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A Modern Utopia Chapter 6 - Women in a Modern Utopia, Sections 1-4 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter six of a Modern Utopia. This is the liberyvox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All liberyvox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit liberyvox dot org. A
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  Speaker 1: Modern Utopia by H. D Wells, Chapter the sixth Women
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  Speaker 1: in a Modern Utopia, Section one. But though I have
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  Speaker 1: come to a point where the problem of a utopia
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  Speaker 1: has resolved itself very simply into the problem of government
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  Speaker 1: and direction, I find I have not brought the botanist
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  Speaker 1: with me. Frankly, he cannot think so steadily onward as
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  Speaker 1: I can. I feel to think, he thinks to feel.
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  Speaker 1: It is I and my kind that have the wider range.
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  Speaker 1: Because we can be impersonal as well as personal, we
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  Speaker 1: can escape ourselves in general terms. At least I understand him.
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  Speaker 1: But he does not understand me in any way at all.
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  Speaker 1: He thinks me an incomprehensible brute, because his obsession is
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  Speaker 1: merely one of my incidental interests. And wherever my reasoning
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  Speaker 1: ceases to be explicit and full, the slightest ellipsis the
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  Speaker 1: most transitory digression. He evades me and is back at
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  Speaker 1: himself again. He may have a personal liking for me,
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  Speaker 1: though I doubt it, but also he hates me pretty
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  Speaker 1: distinctly because of this bias. He cannot understand my philosophical
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  Speaker 1: insistence that things shall be reasonable and hang together, that
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  Speaker 1: what can be explained shall be explained, and that what
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  Speaker 1: can be done by calculation in certain methods shall not
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  Speaker 1: be left to chance. He loathes. He just wants, adventurously
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  Speaker 1: to feel. He wants to feel the sunset, and he
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  Speaker 1: thinks that on he would feel it better if he
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  Speaker 1: had not been taught the sun was about ninety two
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  Speaker 1: million miles away. He wants to feel free and strong,
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  Speaker 1: and he would rather feel so than be so. He
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  Speaker 1: does not want to accomplish great things, but to have
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  Speaker 1: dazzling things occur to him. He does not know that
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  Speaker 1: there are feelings also up in the clear air of
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  Speaker 1: the philosophic mountains, in the long a sense of effort
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  Speaker 1: and design. He does not know that thought itself is
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  Speaker 1: only a finer sort of feeling than his good hock
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  Speaker 1: to the mixed gin porter and treacle of his emotions,
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  Speaker 1: a perception of similitudes and oppositions that carries even thrills,
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  Speaker 1: and naturally he broods on the source of all his
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  Speaker 1: most copious feelings and emotions women, and particularly upon the
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  Speaker 1: woman who has most made him feel He forces me
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  Speaker 1: also to that our position is unfortunate for me. Our return,
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  Speaker 1: the utopian equivalent of Lucerne, revives in him all the
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  Speaker 1: melancholy distresses that so preoccupied him when first we were
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  Speaker 1: transferred to this better planet. One day, while we are
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  Speaker 1: still waiting there for the public office to decide about us,
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  Speaker 1: he broaches the matter. It is early evening, and we
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  Speaker 1: are walking beside the lake after our simple dinner. About here,
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  Speaker 1: he says, the keys would run, and all those big
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  Speaker 1: hotels would be along here, looking out on the lake.
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  Speaker 1: It's so strange to have seen them so recently, and
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  Speaker 1: now not to see them at all. Where have they
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  Speaker 1: gone vanished by hypothesis? What, oh, they're there still. It's
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  Speaker 1: we that have come hither. Of course I forgot, But still,
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  Speaker 1: you know there was an avenue of little trees along
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  Speaker 1: this quay with seats, and she was sitting looking out
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  Speaker 1: upon the lake. I hadn't seen her for ten years.
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  Speaker 1: He looks about him, still a little perplexed. Now we
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  Speaker 1: are here, he says, it seems as though that meeting
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  Speaker 1: and the talk we had must have been a dream,
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  Speaker 1: he falls musing. Presently, he says, I knew her at once,
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  Speaker 1: I saw her in profile, but you know, I didn't
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  Speaker 1: speak to her directly. I walked past her seat and
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  Speaker 1: on for a little way, trying to control myself. Then
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  Speaker 1: I turned back and sat down beside her very quietly.
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  Speaker 1: She looked up at me. Everything came back. Everything. For
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  Speaker 1: a moment or so, I felt I was going to cry.
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  Speaker 1: That seems to give him a sort of satisfaction even
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  Speaker 1: in the reminiscence. We talked for a time, just like
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  Speaker 1: casual acquaintances about the view in the weather and things
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  Speaker 1: like that, He muses again. In utopia, everything would have
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  Speaker 1: been different, I say, I suppose it would. He goes
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  Speaker 1: on before I can say anything more. Then, you know,
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  Speaker 1: there was a pause. I had a sort of intuition
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  Speaker 1: that the moment was coming, So I think, had she.
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  Speaker 1: You may scoff, of course, at these intuitions. I don't,
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  Speaker 1: as a matter of fact. Instead, I swear secretly always
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  Speaker 1: this sort of man keeps up the pretense of highly
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  Speaker 1: distinguished and remarkable mental processes, whereas have not I in
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  Speaker 1: my own composition. The whole direpasan of emotional fool is
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  Speaker 1: not the suppression of these notes, my perpetual effort, my
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  Speaker 1: undying despair. And then am I to be accused of poverty?
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  Speaker 1: But to his story, she said, quite abruptly, I am
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  Speaker 1: not happy. And I told her I knew that the
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  Speaker 1: instant I saw you. Then you know, she began to
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  Speaker 1: talk to me, very quietly, very frankly, about everything. It
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  Speaker 1: was only afterwards I began to feel just what it
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  Speaker 1: meant her talking to me like that. I cannot listen
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  Speaker 1: to this, don't you understand? I cry that we are
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  Speaker 1: in utopia. She may be bound unhappily upon earth, and
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  Speaker 1: you may be bound, but not here. Here. I think
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  Speaker 1: it will be different here. The laws that control all
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  Speaker 1: these things will be humane and just so that all
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  Speaker 1: you said and did over there does not signify here,
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  Speaker 1: does not signify here. He looks up for a moment
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  Speaker 1: at my face, and then carelessly at my wonderful new world. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: he says, without interest, with something of the tone of
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  Speaker 1: an abstracted elder speaking to a child, I dare say
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  Speaker 1: it will be all very fine here, And he lapses,
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  Speaker 1: thwarted from his confidences into musing there is something almost
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  Speaker 1: dignified in this withdrawal into himself. For a moment, I
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  Speaker 1: entertain an illusion that ready I am unworthy to hear
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  Speaker 1: the impalpable inconclusiveness of what he said to her and
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  Speaker 1: of what she said to him. I am snubbed. I
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  Speaker 1: am also amazed to find myself snubbed. I become breathless
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  Speaker 1: with indignation. We walk along side by side, but now
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  Speaker 1: profoundly estranged. I regard the facade of the utopian public
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  Speaker 1: offices of Lucerne. I had meant to call his attention
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  Speaker 1: to some of the architectural features of these with a
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  Speaker 1: changed eye, with all the spirit gone out of my vision.
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  Speaker 1: I wish I had never brought this introspective carcass, this
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  Speaker 1: mental ingrate with me. I inclined to fatalistic submission. I
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  Speaker 1: suppose I had no power to leave him behind. I wonder,
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  Speaker 1: and I wonder the old utopists never had to encumber
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  Speaker 1: themselves with this sort of man Section two. How would
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  Speaker 1: things be different in the modern utopia? After all, it
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  Speaker 1: is time we face the riddle of the problems of
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  Speaker 1: marriage and motherhood. The modern utopia is not only to
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  Speaker 1: be a sound and happy world, state, but it is
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  Speaker 1: to be one progressing from good to better. But, as
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  Speaker 1: Martha's Potnote Essay on the Principles of Population demonstrated for
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  Speaker 1: all time, a state whose population continues to increase in
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  Speaker 1: obedience to unchecked instinct can progress only from bad to worse.
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  Speaker 1: From the view of human comfort and happiness, the increase
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  Speaker 1: of population that occurs at each advance in human security
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  Speaker 1: is the greatest evil of life. The way of nature
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  Speaker 1: is for every species to increase nearly to its possible
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  Speaker 1: maximum of numbers, and then to improve, through the pressure
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  Speaker 1: of that maximum against its limiting conditions, by the crushing
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  Speaker 1: and killing of all the feebler individuals. The way of
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  Speaker 1: nature has also been the way of humanity so far,
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  Speaker 1: and except when a temporary alleviation is obtained through an
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  Speaker 1: expansion of the general stock of sustenance by invention or discovery,
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  Speaker 1: the amount of starvation and of the physical misery of
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  Speaker 1: privation in the world must vary almost exactly with the
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  Speaker 1: excess of the actual birth rate over that required to
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  Speaker 1: sustain population at a number compatible with a universal contentment.
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  Speaker 1: Neither has nature evolved, nor has man so far put
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  Speaker 1: into operation any device by which paying this price of progress.
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  Speaker 1: This misery of a multitude of starved and unsuccessful lives
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  Speaker 1: can be evaded a mere indiscriminating restriction of the birth rate,
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  Speaker 1: an end practically attained in the homely, old fashioned civilization
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  Speaker 1: of China by female infanticide, involves not only their cessation
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  Speaker 1: of distresses, but stagnation and the minor good of a
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  Speaker 1: sort of comfort in social stability is one at too
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  Speaker 1: great a sacrifice. Progress depends essentially on competitive selection, and
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  Speaker 1: that we may not escape. But it is a conceivable,
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  Speaker 1: impossible thing, that this margin of futile struggling, pain and
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  Speaker 1: discomfort and death might be reduced to nearly nothing without
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  Speaker 1: checking physical and mental hesthir with indeed an acceleration of
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  Speaker 1: physical and mental evolution by preventing the birth of those
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  Speaker 1: who would, in the unrestricted interplay of natural forces, be
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  Speaker 1: borne to suffer and fail. The method of nature, read
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  Speaker 1: in Tooth and Claw, is to degrade thought, torture, and
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  Speaker 1: kill the weakest and least adapted members of every species
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  Speaker 1: in existence in each generation, and so keep this specific
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  Speaker 1: average rising. The ideal of a scientific civilization is to
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  Speaker 1: prevent those weaklings being born. There is no other way
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  Speaker 1: of evading nature's punishment of sorrow. The struggle for life
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  Speaker 1: among the beasts and uncivilized men means misery and death
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  Speaker 1: for the inferior individuals, misery and death in order that
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  Speaker 1: they may not increase and multiply. In a civilized state,
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  Speaker 1: it is now clearly possible to make the conditions of
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  Speaker 1: life tolerable for every living creature, provided the inferiors can
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  Speaker 1: be prevented from increasing and multiplying. But this latter condition
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  Speaker 1: must be respected. Instead of competing to escape death and wretchedness,
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  Speaker 1: we may compete to give birth, and we may heap
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  Speaker 1: every sort of consolation prize upon the losers in that competition.
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  Speaker 1: The modern state tends to qualify inheritance, to insist upon
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  Speaker 1: education and nurture for children to come in more and
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  Speaker 1: more in the interests of the future between father and child.
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  Speaker 1: It is taking over the responsibility of the general welfare
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  Speaker 1: of the children more and more, and as it does so,
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  Speaker 1: its right to decide which children it will shelter becomes
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  Speaker 1: more and more reasonable. How far will such conditions be prescribed?
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  Speaker 1: How far can they be prescribed in a modern utopia?
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  Speaker 1: Let us set aside at once all nonsense of the
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  Speaker 1: sort one hears in certain quarters about the human stud
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  Speaker 1: farm footnote see Mankind in the Making, Chapter two. State
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  Speaker 1: breeding of the population was a reasonable proposal for Plato
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  Speaker 1: to make, in view of the biological knowledge of his
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  Speaker 1: time and the purely tentative nature of his metaphysics. But
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  Speaker 1: from anyone in the days after Darwin it is preposterous.
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  Speaker 1: Yet we have it given to us as the most
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  Speaker 1: brilliant of modern discoveries by a certain school of sociological writers,
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  Speaker 1: who seem totally unable to grasp the modification of meaning
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  Speaker 1: species and individual have undergone in the last fifty years.
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  Speaker 1: They do not seem capable of the suspicion that the
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  Speaker 1: boundaries of species have vanished, and that individual now carries
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  Speaker 1: with it the quality of the unique. To them, individuals
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  Speaker 1: are still defective copies of a platonic ideal of the species,
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  Speaker 1: and the purpose of breeding no more than an approximation
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  Speaker 1: to that perfection. Individuality is indeed a negligible difference. To
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  Speaker 1: them an impertinence, and the whole flow of modern biological
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  Speaker 1: ideas has washed over them in vain. But to the
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  Speaker 1: modern thinker, individuality is the significant fact of life, and
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  Speaker 1: the idea of the state which is necessarily concerned with
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  Speaker 1: the average. In general, selecting individualities in order to pair
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  Speaker 1: them and improve the race and absurdity. It is like
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  Speaker 1: fixing a crane on the plane in order to raise
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  Speaker 1: the hilltops. In the initiative of the individual. Above the
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  Speaker 1: average lies the reality of the future, which the state
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  Speaker 1: presenting the average may subserve it cannot control, and the
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  Speaker 1: natural center of the emotional life, the cardinal will. The
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  Speaker 1: supreme and significant expression of individuality, should lie in the
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  Speaker 1: selection of a partner for approcreation. But compulsory pairing is
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  Speaker 1: one thing, and the maintenance of general limiting conditions is another,
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  Speaker 1: and one well within the scope of state activity. The
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  Speaker 1: state is justified in saying, before you may add children
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  Speaker 1: to the community, for the community to educate and in
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  Speaker 1: part to support, you must be above a certain minimum
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  Speaker 1: of personal efficiency, and this you must show by holding
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  Speaker 1: a position of solvency and independence in the world. You
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  Speaker 1: must be above a certain age and a certain minimum
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  Speaker 1: of physical development, and free of any transmissible disease. Must
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  Speaker 1: not be a criminal unless you have expiated your affenirse
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  Speaker 1: aiding these simple qualifications, if you and some person conspire
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  Speaker 1: and add to the population of the state, we will,
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  Speaker 1: for the sake of humanity, take over the innocent victim
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  Speaker 1: of your passions. But we shall insist that you are
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  Speaker 1: under a debt to the state of a peculiarly urgent sort,
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  Speaker 1: and one you will certainly pay, even if it is
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  Speaker 1: necessary to use restraint to get the payment out of you.
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  Speaker 1: It is a debt that has, in the last resort,
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  Speaker 1: your liberty as a security. And moreover, if this thing
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  Speaker 1: happens a second time, or if it is disease or
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  Speaker 1: imbecility you have multiplied, we will take an absolutely effectual
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  Speaker 1: guarantee that neither you nor your partner offend again in
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  Speaker 1: this matter. Harsh you say, and poor humanity, you have
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  Speaker 1: the gentler alternative to study in your terrestrial slums and asylums.
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  Speaker 1: It may be urged that to permit conspicuously inferior people
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  Speaker 1: to have one or two children in this way would
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  Speaker 1: be to fail to attain the desired end. But indeed
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  Speaker 1: this is not so. As suitably qualified permission, as every
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  Speaker 1: statesman knows, may produce the social effects without producing the
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  Speaker 1: irksome pressure of an absolute prohibition amidst bright and comfortable circumstances,
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  Speaker 1: and with an easy and practicable alternative people will exercise
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  Speaker 1: foresight and self restraint to escape even the possibilities of
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  Speaker 1: hardship and discomfort, and free life in utopia is to
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  Speaker 1: be well worth this trouble, even for inferior people. The
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  Speaker 1: growing comfort, self respect and intelligence of the English is shown,
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  Speaker 1: for example, in the fall in the proportion of illegitimate
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  Speaker 1: births from two point two per one thousand eighteen forty
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  Speaker 1: six to eighteen fifty to one point two per thousand
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety to nineteen hundred, and this without any
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  Speaker 1: positive preventive laws whatever. This most desirable result is pretty
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  Speaker 1: certainly not the consequence of any great exaltation of our
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  Speaker 1: moral tone, but simply of a rising standard of comfort
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  Speaker 1: and a livelier sense of consequences and responsibilities. If so
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  Speaker 1: marked a change is possible in response to such progress
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  Speaker 1: as England has achieved in the past fifty years. If
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  Speaker 1: discreet restraint can be so effective as this seems reasonable
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  Speaker 1: to suppose that in the ampler knowledge and the cleaner,
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  Speaker 1: franker atmosphere of our utopian planet, the birth of a
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  Speaker 1: child to diseased or infairy appearance and contrary to the
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  Speaker 1: sanctions of the state, will be the rarest of disasters,
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  Speaker 1: and the death of a child too, that most tragic
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  Speaker 1: event utopia will rarely know. Children are not born to
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  Speaker 1: die in childhood, but in our world at present, through
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  Speaker 1: the defects of our medical science and nursing methods, through
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  Speaker 1: defects in our organization, through poverty and carelessness, and through
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  Speaker 1: the birth of children that never ought to have been born.
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  Speaker 1: One out of every five children born dies within five years.
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  Speaker 1: It may be the reader has witnessed this most distressful
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  Speaker 1: of all human tragedies. It is sheer waste of suffering.
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  Speaker 1: There is no reason why ninety nine out of every
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  Speaker 1: hundred children born should not live to a ripe age. Accordingly,
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  Speaker 1: in any modern utopia, it must be insisted they will
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  Speaker 1: Section three. All former utopias have, by modern standards, erred
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  Speaker 1: on the side of over regulation. In these matters. The
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  Speaker 1: amount of state interference with the marriage and birth of
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the citizens of a modern utopia will be much less
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  Speaker 1: than a in any terrestrial state. Here, just as in
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  Speaker 1: relation to property and enterprise, the law will regulate only
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  Speaker 1: in order to secure the utmost freedom and initiative. Up
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  Speaker 1: to the beginning of this chapter, our utopian speculations like
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  Speaker 1: many acts of parliament have ignored the difference of sex.
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  Speaker 1: He indeed is to be read as he and she,
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  Speaker 1: and all that goes before. But we may now come
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  Speaker 1: to the sexual aspects of the modern ideal of a
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  Speaker 1: constitution of society, in which, for all purposes of the individual,
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  Speaker 1: women are to be as free as men. This will
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  Speaker 1: certainly be realized in the modern utopia, if it can
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  Speaker 1: be realized at all, not only for women's sake, but
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  Speaker 1: for man's. But women may be free in theory and
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  Speaker 1: not in practice. And as long as they suffer from
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  Speaker 1: their economic inferiority, from the inability to produce as much
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  Speaker 1: value as a man and for the same amount of work,
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  Speaker 1: and there can be no doubt of this inferiority, so
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  Speaker 1: long will their legal and technical equality be a mockery.
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  Speaker 1: It is a fact that almost every point in which
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  Speaker 1: a woman differs from a man is an economic disadvantage
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  Speaker 1: to her. Her incapacity for great stresses of exertion, her
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  Speaker 1: frequent liability to slight illnesses, her weaker initiative, her infairy
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  Speaker 1: invention and resourcefulness, her relative incapacity for organization and combination,
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  Speaker 1: and the possibilities of emotional complications whenever she is in
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  Speaker 1: economic dependence on men. So long as women are compared
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  Speaker 1: economically with men and boys, they will be inferior in
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  Speaker 1: precisely the measure in which they differ from men. All
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  Speaker 1: that constitutes this difference they are supposed not to trade
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  Speaker 1: upon except in one way, and that is by winning
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  Speaker 1: or luring a man to marry, selling themselves in an
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  Speaker 1: almost irrevocable bargain, and then following and sharing his fortunes
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  Speaker 1: for better or worse. But do not let the proposition
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  Speaker 1: in its first crudity alarm you. Suppose that the modern
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  Speaker 1: utopia equalizes things between the sexes in the only possible
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  Speaker 1: way by insisting that a motherhood is a service to
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  Speaker 1: the state and a legitimate claim to a living, and that,
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  Speaker 1: since the state is to exercise the writer forbidding or
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  Speaker 1: sanctioning motherhood, a woman who is or is becoming a
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  Speaker 1: mother is as much entitled to wages above the minimum wage,
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  Speaker 1: to support, to freedom, and to respect and dignity as
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  Speaker 1: a policeman, a citizen, a general, a king, a bishop
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  Speaker 1: in the state, church, a government professor, or anyone else
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  Speaker 1: this state sustains. Suppose the state secures to every woman
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  Speaker 1: who is under legitimate sanctions becoming or likely to become
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  Speaker 1: a mother, that is to say, who is duly married
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  Speaker 1: a certain wage from her husband to secure her against
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  Speaker 1: the need of toil and anxiety. Suppose it pays her
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  Speaker 1: a certain gratuity upon the birth of a child, and
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  Speaker 1: continues to pay at regular intervals sums sufficient to keep
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  Speaker 1: her and her child in independent freedom, so long as
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  Speaker 1: the child keeps up to the minimum standard of health
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  Speaker 1: and physical and mental development. Suppose it pays more upon
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the child when it rises markedly about certain minimum qualifications
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: physical or mental, and in fact does its best to
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: make thoroughly efficient motherhood a profession worth following. And Suppose
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: in correlation with this, it forbids the industrial employment of
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: married women and of mothers who have children needing care,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: unless they are in a position to employ quality find
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: efficient substitutes to take care of their offspring. What differences
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: from terrestrial conditions will ensue This extent of intervention will
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: at least abolish two or three sedient hardships and evils
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: of this civilized life. It will abolish the hardship of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the majority of widows who on Earth are poor and
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: encumbered exactly in proportion as they have discharged the chief
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: distinctive duty of a woman and miserable, just in proportion
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: as their standard of life and of education is high.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: It will abolish the hardship of those who do not
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: now marry on account of poverty, or who do not
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: dare to have children. The fear that often turns a
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: woman from a beautiful to a mercenary marriage will vanish
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: from life. In utopia, a career of wholesome motherhood would
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: be under such conditions as I have suggested, the normal
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: and remunerative calling for a woman, and a capable woman
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: who has borne, bred, and begun the education of eight
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: or nine well built, intelligent and successful sons and daughters,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: would be an extremely prosperous woman, quite irrespective of the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: economic fortunes of the man she has married. She would
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: need to be an exceptional woman, and she would need
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to have chosen a man at least a little above
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the average as her partner in life, but his death
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: or misbehavior or misfortunes would not ruin her Now. Such
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: an arrangement is merely the completed induction from the starting
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: propositions that make some measure of education free and compulsory
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: for every child in the state. If you prevent people
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: making profit out of their children, and every civilized state,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: even that compendium of old fashioned individualism, the United States
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: of America is now disposed to admit the necessity of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: that prohibition. And if you provide for the aged instead
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: of leaving them to their children's sense of duty, the
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: practical inducements to parentage, except among very wealthy people, are
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: greatly reduced. The sentimental factor in the case rarely leads
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: to more than a solitary child, or at most too
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: to a marriage, and with a high and rising standard
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: of comfort and circumspection, it is unlikely that the birth
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: rate will ever rise very greatly. Again, the Utopians will
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: hold that if you keep the children from profitable employment
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: for the sake of the future, then if you want
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: any but the exceptionally rich, secure, pious, unselfish, or reckless
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: to bear children freely, you must be prepared to throw
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: the cost of their maintenance upon the general community. In short,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Utopia will hold that sound child bearing and rearing is
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: a service done not to a particular man, but to
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the whole community, and all its legal arrangements for motherhood
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: will be based on that conception section four, and after
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: these preliminaries, we must proceed to ask first what will
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: be the utopian marriage law, and then what sort of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: customs and opinions are likely to be superadded to that law.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: The trend of our reasoning has brought us to the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: conclusion that the utopian state will feel justified in intervening
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: between men and women on two accounts, first on account
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of paternity, and secondly on account of the clash of
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: freedoms that may otherwise arise. The utopian state will effectually
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: interfere with and prescribe conditions for all sorts of contract,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: and for this sort of contract in particular, it will
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: be an agreement with almost every earthly state in defining
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: in the completest fashion what things a man or woman
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: may be bound to do and what they cannot be
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: bound to do. From the point of view of a statesman,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: marriage is the union of a man and woman in
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: a manner so intimate as to involve the probability of offspring,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and it is of primary importance to the state, first
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: in order to secure good births and secondly good home conditions,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: that these unions should not be free nor promiscuous nor
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: practically universal throughout the adult population. Prolific marriage must be
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: a profitable privilege. It must occur only under certain obvious conditions.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: The contracting parties must be in health and condition, free
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: from specific transmissible taints, above a certain minimum age, and
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: sufficiently intelligent and energetic to have acquired a minimum education.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: The man at least must be in receipt of a
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: net income above the minimum wage after any outstanding charges
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: against him have been paid, Or this much it is
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: surely reasonable to insist upon before the state becomes responsible
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: for the prospective children. The age at which men and
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: women may contract to marry is difficult to determine. But
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: if we are as far as possible to put women
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: on an equality with men, if we are to insist
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: upon a universally educated population, and if we are seeking
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: to reduce the infantile death rate to zero, it must
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: be much higher than it is in any terrestrial state.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: The woman should be at least one in twenty the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: man twenty six or twenty seven. When imagines the parties
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: to a projected marriage, first obtaining licenses which will testify
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: that these conditions are satisfied. From the point of view
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: of the theoretical utopian state, these licenses are the feature
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: of primary importance. Then no doubt that universal register at
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Paris would come into play. As a matter of justice,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: there must be no deception between the two people, and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: the state would ensure that in certain broad essentials. This
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: is so. They would have to communicate their joint intention
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to a public office after their personal licenses were granted,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: and each would be supplied with a copy of the
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: index card of the projected mate, on which would be
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: recorded his or her age, previous marriages, legally important diseases,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: offspring domiciles, public appointments, criminal convictions, registered assignments of property,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and so forth. Possibly it might be advisable to have
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: a little ceremony for each party, for each in the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: absence of the other, in which this record could be
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: read over in the presence of witnesses, together with some
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: prescribed form of address of counsel in the matter. There
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: would then be a reasonable interval for consideration and withdrawal
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: on the part of either spars. In the event of
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: the two people persisting in their resolution, they would, after
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: this minimum interval, signify as much to the local official,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: and the necessary entry would be made in the registers.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: These formalities would be quite independent of any religious ceremony
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: or the contracting parties might choose, for with religious belief
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: and procedure. The modern state has no concern so much
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: for the preliminary conditions of matrimony. For those men and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: women who choose to ignore these conditions and to achieve
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: any sort of union they liked, the state would have
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: no concern unless offspring were born illegitimately. In that case,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: as we have already suggested, it would be only reasonable
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: to make the parents chargeable with every duty, with maintenance, education,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: and so forth that in the normal course of things
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: would fall to the state. It would be necessary to
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: impose a life assurance payment upon these parents, and to
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: exact effectual guarantees against every possible evasion of the responsibility
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: they had incurred. But the further control of private morality,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: beyond the protection of the immature from corruption and evil, example,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: will be no concern of the states. When a child
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: comes in, the future of the species comes in, and
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: the state comes in as the guardian of interests wider
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: than the individuals. But the adult's private life is the
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: entirely private life into which the state may not intrude. Now,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: what will be the nature of the utopian contract of matrimony?
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: From the first of the two a two points a
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: view named above that of parentage, it is obvious that
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: one unavoidable condition will be the chastity of the wife.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Her infidelity being demonstrated, must at once terminate the marriage
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and release both her husband and the state from any
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: liability for the support of her illegitimate offspring. That, at
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: any rate is beyond controversy. A marriage contract that is
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: not involved that is a triumph of metaphysics over common sense.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: It will be obvious that under utopian conditions, it is
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a state that will suffer injury by a wife's misconduct,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: and that a husband who condones anything of the sort
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: will participate in her offense. A woman, therefore, who is
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: divorced on this account, will be divorced as a public offender,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: and not in the key of a personal quarrel, not
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: as one who has inflicted a private and personal wrong.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: This who lies within the primary implications of marriage. Beyond that,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: what conditions should a marriage contract in utopia involve? A
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: reciprocal restraint on the part of the husband is clearly
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: of no importance whatever. So far as the first end
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of matrimony goes the protection of the community from inferior births.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: It is no wrong to the state, but it does
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: carry with it a variable amount of emotional offense to
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the wife. It may wound her pride and cause her
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: violent perturbations of jealousy. It may lead to her neglect,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: her solitude and unhappiness, and it may even work to
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: her physical injury. There should be an implication that it
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: is not to occur. She has bound herself to the
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: man for the good of the state, and clearly it
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: is reasonable that she should look to the state for
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: relief if it does occur. The extent of the offense
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: given her is the exact measure of her injury. If
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: she does not mind, nobody minds, and if her self
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: respect does not suffer, nothing whatever is lost to the world.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: And so it should rest with her to establish his misconduct,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: and if she thinks fit to terminate the marriage. A
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: failure on either side to perform the elementary duties of
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: companionship desertion, for example, should obviously give the other mate
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: the right to relief, and clearly, the development of any
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: disqualifying habit drunkenness or drug taking or the like, or
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: any serious crime or acts of violence should give grounds
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: for a final release. Moreover, the modern utopian state intervenes
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: between the sexes only because of the coming generation, and
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: for it to sustain restrictions upon conduct in a continually
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: fruitless marriag briage is obviously to lapse into purely moral intervention.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: It seems reasonable, therefore, to set a term to a
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: marriage that remains childless, to let it expire at the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: end of three or four or five unfruitful years, but
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: with no restriction upon the right of the husband and
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: wife to marry each other. Again, these are the fairly
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: easy primaries of this question. We now come to the
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: more difficult issues of the matter. The first of these
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: is the question of the economic relationships of husband and wife,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: having in regard to the fact that even in utopia, women,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: at least until they become mothers, are likely to be
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: on the average poorer than men. The second is the
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: question of the duration of a marriage. But the two
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: interlocke and are perhaps best treated together in one common section,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: and they both ramify, in the most complicated manner, into
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the consideration of the general morale of the community. End
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: of Chapter six, Sections one to four. Recording by Felicity Campbell,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Book one for me dot com, wang Nui, New Zealand,