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
Now, quite inevitably, these men will be religious men. Being
themselves, as by the nature of the forces that have selected them they
will certainly be, men of will and purpose, they will be disposed to
find, and consequently they will find, an effect of purpose in the
totality of things. Either one must believe the Universe to be one and
systematic, and held together by some omnipresent quality, or one must
believe it to be a casual aggregation, an incoherent accumulation with
no unity whatsoever outside the unity of the personality regarding it.
All science and most modern religious systems presuppose the former, and
to believe the former is, to any one not too anxious to quibble, to
believe in God. But I believe that these prevailing men of the future,
like many of the saner men of to-day, having so formulated their
fundamental belief, will presume to no knowledge whatever, will presume
to no possibility of knowledge of the real being of God. They will have
no positive definition of God at all. They will certainly not indulge in
"that something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness" (not
defined) or any defective claptrap of that sort. They will content
themselves with denying the self-contradictory absurdities of an
obstinately anthropomorphic theology,[50] they will regard the whole of
being, within themselves and without, as the sufficient revelation of
God to their souls, and they will set themselves simply to that
revelation, seeking its meaning towards themselves faithfully and
courageously. Manifestly the essential being of man in this life is his
will; he exists consciously only to _do_; his main interest in life is
the choice between alternatives; and, since he moves through space and
time to effects and consequences, a general purpose in space and time is
the limit of his understanding. He can know God only under the semblance
of a pervading purpose, of which his own individual freedom of will is a
part, but he can understand that the purpose that exists in space and
time is no more God than a voice calling out of impenetrable darkness is
a man. To men of the kinetic type belief in God so manifest as purpose
is irresistible, and, to all lucid minds, the being of God, save as that
general atmosphere of imperfectly apprehended purpose in which our
individual wills operate, is incomprehensible. To cling to any belief
more detailed than this, to define and limit God in order to take hold
of Him, to detach one's self and parts of the universe from God in some
mysterious way in order to reduce life to a dramatic antagonism, is not
faith, but infirmity. Excessive strenuous belief is not faith. By faith
we disbelieve, and it is the drowning man, and not the strong swimmer,
who clutches at the floating straw. It is in the nature of man, it is in
the present purpose of things, that the real world of our experience and
will should appear to us not only as a progressive existence in space
and time, but as a scheme of good and evil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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