the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favor the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity - beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds . . . And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness ... is death . . . The men of the New Republic . . . will have an ideal that will make the killing worth the while. That was written in 1902, and Wells was regarded as a progressive in his own time. In 1902 such sentiments, while not widely agreed,would have made for an acceptable dinner-party argument.Modern readers, by contrast, literally gasp with horror when they see the words. We are forced to realize that Hitler, appalling though he was, was not quite as far outside the Zeitgeist of his time as he seems from our vantage-point today.

The God Delusion On page 263 Monday, November 5, 2012 @ 1:54pm