Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The New Machiavelli Chapter 12

Transcript

The New Machiavelli Chapter 12 · The H. G. Wells Library

0:00
Speaker 1: Chapter twelve of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
0:05
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Antonyogus.
0:11
Speaker 1: The besetting of sex one art is selection, and so
0:18
Speaker 1: is most autobiography. But I am concerned with a more
0:22
Speaker 1: tangled business than selection. I want to show a contemporary
0:26
Speaker 1: man in relation to the state, and social usage, and
0:30
Speaker 1: the social organism in relation to that man. To tell
0:34
Speaker 1: my story at all, I have to simplify. I have
0:37
Speaker 1: given now the broad lines of my political development and
0:41
Speaker 1: how I passed from my initial liberal socialism to the
0:45
Speaker 1: conception of a constructive aristocracy. I have tried to set
0:50
Speaker 1: that out in the form of a man discovering himself. Incidentally,
0:54
Speaker 1: that self development led to a profound breach with my wife.
0:59
Speaker 1: One has read stroll or as before of husband and
1:01
Speaker 1: wife speaking severally two different languages and coming to an understanding.
1:07
Speaker 1: But Margaret and I began in her dialect, and as
1:10
Speaker 1: I came more and more to use my own diverged.
1:15
Speaker 1: I had thought when I married that the matter of
1:17
Speaker 1: womankind had ended for me. I have tried to tell
1:21
Speaker 1: all that sex and women had been to me up
1:24
Speaker 1: to my married life with Margaret and our fatal entanglement
1:28
Speaker 1: tried to show the queer, crippled, embarrassed, and limited way
1:32
Speaker 1: in which these interests break upon the life of a
1:35
Speaker 1: young man under contemporary conditions. I do not think my
1:39
Speaker 1: lot was a very exceptional one. I missed the chance
1:43
Speaker 1: of sisters and girl playmates, but that is not an
1:46
Speaker 1: uncommon misadventure in an age of small families. I never
1:51
Speaker 1: came to know any woman at all intimately until I
1:54
Speaker 1: was married to Margaret. My earlier love affairs were encounters
1:59
Speaker 1: of sex under conditions of furtiveness and adventure that made
2:03
Speaker 1: them things in themselves, restricted and unilluminating. From a boyish
2:09
Speaker 1: disposition to be mystical and worshiping towards women, I had
2:13
Speaker 1: passed into a disregardful attitude, as though women were things
2:17
Speaker 1: inferior or irrelevant, disturb as in great affairs. For a time,
2:22
Speaker 1: Margaret had blotted out all other women. She was so
2:25
Speaker 1: different and so near. She was like a person who
2:29
Speaker 1: stands suddenly in front of a little window through which
2:32
Speaker 1: one has been surveying a crowd. She didn't become woman
2:36
Speaker 1: kind for me so much as eliminate womankind from my world.
2:40
Speaker 1: And then came this secret separation. Until this estrangement and
2:46
Speaker 1: the rapid and uncontrollable development of my relations with Isabel
2:50
Speaker 1: which chanced to follow it, I seemed to have solved
2:54
Speaker 1: the problem of women by marriage and disregard. I thought
2:58
Speaker 1: these things were over. I went about my career with
3:02
Speaker 1: Margaret beside me, her brow slightly knit, her manner faintly, strenuous, helping, helping,
3:09
Speaker 1: And if we had not altogether abolished sex, we had
3:12
Speaker 1: at least so circumscribed and isolated it that it would
3:16
Speaker 1: not have affected the general tenor of our lives in
3:19
Speaker 1: the slightest degree if we had. And then clothing itself
3:24
Speaker 1: more and more in the form of Isabel and her problems.
3:28
Speaker 1: This old, this fundamental obsession of my life returned. The
3:33
Speaker 1: thing stole upon my mind so that I was unaware
3:36
Speaker 1: of its invasion and how it was changing our long intimacy.
3:42
Speaker 1: I have already compared the lot of the modern publicist
3:44
Speaker 1: to Machiavelli, writing in his study. In his day, women
3:49
Speaker 1: and sex were as disregarded in these high affairs as
3:53
Speaker 1: let us say, the chemistry of air or the will
3:55
Speaker 1: of the beasts in the fields. In ours. The case
3:59
Speaker 1: is altogether changed. And woman has come now to stand
4:03
Speaker 1: beside the tall candles, half in the light, half in
4:07
Speaker 1: the mystery of the shadows, besetting, interrupting, demanding, unrelentingly, an
4:12
Speaker 1: altogether unprecedented attention. I feel that in these matters my
4:18
Speaker 1: life has been almost typical of my time. Woman insists
4:22
Speaker 1: upon her presence. She is no longer a mere physical need,
4:26
Speaker 1: an esthetic by play, a sentimental background. She is a
4:31
Speaker 1: moral and intellectual necessity in a man's life. She comes
4:35
Speaker 1: to the politician and demands is she a child or
4:38
Speaker 1: a citizen? Is she a thing or a soul? She
4:42
Speaker 1: comes to the individual man as she came to me,
4:45
Speaker 1: and asks, is she a cherished weakling or an equal mate,
4:49
Speaker 1: an unavoidable helper? Is she to be tried and trusted,
4:54
Speaker 1: or guarded and controlled, bond or free? For if she
4:58
Speaker 1: is a mate, one must at once trust more and
5:01
Speaker 1: exact more, exacting toil, courage and the hardest, most necessary
5:06
Speaker 1: thing of all, the clearest, most shameless explicitness of understanding two.
5:16
Speaker 1: In all my earlier imaginings of state craft, I had
5:19
Speaker 1: tacitly assumed either the relations of the sexes were all right,
5:24
Speaker 1: or that anyhow, they didn't concern the state. It was
5:28
Speaker 1: a matter they, whoever they were, had to settle among themselves.
5:33
Speaker 1: That sort of disregard was possible then, But even before
5:37
Speaker 1: nineteen o six there were endless intimations that the dams
5:41
Speaker 1: holding back great reservoirs of discussion were crumbling. We political
5:46
Speaker 1: schemers were plowing wider than anyone had plowed before in
5:50
Speaker 1: the field of social reconstruction. We had also, we realized,
5:55
Speaker 1: to plow deeper. We had to plow down at last
5:59
Speaker 1: to the pass elements of sexual relationship and examine and
6:03
Speaker 1: decide upon them. The signs multiplied. In a year or so.
6:09
Speaker 1: Half the police of the metropolis was scarce sufficient to
6:13
Speaker 1: protect the House from one clamorous aspect of the new problem.
6:18
Speaker 1: The members went about Westminster with an odd new sense
6:21
Speaker 1: of being beset. A good proportion of us kept up
6:26
Speaker 1: the pretense that the vote for women was an isolated
6:29
Speaker 1: fad and the agitation and epidemic madness that would presently pass.
6:36
Speaker 1: But it was manifest to anyone who sought more than
6:38
Speaker 1: comfort in the matter, that the streams of women and
6:42
Speaker 1: sympathizers and money forthcoming marked far deeper and wider things
6:47
Speaker 1: than an idle fancy for the franchise. The existing laws
6:51
Speaker 1: and conventions of relationship between man and woman were just
6:55
Speaker 1: as unsatisfactory a disorder as anything else in our tumble
7:00
Speaker 1: confusion of a world, and that also was coming to
7:03
Speaker 1: bear upon state craft. My first parliament was the Parliament
7:08
Speaker 1: of the Suffragettes. I don't propose to tell here of
7:13
Speaker 1: that amazing campaign, with its absurdities and follies, its courage
7:18
Speaker 1: and devotion. There were aspects of that unquenchable agitation that
7:23
Speaker 1: were absolutely heroic, and aspects that were absolutely pitiful. It
7:28
Speaker 1: was unreasonable, unwise, and except for its one central insistence,
7:33
Speaker 1: astonishingly incoherent. It was amazingly effective. The very incoherence of
7:41
Speaker 1: the demand witnessed, I think, to the forces that lay
7:44
Speaker 1: behind it. It wasn't a simple argument based on a
7:48
Speaker 1: simple assumption. It was the first crude expression of a
7:52
Speaker 1: great mass and mingling of convergent feelings, of a widespread,
7:57
Speaker 1: confused persuasion among modern educated women that the conditions of
8:02
Speaker 1: their relations with men were oppressive, ugly, dishonoring, and had
8:07
Speaker 1: to be altered. They had not merely adopted the vote
8:11
Speaker 1: as a symbol of equality. It was fairly manifest to
8:15
Speaker 1: me that given it, they meant to use it, and
8:17
Speaker 1: to use it, perhaps even vindictively and blindly, as a
8:21
Speaker 1: weapon against many things they had every reason to hate.
8:26
Speaker 1: I remember with exceptional vividness that great night early in
8:30
Speaker 1: the session of nineteen o nine, when I think it
8:33
Speaker 1: was fifty or sixty women went to prison. I had
8:37
Speaker 1: been dining at the Barns and Lord barm and I
8:40
Speaker 1: came down from the direction of Saint James's Park into
8:43
Speaker 1: a crowd and a confusion outside the Caxton Hall. We
8:48
Speaker 1: found ourselves drifting with an immense multitude towards Parliament Square
8:53
Speaker 1: and parallel with a silent, close packed column of girls
8:57
Speaker 1: and women, for the most part white faced, and I
9:01
Speaker 1: still remember the effect of their faces upon me. It
9:05
Speaker 1: was quite different from the general effect of staring about
9:09
Speaker 1: and divided attention one gets in a political possession of men.
9:13
Speaker 1: There was an expression of heroic tension. There had been
9:17
Speaker 1: a pretty deliberate appeal on the part of the Women's
9:20
Speaker 1: organizers to the unemployed, who had been demonstrating throughout that
9:24
Speaker 1: winter to join forces with the movement, and the result
9:28
Speaker 1: was shown in the quality of the crowd upon the pavement.
9:32
Speaker 1: It was an ugly, dangerous looking crowd, but as yet
9:35
Speaker 1: good tempered and sympathetic. When at last we got within
9:39
Speaker 1: sight of the house, the square was a seething seat
9:43
Speaker 1: of excited people, and the array of police on horse
9:46
Speaker 1: and on foot might have been assembled for a revolutionary outbreak.
9:51
Speaker 1: There were dense masses of people up White Hall and
9:54
Speaker 1: right on to Westminster Bridge. The scuffle that ended in
9:58
Speaker 1: the arrests was the porous explosion to follow such stupendous preparations.
10:06
Speaker 1: Three later on in that year, the women began a
10:10
Speaker 1: new attack day and night, and all through the long
10:14
Speaker 1: nights of the budget sittings. At all the peers of
10:17
Speaker 1: the gates of New Palace Yard and at Saint Stephen's
10:20
Speaker 1: Porch stood women pickets and watched us silently and reproachfully
10:25
Speaker 1: as we went to and fro. They were women of
10:29
Speaker 1: all sorts, though of course the independent worker class predominated.
10:34
Speaker 1: There were gray haired old ladies standing there sturdily charming
10:38
Speaker 1: in the rain, battered looking, ambiguous women with something of
10:43
Speaker 1: the desperate bitterness of battered women showing in their eyes.
10:47
Speaker 1: North country factory girls, cheaply dressed suburban women, trim comfortable
10:53
Speaker 1: mothers of families, valiant eyed girl graduates and undergraduates, lank,
10:59
Speaker 1: hung looking creatures who stirred one's imagination. One very dainty
11:05
Speaker 1: little woman in deep mourning, I recall, grave and steadfast,
11:09
Speaker 1: with eyes fixed on distant things. Some of those women
11:13
Speaker 1: looked defiant, some timidly aggressive, some full of the stir
11:18
Speaker 1: of adventure, some drooping with cold and fatigue. The supply
11:23
Speaker 1: never ceased. I had a mortal fear that somehow the
11:27
Speaker 1: supply might halt or cease. I found that continual siege
11:32
Speaker 1: of the legislature extraordinarily impressive, infinitely more impressive than the feeble,
11:38
Speaker 1: forcible ragging of the more militant section. I thought of
11:43
Speaker 1: the appeal that must be going through the country, summoning
11:46
Speaker 1: the women from countless scattered homes, rooms, colleges to Westminster.
11:52
Speaker 1: I remember, too, the petty little difficulty I felt whether
11:56
Speaker 1: I should ignore these pickets altogether, or lift a hat
11:59
Speaker 1: as I had past, with averted eyes, or look them
12:03
Speaker 1: in the face, as I did so. Towards the end,
12:06
Speaker 1: the house evoked and etiquette of salutation four. There was
12:14
Speaker 1: a tendency, even on the part of its sympathizers, to
12:18
Speaker 1: treat the whole suffrage agitation as if it were a
12:21
Speaker 1: disconnected issue, irrelevant to all other broad developments of social
12:26
Speaker 1: and political life. We struggled, all of us to ignore
12:30
Speaker 1: the indicating finger it thrust out before us your schemes,
12:35
Speaker 1: for all their bigness. It insisted to our reluctant, averted minds.
12:40
Speaker 1: Still don't go down to the essential things. We have
12:44
Speaker 1: to go deeper, or our inadequate children's insufficient children will
12:49
Speaker 1: starve amidst harvests of earless futility. That conservatism, which works
12:55
Speaker 1: in every class to preserve in its essentials the habitual
12:59
Speaker 1: daily life life, is all against a profounder treatment of
13:03
Speaker 1: political issues. The politician, almost as absurdly as the philosopher,
13:09
Speaker 1: tends constantly, in spite of magnificent preludes vast intimations, to
13:15
Speaker 1: specialize himself out of the reality he has so stupendously summoned.
13:20
Speaker 1: He bolts back to littleness. The world has to be
13:24
Speaker 1: molded anew, he continues to admit, but without he adds
13:28
Speaker 1: any risk of upsetting his weekend visits, his morning cup
13:32
Speaker 1: of tea. The discussion of the relations of men and
13:36
Speaker 1: women disturbs everyone. It reacts upon the private life of
13:41
Speaker 1: everyone who attempts it, and at any particular time only
13:46
Speaker 1: a small minority have a personal interest in changing the
13:49
Speaker 1: established state of affairs. Habit and interest are in a
13:54
Speaker 1: constantly recruited majority against conscious change and adjustment. In these matters,
14:00
Speaker 1: drift rules us. The great mass of people and an
14:04
Speaker 1: overwhelming proportion of influential people a people who have banished
14:09
Speaker 1: their dreams and made their compromise. Wonderful and beautiful possibilities
14:15
Speaker 1: are no longer to be thought about. They have given
14:18
Speaker 1: up any aspirations for intense love their splendid offspring for
14:23
Speaker 1: keen delights, have accepted a cultivated kindliness and an uncritical
14:28
Speaker 1: sense of righteousness as their compensation. It's a settled affair
14:34
Speaker 1: with them, a settled, dangerous affair. Most of them fear,
14:38
Speaker 1: and many hate the slightest reminder of those abandoned dreams.
14:44
Speaker 1: As Dayton once said to the Pentagram Circle, when we
14:47
Speaker 1: were discussing the problem of a universal marriage and divorce
14:51
Speaker 1: law throughout the Empire, I am for leaving all these
14:54
Speaker 1: things alone. And then, with a groan in his voice,
14:58
Speaker 1: leave them alone, Leave them all alone. That was his
15:03
Speaker 1: whole speech for the evening, in a note of suppressed passion,
15:07
Speaker 1: and presently against all our etiquette, he got up and
15:10
Speaker 1: went out. For some years after my marriage, I too
15:16
Speaker 1: was for leaving them alone. I developed to dread and
15:20
Speaker 1: dislike for romance, for emotional music, for the human figure
15:25
Speaker 1: in art, turning my heart to landscape. I wanted to
15:30
Speaker 1: sneer at lovers and their ecstasies, and was uncomfortable until
15:34
Speaker 1: I found the effective sneer in matters of private morals.
15:39
Speaker 1: These were my most uncharitable years. I didn't want to
15:43
Speaker 1: think of these things anymore. Forever I hated the people
15:47
Speaker 1: whose talk or practice showed they were not of my opinion.
15:52
Speaker 1: I wanted to believe that their views were immoral and
15:54
Speaker 1: objectionable and contemptible. Because I had decided to treat them
15:58
Speaker 1: as at that level, I was in fact falling into
16:02
Speaker 1: the attitude of the normal, decent man. And yet one
16:08
Speaker 1: cannot help thinking the sensible, moralized man finds it hard
16:13
Speaker 1: to escape the stream of suggestion that there are still
16:17
Speaker 1: dreams beyond these commonplace acquiescences, the appeal of beauty suddenly
16:23
Speaker 1: shining upon one, the mothlike stirrings of serene summer, nights,
16:29
Speaker 1: the sweetness of distant music. It is one of the
16:33
Speaker 1: paradoxical factors in our public life at the present time
16:37
Speaker 1: which penalizes abandonment to love so abundantly and so heavily
16:42
Speaker 1: that power, influence, and control fall largely to unencumbered people
16:47
Speaker 1: and sterile people, and people who have married for passionless purposes,
16:52
Speaker 1: people whose very deficiency in feeling has left them free
16:56
Speaker 1: to follow ambition. People beauty blind who don't understand what
17:01
Speaker 1: it is to fall in love, what it is to
17:04
Speaker 1: desire children or have them, what it is to feel
17:07
Speaker 1: in their blood and bodies, the supreme claim of good
17:10
Speaker 1: births and selective births above all other affairs in life.
17:15
Speaker 1: People almost of necessity, averse from this most fundamental aspect
17:20
Speaker 1: of existence. Five. It wasn't, however, my deepening sympathy with
17:28
Speaker 1: an understanding of the position of women in general, or
17:32
Speaker 1: the change in my ideas about all these intimate things
17:36
Speaker 1: my fast friendship with Isabel was bringing about that led
17:40
Speaker 1: me to the heretical views I have in the last
17:43
Speaker 1: five years dragged from the region of academic and timid
17:46
Speaker 1: discussion into the field of practical politics. Those influences, no
17:52
Speaker 1: doubt have converged to the same end and given me
17:56
Speaker 1: a powerful emotional push upon my road. But there's a
18:00
Speaker 1: broader and colder view of things that first determine me
18:03
Speaker 1: in my attempt to graft the endowment of motherhood in
18:07
Speaker 1: some form or other upon British imperialism. Now that I
18:11
Speaker 1: am exiled from the political world, it is possible to
18:15
Speaker 1: estimate just how effectually that grafting has been done. I
18:21
Speaker 1: have explained how the ideas of a trained aristocracy and
18:24
Speaker 1: a universal education grew to paramount importance in my political scheme.
18:31
Speaker 1: It is but a short step from this to the
18:33
Speaker 1: question of the quantity and quality of births in the community,
18:38
Speaker 1: and from that again to these forbidden and fear beset
18:41
Speaker 1: topics of marriage, divorce, and the family organization. A sporadic
18:47
Speaker 1: discussion of these aspects had been going on for years.
18:51
Speaker 1: A eugenic society existed, and articles on the falling birth
18:55
Speaker 1: rate and the rapid multification of the unfit were states
19:00
Speaker 1: of the monthly magazines. But beyond an intermittent scolding of
19:06
Speaker 1: prosperous childless people in general, where never addressed them in particular,
19:11
Speaker 1: nothing was done towards arresting those adverse processes. Almost against
19:16
Speaker 1: my natural inclination, I found myself forced to go into
19:20
Speaker 1: these things. I came to the conclusion that under modern conditions,
19:26
Speaker 1: the isolated private family based on the existing marriage contract
19:31
Speaker 1: was failing in its work. It wasn't producing enough children,
19:35
Speaker 1: and children good enough and well trained enough for the
19:38
Speaker 1: demands of the developing civilized state. Our civilization was growing
19:44
Speaker 1: outwardly and decaying in its intimate substance, and unless it
19:49
Speaker 1: was presently to collapse, some very extensive and courageous reorganization
19:54
Speaker 1: was needed. The old haphazard system of pairing qualified mora
20:00
Speaker 1: more by worldly discretions, no longer secures a young population
20:05
Speaker 1: numerous enough or good enough for the growing needs and
20:08
Speaker 1: possibilities of our empire. State Craft sits weaving splendid garments,
20:14
Speaker 1: no doubt, but with a puny, ugly, insufficient baby in
20:18
Speaker 1: the cradle. No one so far has dared to take
20:22
Speaker 1: up this problem as a present question for state craft.
20:26
Speaker 1: But it comes unherlded, unadvocated, and sits at every legislative board.
20:32
Speaker 1: Every improvement is provisional except the improvement of the race.
20:37
Speaker 1: And it became more and more doubtful to me if
20:39
Speaker 1: we were improving the race at all. Splendid and beautiful
20:43
Speaker 1: and courageous people must come together and have children. Women,
20:47
Speaker 1: with their fine senses and glorious devotion, must be free
20:51
Speaker 1: from the net that compels them to be celibate, compels
20:55
Speaker 1: them to be childless and useless, or to bear children
20:58
Speaker 1: ignobly to men whom need and ignorance and the treacherous
21:02
Speaker 1: pressure of circumstances have forced upon them. We all know that,
21:07
Speaker 1: and so few dare even to whisper it, for fear
21:10
Speaker 1: that they should seem, in seeking to save the family,
21:13
Speaker 1: to threaten its existence. It is as if a party
21:18
Speaker 1: of pigmies in a not too capacious room have been
21:21
Speaker 1: joined by a carnivorous giant and decided to go on
21:24
Speaker 1: living happily by cutting him dead. The problem the developing
21:30
Speaker 1: civilized state has to solve is how it can get
21:33
Speaker 1: the best possible increase under the best possible conditions. I
21:38
Speaker 1: became more and more convinced that the independent family unit
21:42
Speaker 1: of today, in which the man is master of the
21:45
Speaker 1: wife and owner of the children, in which all are
21:48
Speaker 1: a dependent upon him, subordinated to his enterprises, and liable
21:53
Speaker 1: to follow his fortunes up or down does not supply
21:56
Speaker 1: anything like the best conceivable conditions we want to modernize
22:01
Speaker 1: the family footing altogether. An enormous premium, both in pleasure
22:07
Speaker 1: and competitive efficiency, is put upon voluntary childlessness, and enormous
22:13
Speaker 1: inducements are held out to women to subordinate instinctive and
22:17
Speaker 1: selective preferences to social and material considerations. The practical reaction
22:23
Speaker 1: of modern conditions upon the old tradition of the family
22:27
Speaker 1: is this that, beneath the pretense that nothing is changing secretly,
22:32
Speaker 1: and with all the unwholesomeness of secrecy, everything is changed.
22:37
Speaker 1: Offspring fall away, the birth rate fools and fools most
22:41
Speaker 1: among just the most efficient and active and best adapted
22:44
Speaker 1: classes in the community. The species is recruited from among
22:49
Speaker 1: its failures and from among less civilized aliens. Contemporary civilizations
22:55
Speaker 1: are in effect burning the best of their possible babies
22:59
Speaker 1: in the furnes that run the machinery. In the United States,
23:04
Speaker 1: the native Anglo American strain has scarcely increased at all
23:08
Speaker 1: since eighteen thirty, and in most Western European countries the
23:12
Speaker 1: same is probably true of the ablest and most energetic
23:16
Speaker 1: elements in the community. The women of these classes still
23:20
Speaker 1: remain legally and practically dependent and protected, were the only
23:25
Speaker 1: natural excuse for their dependence. Gone, the modern world becomes
23:30
Speaker 1: an immense spectacle of unsatisfactory groupings. Here childless couples bored
23:37
Speaker 1: to death in the hopeless effort to sustain an incessant honeymoon. Here,
23:42
Speaker 1: homes in which a solitary child grows unsocially Here, small
23:46
Speaker 1: two or three child homes that do no more than
23:49
Speaker 1: continue the culture of the parents at a great social cost.
23:54
Speaker 1: Here numbers of unhappy, educated but childless married women. Here, careless, decivilized,
24:01
Speaker 1: vacant homes. Here, orphanages and asylums for the heedlessly forgotten.
24:07
Speaker 1: It is just the disorderly proliferation of Bromstead over again,
24:12
Speaker 1: in lives instead of in houses. What is the good?
24:17
Speaker 1: What is the common sense of rectifying boundaries, pushing research
24:21
Speaker 1: and discovery, building cities, improving all the facilities of life,
24:27
Speaker 1: making great fleets, waging wars. While this aimless decadence remains
24:33
Speaker 1: the quality of the biological outlook. It is difficult now
24:38
Speaker 1: to trace how I changed from my earlier version until
24:42
Speaker 1: I faced this mass of problems. But so far back
24:46
Speaker 1: as nineteen ten I had it clear in my mind
24:49
Speaker 1: that I would rather fail utterly than participate in all
24:53
Speaker 1: the surrenders of mind and body that are implied in
24:57
Speaker 1: dayton snarl of leave it alone, leave it all alone.
25:02
Speaker 1: Marriage and the begetting and care of children is the
25:05
Speaker 1: very ground substance in the life of the community. In
25:10
Speaker 1: a world in which everything changes, in which fresh methods,
25:14
Speaker 1: fresh adjustments, and fresh ideas perpetually renew the circumstances of life,
25:20
Speaker 1: it is preposterous that we should not even examine into
25:24
Speaker 1: these matters, should rest content to be ruled by the
25:27
Speaker 1: uncriticized traditions of a barbaric age. Now it seems to
25:33
Speaker 1: me that the solution of this problem is also the
25:37
Speaker 1: solution of the woman's individual problem. The two go together
25:42
Speaker 1: a right and left of one question. The only conceivable
25:46
Speaker 1: way out from our ampass lies in the recognition of parentage,
25:51
Speaker 1: that is to say, of adequate mothering as no longer
25:54
Speaker 1: a chance product of individual passions, but a service rendered
25:59
Speaker 1: to the state. Women must become less and less subordinated
26:03
Speaker 1: to individual men. Since this works out in a more
26:06
Speaker 1: or less complete limitation, waste, and sterilization of their essentially
26:12
Speaker 1: social function, they must become more and more subordinated as
26:17
Speaker 1: individually independent citizens to the collective purpose. Or to express
26:23
Speaker 1: the thing by familiar phrase, the highly organized, scientific state
26:28
Speaker 1: we desire must, if it is to exist at all,
26:32
Speaker 1: base itself not upon the irresponsible man ruled family, but
26:37
Speaker 1: upon the matriarchal family, the citizenship and freedom of women,
26:42
Speaker 1: and the public endowment of motherhood. After two generations of
26:47
Speaker 1: confused and experimental revolt, it grows clear to modern women
26:53
Speaker 1: that a conscious, deliberate motherhood and mothering is their special
26:57
Speaker 1: function in the state, and that a personal subordination to
27:01
Speaker 1: an individual man with an unlimited power of control over
27:05
Speaker 1: this intimate and supreme duty is a degradation. No contemporary
27:11
Speaker 1: woman of education, put to the test is willing to
27:14
Speaker 1: recognize any claim a man can make upon her, but
27:17
Speaker 1: the claim of her freely given devotion to him. She
27:21
Speaker 1: wants the reality of her choice, and she means family,
27:25
Speaker 1: while a man too often means only possession. This alters
27:30
Speaker 1: the spirit of the family relationships. Fundamentally. Their form remains
27:35
Speaker 1: just what it was when woman was esteemed a pretty
27:39
Speaker 1: desirable and incidentally a child producing chattel. Against these time
27:45
Speaker 1: oddered ideas, the new spirit of womanhood struggles in shame, astonishment, bitterness,
27:52
Speaker 1: and tears. I confess myself altogether feminist. I have no
27:58
Speaker 1: doubts in the matter. I want this coddling and brow
28:01
Speaker 1: beating of women to cease. I want to see women
28:05
Speaker 1: come in, free and fearless, to a full participation in
28:09
Speaker 1: the collective purpose of mankind. Women, I am convinced, are
28:14
Speaker 1: as fine as men. They can be, as wise as men.
28:17
Speaker 1: They are capable of far greater devotion than men. I
28:21
Speaker 1: want to see them citizens, with a marriage law framed
28:25
Speaker 1: primarily for them and for their protection and the good
28:28
Speaker 1: of the race, and not for men's satisfactions. I want
28:33
Speaker 1: to see them bearing and rearing good children in the
28:36
Speaker 1: state as a generously rewarded public duty and service, choosing
28:41
Speaker 1: their husbands freely and discerningly, and in no way enslaved
28:46
Speaker 1: by or subordinated to the men they have chosen. The
28:51
Speaker 1: social consciousness of women seems to me an unworked and
28:55
Speaker 1: almost untouched mine of wealth for the constructive purpose of
28:59
Speaker 1: the world world. I want to change the respective values
29:03
Speaker 1: of the family group altogether, and make the home indeed
29:07
Speaker 1: the women's kingdom, and the mother the owner and responsible
29:11
Speaker 1: guardian of her children. It is no use pretending that
29:15
Speaker 1: this is not novel and revolutionary. It is. The endowment
29:20
Speaker 1: of motherhood implies a new method of social organization, a
29:24
Speaker 1: rearrangement of the social unit untried in human experience, as
29:30
Speaker 1: untried as electric traction was or flying in eighteen hundred.
29:35
Speaker 1: Of course, it may work out to modify men's ideas
29:39
Speaker 1: of marriage profoundly. To me, that is a secondary consideration.
29:44
Speaker 1: I do not believe that particular assertion myself, because I
29:48
Speaker 1: am convinced that a practical monogamy is a psychological necessity
29:53
Speaker 1: to the massive civilized people. But even if I did
29:57
Speaker 1: believe it, I should still keep to my present life,
30:00
Speaker 1: because it is the only line that will prevent a
30:03
Speaker 1: highly organized civilization from ending in biological decay. The public
30:09
Speaker 1: endowment of motherhood is the only possible way which will
30:13
Speaker 1: ensure the permanently developing civilized state at which all constructive
30:19
Speaker 1: minds are aiming. A point is reached in the life
30:22
Speaker 1: history of a civilization when either this reconstruction must be
30:26
Speaker 1: affected or the quality and morale of the population prove
30:30
Speaker 1: insufficient for the needs of the developing organization. It is
30:35
Speaker 1: not so much moral decadence that will destroy us as
30:39
Speaker 1: moral inadaptability, the old code fails under the new needs.
30:45
Speaker 1: The only alternative to this profound reconstruction is a decay
30:50
Speaker 1: in human quality and social collapse. Either this unprecedented rearrangement
30:57
Speaker 1: must be achieved by our civilization, or it must presently
31:01
Speaker 1: come upon a phase of disorder and crumble and perish,
31:04
Speaker 1: as Rome perished, as France declines, as the strain of
31:09
Speaker 1: the pilgrim Fathers dwindles out of America. Whatever hope there
31:14
Speaker 1: may be in the attempt, therefore, there is no alternative
31:17
Speaker 1: to the attempt. Six. I wanted political success now, dearly enough,
31:26
Speaker 1: but not at the price of constructive realities. These questions were,
31:31
Speaker 1: no doubt monstrously dangerous in the political world. There wasn't
31:35
Speaker 1: a politician alive who didn't look scared at the mention
31:39
Speaker 1: of the family. But if raising these issues were essential
31:44
Speaker 1: to the social reconstructions on which my life was set,
31:48
Speaker 1: that did not matter. It only implied that I should
31:51
Speaker 1: take them up with deliberate caution. There was no release
31:55
Speaker 1: because of Wreath's score difficulty. The question of whether I
32:00
Speaker 1: I should commit myself to some open project in this
32:02
Speaker 1: direction was going on in my mind concurrently with my
32:06
Speaker 1: speculations about a change of party, like base and treble
32:11
Speaker 1: in a complex piece of music, the two droot or
32:14
Speaker 1: conclusion together, I would not only go over to imperialism,
32:19
Speaker 1: but I would attempt to biologize imperialism. I thought at
32:25
Speaker 1: first that I was undertaking a monstrous uphill task. But
32:29
Speaker 1: as I came to look into the possibilities of the matter,
32:32
Speaker 1: a strong persuasion grew up in my mind that this
32:36
Speaker 1: panic fear of legislative proposals affecting the family basis was excessive.
32:42
Speaker 1: That things were much riper for development in this direction
32:46
Speaker 1: than old experienced people out of touch with the younger generation.
32:50
Speaker 1: Imagined that, to phrase the thing in a parliamentary fashion,
32:54
Speaker 1: something might be done in the constituencies with the endowment
32:58
Speaker 1: of motherhood forthwith, provided only that it was made perfectly
33:02
Speaker 1: clear that anything a sane person could possibly intend by
33:06
Speaker 1: morality was left untouched by these proposals. I went to
33:11
Speaker 1: work very carefully. I got Roper of the daily telephone
33:16
Speaker 1: and Burkeert of the dial to try over a silly
33:19
Speaker 1: seasoned discussion of state help for mothers, and I put
33:24
Speaker 1: a series of articles on eugenics. Upon the fall in
33:27
Speaker 1: the birth rate and similar topics in the Blue Weekly,
33:31
Speaker 1: leading up to a tentative and generalized advocacy of the
33:35
Speaker 1: public endowment of the nation's children. I was more and
33:39
Speaker 1: more struck by the acceptance won by a sober and
33:43
Speaker 1: restrained presentation of this suggestion. And then, in the fourth
33:48
Speaker 1: year of the Blue Weekly's career came the hand Itch election,
33:53
Speaker 1: and I was forced by the clamor of my antagonist,
33:56
Speaker 1: and very willingly forced to put my convictions to the test.
34:01
Speaker 1: I returned triumphantly to Westminster with the public endowment of
34:06
Speaker 1: motherhood as part of my open profession, and with the
34:09
Speaker 1: full approval of the Party press. Applauding benches of imperialists
34:14
Speaker 1: cheered me on my way to the table between the whips.
34:18
Speaker 1: That second time I took the oath, I was not
34:21
Speaker 1: one of a crowd of new members, but salient an event,
34:26
Speaker 1: a symbol of profound changes and new purposes in the
34:30
Speaker 1: national life. Here it is my political book comes to
34:35
Speaker 1: an end, and in a sense my book ends altogether.
34:39
Speaker 1: For the rest is but to tell how I was
34:41
Speaker 1: swept out of this great world of political possibilities. I
34:47
Speaker 1: close this third book as I opened it, with an
34:50
Speaker 1: admission of difficulties and complexities. But now with a pile
34:54
Speaker 1: of manuscript before me, I have to confess them, unsurmounted
34:58
Speaker 1: and still entangled. Yet my aim was a final simplicity.
35:04
Speaker 1: I have sought to show my growing realization that the
35:07
Speaker 1: essential quality of all political and social effort is the
35:11
Speaker 1: development of a great race mind behind the interplay of
35:14
Speaker 1: individual lives. That is, the collective human reality, the basis
35:19
Speaker 1: of morality, the purpose of devotion, to that our lives
35:24
Speaker 1: must be given. From that will come the perpetual fresh
35:27
Speaker 1: release and further ennoblement of individual lives. I have wanted
35:33
Speaker 1: to make that idea of a collective mind play in
35:36
Speaker 1: this book the part United Italy plays in Machiavelli's Prince.
35:42
Speaker 1: I have called it the hinterland of reality, shown it
35:45
Speaker 1: accumulating a dominating truth and rightness, which must force men's
35:50
Speaker 1: now sporadic motives more and more into a disciplined and
35:55
Speaker 1: understanding relation to a plan. And I have tried to
35:59
Speaker 1: end Kate, how I sought to serve this great clarification
36:03
Speaker 1: of our confusions. Now I come back to personality and
36:09
Speaker 1: the story of my self betrayal, and how it is
36:12
Speaker 1: I have had to leave all that far reaching scheme
36:15
Speaker 1: of mine, a mere project and beginning for other men
36:19
Speaker 1: to take or leave as it pleases them. End of
36:24
Speaker 1: Chapter twelve, end of Book three,