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H.G. Wells's Eugenic Thinking

of the 1930s and 1940s*

JOHN S. PARTINGTON

IN A PREVIOUS UTOPIAN STuDIEs ARTICLE ("Death of the Static"), I presentedWells's eugenic thinking between 1892 and 1908. That article demonstratedthe influence of T.H. Huxley's principle of "ethical evolution" on Wells'sdeveloping social policy. Rather than support the "survival of the fittest",Huxley advocated the "the fitting of as many as possible to survive" ("Evo-lution and Ethics" 82). As I demonstrated, Wells followed Huxley's leadduring the late-Victorian and Edwardian period, devising social policybased on the "minimum standard" (Mankind in the Making 108), a rejection

of "Race Prejudice" (381), and the advocacy of the "Endowment of Mother-hood" (An Englishman Looks at the World 229). However, Wells did notreject eugenics outright but considered it of possible use in improving thesurvival chances of the human species and preventing the occurrence ofunwanted births. While Wells consistently rejected positive eugenics, claim-ing that the creation of an ideal type was antithetical to the principles ofDarwinian evolution and arguing that competitive selection was a prerequi-site for species advance, he felt that negative eugenics-the prevention of"congenital invalids" and certain anti-social types from breeding and the

employment of euthanasia against severely "diseased" new-borns-did havea role in a scientifically-organised society. I argued in that article thatWells's eugenic advocacy, however, could not be viewed in isolation butwas intrinsically linked to his more immediate social policy concerns suchas improved housing, better education and universal healthcare.

That article only investigated Wells's eugenic thought up until 1908. Fol-lowing the publication of "Race Prejudice" in that year Wells shifted his jour-nalistic emphasis from social policy to class relations (in such essays as "TheLabour Unrest"), socialist theory (in New Worlds for Old) and internationalquestions and world-state thinking (in Socialism and

the GreatState, TheFuture in America and An EnglishmanLooks at the World). Eugenics literally



H.G. Wells's Eugenic Thinking 75

H.G. Wells's Eugenic Thinking of the 1930s

In 1930, in The Science ofLife, Wells restated T.H. Huxley's notion of"ethical evolution", declaring that "when we reach man, Evolution does in

part become purposeful. It has at least the possibility of becoming purpose-

ful, because man is the first product of Evolution who has the capacity for

long-range purpose, the first to be capable of controlling evolutionary destiny.

Human purpose is one of the achievements of Evolution" (428). Although

Wells thus still denies the possibility of creating the perfect human (on the

basis that perfection equates to a lack of change inconsistent with evolution-

ary principles), he nonetheless includes in The Science ofLife a brief discus-

sion of the possibilities of positive eugenics for the future of humanity.Perhaps inyears to come our descendants will look with intelligence over their

pedigree, and if there is aprobability of recessive genius inafamily and no rea-

son to suspect a grave recessive taint they will deliberately encourage inbreed-

ing. A rather grim Utopia might be devised in which for some generations

[... ] inbreeding would be made compulsory, with a prompt resort to the lethal

chamber for any undesirable results. A grim Utopia, no doubt, but in that man-

ner our race might be purged of its evil recessives for ever. (328)1

Here Wells considers human breeding on the model of plants and animals,

throwing out undesirable specimens and intensively inbreeding those whichbear desired characteristics. Just how serious Wells was being in this portrayal

of a future "grim Utopia" is open to question,2 however, for later in the same

work he declares, "Possibly mankind will find that positive eugenics is un-

attainable and undesirable" (969). Certainly, as to the present Wells states

that "Positive eugenics remains a dream, a note of interrogation" (968).

Wells's disposal of positive eugenics is strengthened by his awareness

of the complexity of the human makeup. "With regard to the question of

human marriages," he writes,

there is little to say. The whole business of human breeding is at present so

haphazard that it is difficult to write with any precision of what we should or

should not do. Man has evolved recently and rapidly, and is so mixed and

cross-bred that we may expect his stock of undesirable concealed recessives to

be considerable. From this point of view inbreeding looks dangerous. When

there is any suspicion of a harmful recessive in afamily, inbreeding should cer-

tainly be avoided. (Wells, Huxley and Wells 327)

Wells's discussion of recessives reflects his interest in and understand-

ing of the relatively new science of genetics. 3 He gives an example of how

"dominant" and "recessive" genes can affect childbirth and how their appear-ance complicates the problem of the eugenicist:



76 UTOPIAN STUDIES

reveal themselves. In rabbits, if there is albinism in the strain it will appear; in

the human example deaf-mutes will turn up. And the opposite is also true;

cross-breeding will conceal the recessives by increasing the chance of theirbeing submerged by dominants. (325-26)

This complexity of dominant and recessive genes led Wells to cast doubt uponsome of the assumptions he had earlier held about what traits were transmis-sible to offspring: "Disease, drink, excessive toil, slums, semi-starvationalternating with gross excess-the machinery of our germ-plasm is merci-fully such that no taint rests upon us through the inheritance of these degra-dations" (391). And even those traits considered ripe for elimination can notbe disposed of so easily as was believed in the Edwardian period. As Wellscomments in The Work, Wealth andHappinessofMankind, "Even in nega-tive eugenics there is no assurance that undesirable qualities will be elimi-nated altogether. Certain types of mental deficiency are supposed to be'recessive.' It is quite possible, therefore, that two quite admirable peopleshould have a defective child. [ ... ] The sterilization of defectives will notend, it will only diminish, the supply of defectives" (679).

These complexities revealed by genetics were sufficient to maintainWells's objection to positive eugenics, though, as is implied by this lastquotation, he did not reject negative eugenics in the 1930s. Indeed, in The

Science ofLife he provides evidence of its continued urgency:

That there is a pressing need for such negative eugenics in the Atlantic commu-nities, due to the steady elimination of death selection from human conditions,

is shown by the British Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee (1929).

This records an increase of one hundred per cent in the defectives of Great

Britain between 1906 and 1927, while the population as a whole has increased

only fourteen per cent. [... .] The birthrate of defectives it seems has not risen,

but the defective children have been better taken care of and have survived. So

that they in their tum are capable of parentage. (968)

On the surface, this position looks fairly consistent with Wells's Edwardianutterances on negative eugenics. In 1932 he stated unequivocally that "Theonly case that has been made out with any degree of conviction is the casefor the segregation and sterilization of mental defectives" (Work, Wealth677), though he added that there appears to be no "sound objection to thesterilization of criminals convicted of brutish violence. The balance of evi-dence tilts towards the conclusion that such qualities are transmissible and,even if that conclusion is unsound, nevertheless the suppression of offspringin these categories will eliminate the certainty of a number of children being

born in unfavourable surroundings at a great social disadvantage. Againthere is every reason for the temporary or permanent sterilization of those




Despite the tone of these utterances, however, by the early 1930s there

was a difference in Wells's eugenic intent from that of thirty years previous.

This difference was to be found in medical advances. When Wells writes of

the diseased or the mentally ill in the 1930s, he is considering a much smaller

group than he considered in the Edwardian period. He makes this clear when

discussing the advances made in the knowledge of internal secretions:

A disease known as myxoedema is due to deficiency of the [thyroid] secretion

in the adult. It is characterised by a sluggishness of the various chemical and

physical reactions that go on in the body; the pulse is slowed, the temperature

is low, the appetite is blunted, speech becomes a drawl, the mind becomes vis-

cous. At the same time there is a thickening of the connective tissues underthe

skin, producing a puffiness and yellowness of the face and hands and falling of

the hair and a considerable accumulation of fat.

In children with defective thyroids similar phenomena appear, but growth,

particularly of the brain and skeleton, also ceases. A child so affected may live

for many years, but even when thirty years old it retains a distorted childish

appearance, and has scarcely the intelligence of a child of four or five. The con-

dition is known as cretinism. In most cases cretinism and myxoedema can be

cured by administering a regular dose of thyroid extract with the food. (Wells,

Huxley and Wells 98-99)

It is beyond question that cretinism and myxoedema would have been two

of the conditions identified for sterilisation in Wells's earlier period.

Another area of medical advance, this time dealing with a greater

understanding of chemical transmission between father and offspring, was

identified by Wells in The Science ofLife, an advance which again "saved"

whole swathes of people from a negative-eugenic solution by the 1930s.

"However ill or old a male may be," he writes, "the character of the off-

spring which he sires will not be affected, provided he is able to sire them at

all" (335). And further, "If he can still produce spermatozoa capable of fer-

tilization, they will, it appears, still be normal, equipped with all the properhereditary outfit in full working order; if they are abnormal, they will be

incapable of effecting fertilization" (335). The question of transmitting unde-

sirable traits was even extended to many categories of mental disability, as

"The bulk of asylum patients may all have been curable at an early stage;

there is no insane type any more than there is any criminal type; at most there

is an excessive excitability which may soon, with advancing medical science,

be quite controllable by glandular treatment [ . .]" (Work, Wealth 792).

If medical advance was limiting the need for negative eugenics, Wells

persisted in seeing education as the key to human salvation in terms ofspecies-advance. Thus, in The Science ofLife he states, "The handing on of



78 UTOPIAN STUDIES

other ways of improving the human stock, declaring that "The deliberateimprovement of man's inherent quality is at present unattainable. It is to a

better education alone, therefore, that we must look for any hope of amelio-rating substantially the confusions and distresses of our present life" (680).

The 1940s: Human Rights, Educationand the End of Compulsory Eugenics

Following The Work, Wealth andHappinessofMankind, Wells em-barked upon a decade-long campaign to promote educational reform (acampaign he had already initiated in 1919 with calls for the creation of uni-

versal history). Now he sought the establishment of a world encyclopaediabased on microphotography and microfilm machines in every home (or atleast in every local library). With the onset of the Second World War, how-ever, his attention was turned back, indirectly, to the question of eugenics.

Having spent forty years promoting a world state and post-parliamen-tary government, with the wartime successes of Nazi expansionism Wellswas open to the criticism of promoting a totalitarian-like global regime.(Such criticism reached its most severe with the publication of George Or-well's "Wells, Hitler and the World State" in 1941). In order to protect his

world-state ideas from such a charge, but also to re-ignite the "war aimsdebate" which he had unsuccessfully argued for during the Great War,Wells called for the acceptance of the "Rights of Man" as a fundamentalallied war aim, and one which should be enshrined within international lawat the conclusion of the conflict. The success of his campaign is open toquestion, though there is no doubt that his final "Rights of Man" documentof 1944 bears several similarities to the "Universal Declaration of HumanRights" as adopted by the United Nations in 1948.4

The "Rights of Man" was initially published in the body of a letter to

the editor of the Times newspaper in 1939, though it underwent many revi-sions as a result of a worldwide debate initiated by Wells, Ritchie Calder,Lord Sankey and others, using the Daily Herald as the forum for publiccomment and using Wells's Regent's Park home as the address for interna-tional comment. The "Rights" document was published as a pamphlet andas appendices and chapters in several of Wells's wartime works between1940 and 1944, each time incorporating the revisions overseen by Wells butcontributed by hundred of commentators from around the world (includingpeople from within the Soviet bloc and the Axis-occupied territories).

The important clauses of the "Rights of Man" for this discussion arenumber nine of the original, which declares that "'no man shall be subjected




largely cut away. The final versions of these clauses read as follows: "No

one shall be subject to any sort of mutilation except with his own deliberateconsent, freely given" ('42 to '44 47) and "He has a right to the teaching

and information and news necessary for him to make the fullest use of his

powers" (47). If these clauses leave any doubt about Wells's rejection of

eugenics, he states clearly in The Rights ofMan or what are we fighting

for? of 1940 that "The positive eugenics of mankind is a mere speculation

of the theorists, and we do not believe that the science of genetics is suffi-

ciently sure of itself, for such negative eugenics as the compulsory sterilisa-

tion of types capable of transmitting evil hereditable traits" (64). Later, in

PhGenix in 1943, Wells dispelled any notions he may have advanced in TheScience of Life by declaring that "There is no analogy between human

breeding and the methods of animal breeders. [. ..] We have to take every-

thing we beget. Nor do we want a set type, we want a great variety of types"

(142). Wells's last word on human improvement was made in "Man's Her-

itage", a radio broadcast of 1944, in which he stated,

The supreme task before our awakening minds is the re-education of the world.

[. . .] We have in the radio, the film, in the facility for the rapid transport of

material and specimens, all that is needed to cover the world with schools, and

in the multitude of quickened minds this struggle has evoked, a supply of menand women who have discovered that by teaching we leam. There are claptrap

phrases about backward races and inferior peoples. [. .. ] There are no back-

ward races. All over the earth babies start from scratch, full of distinctive and

untried possibilities, which the New World will develop eagerly. (10-11)

In terms of human improvement, education was Wells's first and last

hope. He considered negative eugenics as an inquiring biologist was per-

haps bound to do, only to ultimately (though after many years of consider-

ing its value) dismiss it as a breach of human rights. As to Francis Galton,

Wells made one last reference to him, in his doctoral thesis of 1944; Therehe declared that "Galton had the mental disposition of a Fascist and was all

for fuehrers and duces" ("Thesis" 183). Perhaps this is unfair on Galton as

Wells was clearly influenced by his eugenic research. But it is equally clear

that Wells, as an old man of 78, did not want to pass away with the taint of

Galtonian eugenics upon him. The Second World War, and the eugenic

experiments being revealed by the liberation of the concentration camps and

death camps of Central Europe, had poisoned the reputation of eugenics and

apparently forced Wells, the erstwhile half-baked eugenicist, to reject it out

of hand.



80 UTOPIAN STUDIES

1. In his recent study of eugenics in Edwardian and interwar Britain, Breeding Superman,Dan Stone has argued that the "lethal chamber" was a common image in Edwardian eugenic

debate, cited by negative-eugenicists only to be rejected by them as cruel and inhumane. Healso claims that it faded out of use by the early 1920s. However, this quotation from The Sci-ence ofLife clearly suggests that it had not done so, and that deeper research into eugenic lan-guage and imagery is required in order to understand exactly the length that non-fascisteugenicists were willing to go during the interwar period in Britain.2. Indeed, it is open to question whether Wells himself was responsible for any of the writingon eugenics in The Science of Life. According to David C. Smith, each section of the bookwas written solely by one of the books authors before being proof-read and rubber-stamped bythe project's co-authors (262). Given that Julian Huxley was actively involved in the EugenicsSociety at the time of the book's conception and publication, and given that he continued toadvocate eugenics in one form or another throughout his life (see Huxley 251-80) one mightspeculate that he was the one who penned the "grim Utopia". For the sake of this essay, how-ever, the actual authorship of the eugenic material is irrelevant as al l three authors agreed col-lective responsibility for the book's content (Smith 262), and Wells, as his correspondencewith his co-authors demonstrates, acted as general editor for the project as a whole, writingfirst drafts of some sections, and proof-reading all the work of Huxley and G.P. Wells, often-times sending them back their sections for revision (Correspondence201, 241, 244, 254-55,258,259, 260,270-72,274-75, 282-83).3. For an excellent study of the history of eugenics and genetics inBritain and the USA fromthe perspective of the current 'scientific ethics' debate, see Kerr and Shakespeare's Genetic

Politics. It should be pointed out that in discussing the 'decline' of eugenics and the 'rise' ofgenetics, the authors tend to present the former as giving place to the latter in rather concreteterms. In fact eugenics as a science (or a 'science') remains to this day, represented by theGalton Institute in Britain and the American Eugenics Society in the USA.4. For a full discussion of Wells's 'Rights of Man" agitation, see chapter seven of my forth-coming book, Building Cosmopolis.

REFERENCES

[Blair, Eric]. "Wells, Hitler and the World State." By George Orwell [pseud.]. Horizon 44(August 1941): 133-39. Rpt. In A PatriotAfter All 1940-41. Ed. Peter Davison assistedby Ian Angus and Sheila Davison. Vol. 12 of The Complete Works of George Orwell.London: Secker &Warburg, 1998,536-41.

Huxley, Julian. Essays ofa Humanist. London: Chatto &Windus, 1964.Huxley, T.H. "Evolution and Ethics." 1893. Evolution and Ethics, 1893-1943. T.H. Huxley

and Julian Huxley. London: Pilot, 1947. 60-102.Kerr, Anne, and Tom Shakespeare. Geneticpolitics: From eugenics to genome. Cheltenham:

New Clarion, 2002.

Partington, John S. Building Cosmopolis: The PoliticalThought of H.G. IVells. Aldershot:Ashgate, 2003.




Wells, H.G. The CorrespondenceofH.G. Wells: Volume 3,1919-1934. Ed. David C Smith.

London: Pickering &Chatto, 1998.

_______. An Englishman Looks at the World: Being a Series of UnrestrainedRemarks upon

Contemporary Matters. London: Cassell, 1914.

. '42 to '44: A ContemporaryMemoir upon HumanBehaviour during the Crisisof

the WorldRevolution. London: Secker &Warburg, 1944.

. The Future n Am erica:A SearchAfter Realities. 1906. London: Granville, 1987.

. "The Labour Unrest." 1912. When the Sleeper Wakes. A CriticalText of the 1899

New York and London FirstEdition, with an Introduction andAppendices. Ed. Leon

Stover. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000). 403-30.

Mankind in the Making. London: Chapman &Hall, 1903.

"Man'sHeritage." Reshaping Man's Heritage. J.S. Huxley, H.G. Wells, J.B.S.

Haldane, et. al. London: Allen &Unwin, 1944. 7-13.

. The New World Order: Whether it is attainable,how it can be attained, and what

sortof world a world atpeace will have to be. London: Secker and Warburg, 1940.

.New Worldsfor Old. London: Constable, 1908.

. Phoenix:A Summary of the Inescapable Conditionsof World Reorganisation.Lon-

don: Secker &Warburg, 1942.

"Race Prejudice." The Independent62 (14 February 1907): 381-84.

. The RightsofMan orwhat arewefightingfor?. Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1940].

. Julian Huxley; and G.P. Wells. The Science ofLife: A Summary of Contemporary

Knowledge aboutLifeand its Possibilities.3 vols. London: Amalgamated, [1930].

_____,___ 'A Thesis on the Quality of Illusion in the Continuity of the Individual Life in the

Higher Metazoa, with Particular Reference to the Species Homo Sapiens." '42 to '44:A

Contemporary Memoir upon HumanBehaviour during the Crisisof the World Revolu-

tion. London: Secker &Warburg, 1944. 169-96.

. The Work, Wealth and HappinessofMankind. London: Heinemann, 1932.



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TITLE: H.G. Wells’s Eugenic Thinking of the 1930s and 1940s

SOURCE: Utopian Stud 14 no1 2003

WN: 0300105008006

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