He said:
"Last night my wife took me to a lecture on Eugenics and the Future. The
night before, we went to a lecture on the Social Implications of the
Tango. I enjoyed them both immensely. Of course, after a long day in the
office, I am rather tired in the evening. If I dozed off on either
occasion it must have been just for a moment. I followed the arguments
perfectly."
"Are you converted?" I said.
He pushed his derby further back on his head.
"Quite. I am not a mule. I know a good argument when I see one. Now,
isn't it true, as the speaker contended last night, that the human
animal, taking him by and large, is not a beautiful object? When he
isn't bow-legged, he is knock-kneed. There are too many men prematurely
bald. There are too many women prematurely wrinkled--and fat. We are
nothing but a shambling, stoop-shouldered race, in a permanent state of
ill-health. In summer we get sun-struck. In winter we get colds in the
head. Look at the ancient Greeks. Is there any reason why we cannot
produce a race as healthy, as beautiful, as graceful in the free play of
muscle and limb? An erect, supple, free-stepping race, breathing deeply
of life, looking the world full in the face, daring everything, afraid
of nothing. Our bodies are divine, as much so as our souls. To go on
being a race of physical degenerates, a snuffling, wheezing, perspiring
race that is always running to the doctor, is mortal sin; especially
when the remedy is close at hand."
"You mean eugenics?" I said.
"No," he said, "I refer to the tango. The speaker last night--or was it
the night before?--was absolutely convincing on the point. I am sure you
will agree."
To make sure that I would agree he interrupted me just as I opened my
mouth to frame an objection. He continued rapidly:
"Take this matter of old age. There's no reason why people should let
themselves grow old, is there now? And a properly constituted race would
see to it that old age was postponed indefinitely. After all, when a man
says he is eighty years old or ninety years old, it is only a figure of
speech. Look at Napoleon winning the battle of Leipzig when he was
seventy-eight years old."
"I never heard that before," I said. "I thought Napoleon lost the battle
of Leipzig, and when he died--"
"It may have been Hannibal," he said. "At that point I may possibly have
dozed off. But the principle of the thing is the same. Only a race of
weaklings will succumb to the ravages of time without making a fight for
it. There is really nothing beautiful in old age. You sit out the long
winter nights by the fire. Your eyes are too weak for the fine print in
the evening paper, and when you ask your son to tell you about the new
Currency Law he grows cross and scolds the baby. When you stop to buy a
ticket in the Subway, people grow impatient and murmur something about
an old ladies' home. It's all as plain as daylight. There is no reason
why people, as soon as they get to be sixty, should reconcile themselves
to the idea of debility, warm gruel, and chest protectors, when they
might go on being young, alert, graceful, full of the joy of life, if
they would only recognise the way of going about it."
"You mean the tango?" I said.
"No," he said. "I was alluding to eugenics."
He spoke with assurance, but from the corner of his eye he threw me a
wistful, fugitive glance, as if to make sure from my bearing that this
was really what he meant. I did not contradict him. I was thinking of
his wife. For the first time in my experience my sympathies were with
the tired business man. It is good for the tired business man that his
wife shall be alive to the things that count; but two nights in
succession is rather hard. His wife, I knew, was alive to every phase of
our intense modern existence, and in rapid succession. She did not
precisely burn with that hard, gemlike flame which Mr. Pater
recommended. Sometimes I thought she burned with a sixty-four-candle
power carbon glow. It was a bit trying on the eyes.
"Or take the question of sex," he said. "What is there in sex emotion to
be ashamed of? It is the most primordial of feelings. It comes before
the law of gravitation, as the speaker showed last night."
"Does it though?" I said.
"Well," he said, "perhaps it was the night before last. Around this
universal urge, of which we ought to be proud, as the most powerful
force in Evolution (the speaker last night was sure there could be no
doubt on the subject), we have built up an elaborate structure of
reticence and hypocrisy. All art, all literature, is of significance
only as it emphasises sex. If the Bible has impressed itself on the
imagination of humanity for two thousand years, it is because it
contains the most beautiful love songs in all literature. It is the
force which drives the sun in its course, as the Italian poet has said.
It has been the inspiration of all great deeds. If we searched deeply
enough, we should find that sex was the inspiration behind the discovery
of America, the invention of printing, and the building of the Roman
aqueducts. Only the most benighted ignorance will permit our prudish
sentiments on the subject to stand in the way of a movement which is
sweeping the world like wildfire."
"Referring to eugenics?" I said.
"No," he said, "I mean the tango."
He looked out of the window and pondered.
"Yes," he said, "that was night before last. What the speaker dwelt upon
last night was the subject of democracy. At present we know nothing of
true democracy, of true equality. Society is divided into classes with
separate codes of morals and standards of conduct. There are rich and
poor; workers and idlers; meat eaters and vegetarians; the old and the
young; the literate, the illiterate, and the advocates of simplified
spelling. It isn't a world at all; it is chaos. In the end it all
resolves itself into this: humanity is divided into the strong and the
weak. The surest way to do away with inequality is to produce a race in
which every member is strong."
"You mean--" I said.
"Pardon me," he said. "I haven't finished. Let me sum up the speaker's
concluding sentence as I recall it. As we look around us to-day there is
unmistakably one force which works for the elimination of that
inequality which is the source of all our troubles; a force which wipes
out all distinction of class, of age, and of education, and produces a
world in which everybody is engaged in doing the same thing as everybody
else."
"Oh, I see," I said. "You are now speaking of the tango."
"Not at all," he said, "I am referring to eugenics. But perhaps you do
not agree with me?"
I hesitated. He was watching me eagerly, pushing his derby back until it
stood upright on its tail like a trained seal.
"I have done my best to agree with you," I said, "but you have made it
rather difficult for me. Nevertheless I do agree with you. What I am
thinking of now is something which the speaker last night omitted to
mention--or was it the night before last? And it is this. Under the
conditions which you describe, how beautifully complex the art of
thinking will become. At present we can hardly be said to think at all.
We are cowards. We crawl along from one truth to another. We timidly
look back to our premises before jumping at the conclusion. We are
horrified by inconsistencies. We are enslaved by facts--facts of nature,
facts of human nature, facts of experience. How different it will all be
when we can sidestep facts, when we can dip over inconsistencies, when
we can hug boldly an apparent contradiction and make it our own; when
thinking, in short, will not be a timid regulated process, but a
succession of dips, twists, gallops, slides, bends, hurdles, sprints,
and pole vaults."
"You are thinking of the tango?" he said.
"No," I replied. "I had eugenics in mind."