Political agitation has in the past been one of the most potent forces by the movement of which men and women have obtained redress from their disabilities, and have put forward their own views and enlisted sympathy in their own troubles. But infants and children, although provided with most effectual means of calling attention to certain of their personal wants, are unable even to formulate grievances of which they are not conscious, and posterity has naturally no voice in determining the course of our present actions although its very existence depends upon these.
This is already partly realised, and there are not wanting those who are prepared to sacrifice much in order to champion the cause of those who have no means of establishing the claims they have to our consideration. Already, four years ago, public opinion expressed itself in public rule that a man and woman in begetting a child must take upon themselves the obligation and responsibility of seeing that that child is not subjected to cruelty and hardship.[32] It is but one step more to say that a man and woman shall be under obligation not to produce children when it is certain that from their want of physique they will have to undergo suffering, and will keep up but an unequal struggle with their fellows.
[Our Sense of Obligation is Developing.]
But our sense of obligation, just as it has grown in the past, is capable of development in the future, and that this sense will develop is probable from the fact that we are beholden to our fellowmen and ancestry far more than we at present realise. Not only do we owe our existence to others, but we owe to them most of our necessities, all our luxuries, our intellectual food, our music, poetry and language. Our possessions and even our ideas we owe to those millions who have for numberless generations toiled in their own behalf and ours. Alone we might obtain subsistence from roots and shell-fish, but as citizens of an organised State we have food and clothing for an easy expenditure of energy, and can obtain for the trying much of that which may be termed luxury, but which in reality is that which makes life worth living.
This debt that we owe to those who have gone before us we can only repay to those who come after us, and the sense of obligation will grow as we become better educated in the broad facts of life and history. We shall increasingly be prepared to forego our pleasures, and to undertake that which may be personally disagreeable for the sake of others. The good of others has been, and will increasingly be, that to which our energies will turn, and the most fundamental good that we can achieve is that which will add to the organic excellence of the race.
Can we doubt for a moment that men will hesitate about fulfilling these obligations, or draw a line beyond which in their disinterestedness they will not eventually be prepared to go? History shows that mankind is ever ready to sacrifice itself if cause be shown; that men and women will go far beyond the lengths of their devotion to self-interest, in their devotion to a cause, a hero, a religion, an ideal. If then it be shown that by sacrifice of the individual so great a thing as racial reconstruction can be accomplished on certain well-understood lines, then from what we know of the stuff that is in humanity this racial reconstruction most assuredly will be carried out.
[Social Philosophers and Social Reformers.]
There are two classes of persons—Social Philosophers and Social Reformers; the former discuss what might be done, the latter endeavour to bring about that which it is possible to do. Nothing would be easier than to frame a set of suggestions which, when followed out, would lead to the desired ends; but as reformers (not philosophers) we have only to discuss those suggestions which the public would be prepared to view with an open mind and eventually to act upon. It is true that this will take us but one step towards the end, but the futility of discussing further steps, for which people are not prepared, has often enough been demonstrated in matters social. After all we have not to argue these questions in the abstract; they are associated in their very essence with the qualities and nature of the average citizen, and we have to think of what will best appeal to him. He sits as the judge of the case; he has to be instructed; his sentiments, and probably his vanity, enlisted; if we go too far he will dismiss the case, and it may be long before it can be taken up again.
[Segregation is Not yet Practicable.]
No one in their senses would at the present moment venture to bring in a Bill for the segregation of criminals and vagrants, for we are not prepared for such a measure. A certain number would, no doubt, be strongly in its favour, but they would be in a small minority. At present the community at large have hardly even discussed their obligations as race producers, and the enforcement of these obligations could only follow a strong growth of public feeling and public practice. Long, too, before the question can be discussed in a practical form, the criminals and vagrants must be separated from the deserving poor; it is probable that this step would commend itself to all, indeed in all probability the present system continues to exist solely on account of a widespread ignorance of the real state of things. Our workhouses and institutions for the relief of the poor have never elicited much personal interest; they are rarely visited by the public, who have never realised the scandalous herding together of the very scum of humanity with the respectable but unfortunate and aged of the labouring class which is nowadays prevalent. Once this state of things were ended, once the public could see the inveterate criminal and vagrant class by itself, it would be able to deal with it on rational lines. It would view it as a hopelessly inferior class, having no place among the workers of the State; a class to be cared for and controlled, but whose perpetuation, on the score of pity for the offspring, must in duty be prevented.