radically altered.

we can accept and retain only one primary prejudice, and that is
that the race is worth preserving.
to that consideration all else will, for atime at least, be subordinate. we must
look at all we do,
with this question in mind. is this going to help our race survive-or will it
hinder us? if it will
help, we must do it, whether or not it conflicts with the ideas in which we were
brought up. if
not, we must avoid it, even though the omission may clash with our previous notions
of duty and even of
justice. "it will not be easy; old prejudices die hard. the simple rely on a
bolstering mass of maxim and
precept, so do the timid, so do the mentally lazy-and so do all of us, more than we
imagine. now
tahat organization has gone, our ready reckoners for conduct within it no longer
live the right answers. we must
said. "there is one thing to be made quite clear to you before you decide to join
our community. it
is that those of us who start on this task will all have our parts to play. the men
must
work-the women must have babies. unless you can agree to that, there can be no
place for you in our
community." after an interval of dead silence, he added. "we can afford to support
a limited number of women who
cannot see, because they will have babies who can see. we cannot afford to support
men who cannot see. in
our new world, then, babies become very much more important than husbands." for
some seconds after he stopped speaking, silence
continued, then isolated murmurs grew quickly into a general buzz. i looked at
josella. to my astonishment, she was grinning
impishly. "what do you find funny about this?" i asked a trifle shortly. "people s
expressions mostly," she replied. i
had to admit it as a reason i looked round the place, and then across at michael.
his eyes were
moving from one section to another of the audience as he tried to sum up the
reaction. "michael s looking
a bit anxious," i observed. 'he should worry," said josella. "if brigham young
could bring it off in the middle
of the nineteenthcentury, this ought to be a pushover." "what a crude young woman
you are at times," i
said. "were you in on this before?" "not exactly, but i m not quite dumb, you know.
besids, while you
were away someone drove in a bus with most of these blind girls on board. they all
came from some
institution. i said to myself, why collect them from there when you could gather up
thousands in a few streets
round here? the answer obviously was that (a) being blind before this happened,
they had been trained to do work
of some kind, and (b) they were all girls. the deduction wasn t terribly
difficult." "h m," i said. "depends
on one s outlook, i suppose. i must say, it wouldn t have struck me. do you" "sh-
sh," she told
me as a quietness came over the hail. a tail, dark, purposeful-looking, youngish
woman had risen. while she waited, she
appeared to have a mouth not made to open, but later it did. " are we to
understand," she inquired, using
a kind of carbon-steel voice, "are we to understand that the last speaker is
advocating free love?" and she sat
down, with spine- jarring decision. dr. vorless smooted back his hair as he
regarded her. "i think the question clearer?" the woman stood
up again. "ithink the speaker understood me. i am asking if he suggests the
abolition of the marriage law?"
"the laws we knew have been abolished by circumstances.it now falls to us to make
laws suitable to the
conditions, and to enforce them if necessary." there is still god s law of
decency." "madam. solomon
had three hundered-or was it five hundered? - wives, and god did not apparantly
hold them against him. a mohammedan preserves
rigid respectability with three wives. these are matters of local custom. just what
our laws in these matters, and in
others, will be is for us all to decide later for the greatest benefit of the
community."this comittee, after
discussion, has decided that if we are to build a new state of things and avoid a
relapse into barbarism-which
is an appreciable danger-we must have certain undertakingsfrom those who wish to
join us. "not one of us is
going to recapture the conditions we have lost. what we offer is a busy life in the
best conditions we
can contrive, and the happiness which will come of achievement against odds. in
return we ask willingness and fruitfulness. there
is no compulsion. the choice is yours. those to whom our offer does not appeal are
at perfect liberty to
go elsewhere and start a seperate community on such lines as they prefer. "but i
would ask you to consider
very carefully whether or not you do hold a warrant from god to deprive any woman
of happiness of
carrying out her natural functions." the discussion which followed was a rambling
affair, descending frequently to points of detail and
hypothesis on which there could as yet be no answers. but there was no move move to
cut it short. the
longer it went on, the less strangeness the idea would have. josella and i moved
over to table where
nurse berr had set up her paraphernalia. we took several shots in our arms and then
sat down again to
listen to the wrangling. "how many of them will decide to come, do you think?" i
asked her. she glanced
round. "nearly all of them-by the morning," she told me. i felt doubtful. there was
a lot of objecting