Chapter VII · CONCLUSION (continued 2)

When we survey the history of Man we are constantly reminded of the profound truth which often lay beneath the parables of Jesus, and they might well form the motto for any treatise on eugenics. Jesus was constantly seeking to suggest the necessity of that process of sifting in which all human evolution consists; he was ever quick to point out how few could be, as it was then phrased, “saved,” how extremely narrow is the path to the Kingdom of Heaven, or, as many might now call it, the Kingdom of Man. He proclaimed symbolically a doctrine of heredity which is only to-day beginning to be directly formulated: “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.” There was no compunction at all in his promulgation of this radical yet necessary doctrine for the destruction of unfit stocks. Even the best stocks Jesus was in favour of destroying ruthlessly as soon as they had ceased to be the best: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, ... it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” Jesus has been reproached by Nietzsche for founding a religion for slaves and plebeians, and so in the result it 356may have become. But we see that, in the words of the Teacher as they have been handed down, the religion of Jesus was the most aristocratic of religions. Its doctrine embodied not even the permission to live for those human stocks which fall short of its aristocratic ideal. It need not surprise us to find that Jesus had already said two thousand years ago what Galton, in a more modern and—some would add—more humane way, was saying yesterday. If there had not been a core of vital truth beneath the surface of the first Christian’s teaching, it could hardly have survived so long. We are told that it is now dead, but should it ever be revived we may well believe that this is the aspect by which it will be commended. It is a significant fact that at the two spiritual sources of our world, Jesus and Plato, we find the assertion of the principle of eugenics, in one implicitly, in the other explicitly.

Jules de Gaultier was not concerned to put forward an aristocratic conception of his æsthetic doctrine, and, as we have seen, he remained on the threshold of eugenics. He was content to suggest, though with no positive assurance, a more democratic conception. He had, indeed, one may divine, a predilection for that middle class which has furnished so vast a number of the supreme figures in art and thought; by producing a class of people dispensed from tasks of utility, he had pointed out, “a society creates for itself an organ fitted for the higher life and bears witness that it has 357passed beyond the merely biological stage to reach the human stage.” But the middle class is not indispensable, and if it is doomed Gaultier saw ways of replacing it.^[158] Especially we may seek to ensure that, in every social group, the individual task of utilitarian work shall be so limited that the worker is enabled to gain a leisure sufficiently ample to devote, if he has the aptitude, to works of intellect or art. He would agree with Otto Braun, the inspired youth who was slain in the Great War, that if we desire the enablement of the people “the eight-hours day becomes nothing less than the most imperative demand of culture.” It is in this direction, it may well be, that social evolution is moving, however its complete realisation may, by temporary causes, from time to time be impeded. The insistent demand for increased wages and diminished hours of work has not been inspired by the desire to raise the level of culture in the social environment, or to inaugurate any æsthetic revolution, yet, by “the law of irony” which so often controls the realisation of things, that is the result which may be achieved. The new leisure conferred on the worker may be transformed into spiritual activity, and the liberated utilitarian energy into æsthetic energy. The road would thus be opened for a new human adventure, of anxious interest, which the future alone can reveal.

We cannot be sure that this transformation will take 358place. We cannot be sure, indeed, that it is possible for it to take place unless the general quality of the population in whom so fine a process must be effected is raised by a more rigid eugenic process than there is yet any real determination among us to exert. Men still bow down before the fetish of mere quantity in population, and that worship may be their undoing. Giant social organisms, like the giant animal species of early times, may be destined to disappear suddenly when they have attained their extreme expansion.

Even if that should be so, even if there should be a solution of continuity in the course of civilisation, even then, as again Jules de Gaultier also held, we need not despair, for life is a fountain of everlasting exhilaration. No creature on the earth has so tortured himself as Man, and none has raised a more exultant Alleluia. It would still be possible to erect places of refuge, cloisters wherein life would yet be full of joy for men and women determined by their vocation to care only for beauty and knowledge, and so to hand on to a future race the living torch of civilisation. When we read Palladius, when we read Rabelais, we realise how vast a field lies open for human activity between the Thebaid on one side and Thelema on the other. Out of such ashes a new world might well arise. Sunset is the promise of dawn.

THE END

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