It is clear that the progress of the individual and the world alike
depends upon the quickening of ideas. All civilisation, all law, all
order, all controlled and purposeful life, will be seen to depend on
these ideas and emotions. The growing conception of the right of every
individual to live in some degree of comfort and security is nothing
but the taking shape of these ideas and emotions; for the end of all
civilisation is to ensure that there shall be freedom for all from
debasing and degrading conditions, and that is perhaps as far as we
have hitherto advanced; but the further end in sight is to set all men
and women free to some extent from hopeless drudgery, to give them
leisure, to provide them with tastes and interests; and further still,
to contrive, if possible, that human beings shall not be born into
the world of tainted parentage, and thus to stamp out the tyranny of
disease and imbecility and criminal instinct. More and more does it
become clear that all the off-scourings and failures of civilisation
are the outcome of diseased brains and nerves, and that self-control
and vigour are the results of nature rather than nurture. All this is
now steadily in sight. The aim is personal freedom, the freedom which
shall end where another's freedom begins; but we recognise now that it
is no use legislating for social and political freedom, if we allow
the morally deficient to beget offspring for whom moral freedom is an
impossibility. And perhaps the best hope of the race lies in firmly
facing this problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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