23. A Glimpse Into Utopia - Page 2

of not more than about four
children. An average of something like four is necessary, we know, to
keep up population, and to allow for infant mortality, inevitable
celibates, and so forth. Few women in such a State would abstain from
maternity, save those who felt themselves physically or morally unfitted
for the task; for in proportion as they abstained, either the State must
lack citizens to carry on its life, or an extra and undue burden would
have to be cast upon some other woman. And it may well be doubted
whether in a well-ordered and civilised State any one woman could
adequately bear, bring up, and superintend the education of more than
four young citizens. Hence we may conclude that while no woman save the
unfit would voluntarily shirk the duties and privileges of maternity,
few (if any) women would make themselves mothers of more than four
children. Four would doubtless grow to be regarded in such a community
as the moral maximum; while it is even possible that improved
sanitation, by diminishing infant mortality and adult ineffectiveness,
might make a maximum of three sufficient to keep up the normal strength
of the population.

In an ideal community, again, the woman who looked forward to this great
task on behalf of the race would strenuously prepare herself for it
beforehand from childhood upward. She would not be ashamed of such
preparation; on the contrary, she would be proud of it. Her duty would
be no longer "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer," but to produce
and bring up strong, vigorous, free, able, and intelligent citizens.
Therefore, she must be nobly educated for her great and important
function--educated physically, intellectually, morally. Let us forecast
her future. She will be well clad in clothes that allow of lithe and
even development of the body; she will be taught to run, to play games,
to dance, to swim; she will be supple and healthy, finely moulded and
knit in limb and organ, beautiful in face and features, splendid and
graceful in the native curves of her lissom figure. No cramping
conventions will be allowed to cage her; no worn-out moralities will be
tied round her neck like a mill-stone to hamper her. Intellectually she
will be developed to the highest pitch of which in each individual case
she proves herself capable--educated, not in the futile linguistic
studies which have already been tried and found wanting for men, but in
realities and existences, in the truths of life, in recognition of her
own and our place among immensities. She will know something worth
knowing of the world she lives in, its past and its present, the
material of which it is made, the forces that inform it, the energies
that thrill through it. Something, too, of the orbs that