how would things be “different” in the modern utopia? after all it is time we faced the riddle of the problems of marriage and motherhood. . . .

the modern utopia is not only to be a sound and happy world state, but it is to be one progressing from good to better. but as malthus [footnote: essay on the principles of population.] demonstrated for all time, a state whose population continues to increase in obedience to unchecked instinct, can progress only from bad to worse. from the view of human comfort and happiness, the increase of population that occurs at each advance in human security is the greatest evil of life. the way of nature is for every species to increase nearly to its possible maximum of numbers, and then to improve through the pressure of that maximum against its limiting conditions by the crushing and killing of all the feebler individuals. the way of nature has also been the way of humanity so far, and except when a temporary alleviation is obtained through an expansion of the general stock of sustenance by invention or discovery, the amount of starvation and of the physical misery of privation in the world, must vary almost exactly with the excess of the actual birth-rate over that required to sustain population at a number compatible with a universal contentment. neither has nature evolved, nor has man so far put into operation, any device by which paying this price of progress, this misery of a multitude of starved and unsuccessful lives can be evaded. a mere indiscriminating restriction of the birth-rate — an end practically attained in the homely, old-fashioned civilisation of china by female infanticide, involves not only the cessation of distresses but stagnation, and the minor good of a sort of comfort and social stability is won at too great a sacrifice. progress depends essentially on competitive selection, and that we may not escape.

but it is a conceivable and possible thing that this margin of futile struggling, pain and discomfort and death might be reduced to nearly nothing without checking physical and mental evolution, with indeed an acceleration of physical and mental evolution, by preventing the birth of those who would in the unrestricted interplay of natural forces be born to suffer and fail. the method of nature “red in tooth and claw” is to degrade, thwart, torture, and kill the weakest and least adapted members of every species in existence in each generation, and so keep the specific average rising; the ideal of a scientific civilisation is to prevent those weaklings being born. there is no other way of evading nature’s punishment of sorrow. the struggle for life among the beasts and uncivilised men means misery and death for the inferior individuals, misery and death in order that they may not increase and multiply; in the civilised state it is now clearly possible to make the conditions of life tolerable for every living creature, provided the inferiors can be prevented from increasing and multiplying. but this latter condition must be respected. instead of competing to escape death and wretchedness, we may compete to give birth and we may heap every sort of consolation prize upon the losers in that competition. the modern state tends to qualify inheritance, to insist upon education and nurture for children, to come in more and more in the interests of the future between father and child. it is taking over the responsibility of the general welfare of the children more and more, and as it does so, its right to decide which children it will shelter becomes more and more reasonable.

how far will such conditions be prescribed? how far can they be prescribed in a modern utopia?

let us set aside at once all nonsense of the sort one hears in certain quarters about the human stud farm. [footnote: see mankind in the making, ch. ii.] state breeding of the population was a reasonable proposal for plato to make, in view of the biological knowledge of his time and the purely tentative nature of his metaphysics; but from anyone in the days after darwin, it is preposterous. yet we have it given to us as the most brilliant of modern discoveries by a certain school of sociological writers, who seem totally unable to grasp the modification of meaning “species” and “individual” have undergone in the last fifty years. they do not seem capable of the suspicion that the boundaries of species have vanished, and that individuality now carries with it the quality of the unique! to them individuals are still defective copies of a platonic ideal of the species, and the purpose of breeding no more than an approximation to that perfection. individuality is indeed a negligible difference to them, an impertinence, and the whole flow of modern biological ideas has washed over them in vain.

but to the modern thinker individuality is the significant fact of life, and the idea of the state, which is necessarily concerned with the average and general, selecting individualities in order to pair them and improve the race, an absurdity. it is like fixing a crane on the plain in order to raise the hill tops. in the initiative of the individual above the average, lies the reality of the future, which the state, presenting the average, may subserve but cannot control. and the natural centre of the emotional life, the cardinal will, the supreme and significant expression of individuality, should lie in the selection of a partner for procreation.

but compulsory pairing is one thing, and the maintenance of general limiting conditions is another, and one well within the scope of state activity. the state is justified in saying, before you may add children to the community for the community to educate and in part to support, you must be above a certain minimum of personal efficiency, and this you must show by holding a position of solvency and independence in the world; you must be above a certain age, and a certain minimum of physical development, and free of any transmissible disease. you must not be a criminal unless you have expiated your offence. failing these simple qualifications, if you and some person conspire and add to the population of the state, we will, for the sake of humanity, take over the innocent victim of your passions, but we shall insist that you are under a debt to the state of a peculiarly urgent sort, and one you will certainly pay, even if it is necessary to use restraint to get the payment out of you: it is a debt that has in the last resort your liberty as a security, and, moreover, if this thing happens a second time, or if it is disease or imbecility you have multiplied, we will take an absolutely effectual guarantee that neither you nor your partner offend again in this matter.

“harsh!” you say, and “poor humanity!”

you have the gentler alternative to study in your terrestrial slums and asylums.

it may be urged that to permit conspicuously inferior people to have one or two children in this way would be to fail to attain the desired end, but, indeed, this is not so. a suitably qualified permission, as every statesman knows, may produce the social effects without producing the irksome pressure of an absolute prohibition. amidst bright and comfortable circumstances, and with an easy and practicable alternative, people will exercise foresight and self-restraint to escape even the possibilities of hardship and discomfort; and free life in utopia is to be well worth this trouble even for inferior people. the growing comfort, self-respect, and intelligence of the english is shown, for example, in the fall in the proportion of illegitimate births from 2.2 per 1,000 in 1846-50 to 1.2 per 1,000 in 1890-1900, and this without any positive preventive laws whatever. this most desirable result is pretty certainly not the consequence of any great exaltation of our moral tone, but simply of a rising standard of comfort and a livelier sense of consequences and responsibilities. if so marked a change is possible in response to such progress as england has achieved in the past fifty years, if discreet restraint can be so effectual as this, it seems reasonable to suppose that in the ampler knowledge and the cleaner, franker atmosphere of our utopian planet the birth of a child to diseased or inferior parents, and contrary to the sanctions of the state, will be the rarest of disasters.

and the death of a child, too, that most tragic event, utopia will rarely know. children are not born to die in childhood. but in our world, at present, through the defects of our medical science and nursing methods, through defects in our organisation, through poverty and carelessness, and through the birth of children that never ought to have been born, one out of every five children born dies within five years. it may be the reader has witnessed this most distressful of all human tragedies. it is sheer waste of suffering. there is no reason why ninety-nine out of every hundred children born should not live to a ripe age. accordingly, in any modern utopia, it must be insisted they will.