News From Nowhere, Or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance

children, desired as a woman, loved as a companion, unanxious for the future of her children, has far more instinct for maternity than the poor drudge and mother of drudges of past days could ever have had; or than her sister of the upper classes, brought up in affected ignorance of natural facts, reared in an atmosphere of mingled prudery and prurience.”

“You speak warmly,” I said, “but I can see that you are right.”

“Yes,” he said, “and I will point out to you a token of all the benefits which we have gained by our freedom.  What did you think of the looks of the people whom you have come across to-day?”

Said I: “I could hardly have believed that there could be so many good-looking people in any civilised country.”

He crowed a little, like the old bird he was.  “What! are we still civilised?” said he.  “Well, as to our looks, the English and Jutish blood, which on the whole is predominant here, used not to produce much beauty.  But I think we have improved it.  I know a man who has a large collection of portraits printed from photographs of the nineteenth century, and going over those and comparing them with the everyday faces in these times, puts the improvement in our good looks beyond a doubt.  Now, there are some people who think it not too fantastic to connect this increase of beauty directly with our freedom and good sense in the matters we have been speaking of: they believe that a child born from the natural and healthy love between a man and a woman, even if that be transient, is likely to turn out better in all ways, and especially in bodily beauty, than the birth of the respectable commercial marriage bed, or of the dull despair of the drudge of that system.  They say, Pleasure begets pleasure.  What do you think?”

“I am much of that mind,” said I.

CHAPTER X: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

“Well,” said the old man, shifting in his chair, “you must get on with your questions, Guest; I have been some time answering this first one.”

Said I: “I want an extra word or two about your ideas of education; although I gathered from Dick that you let your children run wild and didn’t teach them anything; and in short, that you have so refined your education, that now you have none.”

“Then you gathered left-handed,” quoth he.  “But of course I understand your point of view about education, which is that of times past, when ‘the struggle for life,’ as men used to phrase it (i.e., the struggle for a slave’s rations on one side, and for a bouncing share of the slave-holders’ privilege on the other), pinched ‘education’ for most people into a niggardly dole of not very accurate information; something to be swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or not, and was hungry for it or not: and which had been chewed and digested over and over again by people who didn’t care about it in order to serve it out to other people who didn’t care about it.”

I stopped the old man’s rising wrath by a laugh, and said: “Well, you were not taught that way, at any rate, so you may let your anger run off you a little.”

“True, true,” said he, smiling.  “I thank you for correcting my ill-temper: I always fancy myself as living in any period of which we may be speaking.  But, however, to put it in a cooler way: you expected to see children thrust into schools when they had reached an age conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard to facts to be subjected to a certain conventional course of ‘learning.’  My friend, can’t you see that such a proceeding means ignoring the fact of growth, bodily and mental?  No one could come out of such a mill uninjured; and those only would avoid being crushed by it who would have the spirit of rebellion strong in them.  Fortunately most children have had that at all times, or I do not know that we should ever have reached our present position.  Now you see what it all comes to.  In the old times all this was the result of poverty.  In the nineteenth century, society was so miserably poor, owing to the systematised robbery on which it was founded, that real education was impossible for anybody.  The whole theory of their so-called education was that it was necessary to shove a little information into a child, even if it were by means of torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no use, or else he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty forbade anything else.  All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and the information lies ready to each one’s hand when his own inclinations impel him to seek it.  In this as in other matters we have become wealthy: we can afford to give ourselves time to grow.”

“Yes,” said I, “but suppose the child, youth, man, never wants the information, never grows in the direction you might hope him to do: suppose, for instance, he objects to learning arithmetic or mathematics; you can’t force him when he is grown; can’t you force him while he is growing, and oughtn’t you to do so?”

“Well,” said he, “were you forced to learn arithmetic and