Science fiction, English -- History and criticism; Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946 -- Criticism and interpretation
And so one turns to his own illustration of this belief, _A Modern
Utopia_. It is a beautiful Utopia, beautifully seen and beautifully
thought; and it has in it some of that flavor of airy unrestraint one
finds in _News from Nowhere_. Morris, of course, carries us into a world
where right discipline has long since produced right will, so wholly and
instinctively socialized that men can afford to be as free as anarchists
would have the unsocialized men of our own time, a world such as Goethe
had in mind when he said: "There is in man a force, a spring of goodness
which counterbalances egoism; and if by a miracle it could for a moment
suddenly be active in all men, the earth would at once be free from
evil." Well, that is the miracle which has in some way just taken place
before the curtain goes up on most Utopias; and I think that Wells has
never been more skilful than in keeping this miracle quietly in his bag
of tricks and devising meanwhile a plausible transition between us and
that better world. It all happens in a moment and we are there. By an
amazing legerdemain of logic he leaps the gap and presents us with a
planet which at every point tallies with our own. It is a planet which
does not contain a State but is a State, the flexible result of a free
social gesture.
_Mankind in the Making_ should be taken as introductory to _A Modern
Utopia_. It is the sketch of a method towards attaining such a world
state. It is a kind of treatise on education based on the assumption
that "our success or failure with the unending stream of babies is the
measure of our civilization." It opens with a complete repudiation of
"scientific" breeding, as a scheme which ignores the uniqueness of
individual cases and the heterogeneous nature of human ideals. "We are,"
says Wells, "not a bit clear what points to breed for, and what points
to breed out;" while the interplay of strong and varied personalities we
desire is contradictory to any uniform notions of beauty, capacity, and
sanity, which thus cannot be bred for, so to speak, in the abstract. But
in _A Modern Utopia_ he outlines certain conditions limiting parentage,
holding it necessary that in order to be a parent a man must be above a
certain minimum of capacity and income, failing which he is indebted to
the State for the keep of his children. Motherhood is endowed and
becomes in this way a normal and remunerative career, which renders the
mother capable of giving her time to the care and education of her
children, as millions are not in a wage-earning civilization, and makes
both her and her children independent of the ups and downs of her
husband. His very detailed suggestions about the education of young
children (illustrated also in _The Food of the Gods_) are at once a
reminiscence of Rabelais and an anticipation of Madame Montessori. He
insists upon uniform pronunciation (a very important matter in England,
where diversity of language is one of the bulwarks of a rigid
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