246 The Ideal State 



however clever in the ordinary sense, learn that they are 

 quite incapable of deciding scientific matters not only 

 requiring training and observation over long periods of 

 time, but much accumulated thought and reflection, the 

 better it will be for the people as a whole ; otherwise our 

 parliamentary machine will be relegated to the limbo 

 of effete institutions. We have dwelt on this matternow, 

 because in the Ideal State some system must be devised 

 so that the accumulated experience and ripened judg- 

 ment of men of special training and power may not be 

 lost to the State. Before long we shall have a State 

 Medical Service, answerable to a Ministry of Medicine as 

 one of the chief offices of the State. Only then will pre- 

 ventive medicine have fullplayand the general standard 

 of health be raised to a much higher level. Slums will 

 very soon be condemned and extirpated, and the life of 

 the child in our industrial centres made much happier, 

 with a resultant improvement in the physique of our 

 man and womanhood. As Mr. Gladstone foretold, it 

 cannot be long before the medical man becomes the 

 prime factor in the maintenance of the welfare of the 

 State. In the full realisation of the Ideal State, when 

 men work not for gain, but solely with the view of 

 " taking pains to help others " in the knowledge that 

 they are benefiting the race at present existing and the 

 generations yet to come, every individual will be able to 

 secure the ripened judgment of experience wherever 

 required, whether in his own interest or in that of 

 public affairs. 



One word may be said here in regard to the question 

 of marriage and the present-day demand for a loosening 

 of its bonds in the direction of making divorce or 

 separation easier. It would certainly seem from the 

 point of view of common sense that where an unhappy 

 union tended to wear out the life, or destroy the useful- 

 ness of either partner, that it would be better that 



