FUTURE WOMAN
THE picture, 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 excuse _mea non culpa_ for
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.
Footnote 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 to _extending 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 a _credo_ for 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 of _looking up_ to
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 not _manifestly_ absurd 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 annoyances _are 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.
Footnote 12:
See _Woman: 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 a _pis 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
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● 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.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_);
was in bold by is enclosed by “equal” signs (=bold=)
had extra character spacing by “plus” signs (+stretched+).