Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
The intellectual trouble in the matter, as it presents itself to me,
comes in upon this, that the question does not lie in one plane. So many
discussions ignore this fact, and deal with it on one plane only. For
example, we may take the whole business on the plane of the medical man,
ignoring all other considerations. On that plane it would probably be
almost easy to reason out a working system. It never has been done by
the medical profession, as a whole, which is fairly understandable, or
by any group of medical men, which is the more surprising, but it
would be an extremely interesting thing to have done and a material
contribution to the sane discussion of this problem. It would not solve
it but it would illuminate certain aspects. Let the mere physiological
problem be taken. We want healthy children and the best we can get. Let
the medical man devise his scheme primarily for that. Understand we
are shutting our eyes to every other consideration but physical or
quasi-physical ones. Imagine the thing done, for example, by a
Mr. Francis Galton, who had an absolutely open mind upon all other
questions. Some form of polygamy, marriage of the most transient
description, with reproduction barred to specified types, would probably
come from such a speculation. But, in addition, a number of people who
can have only a few children or none are, nevertheless, not adapted
physiologically for celibacy. Conceive the medical man working that
problem out upon purely materialistic lines and with an eye to all
physiological and pathological peculiarities. The Tasmanians (now
extinct) seem to have been somewhere near the probable result.
Then let us take one step up to a second stage of consideration,
remaining still materialistic, and with the medical man still as our
only guide. We want the children to grow up healthy; we want them to
be taken care of. This means homes, homes of some sort. That may not
abolish polygamy, but it will qualify it, it will certainly abolish any
approach to promiscuity that was possible at the lowest stage, it will
enhance the importance of motherhood and impose a number of limits upon
the sexual freedoms of men and women. People who have become parents, at
any rate, must be tied to the children and one another. We come at once
to much more definite marriage, to an organized family of some sort, be
it only Plato’s state community or something after the Oneida pattern,
but with at least a system of guarantees and responsibilities. Let
us add that we want the children to go through a serious educational
process, and we find at once still further limitations coming in.
We discover the necessity of deferring experience, of pushing back
adolescence, of avoiding precocious stimulation with its consequent
arrest of growth. We are already face to face with an enlarged case for
decency, for a system of suppressions and of complicated Taboos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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