“In the time now ahead of us a great many of these prejudices we have been given will have to go, or be radically altered. We can accept and retain only one primary prejudice, and that is that the race is worth preserving. To that consideration all else will, for a time at least, be subordinate. We must look at all we do, with this question in mind: ‘Is this going to help our race survive—or will it hinder us?’ If it will help, we must do it, whether or not it conflicts with the ideas in which we were brought up. If not, we must avoid it, even though the omission may clash with our previous notions of duty and even of justice.
“It will not be easy; old prejudices die hard. The simple rely on a bolstering mass of maxim and precept; so do the timid; so do the mentally lazy—and so do all of us, more than we imagine. Now that the organization has gone, our ready reckoners for conduct within it no longer give the right answers. We must have the moral courage to think and to plan for ourselves.”
He paused to survey his audience thoughtfully. Then he said:
“There is one thing to be made quite clear to you before you decide to join our community. It is that those of us who start on this task will all have our parts to play. The men must work—the women must have babies. Unless you can agree to that, there can be no place for you in our community.”
After an interval of dead silence, he added:
“We can afford to support a limited number of women who cannot see, because they will have babies who can see. We cannot afford to support men who cannot see. In our new world, then, babies become very much more important than husbands.”
For some seconds after he stopped speaking, silence continued, then isolated murmurs grew quickly into a general buzz.
I looked at Josella. To my astonishment, she was grinning impishly.
“What do you find funny about this?” I asked a trifle shortly.
“People’s expressions mostly,” she replied.
I had to admit it as a reason. I looked round the place, and then across at Michael. His eyes were moving from one section to another of the audience as he tried to sum up the reaction.
“Michael’s looking a bit anxious,” I observed.
“He should worry,” said Josella. “If Brigham Young could bring it off in the middle of the nineteenth century, this ought to be a pushover.”
“What a crude young woman you are at times,” I said. “Were you in on this before?”
“Not exactly, but I’m not quite dumb, you know. Besides, while you were away someone drove in a bus with most of these blind girls on board. They all came from some institution. I said to myself, why collect them from there when you could gather up thousands in a few streets round here? The answer obviously was that （a） being blind before this happened, they had been trained to do work of some kind, and （b） they were all girls. The deduction wasn’t terribly difficult.”
“H’m,” I said. “Depends on one’s outlook, I suppose. I must say, it wouldn’t have struck me. Do you——”
“Sh-sh,” she told me as a quietness came over the hall.
A tall, dark, purposeful-looking, youngish woman had risen. While she waited, she appeared to have a mouth not made to open, but later it did.
“Are we to understand,” she inquired, using a kind of carbon-steel voice, “are we to understand that the last speaker is advocating free love?” And she sat down, with spine-jarring decision.
Dr. Vorless smoothed back his hair as he regarded her.
“I think the questioner must be aware that I never mentioned love, free, bought, or bartered. Will she please make her question clearer?”
The woman stood up again.
“I think the speaker understood me. I am asking if he suggests the abolition of the marriage law?”