many methods by
which people in the upper classes prevent procreation; one of them is
what used to be called "platonic friendship," till they found another
name for it at the Old Bailey. I do not suppose the hopeful gentleman
hopes for this; but some of us find the abortion he does hope for
almost as abominable. That, however, is not the curious point. The
curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "When
people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high
infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are
stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a
time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if
there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly
takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately
shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of
human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries,
things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted
children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the
parents do not want to have them. He means that the employers do not
want to pay them properly. Doubtless, if you said to him directly,
"Are you in favour of low wages?" he would say, "No." But I am not, in
this chapter, talking about the effect on such modern minds of a
cross-examination to which they do not subject themselves. I am
talking about the way their minds work, the instinctive trick and turn
of their thoughts, the things they assume before argument, and the way
they faintly feel that the world is going. And, frankly, the turn of
their mind is to tell the child he is not wanted, as the turn of my
mind is to tell the profiteer he is not wanted. Motherhood, they feel,
and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good
things in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the
mutilation of womanhood, and the massacre of men unborn, he signs
himself "Hopeful." He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human
annihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself
"Hopeless."

This is the first evidence of motive: the ubiquitous assumption that
life and love must fit into a fixed framework of employment, even (as
in this case) of bad employment. The second evidence is the tacit and
total neglect of the scientific question in all the departments in
which it is not an employment question; as,