Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / A Modern Utopia Chapter 10 - Race in Utopia, Sections 3-5

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A Modern Utopia Chapter 10 - Race in Utopia, Sections 3-5 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter ten of A Modern Utopia. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. A
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  Speaker 1: Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells, Chapter the tenth, section three.
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  Speaker 1: Suppose now there is such a thing as in all
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  Speaker 1: round inferior race, is there any reason why we should
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  Speaker 1: propose to preserve it forever in a condition of tutelage.
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  Speaker 1: Whether there is a race so inferior I do not know,
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  Speaker 1: But certainly there is no race so superior as to
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  Speaker 1: be trusted with human charges. The true answer to Aristotle's
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  Speaker 1: plea for slavery that there are natural slaves lies in
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  Speaker 1: the fact that there are no natural masters. Power is
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  Speaker 1: no more to be committed to men without discipline and
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  Speaker 1: restriction than alcohol. The true objection to slavery is not
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  Speaker 1: that it is unjust to the inferior, but that it
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  Speaker 1: corrupts the superior. There is only one sane and logical
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  Speaker 1: thing to be done with a really inferior race, and
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  Speaker 1: that is to exterminate it. Now, there are various ways
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  Speaker 1: of exterminating a race, and most of them are cruel.
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  Speaker 1: You may end it with fire and sword, after the
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  Speaker 1: old Hebrew fashion. You may enslave it and work it
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  Speaker 1: to death, as the Spaniards to the Caribs. You may
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  Speaker 1: set it boundaries and then poison it slowly with deleterious commodities,
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  Speaker 1: as the Americans do with most of their Indians. You
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  Speaker 1: may incite it to wear clothing to which it is
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  Speaker 1: not accustomed, and to live under new and strange conditions
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  Speaker 1: that will expose it to infectious diseases to which you
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  Speaker 1: yourselves are immune, as the missionaries do the Polynesians. You
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  Speaker 1: may resort to honest, simple murder, as we English did
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  Speaker 1: with the Tasmanians. Or you can maintain such conditions as
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  Speaker 1: conduced to race suicide, as the British administration does in Fiji. Suppose, then,
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  Speaker 1: for a moment, that there is an all round inferior race.
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  Speaker 1: A modern utopia is under the hard logic of life,
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  Speaker 1: and it would have to exterminate such a race as
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  Speaker 1: quickly as it could on the whole. The Fijian device
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  Speaker 1: seems the least cruel, but Utopia would do that without
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  Speaker 1: any clumsiness of race distinction, in exactly the same manner
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  Speaker 1: and by the same machinery as it exterminates all its
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  Speaker 1: own defective and inferious strains. That is to say, as
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  Speaker 1: we have already discussed in Chapter the fifth section one,
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  Speaker 1: by its marriage laws and by the laws of the
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  Speaker 1: minimum wage, that extinction need never be discriminatory. If any
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  Speaker 1: of the race did, after all, proved to be fit
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  Speaker 1: to survive, they would survive. They would be picked out
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  Speaker 1: with a sure and automatic justice from the over ready
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  Speaker 1: condemnation of all their kind. Is there, however, an all
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  Speaker 1: round inferior race in the world. Even the Australian blackfellow
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  Speaker 1: is perhaps not quite so entirely eligible for extinction as
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  Speaker 1: a good wholesome horse racing sheep farming Australian white. Might think.
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  Speaker 1: These queer little races, the blackfellows, the pygmies, the bushmen,
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  Speaker 1: may have their little gifts, a greater keenness, a greater
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  Speaker 1: fineness of this sense or that, a quaintness of the imagination,
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  Speaker 1: or what not, that may serve as their little unique
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  Speaker 1: addition to the totality of our utopian civilization. We are
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  Speaker 1: supposing that every individual alive on earth is alive in utopia,
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  Speaker 1: and so all the surviving blackfellows are there, every one
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  Speaker 1: of them in Utopia has had what none have had
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  Speaker 1: on earth, a fair education and fair treatment, justice and opportunity.
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  Speaker 1: Suppose that the common idea is right about the general
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  Speaker 1: inferiority of these people, then it would follow that in
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  Speaker 1: Utopia most of them are childless and working at or
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  Speaker 1: about the minimum wage, and some will have passed out
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  Speaker 1: of all possibility of offspring under the hand of the
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  Speaker 1: offended law. But still cannot we imagine some few of
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  Speaker 1: these little people, whom you must suppose neither naked nor
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  Speaker 1: clothe in the European style, but robed in the Utopian fashion,
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  Speaker 1: may have found some delicate art to practice, some peculiar
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  Speaker 1: sort of carving, for example, that justifies God in creating them.
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  Speaker 1: Utopia has sound sanitary laws, sound social laws, sound economic laws.
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  Speaker 1: What harm are these people going to do? Some may
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  Speaker 1: be even prosperous and admired, may have married women of
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  Speaker 1: their own or some other race, and so may be
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  Speaker 1: transmitting that distinctive, thin thread of excellence to take its
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  Speaker 1: due place in the great synthesis of the future, and
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  Speaker 1: indeed coming along that terrace. In utopia, I see a
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  Speaker 1: little figure, a little bright eyed, bearded man, inky black,
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  Speaker 1: frizzy head, and clad in a white tunic and black hose,
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  Speaker 1: and with a mantle of lemon yellow wrapped by his shoulders.
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  Speaker 1: He walks as most utopians walk, as though he had
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  Speaker 1: reason to be proud of something, as though he had
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  Speaker 1: no reason to be afraid of anything in the world.
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  Speaker 1: He carries a portfolio in his hand. It is that,
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  Speaker 1: I suppose, as much as is hair, that recalls the
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  Speaker 1: courtier Latan to my mind. Section four. I had already
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  Speaker 1: discussed the question of race with the botanist at Lucerne.
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  Speaker 1: But you would not, like, he cried in horror, your
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  Speaker 1: daughter to marry a Chinaman or a Negro, of course,
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  Speaker 1: said I. When you say Chinaman, you think of a
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  Speaker 1: creature with a pigtail, long nails, and insanitary habits. And
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  Speaker 1: when you say Negro, you think of a filthy headed,
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  Speaker 1: black creature in an old hat. You do this because
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  Speaker 1: your imagination is too feeble to disentangle the inherent qualities
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  Speaker 1: of a thing from its habitual associations. Insult isn't argument,
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  Speaker 1: said the botanist. Neither is unsound implication. You make a
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  Speaker 1: question of race into a question of unequal cultures. You
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  Speaker 1: would not like your daughter to marry the sort of
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  Speaker 1: negro who steals hens. But then you would also not
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  Speaker 1: like your daughter to marry a pure English hunchback with
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  Speaker 1: a squint, or a drunken cab taut of Norman blood.
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  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, very few well bred English
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  Speaker 1: girls do commit that sort of indiscretion. But you don't
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  Speaker 1: think it necessary to generalize against men of your own
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  Speaker 1: race because there are drunken cab tuts. And why should
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  Speaker 1: you generalize against Negroes Because the proportion of undesirables is
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  Speaker 1: higher among negroes. That does not justify a sweeping condemnation.
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  Speaker 1: You may have to condemn most, But why all there
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  Speaker 1: may be. Neither of us knows enough to deny negroes.
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  Speaker 1: Who you are handsome, capable, courageous, ugh, said the botanist.
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  Speaker 1: How detestable you must find Othello, it is my utopia.
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  Speaker 1: And for a moment I could almost find it in
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  Speaker 1: my heart to spite the botanist by creating a modern
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  Speaker 1: Desdemona and her lover Sooty black to the lips there
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  Speaker 1: before our eyes. But I am not so sure of
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  Speaker 1: my case as that, And for the moment there shall
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  Speaker 1: come nothing more than a swart faced dusky Burmese woman
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  Speaker 1: in the dress of the greater rule, with her tall
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  Speaker 1: englishman as he might be on earth at her side. That, however,
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  Speaker 1: is a digression for my conversation with the botanist and
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  Speaker 1: the Chinaman, said the botanist, I think we shall have
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  Speaker 1: all the buff and yellow peoples intermingling pretty freely.
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  Speaker 2: Chinaman and white women, for example.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, I said, You've got to swallow that. Anyhow, you
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  Speaker 1: shall swallow that. He finds the idea too revolting for comment.
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  Speaker 1: I try and make the thing seem easier for him.
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  Speaker 1: Do try, I said, To grasp a modern utopian's conditions.
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  Speaker 1: The Chinaman will speak the same language as his wife,
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  Speaker 1: whatever her race may be. He will wear costume of
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  Speaker 1: the common civilized fashion. He will have much the same
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  Speaker 1: education as his European rival, read the same literature, bow
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  Speaker 1: to the same traditions. And you must remember, a wife
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  Speaker 1: in utopia is singularly not subject to her husband. The
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  Speaker 1: botanist proclaims his invincible conclusion.
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  Speaker 2: Every one will cut her.
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  Speaker 1: This is utopia, I said, and then sought once more
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  Speaker 1: to tranquilize his mind. No doubt among the vulgar, coarse
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  Speaker 1: minded people outside the rule, there may be something of
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  Speaker 1: the sort. Every earthly moral blockhead, a little educated, perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: is to be found in utopia. You will no doubt
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  Speaker 1: find the cut and the boycott, and all those nice
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  Speaker 1: little devices by which dull people get a keen edge
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  Speaker 1: on life in their place here, And their place here
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  Speaker 1: is somewhere. I turned a thumb earthward there. The botanist
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  Speaker 1: did not answer for a little while. Then he said,
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  Speaker 1: with some temper and great emphasis.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I'm jolly glady, how that I'm not to be
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  Speaker 2: a permanent resident in this utopia? If our daughters are
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  Speaker 2: to be married to hottentots by regulation, I'm jolly glad.
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  Speaker 1: He turned his back on me. Now did I say
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  Speaker 1: anything of the sort I had to bring him? I
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  Speaker 1: suppose there's no getting away from him in this life.
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  Speaker 1: But as I have already observed, the happy ancients went
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  Speaker 1: to their utopias without this sort of company. Section five.
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  Speaker 1: What gives the botanists so great an advantage in all
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  Speaker 1: his anti utopian utterances is his unconsciousness of his own limitations.
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  Speaker 1: He thinks in little pieces that lie about loose, and
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  Speaker 1: nothing has any necessary link with anything else in his mind,
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  Speaker 1: so that I cannot retort upon him by asking him,
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  Speaker 1: if he objects to this synthesis of all nations, tongues,
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  Speaker 1: and peoples in a world state, what alternative ideal he proposes.
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  Speaker 1: People of this sort do not even feel the need
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  Speaker 1: of alternatives beyond the scope of a few personal projects,
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  Speaker 1: meeting her again, and things like that. They do not
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  Speaker 1: feel that there is a future. They are unencumbered by
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  Speaker 1: any baggage of convictions whatever in relation to that. That,
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  Speaker 1: at least is the only way in which I can
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  Speaker 1: explain our friend's high intellectual mobility attempts to correlate statesmanship,
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  Speaker 1: which they regard with interest as a dramatic interplay of personalities,
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  Speaker 1: with any secular movement of humanity. They class with the
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  Speaker 1: differential calculus and Darwinism as things far too difficult to
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  Speaker 1: be anything but finally and subtly wrong. So the argument
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  Speaker 1: must pass into a direct address to the reader. If
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  Speaker 1: you are not prepared to regard a worldwide synthesis of
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  Speaker 1: all cultures and polities and races into one world state
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  Speaker 1: as the desirable end upon which all civilizing efforts converge,
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  Speaker 1: what do you regard as the desirable end synthesis? One
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  Speaker 1: may remark in passing does not necessarily mean fusion, nor
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  Speaker 1: does it mean uniformity. The alternatives fall roughly under three heads.
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  Speaker 1: The first is to assume there is a best race,
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  Speaker 1: to define as well as one can that best race,
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  Speaker 1: and to regard all other races as material for extermination.
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  Speaker 1: This has a fine modern biological air survival of the fittest.
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  Speaker 1: If you are one of those queer German professors who
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  Speaker 1: write insanity about Velt politic, you assume the best race
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  Speaker 1: is the Teutonic Cecil Rhodes affected that triumph of creative imagination,
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  Speaker 1: the Anglo Saxon race. My friend Moses Cohen thinks there
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  Speaker 1: is much to be said for the jew on its premises.
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  Speaker 1: This is a perfectly sound and reasonable policy, and it
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  Speaker 1: opens out a brilliant prospect for the scientific inventor for
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  Speaker 1: what one might call velt apparat in the future, for
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  Speaker 1: national harrowing and reaping machines and race destroying fumigations. The
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  Speaker 1: Great Plain of China yellow peril lends itself particularly to
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  Speaker 1: some striking wholesale undertaking. It might, for example, be flooded
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  Speaker 1: for a few days and then disinfected with volcanic chlorine.
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  Speaker 1: Whether when all the inferior races have been stamped out.
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  Speaker 1: The superior race would not proceed at once, or after
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  Speaker 1: a brief millennial period of social harmony, to divide itself
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  Speaker 1: into subclasses and begin the business over again at a
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  Speaker 1: higher level. Is an interesting residual question into which we
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  Speaker 1: need not now penetrate. That complete development of a scientific
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  Speaker 1: velt politic is not, however, very widely advocated at present,
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  Speaker 1: no doubt from a want of confidence in the public imagination.
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  Speaker 1: We have, however, a very audible and influential school, the
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  Speaker 1: modern imperialist school, which distinguishes its own race. There is
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  Speaker 1: a German, a British, and an Anglo Saxon section in
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  Speaker 1: the school, and a wider teaching which embraces the whole
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  Speaker 1: white race in one remarkable tolerance as the superior race,
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  Speaker 1: as one indeed superior enough to own slaves collectively, if
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  Speaker 1: not individually. And the exponents of this doctrine look with
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  Speaker 1: a resolute, truculent but slightly indistinct eye to a future
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  Speaker 1: in which all the rest of the world will be
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  Speaker 1: in subjection to these elect The ideals of this type
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  Speaker 1: are set forth pretty clearly in mister Kidd's control of
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  Speaker 1: the tropics. The whole world is to be administered by
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  Speaker 1: the white powers. Mister Kidd did not anticipate Japan, who
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  Speaker 1: will see to it that their subjects do not prevent
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  Speaker 1: the utilization of the immense natural resources which they have
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  Speaker 1: in charge. Those other races are to be regarded as children,
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  Speaker 1: recalcitrant children at times, and without any of the tender
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  Speaker 1: emotions of paternity. It is a little doubtful whether the
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  Speaker 1: race is lacking in the elementary qualities of social efficiency
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  Speaker 1: are expected to acquire them under the chastening hands of
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  Speaker 1: those races which, through strength and energy of character, humanity,
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  Speaker 1: probity and integrity, and a single minded devotion to conceptions
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  Speaker 1: of duty, are developing the resources of the richest regions
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  Speaker 1: of the earth over their heads, or whether this is
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  Speaker 1: the ultimate ideal. Next comes the rather incoherent alternative that
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  Speaker 1: one associates in England with official liberalism. Liberalism in England
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  Speaker 1: is not quite the same thing as liberalism in the
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  Speaker 1: rest of the world. It is woven of two strands.
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  Speaker 1: There is Whiggism, the powerful tradition of seventeenth century Protestant
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  Speaker 1: and Republican England, with its great debt to Republican Rome,
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  Speaker 1: its strong constructive and disciplinary bias, its broad and originally
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  Speaker 1: very living and intelligent outlook. And interwoven with this there
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  Speaker 1: is the sentimental and logical liberalism that sprang from the
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  Speaker 1: stresses of the eighteenth century, that finds its early scarce
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  Speaker 1: differentiated expression in Harrington's Oceania, and after fresh drafts of
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  Speaker 1: the tradition of Brutus and Cato and some elegant trifling
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  Speaker 1: with noble savages, budded in La cite moraleste, flowered in
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  Speaker 1: the emotional democratic naturalism of Rousseau, and bore abundant fruit
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  Speaker 1: in the French Revolution. These are two very distinct Directly,
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  Speaker 1: they were freed in America from the grip of conflict
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  Speaker 1: with British Toryism. They came apart as the Republican and
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  Speaker 1: Democratic parties, respectively. Their continued union in Great Britain is
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  Speaker 1: a political accident. Because of this mixture. The whole career
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: of English speaking liberalism, though it has gone to one
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  Speaker 1: unbroken strain of eloquence, has never produced a clear statement
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  Speaker 1: of policy in relation to other peoples politically less fortunate.
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  Speaker 1: It has developed no definite ideas at all about the
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  Speaker 1: future of mankind. The Whig disposition, which once had some
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  Speaker 1: play in India, was certainly to attempt to anglicize the native,
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  Speaker 1: to assimilate his culture, and then to assimilate his political
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  Speaker 1: status with that of his temporary ruler. But interwoven with
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  Speaker 1: his anglicizing tendency, which was also by the bye a
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  Speaker 1: christianizing tendency, was a strong disposition derived from the Rousseau strand,
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  Speaker 1: to leave other peoples alone, to facilitate even the separation
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  Speaker 1: and autonomy of detached portions of our own peoples, to
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  Speaker 1: disintegrate finally into perfect because lawless individuals. The official exposition
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  Speaker 1: of British illiberalism today still regles unstably because of these
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: conflicting constituents, but on the whole, the Whig strand now
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  Speaker 1: seems the weaker. The contemporary liberal politician offers cogent criticism
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  Speaker 1: upon the brutality and conceit of modern imperialisms, but that
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  Speaker 1: seems to be the limit of his service. Taking what
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: they do not say and do not propose as an
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  Speaker 1: indication of liberal intentions, it would seem that the ideal
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  Speaker 1: of the British liberals and of the American democrats is
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: to favor the existence of just as many petty, loosely
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  Speaker 1: allied or quite independent nationalities as possible, just as many
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  Speaker 1: languages as possible, to deprecate armies and all controls, and
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  Speaker 1: to trust to the innate goodness of disorder and the
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  Speaker 1: powers of an ardent sentimentality to keep the world clean
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  Speaker 1: and sweet. The liberals will not face the plain consequence
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: that such a state of affairs is hopelessly unstable, that
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: it involves the maximum risk of war with the minimum
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  Speaker 1: of permanent benefit and public order. They will not reflect
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: that the stars, in their courses rule inexorably against it.
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  Speaker 1: It is a vague, impossible ideal, with a rude sort
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  Speaker 1: of unworldly moral beauty, like the Gospel of the Ducabors.
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  Speaker 1: Besides that charm, it has this most seductive quality to
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  Speaker 1: an official British Liberal, that it does not exact intellectual activity,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: nor indeed activity of any sort whatever. It is by
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  Speaker 1: virtue of that alone, a far less mischievous doctrine than
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: the crude and violent imperialism of the popular press. Neither
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of these two schools of policy, neither the international less
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: affair of the liberals nor hustle to the top imperialism,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: promise any reality of permanent progress for the world of men.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: They are the resort, the moral reference of those who
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: will not think frankly and exhaustibly over the whole field
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  Speaker 1: of this question. Do that insist upon solutions of more
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: than accidental applicability, and you emerge with one or other
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  Speaker 1: of two contrasted solutions, as the consciousness of kind or
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the consciousness of individuality prevails in your mind. In the
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  Speaker 1: former case, you will adopt aggressive imperialism, but you will
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  Speaker 1: carry it out to its thorough degree of extermination. You
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  Speaker 1: will seek to develop the culture and power of your
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: kind of men and women to the utmost in order
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  Speaker 1: to shoulder all other kinds from the earth. If, on
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  Speaker 1: the other hand, you appreciate the unique, you will aim
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  Speaker 1: at such a synthesis as this utopia displays, a synthesis
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  Speaker 1: far more credible and possible than any other valsh politic.
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  Speaker 1: In spite of all, the pageant of modern war synthesis
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  Speaker 1: is in the trend of the world to aid and develop.
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  Speaker 1: It could be made the open and secure policy of
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  Speaker 1: any great modern empire. Now, modern war modern international hostility
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  Speaker 1: is I believe possible only through the stupid illiteracy of
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  Speaker 1: the mass of men, and the conceit and intellectual indolence
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  Speaker 1: of rulers and those who feed the public mind. Where
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  Speaker 1: the will of the mass of men, lit and conscious,
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  Speaker 1: I am firmly convinced it would now burn steadily for
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  Speaker 1: synthesis and peace. It would be so easy to bring
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  Speaker 1: about a world peace within a few decades, was there
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  Speaker 1: but the will for it among men? The great empires
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  Speaker 1: that exist need but a little speech and frankness one
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  Speaker 1: with another. Within the riddles of social order are already
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  Speaker 1: half solved in books and thought. There are the common
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  Speaker 1: people and the subject to peoples, to be educated and drilled,
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  Speaker 1: to be led to a common speech and a common literature,
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  Speaker 1: to be assimilated and made citizens. Without there is the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: possible treaties. Why, for example, should Britain and France, or
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  Speaker 1: either and the United States, or Sweden and Norway, or
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  Speaker 1: Holland or Denmark or Italy fight any more forever? And
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: if there is no reason, how foolish and dangerous it
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  Speaker 1: is still to sustain linguistic differences in custom houses, and
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: all sorts of foolish and irritating distinctions between their various citizens,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: why should not all these peoples agree to teach some
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: common language French, for example, in their common schools, or
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: to teach each other's languages reciprocally. Why should they not
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: aim at a common literature and bring their various common laws,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: their marriage laws, and so on into uniformity. Why should
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: they not work for a uniform minimum of labor conditions
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: through all their communities. Why then, should they, not, except
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: in the interests of a few rascal plutocrats, trade freely
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: and exchange their citizenship freely throughout their common boundaries. No
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: doubt there are difficulties to be found, but they are
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: quite finite difficulties. What is there to prevent a parallel
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: movement of all the civilized powers in the world towards
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: a common ideal and assimilation? Stupidity, nothing but stupidity, a
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: stupid brute jealousy, aimless and unjustifiable. The coarser conceptions of
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: aggregation are at hand, the hostile, jealous patriotisms, the blare
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: of trumpets, and the pride of fools. They serve the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: daily need, though they lead towards disaster. The real and
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the immediate has us in its grip. The accidental personal things,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the little effort of thought, the brief sustained effort of
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: will is too much for the contemporary mind. Such treaties,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: such sympathetic international movements, are but dream stuff yet on Earth,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: though Utopia has realized them long since, and already passed
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: them by end of chapter. The tenth recording by Felicity Campbell,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Book one for me dot Com, Wanganui, New Zealand,