That they must cross it becomes obvious the moment we acknowledge the futility19 of breeding men for special qualities as we breed cocks for game, greyhounds for speed, or sheep for mutton. What is really important in Man is the part of him that we do not yet understand. Of much of it we are not even conscious, just as we are not normally conscious of keeping up our circulation by our heart-pump, though if we neglect it we die. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that when we have carried selection as far as we can by rejecting from the list of eligible20 parents all persons who are uninteresting, unpromising, or blemished21 without any set-off, we shall still have to trust to the guidance of fancy (alias Voice of Nature), both in the breeders and the parents, for that superiority in the unconscious self which will be the true characteristic of the Superman.
At this point we perceive the importance of giving fancy the widest possible field. To cut humanity up into small cliques22, and effectively limit the selection of the individual to his own clique23, is to postpone24 the Superman for eons, if not for ever. Not only should every person be nourished and trained as a possible parent, 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 charwoman. Equality is essential to good breeding; and equality, as all economists25 know, is incompatible26 with property.
Besides, equality is an essential condition of bad breeding also; and bad breeding is indispensable to the weeding out of the human race. When the conception of heredity took hold of the scientific imagination in the middle of last century, its devotees announced that it was a crime to marry the lunatic to the lunatic or the consumptive to the consumptive. But pray are we to try to correct our diseased stocks by infecting our healthy stocks with them? Clearly the attraction which disease has for diseased people is beneficial to the race. If two really unhealthy people get married, they will, as likely as not, have a great number of children who will all die before they reach maturity27. This is a far more satisfactory arrangement than the tragedy of a union between a healthy and an unhealthy person. Though more costly28 than sterilization29 of the unhealthy, it has the enormous advantage that in the event of our notions of health and unhealth being erroneous (which to some extent they most certainly are), the error will be corrected by experience instead of confirmed by evasion30.
One fact must be faced resolutely31, in spite of the shrieks32 of the romantic. There is no evidence that the best citizens are the offspring of congenial marriages, or that a conflict of temperament33 is not a highly important part of what breeders call crossing. On the contrary, it is quite sufficiently34 probable that good results may be obtained from parents who would be extremely unsuitable companions and partners, 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 accidentally. But mating such couples must clearly not involve marrying them. In conjugation two complementary persons may supply one another’s deficiencies: in the domestic partnership35 of marriage they only feel them and suffer from them. Thus the son of a robust36, cheerful, eupeptic British country squire37, with the tastes and range of his class, and of a clever, imaginative, intellectual, highly civilized38 Jewess, might be very superior to both his parents; but it is not likely that the Jewess would find the squire an interesting companion, or his habits, his friends, his place and mode of life congenial to her. Therefore marriage, whilst it is made an indispensable condition of mating, will delay the advent39 of the Superman as effectually as Property, and will be modified by the impulse towards him just as effectually.
The practical abrogation40 of Property and Marriage as they exist at present will occur without being much noticed. To the mass of men, the intelligent abolition41 of property would mean nothing except an increase in the quantity of food, clothing, housing, and comfort at their personal disposal, as well as a greater control over their time and circumstances. 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 clergyman, officer, or civil servant. A landed proprietor43 may still drive men and women off his land, demolish44 their dwellings45, and replace them with sheep or deer; 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 century. But though the Factory Code on the one hand, and Trade union organization on the other, have, within the lifetime of men still living, 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 stringent46 public or collective conditions, imposed in the interest of the general welfare without any regard for individual hard cases, people in Lancashire still speak of their “property” in the old terms, meaning nothing more by it than the things a thief can be punished for stealing. The total abolition of property, and the conversion47 of every citizen into a salaried functionary48 in the public service, would leave much more than 99 per cent of the nation quite unconscious of any greater change than now takes place when the son of a shipowner goes into the navy. They would still call their watches and umbrellas and back gardens their property.
Marriage also will persist as a name attached to a general custom long after the custom itself will have altered. For example, modern English marriage, as modified by divorce and by Married Women’s Property Acts, differs more from early XIX century marriage than Byron’s marriage did from Shakespear’s. At the present moment marriage in England differs not only from marriage in France, but from marriage in Scotland. Marriage as modified by the divorce laws in South Dakota would be called mere promiscuity49 in Clapham. Yet the Americans, far from taking a profligate50 and cynical51 view of marriage, do homage52 to its ideals with a seriousness that seems old fashioned in Clapham. Neither in England nor America would a proposal to abolish marriage be tolerated for a moment; and yet nothing is more certain than that in both countries the progressive modification53 of the marriage contract will be continued until it is no more onerous54 nor irrevocable than any ordinary commercial deed of partnership. Were even this dispensed55 with, people would still call themselves husbands and wives; describe their companionships as marriages; and be for the most part unconscious that they were any less married than Henry VIII. For though a glance at the legal conditions of marriage in different Christian56 countries shews that marriage varies legally from frontier to frontier, domesticity varies so little that most people believe their own marriage laws to be universal. Consequently here again, as in the case of Property, the absolute confidence of the public in the stability of the institution’s name, makes it all the easier to alter its substance.
However, it cannot be denied that one of the changes in public opinion demanded by the need for the Superman is a very unexpected one. It is nothing less than the dissolution of the present necessary association of marriage with conjugation, which most unmarried people regard as the very diagnostic of marriage. They are wrong, of course: it would be quite as near the truth to say that conjugation is the one purely57 accidental and incidental condition of marriage. Conjugation is essential to nothing but the propagation of the race; and the moment that paramount58 need is provided for otherwise than by marriage, conjugation, from Nature’s creative point of view, ceases to be essential in marriage. But marriage does not thereupon cease to be so economical, convenient, and comfortable, that the Superman might safely bribe59 the matrimonomaniacs by offering to revive all the old inhuman60 stringency61 and irrevocability of marriage, to abolish divorce, to confirm the horrible bond which still chains decent people to drunkards, criminals, and wasters, provided only the complete extrication62 of conjugation from it were conceded to him. For if people could form domestic companionships on no easier terms than these, they would still marry. The Roman Catholic, forbidden by his Church to avail himself of the divorce laws, marries as freely as the South Dakotan Presbyterians who can change partners with a facility that scandalizes the old world; and were his Church to dare a further step towards Christianity and enjoin63 celibacy64 on its laity65 as well as on its clergy42, marriages would still be contracted for the sake of domesticity by perfectly66 obedient sons and daughters of the Church. One need not further pursue these hypotheses: they are only suggested here to help the reader to analyse marriage into its two functions of regulating conjugation and supplying a form of domesticity. These two functions are quite separable; and domesticity is the only one of the two which is essential to the existence of marriage, because conjugation without domesticity is not marriage at all, whereas domesticity without conjugation is still marriage: in fact it is necessarily the actual condition of all fertile marriages during a great part of their duration, and of some marriages during the whole of it.
Taking it, then, that Property and Marriage, by destroying Equality and thus hampering67 sexual selection with irrelevant conditions, are hostile to the evolution of the Superman, 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 institutions.
![](../../../skin/default/image/4.jpg)
点击
收听单词发音
![收听单词发音](/template/default/tingnovel/images/play.gif)
1
labor
![]() |
|
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2
grotesquely
![]() |
|
adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3
irrelevant
![]() |
|
adj.不恰当的,无关系的,不相干的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4
feudal
![]() |
|
adj.封建的,封地的,领地的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5
demonstrations
![]() |
|
证明( demonstration的名词复数 ); 表明; 表达; 游行示威 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6
socialists
![]() |
|
社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7
knell
![]() |
|
n.丧钟声;v.敲丧钟 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8
mere
![]() |
|
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9
disastrously
![]() |
|
ad.灾难性地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10
complexity
![]() |
|
n.复杂(性),复杂的事物 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11
mightier
![]() |
|
adj. 强有力的,强大的,巨大的 adv. 很,极其 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12
precisely
![]() |
|
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13
survivor
![]() |
|
n.生存者,残存者,幸存者 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14
unity
![]() |
|
n.团结,联合,统一;和睦,协调 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15
intentional
![]() |
|
adj.故意的,有意(识)的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16
defrauded
![]() |
|
v.诈取,骗取( defraud的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17
miseries
![]() |
|
n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 );痛苦的事;穷困;常发牢骚的人 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18
fully
![]() |
|
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19
futility
![]() |
|
n.无用 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20
eligible
![]() |
|
adj.有条件被选中的;(尤指婚姻等)合适(意)的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21
blemished
![]() |
|
v.有损…的完美,玷污( blemish的过去式 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22
cliques
![]() |
|
n.小集团,小圈子,派系( clique的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23
clique
![]() |
|
n.朋党派系,小集团 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24
postpone
![]() |
|
v.延期,推迟 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25
economists
![]() |
|
n.经济学家,经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26
incompatible
![]() |
|
adj.不相容的,不协调的,不相配的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27
maturity
![]() |
|
n.成熟;完成;(支票、债券等)到期 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28
costly
![]() |
|
adj.昂贵的,价值高的,豪华的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29
sterilization
![]() |
|
n.杀菌,绝育;灭菌 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30
evasion
![]() |
|
n.逃避,偷漏(税) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31
resolutely
![]() |
|
adj.坚决地,果断地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32
shrieks
![]() |
|
n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33
temperament
![]() |
|
n.气质,性格,性情 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34
sufficiently
![]() |
|
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35
partnership
![]() |
|
n.合作关系,伙伴关系 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36
robust
![]() |
|
adj.强壮的,强健的,粗野的,需要体力的,浓的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37
squire
![]() |
|
n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38
civilized
![]() |
|
a.有教养的,文雅的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39
advent
![]() |
|
n.(重要事件等的)到来,来临 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40
abrogation
![]() |
|
n.取消,废除 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41
abolition
![]() |
|
n.废除,取消 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42
clergy
![]() |
|
n.[总称]牧师,神职人员 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43
proprietor
![]() |
|
n.所有人;业主;经营者 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44
demolish
![]() |
|
v.拆毁(建筑物等),推翻(计划、制度等) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45
dwellings
![]() |
|
n.住处,处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46
stringent
![]() |
|
adj.严厉的;令人信服的;银根紧的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47
conversion
![]() |
|
n.转化,转换,转变 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48
functionary
![]() |
|
n.官员;公职人员 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49
promiscuity
![]() |
|
n.混杂,混乱;(男女的)乱交 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50
profligate
![]() |
|
adj.行为不检的;n.放荡的人,浪子,肆意挥霍者 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51
cynical
![]() |
|
adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的,不信世道向善的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52
homage
![]() |
|
n.尊敬,敬意,崇敬 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53
modification
![]() |
|
n.修改,改进,缓和,减轻 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54
onerous
![]() |
|
adj.繁重的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55
dispensed
![]() |
|
v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 );施与;配(药) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56
Christian
![]() |
|
adj.基督教徒的;n.基督教徒 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57
purely
![]() |
|
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58
paramount
![]() |
|
a.最重要的,最高权力的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59
bribe
![]() |
|
n.贿赂;v.向…行贿,买通 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60
inhuman
![]() |
|
adj.残忍的,不人道的,无人性的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61
stringency
![]() |
|
n.严格,紧迫,说服力;严格性;强度 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
62
extrication
![]() |
|
n.解脱;救出,解脱 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
63
enjoin
![]() |
|
v.命令;吩咐;禁止 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
64
celibacy
![]() |
|
n.独身(主义) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
65
laity
![]() |
|
n.俗人;门外汉 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
66
perfectly
![]() |
|
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
67
hampering
![]() |
|
妨碍,束缚,限制( hamper的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |