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
And these segregations, based primarily on a difference in moral ideas
and pursuits and ideals, will probably round off and complete themselves
at last as distinct and separate cultures. As the moral ideas realize
themselves in _menage_ and habits, so the ideals will seek to find
expression in a literature, and the passive drifting together will pass
over into a phase of more or less conscious and intentional
organization. The segregating groups will develop fashions of costume,
types of manners and bearing, and even, perhaps, be characterized by a
certain type of facial expression. And this gives us a glimpse, an
aspect of the immediate future of literature. The kingdoms of the past
were little things, and above the mass of peasants who lived and obeyed
and died, there was just one little culture to which all must needs
conform. Literature was universal within the limits of its language.
Where differences of view arose there were violent controversies,
polemics, and persecutions, until one or other rendering had won its
ascendency. But this new world into which we are passing will, for
several generations at least, albeit it will be freely
inter-communicating and like a whispering gallery for things outspoken,
possess no universal ideals, no universal conventions: there will be the
literature of the thought and effort of this sort of people, and the
literature, thought, and effort of that.[32] Life is already most
wonderfully arbitrary and experimental, and for the coming century this
must be its essential social history, a great drifting and unrest of
people, a shifting and regrouping and breaking up again of groups, great
multitudes seeking to find themselves.
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