constructive purpose of the world. I want to change
the respective values of the family group altogether, and make the home
indeed the women's kingdom and the mother the owner and responsible
guardian of her children.

It is no use pretending that this is not novel and revolutionary; it is.
The Endowment of Motherhood implies a new method of social organization,
a rearrangement of the social unit, untried in human experience--as
untried as electric traction was or flying in 1800. Of course, it may
work out to modify men's ideas of marriage profoundly. To me that is
a secondary consideration. I do not believe that particular assertion
myself, because I am convinced that a practical monogamy is a
psychological necessity to the mass of civilised people. But even if I
did believe it I should still keep to my present line, because it is the
only line that will prevent a highly organised civilisation from ending
in biological decay. The public Endowment of Motherhood is the only
possible way which will ensure the permanently developing civilised
state at which all constructive minds are aiming. A point is reached in
the life-history of a civilisation when either this reconstruction
must be effected or the quality and MORALE of the population prove
insufficient for the needs of the developing organisation. It is not so
much moral decadence that will destroy us as moral inadaptability.
The old code fails under the new needs. The only alternative to this
profound reconstruction is a decay in human quality and social collapse.
Either this unprecedented rearrangement must be achieved by our
civilisation, or it must presently come upon a phase of disorder and
crumble and perish, as Rome perished, as France declines, as the strain
of the Pilgrim Fathers dwindles out of America. Whatever hope there may
be in the attempt therefore, there is no alternative to the attempt.

6

I wanted political success now dearly enough, but not at the price
of constructive realities. These questions were no doubt monstrously
dangerous in the political world; there wasn't a politician alive who
didn't look scared at the mention of "The Family," but if raising these
issues were essential to the social reconstructions on which my life
was set, that did not matter. It only implied that I should take them
up with deliberate caution. There was no release because of risk or
difficulty.

The question of whether I should commit myself to some open p