Eugenics

Eugenics and Other Evils

by G.K. Chesterton

1922

PART ONE: THE FALSE THEORY

I What is Eugenics? II The First Obstacles III The Anarchy from Above IV The Lunatic and the Law V The Flying Authority VI The Unanswered Challenge VII The Established Church of Doubt VIII A Summary of a False Theory

PART TWO: THE REAL AIM

I The Impotence of Impenitence II True History of a Tramp III True History of a Eugenist IV The Vengeance of the Flesh V The Meanness of the Motive VI The Eclipse of Liberty VII The Transformation of Socialism VIII The End of the Household Gods IX A Short Chapter

TO THE READER

I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason connected with the present situation; a reason which I should like briefly to emphasize and make clear.

Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are conceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before the war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; when eugenic babies --- not visibly very distinguishable from other babies --- sprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancy of Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr. Bernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a man like a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilization, of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be found in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion too controversially, and it seems to me that I some times took it too seriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organization.

And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might well fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one, and was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And, anyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style. Scientific officialism and organization in the State which had specialized in them, had gone to war with the older culture of Christendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would be hopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless. As the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, it grew more and more plain that the scientifically organized State was not increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen would ever again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So I thought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind.

I am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It has gradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the ruling classes in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussia is a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nine years old most of their principles and proceedings are a great deal older. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors that have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. For that reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect and publish these papers.

G. K. C.

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PART ONE

THE FALSE THEORY

I

WHAT IS EUGENICS?

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.

There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists; or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed. It is called for convenience “Eugenics”; and that it ought to be destroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that it means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called “The Gracious Ones.” I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they are doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenics itself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas exist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming quickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a thousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no more to be bargained about than poisoning.

It is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: though some of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it. The movement consists of two parts: a moral basis, which is common to all, and a scheme of social application which varies a good deal. For the moral basis, it is obvious that man’s ethical responsibility varies with his knowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr. Johnson in that tower of vision), and the baby was ill through having eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might be calling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides of babies whose diet has been far more deadly; but I should be justified. I could not be expected to know enough about his other patients to be obliged (or even entitled) to sacrifice to them the baby for whom I was primarily and directly responsible. Now the Eugenic moral basis is this; that the baby for whom we are primarily and directly responsible is the babe unborn. That is, that we know (or may come to know) enough of certain inevitable tendencies in biology to consider the fruit of some contemplated union in that direct and clear light of conscience which we can now only fix on the other partner in that union. The one duty can conceivably be as definite as or more definite than the other. The baby that does not exist can be considered even before the wife who does. Now it is essential to grasp that this is a comparatively new note in morality. Of course sane people always thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the glory of God or according to the plan of Nature; but whether they counted such children as God’s reward for service or Nature’s premium on sanity, they always left the reward to God or the premium to Nature, as a less definable thing. The only person (and this is the point) towards whom one could have precise duties was the partner in the process. Directly considering the partner’s claims was the nearest one could get to indirectly considering the claims of posterity. If the women of the harem sang praises of the hero as the Moslem mounted his horse, it was because this was the due of a man; if the Christian knight helped his wife off her horse, it was because this was the due of a woman. Definite and detailed dues of this kind they did not predicate of the babe unborn; regarding him in that agnostic and opportunist light in which Mr. Browdie regarded the hypothetical child of Miss Squeers. Thinking these sex relations healthy, they naturally hoped they would produce healthy children; but that was all. The Moslem woman doubtless expected Allah to send beautiful sons to an obedient wife; but she would not have allowed any direct vision of such sons to alter the obedience itself. She would not have said, “I will now be a disobedient wife; as the learned leech informs me that great prophets are often children of disobedient wives.” The knight doubtless hoped that the saints would help him to strong children, if he did all the duties of his station, one of which might be helping his wife off her horse; but he would not have refrained from doing this because he had read in a book that a course of falling off horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem and Christian would have thought such speculations not only impious but utterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is not the point here.

The point here is that a new school believes Eugenics against Ethics. And it is proved by one familiar fact: that the heroisms of history are actually the crimes of Eugenics. The Eugenists’ books and articles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should and may come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feel that marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children. But history is full of the praises of people who have held sacred such ties to invalids; of cases like those of Colonel Hutchinson and Sir William Temples, who remained faithful to betrothals when beauty and health had been apparently blasted. And though the illnesses of Dorothy Osborne and Mrs. Hutchinson may not fall under the Eugenic speculations (I do not know), it is obvious that they might have done so; and certainly it would not have made any difference to men’s moral opinion of the act. I do not discuss here which morality I favour; but I insist that they are opposite. The Eugenist really sets up as saints the very men whom hundreds of families have called sneaks. To be consistent, they ought to put up statues to the men who deserted their loves because of bodily misfortune; with inscriptions celebrating the good Eugenist who, on his fiancée falling off a bicycle, nobly refused to marry her; or to the young hero who, on hearing of an uncle with erysipelas, magnanimously broke his word. What is perfectly plain is this: that mankind have hitherto held the bond between man and woman so sacred, and the effect of it on the children so incalculable, that they have always admired the maintenance of honour more than the maintenance of safety. Doubtless they thought that even the children might be none the worse for not being the children of cowards and shirkers; but this was not the first thought, the first commandment. Briefly, we may say that while many moral systems have set restraints on sex almost as severe as any Eugenist could set, they have almost always had the character of securing the fidelity of the two sexes to each other, and leaving the rest to God. To introduce an ethic which makes that fidelity or infidelity vary with some calculation about heredity is that rarest of all things, a revolution that has not happened before.

It is only right to say here, though the matter should only be touched on, that many Eugenists would contradict this, in so far as to claim that there was a consciously Eugenic reason for the horror of those unions which begin with the celebrated denial to man of the privilege of marrying his grandmother. Dr. S. R. Steinmetz, with that creepy simplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarks that “we do not yet know quite certainly” what were “the motives for the horror of” that horrible thing which is the agony of Oedipus. With entirely amiable intention, I ask Dr. S. R. Steinmetz to speak for himself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or a sister as separate from other women; nor have I reached them by any curious researches. I found them where I found an analogous aversion to eating a baby for breakfast. I found them in a rooted detestation in the human soul to liking a thing in one way, when you already like it in another quite incompatible way. Now it is perfectly true that this aversion may have acted eugenically; and so had a certain ultimate confirmation and basis in the laws of procreation. But there really cannot be any Eugenist quite so dull as not to see that this is not a defence of Eugenics but a direct denial of Eugenics. If something which has been discovered at last by the lamp of learning is something which has been acted on from the first by the light of nature, this (so far as it goes) is plainly not an argument for pestering people, but an argument for letting them alone. If men did not marry their grandmothers when it was, for all they knew, a most hygienic habit; if we know now that they instinctively avoided scientific peril; that, so far as it goes, is a point in favour of letting people marry anyone they like. It is simply the statement that sexual selection, or what Christians call falling in love, is a part of man which in the rough and in the long run can be trusted. And that is the destruction of the whole of this science at a blow.

The second part of the definition, the persuasive or coercive methods to be employed, I shall deal with more fully in the second part of this book. But some such summary as the following may here be useful. Far into the unfathomable past of our race we find the assumption that the founding of a family is the personal adventure of a free man. Before slavery sank slowly out of sight under the new climate of Christianity, it may or may not be true that slaves were in some sense bred like cattle, valued as a promising stock for labour. If it was so it was so in a much looser and vaguer sense than the breeding of the Eugenists; and such modern philosophers read into the old paganism a fantastic pride and cruelty which are wholly modern. It may be, however, that pagan slaves had some shadow of the blessings of the Eugenist’s care. It is quite certain that the pagan freemen would have killed the first man that suggested it. I mean suggested it seriously; for Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. Among free men, the law, more often the creed, most commonly of all the custom, have laid all sorts of restrictions on sex for this reason or that. But law and creed and custom have never concentrated heavily except upon fixing and keeping the family when once it had been made. The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individual adventure outside the frontiers of the State. Our first forgotten ancestors left this tradition behind them; and our own latest fathers and mothers a few years ago would have thought us lunatics to be discussing it. The shortest general definition of Eugenics on its practical side is that it does, in a more or less degree, propose to control some families at least as if they were families of pagan slaves. I shall discuss later the question of the people to whom this pressure may be applied; and the much more puzzling question of what people will apply it. But it is to be applied at the very least by somebody to somebody, and that on certain calculations about breeding which are affirmed to be demonstrable. So much for the subject itself. I say that this thing exists. I define it as closely as matters involving moral evidence can be defined; I call it Eugenics. If after that anyone chooses to say that Eugenics is not the Greek for this --- I am content to answer that “chivalrous” is not the French for “horsy”; and that such controversial games are more horsy than chivalrous.

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II

THE FIRST OBSTACLES

Now before I set about arguing these things, there is a cloud of skirmishers, of harmless and confused modern sceptics, who ought to be cleared off or calmed down before we come to debate with the real doctors of the heresy. If I sum up my statement thus: “Eugenics, as discussed, evidently means the control of some men over the marriage and unmarriage of others; and probably means the control of the few over the marriage and unmarriage of the many,” I shall first of all receive the sort of answers that float like skim on the surface of teacups and talk. I may very roughly and rapidly divide these preliminary objectors into five sects; whom I will call the Euphemists, the Casuists, the Autocrats, the Precedenters, and the Endeavourers. When we have answered the immediate protestation of all these good, shouting, short-sighted people, we can begin to do justice to those intelligences that are really behind the idea.

Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them “The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generations does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females?”; say this to them and they sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them “Murder your mother,” and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them “It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once useful distinction between the anthropoid homo and the other animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be modified also even in regard to the important question of the extension of human diet”; say this to them, and beauty born of murmuring sound will pass into their faces. But say to them, in a simple, manly, hearty way “Let’s eat a man!” and their surprise is quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing. Now, if anyone thinks these two instances extravagant, I will refer to two actual cases from the Eugenic discussions. When Sir Oliver Lodge spoke of the methods “of the stud-farm” many Eugenists exclaimed against the crudity of the suggestion. Yet long before that one of the ablest champions in the other interest had written “What nonsense this education is! Who could educate a racehorse or a greyhound?” Which most certainly either means nothing, or the human stud-farm. Or again, when I spoke of people “being married forcibly by the police,” another distinguished Eugenist almost achieved high spirits in his hearty assurance that no such thing had ever come into their heads. Yet a few days after I saw a Eugenist pronouncement, to the effect that the State ought to extend its powers in this area. The State can only be that corporation which men permit to employ compulsion; and this area can only be the area of sexual selection. I mean somewhat more than an idle jest when I say that the policeman will generally be found in that area. But I willingly admit that the policeman who looks after weddings will be like the policeman who looks after wedding-presents. He will be in plain clothes. I do not mean that a man in blue with a helmet will drag the bride and bridegroom to the altar. I do mean that nobody that man in blue is told to arrest will even dare to come near the church. Sir Oliver did not mean that men would be tied up in stables and scrubbed down by grooms. He meant that they would undergo a loss of liberty which to men is even more infamous. He meant that the only formula important to Eugenists would be “by Smith out of Jones.” Such a formula is one of the shortest in the world; and is certainly the shortest way with the Euphemists.

The next sect of superficial objectors is even more irritating. I have called them, for immediate purposes, the Casuists. Suppose I say “I, dislike this spread of Cannibalism in the West End restaurants.” Somebody is sure to say “Well, after all, Queen Eleanor when she sucked blood from her husband’s arm was a cannibal.” What is one to say to such people? One can only say “Confine yourself to sucking poisoned blood from people’s arms? and I permit you to call yourself by the glorious title of Cannibal.” In this sense people say of Eugenics, “After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying a mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists.” Again one can only answer, “Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as are naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult in the title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinction will be rare.” But surely anyone’s common-sense must tell him that if Eugenics dealt only with such extravagant cases, it would be called common-sense --- and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded such absurdities for unknown ages; and has never yet called it Eugenics. You may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back; you may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire; but if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among living men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved, there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no such thing as this book.

I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the Idealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good they hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who give us generally to understand that every modern reform will “work” all right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, and for how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind their looking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is the shadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does not expect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people most certainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it has left their hands. Each man promises to be about a thousand policemen. If you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, “Oh, I would certainly insist on this”; or “I would never go so far as that”; as if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever done quite successfully --- force men to forsake their sins. Of these it is enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any more than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not be able to fulfill a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put into it.

Along with such idealists should go the strange people who seem to think that you can consecrate and purify any campaign for ever by repeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocates had in mind. These people will say “So far from aiming at slavery, the Eugenists are seeking true liberty; liberty from disease and degeneracy, etc.” Or they will say “We can assure Mr. Chesterton that the Eugenists have no intention of segregating the harmless; justice and mercy are the very motto of ---” etc. To this kind of thing perhaps the shortest answer is this. Many of those who speak thus are agnostic or generally unsympathetic to official religion. Suppose one of them said “The Church of England is full of hypocrisy.” What would he think of me if I answered, “I assure you that hypocrisy is condemned by every form of Christianity; and is particularly repudiated in the Prayer Book”? Suppose he said that the Church of Rome had been guilty of great cruelties. What would he think of me if I answered, “The Church is expressly bound to meekness and charity; and therefore cannot be cruel”? This kind of people need not detain us long. Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; who flourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by the solemn official who said the other day that he could not understand the clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill as it only extended the “principles” of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer “Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws to persons without a trace of lunacy.” This lucid politician finds an old law, let us say, about keeping lepers in quarantine. He simply alters the word “lepers” to “long-nosed people,” and says blandly that the principle is the same.

Perhaps the weakest of all are those helpless persons whom I have called the Endeavourers. The prize specimen of them was another M. P. who defended the same Bill as “an honest attempt” to deal with a great evil: as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one’s fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment; in a state of reverent agnosticism about what would come of it. But with this fatuous notion that one can deliberately establish the Inquisition or the Terror, and then faintly trust the larger hope, I shall have to deal more seriously in a subsequent chapter. It is enough to say here that the best thing the honest Endeavourer could do would be to make an honest attempt to know what he is doing. And not to do anything else until he has found out. Lastly, there is a class of controversialists so hopeless and futile that I have really failed to find a name for them. But whenever anyone attempts to argue rationally for or against any existent and recognizable thing, such as the Eugenic class of legislation, there are always people who begin to chop hay about Socialism and Individualism; and say “You object to all State interference; I am in favour of State interference. You are an Individualist; I, on the other hand,” etc. To which I can only answer, with heart-broken patience, that I am not an Individualist, but a poor fallen but baptized journalist who is trying to write a book about Eugenists, several of whom he has met; whereas he never met an Individualist and is by no means certain he would recognize him if he did. In short, I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say in this case it would interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be turned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomless botherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative advantages of always turning to the right and always turning to the left.

And for the rest, there is undoubtedly an enormous mass of sensible, rather thoughtless people, whose rooted sentiment it is that any deep change in our society must be in some way infinitely distant. They cannot believe that men in hats and coats like themselves can be preparing a revolution; all their Victorian philosophy has taught them that such transformations are always slow. Therefore, when I speak of Eugenic legislation, or the coming of the Eugenic State, they think of it as something like The Time Machine or Looking Backward: a thing that, good or bad, will have to fit itself to their great-great-great-grandchild, who may be very different and may like it; and who in any case is rather a distant relative. To all this I have, to begin with, a very short and simple answer. The Eugenic State has begun. The first of the Eugenic Laws has already been adopted by the Government of this country; and passed with the applause of both parties through the dominant House of Parliament. This first Eugenic Law clears the ground and may be said to proclaim negative Eugenics; but it cannot be defended, and nobody has attempted to defend it, except on the Eugenic theory. I will call it the Feeble-Minded Bill, both for brevity and because the description is strictly accurate. It is, and quite simply and literally, a Bill for incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them weak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom this term has not been conversationally applied by his own friends and relatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives have been lamentably lacking in spirit), it can be clearly seen that this law, like the early Christian Church (to which, however, it presents points of dissimilarity), is a net drawing in of all kinds. It must not be supposed that we have a stricter definition incorporated in the Bill. Indeed, the first definition of “feeble-minded” in the Bill was much looser and vaguer than the phrase “feeble-minded” itself. It is a piece of yawning idiocy about “persons who though capable of earning their living under favourable circumstances” (as if anyone could earn his living if circumstances were directly unfavourable to his doing so), are nevertheless “incapable of managing their affairs with proper prudence”; which is exactly what all the world and his wife are saying about their neighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for any kind of thought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing so very novel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is vital is this: that the defence of this crazy Coercion Act is a Eugenic defence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children. Every tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that is the point. England has forgotten the Feudal State; it is in the last anarchy of the Industrial State; there is much in Mr. Belloc’s theory that it is approaching the Servile State; it cannot at present get at the Distributive State; it has almost certainly missed the Socialist State. But we are already under the Eugenist State; and nothing remains to us but rebellion.

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III

THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE

A silent anarchy is eating out our society. I must pause upon the expression; because the true nature of anarchy is mostly misapprehended. It is not in the least necessary that anarchy should be violent; nor is it necessary that it should come from below. A government may grow anarchic as much as a people. The more sentimental sort of Tory uses the word anarchy as a mere term of abuse for rebellion; but he misses a most important intellectual distinction. Rebellion may be wrong and disastrous; but even when rebellion is wrong, it is never anarchy. When it is not self-defence, it is usurpation. It aims at setting up a new rule in place of the old rule. And while it cannot be anarchic in essence (because it has an aim), it certainly cannot be anarchic in method; for men must be organized when they fight; and the discipline in a rebel army has to be as good as the discipline in the royal army. This deep principle of distinction must be clearly kept in mind. Take for the sake of symbolism those two great spiritual stories which, whether we count them myths or mysteries, have so long been the two hinges of all European morals. The Christian who is inclined to sympathize generally with constituted authority will think of rebellion under the image of Satan, the rebel against God. But Satan, though a traitor, was not an anarchist. He claimed the crown of the cosmos; and had he prevailed, would have expected his rebel angels to give up rebelling. On the other hand, the Christian whose sympathies are more generally with just self-defence among the oppressed will think rather of Christ Himself defying the High Priests and scourging the rich traders. But whether or no Christ was (as some say) a Socialist, He most certainly was not an Anarchist. Christ, like Satan, claimed the throne. He set up a new authority against an old authority; but He set it up with positive commandments and a comprehensible scheme. In this light all mediaeval people --- indeed, all people until a little while ago --- would have judged questions involving revolt. John Ball would have offered to pull down the government because it was a bad government, not because it was a government. Richard II would have blamed Bolingbroke not as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, in the useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from any rebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, in its first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I said before, it is often entirely silent.

Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop yourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the normal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar, extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot end these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family sits up all night on New Year’s Eve. It is anarchy in the home if members of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It was not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the slaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the slave-owners’ point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the slaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is historically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a picnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I think, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all took what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat if swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are uncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the really dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It is magnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water --- like Niagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening or dangerous or even destructive, it is that it cannot stop. Now it is plain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a society as easily as the society so ruled. And in modern England it is the powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it --- who are truly possessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense, is not too strong. The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is talking nonsense and it can’t stop.

Now it is perfectly plain that government ought to have, and must have, the same sort of right to use exceptional methods occasionally that the private householder has to have a picnic or to sit up all night on New Year’s Eve. The State, like the householder, is sane if it can treat such exceptions as exceptions. Such desperate remedies may not even be right; but such remedies are endurable as long as they are admittedly desperate. Such cases, of course, are the communism of food in a besieged city; the official disavowal of an arrested spy; the subjection of a patch of civil life to martial law; the cutting of communication in a plague; or that deepest degradation of the commonwealth, the use of national soldiers not against foreign soldiers, but against their own brethren in revolt. Of these exceptions some are right and some wrong; but all are right in so far as they are taken as exceptions. The modern world is insane, not so much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the normal.

We see this in the vague extension of punishments like imprisonment; often the very reformers who admit that prison is bad for people propose to reform them by a little more of it. We see it in panic legislation like that after the White Slave scare, when the torture of flogging was revived for all sorts of ill-defined and vague and variegated types of men. Our fathers were never so mad, even when they were torturers. They stretched the man out on the rack. They did not stretch the rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burning they may have seen witches everywhere--- because their minds were fixed on witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, because their minds were unfixed. While tying some very unpopular witch to the stake, with the firm conviction that she was a spiritual tyranny and pestilence, they did not say to each other, “A little burning is what my Aunt Susan wants, to cure her of her back-biting,” or “Some of these faggots would do your Cousin James good, and teach him to play with poor girls’ affections.”

Now the name of all this is Anarchy. It not only does not know what it wants, but it does not even know what it hates. It multiplies excessively in the more American sort of English newspapers. When this new sort of New Englander burns a witch the whole prairie catches fire. These people have not the decision and detachment of the doctrinal ages. They cannot do a monstrous action and still see it is monstrous. Wherever they make a stride they make a rut. They cannot stop their own thoughts, though their thoughts are pouring into the pit.

A final instance, which can be sketched much more briefly, can be found in this general fact: that the definition of almost every crime has become more and more indefinite, and spreads like a flattening and thinning cloud over larger and larger landscapes. Cruelty to children, one would have thought, was a thing about as unmistakable, unusual and appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to cover almost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The only distinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in the poor, who generally can’t help them, and not in the rich, who generally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. The point here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod on the bloody night of Innocents has come precious near being attributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in the Temple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kind mother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy children had no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this an illegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all the horror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes to parricide, could now be used against my son who had done any act that could colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and so affected his health. Few of us would be safe.

Another case out of hundreds is the loose extension of the idea of libel. Libel cases bear no more trace of the old and just anger against the man who bore false witness against his neighbour than “cruelty” cases do of the old and just horror of the parents that hated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports of the less athletic rich --- a variation on baccarat, a game of chance. A music-hall actress got damages for a song that was called “vulgar,” which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my handwriting “rococo.” A politician got huge damages because he was said to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that seductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story. Sometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in his business; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocer slanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it is clear that its exponents possess no power of distinction, or sense of proportion, by which they can draw the line between calling a woman a popular singer and calling her a bad lot; or between charging a man with leading infants to Protection and leading them to sin and shame. But the vital point to which to return is this. That it is not necessarily nor even specially, an anarchy in the populace. It is an anarchy in the organ of government. It is the magistrates --- voices of the governing class --- who cannot distinguish between cruelty and carelessness. It is the judges (and their very submissive special juries) who cannot see the difference between opinion and slander. And it is the highly placed and highly paid experts who have brought in the first Eugenic Law, the Feeble-Minded Bill --- thus showing that they can see no difference between a mad and a sane man.

That, to begin with, is the historic atmosphere in which this thing was born. It is a peculiar atmosphere, and luckily not likely to last. Real progress bears the same relation to it that a happy girl laughing bears to an hysterical girl who cannot stop laughing. But I have described this atmosphere first because it is the only atmosphere in which such a thing as the Eugenist legislation could be proposed among men. All other ages would have called it to some kind of logical account, however academic or narrow. The lowest sophist in the Greek schools would remember enough of Socrates to force the Eugenist to tell him (at least) whether Midias was segregated because he was curable or because he was incurable. The meanest Thomist of the mediaeval monasteries would have the sense to see that you cannot discuss a madman when you have not discussed a man. The most owlish Calvinist commentator in the seventeenth century would ask the Eugenist to reconcile such Bible texts as derided fools with the other Bible texts that praised them. The dullest shopkeeper in Paris in l790 would have asked what were the Rights of Man, if they did not include the rights of the lover, the husband, and the father. It is only in our own London Particular (as Mr. Guppy said of the fog) that small figures can loom so large in the vapour, and even mingle with quite different figures, and have the appearance of a mob. But, above all, I have dwelt on the telescopic quality in these twilight avenues, because unless the reader realizes how elastic and unlimited they are, he simply will not believe in the abominations we have to combat.

One of those wise old fairy tales, that come from nowhere and flourish everywhere, tells how a man came to own a small magic machine like a coffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one word and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I wish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the mill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers’ mess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury and exaggeration, and sailors’ tales should be taken with a grain of it. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then, touching the word that stopped it, suddenly remembered that he forgot. The tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like Arctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom, where all the men lay drowned. And that (so says this fairy tale) is why the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For the fairy tales knew what the modern mystics don’t --- that one should not let loose either the supernatural or the natural.

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IV

THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW

The modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: that people do not see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it may or may not be right to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivably be right to kill a murderer because it is wrong to kill a man. If the hangman, having got his hand in, proceeded to hang friends and relatives to his taste and fancy, he would (intellectually) unhang the first man, though the first man might not think so. Or thus again, if you say an insane man is irresponsible, you imply that a sane man is responsible. He is responsible for the insane man. And the attempt of the Eugenists and other fatalists to treat all men as irresponsible is the largest and flattest folly in philosophy. The Eugenist has to treat everybody, including himself, as an exception to a rule that isn’t there.

The Eugenists, as a first move, have extended the frontiers of the lunatic asylum; let us take this as our definite starting point, and ask ourselves what lunacy is, and what is its fundamental relation to human society. Now that raw juvenile scepticism that clogs all thought with catchwords may often be heard to remark that the mad are only the minority, the sane only the majority. There is a neat exactitude about such people’s nonsense; they seem to miss the point by magic. The mad are not a minority because they are not a corporate body; and that is what their madness means. The sane are not a majority; they are mankind. And mankind (as its name would seem to imply) is a kind, not a degree. In so far as the lunatic differs, he differs from all minorities and majorities in kind. The madman who thinks he is a knife cannot go into partnership with the other who thinks he is a fork. There is no trysting place outside reason; there is no inn on those wild roads that are beyond the world.

The madman is not he that defies the world. The saint, the criminal, the martyr, the cynic, the nihilist may all defy the world quite sanely. And even if such fanatics would destroy the world the world owes them a strictly fair trial according to proof and public law. But the madman is not the man who defies the world; he is the man who denies it. Suppose we are all standing round a field and looking at a tree in the middle of it. It is perfectly true that we all see it (as the decadents say) in infinitely different aspects: that is not the point; the point is that we all say it is a tree. Suppose, if you will, that we are all poets? which seems improbable; so that each of us could turn his aspect into a vivid image distinct from a tree. Suppose one says it looks like a green cloud and another like a green fountain, and a third like a green dragon and the fourth like a green cheese. The fact remains: that they all say it looks like these things. It is a tree. Nor are any of the poets in the least mad because of any opinions they may form, however frenzied, about the functions or future of the tree. A conservative poet may wish to clip the tree; a revolutionary poet may wish to burn it. An optimist poet may want to make it a Christmas tree and hang candles on it. A pessimist poet may want to hang himself on it. None of these are mad, because they are all talking about the same thing. But there is another man who is talking horribly about something else. There is a monstrous exception to mankind. Why he is so we know not; a new theory says it is heredity; an older theory says it is devils. But in any case, the spirit of it is the spirit that denies, the spirit that really denies realities. This is the man who looks at the tree and does not say it looks like a lion, but says that it is a lamp-post.

I do not mean that all mad delusions are as concrete as this, though some are more concrete. Believing your own body is glass is a more daring denial of reality than believing a tree is a glass lamp at the top of a pole. But all true delusions have in them this unalterable assertion --- that what is not is. The difference between us and the maniac is not about how things look or how things ought to look, but about what they self-evidently are. The lunatic does not say that he ought to be King; Perkin Warbeck might say that. He says he is King. The lunatic does not say he is as wise as Shakespeare; Bernard Shaw might say that. The lunatic says he is Shakespeare. The lunatic does not say he is divine in the same sense as Christ; Mr. R. J. Campbell would say that. The lunatic says he is Christ. In all cases the difference is a difference about what is there; not a difference touching what should be done about it.

For this reason, and for this alone, the lunatic is outside public law. This is the abysmal difference between him and the criminal. The criminal admits the facts, and therefore permits us to appeal to the facts. We can so arrange the facts around him that he may really understand that agreement is in his own interests. We can say to him, “Do not steal apples from this tree, or we will hang you on that tree.” But if the man really thinks one tree is a Lamp-post and the other tree a Trafalgar Square fountain, we simply cannot treat with him at all. It is obviously useless to say, “Do not steal apples from this lamp-post, or I will hang you on that fountain.” If a man denies the facts, there is no answer but to lock him up. He cannot speak our language: not that varying verbal language which often misses fire even with us, but that enormous alphabet of sun and moon and green grass and blue sky in which alone we meet, and by which alone we can signal to each other. That unique man of genius, George Macdonald, described in one of his weird stories two systems of space co-incident; so that where I knew there was a piano standing in a drawing-room you knew there was a rose-bush growing in a garden. Something of this sort is in small or great affairs the matter with the madman. He cannot have a vote, because he is the citizen of another country. He is a foreigner. Nay, he is an invader and an enemy; for the city he lives in has been super-imposed on ours.

Now these two things are primarily to be noted in his case. First, that we can only condemn him to a general doom, because we only know his general nature. All criminals, who do particular things for particular reasons (things and reasons which, however criminal, are always comprehensible), have been more and more tried for such separate actions under separate and suitable laws ever since Europe began to become a civilization --- and until the rare and recent reincursions of barbarism in such things as the Indeterminate Sentence. Of that I shall speak later; it is enough for this argument to point out the plain facts. It is the plain fact that every savage, every sultan, every outlawed baron, every brigand-chief has always used this instrument of the Indeterminate Sentence, which has been recently offered us as something highly scientific and humane. All these people, in short, being barbarians, have always kept their captives until they (the barbarians) chose to think the captives were in a fit frame of mind to come out. It is also the plain fact that all that has been called civilization or progress, justice or liberty, for nearly three thousand years, has had the general direction of treating even the captive as a free man, in so far as some clear case of some defined crime had to be shown against him. All law has meant allowing the criminal, within some limits or other, to argue with the law: as Job was allowed, or rather challenged, to argue with God. But the criminal is, among civilized men, tried by one law for one crime for a perfectly simple reason: that the motive of the crime like the meaning of the law, is conceivable to the common intelligence. A man is punished specially as a burglar, and not generally as a bad man, because a man may be a burglar and, in many other respects not be a bad man. The act of burglary is punishable because it is intelligible. But when acts are unintelligible, we can only refer them to a general untrustworthiness, and guard against them by a general restraint. If a man breaks into a house to get a piece of bread, we can appeal to his reason in various ways. We can hang him for housebreaking; or again (as has occurred to some daring thinkers) we can give him a piece of bread. But if he breaks in, let us say, to steal the parings of other people’s finger nails, then we are in a difficulty: we cannot imagine what he is going to do with them, and therefore cannot easily imagine what we are going to do with him. If a villain comes in, in cloak and mask, and puts a little arsenic in the soup, we can collar him and say to him distinctly, “You are guilty of murder; and I will now consult the code of tribal law, under which we live, to see if this practice is not forbidden.” But if a man in the same cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-water in the soup, what can we say? Our charge necessarily becomes a more general one. We can only observe, with a moderation almost amounting to weakness, “You seem to be the sort of person who will do this sort of thing.” And then we can lock him up. The principle of the indeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. It does apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And it applies to nobody else.

The second thing to be noted is this: that it is only by the unanimity of sane men that we can condemn this man as utterly separate. If he says a tree is a lamp-post he is mad; but only because all other men say it is a tree. If some men thought it was a tree with a lamp on it, and others thought it was a lamp-post wreathed with branches and vegetation, then it would be a matter of opinion and degree; and he would not be mad, but merely extreme. Certainly he would not be mad if nobody but a botanist could see it was a tree. Certainly his enemies might be madder than he, if nobody but a lamplighter could see it was not a lamp-post. And similarly a man is not an imbecile if only a Eugenist thinks so. The question then raised would not be his sanity, but the sanity of one botanist or one lamplighter or one Eugenist. That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is not the abnormally clever, which is obviously a matter in dispute. That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he begins to say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that we have a right to treat him as the exception and not the rule. It is only because we none of us profess to be anything more than man that we have authority to treat him as something less.

Now the first principle behind Eugenics becomes plain enough. It is the proposal that somebody or something should criticize men with the same superiority with which men criticize madmen. It might exercise this right with great moderation; but I am not here talking about the exercise, but about the right. Its claim certainly is to bring all human life under the Lunacy Laws.

Now this is the first weakness in the case of the Eugenists: that they cannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by what authority they do these things. They cannot see the exception is different from the rule --- even when it is misrule, even when it is an unruly rule. The sound sense in the old Lunacy Law was this: that you cannot deny that a man is a citizen until you are practically prepared to deny that he is a man. Men, and only men, can be the judges of whether he is a man. But any private club of prigs can be judges of whether he ought to be a citizen. When once we step down from that tall and splintered peak of pure insanity we step on to a tableland where one man is not so widely different from an other. Outside the exception, what we find is the average. And the practical, legal shape of the quarrel is this: that unless the normal men have the right to expel the abnormal, what particular sort of abnormal men have the right to expel the normal men? If sanity is not good enough, what is there that is saner than sanity?

Without any grip of the notion of a rule and an exception, the general idea of judging people’s heredity breaks down and is useless. For this reason: that if everything is the result of a doubtful heredity, the judgment itself is the result of a doubtful heredity also. Let it judge not that it be not judged. Eugenists, strange to say, have fathers and mothers like other people; and our opinion about their fathers and mothers is worth exactly as much as their opinions about ours. None of the parents were lunatics, and the rest is mere likes and dislikes. Suppose Dr. Saleeby had gone to Byron and said, “My lord, I perceive you have a club-foot and inordinate passions: such are the hereditary results of a profligate soldier marrying a hot-tempered woman.” The poet might logically reply (with characteristic lucidity and impropriety), “Sir, I perceive you have a confused mind and an unphilosophic theory about other people’s love affairs. Such are the hereditary delusions bred by a Syrian doctor marrying a Quaker lady from New York.” Suppose Dr. Karl Pearson had said to Shelley, “From what I see of your temperament, you are running great risks in forming a connection with the daughter of a fanatic and eccentric like Godwin.” Shelley would be employing the strict rationalism of the older and stronger free thinkers, if he answered, “From what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction in marrying the great-niece of an old corpse of a courtier and dilettante like Samuel Rogers.” It is only opinion for opinion. Nobody can pretend that either Mary Godwin or Samuel Rogers was mad; and the general view a man may hold about the healthiness of inheriting their blood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men do marry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose that Dr. Karl Pearson is any better judge of a bridegroom than the bridegroom is of a bride.

An objection may be anticipated here, but it is very easily answered. It may be said that we do, in fact, call in medical specialists to settle whether a man is mad; and that these specialists go by technical and even secret tests that cannot be known to the mass of men. It is obvious that this is true; it is equally obvious that it does not affect our argument. When we ask the doctor whether our grandfather is going mad, we still mean mad by our own common human definition. We mean, is be going to be a certain sort of person whom men recognize when once he exists. That certain specialists can detect the approach of him, before he exists, does not alter the fact that it is of the practical and popular madman that we are talking, and of him alone. The doctor merely sees a certain fact potentially in the future, while we, with less information, can only see it in the present; but his fact is our fact and everybody’s fact, or we should not bother about it at all. Here is no question of the doctor bringing an entirely new sort of person under coercion, as in the Feeble-Minded Bill. The doctor can say, “Tobacco is death to you,” because the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highly democratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of the indubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, “Jones has that twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house.” But it is not the medical detail we fear, but the moral upshot. We should say, “Let him twitch, as long as he doesn’t burn down the house.” The doctor may say “He has that look in the eyes, and he may take the hatchet and brain you all.” But we do not object to the look in the eyes as such; we object to consequences which, once come, we should all call insane if there were no doctors in the world. We should say, “Let him look how he likes; as long as he does not look for the hatchet.”

Now, that specialists are valuable for this particular and practical purpose, of predicting the approach of enormous and admitted human calamities, nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring us one inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is a calamity; or to call things calamities which common-sense does not call calamities. We call in the doctor to save us from death; and, death being admittedly an evil, he has the right to administer the queerest and most recondite pill which he may think is a cure for all such menaces of death. He has not the right to administer death as the cure for all human ills. And as he has no moral authority to enforce a new conception of happiness, so he has no moral authority to enforce a new conception of sanity. He may know I am going mad; for madness is an isolated thing like leprosy; and I know nothing about leprosy. But if he merely thinks my mind is weak, I may happen to think the same of his. I often do.

In short, unless pilots are to be permitted to ram ships on to the rocks and then say that heaven is the only true harbour; unless judges are to be allowed to let murderers loose, and explain afterwards that the murder had done good on the whole; unless soldiers are to be allowed to lose battles and then point out that true glory is to be found in the valley of humiliation; unless cashiers are to rob a bank in order to give it an advertisement; or dentists to torture people to give them a contrast to their comforts; unless we are prepared to let loose all these private fancies against the public and accepted meaning of life or safety or prosperity or pleasure --- then it is as plain as Punch’s nose that no scientific man must be allowed to meddle with the public definition of madness. We call him in to tell us where it is or when it is. We could not do so, if we had not ourselves settled what it is.

As I wish to confine myself in this chapter to the primary point of the plain existence of sanity and insanity, I will not be led along any of the attractive paths that open here. I shall endeavor to deal with them in the next chapter. Here I confine myself to a sort of summary. Suppose a man’s throat has been cut, quite swiftly and suddenly, with a table knife, at a small table where we sit. The whole of civil law rests on the supposition that we are witnesses; that we saw it; and if we do not know about it, who does? Now suppose all the witnesses fall into a quarrel about degrees of eyesight. Suppose one says he had brought his reading-glasses instead of his usual glasses; and therefore did not see the man fall across the table and cover it with blood. Suppose another says he could not be certain it was blood, because a slight colour-blindness was hereditary in his family. Suppose a third says he cannot swear to the uplifted knife, because his oculist tells him he is astigmatic, and vertical lines do not affect him as do horizontal lines. Suppose another says that dots have often danced before his eyes in very fantastic combinations, many of which were very like one gentleman cutting another gentleman’s throat at dinner. All these things refer to real experiences. There is such a thing as myopia, there is such a thing as colour-blindness; there is such a thing as astigmatism; there is such a thing as shifting shapes swimming before the eyes. But what should we think of a whole dinner party that could give nothing except these highly scientific explanations when found in company with a corpse? I imagine there are only two things we could think either that they were all drunk, or they were all murderers.

And yet there is an exception. If there were one man at table who was admittedly blind, should we not give him the benefit of the doubt? Should we not honestly feel that he was the exception that proved the rule? The very fact that he could not have seen would remind us that the other men must have seen. The very fact that he had no eyes must remind us of eyes. A man can be blind; a man can be dead: a man can be mad. But the comparison is necessarily weak, after all. For it is the essence of madness to be unlike anything else in the world: which is perhaps why so many men wiser than we have traced it to another.

Lastly, the literal maniac is different from all other persons in dispute in this vital respect: that he is the only person whom we can, with a final lucidity, declare that we do not want. He is almost always miserable himself, and he always makes others miserable. But this is not so with the mere invalid. The Eugenists would probably answer all my examples by taking the case of marrying into a family with consumption (or some such disease which they are fairly sure is hereditary) and asking whether such cases at least are not clear cases for a Eugenic intervention. Permit me to point out to them that they once more make a confusion of thought. The sickness or soundness of a consumptive may be a clear and calculable matter. The happiness or unhappiness of a consumptive is quite another matter, and is not calculable at all. What is the good of telling people that if they marry for love, they may be punished by being the parents of Keats or the parents of Stevenson? Keats died young; but he had more pleasure in a minute than a Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson had lung-trouble; and it may, for all I know, have been perceptible to the Eugenic eye even a generation before. But who would perform that illegal operation: the stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter bursting with good news, confiscating a hamper full of presents and prizes, pouring torrents of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this is a faint approximation for the Eugenic in action of the ancestors of Stevenson. This, however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson it is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he got. If he had died without writing a line, he would have had more red-hot joy than is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I owe so much, let the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray that the stars of the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered among the days of the year, because it shut not up the doors of his mother’s womb? I respect fully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon my mouth.

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V

THE FLYING AUTHORITY

It happened one day that an atheist and a man were standing together on a doorstep; and the atheist said, “It is raining.” To which the man replied, “What is raining?”: which question was the beginning of a violent quarrel and a lasting friendship. I will not touch upon any heads of the dispute, which doubtless included Jupiter, Pluvius, the Neuter Gender, Pantheism, Noah’s Ark, Mackintoshes, and the Passive Mood; but I will record the one point upon which the two persons emerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as an atheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the mere diction of a man, though he be speaking of clocks or cats or anything quite remote from theology. The mark of the atheistic style is that it instinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are dead things; that things have no souls. Thus they will not speak of waging war, which means willing it; they speak of the “outbreak of war,” as if all the guns blew up without the men touching them. Thus those Socialists that are atheist will not call their international sympathy, sympathy; they will call it “solidarity,” as if the poor men of France and Germany were physically stuck together like dates in a grocer’s shop. The same Marxian Socialists are accused of cursing the Capitalists inordinately; but the truth is that they let the Capitalists off much too easily. For instead of saying that employers pay less wages, which might pin the employers to some moral responsibility, they insist on talking about the “rise and fall” of wages; as if a vast silver sea of sixpences and shillings was always going up and down automatically like the real sea at Margate. Thus they will not speak of reform, but of development; and they spoil their one honest and virile phrase, “the class war” by talking of it as no one in his wits can talk of a war, predicting its finish and final result as one calculates the coming of Christmas Day or the taxes. Thus, lastly (as we shall see touching our special subject-matter here) the atheist style in letters always avoids talking of love or lust, which are things alive, and calls marriage or concubinage “the relations of the sexes”; as if a man and a woman were two wooden objects standing in a certain angle and attitude to each other like a table and a chair.

Now the same anarchic mystery that clings round the phrase, “il pleut,” clings round the phrase, “il fait” In English it is generally represented by the passive mood in grammar, and the Eugenists and their like deal especially in it; they are as passive in their statements as they are active in their experiments. Their sentences always enter tail first, and have no subject, like animals without heads. It is never “the doctor should cut off this leg” or “the policeman should collar that man.” It is always “Such limbs should be amputated,” or “Such men should be under restraint.” Hamlet said, “I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave’s offal.” The Eugenist would say, “The region kites should, if possible, be fattened; and the offal of this slave is available for the dietetic experiment.” Lady Macbeth said, “Give me the daggers; I’ll let his bowels out.” The Eugenist would say, “In such cases the bowels should, etc.” Do not blame me for the repulsiveness of the comparisons. I have searched English literature for the most decent parallels to Eugenist language.

The formless god that broods over the East is called “Om.” The formless god who has begun to brood over the West is called “On.” But here we must make a distinction. The impersonal word on is French, and the French have a right to use it, because they are a democracy. And when a Frenchman says “one” he does not mean himself, but the normal citizen. He does not mean merely “one,” but one and all. “On n’a que sa parole” does not mean “Noblesse oblige,” or “I am the Duke of Billingsgate and must keep my word.” It means: “One has a sense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, should feel honourable”; and this, whether possible or no, is the purest ambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, “Conditions must be altered” or “Ancestry should be investigated,” or what not, it seems clear that they do not mean that the democracy must do it, whatever else they may mean. They do not mean that any man not evidently mad may be trusted with these tests and rearrangements as the French democratic system trusts such a man with a vote or a farm or the control of a family. That would mean that Jones and Brown, being both ordinary men, would set about arranging each other’s marriages. And this state of affairs would seem a little elaborate, and it might occur even to the Eugenic mind that if Jones and Brown are quite capable of arranging each other’s marriages, it is just possible that they might be capable of arranging their own.

This dilemma, which applies in so simple a case, applies equally to any wide and sweeping system of Eugenist voting; for though it is true that the community can judge more dispassionately than a man can judge in his own case, this particular question of the choice of a wife is so full of disputable shades in every conceivable case, that it is surely obvious that almost any democracy would simply vote the thing out of the sphere of voting, as they would any proposal of police interference in the choice of walking weather or of children’s names. I should not like to be the politician who should propose a particular instance of Eugenics to be voted on by the French people. Democracy dismissed, it is here hardly needful to consider the other old models. Modern scientists will not say that George III, in his lucid intervals, should settle who is mad; or that the aristocracy that introduced gout shall supervise diet.

I hold it clear, therefore, if anything is clear about the business, that the Eugenists do not merely mean that the mass of common men should settle each other’s marriages between them; the question remains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when they say that this or that ought to be done. What is this flying and evanescent authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man who is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist’s verb? In a large number of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenist means himself and nobody else. Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A. H. Huth, actually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a great deal of good could be done with a surgical knife, if we would only turn him loose with one. And this may be true. A great deal of good could be done with a loaded revolver, in the hands of a judicious student of human nature. But it is imperative that the Eugenist should perceive that on that principle we can never get beyond a perfect balance of different sympathies and antipathies. I mean that I should differ from Dr. Saleeby or Dr. Karl Pearson not only in a vast majority of individual cases, but in a vast majority of cases in which they would be bound to admit that such a difference was natural and reasonable. The chief victim of these famous doctors would be a yet more famous doctor: that eminent though unpopular practitioner, Dr. Fell.

To show that such rational and serious differences do exist, I will take one instance from that Bill which proposed to protect families and the public generally from the burden of feeble-minded persons. Now, even if I could share the Eugenic contempt for human rights, even if I could start gaily on the Eugenic campaign, I should not begin by removing feeble-minded persons. I have known as many families in as many classes as most men; and I cannot remember meeting any very monstrous human suffering arising out of the presence of such insufficient and negative types. There seems to be comparatively few of them; and those few by no means the worst burdens upon domestic happiness. I do not hear of them often; I do not hear of them doing much more harm than good; and in the few cases I know well they are not only regarded with human affection, but can be put to certain limited forms of human use. Even if I were a Eugenist, then I should not personally elect to waste my time locking up the feeble-minded. The people I should lock up would be the strong-minded. I have known hardly any cases of mere mental weakness making a family a failure; I have known eight or nine cases of violent and exaggerated force of character making a family a hell. If the strong-minded could be segregated it would quite certainly be better for their friends and families. And if there is really anything in heredity, it would be better for posterity too. For the kind of egoist I mean is a madman in a much more plausible sense than the mere harmless “deficient”; and to hand on the horrors of his anarchic and insatiable temperament is a much graver responsibility than to leave a mere inheritance of childishness. I would not arrest such tyrants, because I think that even moral tyranny in a few homes is better than a medical tyranny turning the state into a madhouse. I would not segregate them, because I respect a man’s free-will and his front door and his right to be tried by his peers. But since free-will is believed by Eugenists no more than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenists no more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is about as sacred to Eugenists as it would be to King John, why do not they bring light and peace into so many human homes by removing a demoniac from each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Bill call at the many grand houses in town or county where such nightmares notoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the bad squire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniac prize fighter? I do not know; and there is only one reason I can think of, which must remain a matter of speculation. When 1 was at school, the kind of boy who liked teasing halfwits was not the sort that stood up to bullies.

That, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention the case of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give one out of the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individual opinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to propagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating trip together, we should separate at the very door; and if he had a thousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyone who has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows that the ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some little hobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad for children, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many more people ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human nature to expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard, dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as exercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own madman. One would have his eyes on devotional Curates; another would wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his own implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lesson which is hardest for him and me and for all our fallen race --- the fact that he is only himself.

We now pass from mere individual men who obviously cannot be trusted, even if they are individual medical men, with such despotism over their neighbours; and we come to consider whether the Eugenists have at all clearly traced any more imaginable public authority, any apparatus of great experts or great examinations to which such risks of tyranny could be trusted. They are not very precise about this either; indeed, the great difficulty I have throughout in considering what are the Eugenist’s proposals is that they do not seem to know themselves. Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connect with human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness of their definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans. The Eugenic optimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled and confused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that it will be all right on the night. They have all the ancient despotism, but none of the ancient dogmatism. If they are ready to reproduce the secrecies and cruelties of the Inquisition, at least we cannot accuse them of offending us with any of that close and complicated thought, that arid and exact logic which narrowed the minds of the Middle Ages, they have discovered how to combine the hardening of the heart with a sympathetic softening of the head. Nevertheless, there is one large, though vague, idea of the Eugenists, which is an idea, and which we reach when we reach this problem of a more general supervision.

It was best presented perhaps by the distinguished doctor who wrote the article on these matters in that composite book which Mr. Wells edited, and called “The Great State.” He said the doctor should no longer be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in his own words, “the health adviser of the community.” The same can be expressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb that prevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that it amounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. This the writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. To which I rejoin that if everyone is ill the health advisor is ill too, and therefore cannot know how to cure that minimum of illness. This is the fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine. Prevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man’s head is not better than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing to cure it. And it is the same if a man is in revolt, even a morbid revolt. Taking the heart out of him by slavery is not better than leaving the heart in him, even if you leave it a broken heart. Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse than disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the extra exasperation of being quite well. I will ask God, but certainly not man, to prevent me in all my doings. But the decisive and discussable form of this is well summed up in that phrase about the health adviser of society. I am sure that those who speak thus have something in their minds larger and more illuminating than the other two propositions we have considered. They do not mean that all citizens should decide, which would mean merely the present vague and dubious balance. They do not mean that all medical men should decide, which would mean a much more unbalanced balance. They mean that a few men might be found who had a consistent scheme and vision of a healthy nation, as Napoleon had a consistent scheme and vision of an army. It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men’s marriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize and segregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a few great hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens, as nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it is tyranny; but tyranny is a workable thing. When we ask by what process such men could be certainly chosen, we are back again on the old dilemma of despotism, which means a man, or democracy which means men, or aristocracy which means favouritism. But as a vision the thing is plausible and even rational. It is rational, and it is wrong.

It is wrong, quite apart from the suggestion that an expert on health cannot be chosen. It is wrong because an expert on health cannot exist. An expert on disease can exist, for the very reason we have already considered in the case of madness, because experts can only arise out of exceptional things. A parallel with any of the other learned professions will make the point plain. If I am prosecuted for trespass, I will ask my solicitor which of the local lanes I am forbidden to walk in. But if my solicitor, having gained my case, were so elated that he insisted on settling what lanes I should walk in; if he asked me to let him map out all my country walks, because he was the perambulatory adviser of the community --- then that Solicitor would solicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me through woodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues and attractive short-cuts, I shall turn on him with passion, saying “Sir, I pay you to know one particular puzzle in Latin and Norman French, which they call the law of England; and you do know the law of England. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you know England. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was looking at it.” As are the limits of the lawyer’s special knowledge about walking, so are the limits of the doctor’s. If I fall over the stump of a tree and break my leg, as is likely enough, I shall say to the lawyer, “Please go and fetch the doctor.” I shall do it because the doctor really has a larger knowledge of a narrower area. There are only a certain number of ways in which a leg can be broken; I know none of them, and he knows all of them. There is such a thing as being a specialist in broken legs. There is no such thing as being a specialist in legs. When unbroken, legs are a matter of taste. If the doctor has really mended my leg, he may merit a colossal equestrian statue on the top of an eternal tower of brass. But if the doctor has really mended my leg he has no more rights over it. He must not come and teach me how to walk; because he and I learnt that in the same school, the nursery. And there is no more abstract likelihood of the doctor walking more elegantly than I do than there is of the barber or the bishop or the burglar walking more elegantly than I do. There cannot be a general specialist; the specialist can have no kind of authority, unless he has avowedly limited his range. There cannot be such a thing as the health adviser of the community, because there cannot be such a thing as one who specialises in the universe.

Thus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be married should be obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-book, the expression is neat; but it does not convey the real respects in which the two things agree, and in which they differ. To begin with, of course, there is a great deal too much of the bank-book for the sanity of our commonwealth; and it is highly probable that the health-book, as conducted in modern conditions, would rapidly become as timid, as snobbish, and as sterile as the money side of marriage has become. In the moral atmosphere of modernity the poor and the honest would probably get as much the worst of it if we fought with health-books as they do when we fight with bank-books. But that is a more general matter; the real point is in the difference between the two. The difference is in this vital fact; that a monied man generally thinks about money, whereas a healthy man does not think about health. If the strong young man cannot produce his health-book, it is for the perfectly simple reason that he has not got one. He can mention some extraordinary malady he has; but every man of honour is expected to do that now, whatever may be the decision that follows on the knowledge.

Health is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the impudence to understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostic has any right to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among other things, that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things, by which they are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and any scientist who pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimate sanity, I will call the lowest of religious fanatics. I will allow him to understand the madman, for the madman is an exception. But if he says he understands the sane man, then he says he has the secret of the Creator. For whenever you and I feel fully sane, we are quite incapable of naming the elements that make up that mysterious simplicity. We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we can conceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium by which, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling like precipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing.

We conclude, therefore, that unless Eugenic activity be restricted to monstrous things like mania, there is no constituted or constitutable authority that can really over-rule men in a matter in which they are so largely on a level. In the matter of fundamental human rights, nothing can be above Man, except God. An institution claiming to come from God might have such authority; but this is the last claim the Eugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking to rule men in such matters is like a man’s right eye claiming to rule him, or his left leg to run away with him. It is madness. We now pass on to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenics to be done, with such cheerfulness as we may possess after discovering that there is nobody to do it.

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VI

THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE

Dr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in one of his addresses on this subject, and said that even I cannot produce any but a feeble-minded child from a feeble-minded ancestry. To which I reply, first of all, that he cannot produce a feeble-minded child. The whole point of our contention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed and outside opinion. There is such a thing as mania, which has always been segregated; there is such a thing as idiocy, which has always been segregated; but feeble-mindedness is a new phrase under which you might segregate anybody. It is essential that this fundamental fallacy in the use of statistics should be got somehow into the modern mind. Such people must be made to see the point, which is surely plain enough, that it is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase. If I say, “There are five fools in Action,” it is surely quite clear that, though no mathematician can make five the same as four or six, that will not stop you or anyone else from finding a few more fools in Action. Now weak-mindedness, like folly, is a term divided from madness in this vital manner --- that in one sense it applies to all men, in another to most men, in another to very many men, and so on. It is as if Dr. Saleeby were to say, “Vanity, I find, is undoubtedly hereditary. Here is Mrs. Jones, who was very sensitive about her sonnets being criticized, and I found her little daughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment is conclusive, the demonstration is complete; there in the first generation is the artistic temperament --- that is vanity; and there in the second generation is dress --- and that is vanity.” We should answer, “My friend, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit --- especially when one has to listen to logic of your favourite kind. Obviously all human beings must value themselves; and obviously there is in all such evaluation an element of weakness, since it is not the valuation of eternal justice. What is the use of your finding by experiment in some people a thing we know by reason must be in all of them?”

Here it will be as well to pause a moment and avert one possible misunderstanding. I do not mean that you and I cannot and do not practically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric or intermediate type, for which the word “feeble-minded” might be a very convenient word, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinable fact of experience. In the same way we might speak, and do speak, of such and such a person being “mad with vanity” without wanting two keepers to walk in and take the person off. But I ask the reader to remember always that I am talking of words, not as they are used in talk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, in warrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament. The distinction between the two is perfectly clear and practical. The difference is that a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit the mark; it is all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the type should be recognized; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the right man. But it is by no means always to the interest of governments or officials to hang the right man. The fact that they often do stretch words in order to cover cases is the whole foundation of having any fixed laws or free institutions at all. My point is not that I have never met anyone whom I should call feeble-minded, rather than mad or imbecile. My point is that if I want to dispossess a nephew, oust a rival, silence a blackmailer, or get rid of an importunate widow, there is nothing in logic to prevent my calling them feeble-minded too. And the vaguer the charge is the less they will be able to disprove it.

One does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resist legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual world in order to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may be such a thing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is such a thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in mere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits; believing that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason to suppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. All that is mere rationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance and terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but denies there can be devils. The superstition is in the person who admits there can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. Yet I should certainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectly simple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. The reason is that it is one thing to believe in witches and quite another to believe in witch smellers. I have more respect for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting the fool of the family; because the witch-finders, according to their own conviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the strong-minded --- the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a raid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a righteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of sin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and despicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a war upon the weak. It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being. When I said above that I believed in witches, but not in witch-smellers, I stated my full position about that conception of heredity, that half-formed philosophy of fears and omens; of curses and weird recurrence and darkness and the doom of blood, which, as preached to humanity to-day, is often more inhuman than witchcraft itself. I do not deny that this dark element exists; I only affirm that it is dark; or, in other words, that its most strenuous students are evidently in the dark about it. I would no more trust Dr. Karl Pearson on a heredity-hunt than on a heresy-hunt. I am perfectly ready to give my reasons for thinking this; and I believe any well-balanced person, if he reflects on them, will think as I do. There are two senses in which a man may be said to know or not know a subject. I know the subject of arithmetic, for instance; that is, I am not good at it, but I know what it is. I am sufficiently familiar with its use to see the absurdity of anyone who says, “So vulgar a fraction cannot be mentioned before ladies,” or “This unit is Unionist, I hope.” Considering myself for one moment as an arithmetician, I may say that I know next to nothing about my subject: but I know my subject. I know it in the street. There is the other kind of man, like Dr. Karl Pearson, who undoubtedly knows a vast amount about his subject; who undoubtedly lives in great forests of facts concerning kinship and inheritance. But it is not, by any means, the same thing to have searched the forests and to have recognized the frontiers. Indeed, the two things generally belong to two very different types of mind. I gravely doubt whether the Astronomer-Royal would write the best essay on the relations between astronomy and astrology. I doubt whether the President of the Geographical Society could give the best definition and the history of the words “geography” and “geology.”

Now the students of heredity, especially, understand all of their subject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born in that brier-patch, and have really explored it without coming to the end of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question of what they are studying. Now I do not propose to rely merely on myself to tell them what they are studying. I propose, as will be seen in a moment, to call the testimony of a great man who has himself studied it. But to begin with, the domain of heredity (for those who see its frontiers) is a sort of triangle, enclosed on its three sides by three facts. The first is that heredity undoubtedly exists, or there would be no such thing as a family likeness, and every marriage might suddenly produce a small negro. The second is that even simple heredity can never be simple; its complexity must be literally, unfathomable, for in that field fight unthinkable millions. But yet again it never is simple heredity: for the instant anyone is, he experiences. The third is that these innumerable ancient influences, these instant inundations of experiences, come together according to a combination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is a combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face that the baby has his mother’s nose or his mother’s eyes. They can never be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every feature, in every inch. In the person of the baby he may have gently pulled his wife’s nose. In the person of the baby he may have partly blacked his wife’s eyes.

Those are the three first facts of heredity. That it exists; that it is subtle and made of a million elements; that it is simple, and cannot be unmade into those elements. To summarize: you know there is wine in the soup. You do not know how many wines there are in the soup, because you do not know how many wines there are in the world. And you never will know, because all chemists, all cooks, and all common-sense people tell you that the soup is of such a sort that it can never be chemically analysed. That is a perfectly fair parallel to the hereditary element in the human soul. There are many ways in which one can feel that there is wine in the soup, as in suddenly tasting a wine specially favoured; that corresponds to seeing suddenly flash on a young face the image of some ancestor you have known. But even then the taster cannot be certain he is not tasting one familiar wine among many unfamiliar ones --- or seeing one known ancestor among a million unknown ancestors. Another way is to get drunk on the soup, which corresponds to the case of those who say they are driven to sin and death by hereditary doom. But even then the drunkard cannot be certain it was the soup, any more than the traditional drunkard who is certain it was the salmon.

Those are the facts about heredity which anyone can see. The upshot of them is not only that a miss is as good as a mile, but a miss is as good as a win. If the child has his parents’ nose (or noses) that may be heredity. But if he has not, that may be heredity too. And as we need not take heredity lightly because two generations differ --- so we need not take heredity a scrap more seriously because two generations are similar. The thing is there, in what cases we know not, in what proportion we know not, and we cannot know.

Now it is just here that the decent difference of function between Dr. Saleeby’s trade and mine comes in. It is his business to study human health and sickness as a whole, in a spirit of more or less enlightened guesswork; and it is perfectly natural that he should allow for heredity here, there, and everywhere, as a man climbing a mountain or sailing a boat will allow for weather without even explaining it to himself. An utterly different attitude is incumbent on any conscientious man writing about what laws should be enforced or about how commonwealths should be governed. And when we consider how plain a fact is murder, and yet how hesitant and even hazy we all grow about the guilt of a murderer, when we consider how simple an act is stealing, and yet how hard it is to convict and punish those rich commercial pirates who steal the most, when we consider how cruel and clumsy the law can be even about things as old and plain as the Ten Commandments --- I simply cannot conceive any responsible person proposing to legislate on our broken knowledge and bottomless ignorance of heredity.

But though I have to consider this dull matter in its due logical order, it appears to me that this part of the matter has been settled, and settled in a most masterly way, by somebody who has infinitely more right to speak on it than I have. Our press seems to have a perfect genius for fitting people with caps that don’t fit; and affixing the wrong terms of eulogy and even the wrong terms of abuse. And just as people will talk of Bernard Shaw as a naughty winking Pierrot, when he is the last great Puritan and really believes in respectability; just as (si parva licet, etc.) they will talk of my own paradoxes, when I pass my life in preaching that the truisms are true; so an enormous number of newspaper readers seem to have it fixed firmly in their heads that Mr. H. G. Wells is a harsh and horrible Eugenist in great goblin spectacles who wants to put us all into metallic microscopes and dissect us with metallic tools. As a matter of fact, of course, Mr. Wells, so far from being too definite, is generally not definite enough. He is an absolute wizard in the appreciation of atmospheres and the opening of vistas; but his answers are more agnostic than his questions. His books will do everything except shut. And so far from being the sort of man who would stop a man from propagating, he cannot even stop a full stop. He is not Eugenic enough to prevent the black dot at the end of a sentence from breeding a line of little dots.

But this is not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real blunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of medals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds of public economy, to giving Mr. Wells only one medal ob cives servatos, I would give him a medal as the Eugenist who destroyed Eugenics. For everyone spoke of him rightly or wrongly, as a Eugenist; and he certainly had, as I have not, the training and type of culture required to consider the matter merely in a biological and not in a generally moral sense. The result was that in that fine book, “Mankind in the Making,” where he inevitably came to grips with the problem, he threw down to the Eugenists an intellectual challenge which seems to me unanswerable, but which, at any rate, is unanswered. I do not mean that no remote Eugenist wrote upon the subject; for it is impossible to read all writings, especially Eugenist writings. I do not mean that the leading Eugenists write as if this challenge had never been offered. The gauntlet lies unlifted on the ground.

Having given honour for the idea where it is due, I may be permitted to summarize it myself for the sake of brevity. Mr. Wells’ point was this. That we cannot be certain about the inheritance of health, because health is not a quality. It is not a thing like darkness in the hair or length in the limbs. It is a relation, a balance. You have a tall, strong man; but his very strength depends on his not being too tall for his strength. You catch a healthy, full-blooded fellow; but his very health depends on his being not too full of blood. A heart that is strong for a dwarf will be weak for a giant; a nervous system that would kill a man with a trace of a certain illness will sustain him to ninety if he has no trace of that illness. Nay, the same nervous system might kill him if he had an excess of some other comparatively healthy thing. Seeing, therefore, that there are apparently healthy people of all types, it is obvious that if you mate two of them, you may even then produce a discord out of two inconsistent harmonies. It is obvious that you can no more be certain of a good offspring than you can be certain of a good tune if you play two fine airs at once on the same piano. You can be even less certain of it in the more delicate case of beauty, of which the Eugenists talk a great deal. Marry two handsome people whose noses tend to the aquiline, and their baby (for all you know) may be a goblin with a nose like an enormous parrot’s. Indeed, I actually know a case of this kind. The Eugenist has to settle, not the result of fixing one steady thing to a second steady thing; but what will happen when one toppling and dizzy equilibrium crashes into another.

This is the interesting conclusion. It is on this degree of knowledge that we are asked to abandon the universal morality of mankind. When we have stopped the lover from marrying the unfortunate woman he loves, when we have found him another uproariously healthy female whom he does not love in the least, even then we have no logical evidence that the result may not be as horrid and dangerous as if he had behaved like a man of honour.

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VII

THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT

Let us now finally consider what the honest Eugenists do mean, since it has become increasingly evident that they cannot mean what they say. Unfortunately, the obstacles to any explanation of this are such as to insist on a circuitous approach. The tendency of all that is printed and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true sense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it is always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article, and he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may even, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he thinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the nearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of classical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to write it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where he learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his stalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth delivering at all. The poor panting critic falls farther behind the motor-car of modern fact. Fifty years ago he was barely fifteen years behind the times. Fifteen years ago he was not more than fifty years behind the times. Just now he is rather more than a hundred years behind the times: and the proof of it is that the things he says, though manifest nonsense about our society to-day, really were true about our society some hundred and thirty years ago. The best instance of his belated state is his perpetual assertion that the supernatural is less and less believed. It is a perfectly true and realistic account --- of the eighteenth century. It is the worst possible account of this age of psychics and spirit-healers and fakirs and fashionable fortune-tellers. In fact, I generally reply in eighteenth century language to this eighteenth century language to this eighteenth century illusion. If somebody says to me, “The creeds are crumbling,” I reply, “And the King of Prussia, who is himself a Freethinker, is certainly capturing Silesia from the Catholic Empress.” If somebody says “Miracles must be reconsidered in the light of rational experience,” I answer affably, “But I hope that our enlightened leader, Hébert, will not insist on guillotining that poor French queen.” If somebody says, “We must watch for the rise of some new religion which can commend itself to reason,” I reply, “But how much more necessary is it to watch for the rise of some military adventurer who may destroy the Republic; and, to my mind, that young Major Bonaparte has rather a restless air.” It is only in such language from the Age of Reason that we can answer such things. The age we live in is something more than an age of superstition --- it is an age of innumerable superstitions. But it is only with one example of this that I am concerned here.

I mean the error that still sends men marching about disestablishing churches and talking of the tyranny of compulsory church teaching or compulsory church tithes. I do not wish for an irrelevant misunderstanding here; I would myself certainly disestablish any church that had a numerical minority, like the Irish or the Welsh; and I think it would do a great deal of good to genuine churches that have a partly conventional majority, like the English, or even the Russian. But I should only do this if I had nothing else to do; and just now there is very much else to do. For religion, orthodox, or unorthodox, is not just now relying on the weapon of State establishment at all. The Pope practically made no attempt to preserve the Concordat; but seemed rather relieved at the independence his Church gained by the destruction of it: and it is common talk among the French clericalists that the Church has gained by the change. In Russia the one real charge brought by religious people (especially Roman Catholics) against the Orthodox Church is not its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, but its abject dependence on the State. In England we can almost measure an Anglican’s fervour for his Church by his comparative coolness about its establishment --- that is, its control by a Parliament of Scotch Presbyterians like Balfour, or Welsh Congregationalists like Lloyd George. In Scotland the powerful combination of the two great sects outside the establishment have left it in a position in which it feels no disposition to boast of being called by mere lawyers the Church of Scotland. I am not here arguing that Churches should not depend on the State; nor that they do not depend upon much worse things. It may be reasonably maintained that the strength of Romanism, though it be not in any national police, is in a moral police more rigid and vigilant. It may be reasonably maintained that the strength of Anglicanism, though it be not in establishment, is in aristocracy, and its shadow, which is called snobbishness. All I assert here is that the Churches are not now leaning heavily on their political establishment; they are not using heavily the secular arm. Almost everywhere their legal tithes have been modified, their legal boards of control have been mixed. They may still employ tyranny, and worse tyranny: I am not considering that. They are not specially using that special tyranny which consists in using the government.

The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen --- that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination, in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite natural to our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to them madness to enforce baptism.

I am not frightened of the word “persecution” when it is attributed to the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof --- then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are. The imposition of such dogmas constitutes a State Church --- in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied to any supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where the religious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way or that; and yet more where it is excluded from this or that public post. But I cannot now recall any place where it is compelled by the criminal law to go through the rite of the official religion. Even the Young Turks did not insist on all Macedonians being circumcised.

Now here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, in the past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence, it has been at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixed and flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by their enemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But what are the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword to enforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions and bewildered answers that we have been studying in the last chapters --- questions whose only interest is that they are trackless and mysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative and new. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; and therefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of science actually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he persecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his creed, because it was unchangeable. The savant enforces it violently because he may change it the next day.

Now this is a new sort of persecution; and one may be permitted to ask if it is an improvement on the old. The difference, so far as one can see at first, seems rather favourable to the old. If we are to be at the merciless mercy of man, most of us would rather be racked for a creed that existed intensely in somebody’s head, rather than vivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone’s head, and possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with a thumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with a vivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet that is the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. If I give in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to profess. But even if I yelled out a credo when the Eugenists had me on the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an extra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed quite a week ago.

Now let not light-minded persons say that I am here taking extravagant parallels; for the parallel is not only perfect, but plain. For this reason: that the difference between torture and vivisection is not in any way affected by the fierceness or mildness of either. Whether they gave the rack half a turn or half a hundred, they were, by hypothesis, dealing with a truth which they knew to be there. Whether they vivisect painfully or painlessly, they are trying to find out whether the truth is there or not. The old inquisitors tortured to put their own opinions into somebody. But the new Inquisitors torture to get their own opinions out of him. They do not know what their own opinions are, until the victim of vivisection tells them. The division of thought is a complete chasm for anyone who cares about thinking. The old persecutor was trying to teach the citizen, with fire and sword. The new persecutor is trying to learn from the citizen, with scalpel and germ-injector. The master was meeker than the pupil will be.

I could prove by many practical instances that even my illustrations are not exaggerated, by many placid proposals I have heard for the vivisection of criminals, or by the filthy incident of Dr. Neisser. But I prefer here to stick to a strictly logical line of distinction, and insist that whereas in all previous persecutions the violence was used to end our indecision, the whole point here is that the violence is used to end the indecision of the persecutors. This is what the honest Eugenists really mean, so far as they mean anything. They mean that the public is to be given up, not as a heathen land for conversion, but simply as a pabulum for a experiment. That is the real, rude, barbaric sense behind this Eugenic legislation. The Eugenist doctors are not such fools as they look in the light of any logical inquiry about what they want. They do not know what they want, except that they want your soul and body and mine in order to find out. They are quite seriously, as they themselves might say, the first religion to be experimental instead of doctrinal. All other established Churches have been based on somebody having found the truth. This is the first Church that was ever based on not having found it.

There is in them a perfectly sincere hope and enthusiasm; but it is not for us, but for what they might learn from us, if they could rule us as they can rabbits. They cannot tell us anything about heredity, because they do not know anything about it. But they do quite honestly believe that they would know something about it, when they had married and mismarried us for a few hundred years. They cannot tell us who is fit to wield such authority, for they know that nobody is; but they do quite honestly believe that when that authority has been abused for a very long time, somebody somehow will be evolved who is fit for the job. I am no Puritan, and no one who knows my opinions will consider it a mere criminal charge if I say that they are simply gambling. The reckless gambler has no money in his pockets; he has only the ideas in his head. These gamblers have no idea in their heads; they have only the money in their pockets. But they think that if they could use the money to buy a big society to experiment on, something like an idea might come to them at last. That is Eugenics.

I confine myself here to remarking that I do not like it. I may be very stingy, but I am willing to pay the scientist for what he does know; I draw the line at paying him for everything he doesn’t know. I may be very cowardly, but I am willing to be hurt for what I think or what he thinks--- I am not willing to be hurt, or even inconvenienced, for whatever he might happen to think after he had hurt me. The ordinary citizen may easily be more magnanimous than I, and take the whole thing on trust; in which case his career may be happier in the next world. But (I think) sadder in this. At least, I wish to point out to him that he will not be giving his glorious body as soldiers give it, to the glory of a fixed flag, or martyrs to the glory of a deathless God. He will be, in the strict sense of the Latin phrase, giving his vile body for an experiment--- an experiment of which even the experimentalist knows neither the significance nor the end.

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VIII

A SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY

I have up to this point treated the Eugenists, I hope, as seriously as they treat themselves. I have attempted an analysis of their theory as if it were an utterly abstract and disinterested theory; and so considered, there seems to be very little left of it. But before I go on, in the second part of this book, to talk of the ugly things that really are left, I wish to recapitulate the essential points in their essential order, lest any personal irrelevance or over-emphasis (to which I know myself to be prone) should have confused the course of what I believe to be a perfectly fair and consistent argument. To make it yet clearer, I will summarize the thing under chapters, and in quite short paragraphs.

In the first chapter I attempted to define the essential point in which Eugenics can claim, and does claim, to be a new morality. That point is that it is possible to consider the baby in considering the bride. I do not adopt the ideal irresponsibility of the man who said, “What has posterity done for us?” But I do say, to start with, “What can we do for posterity, except deal fairly with our contemporaries?” Unless a man love his wife whom he has seen, how shall he love his child whom he has not seen?

In the second chapter I point out that this division in the conscience cannot be met by mere mental confusions, which would make any woman refusing any man a Eugenist. There will always be something in the world which tends to keep outrageous unions exceptional; that influence is not Eugenics, but laughter.

In the third chapter I seek to describe the quite extraordinary atmosphere in which such things have become possible. I call that atmosphere anarchy; but insist that it is an anarchy in the centres where there should be authority. Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government. In this atmosphere it is natural enough that medical experts, being authorities, should go mad, and attempt so crude and random and immature dream as this of petting and patting (and rather spoiling) the babe unborn.

In chapter four I point out how this impatience has burst through the narrow channel of the Lunacy Laws, and has obliterated them by extending them. The whole point of the madman is that he is the exception that prove the rule. But Eugenics seeks to treat the whole rule as a series of exceptions --- to make all men mad. And on that ground there is hope for nobody; for all opinions have an author, and all authors have a heredity. The mentality of the Eugenist makes him believe in Eugenics as much as the mentality of the reckless lover makes him violate Eugenics; and both mentalities are, on the materialist hypothesis, equally the irresponsible product of more or less unknown physical causes. The real security of the man against any logical Eugenics is like the false security of Macbeth. The only Eugenist that could rationally attack him must be a man of no woman born.

In the chapter following this, which is called “The Flying Authority,” I try in vain to locate and fix any authority that could rationally rule men in so rooted and universal a matter; little would be gained by ordinary men doing it to each other; and if ordinary practitioners did it they would very soon show, by a thousand whims and quarrels, that they were ordinary men. I then discussed the enlightened despotism of a few general professors of hygiene, and found it unworkable, for an essential reason: that while we can always get men intelligent enough to know more than the rest of us about this or that accident or pain or pest, we cannot count on the appearance of great cosmic philosophers; and only such men can be even supposed to know more than we do about normal conduct and common sanity. Every sort of man, in short, would shirk such a responsibility, except the worst sort of man, who would accept it.

I pass on, in the next chapter, to consider whether we know enough about heredity to act decisively, even if we were certain who ought to act. Here I refer the Eugenists to the reply of Mr. Wells, which they have never dealt with to my knowledge or satisfaction --- the important and primary objection that health is not a quality but a proportion of qualities; so that even health married to health might produce the exaggeration called disease. It should be noted here, of course, that an individual biologist may quite honestly believe that he has found a fixed principle with the help of Weissmann or Mendel. But we are not discussing whether he knows enough to be justified in thinking (as is somewhat the habit of the anthropoid Homo) that he is right. We are discussing whether we know enough, as responsible citizens, to put such powers into the hands of men who may be deceived or who may be deceivers. I conclude that we do not.

In the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, I believe, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what the Eugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what they want. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire the establishment of research; that is the making of it a thing official and compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it is only research and not discovery. In short, they want a new kind of State Church, which shall be an Established Church of Doubt --- instead of Faith. They have no Science of Eugenics at all, but they do really mean that if we will give ourselves up to be vivisected they may very probably have one some day. I point out, in more dignified diction, that this is a bit thick.

And now, in the second half of this book, we will proceed to the consideration of things that really exist. It is, I deeply regret to say, necessary to return to realities, as they are in your daily life and mine. Our happy holiday in the land of nonsense is over; we shall see no more its beautiful city, with the almost Biblical name of Bosh, nor the forests full of mares’ nests, nor the fields of tares that are ripened only by moonshine. We shall meet no longer those delicious monsters that might have talked in the same wild club with the Snark and the Jabberwock or the Pobble or the Dong with the Luminous Nose; the father who can’t make head or tail of the mother, but thoroughly understands the child she will some day bear; the lawyer who has to run after his own laws almost as fast as the criminals run away from them; the two mad doctors who might discuss for a million years which of them has the right to lock up the other; the grammarian who clings convulsively to the Passive Mood, and says it is the duty of something to get itself done without any human assistance, the man who would marry giants to giants until the back breaks, as children pile brick upon brick for the pleasure of seeing the staggering tower tumble down; and, above all, the superb man of science who wants you to pay him and crown him because he has so far found out nothing. These fairy-tale comrades must leave us. They exist, but they have no influence in what is really going on. They are honest dupes and tools, as you and I were very nearly being honest dupes and tools. If we come to think coolly of the world we live in, if we consider how very practical is the practical politician, at least where cash is concerned, how very dull and earthy are most of the men who own millions and manage the newspaper trusts, how very cautious and averse from idealist upheaval are those that control this capitalist society --- when we consider all this, it is frankly incredible that Eugenics should be a front bench fashionable topic and almost an Act of Parliament, if it were in practice only the unfinished fantasy which it is, as I have shown, in pure reason. Even if it were a just revolution, it would be much too revolutionary a revolution for modern statesmen, if there were not something else behind. Even if it were a true ideal, it would be much too idealistic an ideal for our “practical men,” if there were not something real as well. Well, there is something real as well. There is no reason in Eugenics, but there is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory, but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I reiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite innocent instruments, there are some, even among Eugenists, who by this time know what they are doing. To them we shall not say, “What is Eugenics?” or “Where on earth are you going?” but only “Woe unto you, hypocrite that devour widows’ houses and for a pretence use long words.”

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PART TWO

THE REAL AIM

I

THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE

The root formula of an epoch is always an unwritten law, just as the law that is the first of all laws, that which protects life from the murderer, is written nowhere in the Statute Book. Nevertheless there is all the difference between having and not having a notion of this basic assumption in an epoch. For instance, the Middle Ages will simply puzzle us with their charities and cruelties, their asceticism and bright colours, unless we catch their general eagerness for building and planning, dividing this from that by walls and fences --- the spirit that made architecture their most successful art. Thus even a slave seemed sacred; the divinity that did hedge a king, did also, in one sense, hedge a serf, for he could not be driven out from behind his hedges. Thus even liberty became a positive thing like a privilege; and even, when most men had it, it was not opened like the freedom of a wilderness, but bestowed, like the freedom of a city. Or again, the seventeenth century may seem a chaos of contradictions, with its almost priggish praise of parliaments and its quite barbaric massacre of prisoners, until we realize that, if the Middle Ages was a house half built, the seventeenth century was a house on fire. Panic was the note of it, and that fierce fastidiousness and exclusiveness that comes from fear. Calvinism was its characteristic religion, even in the Catholic Church, the insistence on the narrowness of the way and the fewness of the chosen. Suspicion was the note of its politics---“put not you trust in princes.” It tried to thrash everything out by learned, virulent, and ceaseless controversy; and it weeded its population by witch-burning. Or yet again: the eighteenth century will present pictures that seem utterly opposite, and yet seem singularly typical of the time: the sack of Versailles and the “Vicar of Wakefield”; the pastorals of Watteau and the dynamite speeches of Danton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight of the idea of tidying up which ran through the whole period, the quietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilization, and sound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people having (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for its own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only a readiness to employ it to get rid of unreason or disorder. With these epochs it is not altogether impossible to say that some such form of words is a key. The epoch for which it is almost impossible to find a form of words is our own.

Nevertheless, I think that with us the key-word is “inevitability,” or, as I should be inclined to call it, “impenitence.” We are subconsciously dominated in all departments by the notion that there is no turning back, and it is rooted in materialism and the denial of free will. Take any handful of modern facts and compare them with the corresponding facts a few hundred years ago. Compare the modern Party System with the political factions of the seventeenth century. The difference is that in the older time the party leaders not only really cut off each other’s heads, but (what is much more alarming) really repealed each other’s laws. With us it has become traditional for one party to inherit and leave untouched the acts of the other when made, however bitterly they were attacked in the making. James II and his nephew William were neither of them very gay specimens; but they would both have laughed at the idea of “a continuous foreign policy.” The Tories were not Conservatives; they were, in the literal sense, reactionaries. They did not merely want to keep the Stuarts; they wanted to bring them back.

Or again, consider how obstinately the English mediaeval monarchy returned again and again to its vision of French possessions, trying to reverse the decision of fate; how Edward III returned to the charge after the defeats of John and Henry III, and Henry V after the failure of Edward III; and how even Mary had that written on her heart which was neither her husband nor her religion. And then consider this: that we have comparatively lately known a universal orgy of the thing called imperialism, the unity of the Empire the only topic, colonies counted like crown jewels, and the Union Jack waved across the world. And yet no one so much as dreamed, I will not say of recovering, the American colonies for the Imperial unity (which would have been too dangerous a task for modern empire-builders), but even of re-telling the story from an Imperial standpoint. Henry V justified the claims of Edward III. Joseph Chamberlain would not have dreamed of justifying the claims of George III. Nay, Shakespeare justifies the French War, and sticks to Talbot and defies the legend of Joan of Arc. Mr. Kipling would not dare to justify the American War, stick to Burgoyne, and defy the legend of Washington. Yet there really was much more to be said for George III than there ever was for Henry V. It was not said, much less acted upon, by the modern Imperialists; because of this basic modern sense, that as the future is inevitable, so is the past irrevocable. Any fact so complete as the American exodus from the Empire must be considered as final for aeons, though it hardly happened more than a hundred years ago. Merely because it has managed to occur it must be called first, a necessary evil, and then an indispensable good. I need not add that I do not want to reconquer America; but then I am not an Imperialist.

Then there is another way of testing it: ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate? How few have we met who realized that British education can be altered, but British weather cannot? How few there were that knew that the clouds were more immortal and more solid than the schools? For a thousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or the ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? Indeed, the very word proves my case by its unpromising and unfamiliar sound. At the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform and Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; but nobody talks about repeal. Our fathers did not talk of Free Trade, but of the Repeal of the Corn Laws. They did not talk of Home Rule, but of the Repeal of the Union. In those days people talked of a “Repealer” as the most practical of all politicians, the kind of politician that carries a club. Now the Repealer is flung far into the province of an impossible idealism: and the leader of one of our great parties, having said, in a heat of temporary sincerity, that he would repeal an Act, actually had to write to all the papers to assure them that he would only amend it. I need not multiply instances, though they might be multiplied almost to a million. The note of the age is to suggest that the past may just as well be praised, since it cannot be mended. Men actually in that past have toiled like ants and died like locusts to undo some previous settlement that seemed secure; but we cannot do so much as repeal an Act of Parliament. We entertain the weak-minded notion that what is done can’t be undone. Our view was well summarized in a typical Victorian song with the refrain: “The mill will never grind with the water that is past.” There are many answers to this. One (which would involve a disquisition on the phenomena of evaporation and dew) we will here avoid. Another is, that to the minds of simple country folk, the object of a mill is not to grind water, but to grind corn, and that (strange as it may seem) there really have been societies sufficiently vigilant and valiant to prevent their corn perpetually flowing away from them, to the tune of a sentimental song.

Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an intellectual fault, it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our mental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also our spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake. It was mere vanity in Mr. Brummell when he sent away trays full of imperfectly knotted neck cloths, lightly remarking, “These are our failures.” It is a good instance of the nearness of vanity to humility, for at least he had to admit that they were failures. But it would have been spiritual pride in Mr. Brummell if he had tied on all the cravats, one on top of the other, lest his valet should discover that he had ever tied one badly. For in spiritual pride there is always an element of secrecy and solitude. Mr. Brummell would be satanic; also (which I fear would affect him more) he would be badly dressed. But he would be a perfect presentation of the modern publicist, who cannot do anything right, because he must not admit that he ever did anything wrong.

This strange, weak obstinacy, this persistence in the wrong path of progress, grows weaker and worse, as do all such weak things. And by the time in which I write its moral attitude has taken on something of the sinister and even the horrible. Our mistakes have become our secrets. Editors and journalists tear up with a guilty air all that reminds them of the party promises unfulfilled, or the party ideals reproaching them. It is true of our statesmen (much more than of our bishops, of whom Mr. Wells said it), that socially in evidence they are intellectually in hiding. The society is heavy with unconfessed sins; its mind is sore and silent with painful subjects; it has a constipation of conscience. There are many things it has done and allowed to be done which it does not really dare to think about; it calls them by other names and tries to talk itself into faith in a false past, as men make up the things they would have said in a quarrel. Of these sins one lies buried deepest but most noisome, and though it is stifled, stinks, the true story of the relations of the rich man and the poor in England. The half-starved English proletarian is not only nearly a skeleton, but he is a skeleton in a cupboard.

It may be said, in some surprise, that surely we hear to-day on every side the same story of the destitute proletariat and the social problem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowding in the slums. It is granted, but I said the true story. Untrue stories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There is the interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands, the chap who has “solidarity,” and is always just going to abolish war. The Marxian Socialists will tell you all about him; only he isn’t there. A common English workman is just as incapable of thinking of a German as anything but a German as he is of thinking of himself as anything but an Englishman. Then there is the opposite story; the story of the horrid man who is an atheist and wants to destroy the home, but who, for some private reason, prefers to call this Socialism. He isn’t there either. The prosperous Socialists have homes exactly like yours and mine; and the poor Socialists are not allowed by the Individualists to have any at all. There is the story of the Two Workmen, which is a very nice and exciting story, about how one passed all the public houses in Cheapside and was made Lord Mayor on arriving at the Guildhall, while the other went into all the public houses and emerged quite ineligible for such a dignity. Alas! for this also is vanity. A thief might become Lord Mayor, but an honest workman certainly couldn’t. Then there is the story of “The Relentless Doom” by which rich men were, by economic laws, forced to go on taking away money from poor men, although they simply longed to leave off: this is an unendurable thought to a free and Christian man, and the reader will be relieved to hear that it never happened. The rich could have left off stealing whenever they wanted to leave off, only this never happened either. Then there is the story of the cunning Fabian who sat on six committees at once and so coaxed the rich man to become quite poor. By simply repeating in a whisper, that there are “wheels within wheels,” this talented man managed to take away the millionaire’s motor car, one wheel at a time, till the millionaire had quite forgotten that he ever had one. It was very clever of him to do this, only he has not done it. There is not a screw loose in the millionaire’s motor, which is capable of running over the Fabian and leaving him a flat corpse in the road at a moment’s notice. All these stories are very fascinating stories to be told by the Individualist and Socialist in turn to the great Sultan of Capitalism, because if they left off amusing him for an instant he would cut off their heads. But if they once began to tell the true story of the Sultan to the Sultan, he would boil them in oil, and this they wish to avoid.

The true story of the sin of the Sultan he is always trying, by listening to these stories, to forget. As we have said before in this chapter, he would prefer not to remember, because he has made up his mind not to repent. It is a curious story, and I shall try to tell it truly in the two chapters that follow. In all ages the tyrant is hard because he is soft. If his car crashes over bleeding and accusing crowds, it is because he has chosen the path of least resistance. It is because it is much easier to ride down a human race than ride up a moderately steep hill. The fight of the oppressor is always a pillow fight; commonly a war with cushions --- always a war for cushions. Saladin, the great Sultan, if I remember rightly, accounted it the greatest feat of swordsmanship to cut a cushion. And so indeed it is, as all of us can attest who have been for years past trying to cut into the swollen and windy corpulence of the modern compromise, that is at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day the colour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palace within palace and garden within garden which makes the rich irresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance, the wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception of luxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights, and walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not our hangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we not already eugenists --- that is, eunuch-makers? Do we not see the bright eyes, the motionless faces, and all the presence of something that is dead and yet sleepless? It is the presence of the sin that is sealed with pride and impenitence; the story of how the Sultan got his throne. But it is not the story he is listening to just now, but another story which has been invented to cover it --- the story called “Eugenius: or the Adventures of One Not Born,” a most varied and entrancing tale, which never fails to send him to sleep.

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II

TRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP

He awoke in the Dark Ages and smelt dawn in the dark, and knew he was not wholly a slave. It was as if, in some tale of Hans Andersen, a stick or a stool had been left in the garden all night and had grown alive and struck root like a tree. For this is the truth behind the old legal fiction of the servile countries, that the slave is a “chattel,” that is a piece of furniture like a stick or a stool. In the spiritual sense, I am certain it was never so unwholesome a fancy as the spawn of Nietzsche suppose to-day. No human being, pagan or Christian, I am certain, ever thought of another human being as a chair or a table. The mind cannot base itself on the idea that a comet is a cabbage; not can it on the idea that a man is a stool. No man was ever unconscious of another’s presence --- or even indifferent to another’s opinion. The lady who is said to have boasted her indifference to being naked before male slaves was showing off --- or she meant something different. The lord who fed fishes by killing a slave was indulging in what most cannibals indulge in --- a satanist affectation. The lady was consciously shameless and the lord was consciously cruel. But it simply is not in the human reason to carve men like wood or examine women like ivory, just as it is not the human reason to think that two and two make five.

But there was this truth in the legal simile of furniture: that the slave, though certainly a man, was in one sense a dead man; in the sense that he was moveable. His locomotion was not his own: his master moved his arms and legs for him as if he were a marionette. Now it is important in the first degree to realize here what would be involved in such a fable as I have imagined, of a stool rooting it self like a shrub. For the general modern notion certainly is that life and liberty are in some way to be associated with novelty and not standing still. But it is just because the stool is lifeless that it moves about. It is just because the tree is alive that it does stand still. That was the main difference between the pagan slave and the Christian serf. The serf still belonged to the lord, as the stick that struck root in the garden; would have still belonged to the owner of the garden; but it would have become a live possession. Therefore the owner is forced, by the laws of nature, to treat it with some respect; something becomes due from him. He cannot pull it up without killing it; it has gained a place in the garden --- or the society. But the moderns are quite wrong in supposing that mere change and holiday and variety have necessarily any element of this life that is the only seed of liberty. You may say if you like that an employer, taking all his work people to a new factory in a Garden City, is giving them the greater freedom of forest landscapes and smokeless skies. If it comes to that, you can say that the slave-traders took negroes from their narrow and brutish African hamlets, and gave them the polish of foreign travel and medicinal breezes of a sea-voyage. But the tiny seed of citizenship and independence there already was in the serfdom of the Dark Ages, had nothing to do with what nice things the lord might do to the serf. It lay in the fact that there were some nasty things he could not do to the serf --- there were not many, but there were some, and one of them was eviction. He could not make the serf utterly landless and desperate utterly without access to the means of production, though doubtless it was rather the field that owned the serf, than the serf that owned the field. But even if you call the serf a beast of the field, he was not what we have tried to make the town workman --- a beast with no field. Foulon said of the French peasants, “Let them eat grass.” If he had said it of the modern London proletariat, they might well reply, “You have not left us even grass to eat.”

There was, therefore, both in theory and practice, some security for the serf, because he had come to life and rooted. The seigneur could not wait in the field in all weathers with a battle-ax to prevent the serf scratching any living out of the ground, any more than the man in my fairy-tale could sit out in the garden all night with an umbrella to prevent the shrub getting any rain. The relation of lord and serf, therefore, involves a combination of two things: inequality and security. I know there are people who will at once point wildly to all sorts of examples, true and false, of insecurity of life in the Middle Ages; but these are people who do not grasp what we mean by the characteristic institutions of a society. For the matter of that, there are plenty of examples of equality in the Middle Ages, as the craftsmen in their guild or the monks electing their abbot. But just as modern England is not a feudal country, though there is a quaint survival called Heralds’ College--- or Ireland is not a commercial country, though there is a quaint survival called Belfast --- it is true of the bulk and shape of that society that came out of the Dark Ages and ended at the Reformation, that it did not care about giving everybody an equal position, but did care about giving everybody a position. So that by the very beginning of that time even the slave had become a slave one could not get rid of, like the Scotch servant who stubbornly asserted that if his master didn’t know a good servant he knew a good master. The free peasant, in ancient or modern times, is free to go or stay. The slave, in ancient times, was free neither to go nor stay. The serf was not free to go; but he was free to stay.

Now what have we done with this man? It is quite simple. There is no historical complexity about it in that respect. We have taken away his freedom to stay. We have turned him out of his field, and whether it was injustice, like turning a free farmer out of his field, or only cruelty to animals, like turning a cow out of its field, the fact remains that he is out in the road. First and last, we have simply destroyed the security. We have not in the least destroyed the inequality. All classes, all creatures, kind or cruel, still see this lowest stratum of society as separate from the upper strata and even the middle strata; he is as separate as the serf. A monster fallen from Mars, ignorant of our simplest word, would know the tramp was at the bottom of the ladder, as well as he would have known it of the serf. The walls of mud are no longer round his boundaries. But only round his boots. The coarse bristling hedge is at the end of his chin, and not of his garden. But mud and bristles still stand out round him like a horrific halo, and separate him from his kind. The Martian would have no difficulty in seeing he was the poorest person in the nation. It is just as impossible that he should marry an heiress, or fight a duel with a duke, or contest a seat at Westminster, or enter a club in Pall Mall, or take a scholarship at Balliol, or take a seat at an opera, or propose a good law, or protest against a bad one, as it was impossible to the serf. Where he differs is in something very different. He has lost what was possible to the serf. He can no longer scratch the bare earth by day or sleep on the bare earth by night, without being collared by a policeman.

Now when I say this man has been oppressed as hardly any other man on this earth has been oppressed, I am not using rhetoric: I have a clear meaning which I am confident of explaining to any honest reader. I do not say he has been treated worse: I say he has been treated differently from the unfortunate in all ages. And the difference is this: that all the others were told to do something, and killed or tortured if they did anything else. This man is not told to do something: he is merely forbidden to do anything. When he was a slave, they said to him, “Sleep in this shed; I will beat you if you sleep anywhere else.” When he was a serf, they said to him, “Let me find you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else’s field.” But now he is a tramp they say to him, “You shall be jailed if I find you in anyone else’s field: but I will not give you a field.” They say, “You shall be punished if you are caught sleeping outside your shed: but there is no shed.” If you say that modern magistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer with entire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two tramps were summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the open air when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full fun of the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly produced about twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, but deliberately didn’t. To which the policeman replied that two pence would not have got them a bed: they could not possibly have got a bed: and therefore (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought to be punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was much struck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men for not doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explain that if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, they would have left the court without a stain on their characters; but as they could not avoid it, they were very much to blame. These things are being done in every part of England every day. They have their parallels even in every daily paper; but they have no parallel in any other earthly people or period; except in that insane command to make bricks without straw which brought down all the plagues of Egypt. For the common historical joke about Henry VIII hanging a man for being Catholic and burning him for being Protestant is a symbolic joke only. The sceptic in the Tudor time could do something: he could always agree with Henry VIII. The desperate man to-day can do nothing. For you cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the straws sticking out of his hair and says, “Procure three-pence from nowhere and I will give you leave to do without it.”

If it be answered that he can go to the work-house, I reply that such an answer is founded on confused thinking. It is true that he is free to go to the workhouse, but only in the same sense in which he is free to go to jail, only in the same sense in which the serf under the gibbet was free to find peace in the grave. Many of the poor greatly prefer the grave to the workhouse, but that is not at all my argument here. The point is this: that it could not have been the general policy of a lord towards serfs to kill them all like wasps. It could not have been his standing “Advice to Serfs” to say, “Get hanged.” It cannot be the standing advice of magistrates to citizens to go to prison. And, precisely as plainly, it cannot be the standing advice of rich men to very poor men to go to the workhouses. For that would mean the rich raising their own poor rates enormously to keep a vast and expensive establishment of slaves. Now it may come to this, as Mr. Belloc maintains, but it is not the theory on which what we call the workhouse does in fact rest. The very shape (and even the very size) of a workhouse expresses the fact that it was found for certain quite exceptional human failures --- like the lunatic asylum. Say to a man, “Go to the madhouse,” and he will say, “Wherein am I mad?” Say to a tramp under a hedge, “Go to the house of exceptional failures,” and he will say with equal reason, “I travel because I have no house; I walk because I have no horse; I sleep out because I have no bed. Wherein have I failed?” And he may have the intelligence to add, “Indeed, your worship, if somebody has failed, I think it is not I.” I concede, with all due haste, that he might perhaps say “me.”

The specialty then of this man’s wrong is that it is the only historic wrong that has in it the quality of nonsense. It could only happen in a nightmare, not in a clear and rational hell. It is the top point of that anarchy in the governing mind which, as I said at the beginning, is the main trait of modernity, especially in England. But if the first note in our policy is madness, the next note is certainly meanness. There are two peculiarly mean and unmanly legal mantraps in which this wretched man is tripped up. The first is that which prevents him from doing what any ordinary savage or nomad would do --- take his chance of an uneven subsistence on the rude bounty of nature.

There is something very abject about forbidding this; because it is precisely this adventurous and vagabond spirit which the educated classes praise most in their books, poems and speeches. To feel the drag of the roads, to hunt in nameless hills and fish in secret streams, to have no address save “Over the Hills and Far Away,” to be ready to breakfast on berries and the daybreak and sup on the sunset and a sodden crust, to feed on wild things and be a boy again, all this is the heartiest and sincerest impulse in recent culture, in the songs and tales of Stevenson, in the cult of George Borrow and in the delightful little books published by Mr. E. V. Lucas. It is the one true excuse in the core of Imperialism; and it faintly softens the squalid prose and wooden-headed wickedness of the Self-Made Man who “came up to London with twopence in his pocket.” But when a poorer but braver man with less that twopence in his pocket does the very thing we are always praising, makes the blue heavens his house, we send him to a house built for infamy and flogging. We take poverty itself and only permit it with a property qualification; we only allow a man to be poor if he is rich. And we do this most savagely if he has sought to snatch his life by that particular thing of which our boyish adventure stories are fullest --- hunting and fishing. The extremely severe English game laws hit most heavily what the highly reckless English romances praise most irresponsibly. All our literature is full of praise of the chase --- especially of the wild goose chase. But if a poor man followed, as Tennyson says, “far as the wild swan wings to where the world dips down to sea and sands,” Tennyson would scarcely allow him to catch it. If he found the wildest goose in the wildest fenland in the wildest regions of the sunset, he would very probably discover that the rich never sleep and that there are no wild things in England.

In short, the English ruler is always appealing to a nation of sportsmen and concentrating all his efforts on preventing them from having any sport. The Imperialist is always pointing out with exultation that the common Englishman can live by adventure anywhere on the globe. But if the common Englishmen tries to live by adventure in England, he is treated as harshly as a thief, and almost as harshly as an honest journalist. This is hypocrisy: the magistrate who gives his son “Treasure Island” and then imprisons a tramp is a hypocrite; the squire who is proud of English colonists and indulgent to English schoolboys, but cruel to English poachers, is drawing near that deep place wherein all liars have their part. But our point here is that the baseness is in the idea of bewildering the tramp; of leaving him no place for repentance. It is quite true, of course, that in the days of slavery or of serfdom the needy were fenced by yet fiercer penalties from spoiling the hunting of the rich. But in the older case there were two very important differences, the second of which is our main subject in this chapter. The first is that in a comparatively wild society, however fond of hunting, it seems impossible that enclosing and game-keeping can have been so omnipresent and efficient as in a society full of maps and policemen. The second difference is the one already noted: that if the slave or semi-slave was forbidden to get his food in the green wood, he was told to get it somewhere else. The note of unreason was absent.

This is the first meanness; and the second is like unto it. If there is one thing of which cultivated modern letters is full besides adventure it is altruism. We are always being told to help others, to regard our wealth as theirs, to do what good we can, for we shall not pass this way again. We are everywhere urged by humanitarians to help lame dogs over stiles --- though some humanitarians, it is true, seem to feel a colder interest in the case of lame men and women. Still, the chief fact of our literature, among all historic literatures, is human charity. But what is the chief fact of our legislation? The great outstanding fact of modern legislation, among all historic legislations, is the forbidding of human charity. It is this astonishing paradox, a thing in the teeth of all logic and conscience, that a man that takes another man’s money with his leave can be punished as if he had taken it without his leave. All through those dark or dim ages behind us, through times of senile stagnation, of feudal insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else that can wear down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was counted lawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries, in short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched and mended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is now forbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance if he could beg.

Now it will be evident by this time that the interesting scientific experiment on the tramp entirely depends on leaving him no chance, and not (like the slave) one chance. Of the economic excuses offered for the persecution of beggars it will be more natural to speak in the next chapter. It will suffice here to say that they are mere excuses, for a policy that has been persistent while probably largely unconscious, with a selfish and atheistic unconsciousness. That policy was directed towards something --- or it could never have cut so cleanly and cruelly across the sentimental but sincere modern trends to adventure and altruism. Its object is soon stated. It was directed towards making the very poor man work for the capitalist, for any wages or none. But all this, which I shall also deal with in the next chapter, is here only important as introducing the last truth touching the man of despair. The game laws have taken from him his human command of Nature. The mendicancy laws have taken from him his human demand on Man. There is one human thing left it is much harder to take from him. Debased by him and his betters, it is still something brought out of Eden, where God made him a demigod; it does not depend on money and but little on time. He can create in his own image. The terrible truth is in the heart of a hundred legends and mysteries. As Jupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Child could be hidden from Herod --- so the child unborn is still hidden from the omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone is left; and they seek his life to take it away.

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III

TRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST

He does not live in a dark lonely tower by the sea, from which are heard the screams of vivisected men and women. On the contrary, he lives in Mayfair. He does not wear great goblin spectacles that magnify his eyes to moons or diminish his neighbours to beetles. When he is more dignified he wears a single eyeglass; when more intelligent, a wink. He is not indeed wholly without interest in heredity and Eugenical biology; but his studies and experiments in this science have specialized almost exclusively in equus celer, the rapid or running horse. He is not a doctor; though he employs doctors to work up a case for Eugenics, just as he employs doctors to correct the errors of his dinner. He is not a lawyer, though unfortunately often a magistrate. He is not an author or a journalist; though he not infrequently owns a newspaper. He is not a soldier, though he may have a commission in the yeomanry; nor is he generally a gentleman, though often a nobleman. His wealth now commonly comes from a large staff of employed persons who scurry about in big buildings while he is playing golf. But he very often laid the foundations of his fortune in a very curious and poetical way, the nature of which I have never fully understood. It consisted in his walking about the street without a hat and going up to another man and saying, “Suppose I have two hundred whales out of the North Sea.” To which the other man replied, “And let us imagine that I am in possession of two thousand elephants’ tusks.” They then exchange, and the first man goes up to a third man and says, “Supposing me to have lately come into the possession of two thousand elephants’ tusks, would you, etc.?” If you play this game well, you become very rich; if you play it badly you have to kill yourself or try your luck at the Bar. The man I am speaking about must have played it well, or at any rate successfully.

He was born about 1860; and has been a Member of Parliament since about 1890. For the first half of his life he was a Liberal; for the second half he has been a Conservative; but his actual policy in Parliament has remained largely unchanged and consistent. His policy in Parliament is as follows: he takes a seat in a room downstairs at Westminster, and takes from his breast pocket an excellent cigar case, from which in turn he takes an excellent cigar. This he lights, and converses with other owners of such cigars on equus celer or such matters as may afford him entertainment. Two or three times in the afternoon a bell rings; whereupon he deposits the cigar in an ash tray with great particularity, taking care not to break the ash, and proceeds to an upstairs room, flanked with two passages. He then walks into whichever of the two passages shall be indicated to him by a young man of the upper classes, holding a slip of paper. Having gone into this passage he comes out of it again, is counted by the young man and proceeds downstairs again; where he takes up the cigar once more, being careful not to break the ash. This process, which is known as Representative government, has never called for any great variety in the manner of his life. Nevertheless, while his Parliamentary policy is unchanged, his change from one side of the House to the other did correspond with a certain change in his general policy in commerce and social life. The change of the party label is by this time quite a trifling matter; but there was in his case a change of philosophy or at least a change of project; though it was not so much becoming a Tory, as becoming rather the wrong kind of Socialist. He is a man with a history. It is a sad history, for he is certainly a less good man than he was when he started. That is why he is the man who is really behind Eugenics. It is because he has degenerated that he has come to talking of Degeneration.

In his Radical days (to quote from one who corresponded in some ways to this type) he was a much better man, because he was a much less enlightened one. The hard impudence of his first Manchester Individualism was softened by two relatively humane qualities; the first was a much great manliness in his pride; the second was a much greater sincerity in his optimism. For the first point, the modern capitalist is merely industrial; but this man was also industrious. He was proud of hard work; nay, he was even proud of low work --- if he could speak of it in the past and not the present. In fact, he invented a new kind of Victorian snobbishness, an inverted snobbishness. While the snobs of Thackeray turned Muggins into De Mogyns, while the snobs of Dickens wrote letters describing themselves as officers’ daughters “accustomed to every luxury--- except spelling,” the Individualist spent his life in hiding his prosperous parents. He was more like an American plutocrat when he began; but he has since lost the American simplicity. The Frenchman works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all. He becomes as far as possible another person --- a country gentleman who has never heard of his shop; one whose left hand holding a gun knows not what his right hand doeth in a ledger. He uses a peerage as an alias, and a large estate as a sort of alibi. A stern Scotch minister remarked concerning the game of golf, with a terrible solemnity of manner, “the man who plays golf --- he neglects his business, he forsakes his wife, he forgets his God.” He did not seem to realize that it is the chief aim of many a modern capitalist’s life to forget all three.

This abandonment of a boyish vanity in work, this substitution of a senile vanity in indolence, this is the first respect in which the rich Englishman has fallen. He was more of a man when he was at least a master-workman and not merely a master. And the second important respect in which he was better at the beginning is this: that he did then, in some hazy way, half believe that he was enriching other people as well as himself. The optimism of the early Victorian Individualists was not wholly hypocritical. Some of the clearest-headed and blackest-hearted of them, such as Malthus, saw where things were going, and boldly based their Manchester city on pessimism instead of optimism. But this was not the general case; most of the decent rich of the Bright and Cobden sort did have a kind of confused faith that the economic conflict would work well in the long run for everybody. They thought the troubles of the poor were incurable by State action (they thought that of all troubles), but they did not cold-bloodedly contemplate the prospect of those troubles growing worse and worse. By one of those tricks or illusions of the brain to which the luxurious are subject in all ages, they sometimes seemed to feel as if the populace had triumphed symbolically in their own persons. They blasphemously thought about their thrones of gold what can only be said about a cross --- that they, being lifted up, would draw all men after them. They were so full of the romance that anybody could be Lord Mayor, that they seemed to have slipped into thinking that everybody could. It seemed as if a hundred Dick Whittingtons, accompanied by a hundred cats, could all be accommodated at the Mansion House. It was all nonsense; but it was not (until later) all humbug.

Step by step, however, with a horrid and increasing clearness, this man discovered what he was doing. It is generally one of the worst discoveries a man can make. At the beginning, the British plutocrat was probably quite as honest in suggesting that every tramp carried a magic cat like Dick Whittington, as the Bonapartist patriot was in saying that every French soldier carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. But it is exactly here that the difference and the danger appears. There is no comparison between a well-managed thing like Napoleon’s army and an unmanageable thing like modern competition. Logically, doubtless, it was impossible that every soldier should carry a marshal’s baton; they could not all be marshals anymore than they could all be mayors. But if the French soldier did not always have a baton in his knapsack, he always had a knapsack. But when that Self-Helper who bore the adorable name of Smiles told the English tramp that he carried a coronet in his bundle, the English tramp had an unanswerable answer. He pointed out that he had no bundle. The powers that ruled him had not fitted him with a knapsack, any more than they had fitted him with a future --- or even a present. The destitute Englishman, so far from hoping to become anything, had never been allowed even to be anything. The French soldier’s ambition may have been in practice not only a short, but even a deliberately shortened ladder, in which the top rungs were knocked out. But for the English it was the bottom rungs that were knocked out, so that they could not even begin to climb. And sooner or later, in exact proportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began to understand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their impotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that his riches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could have been strong enough to make him rich. It is this paradox, as we shall see, that creates the curious difference between him and every other kind of robber.

I think it is no more than justice to him to say that the knowledge, where it has come to him, has come to him slowly; and I think it came (as most things of common-sense come) rather vaguely and as in a vision --- that is, by the mere look of things. The old Cobdennite employer was quite within his rights in arguing that earth is not heaven, that the best obtainable arrangement might contain many necessary evils; and that Liverpool and Belfast might be growing more prosperous as a whole in spite of pathetic things that might be seen there. But I simply do not believe he has been able to look at Liverpool and Belfast and continue to think this: that is why he has turned himself into a sham country gentleman. Earth is not heaven, but the nearest we can get to heaven ought not to look like hell; and Liverpool and Belfast look like hell, whether they are or not. Such cities might be growing prosperous as a whole, though a few citizens were more miserable. But it was more and more broadly apparent that it was exactly and precisely as a whole that they were not growing more prosperous, but only the few citizens who were growing more prosperous by their increasing misery. You could not say a country was becoming a white man’s country when there were more and more black men in it every day. You could not say a community was more and more masculine when it was producing more and more women. Nor can you say that a city is growing richer and richer when more and more of its inhabitants are very poor men. There might be a false agitation founded on the pathos of individual cases in a community pretty normal in bulk. But the fact is that no one can take a cab across Liverpool without having a quite complete and unified impression that the pathos is not a pathos of individual cases, but a pathos in bulk. People talk of the Celtic sadness; but there are very few things in Ireland that look so sad as the Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery compared with the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournful friends to turn their attention to the pathos of Belfast. I think if they hung up the harp that once in Lord Furness’s factory, there would be a chance of another string breaking.

Broadly, and as things bulk to the eye, towns like Leeds, if placed beside towns like Rouen or Florence, or Chartres, or Cologne, do actually look like beggars walking among burghers. After that overpowering and unpleasant impression it is really useless to argue that they are richer because a few of their parasites get rich enough to live somewhere else. The point may be put another way, thus: that it is not so much that these more modern cities have this or that monopoly of good or evil; it is that they have every good in its fourth-rate form and every evil in its worst form. For instance, that interesting weekly paper The Nation amiably rebuked Mr. Belloc and myself for suggesting that revelry and the praise of fermented liquor were more characteristic of Continental and Catholic communities than of communities with the religion and civilization of Belfast. It said that if we would “cross the border” into Scotland, we should find out our mistake. Now, not only have I crossed the border, but I have had considerable difficulty in crossing the road in a Scotch town on a festive evening. Men were literally lying like piled-up corpses in the gutters, and from broken bottles whisky was pouring down the drains. I am not likely, therefore, to attribute a total and arid abstinence to the whole of industrial Scotland. But I never said that drinking was a mark rather of the Catholic countries. I said that moderate drinking was a mark rather of the Catholic countries. In other words, I say of the common type of Continental citizen, not that he is the only person who is drinking, but that he is the only person who knows how to drink. Doubtless gin is as much a feature of Hoxton as beer is a feature of Munich. But who is the connoisseur who prefers the gin of Hoxton to the beer of Munich? Doubtless the Protestant Scotch ask for “Scotch,” as the men of Burgundy ask for Burgundy. But do we find them lying in heaps on each side of the road when we walk through a Burgundian village? Do we find the French peasant ready to let Burgundy escape down a drain-pipe? Now this one point, on which I accept The Nation’s challenge, can be exactly paralleled on almost every point by which we test a civilization. It does not matter whether we are for alcohol or against it. On either argument Glasgow is more objectionable than Rouen. The French abstainer makes less fuss; the French drinker gives less offence. It is so with property, with war, with everything. I can understand a teetotaller being horrified, on his principles, at Italian wine-drinking. I simply cannot believe he could be more horrified at it than at Hoxton gin-drinking. I can understand a Pacifist, with his special scruples, disliking the militarism of Belfort. I flatly deny that he can dislike it more than the militarism of Berlin. I can understand a good Socialist hating the petty cares of the distributed peasant property. I deny that any good Socialist can hate them more than he hates the large cares of Rockefeller. That is the unique tragedy of the plutocratic state to-day; it has no successes to hold up against the failures it alleges to exist in Latin or other methods. You can (if you are well out of his reach) call the Irish rustic debased and superstitious. I defy you to contrast his debasement and superstition with the citizenship and enlightenment of the English rustic.

To-day the rich man knows in his heart that he is a cancer and not an organ of the State. He differs from all other thieves or parasites for this reason: that the brigand who takes by force wishes his victims to be rich. But he who wins by a one-sided contract actually wishes them to be poor. Rob Roy in a cavern, hearing a company approaching, will hope (or if in a pious mood, pray) that they may come laden with gold or goods. But Mr. Rockefeller, in his factory, knows that if those who pass are laden with goods they will pass on. He will therefore (if in a pious mood) pray that they may be destitute, and so be forced to work his factory for him for a starvation wage. It is said (and also, I believe, disputed) that Blucher riding through the richer parts of London exclaimed, “What a city to sack!” But Blucher was a soldier if he was a bandit. The true sweater feels quite otherwise. It is when he drives through the poorest parts of London that he finds the streets paved with gold, being paved with prostrate servants; it is when he sees the grey lean leagues of Bow and Poplar that his soul is uplifted and he knows he is secure. This is not rhetoric, but economics.

I repeat that up to a point the profiteer was innocent because he was ignorant; he had been lured on by easy and accommodating events. He was innocent as the new Thane of Glamis was innocent, as the new Thane of Cawdor was innocent; but the King --- the modern manufacturer, like Macbeth, decided to march on, under the mute menace of the heavens. He knew that the spoil of the poor was in his houses; but he could not, after careful calculation, think of any way in which they could get it out of his houses without being arrested for housebreaking. He faced the future with a face flinty with pride and impenitence. This period can be dated practically by the period when the old and genuine Protestant religion of England began to fail; and the average business man began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way out. But in any case, the man who had made a mistake not only refused to unmake it, but decided to go on making it. But in this he made yet another most amusing mistake, which was the beginning of all Eugenics.

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IV

THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH

By a quaint paradox, we generally miss the meaning of simple stories because we are not subtle enough to understand their simplicity. As long as men were in sympathy with some particular religion or other romance of things in general, they saw the thing solid and swallowed it whole, knowing that it could not disagree with them. But the moment men have lost the instinct of being simple in order to understand it, they have to be very subtle in order to understand it. We can find, for instance, a very good working case in those old puritanical nursery tales about the terrible punishment of trivial sins; about how Tommy was drowned for fishing on the Sabbath, or Sammy struck by lightning for going out after dark. Now these moral stories are immoral, because Calvinism is immoral. They are wrong, because Puritanism is wrong. But they are not quite so wrong, they are not a quarter so wrong, as many superficial sages have supposed.

The truth is that everything that ever came out of a human mouth had a human meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such a fool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great grandmothers told a child he might be drowned by a breaking of the Sabbath, their souls (though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not in quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god was a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form of religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it did correspond to certain reality in psychology which most people of any religion, or even of none, have felt a touch of at some time or other. Leaving out theological terms as far as possible, it is the subconscious feeling that one can be wrong with Nature as well as right with Nature; that the point of wrongness may be a detail (in the superstitions of heathens this is often quite a triviality); but that if one is really wrong with Nature, there is no particular reason why all her rivers should not drown or all her storm-bolts strike one who is, by this vague yet vivid hypothesis, her enemy. This may be a mental sickness, but it is too human or too mortal a sickness to be called solely a superstition. It is not solely a superstition; it is not simply superimposed upon human nature by something that has got on top of it. It flourishes without check among non-Christian systems, and it flourishes especially in Calvinism, because Calvinism is the most non-Christian of Christian systems. But like everything else that inheres in the natural senses and spirit of man, it has something in it; it is not stark unreason. If it is an ill (and it generally is), it is one of the ills that flesh is heir to, but he is the lawful heir. And like many other dubious or dangerous human instincts or appetites, it is sometimes useful as a warning against worse things.

Now the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from the loss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathen mysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe in Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they overlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps Julius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in Jupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of that age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit personal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, while the heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queer coincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whether they were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his own brain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain such notions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modern sceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural. And this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrant literally pagan might possibly not have done.

There is one idea of this kind that runs through most popular tales (those, for instance, on which Shakespeare is so often based) --- an idea that is profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is what may be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take my advantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage. Thus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reason to become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had a fallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. He forgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on it can. Thus Shylock had a fallacy of physiology; he forgot that, if you break into the house of life, you find it a bloody house in the most emphatic sense. But the modern capitalist did not read fairy-tales, and never looked for the little omens at the turnings of the road. He (or the most intelligent section of him) had by now realized his position, and knew in his heart it was a false position. He thought a margin of men out of work was good for his business; he could no longer really think it was good for his country. He could no longer be the old “hard-headed” man who simply did not understand things; he could only be the hard-hearted man who faced them. But he still marched on, he was sure he had made no mistake.

However, he had made a mistake --- as definite as a mistake in multiplication. It may be summarized thus: that the same inequality and insecurity that makes cheap labour may make bad labour, and at last no labour at all. It was as if a man who wanted something from an enemy, should at last reduce the enemy to come knocking at his door in the despair of winter, should keep him waiting in the snow to sharpen the bargain; and then come out to find the man dead upon the doorstep.

He had discovered the divine boomerang; his sin had found him out. The experiment of Individualism --- the keeping of the worker half in and half out of work --- was far too ingenious not to contain a flaw. It was too delicate a balance to work entirely with the strength of the starved and the vigilance of the benighted. It was too desperate a course to rely wholly on desperation. And as time went on the terrible truth slowly declared itself; the degraded class was really degenerating. It was right and proper enough to use a man as a tool; but the tool, ceaselessly used, was being used up. It was quite reasonable and respectable, of course, to fling a man away like a tool; but when it was flung away in the rain the tool rusted. But the comparison to a tool was insufficient for an awful reason that had already begun to dawn upon the master’s mind. If you pick up a hammer you do not find a whole family of nails clinging to it. If you fling away a chisel by the roadside, it does not litter and leave a lot of little chisels. But the meanest of the tools, Man, had still this strange privilege which God had given him, doubtless by mistake. Despite all improvements in machinery, the most important part of the machinery (the fittings technically described in the trade as “hands”) were apparently growing worse. The firm was not only encumbered with one useless servant, but he immediately turned himself into five useless servants. “The poor should not be emancipated,” the old reactionaries used to say, “until they are fit for freedom.” But if this downrush went on, it looked as if the poor would not stand high enough to be fit for slavery.

So at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree subconsciously, to the man who had wagered all his wealth on the usefulness of the poor to the rich and the dependence of the rich on the poor. The time came at last when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below ceased to be a supply, and began to be something like a wastage; ceased to be something like keeping foxhounds, and began alarmingly to resemble a necessity of shooting foxes. The situation was aggravated by the fact that these sexual pleasures were often the only ones the very poor could obtain, and were, therefore, disproportionately pursued, and by the fact that their conditions were often such that prenatal nourishment and such things were utterly abnormal. The consequences began to appear. To a much less extent than the Eugenists assert, but still to a notable extent, in a much looser sense than the Eugenists assume, but still in some sort of sense, the types that were inadequate or incalculable or uncontrollable began to increase. Under the hedges of the country, on the seats of the parks, loafing under the bridges or leaning over the Embankment, began to appear a new race of men --- men who are certainly not mad, whom we shall gain no scientific light by calling feeble-minded, but who are, in varying individual degrees, dazed or drink-sodden, or lazy or tricky or tired in body and spirit. In a far less degree than the teetotallers tell us, but still in a large degree, the traffic in gin and bad beer (itself a capitalist enterprise) fostered the evil, though it had not begun it. Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men who seemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesore in the market-place and a terror on the empty roads. The rich were afraid.

Moreover, as I have hinted before, the act of keeping the destitute out of public life, and crushing them under confused laws, had an effect on their intelligences which paralyses them even as a proletariat. Modern people talk of “Reason versus Authority”; but authority itself involves reason, or its orders would not even be understood. If you say to your valet, “Look after the buttons on my waistcoat,” he may do it, even if you throw a boot at his head. But if you say to him, “Look after the buttons on my tophat,” he will not do it, though you empty a bootshop over him. If you say to a schoolboy, “Write out that Ode to Horace from memory in the original Latin,” he may do it without a flogging. If you say, “Write out that Ode of Horace in the original German,” he will not do it with a thousand floggings. If you will not learn logic, he certainly will not learn Latin. And the ludicrous laws to which the needy are subject (such as that which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, I think, a great deal to do with a certain increase in their sheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrial inefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory, a man actually acquitted by judge and jury could then be examined by doctors as to the state of his mind --- presumably in order to discover by what diseased eccentricity he had refrained from the crime. In other words, when the police cannot jail a man who is innocent of doing something, they jail him for being too innocent to do anything. I do not suppose the man is an idiot at all, but I can believe he feels more like one after the legal process than before. Thus all the factors --- the bodily exhaustion, the harassing fear of hunger, the reckless refuge in sexuality, and the black botheration of bad laws --- combined to make the employee more unemployable.

Now, it is very important to understand here that there were two courses of action still open to the disappointed capitalist confronted by the new peril of this real or alleged decay. First, he might have reversed his machine, so to speak, and started unwinding the long rope of dependence by which he had originally dragged the proletarian to his feet. In other words, he might have seen that the workmen had more money, more leisure, more luxuries, more status in the community, and then trusted to the normal instincts of reasonably happy human beings to produce a generation better born, bred and cared for than these tortured types that were less and less use to him. It might still not be too late to rebuild the human house upon such an architectural plan that poverty might fly out of the window, with the reasonable prospect of love coming in at the door. In short, he might have let the English poor, the mass of whom were not weak-minded, though more of them were growing weaker, a reasonable chance, in the form of more money, of achieving their eugenical resurrection themselves. It has never been shown, and it cannot be shown, that the method would have failed. But it can be shown, and it must be closely and clearly noted, that the method had very strict limitations from the employers’ own point of view. If they made the worker too comfortable, he would not work to increase another’s comforts; if they made him too independent, he would not work like a dependent. If, for instance, his wages were so good that he could save out of them, he might cease to be a wage-earner. If his house or garden were his own, he might stand an economic siege in it. The whole capitalist experiment had been built on his dependence; but now it was getting out of hand, not in the direction of freedom, but of frank helplessness. One might say that his dependence had got independent of control.

But there was another way. And towards this the employer’s ideas began, first darkly and unconsciously, but now more and more clearly, to drift. Giving property, giving leisure, giving status costs money. But there is one human force that costs nothing. As it does not cost the beggar a penny to indulge, so it would not cost the employer a penny to employ. He could not alter or improve the tables or the chairs on the cheap. But there were two pieces of furniture (labelled respectively “the husband” and “the wife”) whose relations were much cheaper. He could alter the marriage in the house in such a way as to promise himself the largest possible number of the kind of children he did want, with the smallest number of the kind he did not. He could divert the force of sex from producing vagabonds. And he could harness to his high engines unbought the red unbroken river of the blood of a man in his youth, as he has already harnessed to them all the wild waste rivers of the world.

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V

THE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE

Now, if any ask whether it be imaginable that an ordinary man of the wealthier type should analyse the problem or conceive the plan, the in-humanly far-seeing plan, as I have set it forth, the answer is: “Certainly not.” Many rich employers are too generous to do such a thing; many are too stupid to know what they are doing. The eugenical opportunity I have described is but an ultimate analysis of a whole drift of thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse his thoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string of rickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. But prosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even ask himself whether he means “How can I help them?” or “How can I use them?” --- what he can still do for them, or what they could still do for him. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more than the former; he laments the breaking of the tools of Mammon much more than the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossible to grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert that there is one thing he doesn’t think. He doesn’t think, “This man might be as jolly as I am, if he need not come to me for work or wages.”

That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a sense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist industrialism being sacrificed to any other object. By a curious recurrent slip in the mind, as irritating as a catch in a clock, people miss the main thing and concentrate on the mean thing. “Modern conditions” are treated as fixed, though the very word “modern” implies that they are fugitive. “Old ideas” are treated as impossible, though their very antiquity often proves their permanence. Some years ago some ladies petitioned that the platforms of our big railway stations should be raised, as it was more convenient for the hobble skirt. It never occurred to them to change to a sensible skirt. Still less did it occur to them that, compared with all the female fashions that have fluttered about on it, by this time St. Pancras is as historic as St Peter’s.

I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious assumption that life and sex must live by the laws of “business” or industrialism, and not vice versa; examples from all the magazines, novels, and newspapers. In order to make it brief and typical, I take one case of a more or less Eugenist sort from a paper that lies open in front of me --- a paper that still bears on its forehead the boast of being peculiarly an organ of democracy in revolt. To this a man writes to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to sign his letter “Hopeful.” Well, there are certainly many methods by which people in the upper classes prevent procreation; one of them is what used to be called “platonic friendship,” till they found another name for it at the Old Bailey. I do not suppose the hopeful gentleman hopes for this; but some of us find the abortion he does hope for almost as abominable. That, however, is not the curious point. The curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, “When people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if there were no unwanted children.” You will observe that he tacitly takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage market. There are unwanted children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the parents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do not want to pay them properly. Doubtless, if you said to him directly, “Are you in favour of low wages?” he would say, “No.” But I am not, in this chapter, talking about the effect on such modern minds of a cross-examination to which they do not subject themselves. I am talking about the way their minds work, the instinctive trick and turn of their thoughts, the things they assume before argument, and the way they faintly feel that the world is going. And, frankly, the turn of their mind is to tell the child he is not wanted, as the turn of my mind is to tell the profiteer he is not wanted. Motherhood, they feel, and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good things in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the mutilation of womanhood and the massacre of men unborn, he signs himself “Hopeful.” He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human annihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself “Hopeless.”

This is the first evidence of motive: the ubiquitous assumption that life and love must fit into a fixed framework of employment, even (as in this case) of bad employment. The second evidence is the tacit and total neglect of the scientific question in all the departments in which it is not an employment question; as, for instance, the marriages of the princely, patrician, or merely plutocratic houses. I do not mean, of course, that no scientific men have rigidly tackled these, though I do not recall any cases. But I am not talking of the merits of individual men of science, but of the push and power behind this movement, the thing that is able to make it fashionable and politically important. I say, if this power were an interest in truth, or even in humanity, the first field in which to study would be in the weddings of the wealthy. Not only would the records be more lucid, and the examples more in evidence, but the cases would be more interesting and more decisive. For the grand marriages have presented both extremes of the problem of pedigree --- first the “breeding in and in,” and later the most incongruous cosmopolitan blends. It would really be interesting to note which worked the best, or what point of compromise was safest. For the poor (about whom the newspaper Eugenists are always talking) cannot offer any test cases so complete. Waiters never had to marry waitresses, as princes had to marry princesses. And (for the other extreme) housemaids seldom marry Red Indians. It may be because there are none to marry. But to the millionaires the continents are flying railway stations, and the most remote races can be rapidly linked together. A marriage in London or Paris may chain Ravenna to Chicago, or Ben Cruachan to Bagdad. Many European aristocrats marry Americans, notoriously the most mixed stock in the world; so that the disinterested Eugenist, with a little trouble, might reveal rich stores of negro or Asiatic blood to his delighted employer. Instead of which he dulls our ears and distresses our refinement by tedious denunciations of the monochrome marriages of the poor.

For there is something really pathetic about the Eugenist’s neglect of the aristocrat and his family affairs. People still talk about the pride of pedigree; but it strikes me as the one point on which the aristocrats are almost morbidly modest. We should be learned Eugenists if we were allowed to know half as much of their heredity as we are of their hairdressing. We see the modern aristocrat in the most human poses in the illustrated papers, playing with his dog or parrot --- nay, we see him playing with his child, or with his grandchild. But there is something heartrending in his refusal to play with his grandfather. There is often something vague and even fantastic about the antecedents of our most established families, which would afford the Eugenist admirable scope not only for investigation but for experiment. Certainly, if he could obtain the necessary powers, the Eugenist might bring off some startling effects with the mixed materials of the governing class. Suppose, to take wild and hypothetical examples, he were to marry a Scotch earl, say, to the daughter of a Jewish banker, or an English duke to an American parvenu of semi-Jewish extraction? What would happen? We have here an unexplored field.

It remains unexplored not merely through snobbery and cowardice, but because the Eugenist (at least the influential Eugenist) half consciously knows it is no part of his job; what he is really wanted for is to get the grip of the governing classes on to the unmanageable output of poor people. It would not matter in the least if all Lord Cowdray’s descendants grew up too weak to hold a tool or turn a wheel. It would matter very much, especially to Lord Cowdray, if all his employees grew up like that. The oligarch can be unemployable because he will not be employed. Thus the practical and popular exponent of Eugenics has his face always turned towards the slums, and instinctively thinks in terms of them. If he talks of segregating some incurably vicious type of the sexual sort, he is thinking of a ruffian who assaults girls in lanes. He is not thinking of a millionaire like White, the victim of Thaw. If he speaks of the hopelessness of feeble-mindedness, he is thinking of some stunted creature gaping at hopeless lessons in a poor school. He is not thinking of a millionaire like Thaw, the slayer of White. And this not because he is such a brute as to like people like White or Thaw any more than we do, but because he knows that his problem is the degeneration of the useful classes; because he knows that White would never have been a millionaire if all his workers had spent themselves on women as White did, that Thaw would never have been a millionaire if all his servants had been Thaws. The ornaments may be allowed to decay, but the machinery must be mended. That is the second proof of the plutocratic impulse behind all Eugenics: that no one thinks of applying it to the prominent classes. No one thinks of applying it where it could most easily be applied.

A third proof is the strange new disposition to regard the poor as a race; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies. It can be most clearly seen by comparing it with the old, more individual, charitable, and (as the Eugenists might say) sentimental view of poverty. In Goldsmith or Dickens or Hood there is a basic idea that the particular poor person ought not to be so poor: it is some accident or some wrong. Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim are fairy princes waiting for their fairy godmother. They are held as slaves, but rather as the hero and heroine of a Spanish or Italian romance were held as slaves by the Moors. The modern poor are getting to be regarded as slaves in the separate and sweeping sense of the negroes in the plantations. The bondage of the white hero to the black master was regarded as abnormal; the bondage of the black to the white master as normal. The Eugenist, for all I know, would regard the mere existence of Tiny Tim as a sufficient reason for massacring the whole family of Cratchit; but, as a matter of fact, we have here a very good instance of how much more practically true to life is sentiment than cynicism. The poor are not a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk about breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact, what Dickens describes: “a dustbin of individual accidents,” of damaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility. The class very largely consists of perfectly promising children, lost like Oliver Twist, or crippled like Tiny Tim. It contains very valuable things, like most dustbins. But the Eugenist delusion of the barbaric breed in the abyss affects even those more gracious philanthropists who almost certainly do want to assist the destitute and not merely to exploit them. It seems to affect not only their minds, but their very eyesight. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Alec Tweedie almost scornfully asks, “When we go through the slums, do we see beautiful children?” The answer is, “Yes, very often indeed.” I have seen children in the slums quite pretty enough to be Little Nell or the outcast whom Hood called “young and so fair.” Nor has the beauty anything necessarily to do with health, there are beautiful healthy children, beautiful dying children, ugly dying children, ugly uproarious children in Petticoat Lane or Park Lane. There are people of every physical and mental type of every sort of health and breeding, in a single back street. They have nothing in common but the wrong we do them.

The important point is, however, that there is more fact and realism in the wildest and most elegant old fictions about disinherited dukes and long-lost daughters than there is in this Eugenist attempt to make the poor all of a piece --- a sort of black fungoid growth that is ceaselessly increasing in chasm. There is a cheap sneer at poor landladies: that they always say they have seen better days. Nine times out of ten they say it because it is true. What can be said of the great mass of Englishmen, by anyone who knows any history, except that they have seen better days? And the landlady’s claim is not snobbish, but rather spirited; it is her testimony to the truth in the old tales of which I spoke: that she ought not to be so poor or so servile in status; that a normal person ought to have more property and more power in the State than that. Such dreams of lost dignity are perhaps the only things that stand between us and the cattle breeding paradise now promised. Nor are such dreams by any means impotent. I remember Mr. T. P. O’Connor wrote an interesting article about Madame Humbert, in the course of which he said that Irish peasants, and probably most peasants, tended to have a half fictitious family legend about an estate to which they were entitled. This was written in the time when Irish peasants were landless in their land; and the delusion doubtless seemed all the more entertaining to the landlords who ruled them and the money-lenders who ruled the landlords. But the dream has conquered the realities. The phantom farms have materialized. Merely by tenaciously affirming the kind of pride that comes after a fall, by remembering the old civilization and refusing the new, by recurring to an old claim that seemed to most Englishmen like the lie of a broken-down lodging-house keeper at Margate --- by all this the Irish have got what they want, in solid mud and turf. That imaginary estate has conquered the Three Estates of the Realm.

But the homeless Englishman must not even remember a home. So far from his house being his castle, he must not have even a castle in the air. He must have no memories; that is why he is taught no history. Why is he told none of the truth about the mediaeval civilization except a few cruelties and mistakes in chemistry? Why does a mediaeval burgher never appear till he can appear in a shirt and a halter? Why does a mediaeval monastery never appear till it is “corrupt” enough to shock the innocence of Henry VIII? Why do we hear of one charter --- that of the barons --- and not a word of the charters of the carpenters, smiths, shipwrights and all the rest? The reason is that the English peasant is not only not allowed to have an estate, he is not even allowed to have lost one. The past has to be painted pitch black, that it may be worse than the present.

There is one strong, startling, outstanding thing about Eugenics, and that is its meanness. Wealth, and the social science supported by wealth, had tried an inhuman experiment. The experiment had entirely failed. They sought to make wealth accumulate --- and they made men decay. Then instead of confessing the error, and trying to restore the wealth, or attempting to repair the decay, they are trying to cover their first cruel experiment with a more cruel experiment. They put a poisonous plaster on a poisonous wound. Vilest of all, they actually quote the bewilderment produced among the poor by their first blunder as a reason for allowing them to blunder again. They are apparently ready to arrest all the opponents of their system as mad, merely because the system was maddening. Suppose a captain had collected volunteers in a hot, waste country by the assurance that he could lead them to water, and knew where to meet the rest of his regiment. Suppose he led them wrong, to a place where the regiment could not be for days, and there was no water. And suppose sunstroke struck them down on the sand man after man, and they kicked and danced and raved. And, when at last the regiment came, suppose the captain successfully concealed his mistake because all his men had suffered too much from it to testify to its ever having occurred. What would you think of the gallant captain? It is pretty much what I think of this particular captain of industry.

Of course, nobody supposes that all Capitalists, or most Capitalists, are conscious of any such intellectual trick. Most of them are as much bewildered as the battered proletariat; but there are some who are less well-meaning and more mean. And these are leading their more generous colleagues towards the fulfilment of this ungenerous evasion, if not towards the comprehension of it. Now a ruler of the Capitalist civilization, who had come to consider the idea of ultimately herding and breeding the workers like cattle, has certainly contemporary problems to review. He has to consider what forces still exist in the modern world for the frustration of his design. The first question is how much remains of the old ideal of individual liberty. The second question is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarian ideas as may be implied in Socialism. The third is whether there is any power of resistance in the tradition of the populace itself. These three questions for the future I shall consider in their order in the final chapters that follow. It is enough to say here that I think the progress of these ideals has broken down at the precise point where they will fail to prevent the experiment. Briefly, the progress will have deprived the Capitalist of his old Individualist scruples, without committing him to his new Collectivist obligations. He is in a very perilous position; for he has ceased to be a Liberal without becoming a Socialist, and the bridge by which he was crossing has broken above an abyss of Anarchy.

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VI

THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY

If such a thing as the Eugenic sociology had been suggested in the period from Fox to Gladstone, it would have been far more fiercely repudiated by the reformers than by the Conservatives. If Tories had regarded it as an insult to marriage, Radicals would have far more resolutely regarded it as an insult to citizenship. But in the interval we have suffered from a process resembling a sort of mystical parricide, such as is told of so many gods, and is true of so many great ideas. Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended. Men merely finding themselves free found themselves free to dispute the value of freedom. But the important point to seize about this reactionary scepticism is that as it is bound to be unlimited in theory, so it is bound to be unlimited in practice. In other words, the modern mind is set in an attitude which would enable it to advance, not only towards Eugenic legislation, but towards any conceivable or inconceivable extravagances of Eugenics.

Those who reply to any plea for freedom invariably fall into a certain trap. I have debated with numberless different people on these matters, and I confess I find it amusing to see them tumbling into it one after another. I remember discussing it before a club of very active and intelligent Suffragists, and I cast it here for convenience in the form which it there assumed. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I say that to take away a poor man’s pot of beer is to take away a poor man’s personal liberty, it is very vital to note what is the usual or almost universal reply. People hardly ever do reply, for some reason or other, by saying that a man’s liberty consists of such and such things, but that beer is an exception that cannot be classed among them, for such and such reasons. What they almost in variably do say is something like this. “After all, what is liberty? Man must live as a member of a society, and must obey those laws which, etc., etc.” In other words, they collapse into a complete confession that they are attacking all liberty and any liberty; that they do deny the very existence or the very possibility of liberty. In the very form of the answer they admit the full scope of the accusation against them. In trying to rebut the smaller accusation, they plead guilty to the larger one.

This distinction is very important, as can be seen from any practical parallel. Suppose we wake up in the middle of the night and find that a neighbor has entered the house not by the front-door but by the skylight; we may suspect that he has come after the fine old family jewellery. We may be reassured if he can refer it to a really exceptional event; as that he fell on to the roof out of an aeroplane, or climbed on to the roof to escape from a mad dog. Short of the incredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for an extraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shall hardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistful fashion and says, “After all, what is property? Why should material objects be thus artificially attached, etc., etc.?” We shall merely realize that his attitude allows of his taking the jewellery and everything else. Or if the neighbour approaches us carrying a large knife dripping with blood, we may be convinced by his story that he killed another neighbour in self-defence, that the quiet gentleman next door was really a homicidal maniac. We shall know that homicidal mania is exceptional and that we ourselves are so happy as not to suffer from it, and being free from the disease may be free from the danger. But it will not soothe us for the man with the gory knife to say softly and pensively, “After all, what is human life? Why should we cling to it? Brief at the best, sad at the brightest, it is itself but a disease from which, etc., etc.” We shall perceive that the sceptic is in a mood not only to murder us but to massacre everybody in the street. Exactly the same effect which would be produced by the questions of “What is property?” and “What is life?” is produced by the question of “What is liberty?” It leaves the questioner free to disregard any liberty, or in other words to take any liberties. The very thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he may choose to do. If he gags a man to prevent him from indulging in profane swearing, or locks him in the coal cellar to guard against his going on the spree, he can still be satisfied with saying “After all, what is liberty? Man is a member of, etc., etc.”

That is the problem, and that is why there is now no protection against Eugenic or any other experiments. If the men who took away beer as an unlawful pleasure had paused for a moment to define the lawful pleasures, there might be a different situation. If the men who had denied one liberty had taken the opportunity to affirm other liberties, there might be some defence for them. But it never occurs to them to admit any liberties at all. It never so much as crosses their minds. Hence the excuse for the last oppression will always serve as well as for the next oppression; and to that tyranny there can be no end.

Hence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secret and sacred place of personal freedom, where no sane man ever dreamed of seeing it; and especially the sanctuary of sex. It is as easy to take away a man’s wife or baby as to take away his beer when you can say “What is liberty?”; just as it is easy to cut off his head as to cut off his hair if you are free to say “What is life?” There is no rational philosophy of human rights generally disseminated among the populace, to which we can appeal in defence even of the most intimate or individual things that anybody can imagine. For so far as there was a vague principle in these things, that principle has been wholly changed. It used to be said that a man could have liberty, so long as it did not interfere with the liberty of others. This did afford some rough justification for the ordinary legal view of the man with the pot of beer. For instance, it was logical to allow some degree of distinction between beer and tea, on the ground that a man may be moved by excess of beer to throw the pot at somebody’s head. And it may be said that the spinster is seldom moved by excess of tea to throw the tea-pot at anybody’s head. But the whole ground of argument is now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to others by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking the beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that the Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control all the habits of all the citizens, and among the rest their habits in the matter of sex.

But there is more than this. It is not only true that it is the last liberties of man that are being taken away; and not merely his first or most superficial liberties. It is also inevitable that the last liberties should be taken first. It is inevitable that the most private matters should be most under public coercion. This inverse variation is very important, though very little realized. If a man’s personal health is a public concern, his most private acts are more public than his most public acts. The official must deal more directly with his cleaning his teeth in the morning than with his using his tongue in the market place. The inspector must interfere more with how he sleeps in the middle of the night than with how he works in the course of the day. The private citizen must have much less to say about his bath or his bedroom window than about his vote or his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a private detective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in public affairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he should sneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All this and things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that the State must make itself responsible for the health of the citizen. But the point is that the policeman must deal primarily and promptly with the citizen in his relation to his home, and only indirectly and more doubtfully with the citizen in his relation to his city. By the whole logic of this test, the king must hear what is said in the inner chamber and hardly notice what is proclaimed from the house-tops. We heard of a revolution that turns everything upside down. But this is almost literally a revolution that turns everything inside out.

If a wary reactionary of the tradition of Metternich had wished in the nineteenth century to reverse the democratic tendency, he would naturally have begun by depriving the democracy of its margin of more dubious powers over more distant things. He might well begin, for instance, by removing the control of foreign affairs from popular assemblies; and there is a case for saying that a people may understand its own affairs, without knowing anything whatever about foreign affairs. Then he might centralize great national questions, leaving a great deal of local government in local questions. This would proceed so for a long time before it occurred to the blackest terrorist of the despotic ages to interfere with a man’s own habits in his own house. But the new sociologists and legislators are, by the nature of their theory, bound to begin where the despots leave off, even if they leave off where the despots begin. For them, as they would put it, the first things must be the very fountains of life, love and birth and babyhood; and these are always covered fountains, flowing in the quiet courts of the home. For them, as Mr. H. G. Wells put it, life itself may be regarded merely as a tissue of births. Thus they are coerced by their own rational principle to begin all coercion at the other end, at the inside end. What happens to the outside end, the external and remote powers of the citizen, they do not very much care; and it is probable that the democratic institutions of recent centuries will be allowed to decay in undisturbed dignity for a century or two more. Thus our civilization will find itself in an interesting situation, not without humour; in which the citizen is still supposed to wield imperial powers over the ends of the earth, but has admittedly no power over his own body and soul at all. He will still be consulted by politicians about whether opium is good for Chinamen, but not whether ale is good for him. He will be cross-examined for his opinions about the danger of allowing Kamshatkal to have a war-fleet, but not about allowing his own child to have a wooden sword. Above all, he will be consulted about the delicate diplomatic crisis created by the proposed marriage of the Emperor of China, and not allowed to marry as he pleases.

Part of this prophecy or probability has already been accomplished; the rest of it, in the absence of any protest, is in process of accomplishment. It would be easy to give an almost endless catalogue of examples, to show how, in dealing with the poorer classes at least, coercion has already come near to a direct control of the relations of the sexes. But I am much more concerned in this chapter to point out that all these things have been adopted in principle, even where they have not been adopted in practice. It is much more vital to realize that the reformers have possessed themselves of a principle, which will cover all such things if it be granted, and which is not sufficiently comprehended to be contradicted. It is a principle whereby the deepest things of flesh and spirit must have the most direct relation with the dictatorship of the State. They must have it, by the whole reason and rationale upon which the thing depends. It is a system that might be symbolized by the telephone from headquarters standing by a man’s bed. He must have a relation to Government like his relation to God. That is, the more he goes into the inner chambers, and the more he closes the doors, the more he is alone with the law. The social machinery which makes such a State uniform and submissive will be worked outwards from the household as from a handle, or a single mechanical knob or button. In a horrible sense, loaded with fear and shame and every detail of dishonour, it will be true to say that charity begins at home.

Charity will begin at home in the sense that all home children will be like charity children. Philanthropy will begin at home, for all householders will be like paupers. Police administration will begin at home, for all citizens will be like convicts. And when health and the humours of daily life have passed into the domain of this social discipline, when it is admitted that the community must primarily control the primary habits, when all law begins, so to speak, next to the skin or nearest the vitals --- then indeed it will appear absurd that marriage and maternity should not be similarly ordered. Then indeed it will seem to be illogical, and it will be illogical, that love should be free when life has lost its freedom.

So passed, to all appearance, from the minds of men the strange dream and fantasy called freedom. Whatever be the future of these evolutionary experiments and their effect on civilization, there is one land at least that has something to mourn. For us in England something will have perished which our fathers valued all the more because they hardly troubled to name it; and whatever be the stars of a more universal destiny, the great star of our night has set. The English had missed many other things that men of the same origins had achieved or retained. Not to them was given, like the French, to establish eternal communes and clear codes of equality; not to them, like the South Germans, to keep the popular culture of their songs; not to them, like the Irish, was it given to die daily for a great religion. But a spirit had been with them from the first which fenced, with a hundred quaint customs and legal fictions, the way of a man who wished to walk nameless and alone. It was not for nothing that they forgot all their laws to remember the name of an outlaw, and filled the green heart of England with the figure of Robin Hood. It was not for nothing that even their princes of art and letters had about them something of kings incognito, undiscovered by formal or academic fame; so that no eye can follow the young Shakespeare as he came up the green lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost himself among the lights of London. It is [not] for nothing that the very roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down on a map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the home of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested upon its woodlands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed departed, it matters little that it has been driven out by perversions it had itself permitted, by monsters it had idly let loose. Industrialism and Capitalism and the rage for physical science were English experiments in the sense that the English lent themselves to their encouragement; but there was something else behind them and within them that was not they --- its name was liberty, and it was our life. It may be that this delicate and tenacious spirit has at last evaporated. If so, it matters little what becomes of the external experiments of our nation in later time. That at which we look will be a dead thing alive with its own parasites. The English will have destroyed England.

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VII

THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM

Socialism is one of the simplest ideas in the world. It has always puzzled me how there came to be so much bewilderment and misunderstanding and miserable mutual slander about it. At one time I agreed with Socialism, because it was simple. Now I disagree with Socialism, because it is too simple. Yet most of its opponents still seem to treat it, not merely as an iniquity but as a mystery of iniquity, which seems to mystify them even more than it maddens them. It may not seem strange that its antagonists should be puzzled about what it is. It may appear more curious and interesting that its admirers are equally puzzled. Its foes used to denounce Socialism as Anarchy, which is its opposite. Its friends seemed to suppose that it is a sort of optimism, which is almost as much of an opposite. Friends and foes alike talked as if it involved a sort of faith in ideal human nature; why I could never imagine. The Socialist system, in a more special sense than any other, is founded not on optimism but on original sin. It proposes that the State, as the conscience of the community, should possess all primary forms of property; and that obviously on the ground that men cannot be trusted to own or barter or combine or compete without injury to themselves. Just as a State might own all the guns lest people should shoot each other, so this State would own all the gold and land lest they should cheat or rackrent or exploit each other. It seems extraordinarily simple and even obvious; and so it is. It is too obvious to be true. But while it is obvious, it seems almost incredible that anybody ever thought it optimistic.

I am myself primarily opposed to Socialism, or Collectivism or Bolshevism or whatever we call it, for a primary reason not immediately involved here: the ideal of property. I say the ideal and not merely the idea; and this alone disposes of the moral mistake in the matter. It disposes of all the dreary doubts of the Anti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yet drearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I do not admit that private property is a concession to baseness and selfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the most truly popular of all points of honour. But this, though it has everything to do with my plea for a domestic dignity, has nothing to do with this passing summary of the situation of Socialism. I only remark in passing that it is vain for the more vulgar sort of Capitalists, sneering at ideals, to say to me that in order to hate Socialism “You must alter human nature.” I answer “Yes. You must alter it for the worse.”

The clouds were considerably cleared away from the meaning of Socialism by the Fabians of the ‘nineties; by Mr. Bernard Shaw, a sort of anti-romantic Quixote, who charged chivalry as chivalry charged windmills, with Sidney Webb for his Sancho Panza. In so far as these paladins had a castle to defend, we may say that their castle was the Post Office. The red pillar-box was the immovable post against which the irresistible force of Capitalist individualism was arrested. Business men who said that nothing could be managed by the State were forced to admit that they trusted all their business letters and business telegrams to the State.

After all, it was not found necessary to have an office competing with another office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or more picturesque postmen. It was not necessary to efficiency that the postmistress should buy a penny stamp for a halfpenny and sell it for two pence; or that she should haggle and beat customers down about the price of a postal order; or that she should always take tenders for telegrams. There was obviously nothing actually impossible about the State management of national needs; and the Post Office was at least tolerably managed. Though it was not always a model employer, by any means, it might be made so by similar methods. It was not impossible that equitable pay, and even equal pay, could be given to the Post-Master-General and the postman. We had only to extend this rule of public responsibility, and we should escape from all the terror of insecurity and torture of compassion, which hag-rides humanity in the insane extremes of economic inequality and injustice. As Mr. Shaw put it, “A man must save Society’s honour before he can save his own.”

That was one side of the argument: that the change would remove inequality; and there was an answer on the other side. It can be stated most truly by putting another model institution and edifice side by side with the Post Office. It is even more of an ideal republic, or commonwealth without competition or private profit. It supplies its citizens not only with the stamps but with clothes and food and lodging, and all they require. It observes considerable level of equality in these things; notably in the clothes. It not only supervises the letters but all the other human communications; notable the sort of evil communications that corrupt good manners. This twin model to the Post Office is called the Prison. And much of the scheme for a model State was regarded by its opponents as a scheme for a model prison; good because it fed men equally, but less acceptable since it imprisoned them equally.

It is better to be in a bad prison than in a good one. From the standpoint of the prisoner this is not at all a paradox; if only because in a bad prison he is more likely to escape. But apart from that, a man was in many ways better off in the old dirty and corrupt prison, where he could bribe turnkeys to bring him drink and meet fellow prisoners to drink with. Now that is exactly the difference between the present system and the proposed system. Nobody worth talking about respects the present system. Capitalism is a corrupt prison. That is the best that can be said for Capitalism. But it is something to be said for it; for a man is a little freer in that corrupt prison than he would be in a complete prison. As a man can find one jailer more lax than another, so he could find one employer more kind than another; he has at least a choice of tyrants. In the other case he finds the same tyrant at every turn. Mr. Shaw and other rational Socialists have agreed that the State would be in practice government by a small group. Any independent man who disliked that group would find his foe waiting for him at the end of every road.

It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as decreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State could provide homes and meals for all, on the other it was answered that this could only be done by State officials who would inspect houses and regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the most interesting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do everything that had even been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that had ever been desired in it. Since it was supposed to gain equality at the sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possible to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed, there was not the faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality. But there was a very spirited and vigourous effort to eliminate liberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and interferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating those whom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was the Capitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted in every sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to the wiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easy to proceed more promptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gone through the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. After all it was easy to inspect the house without having helped to build it; it was even possible, with luck, to inspect the house in time to prevent it being built. All that is described in the documents of the Housing Problem; for the people of this age loved problems and hated solutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing the dinner. All that can be found in the documents of what is called Temperance Reform.

In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists themselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over bodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a Capitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in the smallest degree diminish the inequalities of a Capitalist State. It simply destroyed such individual liberties as remained among its victims. It did not enable any man to build a better house; it only limited the houses he might live in --- or how he might manage to live there, forbidding him to keep pigs or poultry or to sell beer or cider. It did not even add anything to a man’s wages; it only took away something from a man’s wages and locked it up, whether he liked it or not, in a sort of money-box which was regarded as a medicine-chest. It does not send food into the house to feed the children; it only sends an inspector into the house to punish the parents for having no food to feed them. It does not see that they have got a fire; it only punishes them for not having a fireguard. It does not even occur to it to provide the fireguard.

Now this anomalous situation will probably ultimately evolve into the Servile State of Mr. Belloc’s thesis. The poor will sink into slavery; it might as correctly be said that the poor will rise into slavery. That is to say, sooner or later, it is very probable that the rich will take over the philanthropic as well as the tyrannic side of the bargain; and will feed men like slaves as well as hunting them like outlaws. But for the purpose of my own argument it is not necessary to carry the process so far as this, or indeed any farther than it has already gone. The purely negative stage of interference, at which we have stuck for the present, is in itself quite favourable to all these eugenical experiments. The capitalist whose half-conscious thought and course of action I have simplified into a story in the preceding chapters, finds this insufficient solution quite sufficient for his purposes. What he has felt for a long time is that he must check or improve the reckless and random breeding of the submerged race, which is at once outstripping his requirements and failing to fulfil his needs. Now the anomalous situation has already accustomed him to stopping things. The first interferences with sex need only be negative; and there are already negative interferences without number. So that the study of this stage of Socialism brings us to the same conclusion as that of the ideal of liberty as formally professed by Liberalism. The ideal of liberty is lost, and the ideal of Socialism is changed, till it is a mere excuse for the oppression of the poor.

The first movements for intervention in the deepest domestic concerns of the poor all had this note of negative interference. Official papers were sent round to the mothers in poor streets; papers in which a total stranger asked these respectable women questions which a man would be killed for asking, in the class of what we called gentlemen or in the countries of what were called free men. They were questions supposed to refer to the conditions of maternity; but the point is here that the reformers did not begin by building up those economic or material conditions. They did not attempt to pay money or establish property to create those conditions. They never give anything --- except orders. Another form of the intervention, and one already mentioned, is the kidnapping of children upon the most fantastic excuses of sham psychology. Some people established an apparatus of tests and trick questions; which might make an amusing game of riddles for the family fireside, but seems an insufficient reason for mutilating and dismembering the family. Others became interested in the hopeless moral condition of children born in the economic condition which they did not attempt to improve. They were great on the fact that crime was a disease; and carried on their criminological studies so successfully as to open the reformatory for little boys who played truant; there was not reformatory for reformers. I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.

Finally one thing may be added which is at least clear. Whether or no the organisation of industry will issue positively in a eugenical reconstruction of the family, it has already issued negatively, as in the negations already noted, in a partial destruction of it. It took the form of a propaganda of popular divorce, calculated at least to accustom the masses to a new notion of the shifting and re-grouping of families. I do not discuss the question of divorce here, as I have done elsewhere, in its intrinsic character; I merely note it as one of these negative reforms which have been substituted for positive economic equality. It was preached with a weird hilarity, as if the suicide of love were something not only humane but happy. But it need not be explained, and certainly it need not be denied, that the harassed poor of a diseased industrialism were indeed maintaining marriage under every disadvantage, and often found individual relief in divorce. Industrialism does produce many unhappy marriages, for the same reason that it produces so many unhappy men. But all the reforms were directed to rescuing the industrialism rather than the happiness. Poor couples were to be divorced because they were already divided. Through all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of sacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with the modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest promptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and gathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled about the chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts were instantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to pour away the wine.

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VIII

THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GOD

The only place where it is possible to find an echo of the mind of the English masses is either in conversation or in comic songs. The latter are obviously the more dubious, but they are the only things recorded and quotable that come anywhere near it. We talk about the popular Press; but in truth there is no popular press. It may be a good thing; but, anyhow, most readers would be mildly surprised if a newspaper leading article were written in the language of a navvy. Sometimes the Press is interested in things in which the democracy is also genuinely interested; such as horse-racing. Sometimes the Press is about as popular as the Press Gang. We talk of Labour leaders in Parliament; but they would be highly unparliamentary if they talked like labourers. The Bolshevists, I believe, profess to promote something that they call “proletarian art,” which only shows that the word Bolshevism can sometimes be abbreviated into bosh. That sort of Bolshevist is not a proletarian, but rather the very thing he accuses everybody also of being. The Bolshevist is above all a bourgeois; a Jewish intellectual of the town. And the real case against industrial intellectualism could hardly be put better than in this very comparison. There has never been such a thing as proletarian art; but there has emphatically been such a thing as peasant art. And the only literature which even reminds us of the real tone and talk of the English working classes is to be found in the comic song of the English music-hall.

I first heard one of them on my voyage to America, in the midst of the sea within sight of the New World, with the Statue of Liberty beginning to loom up on the horizon. From the lips of a young Scotch engineer, of all people in the world, I heard for the first time these immortal words from a London music-hall song:---

“Father’s got the sack from the water-works For smoking of his old cherry-briar; Father’s got the sack from the water-works ‘Cos he might set the water-works on fire.”

As I told my friends in America, I think it no part of a patriot to boast; and boasting itself is certainly not a thing to boast of. I doubt the persuasive power of English as exemplified in Kipling, and one can easily force it on foreigners too much, even as exemplified in Dickens. I am no Imperialist, and only on rare and proper occasions a Jingo. But when I hear those words about Father and the water-works, when I hear under far-off foreign skies anything so gloriously English as that, then indeed (I said to them), then indeed:---

“I thank the goodness and the grace That on my birth have smiled, And made me, as you see me here, A little English child.”

But that noble stanza about the water-works has other elements of nobility besides nationality. It provides a compact and almost perfect summary of the whole social problem in industrial countries like England and America. If I wished to set forth systematically the elements of the ethical and economic problem in Pittsburgh of Sheffield, I could not do better than take these few words as a text, and divide them up like the heads of a sermon. Let me note the points in some rough fashion here.

I.--- Father. This word is still in use among the more ignorant and ill-paid of the industrial community; and is the badge of an old convention or unit called the family. A man and woman having vowed to be faithful to each other, the man makes himself responsible for all the children of the woman, and is thus generically called “Father.” It must not be supposed that the poet or singer is necessarily one of the children. It may be the wife, called by the same ritual “Mother.” Poor English wives say “Father” as poor Irish wives say “Himself,” meaning the titular head of the house. The point to seize is that among the ignorant this convention or custom still exists. Father and the family are the foundations of thought; the natural authority still comes natural to the poet; but it is overlaid and thwarted with more artificial authorities; the official, the schoolmaster, the policeman, the employer, and so on. What these forces fighting the family are we shall see, my dear brethren, when we pass to our second heading; which is:---

2.--- Got the Sack. This idiom marks a later stage of the history of the language than the comparatively primitive word “Father.” It is needless to discuss whether the term comes from Turkey or some other servile society. In America they say that Father has been fired. But it involves the whole of the unique economic system under which Father has now to live. Though assumed by family tradition to be a master, he can now, by industrial tradition, only be a particular kind of servant; a servant who has not the security of a slave. If he owned his own shop and tools, he could not get the sack. If his master owned him, he could not get the sack. The slave and the guildsman know where they will sleep every night; it was only the proletarian of individualist industrialism who could get the sack, if not in the style of the Bosphorus, at least in the sense of the Embankment. We pass to the third heading.

3.--- From the Water-works. This detail of Father’s life is very important; for this is the reply to most of the Socialists, as the last section is to so many of the Capitalists. The water-works which employed Father is a very large, official and impersonal institution. Whether it is technically a bureaucratic department or a Big business makes little or no change in the feelings of Father in connection with it. The water-works might or might not be nationalized; and it would make no necessary difference to Father being fired, and no difference at all to his being accused of playing with fire. In fact, if the Capitalists are more likely to give him the sack, the Socialists are even more likely to forbid him the smoke. There is no freedom for Father except in some sort of private ownership of things like water and fire. If he owned his own well his water could never be cut off, and while he sits by his own fire his pipe can never be put out. That is the real meaning of property, and the real argument against Socialism; probably the only argument against Socialism.

4.---For Smoking. Nothing marks this queer intermediate phase of industrialism more strangely than the fact that, while employers still claim the right to sack him like a stranger, they are already beginning to claim the right to supervise him like a son. Economically he can go and starve on the Embankment; but ethically and hygienically he must be controlled and coddled in the nursery. Government repudiates all responsibility for seeing that he gets bread. But it anxiously accepts all responsibility for seeing that he does not get beer. It passes an Insurance Act to force him to provide himself with medicine; but it is avowedly indifferent to whether he is able to provide himself with meals. Thus while the sack is inconsistent with the family, the supervision is really inconsistent with the sack. The whole thing is a tangled chain of contradictions. It is true that in the special and sacred text of scripture we are here considering, the smoking is forbidden on a general and public and not on a medicinal and private ground. But it is none the less relevant to remember that, as his masters have already proved that alcohol is a poison, they may soon prove that nicotine is a poison. And it is most significant of all that this sort of danger is even greater in what is called the new democracy of America than in what is called the old oligarchy of England. When I was in America, people were already “defending” tobacco. People who defend tobacco are on the road to proving that daylight is defensible, or that it is not really sinful to sneeze. In other words, they are quietly going mad.

5.--- Of his old Cherry-briar. Here we have the intermediate and anomalous position of the institution of Property. The sentiment still exists, even among the poor, or perhaps especially among the poor. But it is attached to toys rather than tools; to the minor products rather than to the means of production. But something of the sanity of ownership is still to be observed; for instance, the element of custom and continuity. It was an old cherry-briar; systematically smoked by Father in spite of all wiles and temptations to Woodbines and gaspers; an old companion possibly connected with various romantic or diverting events in Father’s life. It is perhaps a relic as well as a trinket. But because it is not a true tool, because it gives the man no grip on the creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of his self-respect, at the mercy of the thing called the sack. When he gets the sack from the water-works, it is only too probable that he will have to pawn his old cherry-briar.

6.--- ‘Cos he might set the water-works on fire. And that single line, like the lovely single lines of the great poets, is so full, so final, so perfect a picture of all the laws we pass and all the reasons we give for them, so exact an analysis of the logic of all our precautions at the present time, that the pen falls even from the hand of the commentator; and the masterpiece is left to speak for itself.

Some such analysis as the above gives a better account than most of the anomalous attitude and situation of the English proletarian today. It is the more appropriate because it is expressed in the words he actually uses; which certainly do not include the word “proletarian.” It will be noted that everything that goes to make up that complexity is in an unfinished state. Property has not quite vanished; slavery has not quite arrived; marriage exists under difficulties; social regimentation exists under restraints, or rather under subterfuges. The question which remains is which force is gaining on the other, and whether the old forces are capable of resisting the new. I hope they are; but I recognize that they resist under more than one heavy handicap. The chief of these is that the family feeling of the workmen is by this time rather an instinct than an ideal. The obvious thing to protect an ideal is a religion. The obvious thing to protect the ideal of marriage is the Christian religion. And for various reasons, which only a history of England could explain (though it hardly ever does), the working classes of this country have been very much cut off from Christianity. I do not dream of denying, indeed I should take every opportunity of affirming, that monogamy and its domestic responsibilities can be defended on rational apart from religious grounds. But a religion is the practical protection of any moral idea which has to be popular and which has to be pugnacious. And our ideal, if it is to survive, will have to be both.

Those who make merry over the landlady who has seen better days, of whom something has been said already, commonly speak, in the same jovial journalese, about her household goods as her household gods. They would be much startled if they discovered how right they are. Exactly what is lacking to the modern materialist is something that can be what the household gods were to the ancient heathen. The household gods of the heathen were not only wood and stone; at least there is always more than that in the stone of the hearth-stone and the wood of the roof-tree. So long as Christianity continued the tradition of patron saints and portable relics, this idea of a blessing on the household could continue. If men had not domestic divinities, at least they had divine domesticities. When Christianity was chilled with Puritanism and rationalism, this inner warmth or secret fire in the house faded on the hearth. But some of the embers still glow or at least glimmer; and there is still a memory among the poor that their material possessions are something sacred. I know poor men for whom it is the romance of their lives to refuse big sums of money for an old copper warming-pan. They do not want it, in any sense of base utility. They do not use it as a warming pan; but it warms them for all that. It is indeed, as Sergeant Buzfuz humorously observed, a cover for hidden fire. And the fire is that which burned before the strange and uncouth wooden gods, like giant dolls in the huts of ancient Italy. It is a household god. And I can imagine some such neglected and unlucky English man dying with his eyes on the red gleam of that piece of copper, as happier men have died with their eyes on the golden gleam of a chalice or a cross.

It will thus be noted that there has always been some connection between a mystical belief and the materials of domesticity; that they generally go together; and that now, in a more mournful sense, they are gone together. The working classes have no reserves of property with which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religion with which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they are under the enormous disadvantage of being right without knowing it. They hold their sound principles as if they were sullen prejudices. They almost secrete their small property as if it were stolen property. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks to her husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolved to run away from her husband. Often she will cry as hopelessly, and as it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were a child deprived of her doll. Indeed, a child in the street, crying for her lost doll, would probably receive more sympathy than she does.

Meanwhile the fun goes on; and many such conflicts are recorded, even in the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking philanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any number of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be flippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather fierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I know that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives of sincere but confused compassion, and many more from a dull but not dishonourable medical or legal habit. But if I and those who agree with me tend to some harshness and abruptness of condemnation, these worthy people need not be altogether impatient with our impatience. It is surely beneath them, in the scope of their great schemes, to complain of protests so ineffectual about wrongs so individual. I have considered in this chapter the chances of general democratic defence of domestic honour, and have been compelled to the conclusion that they are not at present hopeful; and it is at least clear that we cannot be founding on them any personal hopes. If this conclusion leaves us defeated, we submit that it leaves us disinterested. Ours is not the sort of protest, at least, that promises anything even to the demagogue, let alone the sycophant. Those we serve will never rule, and those we pity will never rise. Parliament will never be surrounded by a mob of submerged grandmothers brandishing pawn-tickets. There is no trade union of defective children. It is not very probable that modern government will be overturned by a few poor dingy devils who are sent to prison by mistake, or rather by ordinary accident. Surely it is not for those magnificent Socialists, or those great reformers and reconstructors of Capitalism, sweeping onward to their scientific triumphs and caring for none of these things, to murmur at our vain indignation. At least if it is vain it is the less venal; and in so far as it is hopeless it is also thankless. They have their great campaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions, and the records of science and progress. They need not be angry with us, who plead for those who will never read our words or reward our effort, even with gratitude. They need surely have no worse mood towards us than mystification, seeing that in recalling these small things of broken hearts or homes, we are but recording what cannot be recorded; trivial tragedies that will fade faster and faster in the flux of time, cries that fail in a furious and infinite wind, wild words of despair that are written only upon running water; unless, indeed, as some so stubbornly and strangely say, they are somewhere cut deep into a rock, in the red granite of the wrath of God.

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IX

A SHORT CHAPTER

Round about the year 1913 Eugenics was turned from a fad to a fashion. Then, if I may so summarize the situation, the joke began in earnest. The organizing mind which we have seen considering the problem of slum population, the popular material and the possibility of protests, felt that the time had come to open the campaign Eugenics began to appear in big headlines in the daily Press, and big pictures in the illustrated papers. A foreign gentleman named Bolce, living at Hampstead, was advertised on a huge scale as having every intention of being the father of the Superman. It turned out to be a Superwoman, and was called Eugenette. The parents were described as devoting themselves to the production of perfect pre-natal conditions. They “eliminated everything from their lives which did not tend towards complete happiness.” Many might indeed be ready to do this; but in the voluminous contemporary journalism on the subject I can find no detailed notes about how it is done. Communications were opened with Mr. H. G. Wells, with Dr. Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. Karl Pearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefully cultivated in the parents. The problem of a sense of humour was felt to be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturally fearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientific as to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, they visited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards George Robey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper reader, however, it looked as if the names of Metchnikof and Steimnetz and Karl Pearson would soon be quite as familiar as those of Robey and Lauder and Bard. Arguments about these Eugenic authorities, reports of the controversies at the Eugenic Congress, filled countless columns. The fact that Mr. Bolce, the creator of perfect prenatal conditions, was afterwards sued in a lawcourt for keeping his own flat in conditions of filth and neglect, cast but a slight and momentary shadow upon the splendid dawn of the science. It would be vain to record any of the thousand testimonies to its triumph. In the nature of things, this should be the longest chapter in the book, or rather the beginning of another book. It should record, in numberless examples, the triumphant popularization of Eugenics in England. But as a matter of fact this is not the first chapter but the last. And this must be a very short chapter, because the whole of this story was cut short. A very curious thing happened. England went to war.

This would in itself have been a sufficiently irritating interruption in the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment of Eugenics. But a far more dreadful and disconcerting fact must be noted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to war with the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that very land of scientific culture from which the very ideal of a Superman had come. She went to war with the whole of Dr. Steinmetz, and presumably with at least half of Dr. Karl Pearson. She gave battle to the birthplace of nine-tenths of the professors who were the prophets of the new hope of humanity. In a few weeks the very name of professor was a matter for hissing and low plebeian mirth. The very name of Nietzsche, who had held up this hope of something superhuman to humanity, was laughed at for all the world as if he had been touched with lunacy. A new mood came upon the whole people, a mood of marching, of spontaneous soldierly vigilance and democratic discipline, moving to the faint tune of bugles far away. Men began to talk strangely of old and common things, of the counties of England, of its quiet landscapes, of motherhood and the half-buried religion of the race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making all things vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awful actuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and the Eugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one may say so, funny.

Such a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given. There was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfection than any other the type of order and foresight that are the subject of this book. It had long been the model State of all those more rational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation of society. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform. All the systematic social reform. All the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudly borrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found it convenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring and neutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had a privilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had the gratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scale and very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionary idealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams; or to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to wait for it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; but in the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silent for five years.

The thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. It might be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogether leave the memories of men; but men’s memories are unstable things. It may be that gradually these dazed dupes will gather again together, and attempt again to believe their dreams and disbelieve their eyes. There may be some whose love of slavery is so ideal and disinterested that they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment of that broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But there are limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been once deceived and a second time deceives himself. They have seen their paragons of science and organization playing their part on land and sea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love of humanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed the testimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neither would they believe though one rose from the dead; though all the millions who died to destroy Prussianism stood up and testified against it.

PART TWO: THE REAL AIM

I The Impotence of Impenitence II True History of a Tramp III True History of a Eugenist IV The Vengeance of the Flesh V The Meanness of the Motive VI The Eclipse of Liberty VII The Transformation of Socialism VIII The End of the Household Gods IX A Short Chapter

TO THE READER

I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason connected with the present situation; a reason which I should like briefly to emphasize and make clear.

Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are conceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before the war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; when eugenic babies --- not visibly very distinguishable from other babies --- sprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancy of Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr. Bernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a man like a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilization, of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be found in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion too controversially, and it seems to me that I some times took it too seriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organization.

And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might well fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one, and was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And, anyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style. Scientific officialism and organization in the State which had specialized in them, had gone to war with the older culture of Christendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would be hopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless. As the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, it grew more and more plain that the scientifically organized State was not increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen would ever again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So I thought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind.

I am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It has gradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the ruling classes in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussia is a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nine years old most of their principles and proceedings are a great deal older. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors that have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. For that reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect and publish these papers.

G. K. C.

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PARTE SECONDA: IL VERO SCOPO

I L’impotenza dell’impenitenza II Vera Storia di un Vagabondo III Vera Storia di un Eugenista IV La vendetta della carne V La meschinità del movente VI L’eclissi della libertà VII La trasformazione del socialismo VIII La fine degli dèi domestici IX Un breve capitolo

AL LETTORE

Pubblico questi saggi nel momento presente per una particolare ragione connessa con la situazione presente; una ragione che vorrei brevemente sottolineare e chiarire.

Benché la maggior parte delle conclusioni, specialmente verso la fine, siano concepite con riferimento a eventi recenti, la vera e propria mole degli appunti preliminari sulla scienza dell’Eugenetica fu scritta prima della guerra. Era un tempo in cui questo tema era l’argomento del momento; in cui i neonati eugenici — non visibilmente molto distinguibili dagli altri neonati — si sdraiavano dappertutto sui giornali illustrati; in cui la fantasia evoluzionistica di Nietzsche era il nuovo grido fra gli intellettuali; e in cui il signor Bernard Shaw e altri prendevano in considerazione l’idea che allevare un uomo come un cavallo da tiro fosse la vera via per conseguire quella civiltà superiore, di magnanimità intellettuale e di intuito compassionevole, che si può trovare nei cavalli da tiro. Può quindi apparire che io abbia preso la questione in modo troppo polemico, e mi sembra di averla talvolta presa troppo sul serio. Ma la critica dell’Eugenetica presto si dilatò da sé in una critica più generale di una moderna mania di ufficialismo scientifico e di rigida organizzazione sociale.

E poi giunse l’ora in cui sentii, non senza sollievo, che avrei ben potuto gettare tutti i miei appunti nel fuoco. Il fuoco era assai grande, e stava bruciando cose più grandi di simili pedantesche ciarlatanerie. E, in ogni caso, la questione stessa si stava risolvendo in uno stile assai diverso. L’ufficialismo scientifico e l’organizzazione nello Stato che vi si era specializzato erano entrati in guerra con la più antica cultura della Cristianità. O il prussianesimo avrebbe vinto e la protesta sarebbe stata vana, oppure il prussianesimo avrebbe perso e la protesta sarebbe stata superflua. Man mano che la guerra avanzava dal gas velenoso alla pirateria contro i neutrali, si faceva sempre più evidente che lo Stato scientificamente organizzato non cresceva in popolarità. Qualunque cosa accadesse, nessun inglese sarebbe mai più andato a ficcare il naso fra i lezzi di quel basso laboratorio. Così ritenni irrilevante tutto ciò che avevo scritto, e me lo tolsi dalla mente.

Con grande dolore devo dire che non è irrilevante. È divenuto via via evidente, al mio sguardo sbalordito, che le classi dirigenti in Inghilterra procedono ancora sul presupposto che la Prussia sia un modello per il mondo intero. Se parti del mio libro hanno quasi nove anni, la maggior parte dei loro principi e procedimenti è assai più antica. Non possono offrirci altro che la stessa soffocante scienza, la stessa prepotente burocrazia e lo stesso terrorismo di professori di decim’ordine che hanno condotto l’Impero germanico al suo recente e cospicuo trionfo. Per questa ragione, tre anni dopo la guerra con la Prussia, raccolgo e pubblico questi scritti.

G. K. C.

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PART ONE

THE FALSE THEORY

I

WHAT IS EUGENICS?

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.

There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists; or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed. It is called for convenience “Eugenics”; and that it ought to be destroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that it means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called “The Gracious Ones.” I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they are doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenics itself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas exist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming quickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a thousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no more to be bargained about than poisoning.

It is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: though some of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it. The movement consists of two parts: a moral basis, which is common to all, and a scheme of social application which varies a good deal. For the moral basis, it is obvious that man’s ethical responsibility varies with his knowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr. Johnson in that tower of vision), and the baby was ill through having eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might be calling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides of babies whose diet has been far more deadly; but I should be justified. I could not be expected to know enough about his other patients to be obliged (or even entitled) to sacrifice to them the baby for whom I was primarily and directly responsible. Now the Eugenic moral basis is this; that the baby for whom we are primarily and directly responsible is the babe unborn. That is, that we know (or may come to know) enough of certain inevitable tendencies in biology to consider the fruit of some contemplated union in that direct and clear light of conscience which we can now only fix on the other partner in that union. The one duty can conceivably be as definite as or more definite than the other. The baby that does not exist can be considered even before the wife who does. Now it is essential to grasp that this is a comparatively new note in morality. Of course sane people always thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the glory of God or according to the plan of Nature; but whether they counted such children as God’s reward for service or Nature’s premium on sanity, they always left the reward to God or the premium to Nature, as a less definable thing. The only person (and this is the point) towards whom one could have precise duties was the partner in the process. Directly considering the partner’s claims was the nearest one could get to indirectly considering the claims of posterity. If the women of the harem sang praises of the hero as the Moslem mounted his horse, it was because this was the due of a man; if the Christian knight helped his wife off her horse, it was because this was the due of a woman. Definite and detailed dues of this kind they did not predicate of the babe unborn; regarding him in that agnostic and opportunist light in which Mr. Browdie regarded the hypothetical child of Miss Squeers. Thinking these sex relations healthy, they naturally hoped they would produce healthy children; but that was all. The Moslem woman doubtless expected Allah to send beautiful sons to an obedient wife; but she would not have allowed any direct vision of such sons to alter the obedience itself. She would not have said, “I will now be a disobedient wife; as the learned leech informs me that great prophets are often children of disobedient wives.” The knight doubtless hoped that the saints would help him to strong children, if he did all the duties of his station, one of which might be helping his wife off her horse; but he would not have refrained from doing this because he had read in a book that a course of falling off horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem and Christian would have thought such speculations not only impious but utterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is not the point here.

The point here is that a new school believes Eugenics against Ethics. And it is proved by one familiar fact: that the heroisms of history are actually the crimes of Eugenics. The Eugenists’ books and articles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should and may come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feel that marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children. But history is full of the praises of people who have held sacred such ties to invalids; of cases like those of Colonel Hutchinson and Sir William Temples, who remained faithful to betrothals when beauty and health had been apparently blasted. And though the illnesses of Dorothy Osborne and Mrs. Hutchinson may not fall under the Eugenic speculations (I do not know), it is obvious that they might have done so; and certainly it would not have made any difference to men’s moral opinion of the act. I do not discuss here which morality I favour; but I insist that they are opposite. The Eugenist really sets up as saints the very men whom hundreds of families have called sneaks. To be consistent, they ought to put up statues to the men who deserted their loves because of bodily misfortune; with inscriptions celebrating the good Eugenist who, on his fiancée falling off a bicycle, nobly refused to marry her; or to the young hero who, on hearing of an uncle with erysipelas, magnanimously broke his word. What is perfectly plain is this: that mankind have hitherto held the bond between man and woman so sacred, and the effect of it on the children so incalculable, that they have always admired the maintenance of honour more than the maintenance of safety. Doubtless they thought that even the children might be none the worse for not being the children of cowards and shirkers; but this was not the first thought, the first commandment. Briefly, we may say that while many moral systems have set restraints on sex almost as severe as any Eugenist could set, they have almost always had the character of securing the fidelity of the two sexes to each other, and leaving the rest to God. To introduce an ethic which makes that fidelity or infidelity vary with some calculation about heredity is that rarest of all things, a revolution that has not happened before.

PARTE PRIMA

LA FALSA TEORIA

I

CHE COS’È L’EUGENETICA?

La cosa più saggia del mondo è gridare prima di essere feriti. Non serve a nulla gridare dopo essere stati feriti; e tanto meno dopo essere stati feriti a morte. Si parla molto dell’impazienza del popolo; ma gli storici seri sanno che la maggior parte delle tirannie è stata possibile proprio perché gli uomini si mossero troppo tardi. Spesso è indispensabile resistere a una tirannia prima ancora che esista. Non è una risposta dire, con un ottimismo lontano, che il progetto è ancora campato in aria. Un colpo d’accetta si può parare soltanto finché è per aria.

Esiste oggi un piano d’azione, una scuola di pensiero, tanto compatta e inconfondibile quanto ognuna di quelle raggruppando le quali soltanto possiamo tracciare un qualche profilo della storia. È un fatto saldo quanto il Movimento di Oxford, o i Puritani del Lungo Parlamento; o i Giansenisti; o i Gesuiti. È una cosa che si può indicare col dito; è una cosa di cui si può discutere; ed è una cosa che si può ancora distruggere. La si chiama per comodità «Eugenetica»; e che debba essere distrutta mi propongo di dimostrarlo nelle pagine che seguono. So che significa cose molto diverse per persone diverse; ma ciò accade soltanto perché il male trae sempre vantaggio dall’ambiguità. So che la si loda con alte professioni di idealismo e di benevolenza; con una retorica dalla lingua d’argento che parla di una maternità più pura e di una posterità più felice. Ma ciò accade soltanto perché il male è sempre adulato, come le Furie venivano chiamate «le Benevole». So che essa annovera molti discepoli le cui intenzioni sono del tutto innocenti e umane; e che rimarrebbero sinceramente stupiti nel sentirmela descrivere come la descrivo. Ma ciò accade soltanto perché il male vince sempre grazie alla forza dei suoi splendidi ingannati; e in ogni epoca vi è stata una disastrosa alleanza tra l’innocenza abnorme e il peccato abnorme. Di costoro che sono ingannati parlerò naturalmente come tutti facciamo di simili strumenti; giudicandoli dal bene che credono di fare, e non dal male che realmente fanno. Ma l’Eugenetica in sé esiste per chi ha abbastanza senno da vedere che le idee esistono; e l’Eugenetica in sé, in grandi quantità o piccole, venga essa presto o venga tardi, sospinta da moventi buoni o cattivi, applicata a mille persone o applicata a tre, l’Eugenetica in sé è cosa su cui non si può mercanteggiare più di quanto si mercanteggi sull’avvelenare la gente.

Non è davvero difficile riassumere l’essenza dell’Eugenetica: benché alcuni Eugenisti sembrino piuttosto vaghi al riguardo. Il movimento consta di due parti: una base morale, comune a tutti, e uno schema di applicazione sociale che varia parecchio. Quanto alla base morale, è ovvio che la responsabilità etica dell’uomo varia con la sua conoscenza delle conseguenze. Se avessi in custodia un bambino (come il dottor Johnson in quella torre di visione), e il bambino si fosse ammalato per aver mangiato il sapone, potrei forse mandare a chiamare un medico. Potrei sottrarlo a casi ben più gravi, ai capezzali di bambini la cui dieta è stata assai più letale; eppure sarei giustificato. Non ci si può aspettare che io sappia abbastanza degli altri suoi pazienti da essere obbligato (o anche solo autorizzato) a sacrificar loro il bambino di cui ero primariamente e direttamente responsabile. Ora la base morale eugenica è questa: che il bambino di cui siamo primariamente e direttamente responsabili è il bimbo non ancora nato. Vale a dire, che noi conosciamo (o possiamo giungere a conoscere) abbastanza di certe tendenze inevitabili della biologia da considerare il frutto di una qualche unione contemplata in quella luce diretta e chiara della coscienza che ora possiamo fissare soltanto sull’altro partner di quella unione. L’un dovere può concepibilmente essere altrettanto preciso, o più preciso, dell’altro. Il bambino che non esiste può essere considerato ancor prima della moglie che esiste. Ora è essenziale afferrare che questa è una nota comparativamente nuova nella morale. Certo, le persone sane di mente hanno sempre pensato che lo scopo del matrimonio fosse la procreazione di figli a gloria di Dio o secondo il piano della Natura; ma sia che contassero tali figli come ricompensa di Dio per il servizio reso o come premio della Natura alla sanità, lasciavano sempre la ricompensa a Dio o il premio alla Natura, come cosa meno definibile. L’unica persona (e questo è il punto) verso la quale si potessero avere doveri precisi era il partner nel processo. Considerare direttamente le pretese del partner era quanto di più vicino si potesse arrivare a considerare indirettamente le pretese della posterità. Se le donne dell’harem cantavano lodi all’eroe mentre il musulmano montava a cavallo, era perché questo era il dovuto a un uomo; se il cavaliere cristiano aiutava la moglie a scendere da cavallo, era perché questo era il dovuto a una donna. Doveri definiti e minuti di questo genere non li si predicava del bimbo non ancora nato; lo si considerava in quella luce agnostica e opportunistica in cui il signor Browdie considerava l’ipotetico figlio della signorina Squeers. Ritenendo sane queste relazioni sessuali, naturalmente speravano che producessero figli sani; ma tutto qui. La donna musulmana si aspettava senza dubbio che Allah mandasse bei figli maschi a una moglie obbediente; ma non avrebbe permesso a nessuna visione diretta di tali figli di alterare l’obbedienza stessa. Non avrebbe detto: «Sarò dunque una moglie disobbediente; poiché il dotto cerusico mi informa che i grandi profeti sono spesso figli di mogli disobbedienti». Il cavaliere sperava senza dubbio che i santi lo aiutassero ad avere figli robusti, se adempiva a tutti i doveri della sua condizione, uno dei quali poteva essere aiutare la moglie a scendere da cavallo; ma non si sarebbe astenuto dal farlo perché aveva letto in un libro che una serie di cadute da cavallo spesso sfocia nella nascita di un genio. Tanto il musulmano quanto il cristiano avrebbero giudicato tali speculazioni non solo empie ma del tutto impraticabili. Sono pienamente d’accordo con loro; ma non è questo il punto qui.

Il punto qui è che una nuova scuola crede nell’Eugenetica contro l’Etica. E lo prova un fatto familiare: che gli eroismi della storia sono in realtà i delitti dell’Eugenetica. I libri e gli articoli degli Eugenisti sono pieni di suggerimenti secondo cui le unioni non eugeniche dovrebbero e potrebbero giungere a essere considerate come consideriamo i peccati; che dovremmo davvero sentire lo sposare un malato come una sorta di crudeltà verso i figli. Ma la storia è piena delle lodi di persone che tennero sacri simili legami con i malati; di casi come quelli del colonnello Hutchinson e di Sir William Temple, che rimasero fedeli ai fidanzamenti quando la bellezza e la salute parevano apparentemente distrutte. E benché le malattie di Dorothy Osborne e della signora Hutchinson possano non ricadere sotto le speculazioni eugeniche (non lo so), è ovvio che avrebbero potuto ricadervi; e certamente ciò non avrebbe mutato d’un nulla l’opinione morale degli uomini su quell’atto. Non discuto qui quale morale io prediliga; ma insisto che sono opposte. L’Eugenista erige davvero a santi proprio quegli uomini che centinaia di famiglie hanno chiamato vigliacchi. Per essere coerenti, dovrebbero innalzare statue agli uomini che abbandonarono le loro amate a causa di una sventura corporale; con iscrizioni che celebrino il buon Eugenista il quale, caduta la fidanzata dalla bicicletta, nobilmente rifiutò di sposarla; o il giovane eroe che, avuta notizia di uno zio malato di erisipela, magnanimamente venne meno alla parola data. Ciò che è perfettamente chiaro è questo: che l’umanità ha finora ritenuto il vincolo tra uomo e donna così sacro, e il suo effetto sui figli così incalcolabile, da aver sempre ammirato il mantenimento dell’onore più del mantenimento della sicurezza. Senza dubbio pensavano che perfino i figli non sarebbero stati peggio per il fatto di non essere figli di codardi e di scansafatiche; ma questo non era il primo pensiero, il primo comandamento. In breve, possiamo dire che, mentre molti sistemi morali hanno posto sul sesso freni quasi altrettanto severi di qualsiasi Eugenista, essi hanno quasi sempre avuto il carattere di assicurare la fedeltà dei due sessi l’uno all’altro, lasciando il resto a Dio. Introdurre un’etica che faccia variare quella fedeltà o infedeltà con qualche calcolo sull’ereditarietà è la più rara di tutte le cose: una rivoluzione mai avvenuta prima.

It is only right to say here, though the matter should only be touched on, that many Eugenists would contradict this, in so far as to claim that there was a consciously Eugenic reason for the horror of those unions which begin with the celebrated denial to man of the privilege of marrying his grandmother. Dr. S. R. Steinmetz, with that creepy simplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarks that “we do not yet know quite certainly” what were “the motives for the horror of” that horrible thing which is the agony of Oedipus. With entirely amiable intention, I ask Dr. S. R. Steinmetz to speak for himself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or a sister as separate from other women; nor have I reached them by any curious researches. I found them where I found an analogous aversion to eating a baby for breakfast. I found them in a rooted detestation in the human soul to liking a thing in one way, when you already like it in another quite incompatible way. Now it is perfectly true that this aversion may have acted eugenically; and so had a certain ultimate confirmation and basis in the laws of procreation. But there really cannot be any Eugenist quite so dull as not to see that this is not a defence of Eugenics but a direct denial of Eugenics. If something which has been discovered at last by the lamp of learning is something which has been acted on from the first by the light of nature, this (so far as it goes) is plainly not an argument for pestering people, but an argument for letting them alone. If men did not marry their grandmothers when it was, for all they knew, a most hygienic habit; if we know now that they instinctively avoided scientific peril; that, so far as it goes, is a point in favour of letting people marry anyone they like. It is simply the statement that sexual selection, or what Christians call falling in love, is a part of man which in the rough and in the long run can be trusted. And that is the destruction of the whole of this science at a blow.

The second part of the definition, the persuasive or coercive methods to be employed, I shall deal with more fully in the second part of this book. But some such summary as the following may here be useful. Far into the unfathomable past of our race we find the assumption that the founding of a family is the personal adventure of a free man. Before slavery sank slowly out of sight under the new climate of Christianity, it may or may not be true that slaves were in some sense bred like cattle, valued as a promising stock for labour. If it was so it was so in a much looser and vaguer sense than the breeding of the Eugenists; and such modern philosophers read into the old paganism a fantastic pride and cruelty which are wholly modern. It may be, however, that pagan slaves had some shadow of the blessings of the Eugenist’s care. It is quite certain that the pagan freemen would have killed the first man that suggested it. I mean suggested it seriously; for Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. Among free men, the law, more often the creed, most commonly of all the custom, have laid all sorts of restrictions on sex for this reason or that. But law and creed and custom have never concentrated heavily except upon fixing and keeping the family when once it had been made. The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individual adventure outside the frontiers of the State. Our first forgotten ancestors left this tradition behind them; and our own latest fathers and mothers a few years ago would have thought us lunatics to be discussing it. The shortest general definition of Eugenics on its practical side is that it does, in a more or less degree, propose to control some families at least as if they were families of pagan slaves. I shall discuss later the question of the people to whom this pressure may be applied; and the much more puzzling question of what people will apply it. But it is to be applied at the very least by somebody to somebody, and that on certain calculations about breeding which are affirmed to be demonstrable. So much for the subject itself. I say that this thing exists. I define it as closely as matters involving moral evidence can be defined; I call it Eugenics. If after that anyone chooses to say that Eugenics is not the Greek for this --- I am content to answer that “chivalrous” is not the French for “horsy”; and that such controversial games are more horsy than chivalrous.

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II

THE FIRST OBSTACLES

Now before I set about arguing these things, there is a cloud of skirmishers, of harmless and confused modern sceptics, who ought to be cleared off or calmed down before we come to debate with the real doctors of the heresy. If I sum up my statement thus: “Eugenics, as discussed, evidently means the control of some men over the marriage and unmarriage of others; and probably means the control of the few over the marriage and unmarriage of the many,” I shall first of all receive the sort of answers that float like skim on the surface of teacups and talk. I may very roughly and rapidly divide these preliminary objectors into five sects; whom I will call the Euphemists, the Casuists, the Autocrats, the Precedenters, and the Endeavourers. When we have answered the immediate protestation of all these good, shouting, short-sighted people, we can begin to do justice to those intelligences that are really behind the idea.

Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them “The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generations does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females?”; say this to them and they sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them “Murder your mother,” and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them “It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once useful distinction between the anthropoid homo and the other animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be modified also even in regard to the important question of the extension of human diet”; say this to them, and beauty born of murmuring sound will pass into their faces. But say to them, in a simple, manly, hearty way “Let’s eat a man!” and their surprise is quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing. Now, if anyone thinks these two instances extravagant, I will refer to two actual cases from the Eugenic discussions. When Sir Oliver Lodge spoke of the methods “of the stud-farm” many Eugenists exclaimed against the crudity of the suggestion. Yet long before that one of the ablest champions in the other interest had written “What nonsense this education is! Who could educate a racehorse or a greyhound?” Which most certainly either means nothing, or the human stud-farm. Or again, when I spoke of people “being married forcibly by the police,” another distinguished Eugenist almost achieved high spirits in his hearty assurance that no such thing had ever come into their heads. Yet a few days after I saw a Eugenist pronouncement, to the effect that the State ought to extend its powers in this area. The State can only be that corporation which men permit to employ compulsion; and this area can only be the area of sexual selection. I mean somewhat more than an idle jest when I say that the policeman will generally be found in that area. But I willingly admit that the policeman who looks after weddings will be like the policeman who looks after wedding-presents. He will be in plain clothes. I do not mean that a man in blue with a helmet will drag the bride and bridegroom to the altar. I do mean that nobody that man in blue is told to arrest will even dare to come near the church. Sir Oliver did not mean that men would be tied up in stables and scrubbed down by grooms. He meant that they would undergo a loss of liberty which to men is even more infamous. He meant that the only formula important to Eugenists would be “by Smith out of Jones.” Such a formula is one of the shortest in the world; and is certainly the shortest way with the Euphemists.

È bene dire qui, sebbene la questione debba essere solo sfiorata, che molti Eugenisti contraddirebbero tutto ciò, nella misura in cui sostengono che vi fosse una ragione consapevolmente eugenica per l’orrore di quelle unioni che comincia con il celebre divieto all’uomo di sposare la propria nonna. Il dottor S. R. Steinmetz, con quella raccapricciante semplicità di mente con cui gli Eugenisti gelano il sangue, osserva che «non sappiamo ancora con certezza» quali fossero «i motivi dell’orrore di» quella cosa orribile che è l’agonia di Edipo. Con intenzione del tutto amabile, chiedo al dottor S. R. Steinmetz di parlare per sé. Io conosco i motivi per cui una madre o una sorella si considera come cosa distinta dalle altre donne; né sono giunto a essi con curiose ricerche. Li ho trovati là dove ho trovato un’analoga avversione a mangiare un lattante per colazione. Li ho trovati in una radicata ripugnanza dell’anima umana ad amare una cosa in un modo, quando già la si ama in un altro modo del tutto incompatibile. Ora è perfettamente vero che questa avversione può aver agito eugenicamente; e così aveva una certa conferma e base ultima nelle leggi della procreazione. Ma non vi può davvero essere Eugenista così ottuso da non vedere che questa non è una difesa dell’Eugenetica ma una diretta negazione dell’Eugenetica. Se qualcosa che è stato scoperto finalmente al lume del sapere è qualcosa su cui si è agito fin dal principio alla luce della natura, questo (per quanto vale) non è evidentemente un argomento per tormentare la gente, ma un argomento per lasciarla in pace. Se gli uomini non sposavano le loro nonne quando era, per quanto ne sapessero, un’abitudine igienicissima; se ora sappiamo che essi istintivamente evitavano un pericolo scientifico; questo, per quanto vale, è un punto a favore del lasciar sposare la gente con chi le pare. È semplicemente l’affermazione che la selezione sessuale, o ciò che i cristiani chiamano l’innamoramento, è una parte dell’uomo di cui, in linea di massima e alla lunga, ci si può fidare. E questa è la distruzione dell’intera scienza in un sol colpo.

La seconda parte della definizione, i metodi persuasivi o coercitivi da impiegare, la tratterò più a fondo nella seconda parte di questo libro. Ma un riassunto come il seguente può essere qui utile. Fin nel remoto e insondabile passato della nostra stirpe troviamo il presupposto che la fondazione di una famiglia sia l’avventura personale di un uomo libero. Prima che la schiavitù tramontasse lentamente sotto il nuovo clima del Cristianesimo, può essere vero o no che gli schiavi fossero in qualche senso allevati come bestiame, valutati come promettente scorta di manodopera. Se così era, lo era in un senso assai più lasco e vago dell’allevamento degli Eugenisti; e certi filosofi moderni leggono nell’antico paganesimo un orgoglio e una crudeltà fantastici che sono del tutto moderni. Può darsi, tuttavia, che gli schiavi pagani avessero qualche ombra delle benedizioni delle cure dell’Eugenista. È del tutto certo che gli uomini liberi pagani avrebbero ucciso il primo che l’avesse proposto. Intendo proposto seriamente; poiché Platone non era che un Bernard Shaw il quale disgraziatamente faceva le sue battute in greco. Tra gli uomini liberi, la legge, più spesso il credo, e più comunemente di tutto il costume, hanno posto ogni sorta di restrizioni al sesso per questa o quella ragione. Ma legge, credo e costume non si sono mai concentrati pesantemente se non sul fissare e conservare la famiglia una volta che era stata formata. L’atto di fondare la famiglia, lo ripeto, era un’avventura individuale al di fuori dei confini dello Stato. I nostri primi e dimenticati antenati ci hanno lasciato questa tradizione; e i nostri stessi padri e madri più recenti, pochi anni or sono, ci avrebbero giudicati pazzi a discuterne. La più breve definizione generale dell’Eugenetica dal suo lato pratico è che essa si propone, in misura più o meno grande, di controllare almeno alcune famiglie come se fossero famiglie di schiavi pagani. Discuterò più avanti la questione delle persone a cui questa pressione può essere applicata; e la questione assai più imbrogliata di quali persone la applicheranno. Ma essa deve essere applicata, quanto meno, da qualcuno a qualcuno, e ciò in base a certi calcoli sull’allevamento che si afferma essere dimostrabili. Tanto basti sull’argomento in sé. Io dico che questa cosa esiste. La definisco con quanta precisione consentono le questioni che coinvolgono prove morali; la chiamo Eugenetica. Se dopo di ciò qualcuno preferisce dire che l’Eugenetica non è il greco che sta per questo — mi contento di rispondere che «chivalrous» non è il francese che sta per «horsy»; e che simili giochi polemici sono più da scuderia che da cavaliere.

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II

I PRIMI OSTACOLI

Ora, prima che io mi metta a discutere queste cose, c’è una nube di tiragliatori, di scettici moderni innocui e confusi, che bisogna spazzar via o calmare prima che si venga a dibattere con i veri dottori dell’eresia. Se riassumo la mia affermazione così: «L’Eugenetica, così come discussa, significa evidentemente il controllo di alcuni uomini sul matrimonio e sul non-matrimonio di altri; e probabilmente significa il controllo dei pochi sul matrimonio e sul non-matrimonio dei molti», riceverò anzitutto quella sorta di risposte che galleggiano come schiuma sulla superficie delle tazze da tè e delle chiacchiere. Posso, molto grossolanamente e rapidamente, dividere questi obiettori preliminari in cinque sette; che chiamerò gli Eufemisti, i Casuisti, gli Autocrati, i Precedentisti e gli Adoperatori. Quando avremo risposto all’immediata protesta di tutta questa brava, urlante e miope gente, potremo cominciare a rendere giustizia a quelle intelligenze che stanno davvero dietro l’idea.

La maggior parte degli Eugenisti sono Eufemisti. Voglio dire semplicemente che le parole brevi li spaventano, mentre le parole lunghe li rassicurano. E sono del tutto incapaci di tradurre le une nelle altre, per quanto ovviamente significhino la stessa cosa. Dite loro: «I poteri persuasivi e persino coercitivi del cittadino dovrebbero metterlo in grado di assicurarsi che il carico della longevità nelle generazioni precedenti non divenga sproporzionato e intollerabile, specialmente per le femmine?»; dite loro questo ed essi ondeggeranno lievemente avanti e indietro come bimbi mandati a dormire nelle culle. Dite loro: «Ammazza tua madre», e si rizzeranno di colpo. Eppure le due frasi, nella fredda logica, sono esattamente la stessa cosa. Dite loro: «Non è improbabile che giunga un periodo in cui la ristretta, benché un tempo utile, distinzione tra l’homo antropoide e gli altri animali, la quale è stata modificata su tanti punti morali, possa essere modificata anche riguardo all’importante questione dell’estensione della dieta umana»; dite loro questo, e una bellezza nata da un mormorio di suoni passerà sui loro volti. Ma dite loro, in modo semplice, virile e cordiale: «Mangiamoci un uomo!», e la loro sorpresa sarà davvero sorprendente. Eppure le frasi dicono proprio la stessa cosa. Ora, se qualcuno ritiene stravaganti questi due esempi, mi riferirò a due casi reali tratti dalle discussioni eugeniche. Quando Sir Oliver Lodge parlò dei metodi «dell’allevamento equino», molti Eugenisti si scandalizzarono della crudezza del suggerimento. Eppure, molto prima di ciò, uno dei più abili campioni dell’altro campo aveva scritto: «Che sciocchezza è mai questa educazione! Chi potrebbe educare un cavallo da corsa o un levriero?». Il che, con ogni certezza, o non significa nulla, o significa l’allevamento umano. O ancora, quando io parlai di gente «sposata a forza dalla polizia», un altro illustre Eugenista quasi raggiunse l’esaltazione nella sua cordiale assicurazione che una cosa simile non era mai passata loro per la testa. Eppure, pochi giorni dopo, vidi una dichiarazione eugenica secondo cui lo Stato dovrebbe estendere i suoi poteri in questo campo. Lo Stato non può essere che quella corporazione a cui gli uomini permettono di impiegare la costrizione; e questo campo non può essere che il campo della selezione sessuale. Intendo qualcosa di più di un ozioso scherzo quando dico che il poliziotto si troverà generalmente in quel campo. Ma ammetto volentieri che il poliziotto che sorveglia i matrimoni sarà come il poliziotto che sorveglia i regali di nozze. Sarà in borghese. Non voglio dire che un uomo in divisa blu con l’elmetto trascinerà la sposa e lo sposo all’altare. Voglio dire che nessuno di quelli che quell’uomo in blu ha ordine di arrestare oserà nemmeno avvicinarsi alla chiesa. Sir Oliver non intendeva che gli uomini sarebbero stati legati nelle stalle e strigliati dagli stallieri. Intendeva che avrebbero subìto una perdita di libertà che per gli uomini è ancor più infame. Intendeva che l’unica formula importante per gli Eugenisti sarebbe stata «da Smith fuori di Jones». Una tale formula è una delle più brevi del mondo; ed è certamente il modo più breve di sbrigare gli Eufemisti.

The next sect of superficial objectors is even more irritating. I have called them, for immediate purposes, the Casuists. Suppose I say “I, dislike this spread of Cannibalism in the West End restaurants.” Somebody is sure to say “Well, after all, Queen Eleanor when she sucked blood from her husband’s arm was a cannibal.” What is one to say to such people? One can only say “Confine yourself to sucking poisoned blood from people’s arms? and I permit you to call yourself by the glorious title of Cannibal.” In this sense people say of Eugenics, “After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying a mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists.” Again one can only answer, “Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as are naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult in the title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinction will be rare.” But surely anyone’s common-sense must tell him that if Eugenics dealt only with such extravagant cases, it would be called common-sense --- and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded such absurdities for unknown ages; and has never yet called it Eugenics. You may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back; you may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire; but if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among living men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved, there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no such thing as this book.

I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the Idealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good they hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who give us generally to understand that every modern reform will “work” all right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, and for how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind their looking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is the shadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does not expect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people most certainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it has left their hands. Each man promises to be about a thousand policemen. If you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, “Oh, I would certainly insist on this”; or “I would never go so far as that”; as if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever done quite successfully --- force men to forsake their sins. Of these it is enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any more than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not be able to fulfill a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put into it.

Along with such idealists should go the strange people who seem to think that you can consecrate and purify any campaign for ever by repeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocates had in mind. These people will say “So far from aiming at slavery, the Eugenists are seeking true liberty; liberty from disease and degeneracy, etc.” Or they will say “We can assure Mr. Chesterton that the Eugenists have no intention of segregating the harmless; justice and mercy are the very motto of ---” etc. To this kind of thing perhaps the shortest answer is this. Many of those who speak thus are agnostic or generally unsympathetic to official religion. Suppose one of them said “The Church of England is full of hypocrisy.” What would he think of me if I answered, “I assure you that hypocrisy is condemned by every form of Christianity; and is particularly repudiated in the Prayer Book”? Suppose he said that the Church of Rome had been guilty of great cruelties. What would he think of me if I answered, “The Church is expressly bound to meekness and charity; and therefore cannot be cruel”? This kind of people need not detain us long. Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; who flourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by the solemn official who said the other day that he could not understand the clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill as it only extended the “principles” of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer “Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws to persons without a trace of lunacy.” This lucid politician finds an old law, let us say, about keeping lepers in quarantine. He simply alters the word “lepers” to “long-nosed people,” and says blandly that the principle is the same.

Perhaps the weakest of all are those helpless persons whom I have called the Endeavourers. The prize specimen of them was another M. P. who defended the same Bill as “an honest attempt” to deal with a great evil: as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one’s fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment; in a state of reverent agnosticism about what would come of it. But with this fatuous notion that one can deliberately establish the Inquisition or the Terror, and then faintly trust the larger hope, I shall have to deal more seriously in a subsequent chapter. It is enough to say here that the best thing the honest Endeavourer could do would be to make an honest attempt to know what he is doing. And not to do anything else until he has found out. Lastly, there is a class of controversialists so hopeless and futile that I have really failed to find a name for them. But whenever anyone attempts to argue rationally for or against any existent and recognizable thing, such as the Eugenic class of legislation, there are always people who begin to chop hay about Socialism and Individualism; and say “You object to all State interference; I am in favour of State interference. You are an Individualist; I, on the other hand,” etc. To which I can only answer, with heart-broken patience, that I am not an Individualist, but a poor fallen but baptized journalist who is trying to write a book about Eugenists, several of whom he has met; whereas he never met an Individualist and is by no means certain he would recognize him if he did. In short, I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say in this case it would interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be turned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomless botherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative advantages of always turning to the right and always turning to the left.

La successiva setta di obiettori superficiali è ancora più irritante. Li ho chiamati, per gli scopi immediati, i Casuisti. Supponiamo che io dica: «Non mi piace questo diffondersi del Cannibalismo nei ristoranti del West End». Qualcuno di sicuro dirà: «Beh, dopotutto, la regina Eleonora, quando succhiò il sangue dal braccio del marito, era una cannibale». Che cosa si può dire a simile gente? Si può solo dire: «Limitatevi a succhiare il sangue avvelenato dalle braccia della gente, e vi permetto di fregiarvi del glorioso titolo di Cannibale». In questo senso la gente dice dell’Eugenetica: «Dopotutto, ogni volta che sconsigliamo a uno scolaretto di sposare una negra pazza e gobba, siamo in realtà Eugenisti». Anche qui si può solo rispondere: «Limitatevi strettamente a quegli scolaretti che siano naturalmente attratti dalle negre gobbe; e potrete esultare del titolo di Eugenista, tanto più fieramente in quanto tale distinzione sarà rara». Ma di sicuro il buon senso di chiunque gli dirà che se l’Eugenetica trattasse solo di casi così stravaganti, la si chiamerebbe buon senso — e non Eugenetica. La razza umana ha escluso simili assurdità da tempi immemorabili; e non l’ha mai chiamato Eugenetica. Potete chiamarlo fustigazione quando date una manata sulla schiena a un signore che sta soffocando; potete chiamarlo tortura quando un uomo si scongela le dita al fuoco; ma se parlate così ancora un po’ cesserete di vivere tra gli uomini viventi. Se non fosse coinvolto altro che questo folle minimo di casi limite, non esisterebbe una cosa come un Congresso Eugenico, e certamente non esisterebbe una cosa come questo libro.

Avevo pensato di chiamare Idealisti la successiva specie di persone superficiali; ma penso che ciò implichi verso il bene impersonale un’umiltà che essi difficilmente mostrano; perciò li chiamo gli Autocrati. Sono coloro che ci danno generalmente a intendere che ogni riforma moderna «funzionerà» a dovere, perché essi saranno lì a vigilare. Dove saranno, e per quanto tempo, non lo spiegano molto chiaramente. Non mi dispiace che si aspettino innumerevoli vite in successione; poiché questa è l’ombra di una speranza umana o divina. Ma persino un teosofo non si aspetta di essere un gran numero di persone tutte in una volta. Eppure questa gente si propone con certezza di essere responsabile di un intero movimento dopo che gli è sfuggito di mano. Ciascuno promette di essere una specie di mille poliziotti. Se chiedete loro come funzionerà questa o quella cosa, risponderanno: «Oh, io insisterei di certo su questo»; oppure: «Io non arriverei mai fino a quel punto»; come se potessero tornare su questa terra e fare ciò che nessuno spettro è mai riuscito a fare del tutto — costringere gli uomini ad abbandonare i loro peccati. Di costoro basti dire che non comprendono la natura di una legge più di quanto comprendano la natura di un cane. Se sciogliete una legge, farà come fa un cane. Obbedirà alla propria natura, non alla vostra. Quel tanto di senno che avrete messo nella legge (o nel cane) sarà adempiuto. Ma non riuscirete ad adempiere un frammento di ciò che avrete dimenticato di mettervi dentro.

Insieme a tali idealisti vanno annoverate le strane persone che sembrano credere che si possa consacrare e purificare per sempre una qualsiasi campagna ripetendo i nomi delle virtù astratte che i suoi migliori sostenitori avevano in mente. Costoro diranno: «Ben lungi dal mirare alla schiavitù, gli Eugenisti cercano la vera libertà; la libertà dalla malattia e dalla degenerazione, eccetera». Oppure diranno: «Possiamo assicurare al signor Chesterton che gli Eugenisti non hanno alcuna intenzione di segregare gli innocui; la giustizia e la misericordia sono il motto stesso di —» eccetera. A questo genere di cose forse la risposta più breve è questa. Molti di coloro che parlano così sono agnostici o in genere poco propensi alla religione ufficiale. Supponiamo che uno di loro dica: «La Chiesa d’Inghilterra è piena di ipocrisia». Che cosa penserebbe di me se io rispondessi: «Vi assicuro che l’ipocrisia è condannata da ogni forma di Cristianesimo; ed è particolarmente ripudiata nel Libro delle preghiere»? Supponiamo che dica che la Chiesa di Roma si è resa colpevole di grandi crudeltà. Che cosa penserebbe di me se io rispondessi: «La Chiesa è espressamente vincolata alla mitezza e alla carità; e perciò non può essere crudele»? Questo genere di persone non ci tratterrà a lungo. Poi ci sono altri che potrei chiamare i Precedentisti; i quali fioriscono particolarmente in Parlamento. Sono meglio rappresentati da quel solenne funzionario che disse l’altro giorno di non riuscire a capire il clamore contro il Progetto di legge sui Deboli di mente, poiché esso non faceva che estendere i «princìpi» delle vecchie Leggi sulla Follia. Al che di nuovo si può solo rispondere: «Proprio così. Esso non fa che estendere i princìpi delle Leggi sulla Follia a persone senza traccia di follia». Questo lucido politico trova una vecchia legge, poniamo, sul tenere i lebbrosi in quarantena. Si limita a cambiare la parola «lebbrosi» in «persone dal naso lungo», e dichiara con aria blanda che il principio è lo stesso.

Forse i più deboli di tutti sono quelle persone impotenti che ho chiamato gli Adoperatori. Il pezzo pregiato del genere fu un altro deputato che difese quello stesso Progetto di legge come «un onesto tentativo» di affrontare un grande male: come se si avesse il diritto di soggiogare e schiavizzare i propri concittadini quasi fossero un esperimento chimico; in uno stato di reverente agnosticismo su ciò che ne sarebbe venuto. Ma con questa fatua idea che si possa deliberatamente istituire l’Inquisizione o il Terrore, e poi fiaccamente confidare nella più vasta speranza, dovrò fare i conti più seriamente in un capitolo successivo. Basti dire qui che la cosa migliore che l’onesto Adoperatore potrebbe fare sarebbe un onesto tentativo di sapere che cosa sta facendo. E di non fare nient’altro finché non l’abbia scoperto. Da ultimo, c’è una classe di polemisti così disperata e inutile che non sono davvero riuscito a trovare loro un nome. Ma ogni volta che qualcuno tenta di argomentare razionalmente a favore o contro una qualsiasi cosa esistente e riconoscibile, come la classe eugenica di legislazione, ci sono sempre persone che cominciano a menare il can per l’aia su Socialismo e Individualismo; e dicono: «Voi vi opponete a ogni intervento dello Stato; io sono a favore dell’intervento dello Stato. Voi siete un Individualista; io, invece», eccetera. Al che posso solo rispondere, con pazienza affranta, che io non sono un Individualista, ma un povero, decaduto ma battezzato giornalista che sta cercando di scrivere un libro sugli Eugenisti, parecchi dei quali ha incontrato; mentre non ha mai incontrato un Individualista e non è affatto certo che lo riconoscerebbe se lo incontrasse. In breve, io non nego, anzi affermo con forza, il diritto dello Stato di intervenire per curare un grande male. Dico che in questo caso interverrebbe per creare un grande male; e non intendo lasciarmi distogliere dalla discussione di quel problema diretto per abissali seccature sul Socialismo e sull’Individualismo, o sui relativi vantaggi del girare sempre a destra e del girare sempre a sinistra.

And for the rest, there is undoubtedly an enormous mass of sensible, rather thoughtless people, whose rooted sentiment it is that any deep change in our society must be in some way infinitely distant. They cannot believe that men in hats and coats like themselves can be preparing a revolution; all their Victorian philosophy has taught them that such transformations are always slow. Therefore, when I speak of Eugenic legislation, or the coming of the Eugenic State, they think of it as something like The Time Machine or Looking Backward: a thing that, good or bad, will have to fit itself to their great-great-great-grandchild, who may be very different and may like it; and who in any case is rather a distant relative. To all this I have, to begin with, a very short and simple answer. The Eugenic State has begun. The first of the Eugenic Laws has already been adopted by the Government of this country; and passed with the applause of both parties through the dominant House of Parliament. This first Eugenic Law clears the ground and may be said to proclaim negative Eugenics; but it cannot be defended, and nobody has attempted to defend it, except on the Eugenic theory. I will call it the Feeble-Minded Bill, both for brevity and because the description is strictly accurate. It is, and quite simply and literally, a Bill for incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them weak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom this term has not been conversationally applied by his own friends and relatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives have been lamentably lacking in spirit), it can be clearly seen that this law, like the early Christian Church (to which, however, it presents points of dissimilarity), is a net drawing in of all kinds. It must not be supposed that we have a stricter definition incorporated in the Bill. Indeed, the first definition of “feeble-minded” in the Bill was much looser and vaguer than the phrase “feeble-minded” itself. It is a piece of yawning idiocy about “persons who though capable of earning their living under favourable circumstances” (as if anyone could earn his living if circumstances were directly unfavourable to his doing so), are nevertheless “incapable of managing their affairs with proper prudence”; which is exactly what all the world and his wife are saying about their neighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for any kind of thought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing so very novel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is vital is this: that the defence of this crazy Coercion Act is a Eugenic defence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children. Every tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that is the point. England has forgotten the Feudal State; it is in the last anarchy of the Industrial State; there is much in Mr. Belloc’s theory that it is approaching the Servile State; it cannot at present get at the Distributive State; it has almost certainly missed the Socialist State. But we are already under the Eugenist State; and nothing remains to us but rebellion.

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III

THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE

A silent anarchy is eating out our society. I must pause upon the expression; because the true nature of anarchy is mostly misapprehended. It is not in the least necessary that anarchy should be violent; nor is it necessary that it should come from below. A government may grow anarchic as much as a people. The more sentimental sort of Tory uses the word anarchy as a mere term of abuse for rebellion; but he misses a most important intellectual distinction. Rebellion may be wrong and disastrous; but even when rebellion is wrong, it is never anarchy. When it is not self-defence, it is usurpation. It aims at setting up a new rule in place of the old rule. And while it cannot be anarchic in essence (because it has an aim), it certainly cannot be anarchic in method; for men must be organized when they fight; and the discipline in a rebel army has to be as good as the discipline in the royal army. This deep principle of distinction must be clearly kept in mind. Take for the sake of symbolism those two great spiritual stories which, whether we count them myths or mysteries, have so long been the two hinges of all European morals. The Christian who is inclined to sympathize generally with constituted authority will think of rebellion under the image of Satan, the rebel against God. But Satan, though a traitor, was not an anarchist. He claimed the crown of the cosmos; and had he prevailed, would have expected his rebel angels to give up rebelling. On the other hand, the Christian whose sympathies are more generally with just self-defence among the oppressed will think rather of Christ Himself defying the High Priests and scourging the rich traders. But whether or no Christ was (as some say) a Socialist, He most certainly was not an Anarchist. Christ, like Satan, claimed the throne. He set up a new authority against an old authority; but He set it up with positive commandments and a comprehensible scheme. In this light all mediaeval people --- indeed, all people until a little while ago --- would have judged questions involving revolt. John Ball would have offered to pull down the government because it was a bad government, not because it was a government. Richard II would have blamed Bolingbroke not as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, in the useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from any rebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, in its first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I said before, it is often entirely silent.

E del resto, c’è indubbiamente un’enorme massa di persone assennate, piuttosto sventate, il cui sentimento radicato è che qualsiasi mutamento profondo nella nostra società debba in qualche modo essere infinitamente lontano. Non riescono a credere che uomini in cappello e cappotto come loro possano star preparando una rivoluzione; tutta la loro filosofia vittoriana ha insegnato loro che simili trasformazioni sono sempre lente. Perciò, quando parlo di legislazione eugenica, o dell’avvento dello Stato Eugenico, la pensano come qualcosa di simile a La macchina del tempo o a Guardando indietro: una cosa che, buona o cattiva, dovrà adattarsi al loro pronipote di quarta generazione, il quale magari sarà molto diverso e magari la gradirà; e che in ogni caso è un parente piuttosto lontano. A tutto questo ho, per cominciare, una risposta molto breve e semplice. Lo Stato Eugenico è già cominciato. La prima delle Leggi Eugeniche è già stata adottata dal Governo di questo paese; e approvata con l’applauso di entrambi i partiti nella Camera dominante del Parlamento. Questa prima Legge Eugenica sgombra il terreno e si può dire che proclami l’Eugenetica negativa; ma non può essere difesa, e nessuno ha tentato di difenderla, se non sulla base della teoria eugenica. La chiamerò il Progetto di legge sui Deboli di mente, sia per brevità sia perché la descrizione è rigorosamente esatta. Esso è, in modo affatto semplice e letterale, un Progetto di legge per rinchiudere come pazzi coloro che nessun medico acconsentirà a definire pazzi. Basta che un medico qualunque possa per caso definirli deboli di mente. Poiché non c’è quasi essere umano a cui questo termine non sia stato applicato in conversazione dai suoi stessi amici e parenti in qualche occasione (a meno che i suoi amici e parenti non abbiano lamentevolmente mancato di spirito), si vede chiaramente che questa legge, come la primitiva Chiesa cristiana (con la quale, tuttavia, presenta punti di dissomiglianza), è una rete che tira a sé ogni sorta di cose. Non si creda che nel Progetto sia incorporata una definizione più rigorosa. Anzi, la prima definizione di «debole di mente» nel Progetto era assai più lasca e vaga della stessa espressione «debole di mente». È un pezzo di sbadigliante idiozia su «persone che, pur capaci di guadagnarsi da vivere in circostanze favorevoli» (come se qualcuno potesse guadagnarsi da vivere se le circostanze fossero direttamente sfavorevoli a che lo faccia), sono nondimeno «incapaci di gestire i propri affari con la dovuta prudenza»; il che è esattamente ciò che tutto il mondo e sua moglie vanno dicendo dei loro vicini per tutto questo pianeta. Ma poiché un’incapacità di qualsiasi genere di pensiero è oggi considerata arte di governo, non c’è nulla di così tanto nuovo in una stesura tanto sciatta. Ciò che è nuovo e ciò che è vitale è questo: che la difesa di questa folle Legge di Coercizione è una difesa eugenica. Non solo lo si dice apertamente, ma lo si sostiene con ardore, che lo scopo del provvedimento è impedire a chiunque questi propagandisti non ritengano per caso intelligente di avere moglie o figli. Ogni vagabondo che sia scontroso, ogni bracciante che sia timido, ogni villico che sia eccentrico, può facilissimamente essere sottoposto a condizioni concepite per i maniaci omicidi. Questa è la situazione; e questo è il punto. L’Inghilterra ha dimenticato lo Stato Feudale; è nell’ultima anarchia dello Stato Industriale; c’è molto di vero nella teoria del signor Belloc secondo cui si avvicina allo Stato Servile; al momento non riesce a raggiungere lo Stato Distributivo; ha quasi certamente mancato lo Stato Socialista. Ma noi siamo già sotto lo Stato Eugenista; e non ci rimane altro che la ribellione.

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III

L’ANARCHIA DALL’ALTO

Un’anarchia silenziosa sta corrodendo la nostra società. Devo indugiare sull’espressione; poiché la vera natura dell’anarchia è per lo più fraintesa. Non è affatto necessario che l’anarchia sia violenta; né è necessario che venga dal basso. Un governo può divenire anarchico non meno di un popolo. Il tipo più sentimentale di Tory usa la parola anarchia come mero termine ingiurioso per la ribellione; ma gli sfugge una distinzione intellettuale importantissima. La ribellione può essere sbagliata e disastrosa; ma anche quando la ribellione è sbagliata, non è mai anarchia. Quando non è autodifesa, è usurpazione. Mira a instaurare una nuova regola al posto della vecchia. E benché non possa essere anarchica nell’essenza (perché ha uno scopo), non può certo essere anarchica nel metodo; poiché gli uomini devono essere organizzati quando combattono; e la disciplina in un esercito di ribelli dev’essere buona quanto la disciplina nell’esercito regio. Questo profondo principio di distinzione dev’essere tenuto ben presente. Prendiamo, a titolo di simbolo, quelle due grandi storie spirituali che, sia che le contiamo miti o misteri, sono state così a lungo i due cardini di tutta la morale europea. Il cristiano incline a simpatizzare in generale con l’autorità costituita penserà alla ribellione sotto l’immagine di Satana, il ribelle contro Dio. Ma Satana, benché traditore, non era un anarchico. Rivendicava la corona del cosmo; e, se avesse prevalso, si sarebbe aspettato che i suoi angeli ribelli smettessero di ribellarsi. D’altra parte, il cristiano le cui simpatie vanno più in generale alla semplice autodifesa degli oppressi penserà piuttosto al Cristo stesso che sfida i Sommi Sacerdoti e flagella i ricchi mercanti. Ma sia che il Cristo fosse (come dicono alcuni) un Socialista, di certo non era un Anarchico. Il Cristo, come Satana, rivendicò il trono. Instaurò una nuova autorità contro una vecchia autorità; ma la instaurò con comandamenti positivi e uno schema comprensibile. In questa luce tutti gli uomini medievali — anzi, tutti gli uomini fino a poco tempo fa — avrebbero giudicato le questioni che comportano la rivolta. John Ball si sarebbe offerto di abbattere il governo perché era un cattivo governo, non perché era un governo. Riccardo II avrebbe biasimato Bolingbroke non come perturbatore della pace, ma come usurpatore. L’anarchia, dunque, nel senso utile della parola, è cosa del tutto distinta da qualsiasi ribellione, giusta o sbagliata. Non è necessariamente adirata; non è, almeno nei suoi primi stadi, neppure necessariamente dolorosa. E, come ho detto prima, è spesso interamente silenziosa.

Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop yourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the normal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar, extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot end these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family sits up all night on New Year’s Eve. It is anarchy in the home if members of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It was not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the slaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the slave-owners’ point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the slaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is historically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a picnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I think, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all took what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat if swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are uncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the really dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It is magnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water --- like Niagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening or dangerous or even destructive, it is that it cannot stop. Now it is plain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a society as easily as the society so ruled. And in modern England it is the powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it --- who are truly possessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense, is not too strong. The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is talking nonsense and it can’t stop.

Now it is perfectly plain that government ought to have, and must have, the same sort of right to use exceptional methods occasionally that the private householder has to have a picnic or to sit up all night on New Year’s Eve. The State, like the householder, is sane if it can treat such exceptions as exceptions. Such desperate remedies may not even be right; but such remedies are endurable as long as they are admittedly desperate. Such cases, of course, are the communism of food in a besieged city; the official disavowal of an arrested spy; the subjection of a patch of civil life to martial law; the cutting of communication in a plague; or that deepest degradation of the commonwealth, the use of national soldiers not against foreign soldiers, but against their own brethren in revolt. Of these exceptions some are right and some wrong; but all are right in so far as they are taken as exceptions. The modern world is insane, not so much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the normal.

We see this in the vague extension of punishments like imprisonment; often the very reformers who admit that prison is bad for people propose to reform them by a little more of it. We see it in panic legislation like that after the White Slave scare, when the torture of flogging was revived for all sorts of ill-defined and vague and variegated types of men. Our fathers were never so mad, even when they were torturers. They stretched the man out on the rack. They did not stretch the rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burning they may have seen witches everywhere--- because their minds were fixed on witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, because their minds were unfixed. While tying some very unpopular witch to the stake, with the firm conviction that she was a spiritual tyranny and pestilence, they did not say to each other, “A little burning is what my Aunt Susan wants, to cure her of her back-biting,” or “Some of these faggots would do your Cousin James good, and teach him to play with poor girls’ affections.”

Now the name of all this is Anarchy. It not only does not know what it wants, but it does not even know what it hates. It multiplies excessively in the more American sort of English newspapers. When this new sort of New Englander burns a witch the whole prairie catches fire. These people have not the decision and detachment of the doctrinal ages. They cannot do a monstrous action and still see it is monstrous. Wherever they make a stride they make a rut. They cannot stop their own thoughts, though their thoughts are pouring into the pit.

A final instance, which can be sketched much more briefly, can be found in this general fact: that the definition of almost every crime has become more and more indefinite, and spreads like a flattening and thinning cloud over larger and larger landscapes. Cruelty to children, one would have thought, was a thing about as unmistakable, unusual and appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to cover almost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The only distinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in the poor, who generally can’t help them, and not in the rich, who generally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. The point here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod on the bloody night of Innocents has come precious near being attributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in the Temple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kind mother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy children had no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this an illegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all the horror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes to parricide, could now be used against my son who had done any act that could colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and so affected his health. Few of us would be safe.

L’anarchia è quella condizione della mente o dei metodi in cui non ci si riesce a fermare. È la perdita di quel autocontrollo che è capace di tornare alla norma. Non è anarchia perché agli uomini è permesso di dar principio a schiamazzi, stravaganze, esperimenti, pericoli. È anarchia quando la gente non riesce a mettere fine a queste cose. Non è anarchia nella casa se l’intera famiglia veglia tutta la notte la vigilia di Capodanno. È anarchia nella casa se i membri della famiglia vegliano sempre più tardi per mesi a venire. Non era anarchia nella villa romana quando, durante i Saturnali, gli schiavi diventavano padroni o i padroni schiavi. Era (dal punto di vista dei proprietari di schiavi) anarchia se, dopo i Saturnali, gli schiavi continuavano a comportarsi in modo saturnaliano; ma è storicamente evidente che non lo facevano. Non è anarchia fare un picnic; ma è anarchia perdere ogni memoria degli orari dei pasti. Sarebbe, credo, anarchia se (come è l’ignobile proposta di taluni) ci prendessimo tutti dalla credenza ciò che ci pare. È così che mangerebbero i porci se i porci avessero credenze; essi non hanno feste immobili; sono straordinariamente progressisti, i porci. È questa incapacità di rientrare entro limiti razionali dopo una stravaganza legittima ciò che costituisce il disordine davvero pericoloso. Il mondo moderno è come il Niagara. È magnifico, ma non è forte. È debole come l’acqua — come il Niagara. L’obiezione a una cateratta non è che sia assordante o pericolosa o persino distruttiva, è che non riesce a fermarsi. Ora è chiaro che questa sorta di caos può impossessarsi dei poteri che governano una società con la stessa facilità con cui si impossessa della società così governata. E nell’Inghilterra moderna sono i poteri che governano a esserne principalmente posseduti — a essere veramente posseduti dai demoni. La frase, nel suo vecchio e giusto senso psicologico, non è troppo forte. Lo Stato è improvvisamente e quietamente impazzito. Sta dicendo sciocchezze e non riesce a fermarsi.

Ora è perfettamente chiaro che il governo dovrebbe avere, e deve avere, lo stesso tipo di diritto a usare occasionalmente metodi eccezionali che il privato capofamiglia ha di fare un picnic o di vegliare tutta la notte la vigilia di Capodanno. Lo Stato, come il capofamiglia, è sano di mente se sa trattare tali eccezioni come eccezioni. Simili rimedi disperati possono anche non essere giusti; ma tali rimedi sono sopportabili finché sono dichiaratamente disperati. Tali casi sono, naturalmente, il comunismo del cibo in una città assediata; la sconfessione ufficiale di una spia catturata; l’assoggettamento di una porzione di vita civile alla legge marziale; l’interruzione delle comunicazioni durante una pestilenza; o quella più profonda degradazione dello Stato, l’uso di soldati nazionali non contro soldati stranieri, ma contro i propri fratelli in rivolta. Di queste eccezioni alcune sono giuste e altre sbagliate; ma tutte sono giuste nella misura in cui sono prese come eccezioni. Il mondo moderno è insano, non tanto perché ammette l’anormale, quanto perché non riesce a recuperare il normale.

Lo vediamo nella vaga estensione di castighi come l’imprigionamento; spesso proprio i riformatori che ammettono che la prigione fa male alla gente propongono di riformarla con un po’ più di prigione. Lo vediamo in una legislazione dettata dal panico come quella dopo il terrore della Tratta delle bianche, quando la tortura della fustigazione fu risuscitata per ogni sorta di tipi d’uomini mal definiti, vaghi e variegati. I nostri padri non furono mai così folli, nemmeno quando torturavano. Stendevano l’uomo sul cavalletto. Non stendevano il cavalletto, come facciamo noi. Quando gli uomini andavano a caccia di streghe potevano vedere streghe dappertutto — perché le loro menti erano fissate sulla stregoneria. Ma non vedevano dappertutto cose da bruciare, perché le loro menti non erano fissate. Mentre legavano al rogo qualche strega assai impopolare, con la ferma convinzione che fosse una tirannide e una pestilenza spirituale, non si dicevano l’un l’altro: «Un po’ di rogo è quel che ci vuole per mia zia Susan, per guarirla dalle sue maldicenze», oppure: «Un po’ di queste fascine farebbero bene a vostro cugino James, e gli insegnerebbero a non giocare con i sentimenti delle povere ragazze».

Ora il nome di tutto questo è Anarchia. Essa non solo non sa che cosa vuole, ma non sa nemmeno che cosa odia. Si moltiplica eccessivamente nel genere più americano di giornali inglesi. Quando questo nuovo tipo di neo-inglese brucia una strega, l’intera prateria prende fuoco. Questa gente non ha la decisione e il distacco delle epoche dottrinali. Non sa compiere un’azione mostruosa continuando a vedere che è mostruosa. Ovunque faccia un passo, scava un solco. Non riesce a fermare i propri pensieri, benché i suoi pensieri si stiano riversando nell’abisso.

Un esempio finale, che si può abbozzare assai più brevemente, si trova in questo fatto generale: che la definizione di quasi ogni delitto è divenuta sempre più indefinita, e si spande come una nube che si appiattisce e si assottiglia su paesaggi sempre più vasti. La crudeltà verso i bambini, si sarebbe pensato, era una cosa tanto inconfondibile, insolita e spaventosa quanto il parricidio. Nella sua applicazione è giunta a coprire quasi ogni negligenza che possa capitare in una famiglia bisognosa. L’unica distinzione è, naturalmente, che queste negligenze vengono punite nei poveri, che generalmente non possono evitarle, e non nei ricchi, che generalmente possono. Ma non è questo il punto che sto argomentando ora. Il punto qui è che un delitto che tutti istintivamente colleghiamo a Erode nella sanguinosa notte degli Innocenti è arrivato pericolosamente vicino a poter essere attribuito a Maria e Giuseppe quando smarrirono il loro figlio nel Tempio. Alla luce di un caso abbastanza recente (la madre, dichiaratamente affettuosa, che fu ultimamente incarcerata perché i suoi figli, dichiaratamente sani, non avevano acqua per lavarsi), nessuno, credo, chiamerà questa un’illegittima esagerazione letteraria. Ora, è esattamente come se tutto l’orrore e il pesante castigo, connessi nelle tribù più semplici al parricidio, potessero ora essere usati contro mio figlio che avesse compiuto un qualsiasi atto che si potesse verosimilmente supporre avesse angustiato il padre, e così ne avesse compromesso la salute. Pochi di noi sarebbero al sicuro.

Another case out of hundreds is the loose extension of the idea of libel. Libel cases bear no more trace of the old and just anger against the man who bore false witness against his neighbour than “cruelty” cases do of the old and just horror of the parents that hated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports of the less athletic rich --- a variation on baccarat, a game of chance. A music-hall actress got damages for a song that was called “vulgar,” which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my handwriting “rococo.” A politician got huge damages because he was said to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that seductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story. Sometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in his business; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocer slanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it is clear that its exponents possess no power of distinction, or sense of proportion, by which they can draw the line between calling a woman a popular singer and calling her a bad lot; or between charging a man with leading infants to Protection and leading them to sin and shame. But the vital point to which to return is this. That it is not necessarily nor even specially, an anarchy in the populace. It is an anarchy in the organ of government. It is the magistrates --- voices of the governing class --- who cannot distinguish between cruelty and carelessness. It is the judges (and their very submissive special juries) who cannot see the difference between opinion and slander. And it is the highly placed and highly paid experts who have brought in the first Eugenic Law, the Feeble-Minded Bill --- thus showing that they can see no difference between a mad and a sane man.

That, to begin with, is the historic atmosphere in which this thing was born. It is a peculiar atmosphere, and luckily not likely to last. Real progress bears the same relation to it that a happy girl laughing bears to an hysterical girl who cannot stop laughing. But I have described this atmosphere first because it is the only atmosphere in which such a thing as the Eugenist legislation could be proposed among men. All other ages would have called it to some kind of logical account, however academic or narrow. The lowest sophist in the Greek schools would remember enough of Socrates to force the Eugenist to tell him (at least) whether Midias was segregated because he was curable or because he was incurable. The meanest Thomist of the mediaeval monasteries would have the sense to see that you cannot discuss a madman when you have not discussed a man. The most owlish Calvinist commentator in the seventeenth century would ask the Eugenist to reconcile such Bible texts as derided fools with the other Bible texts that praised them. The dullest shopkeeper in Paris in l790 would have asked what were the Rights of Man, if they did not include the rights of the lover, the husband, and the father. It is only in our own London Particular (as Mr. Guppy said of the fog) that small figures can loom so large in the vapour, and even mingle with quite different figures, and have the appearance of a mob. But, above all, I have dwelt on the telescopic quality in these twilight avenues, because unless the reader realizes how elastic and unlimited they are, he simply will not believe in the abominations we have to combat.

One of those wise old fairy tales, that come from nowhere and flourish everywhere, tells how a man came to own a small magic machine like a coffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one word and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I wish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the mill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers’ mess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury and exaggeration, and sailors’ tales should be taken with a grain of it. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then, touching the word that stopped it, suddenly remembered that he forgot. The tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like Arctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom, where all the men lay drowned. And that (so says this fairy tale) is why the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For the fairy tales knew what the modern mystics don’t --- that one should not let loose either the supernatural or the natural.

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IV

THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW

The modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: that people do not see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it may or may not be right to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivably be right to kill a murderer because it is wrong to kill a man. If the hangman, having got his hand in, proceeded to hang friends and relatives to his taste and fancy, he would (intellectually) unhang the first man, though the first man might not think so. Or thus again, if you say an insane man is irresponsible, you imply that a sane man is responsible. He is responsible for the insane man. And the attempt of the Eugenists and other fatalists to treat all men as irresponsible is the largest and flattest folly in philosophy. The Eugenist has to treat everybody, including himself, as an exception to a rule that isn’t there.

The Eugenists, as a first move, have extended the frontiers of the lunatic asylum; let us take this as our definite starting point, and ask ourselves what lunacy is, and what is its fundamental relation to human society. Now that raw juvenile scepticism that clogs all thought with catchwords may often be heard to remark that the mad are only the minority, the sane only the majority. There is a neat exactitude about such people’s nonsense; they seem to miss the point by magic. The mad are not a minority because they are not a corporate body; and that is what their madness means. The sane are not a majority; they are mankind. And mankind (as its name would seem to imply) is a kind, not a degree. In so far as the lunatic differs, he differs from all minorities and majorities in kind. The madman who thinks he is a knife cannot go into partnership with the other who thinks he is a fork. There is no trysting place outside reason; there is no inn on those wild roads that are beyond the world.

Un altro caso tra centinaia è la lassa estensione dell’idea di diffamazione. Le cause per diffamazione non recano più traccia dell’antica e giusta ira contro chi rendeva falsa testimonianza contro il prossimo di quanta le cause per «crudeltà» ne rechino dell’antico e giusto orrore verso i genitori che odiavano la propria carne. Una causa per diffamazione è divenuta uno degli sport dei ricchi meno atletici — una variante del baccarà, un gioco d’azzardo. Un’attrice di varietà ottenne un risarcimento per una canzone definita «volgare», il che è come se io potessi multare o incarcerare il mio vicino per aver detto «rococò» la mia calligrafia. Un politico ottenne un enorme risarcimento perché lo si diceva aver parlato ai bambini della Riforma daziaria; come se quel seducente argomento potesse corromperne la virtù, al pari di una storia oscena. Talvolta la diffamazione è definita come qualsiasi cosa atta a danneggiare un uomo nei suoi affari; nel qual caso ogni nuovo bottegaio che si chiami droghiere calunnia il droghiere di fronte. Tutto questo, io dico, è Anarchia; poiché è chiaro che i suoi fautori non possiedono alcun potere di distinzione, né senso della proporzione, con cui tracciare la linea tra il chiamare una donna cantante popolare e il chiamarla una poco di buono; o tra l’accusare un uomo di indurre i bimbi al Protezionismo e l’indurli al peccato e alla vergogna. Ma il punto vitale a cui tornare è questo. Che non si tratta necessariamente, né in modo particolare, di un’anarchia nel popolo. È un’anarchia nell’organo del governo. Sono i magistrati — voci della classe dirigente — che non sanno distinguere tra crudeltà e trascuratezza. Sono i giudici (e le loro giurie speciali assai remissive) che non sanno vedere la differenza tra opinione e calunnia. E sono gli esperti altolocati e strapagati che hanno introdotto la prima Legge Eugenica, il Progetto di legge sui Deboli di mente — mostrando così di non saper vedere alcuna differenza tra un pazzo e un uomo sano.

Questa, per cominciare, è l’atmosfera storica in cui questa cosa è nata. È un’atmosfera peculiare, e fortunatamente non destinata a durare. Il progresso reale sta a essa nella stessa relazione in cui una fanciulla felice che ride sta a una fanciulla isterica che non riesce a smettere di ridere. Ma ho descritto per prima questa atmosfera perché è l’unica atmosfera in cui una cosa come la legislazione eugenista potesse essere proposta tra gli uomini. Ogni altra epoca l’avrebbe chiamata a qualche sorta di resa dei conti logica, per quanto accademica o angusta. Il più infimo sofista delle scuole greche ricorderebbe abbastanza di Socrate da costringere l’Eugenista a dirgli (almeno) se Mida fosse segregato perché guaribile o perché inguaribile. Il più meschino tomista dei monasteri medievali avrebbe il buon senso di vedere che non si può discutere di un pazzo quando non si è discusso di un uomo. Il più tonto commentatore calvinista del diciassettesimo secolo chiederebbe all’Eugenista di conciliare quei versetti della Bibbia che schernivano gli stolti con gli altri versetti della Bibbia che li lodavano. Il più ottuso bottegaio di Parigi nel 1790 avrebbe chiesto quali fossero i Diritti dell’Uomo, se non includevano i diritti dell’amante, del marito e del padre. È solo nella nostra Londra Particolare (come diceva il signor Guppy della nebbia) che piccole figure possono profilarsi così grandi nel vapore, e persino confondersi con figure del tutto diverse, e assumere l’apparenza di una folla. Ma, soprattutto, ho indugiato sulla qualità telescopica di questi viali crepuscolari, perché, a meno che il lettore non si renda conto di quanto siano elastici e illimitati, semplicemente non crederà alle abominazioni che dobbiamo combattere.

Una di quelle savie vecchie fiabe, che vengono dal nulla e fioriscono ovunque, racconta come un uomo giunse a possedere una piccola macchina magica simile a un macinino da caffè, che macinava qualunque cosa egli volesse quando pronunciava una parola e si fermava quando ne pronunciava un’altra. Dopo aver compiuto meraviglie (che vorrei che la mia coscienza mi lasciasse mettere in questo libro come riempitivo), al macinino fu semplicemente chiesto di macinare qualche granello di sale alla mensa degli ufficiali a bordo di una nave; poiché il sale è ovunque il tipo del piccolo lusso e dell’esagerazione, e i racconti dei marinai vanno presi con un granello di esso. L’uomo ricordava la parola che avviava il macinino del sale, e poi, toccando la parola che lo fermava, si ricordò all’improvviso di averla dimenticata. L’alta nave affondò, carica e scintillante fino agli alberi di gabbia di sale come di nevi artiche; ma il folle macinino continuava a macinare sul fondo dell’oceano, dove tutti gli uomini giacevano annegati. Ed è per questo (così dice la fiaba) che le grandi acque intorno al nostro mondo hanno un sapore amaro. Poiché le fiabe sapevano ciò che i mistici moderni non sanno — che non si deve sciogliere né il soprannaturale né il naturale.

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IV

IL PAZZO E LA LEGGE

Il male moderno, abbiamo detto, ruota in gran parte su questo: che la gente non vede che l’eccezione conferma la regola. Così, può essere giusto o no uccidere un assassino; ma può essere giusto uccidere un assassino solo perché è sbagliato uccidere un uomo. Se il boia, presa la mano, si mettesse a impiccare amici e parenti a suo gusto e capriccio, egli (intellettualmente) disimpiccherebbe il primo uomo, benché il primo uomo potrebbe non pensarla così. O ancora, se dite che un uomo insano è irresponsabile, implicate che un uomo sano è responsabile. È responsabile dell’uomo insano. E il tentativo degli Eugenisti e degli altri fatalisti di trattare tutti gli uomini come irresponsabili è la più grande e piatta follia della filosofia. L’Eugenista deve trattare tutti, se stesso incluso, come un’eccezione a una regola che non c’è.

Gli Eugenisti, come prima mossa, hanno esteso i confini del manicomio; prendiamo questo come nostro preciso punto di partenza, e chiediamoci che cosa sia la follia, e quale sia la sua relazione fondamentale con la società umana. Ora, quel greve scetticismo giovanile che intasa ogni pensiero con parole d’ordine si può spesso sentir osservare che i pazzi sono solo la minoranza, i sani solo la maggioranza. C’è una precisa esattezza nelle sciocchezze di simili persone; sembrano mancare il bersaglio per magia. I pazzi non sono una minoranza perché non sono un corpo costituito; ed è questo che significa la loro follia. I sani non sono una maggioranza; sono l’umanità. E l’umanità (come il suo nome parrebbe implicare) è una specie, non un grado. Nella misura in cui il pazzo differisce, differisce da tutte le minoranze e maggioranze per specie. Il pazzo che crede di essere un coltello non può mettersi in società con l’altro che crede di essere una forchetta. Non c’è luogo di ritrovo al di fuori della ragione; non c’è locanda su quelle strade selvagge che stanno oltre il mondo.

The madman is not he that defies the world. The saint, the criminal, the martyr, the cynic, the nihilist may all defy the world quite sanely. And even if such fanatics would destroy the world the world owes them a strictly fair trial according to proof and public law. But the madman is not the man who defies the world; he is the man who denies it. Suppose we are all standing round a field and looking at a tree in the middle of it. It is perfectly true that we all see it (as the decadents say) in infinitely different aspects: that is not the point; the point is that we all say it is a tree. Suppose, if you will, that we are all poets? which seems improbable; so that each of us could turn his aspect into a vivid image distinct from a tree. Suppose one says it looks like a green cloud and another like a green fountain, and a third like a green dragon and the fourth like a green cheese. The fact remains: that they all say it looks like these things. It is a tree. Nor are any of the poets in the least mad because of any opinions they may form, however frenzied, about the functions or future of the tree. A conservative poet may wish to clip the tree; a revolutionary poet may wish to burn it. An optimist poet may want to make it a Christmas tree and hang candles on it. A pessimist poet may want to hang himself on it. None of these are mad, because they are all talking about the same thing. But there is another man who is talking horribly about something else. There is a monstrous exception to mankind. Why he is so we know not; a new theory says it is heredity; an older theory says it is devils. But in any case, the spirit of it is the spirit that denies, the spirit that really denies realities. This is the man who looks at the tree and does not say it looks like a lion, but says that it is a lamp-post.

I do not mean that all mad delusions are as concrete as this, though some are more concrete. Believing your own body is glass is a more daring denial of reality than believing a tree is a glass lamp at the top of a pole. But all true delusions have in them this unalterable assertion --- that what is not is. The difference between us and the maniac is not about how things look or how things ought to look, but about what they self-evidently are. The lunatic does not say that he ought to be King; Perkin Warbeck might say that. He says he is King. The lunatic does not say he is as wise as Shakespeare; Bernard Shaw might say that. The lunatic says he is Shakespeare. The lunatic does not say he is divine in the same sense as Christ; Mr. R. J. Campbell would say that. The lunatic says he is Christ. In all cases the difference is a difference about what is there; not a difference touching what should be done about it.

For this reason, and for this alone, the lunatic is outside public law. This is the abysmal difference between him and the criminal. The criminal admits the facts, and therefore permits us to appeal to the facts. We can so arrange the facts around him that he may really understand that agreement is in his own interests. We can say to him, “Do not steal apples from this tree, or we will hang you on that tree.” But if the man really thinks one tree is a Lamp-post and the other tree a Trafalgar Square fountain, we simply cannot treat with him at all. It is obviously useless to say, “Do not steal apples from this lamp-post, or I will hang you on that fountain.” If a man denies the facts, there is no answer but to lock him up. He cannot speak our language: not that varying verbal language which often misses fire even with us, but that enormous alphabet of sun and moon and green grass and blue sky in which alone we meet, and by which alone we can signal to each other. That unique man of genius, George Macdonald, described in one of his weird stories two systems of space co-incident; so that where I knew there was a piano standing in a drawing-room you knew there was a rose-bush growing in a garden. Something of this sort is in small or great affairs the matter with the madman. He cannot have a vote, because he is the citizen of another country. He is a foreigner. Nay, he is an invader and an enemy; for the city he lives in has been super-imposed on ours.

Now these two things are primarily to be noted in his case. First, that we can only condemn him to a general doom, because we only know his general nature. All criminals, who do particular things for particular reasons (things and reasons which, however criminal, are always comprehensible), have been more and more tried for such separate actions under separate and suitable laws ever since Europe began to become a civilization --- and until the rare and recent reincursions of barbarism in such things as the Indeterminate Sentence. Of that I shall speak later; it is enough for this argument to point out the plain facts. It is the plain fact that every savage, every sultan, every outlawed baron, every brigand-chief has always used this instrument of the Indeterminate Sentence, which has been recently offered us as something highly scientific and humane. All these people, in short, being barbarians, have always kept their captives until they (the barbarians) chose to think the captives were in a fit frame of mind to come out. It is also the plain fact that all that has been called civilization or progress, justice or liberty, for nearly three thousand years, has had the general direction of treating even the captive as a free man, in so far as some clear case of some defined crime had to be shown against him. All law has meant allowing the criminal, within some limits or other, to argue with the law: as Job was allowed, or rather challenged, to argue with God. But the criminal is, among civilized men, tried by one law for one crime for a perfectly simple reason: that the motive of the crime like the meaning of the law, is conceivable to the common intelligence. A man is punished specially as a burglar, and not generally as a bad man, because a man may be a burglar and, in many other respects not be a bad man. The act of burglary is punishable because it is intelligible. But when acts are unintelligible, we can only refer them to a general untrustworthiness, and guard against them by a general restraint. If a man breaks into a house to get a piece of bread, we can appeal to his reason in various ways. We can hang him for housebreaking; or again (as has occurred to some daring thinkers) we can give him a piece of bread. But if he breaks in, let us say, to steal the parings of other people’s finger nails, then we are in a difficulty: we cannot imagine what he is going to do with them, and therefore cannot easily imagine what we are going to do with him. If a villain comes in, in cloak and mask, and puts a little arsenic in the soup, we can collar him and say to him distinctly, “You are guilty of murder; and I will now consult the code of tribal law, under which we live, to see if this practice is not forbidden.” But if a man in the same cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-water in the soup, what can we say? Our charge necessarily becomes a more general one. We can only observe, with a moderation almost amounting to weakness, “You seem to be the sort of person who will do this sort of thing.” And then we can lock him up. The principle of the indeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. It does apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And it applies to nobody else.

Il pazzo non è colui che sfida il mondo. Il santo, il criminale, il martire, il cinico, il nichilista possono tutti sfidare il mondo in perfetta sanità di mente. E anche se tali fanatici volessero distruggere il mondo, il mondo deve loro un processo rigorosamente equo, secondo le prove e il pubblico diritto. Ma il pazzo non è l’uomo che sfida il mondo; è l’uomo che lo nega. Supponiamo di essere tutti intorno a un campo a guardare un albero nel mezzo di esso. È perfettamente vero che tutti noi lo vediamo (come dicono i decadenti) in aspetti infinitamente diversi: non è questo il punto; il punto è che tutti diciamo che è un albero. Supponiamo, se volete, che siamo tutti poeti — il che pare improbabile; sicché ciascuno di noi possa tramutare il proprio aspetto in un’immagine vivida distinta da un albero. Supponiamo che uno dica che sembra una nube verde e un altro una verde fontana, e un terzo un verde drago e il quarto un verde formaggio. Il fatto rimane: che tutti dicono che sembra queste cose. È un albero. Né alcuno dei poeti è minimamente pazzo per una qualsiasi opinione che possa formarsi, per quanto frenetica, sulle funzioni o sul futuro dell’albero. Un poeta conservatore può voler potare l’albero; un poeta rivoluzionario può volerlo bruciare. Un poeta ottimista può voler farne un albero di Natale e appendervi candele. Un poeta pessimista può volervisi impiccare. Nessuno di costoro è pazzo, perché parlano tutti della stessa cosa. Ma c’è un altro uomo che sta parlando orribilmente di qualcos’altro. C’è una mostruosa eccezione all’umanità. Perché egli sia così, non lo sappiamo; una nuova teoria dice che è l’ereditarietà; una teoria più antica dice che sono i demoni. Ma in ogni caso, il suo spirito è lo spirito che nega, lo spirito che nega davvero le realtà. Costui è l’uomo che guarda l’albero e non dice che sembra un leone, ma dice che è un lampione.

Non intendo dire che tutte le allucinazioni dei pazzi siano concrete come questa, benché alcune siano più concrete. Credere che il proprio corpo sia di vetro è una negazione della realtà più ardita che credere che un albero sia una lampada di vetro in cima a un palo. Ma tutte le vere allucinazioni contengono questa inalterabile asserzione — che ciò che non è, è. La differenza tra noi e il maniaco non riguarda come le cose appaiono o come le cose dovrebbero apparire, ma ciò che esse autoevidentemente sono. Il pazzo non dice che dovrebbe essere re; Perkin Warbeck potrebbe dirlo. Egli dice di essere re. Il pazzo non dice di essere saggio quanto Shakespeare; Bernard Shaw potrebbe dirlo. Il pazzo dice di essere Shakespeare. Il pazzo non dice di essere divino nello stesso senso in cui lo è il Cristo; il signor R. J. Campbell lo direbbe. Il pazzo dice di essere il Cristo. In tutti i casi la differenza è una differenza su ciò che c’è; non una differenza che tocca ciò che se ne debba fare.

Per questa ragione, e per questa soltanto, il pazzo è fuori dal pubblico diritto. Questa è l’abissale differenza tra lui e il criminale. Il criminale ammette i fatti, e perciò ci permette di appellarci ai fatti. Possiamo disporre i fatti attorno a lui in modo che egli comprenda davvero che l’accordo è nel suo stesso interesse. Possiamo dirgli: «Non rubare le mele da quest’albero, o ti impiccheremo a quell’albero». Ma se l’uomo pensa davvero che un albero sia un lampione e l’altro albero una fontana di Trafalgar Square, semplicemente non possiamo trattare con lui in alcun modo. È ovviamente inutile dire: «Non rubare le mele da questo lampione, o ti impiccherò a quella fontana». Se un uomo nega i fatti, non c’è altra risposta che rinchiuderlo. Egli non può parlare la nostra lingua: non quel mutevole linguaggio verbale che spesso fa cilecca anche con noi, ma quell’enorme alfabeto di sole e luna ed erba verde e cielo azzurro nel quale soltanto ci incontriamo, e per mezzo del quale soltanto possiamo segnalarci l’un l’altro. Quell’uomo di genio unico, George Macdonald, descrisse in uno dei suoi bizzarri racconti due sistemi di spazio coincidenti; sicché dove io sapevo che c’era un pianoforte in un salotto, tu sapevi che c’era un cespuglio di rose che cresceva in un giardino. Qualcosa di questo genere è, nelle faccende piccole o grandi, ciò che affligge il pazzo. Egli non può avere un voto, perché è cittadino di un altro paese. È uno straniero. Anzi, è un invasore e un nemico; poiché la città in cui vive è stata sovrapposta alla nostra.

Ora, due cose vanno anzitutto notate nel suo caso. Primo, che possiamo condannarlo soltanto a una condanna generale, perché conosciamo soltanto la sua natura generale. Tutti i criminali, che compiono cose particolari per ragioni particolari (cose e ragioni che, per quanto criminali, sono sempre comprensibili), sono stati sempre più processati per tali azioni separate secondo leggi separate e adeguate, fin da quando l’Europa cominciò a diventare una civiltà — e fino alle rare e recenti reincursioni della barbarie in cose come la Sentenza Indeterminata. Di ciò parlerò più avanti; per questo argomento basta far notare i fatti nudi e crudi. È un fatto nudo e crudo che ogni selvaggio, ogni sultano, ogni barone fuorilegge, ogni capo brigante abbia sempre usato questo strumento della Sentenza Indeterminata, che ci è stato di recente offerto come qualcosa di altamente scientifico e umano. Tutta questa gente, in breve, essendo barbara, ha sempre tenuto i propri prigionieri finché essi (i barbari) non sceglievano di ritenere che i prigionieri fossero in uno stato d’animo adatto a uscire. È anche un fatto nudo e crudo che tutto ciò che è stato chiamato civiltà o progresso, giustizia o libertà, da quasi tremila anni, ha avuto la direzione generale di trattare persino il prigioniero come un uomo libero, nella misura in cui contro di lui doveva essere dimostrato qualche caso chiaro di qualche delitto definito. Tutto il diritto ha significato permettere al criminale, entro certi limiti, di argomentare con la legge: come a Giobbe fu permesso, o piuttosto fu intimato, di argomentare con Dio. Ma il criminale è, tra gli uomini civili, processato con una sola legge per un solo delitto per una ragione perfettamente semplice: che il movente del delitto, come il significato della legge, è concepibile all’intelligenza comune. Un uomo è punito specificamente come scassinatore, e non genericamente come uomo cattivo, perché un uomo può essere uno scassinatore e, sotto molti altri rispetti, non essere un uomo cattivo. L’atto di scasso è punibile perché è intelligibile. Ma quando gli atti sono inintelligibili, possiamo solo riferirli a una generale inaffidabilità, e premunirci contro di essi con una generale restrizione. Se un uomo si introduce in una casa per procurarsi un pezzo di pane, possiamo appellarci alla sua ragione in vari modi. Possiamo impiccarlo per effrazione; o ancora (come è venuto in mente a certi pensatori audaci) possiamo dargli un pezzo di pane. Ma se si introduce, poniamo, per rubare i ritagli delle unghie altrui, allora siamo in difficoltà: non riusciamo a immaginare che cosa ne farà, e perciò non riusciamo facilmente a immaginare che cosa faremo di lui. Se un malvagio entra, in mantello e maschera, e mette un po’ di arsenico nella minestra, possiamo afferrarlo per il bavero e dirgli distintamente: «Sei colpevole di omicidio; e ora consulterò il codice del diritto tribale, sotto il quale viviamo, per vedere se questa pratica non sia proibita». Ma se un uomo nello stesso mantello e nella stessa maschera è sorpreso a mezzanotte a mettere un po’ di acqua di seltz nella minestra, che cosa possiamo dire? La nostra accusa diventa necessariamente più generica. Possiamo solo osservare, con una moderazione che quasi rasenta la debolezza: «Sembri il tipo di persona che farà questo genere di cose». E poi possiamo rinchiuderlo. Il principio della sentenza indeterminata è la creazione della mente indeterminata. Esso si applica alla creatura incomprensibile, il pazzo. E non si applica a nessun altro.

The second thing to be noted is this: that it is only by the unanimity of sane men that we can condemn this man as utterly separate. If he says a tree is a lamp-post he is mad; but only because all other men say it is a tree. If some men thought it was a tree with a lamp on it, and others thought it was a lamp-post wreathed with branches and vegetation, then it would be a matter of opinion and degree; and he would not be mad, but merely extreme. Certainly he would not be mad if nobody but a botanist could see it was a tree. Certainly his enemies might be madder than he, if nobody but a lamplighter could see it was not a lamp-post. And similarly a man is not an imbecile if only a Eugenist thinks so. The question then raised would not be his sanity, but the sanity of one botanist or one lamplighter or one Eugenist. That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is not the abnormally clever, which is obviously a matter in dispute. That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he begins to say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that we have a right to treat him as the exception and not the rule. It is only because we none of us profess to be anything more than man that we have authority to treat him as something less.

Now the first principle behind Eugenics becomes plain enough. It is the proposal that somebody or something should criticize men with the same superiority with which men criticize madmen. It might exercise this right with great moderation; but I am not here talking about the exercise, but about the right. Its claim certainly is to bring all human life under the Lunacy Laws.

Now this is the first weakness in the case of the Eugenists: that they cannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by what authority they do these things. They cannot see the exception is different from the rule --- even when it is misrule, even when it is an unruly rule. The sound sense in the old Lunacy Law was this: that you cannot deny that a man is a citizen until you are practically prepared to deny that he is a man. Men, and only men, can be the judges of whether he is a man. But any private club of prigs can be judges of whether he ought to be a citizen. When once we step down from that tall and splintered peak of pure insanity we step on to a tableland where one man is not so widely different from an other. Outside the exception, what we find is the average. And the practical, legal shape of the quarrel is this: that unless the normal men have the right to expel the abnormal, what particular sort of abnormal men have the right to expel the normal men? If sanity is not good enough, what is there that is saner than sanity?

Without any grip of the notion of a rule and an exception, the general idea of judging people’s heredity breaks down and is useless. For this reason: that if everything is the result of a doubtful heredity, the judgment itself is the result of a doubtful heredity also. Let it judge not that it be not judged. Eugenists, strange to say, have fathers and mothers like other people; and our opinion about their fathers and mothers is worth exactly as much as their opinions about ours. None of the parents were lunatics, and the rest is mere likes and dislikes. Suppose Dr. Saleeby had gone to Byron and said, “My lord, I perceive you have a club-foot and inordinate passions: such are the hereditary results of a profligate soldier marrying a hot-tempered woman.” The poet might logically reply (with characteristic lucidity and impropriety), “Sir, I perceive you have a confused mind and an unphilosophic theory about other people’s love affairs. Such are the hereditary delusions bred by a Syrian doctor marrying a Quaker lady from New York.” Suppose Dr. Karl Pearson had said to Shelley, “From what I see of your temperament, you are running great risks in forming a connection with the daughter of a fanatic and eccentric like Godwin.” Shelley would be employing the strict rationalism of the older and stronger free thinkers, if he answered, “From what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction in marrying the great-niece of an old corpse of a courtier and dilettante like Samuel Rogers.” It is only opinion for opinion. Nobody can pretend that either Mary Godwin or Samuel Rogers was mad; and the general view a man may hold about the healthiness of inheriting their blood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men do marry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose that Dr. Karl Pearson is any better judge of a bridegroom than the bridegroom is of a bride.

An objection may be anticipated here, but it is very easily answered. It may be said that we do, in fact, call in medical specialists to settle whether a man is mad; and that these specialists go by technical and even secret tests that cannot be known to the mass of men. It is obvious that this is true; it is equally obvious that it does not affect our argument. When we ask the doctor whether our grandfather is going mad, we still mean mad by our own common human definition. We mean, is be going to be a certain sort of person whom men recognize when once he exists. That certain specialists can detect the approach of him, before he exists, does not alter the fact that it is of the practical and popular madman that we are talking, and of him alone. The doctor merely sees a certain fact potentially in the future, while we, with less information, can only see it in the present; but his fact is our fact and everybody’s fact, or we should not bother about it at all. Here is no question of the doctor bringing an entirely new sort of person under coercion, as in the Feeble-Minded Bill. The doctor can say, “Tobacco is death to you,” because the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highly democratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of the indubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, “Jones has that twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house.” But it is not the medical detail we fear, but the moral upshot. We should say, “Let him twitch, as long as he doesn’t burn down the house.” The doctor may say “He has that look in the eyes, and he may take the hatchet and brain you all.” But we do not object to the look in the eyes as such; we object to consequences which, once come, we should all call insane if there were no doctors in the world. We should say, “Let him look how he likes; as long as he does not look for the hatchet.”

La seconda cosa da notare è questa: che è solo per l’unanimità degli uomini sani che possiamo condannare quest’uomo come del tutto a parte. Se dice che un albero è un lampione è pazzo; ma solo perché tutti gli altri uomini dicono che è un albero. Se alcuni uomini pensassero che è un albero con sopra una lampada, e altri pensassero che è un lampione inghirlandato di rami e vegetazione, allora sarebbe questione di opinione e di grado; ed egli non sarebbe pazzo, ma soltanto estremista. Certo non sarebbe pazzo se nessuno tranne un botanico potesse vedere che è un albero. Certo i suoi nemici potrebbero essere più pazzi di lui, se nessuno tranne un lampionaio potesse vedere che non è un lampione. E similmente un uomo non è un imbecille se soltanto un Eugenista lo ritiene tale. La questione allora sollevata non sarebbe la sua sanità di mente, ma la sanità di mente di un botanico o di un lampionaio o di un Eugenista. Ciò che può condannare l’anormalmente sciocco non è l’anormalmente intelligente, che è ovviamente materia controversa. Ciò che può condannare l’anormalmente sciocco è il normalmente sciocco. È quando egli comincia a dire e a fare cose che nemmeno le persone stupide dicono o fanno, che abbiamo il diritto di trattarlo come l’eccezione e non la regola. È solo perché nessuno di noi pretende di essere qualcosa di più di un uomo che abbiamo l’autorità di trattarlo come qualcosa di meno.

Ora il primo principio che sta dietro l’Eugenetica diventa abbastanza chiaro. È la proposta che qualcuno o qualcosa debba criticare gli uomini con la stessa superiorità con cui gli uomini criticano i pazzi. Potrebbe esercitare questo diritto con grande moderazione; ma qui non sto parlando dell’esercizio, bensì del diritto. La sua pretesa è certamente di portare tutta la vita umana sotto le Leggi sulla Follia.

Ora questa è la prima debolezza nel caso degli Eugenisti: che essi non sanno definire chi debba controllare chi; non sanno dire in base a quale autorità fanno queste cose. Non sanno vedere che l’eccezione è diversa dalla regola — anche quando è mala regola, anche quando è una regola sregolata. Il buon senso che stava nella vecchia Legge sulla Follia era questo: che non si può negare che un uomo sia un cittadino finché non si è praticamente disposti a negare che egli sia un uomo. Gli uomini, e soltanto gli uomini, possono essere giudici del fatto che egli sia un uomo. Ma qualsiasi club privato di saccenti può essere giudice del fatto che egli debba essere un cittadino. Una volta che scendiamo da quell’alto e frastagliato picco della pura insania, mettiamo piede su un altopiano dove un uomo non è così ampiamente diverso da un altro. Al di fuori dell’eccezione, ciò che troviamo è la media. E la forma pratica, giuridica, della disputa è questa: che, a meno che gli uomini normali non abbiano il diritto di espellere gli anormali, quale particolare sorta di uomini anormali ha il diritto di espellere gli uomini normali? Se la sanità di mente non basta, che cosa c’è di più sano della sanità di mente?

Senza alcuna presa sulla nozione di una regola e di un’eccezione, l’idea generale di giudicare l’ereditarietà della gente crolla ed è inutile. Per questa ragione: che, se tutto è il risultato di un’ereditarietà dubbia, anche il giudizio stesso è il risultato di un’ereditarietà dubbia. Non giudichi, per non essere giudicato. Gli Eugenisti, strano a dirsi, hanno padri e madri come le altre persone; e la nostra opinione sui loro padri e sulle loro madri vale esattamente quanto le loro opinioni sui nostri. Nessuno dei genitori era pazzo, e il resto sono meri gusti e disgusti. Supponiamo che il dottor Saleeby fosse andato da Byron e avesse detto: «Mylord, mi accorgo che avete un piede equino e passioni smodate: tali sono i risultati ereditari di un soldato dissoluto che sposa una donna dal temperamento focoso». Il poeta potrebbe logicamente rispondere (con caratteristica lucidità e sconvenienza): «Signore, mi accorgo che avete una mente confusa e una teoria non filosofica sulle faccende d’amore altrui. Tali sono le allucinazioni ereditarie generate da un medico siriano che sposa una signora quacchera di New York». Supponiamo che il dottor Karl Pearson avesse detto a Shelley: «Da quel che vedo del vostro temperamento, correte grandi rischi a formare un legame con la figlia di un fanatico ed eccentrico come Godwin». Shelley starebbe adoperando il rigoroso razionalismo dei liberi pensatori più antichi e più forti, se rispondesse: «Da quel che osservo della vostra mente, vi precipitate verso la rovina sposando la pronipote d’un vecchio cadavere di cortigiano e dilettante come Samuel Rogers». È soltanto opinione contro opinione. Nessuno può pretendere che Mary Godwin o Samuel Rogers fossero pazzi; e la veduta generale che un uomo può avere sulla salubrità dell’ereditare il loro sangue o il loro tipo è semplicemente la stessa sorta di veduta generale in base alla quale gli uomini sposano per amore o per simpatia. Non c’è ragione di supporre che il dottor Karl Pearson sia un giudice migliore di uno sposo di quanto lo sposo sia giudice di una sposa.

Si può qui prevedere un’obiezione, ma le si risponde facilissimamente. Si può dire che noi, di fatto, chiamiamo specialisti medici per stabilire se un uomo sia pazzo; e che questi specialisti si regolano su prove tecniche e persino segrete che non possono essere note alla massa degli uomini. È ovvio che questo è vero; è ugualmente ovvio che non tocca il nostro argomento. Quando chiediamo al medico se nostro nonno stia diventando pazzo, intendiamo pur sempre pazzo secondo la nostra comune definizione umana. Intendiamo: sta per diventare un certo tipo di persona che gli uomini riconoscono una volta che esiste? Che certi specialisti sappiano rilevarne l’approssimarsi, prima che esista, non altera il fatto che è del pazzo pratico e popolare che stiamo parlando, e di lui soltanto. Il medico si limita a vedere un certo fatto potenzialmente nel futuro, mentre noi, con minori informazioni, possiamo vederlo solo nel presente; ma il suo fatto è il nostro fatto e il fatto di tutti, altrimenti non ce ne daremmo affatto pensiero. Qui non si tratta che il medico porti sotto costrizione un tipo di persona del tutto nuovo, come nel Progetto di legge sui Deboli di mente. Il medico può dire: «Il tabacco è la morte per te», perché l’avversione alla morte può darsi per scontata, essendo un’istituzione altamente democratica; e lo stesso vale per l’avversione all’indubitabile eccezione chiamata follia. Il medico può dire: «Jones ha quel tremito nei nervi, e potrebbe dar fuoco alla casa». Ma non è il dettaglio medico che noi temiamo, bensì l’esito morale. Diremmo: «Che tremi pure, purché non dia fuoco alla casa». Il medico può dire: «Ha quello sguardo negli occhi, e potrebbe prendere l’accetta e spaccarvi la testa a tutti». Ma noi non abbiamo nulla in contrario allo sguardo negli occhi in quanto tale; abbiamo in contrario le conseguenze che, una volta venute, tutti chiameremmo insane se non ci fossero medici al mondo. Diremmo: «Che guardi pure come gli pare; purché non vada in cerca dell’accetta».

Now, that specialists are valuable for this particular and practical purpose, of predicting the approach of enormous and admitted human calamities, nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring us one inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is a calamity; or to call things calamities which common-sense does not call calamities. We call in the doctor to save us from death; and, death being admittedly an evil, he has the right to administer the queerest and most recondite pill which he may think is a cure for all such menaces of death. He has not the right to administer death as the cure for all human ills. And as he has no moral authority to enforce a new conception of happiness, so he has no moral authority to enforce a new conception of sanity. He may know I am going mad; for madness is an isolated thing like leprosy; and I know nothing about leprosy. But if he merely thinks my mind is weak, I may happen to think the same of his. I often do.

In short, unless pilots are to be permitted to ram ships on to the rocks and then say that heaven is the only true harbour; unless judges are to be allowed to let murderers loose, and explain afterwards that the murder had done good on the whole; unless soldiers are to be allowed to lose battles and then point out that true glory is to be found in the valley of humiliation; unless cashiers are to rob a bank in order to give it an advertisement; or dentists to torture people to give them a contrast to their comforts; unless we are prepared to let loose all these private fancies against the public and accepted meaning of life or safety or prosperity or pleasure --- then it is as plain as Punch’s nose that no scientific man must be allowed to meddle with the public definition of madness. We call him in to tell us where it is or when it is. We could not do so, if we had not ourselves settled what it is.

As I wish to confine myself in this chapter to the primary point of the plain existence of sanity and insanity, I will not be led along any of the attractive paths that open here. I shall endeavor to deal with them in the next chapter. Here I confine myself to a sort of summary. Suppose a man’s throat has been cut, quite swiftly and suddenly, with a table knife, at a small table where we sit. The whole of civil law rests on the supposition that we are witnesses; that we saw it; and if we do not know about it, who does? Now suppose all the witnesses fall into a quarrel about degrees of eyesight. Suppose one says he had brought his reading-glasses instead of his usual glasses; and therefore did not see the man fall across the table and cover it with blood. Suppose another says he could not be certain it was blood, because a slight colour-blindness was hereditary in his family. Suppose a third says he cannot swear to the uplifted knife, because his oculist tells him he is astigmatic, and vertical lines do not affect him as do horizontal lines. Suppose another says that dots have often danced before his eyes in very fantastic combinations, many of which were very like one gentleman cutting another gentleman’s throat at dinner. All these things refer to real experiences. There is such a thing as myopia, there is such a thing as colour-blindness; there is such a thing as astigmatism; there is such a thing as shifting shapes swimming before the eyes. But what should we think of a whole dinner party that could give nothing except these highly scientific explanations when found in company with a corpse? I imagine there are only two things we could think either that they were all drunk, or they were all murderers.

And yet there is an exception. If there were one man at table who was admittedly blind, should we not give him the benefit of the doubt? Should we not honestly feel that he was the exception that proved the rule? The very fact that he could not have seen would remind us that the other men must have seen. The very fact that he had no eyes must remind us of eyes. A man can be blind; a man can be dead: a man can be mad. But the comparison is necessarily weak, after all. For it is the essence of madness to be unlike anything else in the world: which is perhaps why so many men wiser than we have traced it to another.

Lastly, the literal maniac is different from all other persons in dispute in this vital respect: that he is the only person whom we can, with a final lucidity, declare that we do not want. He is almost always miserable himself, and he always makes others miserable. But this is not so with the mere invalid. The Eugenists would probably answer all my examples by taking the case of marrying into a family with consumption (or some such disease which they are fairly sure is hereditary) and asking whether such cases at least are not clear cases for a Eugenic intervention. Permit me to point out to them that they once more make a confusion of thought. The sickness or soundness of a consumptive may be a clear and calculable matter. The happiness or unhappiness of a consumptive is quite another matter, and is not calculable at all. What is the good of telling people that if they marry for love, they may be punished by being the parents of Keats or the parents of Stevenson? Keats died young; but he had more pleasure in a minute than a Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson had lung-trouble; and it may, for all I know, have been perceptible to the Eugenic eye even a generation before. But who would perform that illegal operation: the stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter bursting with good news, confiscating a hamper full of presents and prizes, pouring torrents of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this is a faint approximation for the Eugenic in action of the ancestors of Stevenson. This, however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson it is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he got. If he had died without writing a line, he would have had more red-hot joy than is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I owe so much, let the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray that the stars of the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered among the days of the year, because it shut not up the doors of his mother’s womb? I respect fully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon my mouth.

Ora, che gli specialisti siano preziosi per questo scopo particolare e pratico, di predire l’avvicinarsi di enormi e riconosciute calamità umane, nessuno tranne uno sciocco lo negherebbe. Ma questo non ci porta di un pollice più vicini a concedere loro il diritto di definire che cosa sia una calamità; o di chiamare calamità cose che il buon senso non chiama calamità. Chiamiamo il medico per salvarci dalla morte; e, poiché la morte è riconosciutamente un male, egli ha il diritto di somministrare la più strana e recondita pillola che ritenga possa curare tutte queste minacce di morte. Non ha il diritto di somministrare la morte come cura per tutti i mali umani. E come non ha alcuna autorità morale per imporre una nuova concezione della felicità, così non ha alcuna autorità morale per imporre una nuova concezione della sanità di mente. Egli può sapere che io sto impazzendo; poiché la follia è una cosa isolata come la lebbra; e io non so nulla della lebbra. Ma se egli si limita a pensare che la mia mente è debole, può darsi che io pensi lo stesso della sua. Spesso lo penso.

In breve, a meno che non si permetta ai piloti di far sbattere le navi contro gli scogli e poi dire che il cielo è l’unico vero porto; a meno che non si consenta ai giudici di lasciar liberi gli assassini, spiegando poi che l’omicidio ha fatto del bene nel complesso; a meno che non si consenta ai soldati di perdere le battaglie e poi far notare che la vera gloria si trova nella valle dell’umiliazione; a meno che i cassieri non debbano derubare una banca per farle pubblicità; o i dentisti torturare la gente per offrirle un contrasto con i propri agi; a meno che non siamo pronti a scatenare tutte queste fantasie private contro il significato pubblico e accettato della vita o della sicurezza o della prosperità o del piacere — allora è chiaro come il naso di Pulcinella che a nessun uomo di scienza dev’essere permesso di immischiarsi nella pubblica definizione della follia. Lo chiamiamo per dirci dove sia o quando sia. Non potremmo farlo, se non avessimo noi stessi stabilito che cosa sia.

Poiché desidero confinarmi in questo capitolo al punto primario della semplice esistenza della sanità di mente e dell’insania, non mi lascerò condurre lungo nessuno dei sentieri seducenti che qui si aprono. Cercherò di trattarli nel prossimo capitolo. Qui mi confino a una sorta di riassunto. Supponiamo che a un uomo sia stata tagliata la gola, in modo assai rapido e improvviso, con un coltello da tavola, a un tavolino a cui siamo seduti. Tutto il diritto civile poggia sul presupposto che noi siamo testimoni; che l’abbiamo visto; e se non ne sappiamo noi, chi ne sa? Ora supponiamo che tutti i testimoni cadano in disputa sui gradi della vista. Supponiamo che uno dica di aver portato con sé gli occhiali da lettura invece dei suoi occhiali soliti; e perciò di non aver visto l’uomo cadere di traverso sul tavolo e coprirlo di sangue. Supponiamo che un altro dica di non poter essere certo che fosse sangue, perché una lieve daltonismo era ereditaria nella sua famiglia. Supponiamo che un terzo dica di non poter giurare sul coltello levato, perché il suo oculista gli dice che è astigmatico, e le linee verticali non lo colpiscono come lo colpiscono le orizzontali. Supponiamo che un altro dica che spesso gli sono danzati puntini davanti agli occhi in combinazioni assai fantastiche, molte delle quali somigliavano moltissimo a un signore che taglia la gola a un altro signore durante il pranzo. Tutte queste cose si riferiscono a esperienze reali. Esiste una cosa come la miopia, esiste una cosa come il daltonismo; esiste una cosa come l’astigmatismo; esiste una cosa come le forme mutevoli che nuotano davanti agli occhi. Ma che cosa dovremmo pensare di un’intera comitiva a cena che non sapesse fornire altro che queste spiegazioni altamente scientifiche, trovandosi in compagnia di un cadavere? Immagino che non potremmo pensare che due cose: o che fossero tutti ubriachi, o che fossero tutti assassini.

Eppure c’è un’eccezione. Se ci fosse a tavola un uomo che era dichiaratamente cieco, non gli concederemmo forse il beneficio del dubbio? Non sentiremmo forse onestamente che era l’eccezione che conferma la regola? Il fatto stesso che egli non avrebbe potuto vedere ci ricorderebbe che gli altri uomini devono aver visto. Il fatto stesso che egli non aveva occhi deve ricordarci gli occhi. Un uomo può essere cieco; un uomo può essere morto: un uomo può essere pazzo. Ma il paragone è necessariamente debole, dopotutto. Poiché è l’essenza della follia l’essere diversa da qualsiasi altra cosa al mondo: il che forse è il motivo per cui tanti uomini più savi di noi l’hanno fatta risalire a un altro mondo.

Da ultimo, il maniaco letterale è diverso da tutte le altre persone in discussione sotto questo rispetto vitale: che è l’unica persona di cui possiamo, con lucidità definitiva, dichiarare che non la vogliamo. Egli è quasi sempre infelice lui stesso, e rende sempre gli altri infelici. Ma non è così per il semplice malato. Gli Eugenisti risponderebbero probabilmente a tutti i miei esempi prendendo il caso del prendere moglie in una famiglia colpita da tisi (o qualche altra malattia che essi ritengono con discreta sicurezza ereditaria) e chiedendo se casi almeno come questi non siano casi chiari per un intervento eugenico. Permettano che io faccia loro notare che ancora una volta compiono una confusione di pensiero. La malattia o la sanità di un tisico può essere una faccenda chiara e calcolabile. La felicità o l’infelicità di un tisico è tutt’altra faccenda, e non è affatto calcolabile. A che serve dire alla gente che, se si sposa per amore, può essere punita con l’essere genitori di Keats o genitori di Stevenson? Keats morì giovane; ma ebbe più piacere in un minuto di quanto un Eugenista ne ricavi in un mese. Stevenson ebbe guai ai polmoni; e può darsi, per quanto ne so, che fossero percepibili all’occhio eugenico persino una generazione prima. Ma chi eseguirebbe quell’operazione illegale: l’arresto di Stevenson? Intercettare una lettera che scoppia di buone notizie, confiscare una cesta piena di regali e premi, versare torrenti di vino inebriante nel mare, tutto ciò è una fioca approssimazione dell’Eugenetica all’opera negli antenati di Stevenson. Questo, tuttavia, non è il punto essenziale; con Stevenson non si tratta solo del piacere che noi ne ricaviamo, ma del piacere che egli ne ricavò. Se fosse morto senza scrivere una riga, avrebbe avuto più gioia rovente di quanta ne sia data alla maggior parte degli uomini. Dirò io di lui, a cui devo tanto: perisca il giorno in cui egli nacque? Pregherò io che le stelle del suo crepuscolo siano tenebrose, e che quel giorno non sia annoverato tra i giorni dell’anno, perché non chiuse le porte del grembo di sua madre? Rifiuto rispettosamente; come Giobbe, porrò la mia mano sulla mia bocca.

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V

THE FLYING AUTHORITY

It happened one day that an atheist and a man were standing together on a doorstep; and the atheist said, “It is raining.” To which the man replied, “What is raining?”: which question was the beginning of a violent quarrel and a lasting friendship. I will not touch upon any heads of the dispute, which doubtless included Jupiter, Pluvius, the Neuter Gender, Pantheism, Noah’s Ark, Mackintoshes, and the Passive Mood; but I will record the one point upon which the two persons emerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as an atheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the mere diction of a man, though he be speaking of clocks or cats or anything quite remote from theology. The mark of the atheistic style is that it instinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are dead things; that things have no souls. Thus they will not speak of waging war, which means willing it; they speak of the “outbreak of war,” as if all the guns blew up without the men touching them. Thus those Socialists that are atheist will not call their international sympathy, sympathy; they will call it “solidarity,” as if the poor men of France and Germany were physically stuck together like dates in a grocer’s shop. The same Marxian Socialists are accused of cursing the Capitalists inordinately; but the truth is that they let the Capitalists off much too easily. For instead of saying that employers pay less wages, which might pin the employers to some moral responsibility, they insist on talking about the “rise and fall” of wages; as if a vast silver sea of sixpences and shillings was always going up and down automatically like the real sea at Margate. Thus they will not speak of reform, but of development; and they spoil their one honest and virile phrase, “the class war” by talking of it as no one in his wits can talk of a war, predicting its finish and final result as one calculates the coming of Christmas Day or the taxes. Thus, lastly (as we shall see touching our special subject-matter here) the atheist style in letters always avoids talking of love or lust, which are things alive, and calls marriage or concubinage “the relations of the sexes”; as if a man and a woman were two wooden objects standing in a certain angle and attitude to each other like a table and a chair.

Now the same anarchic mystery that clings round the phrase, “il pleut,” clings round the phrase, “il fait” In English it is generally represented by the passive mood in grammar, and the Eugenists and their like deal especially in it; they are as passive in their statements as they are active in their experiments. Their sentences always enter tail first, and have no subject, like animals without heads. It is never “the doctor should cut off this leg” or “the policeman should collar that man.” It is always “Such limbs should be amputated,” or “Such men should be under restraint.” Hamlet said, “I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave’s offal.” The Eugenist would say, “The region kites should, if possible, be fattened; and the offal of this slave is available for the dietetic experiment.” Lady Macbeth said, “Give me the daggers; I’ll let his bowels out.” The Eugenist would say, “In such cases the bowels should, etc.” Do not blame me for the repulsiveness of the comparisons. I have searched English literature for the most decent parallels to Eugenist language.

The formless god that broods over the East is called “Om.” The formless god who has begun to brood over the West is called “On.” But here we must make a distinction. The impersonal word on is French, and the French have a right to use it, because they are a democracy. And when a Frenchman says “one” he does not mean himself, but the normal citizen. He does not mean merely “one,” but one and all. “On n’a que sa parole” does not mean “Noblesse oblige,” or “I am the Duke of Billingsgate and must keep my word.” It means: “One has a sense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, should feel honourable”; and this, whether possible or no, is the purest ambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, “Conditions must be altered” or “Ancestry should be investigated,” or what not, it seems clear that they do not mean that the democracy must do it, whatever else they may mean. They do not mean that any man not evidently mad may be trusted with these tests and rearrangements as the French democratic system trusts such a man with a vote or a farm or the control of a family. That would mean that Jones and Brown, being both ordinary men, would set about arranging each other’s marriages. And this state of affairs would seem a little elaborate, and it might occur even to the Eugenic mind that if Jones and Brown are quite capable of arranging each other’s marriages, it is just possible that they might be capable of arranging their own.

This dilemma, which applies in so simple a case, applies equally to any wide and sweeping system of Eugenist voting; for though it is true that the community can judge more dispassionately than a man can judge in his own case, this particular question of the choice of a wife is so full of disputable shades in every conceivable case, that it is surely obvious that almost any democracy would simply vote the thing out of the sphere of voting, as they would any proposal of police interference in the choice of walking weather or of children’s names. I should not like to be the politician who should propose a particular instance of Eugenics to be voted on by the French people. Democracy dismissed, it is here hardly needful to consider the other old models. Modern scientists will not say that George III, in his lucid intervals, should settle who is mad; or that the aristocracy that introduced gout shall supervise diet.

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V

L’AUTORITÀ VOLANTE

Accadde un giorno che un ateo e un uomo se ne stessero insieme sulla soglia di casa; e l’ateo disse: «Piove». Al che l’uomo replicò: «Che cosa piove?»: domanda che fu il principio di una violenta lite e di una duratura amicizia. Non toccherò alcuno dei capi della disputa, che senza dubbio inclusero Giove Pluvio, il Genere Neutro, il Panteismo, l’Arca di Noè, gli impermeabili e il Modo Passivo; ma metterò a verbale l’unico punto su cui i due individui emersero in un certo accordo. Ed era che esiste una cosa come uno stile letterario ateistico; che il materialismo può apparire nella mera dizione di un uomo, benché egli stia parlando di orologi o di gatti o di qualsiasi cosa affatto remota dalla teologia. Il segno dello stile ateistico è che esso sceglie istintivamente la parola che suggerisce che le cose sono cose morte; che le cose non hanno anima. Così non parleranno di muovere guerra, che vuol dire volerla; parlano dello «scoppio della guerra», come se tutti i cannoni saltassero in aria senza che gli uomini li toccassero. Così quei Socialisti che sono atei non chiameranno la loro simpatia internazionale, simpatia; la chiameranno «solidarietà», come se i poveri uomini di Francia e di Germania fossero fisicamente appiccicati insieme come datteri nella bottega di un droghiere. Gli stessi Socialisti marxisti sono accusati di maledire smodatamente i Capitalisti; ma la verità è che lasciano i Capitalisti scampare troppo facilmente. Poiché, invece di dire che i datori di lavoro pagano salari inferiori, il che potrebbe inchiodare i datori di lavoro a una qualche responsabilità morale, insistono nel parlare dell’«ascesa e caduta» dei salari; come se un vasto mare d’argento di monetine e scellini salisse e scendesse continuamente in modo automatico come il mare vero a Margate. Così non parleranno di riforma, ma di sviluppo; e rovinano la loro unica frase onesta e virile, «la lotta di classe», parlandone come nessuno sano di mente può parlare di una guerra, predicendone la conclusione e il risultato finale come si calcola l’arrivo del giorno di Natale o delle tasse. Così, infine (come vedremo toccando il nostro speciale argomento qui), lo stile ateistico nelle lettere evita sempre di parlare di amore o di lussuria, che sono cose vive, e chiama il matrimonio o il concubinato «le relazioni tra i sessi»; come se un uomo e una donna fossero due oggetti di legno posti in un certo angolo e atteggiamento l’uno rispetto all’altro come un tavolo e una sedia.

Ora, lo stesso anarchico mistero che aleggia intorno alla frase «il pleut» aleggia intorno alla frase «il fait». In inglese è generalmente rappresentato dal modo passivo nella grammatica, e gli Eugenisti e i loro simili ne fanno un uso speciale; sono tanto passivi nelle loro affermazioni quanto sono attivi nei loro esperimenti. Le loro frasi entrano sempre di coda, e non hanno soggetto, come animali senza testa. Non è mai «il medico dovrebbe tagliare questa gamba» o «il poliziotto dovrebbe acciuffare quell’uomo». È sempre «Simili arti dovrebbero essere amputati», o «Simili uomini dovrebbero essere posti sotto sorveglianza». Amleto disse: «Avrei dovuto ingrassare tutti i nibbi della contrada con le interiora di questo schiavo». L’Eugenista direbbe: «I nibbi della contrada dovrebbero, se possibile, essere ingrassati; e le interiora di questo schiavo sono disponibili per l’esperimento dietetico». Lady Macbeth disse: «Datemi i pugnali; gli caverò le budella». L’Eugenista direbbe: «In tali casi le budella dovrebbero, eccetera». Non biasimatemi per la ripugnanza dei paragoni. Ho frugato la letteratura inglese in cerca dei più decenti paralleli al linguaggio eugenista.

Il dio informe che incombe sull’Oriente si chiama «Om». Il dio informe che ha cominciato a incombere sull’Occidente si chiama «On». Ma qui dobbiamo fare una distinzione. La parola impersonale on è francese, e i francesi hanno il diritto di usarla, perché sono una democrazia. E quando un francese dice «uno» non intende se stesso, ma il cittadino normale. Non intende meramente «uno», ma uno e tutti. «On n’a que sa parole» non significa «Noblesse oblige», o «Io sono il Duca di Billingsgate e devo tener fede alla mia parola». Significa: «Uno ha un senso dell’onore come ha una spina dorsale: ogni uomo, ricco o povero, deve sentirsi onorato»; e questa, possibile o no, è la più pura ambizione della repubblica. Ma quando gli Eugenisti dicono «Le condizioni devono essere alterate» o «Gli antenati dovrebbero essere indagati», o che so io, sembra chiaro che non intendono che debba farlo la democrazia, qualunque altra cosa possano intendere. Non intendono che a un qualsiasi uomo non evidentemente pazzo si possano affidare queste prove e questi riordinamenti, come il sistema democratico francese affida a un tale uomo un voto o una fattoria o il controllo di una famiglia. Ciò significherebbe che Jones e Brown, essendo entrambi uomini comuni, si metterebbero a combinare i matrimoni l’uno dell’altro. E questo stato di cose parrebbe un po’ macchinoso, e potrebbe venire in mente persino alla mente eugenica che, se Jones e Brown sono ben capaci di combinare i matrimoni l’uno dell’altro, è appena possibile che siano capaci di combinare i propri.

Questo dilemma, che si applica in un caso così semplice, si applica ugualmente a qualsiasi vasto e generale sistema di voto eugenista; poiché, benché sia vero che la comunità può giudicare più spassionatamente di quanto un uomo possa giudicare nel proprio caso, questa particolare questione della scelta di una moglie è così piena di sfumature discutibili in ogni caso concepibile, che è sicuramente ovvio che quasi ogni democrazia semplicemente escluderebbe la cosa dalla sfera del voto, come farebbe con qualsiasi proposta di ingerenza della polizia nella scelta del tempo da passeggio o dei nomi dei bambini. Non vorrei essere il politico che dovesse proporre un particolare esempio di Eugenetica da mettere ai voti del popolo francese. Congedata la Democrazia, è qui appena necessario considerare gli altri vecchi modelli. Gli scienziati moderni non diranno che Giorgio III, nei suoi intervalli lucidi, debba stabilire chi sia pazzo; o che l’aristocrazia che introdusse la gotta debba sorvegliare la dieta.

I hold it clear, therefore, if anything is clear about the business, that the Eugenists do not merely mean that the mass of common men should settle each other’s marriages between them; the question remains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when they say that this or that ought to be done. What is this flying and evanescent authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man who is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist’s verb? In a large number of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenist means himself and nobody else. Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A. H. Huth, actually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a great deal of good could be done with a surgical knife, if we would only turn him loose with one. And this may be true. A great deal of good could be done with a loaded revolver, in the hands of a judicious student of human nature. But it is imperative that the Eugenist should perceive that on that principle we can never get beyond a perfect balance of different sympathies and antipathies. I mean that I should differ from Dr. Saleeby or Dr. Karl Pearson not only in a vast majority of individual cases, but in a vast majority of cases in which they would be bound to admit that such a difference was natural and reasonable. The chief victim of these famous doctors would be a yet more famous doctor: that eminent though unpopular practitioner, Dr. Fell.

To show that such rational and serious differences do exist, I will take one instance from that Bill which proposed to protect families and the public generally from the burden of feeble-minded persons. Now, even if I could share the Eugenic contempt for human rights, even if I could start gaily on the Eugenic campaign, I should not begin by removing feeble-minded persons. I have known as many families in as many classes as most men; and I cannot remember meeting any very monstrous human suffering arising out of the presence of such insufficient and negative types. There seems to be comparatively few of them; and those few by no means the worst burdens upon domestic happiness. I do not hear of them often; I do not hear of them doing much more harm than good; and in the few cases I know well they are not only regarded with human affection, but can be put to certain limited forms of human use. Even if I were a Eugenist, then I should not personally elect to waste my time locking up the feeble-minded. The people I should lock up would be the strong-minded. I have known hardly any cases of mere mental weakness making a family a failure; I have known eight or nine cases of violent and exaggerated force of character making a family a hell. If the strong-minded could be segregated it would quite certainly be better for their friends and families. And if there is really anything in heredity, it would be better for posterity too. For the kind of egoist I mean is a madman in a much more plausible sense than the mere harmless “deficient”; and to hand on the horrors of his anarchic and insatiable temperament is a much graver responsibility than to leave a mere inheritance of childishness. I would not arrest such tyrants, because I think that even moral tyranny in a few homes is better than a medical tyranny turning the state into a madhouse. I would not segregate them, because I respect a man’s free-will and his front door and his right to be tried by his peers. But since free-will is believed by Eugenists no more than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenists no more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is about as sacred to Eugenists as it would be to King John, why do not they bring light and peace into so many human homes by removing a demoniac from each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Bill call at the many grand houses in town or county where such nightmares notoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the bad squire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniac prize fighter? I do not know; and there is only one reason I can think of, which must remain a matter of speculation. When 1 was at school, the kind of boy who liked teasing halfwits was not the sort that stood up to bullies.

That, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention the case of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give one out of the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individual opinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to propagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating trip together, we should separate at the very door; and if he had a thousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyone who has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows that the ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some little hobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad for children, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many more people ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human nature to expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard, dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as exercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own madman. One would have his eyes on devotional Curates; another would wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his own implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lesson which is hardest for him and me and for all our fallen race --- the fact that he is only himself.

We now pass from mere individual men who obviously cannot be trusted, even if they are individual medical men, with such despotism over their neighbours; and we come to consider whether the Eugenists have at all clearly traced any more imaginable public authority, any apparatus of great experts or great examinations to which such risks of tyranny could be trusted. They are not very precise about this either; indeed, the great difficulty I have throughout in considering what are the Eugenist’s proposals is that they do not seem to know themselves. Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connect with human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness of their definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans. The Eugenic optimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled and confused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that it will be all right on the night. They have all the ancient despotism, but none of the ancient dogmatism. If they are ready to reproduce the secrecies and cruelties of the Inquisition, at least we cannot accuse them of offending us with any of that close and complicated thought, that arid and exact logic which narrowed the minds of the Middle Ages, they have discovered how to combine the hardening of the heart with a sympathetic softening of the head. Nevertheless, there is one large, though vague, idea of the Eugenists, which is an idea, and which we reach when we reach this problem of a more general supervision.

Ritengo dunque chiaro, se qualcosa è chiaro in questa faccenda, che gli Eugenisti non intendono soltanto che la massa degli uomini comuni debba combinare tra loro i matrimoni gli uni degli altri; rimane dunque la domanda: di chi si fidano istintivamente quando dicono che questo o quello dovrebbe essere fatto. Che cos’è questa autorità volante ed evanescente che svanisce ogni volta che cerchiamo di fissarla? Chi è l’uomo, il soggetto perduto che governa il verbo dell’Eugenista? In un gran numero di casi credo che si possa semplicemente dire che il singolo Eugenista intende se stesso e nessun altro. Anzi, un Eugenista, il signor A. H. Huth, ebbe davvero un senso dell’umorismo, e lo ammise. Egli pensa che si potrebbe fare un gran bene con un coltello chirurgico, se solo lo lasciassimo scorrazzare con uno in mano. E può darsi che sia vero. Un gran bene si potrebbe fare con una rivoltella carica, in mano a un giudizioso studioso della natura umana. Ma è imperativo che l’Eugenista si renda conto che, su quel principio, non possiamo mai andare oltre un perfetto equilibrio di simpatie e antipatie diverse. Voglio dire che io dissentirei dal dottor Saleeby o dal dottor Karl Pearson non soltanto nella grande maggioranza dei casi individuali, ma nella grande maggioranza dei casi in cui essi sarebbero costretti ad ammettere che tale dissenso era naturale e ragionevole. La principale vittima di questi famosi dottori sarebbe un dottore ancor più famoso: quell’eminente benché impopolare medico, il dottor Fell.

Per mostrare che simili dissensi razionali e seri esistono davvero, prenderò un esempio da quel Progetto di legge che si proponeva di proteggere le famiglie e il pubblico in generale dal peso delle persone deboli di mente. Ora, anche se potessi condividere il disprezzo eugenico per i diritti umani, anche se potessi lanciarmi gaiamente nella campagna eugenica, non comincerei col rimuovere le persone deboli di mente. Ho conosciuto tante famiglie in tante classi quanto la maggior parte degli uomini; e non ricordo di aver mai incontrato una qualche mostruosa sofferenza umana sorta dalla presenza di simili tipi insufficienti e negativi. Ne sembrano esserci comparativamente pochi; e quei pochi non sono affatto i pesi peggiori per la felicità domestica. Non ne sento parlare spesso; non ne sento dire che facciano molto più male che bene; e nei pochi casi che conosco bene non solo sono guardati con affetto umano, ma possono essere adibiti a certe forme limitate di utilità umana. Anche se io fossi un Eugenista, dunque, non sceglierei personalmente di sprecare il mio tempo a rinchiudere i deboli di mente. La gente che io rinchiuderei sono i forti di mente. Non ho conosciuto quasi nessun caso di mera debolezza mentale che facesse di una famiglia un fallimento; ho conosciuto otto o nove casi di violenta ed esagerata forza di carattere che facevano di una famiglia un inferno. Se i forti di mente potessero essere segregati, sarebbe di certo meglio per i loro amici e le loro famiglie. E se c’è davvero qualcosa nell’ereditarietà, sarebbe meglio anche per la posterità. Poiché il genere di egoista che intendo è un pazzo in un senso assai più plausibile del semplice e innocuo «deficiente»; e trasmettere gli orrori del suo temperamento anarchico e insaziabile è una responsabilità assai più grave che lasciare una mera eredità di puerilità. Non arresterei simili tiranni, perché penso che persino la tirannia morale in poche case sia meglio di una tirannia medica che trasformi lo Stato in un manicomio. Non li segregerei, perché rispetto il libero arbitrio di un uomo e la sua porta di casa e il suo diritto di essere giudicato dai suoi pari. Ma poiché il libero arbitrio è creduto dagli Eugenisti non più che dai Calvinisti, poiché le porte di casa sono rispettate dagli Eugenisti non più che dagli scassinatori di case, e poiché l’Habeas Corpus è più o meno sacro agli Eugenisti quanto lo sarebbe a Re Giovanni, perché non portano luce e pace in tante case umane rimuovendo da ognuna un indemoniato? Perché i promotori del Progetto di legge sui Deboli di mente non si recano nelle molte grandi case in città o in campagna dove tali incubi notoriamente si annidano? Perché non bussano alla porta e portano via il cattivo signorotto? Perché non suonano il campanello e rimuovono il pugile dipsomane? Non lo so; e c’è una sola ragione che riesco a immaginare, la quale deve restare materia di congettura. Quando ero a scuola, il tipo di ragazzo a cui piaceva tormentare i mezzi scemi non era quello che teneva testa ai prepotenti.

Ciò, comunque stiano le cose, non riguarda il mio argomento. Menziono il caso della varietà forte di mente del mostruoso solo per dare uno dei cento casi dell’immediata divergenza delle opinioni individuali nel momento in cui cominciamo a discutere chi sia idoneo o inidoneo a propagarsi. Se il dottor Saleeby e io ci mettessimo in viaggio insieme per una spedizione segregatrice, ci separeremmo proprio sulla soglia; e se egli avesse con sé mille medici, se ne andrebbero tutti per strade diverse. Chiunque abbia conosciuto tanti medici gentili e capaci quanti ne ho conosciuti io sa che i più abili e assennati fra loro hanno la tendenza a possedere qualche piccolo pallino o mezza scoperta tutta loro, come che le arance fanno male ai bambini, o che gli alberi sono pericolosi nei giardini, o che molte più persone dovrebbero portare gli occhiali. È chiedere troppo alla natura umana aspettarsi che non coltivino simili briciole di originalità in un mestiere duro, tedioso e spesso eroico. Ma l’inevitabile risultato di ciò, esercitato dai singoli Saleeby, sarebbe che ciascuno avrebbe il suo tipo prediletto di idiota. Ciascun medico sarebbe pazzo del proprio pazzo. Uno terrebbe gli occhi sui devoti curati; un altro andrebbe in giro a collezionare turbolenti maggiori; un terzo sarebbe il terrore delle zitelle amanti degli animali, che fuggirebbero davanti a lui con tutti i loro gatti e cani. A meno della pura e letterale anarchia, dunque, pare chiaro che l’Eugenista debba trovare un’autorità diversa dalla propria implicita personalità. Egli deve, una volta per tutte, imparare la lezione che è la più ardua per lui e per me e per tutta la nostra stirpe decaduta — il fatto che egli è soltanto se stesso.

Passiamo ora dai meri uomini individuali, ai quali ovviamente non ci si può affidare, anche se sono individui medici, con un simile dispotismo sui loro vicini; e veniamo a considerare se gli Eugenisti abbiano affatto chiaramente tracciato una qualsiasi autorità pubblica più immaginabile, un qualche apparato di grandi esperti o di grandi esami a cui simili rischi di tirannia potessero essere affidati. Non sono molto precisi neppure su questo; anzi, la grande difficoltà che ho continuamente nel considerare quali siano le proposte dell’Eugenista è che essi stessi non sembrano saperlo. Un qualche atteggiamento filosofico che io non riesco a connettere con la ragione umana sembra renderli addirittura fieri dell’oscurità delle loro definizioni e dell’incompletezza dei loro piani. L’ottimismo eugenico sembra partecipare in generale della natura di quella abbagliata e confusa fiducia, tanto comune nelle recite tra dilettanti, che tutto andrà bene la sera della prima. Hanno tutto il dispotismo antico, ma nulla dell’antico dogmatismo. Se sono pronti a riprodurre le segretezze e le crudeltà dell’Inquisizione, almeno non possiamo accusarli di offenderci con nulla di quel pensiero serrato e complicato, di quella arida ed esatta logica che restrinse le menti del Medioevo; hanno scoperto come combinare l’indurimento del cuore con un simpatico rammollimento della testa. Nondimeno, c’è una grande, benché vaga, idea degli Eugenisti, che è un’idea, e a cui giungiamo quando giungiamo a questo problema di una sorveglianza più generale.

It was best presented perhaps by the distinguished doctor who wrote the article on these matters in that composite book which Mr. Wells edited, and called “The Great State.” He said the doctor should no longer be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in his own words, “the health adviser of the community.” The same can be expressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb that prevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that it amounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. This the writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. To which I rejoin that if everyone is ill the health advisor is ill too, and therefore cannot know how to cure that minimum of illness. This is the fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine. Prevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man’s head is not better than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing to cure it. And it is the same if a man is in revolt, even a morbid revolt. Taking the heart out of him by slavery is not better than leaving the heart in him, even if you leave it a broken heart. Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse than disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the extra exasperation of being quite well. I will ask God, but certainly not man, to prevent me in all my doings. But the decisive and discussable form of this is well summed up in that phrase about the health adviser of society. I am sure that those who speak thus have something in their minds larger and more illuminating than the other two propositions we have considered. They do not mean that all citizens should decide, which would mean merely the present vague and dubious balance. They do not mean that all medical men should decide, which would mean a much more unbalanced balance. They mean that a few men might be found who had a consistent scheme and vision of a healthy nation, as Napoleon had a consistent scheme and vision of an army. It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men’s marriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize and segregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a few great hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens, as nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it is tyranny; but tyranny is a workable thing. When we ask by what process such men could be certainly chosen, we are back again on the old dilemma of despotism, which means a man, or democracy which means men, or aristocracy which means favouritism. But as a vision the thing is plausible and even rational. It is rational, and it is wrong.

It is wrong, quite apart from the suggestion that an expert on health cannot be chosen. It is wrong because an expert on health cannot exist. An expert on disease can exist, for the very reason we have already considered in the case of madness, because experts can only arise out of exceptional things. A parallel with any of the other learned professions will make the point plain. If I am prosecuted for trespass, I will ask my solicitor which of the local lanes I am forbidden to walk in. But if my solicitor, having gained my case, were so elated that he insisted on settling what lanes I should walk in; if he asked me to let him map out all my country walks, because he was the perambulatory adviser of the community --- then that Solicitor would solicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me through woodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues and attractive short-cuts, I shall turn on him with passion, saying “Sir, I pay you to know one particular puzzle in Latin and Norman French, which they call the law of England; and you do know the law of England. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you know England. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was looking at it.” As are the limits of the lawyer’s special knowledge about walking, so are the limits of the doctor’s. If I fall over the stump of a tree and break my leg, as is likely enough, I shall say to the lawyer, “Please go and fetch the doctor.” I shall do it because the doctor really has a larger knowledge of a narrower area. There are only a certain number of ways in which a leg can be broken; I know none of them, and he knows all of them. There is such a thing as being a specialist in broken legs. There is no such thing as being a specialist in legs. When unbroken, legs are a matter of taste. If the doctor has really mended my leg, he may merit a colossal equestrian statue on the top of an eternal tower of brass. But if the doctor has really mended my leg he has no more rights over it. He must not come and teach me how to walk; because he and I learnt that in the same school, the nursery. And there is no more abstract likelihood of the doctor walking more elegantly than I do than there is of the barber or the bishop or the burglar walking more elegantly than I do. There cannot be a general specialist; the specialist can have no kind of authority, unless he has avowedly limited his range. There cannot be such a thing as the health adviser of the community, because there cannot be such a thing as one who specialises in the universe.

Thus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be married should be obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-book, the expression is neat; but it does not convey the real respects in which the two things agree, and in which they differ. To begin with, of course, there is a great deal too much of the bank-book for the sanity of our commonwealth; and it is highly probable that the health-book, as conducted in modern conditions, would rapidly become as timid, as snobbish, and as sterile as the money side of marriage has become. In the moral atmosphere of modernity the poor and the honest would probably get as much the worst of it if we fought with health-books as they do when we fight with bank-books. But that is a more general matter; the real point is in the difference between the two. The difference is in this vital fact; that a monied man generally thinks about money, whereas a healthy man does not think about health. If the strong young man cannot produce his health-book, it is for the perfectly simple reason that he has not got one. He can mention some extraordinary malady he has; but every man of honour is expected to do that now, whatever may be the decision that follows on the knowledge.

Fu forse esposta al meglio dal distinto dottore che scrisse l’articolo su queste materie in quel libro collettivo che il signor Wells curò, e intitolò «The Great State». Egli disse che il medico non dovrebbe più essere un mero rappezzatore di malanni da poco, ma dovrebbe essere, con le sue stesse parole, «il consulente sanitario della comunità». Lo stesso si può esprimere con ancor più efficacia e semplicità nel proverbio secondo cui prevenire è meglio che curare. Commentando ciò, io dissi che equivaleva a trattare tutte le persone che stanno bene come se fossero malate. Questo lo scrittore ammise essere vero, aggiungendo soltanto che tutti sono malati. Al che ribatto che, se tutti sono malati, anche il consulente sanitario è malato, e perciò non può sapere come curare quel minimo di malattia. Questa è la fallacia fondamentale in tutta la faccenda della medicina preventiva. Prevenire non è meglio che curare. Tagliare la testa a un uomo non è meglio che curargli il mal di testa; non è nemmeno meglio che non riuscire a curarglielo. E lo stesso vale se un uomo è in rivolta, anche in una rivolta morbosa. Strappargli il cuore con la schiavitù non è meglio che lasciargli il cuore, anche se glielo lasciate spezzato. Prevenire non solo non è meglio che curare; prevenire è persino peggio della malattia. Prevenire significa essere invalidi a vita, con l’esasperazione ulteriore di stare benissimo. Chiederò a Dio, ma certo non all’uomo, di prevenirmi in tutte le mie azioni. Ma la forma decisiva e discutibile di ciò è ben riassunta in quella frase sul consulente sanitario della società. Sono certo che coloro che parlano così hanno in mente qualcosa di più ampio e illuminante delle altre due proposizioni che abbiamo considerato. Non intendono che tutti i cittadini debbano decidere, il che significherebbe soltanto l’attuale vago e dubbio equilibrio. Non intendono che tutti i medici debbano decidere, il che significherebbe un equilibrio assai più sbilanciato. Intendono che si potrebbero trovare pochi uomini forniti di uno schema e di una visione coerente di una nazione sana, come Napoleone aveva uno schema e una visione coerente di un esercito. È fredda anarchia dire che tutti gli uomini debbano immischiarsi nei matrimoni di tutti gli uomini. È fredda anarchia dire che un medico qualsiasi possa afferrare e segregare chi gli pare. Ma non è anarchia dire che pochi grandi igienisti potrebbero racchiudere o limitare la vita di tutti i cittadini, come fanno le bambinaie con una famiglia di bambini. Non è anarchia, è tirannia; ma la tirannia è cosa attuabile. Quando chiediamo con quale procedimento tali uomini potrebbero essere scelti con certezza, siamo di nuovo al vecchio dilemma del dispotismo, che significa un uomo, o della democrazia, che significa gli uomini, o dell’aristocrazia, che significa favoritismo. Ma come visione la cosa è plausibile e persino razionale. È razionale, ed è sbagliata.

È sbagliata, del tutto a prescindere dal suggerimento che un esperto in salute non possa essere scelto. È sbagliata perché un esperto in salute non può esistere. Un esperto in malattia può esistere, per la ragione stessa che abbiamo già considerato nel caso della follia, perché gli esperti possono sorgere soltanto da cose eccezionali. Un parallelo con una qualsiasi delle altre dotte professioni renderà il punto evidente. Se sono perseguito per violazione di proprietà, chiederò al mio avvocato in quali dei vicoli locali mi è vietato passeggiare. Ma se il mio avvocato, avendo vinto la mia causa, ne fosse così esaltato da insistere per stabilire in quali vicoli io debba passeggiare; se mi chiedesse di lasciargli tracciare tutte le mie passeggiate in campagna, perché è il consulente deambulatorio della comunità — allora quell’avvocato patrocinerebbe invano. Se insistesse a camminarmi dietro per i sentieri boschivi, additando con il bastone da passeggio verosimili viali e attraenti scorciatoie, mi rivolgerei a lui con veemenza, dicendo: «Signore, io vi pago perché conosciate un particolare rompicapo in latino e in francese normanno, che chiamano il diritto d’Inghilterra; e voi conoscete il diritto d’Inghilterra. Non ho mai avuto alcuna terrena ragione di supporre che voi conosciate l’Inghilterra. Se la conosceste, lascereste un uomo in pace quando la sta guardando». Come sono i limiti della speciale conoscenza dell’avvocato riguardo al passeggiare, così sono i limiti di quella del medico. Se inciampo nel ceppo di un albero e mi rompo una gamba, come è abbastanza probabile, dirò all’avvocato: «Per favore, andate a chiamare il medico». Lo farò perché il medico ha davvero una conoscenza più ampia di un’area più ristretta. C’è solo un certo numero di modi in cui una gamba si può rompere; io non ne conosco nessuno, ed egli li conosce tutti. Esiste una cosa come l’essere specialista in gambe rotte. Non esiste una cosa come l’essere specialista in gambe. Quando sono intere, le gambe sono questione di gusto. Se il medico mi ha davvero aggiustato la gamba, può meritare una colossale statua equestre in cima a un’eterna torre di bronzo. Ma se il medico mi ha davvero aggiustato la gamba, non ha più alcun diritto su di essa. Non deve venire a insegnarmi a camminare; perché lui e io l’abbiamo imparato nella stessa scuola, la stanza dei bambini. E non c’è più astratta probabilità che il medico cammini più elegantemente di me di quanta ce ne sia che il barbiere o il vescovo o lo scassinatore camminino più elegantemente di me. Non può esistere uno specialista generale; lo specialista non può avere alcuna sorta di autorità, a meno che non abbia dichiaratamente limitato il proprio campo. Non può esistere una cosa come il consulente sanitario della comunità, perché non può esistere una cosa come colui che si specializza nell’universo.

Così, quando il dottor Saleeby dice che un giovane in procinto di sposarsi dovrebbe essere obbligato a esibire il suo libretto sanitario come esibisce il suo libretto bancario, l’espressione è arguta; ma non rende i veri rispetti in cui le due cose concordano, e quelli in cui differiscono. Per cominciare, naturalmente, c’è già fin troppo del libretto bancario per la salute mentale del nostro Stato; ed è altamente probabile che il libretto sanitario, condotto nelle condizioni moderne, diventerebbe rapidamente altrettanto timido, snob e sterile quanto è diventato il lato economico del matrimonio. Nell’atmosfera morale della modernità, i poveri e gli onesti avrebbero probabilmente la peggio se combattessimo con i libretti sanitari, proprio come l’hanno quando combattiamo con i libretti bancari. Ma questa è una faccenda più generale; il punto vero sta nella differenza tra i due. La differenza sta in questo fatto vitale: che un uomo danaroso generalmente pensa al denaro, mentre un uomo sano non pensa alla salute. Se il forte giovane non può esibire il proprio libretto sanitario, è per la ragione perfettamente semplice che non ne possiede uno. Egli può menzionare qualche malanno straordinario di cui soffre; ma da ogni uomo d’onore ci si aspetta oggi che lo faccia, qualunque possa essere la decisione che segue alla conoscenza.

Health is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the impudence to understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostic has any right to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among other things, that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things, by which they are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and any scientist who pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimate sanity, I will call the lowest of religious fanatics. I will allow him to understand the madman, for the madman is an exception. But if he says he understands the sane man, then he says he has the secret of the Creator. For whenever you and I feel fully sane, we are quite incapable of naming the elements that make up that mysterious simplicity. We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we can conceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium by which, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling like precipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing.

We conclude, therefore, that unless Eugenic activity be restricted to monstrous things like mania, there is no constituted or constitutable authority that can really over-rule men in a matter in which they are so largely on a level. In the matter of fundamental human rights, nothing can be above Man, except God. An institution claiming to come from God might have such authority; but this is the last claim the Eugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking to rule men in such matters is like a man’s right eye claiming to rule him, or his left leg to run away with him. It is madness. We now pass on to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenics to be done, with such cheerfulness as we may possess after discovering that there is nobody to do it.

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VI

THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE

Dr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in one of his addresses on this subject, and said that even I cannot produce any but a feeble-minded child from a feeble-minded ancestry. To which I reply, first of all, that he cannot produce a feeble-minded child. The whole point of our contention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed and outside opinion. There is such a thing as mania, which has always been segregated; there is such a thing as idiocy, which has always been segregated; but feeble-mindedness is a new phrase under which you might segregate anybody. It is essential that this fundamental fallacy in the use of statistics should be got somehow into the modern mind. Such people must be made to see the point, which is surely plain enough, that it is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase. If I say, “There are five fools in Action,” it is surely quite clear that, though no mathematician can make five the same as four or six, that will not stop you or anyone else from finding a few more fools in Action. Now weak-mindedness, like folly, is a term divided from madness in this vital manner --- that in one sense it applies to all men, in another to most men, in another to very many men, and so on. It is as if Dr. Saleeby were to say, “Vanity, I find, is undoubtedly hereditary. Here is Mrs. Jones, who was very sensitive about her sonnets being criticized, and I found her little daughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment is conclusive, the demonstration is complete; there in the first generation is the artistic temperament --- that is vanity; and there in the second generation is dress --- and that is vanity.” We should answer, “My friend, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit --- especially when one has to listen to logic of your favourite kind. Obviously all human beings must value themselves; and obviously there is in all such evaluation an element of weakness, since it is not the valuation of eternal justice. What is the use of your finding by experiment in some people a thing we know by reason must be in all of them?”

Here it will be as well to pause a moment and avert one possible misunderstanding. I do not mean that you and I cannot and do not practically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric or intermediate type, for which the word “feeble-minded” might be a very convenient word, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinable fact of experience. In the same way we might speak, and do speak, of such and such a person being “mad with vanity” without wanting two keepers to walk in and take the person off. But I ask the reader to remember always that I am talking of words, not as they are used in talk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, in warrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament. The distinction between the two is perfectly clear and practical. The difference is that a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit the mark; it is all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the type should be recognized; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the right man. But it is by no means always to the interest of governments or officials to hang the right man. The fact that they often do stretch words in order to cover cases is the whole foundation of having any fixed laws or free institutions at all. My point is not that I have never met anyone whom I should call feeble-minded, rather than mad or imbecile. My point is that if I want to dispossess a nephew, oust a rival, silence a blackmailer, or get rid of an importunate widow, there is nothing in logic to prevent my calling them feeble-minded too. And the vaguer the charge is the less they will be able to disprove it.

One does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resist legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual world in order to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may be such a thing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is such a thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in mere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits; believing that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason to suppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. All that is mere rationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance and terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but denies there can be devils. The superstition is in the person who admits there can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. Yet I should certainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectly simple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. The reason is that it is one thing to believe in witches and quite another to believe in witch smellers. I have more respect for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting the fool of the family; because the witch-finders, according to their own conviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the strong-minded --- the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a raid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a righteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of sin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and despicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a war upon the weak. It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being. When I said above that I believed in witches, but not in witch-smellers, I stated my full position about that conception of heredity, that half-formed philosophy of fears and omens; of curses and weird recurrence and darkness and the doom of blood, which, as preached to humanity to-day, is often more inhuman than witchcraft itself. I do not deny that this dark element exists; I only affirm that it is dark; or, in other words, that its most strenuous students are evidently in the dark about it. I would no more trust Dr. Karl Pearson on a heredity-hunt than on a heresy-hunt. I am perfectly ready to give my reasons for thinking this; and I believe any well-balanced person, if he reflects on them, will think as I do. There are two senses in which a man may be said to know or not know a subject. I know the subject of arithmetic, for instance; that is, I am not good at it, but I know what it is. I am sufficiently familiar with its use to see the absurdity of anyone who says, “So vulgar a fraction cannot be mentioned before ladies,” or “This unit is Unionist, I hope.” Considering myself for one moment as an arithmetician, I may say that I know next to nothing about my subject: but I know my subject. I know it in the street. There is the other kind of man, like Dr. Karl Pearson, who undoubtedly knows a vast amount about his subject; who undoubtedly lives in great forests of facts concerning kinship and inheritance. But it is not, by any means, the same thing to have searched the forests and to have recognized the frontiers. Indeed, the two things generally belong to two very different types of mind. I gravely doubt whether the Astronomer-Royal would write the best essay on the relations between astronomy and astrology. I doubt whether the President of the Geographical Society could give the best definition and the history of the words “geography” and “geology.”

La salute è semplicemente Natura, e nessun naturalista dovrebbe avere l’impudenza di comprenderla. La salute, si può dire, è Dio; e nessun agnostico ha alcun diritto di reclamarne la conoscenza. Poiché Dio deve significare, tra le altre cose, quel mistico e moltitudinoso equilibrio di tutte le cose, per cui esse sono almeno capaci di stare erette e di durare; e qualsiasi scienziato che pretenda di aver esaurito questo tema della sanità ultima, io lo chiamerò il più infimo dei fanatici religiosi. Gli permetterò di comprendere il pazzo, poiché il pazzo è un’eccezione. Ma se dice di comprendere l’uomo sano, allora dice di possedere il segreto del Creatore. Poiché ogni volta che io e voi ci sentiamo pienamente sani, siamo del tutto incapaci di nominare gli elementi che compongono quella misteriosa semplicità. Non possiamo analizzare tale pace nell’anima più di quanto possiamo concepire nelle nostre teste l’intero enorme e vertiginoso equilibrio per cui, da soli che ruggiscono come inferni e cieli che vacillano come precipizi, Egli ha appeso il mondo sul nulla.

Concludiamo, dunque, che, a meno che l’attività eugenica non sia ristretta a cose mostruose come la mania, non esiste alcuna autorità costituita o costituibile che possa davvero prevaricare gli uomini in una materia in cui essi sono così ampiamente su un piano di parità. In materia di diritti umani fondamentali, nulla può essere al di sopra dell’Uomo, tranne Dio. Un’istituzione che pretendesse di provenire da Dio potrebbe avere tale autorità; ma questa è l’ultima pretesa che gli Eugenisti siano propensi ad avanzare. Una casta o una professione che cerchi di governare gli uomini in tali materie è come l’occhio destro di un uomo che pretende di governarlo, o la sua gamba sinistra di correre via con lui. È follia. Passiamo ora a considerare se ci sia davvero qualcosa da fare in fatto di Eugenetica, con quanta allegria possiamo possedere dopo aver scoperto che non c’è nessuno che lo faccia.

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VI

LA SFIDA SENZA RISPOSTA

Il dottor Saleeby mi fece l’onore di riferirsi a me in uno dei suoi discorsi su questo argomento, e disse che nemmeno io posso produrre altro che un figlio debole di mente da un’ascendenza debole di mente. Al che rispondo, anzitutto, che egli non può produrre un figlio debole di mente. Tutto il nocciolo della nostra tesi è che questa espressione non trasmette nulla di fisso e al di fuori dell’opinione. Esiste una cosa come la mania, che è sempre stata segregata; esiste una cosa come l’idiozia, che è sempre stata segregata; ma la debolezza di mente è una nuova espressione sotto la quale potreste segregare chiunque. È essenziale che questa fallacia fondamentale nell’uso delle statistiche entri in qualche modo nella mente moderna. Bisogna far vedere a simile gente il punto, che è di sicuro abbastanza chiaro, che è inutile avere cifre esatte se sono cifre esatte su un’espressione inesatta. Se io dico: «Ci sono cinque sciocchi ad Acton», è di sicuro chiarissimo che, benché nessun matematico possa fare in modo che cinque sia uguale a quattro o a sei, ciò non impedirà a voi o a chiunque altro di trovare ancora qualche sciocco ad Acton. Ora la debolezza di mente, come la stoltezza, è un termine diviso dalla follia in questo modo vitale — che in un senso si applica a tutti gli uomini, in un altro alla maggior parte degli uomini, in un altro a moltissimi uomini, e così via. È come se il dottor Saleeby dicesse: «La Vanità, trovo, è indubbiamente ereditaria. Ecco la signora Jones, che era assai suscettibile riguardo alle critiche ai suoi sonetti, e ho trovato la sua figlioletta, in un vestito nuovo, che si guardava allo specchio. L’esperimento è conclusivo, la dimostrazione è completa; ecco nella prima generazione il temperamento artistico — cioè la vanità; ed ecco nella seconda generazione l’abbigliamento — e questa è vanità». Dovremmo rispondere: «Amico mio, tutto è vanità, vanità e afflizione di spirito — specialmente quando si deve ascoltare la logica del vostro genere prediletto. Ovviamente tutti gli esseri umani devono valutare se stessi; e ovviamente c’è in ogni tale valutazione un elemento di debolezza, poiché non è la valutazione della giustizia eterna. A che serve trovare per esperimento in alcuni una cosa che sappiamo per ragione deve essere in tutti loro?».

Qui sarà bene soffermarsi un momento e prevenire un possibile equivoco. Non intendo dire che voi e io non possiamo e non notiamo praticamente e personalmente questo o quel tipo eccentrico o intermedio, per il quale la parola «debole di mente» potrebbe essere una parola assai comoda, e potrebbe corrispondere a un fatto genuino, benché indefinibile, dell’esperienza. Allo stesso modo potremmo dire, e diciamo, che questa o quella persona è «pazza di vanità» senza volere che due guardiani entrino a portarla via. Ma prego il lettore di ricordare sempre che io sto parlando di parole, non come vengono usate nelle chiacchiere o nei romanzi, ma come verranno usate, e sono state usate, in mandati e certificati, e in Atti del Parlamento. La distinzione tra le due cose è perfettamente chiara e pratica. La differenza è che a un romanziere o a un conversatore ci si può affidare che cerchi di colpire il bersaglio; è tutto a sua gloria che il berretto calzi, che il tipo sia riconosciuto; che egli, in senso letterario, impicchi l’uomo giusto. Ma non è affatto sempre nell’interesse dei governi o dei funzionari impiccare l’uomo giusto. Il fatto che essi spesso stirino le parole per coprire i casi è l’intero fondamento dell’avere leggi fisse o libere istituzioni. Il mio punto non è che io non abbia mai incontrato nessuno che chiamerei debole di mente, piuttosto che pazzo o imbecille. Il mio punto è che, se voglio spossessare un nipote, soppiantare un rivale, ridurre al silenzio un ricattatore, o sbarazzarmi di una vedova importuna, non c’è nulla nella logica che mi impedisca di chiamare anche loro deboli di mente. E quanto più vaga è l’accusa, tanto meno saranno in grado di confutarla.

Non occorre, come ho detto, negare l’ereditarietà per resistere alla legislazione, non più di quanto occorra negare il mondo spirituale per resistere a un’epidemia di roghi di streghe. Ammetto che possa esistere una cosa come la debolezza di mente ereditaria; credo che esista una cosa come la stregoneria. Credendo che esistano gli spiriti, sono tenuto in pura ragione a supporre che esistano probabilmente spiriti maligni; credendo che esistano spiriti maligni, sono tenuto in pura ragione a supporre che alcuni uomini divengano malvagi trafficando con essi. Tutto ciò è puro razionalismo; la superstizione (cioè la ripugnanza e il terrore irragionevoli) è nella persona che ammette che possano esserci angeli ma nega che possano esserci demoni. La superstizione è nella persona che ammette che possano esserci demoni ma nega che possano esserci demonolatri. Eppure io resisterei di certo a qualsiasi sforzo di dare la caccia alle streghe, per una ragione perfettamente semplice, che è la chiave di tutta questa controversia. La ragione è che una cosa è credere nelle streghe e tutt’altra è credere negli annusatori di streghe. Ho più rispetto per gli Eugenisti, che vanno in giro a perseguitare lo sciocco della famiglia; perché gli scovatori di streghe, secondo la loro stessa convinzione, correvano un rischio. Le streghe non erano le deboli di mente, ma le forti di mente — le malvagie mesmeriste, le signore degli elementi. Molte scorrerie contro una strega, giuste o sbagliate, parevano ai villici che le compivano una giusta insurrezione popolare contro una vasta tirannide spirituale, un papato del peccato. Eppure sappiamo che la cosa degenerò in una rabbiosa e spregevole persecuzione dei deboli o dei vecchi. Finì con l’essere una guerra ai deboli. Finì con l’essere ciò con cui l’Eugenetica comincia. Quando sopra dissi di credere nelle streghe, ma non negli annusatori di streghe, enunciai la mia piena posizione riguardo a quella concezione dell’ereditarietà, quella filosofia mezza formata di paure e presagi; di maledizioni e strane ricorrenze e tenebre e la condanna del sangue, la quale, come predicata oggi all’umanità, è spesso più disumana della stregoneria stessa. Non nego che questo elemento oscuro esista; affermo soltanto che è oscuro; o, in altre parole, che i suoi studiosi più zelanti sono evidentemente all’oscuro riguardo a esso. Non mi fiderei del dottor Karl Pearson in una caccia all’ereditarietà più di quanto mi fiderei di lui in una caccia all’eresia. Sono perfettamente pronto a esporre le mie ragioni per pensare ciò; e credo che qualsiasi persona ben equilibrata, se vi rifletterà, la penserà come me. Ci sono due sensi in cui si può dire che un uomo conosca o non conosca una materia. Io conosco la materia dell’aritmetica, per esempio; vale a dire, non ci sono bravo, ma so che cos’è. Ho abbastanza familiarità con il suo uso da vedere l’assurdità di chi dice: «Una frazione tanto volgare non può essere menzionata dinanzi alle signore», oppure: «Questa unità è unionista, lo spero». Considerandomi per un momento aritmetico, posso dire di non sapere quasi nulla della mia materia: ma so qual è la mia materia. La conosco per strada. C’è l’altro genere d’uomo, come il dottor Karl Pearson, che indubbiamente sa una quantità enorme sulla sua materia; che indubbiamente vive in grandi foreste di fatti concernenti la parentela e l’eredità. Ma non è affatto la stessa cosa aver frugato le foreste e aver riconosciuto i confini. Anzi, le due cose appartengono generalmente a due tipi di mente assai diversi. Dubito gravemente che l’Astronomo Reale scriverebbe il miglior saggio sui rapporti tra astronomia e astrologia. Dubito che il Presidente della Società Geografica saprebbe dare la migliore definizione e la storia delle parole «geografia» e «geologia».

Now the students of heredity, especially, understand all of their subject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born in that brier-patch, and have really explored it without coming to the end of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question of what they are studying. Now I do not propose to rely merely on myself to tell them what they are studying. I propose, as will be seen in a moment, to call the testimony of a great man who has himself studied it. But to begin with, the domain of heredity (for those who see its frontiers) is a sort of triangle, enclosed on its three sides by three facts. The first is that heredity undoubtedly exists, or there would be no such thing as a family likeness, and every marriage might suddenly produce a small negro. The second is that even simple heredity can never be simple; its complexity must be literally, unfathomable, for in that field fight unthinkable millions. But yet again it never is simple heredity: for the instant anyone is, he experiences. The third is that these innumerable ancient influences, these instant inundations of experiences, come together according to a combination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is a combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face that the baby has his mother’s nose or his mother’s eyes. They can never be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every feature, in every inch. In the person of the baby he may have gently pulled his wife’s nose. In the person of the baby he may have partly blacked his wife’s eyes.

Those are the three first facts of heredity. That it exists; that it is subtle and made of a million elements; that it is simple, and cannot be unmade into those elements. To summarize: you know there is wine in the soup. You do not know how many wines there are in the soup, because you do not know how many wines there are in the world. And you never will know, because all chemists, all cooks, and all common-sense people tell you that the soup is of such a sort that it can never be chemically analysed. That is a perfectly fair parallel to the hereditary element in the human soul. There are many ways in which one can feel that there is wine in the soup, as in suddenly tasting a wine specially favoured; that corresponds to seeing suddenly flash on a young face the image of some ancestor you have known. But even then the taster cannot be certain he is not tasting one familiar wine among many unfamiliar ones --- or seeing one known ancestor among a million unknown ancestors. Another way is to get drunk on the soup, which corresponds to the case of those who say they are driven to sin and death by hereditary doom. But even then the drunkard cannot be certain it was the soup, any more than the traditional drunkard who is certain it was the salmon.

Those are the facts about heredity which anyone can see. The upshot of them is not only that a miss is as good as a mile, but a miss is as good as a win. If the child has his parents’ nose (or noses) that may be heredity. But if he has not, that may be heredity too. And as we need not take heredity lightly because two generations differ --- so we need not take heredity a scrap more seriously because two generations are similar. The thing is there, in what cases we know not, in what proportion we know not, and we cannot know.

Now it is just here that the decent difference of function between Dr. Saleeby’s trade and mine comes in. It is his business to study human health and sickness as a whole, in a spirit of more or less enlightened guesswork; and it is perfectly natural that he should allow for heredity here, there, and everywhere, as a man climbing a mountain or sailing a boat will allow for weather without even explaining it to himself. An utterly different attitude is incumbent on any conscientious man writing about what laws should be enforced or about how commonwealths should be governed. And when we consider how plain a fact is murder, and yet how hesitant and even hazy we all grow about the guilt of a murderer, when we consider how simple an act is stealing, and yet how hard it is to convict and punish those rich commercial pirates who steal the most, when we consider how cruel and clumsy the law can be even about things as old and plain as the Ten Commandments --- I simply cannot conceive any responsible person proposing to legislate on our broken knowledge and bottomless ignorance of heredity.

But though I have to consider this dull matter in its due logical order, it appears to me that this part of the matter has been settled, and settled in a most masterly way, by somebody who has infinitely more right to speak on it than I have. Our press seems to have a perfect genius for fitting people with caps that don’t fit; and affixing the wrong terms of eulogy and even the wrong terms of abuse. And just as people will talk of Bernard Shaw as a naughty winking Pierrot, when he is the last great Puritan and really believes in respectability; just as (si parva licet, etc.) they will talk of my own paradoxes, when I pass my life in preaching that the truisms are true; so an enormous number of newspaper readers seem to have it fixed firmly in their heads that Mr. H. G. Wells is a harsh and horrible Eugenist in great goblin spectacles who wants to put us all into metallic microscopes and dissect us with metallic tools. As a matter of fact, of course, Mr. Wells, so far from being too definite, is generally not definite enough. He is an absolute wizard in the appreciation of atmospheres and the opening of vistas; but his answers are more agnostic than his questions. His books will do everything except shut. And so far from being the sort of man who would stop a man from propagating, he cannot even stop a full stop. He is not Eugenic enough to prevent the black dot at the end of a sentence from breeding a line of little dots.

Ora gli studiosi dell’ereditarietà, in particolare, comprendono tutto della loro materia tranne la loro materia. Furono, suppongo, generati e nati in quel roveto, e l’hanno davvero esplorato senza giungerne al termine. Vale a dire, hanno studiato ogni cosa tranne la questione di che cosa stiano studiando. Ora non mi propongo di affidarmi soltanto a me stesso per dir loro che cosa stiano studiando. Mi propongo, come si vedrà tra un momento, di chiamare la testimonianza di un grande uomo che l’ha studiata lui stesso. Ma per cominciare, il dominio dell’ereditarietà (per chi ne vede i confini) è una sorta di triangolo, racchiuso sui suoi tre lati da tre fatti. Il primo è che l’ereditarietà esiste indubbiamente, altrimenti non esisterebbe una cosa come la somiglianza di famiglia, e ogni matrimonio potrebbe d’improvviso produrre un piccolo negro. Il secondo è che persino la semplice ereditarietà non può mai essere semplice; la sua complessità dev’essere letteralmente insondabile, poiché in quel campo combattono milioni impensabili. Ma anche qui non è mai semplice ereditarietà: poiché nell’istante in cui uno è, egli fa esperienza. Il terzo è che queste innumerevoli influenze antiche, queste istantanee inondazioni di esperienze, si uniscono secondo una combinazione che non somiglia a nient’altro su questa terra. È una combinazione che davvero combina. Non può essere di nuovo scomposta, nemmeno nel Giorno del Giudizio. Due persone totalmente diverse sono divenute, nel senso più sacro, spaventoso e irrefutabile, una sola carne. Se una fanciulla scandinava dai capelli d’oro ha sposato un ebreo assai bruno, il lato scandinavo della famiglia può dire fino a diventare paonazzo in volto che il bambino ha il naso di sua madre o gli occhi di sua madre. Non potranno mai essere certi che il beduino dai capelli neri non sia presente in ogni lineamento, in ogni pollice. Nella persona del bambino egli può aver gentilmente tirato il naso di sua moglie. Nella persona del bambino egli può aver in parte pestato gli occhi di sua moglie.

Questi sono i tre primi fatti dell’ereditarietà. Che essa esiste; che è sottile e fatta di un milione di elementi; che è semplice, e non può essere disfatta in quegli elementi. Per riassumere: sapete che c’è del vino nella minestra. Non sapete quanti vini ci sono nella minestra, perché non sapete quanti vini ci sono al mondo. E non lo saprete mai, perché tutti i chimici, tutti i cuochi e tutte le persone di buon senso vi dicono che la minestra è di tal fatta che non può mai essere chimicamente analizzata. Questo è un parallelo perfettamente calzante con l’elemento ereditario nell’anima umana. Ci sono molti modi in cui si può sentire che c’è del vino nella minestra, come nell’assaporare d’improvviso un vino particolarmente prediletto; ciò corrisponde al vedere balenare d’improvviso su un volto giovane l’immagine di qualche antenato che avete conosciuto. Ma anche allora chi assaggia non può essere certo di non star assaporando un vino familiare tra molti sconosciuti — o di vedere un antenato noto tra un milione di antenati ignoti. Un altro modo è ubriacarsi con la minestra, il che corrisponde al caso di coloro che dicono di essere spinti al peccato e alla morte da una condanna ereditaria. Ma anche allora l’ubriaco non può essere certo che fosse la minestra, non più del proverbiale ubriaco che è certo che fosse il salmone.

Questi sono i fatti sull’ereditarietà che chiunque può vedere. La conclusione che se ne trae non è soltanto che sbagliare di poco vale come sbagliare di tanto, ma che sbagliare vale come vincere. Se il figlio ha il naso (o i nasi) dei genitori, questo può essere ereditarietà. Ma se non li ha, anche questo può essere ereditarietà. E come non dobbiamo prendere alla leggera l’ereditarietà perché due generazioni differiscono — così non dobbiamo prendere l’ereditarietà un briciolo più sul serio perché due generazioni sono simili. La cosa è lì, in quali casi non lo sappiamo, in quale proporzione non lo sappiamo, e non possiamo saperlo.

Ora è proprio qui che entra la decente differenza di funzione tra il mestiere del dottor Saleeby e il mio. È affar suo studiare la salute e la malattia umana nel loro complesso, in uno spirito di congetture più o meno illuminate; ed è perfettamente naturale che egli tenga conto dell’ereditarietà qua, là e dovunque, come un uomo che scala una montagna o che governa una barca terrà conto del tempo senza nemmeno spiegarselo. Un atteggiamento del tutto diverso incombe su chiunque scriva coscienziosamente su quali leggi debbano essere applicate o su come gli Stati debbano essere governati. E quando consideriamo quanto sia chiaro un fatto l’omicidio, e tuttavia quanto esitanti e persino nebulosi diventiamo tutti sulla colpa di un assassino; quando consideriamo quanto sia semplice un atto il rubare, e tuttavia quanto sia difficile condannare e punire quei ricchi pirati del commercio che rubano di più; quando consideriamo quanto crudele e maldestra possa essere la legge persino su cose antiche e chiare come i Dieci Comandamenti — semplicemente non riesco a concepire alcuna persona responsabile che si proponga di legiferare sulla nostra spezzata conoscenza e sulla nostra sconfinata ignoranza dell’ereditarietà.

Ma benché io debba considerare questa tediosa faccenda nel suo dovuto ordine logico, mi pare che questa parte della questione sia stata risolta, e risolta nel modo più magistrale, da qualcuno che ha infinitamente più diritto di me a parlarne. La nostra stampa sembra avere un perfetto genio nell’assegnare alla gente berretti che non calzano; e nell’affibbiare i termini sbagliati di elogio e persino i termini sbagliati di ingiuria. E proprio come si parla di Bernard Shaw come di un birichino Pierrot ammiccante, quando egli è l’ultimo grande Puritano e crede davvero nella rispettabilità; proprio come (si parva licet, eccetera) si parlerà dei miei stessi paradossi, quando io passo la vita a predicare che i truismi sono veri; così un enorme numero di lettori di giornali sembra avere fisso saldamente in testa che il signor H. G. Wells è un aspro e orribile Eugenista con grandi occhiali da orco, che vuole ficcarci tutti dentro microscopi metallici e sezionarci con strumenti metallici. In realtà, naturalmente, il signor Wells, ben lungi dall’essere troppo preciso, generalmente non è abbastanza preciso. È un mago assoluto nell’apprezzamento delle atmosfere e nell’aprire prospettive; ma le sue risposte sono più agnostiche delle sue domande. I suoi libri fanno tutto tranne che chiudersi. E ben lungi dall’essere il tipo d’uomo che fermerebbe un uomo dal propagarsi, egli non riesce nemmeno a fermare un punto fermo. Non è abbastanza Eugenico da impedire al puntino nero in fondo a una frase di generare una fila di piccoli puntini.

But this is not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real blunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of medals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds of public economy, to giving Mr. Wells only one medal ob cives servatos, I would give him a medal as the Eugenist who destroyed Eugenics. For everyone spoke of him rightly or wrongly, as a Eugenist; and he certainly had, as I have not, the training and type of culture required to consider the matter merely in a biological and not in a generally moral sense. The result was that in that fine book, “Mankind in the Making,” where he inevitably came to grips with the problem, he threw down to the Eugenists an intellectual challenge which seems to me unanswerable, but which, at any rate, is unanswered. I do not mean that no remote Eugenist wrote upon the subject; for it is impossible to read all writings, especially Eugenist writings. I do not mean that the leading Eugenists write as if this challenge had never been offered. The gauntlet lies unlifted on the ground.

Having given honour for the idea where it is due, I may be permitted to summarize it myself for the sake of brevity. Mr. Wells’ point was this. That we cannot be certain about the inheritance of health, because health is not a quality. It is not a thing like darkness in the hair or length in the limbs. It is a relation, a balance. You have a tall, strong man; but his very strength depends on his not being too tall for his strength. You catch a healthy, full-blooded fellow; but his very health depends on his being not too full of blood. A heart that is strong for a dwarf will be weak for a giant; a nervous system that would kill a man with a trace of a certain illness will sustain him to ninety if he has no trace of that illness. Nay, the same nervous system might kill him if he had an excess of some other comparatively healthy thing. Seeing, therefore, that there are apparently healthy people of all types, it is obvious that if you mate two of them, you may even then produce a discord out of two inconsistent harmonies. It is obvious that you can no more be certain of a good offspring than you can be certain of a good tune if you play two fine airs at once on the same piano. You can be even less certain of it in the more delicate case of beauty, of which the Eugenists talk a great deal. Marry two handsome people whose noses tend to the aquiline, and their baby (for all you know) may be a goblin with a nose like an enormous parrot’s. Indeed, I actually know a case of this kind. The Eugenist has to settle, not the result of fixing one steady thing to a second steady thing; but what will happen when one toppling and dizzy equilibrium crashes into another.

This is the interesting conclusion. It is on this degree of knowledge that we are asked to abandon the universal morality of mankind. When we have stopped the lover from marrying the unfortunate woman he loves, when we have found him another uproariously healthy female whom he does not love in the least, even then we have no logical evidence that the result may not be as horrid and dangerous as if he had behaved like a man of honour.

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VII

THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT

Let us now finally consider what the honest Eugenists do mean, since it has become increasingly evident that they cannot mean what they say. Unfortunately, the obstacles to any explanation of this are such as to insist on a circuitous approach. The tendency of all that is printed and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true sense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it is always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article, and he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may even, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he thinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the nearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of classical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to write it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where he learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his stalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth delivering at all. The poor panting critic falls farther behind the motor-car of modern fact. Fifty years ago he was barely fifteen years behind the times. Fifteen years ago he was not more than fifty years behind the times. Just now he is rather more than a hundred years behind the times: and the proof of it is that the things he says, though manifest nonsense about our society to-day, really were true about our society some hundred and thirty years ago. The best instance of his belated state is his perpetual assertion that the supernatural is less and less believed. It is a perfectly true and realistic account --- of the eighteenth century. It is the worst possible account of this age of psychics and spirit-healers and fakirs and fashionable fortune-tellers. In fact, I generally reply in eighteenth century language to this eighteenth century language to this eighteenth century illusion. If somebody says to me, “The creeds are crumbling,” I reply, “And the King of Prussia, who is himself a Freethinker, is certainly capturing Silesia from the Catholic Empress.” If somebody says “Miracles must be reconsidered in the light of rational experience,” I answer affably, “But I hope that our enlightened leader, Hébert, will not insist on guillotining that poor French queen.” If somebody says, “We must watch for the rise of some new religion which can commend itself to reason,” I reply, “But how much more necessary is it to watch for the rise of some military adventurer who may destroy the Republic; and, to my mind, that young Major Bonaparte has rather a restless air.” It is only in such language from the Age of Reason that we can answer such things. The age we live in is something more than an age of superstition --- it is an age of innumerable superstitions. But it is only with one example of this that I am concerned here.

Ma non è questo lo sbaglio netto e chiaro di cui parlavo. Il vero sbaglio è questo. Il signor Wells merita una tiara di corone e una ghirlanda di medaglie per ogni sorta di ragioni. Ma se dovessi, per motivi di pubblica economia, dare al signor Wells una sola medaglia ob cives servatos, gli darei una medaglia come all’Eugenista che distrusse l’Eugenetica. Poiché tutti parlavano di lui, a torto o a ragione, come di un Eugenista; ed egli aveva certamente, come io non ho, l’addestramento e il tipo di cultura richiesti per considerare la questione in senso meramente biologico e non in senso generalmente morale. Il risultato fu che in quel bel libro, «Mankind in the Making», dove egli venne inevitabilmente alle prese con il problema, lanciò agli Eugenisti una sfida intellettuale che mi pare irrefutabile, ma che, in ogni caso, è rimasta senza risposta. Non intendo che nessun remoto Eugenista abbia scritto sull’argomento; poiché è impossibile leggere tutti gli scritti, specialmente gli scritti eugenisti. Intendo che i principali Eugenisti scrivono come se questa sfida non fosse mai stata lanciata. Il guanto giace a terra non raccolto.

Avendo reso all’idea l’onore che le è dovuto, mi sia permesso di riassumerla io stesso per amor di brevità. Il punto del signor Wells era questo. Che non possiamo essere certi dell’ereditarietà della salute, perché la salute non è una qualità. Non è una cosa come il buio nei capelli o la lunghezza negli arti. È una relazione, un equilibrio. Avete un uomo alto e robusto; ma la sua stessa robustezza dipende dal suo non essere troppo alto per la sua robustezza. Prendete un individuo sano e sanguigno; ma la sua stessa salute dipende dal suo non essere troppo pieno di sangue. Un cuore che è forte per un nano sarà debole per un gigante; un sistema nervoso che ucciderebbe un uomo con una traccia di una certa malattia lo sosterrà fino a novant’anni se non ha traccia di quella malattia. Anzi, lo stesso sistema nervoso potrebbe ucciderlo se avesse un eccesso di qualche altra cosa comparativamente sana. Vedendo, dunque, che vi sono persone apparentemente sane di ogni tipo, è ovvio che se ne accoppiate due, potreste anche allora produrre una dissonanza da due armonie incompatibili. È ovvio che non potete essere più certi di una buona prole di quanto possiate essere certi di una buona melodia se suonate due belle arie contemporaneamente sullo stesso pianoforte. Potete esserne ancor meno certi nel caso più delicato della bellezza, di cui gli Eugenisti parlano molto. Sposate due belle persone i cui nasi tendono all’aquilino, e il loro bambino (per quel che ne sapete) potrebbe essere un folletto con un naso come quello di un enorme pappagallo. Anzi, conosco davvero un caso di questo genere. L’Eugenista deve stabilire, non il risultato di fissare una cosa stabile a una seconda cosa stabile; ma che cosa accadrà quando un equilibrio traballante e vertiginoso si schianta contro un altro.

Questa è la conclusione interessante. È con questo grado di conoscenza che ci si chiede di abbandonare la morale universale dell’umanità. Quando abbiamo impedito all’amante di sposare la sfortunata donna che ama, quando gli abbiamo trovato un’altra femmina fragorosamente sana che egli non ama affatto, anche allora non abbiamo alcuna prova logica che il risultato non possa essere altrettanto orrido e pericoloso che se si fosse comportato da uomo d’onore.

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VII

LA CHIESA COSTITUITA DEL DUBBIO

Consideriamo ora finalmente che cosa intendano davvero gli onesti Eugenisti, poiché è divenuto sempre più evidente che non possono intendere ciò che dicono. Sfortunatamente, gli ostacoli a una qualsiasi spiegazione di ciò sono tali da imporre un approccio tortuoso. La tendenza di tutto ciò che viene stampato e di molto di ciò che viene detto oggi è di essere, nell’unico vero senso, indietro coi tempi. È perché ha sempre fretta che è sempre troppo tardi. Date a un uomo comune un giorno per scrivere un articolo, ed egli ricorderà le cose che ha davvero udito per ultime; e potrà persino, nell’ultima gloria del tramonto, cominciare a pensare a ciò che egli stesso pensa. Dategli un’ora per scriverlo, ed egli penserà al più vicino manuale sull’argomento, e farà il miglior mosaico che può di citazioni classiche e vecchie autorità. Dategli dieci minuti per scriverlo, ed egli correrà urlando a rifugiarsi nella vecchia stanza dei bambini dove imparò i suoi più triti proverbi, o nella vecchia scuola dove imparò la sua più trita politica. Quanto più svelto va il giornalista, tanto più lenti vanno i suoi pensieri. Il risultato è il giornale del nostro tempo, che ogni giorno può essere consegnato sempre prima, e che, ogni giorno, vale sempre meno la pena di consegnare. Il povero critico ansante resta sempre più indietro rispetto all’automobile del fatto moderno. Cinquant’anni fa era appena quindici anni indietro coi tempi. Quindici anni fa non era più di cinquant’anni indietro coi tempi. Proprio ora è piuttosto più di cent’anni indietro coi tempi: e la prova di ciò è che le cose che dice, benché manifeste sciocchezze sulla nostra società di oggi, erano davvero vere sulla nostra società di circa centotrent’anni fa. Il migliore esempio del suo stato ritardato è la sua perpetua asserzione che il soprannaturale è sempre meno creduto. È un resoconto perfettamente vero e realistico — del diciottesimo secolo. È il peggior resoconto possibile di questa età di sensitivi e guaritori spirituali e fachiri e chiromanti alla moda. Di fatto, generalmente rispondo in linguaggio settecentesco a questa illusione settecentesca. Se qualcuno mi dice: «I credi stanno crollando», rispondo: «E il re di Prussia, che è lui stesso un libero pensatore, sta di certo strappando la Slesia all’imperatrice cattolica». Se qualcuno dice: «I miracoli devono essere riconsiderati alla luce dell’esperienza razionale», rispondo affabilmente: «Ma spero che il nostro illuminato leader, Hébert, non insista per ghigliottinare quella povera regina francese». Se qualcuno dice: «Dobbiamo vigilare sul sorgere di qualche nuova religione che possa raccomandarsi alla ragione», rispondo: «Ma quanto più necessario è vigilare sul sorgere di qualche avventuriero militare che possa distruggere la Repubblica; e, a mio parere, quel giovane maggiore Bonaparte ha un’aria piuttosto irrequieta». È soltanto in tale linguaggio dell’Età della Ragione che possiamo rispondere a simili cose. L’età in cui viviamo è qualcosa di più di un’età di superstizione — è un’età di innumerevoli superstizioni. Ma è di un solo esempio di ciò che qui mi occupo.

I mean the error that still sends men marching about disestablishing churches and talking of the tyranny of compulsory church teaching or compulsory church tithes. I do not wish for an irrelevant misunderstanding here; I would myself certainly disestablish any church that had a numerical minority, like the Irish or the Welsh; and I think it would do a great deal of good to genuine churches that have a partly conventional majority, like the English, or even the Russian. But I should only do this if I had nothing else to do; and just now there is very much else to do. For religion, orthodox, or unorthodox, is not just now relying on the weapon of State establishment at all. The Pope practically made no attempt to preserve the Concordat; but seemed rather relieved at the independence his Church gained by the destruction of it: and it is common talk among the French clericalists that the Church has gained by the change. In Russia the one real charge brought by religious people (especially Roman Catholics) against the Orthodox Church is not its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, but its abject dependence on the State. In England we can almost measure an Anglican’s fervour for his Church by his comparative coolness about its establishment --- that is, its control by a Parliament of Scotch Presbyterians like Balfour, or Welsh Congregationalists like Lloyd George. In Scotland the powerful combination of the two great sects outside the establishment have left it in a position in which it feels no disposition to boast of being called by mere lawyers the Church of Scotland. I am not here arguing that Churches should not depend on the State; nor that they do not depend upon much worse things. It may be reasonably maintained that the strength of Romanism, though it be not in any national police, is in a moral police more rigid and vigilant. It may be reasonably maintained that the strength of Anglicanism, though it be not in establishment, is in aristocracy, and its shadow, which is called snobbishness. All I assert here is that the Churches are not now leaning heavily on their political establishment; they are not using heavily the secular arm. Almost everywhere their legal tithes have been modified, their legal boards of control have been mixed. They may still employ tyranny, and worse tyranny: I am not considering that. They are not specially using that special tyranny which consists in using the government.

The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen --- that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination, in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite natural to our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to them madness to enforce baptism.

I am not frightened of the word “persecution” when it is attributed to the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof --- then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are. The imposition of such dogmas constitutes a State Church --- in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied to any supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where the religious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way or that; and yet more where it is excluded from this or that public post. But I cannot now recall any place where it is compelled by the criminal law to go through the rite of the official religion. Even the Young Turks did not insist on all Macedonians being circumcised.

Now here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, in the past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence, it has been at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixed and flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by their enemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But what are the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword to enforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions and bewildered answers that we have been studying in the last chapters --- questions whose only interest is that they are trackless and mysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative and new. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; and therefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of science actually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he persecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his creed, because it was unchangeable. The savant enforces it violently because he may change it the next day.

Now this is a new sort of persecution; and one may be permitted to ask if it is an improvement on the old. The difference, so far as one can see at first, seems rather favourable to the old. If we are to be at the merciless mercy of man, most of us would rather be racked for a creed that existed intensely in somebody’s head, rather than vivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone’s head, and possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with a thumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with a vivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet that is the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. If I give in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to profess. But even if I yelled out a credo when the Eugenists had me on the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an extra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed quite a week ago.

Intendo l’errore che ancora manda gli uomini in giro a smantellare le chiese di Stato e a parlare della tirannia dell’insegnamento religioso obbligatorio o delle decime ecclesiastiche obbligatorie. Non desidero qui un equivoco irrilevante; io stesso smantellerei di certo qualsiasi chiesa che avesse una minoranza numerica, come quella irlandese o quella gallese; e penso che farebbe un gran bene alle chiese genuine che hanno una maggioranza in parte convenzionale, come quella inglese, o persino quella russa. Ma lo farei solo se non avessi nient’altro da fare; e proprio ora c’è moltissimo altro da fare. Poiché la religione, ortodossa o eterodossa, non fa proprio ora affidamento sull’arma dell’istituzione statale. Il Papa non fece praticamente alcun tentativo di preservare il Concordato; ma parve piuttosto sollevato dall’indipendenza che la sua Chiesa guadagnò con la distruzione di esso: ed è cosa risaputa tra i clericali francesi che la Chiesa ci abbia guadagnato con il cambiamento. In Russia l’unica accusa reale mossa dalle persone religiose (specialmente i cattolici romani) contro la Chiesa ortodossa non è la sua ortodossia o eterodossia, ma la sua abietta dipendenza dallo Stato. In Inghilterra possiamo quasi misurare il fervore di un anglicano per la sua Chiesa dalla sua comparativa freddezza riguardo alla sua istituzione statale — cioè al suo controllo da parte di un Parlamento di presbiteriani scozzesi come Balfour, o di congregazionalisti gallesi come Lloyd George. In Scozia la potente combinazione delle due grandi sette al di fuori della chiesa di Stato l’ha lasciata in una posizione in cui non sente alcuna disposizione a vantarsi di essere chiamata da meri avvocati la Chiesa di Scozia. Non sto qui sostenendo che le Chiese non debbano dipendere dallo Stato; né che non dipendano da cose assai peggiori. Si può ragionevolmente sostenere che la forza del romanesimo, benché non stia in alcuna polizia nazionale, stia in una polizia morale più rigida e vigile. Si può ragionevolmente sostenere che la forza dell’anglicanesimo, benché non stia nell’istituzione statale, stia nell’aristocrazia, e nella sua ombra, che si chiama snobismo. Tutto ciò che qui affermo è che le Chiese non si appoggiano ora pesantemente sulla loro istituzione politica; non usano pesantemente il braccio secolare. Quasi dovunque le loro decime legali sono state modificate, i loro consigli legali di controllo sono stati resi misti. Possono ancora esercitare tirannia, e peggiore tirannia: non è questo che sto considerando. Non usano in modo speciale quella speciale tirannia che consiste nell’usare il governo.

La cosa che davvero cerca di tiranneggiare attraverso il governo è la Scienza. La cosa che davvero usa il braccio secolare è la Scienza. E il credo che davvero riscuote decime e conquista scuole, il credo che davvero è imposto con la multa e l’imprigionamento, il credo che davvero è proclamato non nei sermoni ma negli statuti, e diffuso non da pellegrini ma da poliziotti — quel credo è il grande ma contestato sistema di pensiero che cominciò con l’Evoluzione e si è concluso nell’Eugenetica. Il materialismo è davvero la nostra Chiesa di Stato; poiché il Governo l’aiuterà davvero a perseguitare i suoi eretici. La vaccinazione, nei suoi cent’anni di esperimenti, è stata contestata quasi quanto il battesimo nei suoi circa duemila. Ma sembra del tutto naturale ai nostri politici imporre la vaccinazione; e parrebbe loro follia imporre il battesimo.

Non mi spaventa la parola «persecuzione» quando è attribuita alle chiese; né è affatto come termine di rimprovero che la attribuisco agli uomini di scienza. È come termine di fatto giuridico. Se essa significa l’imposizione da parte della polizia di una teoria ampiamente contestata, incapace di prova definitiva — allora i nostri preti non perseguitano più, ma i nostri medici sì. L’imposizione di simili dogmi costituisce una Chiesa di Stato — in un senso più antico e più forte di qualsiasi altro applicabile a una qualunque Chiesa soprannaturale di oggi. Ci sono ancora luoghi dove alla minoranza religiosa è vietato radunarsi o insegnare in questo o quel modo; e ancor più dove essa è esclusa da questa o quella carica pubblica. Ma non riesco ora a rammentare alcun luogo dove essa sia costretta dalla legge penale a sottoporsi al rito della religione ufficiale. Persino i Giovani Turchi non insistettero perché tutti i macedoni fossero circoncisi.

Ora ci troviamo qui di fronte a un fatto sbalorditivo. Quando, in passato, opinioni così opinabili sono state imposte con la violenza dello Stato, ciò è avvenuto per istigazione di fanatici che le tenevano per certezze fisse e fiammeggianti. Se le verità non potevano essere eluse dai loro nemici, neppure potevano essere alterate dai loro amici. Ma quali sono le verità certe che il braccio secolare deve ora levare la spada a imporre? Ebbene, sono proprio quella massa di questioni senza fondo e di risposte sconcertate che siamo andati studiando negli ultimi capitoli — questioni il cui unico interesse è che sono impervie e misteriose; risposte la cui unica gloria è che sono provvisorie e nuove. Il devoto si vantava che non avrebbe mai abbandonato la Fede; e perciò perseguitava per la Fede. Ma il dottore di scienza si vanta addirittura che abbandonerà sempre un’ipotesi; e tuttavia perseguita per l’ipotesi. L’Inquisitore imponeva violentemente il suo credo, perché era immutabile. Il sapiente lo impone violentemente perché potrà mutarlo il giorno dopo.

Ora questa è una nuova specie di persecuzione; e sia permesso chiedere se sia un miglioramento rispetto alla vecchia. La differenza, per quanto si possa vedere a prima vista, sembra piuttosto favorevole alla vecchia. Se dobbiamo essere alla spietata mercé dell’uomo, la maggior parte di noi preferirebbe essere messa alla tortura per un credo che esisteva intensamente nella testa di qualcuno, piuttosto che essere vivisezionata per una scoperta che non era ancora entrata nella testa di nessuno, e forse non vi sarebbe mai entrata. Un uomo preferirebbe essere torturato con una morsa per i pollici finché non scegliesse di ragionare, piuttosto che torturato con un coltello da vivisezione finché il vivisettore non scegliesse di ragionare. Eppure questa è la vera differenza tra i due tipi di imposizione legale. Se io mi arrendo agli Inquisitori, saprei almeno quale credo professare. Ma anche se strillassi un credo mentre gli Eugenisti mi tenessero sul cavalletto, non saprei quale credo strillare. Potrei ricevere un giro in più di cavalletto per aver confessato il credo che essi confessavano appena una settimana fa.

Now let not light-minded persons say that I am here taking extravagant parallels; for the parallel is not only perfect, but plain. For this reason: that the difference between torture and vivisection is not in any way affected by the fierceness or mildness of either. Whether they gave the rack half a turn or half a hundred, they were, by hypothesis, dealing with a truth which they knew to be there. Whether they vivisect painfully or painlessly, they are trying to find out whether the truth is there or not. The old inquisitors tortured to put their own opinions into somebody. But the new Inquisitors torture to get their own opinions out of him. They do not know what their own opinions are, until the victim of vivisection tells them. The division of thought is a complete chasm for anyone who cares about thinking. The old persecutor was trying to teach the citizen, with fire and sword. The new persecutor is trying to learn from the citizen, with scalpel and germ-injector. The master was meeker than the pupil will be.

I could prove by many practical instances that even my illustrations are not exaggerated, by many placid proposals I have heard for the vivisection of criminals, or by the filthy incident of Dr. Neisser. But I prefer here to stick to a strictly logical line of distinction, and insist that whereas in all previous persecutions the violence was used to end our indecision, the whole point here is that the violence is used to end the indecision of the persecutors. This is what the honest Eugenists really mean, so far as they mean anything. They mean that the public is to be given up, not as a heathen land for conversion, but simply as a pabulum for a experiment. That is the real, rude, barbaric sense behind this Eugenic legislation. The Eugenist doctors are not such fools as they look in the light of any logical inquiry about what they want. They do not know what they want, except that they want your soul and body and mine in order to find out. They are quite seriously, as they themselves might say, the first religion to be experimental instead of doctrinal. All other established Churches have been based on somebody having found the truth. This is the first Church that was ever based on not having found it.

There is in them a perfectly sincere hope and enthusiasm; but it is not for us, but for what they might learn from us, if they could rule us as they can rabbits. They cannot tell us anything about heredity, because they do not know anything about it. But they do quite honestly believe that they would know something about it, when they had married and mismarried us for a few hundred years. They cannot tell us who is fit to wield such authority, for they know that nobody is; but they do quite honestly believe that when that authority has been abused for a very long time, somebody somehow will be evolved who is fit for the job. I am no Puritan, and no one who knows my opinions will consider it a mere criminal charge if I say that they are simply gambling. The reckless gambler has no money in his pockets; he has only the ideas in his head. These gamblers have no idea in their heads; they have only the money in their pockets. But they think that if they could use the money to buy a big society to experiment on, something like an idea might come to them at last. That is Eugenics.

I confine myself here to remarking that I do not like it. I may be very stingy, but I am willing to pay the scientist for what he does know; I draw the line at paying him for everything he doesn’t know. I may be very cowardly, but I am willing to be hurt for what I think or what he thinks--- I am not willing to be hurt, or even inconvenienced, for whatever he might happen to think after he had hurt me. The ordinary citizen may easily be more magnanimous than I, and take the whole thing on trust; in which case his career may be happier in the next world. But (I think) sadder in this. At least, I wish to point out to him that he will not be giving his glorious body as soldiers give it, to the glory of a fixed flag, or martyrs to the glory of a deathless God. He will be, in the strict sense of the Latin phrase, giving his vile body for an experiment--- an experiment of which even the experimentalist knows neither the significance nor the end.

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VIII

A SUMMARY OF A FALSE THEORY

I have up to this point treated the Eugenists, I hope, as seriously as they treat themselves. I have attempted an analysis of their theory as if it were an utterly abstract and disinterested theory; and so considered, there seems to be very little left of it. But before I go on, in the second part of this book, to talk of the ugly things that really are left, I wish to recapitulate the essential points in their essential order, lest any personal irrelevance or over-emphasis (to which I know myself to be prone) should have confused the course of what I believe to be a perfectly fair and consistent argument. To make it yet clearer, I will summarize the thing under chapters, and in quite short paragraphs.

In the first chapter I attempted to define the essential point in which Eugenics can claim, and does claim, to be a new morality. That point is that it is possible to consider the baby in considering the bride. I do not adopt the ideal irresponsibility of the man who said, “What has posterity done for us?” But I do say, to start with, “What can we do for posterity, except deal fairly with our contemporaries?” Unless a man love his wife whom he has seen, how shall he love his child whom he has not seen?

In the second chapter I point out that this division in the conscience cannot be met by mere mental confusions, which would make any woman refusing any man a Eugenist. There will always be something in the world which tends to keep outrageous unions exceptional; that influence is not Eugenics, but laughter.

Ora le persone dalla mente leggera non dicano che qui io traccio paralleli stravaganti; poiché il parallelo non è solo perfetto, ma evidente. Per questa ragione: che la differenza tra tortura e vivisezione non è in alcun modo intaccata dalla ferocia o dalla mitezza dell’una o dell’altra. Sia che dessero al cavalletto mezzo giro o mezzo centinaio, essi trattavano, per ipotesi, con una verità che sapevano essere lì. Sia che vivisezionino dolorosamente o indolore, essi cercano di scoprire se la verità sia lì oppure no. I vecchi inquisitori torturavano per mettere le proprie opinioni dentro qualcuno. Ma i nuovi Inquisitori torturano per cavare da lui le proprie opinioni. Non sanno quali siano le proprie opinioni, finché la vittima della vivisezione non gliele dice. La divisione del pensiero è un abisso completo per chiunque tenga al pensare. Il vecchio persecutore cercava di istruire il cittadino, con il fuoco e la spada. Il nuovo persecutore cerca di imparare dal cittadino, con il bisturi e l’iniettore di germi. Il maestro era più mite di quanto sarà l’allievo.

Potrei provare con molti esempi pratici che persino le mie illustrazioni non sono esagerate, con molte placide proposte che ho udito per la vivisezione dei criminali, o con lo sconcio episodio del dottor Neisser. Ma preferisco qui attenermi a una linea di distinzione rigorosamente logica, e insistere che, mentre in tutte le persecuzioni precedenti la violenza era usata per porre fine alla nostra indecisione, tutto il punto qui è che la violenza è usata per porre fine all’indecisione dei persecutori. Questo è ciò che gli onesti Eugenisti intendono davvero, per quanto intendano qualcosa. Intendono che il pubblico dev’essere consegnato, non come una terra pagana da convertire, ma semplicemente come pastura per un esperimento. Questo è il vero, rozzo, barbaro senso che sta dietro questa legislazione eugenica. I dottori eugenisti non sono così sciocchi come sembrano alla luce di una qualsiasi indagine logica su ciò che vogliono. Non sanno che cosa vogliono, salvo che vogliono la vostra e la mia anima e il vostro e il mio corpo per scoprirlo. Sono, del tutto seriamente, come essi stessi potrebbero dire, la prima religione a essere sperimentale invece che dottrinale. Tutte le altre Chiese costituite si sono basate sul fatto che qualcuno aveva trovato la verità. Questa è la prima Chiesa che si sia mai basata sul non averla trovata.

C’è in essi una speranza e un entusiasmo perfettamente sinceri; ma non per noi, bensì per ciò che potrebbero imparare da noi, se potessero governarci come possono governare i conigli. Non possono dirci nulla sull’ereditarietà, perché non ne sanno nulla. Ma credono, in tutta onestà, che ne saprebbero qualcosa quando ci avessero sposati e mal-sposati per qualche centinaio d’anni. Non possono dirci chi sia idoneo a esercitare tale autorità, poiché sanno che nessuno lo è; ma credono, in tutta onestà, che quando quell’autorità sarà stata abusata per un tempo lunghissimo, verrà in qualche modo evoluto qualcuno idoneo al compito. Non sono un Puritano, e nessuno che conosca le mie opinioni riterrà una mera accusa penale se dico che essi stanno semplicemente giocando d’azzardo. Il giocatore avventato non ha denaro in tasca; ha soltanto le idee in testa. Questi giocatori non hanno alcuna idea in testa; hanno soltanto il denaro in tasca. Ma pensano che, se potessero usare il denaro per comprare una grande società su cui esperimentare, qualcosa di simile a un’idea potrebbe venire loro alla fine. Questa è l’Eugenetica.

Mi confino qui a osservare che non mi piace. Potrò essere assai spilorcio, ma sono disposto a pagare lo scienziato per ciò che sa; traccio la linea al pagarlo per tutto ciò che non sa. Potrò essere assai codardo, ma sono disposto a essere ferito per ciò che io penso o per ciò che egli pensa — non sono disposto a essere ferito, e nemmeno incomodato, per qualunque cosa gli capiti di pensare dopo avermi ferito. Il cittadino comune può facilmente essere più magnanimo di me, e prendere tutta la faccenda sulla fiducia; nel qual caso la sua carriera potrà essere più felice nel prossimo mondo. Ma (io penso) più triste in questo. Almeno, desidero fargli notare che egli non darà il suo glorioso corpo come lo danno i soldati, alla gloria di una bandiera stabile, o i martiri alla gloria di un Dio immortale. Egli darà, nel senso stretto della frase latina, il suo vile corpo per un esperimento — un esperimento del quale persino lo sperimentatore non conosce né il significato né il fine.

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VIII

RIASSUNTO DI UNA FALSA TEORIA

Ho fino a questo punto trattato gli Eugenisti, spero, con la stessa serietà con cui essi trattano se stessi. Ho tentato un’analisi della loro teoria come se fosse una teoria del tutto astratta e disinteressata; e, considerata così, sembra rimanerne assai poco. Ma prima di proseguire, nella seconda parte di questo libro, a parlare delle brutte cose che davvero rimangono, desidero ricapitolare i punti essenziali nel loro ordine essenziale, per timore che qualche irrilevanza personale o qualche eccessiva enfasi (alle quali mi so incline) abbia confuso il corso di quello che credo essere un argomento perfettamente equo e coerente. Per renderlo ancor più chiaro, riassumerò la cosa per capitoli, e in paragrafi assai brevi.

Nel primo capitolo ho tentato di definire il punto essenziale in cui l’Eugenetica può pretendere, e pretende, di essere una nuova morale. Quel punto è che è possibile considerare il bambino nel considerare la sposa. Non adotto l’ideale irresponsabilità dell’uomo che disse: «Che cos’ha fatto per noi la posterità?». Ma dico, per cominciare: «Che cosa possiamo fare noi per la posterità, se non trattare equamente i nostri contemporanei?». Se un uomo non ama la moglie che ha visto, come amerà egli il suo figlio che non ha visto?

Nel secondo capitolo faccio notare che questa divisione nella coscienza non può essere affrontata con mere confusioni mentali, che farebbero di qualsiasi donna che rifiuta un uomo qualsiasi una Eugenista. Ci sarà sempre qualcosa al mondo che tende a mantenere eccezionali le unioni oltraggiose; quell’influenza non è l’Eugenetica, ma il riso.

In the third chapter I seek to describe the quite extraordinary atmosphere in which such things have become possible. I call that atmosphere anarchy; but insist that it is an anarchy in the centres where there should be authority. Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government. In this atmosphere it is natural enough that medical experts, being authorities, should go mad, and attempt so crude and random and immature dream as this of petting and patting (and rather spoiling) the babe unborn.

In chapter four I point out how this impatience has burst through the narrow channel of the Lunacy Laws, and has obliterated them by extending them. The whole point of the madman is that he is the exception that prove the rule. But Eugenics seeks to treat the whole rule as a series of exceptions --- to make all men mad. And on that ground there is hope for nobody; for all opinions have an author, and all authors have a heredity. The mentality of the Eugenist makes him believe in Eugenics as much as the mentality of the reckless lover makes him violate Eugenics; and both mentalities are, on the materialist hypothesis, equally the irresponsible product of more or less unknown physical causes. The real security of the man against any logical Eugenics is like the false security of Macbeth. The only Eugenist that could rationally attack him must be a man of no woman born.

In the chapter following this, which is called “The Flying Authority,” I try in vain to locate and fix any authority that could rationally rule men in so rooted and universal a matter; little would be gained by ordinary men doing it to each other; and if ordinary practitioners did it they would very soon show, by a thousand whims and quarrels, that they were ordinary men. I then discussed the enlightened despotism of a few general professors of hygiene, and found it unworkable, for an essential reason: that while we can always get men intelligent enough to know more than the rest of us about this or that accident or pain or pest, we cannot count on the appearance of great cosmic philosophers; and only such men can be even supposed to know more than we do about normal conduct and common sanity. Every sort of man, in short, would shirk such a responsibility, except the worst sort of man, who would accept it.

I pass on, in the next chapter, to consider whether we know enough about heredity to act decisively, even if we were certain who ought to act. Here I refer the Eugenists to the reply of Mr. Wells, which they have never dealt with to my knowledge or satisfaction --- the important and primary objection that health is not a quality but a proportion of qualities; so that even health married to health might produce the exaggeration called disease. It should be noted here, of course, that an individual biologist may quite honestly believe that he has found a fixed principle with the help of Weissmann or Mendel. But we are not discussing whether he knows enough to be justified in thinking (as is somewhat the habit of the anthropoid Homo) that he is right. We are discussing whether we know enough, as responsible citizens, to put such powers into the hands of men who may be deceived or who may be deceivers. I conclude that we do not.

In the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, I believe, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what the Eugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what they want. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire the establishment of research; that is the making of it a thing official and compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it is only research and not discovery. In short, they want a new kind of State Church, which shall be an Established Church of Doubt --- instead of Faith. They have no Science of Eugenics at all, but they do really mean that if we will give ourselves up to be vivisected they may very probably have one some day. I point out, in more dignified diction, that this is a bit thick.

And now, in the second half of this book, we will proceed to the consideration of things that really exist. It is, I deeply regret to say, necessary to return to realities, as they are in your daily life and mine. Our happy holiday in the land of nonsense is over; we shall see no more its beautiful city, with the almost Biblical name of Bosh, nor the forests full of mares’ nests, nor the fields of tares that are ripened only by moonshine. We shall meet no longer those delicious monsters that might have talked in the same wild club with the Snark and the Jabberwock or the Pobble or the Dong with the Luminous Nose; the father who can’t make head or tail of the mother, but thoroughly understands the child she will some day bear; the lawyer who has to run after his own laws almost as fast as the criminals run away from them; the two mad doctors who might discuss for a million years which of them has the right to lock up the other; the grammarian who clings convulsively to the Passive Mood, and says it is the duty of something to get itself done without any human assistance, the man who would marry giants to giants until the back breaks, as children pile brick upon brick for the pleasure of seeing the staggering tower tumble down; and, above all, the superb man of science who wants you to pay him and crown him because he has so far found out nothing. These fairy-tale comrades must leave us. They exist, but they have no influence in what is really going on. They are honest dupes and tools, as you and I were very nearly being honest dupes and tools. If we come to think coolly of the world we live in, if we consider how very practical is the practical politician, at least where cash is concerned, how very dull and earthy are most of the men who own millions and manage the newspaper trusts, how very cautious and averse from idealist upheaval are those that control this capitalist society --- when we consider all this, it is frankly incredible that Eugenics should be a front bench fashionable topic and almost an Act of Parliament, if it were in practice only the unfinished fantasy which it is, as I have shown, in pure reason. Even if it were a just revolution, it would be much too revolutionary a revolution for modern statesmen, if there were not something else behind. Even if it were a true ideal, it would be much too idealistic an ideal for our “practical men,” if there were not something real as well. Well, there is something real as well. There is no reason in Eugenics, but there is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory, but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I reiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite innocent instruments, there are some, even among Eugenists, who by this time know what they are doing. To them we shall not say, “What is Eugenics?” or “Where on earth are you going?” but only “Woe unto you, hypocrite that devour widows’ houses and for a pretence use long words.”

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Nel terzo capitolo cerco di descrivere l’atmosfera del tutto straordinaria in cui simili cose sono divenute possibili. Chiamo quell’atmosfera anarchia; ma insisto che è un’anarchia nei centri in cui dovrebbe esserci autorità. Il Governo è divenuto ingovernabile; vale a dire, non riesce a smettere di governare. La legge è divenuta illegale; vale a dire, non riesce a vedere dove le leggi dovrebbero fermarsi. La caratteristica principale del nostro tempo è la mansuetudine della folla e la follia del governo. In questa atmosfera è abbastanza naturale che gli esperti medici, essendo autorità, impazziscano, e tentino un sogno tanto rozzo e casuale e immaturo quanto questo di coccolare e vezzeggiare (e piuttosto viziare) il bimbo non ancora nato.

Nel quarto capitolo faccio notare come questa impazienza abbia rotto lo stretto canale delle Leggi sulla Follia, e le abbia obliterate estendendole. Tutto il nocciolo del pazzo è che egli è l’eccezione che conferma la regola. Ma l’Eugenetica cerca di trattare l’intera regola come una serie di eccezioni — di render pazzi tutti gli uomini. E su quel terreno non c’è speranza per nessuno; poiché tutte le opinioni hanno un autore, e tutti gli autori hanno un’ereditarietà. La mentalità dell’Eugenista lo fa credere nell’Eugenetica tanto quanto la mentalità dell’avventato amante lo fa violare l’Eugenetica; ed entrambe le mentalità sono, secondo l’ipotesi materialista, ugualmente il prodotto irresponsabile di cause fisiche più o meno ignote. La vera sicurezza dell’uomo contro qualsiasi Eugenetica logica è come la falsa sicurezza di Macbeth. L’unico Eugenista che potesse razionalmente assalirlo dovrebbe essere un uomo non nato da donna.

Nel capitolo che segue questo, intitolato «L’autorità volante», cerco invano di localizzare e fissare una qualsiasi autorità che potesse razionalmente governare gli uomini in una materia tanto radicata e universale; poco si guadagnerebbe se gli uomini comuni lo facessero l’uno all’altro; e se i medici ordinari lo facessero, mostrerebbero ben presto, con mille capricci e liti, di essere uomini ordinari. Discussi poi il dispotismo illuminato di pochi professori generali d’igiene, e lo trovai inattuabile, per una ragione essenziale: che, mentre possiamo sempre trovare uomini abbastanza intelligenti da sapere più del resto di noi su questo o quell’incidente o dolore o flagello, non possiamo contare sull’apparizione di grandi filosofi cosmici; e solo tali uomini si possono anche solo supporre sappiano più di noi sulla condotta normale e sulla comune sanità di mente. Ogni sorta d’uomo, in breve, scanserebbe una simile responsabilità, tranne la peggior sorta d’uomo, che l’accetterebbe.

Passo, nel capitolo seguente, a considerare se sappiamo abbastanza sull’ereditarietà per agire in modo decisivo, anche se fossimo certi di chi debba agire. Qui rimando gli Eugenisti alla replica del signor Wells, che essi non hanno mai affrontato, per quanto io sappia o mi soddisfi — l’obiezione importante e primaria che la salute non è una qualità ma una proporzione di qualità; sicché persino la salute sposata alla salute potrebbe produrre l’esagerazione chiamata malattia. Va notato qui, naturalmente, che un singolo biologo può in tutta onestà credere di aver trovato un principio fisso con l’aiuto di Weissmann o di Mendel. Ma noi non stiamo discutendo se egli sappia abbastanza da essere giustificato nel pensare (come è alquanto abitudine dell’antropoide Homo) di aver ragione. Stiamo discutendo se noi sappiamo abbastanza, come cittadini responsabili, per mettere simili poteri nelle mani di uomini che possono essere ingannati o che possono essere ingannatori. Concludo che non lo sappiamo.

Nell’ultimo capitolo della prima metà del libro do quello che è, credo, il vero segreto di questa confusione, il segreto di ciò che gli Eugenisti vogliono davvero. Vogliono che sia loro permesso di scoprire ciò che vogliono. Non contenti della dotazione della ricerca, desiderano l’istituzione della ricerca; cioè il renderla cosa ufficiale e obbligatoria, come l’istruzione o l’assicurazione statale; ma pur sempre è solo ricerca e non scoperta. In breve, vogliono una nuova specie di Chiesa di Stato, che sia una Chiesa costituita del Dubbio — invece che della Fede. Non hanno affatto una Scienza dell’Eugenetica, ma intendono davvero che, se ci consegneremo per essere vivisezionati, essi molto probabilmente ne avranno una un giorno. Faccio notare, in dizione più dignitosa, che questo è un po’ troppo.

E ora, nella seconda metà di questo libro, procederemo alla considerazione delle cose che davvero esistono. È, mi rincresce profondamente dirlo, necessario tornare alle realtà, come sono nella vostra e nella mia vita quotidiana. La nostra felice vacanza nel paese delle sciocchezze è finita; non vedremo più la sua bella città, dal nome quasi biblico di Bosh, né le foreste piene di nidi di cavalla, né i campi di zizzania che maturano soltanto al chiaro di luna. Non incontreremo più quei deliziosi mostri che avrebbero potuto conversare nello stesso club selvaggio con lo Snark e il Ciciarampa o il Pobble o il Dong dal Naso Luminoso; il padre che non riesce a raccapezzarsi della madre, ma comprende a fondo il figlio che ella un giorno partorirà; l’avvocato che deve rincorrere le proprie leggi quasi altrettanto in fretta di quanto i criminali fuggono da esse; i due medici pazzi che potrebbero discutere per un milione d’anni su quale dei due abbia il diritto di rinchiudere l’altro; il grammatico che si aggrappa convulsamente al Modo Passivo, e dice che è dovere di qualcosa il farsi fare senza alcuna assistenza umana; l’uomo che sposerebbe giganti a giganti finché la schiena non si spezzi, come i bambini impilano mattone su mattone per il piacere di vedere crollare la traballante torre; e, soprattutto, il superbo uomo di scienza che vuole che voi lo paghiate e lo incoroniate perché finora non ha scoperto nulla. Questi compagni da fiaba devono lasciarci. Esistono, ma non hanno alcuna influenza su ciò che davvero sta accadendo. Sono onesti ingannati e strumenti, come voi e io eravamo quasi diventati onesti ingannati e strumenti. Se riflettiamo freddamente sul mondo in cui viviamo, se consideriamo quanto sia assai pratico il politico pratico, almeno dove è in gioco il denaro, quanto siano assai ottusi e terreni la maggior parte degli uomini che possiedono milioni e gestiscono i trust dei giornali, quanto siano assai cauti e avversi a ogni sconvolgimento idealista coloro che controllano questa società capitalista — quando consideriamo tutto ciò, è francamente incredibile che l’Eugenetica sia un argomento alla moda dei banchi di governo e quasi un Atto del Parlamento, se fosse in pratica soltanto l’incompiuta fantasia che essa è, come ho mostrato, in pura ragione. Anche se fosse una giusta rivoluzione, sarebbe una rivoluzione troppo rivoluzionaria per gli uomini di Stato moderni, se non ci fosse qualcos’altro dietro. Anche se fosse un vero ideale, sarebbe un ideale troppo idealistico per i nostri «uomini pratici», se non ci fosse del pari qualcosa di reale. Ebbene, c’è del pari qualcosa di reale. Non c’è ragione nell’Eugenetica, ma c’è abbondanza di movente. I suoi sostenitori sono assai vaghi sulla sua teoria, ma saranno dolorosamente pratici sulla sua pratica. E mentre ribadisco che molti dei suoi più eloquenti agenti sono probabilmente strumenti del tutto innocenti, ce ne sono alcuni, persino tra gli Eugenisti, che ormai sanno che cosa stanno facendo. A loro non diremo: «Che cos’è l’Eugenetica?» o «Dove diamine state andando?», ma soltanto: «Guai a voi, ipocriti che divorate le case delle vedove e per finzione usate parole lunghe».

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PART TWO

THE REAL AIM

I

THE IMPOTENCE OF IMPENITENCE

The root formula of an epoch is always an unwritten law, just as the law that is the first of all laws, that which protects life from the murderer, is written nowhere in the Statute Book. Nevertheless there is all the difference between having and not having a notion of this basic assumption in an epoch. For instance, the Middle Ages will simply puzzle us with their charities and cruelties, their asceticism and bright colours, unless we catch their general eagerness for building and planning, dividing this from that by walls and fences --- the spirit that made architecture their most successful art. Thus even a slave seemed sacred; the divinity that did hedge a king, did also, in one sense, hedge a serf, for he could not be driven out from behind his hedges. Thus even liberty became a positive thing like a privilege; and even, when most men had it, it was not opened like the freedom of a wilderness, but bestowed, like the freedom of a city. Or again, the seventeenth century may seem a chaos of contradictions, with its almost priggish praise of parliaments and its quite barbaric massacre of prisoners, until we realize that, if the Middle Ages was a house half built, the seventeenth century was a house on fire. Panic was the note of it, and that fierce fastidiousness and exclusiveness that comes from fear. Calvinism was its characteristic religion, even in the Catholic Church, the insistence on the narrowness of the way and the fewness of the chosen. Suspicion was the note of its politics---“put not you trust in princes.” It tried to thrash everything out by learned, virulent, and ceaseless controversy; and it weeded its population by witch-burning. Or yet again: the eighteenth century will present pictures that seem utterly opposite, and yet seem singularly typical of the time: the sack of Versailles and the “Vicar of Wakefield”; the pastorals of Watteau and the dynamite speeches of Danton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight of the idea of tidying up which ran through the whole period, the quietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilization, and sound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people having (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for its own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only a readiness to employ it to get rid of unreason or disorder. With these epochs it is not altogether impossible to say that some such form of words is a key. The epoch for which it is almost impossible to find a form of words is our own.

Nevertheless, I think that with us the key-word is “inevitability,” or, as I should be inclined to call it, “impenitence.” We are subconsciously dominated in all departments by the notion that there is no turning back, and it is rooted in materialism and the denial of free will. Take any handful of modern facts and compare them with the corresponding facts a few hundred years ago. Compare the modern Party System with the political factions of the seventeenth century. The difference is that in the older time the party leaders not only really cut off each other’s heads, but (what is much more alarming) really repealed each other’s laws. With us it has become traditional for one party to inherit and leave untouched the acts of the other when made, however bitterly they were attacked in the making. James II and his nephew William were neither of them very gay specimens; but they would both have laughed at the idea of “a continuous foreign policy.” The Tories were not Conservatives; they were, in the literal sense, reactionaries. They did not merely want to keep the Stuarts; they wanted to bring them back.

Or again, consider how obstinately the English mediaeval monarchy returned again and again to its vision of French possessions, trying to reverse the decision of fate; how Edward III returned to the charge after the defeats of John and Henry III, and Henry V after the failure of Edward III; and how even Mary had that written on her heart which was neither her husband nor her religion. And then consider this: that we have comparatively lately known a universal orgy of the thing called imperialism, the unity of the Empire the only topic, colonies counted like crown jewels, and the Union Jack waved across the world. And yet no one so much as dreamed, I will not say of recovering, the American colonies for the Imperial unity (which would have been too dangerous a task for modern empire-builders), but even of re-telling the story from an Imperial standpoint. Henry V justified the claims of Edward III. Joseph Chamberlain would not have dreamed of justifying the claims of George III. Nay, Shakespeare justifies the French War, and sticks to Talbot and defies the legend of Joan of Arc. Mr. Kipling would not dare to justify the American War, stick to Burgoyne, and defy the legend of Washington. Yet there really was much more to be said for George III than there ever was for Henry V. It was not said, much less acted upon, by the modern Imperialists; because of this basic modern sense, that as the future is inevitable, so is the past irrevocable. Any fact so complete as the American exodus from the Empire must be considered as final for aeons, though it hardly happened more than a hundred years ago. Merely because it has managed to occur it must be called first, a necessary evil, and then an indispensable good. I need not add that I do not want to reconquer America; but then I am not an Imperialist.

Then there is another way of testing it: ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate? How few have we met who realized that British education can be altered, but British weather cannot? How few there were that knew that the clouds were more immortal and more solid than the schools? For a thousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or the ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? Indeed, the very word proves my case by its unpromising and unfamiliar sound. At the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform and Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; but nobody talks about repeal. Our fathers did not talk of Free Trade, but of the Repeal of the Corn Laws. They did not talk of Home Rule, but of the Repeal of the Union. In those days people talked of a “Repealer” as the most practical of all politicians, the kind of politician that carries a club. Now the Repealer is flung far into the province of an impossible idealism: and the leader of one of our great parties, having said, in a heat of temporary sincerity, that he would repeal an Act, actually had to write to all the papers to assure them that he would only amend it. I need not multiply instances, though they might be multiplied almost to a million. The note of the age is to suggest that the past may just as well be praised, since it cannot be mended. Men actually in that past have toiled like ants and died like locusts to undo some previous settlement that seemed secure; but we cannot do so much as repeal an Act of Parliament. We entertain the weak-minded notion that what is done can’t be undone. Our view was well summarized in a typical Victorian song with the refrain: “The mill will never grind with the water that is past.” There are many answers to this. One (which would involve a disquisition on the phenomena of evaporation and dew) we will here avoid. Another is, that to the minds of simple country folk, the object of a mill is not to grind water, but to grind corn, and that (strange as it may seem) there really have been societies sufficiently vigilant and valiant to prevent their corn perpetually flowing away from them, to the tune of a sentimental song.

PARTE SECONDA

IL VERO SCOPO

I

L’IMPOTENZA DELL’IMPENITENZA

La formula radicale di un’epoca è sempre una legge non scritta, proprio come la legge che è la prima di tutte le leggi, quella che protegge la vita dall’assassino, non è scritta in nessun punto del Codice. Nondimeno c’è tutta la differenza tra avere e non avere una nozione di questo presupposto basilare in un’epoca. Per esempio, il Medioevo ci lascerà semplicemente perplessi con le sue carità e crudeltà, il suo ascetismo e i suoi colori vivaci, a meno che non cogliamo il suo generale zelo per il costruire e il progettare, dividendo questo da quello con muri e recinti — lo spirito che fece dell’architettura la sua arte più riuscita. Così persino uno schiavo pareva sacro; la divinità che circondava di siepe un re circondava anche, in un certo senso, un servo, poiché egli non poteva essere cacciato da dietro le sue siepi. Così persino la libertà divenne una cosa positiva come un privilegio; e persino, quando la maggior parte degli uomini la possedeva, non era aperta come la libertà di un deserto, ma conferita, come la franchigia di una città. O ancora, il diciassettesimo secolo può sembrare un caos di contraddizioni, con la sua lode quasi da saccente dei parlamenti e il suo massacro affatto barbaro dei prigionieri, finché non ci rendiamo conto che, se il Medioevo era una casa costruita a metà, il diciassettesimo secolo era una casa in fiamme. Il panico ne era la nota, e quella feroce schizzinosità ed esclusività che nasce dalla paura. Il calvinismo era la sua religione caratteristica, persino nella Chiesa Cattolica, l’insistenza sulla strettezza della via e sull’esiguità degli eletti. Il sospetto era la nota della sua politica — «non riporre la tua fiducia nei principi». Cercava di trebbiare ogni cosa con dotte, virulente e incessanti controversie; e diradava la sua popolazione con i roghi di streghe. O ancora: il diciottesimo secolo presenterà quadri che sembrano del tutto opposti, eppure sembrano singolarmente tipici del tempo: il sacco di Versailles e il «Vicario di Wakefield»; le pastorali di Watteau e i discorsi dinamitardi di Danton. Ma li comprenderemo tutti meglio se una volta cogliamo l’idea del riordinare che percorreva l’intero periodo, essendo le persone più quiete più fiere della loro ordinatezza, civiltà e buon gusto che di qualsiasi loro virtù; e le persone più selvagge non avendo (e questo è il punto più importante) alcun amore della selvatichezza in se stessa, come Nietzsche o i poeti anarchici, ma soltanto una prontezza a impiegarla per sbarazzarsi dell’irragionevolezza o del disordine. Con queste epoche non è del tutto impossibile dire che una qualche tale formula verbale è una chiave. L’epoca per la quale è quasi impossibile trovare una formula verbale è la nostra.

Nondimeno, penso che per noi la parola chiave sia «inevitabilità», o, come sarei incline a chiamarla, «impenitenza». Siamo subconsciamente dominati in ogni ambito dalla nozione che non vi sia ritorno indietro, e ciò è radicato nel materialismo e nella negazione del libero arbitrio. Prendete una manciata qualsiasi di fatti moderni e confrontateli con i fatti corrispondenti di qualche centinaio d’anni fa. Confrontate il moderno Sistema dei Partiti con le fazioni politiche del diciassettesimo secolo. La differenza è che nel tempo più antico i capi di partito non solo si tagliavano davvero la testa a vicenda, ma (ciò che è assai più allarmante) abrogavano davvero le leggi l’uno dell’altro. Per noi è divenuto tradizionale che un partito erediti e lasci intatti gli atti dell’altro una volta fatti, per quanto aspramente fossero stati attaccati nel farsi. Giacomo II e suo nipote Guglielmo non erano né l’uno né l’altro esemplari molto allegri; ma avrebbero entrambi riso all’idea di «una politica estera continua». I Tory non erano Conservatori; erano, nel senso letterale, reazionari. Non volevano semplicemente conservare gli Stuart; volevano riportarli indietro.

O ancora, considerate con quanta ostinazione la monarchia medievale inglese tornasse più e più volte alla sua visione dei possedimenti francesi, cercando di rovesciare il verdetto del fato; come Edoardo III tornasse alla carica dopo le sconfitte di Giovanni e di Enrico III, e Enrico V dopo il fallimento di Edoardo III; e come persino Maria avesse scritto in cuore ciò che non era né suo marito né la sua religione. E poi considerate questo: che abbiamo comparativamente di recente conosciuto un’orgia universale della cosa chiamata imperialismo, l’unità dell’Impero unico argomento, le colonie contate come gioielli della corona, e l’Union Jack sventolata per tutto il mondo. Eppure nessuno si sognò nemmeno, non dico di riconquistare le colonie americane per l’unità imperiale (il che sarebbe stato un compito troppo pericoloso per i moderni costruttori d’imperi), ma persino di ri-raccontare la storia da un punto di vista imperiale. Enrico V giustificò le pretese di Edoardo III. Joseph Chamberlain non si sarebbe sognato di giustificare le pretese di Giorgio III. Anzi, Shakespeare giustifica la Guerra di Francia, e sta dalla parte di Talbot e sfida la leggenda di Giovanna d’Arco. Il signor Kipling non oserebbe giustificare la Guerra d’America, stare dalla parte di Burgoyne e sfidare la leggenda di Washington. Eppure c’era davvero molto di più da dire in favore di Giorgio III di quanto ce ne fosse mai in favore di Enrico V. Non fu detto, e tanto meno posto in atto, dai moderni Imperialisti; a causa di questo basilare senso moderno, che, come il futuro è inevitabile, così il passato è irrevocabile. Qualsiasi fatto tanto compiuto quanto l’esodo americano dall’Impero deve essere considerato definitivo per eoni, benché sia accaduto appena poco più di cent’anni fa. Semplicemente perché è riuscito ad accadere deve essere chiamato dapprima un male necessario, e poi un bene indispensabile. Non occorre aggiungere che io non voglio riconquistare l’America; ma d’altronde non sono un Imperialista.

Poi c’è un altro modo di metterlo alla prova: chiedetevi quante persone avete incontrato che si lagnavano di una cosa come incurabile, e quante che l’attaccavano come curabile. Quante persone abbiamo udito inveire contro le scuole elementari britanniche, come inveirebbero contro il clima britannico? Quanto pochi ne abbiamo incontrati che si rendessero conto che l’istruzione britannica può essere mutata, ma il tempo britannico no? Quanto pochi c’erano che sapessero che le nuvole erano più immortali e più solide delle scuole? Per mille che rimpiangono l’istruzione obbligatoria, dov’è il centinaio, o la decina, o l’uno, che abrogherebbe l’istruzione obbligatoria? Anzi, la parola stessa dimostra il mio assunto col suo suono poco promettente e insolito. All’inizio della nostra epoca gli uomini parlavano con uguale disinvoltura di Riforma e di Abrogazione. Ora tutti parlano di Riforma; ma nessuno parla di abrogazione. I nostri padri non parlavano di Libero Scambio, ma dell’Abrogazione delle Leggi sul Grano. Non parlavano di Home Rule, ma dell’Abrogazione dell’Unione. A quei tempi si parlava di un «Abrogatore» come del più pratico di tutti i politici, il tipo di politico che porta un randello. Ora l’Abrogatore è scagliato lontano nella provincia di un impossibile idealismo: e il capo di uno dei nostri grandi partiti, avendo detto, in un impeto di sincerità momentanea, che avrebbe abrogato un Atto, dovette davvero scrivere a tutti i giornali per assicurarli che lo avrebbe soltanto emendato. Non occorre che io moltiplichi gli esempi, benché potrebbero essere moltiplicati quasi fino a un milione. La nota dell’epoca è suggerire che il passato può del pari essere lodato, poiché non può essere rimediato. Uomini realmente vissuti in quel passato hanno faticato come formiche e sono morti come locuste per disfare qualche precedente assetto che pareva sicuro; ma noi non riusciamo nemmeno ad abrogare un Atto del Parlamento. Nutriamo la debole nozione che ciò che è fatto non possa essere disfatto. La nostra veduta fu ben riassunta in una tipica canzone vittoriana col ritornello: «Il mulino non macinerà mai con l’acqua che è passata». Ci sono molte risposte a questo. Una (che comporterebbe una dissertazione sui fenomeni dell’evaporazione e della rugiada) qui la eviteremo. Un’altra è che, per le menti della semplice gente di campagna, lo scopo di un mulino non è macinare l’acqua, ma macinare il grano, e che (per strano che possa sembrare) ci sono state davvero società abbastanza vigili e valorose da impedire al loro grano di defluire perpetuamente via da loro, sulla melodia di una sentimentale canzone.

Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an intellectual fault, it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our mental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also our spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake. It was mere vanity in Mr. Brummell when he sent away trays full of imperfectly knotted neck cloths, lightly remarking, “These are our failures.” It is a good instance of the nearness of vanity to humility, for at least he had to admit that they were failures. But it would have been spiritual pride in Mr. Brummell if he had tied on all the cravats, one on top of the other, lest his valet should discover that he had ever tied one badly. For in spiritual pride there is always an element of secrecy and solitude. Mr. Brummell would be satanic; also (which I fear would affect him more) he would be badly dressed. But he would be a perfect presentation of the modern publicist, who cannot do anything right, because he must not admit that he ever did anything wrong.

This strange, weak obstinacy, this persistence in the wrong path of progress, grows weaker and worse, as do all such weak things. And by the time in which I write its moral attitude has taken on something of the sinister and even the horrible. Our mistakes have become our secrets. Editors and journalists tear up with a guilty air all that reminds them of the party promises unfulfilled, or the party ideals reproaching them. It is true of our statesmen (much more than of our bishops, of whom Mr. Wells said it), that socially in evidence they are intellectually in hiding. The society is heavy with unconfessed sins; its mind is sore and silent with painful subjects; it has a constipation of conscience. There are many things it has done and allowed to be done which it does not really dare to think about; it calls them by other names and tries to talk itself into faith in a false past, as men make up the things they would have said in a quarrel. Of these sins one lies buried deepest but most noisome, and though it is stifled, stinks, the true story of the relations of the rich man and the poor in England. The half-starved English proletarian is not only nearly a skeleton, but he is a skeleton in a cupboard.

It may be said, in some surprise, that surely we hear to-day on every side the same story of the destitute proletariat and the social problem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowding in the slums. It is granted, but I said the true story. Untrue stories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There is the interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands, the chap who has “solidarity,” and is always just going to abolish war. The Marxian Socialists will tell you all about him; only he isn’t there. A common English workman is just as incapable of thinking of a German as anything but a German as he is of thinking of himself as anything but an Englishman. Then there is the opposite story; the story of the horrid man who is an atheist and wants to destroy the home, but who, for some private reason, prefers to call this Socialism. He isn’t there either. The prosperous Socialists have homes exactly like yours and mine; and the poor Socialists are not allowed by the Individualists to have any at all. There is the story of the Two Workmen, which is a very nice and exciting story, about how one passed all the public houses in Cheapside and was made Lord Mayor on arriving at the Guildhall, while the other went into all the public houses and emerged quite ineligible for such a dignity. Alas! for this also is vanity. A thief might become Lord Mayor, but an honest workman certainly couldn’t. Then there is the story of “The Relentless Doom” by which rich men were, by economic laws, forced to go on taking away money from poor men, although they simply longed to leave off: this is an unendurable thought to a free and Christian man, and the reader will be relieved to hear that it never happened. The rich could have left off stealing whenever they wanted to leave off, only this never happened either. Then there is the story of the cunning Fabian who sat on six committees at once and so coaxed the rich man to become quite poor. By simply repeating in a whisper, that there are “wheels within wheels,” this talented man managed to take away the millionaire’s motor car, one wheel at a time, till the millionaire had quite forgotten that he ever had one. It was very clever of him to do this, only he has not done it. There is not a screw loose in the millionaire’s motor, which is capable of running over the Fabian and leaving him a flat corpse in the road at a moment’s notice. All these stories are very fascinating stories to be told by the Individualist and Socialist in turn to the great Sultan of Capitalism, because if they left off amusing him for an instant he would cut off their heads. But if they once began to tell the true story of the Sultan to the Sultan, he would boil them in oil, and this they wish to avoid.

The true story of the sin of the Sultan he is always trying, by listening to these stories, to forget. As we have said before in this chapter, he would prefer not to remember, because he has made up his mind not to repent. It is a curious story, and I shall try to tell it truly in the two chapters that follow. In all ages the tyrant is hard because he is soft. If his car crashes over bleeding and accusing crowds, it is because he has chosen the path of least resistance. It is because it is much easier to ride down a human race than ride up a moderately steep hill. The fight of the oppressor is always a pillow fight; commonly a war with cushions --- always a war for cushions. Saladin, the great Sultan, if I remember rightly, accounted it the greatest feat of swordsmanship to cut a cushion. And so indeed it is, as all of us can attest who have been for years past trying to cut into the swollen and windy corpulence of the modern compromise, that is at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day the colour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palace within palace and garden within garden which makes the rich irresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance, the wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception of luxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights, and walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not our hangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we not already eugenists --- that is, eunuch-makers? Do we not see the bright eyes, the motionless faces, and all the presence of something that is dead and yet sleepless? It is the presence of the sin that is sealed with pride and impenitence; the story of how the Sultan got his throne. But it is not the story he is listening to just now, but another story which has been invented to cover it --- the story called “Eugenius: or the Adventures of One Not Born,” a most varied and entrancing tale, which never fails to send him to sleep.

Ora questo moderno rifiuto di disfare ciò che è stato fatto non è soltanto una colpa intellettuale, è anche una colpa morale. Non è meramente la nostra incapacità mentale di comprendere l’errore che abbiamo commesso. È anche il nostro rifiuto spirituale di ammettere che abbiamo commesso un errore. Era mera vanità nel signor Brummell quando rimandava indietro vassoi pieni di cravatte annodate imperfettamente, osservando con leggerezza: «Questi sono i nostri fallimenti». È un buon esempio della vicinanza della vanità all’umiltà, poiché almeno egli doveva ammettere che erano fallimenti. Ma sarebbe stato orgoglio spirituale nel signor Brummell se avesse annodato addosso tutte le cravatte, una sopra l’altra, per timore che il suo valletto scoprisse che egli ne aveva mai annodata una male. Poiché nell’orgoglio spirituale c’è sempre un elemento di segretezza e di solitudine. Il signor Brummell sarebbe satanico; e per giunta (ciò che temo lo toccherebbe di più) sarebbe mal vestito. Ma sarebbe una perfetta rappresentazione del pubblicista moderno, che non riesce a fare nulla di giusto, perché non deve ammettere di aver mai fatto nulla di sbagliato.

Questa strana, debole ostinazione, questa perseveranza nella via sbagliata del progresso, si fa più debole e peggiore, come tutte le cose deboli. E al tempo in cui scrivo il suo atteggiamento morale ha assunto qualcosa del sinistro e persino dell’orribile. I nostri errori sono divenuti i nostri segreti. Redattori e giornalisti fanno a pezzi con aria colpevole tutto ciò che ricorda loro le promesse di partito non mantenute, o gli ideali di partito che li rimproverano. È vero dei nostri uomini di Stato (assai più che dei nostri vescovi, di cui lo disse il signor Wells) che, socialmente in vista, sono intellettualmente in agguato. La società è greve di peccati non confessati; la sua mente è dolente e silenziosa per argomenti penosi; ha una stitichezza della coscienza. Ci sono molte cose che essa ha fatto e lasciato fare a cui non osa davvero pensare; le chiama con altri nomi e cerca di persuadersi ad avere fede in un falso passato, come gli uomini si inventano le cose che avrebbero detto in un litigio. Di questi peccati uno giace sepolto più a fondo ma è il più fetido, e, benché soffocato, puzza: la vera storia dei rapporti tra il ricco e il povero in Inghilterra. Il proletario inglese mezzo affamato non è soltanto quasi uno scheletro, ma è uno scheletro nell’armadio.

Si può dire, con qualche sorpresa, che di sicuro udiamo oggi da ogni parte la stessa storia del proletariato indigente e del problema sociale, dello sfruttamento nei mestieri non specializzati o del sovraffollamento nei bassifondi. Sia concesso, ma io ho detto la vera storia. Storie non vere ce ne sono in abbondanza, da tutti i lati della discussione. C’è l’interessante storia del Proletario Consapevole della Classe di Tutti i Paesi, il tizio che ha la «solidarietà», e sta sempre per abolire la guerra. I Socialisti marxisti vi diranno tutto di lui; solo che egli non c’è. Un comune operaio inglese è tanto incapace di pensare a un tedesco come a qualcosa di diverso da un tedesco quanto è incapace di pensare a se stesso come a qualcosa di diverso da un inglese. Poi c’è la storia opposta; la storia dell’uomo orribile che è ateo e vuole distruggere la casa, ma che, per qualche ragione privata, preferisce chiamare tutto ciò Socialismo. Non c’è neppure lui. I Socialisti prosperi hanno case esattamente come la vostra e la mia; e ai Socialisti poveri non è permesso dagli Individualisti di averne alcuna. C’è la storia dei Due Operai, che è una storia molto graziosa ed emozionante, su come uno passò oltre tutte le osterie di Cheapside e fu fatto Lord Sindaco al suo arrivo alla Guildhall, mentre l’altro entrò in tutte le osterie e ne uscì del tutto inadatto a una simile dignità. Ahimè! poiché anche questa è vanità. Un ladro potrebbe diventare Lord Sindaco, ma un onesto operaio di certo non potrebbe. Poi c’è la storia della «Condanna Implacabile», per cui i ricchi erano, per leggi economiche, costretti a continuare a togliere denaro ai poveri, benché non desiderassero altro che smettere: questo è un pensiero insopportabile per un uomo libero e cristiano, e il lettore sarà sollevato di sentire che non accadde mai. I ricchi avrebbero potuto smettere di rubare ogni volta che avessero voluto smettere, solo che neppure questo accadde mai. Poi c’è la storia del cunning Fabiano che sedeva in sei comitati alla volta e così persuase il ricco a diventare del tutto povero. Semplicemente ripetendo in un bisbiglio che ci sono «ruote dentro le ruote», questo talentuoso individuo riuscì a portar via l’automobile del milionario, una ruota alla volta, finché il milionario non ebbe del tutto dimenticato di averne mai avuta una. Fu molto astuto da parte sua fare ciò, solo che non l’ha fatto. Non c’è una vite allentata nell’automobile del milionario, la quale è capace di travolgere il Fabiano e lasciarlo cadavere spiaccicato sulla strada in un batter d’occhio. Tutte queste storie sono storie affascinantissime da raccontarsi a turno dall’Individualista e dal Socialista al grande Sultano del Capitalismo, perché se smettessero di divertirlo anche solo per un istante egli taglierebbe loro la testa. Ma se una volta cominciassero a raccontare al Sultano la vera storia del Sultano, egli li farebbe bollire nell’olio, e questo essi desiderano evitare.

La vera storia del peccato del Sultano egli cerca sempre, ascoltando queste storie, di dimenticarla. Come abbiamo detto prima in questo capitolo, egli preferirebbe non ricordare, perché ha deciso di non pentirsi. È una storia curiosa, e cercherò di raccontarla fedelmente nei due capitoli che seguono. In ogni epoca il tiranno è duro perché è molle. Se la sua vettura passa sopra folle sanguinanti e accusatrici, è perché egli ha scelto la via di minor resistenza. È perché è molto più facile travolgere una razza umana che risalire una collina moderatamente ripida. La lotta dell’oppressore è sempre una lotta a cuscinate; comunemente una guerra con cuscini — sempre una guerra per i cuscini. Saladino, il grande Sultano, se ben ricordo, riteneva la più grande prodezza di scherma il tagliare un cuscino. E in effetti lo è, come tutti noi possiamo attestare, noi che da anni cerchiamo di tagliare la gonfia e ventosa corpulenza del moderno compromesso, che è a un tempo comodo e crudele. Poiché c’è davvero nel nostro mondo di oggi il colore e il silenzio del divano imbottito; e quel senso di palazzo dentro palazzo e di giardino dentro giardino che costituisce la ricca irresponsabilità dell’Oriente. Non abbiamo forse già la danza senza parole, il banchetto senza vino, e tutta quella strana concezione non cristiana del lusso senza riso? Non siamo forse già in una malvagia storia delle Mille e una notte, e non percorriamo forse le città da incubo di un despota invisibile? Il nostro boia non strangola forse di nascosto, il portatore della corda dell’arco? Non siamo forse già eugenisti — cioè fabbricatori di eunuchi? Non vediamo forse gli occhi lucenti, i volti immobili, e tutta la presenza di qualcosa che è morto eppure insonne? È la presenza del peccato che è sigillato con l’orgoglio e l’impenitenza; la storia di come il Sultano ottenne il suo trono. Ma non è la storia che egli sta ascoltando proprio ora, bensì un’altra storia che è stata inventata per coprirla — la storia intitolata «Eugenio, ovvero le avventure di un Non Nato», un racconto quanto mai vario e incantevole, che non manca mai di mandarlo a dormire.

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II

TRUE HISTORY OF A TRAMP

He awoke in the Dark Ages and smelt dawn in the dark, and knew he was not wholly a slave. It was as if, in some tale of Hans Andersen, a stick or a stool had been left in the garden all night and had grown alive and struck root like a tree. For this is the truth behind the old legal fiction of the servile countries, that the slave is a “chattel,” that is a piece of furniture like a stick or a stool. In the spiritual sense, I am certain it was never so unwholesome a fancy as the spawn of Nietzsche suppose to-day. No human being, pagan or Christian, I am certain, ever thought of another human being as a chair or a table. The mind cannot base itself on the idea that a comet is a cabbage; not can it on the idea that a man is a stool. No man was ever unconscious of another’s presence --- or even indifferent to another’s opinion. The lady who is said to have boasted her indifference to being naked before male slaves was showing off --- or she meant something different. The lord who fed fishes by killing a slave was indulging in what most cannibals indulge in --- a satanist affectation. The lady was consciously shameless and the lord was consciously cruel. But it simply is not in the human reason to carve men like wood or examine women like ivory, just as it is not the human reason to think that two and two make five.

But there was this truth in the legal simile of furniture: that the slave, though certainly a man, was in one sense a dead man; in the sense that he was moveable. His locomotion was not his own: his master moved his arms and legs for him as if he were a marionette. Now it is important in the first degree to realize here what would be involved in such a fable as I have imagined, of a stool rooting it self like a shrub. For the general modern notion certainly is that life and liberty are in some way to be associated with novelty and not standing still. But it is just because the stool is lifeless that it moves about. It is just because the tree is alive that it does stand still. That was the main difference between the pagan slave and the Christian serf. The serf still belonged to the lord, as the stick that struck root in the garden; would have still belonged to the owner of the garden; but it would have become a live possession. Therefore the owner is forced, by the laws of nature, to treat it with some respect; something becomes due from him. He cannot pull it up without killing it; it has gained a place in the garden --- or the society. But the moderns are quite wrong in supposing that mere change and holiday and variety have necessarily any element of this life that is the only seed of liberty. You may say if you like that an employer, taking all his work people to a new factory in a Garden City, is giving them the greater freedom of forest landscapes and smokeless skies. If it comes to that, you can say that the slave-traders took negroes from their narrow and brutish African hamlets, and gave them the polish of foreign travel and medicinal breezes of a sea-voyage. But the tiny seed of citizenship and independence there already was in the serfdom of the Dark Ages, had nothing to do with what nice things the lord might do to the serf. It lay in the fact that there were some nasty things he could not do to the serf --- there were not many, but there were some, and one of them was eviction. He could not make the serf utterly landless and desperate utterly without access to the means of production, though doubtless it was rather the field that owned the serf, than the serf that owned the field. But even if you call the serf a beast of the field, he was not what we have tried to make the town workman --- a beast with no field. Foulon said of the French peasants, “Let them eat grass.” If he had said it of the modern London proletariat, they might well reply, “You have not left us even grass to eat.”

There was, therefore, both in theory and practice, some security for the serf, because he had come to life and rooted. The seigneur could not wait in the field in all weathers with a battle-ax to prevent the serf scratching any living out of the ground, any more than the man in my fairy-tale could sit out in the garden all night with an umbrella to prevent the shrub getting any rain. The relation of lord and serf, therefore, involves a combination of two things: inequality and security. I know there are people who will at once point wildly to all sorts of examples, true and false, of insecurity of life in the Middle Ages; but these are people who do not grasp what we mean by the characteristic institutions of a society. For the matter of that, there are plenty of examples of equality in the Middle Ages, as the craftsmen in their guild or the monks electing their abbot. But just as modern England is not a feudal country, though there is a quaint survival called Heralds’ College--- or Ireland is not a commercial country, though there is a quaint survival called Belfast --- it is true of the bulk and shape of that society that came out of the Dark Ages and ended at the Reformation, that it did not care about giving everybody an equal position, but did care about giving everybody a position. So that by the very beginning of that time even the slave had become a slave one could not get rid of, like the Scotch servant who stubbornly asserted that if his master didn’t know a good servant he knew a good master. The free peasant, in ancient or modern times, is free to go or stay. The slave, in ancient times, was free neither to go nor stay. The serf was not free to go; but he was free to stay.

Now what have we done with this man? It is quite simple. There is no historical complexity about it in that respect. We have taken away his freedom to stay. We have turned him out of his field, and whether it was injustice, like turning a free farmer out of his field, or only cruelty to animals, like turning a cow out of its field, the fact remains that he is out in the road. First and last, we have simply destroyed the security. We have not in the least destroyed the inequality. All classes, all creatures, kind or cruel, still see this lowest stratum of society as separate from the upper strata and even the middle strata; he is as separate as the serf. A monster fallen from Mars, ignorant of our simplest word, would know the tramp was at the bottom of the ladder, as well as he would have known it of the serf. The walls of mud are no longer round his boundaries. But only round his boots. The coarse bristling hedge is at the end of his chin, and not of his garden. But mud and bristles still stand out round him like a horrific halo, and separate him from his kind. The Martian would have no difficulty in seeing he was the poorest person in the nation. It is just as impossible that he should marry an heiress, or fight a duel with a duke, or contest a seat at Westminster, or enter a club in Pall Mall, or take a scholarship at Balliol, or take a seat at an opera, or propose a good law, or protest against a bad one, as it was impossible to the serf. Where he differs is in something very different. He has lost what was possible to the serf. He can no longer scratch the bare earth by day or sleep on the bare earth by night, without being collared by a policeman.

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II

VERA STORIA DI UN VAGABONDO

Si risvegliò nei Secoli Bui e sentì l’odore dell’alba nel buio, e seppe di non essere del tutto uno schiavo. Fu come se, in qualche fiaba di Hans Andersen, un bastone o uno sgabello fossero stati lasciati nel giardino per tutta la notte e si fossero animati e avessero messo radici come un albero. Poiché questa è la verità che sta dietro l’antica finzione giuridica dei paesi servili, secondo cui lo schiavo è un «bene mobile», ossia un pezzo di mobilio come un bastone o uno sgabello. In senso spirituale, sono certo che non fu mai una fantasia tanto malsana quanto suppongono oggi i rampolli di Nietzsche. Nessun essere umano, pagano o cristiano, ne sono certo, pensò mai a un altro essere umano come a una sedia o a un tavolo. La mente non può fondarsi sull’idea che una cometa sia un cavolo; né può farlo sull’idea che un uomo sia uno sgabello. Nessun uomo fu mai inconsapevole della presenza altrui — né mai indifferente all’opinione altrui. La dama che si dice si vantasse della propria indifferenza a mostrarsi nuda davanti agli schiavi maschi si dava delle arie — oppure intendeva qualcosa di diverso. Il signore che nutriva i pesci uccidendo uno schiavo si abbandonava a ciò cui la maggior parte dei cannibali si abbandona — un’affettazione satanica. La dama era consapevolmente sfrontata e il signore era consapevolmente crudele. Ma non è semplicemente nella ragione umana intagliare gli uomini come legno o esaminare le donne come avorio, così come non è nella ragione umana pensare che due più due faccia cinque.

Ma vi era questa verità nella similitudine giuridica del mobilio: che lo schiavo, per quanto certamente un uomo, era in un certo senso un uomo morto; nel senso che era movibile. La sua locomozione non gli apparteneva: il suo padrone gli muoveva braccia e gambe come se fosse una marionetta. Ora è di primaria importanza rendersi conto qui di che cosa comporterebbe una favola come quella che ho immaginato, di uno sgabello che mette radici da sé come un arbusto. Poiché la nozione moderna comune è certamente che la vita e la libertà debbano in qualche modo associarsi alla novità e al non stare fermi. Ma è proprio perché lo sgabello è privo di vita che si sposta qua e là. È proprio perché l’albero è vivo che sta fermo. Questa era la differenza principale tra lo schiavo pagano e il servo della gleba cristiano. Il servo apparteneva ancora al signore, come il bastone che avesse messo radici nel giardino sarebbe ancora appartenuto al proprietario del giardino; ma sarebbe diventato un possesso vivo. Perciò il proprietario è costretto, dalle leggi di natura, a trattarlo con un certo rispetto; qualcosa gli diventa dovuto. Non può strapparlo via senza ucciderlo; esso ha guadagnato un posto nel giardino — ovvero nella società. Ma i moderni sbagliano di grosso nel supporre che il mero mutamento, la vacanza e la varietà abbiano necessariamente qualche elemento di questa vita che è l’unico seme della libertà. Potete dire, se vi piace, che un datore di lavoro, portando tutte le sue maestranze in una nuova fabbrica in una Garden Città giardino, sta concedendo loro la maggiore libertà di paesaggi boschivi e cieli senza fumo. Se è per questo, potete dire che i trafficanti di schiavi presero i negri dai loro angusti e brutali villaggi africani, e diedero loro il lustro dei viaggi all’estero e le brezze medicamentose di una traversata per mare. Ma il minuscolo seme di cittadinanza e indipendenza che già era presente nella servitù della gleba dei Secoli Bui non aveva nulla a che fare con le cose gentili che il signore poteva fare al servo. Consisteva nel fatto che vi erano alcune cose sgradevoli che egli non poteva fare al servo — non erano molte, ma ve n’erano alcune, e una di esse era lo sfratto. Non poteva rendere il servo del tutto privo di terra e disperatamente privo di ogni accesso ai mezzi di produzione, per quanto senza dubbio fosse piuttosto il campo a possedere il servo, che il servo a possedere il campo. Ma anche se chiamate il servo bestia del campo, egli non era ciò che noi abbiamo cercato di fare dell’operaio di città — una bestia senza campo. Foulon disse dei contadini francesi: «Che mangino erba». Se lo avesse detto del moderno proletariato di Londra, quelli potrebbero ben rispondere: «Non ci avete lasciato nemmeno l’erba da mangiare».

Vi era, dunque, sia in teoria sia in pratica, una certa sicurezza per il servo, perché era giunto alla vita e aveva messo radici. Il signore non poteva starsene nel campo con ogni tempo, armato di un’ascia da battaglia, per impedire al servo di raschiare un qualsiasi sostentamento dal terreno, non più di quanto l’uomo della mia fiaba potesse starsene seduto nel giardino tutta la notte con un ombrello per impedire all’arbusto di ricevere pioggia. La relazione tra signore e servo, dunque, comporta una combinazione di due cose: disuguaglianza e sicurezza. So che vi sono persone che additeranno subito freneticamente ogni sorta di esempi, veri e falsi, di insicurezza della vita nel Medioevo; ma sono persone che non colgono ciò che intendiamo per le istituzioni caratteristiche di una società. Se è per questo, vi sono numerosi esempi di uguaglianza nel Medioevo, come gli artigiani nella loro gilda o i monaci che eleggono l’abate. Ma proprio come l’Inghilterra moderna non è un paese feudale, benché vi sia una bizzarra sopravvivenza chiamata Collegio degli Araldi — o l’Irlanda non è un paese commerciale, benché vi sia una bizzarra sopravvivenza chiamata Belfast — è vero della massa e della forma di quella società che uscì dai Secoli Bui e si concluse con la Riforma, che essa non si curava di dare a ognuno una posizione uguale, ma si curava di dare a ognuno una posizione. Cosicché fin dal principio di quel tempo persino lo schiavo era diventato uno schiavo di cui non ci si poteva sbarazzare, come il servitore scozzese che ostinatamente affermava che, se il suo padrone non sapeva riconoscere un buon servitore, lui però sapeva riconoscere un buon padrone. Il libero contadino, nei tempi antichi o moderni, è libero di andare o restare. Lo schiavo, nei tempi antichi, non era libero né di andare né di restare. Il servo non era libero di andare; ma era libero di restare.

Ora, che cosa abbiamo fatto di quest’uomo? È del tutto semplice. Non c’è alcuna complessità storica al riguardo. Gli abbiamo tolto la libertà di restare. Lo abbiamo cacciato dal suo campo, e sia che si trattasse di un’ingiustizia, come cacciare un libero coltivatore dal suo campo, sia soltanto di crudeltà verso gli animali, come cacciare una mucca dal suo campo, resta il fatto che egli è fuori sulla strada. In primo e ultimo luogo, abbiamo semplicemente distrutto la sicurezza. Non abbiamo minimamente distrutto la disuguaglianza. Tutte le classi, tutte le creature, gentili o crudeli, vedono ancora questo strato più basso della società come separato dagli strati superiori e persino dagli strati intermedi; egli è tanto separato quanto il servo. Un mostro caduto da Marte, ignaro delle nostre parole più semplici, saprebbe che il vagabondo si trova in fondo alla scala, tanto bene quanto lo avrebbe saputo del servo. I muri di fango non stanno più intorno ai suoi confini. Ma solo intorno ai suoi stivali. La ruvida siepe irta di spine sta al termine del suo mento, e non del suo giardino. Ma il fango e le setole gli stanno ancora attorno come un’orribile aureola, e lo separano dai suoi simili. Il marziano non avrebbe alcuna difficoltà a vedere che egli è la persona più povera della nazione. È altrettanto impossibile che egli sposi un’ereditiera, o si batta a duello con un duca, o si contenda un seggio a Westminster, o entri in un club a Pall Mall, o ottenga una borsa di studio a Balliol, o prenda posto all’opera, o proponga una buona legge, o protesti contro una cattiva, di quanto fosse impossibile al servo. Là dove egli differisce è in qualcosa di assai diverso. Ha perduto ciò che era possibile al servo. Non può più raschiare la nuda terra di giorno né dormire sulla nuda terra di notte, senza essere acciuffato per il colletto da un poliziotto.

Now when I say this man has been oppressed as hardly any other man on this earth has been oppressed, I am not using rhetoric: I have a clear meaning which I am confident of explaining to any honest reader. I do not say he has been treated worse: I say he has been treated differently from the unfortunate in all ages. And the difference is this: that all the others were told to do something, and killed or tortured if they did anything else. This man is not told to do something: he is merely forbidden to do anything. When he was a slave, they said to him, “Sleep in this shed; I will beat you if you sleep anywhere else.” When he was a serf, they said to him, “Let me find you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else’s field.” But now he is a tramp they say to him, “You shall be jailed if I find you in anyone else’s field: but I will not give you a field.” They say, “You shall be punished if you are caught sleeping outside your shed: but there is no shed.” If you say that modern magistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer with entire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two tramps were summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the open air when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full fun of the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly produced about twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, but deliberately didn’t. To which the policeman replied that two pence would not have got them a bed: they could not possibly have got a bed: and therefore (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought to be punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was much struck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men for not doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explain that if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, they would have left the court without a stain on their characters; but as they could not avoid it, they were very much to blame. These things are being done in every part of England every day. They have their parallels even in every daily paper; but they have no parallel in any other earthly people or period; except in that insane command to make bricks without straw which brought down all the plagues of Egypt. For the common historical joke about Henry VIII hanging a man for being Catholic and burning him for being Protestant is a symbolic joke only. The sceptic in the Tudor time could do something: he could always agree with Henry VIII. The desperate man to-day can do nothing. For you cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the straws sticking out of his hair and says, “Procure three-pence from nowhere and I will give you leave to do without it.”

If it be answered that he can go to the work-house, I reply that such an answer is founded on confused thinking. It is true that he is free to go to the workhouse, but only in the same sense in which he is free to go to jail, only in the same sense in which the serf under the gibbet was free to find peace in the grave. Many of the poor greatly prefer the grave to the workhouse, but that is not at all my argument here. The point is this: that it could not have been the general policy of a lord towards serfs to kill them all like wasps. It could not have been his standing “Advice to Serfs” to say, “Get hanged.” It cannot be the standing advice of magistrates to citizens to go to prison. And, precisely as plainly, it cannot be the standing advice of rich men to very poor men to go to the workhouses. For that would mean the rich raising their own poor rates enormously to keep a vast and expensive establishment of slaves. Now it may come to this, as Mr. Belloc maintains, but it is not the theory on which what we call the workhouse does in fact rest. The very shape (and even the very size) of a workhouse expresses the fact that it was found for certain quite exceptional human failures --- like the lunatic asylum. Say to a man, “Go to the madhouse,” and he will say, “Wherein am I mad?” Say to a tramp under a hedge, “Go to the house of exceptional failures,” and he will say with equal reason, “I travel because I have no house; I walk because I have no horse; I sleep out because I have no bed. Wherein have I failed?” And he may have the intelligence to add, “Indeed, your worship, if somebody has failed, I think it is not I.” I concede, with all due haste, that he might perhaps say “me.”

The specialty then of this man’s wrong is that it is the only historic wrong that has in it the quality of nonsense. It could only happen in a nightmare, not in a clear and rational hell. It is the top point of that anarchy in the governing mind which, as I said at the beginning, is the main trait of modernity, especially in England. But if the first note in our policy is madness, the next note is certainly meanness. There are two peculiarly mean and unmanly legal mantraps in which this wretched man is tripped up. The first is that which prevents him from doing what any ordinary savage or nomad would do --- take his chance of an uneven subsistence on the rude bounty of nature.

There is something very abject about forbidding this; because it is precisely this adventurous and vagabond spirit which the educated classes praise most in their books, poems and speeches. To feel the drag of the roads, to hunt in nameless hills and fish in secret streams, to have no address save “Over the Hills and Far Away,” to be ready to breakfast on berries and the daybreak and sup on the sunset and a sodden crust, to feed on wild things and be a boy again, all this is the heartiest and sincerest impulse in recent culture, in the songs and tales of Stevenson, in the cult of George Borrow and in the delightful little books published by Mr. E. V. Lucas. It is the one true excuse in the core of Imperialism; and it faintly softens the squalid prose and wooden-headed wickedness of the Self-Made Man who “came up to London with twopence in his pocket.” But when a poorer but braver man with less that twopence in his pocket does the very thing we are always praising, makes the blue heavens his house, we send him to a house built for infamy and flogging. We take poverty itself and only permit it with a property qualification; we only allow a man to be poor if he is rich. And we do this most savagely if he has sought to snatch his life by that particular thing of which our boyish adventure stories are fullest --- hunting and fishing. The extremely severe English game laws hit most heavily what the highly reckless English romances praise most irresponsibly. All our literature is full of praise of the chase --- especially of the wild goose chase. But if a poor man followed, as Tennyson says, “far as the wild swan wings to where the world dips down to sea and sands,” Tennyson would scarcely allow him to catch it. If he found the wildest goose in the wildest fenland in the wildest regions of the sunset, he would very probably discover that the rich never sleep and that there are no wild things in England.

Ora, quando dico che quest’uomo è stato oppresso come quasi nessun altro uomo su questa terra è stato oppresso, non uso retorica: ho un significato preciso che sono sicuro di poter spiegare a qualsiasi lettore onesto. Non dico che sia stato trattato peggio: dico che è stato trattato diversamente dagli sventurati di tutte le epoche. E la differenza è questa: che a tutti gli altri veniva ordinato di fare qualcosa, e venivano uccisi o torturati se facevano qualcos’altro. A quest’uomo non viene ordinato di fare qualcosa: gli è semplicemente proibito di fare qualsiasi cosa. Quando era schiavo, gli dicevano: «Dormi in questa capanna; ti bastonerò se dormi altrove». Quando era servo della gleba, gli dicevano: «Che io ti trovi in questo campo: ti impiccherò se ti trovo nel campo di chiunque altro». Ma ora che è un vagabondo gli dicono: «Sarai imprigionato se ti trovo nel campo di chiunque altro: ma non ti darò un campo». Dicono: «Sarai punito se ti si coglie a dormire fuori dalla tua capanna: ma non c’è alcuna capanna». Se dite che le magistrature moderne non potrebbero mai pronunciare simili folli contraddizioni, rispondo con assoluta certezza che le pronunciano. Poco tempo fa due vagabondi furono citati davanti a un magistrato, accusati di aver dormito all’aria aperta quando non avevano nessun altro luogo dove dormire. Ma non è questo il pieno spasso dell’episodio. Il vero spasso è che ciascuno di loro esibì ansiosamente circa due penny, per dimostrare che avrebbero potuto procurarsi un letto, ma deliberatamente non l’avevano fatto. Al che il poliziotto replicò che due penny non avrebbero procurato loro un letto: non avrebbero potuto in alcun modo procurarsi un letto: e perciò (argomentava quel premuroso funzionario) dovevano essere puniti per non essersene procurato uno. L’intelligente magistrato fu assai colpito dall’argomento: e procedette a incarcerare quei due uomini per non aver fatto una cosa che non potevano fare. Ma ebbe cura di spiegare che, se avessero peccato senza necessità e per gratuito disprezzo della legge, avrebbero lasciato la corte senza una macchia sul loro carattere; ma poiché non avevano potuto evitarlo, erano assai da biasimare. Queste cose si compiono in ogni parte dell’Inghilterra ogni giorno. Hanno i loro paralleli persino in ogni quotidiano; ma non hanno alcun parallelo in nessun altro popolo o periodo della terra; se non in quell’ordine insensato di fare mattoni senza paglia che fece piombare tutte le piaghe sull’Egitto. Poiché la consueta facezia storica su Enrico VIII che impiccava un uomo perché cattolico e lo bruciava perché protestante è una facezia soltanto simbolica. Lo scettico ai tempi dei Tudor poteva fare qualcosa: poteva sempre trovarsi d’accordo con Enrico VIII. L’uomo disperato di oggi non può fare nulla. Poiché non ci si può trovare d’accordo con un maniaco che siede in tribunale con le pagliuzze che gli spuntano dai capelli e dice: «Procurati tre penny dal nulla e ti darò il permesso di farne a meno».

Se si risponde che egli può andare all’ospi-zio, replico che una simile risposta si fonda su un pensiero confuso. È vero che egli è libero di andare all’ospizio, ma solo nello stesso senso in cui è libero di andare in prigione, solo nello stesso senso in cui il servo sotto la forca era libero di trovare pace nella tomba. Molti dei poveri preferiscono di gran lunga la tomba all’ospizio, ma non è affatto questo il mio argomento qui. Il punto è questo: che non poteva essere la politica generale di un signore verso i servi ucciderli tutti come vespe. Non poteva essere il suo consueto «Consiglio ai servi» dire: «Fatti impiccare». Non può essere il consueto consiglio dei magistrati ai cittadini andare in prigione. E, in modo altrettanto evidente, non può essere il consueto consiglio dei ricchi agli uomini poverissimi andare negli ospizi. Poiché ciò significherebbe che i ricchi innalzerebbero enormemente le proprie imposte per i poveri, per mantenere un vasto e dispendioso stabilimento di schiavi. Ora, può darsi che si arrivi a questo, come sostiene il signor Belloc, ma non è la teoria su cui ciò che chiamiamo ospizio in realtà si fonda. La forma stessa (e persino la dimensione stessa) di un ospizio esprime il fatto che esso fu istituito per certi del tutto eccezionali fallimenti umani — come il manicomio. Dite a un uomo: «Va’ al manicomio», ed egli dirà: «In che cosa sono pazzo?». Dite a un vagabondo sotto una siepe: «Va’ alla casa dei fallimenti eccezionali», ed egli dirà con pari ragione: «Viaggio perché non ho casa; cammino perché non ho cavallo; dormo all’aperto perché non ho letto. In che cosa ho fallito?». E potrebbe avere l’intelligenza di aggiungere: «In verità, vostro onore, se qualcuno ha fallito, penso che non sia io». Concedo, con tutta la fretta dovuta, che egli forse direbbe «io no».

La specialità, dunque, del torto fatto a quest’uomo è che è l’unico torto storico che abbia in sé la qualità dell’assurdo. Potrebbe accadere soltanto in un incubo, non in un inferno chiaro e razionale. È il punto culminante di quell’anarchia nella mente di chi governa che, come ho detto all’inizio, è il tratto principale della modernità, specialmente in Inghilterra. Ma se la prima nota della nostra politica è la follia, la nota successiva è certamente la meschinità. Vi sono due trappole legali particolarmente meschine e vili in cui questo disgraziato viene fatto cadere. La prima è quella che gli impedisce di fare ciò che qualsiasi comune selvaggio o nomade farebbe — tentare la sorte di un sostentamento incerto sulla rozza generosità della natura.

Vi è qualcosa di assai abietto nel proibire questo; perché è precisamente questo spirito avventuroso e vagabondo che le classi istruite lodano più di ogni altro nei loro libri, poesie e discorsi. Sentire il richiamo delle strade, cacciare su colline senza nome e pescare in ruscelli segreti, non avere altro recapito che «Oltre le colline e lontano», essere pronti a fare colazione di bacche e dell’alba e a cenare di tramonto e di una crosta inzuppata, nutrirsi di cose selvatiche e tornare ragazzi, tutto questo è l’impulso più cordiale e sincero della cultura recente, nelle canzoni e nei racconti di Stevenson, nel culto di George Borrow e nei deliziosi libriccini pubblicati dal signor E. V. Lucas. È l’unica vera scusa nel cuore dell’Imperialismo; e attenua debolmente la squallida prosa e la ottusa malvagità del Self-Made Man che «venne a Londra con due penny in tasca». Ma quando un uomo più povero e più coraggioso, con meno di due penny in tasca, fa la cosa stessa che andiamo sempre lodando, fa del cielo azzurro la sua casa, noi lo mandiamo in una casa costruita per l’infamia e la fustigazione. Prendiamo la povertà stessa e la permettiamo soltanto con un requisito di censo; permettiamo a un uomo di essere povero solo se è ricco. E facciamo questo nel modo più feroce se egli ha cercato di strappare la propria vita proprio a quella cosa di cui le nostre avventurose storie per ragazzi sono più colme — la caccia e la pesca. Le leggi inglesi sulla caccia, estremamente severe, colpiscono con maggior durezza ciò che i romanzi inglesi, altamente sconsiderati, lodano con maggiore irresponsabilità. Tutta la nostra letteratura è colma di elogi della caccia — specialmente della caccia all’oca selvatica. Ma se un pover’uomo seguisse, come dice Tennyson, «lontano quanto il cigno selvatico spinge le ali, là dove il mondo digrada verso il mare e le sabbie», Tennyson difficilmente gli permetterebbe di catturarla. Se trovasse l’oca più selvatica nel più selvaggio degli acquitrini nelle più selvagge regioni del tramonto, con ogni probabilità scoprirebbe che i ricchi non dormono mai e che in Inghilterra non ci sono cose selvatiche.

In short, the English ruler is always appealing to a nation of sportsmen and concentrating all his efforts on preventing them from having any sport. The Imperialist is always pointing out with exultation that the common Englishman can live by adventure anywhere on the globe. But if the common Englishmen tries to live by adventure in England, he is treated as harshly as a thief, and almost as harshly as an honest journalist. This is hypocrisy: the magistrate who gives his son “Treasure Island” and then imprisons a tramp is a hypocrite; the squire who is proud of English colonists and indulgent to English schoolboys, but cruel to English poachers, is drawing near that deep place wherein all liars have their part. But our point here is that the baseness is in the idea of bewildering the tramp; of leaving him no place for repentance. It is quite true, of course, that in the days of slavery or of serfdom the needy were fenced by yet fiercer penalties from spoiling the hunting of the rich. But in the older case there were two very important differences, the second of which is our main subject in this chapter. The first is that in a comparatively wild society, however fond of hunting, it seems impossible that enclosing and game-keeping can have been so omnipresent and efficient as in a society full of maps and policemen. The second difference is the one already noted: that if the slave or semi-slave was forbidden to get his food in the green wood, he was told to get it somewhere else. The note of unreason was absent.

This is the first meanness; and the second is like unto it. If there is one thing of which cultivated modern letters is full besides adventure it is altruism. We are always being told to help others, to regard our wealth as theirs, to do what good we can, for we shall not pass this way again. We are everywhere urged by humanitarians to help lame dogs over stiles --- though some humanitarians, it is true, seem to feel a colder interest in the case of lame men and women. Still, the chief fact of our literature, among all historic literatures, is human charity. But what is the chief fact of our legislation? The great outstanding fact of modern legislation, among all historic legislations, is the forbidding of human charity. It is this astonishing paradox, a thing in the teeth of all logic and conscience, that a man that takes another man’s money with his leave can be punished as if he had taken it without his leave. All through those dark or dim ages behind us, through times of senile stagnation, of feudal insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else that can wear down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was counted lawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries, in short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched and mended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is now forbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance if he could beg.

Now it will be evident by this time that the interesting scientific experiment on the tramp entirely depends on leaving him no chance, and not (like the slave) one chance. Of the economic excuses offered for the persecution of beggars it will be more natural to speak in the next chapter. It will suffice here to say that they are mere excuses, for a policy that has been persistent while probably largely unconscious, with a selfish and atheistic unconsciousness. That policy was directed towards something --- or it could never have cut so cleanly and cruelly across the sentimental but sincere modern trends to adventure and altruism. Its object is soon stated. It was directed towards making the very poor man work for the capitalist, for any wages or none. But all this, which I shall also deal with in the next chapter, is here only important as introducing the last truth touching the man of despair. The game laws have taken from him his human command of Nature. The mendicancy laws have taken from him his human demand on Man. There is one human thing left it is much harder to take from him. Debased by him and his betters, it is still something brought out of Eden, where God made him a demigod; it does not depend on money and but little on time. He can create in his own image. The terrible truth is in the heart of a hundred legends and mysteries. As Jupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Child could be hidden from Herod --- so the child unborn is still hidden from the omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone is left; and they seek his life to take it away.

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III

TRUE HISTORY OF A EUGENIST

He does not live in a dark lonely tower by the sea, from which are heard the screams of vivisected men and women. On the contrary, he lives in Mayfair. He does not wear great goblin spectacles that magnify his eyes to moons or diminish his neighbours to beetles. When he is more dignified he wears a single eyeglass; when more intelligent, a wink. He is not indeed wholly without interest in heredity and Eugenical biology; but his studies and experiments in this science have specialized almost exclusively in equus celer, the rapid or running horse. He is not a doctor; though he employs doctors to work up a case for Eugenics, just as he employs doctors to correct the errors of his dinner. He is not a lawyer, though unfortunately often a magistrate. He is not an author or a journalist; though he not infrequently owns a newspaper. He is not a soldier, though he may have a commission in the yeomanry; nor is he generally a gentleman, though often a nobleman. His wealth now commonly comes from a large staff of employed persons who scurry about in big buildings while he is playing golf. But he very often laid the foundations of his fortune in a very curious and poetical way, the nature of which I have never fully understood. It consisted in his walking about the street without a hat and going up to another man and saying, “Suppose I have two hundred whales out of the North Sea.” To which the other man replied, “And let us imagine that I am in possession of two thousand elephants’ tusks.” They then exchange, and the first man goes up to a third man and says, “Supposing me to have lately come into the possession of two thousand elephants’ tusks, would you, etc.?” If you play this game well, you become very rich; if you play it badly you have to kill yourself or try your luck at the Bar. The man I am speaking about must have played it well, or at any rate successfully.

In breve, il governante inglese si appella sempre a una nazione di sportivi e concentra tutti i suoi sforzi nell’impedire loro di praticare qualsiasi sport. L’Imperialista fa sempre notare con esultanza che il comune inglese può vivere d’avventura in qualsiasi parte del globo. Ma se il comune inglese cerca di vivere d’avventura in Inghilterra, viene trattato con la stessa durezza di un ladro, e quasi con la stessa durezza di un onesto giornalista. Questa è ipocrisia: il magistrato che regala a suo figlio «L’isola del tesoro» e poi imprigiona un vagabondo è un ipocrita; lo squire che è orgoglioso dei coloni inglesi e indulgente verso gli scolari inglesi, ma crudele verso i bracconieri inglesi, si avvicina a quel luogo profondo in cui tutti i mentitori hanno la loro parte. Ma il nostro punto qui è che la bassezza sta nell’idea di sconcertare il vagabondo; di non lasciargli alcun luogo per il pentimento. È del tutto vero, s’intende, che ai tempi della schiavitù o della servitù della gleba i bisognosi erano tenuti a distanza da pene ancor più feroci dal rovinare la caccia dei ricchi. Ma nel caso più antico vi erano due differenze assai importanti, la seconda delle quali è il tema principale di questo capitolo. La prima è che in una società relativamente selvaggia, per quanto amante della caccia, sembra impossibile che il recintare e la custodia della selvaggina possano essere stati così onnipresenti ed efficienti come in una società piena di mappe e di poliziotti. La seconda differenza è quella già notata: che se allo schiavo o semi-schiavo era proibito procurarsi il cibo nel verde bosco, gli veniva detto di procurarselo altrove. La nota dell’irragionevolezza era assente.

Questa è la prima meschinità; e la seconda è simile a essa. Se vi è una cosa di cui le lettere moderne coltivate sono colme, oltre all’avventura, è l’altruismo. Ci viene sempre detto di aiutare gli altri, di considerare la nostra ricchezza come loro, di fare tutto il bene che possiamo, poiché non ripasseremo più per questa via. Siamo ovunque esortati dagli umanitari ad aiutare i cani zoppi a scavalcare le staccionate — benché alcuni umanitari, è vero, sembrino provare un interesse più freddo per il caso degli uomini e delle donne zoppi. Ciononostante, il fatto principale della nostra letteratura, fra tutte le letterature storiche, è la carità umana. Ma qual è il fatto principale della nostra legislazione? Il grande fatto saliente della legislazione moderna, fra tutte le legislazioni storiche, è il proibire la carità umana. È questo stupefacente paradosso, una cosa contraria a ogni logica e coscienza, che un uomo il quale prende il denaro di un altro col suo permesso possa essere punito come se lo avesse preso senza il suo permesso. In tutti quei secoli oscuri o incerti alle nostre spalle, attraverso tempi di senile stagnazione, di insolenza feudale, di pestilenza e di lotte civili e di tutto il resto che può fiaccare i deboli, per i deboli chiedere la carità era considerato lecito, e dare quella carità, ammirevole. In tutti gli altri secoli, in breve, le occasionali cattive azioni degli uomini cattivi potevano essere in parte rattoppate e rammendate dalle occasionali buone azioni degli uomini buoni. Ma questo è ora proibito; poiché lascerebbe al vagabondo un’ultima possibilità, se potesse mendicare.

Ora sarà ormai evidente che l’interessante esperimento scientifico sul vagabondo dipende interamente dal non lasciargli alcuna possibilità, e non (come allo schiavo) una possibilità. Delle scuse economiche addotte per la persecuzione dei mendicanti sarà più naturale parlare nel prossimo capitolo. Basterà dire qui che sono mere scuse, per una politica che è stata tenace pur essendo probabilmente in gran parte inconsapevole, con un’inconsapevolezza egoistica e atea. Quella politica era diretta verso qualcosa — altrimenti non avrebbe mai potuto tagliare in modo così netto e crudele attraverso le sentimentali ma sincere tendenze moderne all’avventura e all’altruismo. Il suo oggetto è presto enunciato. Era diretta a far lavorare l’uomo poverissimo per il capitalista, per qualsiasi salario o per nessuno. Ma tutto ciò, di cui tratterò anche nel prossimo capitolo, qui è importante solo in quanto introduce l’ultima verità che riguarda l’uomo della disperazione. Le leggi sulla caccia gli hanno tolto il suo umano dominio sulla Natura. Le leggi sull’accattonaggio gli hanno tolto la sua umana richiesta all’Uomo. Vi è una cosa umana rimasta che è assai più difficile togliergli. Degradata da lui e dai suoi superiori, essa è pur sempre qualcosa portato fuori dall’Eden, dove Dio lo fece semidio; non dipende dal denaro e ben poco dal tempo. Egli può creare a propria immagine. La terribile verità è nel cuore di un centinaio di leggende e misteri. Come Giove poteva essere nascosto al Tempo che tutto divora, come il Bambino Christ Gesù poteva essere nascosto a Erode — così il bambino non ancora nato è ancora nascosto all’oppressore onnisciente. Colui che ancora non vive, lui e lui soltanto è rimasto; e cercano la sua vita per portargliela via.

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III

VERA STORIA DI UN EUGENISTA

Egli non vive in una tetra torre solitaria in riva al mare, dalla quale si odono le grida di uomini e donne vivisezionati. Al contrario, vive a Mayfair. Non porta grandi occhiali da orco che gli ingrandiscono gli occhi fino a farne lune o gli rimpiccioliscono i vicini fino a farne scarabei. Quando è più dignitoso porta un monocolo; quando è più intelligente, una strizzatina d’occhio. Non è invero del tutto privo di interesse per l’ereditarietà e la biologia eugenetica; ma i suoi studi ed esperimenti in questa scienza si sono specializzati quasi esclusivamente nell’equus celer, il cavallo veloce o da corsa. Non è un medico; benché impieghi medici per costruire un caso a favore dell’Eugenetica, così come impiega medici per correggere gli errori della sua cena. Non è un avvocato, benché purtroppo spesso un magistrato. Non è uno scrittore o un giornalista; benché non di rado possieda un giornale. Non è un soldato, benché possa avere un incarico nella cavalleria territoriale; né è in generale un gentiluomo, benché spesso un nobiluomo. La sua ricchezza proviene oggi comunemente da un vasto stuolo di persone impiegate che si affannano nei grandi edifici mentre lui gioca a golf. Ma assai spesso egli gettò le fondamenta della sua fortuna in un modo assai curioso e poetico, la cui natura non ho mai compreso appieno. Consisteva nel suo camminare per la strada senza cappello e nell’avvicinarsi a un altro uomo dicendo: «Supponiamo che io abbia duecento balene ricavate dal Mare del Nord». Al che l’altro uomo replicava: «E immaginiamo che io sia in possesso di duemila zanne d’elefante». Allora fanno uno scambio, e il primo uomo si avvicina a un terzo uomo e dice: «Ammesso che io sia entrato di recente in possesso di duemila zanne d’elefante, vorreste voi, eccetera?». Se giocate bene a questo gioco, diventate assai ricchi; se lo giocate male, dovete uccidervi o tentare la fortuna al Foro. L’uomo di cui sto parlando deve averlo giocato bene, o comunque con successo.

He was born about 1860; and has been a Member of Parliament since about 1890. For the first half of his life he was a Liberal; for the second half he has been a Conservative; but his actual policy in Parliament has remained largely unchanged and consistent. His policy in Parliament is as follows: he takes a seat in a room downstairs at Westminster, and takes from his breast pocket an excellent cigar case, from which in turn he takes an excellent cigar. This he lights, and converses with other owners of such cigars on equus celer or such matters as may afford him entertainment. Two or three times in the afternoon a bell rings; whereupon he deposits the cigar in an ash tray with great particularity, taking care not to break the ash, and proceeds to an upstairs room, flanked with two passages. He then walks into whichever of the two passages shall be indicated to him by a young man of the upper classes, holding a slip of paper. Having gone into this passage he comes out of it again, is counted by the young man and proceeds downstairs again; where he takes up the cigar once more, being careful not to break the ash. This process, which is known as Representative government, has never called for any great variety in the manner of his life. Nevertheless, while his Parliamentary policy is unchanged, his change from one side of the House to the other did correspond with a certain change in his general policy in commerce and social life. The change of the party label is by this time quite a trifling matter; but there was in his case a change of philosophy or at least a change of project; though it was not so much becoming a Tory, as becoming rather the wrong kind of Socialist. He is a man with a history. It is a sad history, for he is certainly a less good man than he was when he started. That is why he is the man who is really behind Eugenics. It is because he has degenerated that he has come to talking of Degeneration.

In his Radical days (to quote from one who corresponded in some ways to this type) he was a much better man, because he was a much less enlightened one. The hard impudence of his first Manchester Individualism was softened by two relatively humane qualities; the first was a much great manliness in his pride; the second was a much greater sincerity in his optimism. For the first point, the modern capitalist is merely industrial; but this man was also industrious. He was proud of hard work; nay, he was even proud of low work --- if he could speak of it in the past and not the present. In fact, he invented a new kind of Victorian snobbishness, an inverted snobbishness. While the snobs of Thackeray turned Muggins into De Mogyns, while the snobs of Dickens wrote letters describing themselves as officers’ daughters “accustomed to every luxury--- except spelling,” the Individualist spent his life in hiding his prosperous parents. He was more like an American plutocrat when he began; but he has since lost the American simplicity. The Frenchman works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all. He becomes as far as possible another person --- a country gentleman who has never heard of his shop; one whose left hand holding a gun knows not what his right hand doeth in a ledger. He uses a peerage as an alias, and a large estate as a sort of alibi. A stern Scotch minister remarked concerning the game of golf, with a terrible solemnity of manner, “the man who plays golf --- he neglects his business, he forsakes his wife, he forgets his God.” He did not seem to realize that it is the chief aim of many a modern capitalist’s life to forget all three.

This abandonment of a boyish vanity in work, this substitution of a senile vanity in indolence, this is the first respect in which the rich Englishman has fallen. He was more of a man when he was at least a master-workman and not merely a master. And the second important respect in which he was better at the beginning is this: that he did then, in some hazy way, half believe that he was enriching other people as well as himself. The optimism of the early Victorian Individualists was not wholly hypocritical. Some of the clearest-headed and blackest-hearted of them, such as Malthus, saw where things were going, and boldly based their Manchester city on pessimism instead of optimism. But this was not the general case; most of the decent rich of the Bright and Cobden sort did have a kind of confused faith that the economic conflict would work well in the long run for everybody. They thought the troubles of the poor were incurable by State action (they thought that of all troubles), but they did not cold-bloodedly contemplate the prospect of those troubles growing worse and worse. By one of those tricks or illusions of the brain to which the luxurious are subject in all ages, they sometimes seemed to feel as if the populace had triumphed symbolically in their own persons. They blasphemously thought about their thrones of gold what can only be said about a cross --- that they, being lifted up, would draw all men after them. They were so full of the romance that anybody could be Lord Mayor, that they seemed to have slipped into thinking that everybody could. It seemed as if a hundred Dick Whittingtons, accompanied by a hundred cats, could all be accommodated at the Mansion House. It was all nonsense; but it was not (until later) all humbug.

Step by step, however, with a horrid and increasing clearness, this man discovered what he was doing. It is generally one of the worst discoveries a man can make. At the beginning, the British plutocrat was probably quite as honest in suggesting that every tramp carried a magic cat like Dick Whittington, as the Bonapartist patriot was in saying that every French soldier carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. But it is exactly here that the difference and the danger appears. There is no comparison between a well-managed thing like Napoleon’s army and an unmanageable thing like modern competition. Logically, doubtless, it was impossible that every soldier should carry a marshal’s baton; they could not all be marshals anymore than they could all be mayors. But if the French soldier did not always have a baton in his knapsack, he always had a knapsack. But when that Self-Helper who bore the adorable name of Smiles told the English tramp that he carried a coronet in his bundle, the English tramp had an unanswerable answer. He pointed out that he had no bundle. The powers that ruled him had not fitted him with a knapsack, any more than they had fitted him with a future --- or even a present. The destitute Englishman, so far from hoping to become anything, had never been allowed even to be anything. The French soldier’s ambition may have been in practice not only a short, but even a deliberately shortened ladder, in which the top rungs were knocked out. But for the English it was the bottom rungs that were knocked out, so that they could not even begin to climb. And sooner or later, in exact proportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began to understand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their impotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that his riches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could have been strong enough to make him rich. It is this paradox, as we shall see, that creates the curious difference between him and every other kind of robber.

Nacque intorno al 1860; ed è Membro del Parlamento dal 1890 circa. Per la prima metà della sua vita fu un Liberale; per la seconda metà è stato un Conservatore; ma la sua effettiva politica in Parlamento è rimasta in larga misura immutata e coerente. La sua politica in Parlamento è la seguente: prende posto in una stanza al pianterreno di Westminster, ed estrae dal taschino interno un eccellente portasigari, dal quale a sua volta estrae un eccellente sigaro. Lo accende, e conversa con altri possessori di simili sigari sull’equus celer o su tali questioni che possano procurargli svago. Due o tre volte nel pomeriggio suona un campanello; al che egli depone il sigaro in un portacenere con grande accuratezza, badando a non spezzare la cenere, e si reca in una stanza al piano superiore, fiancheggiata da due corridoi. Poi entra in quello dei due corridoi che gli venga indicato da un giovane delle classi superiori, che regge un foglietto di carta. Entrato in questo corridoio, ne esce di nuovo, viene contato dal giovane e ridiscende; dove riprende il sigaro, badando a non spezzare la cenere. Questo procedimento, noto come governo rappresentativo, non ha mai richiesto alcuna grande varietà nel modo della sua vita. Ciononostante, mentre la sua politica parlamentare è rimasta immutata, il suo passaggio da una parte all’altra della Camera corrispose effettivamente a un certo mutamento nella sua politica generale nel commercio e nella vita sociale. Il mutamento dell’etichetta di partito è ormai una faccenda del tutto trascurabile; ma nel suo caso vi fu un mutamento di filosofia o almeno un mutamento di progetto; benché non si trattasse tanto di diventare un Tory, quanto piuttosto di diventare il genere sbagliato di Socialista. È un uomo con una storia. È una storia triste, poiché egli è certamente un uomo meno buono di quanto fosse quando cominciò. Ecco perché è l’uomo che sta davvero dietro l’Eugenetica. È perché è degenerato che è arrivato a parlare di Degenerazione.

Ai suoi tempi radicali (per citare qualcuno che in certi modi corrispondeva a questo tipo) egli era un uomo assai migliore, perché era un uomo assai meno illuminato. La dura sfrontatezza del suo primo Individualismo di Manchester era addolcita da due qualità relativamente umane; la prima era una assai maggiore virilità nel suo orgoglio; la seconda era una assai maggiore sincerità nel suo ottimismo. Quanto al primo punto, il capitalista moderno è meramente industriale; ma quest’uomo era anche industrioso. Era fiero del duro lavoro; anzi, era persino fiero del lavoro umile — purché potesse parlarne al passato e non al presente. In effetti, inventò un nuovo genere di snobismo vittoriano, uno snobismo rovesciato. Mentre gli snob di Thackeray trasformavano Muggins in De Mogyns, mentre gli snob di Dickens scrivevano lettere descrivendosi come figlie di ufficiali «avvezze a ogni lusso — tranne l’ortografia», l’Individualista trascorreva la vita a nascondere i propri prosperi genitori. Assomigliava di più a un plutocrate americano quando cominciò; ma da allora ha perduto la semplicità americana. Il francese lavora finché non può più giocare; e poi ringrazia il diavolo, suo padrone, di essere asino a sufficienza da morire con i finimenti addosso. Ma l’inglese, quale è poi diventato, lavora finché non può fingere di non aver mai lavorato affatto. Diventa per quanto possibile un’altra persona — un gentiluomo di campagna che non ha mai sentito parlare della sua bottega; uno la cui mano sinistra, impugnando un fucile, non sa ciò che la sua mano destra fa in un libro mastro. Usa un titolo nobiliare come uno pseudonimo, e una grande tenuta come una sorta di alibi. Un severo ministro scozzese osservò a proposito del gioco del golf, con terribile solennità di modi: «l’uomo che gioca a golf — trascura i suoi affari, abbandona sua moglie, dimentica il suo Dio». Non sembrava rendersi conto che è lo scopo principale della vita di molti capitalisti moderni dimenticare tutte e tre le cose.

Questo abbandono di una fanciullesca vanità nel lavoro, questa sostituzione di una senile vanità nell’indolenza, è il primo aspetto sotto il quale il ricco inglese è decaduto. Era più uomo quando era almeno un maestro-artigiano e non un mero padrone. E il secondo importante aspetto sotto il quale era migliore all’inizio è questo: che allora, in qualche modo nebuloso, credeva a metà di arricchire gli altri come pure se stesso. L’ottimismo dei primi Individualisti vittoriani non era del tutto ipocrita. Alcuni fra i più lucidi di mente e i più neri di cuore fra loro, come Malthus, videro dove le cose andavano a finire, e fondarono arditamente la loro città di Manchester sul pessimismo anziché sull’ottimismo. Ma questo non era il caso generale; la maggior parte dei ricchi per bene del genere di Bright e Cobden avevano una sorta di confusa fede che il conflitto economico avrebbe funzionato bene, alla lunga, per tutti. Pensavano che i guai dei poveri fossero incurabili con l’azione dello Stato (lo pensavano di tutti i guai), ma non contemplavano a sangue freddo la prospettiva di quei guai che peggioravano sempre più. Per uno di quei trucchi o illusioni del cervello a cui i gaudenti sono soggetti in tutte le epoche, talvolta sembravano sentire come se il popolo avesse trionfato simbolicamente nelle loro stesse persone. Pensavano blasfemamente dei loro troni d’oro ciò che si può dire soltanto di una croce — che essi, essendo innalzati, avrebbero attirato a sé tutti gli uomini. Erano così pieni del romanzesco pensiero che chiunque potesse diventare Lord Sindaco, che sembravano essere scivolati nel pensare che tutti potessero. Sembrava che un centinaio di Dick Whittington, accompagnati da un centinaio di gatti, potessero tutti trovar posto alla Mansion House. Era tutto un’assurdità; ma non era (fino a più tardi) tutto un’impostura.

Passo dopo passo, tuttavia, con orribile e crescente chiarezza, quest’uomo scoprì ciò che stava facendo. È in generale una delle peggiori scoperte che un uomo possa fare. All’inizio, il plutocrate britannico era probabilmente tanto onesto nel suggerire che ogni vagabondo portava con sé un gatto magico come Dick Whittington, quanto il patriota bonapartista era nel dire che ogni soldato francese portava un bastone da maresciallo nello zaino. Ma è esattamente qui che appaiono la differenza e il pericolo. Non vi è paragone tra una cosa ben amministrata come l’esercito di Napoleone e una cosa ingovernabile come la moderna concorrenza. Logicamente, senza dubbio, era impossibile che ogni soldato portasse un bastone da maresciallo; non potevano essere tutti marescialli, non più di quanto potessero essere tutti sindaci. Ma se il soldato francese non aveva sempre un bastone nello zaino, aveva pur sempre uno zaino. Ma quando quell’Aiuta-Se-Stesso che portava l’adorabile nome di Smiles disse al vagabondo inglese che portava una corona nel suo fagotto, il vagabondo inglese ebbe una risposta inconfutabile. Fece notare che non aveva alcun fagotto. Le potenze che lo governavano non lo avevano dotato di uno zaino, non più di quanto lo avessero dotato di un futuro — o persino di un presente. L’inglese indigente, ben lungi dallo sperare di diventare qualcosa, non gli era mai stato permesso nemmeno di essere qualcosa. L’ambizione del soldato francese può essere stata in pratica non solo una scala corta, ma persino una scala deliberatamente accorciata, in cui i pioli più alti erano stati eliminati. Ma per l’inglese erano i pioli in basso a essere stati eliminati, cosicché non potevano nemmeno cominciare a salire. E prima o poi, in esatta proporzione alla sua intelligenza, il plutocrate inglese cominciò a capire non solo che i poveri erano impotenti, ma che la loro impotenza era stata il suo unico potere. La verità non era semplicemente che le sue ricchezze li avevano lasciati poveri; era che nulla se non la loro povertà avrebbe potuto essere abbastanza forte da renderlo ricco. È questo paradosso, come vedremo, che crea la curiosa differenza tra lui e ogni altro genere di rapinatore.

I think it is no more than justice to him to say that the knowledge, where it has come to him, has come to him slowly; and I think it came (as most things of common-sense come) rather vaguely and as in a vision --- that is, by the mere look of things. The old Cobdennite employer was quite within his rights in arguing that earth is not heaven, that the best obtainable arrangement might contain many necessary evils; and that Liverpool and Belfast might be growing more prosperous as a whole in spite of pathetic things that might be seen there. But I simply do not believe he has been able to look at Liverpool and Belfast and continue to think this: that is why he has turned himself into a sham country gentleman. Earth is not heaven, but the nearest we can get to heaven ought not to look like hell; and Liverpool and Belfast look like hell, whether they are or not. Such cities might be growing prosperous as a whole, though a few citizens were more miserable. But it was more and more broadly apparent that it was exactly and precisely as a whole that they were not growing more prosperous, but only the few citizens who were growing more prosperous by their increasing misery. You could not say a country was becoming a white man’s country when there were more and more black men in it every day. You could not say a community was more and more masculine when it was producing more and more women. Nor can you say that a city is growing richer and richer when more and more of its inhabitants are very poor men. There might be a false agitation founded on the pathos of individual cases in a community pretty normal in bulk. But the fact is that no one can take a cab across Liverpool without having a quite complete and unified impression that the pathos is not a pathos of individual cases, but a pathos in bulk. People talk of the Celtic sadness; but there are very few things in Ireland that look so sad as the Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery compared with the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournful friends to turn their attention to the pathos of Belfast. I think if they hung up the harp that once in Lord Furness’s factory, there would be a chance of another string breaking.

Broadly, and as things bulk to the eye, towns like Leeds, if placed beside towns like Rouen or Florence, or Chartres, or Cologne, do actually look like beggars walking among burghers. After that overpowering and unpleasant impression it is really useless to argue that they are richer because a few of their parasites get rich enough to live somewhere else. The point may be put another way, thus: that it is not so much that these more modern cities have this or that monopoly of good or evil; it is that they have every good in its fourth-rate form and every evil in its worst form. For instance, that interesting weekly paper The Nation amiably rebuked Mr. Belloc and myself for suggesting that revelry and the praise of fermented liquor were more characteristic of Continental and Catholic communities than of communities with the religion and civilization of Belfast. It said that if we would “cross the border” into Scotland, we should find out our mistake. Now, not only have I crossed the border, but I have had considerable difficulty in crossing the road in a Scotch town on a festive evening. Men were literally lying like piled-up corpses in the gutters, and from broken bottles whisky was pouring down the drains. I am not likely, therefore, to attribute a total and arid abstinence to the whole of industrial Scotland. But I never said that drinking was a mark rather of the Catholic countries. I said that moderate drinking was a mark rather of the Catholic countries. In other words, I say of the common type of Continental citizen, not that he is the only person who is drinking, but that he is the only person who knows how to drink. Doubtless gin is as much a feature of Hoxton as beer is a feature of Munich. But who is the connoisseur who prefers the gin of Hoxton to the beer of Munich? Doubtless the Protestant Scotch ask for “Scotch,” as the men of Burgundy ask for Burgundy. But do we find them lying in heaps on each side of the road when we walk through a Burgundian village? Do we find the French peasant ready to let Burgundy escape down a drain-pipe? Now this one point, on which I accept The Nation’s challenge, can be exactly paralleled on almost every point by which we test a civilization. It does not matter whether we are for alcohol or against it. On either argument Glasgow is more objectionable than Rouen. The French abstainer makes less fuss; the French drinker gives less offence. It is so with property, with war, with everything. I can understand a teetotaller being horrified, on his principles, at Italian wine-drinking. I simply cannot believe he could be more horrified at it than at Hoxton gin-drinking. I can understand a Pacifist, with his special scruples, disliking the militarism of Belfort. I flatly deny that he can dislike it more than the militarism of Berlin. I can understand a good Socialist hating the petty cares of the distributed peasant property. I deny that any good Socialist can hate them more than he hates the large cares of Rockefeller. That is the unique tragedy of the plutocratic state to-day; it has no successes to hold up against the failures it alleges to exist in Latin or other methods. You can (if you are well out of his reach) call the Irish rustic debased and superstitious. I defy you to contrast his debasement and superstition with the citizenship and enlightenment of the English rustic.

To-day the rich man knows in his heart that he is a cancer and not an organ of the State. He differs from all other thieves or parasites for this reason: that the brigand who takes by force wishes his victims to be rich. But he who wins by a one-sided contract actually wishes them to be poor. Rob Roy in a cavern, hearing a company approaching, will hope (or if in a pious mood, pray) that they may come laden with gold or goods. But Mr. Rockefeller, in his factory, knows that if those who pass are laden with goods they will pass on. He will therefore (if in a pious mood) pray that they may be destitute, and so be forced to work his factory for him for a starvation wage. It is said (and also, I believe, disputed) that Blucher riding through the richer parts of London exclaimed, “What a city to sack!” But Blucher was a soldier if he was a bandit. The true sweater feels quite otherwise. It is when he drives through the poorest parts of London that he finds the streets paved with gold, being paved with prostrate servants; it is when he sees the grey lean leagues of Bow and Poplar that his soul is uplifted and he knows he is secure. This is not rhetoric, but economics.

Penso non sia altro che giustizia verso di lui dire che la consapevolezza, là dove gli è giunta, gli è giunta lentamente; e penso che gli sia giunta (come giunge la maggior parte delle cose di buon senso) piuttosto vagamente e come in una visione — cioè per il mero aspetto delle cose. Il vecchio datore di lavoro di scuola cobdeniana era pienamente nel suo diritto nell’argomentare che la terra non è il cielo, che la migliore sistemazione ottenibile poteva contenere molti mali necessari; e che Liverpool e Belfast potevano diventare più prospere nel complesso, nonostante le cose patetiche che vi si potevano vedere. Ma semplicemente non credo che egli sia stato in grado di guardare Liverpool e Belfast e continuare a pensare questo: ecco perché si è trasformato in un finto gentiluomo di campagna. La terra non è il cielo, ma il più vicino che possiamo arrivare al cielo non dovrebbe avere l’aspetto dell’inferno; e Liverpool e Belfast hanno l’aspetto dell’inferno, che lo siano o no. Simili città potrebbero diventare prospere nel complesso, benché pochi cittadini fossero più miserabili. Ma diventava sempre più largamente evidente che era esattamente e precisamente nel complesso che esse non stavano diventando più prospere, ma solo i pochi cittadini che diventavano più prosperi grazie alla loro crescente miseria. Non si potrebbe dire che un paese stia diventando un paese di uomini bianchi quando ogni giorno vi sono in esso sempre più uomini neri. Non si potrebbe dire che una comunità sia sempre più maschile quando produce sempre più donne. Né si può dire che una città diventi sempre più ricca quando sempre più dei suoi abitanti sono uomini poverissimi. Vi potrebbe essere una falsa agitazione fondata sul pathos dei casi individuali in una comunità piuttosto normale nella sua massa. Ma il fatto è che nessuno può attraversare Liverpool in carrozza senza ricavarne un’impressione del tutto completa e unitaria che il pathos non sia un pathos di casi individuali, ma un pathos di massa. La gente parla della tristezza celtica; ma vi sono ben poche cose in Irlanda che appaiano tanto tristi quanto l’irlandese a Liverpool. La desolazione di Tara è allegra al confronto con la desolazione di Belfast. Raccomando al signor Yeats e ai suoi mesti amici di rivolgere la loro attenzione al pathos di Belfast. Penso che se appendessero l’arpa d’un tempo nella fabbrica di Lord Furness, vi sarebbe la possibilità che si spezzasse un’altra corda.

In generale, e per come le cose si stagliano all’occhio, città come Leeds, se poste accanto a città come Rouen o Firenze, o Chartres, o Colonia, hanno davvero l’aria di mendicanti che camminano fra borghesi. Dopo quella schiacciante e sgradevole impressione è davvero inutile argomentare che siano più ricche perché alcuni dei loro parassiti si arricchiscono abbastanza da vivere altrove. Il punto si può porre in un altro modo, così: che non è tanto che queste città più moderne abbiano questo o quel monopolio del bene o del male; è che esse hanno ogni bene nella sua forma di quart’ordine e ogni male nella sua forma peggiore. Per esempio, quell’interessante settimanale The Nation rimproverò amabilmente il signor Belloc e me stesso per aver suggerito che la baldoria e l’elogio del liquore fermentato fossero più caratteristici delle comunità continentali e cattoliche che delle comunità con la religione e la civiltà di Belfast. Diceva che, se avessimo «attraversato il confine» in Scozia, avremmo scoperto il nostro errore. Ora, non solo ho attraversato il confine, ma ho avuto notevole difficoltà ad attraversare la strada in una città scozzese in una sera di festa. Uomini giacevano letteralmente come cadaveri ammucchiati nei rigagnoli, e da bottiglie rotte il whisky colava giù per i tombini. Non è probabile, dunque, che io attribuisca una totale e arida astinenza all’intera Scozia industriale. Ma non ho mai detto che il bere fosse piuttosto un tratto dei paesi cattolici. Ho detto che il bere moderato fosse piuttosto un tratto dei paesi cattolici. In altre parole, dico del comune tipo di cittadino continentale, non che sia l’unica persona che beve, ma che è l’unica persona che sa bere. Senza dubbio il gin è tanto un tratto di Hoxton quanto la birra è un tratto di Monaco. Ma chi è l’intenditore che preferisce il gin di Hoxton alla birra di Monaco? Senza dubbio gli scozzesi protestanti chiedono lo «Scotch», come gli uomini di Borgogna chiedono il Borgogna. Ma li troviamo forse a giacere a mucchi su entrambi i lati della strada quando attraversiamo un villaggio borgognone? Troviamo forse il contadino francese pronto a lasciar sfuggire il Borgogna giù per un tubo di scolo? Ora, questo unico punto, sul quale accetto la sfida di The Nation, si può esattamente ripetere quasi su ogni punto con cui saggiamo una civiltà. Non importa se siamo a favore dell’alcol o contro di esso. Sull’uno o sull’altro argomento Glasgow è più discutibile di Rouen. L’astemio francese fa meno chiasso; il bevitore francese reca meno offesa. È così con la proprietà, con la guerra, con ogni cosa. Posso capire che un astemio sia inorridito, per i suoi principi, dal bere vino degli italiani. Semplicemente non posso credere che possa esserne più inorridito che dal bere gin di Hoxton. Posso capire che un pacifista, con i suoi speciali scrupoli, detesti il militarismo di Belfort. Nego recisamente che possa detestarlo più del militarismo di Berlino. Posso capire che un buon socialista odii le meschine preoccupazioni della proprietà contadina distribuita. Nego che alcun buon socialista possa odiarle più di quanto odii le grandi preoccupazioni di Rockefeller. Questa è l’unica tragedia dello Stato plutocratico oggi; esso non ha successi da contrapporre ai fallimenti che sostiene esistere nei metodi latini o in altri. Potete (se siete ben fuori della sua portata) definire il rustico irlandese degradato e superstizioso. Vi sfido a contrapporre la sua degradazione e la sua superstizione alla cittadinanza e all’illuminazione del rustico inglese.

Oggi il ricco sa in cuor suo di essere un cancro e non un organo dello Stato. Egli differisce da tutti gli altri ladri o parassiti per questa ragione: che il brigante che prende con la forza desidera che le sue vittime siano ricche. Ma colui che vince mediante un contratto unilaterale desidera in realtà che esse siano povere. Rob Roy in una caverna, udendo avvicinarsi una compagnia, spererà (o, se in vena pia, pregherà) che essi possano giungere carichi d’oro o di merci. Ma il signor Rockefeller, nella sua fabbrica, sa che se coloro che passano sono carichi di merci, tireranno dritto. Egli perciò (se in vena pia) pregherà che essi siano indigenti, e così siano costretti a far funzionare la sua fabbrica per lui a un salario da fame. Si dice (e anche, credo, si contesta) che Blücher, cavalcando attraverso le parti più ricche di Londra, esclamasse: «Che città da saccheggiare!». Ma Blücher era un soldato, ammesso che fosse un bandito. Il vero sfruttatore prova un sentimento del tutto diverso. È quando attraversa in carrozza le parti più povere di Londra che trova le strade lastricate d’oro, essendo lastricate di servi prostrati; è quando vede le grigie e magre distese di Bow e Poplar che la sua anima si esalta ed egli sa di essere al sicuro. Questa non è retorica, ma economia.

I repeat that up to a point the profiteer was innocent because he was ignorant; he had been lured on by easy and accommodating events. He was innocent as the new Thane of Glamis was innocent, as the new Thane of Cawdor was innocent; but the King --- the modern manufacturer, like Macbeth, decided to march on, under the mute menace of the heavens. He knew that the spoil of the poor was in his houses; but he could not, after careful calculation, think of any way in which they could get it out of his houses without being arrested for housebreaking. He faced the future with a face flinty with pride and impenitence. This period can be dated practically by the period when the old and genuine Protestant religion of England began to fail; and the average business man began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way out. But in any case, the man who had made a mistake not only refused to unmake it, but decided to go on making it. But in this he made yet another most amusing mistake, which was the beginning of all Eugenics.

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IV

THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH

By a quaint paradox, we generally miss the meaning of simple stories because we are not subtle enough to understand their simplicity. As long as men were in sympathy with some particular religion or other romance of things in general, they saw the thing solid and swallowed it whole, knowing that it could not disagree with them. But the moment men have lost the instinct of being simple in order to understand it, they have to be very subtle in order to understand it. We can find, for instance, a very good working case in those old puritanical nursery tales about the terrible punishment of trivial sins; about how Tommy was drowned for fishing on the Sabbath, or Sammy struck by lightning for going out after dark. Now these moral stories are immoral, because Calvinism is immoral. They are wrong, because Puritanism is wrong. But they are not quite so wrong, they are not a quarter so wrong, as many superficial sages have supposed.

The truth is that everything that ever came out of a human mouth had a human meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such a fool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great grandmothers told a child he might be drowned by a breaking of the Sabbath, their souls (though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not in quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god was a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form of religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it did correspond to certain reality in psychology which most people of any religion, or even of none, have felt a touch of at some time or other. Leaving out theological terms as far as possible, it is the subconscious feeling that one can be wrong with Nature as well as right with Nature; that the point of wrongness may be a detail (in the superstitions of heathens this is often quite a triviality); but that if one is really wrong with Nature, there is no particular reason why all her rivers should not drown or all her storm-bolts strike one who is, by this vague yet vivid hypothesis, her enemy. This may be a mental sickness, but it is too human or too mortal a sickness to be called solely a superstition. It is not solely a superstition; it is not simply superimposed upon human nature by something that has got on top of it. It flourishes without check among non-Christian systems, and it flourishes especially in Calvinism, because Calvinism is the most non-Christian of Christian systems. But like everything else that inheres in the natural senses and spirit of man, it has something in it; it is not stark unreason. If it is an ill (and it generally is), it is one of the ills that flesh is heir to, but he is the lawful heir. And like many other dubious or dangerous human instincts or appetites, it is sometimes useful as a warning against worse things.

Now the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from the loss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathen mysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe in Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they overlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps Julius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in Jupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of that age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit personal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, while the heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queer coincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whether they were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his own brain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain such notions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modern sceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural. And this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrant literally pagan might possibly not have done.

There is one idea of this kind that runs through most popular tales (those, for instance, on which Shakespeare is so often based) --- an idea that is profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is what may be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take my advantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage. Thus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reason to become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had a fallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. He forgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on it can. Thus Shylock had a fallacy of physiology; he forgot that, if you break into the house of life, you find it a bloody house in the most emphatic sense. But the modern capitalist did not read fairy-tales, and never looked for the little omens at the turnings of the road. He (or the most intelligent section of him) had by now realized his position, and knew in his heart it was a false position. He thought a margin of men out of work was good for his business; he could no longer really think it was good for his country. He could no longer be the old “hard-headed” man who simply did not understand things; he could only be the hard-hearted man who faced them. But he still marched on, he was sure he had made no mistake.

Ripeto che fino a un certo punto il profittatore era innocente perché era ignorante; era stato adescato da eventi facili e accomodanti. Era innocente come il nuovo Thane di Glamis era innocente, come il nuovo Thane di Cawdor era innocente; ma il re — il moderno fabbricante, come Macbeth, decise di marciare avanti, sotto la muta minaccia dei cieli. Sapeva che il bottino dei poveri era nelle sue case; ma non poteva, dopo attento calcolo, immaginare alcun modo in cui essi potessero tirarlo fuori dalle sue case senza essere arrestati per effrazione. Affrontò il futuro con un volto duro come selce di orgoglio e impenitenza. Questo periodo si può datare praticamente al periodo in cui l’antica e genuina religione protestante d’Inghilterra cominciò a venir meno; e l’uomo d’affari medio cominciò a farsi agnostico, non tanto perché non sapesse dove si trovasse, quanto perché voleva dimenticare. Molti dei ricchi si diedero allo scetticismo esattamente come i poveri si diedero al bere; perché era una via d’uscita. Ma in ogni caso, l’uomo che aveva commesso un errore non solo rifiutò di disfarlo, ma decise di continuare a commetterlo. Ma in questo commise un altro errore assai divertente, che fu l’inizio di tutta l’Eugenetica.

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IV

LA VENDETTA DELLA CARNE

Per un bizzarro paradosso, in generale ci sfugge il significato delle storie semplici perché non siamo abbastanza sottili da comprendere la loro semplicità. Finché gli uomini furono in sintonia con qualche particolare religione o altro romanzesco modo di vedere le cose in generale, videro la cosa solida e la ingoiarono tutta intera, sapendo che non poteva mettersi in disaccordo con loro. Ma nel momento in cui gli uomini hanno perduto l’istinto di essere semplici per comprenderla, devono essere assai sottili per comprenderla. Possiamo trovare, per esempio, un ottimo caso pratico in quei vecchi racconti puritani da nursery sulla terribile punizione dei peccati banali; su come Tommy affogò per aver pescato di Sabato, o Sammy fu colpito dal fulmine per essere uscito dopo il tramonto. Ora, queste storie morali sono immorali, perché il calvinismo è immorale. Sono sbagliate, perché il Puritanesimo è sbagliato. Ma non sono del tutto così sbagliate, non sono sbagliate neppure per un quarto, quanto molti superficiali saggi hanno supposto.

La verità è che tutto ciò che uscì mai da una bocca umana ebbe un significato umano; e nessuno degli sciocchi immancabili della storia fu tanto sciocco quanto appare. E quando i nostri prozii o le nostre bisnonne dicevano a un bambino che poteva affogare per una violazione del Sabato, le loro anime (benché indubbiamente, come disse Paragone, in uno stato periglioso) non erano in uno stato così semplice come suggerisce il supporre che il loro dio fosse un diavolo che gettava i neonati nel Tamigi per un’inezia. Questa forma di letteratura religiosa è una forma morbosa se presa a sé; ma corrispondeva a una certa realtà nella psicologia di cui la maggior parte delle persone di qualsiasi religione, o persino di nessuna, ha avvertito un tocco in un momento o nell’altro. Lasciando da parte per quanto possibile i termini teologici, è il sentimento subconscio che si possa essere in torto con la Natura così come in ragione con la Natura; che il punto del torto possa essere un dettaglio (nelle superstizioni dei pagani questa è spesso una vera e propria inezia); ma che, se si è davvero in torto con la Natura, non vi è alcuna particolare ragione per cui tutti i suoi fiumi non debbano affogare o tutti i suoi fulmini di tempesta non debbano colpire colui che è, per questa vaga eppure vivida ipotesi, suo nemico. Questa può essere una malattia mentale, ma è una malattia troppo umana o troppo mortale per essere chiamata soltanto superstizione. Non è soltanto una superstizione; non è semplicemente sovrapposta alla natura umana da qualcosa che vi si è collocato sopra. Prospera senza freno tra i sistemi non cristiani, e prospera specialmente nel calvinismo, perché il calvinismo è il più non cristiano dei sistemi cristiani. Ma come ogni altra cosa che è insita nei sensi naturali e nello spirito dell’uomo, ha in sé qualcosa; non è pura irragionevolezza. Se è un male (e in generale lo è), è uno di quei mali di cui la carne è erede, ma egli ne è l’erede legittimo. E come molti altri dubbi o pericolosi istinti o appetiti umani, è talvolta utile come ammonimento contro cose peggiori.

Ora, il guaio del diciannovesimo secolo derivò in larghissima misura dalla perdita di questo; la perdita di ciò che possiamo chiamare il misticismo naturale e pagano. Quando i critici moderni dicono che Giulio Cesare non credeva in Giove, o che papa Leone non credeva nel cattolicesimo, trascurano una differenza essenziale tra quelle epoche e la nostra. Forse Giulio non credeva in Giove; ma non discredeva in Giove. Non vi era nulla nella sua filosofia, o nella filosofia di quell’epoca, che potesse proibirgli di pensare che vi fosse uno spirito personale e predominante nel mondo. Ma ai materialisti moderni non è permesso dubitare; è loro proibito credere. Perciò, mentre il pagano poteva avvalersi di presagi accidentali, di strane coincidenze o di sogni casuali, senza sapere con certezza se fossero davvero cenni dal cielo o moti premonitori del proprio cervello, il moderno cristiano fattosi pagano non deve accarezzare affatto simili idee, ma deve respingere l’oracolo come l’altare. Lo scettico moderno era narcotizzato contro tutto ciò che vi era di naturale nel soprannaturale. Ed ecco perché il moderno tiranno marciò verso la sua rovina, come forse un tiranno letteralmente pagano non avrebbe fatto.

Vi è un’idea di questo genere che percorre la maggior parte dei racconti popolari (quelli, per esempio, su cui Shakespeare così spesso si fonda) — un’idea che è profondamente morale anche se i racconti sono immorali. È ciò che si può chiamare il difetto nell’atto: l’idea che, se traggo il mio vantaggio fino in fondo, verrò a sapere di qualcosa a mio svantaggio. Così Mida cadde in un errore riguardo alla valuta; e presto ebbe ragione di diventare qualcosa di più di un bimetallista. Così Macbeth ebbe un errore riguardo alla silvicoltura; non riusciva a vedere gli alberi per via del bosco. Dimenticò che, benché un luogo non possa essere spostato, gli alberi che vi crescono sì. Così Shylock ebbe un errore di fisiologia; dimenticò che, se si irrompe nella casa della vita, la si trova una casa sanguinosa nel senso più marcato. Ma il capitalista moderno non leggeva fiabe, e non cercava mai i piccoli presagi alle svolte della strada. Egli (o la sua sezione più intelligente) aveva ormai compreso la propria posizione, e sapeva in cuor suo che era una falsa posizione. Pensava che un margine di uomini disoccupati facesse bene ai suoi affari; non poteva più pensare davvero che facesse bene al suo paese. Non poteva più essere il vecchio uomo dalla «testa dura» che semplicemente non capiva le cose; poteva essere soltanto l’uomo dal cuore duro che le affrontava. Ma continuava a marciare avanti, era certo di non aver commesso alcun errore.

However, he had made a mistake --- as definite as a mistake in multiplication. It may be summarized thus: that the same inequality and insecurity that makes cheap labour may make bad labour, and at last no labour at all. It was as if a man who wanted something from an enemy, should at last reduce the enemy to come knocking at his door in the despair of winter, should keep him waiting in the snow to sharpen the bargain; and then come out to find the man dead upon the doorstep.

He had discovered the divine boomerang; his sin had found him out. The experiment of Individualism --- the keeping of the worker half in and half out of work --- was far too ingenious not to contain a flaw. It was too delicate a balance to work entirely with the strength of the starved and the vigilance of the benighted. It was too desperate a course to rely wholly on desperation. And as time went on the terrible truth slowly declared itself; the degraded class was really degenerating. It was right and proper enough to use a man as a tool; but the tool, ceaselessly used, was being used up. It was quite reasonable and respectable, of course, to fling a man away like a tool; but when it was flung away in the rain the tool rusted. But the comparison to a tool was insufficient for an awful reason that had already begun to dawn upon the master’s mind. If you pick up a hammer you do not find a whole family of nails clinging to it. If you fling away a chisel by the roadside, it does not litter and leave a lot of little chisels. But the meanest of the tools, Man, had still this strange privilege which God had given him, doubtless by mistake. Despite all improvements in machinery, the most important part of the machinery (the fittings technically described in the trade as “hands”) were apparently growing worse. The firm was not only encumbered with one useless servant, but he immediately turned himself into five useless servants. “The poor should not be emancipated,” the old reactionaries used to say, “until they are fit for freedom.” But if this downrush went on, it looked as if the poor would not stand high enough to be fit for slavery.

So at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree subconsciously, to the man who had wagered all his wealth on the usefulness of the poor to the rich and the dependence of the rich on the poor. The time came at last when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below ceased to be a supply, and began to be something like a wastage; ceased to be something like keeping foxhounds, and began alarmingly to resemble a necessity of shooting foxes. The situation was aggravated by the fact that these sexual pleasures were often the only ones the very poor could obtain, and were, therefore, disproportionately pursued, and by the fact that their conditions were often such that prenatal nourishment and such things were utterly abnormal. The consequences began to appear. To a much less extent than the Eugenists assert, but still to a notable extent, in a much looser sense than the Eugenists assume, but still in some sort of sense, the types that were inadequate or incalculable or uncontrollable began to increase. Under the hedges of the country, on the seats of the parks, loafing under the bridges or leaning over the Embankment, began to appear a new race of men --- men who are certainly not mad, whom we shall gain no scientific light by calling feeble-minded, but who are, in varying individual degrees, dazed or drink-sodden, or lazy or tricky or tired in body and spirit. In a far less degree than the teetotallers tell us, but still in a large degree, the traffic in gin and bad beer (itself a capitalist enterprise) fostered the evil, though it had not begun it. Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men who seemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesore in the market-place and a terror on the empty roads. The rich were afraid.

Moreover, as I have hinted before, the act of keeping the destitute out of public life, and crushing them under confused laws, had an effect on their intelligences which paralyses them even as a proletariat. Modern people talk of “Reason versus Authority”; but authority itself involves reason, or its orders would not even be understood. If you say to your valet, “Look after the buttons on my waistcoat,” he may do it, even if you throw a boot at his head. But if you say to him, “Look after the buttons on my tophat,” he will not do it, though you empty a bootshop over him. If you say to a schoolboy, “Write out that Ode to Horace from memory in the original Latin,” he may do it without a flogging. If you say, “Write out that Ode of Horace in the original German,” he will not do it with a thousand floggings. If you will not learn logic, he certainly will not learn Latin. And the ludicrous laws to which the needy are subject (such as that which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, I think, a great deal to do with a certain increase in their sheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrial inefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory, a man actually acquitted by judge and jury could then be examined by doctors as to the state of his mind --- presumably in order to discover by what diseased eccentricity he had refrained from the crime. In other words, when the police cannot jail a man who is innocent of doing something, they jail him for being too innocent to do anything. I do not suppose the man is an idiot at all, but I can believe he feels more like one after the legal process than before. Thus all the factors --- the bodily exhaustion, the harassing fear of hunger, the reckless refuge in sexuality, and the black botheration of bad laws --- combined to make the employee more unemployable.

Now, it is very important to understand here that there were two courses of action still open to the disappointed capitalist confronted by the new peril of this real or alleged decay. First, he might have reversed his machine, so to speak, and started unwinding the long rope of dependence by which he had originally dragged the proletarian to his feet. In other words, he might have seen that the workmen had more money, more leisure, more luxuries, more status in the community, and then trusted to the normal instincts of reasonably happy human beings to produce a generation better born, bred and cared for than these tortured types that were less and less use to him. It might still not be too late to rebuild the human house upon such an architectural plan that poverty might fly out of the window, with the reasonable prospect of love coming in at the door. In short, he might have let the English poor, the mass of whom were not weak-minded, though more of them were growing weaker, a reasonable chance, in the form of more money, of achieving their eugenical resurrection themselves. It has never been shown, and it cannot be shown, that the method would have failed. But it can be shown, and it must be closely and clearly noted, that the method had very strict limitations from the employers’ own point of view. If they made the worker too comfortable, he would not work to increase another’s comforts; if they made him too independent, he would not work like a dependent. If, for instance, his wages were so good that he could save out of them, he might cease to be a wage-earner. If his house or garden were his own, he might stand an economic siege in it. The whole capitalist experiment had been built on his dependence; but now it was getting out of hand, not in the direction of freedom, but of frank helplessness. One might say that his dependence had got independent of control.

Eppure, aveva commesso un errore — netto come un errore in una moltiplicazione. Si può riassumere così: che la stessa disuguaglianza e insicurezza che rende il lavoro a buon mercato può rendere il lavoro cattivo, e alla fine nessun lavoro affatto. Fu come se un uomo che voleva qualcosa da un nemico dovesse alla fine ridurre il nemico a venire a bussare alla sua porta nella disperazione dell’inverno, dovesse tenerlo ad aspettare nella neve per affilare il patto; e poi uscire a trovare l’uomo morto sulla soglia.

Aveva scoperto il boomerang divino; il suo peccato lo aveva scoperto. L’esperimento dell’Individualismo — il tenere l’operaio per metà dentro e per metà fuori dal lavoro — era assai troppo ingegnoso per non contenere un difetto. Era un equilibrio troppo delicato per funzionare interamente con la forza degli affamati e la vigilanza degli ottenebrati. Era un corso troppo disperato per affidarsi interamente alla disperazione. E col passare del tempo la terribile verità lentamente si dichiarò; la classe degradata stava davvero degenerando. Era abbastanza giusto e conveniente usare un uomo come uno strumento; ma lo strumento, usato senza sosta, si stava logorando. Era del tutto ragionevole e rispettabile, s’intende, gettar via un uomo come uno strumento; ma quando lo si gettava via sotto la pioggia, lo strumento si arrugginiva. Ma il paragone con uno strumento era insufficiente per una ragione tremenda che aveva già cominciato ad albeggiare nella mente del padrone. Se si raccoglie un martello, non ci si trova appesa un’intera famiglia di chiodi. Se si getta via uno scalpello sul ciglio della strada, esso non figlia lasciando un mucchio di scalpellini. Ma il più umile degli strumenti, l’Uomo, aveva ancora questo strano privilegio che Dio gli aveva dato, senza dubbio per errore. Nonostante tutti i miglioramenti nei macchinari, la parte più importante del macchinario (i pezzi tecnicamente descritti nel mestiere come «mani») stava a quanto pareva peggiorando. La ditta non era soltanto gravata di un servitore inutile, ma egli si trasformava immediatamente in cinque servitori inutili. «I poveri non dovrebbero essere emancipati», dicevano i vecchi reazionari, «finché non sono adatti alla libertà». Ma se questa caduta a precipizio proseguiva, sembrava che i poveri non sarebbero rimasti in piedi abbastanza in alto da essere adatti alla schiavitù.

Così almeno appariva, senza dubbio in gran parte in modo subconscio, all’uomo che aveva scommesso tutta la sua ricchezza sull’utilità dei poveri per i ricchi e sulla dipendenza dei ricchi dai poveri. Venne infine il tempo in cui la piuttosto sconsiderata riproduzione nell’abisso sottostante cessò di essere una risorsa, e cominciò a essere qualcosa di simile a uno sperpero; cessò di essere qualcosa come tenere segugi da volpe, e cominciò allarmantemente ad assomigliare alla necessità di abbattere volpi. La situazione era aggravata dal fatto che questi piaceri sessuali erano spesso gli unici che i poverissimi potessero ottenere, ed erano, perciò, perseguiti in modo sproporzionato, e dal fatto che le loro condizioni erano spesso tali che la nutrizione prenatale e simili cose erano del tutto anormali. Le conseguenze cominciarono ad apparire. In misura assai minore di quanto affermino gli Eugenisti, ma pur sempre in misura notevole, in un senso assai più lasco di quanto assumano gli Eugenisti, ma pur sempre in una qualche sorta di senso, i tipi che erano inadeguati o incalcolabili o incontrollabili cominciarono ad aumentare. Sotto le siepi della campagna, sulle panchine dei parchi, gironzolando sotto i ponti o appoggiati al Lungotamigi, cominciò ad apparire una nuova razza di uomini — uomini che certamente non sono pazzi, e sui quali non guadagneremo alcuna luce scientifica chiamandoli deboli di mente, ma che sono, in gradi individuali variabili, storditi o inzuppati di liquore, o pigri o furbi o stanchi nel corpo e nello spirito. In misura assai minore di quanto ci raccontino gli astemi, ma pur sempre in larga misura, il traffico di gin e di cattiva birra (esso stesso un’impresa capitalistica) alimentò il male, benché non lo avesse iniziato. Uomini che non avevano alcun legame umano con l’uomo istruito, uomini che a lui parevano mostri e creature prive di mente, divennero uno spettacolo penoso nella piazza del mercato e un terrore sulle strade deserte. I ricchi ebbero paura.

Inoltre, come ho accennato prima, l’atto di tenere gli indigenti fuori dalla vita pubblica, e di schiacciarli sotto leggi confuse, ebbe sulle loro intelligenze un effetto che li paralizza persino come proletariato. La gente moderna parla di «Ragione contro Autorità»; ma l’autorità stessa implica la ragione, altrimenti i suoi ordini non sarebbero nemmeno compresi. Se dite al vostro cameriere: «Bada ai bottoni del mio panciotto», egli lo farà, anche se gli scagliate uno stivale in testa. Ma se gli dite: «Bada ai bottoni del mio cilindro», non lo farà, anche se gli rovesciate addosso una calzoleria. Se dite a uno scolaro: «Trascrivi a memoria quell’Ode di Orazio nell’originale latino», egli potrà farlo senza una frustata. Se dite: «Trascrivi quell’Ode di Orazio nell’originale tedesco», non lo farà nemmeno con mille frustate. Se voi non volete imparare la logica, egli certamente non imparerà il latino. E le ridicole leggi a cui sono soggetti i bisognosi (come quella che punisce chi è senza tetto per non essere andato a casa) hanno davvero, io penso, molto a che fare con un certo aumento della loro stupidità pecoresca e ottusità, e, perciò, della loro inefficienza industriale. Per una delle mostruosità della teoria dei deboli di mente, un uomo effettivamente assolto da giudice e giuria poteva poi essere esaminato da medici quanto allo stato della sua mente — presumibilmente allo scopo di scoprire per quale malata eccentricità si fosse astenuto dal crimine. In altre parole, quando la polizia non può incarcerare un uomo che è innocente di aver fatto qualcosa, lo incarcera per essere troppo innocente per fare qualcosa. Non suppongo affatto che l’uomo sia un idiota, ma posso credere che si senta più simile a uno dopo il procedimento legale che prima. Così tutti i fattori — lo sfinimento del corpo, l’assillante paura della fame, il temerario rifugio nella sessualità, e la nera seccatura delle cattive leggi — si combinarono per rendere l’impiegato ancor più inimpiegabile.

Ora, è assai importante comprendere qui che vi erano due corsi d’azione ancora aperti al deluso capitalista che si trovava di fronte al nuovo pericolo di questa reale o presunta decadenza. In primo luogo, avrebbe potuto invertire la sua macchina, per così dire, e cominciare a srotolare la lunga fune di dipendenza con cui aveva originariamente trascinato il proletario in piedi. In altre parole, avrebbe potuto fare in modo che gli operai avessero più denaro, più tempo libero, più agi, più status nella comunità, e poi confidare negli istinti normali di esseri umani ragionevolmente felici per produrre una generazione meglio nata, allevata e curata di questi tipi torturati che gli erano sempre meno utili. Poteva forse non essere ancora troppo tardi per riedificare la casa umana su un piano architettonico tale che la povertà potesse volar via dalla finestra, con la ragionevole prospettiva che l’amore entrasse dalla porta. In breve, avrebbe potuto concedere ai poveri inglesi, la cui massa non era debole di mente, benché un numero maggiore di essi si stesse indebolendo, una ragionevole possibilità, sotto forma di più denaro, di conseguire da sé la loro eugenetica resurrezione. Non è mai stato dimostrato, e non può essere dimostrato, che il metodo sarebbe fallito. Ma si può dimostrare, e va notato con attenzione e chiarezza, che il metodo aveva rigidissime limitazioni dal punto di vista degli stessi datori di lavoro. Se rendevano l’operaio troppo comodo, egli non avrebbe lavorato per accrescere le comodità altrui; se lo rendevano troppo indipendente, non avrebbe lavorato come un dipendente. Se, per esempio, il suo salario fosse stato così buono da poter risparmiare, egli avrebbe potuto cessare di essere un salariato. Se la sua casa o il suo giardino fossero stati suoi, egli avrebbe potuto resistervi a un assedio economico. L’intero esperimento capitalistico era stato costruito sulla sua dipendenza; ma ora essa sfuggiva di mano, non in direzione della libertà, ma di una franca impotenza. Si potrebbe dire che la sua dipendenza fosse divenuta indipendente da ogni controllo.

But there was another way. And towards this the employer’s ideas began, first darkly and unconsciously, but now more and more clearly, to drift. Giving property, giving leisure, giving status costs money. But there is one human force that costs nothing. As it does not cost the beggar a penny to indulge, so it would not cost the employer a penny to employ. He could not alter or improve the tables or the chairs on the cheap. But there were two pieces of furniture (labelled respectively “the husband” and “the wife”) whose relations were much cheaper. He could alter the marriage in the house in such a way as to promise himself the largest possible number of the kind of children he did want, with the smallest number of the kind he did not. He could divert the force of sex from producing vagabonds. And he could harness to his high engines unbought the red unbroken river of the blood of a man in his youth, as he has already harnessed to them all the wild waste rivers of the world.

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V

THE MEANNESS OF THE MOTIVE

Now, if any ask whether it be imaginable that an ordinary man of the wealthier type should analyse the problem or conceive the plan, the in-humanly far-seeing plan, as I have set it forth, the answer is: “Certainly not.” Many rich employers are too generous to do such a thing; many are too stupid to know what they are doing. The eugenical opportunity I have described is but an ultimate analysis of a whole drift of thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse his thoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string of rickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. But prosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even ask himself whether he means “How can I help them?” or “How can I use them?” --- what he can still do for them, or what they could still do for him. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more than the former; he laments the breaking of the tools of Mammon much more than the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossible to grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert that there is one thing he doesn’t think. He doesn’t think, “This man might be as jolly as I am, if he need not come to me for work or wages.”

That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a sense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist industrialism being sacrificed to any other object. By a curious recurrent slip in the mind, as irritating as a catch in a clock, people miss the main thing and concentrate on the mean thing. “Modern conditions” are treated as fixed, though the very word “modern” implies that they are fugitive. “Old ideas” are treated as impossible, though their very antiquity often proves their permanence. Some years ago some ladies petitioned that the platforms of our big railway stations should be raised, as it was more convenient for the hobble skirt. It never occurred to them to change to a sensible skirt. Still less did it occur to them that, compared with all the female fashions that have fluttered about on it, by this time St. Pancras is as historic as St Peter’s.

I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious assumption that life and sex must live by the laws of “business” or industrialism, and not vice versa; examples from all the magazines, novels, and newspapers. In order to make it brief and typical, I take one case of a more or less Eugenist sort from a paper that lies open in front of me --- a paper that still bears on its forehead the boast of being peculiarly an organ of democracy in revolt. To this a man writes to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to sign his letter “Hopeful.” Well, there are certainly many methods by which people in the upper classes prevent procreation; one of them is what used to be called “platonic friendship,” till they found another name for it at the Old Bailey. I do not suppose the hopeful gentleman hopes for this; but some of us find the abortion he does hope for almost as abominable. That, however, is not the curious point. The curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, “When people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if there were no unwanted children.” You will observe that he tacitly takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage market. There are unwanted children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the parents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do not want to pay them properly. Doubtless, if you said to him directly, “Are you in favour of low wages?” he would say, “No.” But I am not, in this chapter, talking about the effect on such modern minds of a cross-examination to which they do not subject themselves. I am talking about the way their minds work, the instinctive trick and turn of their thoughts, the things they assume before argument, and the way they faintly feel that the world is going. And, frankly, the turn of their mind is to tell the child he is not wanted, as the turn of my mind is to tell the profiteer he is not wanted. Motherhood, they feel, and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good things in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the mutilation of womanhood and the massacre of men unborn, he signs himself “Hopeful.” He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human annihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself “Hopeless.”

Ma vi era un’altra via. E verso questa le idee del datore di lavoro cominciarono, dapprima oscuramente e inconsciamente, ma ormai sempre più chiaramente, a inclinare. Dare proprietà, dare tempo libero, dare status costa denaro. Ma vi è una forza umana che non costa nulla. Come non costa al mendicante un soldo abbandonarvisi, così non costerebbe al datore di lavoro un soldo impiegarla. Non poteva modificare o migliorare i tavoli o le sedie a buon mercato. Ma vi erano due pezzi di mobilio (etichettati rispettivamente «il marito» e «la moglie») le cui relazioni erano assai più a buon mercato. Poteva alterare il matrimonio nella casa in modo tale da assicurarsi il maggior numero possibile del genere di figli che voleva, col minor numero del genere che non voleva. Poteva deviare la forza del sesso dal produrre vagabondi. E poteva aggiogare ai suoi possenti motori, senza pagarlo, il rosso e indomito fiume del sangue di un uomo nella sua giovinezza, come già ha aggiogato ad essi tutti i selvaggi e sperperati fiumi del mondo.

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V

LA MESCHINITÀ DEL MOVENTE

Ora, se qualcuno chiede se sia immaginabile che un uomo comune del tipo più agiato possa analizzare il problema o concepire il piano, il piano dis-umanamente lungimirante, quale l’ho esposto, la risposta è: «Certamente no». Molti ricchi datori di lavoro sono troppo generosi per fare una cosa simile; molti sono troppo stupidi per sapere ciò che fanno. L’opportunità eugenetica che ho descritto non è che un’analisi ultima di un’intera deriva di pensieri nel tipo d’uomo che non analizza i propri pensieri. Egli vede un vagabondo curvo, con una moglie malata e una fila di figli rachitici, e onestamente si domanda che cosa possa farne. Ma la prosperità non favorisce l’esame di sé; ed egli non si domanda nemmeno se intenda «Come posso aiutarli?» oppure «Come posso usarli?» — ciò che egli può ancora fare per loro, o ciò che essi potrebbero ancora fare per lui. Probabilmente intende sinceramente entrambe le cose, ma la seconda assai più della prima; egli lamenta la rottura degli strumenti di Mammona assai più della rottura delle immagini di Dio. Sarebbe quasi impossibile brancolare nel limbo di ciò che egli pensa davvero; ma possiamo affermare che vi è una cosa che egli non pensa. Non pensa: «Quest’uomo potrebbe essere allegro quanto me, se non dovesse venire da me per un lavoro o un salario».

Che sia così, che alla radice l’Eugenista sia il Datore di lavoro, ve ne sono innumerevoli prove da ogni parte, ma sono per necessità eterogenee, e in molti casi negative. La più enorme è in un certo senso la più negativa: che nessuno sembra capace di immaginare che l’industrialismo capitalistico venga sacrificato a un qualsiasi altro fine. Per un curioso e ricorrente scarto della mente, irritante come uno scatto in un orologio, la gente manca la cosa principale e si concentra sulla cosa meschina. Le «condizioni moderne» sono trattate come fisse, benché la parola stessa «moderno» implichi che siano fuggevoli. Le «vecchie idee» sono trattate come impossibili, benché la loro stessa antichità spesso provi la loro permanenza. Alcuni anni fa certe signore chiesero con una petizione che i marciapiedi delle nostre grandi stazioni ferroviarie fossero rialzati, poiché era più comodo per la gonna a fascia. Non venne loro in mente di passare a una gonna sensata. Ancor meno venne loro in mente che, in confronto a tutte le mode femminili che vi hanno svolazzato sopra, St. Pancras è ormai storica quanto San Pietro.

Potrei riempire questo libro di esempi dell’assunzione universale e inconscia che la vita e il sesso debbano vivere secondo le leggi degli «affari» o dell’industrialismo, e non viceversa; esempi tratti da tutte le riviste, i romanzi e i giornali. Per renderlo breve e tipico, prendo un caso di sorta più o meno eugenetica da un giornale che mi sta aperto davanti — un giornale che porta ancora sulla fronte il vanto di essere in modo peculiare un organo di democrazia in rivolta. A questo un uomo scrive per dire che la diffusione dell’indigenza non sarà mai fermata finché non avremo educato le classi inferiori ai metodi con cui le classi superiori impediscono la procreazione. L’uomo ebbe l’orribile faceta compiacenza di firmare la sua lettera «Fiducioso». Ebbene, vi sono certamente molti metodi con cui le persone delle classi superiori impediscono la procreazione; uno di essi è ciò che si usava chiamare «amicizia platonica», finché non le trovarono un altro nome all’Old Bailey. Non suppongo che il fiducioso gentiluomo abbia fiducia in questo; ma alcuni di noi trovano l’aborto in cui egli ha fiducia quasi altrettanto abominevole. Non è questo, tuttavia, il punto curioso. Il punto curioso è che il fiducioso conclude dicendo: «Quando la gente ha famiglie numerose e salari esigui, non solo vi è un alto tasso di mortalità infantile, ma spesso quelli che vivono abbastanza da crescere sono rachitici e indeboliti per aver dovuto condividere per un periodo il reddito familiare con quelli che morirono presto. Vi sarebbe meno infelicità se non ci fossero figli indesiderati». Osserverete che egli tacitamente dà per scontato che i salari esigui e il reddito, disperatamente condiviso, siano i punti fissi, come il giorno e la notte, le condizioni della vita umana. In confronto a essi il matrimonio e la maternità sono lussi, cose da modificare per adattarle al mercato dei salari. Vi sono figli indesiderati; ma indesiderati da chi? Quest’uomo non intende davvero che i genitori non vogliano averli. Intende che i datori di lavoro non vogliono pagarli adeguatamente. Senza dubbio, se gli diceste direttamente: «Siete a favore dei bassi salari?», direbbe: «No». Ma in questo capitolo non parlo dell’effetto su tali menti moderne di un contro-interrogatorio a cui esse non si sottopongono. Parlo del modo in cui le loro menti funzionano, del vezzo e della piega istintiva dei loro pensieri, delle cose che assumono prima di ogni argomentazione, e del modo in cui sentono debolmente dove vada il mondo. E, francamente, la piega della loro mente è di dire al bambino che non è desiderato, come la piega della mia mente è di dire al profittatore che non è desiderato. La maternità, sentono, e una piena infanzia, e la bellezza dei fratelli e delle sorelle, sono buone cose a modo loro, ma non così buone come un cattivo salario. Riguardo alla mutilazione della femminilità e al massacro degli uomini non ancora nati, egli si firma «Fiducioso». Ha fiducia nell’indegnità femminile, ha fiducia nell’annientamento umano. Ma riguardo al migliorare l’esiguo cattivo salario si firma «Senza speranza».

This is the first evidence of motive: the ubiquitous assumption that life and love must fit into a fixed framework of employment, even (as in this case) of bad employment. The second evidence is the tacit and total neglect of the scientific question in all the departments in which it is not an employment question; as, for instance, the marriages of the princely, patrician, or merely plutocratic houses. I do not mean, of course, that no scientific men have rigidly tackled these, though I do not recall any cases. But I am not talking of the merits of individual men of science, but of the push and power behind this movement, the thing that is able to make it fashionable and politically important. I say, if this power were an interest in truth, or even in humanity, the first field in which to study would be in the weddings of the wealthy. Not only would the records be more lucid, and the examples more in evidence, but the cases would be more interesting and more decisive. For the grand marriages have presented both extremes of the problem of pedigree --- first the “breeding in and in,” and later the most incongruous cosmopolitan blends. It would really be interesting to note which worked the best, or what point of compromise was safest. For the poor (about whom the newspaper Eugenists are always talking) cannot offer any test cases so complete. Waiters never had to marry waitresses, as princes had to marry princesses. And (for the other extreme) housemaids seldom marry Red Indians. It may be because there are none to marry. But to the millionaires the continents are flying railway stations, and the most remote races can be rapidly linked together. A marriage in London or Paris may chain Ravenna to Chicago, or Ben Cruachan to Bagdad. Many European aristocrats marry Americans, notoriously the most mixed stock in the world; so that the disinterested Eugenist, with a little trouble, might reveal rich stores of negro or Asiatic blood to his delighted employer. Instead of which he dulls our ears and distresses our refinement by tedious denunciations of the monochrome marriages of the poor.

For there is something really pathetic about the Eugenist’s neglect of the aristocrat and his family affairs. People still talk about the pride of pedigree; but it strikes me as the one point on which the aristocrats are almost morbidly modest. We should be learned Eugenists if we were allowed to know half as much of their heredity as we are of their hairdressing. We see the modern aristocrat in the most human poses in the illustrated papers, playing with his dog or parrot --- nay, we see him playing with his child, or with his grandchild. But there is something heartrending in his refusal to play with his grandfather. There is often something vague and even fantastic about the antecedents of our most established families, which would afford the Eugenist admirable scope not only for investigation but for experiment. Certainly, if he could obtain the necessary powers, the Eugenist might bring off some startling effects with the mixed materials of the governing class. Suppose, to take wild and hypothetical examples, he were to marry a Scotch earl, say, to the daughter of a Jewish banker, or an English duke to an American parvenu of semi-Jewish extraction? What would happen? We have here an unexplored field.

It remains unexplored not merely through snobbery and cowardice, but because the Eugenist (at least the influential Eugenist) half consciously knows it is no part of his job; what he is really wanted for is to get the grip of the governing classes on to the unmanageable output of poor people. It would not matter in the least if all Lord Cowdray’s descendants grew up too weak to hold a tool or turn a wheel. It would matter very much, especially to Lord Cowdray, if all his employees grew up like that. The oligarch can be unemployable because he will not be employed. Thus the practical and popular exponent of Eugenics has his face always turned towards the slums, and instinctively thinks in terms of them. If he talks of segregating some incurably vicious type of the sexual sort, he is thinking of a ruffian who assaults girls in lanes. He is not thinking of a millionaire like White, the victim of Thaw. If he speaks of the hopelessness of feeble-mindedness, he is thinking of some stunted creature gaping at hopeless lessons in a poor school. He is not thinking of a millionaire like Thaw, the slayer of White. And this not because he is such a brute as to like people like White or Thaw any more than we do, but because he knows that his problem is the degeneration of the useful classes; because he knows that White would never have been a millionaire if all his workers had spent themselves on women as White did, that Thaw would never have been a millionaire if all his servants had been Thaws. The ornaments may be allowed to decay, but the machinery must be mended. That is the second proof of the plutocratic impulse behind all Eugenics: that no one thinks of applying it to the prominent classes. No one thinks of applying it where it could most easily be applied.

A third proof is the strange new disposition to regard the poor as a race; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies. It can be most clearly seen by comparing it with the old, more individual, charitable, and (as the Eugenists might say) sentimental view of poverty. In Goldsmith or Dickens or Hood there is a basic idea that the particular poor person ought not to be so poor: it is some accident or some wrong. Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim are fairy princes waiting for their fairy godmother. They are held as slaves, but rather as the hero and heroine of a Spanish or Italian romance were held as slaves by the Moors. The modern poor are getting to be regarded as slaves in the separate and sweeping sense of the negroes in the plantations. The bondage of the white hero to the black master was regarded as abnormal; the bondage of the black to the white master as normal. The Eugenist, for all I know, would regard the mere existence of Tiny Tim as a sufficient reason for massacring the whole family of Cratchit; but, as a matter of fact, we have here a very good instance of how much more practically true to life is sentiment than cynicism. The poor are not a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk about breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact, what Dickens describes: “a dustbin of individual accidents,” of damaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility. The class very largely consists of perfectly promising children, lost like Oliver Twist, or crippled like Tiny Tim. It contains very valuable things, like most dustbins. But the Eugenist delusion of the barbaric breed in the abyss affects even those more gracious philanthropists who almost certainly do want to assist the destitute and not merely to exploit them. It seems to affect not only their minds, but their very eyesight. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Alec Tweedie almost scornfully asks, “When we go through the slums, do we see beautiful children?” The answer is, “Yes, very often indeed.” I have seen children in the slums quite pretty enough to be Little Nell or the outcast whom Hood called “young and so fair.” Nor has the beauty anything necessarily to do with health, there are beautiful healthy children, beautiful dying children, ugly dying children, ugly uproarious children in Petticoat Lane or Park Lane. There are people of every physical and mental type of every sort of health and breeding, in a single back street. They have nothing in common but the wrong we do them.

Questa è la prima prova del movente: l’onnipresente assunzione che la vita e l’amore debbano incastrarsi in una cornice fissa di impiego, persino (come in questo caso) di cattivo impiego. La seconda prova è la tacita e totale trascuratezza della questione scientifica in tutti i settori in cui essa non è una questione di impiego; come, per esempio, i matrimoni delle case principesche, patrizie, o semplicemente plutocratiche. Non intendo, s’intende, che nessun uomo di scienza abbia rigidamente affrontato questi casi, benché non ne ricordi alcuno. Ma non parlo dei meriti dei singoli uomini di scienza, bensì della spinta e della potenza dietro questo movimento, la cosa che è in grado di renderlo di moda e politicamente importante. Dico che, se questa potenza fosse un interesse per la verità, o anche solo per l’umanità, il primo campo in cui studiare sarebbe quello delle nozze dei ricchi. Non solo le testimonianze sarebbero più lucide, e gli esempi più in evidenza, ma i casi sarebbero più interessanti e più decisivi. Poiché i grandi matrimoni hanno presentato entrambi gli estremi del problema della stirpe — dapprima l’«incrocio in seno alla famiglia», e più tardi le più incongrue mescolanze cosmopolite. Sarebbe davvero interessante notare quale funzionasse meglio, o quale punto di compromesso fosse più sicuro. Poiché i poveri (di cui gli Eugenisti da giornale parlano sempre) non possono offrire casi campione altrettanto completi. I camerieri non hanno mai dovuto sposare cameriere, come i principi hanno dovuto sposare principesse. E (per l’altro estremo) le domestiche di rado sposano pellirosse. Può essere perché non ve ne sono da sposare. Ma per i milionari i continenti sono volanti stazioni ferroviarie, e le razze più remote possono essere rapidamente collegate insieme. Un matrimonio a Londra o a Parigi può incatenare Ravenna a Chicago, o il Ben Cruachan a Bagdad. Molti aristocratici europei sposano americane, notoriamente la stirpe più mista del mondo; cosicché il disinteressato Eugenista, con un po’ di fatica, potrebbe rivelare ricche riserve di sangue negro o asiatico al suo deliziato datore di lavoro. Invece di ciò egli ci intontisce le orecchie e affligge la nostra raffinatezza con tediose denunce dei monocromi matrimoni dei poveri.

Poiché vi è qualcosa di davvero patetico nella trascuratezza dell’Eugenista verso l’aristocratico e i suoi affari di famiglia. La gente parla ancora dell’orgoglio della stirpe; ma mi colpisce come l’unico punto su cui gli aristocratici sono quasi morbosamente modesti. Saremmo dotti Eugenisti se ci fosse permesso conoscere della loro ereditarietà anche solo la metà di quanto conosciamo della loro pettinatura. Vediamo il moderno aristocratico nelle pose più umane sui giornali illustrati, mentre gioca col suo cane o col suo pappagallo — anzi, lo vediamo giocare col suo bambino, o col suo nipotino. Ma vi è qualcosa di straziante nel suo rifiuto di giocare col suo bisnonno. Vi è spesso qualcosa di vago e persino di fantastico negli antenati delle nostre famiglie più affermate, che offrirebbe all’Eugenista un ambito ammirevole non solo per l’indagine ma per l’esperimento. Certamente, se potesse ottenere i poteri necessari, l’Eugenista potrebbe realizzare qualche effetto sorprendente coi materiali misti della classe dirigente. Supponiamo, per prendere esempi arditi e ipotetici, che dovesse sposare un conte scozzese, poniamo, con la figlia di un banchiere ebreo, o un duca inglese con una parvenu americana di semi-ebraica estrazione? Che cosa accadrebbe? Abbiamo qui un campo inesplorato.

Esso rimane inesplorato non soltanto per snobismo e codardia, ma perché l’Eugenista (almeno l’Eugenista influente) sa a metà consapevolmente che non è affar suo; ciò per cui lo si vuole davvero è di far stringere alla classe dirigente la presa sull’ingovernabile prodotto della povera gente. Non importerebbe minimamente se tutti i discendenti di Lord Cowdray crescessero troppo deboli per reggere uno strumento o girare una ruota. Importerebbe moltissimo, specialmente a Lord Cowdray, se tutti i suoi dipendenti crescessero così. L’oligarca può essere inimpiegabile perché non sarà impiegato. Così il pratico e popolare fautore dell’Eugenetica ha il volto sempre rivolto verso i bassifondi, e istintivamente pensa nei loro termini. Se parla di segregare qualche tipo incurabilmente vizioso di sorta sessuale, pensa a un manigoldo che aggredisce le ragazze nei vicoli. Non pensa a un milionario come White, la vittima di Thaw. Se parla della disperante condizione della debolezza mentale, pensa a qualche creatura rachitica che sta a bocca aperta davanti a lezioni senza speranza in una povera scuola. Non pensa a un milionario come Thaw, l’uccisore di White. E ciò non perché sia tanto bruto da avere simpatia per gente come White o Thaw più di quanta ne abbiamo noi, ma perché sa che il suo problema è la degenerazione delle classi utili; perché sa che White non sarebbe mai stato un milionario se tutti i suoi operai si fossero consumati con le donne come faceva White, che Thaw non sarebbe mai stato un milionario se tutti i suoi servi fossero stati dei Thaw. Agli ornamenti si può permettere di decadere, ma il macchinario dev’essere riparato. Questa è la seconda prova dell’impulso plutocratico dietro tutta l’Eugenetica: che nessuno pensa di applicarla alle classi eminenti. Nessuno pensa di applicarla dove potrebbe essere applicata più facilmente.

Una terza prova è la strana nuova disposizione a considerare i poveri come una razza; come se fossero una colonia di giapponesi o di coolie cinesi. La si può vedere con la massima chiarezza confrontandola con la vecchia veduta della povertà, più individuale, caritatevole, e (come direbbero gli Eugenisti) sentimentale. In Goldsmith o Dickens o Hood vi è un’idea di fondo che il particolare povero non dovrebbe essere così povero: è un qualche accidente o un qualche torto. Oliver Twist o Tiny Tim sono principi fatati in attesa della loro fata madrina. Sono tenuti schiavi, ma piuttosto come l’eroe e l’eroina di un romanzo spagnolo o italiano erano tenuti schiavi dai Mori. I poveri moderni cominciano a essere considerati schiavi nel senso separato e generalizzante dei negri nelle piantagioni. La servitù dell’eroe bianco al padrone nero era considerata anormale; la servitù del nero al padrone bianco come normale. L’Eugenista, per quanto ne so, considererebbe la mera esistenza di Tiny Tim come una ragione sufficiente per massacrare l’intera famiglia Cratchit; ma, di fatto, abbiamo qui un ottimo esempio di quanto più praticamente fedele alla vita sia il sentimento che il cinismo. I poveri non sono una razza né persino un tipo. È insensato parlare di allevarli; poiché non sono una stirpe da allevamento. Sono, a freddo, ciò che Dickens descrive: «un bidone della spazzatura di accidenti individuali», di dignità danneggiata, e spesso di raffinatezza danneggiata. La classe consiste in larghissima misura di bambini perfettamente promettenti, smarriti come Oliver Twist, o storpiati come Tiny Tim. Contiene cose di grande valore, come la maggior parte dei bidoni della spazzatura. Ma l’eugenetica illusione della barbara stirpe nell’abisso contagia persino quei più graziosi filantropi che quasi certamente vogliono soccorrere gli indigenti e non semplicemente sfruttarli. Sembra contagiare non solo le loro menti, ma la loro vista stessa. Così, per esempio, la signora Alec Tweedie chiede quasi con disprezzo: «Quando attraversiamo i bassifondi, vediamo forse bei bambini?». La risposta è: «Sì, davvero assai spesso». Ho visto nei bassifondi bambini abbastanza graziosi da essere Little Nell o la reietta che Hood chiamò «giovane e così bella». Né la bellezza ha necessariamente a che fare con la salute: vi sono bei bambini sani, bei bambini morenti, brutti bambini morenti, brutti bambini schiamazzanti a Petticoat Lane o a Park Lane. Vi sono persone di ogni tipo fisico e mentale, di ogni sorta di salute e di allevamento, in un’unica stradina secondaria. Non hanno nulla in comune se non il torto che facciamo loro.

The important point is, however, that there is more fact and realism in the wildest and most elegant old fictions about disinherited dukes and long-lost daughters than there is in this Eugenist attempt to make the poor all of a piece --- a sort of black fungoid growth that is ceaselessly increasing in chasm. There is a cheap sneer at poor landladies: that they always say they have seen better days. Nine times out of ten they say it because it is true. What can be said of the great mass of Englishmen, by anyone who knows any history, except that they have seen better days? And the landlady’s claim is not snobbish, but rather spirited; it is her testimony to the truth in the old tales of which I spoke: that she ought not to be so poor or so servile in status; that a normal person ought to have more property and more power in the State than that. Such dreams of lost dignity are perhaps the only things that stand between us and the cattle breeding paradise now promised. Nor are such dreams by any means impotent. I remember Mr. T. P. O’Connor wrote an interesting article about Madame Humbert, in the course of which he said that Irish peasants, and probably most peasants, tended to have a half fictitious family legend about an estate to which they were entitled. This was written in the time when Irish peasants were landless in their land; and the delusion doubtless seemed all the more entertaining to the landlords who ruled them and the money-lenders who ruled the landlords. But the dream has conquered the realities. The phantom farms have materialized. Merely by tenaciously affirming the kind of pride that comes after a fall, by remembering the old civilization and refusing the new, by recurring to an old claim that seemed to most Englishmen like the lie of a broken-down lodging-house keeper at Margate --- by all this the Irish have got what they want, in solid mud and turf. That imaginary estate has conquered the Three Estates of the Realm.

But the homeless Englishman must not even remember a home. So far from his house being his castle, he must not have even a castle in the air. He must have no memories; that is why he is taught no history. Why is he told none of the truth about the mediaeval civilization except a few cruelties and mistakes in chemistry? Why does a mediaeval burgher never appear till he can appear in a shirt and a halter? Why does a mediaeval monastery never appear till it is “corrupt” enough to shock the innocence of Henry VIII? Why do we hear of one charter --- that of the barons --- and not a word of the charters of the carpenters, smiths, shipwrights and all the rest? The reason is that the English peasant is not only not allowed to have an estate, he is not even allowed to have lost one. The past has to be painted pitch black, that it may be worse than the present.

There is one strong, startling, outstanding thing about Eugenics, and that is its meanness. Wealth, and the social science supported by wealth, had tried an inhuman experiment. The experiment had entirely failed. They sought to make wealth accumulate --- and they made men decay. Then instead of confessing the error, and trying to restore the wealth, or attempting to repair the decay, they are trying to cover their first cruel experiment with a more cruel experiment. They put a poisonous plaster on a poisonous wound. Vilest of all, they actually quote the bewilderment produced among the poor by their first blunder as a reason for allowing them to blunder again. They are apparently ready to arrest all the opponents of their system as mad, merely because the system was maddening. Suppose a captain had collected volunteers in a hot, waste country by the assurance that he could lead them to water, and knew where to meet the rest of his regiment. Suppose he led them wrong, to a place where the regiment could not be for days, and there was no water. And suppose sunstroke struck them down on the sand man after man, and they kicked and danced and raved. And, when at last the regiment came, suppose the captain successfully concealed his mistake because all his men had suffered too much from it to testify to its ever having occurred. What would you think of the gallant captain? It is pretty much what I think of this particular captain of industry.

Of course, nobody supposes that all Capitalists, or most Capitalists, are conscious of any such intellectual trick. Most of them are as much bewildered as the battered proletariat; but there are some who are less well-meaning and more mean. And these are leading their more generous colleagues towards the fulfilment of this ungenerous evasion, if not towards the comprehension of it. Now a ruler of the Capitalist civilization, who had come to consider the idea of ultimately herding and breeding the workers like cattle, has certainly contemporary problems to review. He has to consider what forces still exist in the modern world for the frustration of his design. The first question is how much remains of the old ideal of individual liberty. The second question is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarian ideas as may be implied in Socialism. The third is whether there is any power of resistance in the tradition of the populace itself. These three questions for the future I shall consider in their order in the final chapters that follow. It is enough to say here that I think the progress of these ideals has broken down at the precise point where they will fail to prevent the experiment. Briefly, the progress will have deprived the Capitalist of his old Individualist scruples, without committing him to his new Collectivist obligations. He is in a very perilous position; for he has ceased to be a Liberal without becoming a Socialist, and the bridge by which he was crossing has broken above an abyss of Anarchy.

Il punto importante, tuttavia, è che vi è più realtà e più realismo nelle più stravaganti ed eleganti vecchie finzioni sui duchi diseredati e sulle figlie perdute da tempo, di quanto ve ne sia in questo tentativo eugenetico di rendere i poveri tutti d’un pezzo — una sorta di nera escrescenza fungina che va incessantemente crescendo nell’abisso. Vi è una facile beffa a spese delle povere padrone di casa: che dicono sempre di aver visto giorni migliori. Nove volte su dieci lo dicono perché è vero. Che cosa si può dire della gran massa degli inglesi, da parte di chiunque conosca un po’ di storia, se non che essi hanno visto giorni migliori? E la pretesa della padrona di casa non è snob, ma piuttosto animosa; è la sua testimonianza alla verità contenuta nei vecchi racconti di cui ho parlato: che ella non dovrebbe essere così povera o di così servile condizione; che una persona normale dovrebbe avere più proprietà e più potere nello Stato di così. Simili sogni di perduta dignità sono forse le uniche cose che si frappongono tra noi e il paradiso da allevamento di bestiame ora promesso. Né tali sogni sono in alcun modo impotenti. Ricordo che il signor T. P. O’Connor scrisse un interessante articolo su Madame Humbert, nel corso del quale disse che i contadini irlandesi, e probabilmente la maggior parte dei contadini, tendevano ad avere una leggenda familiare semi-fittizia su una tenuta cui avevano diritto. Questo fu scritto nel tempo in cui i contadini irlandesi erano privi di terra nella loro terra; e l’illusione appariva senza dubbio tanto più divertente ai proprietari terrieri che li governavano e agli usurai che governavano i proprietari terrieri. Ma il sogno ha conquistato le realtà. Le fantasma fattorie si sono materializzate. Semplicemente affermando tenacemente il genere di orgoglio che viene dopo una caduta, ricordando l’antica civiltà e rifiutando la nuova, tornando a un’antica rivendicazione che alla maggior parte degli inglesi pareva la menzogna di un gestore di squallida pensione a Margate — con tutto questo gli irlandesi hanno ottenuto ciò che volevano, in solido fango e torba. Quella tenuta immaginaria ha conquistato i Tre Stati del Regno.

Ma l’inglese senza tetto non deve nemmeno ricordare una casa. Ben lungi dall’essere la sua casa il suo castello, egli non deve avere nemmeno un castello in aria. Non deve avere memorie; ecco perché non gli si insegna alcuna storia. Perché non gli si dice nulla della verità sulla civiltà medievale se non alcune crudeltà ed errori di chimica? Perché un borghese medievale non compare mai finché non può comparire in camicia e con un cappio? Perché un monastero medievale non compare mai finché non è abbastanza «corrotto» da scandalizzare l’innocenza di Enrico VIII? Perché sentiamo parlare di una sola carta — quella dei baroni — e non una parola delle carte dei falegnami, dei fabbri, dei carpentieri navali e di tutti gli altri? La ragione è che al contadino inglese non solo non è permesso avere una tenuta, non gli è nemmeno permesso di averne perduta una. Il passato dev’essere dipinto nero come la pece, affinché sia peggiore del presente.

Vi è una cosa forte, sorprendente, saliente riguardo all’Eugenetica, ed è la sua meschinità. La ricchezza, e la scienza sociale sostenuta dalla ricchezza, avevano tentato un esperimento disumano. L’esperimento era fallito completamente. Cercarono di far accumulare la ricchezza — e fecero decadere gli uomini. Poi, invece di confessare l’errore, e di cercare di ripristinare la ricchezza, o di tentare di riparare la decadenza, cercano di coprire il loro primo crudele esperimento con un esperimento più crudele. Applicano un cerotto avvelenato a una ferita avvelenata. Cosa più vile di tutte, essi addirittura citano lo smarrimento prodotto tra i poveri dal loro primo abbaglio come ragione per permettere loro di sbagliare di nuovo. Sono a quanto pare pronti ad arrestare come pazzi tutti gli oppositori del loro sistema, semplicemente perché il sistema faceva impazzire. Supponiamo che un capitano avesse radunato dei volontari in un paese caldo e desolato con l’assicurazione di poterli condurre all’acqua, e sapesse dove incontrare il resto del suo reggimento. Supponiamo che li avesse condotti male, in un luogo dove il reggimento non poteva trovarsi per giorni, e non vi era acqua. E supponiamo che l’insolazione li avesse abbattuti sulla sabbia uno dopo l’altro, e che essi scalciassero e danzassero e delirassero. E, quando alla fine il reggimento giungeva, supponiamo che il capitano avesse celato con successo il suo errore perché tutti i suoi uomini avevano troppo sofferto a causa di esso per testimoniare che fosse mai avvenuto. Che cosa pensereste del galante capitano? È pressappoco ciò che io penso di questo particolare capitano d’industria.

Naturalmente, nessuno suppone che tutti i capitalisti, o la maggior parte dei capitalisti, siano consapevoli di un simile trucco intellettuale. La maggior parte di essi è tanto smarrita quanto il bastonato proletariato; ma ve ne sono alcuni che sono meno bene intenzionati e più meschini. E questi conducono i loro più generosi colleghi verso il compimento di questa gretta evasione, se non verso la comprensione di essa. Ora, un governante della civiltà capitalistica, giunto a considerare l’idea di ammassare e allevare infine gli operai come bestiame, ha certamente problemi contemporanei da esaminare. Deve considerare quali forze esistano ancora nel mondo moderno per la frustrazione del suo disegno. La prima questione è quanto rimanga del vecchio ideale della libertà individuale. La seconda questione è fino a che punto la mente moderna sia impegnata in quelle idee egualitarie che possono essere implicite nel Socialismo. La terza è se vi sia qualche potere di resistenza nella tradizione del popolo stesso. Queste tre questioni per il futuro le considererò nel loro ordine nei capitoli finali che seguono. Basti dire qui che io penso che il progresso di questi ideali si sia arrestato proprio nel punto in cui essi mancheranno di impedire l’esperimento. In breve, il progresso avrà privato il capitalista dei suoi vecchi scrupoli individualisti, senza vincolarlo ai suoi nuovi obblighi collettivisti. Egli si trova in una posizione assai perigliosa; poiché ha cessato di essere un Liberale senza diventare un Socialista, e il ponte per cui stava passando si è spezzato sopra un abisso di Anarchia.

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VI

THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY

If such a thing as the Eugenic sociology had been suggested in the period from Fox to Gladstone, it would have been far more fiercely repudiated by the reformers than by the Conservatives. If Tories had regarded it as an insult to marriage, Radicals would have far more resolutely regarded it as an insult to citizenship. But in the interval we have suffered from a process resembling a sort of mystical parricide, such as is told of so many gods, and is true of so many great ideas. Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended. Men merely finding themselves free found themselves free to dispute the value of freedom. But the important point to seize about this reactionary scepticism is that as it is bound to be unlimited in theory, so it is bound to be unlimited in practice. In other words, the modern mind is set in an attitude which would enable it to advance, not only towards Eugenic legislation, but towards any conceivable or inconceivable extravagances of Eugenics.

Those who reply to any plea for freedom invariably fall into a certain trap. I have debated with numberless different people on these matters, and I confess I find it amusing to see them tumbling into it one after another. I remember discussing it before a club of very active and intelligent Suffragists, and I cast it here for convenience in the form which it there assumed. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I say that to take away a poor man’s pot of beer is to take away a poor man’s personal liberty, it is very vital to note what is the usual or almost universal reply. People hardly ever do reply, for some reason or other, by saying that a man’s liberty consists of such and such things, but that beer is an exception that cannot be classed among them, for such and such reasons. What they almost in variably do say is something like this. “After all, what is liberty? Man must live as a member of a society, and must obey those laws which, etc., etc.” In other words, they collapse into a complete confession that they are attacking all liberty and any liberty; that they do deny the very existence or the very possibility of liberty. In the very form of the answer they admit the full scope of the accusation against them. In trying to rebut the smaller accusation, they plead guilty to the larger one.

This distinction is very important, as can be seen from any practical parallel. Suppose we wake up in the middle of the night and find that a neighbor has entered the house not by the front-door but by the skylight; we may suspect that he has come after the fine old family jewellery. We may be reassured if he can refer it to a really exceptional event; as that he fell on to the roof out of an aeroplane, or climbed on to the roof to escape from a mad dog. Short of the incredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for an extraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shall hardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistful fashion and says, “After all, what is property? Why should material objects be thus artificially attached, etc., etc.?” We shall merely realize that his attitude allows of his taking the jewellery and everything else. Or if the neighbour approaches us carrying a large knife dripping with blood, we may be convinced by his story that he killed another neighbour in self-defence, that the quiet gentleman next door was really a homicidal maniac. We shall know that homicidal mania is exceptional and that we ourselves are so happy as not to suffer from it, and being free from the disease may be free from the danger. But it will not soothe us for the man with the gory knife to say softly and pensively, “After all, what is human life? Why should we cling to it? Brief at the best, sad at the brightest, it is itself but a disease from which, etc., etc.” We shall perceive that the sceptic is in a mood not only to murder us but to massacre everybody in the street. Exactly the same effect which would be produced by the questions of “What is property?” and “What is life?” is produced by the question of “What is liberty?” It leaves the questioner free to disregard any liberty, or in other words to take any liberties. The very thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he may choose to do. If he gags a man to prevent him from indulging in profane swearing, or locks him in the coal cellar to guard against his going on the spree, he can still be satisfied with saying “After all, what is liberty? Man is a member of, etc., etc.”

That is the problem, and that is why there is now no protection against Eugenic or any other experiments. If the men who took away beer as an unlawful pleasure had paused for a moment to define the lawful pleasures, there might be a different situation. If the men who had denied one liberty had taken the opportunity to affirm other liberties, there might be some defence for them. But it never occurs to them to admit any liberties at all. It never so much as crosses their minds. Hence the excuse for the last oppression will always serve as well as for the next oppression; and to that tyranny there can be no end.

Hence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secret and sacred place of personal freedom, where no sane man ever dreamed of seeing it; and especially the sanctuary of sex. It is as easy to take away a man’s wife or baby as to take away his beer when you can say “What is liberty?”; just as it is easy to cut off his head as to cut off his hair if you are free to say “What is life?” There is no rational philosophy of human rights generally disseminated among the populace, to which we can appeal in defence even of the most intimate or individual things that anybody can imagine. For so far as there was a vague principle in these things, that principle has been wholly changed. It used to be said that a man could have liberty, so long as it did not interfere with the liberty of others. This did afford some rough justification for the ordinary legal view of the man with the pot of beer. For instance, it was logical to allow some degree of distinction between beer and tea, on the ground that a man may be moved by excess of beer to throw the pot at somebody’s head. And it may be said that the spinster is seldom moved by excess of tea to throw the tea-pot at anybody’s head. But the whole ground of argument is now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to others by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking the beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that the Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control all the habits of all the citizens, and among the rest their habits in the matter of sex.

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VI

L’ECLISSI DELLA LIBERTÀ

Se una cosa come la sociologia eugenetica fosse stata proposta nel periodo da Fox a Gladstone, sarebbe stata assai più ferocemente ripudiata dai riformatori che dai conservatori. Se i Tory l’avessero considerata un insulto al matrimonio, i Radicali l’avrebbero assai più risolutamente considerata un insulto alla cittadinanza. Ma nell’intervallo abbiamo sofferto un processo simile a una sorta di parricidio mistico, come si narra di tanti dèi, ed è vero di tante grandi idee. La libertà ha prodotto lo scetticismo, e lo scetticismo ha distrutto la libertà. Gli amanti della libertà pensavano di lasciarla illimitata, quando la lasciavano soltanto indefinita. Pensavano di lasciarla soltanto indefinita, quando in realtà la lasciavano indifesa. Gli uomini, semplicemente trovandosi liberi, si trovarono liberi di contestare il valore della libertà. Ma il punto importante da cogliere riguardo a questo scetticismo reazionario è che, come è destinato a essere illimitato in teoria, così è destinato a essere illimitato in pratica. In altre parole, la mente moderna è disposta in un atteggiamento che le consentirebbe di avanzare, non solo verso una legislazione eugenetica, ma verso qualsiasi concepibile o inconcepibile stravaganza dell’Eugenetica.

Coloro che replicano a qualsiasi appello per la libertà cadono invariabilmente in una certa trappola. Ho discusso con innumerevoli persone diverse su queste materie, e confesso che trovo divertente vederle inciampare in essa una dopo l’altra. Ricordo di averne discusso davanti a un circolo di suffragiste assai attive e intelligenti, e la getto qui per comodità nella forma che assunse in quella sede. Supponiamo, per amor di discussione, che io dica che togliere a un pover’uomo il suo boccale di birra è togliere a un pover’uomo la sua libertà personale: è assai importante notare quale sia la solita, anzi quasi universale, replica. La gente quasi mai replica, per una ragione o per l’altra, dicendo che la libertà di un uomo consiste in questa e in quella cosa, ma che la birra è un’eccezione che non può essere annoverata tra esse, per queste e queste ragioni. Ciò che quasi invariabilmente dicono è qualcosa di simile a questo. «In fondo, che cos’è la libertà? L’uomo deve vivere come membro di una società, e deve obbedire a quelle leggi che, eccetera, eccetera». In altre parole, essi crollano in una completa confessione di attaccare ogni libertà e qualsiasi libertà; di negare l’esistenza stessa o la possibilità stessa della libertà. Nella forma stessa della risposta ammettono l’intera portata dell’accusa contro di loro. Nel tentativo di confutare l’accusa minore, si dichiarano colpevoli di quella maggiore.

Questa distinzione è assai importante, come si può vedere da qualsiasi parallelo pratico. Supponiamo di svegliarci nel mezzo della notte e di scoprire che un vicino è entrato nella casa non dalla porta d’ingresso ma dal lucernario; possiamo sospettare che sia venuto per i bei vecchi gioielli di famiglia. Possiamo essere rassicurati se egli può ricondurlo a un evento davvero eccezionale; come che sia caduto sul tetto da un aeroplano, o che sia salito sul tetto per sfuggire a un cane rabbioso. A parte l’incredibile, quanto più strana la storia tanto migliore la scusa; poiché un evento straordinario richiede una scusa straordinaria. Ma difficilmente saremo rassicurati se egli si limita a fissarci in modo sognante e malinconico e dice: «In fondo, che cos’è la proprietà? Perché gli oggetti materiali dovrebbero essere così artificialmente vincolati, eccetera, eccetera?». Ci renderemo semplicemente conto che il suo atteggiamento gli consente di prendere i gioielli e ogni altra cosa. Oppure, se il vicino si avvicina a noi reggendo un grosso coltello gocciolante di sangue, possiamo essere convinti dalla sua storia che ha ucciso un altro vicino per legittima difesa, che il quieto gentiluomo della porta accanto era in realtà un maniaco omicida. Sapremo che la mania omicida è eccezionale e che noi stessi siamo tanto felici da non soffrirne, ed essendo liberi dalla malattia possiamo essere liberi dal pericolo. Ma non ci consolerà che l’uomo dal coltello insanguinato dica sommessamente e pensosamente: «In fondo, che cos’è la vita umana? Perché dovremmo aggrapparci ad essa? Breve nel migliore dei casi, triste nel più luminoso, essa stessa non è che una malattia da cui, eccetera, eccetera». Ci accorgeremo che lo scettico è in vena non solo di assassinarci ma di massacrare chiunque per la strada. Esattamente lo stesso effetto che sarebbe prodotto dalle domande «Che cos’è la proprietà?» e «Che cos’è la vita?» è prodotto dalla domanda «Che cos’è la libertà?». Essa lascia chi interroga libero di ignorare qualsiasi libertà, ovvero di prendersi qualsiasi libertà. La cosa stessa che egli dice è una scusa anticipata per qualsiasi cosa possa scegliere di fare. Se imbavaglia un uomo per impedirgli di abbandonarsi a bestemmie profane, o lo chiude nella cantina del carbone per premunirsi contro le sue baldorie, può pur sempre accontentarsi di dire: «In fondo, che cos’è la libertà? L’uomo è membro di, eccetera, eccetera».

Questo è il problema, ed ecco perché ora non vi è alcuna protezione contro gli esperimenti eugenetici o di qualsiasi altro genere. Se gli uomini che tolsero la birra come piacere illecito si fossero fermati un momento a definire i piaceri leciti, la situazione potrebbe essere diversa. Se gli uomini che avevano negato una libertà avessero colto l’occasione per affermare altre libertà, vi potrebbe essere qualche difesa per loro. Ma non viene mai loro in mente di ammettere alcuna libertà. Non attraversa nemmeno lontanamente le loro menti. Perciò la scusa per l’ultima oppressione servirà sempre altrettanto bene che per la prossima oppressione; e a quella tirannia non vi può essere fine.

Perciò la tirannia ha compiuto un solo passo per raggiungere il segreto e sacro luogo della libertà personale, dove nessun uomo sano di mente sognò mai di vederla; e specialmente il santuario del sesso. È facile togliere a un uomo la moglie o il figlio quanto togliergli la birra, quando si può dire «Che cos’è la libertà?»; così com’è facile tagliargli la testa quanto tagliargli i capelli, se si è liberi di dire «Che cos’è la vita?». Non vi è alcuna razionale filosofia dei diritti umani generalmente diffusa tra il popolo, alla quale possiamo appellarci in difesa persino delle cose più intime o individuali che chiunque possa immaginare. Poiché, in quanto vi era un vago principio in queste cose, quel principio è stato interamente mutato. Si usava dire che un uomo poteva avere libertà, purché essa non interferisse con la libertà altrui. Questo forniva effettivamente una certa rozza giustificazione alla comune veduta legale dell’uomo col boccale di birra. Per esempio, era logico ammettere un certo grado di distinzione tra la birra e il tè, sulla base che un uomo può essere indotto da un eccesso di birra a scagliare il boccale in testa a qualcuno. E si può dire che la zitella è di rado indotta da un eccesso di tè a scagliare la teiera in testa a qualcuno. Ma l’intero fondamento della discussione è ora mutato. Poiché la gente non considera ciò che l’ubriaco fa agli altri scagliando il boccale, ma ciò che fa a se stesso bevendo la birra. L’argomento si fonda sulla salute; e si dice che il Governo deve tutelare la salute della comunità. E nel momento in cui ciò si dice, cessa di esservi l’ombra di una differenza tra la birra e il tè. Le persone possono certamente rovinarsi la salute col tè o col tabacco o con venti altre cose. E non vi è scampo per il logico igienista se non frenarle e regolarle tutte. Se deve controllare la salute della comunità, deve necessariamente controllare tutte le abitudini di tutti i cittadini, e fra le altre le loro abitudini in fatto di sesso.

But there is more than this. It is not only true that it is the last liberties of man that are being taken away; and not merely his first or most superficial liberties. It is also inevitable that the last liberties should be taken first. It is inevitable that the most private matters should be most under public coercion. This inverse variation is very important, though very little realized. If a man’s personal health is a public concern, his most private acts are more public than his most public acts. The official must deal more directly with his cleaning his teeth in the morning than with his using his tongue in the market place. The inspector must interfere more with how he sleeps in the middle of the night than with how he works in the course of the day. The private citizen must have much less to say about his bath or his bedroom window than about his vote or his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a private detective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in public affairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he should sneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All this and things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that the State must make itself responsible for the health of the citizen. But the point is that the policeman must deal primarily and promptly with the citizen in his relation to his home, and only indirectly and more doubtfully with the citizen in his relation to his city. By the whole logic of this test, the king must hear what is said in the inner chamber and hardly notice what is proclaimed from the house-tops. We heard of a revolution that turns everything upside down. But this is almost literally a revolution that turns everything inside out.

If a wary reactionary of the tradition of Metternich had wished in the nineteenth century to reverse the democratic tendency, he would naturally have begun by depriving the democracy of its margin of more dubious powers over more distant things. He might well begin, for instance, by removing the control of foreign affairs from popular assemblies; and there is a case for saying that a people may understand its own affairs, without knowing anything whatever about foreign affairs. Then he might centralize great national questions, leaving a great deal of local government in local questions. This would proceed so for a long time before it occurred to the blackest terrorist of the despotic ages to interfere with a man’s own habits in his own house. But the new sociologists and legislators are, by the nature of their theory, bound to begin where the despots leave off, even if they leave off where the despots begin. For them, as they would put it, the first things must be the very fountains of life, love and birth and babyhood; and these are always covered fountains, flowing in the quiet courts of the home. For them, as Mr. H. G. Wells put it, life itself may be regarded merely as a tissue of births. Thus they are coerced by their own rational principle to begin all coercion at the other end, at the inside end. What happens to the outside end, the external and remote powers of the citizen, they do not very much care; and it is probable that the democratic institutions of recent centuries will be allowed to decay in undisturbed dignity for a century or two more. Thus our civilization will find itself in an interesting situation, not without humour; in which the citizen is still supposed to wield imperial powers over the ends of the earth, but has admittedly no power over his own body and soul at all. He will still be consulted by politicians about whether opium is good for Chinamen, but not whether ale is good for him. He will be cross-examined for his opinions about the danger of allowing Kamshatkal to have a war-fleet, but not about allowing his own child to have a wooden sword. Above all, he will be consulted about the delicate diplomatic crisis created by the proposed marriage of the Emperor of China, and not allowed to marry as he pleases.

Part of this prophecy or probability has already been accomplished; the rest of it, in the absence of any protest, is in process of accomplishment. It would be easy to give an almost endless catalogue of examples, to show how, in dealing with the poorer classes at least, coercion has already come near to a direct control of the relations of the sexes. But I am much more concerned in this chapter to point out that all these things have been adopted in principle, even where they have not been adopted in practice. It is much more vital to realize that the reformers have possessed themselves of a principle, which will cover all such things if it be granted, and which is not sufficiently comprehended to be contradicted. It is a principle whereby the deepest things of flesh and spirit must have the most direct relation with the dictatorship of the State. They must have it, by the whole reason and rationale upon which the thing depends. It is a system that might be symbolized by the telephone from headquarters standing by a man’s bed. He must have a relation to Government like his relation to God. That is, the more he goes into the inner chambers, and the more he closes the doors, the more he is alone with the law. The social machinery which makes such a State uniform and submissive will be worked outwards from the household as from a handle, or a single mechanical knob or button. In a horrible sense, loaded with fear and shame and every detail of dishonour, it will be true to say that charity begins at home.

Charity will begin at home in the sense that all home children will be like charity children. Philanthropy will begin at home, for all householders will be like paupers. Police administration will begin at home, for all citizens will be like convicts. And when health and the humours of daily life have passed into the domain of this social discipline, when it is admitted that the community must primarily control the primary habits, when all law begins, so to speak, next to the skin or nearest the vitals --- then indeed it will appear absurd that marriage and maternity should not be similarly ordered. Then indeed it will seem to be illogical, and it will be illogical, that love should be free when life has lost its freedom.

Ma vi è di più. Non solo è vero che sono le ultime libertà dell’uomo a essere sottratte; e non semplicemente le sue prime o più superficiali libertà. È anche inevitabile che le ultime libertà siano sottratte per prime. È inevitabile che le questioni più private siano le più soggette alla coercizione pubblica. Questa variazione inversa è assai importante, benché assai poco compresa. Se la salute personale di un uomo è un affare pubblico, i suoi atti più privati sono più pubblici dei suoi atti più pubblici. Il funzionario deve occuparsi più direttamente di come egli si lava i denti al mattino che di come usa la lingua nella piazza del mercato. L’ispettore deve interferire più con come egli dorme nel mezzo della notte che con come lavora nel corso del giorno. Il privato cittadino deve avere molto meno voce in capitolo sul suo bagno o sulla finestra della sua camera da letto che sul suo voto o sul suo conto in banca. Il poliziotto deve essere in un nuovo senso un investigatore privato; e pedinarlo negli affari privati piuttosto che in quelli pubblici. Un poliziotto deve chiudergli le porte alle spalle per paura che starnutisca, o cacciargli cuscini sotto per paura che russi. Tutto questo e cose ben più fantastiche seguono dalla semplice formula che lo Stato deve rendersi responsabile della salute del cittadino. Ma il punto è che il poliziotto deve occuparsi primariamente e prontamente del cittadino nella sua relazione con la sua casa, e solo indirettamente e più dubbiosamente del cittadino nella sua relazione con la sua città. Per l’intera logica di questo criterio, il re deve udire ciò che si dice nella camera interna e a stento notare ciò che si proclama dai tetti. Abbiamo sentito parlare di una rivoluzione che capovolge ogni cosa. Ma questa è quasi letteralmente una rivoluzione che rivolta ogni cosa dall’interno all’esterno.

Se un cauto reazionario della tradizione di Metternich avesse voluto nell’Ottocento invertire la tendenza democratica, avrebbe naturalmente cominciato col privare la democrazia del suo margine di poteri più dubbi su cose più distanti. Potrebbe ben cominciare, per esempio, col sottrarre il controllo degli affari esteri alle assemblee popolari; e vi è motivo di dire che un popolo può comprendere i propri affari, senza saperne nulla di nulla degli affari esteri. Poi potrebbe accentrare le grandi questioni nazionali, lasciando gran parte del governo locale nelle questioni locali. Questo procederebbe così per lungo tempo prima che venisse in mente al più nero terrorista delle epoche dispotiche di interferire con le abitudini di un uomo nella sua propria casa. Ma i nuovi sociologi e legislatori sono, per la natura della loro teoria, tenuti a cominciare dove i despoti smettono, anche se smettono dove i despoti cominciano. Per loro, come direbbero, le prime cose devono essere le fonti stesse della vita, l’amore e la nascita e l’infanzia; e queste sono sempre fonti coperte, che scorrono nelle quiete corti della casa. Per loro, come dice il signor H. G. Wells, la vita stessa può essere considerata semplicemente come un tessuto di nascite. Così sono costretti dal loro stesso principio razionale a cominciare ogni coercizione dall’altro capo, dal capo interno. Che cosa accada al capo esterno, ai poteri esterni e remoti del cittadino, non importa loro granché; ed è probabile che alle istituzioni democratiche dei secoli recenti sarà permesso di decadere in indisturbata dignità per un secolo o due ancora. Così la nostra civiltà si troverà in una situazione interessante, non priva di umorismo; in cui si suppone che il cittadino brandisca ancora imperiali poteri sui confini della terra, ma dichiaratamente non abbia alcun potere sul proprio corpo e sulla propria anima. Sarà ancora consultato dai politici sull’opportunità che l’oppio faccia bene ai cinesi, ma non che la birra faccia bene a lui. Sarà interrogato sulle sue opinioni circa il pericolo di permettere al Kamchatka di avere una flotta da guerra, ma non circa il permettere al proprio figlio di avere una spada di legno. Soprattutto, sarà consultato sulla delicata crisi diplomatica creata dal proposto matrimonio dell’Imperatore di Cina, e non gli sarà permesso di sposarsi a suo piacimento.

Parte di questa profezia o probabilità è già stata compiuta; il resto, in assenza di qualsiasi protesta, è in corso di compimento. Sarebbe facile fornire un catalogo quasi infinito di esempi, per mostrare come, nel trattare le classi più povere almeno, la coercizione sia già giunta vicino a un diretto controllo delle relazioni tra i sessi. Ma in questo capitolo mi preme molto di più far notare che tutte queste cose sono state adottate in linea di principio, anche là dove non sono state adottate in pratica. È assai più vitale rendersi conto che i riformatori si sono impossessati di un principio, che coprirà tutte queste cose se lo si concede, e che non è compreso a sufficienza per essere contraddetto. È un principio per cui le cose più profonde della carne e dello spirito devono avere la più diretta relazione con la dittatura dello Stato. Devono averla, per tutta la ragione e il fondamento razionale su cui la cosa si regge. È un sistema che potrebbe essere simboleggiato dal telefono del quartier generale posto accanto al letto di un uomo. Egli deve avere una relazione col Governo come la sua relazione con Dio. Cioè, quanto più egli si ritira nelle camere interne, e quanto più chiude le porte, tanto più è solo con la legge. Il macchinario sociale che rende un simile Stato uniforme e sottomesso sarà azionato verso l’esterno a partire dal focolare domestico come da una manovella, o da un unico pomello o pulsante meccanico. In un senso orribile, carico di paura e di vergogna e di ogni dettaglio di disonore, sarà vero dire che la carità comincia in casa.

La carità comincerà in casa nel senso che tutti i figli di casa saranno come figli della carità pubblica. La filantropia comincerà in casa, poiché tutti i capifamiglia saranno come indigenti. L’amministrazione di polizia comincerà in casa, poiché tutti i cittadini saranno come galeotti. E quando la salute e gli umori della vita quotidiana saranno passati nel dominio di questa disciplina sociale, quando si ammetterà che la comunità deve primariamente controllare le abitudini primarie, quando ogni legge comincerà, per così dire, a fior di pelle o al più prossimo delle viscere — allora davvero apparirà assurdo che il matrimonio e la maternità non debbano essere similmente regolati. Allora davvero sembrerà illogico, e sarà illogico, che l’amore sia libero quando la vita ha perduto la sua libertà.

So passed, to all appearance, from the minds of men the strange dream and fantasy called freedom. Whatever be the future of these evolutionary experiments and their effect on civilization, there is one land at least that has something to mourn. For us in England something will have perished which our fathers valued all the more because they hardly troubled to name it; and whatever be the stars of a more universal destiny, the great star of our night has set. The English had missed many other things that men of the same origins had achieved or retained. Not to them was given, like the French, to establish eternal communes and clear codes of equality; not to them, like the South Germans, to keep the popular culture of their songs; not to them, like the Irish, was it given to die daily for a great religion. But a spirit had been with them from the first which fenced, with a hundred quaint customs and legal fictions, the way of a man who wished to walk nameless and alone. It was not for nothing that they forgot all their laws to remember the name of an outlaw, and filled the green heart of England with the figure of Robin Hood. It was not for nothing that even their princes of art and letters had about them something of kings incognito, undiscovered by formal or academic fame; so that no eye can follow the young Shakespeare as he came up the green lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost himself among the lights of London. It is [not] for nothing that the very roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down on a map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the home of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested upon its woodlands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed departed, it matters little that it has been driven out by perversions it had itself permitted, by monsters it had idly let loose. Industrialism and Capitalism and the rage for physical science were English experiments in the sense that the English lent themselves to their encouragement; but there was something else behind them and within them that was not they --- its name was liberty, and it was our life. It may be that this delicate and tenacious spirit has at last evaporated. If so, it matters little what becomes of the external experiments of our nation in later time. That at which we look will be a dead thing alive with its own parasites. The English will have destroyed England.

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VII

THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALISM

Socialism is one of the simplest ideas in the world. It has always puzzled me how there came to be so much bewilderment and misunderstanding and miserable mutual slander about it. At one time I agreed with Socialism, because it was simple. Now I disagree with Socialism, because it is too simple. Yet most of its opponents still seem to treat it, not merely as an iniquity but as a mystery of iniquity, which seems to mystify them even more than it maddens them. It may not seem strange that its antagonists should be puzzled about what it is. It may appear more curious and interesting that its admirers are equally puzzled. Its foes used to denounce Socialism as Anarchy, which is its opposite. Its friends seemed to suppose that it is a sort of optimism, which is almost as much of an opposite. Friends and foes alike talked as if it involved a sort of faith in ideal human nature; why I could never imagine. The Socialist system, in a more special sense than any other, is founded not on optimism but on original sin. It proposes that the State, as the conscience of the community, should possess all primary forms of property; and that obviously on the ground that men cannot be trusted to own or barter or combine or compete without injury to themselves. Just as a State might own all the guns lest people should shoot each other, so this State would own all the gold and land lest they should cheat or rackrent or exploit each other. It seems extraordinarily simple and even obvious; and so it is. It is too obvious to be true. But while it is obvious, it seems almost incredible that anybody ever thought it optimistic.

I am myself primarily opposed to Socialism, or Collectivism or Bolshevism or whatever we call it, for a primary reason not immediately involved here: the ideal of property. I say the ideal and not merely the idea; and this alone disposes of the moral mistake in the matter. It disposes of all the dreary doubts of the Anti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yet drearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I do not admit that private property is a concession to baseness and selfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the most truly popular of all points of honour. But this, though it has everything to do with my plea for a domestic dignity, has nothing to do with this passing summary of the situation of Socialism. I only remark in passing that it is vain for the more vulgar sort of Capitalists, sneering at ideals, to say to me that in order to hate Socialism “You must alter human nature.” I answer “Yes. You must alter it for the worse.”

The clouds were considerably cleared away from the meaning of Socialism by the Fabians of the ‘nineties; by Mr. Bernard Shaw, a sort of anti-romantic Quixote, who charged chivalry as chivalry charged windmills, with Sidney Webb for his Sancho Panza. In so far as these paladins had a castle to defend, we may say that their castle was the Post Office. The red pillar-box was the immovable post against which the irresistible force of Capitalist individualism was arrested. Business men who said that nothing could be managed by the State were forced to admit that they trusted all their business letters and business telegrams to the State.

Così passò, a quanto pare, dalle menti degli uomini quello strano sogno e fantasia chiamato libertà. Qualunque sia il futuro di questi esperimenti evoluzionistici e il loro effetto sulla civiltà, vi è almeno una terra che ha qualcosa da piangere. Per noi in Inghilterra sarà perito qualcosa che i nostri padri stimavano tanto più in quanto si davano appena la pena di nominarlo; e quali che siano le stelle di un destino più universale, la grande stella della nostra notte è tramontata. Gli inglesi avevano mancato molte altre cose che uomini delle medesime origini avevano conseguito o conservato. Non a loro fu concesso, come ai francesi, di fondare eterni comuni e chiari codici di uguaglianza; non a loro, come ai tedeschi del sud, di conservare la cultura popolare delle loro canzoni; non a loro, come agli irlandesi, fu concesso di morire ogni giorno per una grande religione. Ma uno spirito era stato con loro fin dal principio, il quale recintava, con cento bizzarre usanze e finzioni giuridiche, la via di un uomo che desiderasse camminare senza nome e solo. Non fu invano che essi dimenticarono tutte le loro leggi per ricordare il nome di un fuorilegge, e riempirono il verde cuore d’Inghilterra con la figura di Robin Hood. Non fu invano che persino i loro principi dell’arte e delle lettere avevano in sé qualcosa di re in incognito, non scoperti da fama formale o accademica; cosicché nessun occhio può seguire il giovane Shakespeare mentre risaliva i verdi sentieri da Stratford, o il giovane Dickens quando si smarrì per la prima volta tra le luci di Londra. Non è [non] invano che le strade stesse sono tortuose e capricciose, cosicché un uomo che guardasse dall’alto una mappa simile a un labirinto serpentino potrebbe capire di star guardando la patria di un popolo errante. Uno spirito insieme selvaggio e familiare posava sui suoi boschi come un vento in riposo. Se quello spirito è davvero dipartito, poco importa che sia stato scacciato da perversioni che esso stesso aveva permesso, da mostri che aveva pigramente lasciato liberi. L’industrialismo e il capitalismo e la smania per la scienza fisica furono esperimenti inglesi nel senso che gli inglesi si prestarono al loro incoraggiamento; ma vi era qualcos’altro dietro di essi e dentro di essi che non era essi — il suo nome era libertà, ed era la nostra vita. Può darsi che questo spirito delicato e tenace sia finalmente evaporato. Se è così, poco importa che cosa ne sia degli esperimenti esteriori della nostra nazione in un tempo successivo. Ciò che guardiamo sarà una cosa morta brulicante dei suoi propri parassiti. Gli inglesi avranno distrutto l’Inghilterra.

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VII

LA TRASFORMAZIONE DEL SOCIALISMO

Il Socialismo è una delle idee più semplici del mondo. Mi ha sempre lasciato perplesso come sia potuto sorgere intorno ad esso tanto smarrimento e fraintendimento e miserabile calunnia reciproca. Un tempo ero d’accordo col Socialismo, perché era semplice. Ora dissento dal Socialismo, perché è troppo semplice. Eppure la maggior parte dei suoi oppositori sembra ancora trattarlo, non semplicemente come un’iniquità ma come un mistero d’iniquità, che pare sconcertarli ancor più di quanto li faccia infuriare. Può non sembrare strano che i suoi antagonisti siano perplessi su che cosa esso sia. Può apparire più curioso e interessante che i suoi ammiratori siano ugualmente perplessi. I suoi nemici usavano denunciare il Socialismo come Anarchia, che ne è l’opposto. I suoi amici sembravano supporre che sia una sorta di ottimismo, che ne è quasi altrettanto l’opposto. Amici e nemici parlavano allo stesso modo come se esso implicasse una sorta di fede nell’ideale natura umana; il perché non ho mai potuto immaginarlo. Il sistema socialista, in un senso più speciale di qualsiasi altro, si fonda non sull’ottimismo ma sul peccato originale. Esso propone che lo Stato, come coscienza della comunità, debba possedere tutte le forme primarie di proprietà; e ciò evidentemente sulla base che non ci si può fidare che gli uomini possiedano o barattino o si associno o competano senza danno per se stessi. Proprio come uno Stato potrebbe possedere tutte le armi da fuoco affinché le persone non si sparino a vicenda, così questo Stato possiederebbe tutto l’oro e la terra affinché non si imbroglino o non si estorcano affitti esosi o non si sfruttino a vicenda. Sembra straordinariamente semplice e persino ovvio; e così è. È troppo ovvio per essere vero. Ma mentre è ovvio, sembra quasi incredibile che qualcuno lo abbia mai ritenuto ottimista.

Io stesso sono primariamente contrario al Socialismo, o Collettivismo o Bolscevismo o comunque lo si chiami, per una ragione primaria non immediatamente implicata qui: l’ideale della proprietà. Dico l’ideale e non semplicemente l’idea; e questo da solo liquida l’errore morale nella faccenda. Liquida tutti i tetri dubbi degli antisocialisti sul fatto che gli uomini non siano ancora angeli, e tutte le ancor più tetre speranze dei socialisti sul fatto che gli uomini presto saranno superuomini. Non ammetto che la proprietà privata sia una concessione alla bassezza e all’egoismo; io penso che sia un punto d’onore. Penso che sia il più genuinamente popolare di tutti i punti d’onore. Ma questo, benché abbia tutto a che fare con la mia perorazione a favore di una dignità domestica, non ha nulla a che fare con questa fugace sintesi della situazione del Socialismo. Noto solo di sfuggita che è vano, per la specie più volgare di capitalisti, che sogghignano sugli ideali, dirmi che per odiare il Socialismo «bisogna alterare la natura umana». Rispondo: «Sì. Bisogna alterarla in peggio».

Le nubi furono considerevolmente diradate intorno al significato del Socialismo dai Fabiani degli anni Novanta; dal signor Bernard Shaw, una sorta di Chisciotte anti-romantico, che caricava la cavalleria come la cavalleria caricava i mulini a vento, con Sidney Webb per suo Sancho Panza. In quanto questi paladini avessero un castello da difendere, possiamo dire che il loro castello era l’Ufficio Postale. La rossa buca delle lettere era il palo immobile contro cui la forza irresistibile dell’individualismo capitalistico veniva arrestata. Gli uomini d’affari che dicevano che nulla poteva essere amministrato dallo Stato erano costretti ad ammettere che affidavano allo Stato tutte le loro lettere d’affari e i loro telegrammi d’affari.

After all, it was not found necessary to have an office competing with another office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or more picturesque postmen. It was not necessary to efficiency that the postmistress should buy a penny stamp for a halfpenny and sell it for two pence; or that she should haggle and beat customers down about the price of a postal order; or that she should always take tenders for telegrams. There was obviously nothing actually impossible about the State management of national needs; and the Post Office was at least tolerably managed. Though it was not always a model employer, by any means, it might be made so by similar methods. It was not impossible that equitable pay, and even equal pay, could be given to the Post-Master-General and the postman. We had only to extend this rule of public responsibility, and we should escape from all the terror of insecurity and torture of compassion, which hag-rides humanity in the insane extremes of economic inequality and injustice. As Mr. Shaw put it, “A man must save Society’s honour before he can save his own.”

That was one side of the argument: that the change would remove inequality; and there was an answer on the other side. It can be stated most truly by putting another model institution and edifice side by side with the Post Office. It is even more of an ideal republic, or commonwealth without competition or private profit. It supplies its citizens not only with the stamps but with clothes and food and lodging, and all they require. It observes considerable level of equality in these things; notably in the clothes. It not only supervises the letters but all the other human communications; notable the sort of evil communications that corrupt good manners. This twin model to the Post Office is called the Prison. And much of the scheme for a model State was regarded by its opponents as a scheme for a model prison; good because it fed men equally, but less acceptable since it imprisoned them equally.

It is better to be in a bad prison than in a good one. From the standpoint of the prisoner this is not at all a paradox; if only because in a bad prison he is more likely to escape. But apart from that, a man was in many ways better off in the old dirty and corrupt prison, where he could bribe turnkeys to bring him drink and meet fellow prisoners to drink with. Now that is exactly the difference between the present system and the proposed system. Nobody worth talking about respects the present system. Capitalism is a corrupt prison. That is the best that can be said for Capitalism. But it is something to be said for it; for a man is a little freer in that corrupt prison than he would be in a complete prison. As a man can find one jailer more lax than another, so he could find one employer more kind than another; he has at least a choice of tyrants. In the other case he finds the same tyrant at every turn. Mr. Shaw and other rational Socialists have agreed that the State would be in practice government by a small group. Any independent man who disliked that group would find his foe waiting for him at the end of every road.

It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as decreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State could provide homes and meals for all, on the other it was answered that this could only be done by State officials who would inspect houses and regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the most interesting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do everything that had even been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that had ever been desired in it. Since it was supposed to gain equality at the sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possible to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed, there was not the faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality. But there was a very spirited and vigourous effort to eliminate liberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and interferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating those whom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was the Capitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted in every sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to the wiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easy to proceed more promptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gone through the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. After all it was easy to inspect the house without having helped to build it; it was even possible, with luck, to inspect the house in time to prevent it being built. All that is described in the documents of the Housing Problem; for the people of this age loved problems and hated solutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing the dinner. All that can be found in the documents of what is called Temperance Reform.

In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists themselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over bodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a Capitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in the smallest degree diminish the inequalities of a Capitalist State. It simply destroyed such individual liberties as remained among its victims. It did not enable any man to build a better house; it only limited the houses he might live in --- or how he might manage to live there, forbidding him to keep pigs or poultry or to sell beer or cider. It did not even add anything to a man’s wages; it only took away something from a man’s wages and locked it up, whether he liked it or not, in a sort of money-box which was regarded as a medicine-chest. It does not send food into the house to feed the children; it only sends an inspector into the house to punish the parents for having no food to feed them. It does not see that they have got a fire; it only punishes them for not having a fireguard. It does not even occur to it to provide the fireguard.

In fondo, non si trovò necessario avere un ufficio in concorrenza con un altro ufficio, che cercasse di emettere francobolli più rosati o di mandare in giro postini più pittoreschi. Non era necessario all’efficienza che la direttrice dell’ufficio postale comprasse un francobollo da un penny per mezzo penny e lo vendesse per due penny; o che mercanteggiasse e strappasse ai clienti il prezzo di un vaglia postale; o che indicesse sempre gare d’appalto per i telegrammi. Evidentemente non vi era nulla di realmente impossibile nella gestione statale dei bisogni nazionali; e l’Ufficio Postale era almeno tollerabilmente gestito. Benché non fosse affatto sempre un datore di lavoro modello, lo si poteva rendere tale con metodi analoghi. Non era impossibile che una retribuzione equa, e persino uguale, fosse data al Direttore Generale delle Poste e al postino. Bastava estendere questa regola di responsabilità pubblica, e saremmo sfuggiti a tutto il terrore dell’insicurezza e alla tortura della compassione, che opprime l’umanità come un incubo negli insensati estremi della disuguaglianza e dell’ingiustizia economica. Come dice il signor Shaw: «Un uomo deve salvare l’onore della Società prima di poter salvare il proprio».

Questo era un lato dell’argomento: che il cambiamento avrebbe rimosso la disuguaglianza; e vi era una risposta dall’altro lato. La si può enunciare nel modo più veritiero ponendo un’altra istituzione ed edificio modello accanto all’Ufficio Postale. Esso è ancora di più una repubblica ideale, o comunità senza concorrenza né profitto privato. Fornisce ai suoi cittadini non solo i francobolli ma i vestiti e il cibo e l’alloggio, e tutto ciò di cui hanno bisogno. Osserva un considerevole livello di uguaglianza in queste cose; segnatamente nei vestiti. Non solo sorveglia le lettere ma tutte le altre comunicazioni umane; segnatamente quella sorta di cattive comunicazioni che corrompono i buoni costumi. Questo modello gemello dell’Ufficio Postale si chiama Prigione. E gran parte del piano per uno Stato modello era considerata dai suoi oppositori come un piano per una prigione modello; buona perché sfamava gli uomini in modo uguale, ma meno accettabile poiché li imprigionava in modo uguale.

È meglio trovarsi in una cattiva prigione che in una buona. Dal punto di vista del prigioniero questo non è affatto un paradosso; non foss’altro perché in una cattiva prigione è più probabile che egli evada. Ma a parte questo, un uomo stava per molti versi meglio nella vecchia prigione sporca e corrotta, dove poteva corrompere i secondini perché gli portassero da bere e incontrare compagni di prigionia con cui bere. Ora, questa è esattamente la differenza tra il sistema presente e il sistema proposto. Nessuno di cui valga la pena parlare rispetta il sistema presente. Il Capitalismo è una prigione corrotta. Questo è il meglio che si possa dire del Capitalismo. Ma è pur qualcosa da dire a suo favore; poiché un uomo è un po’ più libero in quella prigione corrotta di quanto lo sarebbe in una prigione completa. Come un uomo può trovare un carceriere più lasco di un altro, così potrebbe trovare un datore di lavoro più gentile di un altro; ha almeno una scelta di tiranni. Nell’altro caso trova lo stesso tiranno a ogni svolta. Il signor Shaw e altri socialisti razionali hanno convenuto che lo Stato sarebbe in pratica governato da un piccolo gruppo. Qualsiasi uomo indipendente al quale quel gruppo dispiacesse troverebbe il suo nemico ad attenderlo al termine di ogni strada.

Del Socialismo si può dire, dunque, assai brevemente, che i suoi amici lo raccomandavano in quanto accresceva l’uguaglianza, mentre i suoi nemici gli resistevano in quanto diminuiva la libertà. Da un lato si diceva che lo Stato poteva fornire case e pasti a tutti, dall’altro si rispondeva che ciò poteva essere fatto solo da funzionari statali che avrebbero ispezionato le case e regolato i pasti. Il compromesso alla fine raggiunto fu uno dei casi più interessanti e persino curiosi della storia. Si decise di fare tutto ciò che nel Socialismo era mai stato denunciato, e nulla di ciò che in esso era mai stato desiderato. Poiché si supponeva che esso guadagnasse l’uguaglianza al sacrificio della libertà, procedemmo a dimostrare che era possibile sacrificare la libertà senza guadagnare l’uguaglianza. Anzi, non vi fu il più debole tentativo di guadagnare l’uguaglianza, meno che mai l’uguaglianza economica. Ma vi fu uno sforzo assai animoso e vigoroso di eliminare la libertà, per mezzo di un raccolto interamente nuovo di rozze regolamentazioni e interferenze. Ma non era lo Stato socialista che regolava coloro che sfamava, come bambini o persino come galeotti. Era lo Stato capitalista che faceva incursioni su coloro che aveva calpestato e abbandonato in ogni sorta di tugurio, come fuorilegge o uomini rovinati. Venne in mente ai sociologi più accorti che, in fondo, sarebbe stato facile procedere più prontamente alla principale faccenda di vessare gli uomini, senza aver attraversato la laboriosa faccenda preliminare di sostenerli. In fondo era facile ispezionare la casa senza aver contribuito a costruirla; era persino possibile, con un po’ di fortuna, ispezionare la casa in tempo per impedire che venisse costruita. Tutto ciò è descritto nei documenti del Problema delle Abitazioni; poiché la gente di questa epoca amava i problemi e odiava le soluzioni. Era facile limitare la dieta senza fornire il pranzo. Tutto ciò si può trovare nei documenti di quella che si chiama Riforma della Temperanza.

In breve, la gente decise che era impossibile conseguire alcuno dei beni del Socialismo, ma si consolò conseguendone tutti i mali. Tutta quella disciplina ufficiale, sulla quale gli stessi socialisti erano in dubbio o almeno sulla difensiva, fu ripresa di peso dai capitalisti. Essi hanno ora aggiunto tutte le tirannie burocratiche di uno Stato socialista alle vecchie tirannie plutocratiche di uno Stato capitalista. Poiché il punto vitale è che ciò non diminuì minimamente le disuguaglianze di uno Stato capitalista. Distrusse semplicemente quelle libertà individuali che rimanevano tra le sue vittime. Non mise alcun uomo in grado di costruirsi una casa migliore; si limitò a restringere le case in cui poteva abitare — o il modo in cui poteva riuscire ad abitarvi, proibendogli di allevare maiali o pollame o di vendere birra o sidro. Non aggiunse nemmeno nulla al salario di un uomo; si limitò a togliere qualcosa dal salario di un uomo e a rinchiuderlo, che gli piacesse o no, in una sorta di salvadanaio che veniva considerato un armadietto dei medicinali. Non manda cibo nella casa per sfamare i bambini; manda soltanto un ispettore nella casa per punire i genitori di non avere cibo con cui sfamarli. Non provvede a che essi abbiano un fuoco; li punisce soltanto di non avere un parafuoco. Non le viene nemmeno in mente di fornire il parafuoco.

Now this anomalous situation will probably ultimately evolve into the Servile State of Mr. Belloc’s thesis. The poor will sink into slavery; it might as correctly be said that the poor will rise into slavery. That is to say, sooner or later, it is very probable that the rich will take over the philanthropic as well as the tyrannic side of the bargain; and will feed men like slaves as well as hunting them like outlaws. But for the purpose of my own argument it is not necessary to carry the process so far as this, or indeed any farther than it has already gone. The purely negative stage of interference, at which we have stuck for the present, is in itself quite favourable to all these eugenical experiments. The capitalist whose half-conscious thought and course of action I have simplified into a story in the preceding chapters, finds this insufficient solution quite sufficient for his purposes. What he has felt for a long time is that he must check or improve the reckless and random breeding of the submerged race, which is at once outstripping his requirements and failing to fulfil his needs. Now the anomalous situation has already accustomed him to stopping things. The first interferences with sex need only be negative; and there are already negative interferences without number. So that the study of this stage of Socialism brings us to the same conclusion as that of the ideal of liberty as formally professed by Liberalism. The ideal of liberty is lost, and the ideal of Socialism is changed, till it is a mere excuse for the oppression of the poor.

The first movements for intervention in the deepest domestic concerns of the poor all had this note of negative interference. Official papers were sent round to the mothers in poor streets; papers in which a total stranger asked these respectable women questions which a man would be killed for asking, in the class of what we called gentlemen or in the countries of what were called free men. They were questions supposed to refer to the conditions of maternity; but the point is here that the reformers did not begin by building up those economic or material conditions. They did not attempt to pay money or establish property to create those conditions. They never give anything --- except orders. Another form of the intervention, and one already mentioned, is the kidnapping of children upon the most fantastic excuses of sham psychology. Some people established an apparatus of tests and trick questions; which might make an amusing game of riddles for the family fireside, but seems an insufficient reason for mutilating and dismembering the family. Others became interested in the hopeless moral condition of children born in the economic condition which they did not attempt to improve. They were great on the fact that crime was a disease; and carried on their criminological studies so successfully as to open the reformatory for little boys who played truant; there was not reformatory for reformers. I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.

Finally one thing may be added which is at least clear. Whether or no the organisation of industry will issue positively in a eugenical reconstruction of the family, it has already issued negatively, as in the negations already noted, in a partial destruction of it. It took the form of a propaganda of popular divorce, calculated at least to accustom the masses to a new notion of the shifting and re-grouping of families. I do not discuss the question of divorce here, as I have done elsewhere, in its intrinsic character; I merely note it as one of these negative reforms which have been substituted for positive economic equality. It was preached with a weird hilarity, as if the suicide of love were something not only humane but happy. But it need not be explained, and certainly it need not be denied, that the harassed poor of a diseased industrialism were indeed maintaining marriage under every disadvantage, and often found individual relief in divorce. Industrialism does produce many unhappy marriages, for the same reason that it produces so many unhappy men. But all the reforms were directed to rescuing the industrialism rather than the happiness. Poor couples were to be divorced because they were already divided. Through all this modern muddle there runs the curious principle of sacrificing the ancient uses of things because they do not fit in with the modern abuses. When the tares are found in the wheat, the greatest promptitude and practicality is always shown in burning the wheat and gathering the tares into the barn. And since the serpent coiled about the chalice had dropped his poison in the wine of Cana, analysts were instantly active in the effort to preserve the poison and to pour away the wine.

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VIII

THE END OF THE HOUSEHOLD GOD

The only place where it is possible to find an echo of the mind of the English masses is either in conversation or in comic songs. The latter are obviously the more dubious, but they are the only things recorded and quotable that come anywhere near it. We talk about the popular Press; but in truth there is no popular press. It may be a good thing; but, anyhow, most readers would be mildly surprised if a newspaper leading article were written in the language of a navvy. Sometimes the Press is interested in things in which the democracy is also genuinely interested; such as horse-racing. Sometimes the Press is about as popular as the Press Gang. We talk of Labour leaders in Parliament; but they would be highly unparliamentary if they talked like labourers. The Bolshevists, I believe, profess to promote something that they call “proletarian art,” which only shows that the word Bolshevism can sometimes be abbreviated into bosh. That sort of Bolshevist is not a proletarian, but rather the very thing he accuses everybody also of being. The Bolshevist is above all a bourgeois; a Jewish intellectual of the town. And the real case against industrial intellectualism could hardly be put better than in this very comparison. There has never been such a thing as proletarian art; but there has emphatically been such a thing as peasant art. And the only literature which even reminds us of the real tone and talk of the English working classes is to be found in the comic song of the English music-hall.

Ora, questa anomala situazione probabilmente evolverà infine nello Stato Servile della tesi del signor Belloc. I poveri sprofonderanno nella schiavitù; si potrebbe con altrettanta esattezza dire che i poveri ascenderanno nella schiavitù. Vale a dire che, prima o poi, è assai probabile che i ricchi si assumano il lato filantropico oltre che quello tirannico del patto; e sfameranno gli uomini come schiavi oltre che cacciarli come fuorilegge. Ma ai fini del mio argomento non è necessario spingere il processo fin qui, né in verità più oltre di quanto sia già andato. Il puro e semplice stadio negativo dell’interferenza, al quale ci siamo per il momento arrestati, è di per sé del tutto favorevole a tutti questi esperimenti eugenetici. Il capitalista, il cui pensiero e corso d’azione semiconscio ho semplificato in un racconto nei capitoli precedenti, trova questa insufficiente soluzione del tutto sufficiente ai suoi fini. Ciò che egli sente da lungo tempo è di dover frenare o migliorare la temeraria e casuale riproduzione della razza sommersa, che è insieme in eccesso rispetto alle sue esigenze e insufficiente a soddisfare i suoi bisogni. Ora, la situazione anomala lo ha già abituato a fermare le cose. Le prime interferenze col sesso hanno bisogno di essere soltanto negative; e vi sono già interferenze negative senza numero. Cosicché lo studio di questo stadio del Socialismo ci conduce alla medesima conclusione di quello dell’ideale di libertà come formalmente professato dal Liberalismo. L’ideale della libertà è perduto, e l’ideale del Socialismo è mutato, fino a diventare una mera scusa per l’oppressione dei poveri.

I primi movimenti per l’intervento nelle più profonde questioni domestiche dei poveri ebbero tutti questa nota di interferenza negativa. Moduli ufficiali venivano inviati alle madri nelle povere strade; moduli in cui un perfetto sconosciuto poneva a queste rispettabili donne domande per le quali un uomo verrebbe ucciso, se le ponesse nella classe di quelli che noi chiamavamo gentiluomini o nei paesi di quelli che venivano chiamati uomini liberi. Erano domande che si supponeva riferirsi alle condizioni della maternità; ma il punto qui è che i riformatori non cominciarono col costruire quelle condizioni economiche o materiali. Non tentarono di pagare denaro o di costituire proprietà per creare quelle condizioni. Non danno mai nulla — se non ordini. Un’altra forma dell’intervento, e già menzionata, è il rapimento dei bambini sotto le più fantastiche scuse di una finta psicologia. Alcune persone istituirono un apparato di test e domande a trabocchetto; il che potrebbe costituire un divertente gioco di indovinelli per il focolare familiare, ma sembra una ragione insufficiente per mutilare e smembrare la famiglia. Altri si interessarono alla disperata condizione morale dei bambini nati nella condizione economica che essi non tentavano di migliorare. Insistevano molto sul fatto che il crimine fosse una malattia; e portarono avanti i loro studi criminologici con tanto successo da aprire il riformatorio per i ragazzini che marinavano la scuola; non vi era alcun riformatorio per i riformatori. Non ho bisogno di soffermarmi a spiegare che il crimine non è una malattia. È la criminologia a essere una malattia.

Infine si può aggiungere una cosa che è almeno chiara. Che l’organizzazione dell’industria sfoci o meno positivamente in una ricostruzione eugenetica della famiglia, essa è già sfociata negativamente, come nelle negazioni già notate, in una sua parziale distruzione. Ciò prese la forma di una propaganda del divorzio popolare, calcolata almeno per abituare le masse a una nuova nozione dello spostarsi e riaggregarsi delle famiglie. Non discuto qui la questione del divorzio, come ho fatto altrove, nel suo carattere intrinseco; la noto soltanto come una di queste riforme negative che sono state sostituite a una positiva uguaglianza economica. Fu predicata con una bizzarra ilarità, come se il suicidio dell’amore fosse qualcosa non solo di umano ma di felice. Ma non occorre spiegare, e certamente non occorre negare, che i vessati poveri di un industrialismo malato stavano in verità mantenendo il matrimonio sotto ogni svantaggio, e spesso trovavano un sollievo individuale nel divorzio. L’industrialismo produce davvero molti matrimoni infelici, per la stessa ragione per cui produce tanti uomini infelici. Ma tutte le riforme erano dirette a salvare l’industrialismo piuttosto che la felicità. Le povere coppie dovevano essere divorziate perché erano già divise. Attraverso tutta questa moderna confusione corre il curioso principio di sacrificare gli antichi usi delle cose perché non si accordano con i moderni abusi. Quando la zizzania si trova nel grano, si mostra sempre la massima prontezza e senso pratico nel bruciare il grano e raccogliere la zizzania nel granaio. E poiché il serpente attorcigliato al calice aveva fatto cadere il suo veleno nel vino di Cana, gli analisti furono immediatamente attivi nello sforzo di conservare il veleno e di versar via il vino.

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VIII

LA FINE DEL DIO DOMESTICO

L’unico luogo in cui è possibile trovare un’eco della mente delle masse inglesi è o nella conversazione o nelle canzoni comiche. Queste ultime sono evidentemente le più dubbie, ma sono le uniche cose registrate e citabili che vi si avvicinino minimamente. Parliamo della stampa popolare; ma in verità non esiste alcuna stampa popolare. Può essere una buona cosa; ma, in ogni caso, la maggior parte dei lettori sarebbe blandamente sorpresa se un articolo di fondo di un giornale fosse scritto nel linguaggio di un manovale. Talvolta la stampa si interessa di cose a cui anche la democrazia è genuinamente interessata; come le corse dei cavalli. Talvolta la stampa è popolare all’incirca quanto la leva forzata. Parliamo dei leader del Lavoro in Parlamento; ma sarebbero altamente antiparlamentari se parlassero come operai. I bolscevichi, credo, dichiarano di promuovere qualcosa che chiamano «arte proletaria», il che dimostra soltanto che la parola Bolscevismo può talvolta essere abbreviata in scempiaggine. Quella sorta di bolscevico non è un proletario, ma piuttosto proprio ciò di cui accusa tutti gli altri di essere. Il bolscevico è soprattutto un borghese; un intellettuale ebreo di città. E il vero argomento contro l’intellettualismo industriale difficilmente potrebbe essere posto meglio che in questo stesso confronto. Non è mai esistita una cosa come l’arte proletaria; ma è enfaticamente esistita una cosa come l’arte contadina. E l’unica letteratura che ci ricorda anche solo il vero tono e il vero parlare delle classi lavoratrici inglesi si trova nella comica canzone del music-hall inglese.

I first heard one of them on my voyage to America, in the midst of the sea within sight of the New World, with the Statue of Liberty beginning to loom up on the horizon. From the lips of a young Scotch engineer, of all people in the world, I heard for the first time these immortal words from a London music-hall song:---

“Father’s got the sack from the water-works For smoking of his old cherry-briar; Father’s got the sack from the water-works ‘Cos he might set the water-works on fire.”

As I told my friends in America, I think it no part of a patriot to boast; and boasting itself is certainly not a thing to boast of. I doubt the persuasive power of English as exemplified in Kipling, and one can easily force it on foreigners too much, even as exemplified in Dickens. I am no Imperialist, and only on rare and proper occasions a Jingo. But when I hear those words about Father and the water-works, when I hear under far-off foreign skies anything so gloriously English as that, then indeed (I said to them), then indeed:---

“I thank the goodness and the grace That on my birth have smiled, And made me, as you see me here, A little English child.”

But that noble stanza about the water-works has other elements of nobility besides nationality. It provides a compact and almost perfect summary of the whole social problem in industrial countries like England and America. If I wished to set forth systematically the elements of the ethical and economic problem in Pittsburgh of Sheffield, I could not do better than take these few words as a text, and divide them up like the heads of a sermon. Let me note the points in some rough fashion here.

I.--- Father. This word is still in use among the more ignorant and ill-paid of the industrial community; and is the badge of an old convention or unit called the family. A man and woman having vowed to be faithful to each other, the man makes himself responsible for all the children of the woman, and is thus generically called “Father.” It must not be supposed that the poet or singer is necessarily one of the children. It may be the wife, called by the same ritual “Mother.” Poor English wives say “Father” as poor Irish wives say “Himself,” meaning the titular head of the house. The point to seize is that among the ignorant this convention or custom still exists. Father and the family are the foundations of thought; the natural authority still comes natural to the poet; but it is overlaid and thwarted with more artificial authorities; the official, the schoolmaster, the policeman, the employer, and so on. What these forces fighting the family are we shall see, my dear brethren, when we pass to our second heading; which is:---

2.--- Got the Sack. This idiom marks a later stage of the history of the language than the comparatively primitive word “Father.” It is needless to discuss whether the term comes from Turkey or some other servile society. In America they say that Father has been fired. But it involves the whole of the unique economic system under which Father has now to live. Though assumed by family tradition to be a master, he can now, by industrial tradition, only be a particular kind of servant; a servant who has not the security of a slave. If he owned his own shop and tools, he could not get the sack. If his master owned him, he could not get the sack. The slave and the guildsman know where they will sleep every night; it was only the proletarian of individualist industrialism who could get the sack, if not in the style of the Bosphorus, at least in the sense of the Embankment. We pass to the third heading.

3.--- From the Water-works. This detail of Father’s life is very important; for this is the reply to most of the Socialists, as the last section is to so many of the Capitalists. The water-works which employed Father is a very large, official and impersonal institution. Whether it is technically a bureaucratic department or a Big business makes little or no change in the feelings of Father in connection with it. The water-works might or might not be nationalized; and it would make no necessary difference to Father being fired, and no difference at all to his being accused of playing with fire. In fact, if the Capitalists are more likely to give him the sack, the Socialists are even more likely to forbid him the smoke. There is no freedom for Father except in some sort of private ownership of things like water and fire. If he owned his own well his water could never be cut off, and while he sits by his own fire his pipe can never be put out. That is the real meaning of property, and the real argument against Socialism; probably the only argument against Socialism.

4.---For Smoking. Nothing marks this queer intermediate phase of industrialism more strangely than the fact that, while employers still claim the right to sack him like a stranger, they are already beginning to claim the right to supervise him like a son. Economically he can go and starve on the Embankment; but ethically and hygienically he must be controlled and coddled in the nursery. Government repudiates all responsibility for seeing that he gets bread. But it anxiously accepts all responsibility for seeing that he does not get beer. It passes an Insurance Act to force him to provide himself with medicine; but it is avowedly indifferent to whether he is able to provide himself with meals. Thus while the sack is inconsistent with the family, the supervision is really inconsistent with the sack. The whole thing is a tangled chain of contradictions. It is true that in the special and sacred text of scripture we are here considering, the smoking is forbidden on a general and public and not on a medicinal and private ground. But it is none the less relevant to remember that, as his masters have already proved that alcohol is a poison, they may soon prove that nicotine is a poison. And it is most significant of all that this sort of danger is even greater in what is called the new democracy of America than in what is called the old oligarchy of England. When I was in America, people were already “defending” tobacco. People who defend tobacco are on the road to proving that daylight is defensible, or that it is not really sinful to sneeze. In other words, they are quietly going mad.

La prima volta ne udii una durante la mia traversata verso l’America, in mezzo al mare in vista del Nuovo Mondo, con la Statua della Libertà che cominciava a profilarsi all’orizzonte. Dalle labbra di un giovane ingegnere scozzese, la persona più impensata al mondo, udii per la prima volta queste immortali parole tratte da una canzone di music-hall di Londra:—

«Il babbo è stato licenziato dagli impianti dell’acqua per aver fumato la sua vecchia pipa di radica; il babbo è stato licenziato dagli impianti dell’acqua perché poteva dar fuoco agli impianti dell’acqua.»

Come dissi ai miei amici in America, penso non sia da patriota vantarsi; e il vantarsi in sé non è certo cosa di cui vantarsi. Dubito del potere persuasivo dell’inglese quale esemplificato in Kipling, e lo si può facilmente imporre agli stranieri in dose eccessiva, persino quale esemplificato in Dickens. Non sono affatto un imperialista, e solo in rare e opportune occasioni uno sciovinista. Ma quando odo quelle parole sul babbo e sugli impianti dell’acqua, quando odo sotto cieli stranieri lontani qualcosa di così gloriosamente inglese come quello, allora davvero (dissi loro), allora davvero:—

«Ringrazio la bontà e la grazia che alla mia nascita hanno sorriso, e mi hanno fatto, come qui mi vedete, un piccolo bimbo inglese.»

Ma quella nobile strofa sugli impianti dell’acqua ha altri elementi di nobiltà oltre alla nazionalità. Fornisce un compatto e quasi perfetto compendio dell’intero problema sociale nei paesi industriali come l’Inghilterra e l’America. Se volessi esporre sistematicamente gli elementi del problema etico ed economico a Pittsburgh o a Sheffield, non potrei far di meglio che prendere queste poche parole come testo, e suddividerle come i punti di un sermone. Permettetemi di annotare qui i punti in modo un po’ sommario.

I.— Il babbo. Questa parola è ancora in uso tra i più ignoranti e mal pagati della comunità industriale; ed è l’insegna di un’antica convenzione o unità chiamata la famiglia. Un uomo e una donna, avendo giurato di essere fedeli l’uno all’altra, l’uomo si rende responsabile di tutti i figli della donna, ed è così genericamente chiamato «babbo». Non si deve supporre che il poeta o cantore sia necessariamente uno dei figli. Può essere la moglie, chiamata dal medesimo rituale «mamma». Le povere mogli inglesi dicono «babbo» come le povere mogli irlandesi dicono «Lui», intendendo il capo titolare della casa. Il punto da cogliere è che tra gli ignoranti questa convenzione o usanza esiste ancora. Il babbo e la famiglia sono le fondamenta del pensiero; l’autorità naturale viene ancora naturale al poeta; ma è sovrapposta e contrastata da autorità più artificiali; il funzionario, il maestro di scuola, il poliziotto, il datore di lavoro, e così via. Che cosa siano queste forze che combattono la famiglia lo vedremo, miei cari fratelli, quando passeremo al nostro secondo punto; che è:—

2.— È stato licenziato. Questo idioma segna uno stadio della storia della lingua più tardo del comparativamente primitivo vocabolo «babbo». È inutile discutere se il termine provenga dalla Turchia o da qualche altra società servile. In America dicono che il babbo è stato buttato fuori. Ma esso implica l’intero singolare sistema economico sotto il quale il babbo deve ora vivere. Benché per tradizione familiare lo si supponga un padrone, egli può ora, per tradizione industriale, essere soltanto un particolare genere di servo; un servo che non ha la sicurezza di uno schiavo. Se possedesse la propria bottega e i propri arnesi, non potrebbe essere licenziato. Se il suo padrone possedesse lui, non potrebbe essere licenziato. Lo schiavo e il membro della gilda sanno dove dormiranno ogni notte; era soltanto il proletario dell’industrialismo individualista che poteva essere licenziato, se non nello stile del Bosforo, almeno nel senso del Lungotamigi. Passiamo al terzo punto.

3.— Dagli impianti dell’Acqua. Questo dettaglio della vita del babbo è assai importante; poiché questa è la risposta alla maggior parte dei socialisti, come la sezione precedente lo è a tanti dei capitalisti. Gli impianti dell’acqua che impiegavano il babbo sono un’istituzione assai grande, ufficiale e impersonale. Che si tratti tecnicamente di un dipartimento burocratico o di una grande impresa, ciò comporta poca o nessuna differenza nei sentimenti del babbo nei suoi confronti. Gli impianti dell’acqua potrebbero o non potrebbero essere nazionalizzati; e ciò non farebbe alcuna necessaria differenza quanto al licenziamento del babbo, e nessuna differenza affatto quanto all’accusa contro di lui di giocare col fuoco. Anzi, se i capitalisti hanno più probabilità di licenziarlo, i socialisti hanno probabilità ancor maggiori di proibirgli il fumo. Non vi è alcuna libertà per il babbo se non in una qualche sorta di proprietà privata di cose come l’acqua e il fuoco. Se possedesse il proprio pozzo, la sua acqua non potrebbe mai essere tagliata, e finché siede accanto al proprio fuoco la sua pipa non potrà mai essere spenta. Questo è il vero significato della proprietà, e il vero argomento contro il Socialismo; probabilmente l’unico argomento contro il Socialismo.

4.— Per aver fumato. Nulla contrassegna questa bizzarra fase intermedia dell’industrialismo più stranamente del fatto che, mentre i datori di lavoro rivendicano ancora il diritto di licenziarlo come un estraneo, cominciano già a rivendicare il diritto di sorvegliarlo come un figlio. Economicamente egli può andare a morir di fame sul Lungotamigi; ma eticamente e igienicamente dev’essere controllato e coccolato nella nursery. Il Governo ripudia ogni responsabilità nel provvedere a che egli abbia il pane. Ma ansiosamente accetta ogni responsabilità nel provvedere a che egli non abbia la birra. Approva una legge sull’assicurazione per costringerlo a procurarsi medicine; ma è dichiaratamente indifferente a che egli sia in grado di procurarsi i pasti. Così, mentre il licenziamento è incoerente con la famiglia, la sorveglianza è in realtà incoerente col licenziamento. L’intera faccenda è una aggrovigliata catena di contraddizioni. È vero che nel particolare e sacro testo delle scritture che stiamo qui considerando, il fumo è proibito su un fondamento generale e pubblico e non su uno medicinale e privato. Ma è nondimeno pertinente ricordare che, come i suoi padroni hanno già dimostrato che l’alcol è un veleno, potranno presto dimostrare che la nicotina è un veleno. E cosa più significativa di tutte, questa sorta di pericolo è persino maggiore in quella che si chiama la nuova democrazia d’America che in quella che si chiama la vecchia oligarchia d’Inghilterra. Quando ero in America, la gente stava già «difendendo» il tabacco. Le persone che difendono il tabacco sono sulla strada che porta a dimostrare che la luce del giorno è difendibile, o che non è davvero peccaminoso starnutire. In altre parole, stanno tranquillamente impazzendo.

5.--- Of his old Cherry-briar. Here we have the intermediate and anomalous position of the institution of Property. The sentiment still exists, even among the poor, or perhaps especially among the poor. But it is attached to toys rather than tools; to the minor products rather than to the means of production. But something of the sanity of ownership is still to be observed; for instance, the element of custom and continuity. It was an old cherry-briar; systematically smoked by Father in spite of all wiles and temptations to Woodbines and gaspers; an old companion possibly connected with various romantic or diverting events in Father’s life. It is perhaps a relic as well as a trinket. But because it is not a true tool, because it gives the man no grip on the creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of his self-respect, at the mercy of the thing called the sack. When he gets the sack from the water-works, it is only too probable that he will have to pawn his old cherry-briar.

6.--- ‘Cos he might set the water-works on fire. And that single line, like the lovely single lines of the great poets, is so full, so final, so perfect a picture of all the laws we pass and all the reasons we give for them, so exact an analysis of the logic of all our precautions at the present time, that the pen falls even from the hand of the commentator; and the masterpiece is left to speak for itself.

Some such analysis as the above gives a better account than most of the anomalous attitude and situation of the English proletarian today. It is the more appropriate because it is expressed in the words he actually uses; which certainly do not include the word “proletarian.” It will be noted that everything that goes to make up that complexity is in an unfinished state. Property has not quite vanished; slavery has not quite arrived; marriage exists under difficulties; social regimentation exists under restraints, or rather under subterfuges. The question which remains is which force is gaining on the other, and whether the old forces are capable of resisting the new. I hope they are; but I recognize that they resist under more than one heavy handicap. The chief of these is that the family feeling of the workmen is by this time rather an instinct than an ideal. The obvious thing to protect an ideal is a religion. The obvious thing to protect the ideal of marriage is the Christian religion. And for various reasons, which only a history of England could explain (though it hardly ever does), the working classes of this country have been very much cut off from Christianity. I do not dream of denying, indeed I should take every opportunity of affirming, that monogamy and its domestic responsibilities can be defended on rational apart from religious grounds. But a religion is the practical protection of any moral idea which has to be popular and which has to be pugnacious. And our ideal, if it is to survive, will have to be both.

Those who make merry over the landlady who has seen better days, of whom something has been said already, commonly speak, in the same jovial journalese, about her household goods as her household gods. They would be much startled if they discovered how right they are. Exactly what is lacking to the modern materialist is something that can be what the household gods were to the ancient heathen. The household gods of the heathen were not only wood and stone; at least there is always more than that in the stone of the hearth-stone and the wood of the roof-tree. So long as Christianity continued the tradition of patron saints and portable relics, this idea of a blessing on the household could continue. If men had not domestic divinities, at least they had divine domesticities. When Christianity was chilled with Puritanism and rationalism, this inner warmth or secret fire in the house faded on the hearth. But some of the embers still glow or at least glimmer; and there is still a memory among the poor that their material possessions are something sacred. I know poor men for whom it is the romance of their lives to refuse big sums of money for an old copper warming-pan. They do not want it, in any sense of base utility. They do not use it as a warming pan; but it warms them for all that. It is indeed, as Sergeant Buzfuz humorously observed, a cover for hidden fire. And the fire is that which burned before the strange and uncouth wooden gods, like giant dolls in the huts of ancient Italy. It is a household god. And I can imagine some such neglected and unlucky English man dying with his eyes on the red gleam of that piece of copper, as happier men have died with their eyes on the golden gleam of a chalice or a cross.

It will thus be noted that there has always been some connection between a mystical belief and the materials of domesticity; that they generally go together; and that now, in a more mournful sense, they are gone together. The working classes have no reserves of property with which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religion with which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they are under the enormous disadvantage of being right without knowing it. They hold their sound principles as if they were sullen prejudices. They almost secrete their small property as if it were stolen property. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks to her husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolved to run away from her husband. Often she will cry as hopelessly, and as it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were a child deprived of her doll. Indeed, a child in the street, crying for her lost doll, would probably receive more sympathy than she does.

Meanwhile the fun goes on; and many such conflicts are recorded, even in the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking philanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any number of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be flippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather fierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I know that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives of sincere but confused compassion, and many more from a dull but not dishonourable medical or legal habit. But if I and those who agree with me tend to some harshness and abruptness of condemnation, these worthy people need not be altogether impatient with our impatience. It is surely beneath them, in the scope of their great schemes, to complain of protests so ineffectual about wrongs so individual. I have considered in this chapter the chances of general democratic defence of domestic honour, and have been compelled to the conclusion that they are not at present hopeful; and it is at least clear that we cannot be founding on them any personal hopes. If this conclusion leaves us defeated, we submit that it leaves us disinterested. Ours is not the sort of protest, at least, that promises anything even to the demagogue, let alone the sycophant. Those we serve will never rule, and those we pity will never rise. Parliament will never be surrounded by a mob of submerged grandmothers brandishing pawn-tickets. There is no trade union of defective children. It is not very probable that modern government will be overturned by a few poor dingy devils who are sent to prison by mistake, or rather by ordinary accident. Surely it is not for those magnificent Socialists, or those great reformers and reconstructors of Capitalism, sweeping onward to their scientific triumphs and caring for none of these things, to murmur at our vain indignation. At least if it is vain it is the less venal; and in so far as it is hopeless it is also thankless. They have their great campaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions, and the records of science and progress. They need not be angry with us, who plead for those who will never read our words or reward our effort, even with gratitude. They need surely have no worse mood towards us than mystification, seeing that in recalling these small things of broken hearts or homes, we are but recording what cannot be recorded; trivial tragedies that will fade faster and faster in the flux of time, cries that fail in a furious and infinite wind, wild words of despair that are written only upon running water; unless, indeed, as some so stubbornly and strangely say, they are somewhere cut deep into a rock, in the red granite of the wrath of God.

5.— La sua vecchia pipa di radica. Qui abbiamo la posizione intermedia e anomala dell’istituzione della Proprietà. Il sentimento esiste ancora, persino tra i poveri, o forse specialmente tra i poveri. Ma è legato a balocchi piuttosto che ad arnesi; ai prodotti minori piuttosto che ai mezzi di produzione. Ma qualcosa della sanità del possesso è ancora osservabile; per esempio, l’elemento della consuetudine e della continuità. Era una vecchia pipa di radica; sistematicamente fumata dal babbo a dispetto di tutte le astuzie e le tentazioni delle Woodbine e delle sigarette da quattro soldi; una vecchia compagna forse legata a vari eventi romantici o divertenti della vita del babbo. È forse una reliquia oltre che un ninnolo. Ma poiché non è un vero arnese, poiché non dà all’uomo alcuna presa sulle energie creative della società, essa è, con tutto il resto del suo amor proprio, alla mercé della cosa chiamata licenziamento. Quando egli viene licenziato dagli impianti dell’acqua, è fin troppo probabile che dovrà impegnare la sua vecchia pipa di radica.

6.— Perché poteva dar fuoco agli impianti dell’acqua. E quell’unico verso, come gli splendidi versi isolati dei grandi poeti, è un quadro così pieno, così definitivo, così perfetto di tutte le leggi che approviamo e di tutte le ragioni che ne diamo, un’analisi così esatta della logica di tutte le nostre precauzioni al tempo presente, che la penna cade persino dalla mano del commentatore; e il capolavoro è lasciato a parlare da sé.

Un’analisi come quella suddetta rende conto meglio della maggior parte dell’anomalo atteggiamento e situazione del proletario inglese di oggi. È tanto più appropriata in quanto è espressa nelle parole che egli effettivamente usa; le quali certamente non includono la parola «proletario». Si noterà che tutto ciò che concorre a comporre quella complessità è in uno stato incompiuto. La proprietà non è del tutto svanita; la schiavitù non è del tutto giunta; il matrimonio esiste tra difficoltà; l’irreggimentazione sociale esiste sotto restrizioni, o piuttosto sotto sotterfugi. La questione che rimane è quale forza stia guadagnando sull’altra, e se le vecchie forze siano capaci di resistere alle nuove. Io spero che lo siano; ma riconosco che esse resistono sotto più di un pesante svantaggio. Il principale di questi è che il sentimento familiare degli operai è ormai piuttosto un istinto che un ideale. La cosa più ovvia per proteggere un ideale è una religione. La cosa più ovvia per proteggere l’ideale del matrimonio è la religione cristiana. E per varie ragioni, che solo una storia dell’Inghilterra potrebbe spiegare (benché quasi mai lo faccia), le classi lavoratrici di questo paese sono state molto tagliate fuori dal Cristianesimo. Non mi sogno di negare, anzi coglierei ogni occasione per affermare, che la monogamia e le sue responsabilità domestiche possono essere difese su basi razionali oltre che religiose. Ma una religione è la protezione pratica di qualsiasi idea morale che debba essere popolare e che debba essere combattiva. E il nostro ideale, se deve sopravvivere, dovrà essere entrambe le cose.

Coloro che si fanno beffe della padrona di casa che ha visto giorni migliori, di cui si è già detto qualcosa, parlano comunemente, nel medesimo gioviale gergo giornalistico, dei suoi arredi domestici come dei suoi dèi domestici. Sarebbero assai sorpresi se scoprissero quanto hanno ragione. Proprio ciò che manca al materialista moderno è qualcosa che possa essere ciò che gli dèi domestici erano per l’antico pagano. Gli dèi domestici del pagano non erano soltanto legno e pietra; almeno vi è sempre qualcosa di più di questo nella pietra del focolare e nel legno della trave maestra. Finché il Cristianesimo continuò la tradizione dei santi patroni e delle reliquie portatili, questa idea di una benedizione sul focolare poté continuare. Se gli uomini non avevano divinità domestiche, avevano almeno domesticità divine. Quando il Cristianesimo fu raffreddato dal Puritanesimo e dal razionalismo, questo calore interiore o segreto fuoco nella casa si spense sul focolare. Ma alcune braci ancora ardono o almeno luccicano; e vi è ancora tra i poveri una memoria che i loro possessi materiali sono qualcosa di sacro. Conosco poveri uomini per i quali è il romanzo della loro vita rifiutare grosse somme di denaro per un vecchio scaldino di rame. Non ne hanno bisogno, in alcun senso di bassa utilità. Non lo usano come scaldino; ma esso li scalda per tutto ciò. È in verità, come osservò umoristicamente il Sergente Buzfuz, una copertura per un fuoco nascosto. E il fuoco è quello che ardeva davanti agli strani e rozzi dèi di legno, simili a giganteschi fantocci nelle capanne dell’antica Italia. È un dio domestico. E posso immaginare qualche tale trascurato e sfortunato inglese morire con gli occhi fissi sul rosso bagliore di quel pezzo di rame, come uomini più felici sono morti con gli occhi fissi sul dorato bagliore di un calice o di una croce.

Si noterà così che vi è sempre stata una qualche connessione tra una credenza mistica e i materiali della domesticità; che generalmente vanno insieme; e che ora, in un senso più mesto, sono andati via insieme. Le classi lavoratrici non hanno riserve di proprietà con cui difendere le loro reliquie di religione. Non hanno alcuna religione con cui santificare e nobilitare la loro proprietà. Soprattutto, sono sotto l’enorme svantaggio di avere ragione senza saperlo. Tengono ai loro sani principi come se fossero cupi pregiudizi. Quasi nascondono la loro piccola proprietà come se fosse proprietà rubata. Spesso una povera donna dirà a un magistrato di restar fedele al marito, con l’aria di sfida e di disperazione di una sfrontata risoluta a fuggire dal marito. Spesso piangerà con altrettanta disperazione, e per così dire impotenza, quando le si toglie il figlio, come se fosse una bambina a cui si toglie la bambola. Anzi, una bambina per la strada, che piange per la sua bambola perduta, riceverebbe probabilmente più compassione di quanta ne riceva lei.

Nel frattempo lo spasso continua; e molti simili conflitti sono registrati, persino sui giornali, tra genitori dal cuore spezzato e filantropi che sfondano la casa; sempre con un solo esito, s’intende. Ve ne sono in gran numero che non finiscono mai sui giornali. E dobbiamo essere frivoli su queste cose come unica alternativa all’essere piuttosto feroci; e non ho alcun desiderio di concludere su una nota di universale ferocia. So che molti che mettono in moto un simile macchinario lo fanno per motivi di sincera ma confusa compassione, e molti altri per una ottusa ma non disonorevole abitudine medica o legale. Ma se io e coloro che concordano con me tendiamo a una certa asprezza e bruschezza di condanna, queste degne persone non hanno bisogno di essere del tutto impazienti con la nostra impazienza. È certamente al di sotto di loro, nell’ampiezza dei loro grandi disegni, lamentarsi di proteste così inefficaci su torti così individuali. Ho considerato in questo capitolo le possibilità di una generale difesa democratica dell’onore domestico, e sono stato costretto alla conclusione che al presente non sono promettenti; ed è almeno chiaro che non possiamo fondare su di esse alcuna speranza personale. Se questa conclusione ci lascia sconfitti, sosteniamo che ci lascia disinteressati. La nostra non è, almeno, quel genere di protesta che prometta qualcosa persino al demagogo, per non dire al sicofante. Coloro che serviamo non governeranno mai, e coloro che compiangiamo non si solleveranno mai. Il Parlamento non sarà mai circondato da una folla di sommerse nonne che brandiscono ricevute del monte di pietà. Non esiste alcun sindacato di categoria di bambini difettosi. Non è molto probabile che il moderno governo sarà rovesciato da qualche povero sudicio diavolo mandato in prigione per errore, o piuttosto per ordinario accidente. Non sta certo a quei magnifici socialisti, o a quei grandi riformatori e ricostruttori del Capitalismo, che avanzano travolgenti verso i loro trionfi scientifici e non si curano di nessuna di queste cose, mormorare contro la nostra vana indignazione. Almeno, se è vana è tanto meno venale; e in quanto è senza speranza è anche senza ricompensa. Essi hanno le loro grandi campagne e i loro sistemi cosmopoliti per l’irreggimentazione di milioni, e gli annali della scienza e del progresso. Non hanno bisogno di adirarsi con noi, che peroriamo la causa di coloro che non leggeranno mai le nostre parole né ricompenseranno il nostro sforzo, nemmeno con la gratitudine. Non hanno certo bisogno di nutrire verso di noi umore peggiore della perplessità, visto che, nel rievocare queste piccole cose di cuori o di case infrante, non facciamo che registrare ciò che non può essere registrato; banali tragedie che sbiadiranno sempre più rapidamente nel flusso del tempo, grida che si spengono in un furioso e infinito vento, selvagge parole di disperazione scritte soltanto sull’acqua corrente; a meno che, in verità, come alcuni con tanta ostinazione e stranezza dicono, esse non siano da qualche parte incise a fondo in una roccia, nel rosso granito dell’ira di Dio.

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IX

A SHORT CHAPTER

Round about the year 1913 Eugenics was turned from a fad to a fashion. Then, if I may so summarize the situation, the joke began in earnest. The organizing mind which we have seen considering the problem of slum population, the popular material and the possibility of protests, felt that the time had come to open the campaign Eugenics began to appear in big headlines in the daily Press, and big pictures in the illustrated papers. A foreign gentleman named Bolce, living at Hampstead, was advertised on a huge scale as having every intention of being the father of the Superman. It turned out to be a Superwoman, and was called Eugenette. The parents were described as devoting themselves to the production of perfect pre-natal conditions. They “eliminated everything from their lives which did not tend towards complete happiness.” Many might indeed be ready to do this; but in the voluminous contemporary journalism on the subject I can find no detailed notes about how it is done. Communications were opened with Mr. H. G. Wells, with Dr. Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. Karl Pearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefully cultivated in the parents. The problem of a sense of humour was felt to be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturally fearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientific as to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, they visited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards George Robey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper reader, however, it looked as if the names of Metchnikof and Steimnetz and Karl Pearson would soon be quite as familiar as those of Robey and Lauder and Bard. Arguments about these Eugenic authorities, reports of the controversies at the Eugenic Congress, filled countless columns. The fact that Mr. Bolce, the creator of perfect prenatal conditions, was afterwards sued in a lawcourt for keeping his own flat in conditions of filth and neglect, cast but a slight and momentary shadow upon the splendid dawn of the science. It would be vain to record any of the thousand testimonies to its triumph. In the nature of things, this should be the longest chapter in the book, or rather the beginning of another book. It should record, in numberless examples, the triumphant popularization of Eugenics in England. But as a matter of fact this is not the first chapter but the last. And this must be a very short chapter, because the whole of this story was cut short. A very curious thing happened. England went to war.

This would in itself have been a sufficiently irritating interruption in the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment of Eugenics. But a far more dreadful and disconcerting fact must be noted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to war with the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that very land of scientific culture from which the very ideal of a Superman had come. She went to war with the whole of Dr. Steinmetz, and presumably with at least half of Dr. Karl Pearson. She gave battle to the birthplace of nine-tenths of the professors who were the prophets of the new hope of humanity. In a few weeks the very name of professor was a matter for hissing and low plebeian mirth. The very name of Nietzsche, who had held up this hope of something superhuman to humanity, was laughed at for all the world as if he had been touched with lunacy. A new mood came upon the whole people, a mood of marching, of spontaneous soldierly vigilance and democratic discipline, moving to the faint tune of bugles far away. Men began to talk strangely of old and common things, of the counties of England, of its quiet landscapes, of motherhood and the half-buried religion of the race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making all things vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awful actuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and the Eugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one may say so, funny.

Such a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given. There was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfection than any other the type of order and foresight that are the subject of this book. It had long been the model State of all those more rational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation of society. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform. All the systematic social reform. All the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudly borrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found it convenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring and neutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had a privilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had the gratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scale and very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionary idealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams; or to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to wait for it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; but in the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silent for five years.

The thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. It might be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogether leave the memories of men; but men’s memories are unstable things. It may be that gradually these dazed dupes will gather again together, and attempt again to believe their dreams and disbelieve their eyes. There may be some whose love of slavery is so ideal and disinterested that they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment of that broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But there are limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been once deceived and a second time deceives himself. They have seen their paragons of science and organization playing their part on land and sea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love of humanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed the testimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neither would they believe though one rose from the dead; though all the millions who died to destroy Prussianism stood up and testified against it.

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IX

UN CAPITOLO BREVE

Intorno all’anno 1913 l’Eugenetica fu trasformata da capriccio in moda. Allora, se posso così riassumere la situazione, lo scherzo cominciò sul serio. La mente organizzatrice che abbiamo visto considerare il problema della popolazione dei bassifondi, il materiale popolare e la possibilità di proteste, sentì che era venuto il tempo di aprire la campagna. L’Eugenetica cominciò a comparire in grossi titoli sulla stampa quotidiana, e in grosse illustrazioni sui giornali illustrati. Un gentiluomo straniero di nome Bolce, residente a Hampstead, fu reclamizzato su vasta scala come deciso in ogni modo a diventare il padre del Superuomo. Risultò essere una Superdonna, e fu chiamata Eugenette. I genitori venivano descritti come dediti alla produzione di perfette condizioni prenatali. Essi «eliminarono dalla loro vita tutto ciò che non tendesse alla completa felicità». Molti potrebbero in verità essere pronti a far questo; ma nel voluminoso giornalismo contemporaneo sull’argomento non riesco a trovare alcuna nota dettagliata su come lo si faccia. Furono aperte comunicazioni col signor H. G. Wells, col dottor Saleeby, e a quanto pare col dottor Karl Pearson. Ogni qualità desiderata nel bambino ideale veniva accuratamente coltivata nei genitori. Il problema del senso dell’umorismo fu sentito come una faccenda di grande gravità. La coppia eugenista, temendo naturalmente di poter essere carente su questo versante, fu così genuinamente scientifica da ricorrere a specialisti. Per coltivare il senso del comico, andarono a vedere Harry Lauder, e poi Wilkie Bard, e in seguito George Robey; ma tutto, a quanto pare, invano. Al lettore di giornali, tuttavia, sembrava che i nomi di Metchnikof e Steimnetz e Karl Pearson sarebbero presto stati altrettanto familiari quanto quelli di Robey e Lauder e Bard. Le discussioni su queste autorità eugenetiche, i resoconti delle controversie al Congresso Eugenico, riempivano innumerevoli colonne. Il fatto che il signor Bolce, il creatore delle perfette condizioni prenatali, fosse in seguito citato in tribunale per aver tenuto il proprio appartamento in condizioni di sudiciume e incuria, gettò solo una lieve e momentanea ombra sulla splendida alba della scienza. Sarebbe vano registrare anche solo una delle mille testimonianze del suo trionfo. Per la natura delle cose, questo dovrebbe essere il capitolo più lungo del libro, o piuttosto l’inizio di un altro libro. Dovrebbe registrare, in innumerevoli esempi, la trionfante divulgazione dell’Eugenetica in Inghilterra. Ma in realtà questo non è il primo capitolo bensì l’ultimo. E questo dev’essere un capitolo assai breve, perché l’intera vicenda fu troncata. Accadde una cosa assai curiosa. L’Inghilterra entrò in guerra.

Questo sarebbe stato di per sé un’interruzione abbastanza irritante nella prima vita di Eugenette, e nel primo affermarsi dell’Eugenetica. Ma va notato un fatto ben più tremendo e sconcertante. Contro chi, ahimè, entrò in guerra l’Inghilterra? L’Inghilterra entrò in guerra col Superuomo nella sua nativa patria. Entrò in guerra proprio con quella terra di cultura scientifica dalla quale era venuto lo stesso ideale del Superuomo. Entrò in guerra con l’intero dottor Steinmetz, e presumibilmente con almeno metà del dottor Karl Pearson. Diede battaglia al luogo natale di nove decimi dei professori che erano i profeti della nuova speranza dell’umanità. In poche settimane il nome stesso di professore fu materia di fischi e di bassa ilarità plebea. Il nome stesso di Nietzsche, che aveva additato all’umanità questa speranza di qualcosa di superumano, veniva deriso proprio come se fosse stato toccato dalla follia. Un nuovo stato d’animo scese su tutto il popolo, uno stato d’animo di marcia, di spontanea vigilanza soldatesca e di disciplina democratica, che si muoveva al fievole suono di trombe lontane. Gli uomini cominciarono a parlare stranamente di cose vecchie e comuni, delle contee d’Inghilterra, dei suoi quieti paesaggi, della maternità e della religione semisepolta della stirpe. La morte risplendeva sul paese come una nuova luce del giorno, rendendo ogni cosa viva e visibilmente cara. E in presenza di questa tremenda realtà sembrava, in un modo o nell’altro, come se persino il signor Bolce e il bambino eugenico fossero cose inspiegabilmente lontane e quasi, se così si può dire, comiche.

Una tale ripulsa richiede una spiegazione, e la si può dare brevemente. Vi era una provincia d’Europa che aveva portato più vicino alla perfezione di qualsiasi altra il tipo di ordine e di previdenza che sono l’oggetto di questo libro. Era da lungo tempo lo Stato modello di tutti quei più razionali moralisti che vedevano nella scienza l’ordinata salvezza della società. Era per ammissione generale all’avanguardia di tutti gli altri Stati nella riforma sociale. Tutte le sistematiche riforme sociali. Tutte le sistematiche riforme sociali erano dichiaratamente e orgogliosamente prese in prestito da essa. Perciò, quando questa provincia della Prussia trovò conveniente estendere il suo sistema imperiale al vicino e neutrale Stato del Belgio, tutti questi entusiasti scientifici ebbero un privilegio non sempre concesso ai meri teorici. Ebbero la gratificazione di vedere la loro grande Utopia all’opera, su vasta scala e assai da vicino. Non dovettero attendere, come altri idealisti evoluzionisti, il lento avvicinarsi di qualcosa di più prossimo ai loro sogni; o lasciarlo semplicemente come una promessa alla posterità. Non dovettero attenderlo come una cosa lontana quale la visione di uno stato futuro; ma in carne e ossa avevano visto il loro Paradiso. E rimasero assai silenziosi per cinque anni.

La cosa alla fine morì, e il suo lezzo puzzò fino al cielo. Si potrebbe pensare che un sentore così terribile non abbandonerebbe mai del tutto la memoria degli uomini; ma le memorie degli uomini sono cose instabili. Può darsi che a poco a poco questi storditi gonzi si radunino di nuovo insieme, e tentino di nuovo di credere ai loro sogni e di non credere ai loro occhi. Vi possono essere alcuni il cui amore per la schiavitù è così ideale e disinteressato da essere ad essa fedeli persino nella sua sconfitta. Ovunque si trovi un frammento di quella catena spezzata, li si troverà a stringerselo al petto. Ma vi sono limiti stabiliti nell’eterna misericordia a colui che è stato una volta ingannato e una seconda volta inganna se stesso. Essi hanno visto i loro modelli di scienza e organizzazione recitare la loro parte in terra e in mare; mostrando il loro amore per il sapere a Lovanio e il loro amore per l’umanità a Lille. Per un tempo almeno hanno creduto alla testimonianza dei loro sensi. E se ora non credono, non crederebbero nemmeno se uno risorgesse dai morti; nemmeno se tutti i milioni che morirono per distruggere il prussianesimo si levassero in piedi a testimoniare contro di esso.