Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thoughtWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thought
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization; Communication and traffic; Social prediction; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
to found families of functionless shareholders, and a strong disposition
to contribute, by means of colleges, libraries, and splendid
foundations, to the future of the whole English-speaking world. Of
course, Mr. Carnegie is not an educational specialist, and his good
intentions will be largely exploited by the energetic mediocrities who
control our educational affairs. But it is the intention that concerns
us now, and not the precise method or effect. Indisputably these rich
Americans are at a fundamentally important work in these endowments, and
as indisputably many of their successors--I do not mean the heirs to
their private wealth, but the men of the same type who will play their
_role_ in the coming years--will carry on this spacious work with a
wider prospect and a clearer common understanding.
The establishment of modern and efficient schools is alone not
sufficient for the intellectual needs of the coming time. The school and
university are merely the preparation for the life of mental activity in
which the citizen of the coming state will live. The three years of
university and a lifetime of garrulous stagnation which constitutes the
mind's history of many a public schoolmaster, for example, and most of
the clergy to-day, will be impossible under the new needs. The
old-fashioned university, secure in its omniscience, merely taught; the
university of the coming time will, as its larger function, criticize
and learn. It will be organized for research--for the criticism, that
is, of thought and nature. And a subtler and a greater task before those
who will presently swear allegiance to the New Republic is to aid and
stimulate that process of sound adult mental activity which is the
cardinal element in human life. After all, in spite of the pretentious
impostors who trade upon the claim, literature, contemporary literature,
is the breath of civilized life, and those who sincerely think and write
the salt of the social body. To mumble over the past, to live on the
classics, however splendid, is senility. The New Republic, therefore,
will sustain its authors. In the past the author lived within the limits
of his patron's susceptibility, and led the world, so far as he did
lead it, from that cage. In the present he lives within the limits of a
particularly distressful and ill-managed market. He must please and
interest the public before he may reason with it, and even to reach the
public ear involves other assiduities than writing. To write one's best
is surely sufficient work for a man, but unless the author is prepared
to add to his literary toil the correspondence and alert activity of a
business man, he may find that no measure of acceptance will save him
from a mysterious poverty. Publishing has become a trade, differing only
from the trade in pork or butter in the tradesman's careless
book-keeping and his professed indifference to the quality of his goods.
But unless the whole mass of argument in these Anticipations is false,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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