,the ,revolutionist's ,handbook and ,pocket ,companion by ,george ,bernard ,shaw 7#ahef-aiej7 ,writing as3 ,,john ,,tanner1 ,m4,i4,r4,c4 7,member of the ,idle ,rich ,class74 ,,preface ,,to ,,the ,,revolutionist',s ,,handbook ,no one can contemplate the present condition of the masses of the people without desiring something like a revolution for the better4 ,sir ,robert ,giffen4 ,essays in ,finance1 vol4 ii4 p4 #cic4 ,,foreword ,a revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order and try another4 ,the constitution of ,england is revolutionary4 ,to a ,russian or ,anglo-,indian bureaucrat1 a general election is as much a revolution as a referendum or plebiscite in which the people fight instead of voting4 ,the ,french ,revolution overthrew one set of rulers and substituted another with different interests and different views4 ,that is what a general election enables the people to do in ,england every seven years if they choose4 ,revolution is therefore a national institution in ,england2 and its advocacy by an ,englishman needs no apology4 ,every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands4 ,for example1 every person who has mastered a profession is a sceptic concerning it1 and consequently a revolutionist4 ,every genuine religious person is a heretic and therefore a revolutionist4 ,all who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists4 ,the most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older1 though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing to their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform4 ,any person under the age of thirty1 who1 having any knowledge of the existing social order1 is not a revolutionist1 is an inferior4 ,,and ,,yet ,revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny3 they have only shifted it to another shoulder4 ,,john ,,tanner ,i ,,on ,,good ,,breeding ,if there were no ,god1 said the eighteenth century ,deist1 it would be necessary to invent ,him4 ,now this ,,xviii century god was deus ex machina1 the god who helped those who could not help themselves1 the god of the lazy and incapable4 ,the nineteenth century decided that there is indeed no such god2 and now ,man must take in hand all the work that he used to shirk with an idle prayer4 ,he must1 in effect1 change himself into the political ,providence which he formerly conceived as god2 and such change is not only possible1 but the only sort of change that is real4 ,the mere transfiguration of institutions1 as from military and priestly dominance to commercial and scientific dominance1 from commercial dominance to proletarian democracy1 from slavery to serfdom1 from serfdom to capitalism1 from monarchy to republicanism1 from polytheism to monotheism1 from monotheism to atheism1 from atheism to pantheistic humanitarianism1 from general illiteracy to general literacy1 from romance to realism1 from realism to mysticism1 from metaphysics to physics1 are all but changes from ,tweedledum to ,tweedledee3 plus a change1 plus c'est la mme chose4 ,but the changes from the crab apple to the pippin1 from the wolf and fox to the house dog1 from the charger of ,henry ,v to the brewer's draught horse and the race-horse1 are real2 for here ,man has played the god1 subduing ,nature to his intention1 and ennobling or debasing ,life for a set purpose4 ,and what can be done with a wolf can be done with a man4 ,if such monsters as the tramp and the gentleman can appear as mere by-products of ,man's individual greed and folly1 what might we not hope for as a main product of his universal aspiration8 ,this is no new conclusion4 ,the despair of institutions1 and the inexorable ye must be born again1 with ,mrs ,poyser's stipulation1 and born different1 recurs in every generation4 ,the cry for the ,superman did not begin with ,nietzsche1 nor will it end with his vogue4 ,but it has always been silenced by the same question3 what kind of person is this ,superman to be8 ,you ask1 not for a super-apple1 but for an eatable apple2 not for a superhorse1 but for a horse of greater draught or velocity4 ,neither is it of any use to ask for a ,superman3 you must furnish a specification of the sort of man you want4 ,unfortunately you do not know what sort of man you want4 ,some sort of goodlooking philosopher-athlete1 with a handsome healthy woman for his mate1 perhaps4 ,vague as this is1 it is a great advance on the popular demand for a perfect gentleman and a perfect lady4 ,and1 after all1 no market demand in the world takes the form of exact technical specification of the article required4 ,excellent poultry and potatoes are produced to satisfy the demand of housewives who do not know the technical differences between a tuber and a chicken4 ,they will tell you that the proof of the pudding is in the eating2 and they are right4 ,the proof of the ,superman will be in the living2 and we shall find out how to produce him by the old method of trial and error1 and not by waiting for a completely convincing prescription of his ingredients4 ,certain common and obvious mistakes may be ruled out from the beginning4 ,for example1 we agree that we want superior mind2 but we need not fall into the football club folly of counting on this as a product of superior body4 ,yet if we recoil so far as to conclude that superior mind consists in being the dupe of our ethical classifications of virtues and vices1 in short1 of conventional morality1 we shall fall out of the fryingpan of the football club into the fire of the ,sunday ,school4 ,if we must choose between a race of athletes and a race of good men1 let us have the athletes3 better ,samson and ,milo than ,calvin and ,robespierre4 ,but neither alternative is worth changing for3 ,samson is no more a ,superman than ,calvin4 ,what then are we to do8 ,,ii ,,property ,,and ,,marriage ,let us hurry over the obstacles set up by property and marriage4 ,revolutionists make too much of them4 ,no doubt it is easy to demonstrate that property will destroy society unless society destroys it4 ,no doubt1 also1 property has hitherto held its own and destroyed all the empires4 ,but that was because the superficial objection to it 7that it distributes social wealth and the social labor burden in a grotesquely inequitable manner7 did not threaten the existence of the race1 but only the individual happiness of its units1 and finally the maintenance of some irrelevant political form or other1 such as a nation1 an empire1 or the like4 ,now as happiness never matters to ,nature1 as she neither recognizes flags and frontiers nor cares a straw whether the economic system adopted by a society is feudal1 capitalistic1 or collectivist1 provided it keeps the race afoot 7the hive and the anthill being as acceptable to her as ,utopia71 the demonstrations of ,socialists1 though irrefutable1 will never make any serious impression on property4 ,the knell of that over-rated institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict with some more vital matter than mere personal inequities in industrial economy4 ,no such conflict was perceived whilst society had not yet grown beyond national communities too small and simple to overtax ,man's limited political capacity disastrously4 ,but we have now reached the stage of international organization4 ,man's political capacity and magnanimity are clearly beaten by the vastness and complexity of the problems forced on him4 ,and it is at this anxious moment that he finds1 when he looks upward for a mightier mind to help him1 that the heavens are empty4 ,he will presently see that his discarded formula that ,man is the ,temple of the ,holy ,ghost happens to be precisely true1 and that it is only through his own brain and hand that this ,holy ,ghost1 formally the most nebulous person in the ,trinity1 and now become its sole survivor as it has always been its real ,unity1 can help him in any way4 ,and so1 if the ,superman is to come1 he must be born of ,woman by ,man's intentional and well-considered contrivance4 ,conviction of this will smash everything that opposes it4 ,even ,property and ,marriage1 which laugh at the laborer's petty complaint that he is defrauded of surplus value1 and at the domestic miseries of the slaves of the wedding ring1 will themselves be laughed aside as the lightest of trifles if they cross this conception when it becomes a fully realized vital purpose of the race4 ,that they must cross it becomes obvious the moment we acknowledge the futility of breeding men for special qualities as we breed cocks for game1 greyhounds for speed1 or sheep for mutton4 ,what is really important in ,man is the part of him that we do not yet understand4 ,of much of it we are not even conscious1 just as we are not normally conscious of keeping up our circulation by our heart-pump1 though if we neglect it we die4 ,we are therefore driven to the conclusion that when we have carried selection as far as we can by rejecting from the list of eligible parents all persons who are uninteresting1 unpromising1 or blemished without any set-off1 we shall still have to trust to the guidance of fancy 7alias ,voice of ,nature71 both in the breeders and the parents1 for that superiority in the unconscious self which will be the true characteristic of the ,superman4 ,at this point we perceive the importance of giving fancy the widest possible field4 ,to cut humanity up into small cliques1 and effectively limit the selection of the individual to his own clique1 is to postpone the ,superman for eons1 if not for ever4 ,not only should every person be nourished and trained as a possible parent1 but there should be no possibility of such an obstacle to natural selection as the objection of a countess to a navvy or of a duke to a charwoman4 ,equality is essential to good breeding2 and equality1 as all economists know1 is incompatible with property4 ,besides1 equality is an essential condition of bad breeding also2 and bad breeding is indispensable to the weeding out of the human race4 ,when the conception of heredity took hold of the scientific imagination in the middle of last century1 its devotees announced that it was a crime to marry the lunatic to the lunatic or the consumptive to the consumptive4 ,but pray are we to try to correct our diseased stocks by infecting our healthy stocks with them8 ,clearly the attraction which disease has for diseased people is beneficial to the race4 ,if two really unhealthy people get married1 they will1 as likely as not1 have a great number of children who will all die before they reach maturity4 ,this is a far more satisfactory arrangement than the tragedy of a union between a healthy and an unhealthy person4 ,though more costly than sterilization of the unhealthy1 it has the enormous advantage that in the event of our notions of health and unhealth being erroneous 7which to some extent they most certainly are71 the error will be corrected by experience instead of confirmed by evasion4 ,one fact must be faced resolutely1 in spite of the shrieks of the romantic4 ,there is no evidence that the best citizens are the offspring of congenial marriages1 or that a conflict of temperament is not a highly important part of what breeders call crossing4 ,on the contrary1 it is quite sufficiently probable that good results may be obtained from parents who would be extremely unsuitable companions and partners1 to make it certain that the experiment of mating them will sooner or later be tried purposely almost as often as it is now tried accidentally4 ,but mating such couples must clearly not involve marrying them4 ,in conjugation two complementary persons may supply one another's deficiencies3 in the domestic partnership of marriage they only feel them and suffer from them4 ,thus the son of a robust1 cheerful1 eupeptic ,british country squire1 with the tastes and range of his class1 and of a clever1 imaginative1 intellectual1 highly civilized ,jewess1 might be very superior to both his parents2 but it is not likely that the ,jewess would find the squire an interesting companion1 or his habits1 his friends1 his place and mode of life congenial to her4 ,therefore marriage1 whilst it is made an indispensable condition of mating1 will delay the advent of the ,superman as effectually as ,property1 and will be modified by the impulse towards him just as effectually4 ,the practical abrogation of ,property and ,marriage as they exist at present will occur without being much noticed4 ,to the mass of men1 the intelligent abolition of property would mean nothing except an increase in the quantity of food1 clothing1 housing1 and comfort at their personal disposal1 as well as a greater control over their time and circumstances4 ,very few persons now make any distinction between virtually complete property and property held on such highly developed public conditions as to place its income on the same footing as that of a propertyless clergyman1 officer1 or civil servant4 ,a landed proprietor may still drive men and women off his land1 demolish their dwellings1 and replace them with sheep or deer2 and in the unregulated trades the private trader may still spunge on the regulated trades and sacrifice the life and health of the nation as lawlessly as the ,manchester cotton manufacturers did at the beginning of last century4 ,but though the ,factory ,code on the one hand1 and ,trade ,union organization on the other1 have1 within the lifetime of men still living1 converted the old unrestricted property of the cotton manufacturer in his mill and the cotton spinner in his labor into a mere permission to trade or work on stringent public or collective conditions1 imposed in the interest of the general welfare without any regard for individual hard cases1 people in ,lancashire still speak of their property in the old terms1 meaning nothing more by it than the things a thief can be punished for stealing4 ,the total abolition of property1 and the conversion of every citizen into a salaried functionary in the public service1 would leave much more than #ii per cent of the nation quite unconscious of any greater change than now takes place when the son of a shipowner goes into the navy4 ,they would still call their watches and umbrellas and back gardens their property4 ,marriage also will persist as a name attached to a general custom long after the custom itself will have altered4 ,for example1 modern ,english marriage1 as modified by divorce and by ,married ,women's ,property ,acts1 differs more from early ,,xix century marriage than ,byron's marriage did from ,shakespear's4 ,at the present moment marriage in ,england differs not only from marriage in ,france1 but from marriage in ,scotland4 ,marriage as modified by the divorce laws in ,south ,dakota would be called mere promiscuity in ,clapham4 ,yet the ,americans1 far from taking a profligate and cynical view of marriage1 do homage to its ideals with a seriousness that seems old fashioned in ,clapham4 ,neither in ,england nor ,america would a proposal to abolish marriage be tolerated for a moment2 and yet nothing is more certain than that in both countries the progressive modification of the marriage contract will be continued until it is no more onerous nor irrevocable than any ordinary commercial deed of partnership4 ,were even this dispensed with1 people would still call themselves husbands and wives2 describe their companionships as marriages2 and be for the most part unconscious that they were any less married than ,henry ,,viii4 ,for though a glance at the legal conditions of marriage in different ,christian countries shews that marriage varies legally from frontier to frontier1 domesticity varies so little that most people believe their own marriage laws to be universal4 ,consequently here again1 as in the case of ,property1 the absolute confidence of the public in the stability of the institution's name1 makes it all the easier to alter its substance4 ,however1 it cannot be denied that one of the changes in public opinion demanded by the need for the ,superman is a very unexpected one4 ,it is nothing less than the dissolution of the present necessary association of marriage with conjugation1 which most unmarried people regard as the very diagnostic of marriage4 ,they are wrong1 of course3 it would be quite as near the truth to say that conjugation is the one purely accidental and incidental condition of marriage4 ,conjugation is essential to nothing but the propagation of the race2 and the moment that paramount need is provided for otherwise than by marriage1 conjugation1 from ,nature's creative point of view1 ceases to be essential in marriage4 ,but marriage does not thereupon cease to be so economical1 convenient1 and comfortable1 that the ,superman might safely bribe the matrimonomaniacs by offering to revive all the old inhuman stringency and irrevocability of marriage1 to abolish divorce1 to confirm the horrible bond which still chains decent people to drunkards1 criminals1 and wasters1 provided only the complete extrication of conjugation from it were conceded to him4 ,for if people could form domestic companionships on no easier terms than these1 they would still marry4 ,the ,roman ,catholic1 forbidden by his ,church to avail himself of the divorce laws1 marries as freely as the ,south ,dakotan ,presbyterians who can change partners with a facility that scandalizes the old world2 and were his ,church to dare a further step towards ,christianity and enjoin celibacy on its laity as well as on its clergy1 marriages would still be contracted for the sake of domesticity by perfectly obedient sons and daughters of the ,church4 ,one need not further pursue these hypotheses3 they are only suggested here to help the reader to analyse marriage into its two functions of regulating conjugation and supplying a form of domesticity4 ,these two functions are quite separable2 and domesticity is the only one of the two which is essential to the existence of marriage1 because conjugation without domesticity is not marriage at all1 whereas domesticity without conjugation is still marriage3 in fact it is necessarily the actual condition of all fertile marriages during a great part of their duration1 and of some marriages during the whole of it4 ,taking it1 then1 that ,property and ,marriage1 by destroying ,equality and thus hampering sexual selection with irrelevant conditions1 are hostile to the evolution of the ,superman1 it is easy to understand why the only generally known modern experiment in breeding the human race took place in a community which discarded both institutions4 ,,iii ,,the ,,perfectionist ,,experiment ,,at ,,oneida ,,creek ,in #ahdh the ,oneida ,community was founded in ,america to carry out a resolution arrived at by a handful of ,perfectionist ,communists that we will devote ourselves exclusively to the establishment of the ,kingdom of ,god4 ,though the ,american nation declared that this sort of thing was not to be tolerated in a ,christian country1 the ,oneida ,community held its own for over thirty years1 during which period it seems to have produced healthier children and done and suffered less evil than any ,joint ,stock ,company on record4 ,it was1 however1 a highly selected community2 for a genuine communist 7roughly definable as an intensely proud person who proposes to enrich the common fund instead of to spunge on it7 is superior to an ordinary joint stock capitalist precisely as an ordinary joint stock capitalist is superior to a pirate4 ,further1 the ,perfectionists were mightily shepherded by their chief ,noyes1 one of those chance attempts at the ,superman which occur from time to time in spite of the interference of ,man's blundering institutions4 ,the existence of ,noyes simplified the breeding problem for the ,communists1 the question as to what sort of man they should strive to breed being settled at once by the obvious desirability of breeding another ,noyes4 ,but an experiment conducted by a handful of people1 who1 after thirty years of immunity from the unintentional child slaughter that goes on by ignorant parents in private homes1 numbered only #cjj1 could do very little except prove that ,communists1 under the guidance of a ,superman devoted exclusively to the establishment of the ,kingdom of ,god1 and caring no more for property and marriage than a ,camberwell minister cares for ,hindoo ,caste or ,suttee1 might make a much better job of their lives than ordinary folk under the harrow of both these institutions4 ,yet their ,superman himself admitted that this apparent success was only part of the abnormal phenomenon of his own occurrence2 for when he came to the end of his powers through age1 he himself guided and organized the voluntary relapse of the communists into marriage1 capitalism1 and customary private life1 thus admitting that the real social solution was not what a casual ,superman could persuade a picked company to do for him1 but what a whole community of ,supermen would do spontaneously4 ,if ,noyes had had to organize1 not a few dozen ,perfectionists1 but the whole ,united ,states1 ,america would have beaten him as completely as ,england beat ,oliver ,cromwell1 ,france ,napoleon1 or ,rome ,julius ,csar4 ,cromwell learnt by bitter experience that ,god himself cannot raise a people above its own level1 and that even though you stir a nation to sacrifice all its appetites to its conscience1 the result will still depend wholly on what sort of conscience the nation has got4 ,napoleon seems to have ended by regarding mankind as a troublesome pack of hounds only worth keeping for the sport of hunting with them4 ,csar's capacity for fighting without hatred or resentment was defeated by the determination of his soldiers to kill their enemies in the field instead of taking them prisoners to be spared by ,csar2 and his civil supremacy was purchased by colossal bribery of the citizens of ,rome4 ,what great rulers cannot do1 codes and religions cannot do4 ,man reads his own nature into every ordinance3 if you devise a superhuman commandment so cunningly that it cannot be misinterpreted in terms of his will1 he will denounce it as seditious blasphemy1 or else disregard it as either crazy or totally unintelligible4 ,parliaments and synods may tinker as much as they please with their codes and creeds as circumstances alter the balance of classes and their interests2 and1 as a result of the tinkering1 there may be an occasional illusion of moral evolution1 as when the victory of the commercial caste over the military caste leads to the substitution of social boycotting and pecuniary damages for duelling4 ,at certain moments there may even be a considerable material advance1 as when the conquest of political power by the working class produces a better distribution of wealth through the simple action of the selfishness of the new masters2 but all this is mere readjustment and reformation3 until the heart and mind of the people is changed the very greatest man will no more dare to govern on the assumption that all are as great as he than a drover dare leave his flock to find its way through the streets as he himself would4 ,until there is an ,england in which every man is a ,cromwell1 a ,france in which every man is a ,napoleon1 a ,rome in which every man is a ,csar1 a ,germany in which every man is a ,luther plus a ,goethe1 the world will be no more improved by its heroes than a ,brixton villa is improved by the pyramid of ,cheops4 ,the production of such nations is the only real change possible to us4 ,,iv ,,man',s ,,objection ,,to ,,his ,,own ,,improvement ,but would such a change be tolerated if ,man must rise above himself to desire it8 ,it would1 through his misconception of its nature4 ,man does desire an ideal ,superman with such energy as he can spare from his nutrition1 and has in every age magnified the best living substitute for it he can find4 ,his least incompetent general is set up as an ,alexander2 his king is the first gentleman in the world2 his ,pope is a saint4 ,he is never without an array of human idols who are all nothing but sham ,supermen4 ,that the real ,superman will snap his superfingers at all ,man's present trumpery ideals of right1 duty1 honor1 justice1 religion1 even decency1 and accept moral obligations beyond present human endurance1 is a thing that contemporary ,man does not foresee3 in fact he does not notice it when our casual ,supermen do it in his very face4 ,he actually does it himself every day without knowing it4 ,he will therefore make no objection to the production of a race of what he calls ,great ,men or ,heroes1 because he will imagine them1 not as true ,supermen1 but as himself endowed with infinite brains1 infinite courage1 and infinite money4 ,the most troublesome opposition will arise from the general fear of mankind that any interference with our conjugal customs will be an interference with our pleasures and our romance4 ,this fear1 by putting on airs of offended morality1 has always intimidated people who have not measured its essential weakness2 but it will prevail with those degenerates only in whom the instinct of fertility has faded into a mere itching for pleasure4 ,the modern devices for combining pleasure with sterility1 now universally known and accessible1 enable these persons to weed themselves out of the race1 a process already vigorously at work2 and the consequent survival of the intelligently fertile means the survival of the partizans of the ,superman2 for what is proposed is nothing but the replacement of the old unintelligent1 inevitable1 almost unconscious fertility by an intelligently controlled1 conscious fertility1 and the elimination of the mere voluptuary from the evolutionary process4#a ,even if this selective agency had not been invented1 the purpose of the race would still shatter the opposition of individual instincts4 ,not only do the bees and the ants satisfy their reproductive and parental instincts vicariously2 but marriage itself successfully imposes celibacy on millions of unmarried normal men and women4 ,in short1 the individual instinct in this matter1 overwhelming as it is thoughtlessly supposed to be1 is really a finally negligible one4 #a ,the part played in evolution by the voluptuary will be the same as that already played by the glutton4 ,the glutton1 as the man with the strongest motive for nourishing himself1 will always take more pains than his fellows to get food4 ,when food is so difficult to get that only great exertions can secure a sufficient supply of it1 the glutton's appetite develops his cunning and enterprise to the utmost2 and he becomes not only the best fed but the ablest man in the community4 ,but in more hospitable climates1 or where the social organization of the food supply makes it easy for a man to overeat1 then the glutton eats himself out of health and finally out of existence4 ,all other voluptuaries prosper and perish in the same way2 way2 and this is why the survival of the fittest means finally the survival of the self-controlled1 because they alone can adapt themselves to the perpetual shifting of conditions produced by industrial progress4 ,v ,,the ,,political ,,need ,,for ,,the ,,superman ,the need for the ,superman is1 in its most imperative aspect1 a political one4 ,we have been driven to ,proletarian ,democracy by the failure of all the alternative systems2 for these depended on the existence of ,supermen acting as despots or oligarchs2 and not only were these ,supermen not always or even often forthcoming at the right moment and in an eligible social position1 but when they were forthcoming they could not1 except for a short time and by morally suicidal coercive methods1 impose superhumanity on those whom they governed2 so1 by mere force of human nature1 government by consent of the governed has supplanted the old plan of governing the citizen as a public-schoolboy is governed4 ,now we have yet to see the man who1 having any practical experience of ,proletarian ,democracy1 has any belief in its capacity for solving great political problems1 or even for doing ordinary parochial work intelligently and economically4 ,only under despotisms and oligarchies has the ,radical faith in universal suffrage as a political panacea arisen4 ,it withers the moment it is exposed to practical trial1 because ,democracy cannot rise above the level of the human material of which its voters are made4 ,switzerland seems happy in comparison with ,russia2 but if ,russia were as small as ,switzerland1 and had her social problems simplified in the same way by impregnable natural fortifications and a population educated by the same variety and intimacy of international intercourse1 there might be little to choose between them4 ,at all events ,australia and ,canada1 which are virtually protected democratic republics1 and ,france and the ,united ,states1 which are avowedly independent democratic republics1 are neither healthy1 wealthy1 nor wise2 and they would be worse instead of better if their popular ministers were not experts in the art of dodging popular enthusiasms and duping popular ignorance4 ,the politician who once had to learn how to flatter ,kings has now to learn how to fascinate1 amuse1 coax1 humbug1 frighten1 or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate2 and though in advanced modern ,states1 where the artizan is better educated than the ,king1 it takes a much bigger man to be a successful demagogue than to be a successful courtier1 yet he who holds popular convictions with prodigious energy is the man for the mob1 whilst the frailer sceptic who is cautiously feeling his way towards the next century has no chance unless he happens by accident to have the specific artistic talent of the mountebank as well1 in which case it is as a mountebank that he catches votes1 and not as a meliorist4 ,consequently the demagogue1 though he professes 7and fails7 to readjust matters in the interests of the majority of the electors1 yet stereotypes mediocrity1 organizes intolerance1 disparages exhibitions of uncommon qualities1 and glorifies conspicuous exhibitions of common ones4 ,he manages a small job well3 he muddles rhetorically through a large one4 ,when a great political movement takes place1 it is not consciously led nor organized3 the unconscious self in mankind breaks its way through the problem as an elephant breaks through a jungle2 and the politicians make speeches about whatever happens in the process1 which1 with the best intentions1 they do all in their power to prevent4 ,finally1 when social aggregation arrives at a point demanding international organization before the demagogues and electorates have learnt how to manage even a country parish properly much less internationalize ,constantinople1 the whole political business goes to smash2 and presently we have ,ruins of ,empires1 ,new ,zealanders sitting on a broken arch of ,london ,bridge1 and so forth4 ,to that recurrent catastrophe we shall certainly come again unless we can have a ,democracy of ,supermen2 and the production of such a ,democracy is the only change that is now hopeful enough to nerve us to the effort that ,revolution demands4 ,,vi ,,prudery ,,explained ,why the bees should pamper their mothers whilst we pamper only our operatic prima donnas is a question worth reflecting on4 ,our notion of treating a mother is1 not to increase her supply of food1 but to cut it off by forbidding her to work in a factory for a month after her confinement4 ,everything that can make birth a misfortune to the parents as well as a danger to the mother is conscientiously done4 ,when a great ,french writer1 ,emil ,zola1 alarmed at the sterilization of his nation1 wrote an eloquent and powerful book to restore the prestige of parentage1 it was at once assumed in ,england that a work of this character1 with such a title as ,fecundity1 was too abominable to be translated1 and that any attempt to deal with the relations of the sexes from any other than the voluptuary or romantic point of view must be sternly put down4 ,now if this assumption were really founded on public opinion1 it would indicate an attitude of disgust and resentment towards the ,life ,force that could only arise in a diseased and moribund community in which ,ibsen's ,hedda ,gabler would be the typical woman4 ,but it has no vital foundation at all4 ,the prudery of the newspapers is1 like the prudery of the dinner table1 a mere difficulty of education and language4 ,we are not taught to think decently on these subjects1 and consequently we have no language for them except indecent language4 ,we therefore have to declare them unfit for public discussion1 because the only terms in which we can conduct the discussion are unfit for public use4 ,physiologists1 who have a technical vocabulary at their disposal1 find no difficulty2 and masters of language who think decently can write popular stories like ,zola's ,fecundity or ,tolstoy's ,resurrection without giving the smallest offence to readers who can also think decently4 ,but the ordinary modern journalist1 who has never discussed such matters except in ribaldry1 cannot write a simple comment on a divorce case without a conscious shamefulness or a furtive facetiousness that makes it impossible to read the comment aloud in company4 ,all this ribaldry and prudery 7the two are the same7 does not mean that people do not feel decently on the subject3 on the contrary1 it is just the depth and seriousness of our feeling that makes its desecration by vile language and coarse humor intolerable2 so that at last we cannot bear to have it spoken of at all because only one in a thousand can speak of it without wounding our self-respect1 especially the self-respect of women4 ,add to the horrors of popular language the horrors of popular poverty4 ,in crowded populations poverty destroys the possibility of cleanliness2 and in the absence of cleanliness many of the natural conditions of life become offensive and noxious1 with the result that at last the association of uncleanliness with these natural conditions becomes so overpowering that among civilized people 7that is1 people massed in the labyrinths of slums we call cities71 half their bodily life becomes a guilty secret1 unmentionable except to the doctor in emergencies2 and ,hedda ,gabler shoots herself because maternity is so unladylike4 ,in short1 popular prudery is only a mere incident of popular squalor3 the subjects which it taboos remain the most interesting and earnest of subjects in spite of it4 ,,vii ,,progress ,,an ,,illusion ,unfortunately the earnest people get drawn off the track of evolution by the illusion of progress4 ,any ,socialist can convince us easily that the difference between ,man as he is and ,man as he might become1 without further evolution1 under millennial conditions of nutrition1 environment1 and training1 is enormous4 ,he can shew that inequality and iniquitous distribution of wealth and allotment of labor have arisen through an unscientific economic system1 and that ,man1 faulty as he is1 no more intended to establish any such ordered disorder than a moth intends to be burnt when it flies into a candle flame4 ,he can shew that the difference between the grace and strength of the acrobat and the bent back of the rheumatic field laborer is a difference produced by conditions1 not by nature4 ,he can shew that many of the most detestable human vices are not radical1 but are mere reactions of our institutions on our very virtues4 ,the ,anarchist1 the ,fabian1 the ,salvationist1 the ,vegetarian1 the doctor1 the lawyer1 the parson1 the professor of ethics1 the gymnast1 the soldier1 the sportsman1 the inventor1 the political program-maker1 all have some prescription for bettering us2 and almost all their remedies are physically possible and aimed at admitted evils4 ,to them the limit of progress is1 at worst1 the completion of all the suggested reforms and the levelling up of all men to the point attained already by the most highly nourished and cultivated in mind and body4 ,here1 then1 as it seems to them1 is an enormous field for the energy of the reformer4 ,here are many noble goals attainable by many of those paths up the ,hill ,difficulty along which great spirits love to aspire4 ,unhappily1 the hill will never be climbed by ,man as we know him4 ,it need not be denied that if we all struggled bravely to the end of the reformers' paths we should improve the world prodigiously4 ,but there is no more hope in that ,if than in the equally plausible assurance that if the sky falls we shall all catch larks4 ,we are not going to tread those paths3 we have not sufficient energy4 ,we do not desire the end enough3 indeed in more cases we do not effectively desire it at all4 ,ask any man would he like to be a better man2 and he will say yes1 most piously4 ,ask him would he like to have a million of money2 and he will say yes1 most sincerely4 ,but the pious citizen who would like to be a better man goes on behaving just as he did before4 ,and the tramp who would like the million does not take the trouble to earn ten shillings3 multitudes of men and women1 all eager to accept a legacy of a million1 live and die without having ever possessed five pounds at one time1 although beggars have died in rags on mattresses stuffed with gold which they accumulated because they desired it enough to nerve them to get it and keep it4 ,the economists who discovered that demand created supply soon had to limit the proposition to effective demand1 which turned out1 in the final analysis1 to mean nothing more than supply itself2 and this holds good in politics1 morals1 and all other departments as well3 the actual supply is the measure of the effective demand2 and the mere aspirations and professions produce nothing4 ,no community has ever yet passed beyond the initial phases in which its pugnacity and fanaticism enabled it to found a nation1 and its cupidity to establish and develop a commercial civilization4 ,even these stages have never been attained by public spirit1 but always by intolerant wilfulness and brute force4 ,take the ,reform ,bill of #ahcb as an example of a conflict between two sections of educated ,englishmen concerning a political measure which was as obviously necessary and inevitable as any political measure has ever been or is ever likely to be4 ,it was not passed until the gentlemen of ,birmingham had made arrangements to cut the throats of the gentlemen of ,st4 ,james's parish in due military form4 ,it would not have been passed to this day if there had been no force behind it except the logic and public conscience of the ,utilitarians4 ,a despotic ruler with as much sense as ,queen ,elizabeth would have done better than the mob of grown-up ,eton boys who governed us then by privilege1 and who1 since the introduction of practically ,manhood ,suffrage in #ahhd1 now govern us at the request of proletarian ,democracy4 ,at the present time we have1 instead of the ,utilitarians1 the ,fabian ,society1 with its peaceful1 constitutional1 moral1 economical policy of ,socialism1 which needs nothing for its bloodless and benevolent realization except that the ,english people shall understand it and approve of it4 ,but why are the ,fabians well spoken of in circles where thirty years ago the word ,socialist was understood as equivalent to cut-throat and incendiary8 ,not because the ,english have the smallest intention of studying or adopting the ,fabian policy1 but because they believe that the ,fabians1 by eliminating the element of intimidation from the ,socialist agitation1 have drawn the teeth of insurgent poverty and saved the existing order from the only method of attack it really fears4 ,of course1 if the nation adopted the ,fabian policy1 it would be carried out by brute force exactly as our present property system is4 ,it would become the law2 and those who resisted it would be fined1 sold up1 knocked on the head by policemen1 thrown into prison1 and in the last resort executed just as they are when they break the present law4 ,but as our proprietary class has no fear of that conversion taking place1 whereas it does fear sporadic cut-throats and gunpowder plots1 and strives with all its might to hide the fact that there is no moral difference whatever between the methods by which it enforces its proprietary rights and the method by which the dynamitard asserts his conception of natural human rights1 the ,fabian ,society is patted on the back just as the ,christian ,social ,union is1 whilst the ,socialist who says bluntly that a ,social revolution can be made only as all other revolutions have been made1 by the people who want it killing1 coercing1 and intimidating the people who dont want it1 is denounced as a misleader of the people1 and imprisoned with hard labor to shew him how much sincerity there is in the objection of his captors to physical force4 ,are we then to repudiate ,fabian methods1 and return to those of the barricader1 or adopt those of the dynamitard and the assassin8 ,on the contrary1 we are to recognize that both are fundamentally futile4 ,it seems easy for the dynamitard to say ,have you not just admitted that nothing is ever conceded except to physical force8 ,did not ,gladstone admit that the ,irish ,church was disestablished1 not by the spirit of ,liberalism1 but by the explosion which wrecked ,clerkenwell prison8 ,well1 we need not foolishly and timidly deny it4 ,let it be fully granted4 ,let us grant1 further1 that all this lies in the nature of things2 that the most ardent ,socialist1 if he owns property1 can by no means do otherwise than ,conservative proprietors until property is forcibly abolished by the whole nation2 nay1 that ballots1 and parliamentary divisions1 in spite of their vain ceremony1 of discussion1 differ from battles only as the bloodless surrender of an outnumbered force in the field differs from ,waterloo or ,trafalgar4 ,i make a present of all these admissions to the ,fenian who collects money from thoughtless ,irishmen in ,america to blow up ,dublin ,castle2 to the detective who persuades foolish young workmen to order bombs from the nearest ironmonger and then delivers them up to penal servitude2 to our military and naval commanders who believe1 not in preaching1 but in an ultimatum backed by plenty of lyddite2 and1 generally1 to all whom it may concern4 ,but of what use is it to substitute the way of the reckless and bloodyminded for the way of the cautious and humane8 ,is ,england any the better for the wreck of ,clerkenwell prison1 or ,ireland for the disestablishment of the ,irish ,church8 ,is there the smallest reason to suppose that the nation which sheepishly let ,charles and ,laud and ,strafford coerce it1 gained anything because it afterwards1 still more sheepishly1 let a few strongminded ,puritans1 inflamed by the masterpieces of ,jewish revolutionary literature1 cut off the heads of the three8 ,suppose the ,gunpowder plot had succeeded1 and set a ,fawkes dynasty permanently on the throne1 would it have made any difference to the present state of the nation8 ,the guillotine was used in ,france up to the limit of human endurance1 both on ,girondins and ,jacobins4 ,fouquier ,tinville followed ,marie ,antoinette to the scaffold2 and ,marie ,antoinette might have asked the crowd1 just as pointedly as ,fouquier did1 whether their bread would be any cheaper when her head was off4 ,and what came of it all8 ,the ,imperial ,france of the ,rougon ,macquart family1 and the ,republican ,france of the ,panama scandal and the ,dreyfus case4 ,was the difference worth the guillotining of all those unlucky ladies and gentlemen1 useless and mischievous as many of them were8 ,would any sane man guillotine a mouse to bring about such a result8 ,turn to ,republican ,america4 ,america has no ,star ,chamber1 and no feudal barons4 ,but it has ,trusts2 and it has millionaires whose factories1 fenced in by live electric wires and defended by ,pinkerton retainers with magazine rifles1 would have made a ,radical of ,reginald ,front de ,boeuf4 ,would ,washington or ,franklin have lifted a finger in the cause of ,american ,independence if they had foreseen its reality8 ,no3 what ,csar1 ,cromwell1 ,napoleon could not do with all the physical force and moral prestige of the ,state in their hands1 cannot be done by enthusiastic criminals and lunatics4 ,even the ,jews1 who1 from ,moses to ,marx and ,lassalle1 have inspired all the revolutions1 have had to confess that1 after all1 the dog will return to his vomit and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire2 and we may as well make up our minds that ,man will return to his idols and his cupidities1 in spite of movements and all revolutions1 until his nature is changed4 ,until then1 his early successes in building commercial civilizations 7and such civilizations1 ,good ,heavens67 are but preliminaries to the inevitable later stage1 now threatening us1 in which the passions which built the civilization become fatal instead of productive1 just as the same qualities which make the lion king in the forest ensure his destruction when he enters a city4 ,nothing can save society then except the clear head and the wide purpose3 war and competition1 potent instruments of selection and evolution in one epoch1 become ruinous instruments of degeneration in the next4 ,in the breeding of animals and plants1 varieties which have arisen by selection through many generations relapse precipitously into the wild type in a generation or two when selection ceases2 and in the same way a civilization in which lusty pugnacity and greed have ceased to act as selective agents and have begun to obstruct and destroy1 rushes downwards and backwards with a suddenness that enables an observer to see with consternation the upward steps of many centuries retraced in a single lifetime4 ,this has often occurred even within the period covered by history2 and in every instance the turning point has been reached long before the attainment1 or even the general advocacy on paper1 of the levelling-up of the mass to the highest point attainable by the best nourished and cultivated normal individuals4 ,we must therefore frankly give up the notion that ,man as he exists is capable of net progress4 ,there will always be an illusion of progress1 because wherever we are conscious of an evil we remedy it1 and therefore always seem to ourselves to be progressing1 forgetting that most of the evils we see are the effects1 finally become acute1 of long-unnoticed retrogressions2 that our compromising remedies seldom fully recover the lost ground2 above all1 that on the lines along which we are degenerating1 good has become evil in our eyes1 and is being undone in the name of progress precisely as evil is undone and replaced by good on the lines along which we are evolving4 ,this is indeed the ,illusion of ,illusions2 for it gives us infallible and appalling assurance that if our political ruin is to come1 it will be effected by ardent reformers and supported by enthusiastic patriots as a series of necessary steps in our progress4 ,let the ,reformer1 the ,progressive1 the ,meliorist then reconsider himself and his eternal ifs and ans which never become pots and pans4 ,whilst ,man remains what he is1 there can be no progress beyond the point already attained and fallen headlong from at every attempt at civilization2 and since even that point is but a pinnacle to which a few people cling in giddy terror above an abyss of squalor1 mere progress should no longer charm us4 ,,viii ,,the ,,conceit ,,of ,,civilization ,after all1 the progress illusion is not so very subtle4 ,we begin by reading the satires of our fathers' contemporaries2 and we conclude 7usually quite ignorantly7 that the abuses exposed by them are things of the past4 ,we see also that reforms of crying evils are frequently produced by the sectional shifting of political power from oppressors to oppressed4 ,the poor man is given a vote by the ,liberals in the hope that he will cast it for his emancipators4 ,the hope is not fulfilled2 but the lifelong imprisonment of penniless men for debt ceases2 ,factory ,acts are passed to mitigate sweating2 schooling is made free and compulsory2 sanitary by-laws are multiplied2 public steps are taken to house the masses decently2 the bare-footed get boots2 rags become rare2 and bathrooms and pianos1 smart tweeds and starched collars1 reach numbers of people who once1 as the unsoaped1 played the ,jew's harp or the accordion in moleskins and belchers4 ,some of these changes are gains3 some of them are losses4 ,some of them are not changes at all3 all of them are merely the changes that money makes4 ,still1 they produce an illusion of bustling progress2 and the reading class infers from them that the abuses of the early ,victorian period no longer exist except as amusing pages in the novels of ,dickens4 ,but the moment we look for a reform due to character and not to money1 to statesmanship and not to interest or mutiny1 we are disillusioned4 ,for example1 we remembered the maladministration and incompetence revealed by the ,crimean ,war as part of a bygone state of things until the ,south ,african war shewed that the nation and the ,war ,office1 like those poor ,bourbons who have been so impudently blamed for a universal characteristic1 had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing4 ,we had hardly recovered from the fruitless irritation of this discovery when it transpired that the officers' mess of our most select regiment included a flogging club presided over by the senior subaltern4 ,the disclosure provoked some disgust at the details of this schoolboyish debauchery1 but no surprise at the apparent absence of any conception of manly honor and virtue1 of personal courage and self-respect1 in the front rank of our chivalry4 ,in civil affairs we had assumed that the sycophancy and idolatry which encouraged ,charles ,i4 to undervalue the ,puritan revolt of the ,,xvii century had been long outgrown2 but it has needed nothing but favorable circumstances to revive1 with added abjectness to compensate for its lost piety4 ,we have relapsed into disputes about transubstantiation at the very moment when the discovery of the wide prevalence of theophagy as a tribal custom has deprived us of the last excuse for believing that our official religious rites differ in essentials from those of barbarians4 ,the ,christian doctrine of the uselessness of punishment and the wickedness of revenge has not1 in spite of its simple common sense1 found a single convert among the nations3 ,christianity means nothing to the masses but a sensational public execution which is made an excuse for other executions4 ,in its name we take ten years of a thief's life minute by minute in the slow misery and degradation of modern reformed imprisonment with as little remorse as ,laud and his ,star ,chamber clipped the ears of ,bastwick and ,burton4 ,we dug up and mutilated the remains of the ,mahdi the other day exactly as we dug up and mutilated the remains of ,cromwell two centuries ago4 ,we have demanded the decapitation of the ,chinese ,boxer princes as any ,tartar would have done2 and our military and naval expeditions to kill1 burn1 and destroy tribes and villages for knocking an ,englishman on the head are so common a part of our ,imperial routine that the last dozen of them has not called forth as much pity as can be counted on by any lady criminal4 ,the judicial use of torture to extort confession is supposed to be a relic of darker ages2 but whilst these pages are being written an ,english judge has sentenced a forger to twenty years penal servitude with an open declaration that the sentence will be carried out in full unless he confesses where he has hidden the notes he forged4 ,and no comment whatever is made1 either on this or on a telegram from the seat of war in ,somaliland mentioning that certain information has been given by a prisoner of war under punishment4 ,even if these reports are false1 the fact that they are accepted without protest as indicating a natural and proper course of public conduct shews that we are still as ready to resort to torture as ,bacon was4 ,as to vindictive cruelty1 an incident in the ,south ,african war1 when the relatives and friends of a prisoner were forced to witness his execution1 betrayed a baseness of temper and character which hardly leaves us the right to plume ourselves on our superiority to ,edward ,,iii4 at the surrender of ,calais4 ,and the democratic ,american officer indulges in torture in the ,philippines just as the aristocratic ,english officer did in ,south ,africa4 ,the incidents of the white invasion of ,africa in search of ivory1 gold1 diamonds1 and sport1 have proved that the modern ,european is the same beast of prey that formerly marched to the conquest of new worlds under ,alexander1 ,antony1 and ,pizarro4 ,parliaments and vestries are just what they were when ,cromwell suppressed them and ,dickens derided them4 ,the democratic politician remains exactly as ,plato described him2 the physician is still the credulous impostor and petulant scientific coxcomb whom ,molire ridiculed2 the schoolmaster remains at best a pedantic child farmer and at worst a flagellomaniac2 arbitrations are more dreaded by honest men than lawsuits2 the philanthropist is still a parasite on misery as the doctor is on disease2 the miracles of priestcraft are none the less fraudulent and mischievous because they are now called scientific experiments and conducted by professors2 witchcraft1 in the modern form of patent medicines and prophylactic inoculations1 is rampant2 the landowner who is no longer powerful enough to2 set the mantrap of ,rhampsinitis improves on it by barbed wire2 the modern gentleman who is too lazy to daub his face with vermilion as a symbol of bravery employs a laundress to daub his shirt with starch as a symbol of cleanliness2 we shake our heads at the dirt of the middle ages in cities made grimy with soot and foul and disgusting with shameless tobacco smoking2 holy water1 in its latest form of disinfectant fluid1 is more widely used and believed in than ever2 public health authorities deliberately go through incantations with burning sulphur 7which they know to be useless7 because the people believe in it as devoutly as the ,italian peasant believes in the liquefaction of the blood of ,st ,januarius2 and straightforward public lying has reached gigantic developments1 there being nothing to choose in this respect between the pickpocket at the police station and the minister on the treasury bench1 the editor in the newspaper office1 the city magnate advertizing bicycle tires that do not side-slip1 the clergyman subscribing the thirty-nine articles1 and the vivisector who pledges his knightly honor that no animal operated on in the physiological laboratory suffers the slightest pain4 ,hypocrisy is at its worst2 for we not only persecute bigotedly but sincerely in the name of the cure-mongering witchcraft we do believe in1 but callously and hypocritically in the name of the ,evangelical creed that our rulers privately smile at as the ,italian patricians of the fifth century smiled at ,jupiter and ,venus4 ,sport is1 as it has always been1 murderous excitement2 the impulse to slaughter is universal2 and museums are set up throughout the country to encourage little children and elderly gentlemen to make collections of corpses preserved in alcohol1 and to steal birds' eggs and keep them as the red ,indian used to keep scalps4 ,coercion with the lash is as natural to an ,englishman as it was to ,solomon spoiling ,rehoboam3 indeed1 the comparison is unfair to the ,jews in view of the facts that the ,mosaic law forbade more than forty lashes in the name of humanity1 and that floggings of a thousand lashes were inflicted on ,english soldiers in the ,,xviii and ,,xix centuries1 and would be inflicted still but for the change in the balance of political power between the military caste and the commercial classes and the proletariat4 ,in spite of that change1 flogging is still an institution in the public school1 in the military prison1 on the training ship1 and in that school of littleness called the home4 ,the lascivious clamor of the flagellomaniac for more of it1 constant as the clamor for more insolence1 more war1 and lower rates1 is tolerated and even gratified because1 having no moral ends in view1 we have sense enough to see that nothing but brute coercion can impose our selfish will on others4 ,cowardice is universal2 patriotism1 public opinion1 parental duty1 discipline1 religion1 morality1 are only fine names for intimidation2 and cruelty1 gluttony1 and credulity keep cowardice in countenance4 ,we cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white2 we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease2 we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women's hats2 we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion2 and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our own diseases by them4 ,now please observe that these are not exceptional developments of our admitted vices1 deplored and prayed against by all good men4 ,not a word has been said here of the excesses of our ,neros1 of whom we have the full usual percentage4 ,with the exception of the few military examples1 which are mentioned mainly to shew that the education and standing of a gentleman1 reinforced by the strongest conventions of honor1 esprit de corps1 publicity and responsibility1 afford no better guarantees of conduct than the passions of a mob1 the illustrations given above are commonplaces taken from the daily practices of our best citizens1 vehemently defended in our newspapers and in our pulpits4 ,the very humanitarians who abhor them are stirred to murder by them3 the dagger of ,brutus and ,ravaillac is still active in the hands of ,caserio and ,luccheni2 and the pistol has come to its aid in the hands of ,guiteau and ,czolgosz4 ,our remedies are still limited to endurance or assassination2 and the assassin is still judicially assassinated on the principle that two blacks make a white4 ,the only novelty is in our methods3 through the discovery of dynamite the overloaded musket of ,hamilton of ,bothwellhaugh has been superseded by the bomb2 but ,ravachol's heart burns just as ,hamilton's did4 ,the world will not bear thinking of to those who know what it is1 even with the largest discount for the restraints of poverty on the poor and cowardice on the rich4 ,all that can be said for us is that people must and do live and let live up to a certain point4 ,even the horse1 with his docked tail and bitted jaw1 finds his slavery mitigated by the fact that a total disregard of his need for food and rest would put his master to the expense of buying a new horse every second day2 for you cannot work a horse to death and then pick up another one for nothing1 as you can a laborer4 ,but this natural check on inconsiderate selfishness is itself checked1 partly by our shortsightedness1 and partly by deliberate calculation2 so that beside the man who1 to his own loss1 will shorten his horse's life in mere stinginess1 we have the tramway company which discovers actuarially that though a horse may live from #bd to #dj years1 yet it pays better to work him to death in #d and then replace him by a fresh victim4 ,and human slavery1 which has reached its worst recorded point within our own time in the form of free wage labor1 has encountered the same personal and commercial limits to both its aggravation and its mitigation4 ,now that the freedom of wage labor has produced a scarcity of it1 as in ,south ,africa1 the leading ,english newspaper and the leading ,english weekly review have openly and without apology demanded a return to compulsory labor3 that is1 to the methods by which1 as we believe1 the ,egyptians built the pyramids4 ,we know now that the crusade against chattel slavery in the ,,xix century succeeded solely because chattel slavery was neither the most effective nor the least humane method of labor exploitation2 and the world is now feeling its way towards a still more effective system which shall abolish the freedom of the worker without again making his exploiter responsible for him4 ,still1 there is always some mitigation3 there is the fear of revolt2 and there are the effects of kindliness and affection4 ,let it be repeated therefore that no indictment is here laid against the world on the score of what its criminals and monsters do4 ,the fires of ,smithfield and of the ,inquisition were lighted by earnestly pious people1 who were kind and good as kindness and goodness go4 ,and when a negro is dipped in kerosene and set on fire in ,america at the present time1 he is not a good man lynched by ruffians3 he is a criminal lynched by crowds of respectable1 charitable1 virtuously indignant1 high-minded citizens1 who1 though they act outside the law1 are at least more merciful than the ,american legislators and judges who not so long ago condemned men to solitary confinement for periods1 not of five months1 as our own practice is1 but of five years and more4 ,the things that our moral monsters do may be left out of account with ,st4 ,bartholomew massacres and other momentary outbursts of social disorder4 ,judge us by the admitted and respected practice of our most reputable circles2 and1 if you know the facts and are strong enough to look them in the face1 you must admit that unless we are replaced by a more highly evolved animal--in short1 by the ,superman--the world must remain a den of dangerous animals among whom our few accidental supermen1 our ,shakespears1 ,goethes1 ,shelleys1 and their like1 must live as precariously as lion tamers do1 taking the humor of their situation1 and the dignity of their superiority1 as a set-off to the horror of the one and the loneliness of the other4 ,,ix ,,the ,,verdict ,,of ,,history ,it may be said that though the wild beast breaks out in ,man and casts him back momentarily into barbarism under the excitement of war and crime1 yet his normal life is higher than the normal life of his forefathers4 ,this view is very acceptable to ,englishmen1 who always lean sincerely to virtue's side as long as it costs them nothing either in money or in thought4 ,they feel deeply the injustice of foreigners1 who allow them no credit for this conditional highmindedness4 ,but there is no reason to suppose that our ancestors were less capable of it than we are4 ,to all such claims for the existence of a progressive moral evolution operating visibly from grandfather to grandson1 there is the conclusive reply that a thousand years of such evolution would have produced enormous social changes1 of which the historical evidence would be overwhelming4 ,but not ,macaulay himself1 the most confident of ,whig meliorists1 can produce any such evidence that will bear cross-examination4 ,compare our conduct and our codes with those mentioned contemporarily in such ancient scriptures and classics as have come down to us1 and you will find no jot of ground for the belief that any moral progress whatever has been made in historic time1 in spite of all the romantic attempts of historians to reconstruct the past on that assumption4 ,within that time it has happened to nations as to private families and individuals that they have flourished and decayed1 repented and hardened their hearts1 submitted and protested1 acted and reacted1 oscillated between natural and artificial sanitation 7the oldest house in the world1 unearthed the other day in ,crete1 has quite modern sanitary arrangements71 and rung a thousand changes on the different scales of income and pressure of population1 firmly believing all the time that mankind was advancing by leaps and bounds because men were constantly busy4 ,and the mere chapter of accidents has left a small accumulation of chance discoveries1 such as the wheel1 the arch1 the safety pin1 gunpowder1 the magnet1 the ,voltaic pile and so forth3 things which1 unlike the gospels and philosophic treatises of the sages1 can be usefully understood and applied by common men2 so that steam locomotion is possible without a nation of ,stephensons1 although national ,christianity is impossible without a nation of ,christs4 ,but does any man seriously believe that the chauffeur who drives a motor car from ,paris to ,berlin is a more highly evolved man than the charioteer of ,achilles1 or that a modern ,prime ,minister is a more enlightened ruler than ,csar because he rides a tricycle1 writes his dispatches by the electric light1 and instructs his stockbroker through the telephone8 ,enough1 then1 of this goose-cackle about ,progress3 ,man1 as he is1 never will nor can add a cubit to his stature by any of its quackeries1 political1 scientific1 educational1 religious1 or artistic4 ,what is likely to happen when this conviction gets into the minds of the men whose present faith in these illusions is the cement of our social system1 can be imagined only by those who know how suddenly a civilization which has long ceased to think 7or in the old phrase1 to watch and pray7 can fall to pieces when the vulgar belief in its hypocrisies and impostures can no longer hold out against its failures and scandals4 ,when religious and ethical formulae become so obsolete that no man of strong mind can believe them1 they have also reached the point at which no man of high character will profess them2 and from1 that moment until they are formally disestablished1 they stand at the door of every profession and every public office to keep out every able man who is not a sophist or a liar4 ,a nation which revises its parish councils once in three years1 but will not revise its articles of religion once in three hundred1 even when those articles avowedly began as a political compromise dictated by ,mr ,facing-,both-,ways1 is a nation that needs remaking4 ,our only hope1 then1 is in evolution4 ,we must replace the man by the superman4 ,it is frightful for the citizen1 as the years pass him1 to see his own contemporaries so exactly reproduced by the younger generation1 that his companions of thirty years ago have their counterparts in every city crowd1 where he had to check himself repeatedly in the act of saluting as an old friend some young man to whom he is only an elderly stranger4 ,all hope of advance dies in his bosom as he watches them3 he knows that they will do just what their fathers did1 and that the few voices which will still1 as always before1 exhort them to do something else and be something better1 might as well spare their breath to cool their porridge 7if they can get any74 ,men like ,ruskin and ,carlyle will preach to ,smith and ,brown for the sake of preaching1 just as ,st ,francis preached to the birds and ,st ,anthony to the fishes4 ,but ,smith and ,brown1 like the fishes and birds1 remain as they are2 and poets who plan ,utopias and prove that nothing is necessary for their realization but that ,man should will them1 perceive at last1 like ,richard ,wagner1 that the fact to be faced is that ,man does not effectively will them4 ,and he never will until he becomes ,superman4 ,and so we arrive at the end of the ,socialist's dream of the socialization of the means of production and exchange1 of the ,positivist's dream of moralizing the capitalist1 and of the ethical professor's1 legislator's1 educator's dream of putting commandments and codes and lessons and examination marks on a man as harness is put on a horse1 ermine on a judge1 pipeclay on a soldier1 or a wig on an actor1 and pretending that his nature has been changed4 ,the only fundamental and possible ,socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of ,man3 in other terms1 of human evolution4 ,we must eliminate the ,yahoo1 or his vote will wreck the commonwealth4 ,x ,,the ,,method ,as to the method1 what can be said as yet except that where there is a will1 there is a way8 ,if there be no will1 we are lost4 ,that is a possibility for our crazy little empire1 if not for the universe2 and as such possibilities are not to be entertained without despair1 we must1 whilst we survive1 proceed on the assumption that we have still energy enough to not only will to live1 but to will to live better4 ,that may mean that we must establish a ,state ,department of ,evolution1 with a seat in the ,cabinet for its chief1 and a revenue to defray the cost of direct ,state experiments1 and provide inducements to private persons to achieve successful results4 ,it may mean a private society or a chartered company for the improvement of human live stock4 ,but for the present it is far more likely to mean a blatant repudiation of such proposals as indecent and immoral1 with1 nevertheless1 a general secret pushing of the human will in the repudiated direction2 so that all sorts of institutions and public authorities will under some pretext or other feel their way furtively towards the ,superman4 ,mr ,graham ,wallas has already ventured to suggest1 as ,chairman of the ,school ,management ,committee of the ,london ,school ,board1 that the accepted policy of the ,sterilization of the ,schoolmistress1 however administratively convenient1 is open to criticism from the national stock-breeding point of view2 and this is as good an example as any of the way in which the drift towards the ,superman may operate in spite of all our hypocrisies4 ,one thing at least is clear to begin with4 ,if a woman can1 by careful selection of a father1 and nourishment of herself1 produce a citizen with efficient senses1 sound organs1 and a good digestion1 she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it4 ,whether she be financed in the undertaking by herself1 or by the father1 or by a speculative capitalist1 or by a new department of1 say1 the ,royal ,dublin ,society1 or 7as at present7 by the ,war ,office maintaining her on the strength and authorizing a particular soldier to marry her1 or by a local authority under a by-law directing that women may under certain circumstances have a year's leave of absence on full salary1 or by the central government1 does not matter provided the result be satisfactory4 ,it is a melancholy fact that as the vast majority of women and their husbands have1 under existing circumstances1 not enough nourishment1 no capital1 no credit1 and no knowledge of science or business1 they would1 if the ,state would pay for birth as it now pays for death1 be exploited by joint stock companies for dividends1 just as they are in ordinary industries4 ,even a joint stock human stud farm 7piously disguised as a reformed ,foundling ,hospital or something of that sort7 might well1 under proper inspection and regulation1 produce better results than our present reliance on promiscuous marriage4 ,it may be objected that when an ordinary contractor produces stores for sale to the ,government1 and the ,government rejects them as not up to the required standard1 the condemned goods are either sold for what they will fetch or else scrapped3 that is1 treated as waste material2 whereas if the goods consisted of human beings1 all that could be done would be to let them loose or send them to the nearest workhouse4 ,but there is nothing new in private enterprise throwing its human refuse on the cheap labor market and the workhouse2 and the refuse of the new industry would presumably be better bred than the staple product of ordinary poverty4 ,in our present happy-go-lucky industrial disorder1 all the human products1 successful or not1 would have to be thrown on the labor market2 but the unsuccessful ones would not entitle the company to a bounty and so would be a dead loss to it4 ,the practical commercial difficulty would be the uncertainty and the cost in time and money of the first experiments4 ,purely commercial capital would not touch such heroic operations during the experimental stage2 and in any case the strength of mind needed for so momentous a new departure could not be fairly expected from the ,stock ,exchange4 ,it will have to be handled by statesmen with character enough to tell our democracy and plutocracy that statecraft does not consist in flattering their follies or applying their suburban standards of propriety to the affairs of four continents4 ,the matter must be taken up either by the ,state or by some organization strong enough to impose respect upon the ,state4 ,the novelty of any such experiment1 however1 is only in the scale of it4 ,in one conspicuous case1 that of royalty1 the ,state does already select the parents on purely political grounds2 and in the peerage1 though the heir to a dukedom is legally free to marry a dairymaid1 yet the social pressure on him to confine his choice to politically and socially eligible mates is so overwhelming that he is really no more free to marry the dairymaid than ,george ,,iv was to marry ,mrs ,fitzherbert2 and such a marriage could only occur as a result of extraordinary strength of character on the part of the dairymaid acting upon extraordinary weakness on the part of the duke4 ,let those who think the whole conception of intelligent breeding absurd and scandalous ask themselves why ,george ,,iv was not allowed to choose his own wife whilst any tinker could marry whom he pleased8 ,simply because it did not matter a rap politically whom the tinker married1 whereas it mattered very much whom the king married4 ,the way in which all considerations of the king's personal rights1 of the claims of the heart1 of the sanctity of the marriage oath1 and of romantic morality crumpled up before this political need shews how negligible all these apparently irresistible prejudices are when they come into conflict with the demand for quality in our rulers4 ,we learn the same lesson from the case of the soldier1 whose marriage1 when it is permitted at all1 is despotically controlled with a view solely to military efficiency4 ,well1 nowadays it is not the ,king that rules1 but the tinker4 ,dynastic wars are no longer feared1 dynastic alliances no longer valued4 ,marriages in royal families are becoming rapidly less political1 and more popular1 domestic1 and romantic4 ,if all the kings in ,europe were made as free to-morrow as ,king ,cophetua1 nobody but their aunts and chamberlains would feel a moment's anxiety as to the consequences4 ,on the other hand a sense of the social importance of the tinker's marriage has been steadily growing4 ,we have made a public matter of his wife's health in the month after her confinement4 ,we have taken the minds of his children out of his hands and put them into those of our ,state schoolmaster4 ,we shall presently make their bodily nourishment independent of him4 ,but they are still riff-raff2 and to hand the country over to riff-raff is national suicide1 since riff-raff can neither govern nor will let anyone else govern except the highest bidder of bread and circuses4 ,there is no public enthusiast alive of twenty years' practical democratic experience who believes in the political adequacy of the electorate or of the bodies it elects4 ,the overthrow of the aristocrat has created the necessity for the ,superman4 ,englishmen hate ,liberty and ,equality too much to understand them4 ,but every ,englishman loves and desires a pedigree4 ,and in that he is right4 ,king ,demos must be bred like all other ,kings2 and with ,must there is no arguing4 ,it is idle for an individual writer to carry so great a matter further in a pamphlet4 ,a conference on the subject is the next step needed4 ,it will be attended by men and women who1 no longer believing that they can live for ever1 are seeking for some immortal work into which they can build the best of themselves before their refuse is thrown into that arch dust destructor1 the cremation furnace4 ,transcriber's ,note3 ,shaw promoted spelling reform of his own invention4 ,his spelling reform included not using apostrophes for contractions1 thus this text has 'dont' instead of 'don't' and -iz- instead of -is- even in words which standard ,english1 both ,british or ,american1 spells with -is-1 for example3 partizan1 artizan4 ,he had the goal of making spelling more phonetic4 ,he spelled it ',shakespear'4 ,he spelled ',caesar' with an ae ligature4 ,he used diacritical on ,french words and names4