t is not only
in his child but in the dissemination of his thought, the expression of
his mind in things done and made, that his triumph is to be found. And
the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system
which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour
the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in
humanity--beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a
growing body of knowledge--and to check the procreation of base and
servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean
and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men. To do the
latter is to do the former; the two things are inseparable. And the
method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world,
whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness, and cowardice
and feebleness were saved from the accomplishment of their desires, the
method that has only one alternative, the method that must in some cases
still be called in to the help of man, is death. In the new vision death
is no inexplicable horror, no pointless terminal terror to the miseries
of life, it is the end of all the pain of life, the end of the
bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of weak and silly and
pointless things....

The new ethics will hold life to be a privilege and a responsibility,
not a sort of night refuge for base spirits out of the void; and the
alternative in right conduct between living fully, beautifully, and
efficiently will be to die. For a multitude of contemptible and silly
creatures, fear-driven and helpless and useless, unhappy or hatefully
happy in the midst of squalid dishonour, feeble, ugly, inefficient, born
of unrestrained lusts, and increasing and multiplying through sheer
incontinence and stupidity, the men of the New Republic will have little
pity and less benevolence. To make life convenient for the breeding of
such people will seem to them not the most virtuous and amiable thing in
the world, as it is held to be now, but an exceedingly abominable
proceeding. Procreation is an avoidable thing for sane persons of even
the most furious passions, and the men of the New Republic will hold
that the procreation of children who, by the circumstances of their
parentage, _must_ be diseased bodily or mentally--I do not think it will
be difficult for the medical science of the coming time to define such
circumstances--is absolutely the most lo