Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thoughtWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thought
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization; Communication and traffic; Social prediction; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
The essential aspect of all this wild and windy business of the sexual
relations is, after all, births. Upon this plain fact the people of the
emergent New Republic will unhesitatingly go. The pre-eminent value of
sexual questions in morality lies in the fact that the lives which will
constitute the future are involved. If they are not involved, if we can
dissociate this relationship from this issue, then sexual questions
become of no more importance than the morality of one's deportment at
chess, or the general morality of outdoor games. Indeed, then the
question of sexual relationships would be entirely on all fours with,
and probably very analogous to, the question of golf. In each case it
would be for the medical man and the psychologist to decide how far the
thing was wholesome and permissible, and how far it was an aggressive
bad habit and an absorbing waste of time and energy. An able-bodied man
continually addicted to love-making that had no result in offspring
would be just as silly and morally objectionable as an able-bodied man
who devoted his chief energies to hitting little balls over golf-links.
But no more. Both would probably be wasting the lives of other human
beings--the golfer must employ his caddie. It is entirely the matter of
births, and a further consideration to be presently discussed, that
makes this analogy untrue. It does not, however, make it so untrue as to
do away with the probability that in many cases the emergent men of the
new time will consider sterile gratification a moral and legitimate
thing. St. Paul tells us that it is better to marry than to burn, but to
beget children on that account will appear, I imagine, to these coming
men as an absolutely loathsome proceeding. They will stifle no spread of
knowledge that will diminish the swarming misery of childhood in the
slums, they will regard the disinclination of the witless "Society"
woman to become a mother as a most amiable trait in her folly. In our
bashfulness about these things we talk an abominable lot of nonsense;
all this uproar one hears about the Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit
and the future of the lower races takes on an entirely different
complexion directly we face known, if indelicate, facts. Most of the
human types, that by civilized standards are undesirable, are quite
willing to die out through such suppressions if the world will only
encourage them a little. They multiply in sheer ignorance, but they do
not desire multiplication even now, and they can easily be made to dread
it. Sensuality aims not at life, but at itself. I believe that the men
of the New Republic will deliberately shape their public policy along
these lines. They will rout out and illuminate urban rookeries and all
places where the base can drift to multiply; they will contrive a land
legislation that will keep the black, or yellow, or mean-white squatter
on the move; they will see to it that no parent can make a profit out of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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