the fields of tares that are
ripened only by moonshine. We shall meet no longer those delicious
monsters that might have talked in the same wild club with the Snark
and the Jabberwock or the Pobble or the Dong with the Luminous Nose;
the father who can't make head or tail of the mother, but thoroughly
understands the child she will some day bear; the lawyer who has to
run after his own laws almost as fast as the criminals run away from
them; the two mad doctors who might discuss for a million years which
of them has the right to lock up the other; the grammarian who clings
convulsively to the Passive Mood, and says it is the duty of something
to get itself done without any human assistance; the man who would
marry giants to giants until the back breaks, as children pile brick
upon brick for the pleasure of seeing the staggering tower tumble
down; and, above all, the superb man of science who wants you to pay
him and crown him because he has so far found out nothing. These
fairy-tale comrades must leave us. They exist, but they have no
influence in what is really going on. They are honest dupes and tools,
as you and I were very nearly being honest dupes and tools. If we
come to think coolly of the world we live in, if we consider how very
practical is the practical politician, at least where cash is
concerned, how very dull and earthy are most of the men who own the
millions and manage the newspaper trusts, how very cautious and averse
from idealist upheaval are those that control this capitalist
society--when we consider all this, it is frankly incredible that
Eugenics should be a front bench fashionable topic and almost an Act
of Parliament, if it were in practice only the unfinished fantasy
which it is, as I have shown, in pure reason. Even if it were a just
revolution, it would be much too revolutionary a revolution for modern
statesmen, if there were not something else behind. Even if it were a
true ideal, it would be much too idealistic an ideal for our
"practical men," if there were not something real as well. Well, there
is something real as well. There is no reason in Eugenics, but there
is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory,
but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I
reiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite
innocent instruments, there _are_ some, even among Eugenists, who by
this time know what they are doing. To them we shall n