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
Very much of the cry for faith that sounds in contemporary life so
loudly, and often with so distressing a note of sincerity, comes from
the unsatisfied egotisms of unemployed, and, therefore, unhappy and
craving people; but much is also due to the distress in the minds of
active and serious men, due to the conflict of inductive knowledge, with
conceptions of right and wrong deduced from unsound, but uncriticised,
first principles. The old ethical principles, the principle of
equivalents or justice, the principle of self-sacrifice, the various
vague and arbitrary ideas of purity, chastity, and sexual "sin," came
like rays out of the theological and philosophical lanterns men carried
in the darkness. The ray of the lantern indicated and directed, and one
followed it as one follows a path. But now there has come a new view of
man's place in the scheme of time and space, a new illumination, dawn;
the lantern rays fade in the growing brightness, and the lanterns that
shone so brightly are becoming smoky and dim. To many men this is no
more than a waning of the lanterns, and they call for new ones, or a
trimming of the old. They blame the day for putting out these flares.
And some go apart, out of the glare of life, into corners of obscurity,
where the radiation of the lantern may still be faintly traced. But,
indeed, with the new light there has come the time for new methods; the
time of lanterns, the time of deductions from arbitrary first principles
is over. The act of faith is no longer to follow your lantern, but to
put it down. We can see about us, and by the landscape we must go.[51]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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