"All existing pairs possible to you," corrected Marindin. "People manage to choose husbands and wives, though according to your computation the whole of the opposite s.e.x would have to be examined and selected from. In practice the choice is narrowed down to a few individuals. So with the choice of parents--most are already snapped up, monopolised or mortgaged, or contracted for, and you have either to choose from the leavings or postpone your birth, and bide your time a century or two. But the problem is greatly simplified by the P. C."
"What is the P. C.?" I murmured.
"The Parental Certificate, of course. Throughout the terrestrial branch of our sect no one is eligible for parentage who does not possess it. It is given only to those who have pa.s.sed the P. D. or Parents" Degree examination, and supplements the old P. L. or Parents" Licence, which was openly bought and sold."
"And the qualifications?"
"Oh, very elementary. The candidate is required to pa.s.s an exam, (both written and oral) in the training of the young, and to be certified of sound mind in sound body. The P. L. itself has been transformed into a licence to keep one, two or more children, according to means."
"You see our "Guide" deals merely with the great typical pairs,"
explained the publisher. "What Aristotle did for Logic our author has done for Birth. He only pretends to give general categories. Aristotle could not guarantee a man shall properly reason, nor can any individual be infallibly inspired to the wisest choice of parentage. Of course the photographs of parents are of great service to the unborn who are thinking of settling down."
"How do they get to see them?"
"Oh, as soon as a couple pa.s.ses the P. D. and receives the P. C. they appear in the ill.u.s.trated papers--especially the ladies" papers.
"Graduates of the Week" is the heading. And then there is the P. T.--the Pathological Tree."
I looked at the publisher in perplexity.
"Gracious! I forget this is your first visit to Ante-land," he said, apologetically. "Look! Here are some P. Ts. my lawyer has just been looking over for me, the property of parents whose advertis.e.m.e.nts for children I have been answering. My friends are rather anxious I should incarnate."
I surveyed the parchment roll with curiosity. It was a tree, on the model of a genealogical tree, but tracing the hygienic record of the family.
"In our sect," said Marindin impressively, "it will become the pride of the family to have an unblemished pedigree, and any child who gets himself born into such a family will do so with the responsibility of carrying on the n.o.ble tradition of the house and living up to the sanitary scutcheon--_sante oblige_. When children begin to be fastidious about the families they are born into, parents will have to improve, or die childless. And, as the love of offspring springs eternal in the human breast, this will have an immense influence upon the evolution of the race to higher goals. I do not know any force of the future on which we can count more hopefully than on the refinement resulting from the struggle for offspring and the survival of the fittest to be parents.
Undesirable families will become extinct. The unborn will subtly mould the born to higher things. Childlessness will become again what it was in the Orient--a shame and a reproach."
"Yes," a.s.serted the publisher, smoothing out the P. Ts.; "the old unreasoned instinct and repugnance will be put on a true basis when it is seen that childlessness is a proof of unworthiness--a brand of failure."
"As old-maidenhood is, less justly, to-day," I put in.
"Quite so," said Marindin eagerly. "In their anxiety to be worthy of selection by Posterity, parents will rise to heights of health and holiness of which our sick generation does not dream. If they do not, woe to them! They will be remorselessly left to die out without issue.
"The change has begun; our sect is spreading fast. In the course of a century or two physical and mental deformities will vanish from the earth." His eye flashed prophetic fire.
"So soon?" I said, with a sceptical smile.
"How could they survive?" Marindin inquired scathingly.
"Is it likely any of us would consent to be born hunchbacks?" broke in the publisher; "or to enter families with hereditary gout? Would any sane Antelander put himself under the yoke of animal instincts or tendencies to drink? Ah, here is a bibulous grandfather!" and he tossed one of the P. Ts. disdainfully aside, though I observed that the old gentleman in question had been an English Earl.
"But, Mr. Fore," I protested, "will all the unborn attach such importance to the pathological pedigree as you do? What power will make them train up their parents in the way they should go?"
"The greatest power on earth," broke in Marindin; "the power of selfishness, backed by education. Enlightened selfishness is all that is needed to bring about the millennium. The selfishness of to-day is so stupid. Let the unborn care only for their own skins, and they will improve the parents, and be well brought up themselves by the good parents they have selected."
"But come now, Mr. Fore," I said; "the new system has been partially at work, I understand, for some time. Do you a.s.sure me, on your word of honor as an unborn publisher, that the filial franchise has been invariably exercised wisely and well?"
"Of course not," interrupted Marindin. "Haven"t I already told you there has been much fumbling and experimentation, some souls being born for money and some for beauty and some for position? But pioneers must always suffer--for the benefit of those who come after."
"Certainly there have been rash and improvident births," admitted the publisher. "Hasty births, premature births, secret births, morganatic births, illegitimate births, and every variety of infelicitous intrusion upon your planet. The rash are born too early, the cautious too late; some even repent on the very brink of birth and elect to be stillborn.
But in the majority of cases birth is the outcome of mature deliberation; a contract entered into with a full sense of the responsibilities of the situation."
"But what do you understand by illegitimate birth?" I asked.
"The selection of parents not possessing the P. C. There are always eccentric spirits who would defy the dearest and most sacred inst.i.tutions organised by society for its own protection. We are gradually creating a public opinion to discountenance such breaches of the law, and such perils to the commonweal, subversive as they are of all our efforts to promote the general happiness and holiness. Even in your uncivilised communities," continued the publisher, "these unlicensed and illegitimate immigrants are stamped with life-long opprobrium and subjected to degrading disabilities; how much infamy should then attach to them when the sin they are born in is their own!"
"A lesser degree of illegitimacy," added Marindin, "is to be born into a family already containing the full number it is licensed for. This happens particularly in rich families, introductions into which are naturally most sought after. It is still a moot point whether the birth should be legitimatised on the death of one of the other children."
"But it is the indirect results that I look forward to most," he went on after a pause. "For example, the solution of Nihilism in Russia."
"What has that to do with the unborn?" I asked, quite puzzled.
"Don"t you see that the czarship will die out?"
"How so?"
"No one will risk being born into the Imperial family. I should say that birth within four degrees of consanguinity of the Czar would be so rare that it would come to be regarded as criminal."
"Yes, that and many another question will be solved quite peaceably,"
said the publisher. "You saw me reject a n.o.ble grandfather; the growth of democratic ideals among us must ultimately abolish hereditary aristocracy. So, too, the question of second marriages and the deceased wife"s sister may be left to the taste and ethical standards of the unborn, who can easily, if they choose, set their faces against such unions."
"You see the centre of gravity would be shifted to the pre-natal period,"
explained Marindin, "when the soul is more liable to n.o.ble influences.
The moment the human being is born it is definitely moulded; all your training can only modify the congenital cast. But the real potentialities are in the unborn. While there is not life there is hope. When you commence to educate the child it is already too late. But if the great forces of education are brought to bear upon the unformed, you may bring all Itigh qualities to birth. Think, for instance, how this will contribute to the cause of religion. The unborn will simply eliminate the false religions by refusing to be born into them. Persuade the unborn, touch _them_, convert _them_! You, I am sure, Mr. Fore," he said, turning to the worthy publisher, "would never consent to be born into the wrong religion!"
"Not if h.e.l.l-fire was the penalty of an unhappy selection," replied Mr.
Fore.
"Of course not," said Marindin. "Missionaries have always flown in the face of psychology. Henceforward, moreover, Jews will be converted at a period more convenient for baptism."
"We hope to mould politics, too," added the publisher, "by boycotting certain races and replenishing others."
"Yes," cried Marindin; "it is my hope that by impregnating the unborn with a specific set of prejudices, they might be induced to settle in particular countries, and I cannot help thinking that patriotism would be more intelligent when it was voluntary; self-imposed from admiration of the ideals and history of a particular people. Indeed this seems to me absolutely the only way in which, reason can be brought to bear on the great war question, for in lieu of that loud eloquence of Woolwich infants there would be exercised the silent pressure of the unborn, who could simply annihilate an undesirable nation, or decimate an offensive district by refusing to be born in it. Surely this would be the most rational way of settling the ever-menacing Franco-Prussian quarrel."
"I observe already a certain anti-Gallic feeling in Ante-land," put in the publisher. "A growing disinclination to be born in France, if not a preference for being made in Germany. But these things belong to _la haute politique_"
"My own suspicion is," I ventured to suggest, "that there is a growing disinclination to be born anywhere, and this new privilege of free choice will simply bring matters to a climax. Your folks, confronted by the endless problem of choosing their own country and century, their own family and their own religion, will dilly-dally and shilly-shally and put off birth so long that they will never change their condition at all.
They will come to the conviction that it is better not to be born; better to bear the evils that they know than fly to others that they know not of. What if the immigration of dest.i.tute little aliens into our planet ceased altogether?"
Marindin shrugged his shoulders, and there came into his face that indescribable look of the hopeless mystic.
"Then humanity would have reached its goal: it would come naturally and gently to an end. The euthanasia of the race would be accomplished, and the glorified planet, cleansed of wickedness at last, would take up its part again in the chorus of the spheres. But like most ideals, I fear this is but a pleasant dream." Then, as the publisher turned away to replace the P. Ts. in a safe, he added softly: "Intelligence is never likely to be so widely diffused in Ante-land that the ma.s.ses would fight shy of birth. There would always be a sufficient proportion of unborn fools left who would prefer the palpabilities of bodily form to the insubstantialities of pre-natal existence. Between you and me, our friend the publisher is extremely anxious to be published."
"And yet he seems intelligent enough," I argued.
"Ah, well, it cannot be denied that there are _some_ lives decidedly worth living, and our friend Fore will probably bring up his parents to the same profession as himself."
"No doubt there would always be compet.i.tion for the best _births_," I observed, smiling.
"Yes," replied Marindin sadly; "the struggle for existence will always continue among the unborn."