H.G. Wells's Eugenic Thinking of the 1930S and 1940S *. (Essays)‪.‬

IN A PREVIOUS UTOPIAN STUDIES ARTICLE ("Death of the Static"), I presented Wells's eugenic thinking between 1892 and 1908. That article demonstrated the influence of T.H. Huxley's principle of "ethical evolution" on Wells's developing social policy. Rather than support the "survival of the fittest", Huxley advocated the "the fitting of as many as possible to survive" ("Evolution and Ethics" 82). As I demonstrated, Wells followed Huxley's lead during the late-Victorian and Edwardian period, devising social policy based on the "minimum standard" (Mankind in the Making 108), a rejection of "Race Prejudice" (381), and the advocacy of the "Endowment of Motherhood" (An Englishman Looks at the Worm 229). However, Wells did not reject eugenics outright but considered it of possible use in improving the survival chances of the human species and preventing the occurrence of unwanted births. While Wells consistently rejected positive eugenics, claiming that the creation of an ideal type was antithetical to the principles of Darwinian evolution and arguing that competitive selection was a prerequisite 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 have a role in a scientifically-organised society. I argued in that article that Wells's eugenic advocacy, however, could not be viewed in isolation but was intrinsically linked to his more immediate social policy concerns such as improved housing, better education and universal healthcare. That article only investigated Wells's eugenic thought up until 1908. Following the publication of "Race Prejudice" in that year Wells shifted his journalistic emphasis from social policy to class relations (in such essays as "The Labour Unrest"), socialist theory (in New Worlds for Old) and international questions and world-state thinking (in Socialism and the Great State, The Future in America and An Englishman Looks at the World). Eugenics literally disappeared from Wells's writings after 1905, only to reemerge in the early 1930s in an evolved form, and one which continued to evolve until his death in 1946. The present essay will thus investigate Wells's later eugenic thought of the 1930s and 1940s and attempt to understand how and why it changed during the last decade of his life. By so doing, I will complete the history of Wells's eugenic thinking, bringing into academic discourse Wells's hitherto ignored later considerations on the role of eugenics in the modern state.