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"In our sect," said Marindin impressively, "it will become the pride of the family to have an unblemished pedigree, and any child who gets himself born into such a family will do so with the responsibility of carrying on the noble tradition of the house and living up to the sanitary scutcheon sante oblige.
Marindin's own unwritten books sustained Paley's thesis of the essentially equal distribution of happiness among all classes, and left it for the individual soul to decide between the realities of toil and the unrealities of prosperity, Marindin took the opportunity of our presence in Ante-land to pay a visit to his publishers, Fore and Futurus, of whose honesty and generosity he spoke in glowing terms.
"Not if hell-fire was the penalty of an unhappy selection," replied Mr. Fore. "Of course not," said Marindin. "Missionaries have always flown in the face of psychology. Henceforward, moreover, Jews will be converted at a period more convenient for baptism." "We hope to mould politics, too," added the publisher, "by boycotting certain races and replenishing others."
What I perceived in Ante-land must needs be expressed through the language of this world, to which in effect it bears as true and constant a relation as the vibration of a violin string to its music. I soon gathered that, as Marindin had claimed, his doctrines had made considerable incursions in the last world, and, what was more surprising, in this.
"Yes," replied Marindin sadly; "the struggle for existence will always continue among the unborn." Suddenly a thought set me a-grin. "Why, what difference can the choice of parents make after all?" I cried. "Suppose you had picked my parents you would have been I, and I should be somebody else, and somebody else would be you.
"Yes," asserted the publisher, smoothing out the P. Ts.; "the old unreasoned instinct and repugnance will be put on a true basis when it is seen that childlessness is a proof of unworthiness a brand of failure." "As old-maidenhood is, less justly, to-day," I put in. "Quite so," said Marindin eagerly.
Many good things had Marindin said of Ibsen and Nietzsche and the modern apostles of self-development who sneered at the Gospel of self-sacrifice, and at all the amiable virtues our infancy had drawn from "The Fairchild Family" with its engaging references to Jeremiah xvii. 9. But now he was breaking out in a new way, and I missed the reassuring twinkle in his eye.
"But who shall say," I asked sceptically, "that the new self-appointed generation will be happier than the old? What guarantee is there that the choice of parents will be made with taste and discretion?" Marindin shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "Come and interview the unborn," he said, and fixed his unsmiling eye on mine, as though to hypnotise me.
What if the immigration of destitute little aliens into our planet ceased altogether?" Marindin shrugged his shoulders, and there came into his face that indescribable look of the hopeless mystic. "Then humanity would have reached its goal: it would come naturally and gently to an end.
So, too, the question of second marriages and the deceased wife's sister may be left to the taste and ethical standards of the unborn, who can easily, if they choose, set their faces against such unions." "You see the centre of gravity would be shifted to the pre-natal period," explained Marindin, "when the soul is more liable to noble influences.
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