Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Anticipations Chapter 9 Part 2

Transcript

Anticipations Chapter 9 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

0:01
Speaker 1: Chapter nine B of Anticipations. This is a LibriVox recording.
0:05
Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
0:09
Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Anticipations
0:15
Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Chapter nine B. And the type
0:22
Speaker 1: of men that I conceive emerging in the coming years
0:25
Speaker 1: will deal simply and logically, not only with the business
0:28
Speaker 1: of death, but with birth. That presently sexual morality of
0:33
Speaker 1: the civilized world is the most illogical and incoherent system
0:37
Speaker 1: of wild permissions and insane prohibitions, foolish tolerance, and ruthless
0:42
Speaker 1: cruelty that it is possible to imagine. Our current civilization
0:48
Speaker 1: is a sexual lunatic, and it has lost its reason
0:52
Speaker 1: in this respect under the stresses of the new birth
0:55
Speaker 1: of things, largely through the difficulties that have stood in
0:59
Speaker 1: the way and do still, in a diminishing degree, stand
1:02
Speaker 1: in the way of any sane discussion of the matter
1:05
Speaker 1: as a whole. To approach it is to approach excitement.
1:10
Speaker 1: So few people seemed to be leading happy and healthy
1:13
Speaker 1: sexual lives that to mention the very word sexual is
1:18
Speaker 1: to set them stirring, to brighten the eye, lower the voice,
1:22
Speaker 1: and blanch or flush the cheek with a flavor of guilt.
1:26
Speaker 1: We are all, as it were, keeping our secrets and
1:30
Speaker 1: hiding our shames. One of the most curious revelations of
1:34
Speaker 1: this fact occurred only a few years ago, when the
1:38
Speaker 1: artless outpourings and fiction of certain young women, who had
1:41
Speaker 1: failed to find light on problems that pressed upon them
1:44
Speaker 1: for solution, and which it was certainly their business as
1:47
Speaker 1: possible wives and mothers to solve, roused all sorts of
1:52
Speaker 1: respectable people to a quite insane vehemence of condemnation. Now
1:58
Speaker 1: there are excellent reasons and a permanent necessity for the
2:02
Speaker 1: preservation of decency, and for a far more stringent suppression
2:07
Speaker 1: of matter that is merely intended to excite than at
2:10
Speaker 1: present obtains. And the chief of these reasons lies in
2:13
Speaker 1: the need of preserving the young from a premature awakening,
2:17
Speaker 1: and indeed in the interests of civilization in positively delaying
2:22
Speaker 1: the period of awakening, retarding maturity, and lengthening the period
2:26
Speaker 1: of growth and preparation as much as possible. But purity
2:31
Speaker 1: and innocence may be prolonged too late. Innocence is really
2:35
Speaker 1: no more becoming to adults than a rattle or a
2:39
Speaker 1: rubber consoler, and the bashfulness that hampers this discussion, that
2:43
Speaker 1: permits it only in a furtive, silly sort of way,
2:47
Speaker 1: has its ugly consequences in shames and cruelties, in miserable
2:51
Speaker 1: households and pitiful crises, in the production of countless, needless
2:56
Speaker 1: and unhappy lives. Indeed, too often we carry our decency
3:01
Speaker 1: so far as to make it suggestive and stimulating in
3:04
Speaker 1: a non natural way. We invest the plain business of
3:08
Speaker 1: reproduction with a mystic religious quality far more unwholesome than
3:13
Speaker 1: a savage nakedness could possibly be the essential aspect of
3:18
Speaker 1: all this wild and windy business of the sexual relations is,
3:22
Speaker 1: after all births. Upon this plain fact, the people of
3:27
Speaker 1: the emergent New Republic will unhesitatingly go. The pre eminent
3:32
Speaker 1: value of sexual questions and morality lies in the fact
3:36
Speaker 1: that the lives which will constitute the future are involved.
3:40
Speaker 1: If they are not involved, if we can dissociate this
3:44
Speaker 1: relationship from this issue, then sexual questions become of no
3:48
Speaker 1: more importance than the morality of one's deportment at chess
3:52
Speaker 1: or the general morality of outdoor games. Indeed, then the
3:56
Speaker 1: question of sexual relationships would be entirely on all falls
4:00
Speaker 1: with and probably very analogous to the question of golf.
4:04
Speaker 1: In each case, it would be for the medical man
4:07
Speaker 1: and the psychologist to decide how far the thing was
4:10
Speaker 1: wholesome and permissible, and how far it was an aggressive,
4:14
Speaker 1: bad habit and an absorbing waste of time and energy.
4:18
Speaker 1: An able bodied man continually addicted to love making that
4:21
Speaker 1: had no result in offspring would be just as silly
4:24
Speaker 1: and morally objectionable as an able bodied man who devoted
4:28
Speaker 1: his chief energies to hitting little balls over golf links,
4:32
Speaker 1: but no more. Both would probably be wasting the lives
4:36
Speaker 1: of other human beings. The golfer must employ his caddy.
4:40
Speaker 1: It is entirely the matter of births, and a further
4:43
Speaker 1: consideration to be presently discussed, that makes this analogy untrue.
4:48
Speaker 1: It does not, however, make it so untrue as to
4:51
Speaker 1: do away with the probability that, in many cases the
4:54
Speaker 1: emergent men of the new time will consider sterile gratification
4:58
Speaker 1: a moral and legitimate thing. Saint Paul tells us that
5:03
Speaker 1: it is better to marry than to burn, but to
5:06
Speaker 1: beget children on that account will appear, I imagine to
5:09
Speaker 1: those coming men as an absolutely loathsome proceeding. They will
5:13
Speaker 1: stifle no spread of knowledge that will diminish the swarming
5:17
Speaker 1: misery of childhood in the slums. They will regard the
5:21
Speaker 1: disinclination of the witless society woman to become a mother
5:25
Speaker 1: as a most amiable trait in her folly. And our
5:29
Speaker 1: bashful is about these things we talk an abominable lot
5:32
Speaker 1: of nonsense. All this uproar one hears about the rapid
5:36
Speaker 1: multiplication of the unfit and the future of the lower
5:40
Speaker 1: races takes on an entirely different complexion. Directly, we face known,
5:45
Speaker 1: if indelicate facts. Most of the human types that by
5:50
Speaker 1: civilized standards are undesirable are quite willing to die out
5:54
Speaker 1: through such suppressions if the world will only encourage them
5:58
Speaker 1: a little. They multiply in sheer ignorance, but they do
6:02
Speaker 1: not desire multiplication even now, and they can easily be
6:05
Speaker 1: made to dread it. Sensuality aims not at life, but
6:09
Speaker 1: at itself. I believe that the men of the New
6:12
Speaker 1: Republic will deliberately shape their public policy along these lines.
6:17
Speaker 1: They will route out and illuminate urban rookeries and all
6:21
Speaker 1: places where the base can drift to multiply. They will
6:24
Speaker 1: contrive a land legislation that will keep the black or
6:28
Speaker 1: yellow or mean white squatter on the move. They will
6:31
Speaker 1: see to it that no parent can make a profit
6:33
Speaker 1: out of a child, so that child bearing shall cease
6:36
Speaker 1: to be a hopeful speculation for the unemployed poor. And
6:41
Speaker 1: they will make the maintenance of a child the first
6:43
Speaker 1: charge upon the parents who have brought it into the world.
6:47
Speaker 1: Only in this way can progress escape being clogged by
6:50
Speaker 1: the products of the security it creates. The development of
6:54
Speaker 1: science has lifted femine and pestilence from the shoulders of man,
6:58
Speaker 1: and it will yet lift war for some other end
7:02
Speaker 1: than to give him a spell of promiscuous and finely
7:05
Speaker 1: cruel and horrible reproduction. No doubt, the sentimentalist in all,
7:11
Speaker 1: whose moral sense has been vigorously trained in the old
7:14
Speaker 1: school will find this rather a dreadful suggestion. It amounts
7:18
Speaker 1: to saying that for the abyss to become a hotbed
7:21
Speaker 1: of sterile immorality will fall in with the deliberate policy
7:25
Speaker 1: of the ruling class in the days to come. At
7:28
Speaker 1: any rate, it will be a terminating evil. At present,
7:32
Speaker 1: the abyss is a hotbed breeding undesirable and too often
7:35
Speaker 1: fearfully miserable children, that is something more than a sentimental
7:40
Speaker 1: horror under the really very horrible morality of today, the
7:45
Speaker 1: spectacle of a mean, spirited, undersized, diseased little man, quite
7:50
Speaker 1: incapable of earning a decent living even for himself, married
7:54
Speaker 1: to some underfed, ignorant, ill shaped, plain and diseased little woman,
7:59
Speaker 1: and gold of the lives of ten or twelve ugly
8:02
Speaker 1: ailing children is regarded as an extremely edifying spectacle, and
8:07
Speaker 1: the two parents consider their reproductive excesses as giving them
8:10
Speaker 1: a distinct claim upon less thick hund and more prosperous people.
8:15
Speaker 1: Benevolent persons throw themselves with peculiar ardour into a case
8:20
Speaker 1: of this sort, and quite passionate efforts are made to
8:23
Speaker 1: strengthen the mother against further eventualities and protect the children
8:27
Speaker 1: until they attain to neubile years, until the attention of
8:32
Speaker 1: the benevolent persons is presently distracted by a new case.
8:37
Speaker 1: Yet so powerful is the suggestion of current opinions that
8:41
Speaker 1: few people seem to see nowadays just what a horrible
8:44
Speaker 1: and criminal thing this sort of family, seen from the
8:48
Speaker 1: point of view of social physiology, appears, and directly such
8:54
Speaker 1: principles as these come into effective operation, and I believe
8:58
Speaker 1: that the next hundred years will see this new phase
9:00
Speaker 1: of the human history beginning. There will recommence a process
9:04
Speaker 1: of physical and mental improvement in mankind, a raising and
9:08
Speaker 1: elaboration of the average man that has virtually been in
9:11
Speaker 1: suspense during the greater portion of the historical period. It
9:16
Speaker 1: is possible that in the last hundred years, in the
9:19
Speaker 1: more civilized states of the world, the average of humanity
9:22
Speaker 1: has positively fallen. All our philanthropists, all our religious teachers,
9:29
Speaker 1: seem to be in a sort of informal conspiracy to
9:31
Speaker 1: preserve an atmosphere of mystical ignorance about these matters, which,
9:36
Speaker 1: in view of the irresistible nature of the sexual impulse,
9:40
Speaker 1: results in a swelling tide of miserable little lives. Consider
9:46
Speaker 1: what it will mean to have perhaps half the population
9:49
Speaker 1: of the world in every generation restrained from or tempted
9:53
Speaker 1: to evade reproduction. This thing, this euthanasia of the weak
9:58
Speaker 1: and sensual, is possible on the principles that will probably
10:03
Speaker 1: animate the predominant classes of the new time. It will
10:06
Speaker 1: be permissible, and I have little or no doubt that
10:09
Speaker 1: in the future it will be planned and achieved. If
10:14
Speaker 1: birth were all the making of a civilized man, the
10:18
Speaker 1: men of the future, on the general principles we have
10:21
Speaker 1: imputed to them, would under no circumstances find the birth
10:25
Speaker 1: of a child healthy in body and brain more than
10:28
Speaker 1: the most venial of offenses. But birth gives only the
10:33
Speaker 1: beginning the raw material of a civilized man. The perfect
10:37
Speaker 1: civilized man is not only a sound, strong body, but
10:42
Speaker 1: a very elaborate fabric of mind. He is a fabric
10:46
Speaker 1: of moral suggestions that become mental habits, a magazine of
10:50
Speaker 1: more or less systematized ideas, a scheme of knowledge and training,
10:56
Speaker 1: and an esthetic culture. He is the child not only
10:59
Speaker 1: of parents, but of a home and of an education.
11:03
Speaker 1: He has to be carefully guarded from physical and moral contagions.
11:08
Speaker 1: A reasonable probability of ensuring home and education and protection
11:13
Speaker 1: without any parasitic dependence on people outside the kin of
11:16
Speaker 1: the child, will be a necessary condition to a moral
11:20
Speaker 1: birth under such general principles as we have supposed now.
11:25
Speaker 1: This sweeps out of reason any such promiscuity of healthy people,
11:30
Speaker 1: as the late mister Grant Allen is supposed to have advocated.
11:34
Speaker 1: But so far as I can understand, him did not.
11:37
Speaker 1: But whether it works out to the taking over of
11:40
Speaker 1: the permanent monogamic marriage of the old morality as a
11:43
Speaker 1: going concern is another matter. Upon this matter I must
11:48
Speaker 1: confess my views of the trend of things in the
11:50
Speaker 1: future do not seem to be finely shaped. The question
11:55
Speaker 1: involves very obscure physiological and psychological considerations. A man who
12:00
Speaker 1: aims to become a novelist naturally prize into these matters
12:03
Speaker 1: whenever he can, but the vital facts are very often
12:07
Speaker 1: hard to come by. It is probable that a great
12:10
Speaker 1: number of people could be pared off in couples who
12:12
Speaker 1: would make permanently happy and successful monogamic homes for their
12:17
Speaker 1: sound and healthy children. At any rate, if a certain
12:21
Speaker 1: freedom of regrouping were possible within a time limit. This
12:24
Speaker 1: might be so. But I am convinced that a large
12:27
Speaker 1: proportion of married couples in the world to day are
12:31
Speaker 1: not completely and happily matched, that there is much mutual limitation,
12:36
Speaker 1: mutual annulment, and mutual exasperation. Home with an atmosphere of
12:41
Speaker 1: contention is worse than none for the child. And it
12:44
Speaker 1: is the interest of the child, and that alone, that
12:47
Speaker 1: will be the test of all these things. I do
12:50
Speaker 1: not think that the arrangement in couples is universally applicable,
12:55
Speaker 1: or that celibacy tempered by sterile vice should be its
12:58
Speaker 1: only alternative. Nor can I see why the union of
13:02
Speaker 1: two childless people should have an indissoluble permanence or prohibit
13:07
Speaker 1: an ampler grouping. The question is greatly complicated by the
13:11
Speaker 1: economic disadvantage of women, which makes wifehood the chief feminine profession,
13:16
Speaker 1: while only for an incidental sort of man is marriage
13:19
Speaker 1: a source of income, And further by the fact that
13:22
Speaker 1: most women have a period of maximum attractiveness, after which
13:25
Speaker 1: it would be grossly unfair to cast them aside. From
13:29
Speaker 1: the point of view we are discussing, the efficient mother,
13:32
Speaker 1: who can make the best of her children, is the
13:34
Speaker 1: most important sort of person in the state. She is
13:38
Speaker 1: a primary necessity to the coming civilization. Can the wife
13:43
Speaker 1: in any sort of polygamic arrangement or a woman of
13:46
Speaker 1: no assured status attain to the maternal possibilities of the
13:50
Speaker 1: ideal monogamic wife. One is disposed to answer no. But then,
13:56
Speaker 1: on the other hand, does the ordinary monogamic wife do that?
14:02
Speaker 1: We are dealing with the finer people of the future
14:04
Speaker 1: strongly individualized people who will be much freer from stereotyped
14:09
Speaker 1: moral suggestions and much less inclined to be dealt with
14:13
Speaker 1: wholesale than the people of today. I have already shown
14:19
Speaker 1: cause in these anticipations to expect a period of disorder
14:23
Speaker 1: and hypocrisy in matters of sexual morality. I am inclined
14:27
Speaker 1: to think that when the new Republic emerges on the
14:30
Speaker 1: other side of this disorder, there will be a great
14:33
Speaker 1: number of marriage contracts possible between men and women, and
14:36
Speaker 1: that the strong arm of the state will insist only
14:39
Speaker 1: upon one thing, the security and welfare of the child.
14:43
Speaker 1: The inevitable removal of births from the sphere of an
14:46
Speaker 1: uncontrollable providence to the category of deliberate acts will enormously
14:51
Speaker 1: enhance the responsibility of the parent and of the state
14:54
Speaker 1: that has failed to adequately discourage the philoprogenitiveness of the
14:58
Speaker 1: parent towards the child. Having permitted the child to come
15:03
Speaker 1: into existence, public policy and the older standard of justice
15:07
Speaker 1: alike demand under these new conditions that it must be fed, cherished,
15:13
Speaker 1: and educated not merely up to the respectable minimum, but
15:17
Speaker 1: to the full height of its possibilities. The state will
15:21
Speaker 1: therefore be the reserved guardian of all children. If they
15:25
Speaker 1: are being undernourished, if their education is being neglected, the
15:29
Speaker 1: state will step in, take over the responsibility of their management,
15:33
Speaker 1: and enforce their charge upon the parents. The first liability
15:38
Speaker 1: of a parent will be to his child, and for
15:41
Speaker 1: his child, even the dues of that darling of our
15:44
Speaker 1: current law, the landlord will stand second to that. This
15:48
Speaker 1: conception of the responsibility of the parents and the state
15:51
Speaker 1: to the child and the future runs quite counter to
15:55
Speaker 1: the general ideas of today. These general ideas disc distort
16:00
Speaker 1: grim realities. Under the most pious and amiable professions, all
16:05
Speaker 1: the Christian states of today are, as a matter of fact,
16:08
Speaker 1: engaged in slave breeding. The chief result, though of course
16:13
Speaker 1: it is not the intention of the activities of priests
16:16
Speaker 1: and moralist today in these matters, is to lure a
16:19
Speaker 1: vast multitude of little souls into this world, for whom
16:23
Speaker 1: there is neither sufficient food, nor love, nor schools, nor
16:27
Speaker 1: any prospect at all in life, but the insufficient bread
16:30
Speaker 1: of servitude. It is a result that endears religion and
16:34
Speaker 1: purity to the sweating employer, and leads unimaginative bishops who
16:39
Speaker 1: have never missed a meal in their lives, and who
16:41
Speaker 1: know nothing of the indescribable bitterness of a handicapped entry
16:45
Speaker 1: into this world, to draw a complacent contrast with irreligious France.
16:51
Speaker 1: It is a result that must necessarily be recognized in
16:54
Speaker 1: its reality and faced by these men who will presently
16:57
Speaker 1: emerge to rule the world, Men who will have neither
17:00
Speaker 1: the plea of ignorance, nor moral stupidity, nor dogmatic revelation
17:06
Speaker 1: to excuse such elaborate cruelty, And having set themselves in
17:12
Speaker 1: these ways to raise the quality of human birth, the
17:15
Speaker 1: new Republicans will see to it that the children who
17:18
Speaker 1: do at last effectually get born come into a world
17:22
Speaker 1: of spacious opportunity. The half educated, unskilled pretenders professing impossible
17:28
Speaker 1: creeds and propounding ridiculous curricula, to whom the unhappy parents
17:32
Speaker 1: of today must needs and trust the intelligences of their children.
17:36
Speaker 1: These heavy handed barber surgeons of the mind, these schoolmasters,
17:42
Speaker 1: with their ragtag and bobtail of sweated and unqualified assistance,
17:47
Speaker 1: will be succeeded by capable, self respecting men and women,
17:51
Speaker 1: constituting the most important profession of the world, the windy
17:55
Speaker 1: pretenses of forming character, supplying moral training and so forth
18:01
Speaker 1: under which the educationalist of to day conceals the fact
18:04
Speaker 1: that he is incapable of his proper task of training, developing,
18:07
Speaker 1: and equipping the mind. Will no longer be made by
18:10
Speaker 1: the teacher, nor will the teacher be permitted to subordinate
18:14
Speaker 1: his duties to the entirely irrelevant business of his pupil's sports.
18:19
Speaker 1: The teacher will teach and confine his moral training beyond
18:23
Speaker 1: enforcing truth and discipline, to the exhibition of a capable
18:27
Speaker 1: person doing his duty as well as it can be done.
18:30
Speaker 1: He will know that his utmost province is only a
18:33
Speaker 1: part of the educational process, that equally important educational influences
18:38
Speaker 1: are the home and the world of thought about the
18:40
Speaker 1: pupil and himself. The whole world will be thinking and learning.
18:45
Speaker 1: The old idea of completing one's education will have vanished
18:49
Speaker 1: with the fancy of a static universe. Every school will
18:53
Speaker 1: be a preparatory school, every college. The school and college
18:57
Speaker 1: will probably give only the keys and a baratus. Have
19:00
Speaker 1: thought a necessary language, or so thoroughly done, a sound
19:05
Speaker 1: mathematical training, drawing a wide and reason view of philosophy,
19:10
Speaker 1: some good exercises and dialectics, A training in the use
19:14
Speaker 1: of those stores of fact that science has made so equipped.
19:18
Speaker 1: The young man and young women will go on to
19:20
Speaker 1: the technical school of their chosen profession, and to the
19:23
Speaker 1: criticism of contemporary practice for their special efficiency, and to
19:28
Speaker 1: the literature of contemporary thought for their general development. And
19:34
Speaker 1: while the emergent New Republic is deciding to provide for
19:37
Speaker 1: the swarming inferiority of the abyss and developing the morality
19:41
Speaker 1: and educational system of the future. In this fashion, it
19:44
Speaker 1: will be attacking that mass of irresponsible property that is
19:47
Speaker 1: so unavoidable and so threatening under present conditions. The attack
19:53
Speaker 1: will of course be made along lines that the developing
19:56
Speaker 1: science of economics will trace in the days immediately before us.
20:00
Speaker 1: A scheme of death duties and of heavy graduated taxes
20:04
Speaker 1: upon irresponsible incomes, with perhaps in addition, a system of
20:09
Speaker 1: terminable liability for borrowers will probably suffice to control the
20:13
Speaker 1: growth of this creditor aliphanticis. The detailed contrivances are for
20:18
Speaker 1: the specialists to make. If there is such a thing
20:21
Speaker 1: as bitterness in the public acts of the New Republicans,
20:25
Speaker 1: it will probably be found in the measures that will
20:27
Speaker 1: be directed against those who are parasitic, or who attempt
20:31
Speaker 1: to be parasitic upon the social body, either by means
20:35
Speaker 1: of gambling, by manipulating the medium of exchange, or by
20:39
Speaker 1: such interventions upon legitimate transactions, as for example, the legal
20:44
Speaker 1: trade Union in Great Britain contrives in the case of house,
20:47
Speaker 1: property and land, simply because he fails more often than
20:51
Speaker 1: he succeeds. There is still a disposition among sentimental people
20:55
Speaker 1: to regard the gambler or the speculator as rather a dashing, advance,
21:00
Speaker 1: enterous sort of person, and to contrast his picturesque gallantry
21:04
Speaker 1: with the sober certainties of honest men. The men of
21:08
Speaker 1: the New Republic will be obtuse to the glamour of
21:10
Speaker 1: such romance. They will regard the gambler simply as a
21:14
Speaker 1: mean creature who hangs about the social body in the
21:16
Speaker 1: hope of getting something for nothing, who runs risks to
21:20
Speaker 1: filter the possessions of other men exactly as a thief does.
21:25
Speaker 1: They will put the two on a footing, and the
21:27
Speaker 1: generous gambler, like the kindly drunkard, in the face of
21:30
Speaker 1: their effectual provision for his little weakness, will cease to
21:34
Speaker 1: complain that his worst enemy is himself, and in dealing
21:38
Speaker 1: with speculation, the new Republic will have the power of
21:41
Speaker 1: an assured faith and purpose, and the resources of an
21:44
Speaker 1: economic science that is as yet only in its infancy.
21:48
Speaker 1: In such matters, the new Republic will entertain no superstition
21:52
Speaker 1: of lasar Fare, Money and credit are as much human
21:56
Speaker 1: contrivances as bicycles, and as liable to its expansion and modification.
22:01
Speaker 1: Has any other sort of prevalent but imperfect machine. And
22:07
Speaker 1: how will the new Republic treat the inferior races? How
22:11
Speaker 1: will it deal with the black How will it deal
22:14
Speaker 1: with the yellow man? How will it tackle that alleged
22:17
Speaker 1: termite in the civilized woodwork? The jew certainly not as
22:22
Speaker 1: races at all. It will aim to establish, and it will,
22:26
Speaker 1: at last, though probably only after a second century has passed,
22:30
Speaker 1: establish a world state with a common language and a
22:34
Speaker 1: common rule all over the world. Its roads, its standards,
22:38
Speaker 1: its laws, and its apparatus of control will run. It will,
22:43
Speaker 1: i have said, make the multiplication of those who fall
22:47
Speaker 1: behind a certain standard of social efficiency unpleasant and difficult.
22:51
Speaker 1: And it will have cast aside any coddling laws to
22:55
Speaker 1: save adult men from themselves. Footnote v Day, mister Archdall
23:01
Speaker 1: reads excellent and suggestive book, The Present Evolution of Man
23:06
Speaker 1: end footnote. It will tolerate no dark corners where the
23:11
Speaker 1: people of the Abyss may fester, no vast diffused slums
23:15
Speaker 1: of peasant proprietors, no stagnant plague preserves. Whatever men may
23:22
Speaker 1: come into its efficient citizenship. It will let come white, black,
23:26
Speaker 1: red or brown. The efficiency will be the test, and
23:31
Speaker 1: the Jew also it will treat as any other man.
23:34
Speaker 1: It is said that the Jew is incurably a parasite
23:37
Speaker 1: on the apparatus of credit. If there are parasites on
23:41
Speaker 1: the apparatus of credit, that is a reason for the
23:44
Speaker 1: legislative cleaning of the apparatus of credit. But it is
23:47
Speaker 1: no reason for the special treatment of the Jew. If
23:51
Speaker 1: the Jew has a certain incurable tendency to social parasitism,
23:55
Speaker 1: and we make social parasitism impossible, we shall abolish the Jew.
24:00
Speaker 1: And if he has not, there is no need to
24:03
Speaker 1: abolish the Jew. We are much more likely to find
24:06
Speaker 1: we have abolished the Caucasian solicitor. I really do not
24:10
Speaker 1: understand the exceptional attitude people take up against the Jews.
24:14
Speaker 1: There is something very ugly about many Jewish faces, but
24:17
Speaker 1: there are Gentile faces, just as coarse and gross. The
24:21
Speaker 1: Jew asserts himself in relation to his nationality with a
24:24
Speaker 1: singular tactlessness. But it is hardly for the English to
24:28
Speaker 1: blame that many Jews are intensely vulgar in dress and bearing,
24:33
Speaker 1: materialistic in thought and cunning, and base in method, but
24:37
Speaker 1: no more so than many Gentiles. The Jew is mentally
24:41
Speaker 1: and physically precocious, and he ages and dies sooner than
24:44
Speaker 1: the average European. But in that, and in a certain disingenuousness,
24:48
Speaker 1: he is simply on all fours with the short, dark Welsh.
24:53
Speaker 1: He foregathers with those of his own nation and favors
24:56
Speaker 1: them against the stranger. But so do the Scotch. I
25:00
Speaker 1: see nothing in his curious, dispersed nationality to dread or dislike.
25:05
Speaker 1: He is a remnant and legacy of medievalism, a sentimentalist, perhaps,
25:10
Speaker 1: but no furtive plotter against the present progress of things.
25:14
Speaker 1: He was the medieval liberal. His persistent existence gave the
25:18
Speaker 1: lie to Catholic pretensions all through the days of their ascendency,
25:22
Speaker 1: and to day he gives the lie to all our
25:24
Speaker 1: yapping nationalisms and sketches in his dispersed sympathies the coming
25:29
Speaker 1: of the world state. He has never been known to
25:32
Speaker 1: burke a school. Much of the Jew's usury is no
25:35
Speaker 1: more than social scavenging. The Jew will probably lose much
25:39
Speaker 1: of his particularism, inter marry with gentiles, and cease to
25:43
Speaker 1: be a physically distinct element in human affairs in the
25:45
Speaker 1: century or so. But much of his moral tradition will,
25:49
Speaker 1: I hope, never die. And for the rest those swarms
25:53
Speaker 1: of black and brown and dirty white and yellow people
25:57
Speaker 1: who do not come into the new needs of efficiency, well,
26:01
Speaker 1: the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and
26:05
Speaker 1: I take it they will have to go. The whole
26:07
Speaker 1: tenorant meaning of the world as I see it, is
26:10
Speaker 1: that they have to go. So far as they fail
26:13
Speaker 1: to develop sane, vigorous, and distinctive personalities for the great
26:17
Speaker 1: world of the future, it is their portion to die
26:20
Speaker 1: out and disappear. The world has a purpose greater than happiness.
26:27
Speaker 1: Our lives are to serve God's purpose, and that purpose
26:30
Speaker 1: aims not at man as an end, but works through
26:33
Speaker 1: him to greater issues. This, I believe, will be the
26:38
Speaker 1: distinctive quality of the New Republican's belief, and for that
26:42
Speaker 1: reason I have not even speculated whether he will hold
26:45
Speaker 1: any belief in human immortality or no. He will certainly
26:49
Speaker 1: not believe there is any post mortem state of rewards
26:53
Speaker 1: and punishments because of his faith in the sanity of God,
26:56
Speaker 1: and I do not see how he will trace any
26:58
Speaker 1: reaction between this world world and whatever world there may
27:01
Speaker 1: be of disembodied lives. Active and capable men of all
27:06
Speaker 1: forms of religious profession to day tend in practice to
27:09
Speaker 1: disregard the question of immortality altogether. So to a greater
27:14
Speaker 1: degree will the kinetic men of the coming time. We
27:18
Speaker 1: may find that issue interesting enough when we turn over
27:20
Speaker 1: the leaf, but at present we have not turned over
27:23
Speaker 1: the leaf on this side. In this life, the relevancy
27:28
Speaker 1: of things points not in the slightest towards the immortality
27:31
Speaker 1: of our egotisms, but convergently and overpoweringly to the future
27:36
Speaker 1: of our race, to that spacious future of which these weak,
27:40
Speaker 1: ambitious anticipations are, as it were, the dim reflection seen
27:45
Speaker 1: in a shallow and troubled pool. For that future, these
27:50
Speaker 1: men will live and die. End of Chapter nine b
27:57
Speaker 1: recording by John Trevivick. End of Anticipations by H. G.
28:02
Speaker 1: Wells