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A Modern Utopia
H.G. Wells
Contents:
H. G. Wells – A Major Prophet Of His Time
Chapter The First - Topographical
Chapter The Second - Concerning Freedoms
Chapter The Third - Utopian Economics
Chapter The Fourth - The Voice Of Nature
Chapter The Fifth - Failure In A Modern Utopia
Chapter The Sixth - Women In A Modern Utopia
Chapter The Seventh - A Few Utopian Impressions
Chapter The Eighth - My Utopian Self
Chapter The Ninth - The Samurai
Chapter The Tenth - Race In Utopia
Chapter The Eleventh - The Bubble Bursts
Appendix — Scepticism Of The Instrument
A Modern Utopia, H. G. Wells
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H. G. Wells – A Major Prophet Of His Time
By Edwin E. Slosson
We are in the beginning of the greatest change that humanity has ever undergone. There is no shock, no epoch-making incident—but then there is no shock at a cloudy daybreak. At no point can we say, "Here it commences, now; last minute was night and this is morning." But insensibly we are in the day. If we care to look, we can foresee growing knowledge, growing order and presently a deliberate improvement of the blood and character of the race. And what we can see and imagine gives us a measure and gives us faith for what surpasses the imagination. It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. We cannot see for there is no need for us to see, what this world will be like when the day has fully come. We are creatures of the twilight. But it is out of our race and lineage that minds will spring that will reach back to us in our littleness to know us better than we know ourselves, and that will reach forward fearlessly to comprehend this future that defeats our eyes. All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things, and a day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amid the stars.—The Discovery of the Future.
IS Wells also among the prophets ? Surely, and none with better right, even though we use the word "prophet" in its narrowest and most ordinary sense as one who foretells the future. He has foretold many futures for us, some utterly abhorrent, others more or less attractive. If we shudder at the thought of humanity on a freezing world fighting a losing battle with gigantic crustaceans as in The Time Machine, or being suffocated on a blazing world as in The Star, or being crushed under the tyranny of an omnipotent trust as in When the Sleeper Wakes—if none of these please us, then we have the option of a businesslike and efficient organization of society under the domination of the engineer as in Anticipations, or a socialistic state under the beneficent sway of the Samurai as in A Modern Utopia, or an instantaneous amelioration of human nature as In me Bays of the Comet. In thus presenting various solutions to the world problem Wells is not inconsistent. Every complicated equation has several roots, some of them imaginary. In solving a physical problem the scientist begins by disentangling the forces involved and then taking them one at a time, calculates what would be the effect if the other forces did not act.
So Wells is applying the scientific method to sociology when he attempts to isolate social forces and deal with them singly. If nothing intervenes to divert it, says the hydraulic engineer, the water of this mountain stream will develop such a momentum on reaching the valley. If no limitations are placed upon the consolidation of capital, says Mr. Wells, we may have a handful of directors ruling the world, as depicted in When the Sleeper Wakes. In its power to forecast the future science finds both its validation and justification. By this alone it tests its conclusions and demonstrates its usefulness. In fact, the sole object of science is prophecy, as Ostwald and Poincare make plain. The mind of the scientific man is directed forward and he has no use for history except as it gives him data by which to draw a curve that he may project into the future. It is, therefore, not a chance direction of his fancy that so many of Wells's books, both romances and studies, deal with the future. It is the natural result of his scientific training, which not only led him to a rich unworked field of fictional motives, but made him consider the problems of life from a novel and very illuminative point of view. He gave definite expression to this philosophy in a remarkable address on "The Discovery of the Future," delivered at the Royal Institution of London, January 24, 1902. Here he shows that there is a growing tendency in modern times to shift the center of gravity from the past to the future and to determine the moral value of an act by its consequences rather than by its relation to some precedent. The justification of a war, for instance, may either be by reference to the past or to the future; that is, it may be based either upon some supposititious claim and violated treaty, or upon the assumed advantage to one or both parties. This idea, that in the moral evaluation of an act its results should be taken into consideration, has been
