Science fiction, English -- History and criticism; Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946 -- Criticism and interpretation
class-system), the universality and constant revision of text-books, the
systematic reorganization of public library and bookselling methods,
with a view to making the race think as a whole. He urges the necessity
of rescuing literature from the accidents of the book-market by endowing
critical reviews, chairs for the discussion of contemporary thought, and
qualified thinkers and writers regardless of their special bias or
principles. To strike a mean between the British abuse of government by
hereditary privilege and the American abuse of government by electoral
machines he ingeniously proposes the election of officials by the jury
method, twenty or thirty men being set aside by lot to determine the
proper holders of office. And he is convinced of the importance in a
democracy of abundant honors, privileges, even titles, and abundant
opportunities for fruitful leisure.
I have already spoken of his belief that the right sociological method
is the creation and comparison of individual Utopias. Thus his own
free-hand sketch of a better world is, in fact, a criticism of all
previous works of the kind. As distinguished from them the modern
Utopia, he says, has to present not a finally perfect stage but a
hopefully ascending one; it has to present men not as uniform types but
as conflicting individualities with a common bond; and moreover it has
to occupy, not some remote island or province "over the range" but a
whole planet. The Utopia of Wells is a world which differs from the
present world in one fundamental respect only--it has one initial
advantage: that every individual in it has been _started right_, in the
degree in which the collective knowledge of the world has rendered that
possible.
But there is no need for me to say anything more about these books. They
are the free and suggestive motions of a mind inexhaustibly fertile and
given to many devices. Anyone who has read Wells at all is aware of his
ingenuity, his equal capacity for large schemes and minute details, his
truly Japanese belief in radical changes, once they are seen to be
necessary and possible. And indeed the details of social arrangement
follow naturally and profusely enough, once you get the frame of mind
that wishes them. Wells in his Utopia presupposes the frame of mind. In
short, he puts education first; he believes that the essential problems
of the present are not economic but psychological.
And here where the constructive theory of Wells begins, let me quote a
passage from _The New Machiavelli_ that gives the gist of it:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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