The Salvaging of CivilizationWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
The Salvaging of Civilization
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization, Modern -- 20th century; Education
But we have been letting the essentials of education slip back into a
secondary place in our pursuit of mere equipment, and we see the results
to-day throughout all the modern states of the world, in a loss of
cohesion, discipline and co-operation. Men will not co-operate except to
raise prices on the consumer or wages on the employer, and everyone
scrambles for a front place and a good time. And they do so, partly no
doubt by virtue of an ineradicable factor in them known as Original Sin,
but also very largely because the vision of life that was built up in
their minds at school and in their homes was fragmentary and
uninspiring; it had no commanding appeal for their imaginations, and no
imperatives for their lives.
So I put it, that for the opening books of our Bible of Civilization,
our Bible translated into terms of modern knowledge, and as the basis of
all our culture, we shall follow the old Bible precedent exactly. We
shall tell to every citizen of our community, as plainly, simply and
beautifully as we can, the New Story of Genesis, the tremendous
spectacle of the Universe that science has opened to us, the flaming
beginnings of our world, the vast ages of its making and the astounding
unfolding, age after age, of Life. We shall tell of the changing
climates of this spinning globe and the coming and going of great floras
and faunas, mighty races of living things, until out of the vast, slow
process our own kind emerged. And we shall tell the story of our race.
How through hundreds of thousands of years it won power over nature,
hunted and presently sowed and reaped. How it learnt the secrets of the
metals, mastered the riddle of the seasons, and took to the seas. That
story of our common inheritance and of our slow upward struggle has to
be taught throughout our entire community, in the city slums and in the
out-of-the-way farmsteads most of all. By teaching it, we restore again
to our people the lost basis of a community, a common idea of their
place in space and time.
Then, still following the Bible precedent, we must tell a universal
history of man. And though on the surface it may seem to be a very
different history from the Bible story, in substance it will really be
very much the same history, only robbed of ancient trappings and
symbols, and made real and fresh again for our present ideas. It will
still be a story of conditional promises, the promises of human
possibility, a record of sins and blunders and lost opportunities, of
men who walked not in the ways of righteousness, of stiff-necked
generations, and of merciful renewals of hope. It will still point our
lives to a common future which will be the reward and judgment of our
present lives.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account