze of
Speaker 1: the sun, there will be many who will never be
Speaker 1: called to this religious conviction, who will lead their little
Speaker 1: lives like fools playing foolishly with religion and all the
Speaker 1: great issues of life, or like the beasts that perish
Speaker 1: having sense alone. But those who by character and intelligence
Speaker 1: are predestinate to participate in the reality of life, will
Speaker 1: fearlessly shape all their ethical determinations and public policy anew
Speaker 1: from a fearless study of themselves and an apparent purpose
Speaker 1: that opens out before them. Very much of the cry
Speaker 1: for faith that sounds in contemporary life so loudly and
Speaker 1: often with so distressing a note of sincerity comes from
Speaker 1: the unsatisfied egotisms of unemployed and therefore unhappy in craving people.
Speaker 1: But much is also due to the distress in the
Speaker 1: minds of active and serious men, due to the conflict
Speaker 1: of inductive knowledge with conceptions of right and wrong deduced
Speaker 1: from unsound but uncriticized first principles, the old ethical principles,
Speaker 1: the principle of equivalence or justice, the principle of self sacrifice,
Speaker 1: the various vague and arbitrary ideas of purity, chastity, and
Speaker 1: sexual sin came like rays out of the theological and
Speaker 1: philosophical lanterns men carried in the darkness. The ray of
Speaker 1: the lantern indicated and directed, and one followed it as
Speaker 1: one follows a path. But now there has come a
Speaker 1: new view of man's place in the scheme of time
Speaker 1: and space, a new illumination dawn. The lantern rays fade
Speaker 1: in the growing brightness, and the lanterns that shone so
Speaker 1: brightly are becoming smoky and dim. To many men, this
Speaker 1: is no more than a waning of the lanterns, and
Speaker 1: they call for new ones, or a trimming of the old.
Speaker 1: They blame the day for putting out these flares, and
Speaker 1: some go apart out of the glare of life, into
Speaker 1: corners of obscurity, where the radiation of the lantern may
Speaker 1: still be faintly traced. But indeed, with the new light,
Speaker 1: there has come the time for new methods, The time
Speaker 1: of lanterns, the time of deductions from arbitrary first principles,
Speaker 1: is over. The act of faith is no longer to
Speaker 1: follow your lantern, but to put it down. We can
Speaker 1: see about us, and by the landscape we must go Footnote.
Speaker 1: It is an interesting byway from our main thesis to
Speaker 1: speculate on the spiritual pathology of the functionless, wealthy, the
Speaker 1: half educated, independent women, of the middle class and the
Speaker 1: people of the Abyss. While the segregating new middle class,
Speaker 1: whose religious and moral development forms our main interest, is
Speaker 1: developing its spacious and confident theism. There will, I imagine,
Speaker 1: be a steady decay in the various Protestant congregations. They
Speaker 1: have played a noble part in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: Their spirit will live forever, but their formulae and organanization
Speaker 1: wax old like a garment. Their moral austerity, that touch
Speaker 1: of contempt for the unsubstantial esthetic which has always distinguished Protestatism,
Speaker 1: is naturally repellent to the irresponsible rich and to artistic
Speaker 1: people of the weaker type. And the face of Protestatism
Speaker 1: has ever been firm, even to hardness against the self indulgent,
Speaker 1: the idler, and the prolific, useless poor. The rich is
Speaker 1: a class, and the people of the Abyss, so far
Speaker 1: as they move towards any existing religious body, will be
Speaker 1: attracted by the moral kindliness, the picturesque organization, and venerable
Speaker 1: tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. We are only in
Speaker 1: the very beginning of a great Roman Catholic revival. The
Speaker 1: diversified countryside of the coming time will show many a
Speaker 1: splendid cathedral, many an elaborate monastic palace, towering amidst the
Speaker 1: abounding colleges and technical schools, along the moving platforms of
Speaker 1: the urban center, and athwart the shining advertisements that will
Speaker 1: adorn them, will go the ceremonial procession, all glorious with
Speaker 1: banners and cinser bearers, and the meek, blue shaven priests
Speaker 1: and barefooted rope girdled holy men, And the artful politician
Speaker 1: of the coming days, until the broom of the new
Speaker 1: republics sweep him up, will arrange the miraculous planks of
Speaker 1: his platform, always with an eye upon the priest. Within
Speaker 1: the ample, sheltering arms of the mother Church, many eccentric
Speaker 1: cults will develop. The curious may steady the works of
Speaker 1: m Heismans to learn the mystical propitiation of God, who
Speaker 1: made heaven and earth by the bed sores of hysterical girls.
Speaker 1: The future, as I see it, swarms with dirtles and
Speaker 1: sister teresas countless ecstatic nuns holding their maker as if
Speaker 1: it were in delashay, will shelter from the world in
Speaker 1: simple but costly refuges of refined austerity, where miracles are needed,
Speaker 1: miracles will occur, except for a few queer people nourished
Speaker 1: on Maria Monk and such like anti papal pornography. I
Speaker 1: doubt if there will be any Protestants left among the
Speaker 1: irresponsible rich. Those who do not follow the being current
Speaker 1: will probably take up with weird science denouncing sex of
Speaker 1: the faith healing type, or with such pseudo scientific gibberish
Speaker 1: as theosophy. Missus Piper, in an inelegant attitude and with
Speaker 1: only the whites of her eyes showing, has restored the
Speaker 1: waning faith of Professor James in human immortality, and I
Speaker 1: do not see why that lady should stick at one dogma.
Speaker 1: Amidst the present quite insatiable demand for creeds Shintoism, and
Speaker 1: either a cleaned or more probably a scented Obie might
Speaker 1: in vigorous hands be pushed to a very considerable success
Speaker 1: in the coming years. And I do not see any
Speaker 1: absolute impossibility in the idea of an after dinner witch
Speaker 1: smelling in Park Lane, with which doctor dressed in feathers.
Speaker 1: It might be amazingly picturesque. People would attend it with
Speaker 1: an air of intellectual liberality, not of course believing in it. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: but admitting there must be something in it. That's something
Speaker 1: in it. The fool has said in his heart there
Speaker 1: is no God, and after that he's ready to do
Speaker 1: anything with his mind and soul. It is by faith
Speaker 1: we disbelieve. And of course there will be much outspoken
Speaker 1: atheism and anti religion of the type of the Parisian
Speaker 1: devil worship. Imbecilities. Young men of means will determine to
Speaker 1: be wicked. They will do silly things that will strike
Speaker 1: them as being indecent and blasphemous and dreadful black masses
Speaker 1: and such like nonsense, and then they will get scared.
Speaker 1: The sort of thing that will be to shock orthodox
Speaker 1: maiden aunts and make olympus ring with laughter. A taking
Speaker 1: sort of nonsense already loose I find among very young
Speaker 1: men is to say, understand, I am non moral. Two
Speaker 1: thoroughly respectable young gentlemen, coming from quite different circles, have
Speaker 1: recently introduced their souls to me in the same formula. Both,
Speaker 1: I rejoice to remark, are married. Both are steady and industrious,
Speaker 1: young men, trustworthy in word and contract, dressed in accordance
Speaker 1: with current conceptions, and behaving with perfect decorum. One no doubt,
Speaker 1: for sinister ends aspires to better the world through a
Speaker 1: socialistic propaganda. That is all, but in a tight corner.
Speaker 1: Some day, that silly little formula may just suffice to
Speaker 1: trip up one or other of these men. To many
Speaker 1: of the irresponsible rich, however, that little understand I am
Speaker 1: non moral may prove of priceless worth. End footnote. How
Speaker 1: will the landscape shape itself to the dominant men of
Speaker 1: the new time, and in relation to themselves? What is
Speaker 1: the will and purpose that these men of will and
Speaker 1: purpose will find above in comprehending their own And to
Speaker 1: this our inquiry resolves itself. They will hold the Schopenhauer
Speaker 1: I believe, and with those who build themselves on Malthus
Speaker 1: and Darwin, that the scheme of being in which we
Speaker 1: live is a struggle of existences to expand into develop
Speaker 1: themselves to their full completeness, and to propagate and increase themselves.
Speaker 1: But being men of action, they will feel nothing of
Speaker 1: the glamor of misery that irresponsible and sexually vitiated shareholder
Speaker 1: Schopenhauer threw over this recognition the final object of this
Speaker 1: struggle among existences, they will not understand. They will have
Speaker 1: abandoned the search for ultimates. They will state the scheme
Speaker 1: of a struggle as approximate object, sufficiently remote and spacious
Speaker 1: to enclose and explain all their possible activities. They will
Speaker 1: seek God's purpose in the sphere of their activities, and
Speaker 1: desire no more as a soldier in battle desires no
Speaker 1: more than the immediate conflict before him. They will admit
Speaker 1: failure as an individual aspect of things, as a soldier
Speaker 1: seeking victory admits the possibility of death. But they will
Speaker 1: refuse to admit, as a part of their faith in God,
Speaker 1: that any existence, even if it is an existence that
Speaker 1: is presently entirely erased, can be needless or vain. It
Speaker 1: will have reacted on the existences that survive. It will
Speaker 1: be justified forever in the modification that it has produced
Speaker 1: in them. They will find in themselves. It must be
Speaker 1: remembered I am speaking of a class that has naturally segregated,
Speaker 1: and not of men as a whole. A desire, a
Speaker 1: passion almost to create and organize, to put an order
Speaker 1: to get the maximum result from certain possibilities. They will
Speaker 1: all be artists in reality, with a passion for simplicity
Speaker 1: and directness, and an impatience of confusion and inefficiency the
Speaker 1: determining frame of their ethics. The more spacious scheme to
Speaker 1: which they will shape the schemes of their individual wills
Speaker 1: will be the elaboration of that future world state to
Speaker 1: which all things are pointing. They will not conceive of
Speaker 1: it as a millennial paradise, a blissful inconsequent stagnation, but
Speaker 1: as a world state of active, ampler human beings, full
Speaker 1: of knowledge and energy, free from much of the baseness
Speaker 1: and limitations the needless pains and dishonors of the world
Speaker 1: disorder of today, but still struggling, struggling against ampler but
Speaker 1: still too narrow restrictions, and for still more spacious objects
Speaker 1: than artists have revealed. For that is a general end
Speaker 1: for the special work that contributes to it. As an
Speaker 1: individual end, they will make the plans and the limiting
Speaker 1: rules of their lives. It is manifest that a reconstructed
Speaker 1: ethical system, reconstructed in the light of modern science and
Speaker 1: to meet the needs of such temperaments and characters as
Speaker 1: the evolution of mechanism will draw together and develop, will
Speaker 1: give very different values from those given by the existing systems.
Speaker 1: If they can be called systems. To almost all the
Speaker 1: great matters of conduct. Under scientific analysis, the essential facts
Speaker 1: of life are very clearly shown to be two, birth
Speaker 1: and death. All life is the effort of the thing born,
Speaker 1: driven by fears, guided by instincts and desires, to evade death,
Speaker 1: to evade even the partial death of crippling or cramping
Speaker 1: or restriction, and to attain to effective procreation, to the
Speaker 1: bigory of another birth. Procreation is the triumph of the
Speaker 1: living being over death. And in the case of man
Speaker 1: who adds mind to his body, it is not only
Speaker 1: in his child, but in the dissemination of his thought,
Speaker 1: the expression of his mind in things done and made,
Speaker 1: that his triumph is to be found. And the ethical
Speaker 1: system of these men of the new Republic, the ethical
Speaker 1: system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped
Speaker 1: primarily to favor the procreation of what is fine and
Speaker 1: efficient and beautiful in humanity, beautiful in strong bodies, clear
Speaker 1: and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge, and
Speaker 1: to check the procreation of base and servile types of
Speaker 1: fear driven in cowardly souls, of all that is mean
Speaker 1: and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits
Speaker 1: of men to do the latter is to do the former.
Speaker 1: The two things are inseparable. And the method that nature
Speaker 1: has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby
Speaker 1: weakness was prevented from propagating weakness, and cowardice and feebleness
Speaker 1: were saved from the accomplishment of their desires. The method
Speaker 1: that has only one alternative, the method that must, in
Speaker 1: some cases still be called into the help of man,
Speaker 1: is death. In the new vision, death is no inexplicable horror,
Speaker 1: no pointless, terminal terror to the miseries of life. It
Speaker 1: is the end of all the pain of life, the
Speaker 1: end of the bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of
Speaker 1: weak and silly and pointless things. The new ethics will
Speaker 1: hold life to be a privilege and a responsibility, not
Speaker 1: a sort of night refuge for base spirits out of
Speaker 1: the void. And the alternative in right conduct between living fully,
Speaker 1: beautifully and efficiently will be to die for a multitude
Speaker 1: of contemptible and silly creatures, fear driven and helpless and useless,
Speaker 1: unhappy or hatefully happy in the midst of squalid, dishonor feeble, ugly, inefficient,
Speaker 1: born of unrestrained lusts, and increasing and multiplying through their
Speaker 1: sheer incontinence and stupidity. The men of the New Republic
Speaker 1: will have little pity and less benevolence to make life convenient,
Speaker 1: for the breeding of such people will seem to them
Speaker 1: not the most virtuous and amiable thing in the world,
Speaker 1: as it is held to be now, but an exceedingly
Speaker 1: abominable proceeding. Procreation is an avoidable thing for sane persons
Speaker 1: of even the most furious passions, And the men of
Speaker 1: the New Republic will hold that the procreation of children who,
Speaker 1: by the circumstances of their parentage, must be diseased bodily
Speaker 1: or mentally. I do not think it will be difficult
Speaker 1: for the medical science of the coming time to define
Speaker 1: such circumstances is absolutely the most loathsome of all conceivable
Speaker 1: sins they will hold. I anticipate that a certain portion
Speaker 1: of the population, the small minority, for example, afflicted with
Speaker 1: indisputably transmissible diseases, with transmissible mental disorders, with such hideous
Speaker 1: and curable habits of mind, as the craving for intoxication
Speaker 1: exists only on sufferance out of pity and patience and
Speaker 1: on the understanding that they do not propagate, and I
Speaker 1: do not foresee any reason to suppose that they will
Speaker 1: hesitate to kill when that sufferance is abused. And I
Speaker 1: imagine also the plea and proof that a grave criminal
Speaker 1: is also insane will be regarded by them not as
Speaker 1: a reason for mercy, but as an added reason for death.
Speaker 1: I do not see how they can think otherwise. On
Speaker 1: the principles they will profess, the men of the New
Speaker 1: Republic will not be squeamish either in facing or inflicting death,
Speaker 1: because they will have a fuller sense of the possibilities
Speaker 1: of life than we possess. They will have an ideal
Speaker 1: that will make killing worth the while. Like Abraham, they
Speaker 1: will have the faith to kill, and they will have
Speaker 1: no superstitions about death. They will naturally regard the modest
Speaker 1: suicide of incurably melancholy or diseased or helpless persons as
Speaker 1: a high and courageous act of duty rather than a crime.
Speaker 1: And since they will regard, as indeed, all men raised
Speaker 1: above a brutish level due regard a very long term
Speaker 1: of imprisonment as infinitely worse than death, as being indeed
Speaker 1: death with a living misery added to its natural terror.
Speaker 1: They will, I conceive where the whole tenor of a
Speaker 1: man's actions, and not simply some incidental or impulsive action,
Speaker 1: seems to prove him unfitted for free life in the world,
Speaker 1: consider him carefully, and condemn him, and remove him from
Speaker 1: being All Such killing will be done with an opiate,
Speaker 1: for death is too grave a thing to be made
Speaker 1: painful or dreadful and used as a deterrent from crime.
Speaker 1: If deterrent punishments are used at all in the code
Speaker 1: of the future, the deterrent will neither be death, nor
Speaker 1: mutilation of the body, nor mutilation of the life by imprisonment,
Speaker 1: nor any horrible things like that, but good, scientifically caused
Speaker 1: pain that will lead nothing but a memory. Yet even
Speaker 1: the memory of overwhelming pain is a sort of mutilation
Speaker 1: of the soul. The idea that only those who are
Speaker 1: fit to live freely in an orderly world states should
Speaker 1: be permitted to live is entirely against the use of
Speaker 1: deterrent punishments at all. Against outrageous conduct to children or women, perhaps,
Speaker 1: or for very cowardly or brutal assaults of any sort.
Speaker 1: The men of the future may consider pain a salutary remedy,
Speaker 1: at least during the ages of transition, while the brute
Speaker 1: is still at large. But since most acts of this
Speaker 1: sort done under conditions that neither torture nor exasperate, point
Speaker 1: to an essential vileness in the perpetrator, I am inclined
Speaker 1: to think that even in these cases, the men of
Speaker 1: the coming time will be far less disposed to torture
Speaker 1: than to kill. They will have another aspect to consider.
Speaker 1: The conscious infliction of pain for the sake of the
Speaker 1: pain is against the better nature of man, and it
Speaker 1: is unsafe and demoralizing for anyone to undertake this duty.
Speaker 1: To kill under the seemingly conditioned science will afford is
Speaker 1: a far less offensive thing. The rulers of the future
Speaker 1: will grudge making good people into jailers, orders, punishment dealers, nurses,
Speaker 1: and attendants on the bad people who cannot live happily
Speaker 1: and freely in the world without spoiling the lives of
Speaker 1: others are better out of it. That is a current
Speaker 1: sentiment even to day. But the men of the new
Speaker 1: Republic will have the courage of their opinions. End of
Speaker 1: chapter nine. A recording by Christopher Taylor