to
assimilate. Now sex assimilation is the death of sex attraction. All
that women spent on their individual development they stole from the
race. Marriages became rare and where they existed they were frequently
sterile. Gradually, all that made man man and all that made woman woman
became rudimentary and atrophied until, as I have told you, one hundred
and fifty years ago the distinction between man and woman was abolished.
Since that time, and indeed for some ten years previous to it, there has
been no instance of birth or marriage or love-making among beings of the
first class. The last word of civilisation has been reached. It is a
splendid consummation."

"Splendid?" I said doubtfully.

"How can you doubt it? Now that the burden of racial responsibility has
been cut off from our backs, our longevity is trebled and more than
trebled. This may be assigned in part to our increased knowledge and to
the fact that we do no laborious or dangerous work. Laborious and
dangerous work is confined to the second class. With them, of course,
sex still exists. They are a lower order. They breed up children. When
the number of workers is deficient we keep those children. When the
number tends to be excessive they are destroyed. Have you never thought
into what a quandary racial responsibility led men and women in the dark
ages? No married man lived as an unmarried man, no married woman as an
unmarried woman. Life became a string of compromises and concessions.
There were complicated households with nurseries in them. It must be
clear to you that the man who works for six people must work just six
times as hard as the man who works for himself alone. Work is dangerous.
And if work is dangerous, worry is deadly. Worry is enormously increased
where there is any emotional attachment. Look how we have simplified
things. To one being one house. The emotions never paid for their keep,
and it is civilised to get rid of them. Tears are as little known among
the first-class beings of Thule as is the gross and unhygienic kiss. The
tortures of modesty do not affect us, for where there is no sex
distinction there is no modesty. We are emancipated. We are free. Love
implies death. The loveless live long. I may tell you that it is
whispered already that we are on the edge of discoveries which may make
it possible for us to live for ever."

"Well," I said, "I am not constituted as you are. You would hardly
expect me to like what you like."