The Salvaging of CivilizationWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
The Salvaging of Civilization
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization, Modern -- 20th century; Education
I think there is. I would suggest that the general tendency of thought
about these things to-day is altogether too sceptical of what teaching
and propaganda can do in these matters. In the past there have been very
great changes in human thought. I need scarcely remind you of the spread
of Christianity in Western Europe. In a few centuries the whole of
Western Europe was changed from the wild confusion of warring tribes
that succeeded the breakdown of the Roman Empire, into the unity of
Christendom, into a community with such an idea of unity that it could
be roused from end to end by the common idea of the Crusades.
Still more remarkable was the swift transformation in less than a
century of all the nations and peoples to the south and west of the
Mediterranean, from Spain to Central Asia, into the unity of Islam, a
unity which has lasted to this day. In both these cases, what I may call
the mental turnover was immense.
I think if you will consider the spread of these very complex and
difficult religions, and compare the means at the disposal of their
promoters with the means at the disposal of intelligent people to-day,
you will find many reasons for believing that a recasting of people's
ideas into the framework of a universal state is by no means an
impossible project.
Those great teachings of the past were spread largely by word of mouth.
Their teachers had to travel slowly and dangerously. People were
gathered together to hear with great difficulty, except in a few crowded
towns. Books could be used only sparingly. Few people could read, fewer
still could translate, and MSS. were copied with extreme slowness upon
parchment. There was no printing, no paper, no post. And except for a
very few people there were no schools. Both Christendom and Islam had to
create their common schools in order to preserve even a minimum of their
doctrine intact from generation to generation. All this was done in the
teeth of much bitter opposition and persecution.
Now to-day we have means of putting ideas and arguments swiftly and
effectively before people all over the world at the same time, such as
no one could have dreamt of a hundred years ago. We have not only books
and papers, but in the cinema we have a means of rapid, vivid
presentation still hardly used. We have schools nearly everywhere. And
here in the need for an overruling world state, and the idea of world
service replacing combative patriotism, we have an urgent, a commanding
human need. We have an invincible case for this world state and an
unanswerable objection to the nationalisms and patriotisms that would
oppose it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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