Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
With each year of their lives they come more distinctly into conscious
participation with our efforts. Those soft little creatures that we have
figured grotesquely as dropping from an inexorable spout into our
world, those weak and wailing lumps of pink flesh more helpless than any
animal, for whom we have planned better care, a better chance of life,
better conditions of all sorts, those laval souls who are at first
helpless clay in our hands, presently insensibly have become helpers
beside us in the struggle. In a little while they are beautiful
children, they are boys and girls and youths and maidens, full of the
zest of new life, full of an abundant, joyful receptivity. In a little
while they are walking with us, seeking to know whither we go, and
whither we lead them, and why. Our account of the men-makers is not
complete until we add to birth and school and world, the increasing
element of deliberate co-operation in the man or woman we are seeking to
make. In a little while they are young men and women, and then men and
women, save for a fresher vigour, like ourselves. For us it comes
at last to fellowship and resignation. For them it comes at last to
responsibility, to freedom, and to introspection and the searching of
hearts. We must if we would be men-makers, as the first and immediate
part of the business, correct and finish ourselves. The good New
Republican must needs ask and ask repeatedly: What have I done and what
am I doing with myself while I tamper with the lives of others? His
self-examination will be no monstrous egotism of perfectibility, indeed,
no virtuosity of virtue, no exquisite retreat and slinking “out of the
race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and
heat.” But he will seek perpetually to gauge his quality, he will watch
to see himself the master of his habits and of his powers; he will take
his brain, blood, body, and lineage as a trust to be administered for
the world. To know all one can of one’s self in relation to the world
about one, to think out all one can, to take nothing for granted except
by reason of one’s unavoidable limitations, to be swift, indeed, but not
hasty, to be strong but not violent, to be as watchful of one’s self as
it is given one to be, is the manifest duty of all who would subserve
the New Republic. For the New Republican, as for his forerunner the
Puritan, conscience and discipline must saturate life. He must be ruled
by duties and a certain ritual in life. Every day and every week he must
set aside time to read and to think, to commune with others and himself,
he must be as jealous of his health and strength as the Levites of
old. Can we in this generation make but a few thousands of such men and
women, men and women who are not afraid to live, men and women with a
common faith and a common understanding, then, indeed, our work will be
done. They will in their own time take this world as a sculptor takes
his marble and shape it better than all our dreams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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