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EUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS

Eugenics andOther Evils

By

G. K. Chesterton

Cassell and Company, LimitedLondon, New York, Toronto & Melbourne1922

TO THE READER

I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reasonconnected with the present situation; a reason which I should likebriefly to emphasise and make clear. 

Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, areconceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk ofpreliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written beforethe war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; wheneugenic babies (not visibly very distinguishable from other babies)sprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancyof Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr. Bernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a manlike a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilisation, of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may befound in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opiniontoo controversially, and it seems to me that I sometimes took it tooseriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself intoa more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialismand strict social organisation. 

And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I mightwell 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 hadspecialised in them, had gone to war with the older culture ofChristendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would behopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless. As the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, itgrew more and more plain that the scientifically organised State wasnot increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen wouldever again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So Ithought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind. 

I am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It hasgradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the rulingclasses in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussiais a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nineyears old, most of their principles and proceedings are a great dealolder. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the samebullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professorsthat have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. Forthat reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect andpublish 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 isno good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you aremortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; butsound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible becausemen moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny beforeit exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that thescheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parriedwhile it is in the air. 

There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, ascollective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone wecan make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the OxfordMovement, 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 thingthat can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed. It is called for convenience "Eugenics"; and that it ought to bedestroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that itmeans very different things to different people; but that is onlybecause evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praisedwith high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tonguedrhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that isonly because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called "TheGracious Ones. " I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentionsare entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerelyastonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evilalways wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there hasin all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence andabnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as weall do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think theyare doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenicsitself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideasexist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, comingquickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to athousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing nomore to be bargained about than poisoning. 

It is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: thoughsome of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it. The movementconsists of two parts: a moral basis, which is common to all, and ascheme of social application which varies a good deal. For the moralbasis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with hisknowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr. Johnson in that tower of vision), and if the baby was ill throughhaving eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might becalling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides ofbabies 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 beobliged (or even entitled) to sacrifice to them the baby for whom Iwas primarily and directly responsible. Now the Eugenic moral basis isthis; that the baby for whom we are primarily and directly responsibleis the babe unborn. That is, that we know (or may come to know) enoughof certain inevitable tendencies in biology to consider the fruit ofsome contemplated union in that direct and clear light of consciencewhich we can now only fix on the other partner in that union. The oneduty can conceivably be as definite as or more definite than theother. The baby that does not exist can be considered even before thewife who does. Now it is essential to grasp that this is acomparatively new note in morality. Of course sane people alwaysthought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to theglory of God or according to the plan of Nature; but whether theycounted such children as God's reward for service or Nature's premiumon sanity, they always left the reward to God or the premium toNature, as a less definable thing. The only person (and this is thepoint) towards whom one could have precise duties was the partner inthe process. Directly considering the partner's claims was the nearestone could get to indirectly considering the claims of posterity. Ifthe women of the harem sang praises of the hero as the Moslem mountedhis horse, it was because this was the due of a man; if the Christianknight helped his wife off her horse, it was because this was the dueof a woman. Definite and detailed dues of this kind they did notpredicate of the babe unborn; regarding him in that agnostic andopportunist light in which Mr. Browdie regarded the hypothetical childof Miss Squeers. Thinking these sex relations healthy, they naturallyhoped they would produce healthy children; but that was all. TheMoslem woman doubtless expected Allah to send beautiful sons to anobedient wife; but she would not have allowed any direct vision ofsuch sons to alter the obedience itself. She would not have said, "Iwill now be a disobedient wife; as the learned leech informs me thatgreat prophets are often the children of disobedient wives. " Theknight doubtless hoped that the saints would help him to strongchildren, if he did all the duties of his station, one of which mightbe helping his wife off her horse; but he would not have refrainedfrom doing this because he had read in a book that a course of fallingoff horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem andChristian would have thought such speculations not only impious bututterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is not thepoint here. 

The point here is that a new school believes Eugenics _against_Ethics. And it is proved by one familiar fact: that the heroisms ofhistory are actually the crimes of Eugenics. The Eugenists' books andarticles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should andmay come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feelthat marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children. But historyis full of the praises of people who have held sacred such ties toinvalids; of cases like those of Colonel Hutchinson and Sir WilliamTemple, who remained faithful to betrothals when beauty and health hadbeen apparently blasted. And though the illnesses of Dorothy Osborneand Mrs. Hutchinson may not fall under the Eugenic speculations (I donot know), it is obvious that they might have done so; and certainlyit would not have made any difference to men's moral opinion of theact. I do not discuss here which morality I favour; but I insist thatthey are opposite. The Eugenist really sets up as saints the very menwhom hundreds of families have called sneaks. To be consistent, theyought to put up statues to the men who deserted their loves because ofbodily misfortune; with inscriptions celebrating the good Eugenistwho, 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: thatmankind have hitherto held the bond between man and woman so sacred, and the effect of it on the children so incalculable, that they havealways admired the maintenance of honour more than the maintenance ofsafety. Doubtless they thought that even the children might be nonethe worse for not being the children of cowards and shirkers; but thiswas not the first thought, the first commandment. Briefly, we may saythat while many moral systems have set restraints on sex almost assevere as any Eugenist could set, they have almost always had thecharacter of securing the fidelity of the two sexes to each other, andleaving the rest to God. To introduce an ethic which makes thatfidelity or infidelity vary with some calculation about heredity isthat rarest of all things, a revolution that has not happened before. 

It is only right to say here, though the matter should only be touchedon, that many Eugenists would contradict this, in so far as to claimthat there was a consciously Eugenic reason for the horror of thoseunions which begin with the celebrated denial to man of the privilegeof marrying his grandmother. Dr. S. R. Steinmetz, with that creepysimplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarksthat "we do not yet know quite certainly" what were "the motives forthe horror of" that horrible thing which is the agony of Oedipus. Withentirely amiable intention, I ask Dr. S. R. Steinmetz to speak forhimself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or sister asseparate from other women; nor have I reached them by any curiousresearches. I found them where I found an analogous aversion to eatinga baby for breakfast. I found them in a rooted detestation in thehuman soul to liking a thing in one way, when you already like it inanother quite incompatible way. Now it is perfectly true that thisaversion may have acted eugenically; and so had a certain ultimateconfirmation and basis in the laws of procreation. But there reallycannot be any Eugenist quite so dull as not to see that this is not adefence of Eugenics but a direct denial of Eugenics. If somethingwhich has been discovered at last by the lamp of learning is somethingwhich 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 theirgrandmothers when it was, for all they knew, a most hygienic habit; ifwe know now that they instinctly avoided scientific peril; that, sofar as it goes, is a point in favour of letting people marry anyonethey like. It is simply the statement that sexual selection, or whatChristians call falling in love, is a part of man which in the roughand in the long run can be trusted. And that is the destruction of thewhole of this science at a blow. 

The second part of the definition, the persuasive or coercive methodsto be employed, I shall deal with more fully in the second part ofthis book. But some such summary as the following may here be useful. Far into the unfathomable past of our race we find the assumptionthat the founding of a family is the personal adventure of a free man. Before slavery sank slowly out of sight under the new climate ofChristianity, it may or may not be true that slaves were in some sensebred like cattle, valued as a promising stock for labour. If it was soit was so in a much looser and vaguer sense than the breeding of theEugenists; and such modern philosophers read into the old paganism afantastic pride and cruelty which are wholly modern. It may be, however, that pagan slaves had some shadow of the blessings of theEugenist's care. It is quite certain that the pagan freemen would havekilled the first man that suggested it. I mean suggested it seriously;for Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes inGreek. Among free men, the law, more often the creed, most commonly ofall the custom, have laid all sorts of restrictions on sex for thisreason or that. But law and creed and custom have never concentratedheavily except upon fixing and keeping the family when once it hadbeen made. The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individualadventure outside the frontiers of the State. Our first forgottenancestors left this tradition behind them; and our own latest fathersand mothers a few years ago would have thought us lunatics to bediscussing it. The shortest general definition of Eugenics on itspractical side is that it does, in a more or less degree, propose tocontrol some families at least as if they were families of paganslaves. I shall discuss later the question of the people to whom thispressure may be applied; and the much more puzzling question of whatpeople will apply it. But it is to be applied at the very least bysomebody to somebody, and that on certain calculations about breedingwhich are affirmed to be demonstrable. So much for the subject itself. I say that this thing exists. I define it as closely as mattersinvolving moral evidence can be defined; I call it Eugenics. If afterthat anyone chooses to say that Eugenics is not the Greek for this--Iam 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 ofskirmishers, of harmless and confused modern sceptics, who ought to becleared off or calmed down before we come to debate with the realdoctors of the heresy. If I sum up my statement thus: "Eugenics, asdiscussed, evidently means the control of some men over the marriageand unmarriage of others; and probably means the control of the fewover the marriage and unmarriage of the many, " I shall first of allreceive the sort of answers that float like skim on the surface ofteacups and talk. I may very roughly and rapidly divide thesepreliminary objectors into five sects; whom I will call theEuphemists, the Casuists, the Autocrats, the Precedenters, and theEndeavourers. When we have answered the immediate protestation of allthese good, shouting, short-sighted people, we can begin to do justiceto those intelligences that are really behind the idea. 

Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startlethem, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable oftranslating the one into the other, however obviously they mean thesame thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers ofthe citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden oflongevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionateand intolerable, especially to the females"; say this to them and theywill sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them "Murder your mother, " and they sit up quite suddenly. Yetthe 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 onceuseful distinction between the anthropoid _homo_ and the otheranimals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may bemodified also even in regard to the important question of theextension of human diet"; say this to them, and beauty born ofmurmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in asimple, manly, hearty way "Let's eat a man!" and their surprise isquite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing. Now, ifanyone thinks these two instances extravagant, I will refer to twoactual cases from the Eugenic discussions. When Sir Oliver Lodge spokeof the methods "of the stud-farm" many Eugenists exclaimed against thecrudity of the suggestion. Yet long before that one of the ablestchampions in the other interest had written "What nonsense thiseducation is! Who could educate a racehorse or a greyhound?" Whichmost certainly either means nothing, or the human stud-farm. Or again, when I spoke of people "being married forcibly by the police, " anotherdistinguished Eugenist almost achieved high spirits in his heartyassurance that no such thing had ever come into their heads. Yet a fewdays after I saw a Eugenist pronouncement, to the effect that theState ought to extend its powers in this area. The State can only bethat corporation which men permit to employ compulsion; and this areacan only be the area of sexual selection. I mean somewhat more than anidle jest when I say that the policeman will generally be found inthat area. But I willingly admit that the policeman who looks afterweddings 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 ahelmet will drag the bride and bridegroom to the altar. I do mean thatnobody that man in blue is told to arrest will even dare to come nearthe church. Sir Oliver did not mean that men would be tied up instables and scrubbed down by grooms. He meant that they would undergoa less of liberty which to men is even more infamous. He meant thatthe only formula important to Eugenists would be "by Smith out ofJones. " Such a formula is one of the shortest in the world; and iscertainly the shortest way with the Euphemists. 

The next sect of superficial objectors is even more irritating. I havecalled them, for immediate purposes, the Casuists. Suppose I say "Idislike this spread of Cannibalism in the West End restaurants. "Somebody is sure to say "Well, after all, Queen Eleanor when shesucked blood from her husband's arm was a cannibal. " What is one tosay to such people? One can only say "Confine yourself to suckingpoisoned blood from people's arms, and I permit you to call yourselfby the glorious title of Cannibal. " In this sense people say ofEugenics, "After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marryinga mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists. " Again onecan only answer, "Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys asare naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult inthe title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinctionwill be rare. " But surely anyone's common-sense must tell him that ifEugenics dealt only with such extravagant cases, it would be calledcommon-sense--and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded suchabsurdities 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 amongliving men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved, there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly nosuch thing as this book. 

I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people theIdealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal goodthey hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those whogive us generally to understand that every modern reform will "work"all right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, andfor how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind theirlooking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is theshadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does notexpect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people mostcertainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it hasleft 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, Iwould 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 everdone quite successfully--force men to forsake their sins. Of these itis enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law anymore than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as adog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as youhave put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will notbe able to fulfil a fragment of anything you have forgotten to putinto it. 

Along with such idealists should go the strange people who seem tothink that you can consecrate and purify any campaign for ever byrepeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocateshad in mind. These people will say "So far from aiming at _slavery_, the Eugenists are seeking _true_ liberty; liberty from disease anddegeneracy, etc. " Or they will say "We can assure Mr. Chesterton thatthe Eugenists have _no_ intention of segregating the harmless; justiceand mercy are the very motto of----" etc. To this kind of thingperhaps the shortest answer is this. Many of those who speak thus areagnostic or generally unsympathetic to official religion. Suppose oneof them said "The Church of England is full of hypocrisy. " What wouldhe think of me if I answered, "I assure you that hypocrisy iscondemned by every form of Christianity; and is particularlyrepudiated in the Prayer Book"? Suppose he said that the Church ofRome had been guilty of great cruelties. What would he think of me ifI answered, "The Church is expressly bound to meekness and charity;and therefore cannot be cruel"? This kind of people need not detain uslong. Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; whoflourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by thesolemn official who said the other day that he could not understandthe clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill, as it only extended theprinciples of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer"Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws topersons without a trace of lunacy. " This lucid politician finds an oldlaw, let us say, about keeping lepers in quarantine. He simply altersthe word "lepers" to "long-nosed people, " and says blandly that theprinciple is the same. 

Perhaps the weakest of all are those helpless persons whom I havecalled the Endeavourers. The prize specimen of them was another M. P. Who defended the same Bill as "an honest attempt" to deal with a greatevil: as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellowcitizens as a kind of chemical experiment; in a state of reverentagnosticism about what would come of it. But with this fatuous notionthat one can deliberately establish the Inquisition or the Terror, andthen faintly trust the larger hope, I shall have to deal moreseriously in a subsequent chapter. It is enough to say here that thebest thing the honest Endeavourer could do would be to make an honestattempt to know what he is doing. And not to do anything else until hehas found out. Lastly, there is a class of controversialists sohopeless and futile that I have really failed to find a name for them. But whenever anyone attempts to argue rationally for or against anyexistent and recognisable _thing_, such as the Eugenic class oflegislation, there are always people who begin to chop hay aboutSocialism and Individualism; and say "_You_ object to all Stateinterference; _I_ am in favour of State interference. _You_ are anIndividualist; _I_, on the other hand, " etc. To which I can onlyanswer, with heart-broken patience, that I am not an Individualist, but a poor fallen but baptised journalist who is trying to write abook about Eugenists, several of whom he has met; whereas he never metan Individualist, and is by no means certain he would recognise him ifhe did. In short, I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of theState to interfere to cure a great evil. I say that in this case itwould interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to beturned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomlessbotherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relativeadvantages of always turning to the right and always turning to theleft. 

And for the rest, there is undoubtedly an enormous mass of sensible, rather thoughtless people, whose rooted sentiment it is that any deepchange in our society must be in some way infinitely distant. Theycannot believe that men in hats and coats like themselves can bepreparing a revolution; all their Victorian philosophy has taughtthem that such transformations are always slow. Therefore, when Ispeak of Eugenic legislation, or the coming of the Eugenic State, they think of it as something like _The Time Machine_ or _LookingBackward_: a thing that, good or bad, will have to fit itself totheir great-great-great-grandchild, who may be very different and maylike it; and who in any case is rather a distant relative. To allthis I have, to begin with, a very short and simple answer. TheEugenic State has begun. The first of the Eugenic Laws has alreadybeen adopted by the Government of this country; and passed with theapplause of both parties through the dominant House of Parliament. This first Eugenic Law clears the ground and may be said to proclaimnegative Eugenics; but it cannot be defended, and nobody hasattempted to defend it, except on the Eugenic theory. I will call itthe Feeble-Minded Bill both for brevity and because the descriptionis strictly accurate. It is, quite simply and literally, a Bill forincarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to callmad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call themweak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom thisterm has not been conversationally applied by his own friends andrelatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relativeshave been lamentably lacking in spirit), it can be clearly seen thatthis law, like the early Christian Church (to which, however, itpresents points of dissimilarity), is a net drawing in of all kinds. It must not be supposed that we have a stricter definitionincorporated in the Bill. Indeed, the first definition of"feeble-minded" in the Bill was much looser and vaguer than thephrase "feeble-minded" itself. It is a piece of yawning idiocy about"persons who though capable of earning their living under favourablecircumstances" (as if anyone could earn his living if circumstanceswere directly unfavourable to his doing so), are nevertheless"incapable of managing their affairs with proper prudence"; which isexactly what all the world and his wife are saying about theirneighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for any kind ofthought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing so verynovel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is vitalis this: that the _defence_ of this crazy Coercion Act is a Eugenicdefence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that theaim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandistsdo not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children. Every tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy, every rustic whois eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions aswere designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and thatis the point. England has forgotten the Feudal State; it is in thelast anarchy of the Industrial State; there is much in Mr. Belloc'stheory that it is approaching the Servile State; it cannot at presentget at the Distributive State; it has almost certainly missed theSocialist State. But we are already under the Eugenist State; andnothing remains to us but rebellion. 

CHAPTER III

THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE

A silent anarchy is eating out our society. I must pause upon theexpression; because the true nature of anarchy is mostlymisapprehended. It is not in the least necessary that anarchy shouldbe violent; nor is it necessary that it should come from below. Agovernment may grow anarchic as much as a people. The more sentimentalsort of Tory uses the word anarchy as a mere term of abuse forrebellion; but he misses a most important intellectual distinction. Rebellion may be wrong and disastrous; but even when rebellion iswrong, it is never anarchy. When it is not self-defence, it isusurpation. 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), itcertainly cannot be anarchic in method; for men must be organised whenthey fight; and the discipline in a rebel army has to be as good asthe discipline in the royal army. This deep principle of distinctionmust be clearly kept in mind. Take for the sake of symbolism those twogreat spiritual stories which, whether we count them myths ormysteries, have so long been the two hinges of all European morals. The Christian who is inclined to sympathise generally withconstituted authority will think of rebellion under the image ofSatan, the rebel against God. But Satan, though a traitor, was not ananarchist. He claimed the crown of the cosmos; and had he prevailed, would have expected his rebel angels to give up rebelling. On theother hand, the Christian whose sympathies are more generally withjust self-defence among the oppressed will think rather of ChristHimself defying the High Priests and scourging the rich traders. Butwhether or no Christ was (as some say) a Socialist, He most certainlywas not an Anarchist. Christ, like Satan, claimed the throne. He setup a new authority against an old authority; but He set it up withpositive commandments and a comprehensible scheme. In this light allmediæval people--indeed, all people until a little while ago--wouldhave judged questions involving revolt. John Ball would have offeredto pull down the government because it was a bad government, notbecause it was a government. Richard II. Would have blamed Bolingbrokenot as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, inthe useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from anyrebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, inits first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I saidbefore, it is often entirely silent. 

Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stopyourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to thenormal. 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 familysits up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in the home ifmembers of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. Itwas not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, theslaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from theslave-owners' point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, theslaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it ishistorically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have apicnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, Ithink, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we alltook what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eatif swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they areuncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to returnwithin rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is thereally dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It ismagnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water--likeNiagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening ordangerous or even destructive; it is that it cannot stop. Now it isplain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule asociety as easily as the society so ruled. And in modern England it isthe powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it--who are trulypossessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense, is not too strong. The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It istalking nonsense; and it can't stop. 

Now it is perfectly plain that government ought to have, and musthave, the same sort of right to use exceptional methods occasionallythat the private householder has to have a picnic or to sit up allnight on New Year's Eve. The State, like the householder, is sane ifit can treat such exceptions as exceptions. Such desperate remediesmay not even be right; but such remedies are endurable as long as theyare admittedly desperate. Such cases, of course, are the communism offood in a besieged city; the official disavowal of an arrested spy;the subjection of a patch of civil life to martial law; the cutting ofcommunication in a plague; or that deepest degradation of thecommonwealth, the use of national soldiers not against foreignsoldiers, but against their own brethren in revolt. Of theseexceptions some are right and some wrong; but all are right in so faras they are taken as exceptions. The modern world is insane, not somuch because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover thenormal. 

We see this in the vague extension of punishments like imprisonment;often the very reformers who admit that prison is bad for peoplepropose to reform them by a little more of it. We see it in paniclegislation like that after the White Slave scare, when the torture offlogging was revived for all sorts of ill defined and vague andvariegated types of men. Our fathers were never so mad, even when theywere torturers. They stretched the man out on the rack. They did notstretch the rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burningthey may have seen witches everywhere--because their minds were fixedon witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, becausetheir minds were unfixed. While tying some very unpopular witch to thestake, with the firm conviction that she was a spiritual tyranny andpestilence, they did not say to each other, "A little burning is whatmy Aunt Susan wants, to cure her of back-biting, " or "Some of thesefaggots would do your Cousin James good, and teach him to play withpoor girls' affections. "

Now the name of all this is Anarchy. It not only does not know what itwants, but it does not even know what it hates. It multipliesexcessively in the more American sort of English newspapers. When thisnew sort of New Englander burns a witch the whole prairie catchesfire. These people have not the decision and detachment of thedoctrinal ages. They cannot do a monstrous action and still see it ismonstrous. Wherever they make a stride they make a rut. They cannotstop their own thoughts, though their thoughts are pouring into thepit. 

A final instance, which can be sketched much more briefly, can befound in this general fact: that the definition of almost every crimehas become more and more indefinite, and spreads like a flattening andthinning cloud over larger and larger landscapes. Cruelty to children, one would have thought, was a thing about as unmistakable, unusualand appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to coveralmost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The onlydistinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in thepoor, who generally can't help them, and not in the rich, whogenerally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. Thepoint here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod onthe bloody night of Innocents has come precious near beingattributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in theTemple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kindmother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy childrenhad no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this anillegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all thehorror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes toparricide, could now be used against any son who had done any act thatcould colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and soaffected his health. Few of us would be safe. 

Another case out of hundreds is the loose extension of the idea oflibel. Libel cases bear no more trace of the old and just angeragainst the man who bore false witness against his neighbour than"cruelty" cases do of the old and just horror of the parents thathated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports ofthe less athletic rich--a variation on _baccarat_, a game of chance. Amusic-hall actress got damages for a song that was called "vulgar, "which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling myhandwriting "rococo. " A politician got huge damages because he wassaid to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if thatseductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story. Sometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in hisbusiness; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocerslanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it isclear that its exponents possess no power of distinction, or sense ofproportion, by which they can draw the line between calling a woman apopular singer and calling her a bad lot; or between charging a manwith leading infants to Protection and leading them to sin and shame. But the vital point to which to return is this. That it is notnecessarily, nor even specially, an anarchy in the populace. It is ananarchy in the organ of government. It is the magistrates--voices ofthe governing class--who cannot distinguish between cruelty andcarelessness. It is the judges (and their very submissive specialjuries) who cannot see the difference between opinion and slander. Andit is the highly placed and highly paid experts who have brought inthe first Eugenic Law, the Feeble-Minded Bill--thus showing that theycan see no difference between a mad and a sane man. 

That, to begin with, is the historic atmosphere in which this thingwas born. It is a peculiar atmosphere, and luckily not likely to last. Real progress bears the same relation to it that a happy girl laughingbears to an hysterical girl who cannot stop laughing. But I havedescribed this atmosphere first because it is the only atmosphere inwhich such a thing as the Eugenist legislation could be proposed amongmen. All other ages would have called it to some kind of logicalaccount, however academic or narrow. The lowest sophist in the Greekschools would remember enough of Socrates to force the Eugenist totell him (at least) whether Midias was segregated because he wascurable or because he was incurable. The meanest Thomist of themediæval monasteries would have the sense to see that you cannotdiscuss a madman when you have not discussed a man. The most owlishCalvinist commentator in the seventeenth century would ask theEugenist to reconcile such Bible texts as derided fools with the otherBible texts that praised them. The dullest shopkeeper in Paris in 1790would have asked what were the Rights of Man, if they did not includethe rights of the lover, the husband, and the father. It is only inour own London Particular (as Mr. Guppy said of the fog) that smallfigures can loom so large in the vapour, and even mingle with quitedifferent figures, and have the appearance of a mob. But, above all, Ihave 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 flourisheverywhere, tells how a man came to own a small magic machine like acoffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said oneword and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which Iwish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) themill 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 luxuryand exaggeration, and sailors' tales should be taken with a grain ofit. 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 likeArctic 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) iswhy the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For thefairy tales knew what the modern mystics don't--that one should notlet 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 donot see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it may or may not beright to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivably be right to killa murderer because it is wrong to kill a man. If the hangman, havinggot his hand in, proceeded to hang friends and relatives to his tasteand fancy, he would (intellectually) unhang the first man, though thefirst man might not think so. Or thus again, if you say an insane manis irresponsible, you imply that a sane man is responsible. He isresponsible for the insane man. And the attempt of the Eugenists andother fatalists to treat all men as irresponsible is the largest andflattest 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 thelunatic asylum: let us take this as our definite starting point, andask ourselves what lunacy is, and what is its fundamental relation tohuman society. Now that raw juvenile scepticism that clogs all thoughtwith catchwords may often be heard to remark that the mad are only theminority, the sane only the majority. There is a neat exactitudeabout 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; andthat is what their madness means. The sane are not a majority; theyare mankind. And mankind (as its name would seem to imply) is a_kind_, not a degree. In so far as the lunatic differs, he differsfrom all minorities and majorities in kind. The madman who thinks heis a knife cannot go into partnership with the other who thinks he isa fork. There is no trysting place outside reason; there is no inn onthose 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 quitesanely. And even if such fanatics would destroy the world, the worldowes them a strictly fair trial according to proof and public law. Butthe 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 ata 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 notthe point; the point is that we all say it is a tree. Suppose, if youwill, that we are all poets, which seems improbable; so that each ofus 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 greenfountain, and a third like a green dragon and the fourth like a greencheese. The fact remains: that they all say it _looks_ like thesethings. It is a tree. Nor are any of the poets in the least madbecause of any opinions they may form, however frenzied, about thefunctions or future of the tree. A conservative poet may wish to clipthe tree; a revolutionary poet may wish to burn it. An optimist poetmay want to make it a Christmas tree and hang candles on it. Apessimist poet may want to hang himself on it. None of these are mad, because they are all talking about the same thing. But there isanother man who is talking horribly about something else. There is amonstrous exception to mankind. Why he is so we know not; a new theorysays it is heredity; an older theory says it is devils. But in anycase, the spirit of it is the spirit that denies, the spirit thatreally denies realities. This is the man who looks at the tree anddoes 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, thoughsome are more concrete. Believing your own body is glass is a moredaring denial of reality than believing a tree is a glass lamp at thetop of a pole. But all true delusions have in them this unalterableassertion--that what is not is. The difference between us and themaniac is not about how things look or how things ought to look, butabout what they self-evidently are. The lunatic does not say that heought 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 Shawmight say that. The lunatic says he _is_ Shakespeare. The lunaticdoes 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 casesthe difference is a difference about what is there; not a differencetouching what should be done about it. 

For this reason, and for this alone, the lunatic is outside publiclaw. This is the abysmal difference between him and the criminal. Thecriminal admits the facts, and therefore permits us to appeal to thefacts. We can so arrange the facts around him that he may reallyunderstand 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 thattree. " But if the man really thinks one tree is a lamp-post and theother tree a Trafalgar Square fountain, we simply cannot treat withhim at all. It is obviously useless to say, "Do not steal apples fromthis lamp-post, or I will hang you on that fountain. " If a man deniesthe facts, there is no answer but to lock him up. He cannot speak ourlanguage: not that varying verbal language which often misses fireeven with us, but that enormous alphabet of sun and moon and greengrass and blue sky in which alone we meet, and by which alone we cansignal to each other. That unique man of genius, George Macdonald, described in one of his weird stories two systems of spaceco-incident; so that where I knew there was a piano standing in adrawing-room you knew there was a rose-bush growing in a garden. Something of this sort is in small or great affairs the matter withthe madman. He cannot have a vote, because he is the citizen ofanother country. He is a foreigner. Nay, he is an invader and anenemy; 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 knowhis _general_ nature. All criminals, who do particular things forparticular reasons (things and reasons which, however criminal, arealways comprehensible), have been more and more tried for suchseparate actions under separate and suitable laws ever since Europebegan to become a civilisation--and until the rare and recentre-incursions of barbarism in such things as the IndeterminateSentence. Of that I shall speak later; it is enough for this argumentto point out the plain facts. It is the plain fact that every savage, every sultan, every outlawed baron, every brigand-chief has alwaysused this instrument of the Indeterminate Sentence, which has beenrecently offered us as something highly scientific and humane. Allthese people, in short, being barbarians, have always kept theircaptives captive until they (the barbarians) chose to think thecaptives were in a fit frame of mind to come out. It is also the plainfact that all that has been called civilisation or progress, justiceor liberty, for nearly three thousand years, has had the generaldirection of treating even the captive as a free man, in so far assome 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, toargue with God. But the criminal is, among civilised men, tried by onelaw for one crime for a perfectly simple reason: that the motive ofthe crime, like the meaning of the law, is conceivable to the commonintelligence. A man is punished specially as a burglar, and notgenerally as a bad man, because a man may be a burglar and in manyother respects not be a bad man. The act of burglary is punishablebecause it is intelligible. But when acts are unintelligible, we canonly refer them to a general untrustworthiness, and guard against themby a general restraint. If a man breaks into a house to get a piece ofbread, we can appeal to his reason in various ways. We can hang himfor 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, tosteal the parings of other people's finger nails, then we are in adifficulty: we cannot imagine what he is going to do with them, andtherefore cannot easily imagine what we are going to do with him. If avillain comes in, in cloak and mask, and puts a little arsenic in thesoup, we can collar him and say to him distinctly, "You are guilty ofMurder; and I will now consult the code of tribal law, under which welive, to see if this practice is not forbidden. " But if a man in thesame cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-waterin the soup, what can we say? Our charge necessarily becomes a moregeneral one. We can only observe, with a moderation almost amountingto weakness, "You seem to be the sort of person who will do this sortof thing. " And then we can lock him up. The principle of theindeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. Itdoes apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And itapplies to nobody else. 

The second thing to be noted is this: that it is only by the unanimityof sane men that we can condemn this man as utterly separate. If hesays a tree is a lamp-post he is mad; but only because all other mensay 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 andvegetation, then it would be a matter of opinion and degree; and hewould not be mad, but merely extreme. Certainly he would not be mad ifnobody but a botanist could see it was a tree. Certainly his enemiesmight be madder than he, if nobody but a lamplighter could see it wasnot a lamp-post. And similarly a man is not imbecile if only aEugenist 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 abnormallyclever, which is obviously a matter in dispute. That which can condemnthe abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he beginsto say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that wehave a right to treat him as the exception and not the rule. It isonly because we none of us profess to be anything more than man thatwe have authority to treat him as something less. 

Now the first principle behind Eugenics becomes plain enough. It isthe proposal that somebody or something should criticise men with thesame superiority with which men criticise madmen. It might exercisethis right with great moderation; but I am not here talking about theexercise, but about the right. Its _claim_ certainly is to bring allhuman life under the Lunacy Laws. 

Now this is the first weakness in the case of the Eugenists: that theycannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by whatauthority they do these things. They cannot see the exception isdifferent from the rule--even when it is misrule, even when it is anunruly rule. The sound sense in the old Lunacy Law was this: that youcannot deny that a man is a citizen until you are practically preparedto deny that he is a man. Men, and only men, can be the judges ofwhether he is a man. But any private club of prigs can be judges ofwhether he ought to be a citizen. When once we step down from thattall and splintered peak of pure insanity we step on to a tablelandwhere one man is not so widely different from another. Outside theexception, what we find is the average. And the practical, legal shapeof the quarrel is this: that unless the normal men have the right toexpel the abnormal, what particular sort of abnormal men have theright to expel the normal men? If sanity is not good enough, what isthere that is saner than sanity?

Without any grip of the notion of a rule and an exception, the generalidea of judging people's heredity breaks down and is useless. For thisreason: that if everything is the result of a doubtful heredity, thejudgment itself is the result of a doubtful heredity also. Let itjudge not that it be not judged. Eugenists, strange to say, havefathers and mothers like other people; and our opinion about theirfathers and mothers is worth exactly as much as their opinions aboutours. None of the parents were lunatics, and the rest is mere likesand dislikes. Suppose Dr. Saleeby had gone up to Byron and said, "Mylord, I perceive you have a club-foot and inordinate passions: suchare the hereditary results of a profligate soldier marrying ahot-tempered woman. " The poet might logically reply (withcharacteristic lucidity and impropriety), "Sir, I perceive you have aconfused mind and an unphilosophic theory about other people's loveaffairs. Such are the hereditary delusions bred by a Syrian doctormarrying a Quaker lady from York. " Suppose Dr. Karl Pearson had saidto Shelley, "From what I see of your temperament, you are runninggreat risks in forming a connection with the daughter of a fanatic andeccentric like Godwin. " Shelley would be employing the strictrationalism of the older and stronger free thinkers, if he answered, "From what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction inmarrying the great-niece of an old corpse of a courtier anddilettante like Samuel Rogers. " It is only opinion for opinion. Nobodycan pretend that either Mary Godwin or Samuel Rogers was mad; and thegeneral view a man may hold about the healthiness of inheriting theirblood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men domarry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose that Dr. KarlPearson is any better judge of a bridegroom than the bridegroom is ofa 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 tosettle whether a man is mad; and that these specialists go bytechnical and even secret tests that cannot be known to the mass ofmen. It is obvious that this is true; it is equally obvious that itdoes not affect our argument. When we ask the doctor whether ourgrandfather is going mad, we still mean mad by our own common humandefinition. We mean, is he going to be a certain sort of person whomall men recognise when once he exists. That certain specialists candetect the approach of him, before he exists, does not alter the factthat it is of the practical and popular madman that we are talking, and of him alone. The doctor merely sees a certain fact potentially inthe future, while we, with less information, can only see it in thepresent; but his fact is our fact and everybody's fact, or we shouldnot bother about it at all. Here is no question of the doctor bringingan entirely new sort of person under coercion, as in theFeeble-Minded Bill. The doctor can say, "Tobacco is death to you, "because the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highlydemocratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of theindubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, "Jones hasthat twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house. " But it isnot 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. " Thedoctor may say, "He has that look in the eyes, and he may take thehatchet and brain you all. " But we do not object to the look in theeyes as such; we object to consequences which, once come, we shouldall 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 thehatchet. "

Now, that specialists are valuable for this particular and practicalpurpose, of predicting the approach of enormous and admitted humancalamities, nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring usone inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is acalamity; or to call things calamities which common sense does notcall calamities. We call in the doctor to save us from death; and, death being admittedly an evil, he has the right to administer thequeerest and most recondite pill which he may think is a cure for allsuch menaces of death. He has not the right to administer death, asthe cure for all human ills. And as he has no moral authority toenforce a new conception of happiness, so he has no moral authorityto enforce a new conception of sanity. He may know I am going mad; formadness is an isolated thing like leprosy; and I know nothing aboutleprosy. But if he merely thinks my mind is weak, I may happen tothink the same of his. I often do. 

In short, unless pilots are to be permitted to ram ships on to therocks and then say that heaven is the only true harbour; unless judgesare to be allowed to let murderers loose, and explain afterwards thatthe murder had done good on the whole; unless soldiers are to beallowed to lose battles and then point out that true glory is to befound in the valley of humiliation; unless cashiers are to rob a bankin order to give it an advertisement; or dentists to torture people togive them a contrast to their comforts; unless we are prepared to letloose all these private fancies against the public and acceptedmeaning of life or safety or prosperity or pleasure--then it is asplain as Punch's nose that no scientific man must be allowed to meddlewith the public definition of madness. We call him in to tell us whereit is or when it is. We could not do so, if we had not ourselvessettled what it is. 

As I wish to confine myself in this chapter to the primary point ofthe plain existence of sanity and insanity, I will not be led alongany of the attractive paths that open here. I shall endeavour to dealwith them in the next chapter. Here I confine myself to a sort ofsummary. Suppose a man's throat has been cut, quite swiftly andsuddenly, with a table knife, at a small table where we sit. Thewhole 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 supposeall the witnesses fall into a quarrel about degrees of eyesight. Suppose one says he had brought his reading-glasses instead of hisusual glasses; and therefore did not see the man fall across the tableand cover it with blood. Suppose another says he could not be certainit was blood, because a slight colour-blindness was hereditary in hisfamily. Suppose a third says he cannot swear to the uplifted knife, because his oculist tells him he is astigmatic, and vertical lines donot affect him as do horizontal lines. Suppose another says that dotshave often danced before his eyes in very fantastic combinations, manyof which were very like one gentleman cutting another gentleman'sthroat at dinner. All these things refer to real experiences. There issuch a thing as myopia; there is such a thing as colour-blindness;there is such a thing as astigmatism; there is such a thing asshifting shapes swimming before the eyes. But what should we think ofa whole dinner party that could give nothing except these highlyscientific explanations when found in company with a corpse? I imaginethere are only two things we could think: either that they were alldrunk, or they were all murderers. 

And yet there is an exception. If there were one man at table who wasadmittedly _blind_, should we not give him the benefit of the doubt?Should we not honestly feel that he was the exception that proved therule? The very fact that he could not have seen would remind us thatthe other men must have seen. The very fact that he had no eyes mustremind us of eyes. A man can be blind; a man can be dead; a man can bemad. But the comparison is necessarily weak, after all. For it is theessence of madness to be unlike anything else in the world: which isperhaps why so many men wiser than we have traced it to another. 

Lastly, the literal maniac is different from all other persons indispute 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 almostalways miserable himself, and he always makes others miserable. Butthis is not so with the mere invalid. The Eugenists would probablyanswer all my examples by taking the case of marrying into a familywith consumption (or some such disease which they are fairly sure ishereditary) and asking whether such cases at least are not clear casesfor a Eugenic intervention. Permit me to point out to them that theyonce more make a confusion of thought. The sickness or soundness of aconsumptive may be a clear and calculable matter. The happiness orunhappiness of a consumptive is quite another matter, and is notcalculable at all. What is the good of telling people that if theymarry for love, they may be punished by being the parents of Keats orthe parents of Stevenson? Keats died young; but he had more pleasurein a minute than a Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson hadlung-trouble; and it may, for all I know, have been perceptible to theEugenic eye even a generation before. But who would perform thatillegal operation: the stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letterbursting with good news, confiscating a hamper full of presents andprizes, pouring torrents of intoxicating wine into the sea, all thisis a faint approximation for the Eugenic inaction of the ancestors ofStevenson. This, however, is not the essential point; with Stevensonit is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure hegot. If he had died without writing a line, he would have had morered-hot joy than is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom Iowe so much, let the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray thatthe stars of the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered amongthe days of the year, because it shut not up the doors of his mother'swomb? I respectfully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon mymouth. 

CHAPTER V

THE FLYING AUTHORITY

It happened one day that an atheist and a man were standing togetheron a doorstep; and the atheist said, "It is raining. " To which the manreplied, "What is raining?": which question was the beginning of aviolent quarrel and a lasting friendship. I will not touch upon anyheads of the dispute, which doubtless included Jupiter Pluvius, theNeuter Gender, Pantheism, Noah's Ark, Mackintoshes, and the PassiveMood; but I will record the one point upon which the two personsemerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as anatheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the merediction of a man, though he be speaking of clocks or cats or anythingquite remote from theology. The mark of the atheistic style is that itinstinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are deadthings; that things have no souls. Thus they will not speak of wagingwar, which means willing it; they speak of the "outbreak of war, " asif all the guns blew up without the men touching them. Thus thoseSocialists that are atheist will not call their internationalsympathy, sympathy; they will call it "solidarity, " as if the poor menof France and Germany were physically stuck together like dates in agrocer's shop. The same Marxian Socialists are accused of cursing theCapitalists inordinately; but the truth is that they let theCapitalists off much too easily. For instead of saying that employerspay less wages, which might pin the employers to some moralresponsibility, they insist on talking about the "rise and fall" ofwages; as if a vast silver sea of sixpences and shillings was alwaysgoing up and down automatically like the real sea at Margate. Thusthey will not speak of reform, but of development; and they spoiltheir one honest and virile phrase, "the class war, " by talking of itas no one in his wits can talk of a war, predicting its finish andfinal result as one calculates the coming of Christmas Day or thetaxes. Thus, lastly (as we shall see touching our specialsubject-matter here) the atheist style in letters always avoidstalking of love or lust, which are things alive, and calls marriage orconcubinage "the relations of the sexes"; as if a man and a woman weretwo wooden objects standing in a certain angle and attitude to eachother, like a table and a chair. 

Now the same anarchic mystery that clings round the phrase, "_ilpleut_, " clings round the phrase, "_il faut_. " In English it isgenerally represented by the passive mood in grammar, and theEugenists and their like deal especially in it; they are as passive intheir statements as they are active in their experiments. Theirsentences always enter tail first, and have no subject, like animalswithout heads. It is never "the doctor should cut off this leg" or"the policeman should collar that man. " It is always "Such limbsshould be amputated, " or "Such men should be under restraint. " Hamletsaid, "I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave'soffal. " The Eugenist would say, "The region kites should, if possible, be fattened; and the offal of this slave is available for the dieteticexperiment. " Lady Macbeth said, "Give me the daggers; I'll let hisbowels out. " The Eugenist would say, "In such cases the bowels should, etc. " Do not blame me for the repulsiveness of the comparisons. I havesearched English literature for the most decent parallels to Eugenistlanguage. 

The formless god that broods over the East is called "Om. " Theformless god who has begun to brood over the West is called "On. " Buthere 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 thenormal citizen. He does not mean merely "one, " but one and all. "_Onn'a que sa parole_" does not mean "_Noblesse oblige_, " or "I am theDuke of Billingsgate and must keep my word. " It means: "One has asense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, shouldfeel honourable"; and this, whether possible or no, is the purestambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, "Conditionsmust be altered" or "Ancestry should be investigated, " or what not, itseems clear that they do not mean that the democracy must do it, whatever else they may mean. They do not mean that any man notevidently mad may be trusted with these tests and re-arrangements, asthe French democratic system trusts such a man with a vote or a farmor the control of a family. That would mean that Jones and Brown, being both ordinary men, would set about arranging each other'smarriages. And this state of affairs would seem a little elaborate, and it might occur even to the Eugenic mind that if Jones and Brownare quite capable of arranging each other's marriages, it is justpossible that they might be capable of arranging their own. 

This dilemma, which applies in so simple a case, applies equally toany wide and sweeping system of Eugenist voting; for though it is truethat the community can judge more dispassionately than a man can judgein his own case, this particular question of the choice of a wife isso full of disputable shades in every conceivable case, that it issurely obvious that almost any democracy would simply vote the thingout of the sphere of voting, as they would any proposal of policeinterference in the choice of walking weather or of children's names. I should not like to be the politician who should propose a particularinstance of Eugenics to be voted on by the French people. Democracydismissed, it is here hardly needful to consider the other old models. Modern scientists will not say that George III. , in his lucidintervals, should settle who is mad; or that the aristocracy thatintroduced 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 menshould settle each other's marriages between them; the questionremains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when they saythat this or that ought to be done. What is this flying and evanescentauthority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man whois the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's verb? In a largenumber of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenistmeans himself, and nobody else. Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A. H. Huth, actually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a greatdeal of good could be done with a surgical knife, if we would onlyturn him loose with one. And this may be true. A great deal of goodcould be done with a loaded revolver, in the hands of a judiciousstudent of human nature. But it is imperative that the Eugenist shouldperceive that on that principle we can never get beyond a perfectbalance of different sympathies and antipathies. I mean that I shoulddiffer from Dr. Saleeby or Dr. Karl Pearson not only in a vastmajority of individual cases, but in a vast majority of cases in whichthey would be bound to admit that such a difference was natural andreasonable. The chief victim of these famous doctors would be a yetmore famous doctor: that eminent though unpopular practitioner, Dr. Fell. 

To show that such rational and serious differences do exist, I willtake one instance from that Bill which proposed to protect familiesand the public generally from the burden of feeble-minded persons. Now, even if I could share the Eugenic contempt for human rights, evenif I could start gaily on the Eugenic campaign, I should not begin byremoving feeble-minded persons. I have known as many families in asmany classes as most men; and I cannot remember meeting any verymonstrous human suffering arising out of the presence of suchinsufficient and negative types. There seem to be comparatively few ofthem; and those few by no means the worst burdens upon domestichappiness. I do not hear of them often; I do not hear of them doingmuch more harm than good; and in the few cases I know well they arenot only regarded with human affection, but can be put to certainlimited forms of human use. Even if I were a Eugenist, then I shouldnot personally elect to waste my time locking up the feeble-minded. The people I should lock up would be the strong-minded. I have knownhardly any cases of mere mental weakness making a family a failure; Ihave known eight or nine cases of violent and exaggerated force ofcharacter making a family a hell. If the strong-minded could besegregated it would quite certainly be better for their friends andfamilies. And if there is really anything in heredity, it would bebetter for posterity too. For the kind of egoist I mean is a madmanin a much more plausible sense than the mere harmless "deficient"; andto hand on the horrors of his anarchic and insatiable temperament is amuch graver responsibility than to leave a mere inheritance ofchildishness. I would not arrest such tyrants, because I think thateven moral tyranny in a few homes is better than a medical tyrannyturning the state into a madhouse. I would not segregate them, becauseI respect a man's free-will and his front-door and his right to betried by his peers. But since free-will is believed by Eugenists nomore than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenistsno more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is aboutas 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 demoniacfrom each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Billcall at the many grand houses in town or country where such nightmaresnotoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the badsquire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniacprize-fighter? I do not know; and there is only one reason I can thinkof, 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 thatstood up to bullies. 

That, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention thecase of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give oneout of the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individualopinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit topropagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating triptogether, we should separate at the very door; and if he had athousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyonewho has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows thatthe ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some littlehobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad forchildren, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many morepeople ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human natureto expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard, dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, asexercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man wouldhave his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his ownmadman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another wouldwander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be theterror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their catsand dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, itseems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than hisown implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lessonwhich is hardest for him and me and for all our fallen race--the factthat 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 overtheir neighbours; and we come to consider whether the Eugenists haveat all clearly traced any more imaginable public authority, anyapparatus of great experts or great examinations to which such risksof tyranny could be trusted. They are not very precise about thiseither; indeed, the great difficulty I have throughout in consideringwhat are the Eugenist's proposals is that they do not seem to knowthemselves. Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connectwith human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness oftheir definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans. The Eugenicoptimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled andconfused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that it will beall right on the night. They have all the ancient despotism, but noneof the ancient dogmatism. If they are ready to reproduce the secreciesand cruelties of the Inquisition, at least we cannot accuse them ofoffending us with any of that close and complicated thought, that aridand exact logic which narrowed the minds of the Middle Ages; they havediscovered how to combine the hardening of the heart with asympathetic softening of the head. Nevertheless, there is one large, though vague, idea of the Eugenists, which is an idea, and which wereach when we reach this problem of a more general supervision. 

It was best presented perhaps by the distinguished doctor who wrotethe article on these matters in that composite book which Mr. Wellsedited, and called "The Great State. " He said the doctor should nolonger be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in hisown words, "the health adviser of the community. " The same can beexpressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb thatprevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that itamounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. Thisthe writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. Towhich 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 isthe fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine. Prevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man's head is notbetter than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing tocure it. And it is the same if a man is in revolt, even a morbidrevolt. Taking the heart out of him by slavery is not better thanleaving the heart in him, even if you leave it a broken heart. Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worsethan disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with theextra exasperation of being quite well. I will ask God, but certainlynot man, to prevent me in all my doings. But the decisive anddiscussable form of this is well summed up in that phrase about thehealth adviser of society. I am sure that those who speak thus havesomething in their minds larger and more illuminating than the othertwo propositions we have considered. They do not mean that allcitizens should decide, which would mean merely the present vague anddubious balance. They do not mean that all medical men should decide, which would mean a much more unbalanced balance. They mean that a fewmen might be found who had a consistent scheme and vision of a healthynation, as Napoleon had a consistent scheme and vision of an army. Itis cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men'smarriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize andsegregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a fewgreat hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens, asnurses 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 mencould be certainly chosen, we are back again on the old dilemma ofdespotism, which means a man, or democracy which means men, oraristocracy which means favouritism. But as a vision the thing isplausible and even rational. It is rational, and it is wrong. 

It is wrong, quite apart from the suggestion that an expert on healthcannot be chosen. It is wrong because an expert on health cannotexist. An expert on disease can exist, for the very reason we havealready considered in the case of madness, because experts can onlyarise out of exceptional things. A parallel with any of the otherlearned professions will make the point plain. If I am prosecuted fortrespass, I will ask my solicitor which of the local lanes I amforbidden to walk in. But if my solicitor, having gained my case, wereso elated that he insisted on settling what lanes I should walk in; ifhe asked me to let him map out all my country walks, because he wasthe perambulatory adviser of the community--then that solicitor wouldsolicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me throughwoodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues andattractive 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 ofEngland. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you knowEngland. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was lookingat it. " As are the limits of the lawyer's special knowledge aboutwalking, so are the limits of the doctor's. If I fall over the stumpof a tree and break my leg, as is likely enough, I shall say to thelawyer, "Please go and fetch the doctor. " I shall do it because thedoctor really has a larger knowledge of a narrower area. There areonly a certain number of ways in which a leg can be broken; I knownone of them, and he knows all of them. There is such a thing as beinga specialist in broken legs. There is no such thing as being aspecialist in legs. When unbroken, legs are a matter of taste. If thedoctor has really mended my leg, he may merit a colossal equestrianstatue on the top of an eternal tower of brass. But if the doctor hasreally mended my leg he has no more rights over it. He must not comeand teach me how to walk; because he and I learnt that in the sameschool, the nursery. And there is no more abstract likelihood of thedoctor walking more elegantly than I do than there is of the barber orthe bishop or the burglar walking more elegantly than I do. Therecannot be a general specialist; the specialist can have no kind ofauthority, unless he has avowedly limited his range. There cannot besuch a thing as the health adviser of the community, because therecannot be such a thing as one who specialises in the universe. 

Thus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be married shouldbe obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-book, theexpression is neat; but it does not convey the real respects in whichthe two things agree, and in which they differ. To begin with, ofcourse, there is a great deal too much of the bank-book for the sanityof our commonwealth; and it is highly probable that the health-book, as conducted in modern conditions, would rapidly become as timid, assnobbish, and as sterile as the money side of marriage has become. Inthe moral atmosphere of modernity the poor and the honest wouldprobably get as much the worst of it if we fought with health-books asthey do when we fight with bank-books. But that is a more generalmatter; the real point is in the difference between the two. Thedifference is in this vital fact: that a monied man generally thinksabout money, whereas a healthy man does not think about health. Ifthe strong young man cannot produce his health-book, it is for theperfectly simple reason that he has not got one. He can mention someextraordinary malady he has; but every man of honour is expected to dothat now, whatever may be the decision that follows on the knowledge. 

Health is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the impudenceto understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostic has anyright to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among otherthings, that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things, bywhich they are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and anyscientist who pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimatesanity, I will call the lowest of religious fanatics. I will allow himto understand the madman, for the madman is an exception. But if hesays he understands the sane man, then he says he has the secret ofthe Creator. For whenever you and I feel fully sane, we are quiteincapable of naming the elements that make up that mysterioussimplicity. We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we canconceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium bywhich, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling likeprecipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing. 

We conclude, therefore, that unless Eugenic activity be restricted tomonstrous things like mania, there is no constituted or constitutableauthority that can really over-rule men in a matter in which they areso largely on a level. In the matter of fundamental human rights, nothing can be above Man, except God. An institution claiming to comefrom God might have such authority; but this is the last claim theEugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking torule men in such matters is like a man's right eye claiming to rulehim, or his left leg to run away with him. It is madness. We now passon to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenicsto be done, with such cheerfulness as we may possess after discoveringthat there is nobody to do it. 

CHAPTER VI

THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE

Dr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in one of hisaddresses on this subject, and said that even I cannot produce any buta feeble-minded child from a feeble-minded ancestry. To which I reply, first of all, that he cannot produce a feeble-minded child. The wholepoint of our contention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed andoutside opinion. There is such a thing as mania, which has always beensegregated; there is such a thing as idiotcy, which has always beensegregated; but feeble-mindedness is a new phrase under which youmight segregate anybody. It is essential that this fundamental fallacyin the use of statistics should be got somehow into the modern mind. Such people must be made to see the point, which is surely plainenough, that it is useless to have exact figures if they are exactfigures about an inexact phrase. If I say, "There are five fools inActon, " it is surely quite clear that, though no mathematician canmake five the same as four or six, that will not stop you or anyoneelse from finding a few more fools in Acton. Now weak-mindedness, likefolly, is a term divided from madness in this vital manner--that inone sense it applies to all men, in another to most men, in anotherto 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, whowas very sensitive about her sonnets being criticised, and I found herlittle daughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment isconclusive, the demonstration is complete; there in the firstgeneration is the artistic temperament--that is vanity; and there inthe second generation is dress--and that is vanity. " We should answer, "My friend, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit--especiallywhen one has to listen to logic of your favourite kind. Obviously allhuman beings must value themselves; and obviously there is in all suchvaluation an element of weakness, since it is not the valuation ofeternal justice. What is the use of your finding by experiment in somepeople 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 possiblemisunderstanding. I do not mean that you and I cannot and do notpractically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric orintermediate type, for which the word "feeble-minded" might be a veryconvenient word, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinablefact of experience. In the same way we might speak, and do speak, ofsuch and such a person being "mad with vanity" without wanting twokeepers to walk in and take the person off. But I ask the reader toremember always that I am talking of words, not as they are used intalk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, inwarrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament. The distinctionbetween the two is perfectly clear and practical. The difference isthat a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit the mark; itis all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the type should berecognised; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the right man. But it is by no means always to the interests of governments orofficials to hang the right man. The fact that they often do stretchwords in order to cover cases is the whole foundation of having anyfixed laws or free institutions at all. My point is not that I havenever met anyone whom I should call feeble-minded, rather than mad orimbecile. My point is that if I want to dispossess a nephew, oust arival, silence a blackmailer, or get rid of an importunate widow, there is nothing in logic to prevent my calling them feeble-mindedtoo. And the vaguer the charge is the less they will be able todisprove it. 

One does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resistsuch legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual worldin order to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may besuch a thing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is sucha thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound inmere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits;believing that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason tosuppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. All that is mererationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance andterror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but deniesthere can be devils. The superstition is in the person who admitsthere can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. Yet I shouldcertainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectlysimple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. Thereason is that it is one thing to believe in witches, and quiteanother to believe in witch-smellers. I have more respect for the oldwitch-finders than for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting thefool of the family; because the witch-finders, according to their ownconviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but thestrong-minded--the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many araid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it arighteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy ofsin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid anddespicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being awar upon the weak. It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being. 

When I said above that I believed in witches, but not inwitch-smellers, I stated my full position about that conception ofheredity, that half-formed philosophy of fears and omens; of cursesand weird recurrence and darkness and the doom of blood, which, aspreached to humanity to-day, is often more inhuman than witchcraftitself. I do not deny that this dark element exists; I only affirmthat it is dark; or, in other words, that its most strenuous studentsare evidently in the dark about it. I would no more trust Dr. KarlPearson on a heredity-hunt than on a heresy-hunt. I am perfectly readyto give my reasons for thinking this; and I believe any well-balancedperson, if he reflects on them, will think as I do. There are twosenses in which a man may be said to know or not know a subject. Iknow the subject of arithmetic, for instance; that is, I am not goodat it, but I know what it is. I am sufficiently familiar with its useto see the absurdity of anyone who says, "So vulgar a fraction cannotbe mentioned before ladies, " or "This unit is Unionist, I hope. "Considering myself for one moment as an arithmetician, I may say thatI know next to nothing about my subject: but I know my subject. I knowit in the street. There is the other kind of man, like Dr. KarlPearson, who undoubtedly knows a vast amount about his subject; whoundoubtedly lives in great forests of facts concerning kinship andinheritance. But it is not, by any means, the same thing to havesearched the forests and to have recognised the frontiers. Indeed, thetwo things generally belong to two very different types of mind. Igravely doubt whether the Astronomer-Royal would write the best essayon the relations between astronomy and astrology. I doubt whether thePresident of the Geographical Society could give the best definitionand history of the words "geography" and "geology. "

Now the students of heredity, especially, understand all of theirsubject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born inthat brier-patch, and have really explored it without coming to theend of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question ofwhat they are studying. Now I do not propose to rely merely on myselfto tell them what they are studying. I propose, as will be seen in amoment, to call the testimony of a great man who has himself studiedit. But to begin with, the domain of heredity (for those who see itsfrontiers) is a sort of triangle, enclosed on its three sides by threefacts. The first is that heredity undoubtedly exists, or there wouldbe no such thing as a family likeness, and every marriage mightsuddenly produce a small negro. The second is that even simpleheredity can never be simple; its complexity must be literallyunfathomable, for in that field fight unthinkable millions. But yetagain it never is simple heredity: for the instant anyone is, heexperiences. The third is that these innumerable ancient influences, these instant inundations of experiences, come together according to acombination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is acombination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even onthe Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in thesense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If agolden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, theScandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the facethat the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They cannever be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in everyfeature, in every inch. In the person of the baby he may have gentlypulled his wife's nose. In the person of the baby he may have partlyblacked his wife's eyes. 

Those are the three first facts of heredity. That it exists; that itis subtle and made of a million elements; that it is simple, andcannot be unmade into those elements. To summarise: you know there iswine in the soup. You do not know how many wines there are in thesoup, because you do not know how many wines there are in the world. And you never will know, because all chemists, all cooks, and allcommon-sense people tell you that the soup is of such a sort that itcan never be chemically analysed. That is a perfectly fair parallel tothe hereditary element in the human soul. There are many ways in whichone can feel that there is wine in the soup, as in suddenly tasting awine specially favoured; that corresponds to seeing suddenly flash ona young face the image of some ancestor you have known. But even thenthe taster cannot be certain he is not tasting one familiar wine amongmany unfamiliar ones--or seeing one known ancestor among a millionunknown ancestors. Another way is to get drunk on the soup, whichcorresponds to the case of those who say they are driven to sin anddeath by hereditary doom. But even then the drunkard cannot be certainit was the soup, any more than the traditional drunkard who is certainit was the salmon. 

Those are the facts about heredity which anyone can see. The upshot ofthem is not only that a miss is as good as a mile, but a miss is asgood as a win. If the child has his parents' nose (or noses) that maybe heredity. But if he has not, that may be heredity too. And as weneed not take heredity lightly because two generations differ--so weneed not take heredity a scrap more seriously because two generationsare similar. The thing is there, in what cases we know not, in whatproportion 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 humanhealth and sickness as a whole, in a spirit of more or lessenlightened guesswork; and it is perfectly natural that he shouldallow for heredity here, there, and everywhere, as a man climbing amountain or sailing a boat will allow for weather without evenexplaining it to himself. An utterly different attitude is incumbenton any conscientious man writing about what laws should be enforced orabout how commonwealths should be governed. And when we consider howplain a fact is murder, and yet how hesitant and even hazy we all growabout the guilt of a murderer, when we consider how simple an act isstealing, and yet how hard it is to convict and punish those richcommercial pirates who steal the most, when we consider how cruel andclumsy the law can be even about things as old and plain as the TenCommandments--I simply cannot conceive any responsible personproposing to legislate on our broken knowledge and bottomlessignorance of heredity. 

But though I have to consider this dull matter in its due logicalorder, it appears to me that this part of the matter has been settled, and settled in a most masterly way, by somebody who has infinitelymore right to speak on it than I have. Our press seems to have aperfect genius for fitting people with caps that don't fit; andaffixing the wrong terms of eulogy and even the wrong terms of abuse. And just as people will talk of Bernard Shaw as a naughty winkingPierrot, when he is the last great Puritan and really believes inrespectability; just as (_si parva licet_ etc. ) they will talk of myown paradoxes, when I pass my life in preaching that the truisms aretrue; so an enormous number of newspaper readers seem to have it fixedfirmly in their heads that Mr. H. G. Wells is a harsh and horribleEugenist in great goblin spectacles, who wants to put us all intometallic microscopes and dissect us with metallic tools. As a matterof fact, of course, Mr. Wells, so far from being too definite, isgenerally not definite enough. He is an absolute wizard in theappreciation of atmospheres and the opening of vistas; but his answersare more agnostic than his questions. His books will do everythingexcept shut. And so far from being the sort of man who would stop aman from propagating, he cannot even stop a full stop. He is notEugenic enough to prevent the black dot at the end of a sentence frombreeding a line of little dots. 

But this is not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The realblunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland ofmedals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on groundsof public economy, to giving Mr. Wells only one medal _ob civesservatos_, I would give him a medal as the Eugenist who destroyedEugenics. For everyone spoke of him, rightly or wrongly, as aEugenist; and he certainly had, as I have not, the training and typeof culture required to consider the matter merely in a biological andnot in a generally moral sense. The result was that in that fine book, "Mankind in the Making, " where he inevitably came to grips with theproblem, he threw down to the Eugenists an intellectual challengewhich seems to me unanswerable, but which, at any rate, is unanswered. I do not mean that no remote Eugenist wrote upon the subject; for itis impossible to read all writings, especially Eugenist writings. I domean that the leading Eugenists write as if this challenge had neverbeen offered. The gauntlet lies unlifted on the ground. 

Having given honour for the idea where it is due, I may be permittedto summarise it myself for the sake of brevity. Mr. Wells' point wasthis. That we cannot be certain about the inheritance of health, because health is not a quality. It is not a thing like darkness inthe hair or length in the limbs. It is a relation, a balance. You havea tall, strong man; but his very strength depends on his not being tootall for his strength. You catch a healthy, full-blooded fellow; buthis very health depends on his being not too full of blood. A heartthat is strong for a dwarf will be weak for a giant; a nervous systemthat would kill a man with a trace of a certain illness will sustainhim to ninety if he has no trace of that illness. Nay, the samenervous system might kill him if he had an excess of some othercomparatively healthy thing. Seeing, therefore, that there areapparently healthy people of all types, it is obvious that if you matetwo of them, you may even then produce a discord out of twoinconsistent harmonies. It is obvious that you can no more be certainof a good offspring than you can be certain of a good tune if you playtwo fine airs at once on the same piano. You can be even less certainof it in the more delicate case of beauty, of which the Eugenists talka great deal. Marry two handsome people whose noses tend to theaquiline, and their baby (for all you know) may be a goblin with anose like an enormous parrot's. Indeed, I actually know a case of thiskind. The Eugenist has to settle, not the result of fixing one steadything to a second steady thing; but what will happen when one topplingand dizzy equilibrium crashes into another. 

This is the interesting conclusion. It is on this degree of knowledgethat we are asked to abandon the universal morality of mankind. Whenwe have stopped the lover from marrying the unfortunate woman heloves, when we have found him another uproariously healthy female whomhe does not love in the least, even then we have no logical evidencethat the result may not be as horrid and dangerous as if he hadbehaved like a man of honour. 

CHAPTER VII

THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT

Let us now finally consider what the honest Eugenists do mean, sinceit has become increasingly evident that they cannot mean what theysay. Unfortunately, the obstacles to any explanation of this are suchas to insist on a circuitous approach. The tendency of all that isprinted and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only truesense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that itis 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 mayeven, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what hethinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of thenearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out ofclassical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes towrite it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery wherehe learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt hisstalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go histhoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day canbe delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worthdelivering at all. The poor panting critic falls farther and fartherbehind the motor-car of modern fact. Fifty years ago he was barelyfifteen years behind the times. Fifteen years ago he was not more thanfifty years behind the times. Just now he is rather more than ahundred years behind the times: and the proof of it is that the thingshe says, though manifest nonsense about our society to-day, reallywere true about our society some hundred and thirty years ago. Thebest instance of his belated state is his perpetual assertion that thesupernatural is less and less believed. It is a perfectly true andrealistic account--of the eighteenth century. It is the worst possibleaccount of this age of psychics and spirit-healers and fakirs andfashionable fortune-tellers. In fact, I generally reply in eighteenthcentury language to this eighteenth century illusion. If somebody saysto me, "The creeds are crumbling, " I reply, "And the King of Prussia, who is himself a Freethinker, is certainly capturing Silesia from theCatholic Empress. " If somebody says, "Miracles must be reconsidered inthe light of rational experience, " I answer affably, "But I hope thatour enlightened leader, Hébert, will not insist on guillotining thatpoor French queen. " If somebody says, "We must watch for the rise ofsome new religion which can commend itself to reason, " I reply, "Buthow much more necessary is it to watch for the rise of some militaryadventurer who may destroy the Republic: and, to my mind, that youngMajor Bonaparte has rather a restless air. " It is only in suchlanguage from the Age of Reason that we can answer such things. Theage we live in is something more than an age of superstition--it is anage of innumerable superstitions. But it is only with one example ofthis that I am concerned here. 

I mean the error that still sends men marching about disestablishingchurches and talking of the tyranny of compulsory church teaching orcompulsory church tithes. I do not wish for an irrelevantmisunderstanding here; I would myself certainly disestablish anychurch that had a numerical minority, like the Irish or the Welsh; andI think it would do a great deal of good to genuine churches that havea 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 nowthere 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; butseemed rather relieved at the independence his Church gained by thedestruction of it: and it is common talk among the French clericaliststhat the Church has gained by the change. In Russia the one realcharge brought by religious people (especially Roman Catholics)against the Orthodox Church is not its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, butits abject dependence on the State. In England we can almost measurean Anglican's fervour for his Church by his comparative coolness aboutits establishment--that is, its control by a Parliament of ScotchPresbyterians like Balfour, or Welsh Congregationalists like LloydGeorge. In Scotland the powerful combination of the two great sectsoutside the establishment have left it in a position in which it feelsno disposition to boast of being called by mere lawyers the Church ofScotland. I am not here arguing that Churches should not depend on theState; nor that they do not depend upon much worse things. It may bereasonably maintained that the strength of Romanism, though it be notin 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 Churchesare not now leaning heavily on their political establishment; they arenot using heavily the secular arm. Almost everywhere their legaltithes have been modified, their legal boards of control have beenmixed. They may still employ tyranny, and worse tyranny: I am notconsidering that. They are not specially using that special tyrannywhich consists in using the government. 

The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government isScience. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, thecreed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed thatreally is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not bypilgrims but by policemen--that creed is the great but disputedsystem of thought which began with Evolution and has ended inEugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for theGovernment will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination, in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as muchas baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite naturalto our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to themmadness to enforce baptism. 

I am not frightened of the word "persecution" when it is attributed tothe churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that Iattribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. Ifit 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 StateChurch--in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied toany supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where thereligious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way orthat; 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 thecriminal law to go through the rite of the official religion. Even theYoung Turks did not insist on all Macedonians being circumcised. 

Now here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, inthe past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence, it has been at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixedand flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by theirenemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But whatare the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword toenforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions andbewildered answers that we have been studying in the lastchapters--questions whose only interest is that they are trackless andmysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative andnew. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; andtherefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of scienceactually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet hepersecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced hiscreed, because it was unchangeable. The _savant_ enforces it violentlybecause he may change it the next day. 

Now this is a new sort of persecution; and one may be permitted to askif it is an improvement on the old. The difference, so far as one cansee at first, seems rather favourable to the old. If we are to be atthe merciless mercy of man, most of us would rather be racked for acreed that existed intensely in somebody's head, rather thanvivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone's head, and possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with athumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with avivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet thatis the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. IfI gave in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed toprofess. But even if I yelled out _a credo_ when the Eugenists had meon the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get anextra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessedquite a week ago. 

Now let no light-minded person say that I am here taking extravagantparallels; for the parallel is not only perfect, but plain. For thisreason: that the difference between torture and vivisection is not inany way affected by the fierceness or mildness of either. Whether theygave the rack half a turn or half a hundred, they were, by hypothesis, dealing with a truth which they knew to be there. Whether theyvivisect painfully or painlessly, they are trying to find out whetherthe truth is there or not. The old Inquisitors tortured to put theirown opinions into somebody. But the new Inquisitors torture to gettheir own opinions out of him. They do not know what their ownopinions are, until the victim of vivisection tells them. The divisionof thought is a complete chasm for anyone who cares about thinking. The old persecutor was trying to _teach_ the citizen, with fire andsword. The new persecutor is trying to _learn_ from the citizen, withscalpel and germ-injector. The master was meeker than the pupil willbe. 

I could prove by many practical instances that even my illustrationsare not exaggerated, by many placid proposals I have heard for thevivisection 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 wasused to end _our_ indecision, the whole point here is that theviolence is used to end the indecision of the persecutors. This iswhat 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 forconversion, but simply as a _pabulum_ for experiment. That is thereal, rude, barbaric sense behind this Eugenic legislation. TheEugenist doctors are not such fools as they look in the light of anylogical 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 findout. They are quite seriously, as they themselves might say, the firstreligion to be experimental instead of doctrinal. All otherestablished Churches have been based on somebody having found thetruth. This is the first Church that was ever based on not havingfound it. 

There is in them a perfectly sincere hope and enthusiasm; but it isnot for us, but for what they might learn from us, if they could ruleus as they can rabbits. They cannot tell us anything about heredity, because they do not know anything about it. But they do quite honestlybelieve that they would know something about it, when they had marriedand mismarried us for a few hundred years. They cannot tell us who isfit to wield such authority, for they know that nobody is; but they doquite honestly believe that when that authority has been abused for avery long time, somebody somehow will be evolved who is fit for thejob. I am no Puritan, and no one who knows my opinions will considerit a mere criminal charge if I say that they are simply gambling. Thereckless gambler has no money in his pockets; he has only the ideas inhis head. These gamblers have no ideas in their heads; they have onlythe money in their pockets. But they think that if they could use themoney to buy a big society to experiment on, something like an ideamight come to them at last. That is Eugenics. 

I confine myself here to remarking that I do not like it. I may bevery stingy, but I am willing to pay the scientist for what he doesknow; I draw the line at paying him for everything he doesn't know. Imay be very cowardly, but I am willing to be hurt for what I think orwhat he thinks--I am not willing to be hurt, or even inconvenienced, for whatever he might happen to think after he had hurt me. Theordinary citizen may easily be more magnanimous than I, and take thewhole thing on trust; in which case his career may be happier in thenext world, but (I think) sadder in this. At least, I wish to pointout to him that he will not be giving his glorious body as soldiersgive it, to the glory of a fixed flag, or martyrs to the glory of adeathless God. He will be, in the strict sense of the Latin phrase, giving his vile body for an experiment--an experiment of which eventhe 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 asthey treat themselves. I have attempted an analysis of their theory asif it were an utterly abstract and disinterested theory; and soconsidered, there seems to be very little left of it. But before I goon, in the second part of this book, to talk of the ugly things thatreally are left, I wish to recapitulate the essential points in theiressential order, lest any personal irrelevance or over-emphasis (towhich I know myself to be prone) should have confused the course ofwhat I believe to be a perfectly fair and consistent argument. To makeit yet clearer, I will summarise the thing under chapters, and inquite short paragraphs. 

In the first chapter I attempted to define the essential point inwhich Eugenics can claim, and does claim, to be a new morality. Thatpoint is that it is possible to consider the baby in considering thebride. 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, "Whatcan we do for posterity, except deal fairly with our contemporaries?"Unless a man love his wife whom he has seen, how shall he love hischild whom he has not seen?

In the second chapter I point out that this division in the consciencecannot be met by mere mental confusions, which would make any womanrefusing any man a Eugenist. There will always be something in theworld which tends to keep outrageous unions exceptional; thatinfluence is not Eugenics, but laughter. 

In the third chapter I seek to describe the quite extraordinaryatmosphere in which such things have become possible. I call thatatmosphere anarchy; but insist that it is an anarchy in the centreswhere there should be authority. Government has become ungovernable;that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; thatis, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of ourtime is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government. Inthis atmosphere it is natural enough that medical experts, beingauthorities, should go mad, and attempt so crude and random andimmature 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 thenarrow channel of the Lunacy Laws, and has obliterated them byextending them. The whole point of the madman is that he is theexception that proves the rule. But Eugenics seeks to treat the wholerule as a series of exceptions--to make all men mad. And on thatground there is hope for nobody; for all opinions have an author, andall authors have a heredity. The mentality of the Eugenist makes himbelieve in Eugenics as much as the mentality of the reckless lovermakes him violate Eugenics; and both mentalities are, on thematerialist hypothesis, equally the irresponsible product of more orless unknown physical causes. The real security of man against anylogical Eugenics is like the false security of Macbeth. The onlyEugenist that could rationally attack him must be a man of no womanborn. 

In the chapter following this, which is called "The Flying Authority, "I try in vain to locate and fix any authority that could rationallyrule men in so rooted and universal a matter; little would be gainedby ordinary men doing it to each other; and if ordinary practitionersdid it they would very soon show, by a thousand whims and quarrels, that they were ordinary men. I then discussed the enlighteneddespotism of a few general professors of hygiene, and found itunworkable, for an essential reason: that while we can always get menintelligent enough to know more than the rest of us about this or thataccident or pain or pest, we cannot count on the appearance of greatcosmic philosophers; and only such men can be even supposed to knowmore than we do about normal conduct and common sanity. Every sort ofman, in short, would shirk such a responsibility, except the worstsort of man, who would accept it. 

I pass on, in the next chapter, to consider whether we know enoughabout heredity to act decisively, even if we were certain who ought toact. Here I refer the Eugenists to the reply of Mr. Wells, which theyhave never dealt with to my knowledge or satisfaction--the importantand primary objection that health is not a quality but a proportion ofqualities; so that even health married to health might produce theexaggeration called disease. It should be noted here, of course, thatan individual biologist may quite honestly believe that he has found afixed principle with the help of Weissmann or Mendel. But we are notdiscussing whether he knows enough to be justified in thinking (as issomewhat the habit of the anthropoid _Homo_) that he is right. We arediscussing whether _we_ know enough, as responsible citizens, to putsuch powers into the hands of men who may be deceived or who may bedeceivers. I conclude that we do not. 

In the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, Ibelieve, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what theEugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what theywant. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire theestablishment of research; that is the making of it a thing officialand compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it isonly research and not discovery. In short, they want a new kind ofState Church, which shall be an Established Church of Doubt--insteadof Faith. They have no Science of Eugenics at all, but they do reallymean that if we will give ourselves up to be vivisected they may veryprobably 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 theconsideration of things that really exist. It is, I deeply regret tosay, necessary to return to realities, as they are in your daily lifeand mine. Our happy holiday in the land of nonsense is over; we shallsee 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 areripened only by moonshine. We shall meet no longer those deliciousmonsters that might have talked in the same wild club with the Snarkand 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 thoroughlyunderstands the child she will some day bear; the lawyer who has torun after his own laws almost as fast as the criminals run away fromthem; the two mad doctors who might discuss for a million years whichof them has the right to lock up the other; the grammarian who clingsconvulsively to the Passive Mood, and says it is the duty of somethingto get itself done without any human assistance; the man who wouldmarry giants to giants until the back breaks, as children pile brickupon brick for the pleasure of seeing the staggering tower tumbledown; and, above all, the superb man of science who wants you to payhim and crown him because he has so far found out nothing. Thesefairy-tale comrades must leave us. They exist, but they have noinfluence 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 wecome to think coolly of the world we live in, if we consider how verypractical is the practical politician, at least where cash isconcerned, how very dull and earthy are most of the men who own themillions and manage the newspaper trusts, how very cautious and aversefrom idealist upheaval are those that control this capitalistsociety--when we consider all this, it is frankly incredible thatEugenics should be a front bench fashionable topic and almost an Actof Parliament, if it were in practice only the unfinished fantasywhich it is, as I have shown, in pure reason. Even if it were a justrevolution, it would be much too revolutionary a revolution for modernstatesmen, if there were not something else behind. Even if it were atrue ideal, it would be much too idealistic an ideal for our"practical men, " if there were not something real as well. Well, thereis something real as well. There is no reason in Eugenics, but thereis plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory, but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while Ireiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quiteinnocent instruments, there _are_ some, even among Eugenists, who bythis time know what they are doing. To them we shall not say, "What isEugenics?" or "Where on earth are you going?" but only "Woe unto you, hypocrites, that devour widows' houses and for a pretence use longwords. "

Part II

THE REAL AIM

CHAPTER I

THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE

The root formula of an epoch is always an unwritten law, just as thelaw that is the first of all laws, that which protects life from themurderer, is written nowhere in the Statute Book. Nevertheless thereis all the difference between having and not having a notion of thisbasic assumption in an epoch. For instance, the Middle Ages willsimply puzzle us with their charities and cruelties, their asceticismand bright colours, unless we catch their general eagerness forbuilding and planning, dividing this from that by walls andfences--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 outfrom behind his hedges. Thus even liberty became a positive thing likea privilege; and even, when most men had it, it was not opened likethe 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 barbaricmassacre of prisoners, until we realise that, if the Middle Ages was ahouse half built, the seventeenth century was a house on fire. Panicwas the note of it, and that fierce fastidiousness and exclusivenessthat comes from fear. Calvinism was its characteristic religion, evenin the Catholic Church, the insistence on the narrowness of the wayand the fewness of the chosen. Suspicion was the note of itspolitics--"put not your trust in princes. " It tried to thrasheverything out by learned, virulent, and ceaseless controversy; and itweeded its population by witch-burning. Or yet again: the eighteenthcentury will present pictures that seem utterly opposite, and yet seemsingularly typical of the time: the sack of Versailles and the "Vicarof Wakefield"; the pastorals of Watteau and the dynamite speeches ofDanton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sightof the idea of _tidying up_ which ran through the whole period, thequietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilisation, andsound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest peoplehaving (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness forits own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only areadiness to employ it to get rid of unreason or disorder. With theseepochs it is not altogether impossible to say that some such form ofwords is a key. The epoch for which it is almost impossible to find aform 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 aresubconsciously dominated in all departments by the notion that thereis no turning back, and it is rooted in materialism and the denial offree-will. Take any handful of modern facts and compare them with thecorresponding facts a few hundred years ago. Compare the modern PartySystem with the political factions of the seventeenth century. Thedifference is that in the older time the party leaders not only reallycut off each other's heads, but (what is much more alarming) reallyrepealed each other's laws. With us it has become traditional for oneparty to inherit and leave untouched the acts of the other when made, however bitterly they were attacked in the making. James II. And hisnephew William were neither of them very gay specimens; but they wouldboth have laughed at the idea of "a continuous foreign policy. " TheTories were not Conservatives; they were, in the literal sense, reactionaries. They did not merely want to keep the Stuarts; theywanted to bring them back. 

Or again, consider how obstinately the English mediæval monarchyreturned again and again to its vision of French possessions, tryingto reverse the decision of fate; how Edward III. Returned to thecharge after the defeats of John and Henry III. , and Henry V. Afterthe failure of Edward III. ; and how even Mary had that written on herheart which was neither her husband nor her religion. And thenconsider this: that we have comparatively lately known a universalorgy of the thing called Imperialism, the unity of the Empire the onlytopic, colonies counted like crown jewels, and the Union Jack wavedacross the world. And yet no one so much as dreamed, I will not say ofrecovering, the American colonies for the Imperial unity (which wouldhave been too dangerous a task for modern empire-builders), but evenof re-telling the story from an Imperial standpoint. Henry V. Justified the claims of Edward III. Joseph Chamberlain would not havedreamed of justifying the claims of George III. Nay, Shakespearejustifies the French War, and sticks to Talbot and defies the legendof Joan of Arc. Mr. Kipling would not dare to justify the AmericanWar, stick to Burgoyne, and defy the legend of Washington. Yet therereally was much more to be said for George III. Than there ever wasfor Henry V. It was not said, much less acted upon, by the modernImperialists; because of this basic modern sense, that as the futureis inevitable, so is the past irrevocable. Any fact so complete as theAmerican exodus from the Empire must be considered as final for æons, though it hardly happened more than a hundred years ago. Merelybecause it has managed to occur it must be called first, a necessaryevil, and then an indispensable good. I need not add that I do notwant to reconquer America; but then I am not an Imperialist. 

Then there is another way of testing it: ask yourself how many peopleyou have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many whoattacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse theBritish elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate?How few have we met who realised that British education can bealtered, but British weather cannot? How few there were that knew thatthe clouds were more immortal and more solid than the schools? For athousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, orthe 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 Reformand Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; but nobody talks aboutrepeal. Our fathers did not talk of Free Trade, but of the Repeal ofthe Corn Laws. They did not talk of Home Rule, but of the Repeal ofthe Union. In those days people talked of a "Repealer" as the mostpractical of all politicians, the kind of politician that carries aclub. Now the Repealer is flung far into the province of an impossibleidealism: and the leader of one of our great parties, having said, ina heat of temporary sincerity, that he would repeal an Act, actuallyhad to write to all the papers to assure them that he would only amendit. I need not multiply instances, though they might be multipliedalmost to a million. The note of the age is to suggest that the pastmay just as well be praised, since it cannot be mended. Men actuallyin that past have toiled like ants and died like locusts to undo someprevious settlement that seemed secure; but we cannot do so much asrepeal an Act of Parliament. We entertain the weak-minded notion thatwhat is done can't be undone. Our view was well summarised in atypical Victorian song with the refrain: "The mill will never grindagain the water that is past. " There are many answers to this. One(which would involve a disquisition on the phenomena of Evaporationand Dew) we will here avoid. Another is, that to the minds of simplecountry folk, the object of a mill is not to grind water, but to grindcorn, and that (strange as it may seem) there really have beensocieties sufficiently vigilant and valiant to prevent their cornperpetually flowing away from them, to the tune of a sentimental song. 

Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only anintellectual fault; it is a moral fault also. It is not merely ourmental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is alsoour spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake. It wasmere vanity in Mr. Brummell when he sent away trays full ofimperfectly knotted neck-cloths, lightly remarking, "These are ourfailures. " It is a good instance of the nearness of vanity tohumility, for at least he had to admit that they were failures. But itwould have been spiritual pride in Mr. Brummell if he had tied on allthe cravats, one on top of the other, lest his valet should discoverthat he had ever tied one badly. For in spiritual pride there isalways an element of secrecy and solitude. Mr. Brummell would besatanic; also (which I fear would affect him more) he would be badlydressed. But he would be a perfect presentation of the modernpublicist, who cannot do anything right, because he must not admitthat he ever did anything wrong. 

This strange, weak obstinacy, this persistence in the wrong path ofprogress, grows weaker and worse, as do all such weak things. And bythe time in which I write its moral attitude has taken on something ofthe sinister and even the horrible. Our mistakes have become oursecrets. Editors and journalists tear up with a guilty air all thatreminds them of the party promises unfulfilled, or the party idealsreproaching them. It is true of our statesmen (much more than of ourbishops, of whom Mr. Wells said it), that socially in evidence theyare intellectually in hiding. The society is heavy with unconfessedsins; its mind is sore and silent with painful subjects; it has aconstipation of conscience. There are many things it has done andallowed to be done which it does not really dare to think about; itcalls them by other names and tries to talk itself into faith in afalse past, as men make up the things they would have said in aquarrel. Of these sins one lies buried deepest but most noisome, andthough it is stifled, stinks: the true story of the relations of therich man and the poor in England. The half-starved English proletarianis 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 everyside the same story of the destitute proletariat and the socialproblem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowdingin the slums. It is granted; but I said the true story. Untruestories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There isthe interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands, the chap who has "solidarity, " and is always just going to abolishwar. The Marxian Socialists will tell you all about him; only he isn'tthere. A common English workman is just as incapable of thinking of aGerman as anything but a German as he is of thinking of himself asanything but an Englishman. Then there is the opposite story; thestory of the horrid man who is an atheist and wants to destroy thehome, but who, for some private reason, prefers to call thisSocialism. He isn't there either. The prosperous Socialists have homesexactly like yours and mine; and the poor Socialists are not allowedby the Individualists to have any at all. There is the story of theTwo Workmen, which is a very nice and exciting story, about how onepassed all the public houses in Cheapside and was made Lord Mayor onarriving at the Guildhall, while the other went into all the publichouses and emerged quite ineligible for such a dignity. Alas! for thisalso is vanity. A thief might become Lord Mayor, but an honest workmancertainly couldn't. Then there is the story of "The Relentless Doom, "by which rich men were, by economic laws, forced to go on taking awaymoney from poor men, although they simply longed to leave off: this isan unendurable thought to a free and Christian man, and the readerwill be relieved to hear that it never happened. The rich could haveleft off stealing whenever they wanted to leave off, only this neverhappened either. Then there is the story of the cunning Fabian who saton six committees at once and so coaxed the rich man to become quitepoor. By simply repeating, in a whisper, that there are "wheels withinwheels, " this talented man managed to take away the millionaire'smotor car, one wheel at a time, till the millionaire had quiteforgotten 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 themillionaire's motor, which is capable of running over the Fabian andleaving him a flat corpse in the road at a moment's notice. All thesestories are very fascinating stories to be told by the Individualistand Socialist in turn to the great Sultan of Capitalism, because ifthey 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 theSultan, 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, bylistening to these stories, to forget. As we have said before in thischapter, he would prefer not to remember, because he has made up hismind not to repent. It is a curious story, and I shall try to tell ittruly in the two chapters that follow. In all ages the tyrant is hardbecause he is soft. If his car crashes over bleeding and accusingcrowds, it is because he has chosen the path of least resistance. Itis because it is much easier to ride down a human race than ride up amoderately steep hill. The fight of the oppressor is always apillow-fight; commonly a war with cushions--always a war for cushions. Saladin, the great Sultan, if I remember rightly, accounted it thegreatest 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 cutinto the swollen and windy corpulence of the modern compromise, thatis at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day thecolour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palacewithin palace and garden within garden which makes the richirresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance, the wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception ofluxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights, and walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not ourhangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we notalready eugenists--that is, eunuch-makers? Do we not see the brighteyes, the motionless faces, and all that presence of something that isdead and yet sleepless? It is the presence of the sin that is sealedwith pride and impenitence; the story of how the Sultan got histhrone. But it is not the story he is listening to just now, butanother story which has been invented to cover it--the story called"Eugenius: or the Adventures of One Not Born, " a most varied andentrancing 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 wasnot wholly a slave. It was as if, in some tale of Hans Andersen, astick or a stool had been left in the garden all night and had grownalive and struck root like a tree. For this is the truth behind theold legal fiction of the servile countries, that the slave is a"chattel, " that is a piece of furniture like a stick or a stool. Inthe spiritual sense, I am certain it was never so unwholesome a fancyas the spawn of Nietzsche suppose to-day. No human being, pagan orChristian, I am certain, ever thought of another human being as achair or a table. The mind cannot base itself on the idea that a cometis a cabbage; nor can it on the idea that a man is a stool. No man wasever unconscious of another's presence--or even indifferent toanother's opinion. The lady who is said to have boasted herindifference to being naked before male slaves was showing off--or shemeant something different. The lord who fed fishes by killing a slavewas indulging in what most cannibals indulge in--a satanistaffectation. The lady was consciously shameless and the lord wasconsciously cruel. But it simply is not in the human reason to carvemen like wood or examine women like ivory, just as it is not in thehuman reason to think that two and two make five. 

But there was this truth in the legal simile of furniture: that theslave, though certainly a man, was in one sense a dead man; in thesense that he was _moveable_. His locomotion was not his own: hismaster moved his arms and legs for him as if he were a marionette. Nowit is important in the first degree to realise here what would beinvolved in such a fable as I have imagined, of a stool rooting itselflike a shrub. For the general modern notion certainly is that life andliberty are in some way to be associated with novelty and not standingstill. But it is just because the stool is lifeless that it movesabout. It is just because the tree is alive that it does stand still. That was the main difference between the pagan slave and the Christianserf. The serf still belonged to the lord, as the stick that struckroot in the garden would have still belonged to the owner of thegarden; but it would have become a _live_ possession. Therefore theowner is forced, by the laws of nature, to treat it with _some_respect; something becomes due from him. He cannot pull it up withoutkilling it; it has gained a _place_ in the garden--or the society. Butthe moderns are quite wrong in supposing that mere change and holidayand variety have necessarily any element of this life that is the onlyseed of liberty. You may say if you like that an employer, taking allhis workpeople to a new factory in a Garden City, is giving them thegreater freedom of forest landscapes and smokeless skies. If it comesto that, you can say that the slave-traders took negroes from theirnarrow and brutish African hamlets, and gave them the polish offoreign travel and medicinal breezes of a sea-voyage. But the tinyseed of citizenship and independence there already was in the serfdomof the Dark Ages, had nothing to do with what nice things the lordmight do to the serf. It lay in the fact that there were some nastythings he could not do to the serf--there were not many, but therewere some, and one of them was eviction. He could not make the serfutterly landless and desperate, utterly without access to the means ofproduction, though doubtless it was rather the field that owned theserf, than the serf that owned the field. But even if you call theserf a beast of the field, he was not what we have tried to make thetown workman--a beast with no field. Foulon said of the Frenchpeasants, "Let them eat grass. " If he had said it of the modern Londonproletariat, they might well reply, "You have not left us even grassto eat. "

There was, therefore, both in theory and practice, _some_ security forthe serf, because he had come to life and rooted. The seigneur couldnot wait in the field in all weathers with a battle-axe to prevent theserf scratching any living out of the ground, any more than the man inmy fairy-tale could sit out in the garden all night with an umbrellato prevent the shrub getting any rain. The relation of lord and serf, therefore, involves a combination of two things: inequality andsecurity. I know there are people who will at once point wildly to allsorts of examples, true and false, of insecurity of life in the MiddleAges; but these are people who do not grasp what we mean by thecharacteristic institutions of a society. For the matter of that, there are plenty of examples of equality in the Middle Ages, as thecraftsmen in their guild or the monks electing their abbot. But justas modern England is not a feudal country, though there is a quaintsurvival called Heralds' College--or Ireland is not a commercialcountry, though there is a quaint survival called Belfast--it is trueof the bulk and shape of that society that came out of the Dark Agesand ended at the Reformation, that it did not care about givingeverybody an equal position, but did care about giving everybody aposition. So that by the very beginning of that time even the slavehad become a slave one could not get rid of, like the Scotch servantwho stubbornly asserted that if his master didn't know a good servanthe 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 neitherto 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 nohistorical complexity about it in that respect. We have taken away hisfreedom to stay. We have turned him out of his field, and whether itwas injustice, like turning a free farmer out of his field, or onlycruelty to animals, like turning a cow out of its field, the factremains that he is out in the road. First and last, we have simplydestroyed the security. We have not in the least destroyed theinequality. All classes, all creatures, kind or cruel, still see thislowest stratum of society as separate from the upper strata and eventhe middle strata; he is as separate as the serf. A monster fallenfrom Mars, ignorant of our simplest word, would know the tramp was atthe bottom of the ladder, as well as he would have known it of theserf. The walls of mud are no longer round his boundaries, but onlyround his boots. The coarse, bristling hedge is at the end of hischin, and not of his garden. But mud and bristles still stand outround him like a horrific halo, and separate him from his kind. TheMartian would have no difficulty in seeing he was the poorest personin the nation. It is just as impossible that he should marry anheiress, or fight a duel with a duke, or contest a seat atWestminster, or enter a club in Pall Mall, or take a scholarship atBalliol, or take a seat at an opera, or propose a good law, or protestagainst a bad one, as it was impossible to the serf. Where he differsis in something very different. He has lost what was possible to theserf. He can no longer scratch the bare earth by day or sleep on thebare earth by night, without being collared by a policeman. 

Now when I say that this man has been oppressed as hardly any otherman on this earth has been oppressed, I am not using rhetoric: I havea clear meaning which I am confident of explaining to any honestreader. I do not say he has been treated worse: I say he has beentreated differently from the unfortunate in all ages. And thedifference is this: that all the others were told to do something, andkilled or tortured if they did anything else. This man is not told todo something: he is merely forbidden to do anything. When he was aslave, they said to him, "Sleep in this shed; I will beat you if yousleep anywhere else. " When he was a serf, they said to him, "Let mefind you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else'sfield. " But now he is a tramp they say to him, "You shall be jailed ifI 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 outsideyour shed: _but there is no shed_. " If you say that modernmagistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer withentire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two trampswere summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the openair when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full funof the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly producedabout twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, butdeliberately didn't. To which the policeman replied that twopencewould not have got them a bed: that they could not possibly have got abed: and _therefore_ (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought tobe punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was muchstruck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men fornot doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explainthat if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, theywould have left the court without a stain on their characters; but asthey could not avoid it, they were very much to blame. These thingsare being done in every part of England every day. They have theirparallels even in every daily paper; but they have no parallel in anyother earthly people or period; except in that insane command to makebricks without straw which brought down all the plagues of Egypt. Forthe common historical joke about Henry VIII. Hanging a man for beingCatholic and burning him for being Protestant is a symbolic joke only. The sceptic in the Tudor time could do something: he could alwaysagree with Henry VIII. The desperate man to-day can do nothing. Foryou cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the strawssticking out of his hair and says, "Procure threepence from nowhereand I will give you leave to do without it. "

If it be answered that he can go to the workhouse, I reply that suchan answer is founded on confused thinking. It is true that he is freeto go to the workhouse, but only in the same sense in which he is freeto go to jail, only in the same sense in which the serf under thegibbet was free to find peace in the grave. Many of the poor greatlyprefer the grave to the workhouse, but that is not at all my argumenthere. The point is this: that it could not have been the generalpolicy of a lord towards serfs to kill them all like wasps. It couldnot have been his standing "Advice to Serfs" to say, "Get hanged. " Itcannot be the standing advice of magistrates to citizens to go toprison. And, precisely as plainly, it cannot be the standing advice ofrich men to very poor men to go to the workhouses. For that would meanthe rich raising their own poor rates enormously to keep a vast andexpensive establishment of slaves. Now it may come to this, as Mr. Belloc maintains, but it is not the theory on which what we call theworkhouse does in fact rest. The very shape (and even the very size)of a workhouse express the fact that it was founded for certain quiteexceptional human failures--like the lunatic asylum. Say to a man, "Goto the madhouse, " and he will say, "Wherein am I mad?" Say to a trampunder a hedge, "Go to the house of exceptional failures, " and he willsay with equal reason, "I travel because I have no house; I walkbecause I have no horse; I sleep out because I have no bed. Whereinhave I failed?" And he may have the intelligence to add, "Indeed, yourworship, if somebody has failed, I think it is not I. " I concede, withall due haste, that he might perhaps say "me. "

The speciality then of this man's wrong is that it is the onlyhistoric wrong that has in it the quality of _nonsense_. It could onlyhappen in a nightmare; not in a clear and rational hell. It is the toppoint of that anarchy in the governing mind which, as I said at thebeginning, is the main trait of modernity, especially in England. Butif the first note in our policy is madness, the next note is certainlymeanness. There are two peculiarly mean and unmanly legal mantraps inwhich this wretched man is tripped up. The first is that whichprevents him from doing what any ordinary savage or nomad woulddo--take his chance of an uneven subsistence on the rude bounty ofnature. 

There is something very abject about forbidding this; because it isprecisely this adventurous and vagabond spirit which the educatedclasses praise most in their books, poems and speeches. To feel thedrag of the roads, to hunt in nameless hills and fish in secretstreams, to have no address save "Over the Hills and Far Away, " to beready to breakfast on berries and the daybreak and sup on the sunsetand a sodden crust, to feed on wild things and be a boy again, allthis is the heartiest and sincerest impulse in recent culture, in thesongs and tales of Stevenson, in the cult of George Borrow and in thedelightful little books published by Mr. E. V. Lucas. It is the onetrue excuse in the core of Imperialism; and it faintly softens thesqualid prose and wooden-headed wickedness of the Self-Made Man who"came up to London with twopence in his pocket. " But when a poorer butbraver man with less than twopence in his pocket does the very thingwe are always praising, makes the blue heavens his house, we send himto a house built for infamy and flogging. We take poverty itself andonly permit it with a property qualification; we only allow a man tobe poor if he is rich. And we do this most savagely if he has soughtto snatch his life by that particular thing of which our boyishadventure stories are fullest--hunting and fishing. The extremelysevere English game laws hit most heavily what the highly recklessEnglish romances praise most irresponsibly. All our literature is fullof praise of the chase--especially of the wild goose chase. But if apoor man followed, as Tennyson says, "far as the wild swan wings towhere the world dips down to sea and sands, " Tennyson would scarcelyallow him to catch it. If he found the wildest goose in the wildestfenland in the wildest regions of the sunset, he would very probablydiscover that the rich never sleep; and that there are no wild thingsin England. 

In short, the English ruler is always appealing to a nation ofsportsmen and concentrating all his efforts on preventing them fromhaving any sport. The Imperialist is always pointing out withexultation that the common Englishman can live by adventure anywhereon the globe, but if the common Englishman tries to live by adventurein England, he is treated as harshly as a thief, and almost as harshlyas an honest journalist. This is hypocrisy: the magistrate who giveshis son "Treasure Island" and then imprisons a tramp is a hypocrite;the squire who is proud of English colonists and indulgent to Englishschoolboys, but cruel to English poachers, is drawing near that deepplace wherein all liars have their part. But our point here is thatthe baseness is in the idea of _bewildering_ the tramp; of leavinghim no place for repentance. It is quite true, of course, that in thedays of slavery or of serfdom the needy were fenced by yet fiercerpenalties from spoiling the hunting of the rich. But in the older casethere were two very important differences, the second of which is ourmain subject in this chapter. The first is that in a comparativelywild society, however fond of hunting, it seems impossible thatenclosing and game-keeping can have been so omnipresent and efficientas in a society full of maps and policemen. The second difference isthe one already noted: that if the slave or semi-slave was forbiddento get his food in the greenwood, he was told to get it somewhereelse. The note of unreason was absent. 

This is the first meanness; and the second is like unto it. If thereis one thing of which cultivated modern letters is full besidesadventure it is altruism. We are always being told to help others, toregard our wealth as theirs, to do what good we can, for we shall notpass this way again. We are everywhere urged by humanitarians to helplame dogs over stiles--though some humanitarians, it is true, seem tofeel a colder interest in the case of lame men and women. Still, thechief fact of our literature, among all historic literatures, is humancharity. But what is the chief fact of our legislation? The greatoutstanding fact of modern legislation, among all historiclegislations, is the forbidding of human charity. It is thisastonishing paradox, a thing in the teeth of all logic andconscience, that a man that takes another man's money with his leavecan be punished as if he had taken it without his leave. All throughthose dark or dim ages behind us, through times of servile stagnation, of feudal insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else thatcan war down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was countedlawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries, in short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched andmended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is nowforbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance if he could beg. 

Now it will be evident by this time that the interesting scientificexperiment on the tramp entirely depends on leaving him _no_ chance, and not (like the slave) one chance. Of the economic excuses offeredfor the persecution of beggars it will be more natural to speak in thenext chapter. It will suffice here to say that they are mere excuses, for a policy that has been persistent while probably largelyunconscious, with a selfish and atheistic unconsciousness. That policywas directed towards something--or it could never have cut so cleanlyand cruelly across the sentimental but sincere modern trends toadventure and altruism. Its object is soon stated. It was directedtowards making the very poor man work for the capitalist, for anywages or none. But all this, which I shall also deal with in the nextchapter, is here only important as introducing the last truth touchingthe man of despair. The game laws have taken from him his humancommand of Nature. The mendicancy laws have taken from him his humandemand on Man. There is one human thing left it is much harder to takefrom him. Debased by him and his betters, it is still somethingbrought out of Eden, where God made him a demigod: it does not dependon money and but little on time. He can create in his own image. Theterrible truth is in the heart of a hundred legends and mysteries. AsJupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Childcould be hidden from Herod--so the child unborn is still hidden fromthe omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone isleft; 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 areheard the screams of vivisected men and women. On the contrary, helives in Mayfair. He does not wear great goblin spectacles thatmagnify his eyes to moons or diminish his neighbours to beetles. Whenhe is more dignified he wears a single eyeglass; when moreintelligent, a wink. He is not indeed wholly without interest inheredity and Eugenical biology; but his studies and experiments inthis science have specialised almost exclusively in _equus celer_, therapid or running horse. He is not a doctor; though he employs doctorsto work up a case for Eugenics, just as he employs doctors to correctthe errors of his dinner. He is not a lawyer, though unfortunatelyoften a magistrate. He is not an author or a journalist; though he notinfrequently owns a newspaper. He is not a soldier, though he may havea commission in the yeomanry; nor is he generally a gentleman, thoughoften a nobleman. His wealth now commonly comes from a large staff ofemployed persons who scurry about in big buildings while he is playinggolf. But he very often laid the foundations of his fortune in a verycurious and poetical way, the nature of which I have never fullyunderstood. It consisted in his walking about the street without a hatand going up to another man and saying, "Suppose I have two hundredwhales out of the North Sea. " To which the other man replied, "And letus 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 thousandelephants' tusks, would you, etc. ?" If you play this game well, youbecome very rich; if you play it badly you have to kill yourself ortry your luck at the Bar. The man I am speaking about must have playedit well, or at any rate successfully. 

He was born about 1860; and has been a member of Parliament sinceabout 1890. For the first half of his life he was a Liberal; for thesecond half he has been a Conservative; but his actual policy inParliament has remained largely unchanged and consistent. His policyin Parliament is as follows: he takes a seat in a room downstairs atWestminster, and takes from his breast pocket an excellent cigar-case, from which in turn he takes an excellent cigar. This he lights, andconverses with other owners of such cigars on _equus celer_ or suchmatters as may afford him entertainment. Two or three times in theafternoon a bell rings; whereupon he deposits the cigar in an ashtraywith great particularity, taking care not to break the ash, andproceeds to an upstairs room, flanked with two passages. He then walksinto whichever of the two passages shall be indicated to him by ayoung man of the upper classes, holding a slip of paper. Having goneinto this passage he comes out of it again, is counted by the youngman and proceeds downstairs again; where he takes up the cigar oncemore, being careful not to break the ash. This process, which is knownas Representative Government, has never called for any great varietyin the manner of his life. Nevertheless, while his Parliamentarypolicy is unchanged, his change from one side of the House to theother did correspond with a certain change in his general policy incommerce and social life. The change of the party label is by thistime quite a trifling matter; but there was in his case a change ofphilosophy or at least a change of project; though it was not so muchbecoming a Tory, as becoming rather the wrong kind of Socialist. He isa man with a history. It is a sad history, for he is certainly a lessgood man than he was when he started. That is why he is the man who isreally behind Eugenics. It is because he has degenerated that he hascome to talking of Degeneration. 

In his Radical days (to quote from one who corresponded in some waysto this type) he was a much better man, because he was a much lessenlightened one. The hard impudence of his first ManchesterIndividualism was softened by two relatively humane qualities; thefirst was a much greater manliness in his pride; the second was a muchgreater sincerity in his optimism. For the first point, the moderncapitalist is merely industrial; but this man was also industrious. He was proud of hard work; nay, he was even proud of low work--if hecould speak of it in the past and not the present. In fact, heinvented a new kind of Victorian snobbishness, an invertedsnobbishness. While the snobs of Thackeray turned Muggins into DeMogyns, while the snobs of Dickens wrote letters describing themselvesas officers' daughters "accustomed to every luxury--except spelling, "the Individualist spent his life in hiding his prosperous parents. Hewas more like an American plutocrat when he began; but he has sincelost the American simplicity. The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can't play; and then thanks the devil, hismaster, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But theEnglishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that henever worked at all. He becomes as far as possible another person--acountry gentleman who has never heard of his shop; one whose left handholding a gun knows not what his right hand doeth in a ledger. He usesa peerage as an alias, and a large estate as a sort of alibi. A sternScotch minister remarked concerning the game of golf, with a terriblesolemnity of manner, "the man who plays golf--he neglects hisbusiness, he forsakes his wife, he forgets his God. " He did not seemto realise that it is the chief aim of many a modern capitalist's lifeto forget all three. 

This abandonment of a boyish vanity in work, this substitution of asenile vanity in indolence, this is the first respect in which therich Englishman has fallen. He was more of a man when he was at leasta master-workman and not merely a master. And the second importantrespect in which he was better at the beginning is this: that he didthen, in some hazy way, half believe that he was enriching otherpeople as well as himself. The optimism of the early VictorianIndividualists was not wholly hypocritical. Some of theclearest-headed and blackest-hearted of them, such as Malthus, sawwhere things were going, and boldly based their Manchester city onpessimism instead of optimism. But this was not the general case; mostof the decent rich of the Bright and Cobden sort did have a kind ofconfused faith that the economic conflict would work well in the longrun for everybody. They thought the troubles of the poor wereincurable by State action (they thought that of all troubles), butthey did not cold-bloodedly contemplate the prospect of those troublesgrowing worse and worse. By one of those tricks or illusions of thebrain to which the luxurious are subject in all ages, they sometimesseemed to feel as if the populace had triumphed symbolically in theirown persons. They blasphemously thought about their thrones of goldwhat can only be said about a cross--that they, being lifted up, woulddraw all men after them. They were so full of the romance that anybodycould be Lord Mayor, that they seemed to have slipped into thinkingthat everybody could. It seemed as if a hundred Dick Whittingtons, accompanied by a hundred cats, could all be accommodated at theMansion House. It was all nonsense; but it was not (until later) allhumbug. 

Step by step, however, with a horrid and increasing clearness, thisman discovered what he was doing. It is generally one of the worstdiscoveries a man can make. At the beginning, the British plutocratwas probably quite as honest in suggesting that every tramp carried amagic cat like Dick Whittington, as the Bonapartist patriot was insaying that every French soldier carried a marshal's _baton_ in hisknapsack. But it is exactly here that the difference and the dangerappears. There is no comparison between a well-managed thing likeNapoleon's army and an unmanageable thing like modern competition. Logically, doubtless, it was impossible that every soldier shouldcarry a marshal's _baton_; they could not all be marshals any morethan they could all be mayors. But if the French soldier did notalways have a _baton_ in his knapsack, he always had a knapsack. Butwhen that Self-Helper who bore the adorable name of Smiles told theEnglish tramp that he carried a coronet in his bundle, the Englishtramp had an unanswerable answer. He pointed out that he had nobundle. 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, hadnever been allowed even to be anything. The French soldier's ambitionmay have been in practice not only a short, but even a deliberatelyshortened ladder, in which the top rungs were knocked out. But forthe English it was the bottom rungs that were knocked out, so thatthey could not even begin to climb. And sooner or later, in exactproportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began tounderstand not only that the poor were impotent, but that theirimpotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that hisriches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty couldhave been strong enough to make him rich. It is this paradox, as weshall see, that creates the curious difference between him and everyother 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 avision--that is, by the mere look of things. The old Cobdeniteemployer was quite within his rights in arguing that earth is notheaven, that the best obtainable arrangement might contain manynecessary evils; and that Liverpool and Belfast might be growing moreprosperous as a whole in spite of pathetic things that might be seenthere. But I simply do not believe he has been able to look atLiverpool and Belfast and continue to think this: that is why he hasturned himself into a sham country gentleman. Earth is not heaven, butthe nearest we can get to heaven ought not to _look_ like hell; andLiverpool and Belfast look like hell, whether they are or not. Suchcities might be growing prosperous as a whole, though a few citizenswere more miserable. But it was more and more broadly apparent that itwas exactly and precisely _as a whole_ that they were not growing moreprosperous, but only the few citizens who were growing more prosperousby their increasing misery. You could not say a country was becoming awhite man's country when there were more and more black men in itevery day. You could not say a community was more and more masculinewhen it was producing more and more women. Nor can you say that a cityis growing richer and richer when more and more of its inhabitants arevery poor men. There might be a false agitation founded on the pathosof individual cases in a community pretty normal in bulk. But the factis that no one can take a cab across Liverpool without having a quitecomplete and unified impression that the pathos is not a pathos ofindividual cases, but a pathos in bulk. People talk of the Celticsadness; but there are very few things in Ireland that look so sad asthe Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery comparedwith the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournfulfriends to turn their attention to the pathos of Belfast. I think ifthey hung up the harp that once in Lord Furness's factory, there wouldbe a chance of another string breaking. 

Broadly, and as things bulk to the eye, towns like Leeds, if placedbeside towns like Rouen or Florence, or Chartres, or Cologne, doactually look like beggars walking among burghers. After thatoverpowering and unpleasant impression it is really useless to arguethat they are richer because a few of their parasites get rich enoughto live somewhere else. The point may be put another way, thus: thatit is not so much that these more modern cities have this or thatmonopoly of good or evil; it is that they have every good in itsfourth-rate form and every evil in its worst form. For instance, thatinteresting weekly paper _The Nation_ amiably rebuked Mr. Belloc andmyself for suggesting that revelry and the praise of fermented liquorwere more characteristic of Continental and Catholic communities thanof communities with the religion and civilisation of Belfast. It saidthat if we would "cross the border" into Scotland, we should find outour mistake. Now, not only have I crossed the border, but I have hadconsiderable difficulty in crossing the road in a Scotch town on afestive evening. Men were literally lying like piled-up corpses in thegutters, and from broken bottles whisky was pouring down the drains. Iam not likely, therefore, to attribute a total and arid abstinence tothe whole of industrial Scotland. But I never said that drinking was amark rather of the Catholic countries. I said that _moderate_ drinkingwas a mark rather of the Catholic countries. In other words, I say ofthe common type of Continental citizen, not that he is the only personwho is drinking, but that he is the only person who knows how todrink. Doubtless gin is as much a feature of Hoxton as beer is afeature of Munich. But who is the connoisseur who prefers the gin ofHoxton to the beer of Munich? Doubtless the Protestant Scotch ask for"Scotch, " as the men of Burgundy ask for Burgundy. But do we find themlying in heaps on each side of the road when we walk through aBurgundian village? Do we find the French peasant ready to letBurgundy escape down a drain-pipe? Now this one point, on which Iaccept _The Nation's_ challenge, can be exactly paralleled on almostevery point by which we test a civilisation. It does not matterwhether we are for alcohol or against it. On either argument Glasgowis more objectionable than Rouen. The French abstainer makes lessfuss; the French drinker gives less offence. It is so with property, with war, with everything. I can understand a teetotaler beinghorrified, on his principles, at Italian wine-drinking. I simplycannot believe he could be _more_ horrified at it than at Hoxtongin-drinking. I can understand a Pacifist, with his special scruples, disliking the militarism of Belfort. I flatly deny that he can dislikeit _more_ than the militarism of Berlin. I can understand a goodSocialist hating the petty cares of the distributed peasant property. I deny that any good Socialist can hate them _more_ than he hates thelarge cares of Rockefeller. That is the unique tragedy of theplutocratic state to-day; it has _no_ successes to hold up against thefailures it alleges to exist in Latin or other methods. You can (ifyou are well out of his reach) call the Irish rustic debased andsuperstitious. I defy you to contrast his debasement and superstitionwith the citizenship and enlightenment of the English rustic. 

To-day the rich man knows in his heart that he is a cancer and not anorgan of the State. He differs from all other thieves or parasites forthis reason: that the brigand who takes by force wishes his victims tobe rich. But he who wins by a one-sided contract actually wishes themto be poor. Rob Roy in a cavern, hearing a company approaching, willhope (or if in a pious mood, pray) that they may come laden with goldor goods. But Mr. Rockefeller, in his factory, knows that if those whopass are laden with goods they will pass on. He will therefore (if ina pious mood) pray that they may be destitute, and so be forced towork his factory for him for a starvation wage. It is said (and also, I believe, disputed) that Blücher riding through the richer parts ofLondon exclaimed, "What a city to sack!" But Blücher was a soldier ifhe was a bandit. The true sweater feels quite otherwise. It is when hedrives through the poorest parts of London that he finds the streetspaved with gold, being paved with prostrate servants; it is when hesees the grey lean leagues of Bow and Poplar that his soul is upliftedand he knows he is secure. This is not rhetoric, but economics. 

I repeat that up to a point the profiteer was innocent because he wasignorant; he had been lured on by easy and accommodating events. Hewas innocent as the new Thane of Glamis was innocent, as the new Thaneof Cawdor was innocent; but the King---- The modern manufacturer, likeMacbeth, 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 couldnot, after careful calculation, think of any way in which they couldget it out of his houses without being arrested for housebreaking. Hefaced the future with a face flinty with pride and impenitence. Thisperiod can be dated practically by the period when the old and genuineProtestant religion of England began to fail; and the average businessman began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where hewas, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took toscepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a wayout. But in any case, the man who had made a mistake not only refusedto unmake it, but decided to go on making it. But in this he made yetanother most amusing mistake, which was the beginning of allEugenics. 

CHAPTER IV

THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH

By a quaint paradox, we generally miss the meaning of simple storiesbecause we are not subtle enough to understand their simplicity. Aslong as men were in sympathy with some particular religion or otherromance of things in general, they saw the thing solid and swallowedit whole, knowing that it could not disagree with them. But the momentmen 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 puritanicalnursery tales about the terrible punishment of trivial sins; about howTommy was drowned for fishing on the Sabbath, or Sammy struck bylightning for going out after dark. Now these moral stories areimmoral, because Calvinism is immoral. They are wrong, becausePuritanism is wrong. But they are not quite so wrong, they are not aquarter so wrong, as many superficial sages have supposed. 

The truth is that everything that ever came out of a human mouth had ahuman meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such afool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great-grandmotherstold a child he might be drowned by breaking the Sabbath, their souls(though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were notin quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their godwas a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This formof religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but itdid correspond to a certain reality in psychology which most people ofany religion, or even of none, have felt a touch of at some time orother. Leaving out theological terms as far as possible, it is thesubconscious feeling that one can be wrong with Nature as well asright with Nature; that the point of wrongness may be a detail (in thesuperstitions of heathens this is often quite a triviality); but thatif one is really wrong with Nature, there is no particular reason whyall her rivers should not drown or all her storm-bolts strike one whois, by this vague yet vivid hypothesis, her enemy. This may be amental sickness, but it is too human or too mortal a sickness to becalled solely a superstition. It is not solely a superstition; it isnot simply superimposed upon human nature by something that has got ontop of it. It flourishes without check among non-Christian systems, and it flourishes especially in Calvinism, because Calvinism is themost non-Christian of Christian systems. But like everything else thatinheres in the natural senses and spirit of man, it has something init; 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 lawfulheir. And like many other dubious or dangerous human instincts orappetites, it is sometimes useful as a warning against worse things. 

Now the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from theloss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathenmysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believein Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, theyoverlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. PerhapsJulius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve inJupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy ofthat age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spiritpersonal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists arenot permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, whilethe heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queercoincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whetherthey were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his ownbrain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain suchnotions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modernsceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural. And this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrantliterally 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 ideathat is profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is whatmay be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take myadvantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage. Thus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reasonto become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had afallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. Heforgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on itcan. Thus Shylock had a fallacy of physiology; he forgot that, if youbreak into the house of life, you find it a bloody house in the mostemphatic 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 hisposition, and knew in his heart it was a false position. He thought amargin of men out of work was good for his business; he could nolonger really think it was good for his country. He could no longer bethe old "hard-headed" man who simply did not understand things; hecould only be the hard-hearted man who faced them. But he stillmarched on; he was sure he had made no mistake. 

However, he had made a mistake--as definite as a mistake inmultiplication. It may be summarised thus: that the same inequalityand insecurity that makes cheap labour may make bad labour, and atlast no labour at all. It was as if a man who wanted something from anenemy, should at last reduce the enemy to come knocking at his door inthe despair of winter, should keep him waiting in the snow to sharpenthe 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. Theexperiment of Individualism--the keeping of the worker half in andhalf out of work--was far too ingenious not to contain a flaw. It wastoo delicate a balance to work entirely with the strength of thestarved and the vigilance of the benighted. It was too desperate acourse to rely wholly on desperation. And as time went on the terribletruth slowly declared itself; the degraded class was reallydegenerating. It was right and proper enough to use a man as a tool;but the tool, ceaselessly used, was being used up. It was quitereasonable and respectable, of course, to fling a man away like atool; but when it was flung away in the rain the tool rusted. But thecomparison to a tool was insufficient for an awful reason that hadalready 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 flingaway a chisel by the roadside, it does not litter and leave a lot oflittle chisels. But the meanest of the tools, Man, had still thisstrange privilege which God had given him, doubtless by mistake. Despite all improvements in machinery, the most important part of themachinery (the fittings technically described in the trade as "hands")were apparently growing worse. The firm was not only encumbered withone useless servant, but he immediately turned himself into fiveuseless servants. "The poor should not be emancipated, " the oldreactionaries used to say, "until they are fit for freedom. " But ifthis downrush went on, it looked as if the poor would not stand highenough to be fit for slavery. 

So at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree subconsciously, tothe man who had wagered all his wealth on the usefulness of the poorto the rich and the dependence of the rich on the poor. The time cameat last when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below ceased tobe a supply, and began to be something like a wastage; ceased to besomething like keeping foxhounds, and began alarmingly to resemble anecessity of shooting foxes. The situation was aggravated by the factthat these sexual pleasures were often the only ones the very poorcould obtain, and were, therefore, disproportionately pursued, and bythe fact that their conditions were often such that prenatalnourishment and such things were utterly abnormal. The consequencesbegan to appear. To a much less extent than the Eugenists assert, butstill to a notable extent, in a much looser sense than the Eugenistsassume, but still in some sort of sense, the types that wereinadequate or incalculable or uncontrollable began to increase. Underthe hedges of the country, on the seats of the parks, loafing underthe bridges or leaning over the Embankment, began to appear a new raceof men--men who are certainly not mad, whom we shall gain noscientific light by calling feeble-minded, but who are, in varyingindividual degrees, dazed or drink-sodden, or lazy or tricky or tiredin body and spirit. In a far less degree than the teetotallers tellus, but still in a large degree, the traffic in gin and bad beer(itself a capitalist enterprise) fostered the evil, though it had notbegun it. Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men whoseemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesorein the market-place and a terror on the empty roads. The rich wereafraid. 

Moreover, as I have hinted before, the act of keeping the destituteout of public life, and crushing them under confused laws, had aneffect on their intelligences which paralyses them even as aproletariat. Modern people talk of "Reason versus Authority"; butauthority itself involves reason, or its orders would not even beunderstood. If you say to your valet, "Look after the buttons on mywaistcoat, " he may do it, even if you throw a boot at his head. But ifyou say to him, "Look after the buttons on my top-hat, " he will not doit, 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, " hemay do it without a flogging. If you say, "Write out that Ode ofHorace in the original German, " he will not do it with a thousandfloggings. If you will not learn logic, he certainly will not learnLatin. And the ludicrous laws to which the needy are subject (such asthat which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, Ithink, a great deal to do with a certain increase in theirsheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrialinefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory, a man actually acquitted by judge and jury could _then_ be examined bydoctors as to the state of his mind--presumably in order to discoverby what diseased eccentricity he had refrained from the crime. Inother words, when the police cannot jail a man who is innocent ofdoing 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 hefeels more like one after the legal process than before. Thus all thefactors--the bodily exhaustion, the harassing fear of hunger, thereckless refuge in sexuality, and the black botheration of badlaws--combined to make the employee more unemployable. 

Now, it is very important to understand here that there were twocourses of action still open to the disappointed capitalist confrontedby the new peril of this real or alleged decay. First, he might havereversed his machine, so to speak, and started unwinding the long ropeof dependence by which he had originally dragged the proletarian tohis feet. In other words, he might have seen that the workmen had moremoney, more leisure, more luxuries, more status in the community, andthen trusted to the normal instincts of reasonably happy human beingsto produce a generation better born, bred and cared for than thesetortured types that were less and less use to him. It might still notbe too late to rebuild the human house upon such an architectural planthat poverty might fly out of the window, with the reasonable prospectof love coming in at the door. In short, he might have let the Englishpoor, the mass of whom were not weak-minded, though more of them weregrowing weaker, a reasonable chance, in the form of more money, ofachieving their eugenical resurrection themselves. It has never beenshown, and it cannot be shown, that the method would have failed. Butit can be shown, and it must be closely and clearly noted, that themethod had very strict limitations from the employers' own point ofview. If they made the worker too comfortable, he would not work toincrease another's comforts; if they made him too independent, hewould not work like a dependent. If, for instance, his wages were sogood that he could save out of them, he might cease to be awage-earner. If his house or garden were his own, he might stand aneconomic siege in it. The whole capitalist experiment had been builton his dependence; but now it was getting out of hand, not in thedirection of freedom, but of frank helplessness. One might say thathis dependence had got independent of control. 

But there was another way. And towards this the employer's ideasbegan, 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 costthe beggar a penny to indulge, so it would not cost the employer apenny to employ. He could not alter or improve the tables or thechairs on the cheap. But there were two pieces of furniture (labelledrespectively "the husband" and "the wife") whose relations were muchcheaper. He could alter the _marriage_ in the house in such a way asto promise himself the largest possible number of the kind of childrenhe did want, with the smallest possible number of the kind he didnot. He could divert the force of sex from producing vagabonds. And hecould harness to his high engines unbought the red unbroken river ofthe blood of a man in his youth, as he has already harnessed to themall 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 thewealthier type should analyse the problem or conceive the plan, theinhumanly far-seeing plan, as I have set it forth, the answer is:"Certainly not. " Many rich employers are too generous to do such athing; many are too stupid to know what they are doing. The eugenicalopportunity I have described is but an ultimate analysis of a wholedrift of thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse histhoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string ofrickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. Butprosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even askhimself whether he means "How can I help them?" or "How can I usethem?"--what he can still do for them, or what they could still do forhim. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more thanthe former; he laments the breaking of the tools of Mammon much morethan the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossibleto grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert thatthere is one thing he doesn't think. He doesn't think, "This man mightbe 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 aremultitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessitymiscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in asense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalistindustrialism being sacrificed to any other object. By a curiousrecurrent slip in the mind, as irritating as a catch in a clock, people miss the main thing and concentrate on the mean thing. "Modernconditions" 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 yearsago some ladies petitioned that the platforms of our big railwaystations should be raised, as it was more convenient for the hobbleskirt. It never occurred to them to change to a sensible skirt. Stillless did it occur to them that, compared with all the female fashionsthat have fluttered about on it, by this time St. Pancras is ashistoric as St. Peter's. 

I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconsciousassumption that life and sex must live by the laws of "business" orindustrialism, and not _vice versa_; examples from all the magazines, novels, and newspapers. In order to make it brief and typical, I takeone case of a more or less Eugenist sort from a paper that lies openin front of me--a paper that still bears on its forehead the boast ofbeing peculiarly an organ of democracy in revolt. To this a man writesto say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until wehave educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upperclasses prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness tosign his letter "Hopeful. " Well, there are certainly many methods bywhich people in the upper classes prevent procreation; one of them iswhat used to be called "platonic friendship, " till they found anothername for it at the Old Bailey. I do not suppose the hopeful gentlemanhopes for this; but some of us find the abortion he does hope foralmost as abominable. That, however, is not the curious point. Thecurious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "Whenpeople have large families and small wages, not only is there a highinfantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up arestunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for atime with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness ifthere were no unwanted children. " You will observe that he tacitlytakes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperatelyshared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions ofhuman life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwantedchildren; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that theparents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do notwant 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, inthis chapter, talking about the effect on such modern minds of across-examination to which they do not subject themselves. I amtalking about the way their minds work, the instinctive trick and turnof their thoughts, the things they assume before argument, and the waythey faintly feel that the world is going. And, frankly, the turn oftheir mind is to tell the child he is not wanted, as the turn of mymind is to tell the profiteer he is not wanted. Motherhood, they feel, and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are goodthings in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About themutilation of womanhood, and the massacre of men unborn, he signshimself "Hopeful. " He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of humanannihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself"Hopeless. "

This is the first evidence of motive: the ubiquitous assumption thatlife and love must fit into a fixed framework of employment, even (asin this case) of bad employment. The second evidence is the tacit andtotal neglect of the scientific question in all the departments inwhich it is not an employment question; as, for instance, themarriages of the princely, patrician, or merely plutocratic houses. Ido not mean, of course, that no scientific men have rigidly tackledthese, though I do not recall any cases. But I am not talking of themerits of individual men of science, but of the push and power behindthis movement, the thing that is able to make it fashionable andpolitically 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 theweddings of the wealthy. Not only would the records be more lucid, and the examples more in evidence, but the cases would be moreinteresting and more decisive. For the grand marriages have presentedboth extremes of the problem of pedigree--first the "breeding in andin, " and later the most incongruous cosmopolitan blends. It wouldreally be interesting to note which worked the best, or what point ofcompromise was safest. For the poor (about whom the newspaperEugenists are always talking) cannot offer any test cases so complete. Waiters never had to marry waitresses, as princes had to marryprincesses. And (for the other extreme) housemaids seldom marry RedIndians. It may be because there are none to marry. But to themillionaires the continents are flying railway stations, and the mostremote races can be rapidly linked together. A marriage in London orParis may chain Ravenna to Chicago, or Ben Cruachan to Bagdad. ManyEuropean aristocrats marry Americans, notoriously the most mixed stockin the world; so that the disinterested Eugenist, with a littletrouble, might reveal rich stores of negro or Asiatic blood to hisdelighted employer. Instead of which he dulls our ears and distressesour refinement by tedious denunciations of the monochrome marriages ofthe poor. 

For there is something really pathetic about the Eugenist's neglect ofthe aristocrat and his family affairs. People still talk about thepride of pedigree; but it strikes me as the one point on which thearistocrats are almost morbidly modest. We should be learned Eugenistsif we were allowed to know half as much of their heredity as we areof their hairdressing. We see the modern aristocrat in the most humanposes in the illustrated papers, playing with his dog or parrot--nay, we see him playing with his child, or with his grandchild. But thereis something heartrending in his refusal to play with his grandfather. There is often something vague and even fantastic about theantecedents of our most established families, which would afford theEugenist admirable scope not only for investigation but forexperiment. Certainly, if he could obtain the necessary powers, theEugenist might bring off some startling effects with the mixedmaterials of the governing class. Suppose, to take wild andhypothetical examples, he were to marry a Scotch earl, say, to thedaughter of a Jewish banker, or an English duke to an American parvenuof semi-Jewish extraction? What would happen? We have here anunexplored field. 

It remains unexplored not merely through snobbery and cowardice, butbecause the Eugenist (at least the influential Eugenist)half-consciously knows it is no part of his job; what he is reallywanted for is to get the grip of the governing classes on to theunmanageable output of poor people. It would not matter in the leastif all Lord Cowdray's descendants grew up too weak to hold a tool orturn a wheel. It would matter very much, especially to Lord Cowdray, if all his employees grew up like that. The oligarch can beunemployable, because he will not be employed. Thus the practical andpopular exponent of Eugenics has his face always turned towards theslums, and instinctively thinks in terms of them. If he talks ofsegregating some incurably vicious type of the sexual sort, he isthinking of a ruffian who assaults girls in lanes. He is not thinkingof a millionaire like White, the victim of Thaw. If he speaks of thehopelessness of feeble-mindedness, he is thinking of some stuntedcreature gaping at hopeless lessons in a poor school. He is notthinking of a millionaire like Thaw, the slayer of White. And this notbecause he is such a brute as to like people like White or Thaw anymore than we do, but because he knows that _his_ problem is thedegeneration of the useful classes; because he knows that White wouldnever have been a millionaire if all his workers had spent themselveson women as White did, that Thaw would never have been a millionaireif all his servants had been Thaws. The ornaments may be allowed todecay, but the machinery _must_ be mended. That is the second proof ofthe plutocratic impulse behind all Eugenics: that no one thinks ofapplying it to the prominent classes. No one thinks of applying itwhere 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 bemost clearly seen by comparing it with the old, more individual, charitable, and (as the Eugenists might say) sentimental view ofpoverty. In Goldsmith or Dickens or Hood there is a basic idea thatthe particular poor person ought not to be so poor: it is someaccident or some wrong. Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim are fairy princeswaiting for their fairy godmother. They are held as slaves, but ratheras the hero and heroine of a Spanish or Italian romance were held asslaves by the Moors. The modern poor are getting to be regarded asslaves in the separate and sweeping sense of the negroes in theplantations. The bondage of the white hero to the black master wasregarded as abnormal; the bondage of the black to the white master asnormal. The Eugenist, for all I know, would regard the mere existenceof Tiny Tim as a sufficient reason for massacring the whole family ofCratchit; but, as a matter of fact, we have here a very good instanceof 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 talkabout breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact, what Dickens describes: "a dustbin of individual accidents, " ofdamaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility. The class verylargely consists of perfectly promising children, lost like OliverTwist, or crippled like Tiny Tim. It contains very valuable things, like most dustbins. But the Eugenist delusion of the barbaric breed inthe abyss affects even those more gracious philanthropists who almostcertainly do want to assist the destitute and not merely to exploitthem. It seems to affect not only their minds, but their veryeyesight. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Alec Tweedie almost scornfullyasks, "When we go through the slums, do we see beautiful children?"The answer is, "Yes, very often indeed. " I have seen children in theslums quite pretty enough to be Little Nell or the outcast whom Hoodcalled "young and so fair. " Nor has the beauty anything necessarily todo with health; there are beautiful healthy children, beautiful dyingchildren, ugly dying children, ugly uproarious children in PetticoatLane or Park Lane. There are people of every physical and mental type, of every sort of health and breeding, in a single back street. Theyhave nothing in common but the wrong we do them. 

The important point is, however, that there is more fact and realismin the wildest and most elegant old fictions about disinherited dukesand long-lost daughters than there is in this Eugenist attempt to makethe poor all of a piece--a sort of black fungoid growth that isceaselessly increasing in a chasm. There is a cheap sneer at poorlandladies: that they always say they have seen better days. Ninetimes out of ten they say it because it is true. What can be said ofthe great mass of Englishmen, by anyone who knows any history, exceptthat they have seen better days? And the landlady's claim is notsnobbish, but rather spirited; it is her testimony to the truth in theold tales of which I spoke: that she _ought not_ to be so poor or soservile in status; that a normal person ought to have more propertyand more power in the State than _that_. Such dreams of lost dignityare perhaps the only things that stand between us and thecattle-breeding paradise now promised. Nor are such dreams by anymeans impotent. I remember Mr. T. P. O'Connor wrote an interestingarticle about Madame Humbert, in the course of which he said thatIrish peasants, and probably most peasants, tended to have ahalf-fictitious family legend about an estate to which they wereentitled. This was written in the time when Irish peasants werelandless in their land; and the delusion doubtless seemed all the moreentertaining to the landlords who ruled them and the money-lenders whoruled the landlords. But the dream has conquered the realities. Thephantom farms have materialised. Merely by tenaciously affirming thekind of pride that comes after a fall, by remembering the oldcivilisation and refusing the new, by recurring to an old claim thatseemed to most Englishmen like the lie of a broken-down lodging-housekeeper at Margate--by all this the Irish have got what they want, insolid mud and turf. That imaginary estate has conquered the ThreeEstates of the Realm. 

But the homeless Englishman must not even remember a home. So far fromhis 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 ishe told none of the truth about the mediæval civilisation except a fewcruelties and mistakes in chemistry? Why does a mediæval burgher neverappear till he can appear in a shirt and a halter? Why does a mediævalmonastery never appear till it is "corrupt" enough to shock theinnocence of Henry VIII. ? Why do we hear of one charter--that of thebarons--and not a word of the charters of the carpenters, smiths, shipwrights and all the rest? The reason is that the English peasantis not only not allowed to have an estate, he is not even allowed tohave lost one. The past has to be painted pitch black, that it may beworse than the present. 

There is one strong, startling, outstanding thing about Eugenics, andthat is its meanness. Wealth, and the social science supported bywealth, had tried an inhuman experiment. The experiment had entirelyfailed. They sought to make wealth accumulate--and they made mendecay. Then, instead of confessing the error, and trying to restorethe wealth, or attempting to repair the decay, they are trying tocover their first cruel experiment with a more cruel experiment. Theyput a poisonous plaster on a poisoned wound. Vilest of all, theyactually quote the bewilderment produced among the poor by their firstblunder as a reason for allowing them to blunder again. They areapparently ready to arrest all the opponents of their system as mad, merely because the system was maddening. Suppose a captain hadcollected volunteers in a hot, waste country by the assurance that hecould lead them to water, and knew where to meet the rest of hisregiment. Suppose he led them wrong, to a place where the regimentcould not be for days, and there was no water. And suppose sunstrokestruck them down on the sand man after man, and they kicked and dancedand raved. And, when at last the regiment came, suppose the captainsuccessfully concealed his mistake, because all his men had sufferedtoo much from it to testify to its ever having occurred. What wouldyou think of the gallant captain? It is pretty much what I think ofthis 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 muchbewildered as the battered proletariat; but there are some who areless well-meaning and more mean. And these are leading their moregenerous colleagues towards the fulfilment of this ungenerous evasion, if not towards the comprehension of it. Now a ruler of the Capitalistcivilisation, who has come to consider the idea of ultimately herdingand breeding the workers like cattle, has certain contemporaryproblems to review. He has to consider what forces still exist in themodern world for the frustration of his design. The first question ishow much remains of the old ideal of individual liberty. The secondquestion is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarianideas as may be implied in Socialism. The third is whether there isany power of resistance in the tradition of the populace itself. Thesethree questions for the future I shall consider in their order in thefinal chapters that follow. It is enough to say here that I think theprogress of these ideals has broken down at the precise point wherethey will fail to prevent the experiment. Briefly, the progress willhave deprived the Capitalist of his old Individualist scruples, without committing him to his new Collectivist obligations. He is in avery perilous position; for he has ceased to be a Liberal withoutbecoming a Socialist, and the bridge by which he was crossing hasbroken above an abyss of Anarchy. 

CHAPTER VI

THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY

If such a thing as the Eugenic sociology had been suggested in theperiod from Fox to Gladstone, it would have been far more fiercelyrepudiated by the reformers than by the Conservatives. If Tories hadregarded it as an insult to marriage, Radicals would have far moreresolutely regarded it as an insult to citizenship. But in theinterval we have suffered from a process resembling a sort of mysticalparricide, such as is told of so many gods, and is true of so manygreat ideas. Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism hasdestroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving itunlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought theywere only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving itundefended. Men merely finding themselves free found themselves freeto dispute the value of freedom. But the important point to seizeabout this reactionary scepticism is that as it is bound to beunlimited in theory, so it is bound to be unlimited in practice. Inother words, the modern mind is set in an attitude which would enableit to advance, not only towards Eugenic legislation, but towards anyconceivable or inconceivable extravagances of Eugenics. 

Those who reply to any plea for freedom invariably fall into a certaintrap. I have debated with numberless different people on thesematters, and I confess I find it amusing to see them tumbling into itone after another. I remember discussing it before a club of veryactive and intelligent Suffragists, and I cast it here for conveniencein 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 awaya poor man's personal liberty, it is very vital to note what is theusual or almost universal reply. People hardly ever do reply, for somereason or other, by saying that a man's liberty consists of such andsuch things, but that beer is an exception that cannot be classedamong them, for such and such reasons. What they almost invariably dosay is something like this: "After all, what is liberty? Man must liveas 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 thevery existence or the very possibility of liberty. In the very form ofthe answer they admit the full scope of the accusation against them. In trying to rebut the smaller accusation, they plead guilty to thelarger one. 

This distinction is very important, as can be seen from any practicalparallel. Suppose we wake up in the middle of the night and find thata neighbour has entered the house not by the front-door but by theskylight; we may suspect that he has come after the fine old familyjewellery. We may be reassured if he can refer it to a reallyexceptional 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 theincredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for anextraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shallhardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistfulfashion and says, "After all, what is property? Why should materialobjects be thus artificially attached, etc. , etc. ?" We shall merelyrealise that his attitude allows of his taking the jewellery andeverything else. Or if the neighbour approaches us carrying a largeknife dripping with blood, we may be convinced by his story that hekilled another neighbour in self-defence, that the quiet gentlemannext door was really a homicidal maniac. We shall know that homicidalmania is exceptional and that we ourselves are so happy as not tosuffer from it; and being free from the disease may be free from thedanger. But it will not soothe us for the man with the gory knife tosay softly and pensively "After all, what is human life? Why should wecling to it? Brief at the best, sad at the brightest, it is itself buta disease from which, etc. , etc. " We shall perceive that the scepticis in a mood not only to murder us but to massacre everybody in thestreet. Exactly the same effect which would be produced by thequestions of "What is property?" and "What is life?" is produced bythe question of "What is liberty?" It leaves the questioner free todisregard any liberty, or in other words to take any liberties. Thevery thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he maychoose to do. If he gags a man to prevent him from indulging inprofane swearing, or locks him in the coal cellar to guard against hisgoing 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 protectionagainst Eugenic or any other experiments. If the men who took awaybeer as an unlawful pleasure had paused for a moment to define thelawful pleasures, there might be a different situation. If the men whohad denied one liberty had taken the opportunity to affirm otherliberties, there might be some defence for them. But it never occursto them to admit any liberties at all. It never so much as crossestheir minds. Hence the excuse for the last oppression will alwaysserve as well for the next oppression; and to that tyranny there canbe no end. 

Hence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secretand sacred places of personal freedom, where no sane man ever dreamedof seeing it; and especially the sanctuary of sex. It is as easy totake away a man's wife or baby as to take away his beer when you cansay "What is liberty?"; just as it is as easy to cut off his head asto cut off his hair if you are free to say "What is life?" There is norational philosophy of human rights generally disseminated among thepopulace, to which we can appeal in defence even of the most intimateor individual things that anybody can imagine. For so far as there wasa vague principle in these things, that principle has been whollychanged. It used to be said that a man could have liberty, so long asit did not interfere with the liberty of others. This did afford somerough justification for the ordinary legal view of the man with thepot of beer. For instance, it was logical to allow some degree ofdistinction between beer and tea, on the ground that a man may bemoved by excess of beer to throw the pot at somebody's head. And itmay be said that the spinster is seldom moved by excess of tea tothrow the tea-pot at anybody's head. But the whole ground of argumentis now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does toothers by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinkingthe beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that theGovernment must safeguard the health of the community. And the momentthat is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference betweenbeer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or withtobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for thehygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he isto control the health of the community, he must necessarily controlall the habits of all the citizens, and among the rest their habits inthe matter of sex. 

But there is more than this. It is not only true that it is the lastliberties of man that are being taken away; and not merely his firstor most superficial liberties. It is also inevitable that the lastliberties should be taken first. It is inevitable that the mostprivate matters should be most under public coercion. This inversevariation is very important, though very little realised. If a man'spersonal 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 hisusing his tongue in the market-place. The inspector must interfere_more_ with how he sleeps in the middle of the night than with how heworks 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 voteor his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a privatedetective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in publicaffairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he shouldsneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All thisand things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that theState must make itself responsible for the health of the citizen. Butthe point is that the policeman must deal primarily and promptly withthe citizen in his relation to his home, and only indirectly and moredoubtfully with the citizen in his relation to his city. By the wholelogic of this test, the king must hear what is said in the innerchamber and hardly notice what is proclaimed from the house-tops. Wehave heard of a revolution that turns everything upside down. Butthis is almost literally a revolution that turns everything insideout. 

If a wary reactionary of the tradition of Metternich had wished in thenineteenth century to reverse the democratic tendency, he wouldnaturally have begun by depriving the democracy of its margin of moredubious powers over more distant things. He might well begin, forinstance, by removing the control of foreign affairs from popularassemblies; and there is a case for saying that a people mayunderstand its own affairs, without knowing anything whatever aboutforeign affairs. Then he might centralise great national questions, leaving a great deal of local government in local questions. Thiswould proceed so for a long time before it occurred to the blackestterrorist of the despotic ages to interfere with a man's own habits inhis own house. But the new sociologists and legislators are, by thenature of their theory, bound to begin where the despots leave off, even if they leave off where the despots begin. For them, as theywould 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. Wellsput it, life itself may be regarded merely as a tissue of births. Thusthey are coerced by their own rational principle to begin all coercionat 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 muchcare; and it is probable that the democratic institutions of recentcenturies will be allowed to decay in undisturbed dignity for acentury or two more. Thus our civilisation will find itself in aninteresting situation, not without humour; in which the citizen isstill 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 willstill be consulted by politicians about whether opium is good forChina-men, but not about whether ale is good for him. He will becross-examined for his opinions about the danger of allowing Kamskatkato have a war-fleet, but not about allowing his own child to have awooden sword. About all, he will be consulted about the delicatediplomatic crisis created by the proposed marriage of the Emperor ofChina, 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 ofaccomplishment. It would be easy to give an almost endless catalogueof examples, to show how, in dealing with the poorer classes at least, coercion has already come near to a direct control of the relations ofthe sexes. But I am much more concerned in this chapter to point outthat all these things have been adopted in principle, even where theyhave not been adopted in practice. It is much more vital to realisethat the reformers have possessed themselves of a _principle_, whichwill cover all such things if it be granted, and which is notsufficiently comprehended to be contradicted. It is a principlewhereby the deepest things of flesh and spirit must have the mostdirect relation with the dictatorship of the State. They must have it, by the whole reason and rationale upon which the thing depends. It isa system that might be symbolised by the telephone from headquartersstanding by a man's bed. He must have a relation to Government likehis relation to God. That is, the more he goes into the innerchambers, and the more he closes the doors, the more he is alone withthe law. The social machinery which makes such a State uniform andsubmissive will be worked outwards from the household as from ahandle, or a single mechanical knob or button. In a horrible sense, loaded with fear and shame and every detail of dishonour, it will betrue to say that charity begins at home. 

Charity will begin at home in the sense that all home children will belike charity children. Philanthropy will begin at home, for allhouseholders will be like paupers. Police administration will begin athome, for all citizens will be like convicts. And when health and thehumours of daily life have passed into the domain of this socialdiscipline, when it is admitted that the community must primarilycontrol the primary habits, when all law begins, so to speak, next tothe skin or nearest the vitals--then indeed it will appear absurd thatmarriage and maternity should not be similarly ordered. Then indeed itwill seem to be illogical, and it will be illogical, that love shouldbe free when life has lost its freedom. 

So passed, to all appearance, from the minds of men the strange dreamand fantasy called freedom. Whatever be the future of theseevolutionary experiments and their effect on civilisation, there isone land at least that has something to mourn. For us in Englandsomething will have perished which our fathers valued all the morebecause they hardly troubled to name it; and whatever be the stars ofa more universal destiny, the great star of our night has set. TheEnglish had missed many other things that men of the same origins hadachieved or retained. Not to them was given, like the French, toestablish 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 greatreligion. 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 whowished to walk nameless and alone. It was not for nothing that theyforgot all their laws to remember the name of an outlaw, and filledthe green heart of England with the figure of Robin Hood. It was notfor nothing that even their princes of art and letters had about themsomething of kings incognito, undiscovered by formal or academic fame;so that no eye can follow the young Shakespeare as he came up thegreen lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first losthimself among the lights of London. It is not for nothing that thevery roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down ona map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on thehome of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar restedupon its wood-lands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeeddeparted, it matters little that it has been driven out by perversionsit had itself permitted, by monsters it had idly let loose. Industrialism and Capitalism and the rage for physical science wereEnglish experiments in the sense that the English lent themselves totheir encouragement; but there was something else behind them andwithin them that was not they--its name was liberty, and it was ourlife. It may be that this delicate and tenacious spirit has at lastevaporated. If so, it matters little what becomes of the externalexperiments of our nation in later time. That at which we look will bea dead thing alive with its own parasites. The English will havedestroyed England. 

CHAPTER VII

THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM

Socialism is one of the simplest ideas in the world. It has alwayspuzzled me how there came to be so much bewilderment andmisunderstanding and miserable mutual slander about it. At one time Iagreed with Socialism, because it was simple. Now I disagree withSocialism, because it is too simple. Yet most of its opponents stillseem to treat it, not merely as an iniquity but as a mystery ofiniquity, which seems to mystify them even more than it maddens them. It may not seem strange that its antagonists should be puzzled aboutwhat it is. It may appear more curious and interesting that itsadmirers are equally puzzled. Its foes used to denounce Socialism asAnarchy, which is its opposite. Its friends seemed to suppose that itis a sort of optimism, which is almost as much of an opposite. Friendsand foes alike talked as if it involved a sort of faith in ideal humannature; why I could never imagine. The Socialist system, in a morespecial sense than any other, is founded not on optimism but onoriginal sin. It proposes that the State, as the conscience of thecommunity, should possess all primary forms of property; and thatobviously on the ground that men cannot be trusted to own or barteror combine or compete without injury to themselves. Just as a Statemight own all the guns lest people should shoot each other, so thisState would own all the gold and land lest they should cheat orrackrent or exploit each other. It seems extraordinarily simple andeven obvious; and so it is. It is too obvious to be true. But while itis obvious, it seems almost incredible that anybody ever thought itoptimistic. 

I am myself primarily opposed to Socialism, or Collectivism orBolshevism or whatever we call it, for a primary reason notimmediately involved here: the ideal of property. I say the ideal andnot merely the idea; and this alone disposes of the moral mistake inthe matter. It disposes of all the dreary doubts of theAnti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yetdrearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I donot admit that private property is a concession to baseness andselfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the mosttruly popular of all points of honour. But this, though it haseverything to do with my plea for a domestic dignity, has nothing todo with this passing summary of the situation of Socialism. I onlyremark in passing that it is vain for the more vulgar sort ofCapitalist, sneering at ideals, to say to me that in order to haveSocialism "You must alter human nature. " I answer "Yes. You must alterit for the worse. "

The clouds were considerably cleared away from the meaning ofSocialism by the Fabians of the 'nineties; by Mr. Bernard Shaw, asort of anti-romantic Quixote, who charged chivalry as chivalrycharged windmills, with Sidney Webb for his Sancho Panza. In so far asthese paladins had a castle to defend, we may say that their castlewas the Post Office. The red pillar-box was the immovable post againstwhich the irresistible force of Capitalist individualism was arrested. Business men who said that nothing could be managed by the State wereforced to admit that they trusted all their business letters andbusiness telegrams to the State. 

After all, it was not found necessary to have an office competing withanother office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or morepicturesque postmen. It was not necessary to efficiency that thepostmistress should buy a penny stamp for a halfpenny and sell it fortwopence; or that she should haggle and beat customers down about theprice of a postal order; or that she should always take tenders fortelegrams. There was obviously nothing actually impossible about theState management of national needs; and the Post Office was at leasttolerably managed. Though it was not always a model employer, by anymeans, it might be made so by similar methods. It was not impossiblethat equitable pay, and even equal pay, could be given to thePostmaster-General and the postman. We had only to extend this rule ofpublic responsibility, and we should escape from all the terror ofinsecurity and torture of compassion, which hag-rides humanity in theinsane extremes of economic inequality and injustice. As Mr. Shaw putit, "A man must save Society's honour before he can save his own. "

That was one side of the argument: that the change would removeinequality; and there was an answer on the other side. It can bestated most truly by putting another model institution and edificeside by side with the Post Office. It is even more of an idealrepublic, or commonwealth without competition or private profit. Itsupplies its citizens not only with the stamps but with clothes andfood and lodging, and all they require. It observes considerable levelof equality in these things; notably in the clothes. It not onlysupervises the letters but all the other human communications; notablythe sort of evil communications that corrupt good manners. This twinmodel to the Post Office is called the Prison. And much of the schemefor a model State was regarded by its opponents as a scheme for amodel prison; good because it fed men equally, but less acceptablesince it imprisoned them equally. 

It is better to be in a bad prison than in a good one. From thestandpoint of the prisoner this is not at all a paradox; if onlybecause in a bad prison he is more likely to escape. But apart fromthat, a man was in many ways better off in the old dirty and corruptprison, where he could bribe turnkeys to bring him drink and meetfellow-prisoners to drink with. Now that is exactly the differencebetween the present system and the proposed system. Nobody worthtalking about respects the present system. Capitalism is a corruptprison. That is the best that can be said for Capitalism. But it issomething to be said for it; for a man is a little freer in thatcorrupt prison than he would be in a complete prison. As a man canfind one jailer more lax than another, so he could find one employermore kind than another; he has at least a choice of tyrants. In theother case he finds the same tyrant at every turn. Mr. Shaw and otherrational Socialists have agreed that the State would be in practicegovernment by a small group. Any independent man who disliked thatgroup would find his foe waiting for him at the end of every road. 

It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friendsrecommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it asdecreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State couldprovide homes and meals for all; on the other it was answered thatthis could only be done by State officials who would inspect housesand regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the mostinteresting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to doeverything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing thathad ever been desired in it. Since it was supposed to gain equality atthe sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possibleto sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed, there was notthe faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality. But there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminateliberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations andinterferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating thosewhom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was theCapitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted inevery sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to thewiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easy to proceed morepromptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gonethrough the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. Afterall, it was easy to inspect the house without having helped to buildit; it was even possible, with luck, to inspect the house in time toprevent it being built. All that is described in the documents of theHousing Problem; for the people of this age loved problems and hatedsolutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing thedinner. All that can be found in the documents of what is calledTemperance Reform. 

In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of thegood of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all thebad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialiststhemselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken overbodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratictyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of aCapitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in thesmallest degree diminish the inequalities of a Capitalist State. Itsimply destroyed such individual liberties as remained among itsvictims. It did not enable any man to build a better house; it onlylimited the houses he might live in--or how he might manage to livethere; forbidding him to keep pigs or poultry or to sell beer orcider. It did not even add anything to a man's wages; it only tookaway something from a man's wages and locked it up, whether he likedit or not, in a sort of money-box which was regarded as amedicine-chest. It does not send food into the house to feed thechildren; it only sends an inspector into the house to punish theparents for having no food to feed them. It does not see that theyhave got a fire; it only punishes them for not having a fireguard. Itdoes not even occur to it to provide the fireguard. 

Now this anomalous situation will probably ultimately evolve into theServile 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 richwill take over the philanthropic as well as the tyrannic side of thebargain; and will feed men like slaves as well as hunting them likeoutlaws. But for the purpose of my own argument it is not necessary tocarry the process so far as this, or indeed any farther than it hasalready gone. The purely negative stage of interference, at which wehave stuck for the present, is in itself quite favourable to all theseeugenical experiments. The capitalist whose half-conscious thought andcourse of action I have simplified into a story in the precedingchapters, finds this insufficient solution quite sufficient for hispurposes. What he has felt for a long time is that he must check orimprove the reckless and random breeding of the submerged race, whichis at once outstripping his requirements and failing to fulfil hisneeds. Now the anomalous situation has already accustomed him tostopping things. The first interferences with sex need only benegative; and there are already negative interferences without number. So that the study of this stage of Socialism brings us to the sameconclusion as that of the ideal of liberty as formally professed byLiberalism. The ideal of liberty is lost, and the ideal of Socialismis changed, till it is a mere excuse for the oppression of the poor. 

The first movements for intervention in the deepest domestic concernsof the poor all had this note of negative interference. Officialpapers were sent round to the mothers in poor streets; papers in whicha total stranger asked these respectable women questions which a manwould be killed for asking, in the class of what were called gentlemenor in the countries of what were called free men. They were questionssupposed to refer to the conditions of maternity; but the point ishere that the reformers did not begin by building up those economic ormaterial conditions. They did not attempt to pay money or establishproperty to create those conditions. They never give anything--exceptorders. Another form of the intervention, and one already mentioned, is the kidnapping of children upon the most fantastic excuses of shampsychology. Some people established an apparatus of tests and trickquestions; which might make an amusing game of riddles for the familyfireside, but seems an insufficient reason for mutilating anddismembering the family. Others became interested in the hopelessmoral condition of children born in the economic condition which theydid not attempt to improve. They were great on the fact that crime wasa disease; and carried on their criminological studies so successfullyas to open the reformatory for little boys who played truant; therewas no reformatory for reformers. I need not pause to explain thatcrime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease. 

Finally one thing may be added which is at least clear. Whether or nothe organisation of industry will issue positively in a eugenicalreconstruction of the family, it has already issued negatively, as inthe negations already noted, in a partial destruction of it. It tookthe form of a propaganda of popular divorce, calculated at least toaccustom the masses to a new notion of the shifting and re-grouping offamilies. I do not discuss the question of divorce here, as I havedone elsewhere, in its intrinsic character; I merely note it as one ofthese negative reforms which have been substituted for positiveeconomic equality. It was preached with a weird hilarity, as if thesuicide of love were something not only humane but happy. But it neednot be explained, and certainly it need not be denied, that theharassed poor of a diseased industrialism were indeed maintainingmarriage under every disadvantage, and often found individual reliefin divorce. Industrialism does produce many unhappy marriages, for thesame reason that it produces so many unhappy men. But all the reformswere 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 ofsacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in withthe modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatestpromptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat andgathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled aboutthe chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts wereinstantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to pour awaythe wine. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GODS

The only place where it is possible to find an echo of the mind of theEnglish masses is either in conversation or in comic songs. The latterare obviously the more dubious; but they are the only things recordedand quotable that come anywhere near it. We talk about the popularPress; but in truth there is no popular Press. It may be a good thing;but, anyhow, most readers would be mildly surprised if a newspaperleading article were written in the language of a navvy. Sometimes thePress is interested in things in which the democracy is also genuinelyinterested; such as horse-racing. Sometimes the Press is about aspopular as the Press Gang. We talk of Labour leaders in Parliament;but they would be highly unparliamentary if they talked likelabourers. The Bolshevists, I believe, profess to promote somethingthat they call "proletarian art, " which only shows that the wordBolshevism can sometimes be abbreviated into bosh. That sort ofBolshevist is not a proletarian, but rather the very thing he accuseseverybody else of being. The Bolshevist is above all a bourgeois; aJewish intellectual of the town. And the real case against industrialintellectualism could hardly be put better than in this verycomparison. There has never been such a thing as proletarian art; butthere has emphatically been such a thing as peasant art. And the onlyliterature which even reminds us of the real tone and talk of theEnglish working classes is to be found in the comic song of theEnglish music-hall. 

I first heard one of them on my voyage to America, in the midst of thesea within sight of the New World, with the Statue of Libertybeginning to loom up on the horizon. From the lips of a young Scotchengineer, of all people in the world, I heard for the first time theseimmortal 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 toboast; and boasting itself is certainly not a thing to boast of. Idoubt the persuasive power of English as exemplified in Kipling, andone can easily force it on foreigners too much, even as exemplified inDickens. I am no Imperialist, and only on rare and proper occasions aJingo. But when I hear those words about Father and the water-works, when I hear under far-off foreign skies anything so gloriously Englishas 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 ofnobility besides nationality. It provides a compact and almost perfectsummary of the whole social problem in industrial countries likeEngland and America. If I wished to set forth systematically theelements of the ethical and economic problem in Pittsburg orSheffield, 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 pointsin some rough fashion here. 

1. --_Father. _ This word is still in use among the more ignorant andill-paid of the industrial community; and is the badge of an oldconvention or unit called the family. A man and woman having vowed tobe faithful to each other, the man makes himself responsible for allthe children of the woman, and is thus generically called "Father. " Itmust not be supposed that the poet or singer is necessarily one of thechildren. It may be the wife, called by the same ritual "Mother. " PoorEnglish wives say "Father" as poor Irish wives say "Himself, " meaningthe titular head of the house. The point to seize is that among theignorant this convention or custom still exists. Father and the familyare the foundations of thought; the natural authority still comesnatural to the poet; but it is overlaid and thwarted with moreartificial authorities; the official, the schoolmaster, thepoliceman, the employer, and so on. What these forces fighting thefamily are we shall see, my dear brethren, when we pass to our secondheading; which is:--

2. --_Got the Sack. _ This idiom marks a later stage of the history ofthe language than the comparatively primitive word "Father. " It isneedless to discuss whether the term comes from Turkey or some otherservile society. In America they say that Father has been fired. Butit involves the whole of the unique economic system under which Fatherhas now to live. Though assumed by family tradition to be a master, hecan now, by industrial tradition, only be a particular kind ofservant; a servant who has not the security of a slave. If he ownedhis own shop and tools, he could not get the sack. If his master ownedhim, he could not get the sack. The slave and the guildsman know wherethey will sleep every night; it was only the proletarian ofindividualist industrialism who could get the sack, if not in thestyle of the Bosphorus, at least in the sense of the Embankment. Wepass to the third heading. 

3. --_From the Water-works. _ This detail of Father's life is veryimportant; for this is the reply to most of the Socialists, as thelast section is to so many of the Capitalists. The water-works whichemployed Father is a very large, official and impersonal institution. Whether it is technically a bureaucratic department or a big businessmakes little or no change in the feelings of Father in connection withit. The water-works might or might not be nationalised; and it wouldmake no necessary difference to Father being fired, and no differenceat all to his being accused of playing with fire. In fact, if theCapitalists are more likely to give him the sack, the Socialists areeven more likely to forbid him the smoke. There is no freedom forFather except in some sort of private ownership of things like waterand 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. Thatis the real meaning of property, and the real argument againstSocialism; probably the only argument against Socialism. 

4. --_For Smoking. _ Nothing marks this queer intermediate phase ofindustrialism more strangely than the fact that, while employers stillclaim the right to sack him like a stranger, they are alreadybeginning to claim the right to supervise him like a son. Economicallyhe can go and starve on the Embankment; but ethically and hygienicallyhe must be controlled and coddled in the nursery. Governmentrepudiates all responsibility for seeing that he gets bread. But itanxiously accepts all responsibility for seeing that he does not getbeer. It passes an Insurance Act to force him to provide himself withmedicine; but it is avowedly indifferent to whether he is able toprovide himself with meals. Thus while the sack is inconsistent withthe family, the supervision is really inconsistent with the sack. Thewhole thing is a tangled chain of contradictions. It is true that inthe special and sacred text of scripture we are here considering, thesmoking is forbidden on a general and public and not on a medicinaland private ground. But it is none the less relevant to remember that, as his masters have already proved that alcohol is a poison, they maysoon prove that nicotine is a poison. And it is most significant ofall that this sort of danger is even greater in what is called the newdemocracy of America than in what is called the old oligarchy ofEngland. When I was in America, people were already "defending"tobacco. People who defend tobacco are on the road to proving thatdaylight is defensible, or that it is not really sinful to sneeze. Inother words, they are quietly going mad. 

5. --_Of his old Cherry-briar. _ Here we have the intermediate andanomalous position of the institution of Property. The sentiment stillexists, even among the poor, or perhaps especially among the poor. Butit is attached to toys rather than tools; to the minor products ratherthan to the means of production. But something of the sanity ofownership is still to be observed; for instance, the element of customand continuity. It was an _old_ cherry-briar; systematically smoked byFather in spite of all wiles and temptations to Woodbines and gaspers;an old companion possibly connected with various romantic or divertingevents 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 onthe creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of hisself-respect, at the mercy of the thing called the sack. When he getsthe sack from the water-works, it is only too probable that he willhave 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 wegive for them, so exact an analysis of the logic of all ourprecautions at the present time, that the pen falls even from thehands of the commentator; and the masterpiece is left to speak foritself. 

Some such analysis as the above gives a better account than most ofthe anomalous attitude and situation of the English proletarianto-day. It is the more appropriate because it is expressed in thewords he actually uses; which certainly do not include the word"proletarian. " It will be noted that everything that goes to make upthat complexity is in an unfinished state. Property has not quitevanished; slavery has not quite arrived; marriage exists underdifficulties; social regimentation exists under restraints, or ratherunder subterfuges. The question which remains is which force isgaining on the other, and whether the old forces are capable ofresisting the new. I hope they are; but I recognise that they resistunder more than one heavy handicap. The chief of these is that thefamily feeling of the workmen is by this time rather an instinct thanan ideal. The obvious thing to protect an ideal is a religion. Theobvious thing to protect the ideal of marriage is the Christianreligion. And for various reasons, which only a history of Englandcould explain (though it hardly ever does), the working classes ofthis country have been very much cut off from Christianity. I do notdream of denying, indeed I should take every opportunity of affirming, that monogamy and its domestic responsibilities can be defended onrational apart from religious grounds. But a religion is the practicalprotection of any moral idea which has to be popular and which has tobe pugnacious. And our ideal, if it is to survive, will have to beboth. 

Those who make merry over the landlady who has seen better days, ofwhom something has been said already, commonly speak, in the samejovial 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 thatcan be what the household gods were to the ancient heathen. Thehousehold gods of the heathen were not only wood and stone; at leastthere is always more than that in the stone of the hearth-stone andthe wood of the roof-tree. So long as Christianity continued thetradition of patron saints and portable relics, this idea of ablessing on the household could continue. If men had not domesticdivinities, at least they had divine domesticities. When Christianitywas chilled with Puritanism and rationalism, this inner warmth orsecret fire in the house faded on the hearth. But some of the embersstill glow or at least glimmer; and there is still a memory among thepoor that their material possessions are something sacred. I know poormen for whom it is the romance of their lives to refuse big sums ofmoney for an old copper warming-pan. They do not want it, in any senseof base utility. They do not use it as a warming-pan; but it warmsthem for all that. It is indeed, as Sergeant Buzfuz humorouslyobserved, a cover for hidden fire. And the fire is that which burnedbefore the strange and uncouth wooden gods, like giant dolls, in thehuts of ancient Italy. It is a household god. And I can imagine somesuch neglected and unlucky English man dying with his eyes on the redgleam of that piece of copper, as happier men have died with theireyes on the golden gleam of a chalice or a cross. 

It will thus be noted that there has always been some connectionbetween a mystical belief and the materials of domesticity; that theygenerally go together; and that now, in a more mournful sense, theyare gone together. The working classes have no reserves of propertywith which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religionwith which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they areunder 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 stolenproperty. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks toher husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolvedto run away from her husband. Often she will cry as hopelessly, andas it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were achild deprived of her doll. Indeed, a child in the street, crying forher lost doll, would probably receive more sympathy than she does. 

Meanwhile the fun goes on; and many such conflicts are recorded, evenin the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breakingphilanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are anynumber of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to beflippant about these things as the only alternative to being ratherfierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. Iknow that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives ofsincere but confused compassion, and many more from a dull but notdishonourable medical or legal habit. But if I and those who agreewith me tend to some harshness and abruptness of condemnation, theseworthy people need not be altogether impatient with our impatience. Itis surely beneath them, in the scope of their great schemes, tocomplain of protests so ineffectual about wrongs so individual. I haveconsidered in this chapter the chances of general democratic defenceof domestic honour, and have been compelled to the conclusion thatthey are not at present hopeful; and it is at least clear that wecannot be founding on them any personal hopes. If this conclusionleaves us defeated, we submit that it leaves us disinterested. Ours isnot the sort of protest, at least, that promises anything even to thedemagogue, let alone the sycophant. Those we serve will never rule, and those we pity will never rise. Parliament will never be surroundedby a mob of submerged grandmothers brandishing pawn-tickets. There isno trade union of defective children. It is not very probable thatmodern government will be overturned by a few poor dingy devils whoare sent to prison by mistake, or rather by ordinary accident. Surelyit is not for those magnificent Socialists, or those great reformersand reconstructors of Capitalism, sweeping onward to their scientifictriumphs and caring for none of these things, to murmur at our vainindignation. At least if it is vain it is the less venal; and in sofar as it is hopeless it is also thankless. They have their greatcampaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions, and the records of science and progress. They need not be angry withus, who plead for those who will never read our words or reward oureffort, even with gratitude. They need surely have no worse moodtowards us than mystification, seeing that in recalling these smallthings of broken hearts or homes, we are but recording what cannot berecorded; trivial tragedies that will fade faster and faster in theflux of time, cries that fail in a furious and infinite wind, wildwords of despair that are written only upon running water; unless, indeed, as some so stubbornly and strangely say, they are somewherecut 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 slumpopulation, the popular material and the possibility of protests, feltthat the time had come to open the campaign. Eugenics began to appearin big headlines in the daily Press, and big pictures in theillustrated papers. A foreign gentleman named Bolce, living atHampstead, was advertised on a huge scale as having every intention ofbeing the father of the Superman. It turned out to be a Superwoman, and was called Eugenette. The parents were described as devotingthemselves to the production of perfect pre-natal conditions. They"eliminated everything from their lives which did not tend towardscomplete happiness. " Many might indeed be ready to do this; but in thevoluminous contemporary journalism on the subject I can find nodetailed notes about how it is done. Communications were opened withMr. H. G. Wells, with Dr. Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. KarlPearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefullycultivated in the parents. The problem of a sense of humour was feltto be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturallyfearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientificas to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, theyvisited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards GeorgeRobey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper reader, however, it looked as if the names of Metchnikoff and Steinmetz andKarl Pearson would soon be quite as familiar as those of Robey andLauder and Bard. Arguments about these Eugenic authorities, reports ofthe 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 inconditions of filth and neglect, cast but a slight and momentaryshadow upon the splendid dawn of the science. It would be vain torecord any of the thousand testimonies to its triumph. In the natureof things, this should be the longest chapter in the book, or ratherthe beginning of another book. It should record, in numberlessexamples, the triumphant popularisation of Eugenics in England. But asa matter of fact this is not the first chapter but the last. And thismust be a very short chapter, because the whole of this story was cutshort. A very curious thing happened. England went to war. 

This would in itself have been a sufficiently irritating interruptionin the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment ofEugenics. But a far more dreadful and disconcerting fact must benoted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to warwith the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that veryland of scientific culture from which the very ideal of a Superman hadcome. She went to war with the whole of Dr. Steinmetz, and presumablywith at least half of Dr. Karl Pearson. She gave battle to thebirthplace of nine-tenths of the professors who were the prophets ofthe new hope of humanity. In a few weeks the very name of a professorwas a matter for hissing and low plebeian mirth. The very name ofNietzsche, who had held up this hope of something superhuman tohumanity, was laughed at for all the world as if he had been touchedwith lunacy. A new mood came upon the whole people; a mood ofmarching, of spontaneous soldierly vigilance and democraticdiscipline, moving to the faint tune of bugles far away. Men began totalk strangely of old and common things, of the counties of England, of its quiet landscapes, of motherhood and the half-buried religion ofthe race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making allthings vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awfulactuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and theEugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one maysay so, funny. 

Such a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given. There was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfectionthan any other the type of order and foresight that are the subjectof this book. It had long been the model State of all those morerational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation ofsociety. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform. All the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudlyborrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found itconvenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring andneutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had aprivilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had thegratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scaleand very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionaryidealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams;or to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to waitfor it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; butin the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silentfor five years. 

The thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. Itmight be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogetherleave the memories of men; but men's memories are unstable things. Itmay 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 disinterestedthat they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment ofthat broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But thereare limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been oncedeceived and a second time deceives himself. They have seen theirparagons of science and organisation playing their part on land andsea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love ofhumanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed thetestimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neitherwould they believe though one rose from the dead; though all themillions who died to destroy Prussianism stood up and testifiedagainst 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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