Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / A Modern Utopia Chapter 6 - Women in a Modern Utopia, Sections 5-6
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Chapter six, sections five and six of a Modern Utopia
- 0:04Speaker 1: by H. D. Wells. This is the Libery Fox recording.
- 0:09Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information,
- 0:13Speaker 1: ought to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Chapter the
- 0:18Speaker 1: sixth Women in a Modern Utopia, Sections five and six,
- 0:24Speaker 1: Section five. This question of marriage is the most complicated
- 0:28Speaker 1: and difficult in the whole range of utopian problems, but
- 0:33Speaker 1: it is happily not the most urgent necessity that it
- 0:37Speaker 1: should be absolutely solved. The urgent and necessary problem is
- 0:41Speaker 1: the ruler. With rulers rightly contrived in a provisional defect
- 0:46Speaker 1: of marriage law, a utopia may be conceived as existing
- 0:50Speaker 1: and a studying to perfect itself. But without rulers, a
- 0:55Speaker 1: utopia is impossible, though the theory of its matrimony be complete.
- 1:00Speaker 1: And the difficulty in this question is not simply the
- 1:03Speaker 1: difficulty of a complicated chest problem, for example, in which
- 1:07Speaker 1: the whole tangle of considerations does at least lie in
- 1:10Speaker 1: one plane, but a series of problems upon different levels
- 1:14Speaker 1: and containing incommensurable factors. It is very easy to repeat
- 1:20Speaker 1: our initial propositions. To recall that we are on another
- 1:24Speaker 1: planet and that all the customs and traditions of the
- 1:27Speaker 1: earth are set aside. But the faintest realization of that
- 1:31Speaker 1: demands a feat of psychological insight. We have all grown
- 1:36Speaker 1: up into an invincible mold of suggestion about sexual things.
- 1:40Speaker 1: We regard this with approval, that with horror, and this
- 1:45Speaker 1: again with contempt, very largely because the thing has always
- 1:49Speaker 1: been put to us in this light, or that the
- 1:52Speaker 1: more emancipated we think ourselves, the more subtle are our bonds.
- 1:56Speaker 1: The disentanglement of what is inherent in these feelings from
- 2:00Speaker 1: what is acquired is an extraordinary complex undertaking. Probably all
- 2:08Speaker 1: men and women have a more or less powerful disposition
- 2:11Speaker 1: to jealousy. But what exactly they will be jealous about
- 2:16Speaker 1: and what exactly they will suffer seems part of the
- 2:18Speaker 1: superposed factor. Probably all men and women are capable of
- 2:25Speaker 1: ideal emotions and wishes beyond merely physical desires. But the
- 2:30Speaker 1: shape these take are almost entirely a reaction to external images.
- 2:36Speaker 1: And you really cannot strip the external off. You cannot
- 2:40Speaker 1: get your stark natural man jealous, but not jealous about
- 2:44Speaker 1: anything in particular, imaginative, without any imaginings, proud at large,
- 2:51Speaker 1: emotional dispositions can no more exist without form than a
- 2:55Speaker 1: man without air. Only a very observant man, who had
- 3:00Speaker 1: lived all over the planet Earth, in all sorts of
- 3:03Speaker 1: social strata, and with every race and tongue, and who
- 3:08Speaker 1: was endowed with great imaginative insight, could hope to understand
- 3:12Speaker 1: the possibilities and the limitations of human plasticity in this matter,
- 3:17Speaker 1: and say what any men and any women could be
- 3:20Speaker 1: induced to do willingly, and just exactly what no man
- 3:25Speaker 1: and no woman could stand, provided one had the training
- 3:29Speaker 1: of them. Though very young men will tell you readily enough,
- 3:34Speaker 1: there are proceedings of other races and other ages do
- 3:37Speaker 1: not seem to carry conviction what our ancestors did, or
- 3:42Speaker 1: what the Greeks or Egyptians did, though it is the
- 3:45Speaker 1: direct physical cause of the modern young man or the
- 3:48Speaker 1: modern young lady, is apt to impress these remarkable consequences
- 3:53Speaker 1: merely as an arrangement of quaint, comical, or repulsive proceedings,
- 3:59Speaker 1: but their emerger to the modern enquirer certain ideals in
- 4:03Speaker 1: desiderata that at least go some way towards completing and
- 4:06Speaker 1: expanding the crude primaries of a utopian marriage law set
- 4:10Speaker 1: out in section four, the sound birth being assured, does
- 4:14Speaker 1: there exist any valid reason for the persistence of the
- 4:17Speaker 1: utopian marriage union. There are two lines of reasoning that
- 4:22Speaker 1: go to establish a longer duration for marriage. The first
- 4:26Speaker 1: of these rests upon the general necessity for a home
- 4:29Speaker 1: and for individual attention. In the case of children, children
- 4:33Speaker 1: are the results of a choice between individuals. They grow
- 4:36Speaker 1: well as a rule only in relation to sympathetic and
- 4:40Speaker 1: kindred individualities, and no wholesale character ignoring method of dealing
- 4:46Speaker 1: with them has ever had a shadow of the success
- 4:50Speaker 1: of the individualized home. Neither Plato nor Socrates, who repudiated
- 4:57Speaker 1: the home, seems ever to have had to do with
- 5:00Speaker 1: anything younger than a young man. Pro Creation is only
- 5:05Speaker 1: the beginning of parentage, and even where the mother is
- 5:08Speaker 1: not the direct nurse and teacher of her child, even
- 5:12Speaker 1: where she delegates these duties, her supervision is, in the
- 5:16Speaker 1: common case, essential to its welfare. Moreover, though the utopian
- 5:21Speaker 1: state will pay the mother and the mother only for
- 5:24Speaker 1: the being and welfare of her legitimate children, there will
- 5:28Speaker 1: be a clear advantage in fostering the natural disposition of
- 5:32Speaker 1: the father to associate his child's welfare with his individual egotism.
- 5:38Speaker 1: And to dispense some of his energies and earnings in
- 5:41Speaker 1: supplementing the common provision of the state. It is an
- 5:45Speaker 1: absurd disregard of a natural economy to leave the innate
- 5:48Speaker 1: fellow progenitiveness of either sex uncultivated. Unless the parents continue
- 5:54Speaker 1: in close relationship. If each is passing through a series
- 5:58Speaker 1: of marriages, the dangers of a conflict of rights and
- 6:02Speaker 1: of the frittering away of emotions become very grave. The
- 6:07Speaker 1: family will lose homogeneity, and its individuals will have for
- 6:11Speaker 1: the mother varied and perhaps incompatible emotional associations. The balance
- 6:18Speaker 1: of social advantage is certainly on the side of much
- 6:21Speaker 1: more permanent unions, on the side of an arrangement that,
- 6:25Speaker 1: subject to ample provisions for a formal divorce without disgrace
- 6:30Speaker 1: in cases of incompatibility, would bind or at least enforce
- 6:35Speaker 1: ideals that would tend to bind a man and woman
- 6:38Speaker 1: together for the whole term of her maternal activity, until
- 6:42Speaker 1: that is, the last born of her children was no
- 6:45Speaker 1: longer in need of her help. The second system of
- 6:49Speaker 1: considerations arises out of the artificiality of woman's position. It
- 6:54Speaker 1: is a less conclusive series than the first, and it
- 6:57Speaker 1: opens a number of interesting cs side vistas. A great
- 7:02Speaker 1: deal of nonsense is talked about the natural equality or
- 7:06Speaker 1: inferiority of women to men. But it is only the
- 7:10Speaker 1: same quality that can be measured by degrees and arranged
- 7:14Speaker 1: in ascending and descending series. And the things that are
- 7:18Speaker 1: essentially feminine are different, qualitatively from and incommensurable with the
- 7:25Speaker 1: distinctly masculine things. The relationship is in the region of
- 7:31Speaker 1: ideals and conventions, and a state is perfectly free to
- 7:35Speaker 1: determine that men and women shall come to intercourse on
- 7:39Speaker 1: a footing of conventional equality, or with either the man
- 7:43Speaker 1: or woman treated as the predominating individual. Aristotle's criticism of
- 7:50Speaker 1: Plato in this matter, his insistence upon the natural inferiority
- 7:54Speaker 1: of slaves and women, is just the sort of confusion
- 7:58Speaker 1: between inherent and imposed qualities that was his most characteristic weakness.
- 8:06Speaker 1: The spirit of the European people, of almost all the
- 8:10Speaker 1: peoples now in the ascendant, is towards a convention of equality.
- 8:15Speaker 1: The spirit of the Mahometan world is towards the intensification
- 8:18Speaker 1: of a convention that the man alone is a citizen
- 8:22Speaker 1: and that the woman is very largely his property. There
- 8:25Speaker 1: can be no doubt that the latter of these two
- 8:27Speaker 1: convenient fictions is the more primitive way of regarding this relationship.
- 8:33Speaker 1: It is quite unfruitful to argue between these ideals, as
- 8:37Speaker 1: if there were a demonstrable conclusion. The adoption of either
- 8:41Speaker 1: is an arbitrary act, and we shall simply follow our
- 8:45Speaker 1: age and time if we display a certain bias for
- 8:49Speaker 1: the former. If one looks closely into the various practical
- 8:53Speaker 1: expansions of these ideas, we find their inherent falsity works
- 8:58Speaker 1: itself out in a very natural way, so soon as
- 9:02Speaker 1: reality is touched. Those who insist upon equality work in
- 9:07Speaker 1: effect for assimilation. For a similar treatment of the sexes,
- 9:13Speaker 1: Plato's women of the governing class, for example, where to
- 9:16Speaker 1: strip for gymnastics, like men, to bear arms and go
- 9:21Speaker 1: to war, and follow most of the masculine occupations of
- 9:25Speaker 1: their class. They were to have the same education and
- 9:29Speaker 1: to be assimilated to men at every doubtful point. The
- 9:33Speaker 1: Aristotlian attitude, on the other hand, insists upon specialization. The
- 9:39Speaker 1: men are to rule and fight and toil. The women
- 9:42Speaker 1: are to support motherhood in a state of natural inferiority.
- 9:47Speaker 1: The trend of evolutionary forces through long centuries of human
- 9:51Speaker 1: development has been on the whole. In this second direction
- 9:55Speaker 1: has been towards differentiation. Footnote see Havelock alices man and woman.
- 10:03Speaker 1: An adult white woman differs far more from a white
- 10:07Speaker 1: man than a negress or pigmy woman from her equivalent male.
- 10:12Speaker 1: The education the mental disposition of a white or Asiatic
- 10:16Speaker 1: woman reeks of sex. Her modesty, her decorum is not
- 10:20Speaker 1: to ignore sex, but to refine and put a point
- 10:23Speaker 1: to it. Her costume is clamorous with the distinctive elements
- 10:27Speaker 1: of her form. The white woman in the materially prosperous
- 10:32Speaker 1: nations is more of a sexual specialist than her sister
- 10:35Speaker 1: of the poor and austere peoples of the prosperous classes,
- 10:40Speaker 1: more so than the peasant woman. Contemporary woman of fashion,
- 10:44Speaker 1: who sets the tone of occidental intercourse, is a stimulant
- 10:48Speaker 1: rather than a companion for a man. Too commonly, she
- 10:52Speaker 1: is an unwholesome stiminant, tending a man from wisdom to appearance,
- 10:57Speaker 1: from beauty to beautiful pleasures, from form to colour, from
- 11:01Speaker 1: persistent aims to belief and stirring triumphs. A arrayed in
- 11:06Speaker 1: what she calls distinctly dress, scented, adorned, displayed, she achieves
- 11:12Speaker 1: by artifice a sexual differentiation profounder than that of any
- 11:17Speaker 1: other vertebrated animal. She outshines the peacock's excess above his mate.
- 11:23Speaker 1: Bye misprobe among the domestic secrets of the insects in
- 11:26Speaker 1: crustacean to find her living parallel. And it is a
- 11:30Speaker 1: question by no means easy, and yet of the utmost
- 11:33Speaker 1: importance to determine how far the wide and widening differences
- 11:38Speaker 1: between the human sexes is inherent and inevitable, and how
- 11:42Speaker 1: far it is an accident of social development that may
- 11:46Speaker 1: be converted and reduced under a different social regimen. Are
- 11:51Speaker 1: we going to recognize and accentuate this difference and to
- 11:55Speaker 1: arrange our utopian organization to play upon it, to have
- 12:00Speaker 1: two primary classes of human being, harmonizing, indeed and reacting,
- 12:05Speaker 1: but following essentially different lives, or are we going to
- 12:09Speaker 1: minimize this difference in every possible way. The former alternative
- 12:14Speaker 1: leads either to a romantic organization of society in which
- 12:19Speaker 1: men will live and fight and die for wonderful, beautiful,
- 12:23Speaker 1: exaggerated creatures, or it leads to the harem. It would
- 12:29Speaker 1: probably lead through one phase to the other. Women would
- 12:33Speaker 1: be enigmas and mysteries and maternal dignitaries that one would
- 12:37Speaker 1: approach in a state of emotional excitement and seclude piously
- 12:42Speaker 1: when serious work was in hand. A girl would blossom
- 12:47Speaker 1: from the totally negligible to the mystically desirable at adolescence,
- 12:52Speaker 1: and boys would be removed from their mother's educational influence
- 12:57Speaker 1: at as early an age as possible. Whenever men and
- 13:01Speaker 1: women met together, the men would be in a state
- 13:04Speaker 1: of inflamed competition towards one another, and the women likewise,
- 13:10Speaker 1: and the intercourse of ideas would be in suspense. Under
- 13:14Speaker 1: the latter alternative, the sexual relation would be subordinated to
- 13:19Speaker 1: friendship and companionship. Boys and girls would be co educated
- 13:23Speaker 1: very largely under maternal direction, and women, disarmed of their
- 13:28Speaker 1: distinctive barbaric adornments. The feathers, beads, lace, and trimmings that
- 13:34Speaker 1: enhance their clamorous claim to a directly personal attention, would
- 13:38Speaker 1: mingle according to their quality in the councils and intellectual
- 13:42Speaker 1: development of men. Such women would be fit to educate
- 13:47Speaker 1: boys even up to adolescents. It is obvious that a
- 13:51Speaker 1: marriage law embodying a decision between these two sets of
- 13:54Speaker 1: ideas would be very different according to the alternative adopted.
- 13:58Speaker 1: In the former case, a man would be expected to
- 14:01Speaker 1: earn and maintain in an adequate manner, the dear delight
- 14:05Speaker 1: that had favored him. He would tell her beautiful liars
- 14:09Speaker 1: about her wonderful moral effect upon him, and keep her
- 14:12Speaker 1: sedulously from all responsibility and knowledge. And since there is
- 14:18Speaker 1: an undeniably greater imaginative appeal to men in the first
- 14:22Speaker 1: bloom of a woman's youth, she would have a distinct
- 14:26Speaker 1: claim upon his energies for the rest of her life.
- 14:30Speaker 1: In the latter case, a man would no more pay
- 14:33Speaker 1: for and support his wife than she would do so
- 14:35Speaker 1: for him. They would be two friends differing in kind,
- 14:40Speaker 1: no doubt, but differing reciprocally, who had linked themselves in
- 14:44Speaker 1: a matrimonial relationship our utopian marriage. So far as we
- 14:50Speaker 1: have discussed it is indeterminate between these alternatives. We have
- 14:56Speaker 1: laid it down as a general principle that the private
- 14:58Speaker 1: morals of an adult wise citizen are no concern for
- 15:01Speaker 1: the state, But that involves a decision to disregard certain
- 15:07Speaker 1: types of bargain. A sanely contrived state will refuse to
- 15:13Speaker 1: sustain bargains wherein there is no plausibly fair exchange. And
- 15:19Speaker 1: if private morality is really to be outside the scope
- 15:22Speaker 1: of the state, then the affections and endearments most certainly
- 15:27Speaker 1: must not be regarded as negotiable commodities. The state therefore
- 15:33Speaker 1: will absolutely ignore the distribution of these favors unless children,
- 15:39Speaker 1: or at least the possibility of children, is involved. It
- 15:44Speaker 1: follows that it will refuse to recognize any debts or
- 15:48Speaker 1: transfers of property that are based on such considerations. It
- 15:52Speaker 1: will be only consistent, therefore, to refuse recognition in the
- 15:57Speaker 1: marriage contract to any financial obligation between husband and wife,
- 16:02Speaker 1: or any settlements qualifying that contract, except when they are
- 16:07Speaker 1: in the nature of accessory provision for the prospective children. Footnote.
- 16:14Speaker 1: Unqualified gifts for love by solvent people will of course
- 16:18Speaker 1: be quite possible and permissible unsalaried services and the like,
- 16:24Speaker 1: provided the standard of life is maintained and the joint
- 16:28Speaker 1: income of the couple between whom the services hold does
- 16:31Speaker 1: not sink below twice the minimum wage. So far, the
- 16:36Speaker 1: utopian state will throw its weight upon the side of
- 16:38Speaker 1: those who advocate the independence of women and their conventional
- 16:43Speaker 1: equality with men, but to any further definition of the
- 16:48Speaker 1: marriage relation. The world state of utopia will not commit itself.
- 16:52Speaker 1: The wide range of relationships that are left possible within
- 16:56Speaker 1: and without the marriage code are entirely a matter of
- 17:00Speaker 1: for the individual choice and imagination. Whether a man treat
- 17:04Speaker 1: his wife in private as a goddess to be propitiated,
- 17:08Speaker 1: as a mystery, to be adored, as an agreeable auxiliary,
- 17:13Speaker 1: as a particularly intimate friend, or as the wholesome mother
- 17:17Speaker 1: of his children is entirely a matter for their private intercourse.
- 17:22Speaker 1: Whether he keep her in oriental idleness or active co operation,
- 17:28Speaker 1: or leave her to live her independent life rests with
- 17:32Speaker 1: the couple alone, And all the possible friendship at intimacy's
- 17:36Speaker 1: outside marriage also lie quite beyond the organization of the
- 17:41Speaker 1: modern state. Religious teaching and literature may affect these customs,
- 17:47Speaker 1: may arise certain types of relationship, may involve social isolation.
- 17:53Speaker 1: The justice of the statesman is blind to such things.
- 17:57Speaker 1: It may be urged that, according to Atkinson's way illuminating
- 18:00Speaker 1: analysis footnote see lang in Atkinson's Social Origins and Primal Law,
- 18:07Speaker 1: the control of love making was the very origin of
- 18:10Speaker 1: the human community. In utopia. Nevertheless, love making is no
- 18:16Speaker 1: concern of the states beyond the province that the protection
- 18:19Speaker 1: of children covers. Footnote. It cannot be made too clear
- 18:24Speaker 1: that though the control of morality is outside the law,
- 18:28Speaker 1: the state must maintain a general decorum, a systematic suppression
- 18:32Speaker 1: of powerful and moving examples, and of incitations and temptations
- 18:37Speaker 1: of the young and inexperienced, And to that extent it will,
- 18:41Speaker 1: of course, in a sense exercise a control over morals.
- 18:45Speaker 1: But this will be only part of a wider law
- 18:48Speaker 1: to safeguard the tender mind. For example, lying advertisements and
- 18:53Speaker 1: the like, when they lean toward adolescent interests, will encounter
- 18:59Speaker 1: especially disagreeable disposition in the law, over and above the
- 19:03Speaker 1: treatment of their general dishonesty. Change of function is one
- 19:08Speaker 1: of the ruling facts in life. The sac that was
- 19:12Speaker 1: in our remotest ancestors a swimming bladder is now a lung.
- 19:17Speaker 1: And the state, which was once perhaps no more than
- 19:20Speaker 1: the jealous and tyrannus will of the strongest male in
- 19:23Speaker 1: the herd, the instrument of justice and equality. The state
- 19:29Speaker 1: intervenes now only where there is want of harmony between individuals.
- 19:36Speaker 1: Individuals who exist or who may presently come into existence.
- 19:42Speaker 1: Section six. It must be reiterated that our reasoning still
- 19:47Speaker 1: leaves utopian marriage and institution with wide possibilities of variation.
- 19:54Speaker 1: We have tried to give effect to the ideal of
- 19:57Speaker 1: a virtual equality, an equality we of spirit between men
- 20:01Speaker 1: and women, and in doing so we have overridden the
- 20:05Speaker 1: accepted opinion of the great majority of mankind. Probably the
- 20:10Speaker 1: first writer to do as much was Plato. His argument
- 20:16Speaker 1: in support of this innovation upon natural human feeling was
- 20:20Speaker 1: thin enough, a mere analogy to illustrate the spirit of
- 20:24Speaker 1: his propositions. It was his creative instinct that determined him.
- 20:30Speaker 1: In the atmosphere of such speculations as this, Plato looms
- 20:35Speaker 1: very large. Indeed, and a view of what we owe
- 20:38Speaker 1: to him, it seems irreasonable that we should hesitate before
- 20:42Speaker 1: dismissing as a thing prohibited and evil a type of
- 20:47Speaker 1: marriage that he made almost a central feature in the
- 20:50Speaker 1: organization of the ruling class, at least of his ideal state.
- 20:55Speaker 1: He was persuaded that the narrow monogamic family is apt
- 20:58Speaker 1: to become a liberal and antisocial to withdraw the imagination
- 21:03Speaker 1: and energies of the citizen from the services of the community.
- 21:06Speaker 1: As a whole, and the Roman Catholic Church has so
- 21:10Speaker 1: far endorsed and substantiated his opinion as to forbid family
- 21:15Speaker 1: relations to its priests and significant servants. He conceived of
- 21:20Speaker 1: a poetic devotion to the public idea, a devotion of
- 21:24Speaker 1: which the mind of Aristotle, as his criticisms of Plato's show,
- 21:29Speaker 1: was incapable as his substitute for the warm and tender
- 21:33Speaker 1: but illiberal emotions of the home. But while the church
- 21:37Speaker 1: made the alternative to family ties celibacy footnote, the warm
- 21:42Speaker 1: imagination of Campanella, that quaint Calabrian monastic fired by Plato
- 21:47Speaker 1: reversed this aspect of the church and participation in an organization.
- 21:52Speaker 1: Plato was far more in accordance with modern ideas in
- 21:56Speaker 1: perceiving the disadvantage that would result from precas, including the
- 22:00Speaker 1: nobler types of character from offspring. He sought a way
- 22:04Speaker 1: to achieve progeny therefore without the narrow concentrations of the
- 22:08Speaker 1: sympathies about the home, and he found it in a
- 22:12Speaker 1: multiple marriage, in which every member of the governing class
- 22:16Speaker 1: was considered to be married to all the others. But
- 22:20Speaker 1: the detailed operation of this system, he put tentatively and
- 22:24Speaker 1: very obscurely. His suggestions have the experimental inconsistency of an
- 22:30Speaker 1: inquiring mind. He left many things altogether open, and it
- 22:35Speaker 1: is unfair to him to adopt Aristotle's forensic method and
- 22:40Speaker 1: deal with his discussion as though it was a fully
- 22:43Speaker 1: worked out project. It is clear that Plato intended every
- 22:47Speaker 1: member of his governing class to be so changed at
- 22:51Speaker 1: birth as to leave paternity untraceable. Mothers were not to
- 22:55Speaker 1: know their children, nor children their parents. But there is
- 22:59Speaker 1: nothing to forbid the supposition that he intended these people
- 23:03Speaker 1: to select and adhere to congenial mates within the great family.
- 23:07Speaker 1: Aristotle's assertion that the Platonic Republic left no scope for
- 23:12Speaker 1: the virtue of continents shows that he had to jump
- 23:15Speaker 1: to just the same conclusions a contemporary London errand boy
- 23:21Speaker 1: hovering a little shamefacedly over Jowett in a public library
- 23:26Speaker 1: might be expected to reach. Aristotle obscures Plato's intention. It
- 23:31Speaker 1: may be accidentally by speaking of his marriage institution as
- 23:36Speaker 1: a community of wives. When reading Plato, he could not
- 23:41Speaker 1: or would not escape reading in his own conception of
- 23:44Speaker 1: the natural ascendancy of men, his idea of property in
- 23:49Speaker 1: women and children. But as Plato intended women to be
- 23:54Speaker 1: conventionally equal to men, this phrase belies him altogether of
- 24:00Speaker 1: husbands and wives would be trier to his proposal. Aristotle
- 24:05Speaker 1: condemns Plato as roundly as any commercial room would condemn
- 24:09Speaker 1: him to day, and in much the same spirit he asserts,
- 24:13Speaker 1: rather than proves, that such a grouping is against the
- 24:16Speaker 1: nature of man. He wanted to have women property, just
- 24:21Speaker 1: as he wanted to have slaves property. He did not
- 24:24Speaker 1: care to ask why, and it distressed his conception of
- 24:28Speaker 1: a convenience extremely to imagine any other arrangement. It is
- 24:34Speaker 1: no doubt true that the natural instinct of either sex
- 24:37Speaker 1: is exclusive of participators in intimacy during a period of intimacy,
- 24:42Speaker 1: but it was probably Aristotle who gave Plato an offensive
- 24:46Speaker 1: interpretation in this matter. No one would freely submit to
- 24:50Speaker 1: such a condition of affairs as multiple marriage, carried out
- 24:54Speaker 1: in the spirit of the Aristotlian interpretation to an obscene completeness.
- 25:00Speaker 1: That is all the more reason why the modern utopia
- 25:03Speaker 1: should not refuse a grouped marriage two three or more
- 25:07Speaker 1: freely consenting persons. There is no sense in prohibiting institutions
- 25:14Speaker 1: which no sane people could ever want to abuse. It
- 25:19Speaker 1: is claimed, though the full facts are difficult to ascertain,
- 25:23Speaker 1: that a group marriage of over two hundred persons was
- 25:27Speaker 1: successfully organized by John Humphrey Noise at Oneida Creek. Footnote
- 25:33Speaker 1: see John H. Noyse's History of American Socialisms and his writings. Generally,
- 25:40Speaker 1: the bare facts of this and the other American experiments
- 25:43Speaker 1: are given together with more recent matter by Maurice Hillcourt
- 25:48Speaker 1: in the History of Socialism in the United States. It
- 25:52Speaker 1: is fairly certain in the latter case that there was
- 25:55Speaker 1: no promiscurity, and that the members mated for variable periods
- 26:00Speaker 1: and often for life within the group. The documents are
- 26:03Speaker 1: reasonably clear upon that point. This so Nigher community was
- 26:08Speaker 1: in fact a league of two hundred persons to regard
- 26:12Speaker 1: their children as common. Choice and preference were not abolished
- 26:16Speaker 1: in the community, though in some cases they were set aside,
- 26:20Speaker 1: just as they are by many parents under our present conditions.
- 26:25Speaker 1: There seems to have been a premature attempt at stirpiculture
- 26:29Speaker 1: at what mister Francis Galton now calls eugenics in the
- 26:33Speaker 1: mating of the members, and there was also a limitation
- 26:37Speaker 1: of offspring. Beyond these points, the inner secrets of the
- 26:40Speaker 1: community do not appear to be very profound. Its atmosphere
- 26:45Speaker 1: was almost commonplace. It was made up of very ordinary people.
- 26:48Speaker 1: There is no doubt that it had a career of
- 26:51Speaker 1: exceptional success throughout the whole lifetime of its founder, and
- 26:56Speaker 1: it broke down with the advent of a new generation,
- 26:59Speaker 1: with the onset of theological differences and the loss of
- 27:04Speaker 1: its guiding intelligence. The Anglo Saxon spirit, it has been
- 27:08Speaker 1: said by one of the ablest children of the experiment,
- 27:12Speaker 1: is too individualistic for communism. It is possible to regard
- 27:18Speaker 1: the temporary success of this complex family as a strange accident,
- 27:22Speaker 1: as the wonderful exploit of what was certainly a very
- 27:25Speaker 1: exceptional man. Its final disintegration into frankly monogamic couples, it
- 27:32Speaker 1: is still a prosperous business. Association may be taken as
- 27:36Speaker 1: an experimental verification of Aristotle's common sense psychology, and was
- 27:42Speaker 1: probably merely the public acknowledgment of conditions already practically established.
- 27:49Speaker 1: Out of respect for Plato, we cannot ignore this possibility
- 27:53Speaker 1: of multiple marriage altogether in our utopian theorizing. But even
- 27:58Speaker 1: if we leave this possibility open, we are still bound
- 28:03Speaker 1: to regard it as a thing so likely to be
- 28:05Speaker 1: rare as not to come at all under our direct
- 28:09Speaker 1: observation during our utopian journeyings. But in one sense, of course,
- 28:15Speaker 1: in the sense that the state guarantees care and support
- 28:19Speaker 1: for all properly born children, our entire utopia is to
- 28:24Speaker 1: be regarded as a comprehensive marriage group. Footnote. The thelema
- 28:32Speaker 1: of Rabelais, with its principle of fair caseservudre within the
- 28:38Speaker 1: limits of the order, is probably intended to suggest a
- 28:42Speaker 1: platonic complex marriage. After the fashion of our interpretation. It
- 28:48Speaker 1: must be remembered that a modern utopia must differ from
- 28:52Speaker 1: the utopias of any preceding age in being worldwide. It
- 28:57Speaker 1: is not therefore, to be the development of any special
- 29:00Speaker 1: race or type of culture, as Plato's developed in Arthenian's
- 29:05Speaker 1: Spartan blend, or more to to England. The modern utopia
- 29:10Speaker 1: is to be, before all things, synthetic politically and socially.
- 29:14Speaker 1: As linguistically, we must suppose it a synthesis. Politically, it
- 29:19Speaker 1: will be a synthesis of once widely different forms of government.
- 29:23Speaker 1: Socially and morally are synthesis of a great variety of
- 29:27Speaker 1: domestic traditions and ethical habits into the modern utopia. There
- 29:31Speaker 1: must have entered the mental tendencies and origins that give
- 29:35Speaker 1: our own world, the polygamy of the Zulus and of Utah,
- 29:40Speaker 1: the polyandry of Tibet, the latitudes of experiment permitted in
- 29:44Speaker 1: the United States, and the divorceless wedlock of Compte. The
- 29:50Speaker 1: tendency of all synthetic processes in matters of law and
- 29:54Speaker 1: custom is to reduce and simplify their compulsory canon, to
- 29:59Speaker 1: add simit alternatives and freedoms. What will laws before become
- 30:05Speaker 1: traditions of feeling and style? And no matter will this
- 30:08Speaker 1: be more apparent than in questions affecting the relations of
- 30:12Speaker 1: the sexes. End of Chapter the sixth recording by Felicity Campbell,
- 30:22Speaker 1: Book one for me dot com Woginery, New Zealand.