CHAPTER IVFuture Woman

Thepicture, given in the last chapter, of the world that is likely to result from the extreme consequences of our present tendencies may seem overdrawn and fantastic; but it should not be too readily dismissed as absurd on that account. The fact that, as a whole, it may seem incredible is no argument against the inevitability of certain of its chief characteristics; for it should always be remembered that, since the main stream of human life as we now know it, is based upon the bodily relation of the sexes and upon the love which makes this relation a thing desired, all influences tending to deteriorate the human body or to upset that bodily relation, and all scientific technique and substitutes which tend to supersede it, must, if they are allowed to develop, lead to a dislocation so complete of the original scheme that there is no telling in what monstrous changes they may culminate.

Had we not already reached bodily degeneration, brought about and condoned by body-despising values; had we not a Puritanical tradition reinforced by Feminism; and, finally, had we not a group of sciences whose discoveries, either actual or potential, allow us to expect every kind of extra-corporeal substitute and aid for our defective corporeal functions and parts, we could afford to laugh at the dangers indicated in the previous chapter. In view, however, of the undeniable truth of the description of our state previously given, it is impossible lightly to reject the ultimate evanescence of sexual love, for instance, as a remote future development. And, if we admit that, we must reckon with the disappearance of our most effective protection against the instinctive hostility of the sexes.

It is for this reason that there is still a fight to be fought with Feminism, and why we ourselves, though heart and soul pro-feminine, still remain active anti-Feminists. People point to the victories of Feminism in recent years, and say: What is there left for active anti-Feminists to do? Now that women have the vote and that they sit in Parliament, now that they have practically the whole of the Press behind them, their battle is surely won, and anti-Feminism is a lost cause! Obviously, however, if anti-Feminism means resisting the further development of Feminism, to prevent it from culminating in some or all of the changes outlined in the previous chapter; if it means a struggle to maintain the natural relations of the sexes, together with the normal functioning of male and female in reproduction; and if it also means the retention of the family, the home, and some beauty in our social scheme, then it certainly cannot yet be a lost cause, and those who, like ourselves, remain anti-Feminists despite the Feminine Franchise, the Feminist Press, and the Woman Μ. P., feel that we have still much to protect and much to achieve before we can regard our position as hopeless.

Fortunately, however, there is an alternative to the developments described in the last chapter—an alternative which, if we so choose, we may well be able to bring about quite as certainly as the future already outlined. But, if we are in earnest about this alternative future, and if we seriously wish to realize it, we must not forget that, since the other is more or less implicit in our present trend, and will evolve automatically out of it if only we continue to acquiesce in everything that constitutes modernity, this other, or alternative, future will require to be actively fought for.

The future is in our hands, and we can mould it as we will—certainly! But, as we have seen, it is also as potential in the present as a flower is potential in the bud. While, therefore, the future sketched in the last chapter—or, at all events, very essential parts of it—will come without any special effort on our part, merely as a further growth of existing tendencies, the alternative future, which we now propose to describe, will, if it is to be realized, demand from us not only the hardness and determination of iconoclasts, but also the creative gifts, patience, and constructive energy of builders.

There is much in our present that must be destroyed, and even more that will subsequently require building and re-building.

Among the first things that we shall destroy is our table of value. We shall do this, however, not in the spirit of anarchists eager only for greater licence and more “freedom”—for that is always the temptation of the mob, and requires no particular courage or constructive programme; but in the spirit of builders who want more discipline for greater achievement.

The first values to be destroyed will be the body-despising values, and everything connected with them. We shall no longer condone ugliness or physiological depravity either in ourselves or in others. The fact that some bodily defect cannot be helped by the man who reveals it does not make him any the more desirable. We shall remember that, strictly speaking, moral depravity is no more voluntary than physiological depravity; and, since we refuse to accept the excusemea non culpafor moral depravity, it is only logical and right to reject that same excuse for bodily depravity. Why is it important not to accept this excuse for bodily depravity? Because to condone is to overlook, to condone is to accept, and, above all, to condone is to become accustomed to. Where physiological depravity is a matter of custom, however, it very soon ceases, as we know, to be regarded as depravity; and mating, love-making, and procreation quickly become possible in spite of it. That is why it is more important to alter our values than to promote Eugenic legislation. For, if our values are altered and physiological depravity is no longer condoned, Eugenic legislation will become unnecessary, and will be anticipated by the taste of the people; whereas, if our body-despising values remain intact, Eugenic legislation will always be fighting an up-hill fight.

The most difficult feature connected with the task of suppressing our body-despising values is the duty it enjoins on each individual not only of condemning his neighbour but also of condemning himself, if he is physiologically depraved; but this each of us will learn to do. We shall feel the shame of bodily defects once more, and strive unremittingly to recover bodies complete anatomically beautiful, and no longer defective functionally. Even at the risk of great immediate suffering, we shall learn to eschew artificial aids of all kinds, and regard it as beneath our dignity to use them. Then, since very little is beyond the wit of man, other means will be found, and we shall recover our former bodily splendour.

We must bear in mind, however, that we are almost at the eleventh hour; that to-morrow may be too late; and that, if we wish to spare ourselves the great discovery of the desolate women-workers of the previous chapter, there is no time to lose.

Secondly, we shall destroy the value which makes it noble, virtuous, and desirable to sacrifice the greater for the less. This value also belongs to the group of values which Dean Inge supports, despite his apparent enthusiasm about Eugenics,[11]and is among the greatest causes of modern degeneracy. When once you admit the principle that it is noble and virtuous to sacrifice the greater for the less, the desirable for the undesirable, the corn for the weeds, the god for the mob, you necessarily invite the condition which we find around us to-day. Everything that is best in the nation, all those elements on which the successful survival of our race depends, are being penalized and sacrificed for the sake of the defective, the lunatic, the crippled, the incurable, the half-witted, and the blind. Honours are acquired not for promoting the multiplication of the sound and hale, but for promoting the comfort, ease, and daily welfare of the physiologically and spiritually hopeless. This value must go. Its disappearance will clear the air. So long, however, as one sound family in England continues to be penalized even to the extent of only sixpence a year in order to support humanity’s wreckage and rubbish, we shall continue to be sacrificing the greater to the less. This absurd and degenerate value must be transvalued into the following:It is noble and virtuous to sacrifice the less for the greater, the rubbish for the precious.When once this transvaluation has been effected, we shall begin to ascend.

11.Another instance of his astonishing confusion of thought.

Thirdly, we shall recognize the error of our modern conception of masculinity. We shall try to forget the Great War, which at present tempts us to think highly of ourselves; and we shall endeavour to understand that to limit the notion of masculinity to proficiency in sports and bravery in war is to overlook a whole catalogue of masculine virtues without which degeneration can hardly fail to overtake us in spite of all our games and our feats of arms. This limitation of the idea of manliness to proficiency in sport and bravery in war is acceptable to women, because it makes for a breed of men who are easily led and still more easily misled; but it is fatal to civilization. We shall learn to expect of the manly man not only courage and proficiency in sport, but also will-power, leadership, mastery over the mysteries of life, and not Puritanical funk in their presence, intelligence sufficient to overshadow any female brain that is placed alongside of him (a feature notoriously absent both in the average soldier and in the average sportsman, or at least, if not absent in, not essential to), and clarity and decision regarding every problem that it concerns him to understand—in fact, a man whose presence alone makes the claim of sexual equality a manifest and transparent absurdity.

Nothing less should satisfy us; for we shall always remember that it was the man who possesses merely courage and proficiency at sport that is responsible not only for all our present muddle, but also for Feminism.

Here again, therefore, we shall recast our values, and, hard as it may seem, discipline ourselves to a new outlook. Nothing else can save the world and nothing else can put woman back in her place—which is only another way of saving the world. Every other remedy is quackery. The highest type of this kind of manly man is the ruler who gives us a new order and a new goal; while even the lowest type is the husband who fills a woman’s life and whom she finds it a joy to obey and no indignity, no hardship to serve. Without this kind of man in large numbers in our midst, the world cannot fail to go hopelessly astray, and it will be our principal object henceforth to discover not only how he can be restored to us, but how it is that, during the last hundred years, we have failed to produce him in England. This is the only kind of scientific research that can possibly be fruitful of good results at the present juncture, and it is the first direction in which we shall turn our remaining energy. Nor need we be deterred by the journalistic scoffers who will tell us that we are in search of that mythical monster the Superman, for we have no such highfalutin’ schemes. The men we wish to rear again have already been reared once before in these islands, and history records their lives. They are not a magic fantasy, but a possible reality. They are not demi-gods, but mortals. And we ourselves, who claim that they are indispensable for the salvation of modern humanity, do not hope for them as a race of Supermen, but merely as the leaders of a Masculine Renaissance.

With regard to the world these leaders will create, and to the position of women in that world, while we cannot safely foretell what they will do, we venture to suggest the following:

We may expect a total and complete exposure of the shallowness, impracticability, and danger to national survival of Democracy as we now understand it, and therefore the evanescence of democratic forms of government. The great suffering and chaos to which such forms of government lead will probably leave a deep impression upon the soul of humanity, and this impression will help the leaders of the Masculine Renaissance to remodel the national life without having recourse to the discredited and preposterous vote.

We may expect a revival of agriculture and craftsmanship, because one of the first things to be done is to arrest the dry-rot in spirit and body, which industrial and urban conditions have brought about under the sway of the body-despising values. Men will learn to respect themselves once more, and this they can do only by expressing their highest impulses in their work. They will become agriculturists and craftsmen again, because this is the only way by which they can recover their dignity, their lost faculties, and their vanished health.

We can also expect that science instead of concentrating, as now, upon providing us with ever more efficient extra-corporeal equipment such as wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes, etc., and more and more substitutes and aids for our defective bodies, will turn its research in the direction of restoring to man bodily perfection and toextending the range of his faculties. It will probe the mystery of powers like clairvoyance, and direct healing (such as that effected by the laying on of hands from time immemorial); it will discover the mechanism (if any) behind telepathy and behind the peculiar magnetism of cultivated will-power, and discover an educational technique by which these properties and powers may become more general, more efficient, and more far-reaching. It will seek the method behind the laws of heredity, and establish principles whereby family and stock qualities may be brought to perfection. It will also sift the mass of evidence and facts collected by modern science, in order to co-ordinate the data, and establish lines of proper conduct and legitimate aspiration. Finally, it will aim at co-ordinating religious and naturalistic truths up to date, with the view of offering to mankind a new faith, and a new metaphysic, purged of the sick and degenerate elements of former religions.

Recognizing that æstheticism is an essential part of terrestrial life, the possession and expression of beauty will no longer be relegated to certain sections of the community, but will be made a part of the national life. The Puritanical prejudice against beauty and its lure will be exploded, and beauty will be cultivated in the human body as an indispensable factor in a happy life. The old Puritanical belief that it is possible to have a beautiful soul, a beautiful character, and a beautiful mind in an ugly body with evil-smelling breath, will have to be recognized for what it is—that is, merely acredofor the comfort of repulsive people.

Meanwhile large hypertrophied cities and towns will tend to disappear, and the population will be thinned by rigorous selection at birth. Abnormal, crippled, defective, incurable, and undesirable people will no longer be allowed to grow up. Their uselessness and their danger as a burden and an eye-sore will be recognized. The old belief in the extreme sacredness of every human creature, irrespective of bodily and mental perfection, will vanish, in order to make way for a valuation based on quality of mind and body. This gradual elimination of the undesirable dregs of humanity with all the physiological botchedness they stand for, will clear the air, and relieve coming generations of many heavy burdens. The energy, spare wealth, and spare time of the community, will then be devoted to the desirable, and the magnificent mansions which are now distributed all over the country, for the housing of human monsters, will be converted into palaces for people of promise.

The regeneration of man will immediately transform woman and her position; because, while her contempt for the male will vanish, she will recover both physically and spiritually that lost joy oflooking upto her mate. Through the mastery he will introduce, her present very justifiable anxiety about the world will tend to disappear, and the serenity of a dependent existence will be restored to her. Her life through being filled by a mate sufficiently versatile to supply her not only with offspring, but also with every possible interest, will gradually lose the feverish restlessness of the modern woman, who is seeking constantly to forget the void both in her heart and in her existence; and in time she will learn to measure at their proper worth the vanities which now supply her with but a poor substitute for her former bliss.

With these changes, women’s claim to equality with men will gradually cease to be heard of. Here and there it may still continue to be raised in some quarters; but, the moment its absurdity is made everywhere visible to the very eye of onlookers, it will necessarily die down. It is merely the fact that the claim is notmanifestlyabsurd to-day that lends it for the time being a certain fatal plausibility.

But, before woman is sound enough in body and mind to give birth to this new breed of masculine sons, and to rear them herself, she will undergo many transformations, and learn to look at life from a very different standpoint. In the first place she will regenerate her own body before it is too late, and recover the ease, if not the ecstasy of old, in all her functions. She will learn to despise herself if she wears glasses, if she has false or bad teeth, if she cannot function without scientific aids, and if she cannot suckle her child. She will perceive the boastful levity of the present generation of women who concern themselves more and more with highfalutin’ interests and matters of the soul, when all the while they are not masters of their bodies. She will see that a workman who wished to leave his bench and his tools in order to try to master high finance when he had not yet mastered his trade, would very justly become an object of derision, and that modern women, with their feverish interest in every new-fangled creed and power, are also objects of derision, because all the while their bodies grow more and more out of hand.

Helped by her men of science, she will apply herself to the task of discovering that mode of life and that diet which will restore to her normal and easy functioning in her digestive system; that mode of life and diet during gestation which will restore to her the joy of childbirth—a joy that has probably not been known to mankind for thousands of years—and, without losing heart over her initial failures, she will persevere until the necessary discoveries are made.

When once bodily normality is recovered—and this will come about much more speedily by a change of values, and therefore by a change of taste, than by legally enforced Eugenics—she and her mate will attach a new value to life, and a new value to motherhood, domesticity, and marriage. All three will appear nobler and more desirable, not only because they have become more beautiful, and more productive of beauty, but also because their responsibilities and annoyancesare endured for a man and for children who make them appear thoroughly worth while.

In Chapter II we pointed out the direction in which inquiry might profitably be directed in order to achieve certain eminently desirable improvements in the present conditions of childbirth. These indications may prove to be misleading. It is possible that their application may be disappointing. This, however, should not deter us. The ideas suggested in Chapter II may or may not be of value; but what is important is that inquiry should be directed towards the goal to which they point, and, if this end be assiduously sought, it cannot fail to be reached sooner or later. It must be obvious to all that, by persisting in our present direction of improved artificial aids, we can never attain to anything either good or desirable—therefore that our present direction is manifestly wrong and hopeless.

The elimination of the bungled and the botched, and a rigorous selection of the newly-born on qualitative lines both of mind and body, will so much relieve the situation in all over-populated districts that early marriages will become a possibility again. Where it is difficult, assistance will easily be found. For where people acquire honour in helping and promoting the best, instead of promoting and helping the worst, the rich will seek distinction in endowing desirable people instead of endowing wrecks, cripples, and incurables.

When once these reforms have been instituted, it will be possible to order life on a much happier scale, particularly for women. Since males and females are normally about equal in number, the increased prosperity will enable most men to marry and most girls to find husbands, and the misery of modern sexual abstinence will cease for millions of women. But, as happiness can be permanently secured only if a nation cuts its coat according to its cloth, careful measures will have to be taken to keep the population within certain limits. Seeing, however, that birth-control and contraceptive methods sacrifice the adults in order to achieve this end, the tendency will be, in a society whose principle it is to sacrifice the less to the greater, to proceed to some kind of controlled and legalized infanticide. This will allow standards governing infant-selection to be periodically revised, and will thus lead to an improvement of the race.

Since, however, wars and the greater danger attending male pursuits are always likely to create a preponderance of females in the community, concubinage will be tolerated for the sake of the surplus women; but, instead of its being a concubinage like that of to-day, which is hidden, secret, sterile, condemned, and therefore productive of much distress and tragedy, it will be open, tolerated, recognized, and fruitful, just as it has been in the best civilizations of the past. There are other and very deep reasons why some form of concubinage is essential. I have already dealt with them elsewhere.[12]Suffice it to say here, however, that no shame or discomfort will necessarily attach to the life of the concubines. They will be legally recognized; they will have their social status; and they will be protected by public opinion and by law. Nor will they be encountered in every household. As in former societies which have recognized them, they will be found only where their need is felt, and where their own taste guides them to seek protection.

12.SeeWoman: A Vindication, pp. 172-3.

Women old enough for matrimony and older, therefore, will tend to be withdrawn more and more from industrial, commercial, and public life, and the old industries of the home—bread, cheese, butter, jam, and confectionery making—will be revived, and will flourish once more. Under the guidance of science, domestic medicine will gradually be transferred from the doctor’s consulting-room to the kitchen and the still-room, and there it will remain, as it always ought to have remained, and doctors and their powers will tend to disappear. Children will be much more the apprentices of their parents than they are at present; the duties of education will tend to be delegated less and less to elders who are not blood-relations; and parents will have a higher sense of their responsibilities. Education outside the home will be regarded—at least for boys and girls under fifteen—as apis aller, more or less as we to-day regard the various arrangements that have to be made for orphans.

Meanwhile, with improved bodies and brighter wits, women will share with men the joy of the developed faculties which, as we have pointed out, it will be the object of science to realize; and a richer and more eventful intellectual and spiritual life will be led, because humanity will be able to apply itself to the pursuit of ever loftier interests. We shall have greater arts and greater religions, deeper thoughts and a mightier grasp of reality; because, having mastered our bodies and solved once more the secret of their harmonious working, we shall no longer be in the difficult dilemma of mortals who, with neglected and badly functioning physiques, try to anticipate here on earth the pastimes and pursuits of the immortal world.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes:Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.Typographical errors were silently corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.

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