a_hundred_years_hence_the_expectations_of_an_optimist
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| — | a_hundred_years_hence_the_expectations_of_an_optimist [2020/10/26 02:26] (current) – created briancarnell | ||
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| + | than an attempt to foresee the probable trend of mechanical invention | ||
| + | and scientific discovery during the present century. But as the work | ||
| + | took shape it was seen to involve a certain amount of what may be | ||
| + | called moral conjecture, since the material progress of the new age | ||
| + | could not very well be imagined without taking into account its mental | ||
| + | characteristics. In these expectations of an optimist, a great ethical | ||
| + | improvement of the civilised human race has been anticipated, | ||
| + | rate of progress foreseen which perhaps no previous writers have looked | ||
| + | for. Both in regard to moral development and material progress, it has | ||
| + | been the aim of the author to predict nothing that the tendencies of | ||
| + | existing movement do not justify us in expecting.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | It will be easy for objectors to signalise this or that expected | ||
| + | invention as beyond scientific possibility, | ||
| + | reform as fit only for Utopia. But those who will consent to perpend | ||
| + | the enormous and utterly unforeseen advance of the nineteenth century | ||
| + | will recognise the danger of limiting their anticipations concerning | ||
| + | the possibilities of the twenty-first. A fanciful description in (I | ||
| + | think) Addison& | ||
| + | movements of an indicator on a lettered dial were imagined to be | ||
| + | reproduced on a similar dial at a <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | employed as a means of communication, | ||
| + | chimerical to its readers; and even as recently as fifty years ago, | ||
| + | anyone who predicted the telephone would have been laughed at. When the | ||
| + | principle of the accumulator was already discovered a very competent | ||
| + | practical electrician told the writer that he need not worry himself | ||
| + | much about the idea: there was not the least likelihood that | ||
| + | electricity could ever be & | ||
| + | whole there is more likelihood of error in timidity than in boldness | ||
| + | when we attempt to foresee what will be attained after the increasingly | ||
| + | rapid movement of scientific progress during this twentieth century | ||
| + | shall have gathered full force.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | because the reader has been in any case invited to enter a realm of | ||
| + | more or less pure imagination. No one can exactly know with what | ||
| + | births, monstrous or beautiful, the future may teem. Admitting a | ||
| + | certain point of view& | ||
| + | optimism& | ||
| + | found to be along the line of existing progress.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | Brentford.</ | ||
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| + | the enormous material advances of the nineteenth century, a much more | ||
| + | remarkable thing than any invention or improvement which that century | ||
| + | brought forth must be the speed of human progression during the hundred | ||
| + | years between 1800 and 1900, and the extraordinary acceleration of that | ||
| + | speed which began to establish itself about the year 1880. But indeed, | ||
| + | during the whole century, our forward movement was steadily gaining | ||
| + | impetus. The difference between the state of the world in 1700 and its | ||
| + | state in 1800 is insignificant compared with the differences | ||
| + | established between the latter date and the opening of the twentieth | ||
| + | century. But it is hardly less insignificant than the progress of the | ||
| + | decade 1800& | ||
| + | 1890& | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | exhibit differences, | ||
| + | boldest imagination can hardly need to be restrained in conjecturing. | ||
| + | The latter part of the nineteenth century was the age of electricity, | ||
| + | just as the middle part was the age of steam. The first part of the | ||
| + | twentieth century is evidently going to be the age of wave | ||
| + | manipulation, | ||
| + | first infantile stirring.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | quite easily presageable) by wireless telegraphy will give us, and what | ||
| + | they will be superseded by, can only be very dimly imagined; what their | ||
| + | effects will be upon the human race in itself no one has yet ventured | ||
| + | even to hint at. Few things are more remarkable in the numerous and | ||
| + | highly-varied experiments of vaticinatory fiction and more serious | ||
| + | efforts of prognostication than the utter absence of any adequate | ||
| + | attempt to forecast the future of the race itself. Social and political | ||
| + | changes, the enormous differences which are certain to be effected in | ||
| + | the manner of human life, have been from time to time more or less | ||
| + | boldly imagined, and a couple of volumes of very able forecasts of the | ||
| + | future have recently been published by a writer of singular vision and | ||
| + | highly-trained scientific imagination. But it does not hitherto appear | ||
| + | to have been at all <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | man himself is quite certain to be profoundly modified, not alone by | ||
| + | the influence of a material environment which will have been changed as | ||
| + | the environment of man has never been changed since the first | ||
| + | inhabitation of this planet, but also by the steady development of | ||
| + | inward changes which have already begun to manifest themselves. Since | ||
| + | the year 1800 ideas which, so far as we have any means of knowing, had | ||
| + | been regarded as irrefragable ever since man first began to think and | ||
| + | to set his thoughts upon record, have been utterly shattered. One has | ||
| + | only to compare the opinions of even average thinkers of our own day on | ||
| + | such subjects as marriage, the status of woman, and the education of | ||
| + | children, with the opinions, practically current without material | ||
| + | change since the dawn of history, in 1800, to perceive the truth of | ||
| + | this statement; and the change of attitude on the part of civilised | ||
| + | people, outside the Roman Catholic Church (and, to some extent, even | ||
| + | within it), towards religion is not less remarkable. An enlightened man | ||
| + | of the present day is so radically different in all his ideas from a | ||
| + | similar individual of the early nineteenth century, that it is hardly | ||
| + | possible for a modern student to write with any intelligence on the | ||
| + | deeper significance of events and life prior to 1800. Grotesquely | ||
| + | inadequate as most historical novels of our own <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | they are perhaps hardly less inadequate than our own understanding of | ||
| + | the novels of Sir Walter Scott. Scott could probably write of crusaders | ||
| + | and the age of chivalry without committing serious blunders of | ||
| + | sentiment. What the world thought in the age of Saladin the world | ||
| + | practically thought in the age of Napoleon. But the irresistible | ||
| + | infection of modern ideas has made it hardly possible for us to enter | ||
| + | with any fulness into the sentiments of Scott; and the sentiments put | ||
| + | into the mouth, and the thoughts into the mind, of the hero of any | ||
| + | historical novel of our own day would be utterly incomprehensible to | ||
| + | that hero, could he by some miracle be resuscitated, | ||
| + | translate them literally to him. We unconsciously endow the personages | ||
| + | of our historical fiction with ideas for which they had not even the | ||
| + | names.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | will be even more difficult for the ordinary cultured man of a hundred | ||
| + | years hence to form any full conception of our ideas than it is for us | ||
| + | to appraise the mental attitude of the men of the eighteenth century. | ||
| + | To take a single example: the humanest warrior of the Napoleonic wars | ||
| + | appears a monster of cruelty if compared with the sternest of modern | ||
| + | generals. Napoleon devastated provinces without a word of censure from | ||
| + | competent critics of the art of war. A howl of execration <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | from continental Europe alone, at the measures& | ||
| + | embarrassing to our military operations, and enormously helpful to our | ||
| + | enemy& | ||
| + | sufferings of the non-combatant population of the Transvaal; camps of | ||
| + | refuge, it appears, did not sufficiently excel in comfort the hospitals | ||
| + | of our own wounded! And there is a section of the Press in this country | ||
| + | which still occasionally remembers, to complain of it, the fact that | ||
| + | our generals found it necessary, for military reasons, to burn | ||
| + | farm-houses. I should not like to attempt the conjecture, what | ||
| + | Wellington would have said in answer to such a complaint, or what he | ||
| + | would have done to a self-appointed emissary who visited his camps for | ||
| + | the purpose of criticising his action! It would have been no more | ||
| + | impossible for him to foresee the day of such things, however, than it | ||
| + | is for us to predict the moral sense of the year 2000. The fact is that | ||
| + | we have greatly deteriorated in war, although, or rather because, we | ||
| + | have even more greatly improved in morals and feeling. William Morris | ||
| + | conceived of man in the coming time as a sort of recreated | ||
| + | medi& | ||
| + | nineteenth-century man, with his ideas merely adjusted to new material | ||
| + | conditions. Bellamy described him in terms of a being inconceivable by | ||
| + | any sort of reason. No one appears to have seen that his <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | will have been not merely revolutionised, | ||
| + | own morality has been recreated during the last hundred years, not so | ||
| + | much by the influence of material environment or the march of | ||
| + | invention, as by the regeneration of human conscience.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | be more apparent than in the thoughts and emotions of men. But to say | ||
| + | this is not to belittle the progress which science and invention have | ||
| + | in store for the new age. In applying a sort of imaginative telescope | ||
| + | to the mental eye it will be necessary to keep constantly in view the | ||
| + | utter inconceivableness of modern achievement by the civilised world of | ||
| + | the past. When electricity was no more than a sort of scientific | ||
| + | plaything& | ||
| + | Davy& | ||
| + | the possible uses of radium are to-day, even scientific thinkers, | ||
| + | endowed with what Huxley so luminously applauded as scientific | ||
| + | imagination, | ||
| + | inventions as the electric telegraph& | ||
| + | of transmitted and picked-up wave energy. And here, at the beginning of | ||
| + | wireless telegraphy, we are no less in the dark as to what will develop | ||
| + | from it and what will supersede it. The nineteenth century progressed, | ||
| + | almost from first to last, on the strength of the discovery of how to | ||
| + | utilise <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | steam engine or indirectly in the dynamo-electric machine and the | ||
| + | electric motor. With the end of the coal age already well in view, we | ||
| + | can only conjecture what the sources of mechanical power will be a | ||
| + | hundred years hence. Before we have quite exhausted our coal measures | ||
| + | and begun to draw more liberally on our stores of petroleum, we shall | ||
| + | no doubt have abandoned altogether so wasteful a contrivance as the | ||
| + | steam engine. There is a clumsiness almost barbarous in the roundabout | ||
| + | employment of coal to produce heat, the steam engine to utilise only a | ||
| + | miserable fraction of the potential energy even of the part of the coal | ||
| + | which we do not fatuously allow to escape as smoke; of the dynamo to | ||
| + | use up a part of the motion yielded by the steam engine in producing | ||
| + | electricity (while a small but recognisable portion of that motion is | ||
| + | converted wastefully back again into heat), and of the electro-motor to | ||
| + | re-convert the electricity into motion, heat, light and chemical | ||
| + | energy, according to our requirements. It cannot be many years before | ||
| + | we learn to use coal far more economically than we do nowadays, | ||
| + | abolishing the furnace and the steam engine, and obtaining electricity | ||
| + | directly from coal itself by some sort of electro-chemical | ||
| + | decomposition. But even so, our coal will not last much longer. The | ||
| + | speed of our progress will exhaust it much <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | most people imagine, and probably in another twenty-five years the end | ||
| + | of our petroleum will also begin to be looked forward to with | ||
| + | apprehension.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | progress will have been accelerated to an enormous degree by the | ||
| + | invention of some new method of decomposing water. The economical | ||
| + | analysis of water into its two component gases, whose chemical affinity | ||
| + | and antipodal electrical attractions are already utilised to some | ||
| + | extent in such appliances as the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe and electrical | ||
| + | storage batteries, is a secret capable of extraordinary beneficences to | ||
| + | the new age. By burning hydrogen in oxygen we can already produce the | ||
| + | greatest heat practically needed in the arts; the electric furnace only | ||
| + | superseding this process because it happens to be more manageable. But | ||
| + | when we want oxygen and hydrogen, we do not, in practice, now obtain | ||
| + | them from water: we only combine them as water in the act of | ||
| + | utilisation. The rational line of progress is obviously to seek means | ||
| + | of directly decomposing water. When we can do this compendiously and | ||
| + | economically we shall have an inexhaustible supply of energy& | ||
| + | water thus used is not destroyed as water, as coal is destroyed, | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | of utilising the gases recombines them: and we <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | thus for the production of almost every kind of energy that man at | ||
| + | present needs. We can use them for heat by burning them together. We | ||
| + | can use them for light by burning them in the presence of any substance | ||
| + | capable of being made incandescent. We shall be able to use them to | ||
| + | generate electricity by some sort of contrivance akin to the | ||
| + | accumulator of the present day (a highly rudimentary invention); and it | ||
| + | would be even now a very simple matter to utilise their explosive | ||
| + | recombination for the direct production of power as motion. Utilised | ||
| + | apart, the constituent gases of water have many other uses and possible | ||
| + | uses. Hydrogen, under suitable treatment, yields the greatest | ||
| + | obtainable cold, as oxygen and hydrogen together yield the greatest | ||
| + | heat. If our flying-machines need a sort of ballast to reinforce their | ||
| + | mechanical lifting apparatus, hydrogen is the best possible assistant. | ||
| + | And the probable uses of oxygen are yet more numerous. So long as we | ||
| + | still burn anything at all except a mixture of oxygen and | ||
| + | hydrogen& | ||
| + | burn& | ||
| + | combustion. One of the greatest problems of our own day is the disposal | ||
| + | of waste products of all sorts& | ||
| + | disease and dirt. Oxygen, if readily and copiously obtainable, is | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | likely that medicine, the least progressive of the sciences to-day, | ||
| + | will find in oxygen the great propulsive force of its forward movement. | ||
| + | In considerably less than a hundred years hence such makeshifts as | ||
| + | drugging, and the fighting of one disease by the instalment in the | ||
| + | organism of another, will certainly have gone by the board. Antisepsis | ||
| + | and Asepsis (the latter almost infinitely the greatest invention in the | ||
| + | history of therapeutics) will have pushed their way from surgery into | ||
| + | medicine. There are numerous diseases which can be not merely cured, | ||
| + | but ultimately abolished when we have once discovered how to use oxygen | ||
| + | adequately. The readjustment of the conditions of life determined by | ||
| + | the removal from the civilised world of the greater number of diseases, | ||
| + | and perhaps of all diseases except those arising out of wilful | ||
| + | misconduct (as improper diet) and even by the elimination of most of | ||
| + | the evils of hurry and overwork (for what are medically and chemically | ||
| + | known as fatigue products can almost certainly be eliminated from the | ||
| + | system by the proper use, yet to be discovered, of oxygen) must | ||
| + | inevitably have an enormous influence not merely upon the physical life | ||
| + | of man, but also, and even more, upon his mental constitution. The rate | ||
| + | of progress will thus in yet another way be vastly accelerated. | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the middle of the century, will be the recomposition of water& | ||
| + | other words, we shall get all the power we want by splitting up water | ||
| + | into oxygen and hydrogen, and then allowing those gases to recombine, | ||
| + | thereby returning to us the energy we have employed in the analysis. | ||
| + | How we shall employ this power is largely for the future to decide, and | ||
| + | certainly in the earlier future we shall employ it in the generation of | ||
| + | etheric waves of various kinds. The world of science is visibly on the | ||
| + | threshold of new and revolutionary discoveries on the nature and | ||
| + | composition of matter, and whither these discoveries will lead us it is | ||
| + | not usefully possible to conjecture. But certainly, after the usual | ||
| + | incubation period of a scientific discovery& | ||
| + | sort of wonderful toy, as argon and radium are at present& | ||
| + | will come the practical men, suckled at the large and noble breasts of | ||
| + | disinterested, | ||
| + | into world-moving material usefulness: so, again, the rate of progress | ||
| + | will receive a vast and valuable acceleration. Electricity, | ||
| + | to the world has been so great, will probably not, until after several | ||
| + | decades, approach the limits of its realm, and so long as electricity | ||
| + | remains a considerable element in the utilisation of those stores of | ||
| + | dissipating energy by which the planet lives, it is possible | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | during the next age.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | present. Placing the end of the age of electricity at provisionally | ||
| + | about a hundred years hence (but it is quite conceivable that the rate | ||
| + | of progress may overtake it earlier and shut the door on conjecture) it | ||
| + | is possible to forecast, not indeed with certainty, but with a measure | ||
| + | of imaginative probability, | ||
| + | electricity are developed and the other material amenities of the world | ||
| + | are worked along the line of natural progress. So far as the light of | ||
| + | analogy can point the way the reader is invited on a sort of | ||
| + | conjectural journey. Of the developments of the moral ideas of man | ||
| + | likely to be determined, not so much by the coming change in his | ||
| + | material environment, | ||
| + | work, I propose to say something at the end of the book. In the | ||
| + | meantime, the probable material changes in the next hundred years (or | ||
| + | less, according to the rate of our progress) in various departments of | ||
| + | life will be the subject of some intermediate conjectures. <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | material changes which the progress of this century threatens, it is | ||
| + | easy to see that certain present-day problems will continue to trouble | ||
| + | our successors. Some things which perplex ourselves will, I think, work | ||
| + | out their own remedy. Others will remain the subject of solutions not | ||
| + | difficult to be imagined in advance.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | immediate future, and even the future that is more remote, arises out | ||
| + | of the simple fact that the race of man tends to increase numerically | ||
| + | at a speed greater than our devices for its accommodation can quite | ||
| + | conveniently cope with. The population of the world not only increases, | ||
| + | but increases at compound interest. Nor is this all. Improved | ||
| + | sanitation, better habits of life, and the progress of medicine, | ||
| + | prolong lives that in the conditions of last century would have been | ||
| + | shortened, and the rate of increase is thus further accelerated, | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | have died, live on, perhaps reproducing their species, and thus | ||
| + | intensifying the population problem. Against these influences may be | ||
| + | set the effect of the restrictions imposed by some civilised peoples on | ||
| + | the birth rate, which Mr Roosevelt calls & | ||
| + | These practices, just now increasingly prevalent, retard the rate of | ||
| + | increase, but do not at present stop our increase: they alleviate, but | ||
| + | do not cure the difficulty of over-population. Artificial physiological | ||
| + | checks on population, if I am right in certain other conjectures to be | ||
| + | presently developed, will not form part of the permanent morality of | ||
| + | the new age, partly because, with more enlightenment, | ||
| + | voluntarily abandoned or superseded, and partly because the necessity | ||
| + | for them will have disappeared, | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the population of the civilised world will not have greatly increased | ||
| + | before the end of the period contemplated by the present inquiry: and | ||
| + | this brings us face to face with two very important | ||
| + | questions& | ||
| + | and how shall we move from place to place& | ||
| + | proceed from home to the scene of work and thence home again every day, | ||
| + | in the future? Shall we indeed thus move back and forth at all? | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the earlier future of (say) twenty or thirty years hence, probably the | ||
| + | greatest tendencies will be towards concentration on the one hand and | ||
| + | exceedingly rapid transport on the other. What the ultimate practice | ||
| + | will be, it should not be difficult to guess when we see how these | ||
| + | tendencies are likely to work themselves out.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | nineteenth century the tendency of workers in great cities was more and | ||
| + | more towards suburban life, men travelling to and from the cities in | ||
| + | increasing numbers, to increasing distances, and at increasing speeds. | ||
| + | Even mechanics, even labourers and the other humbler wage-earners (to | ||
| + | say nothing of clerks not earning much more, but spending their money | ||
| + | in a different manner) nowadays travel considerable distances to their | ||
| + | work. But in spite of what is complacently regarded (by railway and | ||
| + | tramway directors) as rapid conveyance, there is lately manifest an | ||
| + | increasing impatience against the time subtracted from men& | ||
| + | leisure by the two daily journeys, an impatience very naturally | ||
| + | increased in the case of manual workers of both sexes by the utter | ||
| + | inadequacy of the legislative control imposed upon railway and tramway | ||
| + | companies.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | women fighting a daily battle for <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | trips have been made, inflict a shameful degradation upon the class for | ||
| + | which Parliament makes illusory provision in railway and tramway Acts. | ||
| + | As a consequence of this difficulty, and also because of the early hour | ||
| + | at which the companies are allowed to cease carrying working-folk at | ||
| + | the workmen& | ||
| + | some hours of their scanty leisure every day between the arrival of | ||
| + | their trains and the opening of their workshops, a cruelty for which | ||
| + | the blame may be pretty equally apportioned to Parliament and the | ||
| + | company directors. The result of it is that many of the poor prefer the | ||
| + | evil of overcrowding in cities before the greater evil of wasted time | ||
| + | and degrading travel. As time goes on, no doubt the monopolists of | ||
| + | transportation will be compelled, as their own necessities increase and | ||
| + | so bring them under the hand of the legislature, | ||
| + | adequately the necessities of the majority. But even so, and as long as | ||
| + | the effective speed of conveyance is limited by the lack of | ||
| + | permanent-way space and the necessity for frequent stations, the | ||
| + | impatience even now manifested, and manifested chiefly by the class | ||
| + | which suffers least from loss of time in travel, will lead to | ||
| + | concentration. Taking London as an example, it may be said that the | ||
| + | Victorian age was the age of the suburbs. But few people now live in | ||
| + | the suburbs of London who <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | Either they move right out into the country, seeking a spot on some | ||
| + | main line where the greater distance and less-frequent train service is | ||
| + | made up for by speedy and uninterrupted journeys; or they come into | ||
| + | London and occupy houses or flats within easy reach of their working | ||
| + | head-quarters. The suburbs are given over to those who cannot afford | ||
| + | either of these expedients, or who, having been brought up there, are | ||
| + | retained by a sort of inertia. Ultimately, as the demand for town space | ||
| + | becomes intensified, | ||
| + | restrictions which many cities, ignoring the freedom of New York and | ||
| + | Chicago, impose upon the erection of excessively high buildings, will | ||
| + | go by the board. The shutting out of sunlight and fresh air will be the | ||
| + | subject of compensations to be presently explained, and thirty, forty, | ||
| + | fifty or a hundred-storey houses, and houses which perhaps burrow to | ||
| + | some distance underground, | ||
| + | house a vast, concentrated population impatient of daily travel. As the | ||
| + | demand for homes increases, and even the high buildings cannot cope | ||
| + | with it, the cities will push their way outwards, repopulating the | ||
| + | rebuilt suburbs. This kind of thing will have a tendency to correct | ||
| + | itself. Rents will be high in proportion to position near the centre. | ||
| + | But a limit of toleration will be reached, and as <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | improvements will have been effected in transport, there will | ||
| + | ultimately be a reaction, and people will again go right out to the | ||
| + | country, as long as there is any country left.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | be convenient to examine the conveniences, | ||
| + | homes of the new age. The greatest convenience of all, no doubt, will | ||
| + | be the modification and partial elimination of the domestic servant. | ||
| + | There is every reason to believe that the great difficulties of the | ||
| + | servant question as at present experienced will solve themselves, | ||
| + | forming in part an instance of the moral changes, accompanying material | ||
| + | invention but only partly resulting from it, which the new age is | ||
| + | certain to experience. It is usual to lay the blame of the | ||
| + | unsatisfactory character and atrocious inefficiency of the domestic | ||
| + | servants of our own day on the institution of free education. They are | ||
| + | much more due to the absence of any education worthy of the name, and | ||
| + | to the imperfect civilisation of modern houses. Thirty-five years or so | ||
| + | are but an instant in the life of an institution so overwhelmingly more | ||
| + | important in its possibilities than any other subject of legislation as | ||
| + | State-compelled education of the people. No one appears to have | ||
| + | recognised that character-making, | ||
| + | important object which can <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | legislator, is the only true object of education, free or otherwise. | ||
| + | When politicians have talked of the necessity of national education, | ||
| + | the argument they have used was that Germans are better chemists than | ||
| + | we are. When they praised the usefulness of modern languages it was in | ||
| + | terms of commercial utility. & | ||
| + | recent critic remarked), & | ||
| + | to despair of free education because free education has produced no | ||
| + | very satisfactory results while conceived of as a process of shoving | ||
| + | undesired knowledge into the children of the poor. Looking, as everyone | ||
| + | not hidebound by pessimism must look, for a great enlightenment of the | ||
| + | law-giving class when the system of party politics, already beginning | ||
| + | to show signs of decay, has ceased to hold all legislation in its | ||
| + | blighting hand, we have every reason to expect that the true uses of | ||
| + | education will be perceived and attained long before the end of the | ||
| + | period contemplated when we speak of the new age. And then, one very | ||
| + | great factor in the servant question will have been satisfactorily | ||
| + | solved, even if other conditions have not conducted us nearly all the | ||
| + | way to the solution beforehand.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | of education, wrongly conceived and improperly administered, | ||
| + | character of women destined to become servants, it must <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | allowed that much of what we call the servant difficulty could be cured | ||
| + | now, and will unquestionably be cured before long, by inventions | ||
| + | capable of abolishing the grievances which lead to it. These grievances | ||
| + | are real and remediable. I do not refer to the confinement, | ||
| + | and gross lack of consideration on the part of employers which lead | ||
| + | young women of the class from which servants are drawn to prefer labour | ||
| + | in factories and elsewhere, in conditions far less comfortable, | ||
| + | domestic service; but to our utter lack of ingenuity in removing the | ||
| + | irksomeness and degradation of much domestic labour. Some coming | ||
| + | inventions calculated to improve the lot of Mary Jane will now be | ||
| + | described.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | without apparently being aware that buildings already exist in which | ||
| + | some of his ideas have been anticipated), | ||
| + | those of all time, seem to have been constructed so as to make it as | ||
| + | difficult as possible to keep them clean. Square corners and | ||
| + | rectangular junctions of wall and floor, wall and ceiling, will | ||
| + | certainly before long be replaced everywhere by curves. But the work of | ||
| + | house cleaning will be rendered easy and unlaborious by another | ||
| + | invention, already indeed in existence on a large scale, but eventually | ||
| + | capable of being rendered portable. I mean a contrivance for | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | very ingenious but rather noisy engine already in use for pumping the | ||
| + | dust out of carpets, curtains and furniture. In the houses of the | ||
| + | future handy contrivances of various shapes, all independent of any | ||
| + | engine, will be found, furnished with elastic nozzles on the outside | ||
| + | and with some sort of appliance capable of instantly exhausting the air | ||
| + | within. Such a utensil wheeled over the floor will remove instantly | ||
| + | every particle of dust from the surface and below the surface of the | ||
| + | carpet, at the same time picking up any such <i lang= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | shaped, will clean the curtains, supposing curtains to be still in use | ||
| + | at the time, and will dust the chairs and tables& | ||
| + | will not be anything like so much dust as there is now, nearly all | ||
| + | kinds of combustion being abolished. The kitchen fire will of course be | ||
| + | an electric furnace: & | ||
| + | coals.& | ||
| + | abolition of horse traffic in cities, and the use of the vacuum | ||
| + | apparatus which will be continuously at work in all streets, keeping | ||
| + | them dry and free from mud, will practically remove the necessity for | ||
| + | boot brushing, even supposing that we shall still wear boots: every man | ||
| + | and woman in dressing will pass a vacuum instrument <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | and her clothes and get rid of even the little dust existing& | ||
| + | we shall be more and more intolerant of dirt in any form, having by | ||
| + | that time fully realised how dangerous dirt is. The new age will be a | ||
| + | clean age. A lady of the year 2000 who could be miraculously | ||
| + | transported back to London at the present moment would probably faint | ||
| + | (they will not have ceased fainting) at the intolerable disgustingness | ||
| + | of what is, I suppose, now one of the cleanest cities in the world, | ||
| + | even if the cruelty of employing horses for traction, and the frightful | ||
| + | recklessness of allowing them to soil the streets in which people walk, | ||
| + | did not overpower her susceptibilities in another way.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | scale at home, in flat-homes at all events; and in any case, for | ||
| + | reasons which will hereafter become apparent, cooking will be a much | ||
| + | less disgusting process than it is to-day. In no case will the domestic | ||
| + | servant of a hundred years hence be called upon to stand over a roaring | ||
| + | fire, laid by herself, and to be cleaned up by herself when done with, | ||
| + | in order to cook the family dinner. Every measure of | ||
| + | heat& | ||
| + | be furnished in electrically-fitted receptacles, | ||
| + | jackets or steam jackets: and unquestionably all cooking will be done | ||
| + | in hermetically-closed vessels. <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | of our cooking by such a wasteful and unwholesome method as boiling, | ||
| + | whereby the important soluble salts of nearly all food are callously | ||
| + | thrown away. As, for reasons to be developed hereafter, it is quite | ||
| + | certain that animal food will have been wholly abandoned before the end | ||
| + | of this century, the <i lang=" | ||
| + | be much more manageable than at present, and the kitchen sink will | ||
| + | cease to be, during a great part of the day, a place of unapproachable | ||
| + | loathsomeness. On the other hand, its conveniences will have been | ||
| + | greatly increased. It is difficult to understand how the old-world | ||
| + | fashion of (for instance) & | ||
| + | can have endured so long. Of course, in the new age, these utensils | ||
| + | will be simply dropped one by one into an automatic receptacle; swilled | ||
| + | clean by water delivered with force and charged with nascent oxygen; | ||
| + | dried by electric heat; and polished by electric force; being finally | ||
| + | oxygen-bathed as a superfluous act of sanitary cleanliness before being | ||
| + | sent to table again. And all that has come off the plates will drop | ||
| + | through the scullery floor into the destructor beneath to be oxygenated | ||
| + | and made away with.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | domestic service got rid of. Naturally lifts of various kinds, driven | ||
| + | by the same force (whatever it is) which lights and <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the house, will be everywhere in evidence. The plan of attaining the | ||
| + | upper part of a small house by climbing, on every occasion, a sort of | ||
| + | wooden hill, covered with carpet of questionable cleanliness, | ||
| + | course have been abandoned: it is doubtful whether staircases will be | ||
| + | built at all after the next two or three decades. And it is likely that | ||
| + | the more refined sentiment of the new age will recoil before the | ||
| + | spectacle of menial service at the table. Not because they will | ||
| + | despise, but because they will respect, their domestic assistants, | ||
| + | hostesses will dislike to have their guests waited upon in a servile | ||
| + | manner during meals by plush-breeched flunkeys of the male, or | ||
| + | neat-handed Phyllises of the female, sex. Well-arranged houses will | ||
| + | have the kitchen on a level with the dining-room, | ||
| + | will be so contrived that a table, ready laid at each course, can be | ||
| + | made to slide through it into the presence of the seated guests. An | ||
| + | immense amount of running to and fro between kitchen and dining-room, | ||
| + | and of lifting food and table-ware into and out of elevators, will thus | ||
| + | be obviated, to the vast gastronomic improvement of the meal and the | ||
| + | salvation of servants& | ||
| + | title=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | amenities lacking to our own. It is not too much to anticipate that we | ||
| + | shall have learned enough of plumbing to be able to <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | baths, wash-basins and other necessary fittings with the drains without | ||
| + | poisoning ourselves, and the inconvenient modern | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | disappear. It cannot be very long& | ||
| + | years& | ||
| + | the technical education of plumbers.< | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | convenient and satisfactory apartment than the one we slept in last | ||
| + | night, and another irksome and unelevating part of the domestic work of | ||
| + | our servants will be eliminated. But the sleeping-apartments, | ||
| + | indeed all apartments in city homes, will contain yet another very | ||
| + | valuable and necessary article of furniture& | ||
| + | Nearly all the unhealthiness and the pinched, weary greyness of | ||
| + | town-dwellers to-day could be cured by fresh air. Everyone is familiar | ||
| + | with the improvement which can be effected in the health and appearance | ||
| + | of a city family by even a short visit to the seaside or the | ||
| + | country& | ||
| + | now to attribute, in the <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | in the sea air. The fact that holiday-makers are able to endure the | ||
| + | smell of slowly-decaying seaweed with a dash of putrescent fish about | ||
| + | it, which is called & | ||
| + | pick up health in the presence of it, is more due to the absence of | ||
| + | carbon dioxide and other deleterious gases of the towns than to | ||
| + | anything else. The beneficent effects of country air are practically | ||
| + | all due to the power possessed by green vegetation of superoxygenating | ||
| + | the surrounding air. The atmosphere of cities, or at all events of city | ||
| + | homes, will presently be freed from the products of combustion and | ||
| + | respiration, | ||
| + | oxygen, by artificial means. And especially in bedrooms, rendered | ||
| + | to-day stuffy and unhealthy by the idiotic fear of night air which an | ||
| + | effete tradition has handed down to us, will this reform be in | ||
| + | evidence. Prudent people to-day insist on large bedroom | ||
| + | windows& | ||
| + | wide open all night. But this is attended by inconveniences in cold and | ||
| + | wet weather; and while our grandchildren will still keep their windows | ||
| + | open all night in all weathers, they will not be content with this | ||
| + | alone. There will be a chemical apparatus hidden away in some corner, | ||
| + | or built into the wall, which will absorb carbon dioxide and at the | ||
| + | same time slowly give off a certain amount <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | oxygen& | ||
| + | standard of the best country places. And similar appliances will be at | ||
| + | work in the streets of our cities, so that town air will be just as | ||
| + | wholesome, just as tonic and invigorating, | ||
| + | theory that the presence of ozone (that is, allotropic oxygen) in the | ||
| + | sea air is beneficent stand the test of time, no doubt ozonators will | ||
| + | form part of these appliances: but in any case, as the high buildings | ||
| + | of the new age will keep out the sunlight, electric light, carrying all | ||
| + | the ray-activity of sunlight, and just as capable of fostering life and | ||
| + | vegetation, will serve the streets. Thus, so far as hygiene goes, town | ||
| + | life will be on a par with country life: but many people will prefer | ||
| + | the country, and means will have to be provided to render homes in the | ||
| + | country compatible with work in the cities. This brings us to the | ||
| + | question of transport.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | years at all events, travel to and from work in flying-machines. But no | ||
| + | doubt the system of railway transport will be revolutionised. What | ||
| + | makes suburban travel so slow is, not so much lack of speed on the part | ||
| + | of the trains, as the necessity for frequent stoppage. You cannot | ||
| + | satisfactorily run a train at sixty miles an hour and stop it every | ||
| + | minute or so: otherwise sixty miles an hour <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | quite fast enough, for some decades at least, to satisfy all | ||
| + | requirements of suburban traffic, though it would be, and indeed is, | ||
| + | ridiculously inadequate for long-distance travelling. The expense of | ||
| + | increased permanent-way hampers railway management, and as there is no | ||
| + | possibility of getting more land to increase the number of available | ||
| + | tracks, some method will have to be devised for running one train over | ||
| + | the top of another& | ||
| + | necessarily provided with supporting rails: for we may very conceivably | ||
| + | have discovered means by which vehicles can be propelled above the | ||
| + | ground in some kind of guide-ways, doing away with the great loss of | ||
| + | power caused by wheel friction; that is to say, the guides will direct, | ||
| + | but not support, the carriages. The clumsy device of locomotive engines | ||
| + | will have been dispensed with. Whatever power is employed to drive the | ||
| + | trains of the next century will certainly be conveyed to them from | ||
| + | central power-houses.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | stoppages which are so wasteful of time on a suburban railway: and they | ||
| + | are also wasteful of force. Now in all respects the new age will be | ||
| + | economical. One thing that will have to be perfected is the art of | ||
| + | getting up speed. Look, as you go home to-night, at the way your train | ||
| + | gathers <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | time it is before it can attain its full velocity. A large part of the | ||
| + | total time you require in order to reach the suburbs is consumed in | ||
| + | this manner. A hundred years hence trains will almost jump to full | ||
| + | speed, somewhat as a motor-car jumps to-day. In collecting passengers | ||
| + | at suburban stations, the train, a hundred years hence, will perhaps | ||
| + | not stop at all. It will only slacken speed a little; but the platform | ||
| + | will begin to move as the train approaches, and will run along beside | ||
| + | it, at the same speed as the train itself, so that passengers can get | ||
| + | in and out as if the train were standing still. When all are aboard, | ||
| + | the doors will be closed all together by the guard, and the platform | ||
| + | will reverse its motion, and return to its original position ready for | ||
| + | the next train.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | hour& | ||
| + | suburbanites of next century& | ||
| + | precautions were not taken. The moment two trains are in the same | ||
| + | section of line they will be automatically cut off from the source of | ||
| + | power, and their brakes will at the same time bring them to a | ||
| + | standstill. A passenger who put his head out of the window of a train | ||
| + | travelling at this speed would be blinded and suffocated; so the | ||
| + | windows will be glazed, the oxygenators <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | absorbers in each carriage keeping the air sweet, and other suitable | ||
| + | appliances adjusting its temperature. There will be no such thing as | ||
| + | level crossings; wherever the road crosses the line there will be | ||
| + | bridges, provided with an endless moving track (like the automatic | ||
| + | staircase at the Crystal Palace), to carry passengers and vehicles | ||
| + | across. Of course horses will long since have vanished from the land, | ||
| + | except as instruments of the pleasure of a few cranks who affect the | ||
| + | manners of that effete period, the year 1900.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | itself have eliminated much danger of accident. It is not to be | ||
| + | supposed that the unresting march of mechanical improvement will have | ||
| + | failed to have its effect on the people. Man himself will have | ||
| + | progressed. He will be cleverer in avoiding accidents. Cities will be | ||
| + | provided with moving street-ways, | ||
| + | speeds; and we shall have learned to hop on and off the lowest speed | ||
| + | from the stationary pavement, and from the lower speeds to the higher, | ||
| + | without danger. When streets cross, one rolling roadway will rise in a | ||
| + | curve over the other. There will be no vehicular traffic at all in | ||
| + | cities of any size; all the transportation will be done by the | ||
| + | roads& | ||
| + | town <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | coin-worked. A man who wishes to travel will step into a motor-car, | ||
| + | drop into a slot-machine the coin which represents the hire of the car | ||
| + | for the distance he wants to travel, and assume control. Here again the | ||
| + | progress of man will come into play. Everyone will know how to drive a | ||
| + | motor-car safely. If you doubt it, consider for a moment the position | ||
| + | of a man of 1800 suddenly transported into a street of modern London. | ||
| + | He would never be able to cross it; the rush of omnibuses, motors and | ||
| + | bicycles would confuse and frighten him. Imagine the same man trying to | ||
| + | use the underground railways of to-day, or to get up to town from a | ||
| + | busy suburb in the morning. He would either be killed out of hand or | ||
| + | left behind altogether from sheer inability to enter the train.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | years hence will be driven by energy of some kind transmitted from the | ||
| + | shores on either side. It is absolutely unquestionable that no marine | ||
| + | engine in the least resembling what we know to-day can meet the | ||
| + | requirements of the new age. The expense of driving a steamship | ||
| + | increases in such a ratio to its size and speed that the economic | ||
| + | limits of steam propulsion are foreseen. Probably the ships of | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | from those we <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | railway engineer, so water-resistance is the bugbear of the marine | ||
| + | engineer. The ships of a hundred years hence will not lie in the water. | ||
| + | They will tower above the surface, merely skimming it with their keels, | ||
| + | and the only engines they will carry will be those which receive and | ||
| + | utilise the energy transmitted to them from the power-houses | ||
| + | ashore& | ||
| + | conquered ocean itself.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | connected in our minds with the growth of population that the more | ||
| + | vital entanglement of the latter with the food question is hardly | ||
| + | perceptible except to economic experts. The ordinary newspaper reader | ||
| + | is not in a position to trace the intimate significance of prices; | ||
| + | indeed, he often regards it as rather a good thing that wheat should | ||
| + | fetch a good price per quarter, forgetting that low prices for | ||
| + | commodities mean increased purchasing power for money, and a better | ||
| + | standard of life for the people. When such elementary implications as | ||
| + | this are overlooked, it is hardly remarkable that the more obscure | ||
| + | connection of population with prices is never thought of. Yet it is | ||
| + | obvious that unless the sources of supply increase more rapidly than | ||
| + | the consuming population, prices must rise& | ||
| + | purchasing power of money must diminish. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | will no doubt rise also, but as competition seriously affects the | ||
| + | markets for manufactured goods and machinery, and the increase of | ||
| + | population not only tends to raise prices of commodities, | ||
| + | restricts the rise of wages, relief will have to be found in economies | ||
| + | of various sorts. The standard of comfort in working families must | ||
| + | improve considerably; | ||
| + | the shape of industrial combination and trade-unionism developed to a | ||
| + | high degree, will be more and more clamorous; partly because of public | ||
| + | feeling. What is currently called the growth of sentimentalism in | ||
| + | modern life is really the development of modern conscience. No doubt | ||
| + | the abolition of judicial torture was at one time regarded as a mark of | ||
| + | absurd sentimentality; | ||
| + | a vast amelioration of public morality is in store for the new age. A | ||
| + | great element in the conflict between comfort on the one hand and | ||
| + | competition on the other will be economy of means. That is why the new | ||
| + | age will, among other things, be an age of economy.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | effected. Nothing is more painfully ludicrous& | ||
| + | incongruous collocution advisedly& | ||
| + | of money being laboriously accumulated for the <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | to a great extent, so wastefully as on meat soups and white bread. The | ||
| + | crass ignorance of the poor, who will not touch wholemeal bread, and | ||
| + | indeed regard the offer of it as something in the nature of an insult; | ||
| + | and who cannot be induced to believe that meat is one of the least | ||
| + | satisfactory and most expensive forms of nourishment, | ||
| + | responsible in great part for this error. If we would get our nitrogen | ||
| + | from pulses, nuts, and use vegetable fats derived from nuts, and bread | ||
| + | made from entire wheat-kernels finely ground (instead of being only | ||
| + | half ground as in most & | ||
| + | id=" | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | twice or three times as many people for every pound collected as they | ||
| + | do at present. But the proposal would probably excite an outcry and we | ||
| + | should hear that the poor were being treated as animals and that we | ||
| + | fain would fill their bellies with the husks that the swine do eat. But | ||
| + | all kinds of influences will tend to eliminate flesh from the dietary | ||
| + | of the new age. & | ||
| + | against the use of animals for highly necessary scientific | ||
| + | investigations, | ||
| + | killing for food; and the refinement of the future will come to regard | ||
| + | the <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | cannibalism. Moreover, the constantly increasing demand of the new age | ||
| + | upon bodily and nervous energies will call for nourishment suited to | ||
| + | their supply. This, and the wastefulness of second-hand food, will | ||
| + | banish all flesh from the bill of fare. Fish will be eaten longer than | ||
| + | meat. But more than anything else, the need for economy will reform our | ||
| + | dinner-tables, | ||
| + | directly from the soil, if we are to have food enough to nourish our | ||
| + | overgrown population at all. We shall not be able to afford to waste | ||
| + | the ground on pasturage. We must use it to produce cereals, nuts and | ||
| + | fruits, which are not only a much more remunerative crop, but will also | ||
| + | use up in their assimilation far less nervous and peptic | ||
| + | energy& | ||
| + | foods& | ||
| + | certain extent) oats& | ||
| + | be partially cooked at the granaries by dry heat; they will need very | ||
| + | little treatment at home. Vegetables, cooked, not in the wasteful | ||
| + | manner now in vogue, but by conservative methods which will preserve | ||
| + | their valuable saline constituents, | ||
| + | kitchens; but pulse in various forms (as pease, lentil flour, etc.) | ||
| + | will be supplied to us almost wholly cooked. A <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | nourishing and delicious dietary will thus be made available.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | opinion that alcohol, as a beverage, must inevitably disappear. Not | ||
| + | only because the price of intoxicants is an unproductive expenditure | ||
| + | (and we shall have to be more and more thrifty as time goes on) but | ||
| + | because the nerves of the new age would never stand them, must all | ||
| + | alcoholic beverages be regarded as destined to obsolescence: | ||
| + | legislative aspect of this question must presently be touched upon. | ||
| + | Already a considerable part of the people, in no way influenced by the | ||
| + | illogical idea that the abuse of a commodity by one class calls for the | ||
| + | abstention from it of another, refrains from alcohol simply because its | ||
| + | use inflicts too great a strain on the system. A good many people even | ||
| + | now find it necessary to abstain from tea or from coffee for precisely | ||
| + | similar reasons; while the highly-organised nervous systems of others | ||
| + | find in the latter a stimulant capable of all the advantages of alcohol | ||
| + | (and they are many) and not without some of its penalties. I think it | ||
| + | quite likely that when alcohol is gone, the nerves of the future may | ||
| + | find it necessary to place the sale of tea and of coffee under | ||
| + | restrictions similar to those at present inflicted upon the trade in | ||
| + | alcohol: and it is quite certain that morphia, cocaine, chloral, | ||
| + | perhaps <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | jealously safeguarded within the next few years.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | development of the nervous system as a mark of degeneration. On the | ||
| + | contrary, it is a part of the great and rapid adaptation which is bound | ||
| + | to take place in the constitution of man himself< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | rapidly-changing conditions of his environment, | ||
| + | duties he will have to fulfil. To overlook the certainty of such | ||
| + | adaptations is to be blind to all history, and especially to all recent | ||
| + | history. The men and women of the new age will differ from ourselves in | ||
| + | much the same sort of way as we differ from our great-grandfathers. | ||
| + | They will differ more only because the progress of the century which we | ||
| + | have lately begun will be so much more rapid and various than those of | ||
| + | the century before& | ||
| + | changes since the world began to be civilised. <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | might be supposed, would disappear altogether from the scheme of things | ||
| + | in favour of some kind of destructors. For reasons connected with a | ||
| + | more enlightened view than we have yet reached of certain aspects of | ||
| + | terrestrial economy, however, I think they will, with modifications, | ||
| + | still exist.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | difficulty in utilising the useful integument of wheat disappears when | ||
| + | the whole grain is finely milled.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | necessary to say here, as an offset to possible misconstruction, | ||
| + | the word & | ||
| + | processes of evolution are far slower than the changes here | ||
| + | contemplated. The latter are voluntary and purposeful, involving no | ||
| + | constructional alteration in the physical frame of man, but only | ||
| + | functional modifications, | ||
| + | pursued.& | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | organisation of society during the present century, we may regard it as | ||
| + | certain that the folk who</ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | possess many conveniences denied to the city man of to-day. It is, for | ||
| + | instance, to be supposed that the inordinate defects of even the best | ||
| + | telephone systems will be eliminated. When wireless communication of | ||
| + | ideas has been perfected, of course the telephone exchange will | ||
| + | disappear. Differential & | ||
| + | any wireless telephone will be able to be brought, as transmitter, | ||
| + | correspondence with any other wireless telephone, as | ||
| + | receiver& | ||
| + | every other merchant. Instead of, as at present, looking up his | ||
| + | associate& | ||
| + | clumsy junction of wires at an exchange office, the merchant will look | ||
| + | up the tuning-formula, | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | bell, or otherwise employ means for attracting the attention of the man | ||
| + | he wants to speak to. As a great proportion of all the business | ||
| + | transacted will be done by telephones the frequent occurrence of | ||
| + | disputes as to what has or has not been said in a given conversation | ||
| + | will have rendered safeguards necessary. Consequently, | ||
| + | will be attached to an instrument, developed from the phonograph, which | ||
| + | will record whatever is said at both ends of the line. Precautions will | ||
| + | have to be devised against eavesdropping. After communication is | ||
| + | established, | ||
| + | instruments to a fresh pitch, which, in cases requiring special | ||
| + | secrecy, could be privately agreed upon beforehand.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | ultimately assume must be a matter of conjecture. It is quite possible | ||
| + | that the written word may in all departments of life lose some of its | ||
| + | present vital importance. We may imagine, if we choose, that instead of | ||
| + | creating records which can be read, we may find it advisable to create | ||
| + | records that can be listened to: and some of the apparent | ||
| + | inconveniences of this substitution may easily be supposed to be | ||
| + | dispensed with. The handiness of a written memorandum is largely a | ||
| + | matter of habit. A practised eye can & | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | document, and either through the use of black-type headlines, or by | ||
| + | pure skill, alight upon exactly the passage required; and if it were | ||
| + | necessary, in order to find a given passage, to listen to the whole | ||
| + | document being read over by the recording phonograph, no doubt much | ||
| + | time would be lost. We shall not be so extremely intolerant of loss of | ||
| + | time, perhaps, in the new age, as some people imagine: but in any case, | ||
| + | if the speed of the phonograph be imagined as adjustable, it will be | ||
| + | perceived that we could then make it gabble parrotwise over the | ||
| + | inessential, | ||
| + | wanted to assure ourselves of. We could even & | ||
| + | portions& | ||
| + | Probably such aural records may be made capable of acceptance in courts | ||
| + | of law, and the maxim <i lang=" | ||
| + | the place of a well-known proverb of our day. Very likely business | ||
| + | letters may some day take the form of conveniently-shaped tablets, made | ||
| + | of some plastic material, and capable of being utilised by means of a | ||
| + | talking machine.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the more difficult task of conceiving a means by which the spoken word | ||
| + | may be directly translatable into print or typewriting. The waste of | ||
| + | time and energy entailed by the present plan of dictating what we want | ||
| + | to say to a stenographer or into a phonograph, for <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | improvement urgently needful; nor are these wastes the only grievance, | ||
| + | as the introduction of a second personality into the operation of | ||
| + | recording speech introduces a simultaneous possibility of error, and an | ||
| + | outrageous waste of time is caused by the necessity of reading over | ||
| + | what one has dictated laboriously to a stenographer or into a | ||
| + | phonograph, to make sure that it is correctly transcribed. It is | ||
| + | obviously a much more difficult matter to translate speech directly | ||
| + | into printed words than to translate it into something which may again | ||
| + | produce the sounds of speech. The first step would be the invention of | ||
| + | something which would print a phonetic representation of | ||
| + | speech& | ||
| + | Isaac Pitman. Even this requires us to imagine machinery of a kind | ||
| + | whose very rudiments do not at present exist. Indeed, we can only | ||
| + | conceive such an instrument by the use of the supposition that some | ||
| + | entirely new manipulation of sound-waves will be discovered; and if we | ||
| + | conceive that, there is no particular reason why we should hesitate | ||
| + | before the notion of speech directly translated into print such as we | ||
| + | use in everyday life. If we are going to limit the possibilities of the | ||
| + | future by the actual achievements of the present, we shall certainly | ||
| + | fall short of any adequate notion of what a hundred years& | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | not see wherein the direct reproduction suggested is any more | ||
| + | inconceivable than, for example, telephony, or even photography, | ||
| + | have been to a man of a hundred years ago. The greatest danger | ||
| + | attending our attempt to preconceive the amenities of the next century | ||
| + | is that we may limit our expectations too narrowly.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | in assuming that the present form of alphabetical writing and printing | ||
| + | will survive at all. But there are two things which seem likely to give | ||
| + | it permanence. The first, of course, is literature. If we adopt an | ||
| + | entirely new form of writing and printing for general use, we must | ||
| + | either set to work to translate all our literature into it, thereby | ||
| + | probably losing some formal beauties which the culture of the world | ||
| + | will not consent to sacrifice; or we must make up our minds to use (as | ||
| + | the Japanese do at present) two kinds of writing concurrently; | ||
| + | difficulty of overcoming the vast inertia of the human mind (which | ||
| + | alone still suffices to exclude from English commerce so obviously | ||
| + | convenient an innovation as decimal coinage) will probably negative | ||
| + | this. This inertia is the second consideration likely to give | ||
| + | permanence to our present form of English alphabetical writing.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | wireless telephony will certainly, when supplemented by records of | ||
| + | whatever kind, greatly facilitate commerce. The tedious process of | ||
| + | writing a letter, posting it, and awaiting the reply, at present | ||
| + | persisted in chiefly because it is so necessary to have some sort of | ||
| + | documentary evidence of what has passed, will be largely dispensed with | ||
| + | when we can secure an automatic record of what we say. Nearly | ||
| + | everything will be done by word of mouth.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | record, which attaches to transactions or negotiations by telephone at | ||
| + | the present day, is that a telephonic conversation is not nearly so | ||
| + | satisfactory as a personal interview face to face. Gesture, attitude, | ||
| + | the language of face and eyes, all do so much to elucidate | ||
| + | communication in the latter way, that we lose a great deal when we meet | ||
| + | an associate at the other end of a telephone wire. Well, the telephone | ||
| + | of the new age will remove this drawback, or rather it will be | ||
| + | supplemented by something which will do so. This invention, not at all | ||
| + | difficult to imagine, I will call provisionally the teleautoscope. It | ||
| + | will no doubt have some name equally barbarous. The teleautoscope can | ||
| + | be explained in a single sentence. It will be an instrument for seeing | ||
| + | by electricity. Whatever is before the transmitting teleautoscope | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | wirelessly <i lang=" | ||
| + | telephone, by phonograph, and by teleautoscope, | ||
| + | will combine all the advantages of a personal interview and a written | ||
| + | correspondence.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | occasional lapses, is as nearly perfect as any human institution, | ||
| + | the present state of society, can be reasonably expected to be. But it | ||
| + | is equally certain that in so far as postal communication is required | ||
| + | at all in the new age it will have to be vastly improved both as to | ||
| + | speed and precision, compared with what we now, sometimes rather | ||
| + | thanklessly, | ||
| + | tolerate the inconvenience of having to send out to post its letters | ||
| + | and parcels, or the tardiness of having these articles sorted and | ||
| + | passed on for delivery only at intervals of half an hour or so. We may | ||
| + | take it for granted that every well-equipped business office will be in | ||
| + | direct communication, | ||
| + | the nearest post-office. And however rapidly and however frequently the | ||
| + | trains or airships of the period may travel, the process of making up | ||
| + | van loads of mail matter for despatch to remote centres, and | ||
| + | redistribution there, is far too clumsy for what commerce will demand a | ||
| + | hundred years hence. No doubt the soil of every civilised <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | will be permeated by vast networks of pneumatic tubes: and all letters | ||
| + | and parcels will be thus distributed at a speed hardly credible | ||
| + | to-day.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | calculating machines. It is not likely that the fatiguing and uncertain | ||
| + | process of having arithmetical calculations of any sort performed in | ||
| + | the brains of clerks will survive the improvements of which these | ||
| + | machines are capable. Account books, invoices, and all similar | ||
| + | documents will doubtless be written by a convenient and compendious | ||
| + | form of combined calculating machine and typewriter, which we may | ||
| + | suppose to be called the numeroscriptor. It will, of course, be capable | ||
| + | of writing anywhere& | ||
| + | surface or on an irregular one. It will make any kind of calculation | ||
| + | required. Even such operations as the weighing and measurement of goods | ||
| + | will all be done by automatic machinery,< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | recording without any possibility of error the quantity and values of | ||
| + | goods submitted to its operation.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | like a renascence. So far as inland <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | difficulties to be overcome already call loudly for amendment. We | ||
| + | cannot for more than a decade or so make do with the present railway | ||
| + | tracks, and either (as already hinted) by means of some invention to | ||
| + | enable trains to run one above another, or by some entirely new | ||
| + | carrying device such as I will now try to suggest, the new age will | ||
| + | certainly supersede or supplement the transport of to-day.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | at all events, is something in the nature of elevated <i lang= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | cities of a country to be linked-up by a system of great overways, we | ||
| + | have at all events a feasible solution of the difficulty. There could | ||
| + | be a double row of tall, massive pillars, between which could run a | ||
| + | wide track, always in motion at considerable speed. It need not be a | ||
| + | lightning speed. Most of the tardiness of railway transportation does | ||
| + | not, in this country at all events, arise from slowness of trains, but | ||
| + | from congestion at goods stations, and this in turn is due, partly to | ||
| + | insufficiency of rolling stock, but much more to insufficiency of | ||
| + | permanent way. The latter evil is very difficult to cope with. But the | ||
| + | system of moving ways, providing a rolling stock equal in length to the | ||
| + | line itself, will be a great saving. Returning upon itself the endless | ||
| + | track will continuously transport merchandise <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | directions. Elevators, suitably placed, will give access to it wherever | ||
| + | needed. Probably the motive power will be electrical: and we may | ||
| + | confidently anticipate entirely new sources of electricity. It is | ||
| + | obviously clumsy to create power in the first instance, convert power | ||
| + | into electricity (I use popular language), and then convert electricity | ||
| + | back again into power. Much more hopeful than any idea of developing | ||
| + | that method would be the conception of new ways of creating and | ||
| + | applying motive-power directly. But, almost certainly, electricity, | ||
| + | obtained in some new way, will do the work of the world for many | ||
| + | generations yet& | ||
| + | more convenient.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | improvement and innovation above sketched out involves, and will be | ||
| + | indeed designed to effect, great saving of labour. With such economies, | ||
| + | and an increased population, there is evidently going to be a | ||
| + | difficulty about employment.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | tend to make commerce extremely powerful. Already great organisers of | ||
| + | business begin to evade competition by combining in vast | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | poor poorer. There is a further cause for the aggrandisement of the | ||
| + | large trader and manufacturer at <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | dealer. More and more every year the unprogressive methods of small | ||
| + | shopkeepers foster the success of large multiple retailers. But it is | ||
| + | likely that retail businesses, whether great or small, will ultimately | ||
| + | tend to be eliminated. Manufacturers and trust companies will supply | ||
| + | the public directly. What, then, will be the solution of the great | ||
| + | social difficulties about to be created?</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the developments above confidently predicted for a future comparatively | ||
| + | near, are probably transient in their nature. It is not yet the time to | ||
| + | discuss political questions: but the problem here directly raised | ||
| + | demands a few words of reassurance from the professed optimist.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | dangers involved in so enormous an aggrandisement of the commercial and | ||
| + | manufacturing class as we shall most of us live to witness. What is | ||
| + | called the problem of the unemployed grows every year more difficult | ||
| + | and less obviously hopeful. Moreover, the concentration of great wealth | ||
| + | in a few hands is in itself a political danger, even apart from the | ||
| + | fact that it implies widespread impoverishment. There are dangers of | ||
| + | corrupt legislation, | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | difficulties beside this. When public education becomes rationalised; | ||
| + | when it is employed chiefly as a means of character-making; | ||
| + | universal education of mankind has the effect of turning out men and | ||
| + | women capable of thinking, and not merely of remembering, | ||
| + | population of the working class will begin to exercise an intelligent | ||
| + | influence on the legislature& | ||
| + | be said to do. And one thing which the intelligently-elected | ||
| + | Parliaments of the new age will assuredly discover is this principle: | ||
| + | that it is not good for the State that any one man, or any one | ||
| + | associated body of men, should possess an inordinate amount of | ||
| + | wealth.< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | it is illegal for any person or corporation to be seised of more than a | ||
| + | certain fixed capital; the dangers of inconvenient <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | in any way unprogressive or injurious to the commonwealth. It is, in | ||
| + | fact, not even injurious to the individuals affected. No | ||
| + | reasonably-enlightened being can pretend that a sensible hardship would | ||
| + | be inflicted on millionaires by being forbidden to pile Pelion upon | ||
| + | Ossa in their present insane manner. A very rich man, compelled to | ||
| + | desist from the accumulation of wealth, and consequently driven to the | ||
| + | task of finding out how to enjoy it intelligently, | ||
| + | infinitely better off for this constraint. The effect of the ordinance | ||
| + | for the limitation of wealth will be to remove all temptation to | ||
| + | concentrate manufactures in a few hands. It will open the doors shut by | ||
| + | trust companies on competition. It will multiply factories of moderate | ||
| + | and convenient size: and one other effect of it will be to improve many | ||
| + | manufacturing processes in themselves. There are a great many things | ||
| + | which can be cheaply turned out in uniform batches, every article | ||
| + | exactly the counterpart of every other, hideous in economical | ||
| + | uniformity, because they all emanate from one or two great factories, | ||
| + | which, if the manufacture of them were distributed over a number of | ||
| + | small factories, would, from this circumstance alone, and from the | ||
| + | stress of wholesome competition, | ||
| + | industries, desirable in themselves, but driven out of <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | concentrated manufacturing, | ||
| + | regretfully the good old kinds would spring up, rejuvenated: | ||
| + | uniformity would cease to be the principal ideal of manufacture. The | ||
| + | people would be able to afford agreeable furniture, utensils, | ||
| + | decorations, | ||
| + | put up with horrible but cheap makeshifts. For one great advantage of | ||
| + | the ordinance just predicted must not be lost sight of. When you | ||
| + | restrain the rich from becoming inordinately richer, you concurrently | ||
| + | save the poor from being made proportionately poorer. This ideal, it | ||
| + | should be remarked, is in no sense socialistic. It is, on the contrary, | ||
| + | the natural development of individualism.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the twenty-first century all manufactures and all commerce will be | ||
| + | co-operative, | ||
| + | wages, but by a share in the produce of their labour. Instead of the | ||
| + | profit of all trade and manufacture being secured to the managers and | ||
| + | owners of lands, machinery, transport and other commercial utilities; | ||
| + | while labour, the equally necessary and indeed the preponderant element | ||
| + | of production, is reckoned as a mere element of cost, in the form of | ||
| + | wages; the profit will be shared all round. The more prosperous the | ||
| + | enterprise, the more money the <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | will be able to grow rich by sweating his workmen. Neither will the | ||
| + | present degrading temptation for every workman to perform his task as | ||
| + | perfunctorily and as lazily as he can, so long as he does not get | ||
| + | dismissed from work altogether, survive this reform. On the contrary, | ||
| + | it will be directly worth every man& | ||
| + | well as he possibly can. The dignity of labour& | ||
| + | justly mocked& | ||
| + | practicality. A great many articles of everyday use will be better made | ||
| + | than it is possible to get them made to-day. The spectacle of the | ||
| + | producers of wealth herding in squalid cabins, clothed in the rags of | ||
| + | cast-off clothing, eating garbage, enjoying nothing but intoxication, | ||
| + | will give way to a more wholesome and natural state of affairs. Nor | ||
| + | will the owners of machinery, of factories and the like long oppose | ||
| + | this development. What are called labour-troubles will cease to exist | ||
| + | when the interest of employer and employed is identical. The problem of | ||
| + | the unemployed will solve itself. Leisure, and an opportunity to employ | ||
| + | leisure wisely, will have been bestowed upon the poor as well as we | ||
| + | have seen that it will be bestowed upon the rich. A man will have no | ||
| + | need to spend practically all the unfatigued hours of every day at the | ||
| + | bench, the loom, or the lathe. He will want recreation. While one batch | ||
| + | of men is <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | other batches to work. And work itself, once it is work for an | ||
| + | intelligent objective, once it is work that there is a comprehensible | ||
| + | reason for trying to execute as well as it can possibly be executed, | ||
| + | will lose much of its irksomeness& | ||
| + | of the product and the producer. <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | contrivance already in existence which not only weighs what is placed | ||
| + | upon it, but can also be made to calculate the value of the goods at | ||
| + | any desired rate per ounce, pound or hundredweight.& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | objection to this principle may be here anticipated and answered. | ||
| + | Politicians may say that for any one nation to be the pioneer in the | ||
| + | adoption of such a policy would have the effect of driving trade and | ||
| + | manufactures into other countries where the restriction did not exist. | ||
| + | But there are so many highly necessary reforms open to a similar | ||
| + | objection that I think there is no doubt that ultimately the jurists of | ||
| + | all nations will agree upon some arrangement for universal legislation, | ||
| + | whereby laws not affecting the relations of one country with another | ||
| + | will be simultaneously enacted by a comity of nations. We have already | ||
| + | one very imperfect example of such a procedure in the Convention | ||
| + | against bounty-helped sugar.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | have suggested to all who accept them that the cultivation of pleasure | ||
| + | must occupy a large part of the energy of the new age. From the moment | ||
| + | when men, sufficiently astute and purposeful to accumulate enormous | ||
| + | fortunes if they were permitted to do so, are required by law to desist | ||
| + | from useless and injurious money-getting, | ||
| + | will be diverted to the development of the useless. The skill expended | ||
| + | upon money-making& | ||
| + | unscrupulous one may be, it is not easy to become a | ||
| + | millionaire& | ||
| + | of spending it satisfactorily. We may consider it as practically | ||
| + | certain that the pleasures of the new age will be largely intellectual | ||
| + | in their nature. The stupidity of merely sensual pleasures will revolt | ||
| + | the intelligence of the future. Athletic sports of some kind, | ||
| + | facilitated by certain inventions which can easily be foreseen, will no | ||
| + | doubt be a <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | gentleness of mankind will abolish, as barbarous, games which take the | ||
| + | form of modified assault, as football, boxing, wrestling, fencing and | ||
| + | the like. We shall certainly acquire a great distaste for fighting in | ||
| + | any form when growing humanitarianism shall have put an end to | ||
| + | war& | ||
| + | present century. Similarly& | ||
| + | alive?& | ||
| + | for sentimental and other reasons, it has been shown that we shall | ||
| + | cease to kill for food.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | instruments of sport will no doubt be the small flying-machine. It is | ||
| + | not in the least probable, so far as can at present be foreseen, that | ||
| + | purely a& | ||
| + | transportation will be a feature of the new civilisation. The dangers | ||
| + | and inconvenience of large a& | ||
| + | imperfect invention than inherent difficulties of the subject. It is | ||
| + | very probable that some means of propelling self-supported vehicles | ||
| + | between guideways may be discovered. But, as it is not at all likely | ||
| + | that any means of suspending the effect of air-resistance can ever be | ||
| + | devised, a flying-machine must always be slow and cumbersome. Travel | ||
| + | and transportation, | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | must be rapid in the extreme. Ships no doubt will skim the surface of | ||
| + | the sea instead of resting upon it. But air-ships are not very likely | ||
| + | to be anything but a sort of vast toy, within, at all events, the next | ||
| + | hundred years.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | travel has great promise. Small one-man flying-machines, | ||
| + | a& | ||
| + | enough. We shall fly for pleasure; and just as thousands of working men | ||
| + | and women now take a Saturday-afternoon spin on a bicycle, so they will | ||
| + | go for a sky-trip, and visit interesting mountain-tops for | ||
| + | (non-alcoholic) picnics. The bicycle or the motor-cycle will perhaps be | ||
| + | the point of development. It is quite certain that within the next ten | ||
| + | or fifteen years some means will have been discovered by which we can | ||
| + | ride on a single wheel. The saving of weight thus effected will go a | ||
| + | long way towards surmounting the flight problem. Then, when | ||
| + | motor-unicycles are presently propelled by force transmitted (in the | ||
| + | same way as Marconi& | ||
| + | difficulty of flight will be within sight of an easy solution. Any | ||
| + | competent mechanician of the present day could design a flying-machine | ||
| + | if the mere weight of the motive appliance could be overcome. When the | ||
| + | motor is fixed on <i lang=" | ||
| + | needs to carry <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | which the source of power wirelessly transmits, flight will be at least | ||
| + | as simple a matter as wireless telegraphy is to-day.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | means of surface-riding ships, propelled, like the flying-machines, | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | and although (as I shall show) it will no longer be necessary to travel | ||
| + | in order to & | ||
| + | pleasure of being present at the actual events of life in different | ||
| + | countries will probably never pall. So long as any parts of the world | ||
| + | remain comparatively unfamiliar, young men and maidens will love | ||
| + | travel. When it is possible, wrapped in warm woollens and provided with | ||
| + | portable heating-appliances, | ||
| + | and enjoy the matchless spectacle of the Aurora Borealis amid the | ||
| + | awe-compelling obscurities of the Polar night: when, with even less | ||
| + | inconvenience, | ||
| + | unchangeable processes of Nature& | ||
| + | immutable conservatism of the East, the new leisure of the coming time | ||
| + | will have great stores of recreation for those happy enough to live in | ||
| + | the dawning twenty-first century.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | age will be much subserved by one <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | rudiments already exist. By means of the phonograph we are able, not | ||
| + | very perfectly, to reproduce as often as we desire sounds created in | ||
| + | favourable circumstances. By various kinds of kinetoscope we can | ||
| + | reproduce a rudimentary sort of picture of an event which has taken | ||
| + | place in a good light. But when the phonograph has been developed, when | ||
| + | moving pictures have been perfected, what a vast implement of amusement | ||
| + | may be foreseen! Each of these inventions is comparatively new. If we | ||
| + | imagine the discovery of means, developed from the phonograph, by which | ||
| + | any sounds which have once existed in the presence of a recording | ||
| + | machine can be reproduced at will, not in a makeshift sort of way, but | ||
| + | without any loss of <i lang=" | ||
| + | articulation where articulation is necessary, with exactly correct | ||
| + | time-regulation automatically determined by the first enunciation, | ||
| + | all this cheaply and compendiously, | ||
| + | enjoyment are offered to the lover of music! How many people, denied | ||
| + | the pleasure of learning to understand good music by the difficulties | ||
| + | and exertion attendant upon our infrequent and expensive concerts, will | ||
| + | become true lovers and appreciators of it! For music is only to be | ||
| + | really enjoyed by the average man when it is repeatedly heard, | ||
| + | repeatedly considered. Certainly the people of the <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | will be epicures of the emotions which comprehended music is so nobly | ||
| + | capable of stirring.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | satisfactory way than we have been able to solve as yet, the problem of | ||
| + | chromatic photography. When colour influences photographic plates or | ||
| + | some contrivance substituted for them, not indirectly by a mechanical | ||
| + | sorting-out of tints, but by affecting directly the optical properties | ||
| + | of the plates or whatever may succeed plates, we shall have | ||
| + | marvellously accurate pictures.< | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | exhibited under various unpleasing names, is imperfect in two ways: | ||
| + | first because it is powerless to reproduce colour, and secondly because | ||
| + | it gives at best a mere magic-lantern picture violently out of focus, | ||
| + | and by its pulsatory motion horribly distressing to the eyes. Chromatic | ||
| + | photography will overcome the former difficulty. When we find out how | ||
| + | to increase greatly the receptive rapidity of photographic emulsion | ||
| + | without spoiling what photographers call the & | ||
| + | or when we have improved, as we every year are improving, <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | optical qualities of lenses, we shall be able to have our pictures in | ||
| + | focus. The distressing flicker of moving pictures is an objection | ||
| + | purely mechanical in its cause. But when, as they will be in a few | ||
| + | years, all these objections except the first have been removed, and | ||
| + | even when we have colour-photography in a true sense of the word, there | ||
| + | will still remain one field to conquer. We must have, instead of moving | ||
| + | pictures, something which represents all objects as solid. The | ||
| + | difference is the difference between an ordinary photograph and a | ||
| + | highly-improved stereoscopic picture magnified to life-size. When these | ||
| + | advantages are attained it will be possible to represent, exactly as it | ||
| + | happened, any event which has been suitably photographed.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | will be at once perceived. Imagine the theatre of the future. Probably | ||
| + | it will not be beyond the means of the rich, even when restrained from | ||
| + | over-possession as it is evident that they must be, to have | ||
| + | theatre-rooms in their own houses. But the masses will no doubt go to | ||
| + | the theatre much as they do now. Only instead of seeing a company of | ||
| + | actors and actresses, more or less mediocre, engaged in the degrading | ||
| + | task of repeating time after time the same words, the same gestures, | ||
| + | the same actions, they will see the performance of a complete | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | best, reproduced as often as it may be wanted, the perfected | ||
| + | kinetoscope exhibiting the spectacle of the stage, the talking machine | ||
| + | and the phonograph (doubtless differentiated) rendering perfectly the | ||
| + | voices of the actors and the music of the orchestra. There will be no | ||
| + | need for the employment of inferior actors in the small parts. As the | ||
| + | production of any play will only demand that it be worked up to the | ||
| + | point of perfection and then performed once, there will be no | ||
| + | difficulty in securing the most perfect rendering that it is capable | ||
| + | of. The actor& | ||
| + | relief from the drudgery of repeated performance and by the leisure | ||
| + | thus afforded him for study and reflection, but also by the removal of | ||
| + | what is keenly felt by all players of sensibility and ambition as one | ||
| + | of the greatest drawbacks of the stage. We are accustomed to the | ||
| + | actor& | ||
| + | painter, the composer of music, makes for himself a fame imperishable | ||
| + | as the products of his art, the actor frets his hour and disappears | ||
| + | from the stage, to be promptly forgotten by an ungrateful public. Well, | ||
| + | the actor& | ||
| + | have the endowment of permanency. And there will be a magnificent | ||
| + | opportunity for the actor as artist, in that he will be able to compare | ||
| + | himself and his fellows with the actors who are dead and can act no | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | greatest actor since Garrick, but who can prove it? The actor& | ||
| + | art is transient to-day: it will be permanent, it will be classical, in | ||
| + | the next century. By this fact not only will the pleasures of the | ||
| + | theatre be made cheap, convenient and varied, but the art of the | ||
| + | theatre will be vastly improved.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | mechanical, parrotlike repetition, so the indifferent maidens of the | ||
| + | new age will have no need to waste their time in learning to play upon | ||
| + | musical instruments more or less imperfectly. No doubt some who are not | ||
| + | professional musicians will do so for their own pleasure. But the | ||
| + | professional executant himself will cease, like the actor, to rank as a | ||
| + | sort of superior harlequin or performing animal, exhibiting his powers | ||
| + | for the diversion of an assembled public. What he has once played can, | ||
| + | if he choose, be constantly repeated. The executant will be paid by a | ||
| + | royalty on each reproduction, | ||
| + | will sell their records for a lump sum, just as the unthrifty author | ||
| + | sells his copyrights. But let it be noted that, on the assumption that | ||
| + | the reproduction is perfect, the evolution above predicted is a highly | ||
| + | artistic one. Instead of the executant or singer being judged by his | ||
| + | performance on an occasion when fatigue, illness or unfavourable | ||
| + | circumstances <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | nerve-shattering conditions of the platform probably in any case offend | ||
| + | his susceptibilities and detract from the perfection of his | ||
| + | performance, | ||
| + | performance he is capable of. He will be able to try and try again in | ||
| + | the privacy of his study. When he has satisfied himself, and then | ||
| + | alone, will he publish his artistic effort to the world. He can destroy | ||
| + | as many unsatisfactory records as he pleases, just as the sculptor can | ||
| + | break up his clay when he has not succeeded, just as the painter can | ||
| + | paint out his picture when it has not pleased him, and be judged only | ||
| + | by his best.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | mankind to suppose that the pleasures of the new age will be limited to | ||
| + | a mere mechanical development of those which we enjoy at present. There | ||
| + | can be no doubt that new delights will be invented. With a general | ||
| + | improvement in intelligence and in the standard of comfort; with a | ||
| + | moneyed class compelled, by the enactments which we have imagined, to | ||
| + | enjoy a considerable accession of leisure; with conditions which will, | ||
| + | as we have hoped, reduce materially the necessary hours of labour for | ||
| + | the worker; with some of the most engrossing amusements of the present | ||
| + | age abolished for sentimental reasons; we may take it for granted that | ||
| + | a great demand for <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | considerations might easily give us pause. We might perhaps fear that | ||
| + | vice& | ||
| + | possible) the invention of new ones& | ||
| + | of the next century, if we had not foreseen, concurrently with the | ||
| + | other developments anticipated, | ||
| + | nature. There is in the calculations of the pessimist and the | ||
| + | reactionary no fallacy more mischievous than the oft-recited aphorism | ||
| + | that human nature is the same in all places and at all times. That is | ||
| + | precisely what human nature is not. Spectacles which delighted ancient | ||
| + | Rome would revolt modern civilisation. Spectacles which are still | ||
| + | keenly enjoyed in Spain would revolt England or the United States, and | ||
| + | probably awaken the activity of the police. Human morality has | ||
| + | demonstrably advanced in historic time: it has very perceptibly | ||
| + | advanced, as I showed in an earlier chapter,< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | nineteenth century. But the improvement in this respect which the next | ||
| + | hundred years will show must, in all human probability, | ||
| + | that of the past time. And thus, though a sane and reasonable | ||
| + | anticipation will not exclude the possibility of regrettable accidents | ||
| + | in the future moral history of mankind, it will also regard them as | ||
| + | probably transient. The vices regarded <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | complicated civilisations have perhaps been too hastily considered by | ||
| + | despairing moralists. Vice is essentially stupid. It is only in | ||
| + | occasional, in sporadic instances that we are presented with the | ||
| + | terrible spectacle of great intelligences depraved by gross immorality | ||
| + | and animalism: and even then, this combination is only possible where a | ||
| + | high degree of culture is in contact with a widespread unintelligence. | ||
| + | Most likely it will be found, when the abstract laws of vice come to be | ||
| + | mapped out with more exactness than, so far as I am aware, they have | ||
| + | yet been, that the degeneracies and immoralities of greatly-civilised | ||
| + | ages are in reality only the product of luxury seated upon degradation. | ||
| + | The French moralists of the eighteenth century had a glimmering of this | ||
| + | in their idyllic pictures of reformed society, when the old morality of | ||
| + | the simple life was to return with the abolition of oligarchic | ||
| + | splendour and popular misery.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | recreation may be supposed capable of vast developments. Already the | ||
| + | study of the psychical side of man has been the means of extraordinary | ||
| + | discoveries. Our knowledge of hypnotism, suggestion, | ||
| + | thought-transference and similar psychological wonders, obscured though | ||
| + | it has unhappily been by charlatanism and the importation into the | ||
| + | subject of irrelevant follies, has great promise <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | future man, whose psychical faculties will unquestionably develop at | ||
| + | the expense of his animal instincts. It is hardly possible to limit our | ||
| + | conception of the means by which thought will be communicated in the | ||
| + | next century, but we may see just where the change will probably come. | ||
| + | A printed essay, such as this, is obviously a successive translation of | ||
| + | thought into words (in the brain), then of the words into letters, and | ||
| + | then of letters into type, which is picked up by the eye, retranslated | ||
| + | into words by one part of the brain, and finally transmuted into | ||
| + | thought again in another part. If some method can be discovered of | ||
| + | abolishing one or more of these processes, thought can be conveyed from | ||
| + | brain to brain at an enormously increased pace, and with a delicacy of | ||
| + | which we have no present conception. This development is not so | ||
| + | inconceivable as it at first appears. We know as yet almost nothing of | ||
| + | the processes by which (for instance) vibration, accepted by the ear as | ||
| + | sound, is, in the brain-cells behind the ear, converted into thought. | ||
| + | Speech and writing are purely conventional devices. If, instead of | ||
| + | using these conventions, | ||
| + | from brain to brain, the next step may be an extraordinary development | ||
| + | of intellectual pleasures, in the case of those individuals whose | ||
| + | tastes are capable of thus being ministered to. But to say this is not | ||
| + | to imply <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | intercommunication will be dispensed with. For most occasions, and for | ||
| + | all but the subtlest and most refined necessities of thought, no doubt | ||
| + | books, newspapers and letters will remain a feature of everyday | ||
| + | life& | ||
| + | the century will have called forth. The future of the newspaper in | ||
| + | particular is a subject of such great importance that it requires to be | ||
| + | discussed in detail. <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | course in the artistic sense of the word; nor is the supersession of | ||
| + | art by optical process in the least contemplated here. The | ||
| + | psychological interest of art will have appreciators more and more | ||
| + | numerous in virtue of the diffusion of culture confidently | ||
| + | anticipated.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | NEWSPAPER</ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | manageable conjecture, any attempt to follow up the suggestion with | ||
| + | which the previous chapter concluded, we can very easily imagine the | ||
| + | lines on which newspapers such as we know are likely to develop | ||
| + | mechanically. A number of processes already existing in embryo can be | ||
| + | shown to be capable of very great extension; and several discoveries | ||
| + | which an intelligent anticipation is capable of predicting could, and | ||
| + | doubtless will, be applied to journalism.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | called the editorial side is a much more difficult task, because we | ||
| + | have here to take into account the influence of the developed and | ||
| + | rationalised education of the people, which is certain to demand very | ||
| + | great changes. Daily newspapers of the present moment are in a more or | ||
| + | less transitional state. It can hardly, I think, be denied that the | ||
| + | papers which enjoy the greatest popularity exhibit retrogression in | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | newspapers of twenty-five years ago. But they are much more widely and | ||
| + | popularly read. The collective influence of their largely-extended | ||
| + | circulations is no doubt very great, though the influence of the | ||
| + | newspaper on the individual is less, and is attained in a different | ||
| + | way. The old newspapers aimed, and the survivors of their class still | ||
| + | aim, at an influence based on argument. They used to report events, | ||
| + | speeches and movements of their age more or less colourlessly, | ||
| + | comment upon these things more or less one-sidedly, | ||
| + | respective political bias. They were ponderous, cultured, dignified, | ||
| + | and a trifle dull. When an adverse statesman made a speech which they | ||
| + | did not like, they reported it faithfully, and tore it to pieces in the | ||
| + | formidable middle pages. The leading article was their most important | ||
| + | weapon: they sought their chief effect by its means. But the day of the | ||
| + | leading article is nearly ended. The newspaper of the | ||
| + | early& | ||
| + | dispense with leading articles altogether, and be much more a | ||
| + | news-carrier than an educator. It will attack adverse opinion by simply | ||
| + | not reporting it. It will sometimes, no doubt, minimise facts | ||
| + | unfavourable to its political side by garbling them. But leading | ||
| + | articles had a useful function not yet mentioned& | ||
| + | explaining the news-columns. <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | intelligent) newspaper-reader was likely to have forgotten, or to be | ||
| + | ignorant of, were (and still are, where leading articles worthy of the | ||
| + | name exist) explained and amplified. In the newspaper of the future, | ||
| + | little paragraphs having the same purpose will no doubt be, as they | ||
| + | already begin to be, tacked on to the ends of news-items: and so far as | ||
| + | comment continues to be given at all, on such matters as political | ||
| + | speeches from the enemy, it will be given in this form. Speeches from | ||
| + | the newspaper& | ||
| + | space will have too many demands upon it to permit of a | ||
| + | statesman& | ||
| + | (actual < | ||
| + | marshalled forth all over again in editorials. Whatever attempt is made | ||
| + | to influence opinion through political reporting will be made by | ||
| + | selective processes. The arguments of the adversary will be simply | ||
| + | suppressed.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | intelligent affair than the popular dailies of the present | ||
| + | decade& | ||
| + | speaking& | ||
| + | It is a curious feature of all progress, that however much an existing | ||
| + | institution may be perceived to be retrograde in comparison with older | ||
| + | institutions, | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | and modify what we have. We do not revive what we have lost. And the | ||
| + | regeneration of the newspaper will be forced upon the newspaper-office | ||
| + | by the development of public intelligence. Comment will probably during | ||
| + | the next few decades be eliminated from daily journalism altogether, | ||
| + | and confined to serious weekly publications, | ||
| + | our monthly reviews, and to other publications summarising the latter, | ||
| + | like the present < | ||
| + | periodical now being issued, with the single exception of < | ||
| + | Times</ | ||
| + | propagation of news, correctly so called: and very likely it will | ||
| + | become almost entirely colourless, politically, | ||
| + | public will resent obvious garbling or clearly unfair selection. The | ||
| + | newspaper reader will no longer (as now) want only to hear what is said | ||
| + | on a side more or less emotionally and hardly at all reflectively | ||
| + | embraced. He will want to know what is said on < | ||
| + | will make up his own mind, instead of swallowing whole the printed | ||
| + | opinions, real or momentarily assumed, of other people. Thus, though | ||
| + | the frantic popular paper of to-day will no doubt increase and | ||
| + | multiply, and replenish its circulation books, as long as the present | ||
| + | system of blind half-education survives, the newspaper which satisfies | ||
| + | the new age will be a very different <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | discard many of the trivialities now reported as news, when a black | ||
| + | woman of Timbuctoo could hardly bring forth four piccaninnies at a | ||
| + | birth without the fact getting into the halfpenny London papers; but it | ||
| + | will record the really important news in ways far more graphic, and | ||
| + | with a far more complete appeal to the imagination, | ||
| + | any but the vaguest notion of.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | will probably be news as to developments of public opinion. It is | ||
| + | hardly conceivable that exactly the methods of Government which exist | ||
| + | at present will satisfy the developed consciousness of the new time: | ||
| + | and most likely the methods then adopted for the ascertainment of | ||
| + | public opinion, and the machinery devised for giving it administrative | ||
| + | effect, will create subject-matter for a type of journalism of which | ||
| + | the very perceptible rudiments, though still nothing but the rudiments, | ||
| + | already exist. If I am right in expecting great results to flow from | ||
| + | new ideas and practice in our educational system, it is certain that | ||
| + | the notion of political freedom will greatly extend its effect: and the | ||
| + | unavoidable corollary is that movements of public thought will become a | ||
| + | matter of the very keenest journalistic interest and of the very | ||
| + | highest journalistic importance. The most probable means to be adopted | ||
| + | for giving effect, in the <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | developed public feeling must be left for discussion in a later | ||
| + | chapter: but when we perceive that the political duty of executing the | ||
| + | will of the people must constitute the paramount work of the | ||
| + | constitution-builder in the latter half of the present century, we | ||
| + | cannot fail to deduce a vast effect on newspapers.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | clearer thinking. We shall very likely amend our political institutions | ||
| + | after the characteristic English manner, which is perhaps really the | ||
| + | safest, though it rather suggest the methods of a cobbler who repairs a | ||
| + | boot by, from time to time, successively replacing sole, vamp, golosh | ||
| + | and upper, until there remains a boot which is not a new boot, though | ||
| + | it contains none of the original boot& | ||
| + | constitution has been built (to employ a better similitude) by a series | ||
| + | of architects who reconstruct and repair the old building, with a | ||
| + | constant adhesion to as much of the old style as they can retain, and | ||
| + | who will in the end present the people with a house entirely | ||
| + | reconstructed, | ||
| + | already begin to perceive that what is regarded as political freedom at | ||
| + | the present day has developed from the entire tyranny of absolute | ||
| + | monarchy, through the modified tyranny of limited monarchies, still not | ||
| + | wholly powerless, to the nearly <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | The last now begin to delegate powers to local councils having | ||
| + | administrative functions, and must presently delegate them to local | ||
| + | parliaments having legislative functions on some | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | decentralisation is liked, but because the intolerable inconveniences | ||
| + | of centralisation will make decentralisation inevitable. The more | ||
| + | energetic propagandists of various systems of constitutional reform | ||
| + | nearly all agree in one respect: they all desire to set up some new | ||
| + | kind of tyranny. Few& | ||
| + | suffer from the opprobrium brought upon the name of anarchists by quite | ||
| + | a different set of thinkers& | ||
| + | sort of machinery resting on the shifting will of a majority tends very | ||
| + | little towards freedom and not at all towards stability& | ||
| + | latter even more important in some respects than the former. In | ||
| + | proportion to the development of education (in nature even more than in | ||
| + | extent), it is likely that the present blind faith of the public in the | ||
| + | ability of the State to do almost anything, and the still blinder | ||
| + | tendency of the public to require the State to do all sorts of things | ||
| + | which could be better accomplished otherwise, will diminish, and we | ||
| + | shall perceive the enormous educational disadvantage of allowing the | ||
| + | citizen to lean too heavily on the <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | sufficiently educated will, with enormous difficulty (because there is | ||
| + | nothing so hard to get rid of as a bad habit of dependency), | ||
| + | undertake the task of doing for itself by free combination what at | ||
| + | present we try to get done for us by governmental machinery. One sees | ||
| + | how this sort of thing is gradually evolving, in spite of the violent | ||
| + | efforts of politicians to shove the world backwards and keep us walking | ||
| + | on crutches instead of strengthening us to walk alone. Statutes | ||
| + | determining the wages of labourers and the price of commodities are | ||
| + | laughed at as examples of medi& | ||
| + | exactly the same thing in principle) Government still interferes with | ||
| + | the freights charged by railway companies, and indeed is obliged thus | ||
| + | to interfere because it has already gone out of the right way by the | ||
| + | powers it has granted to railway companies. The new education& | ||
| + | education which builds character instead of merely diffusing | ||
| + | information (generally useless)& | ||
| + | advantages attaching to results attained by free combination, | ||
| + | State will be relieved of many functions at present regarded as | ||
| + | essential to it, and often sought to be increased.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | of these results would be almost impossible without the constant | ||
| + | interchange <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | careful newsgathering as to the progress in detail of various schemes | ||
| + | and of public opinion concerning them.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | important class of news is not to imply that the public will develop an | ||
| + | unintelligent indifference to news of other kind, though it is | ||
| + | allowable to hope that it will develop an intelligent indifference to | ||
| + | the trivialities at present solemnly chronicled by the popular papers. | ||
| + | It may be doubted whether, even now, the public is quite so | ||
| + | passionately interested in the < | ||
| + | editors imagine: but with invention steadily moving on, and its | ||
| + | consequences habitually developing in unexpected ways, there will be | ||
| + | plenty of & | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | most expensive and the most helpful to a daily paper& | ||
| + | individual & | ||
| + | done with by the end of this century. Remembering the rate of progress | ||
| + | foreseen in the early part of this work<a class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | nature of that progress, we may take it as quite certain that war as an | ||
| + | institution will be as obsolete as gladiators in the year 2000. Even if | ||
| + | the increasing amenity of the human race did not <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | war, two other things would be certain to do so. One is the enormous | ||
| + | development, | ||
| + | other the revolt of the peoples against the stupendous cost, not merely | ||
| + | or chiefly in time of war, but also in time of peace, of modern | ||
| + | armaments. The rising tide of educated democracy must inevitably banish | ||
| + | war. We have lately, in our own South African experience, seen how | ||
| + | crushingly expensive, how intolerably impoverishing, | ||
| + | and all this is a mere trifle compared with what it had cost us to be | ||
| + | even very ill-prepared for even such an insignificant combat. This kind | ||
| + | of thing cannot go on for very long and the peace of Dives<a class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | must soon be upon us.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | that the newspapers will have to sacrifice many of the advantages which | ||
| + | they at present derive from the intense popular appetite for the | ||
| + | details of organised death. The war-correspondent, | ||
| + | telegraph, is a great nuisance to commanders in the field, and the | ||
| + | increasing difficulties and importance of modern combat will have the | ||
| + | effect, eventually, of causing generals to forbid telegraphic | ||
| + | communication from the field or its neighbourhood altogether, on | ||
| + | account of the information, | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Consequently< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | censorship, and will take the form chiefly of written and photographic | ||
| + | descriptions, | ||
| + | organisation controlled by the fighting army itself. These may perhaps | ||
| + | be telegraphed to the newspaper office from some intermediate port when | ||
| + | the theatre of war is distant& | ||
| + | very long, be able to telegraph pictures quite as easily as words. And | ||
| + | this brings us face to face with one of the most interesting and | ||
| + | important developments to be looked for in the vending of news. Beyond | ||
| + | doubt, newspaper illustration will, in even the near future, be the | ||
| + | subject of great and, in fact, of revolutionary improvement. Every | ||
| + | daily paper will be copiously illustrated, | ||
| + | It is easy to foresee that before many years we shall be <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | photograph any object or scene in its natural colours at one operation. | ||
| + | We can already do so in three, and by the same number of machinings we | ||
| + | can reproduce such pictures in print, provided we can afford to print | ||
| + | slowly enough and on a sufficiently smooth paper. The process is in its | ||
| + | earliest infancy as yet. We shall ultimately make it far more | ||
| + | practicable. But even so, printing presses of the present sort are far | ||
| + | too slow for newspaper use. A hundred years hence magazines and weekly | ||
| + | periodicals may perhaps still be printed on greatly improved presses; | ||
| + | but daily papers will be produced by photography alone. Already the | ||
| + | R& | ||
| + | superimposed sensitive papers. In the next century all that will be | ||
| + | necessary in order to multiply type-matter and illustrations in any | ||
| + | number of colours will be to place the original on a pile of paper and | ||
| + | expose it to the rays of some source of energy, when the whole matter | ||
| + | will be impressed upon every sheet, and this not by any mere contact of | ||
| + | type and process-blocks with paper (which involves serious | ||
| + | difficulties, | ||
| + | grain of the etched & | ||
| + | light, or of some influence taking the place of light, so that | ||
| + | perfectly clear pictures will be produced. And news of all sorts will | ||
| + | be the subject of this kind of illustration. <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | teleautoscope< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | telegraphed) will exhibit the actual facts in every newspaper office | ||
| + | from colour-photographs taken on the spot. What it shows will be | ||
| + | rephotographed and reproduced in colours.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | much diminished. Where an event can be long anticipated& | ||
| + | is an event like the Delhi Durbar or the christening of the Czarewitch, | ||
| + | for instance& | ||
| + | perfect results published. And difficulties of merely photographic | ||
| + | detail, which at present restrict rapid photography to events in full | ||
| + | sunlight, having been overcome, and instantaneous photography by | ||
| + | artificial light having been made possible, such an event as an | ||
| + | important theatrical production in London will be pictorially reported | ||
| + | in the New York and San Francisco papers next morning. Where an event | ||
| + | is of an unexpected character& | ||
| + | some sudden cataclysm of Nature& | ||
| + | employed with great advantage. Take, for instance, the case of some | ||
| + | large public building or some theatre destroyed by fire& | ||
| + | fires will not be so frequent in the new age as they are to-day. The | ||
| + | local newspaper artists will select from <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | photographs of the building kept on hand for such occasions and get to | ||
| + | work on them with paint-box and colours, depicting the progress of what | ||
| + | they will perhaps still cling sufficiently to tradition to call the | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | it is not possible to transmit actual photographs of the event. And of | ||
| + | course, when all is over, the ruins will be photographed in colours | ||
| + | from every desirable standpoint, and the descriptive photographer will, | ||
| + | in a great measure, supplant the penny-a-liner. Many pieces of news | ||
| + | will doubtless be photographed from the small one-man air-carriages, | ||
| + | the employment of which, as a means of recreation, we have already | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | be served up with far more vividness than even the most feverish | ||
| + | present-day journalism dreams of, and the newspaper will be far more | ||
| + | quickly & | ||
| + | gone out of fashion, and a series of pictures, occupying much more | ||
| + | space, but apprehended by the mind with far greater rapidity, will | ||
| + | supply their place. Even in what remains of the printed word I think | ||
| + | that great compression is probable. It must be remembered that even in | ||
| + | the best-educated parts of England we are hardly through the | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | read, and already newspaper-English is taking on a character of its | ||
| + | own, very different from the & | ||
| + | old-fashioned reporters. By degrees a sort of slang, distinguished | ||
| + | chiefly by brevity and conciseness, | ||
| + | newspapers, especially those published in large towns& | ||
| + | indeed it is quite evident that in a few years daily newspapers will be | ||
| + | published nowhere else. This terse, quick language will, after a period | ||
| + | of reprobation, | ||
| + | first shocked to tears of indignant printer& | ||
| + | defilement of the mother tongue, and it will accelerate vastly the task | ||
| + | of & | ||
| + | the less hurried manners which I foresee for the future, be made as | ||
| + | speedy as possible by the newspaper that would thrive and increase its | ||
| + | circulation. Thus literature, already restive in an uncongenial | ||
| + | wedlock, will finally obtain divorce from daily journalism. This does | ||
| + | not mean that literature will perish. On the contrary, it will develop. | ||
| + | And the periodicals other than newspapers will excel our own in merit | ||
| + | of every sort. They will be permanent, dignified and, above all, | ||
| + | literary. For with the education of the people really carried to | ||
| + | perfection, and with universal leisure, the result of improved social | ||
| + | arrangements even more <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | shall have a demand for a really intelligent periodical literature, for | ||
| + | really artistic illustrations, | ||
| + | to publish matter that only artificial endowment could support | ||
| + | nowadays.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | new age will still be an age of progress, and the very perfection of | ||
| + | the periodical Press will be the greatest of all stimulants to further | ||
| + | effort.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | greatly ameliorated, | ||
| + | one ground of discontent with the newspaper of the future. They | ||
| + | sometimes are, in the newspaper of to-day, the subject of complaint not | ||
| + | altogether reasonable, because if there were no advertisements there | ||
| + | could be no newspapers. At all events, without this powerful source of | ||
| + | revenue our newspapers could be neither so cheap nor so liberally | ||
| + | conducted as they are; and all the economies of the new age will | ||
| + | probably be insufficient to enable newspaper proprietors to dispense | ||
| + | with them. The better and the more generously-conducted newspapers are, | ||
| + | the more money they spend in the careful collection, editing, printing | ||
| + | and illustrating of public information, | ||
| + | become on the revenue from advertising, | ||
| + | journalism; and the more <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | read, the greater will be the revenue they are able to command from | ||
| + | this source. Moreover, they would be incomplete without this feature. | ||
| + | The unreflecting newspaper-reader, | ||
| + | journal because its weight and bulk are increased by the presence of | ||
| + | advertisements which he does not want, seldom takes into account the | ||
| + | fact that there are plenty of his fellow-readers who do want them, or | ||
| + | some of them, and that he himself is often in the same predicament. | ||
| + | Thousands of copies of newspapers are bought every day in order to | ||
| + | consult advertisements which they are known to contain. A man who | ||
| + | purposes to take his family to a concert often buys < | ||
| + | Telegraph</ | ||
| + | concert announcements in it than any other paper, and that it is in | ||
| + | fact a practically complete directory to all the current musical | ||
| + | opportunities of the Metropolis. Another man, who wants a secretary, or | ||
| + | a steward for his estate, probably orders < | ||
| + | knows that the best class of secretaries and stewards advertise in | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | a supply of coals without looking at the daily paper for information; | ||
| + | and assuredly this information is not inserted without being paid for; | ||
| + | in other words, it forms part of the advertisements. Deprived of | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | its need of clerks, warehousemen, | ||
| + | kinds, commerce, even if it could manage without advertisements of the | ||
| + | sort more commonly thought of when the nuisance of them is being | ||
| + | condemned, could hardly keep up its organisation at all. Thus, so far | ||
| + | from this feature of our newspapers being a grievance, it is both | ||
| + | directly and indirectly a boon to all who read them. And when we | ||
| + | remember in addition that the cost of the paper and printing alone in a | ||
| + | copy of most newspapers exceeds the price at which each copy is sold by | ||
| + | the proprietor, so that the whole cost of newsgathering, | ||
| + | of editing, the fees of contributors and artists, and the cost of | ||
| + | pictures and engraving, as well as the profit which induces persons to | ||
| + | embark upon an enterprise so troublesome and precarious as | ||
| + | newspaper-publishing, | ||
| + | and from this alone, we cannot doubt that the enormously developed | ||
| + | newspaper of a hundred years hence will & | ||
| + | advertisement,& | ||
| + | the intelligence to be very glad that it does so.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | have made a complete forecast of the newspaper of the future unless we | ||
| + | consider what sort of advertisements it will contain, and <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | to do this we must consider just what advertising is likely to be | ||
| + | needed in the new age.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | affected by the mechanical and economic developments of another | ||
| + | century, evidently advertising will have to undergo vast changes in | ||
| + | order to adapt itself to new requirements. Already competition and the | ||
| + | urgent demand of the public for all possible utilities and luxuries to | ||
| + | be supplied with the greatest economy of money and trouble have | ||
| + | produced changes in the machinery of supply and demand which must | ||
| + | develop at an increasing speed as time goes on. One tendency of these | ||
| + | things is current talk; we speak of & | ||
| + | middleman.& | ||
| + | the end of the century, and one of the forces which will help to | ||
| + | eliminate him is the very force with which, at present, he endeavours, | ||
| + | with a high degree of transient success, to defend himself& | ||
| + | very force we have to discuss here; advertisement.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | small towns, and hampered by difficulty and expense in transportation, | ||
| + | there is an evident advantage in the retail-shop system. But we can | ||
| + | hardly with convenience remain a nation of shopkeepers in the present | ||
| + | and future state of concentration and with cheapened transport. It is | ||
| + | only necessary to observe the different ways in which we supply | ||
| + | ourselves with <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | to understand the tendencies at work. In a village remote from any | ||
| + | large town there are generally one or two general shops, at which a | ||
| + | highly miscellaneous collection of merchandise is handled. The smaller | ||
| + | the village the more miscellaneous the stock kept at a single trading | ||
| + | establishment. In a small town the shops differentiate themselves more: | ||
| + | but they still cross the boundary lines of trade, and one gets tobacco | ||
| + | at the chemist& | ||
| + | materials and books. When we come to towns somewhat larger, trades keep | ||
| + | more to themselves, and it is often possible to find a place where | ||
| + | there are no miscellaneous shops at all, except those owned by the | ||
| + | industrial co-operative societies now so common and so useful to the | ||
| + | thriftier artisans. It is only when we enter the largest towns and | ||
| + | cities of all that we find large shops divided into departments and | ||
| + | again selling almost everything under one roof.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | is likely to occur a hundred years hence: because (as has already been | ||
| + | seen) towns will certainly grow, and the population will become more | ||
| + | concentrated, | ||
| + | men to live at a great distance from their work, the same facilities | ||
| + | will enable their wives to do their shopping in the centres of | ||
| + | commerce. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | commodities, | ||
| + | residential neighbourhoods will be driven out of business, as they are | ||
| + | in fact already being driven out of it in the suburbs and dependencies | ||
| + | of all large cities.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | to sell at a smaller percentage of profit than a trader in a single | ||
| + | class of merchandise: | ||
| + | able to start with a lower cost price, and thus he is in every way | ||
| + | better situated to meet the demand for cheapness. He can also meet the | ||
| + | demand for convenience, | ||
| + | trade of a family, even at some little distance, he can afford to | ||
| + | arrange for the transportation of goods in ways convenient to the | ||
| + | purchaser. Thus the small shopkeeper will lose custom in every way and | ||
| + | the large shopkeeper will gain custom. But there is still a middleman. | ||
| + | We have not yet begun to see how he is to be eliminated, but only how | ||
| + | he is to be limited in his numbers while being individually pampered | ||
| + | with increased trade.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | have failed to note how, from both sides, the middleman, | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | large retailers tend more and more to become, little by little, | ||
| + | manufacturers instead of merely agents <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | other people. Very often they are actually forced to this by the | ||
| + | difficulty of obtaining a regular supply of goods of satisfactory | ||
| + | quality from the existing factories. One of the largest companies doing | ||
| + | a miscellaneous retailing business has an enormous estate in the | ||
| + | neighbourhood of London covered with orchards where fruit is grown for | ||
| + | sale and for jam-making; and it has factories of various kinds dotted | ||
| + | all round the Metropolis, though a few years ago it was a simple | ||
| + | trading concern which manufactured nothing. On the other hand, large | ||
| + | manufacturers in many trades (of which the boot trade is an example | ||
| + | which must have come under the notice of every reader) are tending to | ||
| + | open retail shops of their own in favourable localities, so as to | ||
| + | obtain the retailer& | ||
| + | manufacturer& | ||
| + | id=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | are more likely to be extensive advertisers than small one-shop | ||
| + | retailers.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | advertising is already apparent in the growing tendency of the public | ||
| + | to prefer branded or packed commodities before bulk goods. Such | ||
| + | groceries as tea, oatmeal and the like are more and more purchased in | ||
| + | packets bearing a manufacturer& | ||
| + | being purchased from bulk and wrapped up by the grocer. The obvious | ||
| + | reason <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | greater uniformity of quality. She finds that she likes a certain | ||
| + | manufacturer& | ||
| + | whereas if she bought bulk-oatmeal she would have the product now of | ||
| + | one mill, now of another, and these products would vary. The only way | ||
| + | in which a manufacturer can call attention to his speciality is to | ||
| + | advertise it. The immediate consequence of this movement is the | ||
| + | degradation of the retailer, who ceases to be the custodian (so to | ||
| + | speak) of his customers& | ||
| + | of packed specialities. It is not very likely that every manufacturer | ||
| + | of such specialities will become a retailer with shops everywhere; but | ||
| + | it is practically certain that trusts will be formed on a sort of | ||
| + | co-operative principle by combinations of manufacturers, | ||
| + | divide among themselves the expense of organisation and obtain the | ||
| + | whole profit without having to share it with any middleman. And in many | ||
| + | departments of commerce the elimination of the retailer will be secured | ||
| + | by the utilisation of improved transport, orders being received at the | ||
| + | works by letter or telephone and executed direct from manufacturer to | ||
| + | consumer. Such business can only be stimulated through advertisement, | ||
| + | and the newspaper of the future constitutes the most convenient medium | ||
| + | for such advertisement. <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | of the new age will be influenced by the new growth of public | ||
| + | intelligence. Once almost wholly, and now to a very great extent, | ||
| + | addressed to the least intelligent faculties of the public& | ||
| + | faculties most liable to be influenced by large type and <i lang= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | world become gradually more and more intelligent in tone. It will seek | ||
| + | to influence demand by argument instead of clamour, a tendency already | ||
| + | more apparent every year. Cheap attention-calling tricks and clap-trap | ||
| + | will be wholly replaced, as they are already being greatly replaced, by | ||
| + | serious exposition; and advertisements, | ||
| + | repetitions of stale catch-words, | ||
| + | informative, | ||
| + | and it will be just as suicidal for a manufacturer to publish silly or | ||
| + | fallacious claims to notoriety as for a shopkeeper of the present day | ||
| + | to seek custom by telling lies to his customers. Skilful writers will | ||
| + | be employed upon the work, and skilful journalists will think it no | ||
| + | derogation from their dignity to be employed in the writing of | ||
| + | commercial advertisements. No doubt the methods of illustration | ||
| + | employed in journalism proper will also be pressed into the service of | ||
| + | the advertiser, and in this, as in other respects, our & | ||
| + | discontent& | ||
| + | of the future <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | to-day.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | literature is likely to define itself more and more | ||
| + | sharply& | ||
| + | literary& | ||
| + | question of the direction in which literature is likely to | ||
| + | develop& | ||
| + | past of this development, | ||
| + | the close of the eighteenth century, from the classical, through the | ||
| + | romantic, to the realistic school; and the last has been associated | ||
| + | with a greatly-increased and minute consideration of language as an | ||
| + | implement of exact and elegant expression. Literature has become, and | ||
| + | will no doubt continue to be, increasingly self-conscious. Happy | ||
| + | effects are deliberately sought for. Felicity of phrase is no longer a | ||
| + | matter of unconscious, | ||
| + | purposefully and deliberately obtained. We no longer expect inspiration | ||
| + | from the Muses, but climb Parnassus with arduous consciousness of our | ||
| + | meritorious pedestrianism. The methodical, scientific orderliness of | ||
| + | modern thought has, in short, invaded even the field of art, and we | ||
| + | have sometimes an air of trying to make of literature an exact process. | ||
| + | Perhaps very great literature, and certainly, according to all | ||
| + | precedent, very <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | There is something of mystery about them, something of the instinctive, | ||
| + | of the elemental, or, to speak with a more critical exactness, of the | ||
| + | spiritual. And the development and circumstances of very elaborate | ||
| + | civilisation do not wholly favour the spiritual. But to conclude from | ||
| + | this that great poetry will never again be written would be to overlook | ||
| + | one of the disturbing, the cataclysmal factors of human life. This | ||
| + | factor is one of the greatest pitfalls of the would-be prophet. By | ||
| + | examining the past, one could predict almost unfailingly the future, if | ||
| + | there were not always, and in every department of life, the strange, | ||
| + | incalculable thing which, for want of a better name, we call genius, to | ||
| + | be reckoned with, to be almost alarmed by. We may examine, we may | ||
| + | reason, we may reckon up almost anything; but athwart all our | ||
| + | conjectures, | ||
| + | everything! It is the one thing which no formula can embrace. Not in | ||
| + | the realms of literature and art alone will it break in and stultify | ||
| + | our best prevision. In every department of life we must tread | ||
| + | cautiously, aware that no one who would forecast the future can afford | ||
| + | to neglect its disturbing possibilities. We must prayerfully and | ||
| + | joyously expect that from time to time genius will suddenly arrive and | ||
| + | pass across the stage, changing everything, bringing to naught our | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the quality of literature to be thus perturbed and regenerated, | ||
| + | not even attempt to predict what schools the literature of the future | ||
| + | will pass through. The only thing we can be certain of is that from | ||
| + | time to time some epoch-making mind will express itself. Acquainted | ||
| + | with all the devices of the schools it will brush them all aside, and | ||
| + | half unconsciously, | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | methods, and endow the time with new delights. Criticism will dissect, | ||
| + | examine and explain, until the creative mind is almost persuaded that | ||
| + | it has all along understood itself; but the one thing by which | ||
| + | criticism must ever be eluded, the one thing which must ever elude | ||
| + | prophecy, is genius itself. When all is said that man can say, and all | ||
| + | is said in vain, the best explanation of the unexplainable is perhaps | ||
| + | the old one, that genius brings in some way a message from outside the | ||
| + | world. Perhaps, since there is always a demand for something which man | ||
| + | can worship, this inspiration may be the subject of the conscious | ||
| + | adoration of the new age. Perhaps we have here the subject of the | ||
| + | religion of the future; for inspiration, | ||
| + | name this mystery, has just that character of the unknowable | ||
| + | half-seized, | ||
| + | for. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | hardly be disputed that the British generals in the late war in South | ||
| + | Africa would have done well to cut the cables altogether, or at all | ||
| + | events reserve them exclusively for their own use. There is very good | ||
| + | evidence that, in spite of the interdiction of & | ||
| + | messages, information passed both ways between the enemy and his agents | ||
| + | in Europe. The resolute manner in which the Japanese kept newspaper | ||
| + | correspondents away from the scene of action until no action remained | ||
| + | for them to correspond about, shows conclusively what will become of | ||
| + | the war-reporter during the few remaining decades which separate us | ||
| + | from the final disappearance of moribund war itself from the | ||
| + | planet.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | food and certain salts the ocean is to-day almost a dead loss to the | ||
| + | world, and what is worse, the greatest of all obstacles to progress. It | ||
| + | separates us from our kin, wrecks our ships, claims a yearly toll of | ||
| + | dead, and is barren, fruitless, a mere receptacle for garbage. A | ||
| + | hundred years hence we shall have awakened to these facts and found | ||
| + | means to make & | ||
| + | better than a subject for the poet and a resting-place for the dead | ||
| + | whom it murders.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the engineer& | ||
| + | announced that the desert of Sahara lay below the level of the sea and | ||
| + | could be flooded with the Atlantic or Mediterranean. The effect of | ||
| + | this, it was considered, would not merely be to inconvenience certain | ||
| + | Arabs, but to change entirely the climate of the rest of equatorial | ||
| + | Africa. Laved by the beneficent waves of ocean, lands at present | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | fertile and salubrious. The project was dismissed or shelved as | ||
| + | impracticable from engineering difficulties. Shall we, a hundred years | ||
| + | hence, have met these difficulties?</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | of land and water will be a thing not indeed beyond the power of the | ||
| + | next century& | ||
| + | accomplishment of them might, if at all rapid, be attended by frightful | ||
| + | disasters, some of which can be readily estimated, but of which the | ||
| + | worst would probably remain unforeseen and unimagined until the | ||
| + | irrevocable moment of fulfilment. To increase to this extent the area | ||
| + | of the world& | ||
| + | not increase) their mass, would perceptibly lower the level of the sea | ||
| + | everywhere, and in accordance with the well-known hydrostatic law | ||
| + | things would & | ||
| + | Every narrow strait in the world, every oceanic canal would become, for | ||
| + | the time being, a roaring cataract. The Mediterranean would rush | ||
| + | tumultuously out through the Straits of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, | ||
| + | and the overflow would flood the adjacent lands. The Straits of Dover | ||
| + | would roar like Niagara, and all Kent, and the low-lying north-east | ||
| + | corner of France, would be devastated. The isthmus of Panama might at | ||
| + | the same time be swept away, for the narrow <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the completed Panama Canal would certainly give way before the weight | ||
| + | of the two oceans. All the rivers of the world would rush down in spate | ||
| + | until they ran nearly dry from the increased outfall. The sea would | ||
| + | recede from all the coasts. Along with this fall in the level of the | ||
| + | sea would come tempests such as, since the appearance of man on the | ||
| + | planet, the world has never known. For the sea-supported atmosphere | ||
| + | would suck into its vacuum the whole weight of the over-lying air until | ||
| + | pressure was equalised. And the climate of all the world would be | ||
| + | reconstituted in new and probably inconvenient ways.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | creation. What we can and shall do is to make the best of it. In a | ||
| + | hundred years& | ||
| + | rich and populous. Canada, for one example, has an area greater than | ||
| + | that of the United States, with a population smaller than the | ||
| + | population of Greater London. And Canada, endowed as it is with almost | ||
| + | every source of wealth, will before long become perhaps the richest | ||
| + | country in the world. By this time next century it will also be one of | ||
| + | the most populous. Siberia, again, with many fertile and salubrious | ||
| + | tracts, will certainly have been more intelligently utilised than by | ||
| + | making a vast prison of it. But when all the regions available for | ||
| + | human habitation are populated <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | civilisation will probably lie very much where they lie now; and here | ||
| + | the congested populations will have found that they can no longer | ||
| + | tolerate the waste of a neglected ocean. As we push outward from the | ||
| + | centre of the continents, the seaboard will have to be utilised and | ||
| + | extended. There is nothing to daunt the engineers of a hundred years | ||
| + | hence in the project of erecting on the sea a vast floating city, fully | ||
| + | as convenient as the present cities of <i lang=" | ||
| + | and, while vastly more healthful, quite substantial enough to resist | ||
| + | storm and every motion of the sea, except the tides on which the city | ||
| + | will rise and fall& | ||
| + | power of many conveniences in ocean cities.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | compared with those we at present inhabit; and we certainly shall not | ||
| + | be able to neglect them. There will be no particular reason for economy | ||
| + | of space or for insalubrious overcrowding (since the sea has no | ||
| + | landlord), and breadth would make for stability as well as for | ||
| + | convenience. Urban traffic will employ an entirely new light vehicle, | ||
| + | the skimmer. It has been mentioned as a thing beyond doubt that the | ||
| + | ships of a hundred years hence will no longer float in the sea, but | ||
| + | ride on its surface, thus evading both the instability and the | ||
| + | resistance at present so troublesome to <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | as the necessity arises for providing street traffic in the ocean | ||
| + | city& | ||
| + | ebbing and flowing, and the salt weed clings to the marble of her | ||
| + | palaces& | ||
| + | waggons and carriages will everywhere glide about, performing the daily | ||
| + | needs of the inhabitants. Something in the nature of break-waters will | ||
| + | provide against wave-play and form an unequalled exterior boulevard; | ||
| + | and by means of an invention which will long since have been called for | ||
| + | by the requirements of other localities, the air of dwelling-houses in | ||
| + | the ocean city will be wholesomely freed from damp.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | knowledge of the fact that irregularities in the proportion of | ||
| + | atmospheric moisture are responsible for the unhealthiness of certain | ||
| + | areas; and we shall have learned, by means of the anhydrator, to | ||
| + | provide any place with exactly the degree of damp or dryness necessary | ||
| + | to health. The same apparatus, by desiccating the air to the extreme | ||
| + | point, will keep the houses of an ocean city dry and thus do away with | ||
| + | an objection which would make homes built on the water insufferable | ||
| + | to-day.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | system of land tenure, the <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | unquestionably relieve the tension which is created by it, and perhaps | ||
| + | a radical change of this character will only become possible when the | ||
| + | enormous advantages of it have been practically exemplified.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | ought to prove a great economic boon to the world. Except in the case | ||
| + | of a few coal mines, with shafts sunk near the sea beach, we have | ||
| + | hardly at all begun to investigate the contents of the ocean floor. | ||
| + | There is, so far as I am aware, no particular reason to doubt that the | ||
| + | constitution of the subterranean world is in most respects very much | ||
| + | the same under the sea as under the land. Probably vast riches, as yet | ||
| + | undreamed of, lie below the surface of the ocean and beneath its floor. | ||
| + | There can be no question that the needs of the world will make us eager | ||
| + | to tap them, as we should already have begun to, if any way could be | ||
| + | discovered of overcoming the engineering difficulties involved. These | ||
| + | difficulties, | ||
| + | stoutest imagination. The problem presented by the immense and | ||
| + | paralysing air pressure in a mine at this great depth would have to be | ||
| + | overcome. Even in some great terrestrial excavations already made the | ||
| + | problem occurs: and where (as in river tunnels and elsewhere) men | ||
| + | attempt to work in great air-pressures <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the phenomenon called caisson-disease occasions practical difficulty. | ||
| + | But the mere fact of an achievement being almost inconceivable in the | ||
| + | light of present knowledge and invention must not be allowed to put a | ||
| + | clog upon a forecast of what next century may attain. It is a | ||
| + | hypothesis which the reader has been invited to accept, not merely that | ||
| + | discovery and invention will go on, but that they will go at a | ||
| + | constantly-increasing pace. We must not, therefore, allow what may well | ||
| + | seem, at the present day, insuperable engineering difficulties to | ||
| + | forbid the belief that the undiscovered wealth of the earth below the | ||
| + | sea will be tapped for the benefit of the new age. What minerals may | ||
| + | lie there, a rich heirloom for the coming time, we can but roughly | ||
| + | imagine. But enterprise and the world& | ||
| + | on to search them out, until the new people, deriving like a fresh | ||
| + | Ant& | ||
| + | into possessions which must vastly relieve their necessities. | ||
| + | Individual enterprise will solve the problems and reap its store of | ||
| + | profits. But the ocean is no-man& | ||
| + | people& | ||
| + | subdivided into antagonistic communities& | ||
| + | toll, for the relief of general taxation, from the earnings of the new | ||
| + | mineralogy. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | We shall get our salt from it, the process of separation being | ||
| + | electrolytic. Fish will probably be eaten later than any other form of | ||
| + | animal food. But the chief gift of the sea to the life of the future | ||
| + | will be the two gases of which water is composed& | ||
| + | hydrogen: and the other gas, chlorine, which forms half the salt, as | ||
| + | well as the metal sodium which forms the other half, will probably have | ||
| + | many new uses found for them. Liquefied oxygen will no doubt be our | ||
| + | sole disinfectant. It will also replace the poisonous, noisome and | ||
| + | destructive bleaching agents used to-day. Hydrogen, the lightest of all | ||
| + | gases, will be another staple of commerce. It will (as we have | ||
| + | elsewhere seen) probably be the only fuel employed, for its combustion | ||
| + | furnishes the greatest heat terrestrially known, and its flame is | ||
| + | smokeless and yields no poisonous by-product. Moreover, the evaporation | ||
| + | of liquid hydrogen, by a sort of curious revenge, produces the greatest | ||
| + | available cold. If anything in the nature of balloons should survive | ||
| + | the century hydrogen will inflate them, and both our hydrogen and our | ||
| + | oxygen will most likely be got by preference from the sea. There are | ||
| + | many reasons for this preference. Probably there will be some advantage | ||
| + | in the matter of expense, since the salts of ocean water would be a | ||
| + | by-product of the operation, <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | may be found for the rarer among them, which could only be obtained in | ||
| + | satisfactory quantities by reducing to dryness huge amounts of water. | ||
| + | And potable or spring waters will perhaps be too precious a commodity | ||
| + | to be consumed unnecessarily. Distilled water could no doubt be used | ||
| + | for drinking purposes, and bacteriologically it is of course | ||
| + | unexceptionable; | ||
| + | these may doubtless be overcome, natural waters have a value which | ||
| + | cannot be ignored.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | deserts, useful to hardly a calculable percentage of the people (and | ||
| + | then only at the expense of the rest) will have become the | ||
| + | world& | ||
| + | time& | ||
| + | begins to be exhausted. For that time must come. We are living upon the | ||
| + | hoards which the womb of our mother the earth has borne to our father | ||
| + | the sun. But our mother is, in respect at all events of mineral wealth, | ||
| + | past the age of conception; and every century brings us more rapidly | ||
| + | near to the time when we shall, like spendthrifts, | ||
| + | capital. Already the end of coal is in sight. When, at the end of a | ||
| + | vista however long, we begin to be able to foresee the exhaustion of | ||
| + | other minerals, we shall face a problem appalling in <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | nature. Perhaps before our store of heat gives out and reduces earth to | ||
| + | the state of a dead world like the moon, we shall already have | ||
| + | exhausted our stock. No economies in the use of scrap metal and the | ||
| + | re-employment of the material of machines which have been superseded | ||
| + | can save us from ultimate metallic bankruptcy in a future calculated | ||
| + | perhaps in thousands (but not many thousands) of years. Our only | ||
| + | succour seems to lie in a conception for which (despite the efforts of | ||
| + | some lively thinkers who have been obliged to ignore all but the least | ||
| + | important difficulties of the subject) we have no material& | ||
| + | conception of means by which the cold depths of interplanetary space | ||
| + | may be traversed. Even if we allow imagination, | ||
| + | most evident necessities of the case, to suggest a speed of transport | ||
| + | computable only by astronomical analogies, we still lag behind anything | ||
| + | which could serve this purpose, unless we concurrently believe that | ||
| + | human life shall, by that time, be lengthened into centuries. | ||
| + | Otherwise, however recklessly we may conceive of speed in | ||
| + | interplanetary travel, man would almost require to live for many | ||
| + | centuries in order to reach and return from any destination which would | ||
| + | not inevitably destroy him by fire or cold when he arrived at it. Most | ||
| + | likely man is for ever destined to accept the bounds of his own planet, | ||
| + | and to be limited <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | resources may be utilised to the uttermost of his needs, the contents | ||
| + | of the ocean floor must undoubtedly be laid under contribution, | ||
| + | probably we shall not antedate this achievement if we consider that it | ||
| + | will have been at least entered upon a hundred years hence. | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | avoid a certain amount of overlapping in different sections of the | ||
| + | subject and a certain blending of topics in a single chapter. The | ||
| + | attempt to differentiate consistently between the progress of science | ||
| + | as science, and the concurrent advance of practical invention by which | ||
| + | scientific discovery is turned to use would only involve needless | ||
| + | repetition. I have already had occasion to suggest elements of material | ||
| + | progress which presuppose the advance in pure science that would make | ||
| + | them possible. Thus, in endeavouring to suggest what the methods of | ||
| + | commerce and the condition of our cities are likely to be in the future | ||
| + | it was necessary to conceive certain advances in our knowledge of what | ||
| + | is rather clumsily called & | ||
| + | predict the discovery of new and cheap methods of analysing water into | ||
| + | its component gases as a source of fuel and as means for the production | ||
| + | of electricity: | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | found convenient to work out in a rough manner the various ways in | ||
| + | which the cheap and inexhaustible supplies of hydrogen and oxygen which | ||
| + | I have imagined discovery to have placed at the disposal of invention | ||
| + | would be employed in the arts. Similarly, when we interrogate | ||
| + | imagination on the subject of scientific discovery itself, we shall be | ||
| + | forced to think chiefly of the practical results likely to be achieved | ||
| + | by it, and indeed there would otherwise be hardly any purpose to serve | ||
| + | by the effort. What imports the greatest amount of complexity into the | ||
| + | subject is the difficulty of conceiving the lines upon which science is | ||
| + | likely to travel, unless we allow ourselves to be guided by the | ||
| + | practical requirements of the future as far as we are able to foresee | ||
| + | them. Imagination has indeed superabundant room in which to run riot | ||
| + | when it endeavours to give form to the probabilities of scientific | ||
| + | discovery; and the only danger is that effort may be wasted in purely | ||
| + | fanciful directions, if it be not pretty securely tied down by some | ||
| + | such artificial restraint as the convention of keeping more or less | ||
| + | strictly to the anticipation of discoveries likely to have immediate | ||
| + | practical application.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | developments we might allow ourselves to imagine as arising out of the | ||
| + | new theories, still in a probationary condition, as to the <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Such conjectures might be followed indefinitely in several directions, | ||
| + | and the resulting conclusions would be more likely to err by timidity | ||
| + | than by extravagance: | ||
| + | which could serve as a guide to the probably-right, | ||
| + | against the probably-wrong, | ||
| + | nor useful to pursue them. Radium & | ||
| + | Saleeby has called it in one of those brilliant papers which fine | ||
| + | imagination and delicate fancy have adorned with many another noble | ||
| + | phrase and memorable image, opens the door to a whole world of new | ||
| + | possibilities. Our whole conception of cosmic processes may have to be | ||
| + | remodelled, in the light of those tiny scintillations which the | ||
| + | spinthariscope has popularised. Already our notions concerning the | ||
| + | nature of matter have been revolutionised. We are told that atoms, | ||
| + | regarded hitherto as the ultimate units of matter& | ||
| + | Lord Kelvin has calculated that if a drop of water were magnified to | ||
| + | the size of the earth the atoms in it would be somewhere between the | ||
| + | size of small shot and the size of cricket balls& | ||
| + | made up of a stuff so almost infinitely more tenuous, that the | ||
| + | particles of it within the atom are, relatively to their size, farther | ||
| + | apart than the planets of the solar system. Nor is <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | all. These particles, commonly called electrons, if particles they can | ||
| + | still be designated at all, were at first said to & | ||
| + | charge of electricity. But it now seems that they < | ||
| + | electricity itself. If this be true, we should seem to be on the point | ||
| + | of bridging the void between what used to be called the eternal | ||
| + | antithetics& | ||
| + | only with the greatest caution be pre-imagined. In any case the | ||
| + | consequences of this discovery, philosophical as well as scientific, | ||
| + | are stupefying in the possibilities they open up to the thinker as well | ||
| + | as to the man of practical science. At last science begins to join | ||
| + | hands with philosophy. What will be the philosophy of a hundred years | ||
| + | hence, imagination pales before the effort of attempting to | ||
| + | conceive.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | radiology belongs rather to this end of the century than to the other. | ||
| + | During the interval there can be no doubt that electricity, | ||
| + | man& | ||
| + | her services to the race. When, as I ventured to suggest in a former | ||
| + | chapter, inexhaustible and cheap & | ||
| + | by some method of utilising the electrical reciprocity of the hydrogen | ||
| + | and oxygen gases derived from water, doubtless all machinery will be | ||
| + | electrically driven, all transport electrically <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the foreground of the future as to be irrelevant to any anticipations | ||
| + | of the world& | ||
| + | development of electrically-driven machinery lies in the middle | ||
| + | distance, and the duration of the electrical age can hardly be | ||
| + | precalculated with any greater exactness than the suggestion that it | ||
| + | will probably have reached, or at all events approached, its end in | ||
| + | about a century& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | is to imagine, if we can, how electrical power will be applied. It is | ||
| + | quite evident that the device of long conductors, either overhead or | ||
| + | below ground& | ||
| + | America& | ||
| + | is indeed a public scandal that cables carrying an electrical charge | ||
| + | capable of killing or paralysing at a touch should be suspended over | ||
| + | the heads of the citizens, exposed to momentary breakage by snowfall, | ||
| + | high wind, or the inevitable wear which careless inspectors may | ||
| + | overlook: and the mere fact that a horse can occasionally set foot on a | ||
| + | ground plate and fall dead from the contact shows that even the vaunted | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | strictly-temporary device. Some of the dangers of the underground | ||
| + | electric wires arise out of the use of our present illuminating gas, | ||
| + | when a pipe <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | forming an explosive mixture of gas and air, which presently becomes | ||
| + | ignited by an electric spark and blows up the whole affair. No doubt | ||
| + | coal gas is within easily measurable distance of its end as a | ||
| + | convenience of civilisation. But it is extremely probable that hydrogen | ||
| + | and oxygen will be conveyed by mains to houses and public buildings | ||
| + | during a long time: and it is hardly possible to believe that the mains | ||
| + | will not sometimes leak and be capable of letting out mixtures far more | ||
| + | dangerous on ignition than the mixture of coal gas and air, and still | ||
| + | more dangerous because neither of the gases, nor the mixture of them, | ||
| + | has any smell, unless indeed we should take the precaution of giving | ||
| + | them one artificially. Whatever we may do, and we shall do much, to | ||
| + | minimise the dangers of highly-evolved civilisation, | ||
| + | always occur, and their violence will probably increase. We must pay | ||
| + | our toll to the conveniences of life, and we shall of course compensate | ||
| + | ourselves by a lower death-rate from diseases, many of which will no | ||
| + | doubt in a hundred years& | ||
| + | planet.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | if we need motive power of some other kind to produce electricity, | ||
| + | doubt the explosive recombination of oxygen and hydrogen, controlled by | ||
| + | devices developed from existing gas-engines and petrol-engines, | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | before the complete exhaustion of the supply of it, have been found | ||
| + | altogether too dirty and unhealthy a thing to use, at all events by way | ||
| + | of combustion, though rumours are heard from time to time of new | ||
| + | methods by which the stored energy of coal may be utilised directly, to | ||
| + | the great economy of the material.< | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | early years of the century will be employing themselves in seeking out | ||
| + | new sources of man& | ||
| + | years hence we shall have entered upon the full inheritance of | ||
| + | them.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | mechanician. Of almost equal, if not quite equal, importance is that of | ||
| + | applying power at the place where it is needed, and the careful reader | ||
| + | will not have overlooked the fact that while we have been discussing | ||
| + | the use of electricity as a source of power we have already been | ||
| + | anticipating, | ||
| + | speak of machinery and locomotive engines being & | ||
| + | electricity, | ||
| + | periphrasis. All our electric machinery, all our electric railways, our | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | life almost intolerable in houses along many of the main roads out of | ||
| + | London, are really driven by coal-burning steam <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Niagara valley) waterfall power is used. But whatever the real source | ||
| + | of power, electricity is only a means, more or less convenient, of | ||
| + | transmitting it. Even electric launches, and slow-going electric | ||
| + | broughams driven by accumulators, | ||
| + | examples of the electrical transmission of power. The ultimate source | ||
| + | of power is always either a steam-engine or a waterfall. A few | ||
| + | lecture-table toys and the like are the only existing examples of | ||
| + | machinery in which the actual source of power is electricity. Even | ||
| + | here, it may be objected, the actual source of power is not | ||
| + | electricity, | ||
| + | man is an ultimate source of power. Even a steam-engine is only a | ||
| + | device for utilising the stored solar energy of coal. Of course man can | ||
| + | no more create power than he can create matter: the stock of each in | ||
| + | the universe is a fixed quantity. All that we are able to do is to | ||
| + | harness to our use a part of the cosmic store. When I speak of | ||
| + | electricity becoming hereafter a & | ||
| + | merely distinguishing between its use as a means of transmitting force | ||
| + | already perceived as force in some other form (as where a | ||
| + | dynamo-electric machine receives motion from a steam-engine or | ||
| + | waterfall and turns this motion into electricity, | ||
| + | wires or rails to an electric dynamic engine that reconverts | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | of utilising the cosmic stores of force.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | electricity as a source of power in itself, our mechanicians will have | ||
| + | plenty to occupy them in the task of devising safer and more convenient | ||
| + | methods of transmitting force, and even at the end of the century, | ||
| + | supposing the use of electricity not to have been entirely superseded | ||
| + | by the discovery of some entirely new force as yet not even | ||
| + | conceivable, | ||
| + | improvements in the transmission as well as in the production of | ||
| + | electricity. It has been hinted that & | ||
| + | transmission of power will no doubt by that time have become | ||
| + | practicable, | ||
| + | telegraphy was mentioned as a proof that such transmission is at least | ||
| + | imaginable. In Marconi& | ||
| + | is launched into the & | ||
| + | can be & | ||
| + | wireless telegram is satisfactorily received. But the important fact | ||
| + | for our present purpose is that some product of the original impulse | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | to see in this a starting-point for entirely new inventions, capable of | ||
| + | gathering up a practicable modicum of the transmitted power in a form | ||
| + | capable of being converted into motion, <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | bring but a poor imaginative equipment to a task so colossal as that of | ||
| + | guessing what the next century will be capable of if we refuse to | ||
| + | believe that something in the nature of Hertzian waves, or something | ||
| + | propagated as these are propagated, can be used to carry impulse to | ||
| + | machinery at a distance from the source of power. The imaginative | ||
| + | faculty which boggles at this effort will probably overlook the fact | ||
| + | that the mere transmission is only a part of the difficulty which is | ||
| + | pretty sure to have been overcome by this time next century. It will | ||
| + | not be enough to launch waves capable of being used where they are | ||
| + | intended to be used. We must also discover how to launch them so that | ||
| + | they may be incapable of being used anywhere else. I read the other day | ||
| + | the report of a police-court case in which a man was charged with | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | indictment from the point of view of the lawyer) by obtaining the use | ||
| + | of a public telephone station without paying the usual fee. The | ||
| + | electricians of a hundred years hence will certainly have to find out | ||
| + | how to prevent the purloining of wireless force, and perhaps the police | ||
| + | will have to devise means of detecting this at present somewhat | ||
| + | recondite crime. This question of wireless transmission lies within the | ||
| + | province of discovery rather than that of invention. Before it can | ||
| + | receive actuality we have to do more than utilise existing <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | achieved in ways other than electrical. Some very interesting | ||
| + | compressed-air tools are already in limited use. Holes are drilled and | ||
| + | rivets driven by little contrivances which have a store of force within | ||
| + | themselves furnished by compressed air. One of the many uses of the | ||
| + | cheap oxygen and hydrogen, and doubtless of cheaply liquefied gases of | ||
| + | high-resisting power,<a class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | kinds of machinery. This use of liquid airs has been much derided, and | ||
| + | indeed a good deal of nonsense has been written as to its | ||
| + | possibilities, | ||
| + | that & | ||
| + | papers, announcing impending revolutions in the methods of obtaining | ||
| + | cheap power by the application of liquid air, have originated from an | ||
| + | imperfect comprehension of the problems involved.& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | at present, liquefied gases are for a <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | to serve any greater mechanical purpose than that of furnishing a | ||
| + | highly portable apparatus by which great power can be developed for a | ||
| + | short time at any required place. It is easy to believe that it could | ||
| + | not be otherwise employed with any economy, even when discovery has | ||
| + | greatly simplified the now difficult process of liquefaction. But in | ||
| + | regard to this matter, and to almost every other mechanical and | ||
| + | engineering improvement suggested in the present work, it is of the | ||
| + | first importance to remember that the conditions in which the work of | ||
| + | the world a hundred years hence will be done are certain to differ very | ||
| + | greatly from anything we know to-day; and that procedures at present | ||
| + | not merely out of proportion, but in themselves actually chimerical, | ||
| + | will become perfectly workable in the new circumstances of another | ||
| + | century. No doubt the problems at present involved make many of the | ||
| + | developments herein suggested almost laughable to those who examine the | ||
| + | subject without imagination. But what could have been thought of a man | ||
| + | who, when Oersted discovered the influence of a battery current on the | ||
| + | compass needle, suggested that the discovery might, in much less than a | ||
| + | hundred years, be practically developed in such unforeseen ways as to | ||
| + | produce locomotive machines capable of carrying vast weight at a speed | ||
| + | of perhaps a hundred <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | such predictions & | ||
| + | comprehension of the problems involved.& | ||
| + | would have been perfectly sound, though it would have been difficult to | ||
| + | withhold assent from the derision which instructed hearers would have | ||
| + | poured upon them. The effect of any scientific discovery can only be | ||
| + | measured when we are in a position to judge of the conditions in which | ||
| + | it may be applied, and the further discoveries which may affect | ||
| + | it& | ||
| + | caution in estimating the possible developments of recent discovery | ||
| + | when utilised in the conditions of the next century and reinforced by | ||
| + | inventions and discoveries yet to come.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | expectations from the new knowledge which radium appears to be | ||
| + | gradually unfolding, not because there is any doubt that radio-activity | ||
| + | will ultimately bring priceless gifts to civilisation, | ||
| + | our present ignorance of all but a few facts concerning it we can form | ||
| + | no possible conjecture as to the lines these gifts will follow. Already | ||
| + | we seem to have seen in some of the radium experiments one | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | we acquire the power which used to be dreamed of as transmutation, | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | result beggar imagination.< | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | already< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | facts now remotest from practical use in connection with the rays of | ||
| + | various sorts so much discussed in the scientific newspapers will no | ||
| + | doubt be utilised in a manner or in manners far removed from the | ||
| + | limited employment in therapeutics already found for them.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | sciences, will no doubt make vast strides during the period under | ||
| + | discussion.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | position and probable achievements of medical science in a | ||
| + | century& | ||
| + | practice of to-day. The changes will be revolutionary rather than | ||
| + | evolutionary. When it is remembered that only fifty years ago limbs | ||
| + | were hacked <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | patient, held down by muscular assistants lest the violent struggles of | ||
| + | his agony should embarrass the surgeon, and that wounds of all sorts | ||
| + | festered and decayed until a hospital reeked with their | ||
| + | impurity& | ||
| + | an& | ||
| + | need not hesitate to predict for the present century changes in medical | ||
| + | and surgical science almost inconceivable by the light of our present | ||
| + | attainment. An& | ||
| + | cocaine and eucaine, are of entirely recent use& | ||
| + | advance in one direction. Antiseptic surgery, which is the prevention | ||
| + | and correction of blood and wound-poisoning by chemical disinfectants, | ||
| + | represented an advance of a different kind. But antisepsis is already | ||
| + | on the point of being superseded by the far more rational and | ||
| + | scientific method of asepsis, or the exclusion from open wounds of all | ||
| + | the germs which can set up inflammation and festering. The change is | ||
| + | typical.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the present time is that of introducing into the body one disease with | ||
| + | the idea of excluding other diseases. It is conceived that cow-pox is | ||
| + | antagonistic to small-pox, erysipelas possibly to cancer, and so on. | ||
| + | All the talk in medical circles is of serum and attenuated virus. And, | ||
| + | apart from animal <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | or attempt to cure all diseases by administering poisons& | ||
| + | vegetable or mineral. Just as by antiseptics we poison the germ which | ||
| + | causes festering and inflammation, | ||
| + | disease& | ||
| + | their administration is almost wholly empirical. If you ask a doctor | ||
| + | why phenacetin reduces fever, it is impossible to get beyond a | ||
| + | metaphysical explanation. He will reply that phenacetin reduces fever | ||
| + | by lowering the blood pressure, or something of that kind. But this | ||
| + | merely re-states the problem. Why does phenacetin lower blood pressure? | ||
| + | We do not know. The substitution of asepsis for antisepsis& | ||
| + | is, of cleanliness for disinfection& | ||
| + | to be in a certain sense the greatest advance in therapeutics since | ||
| + | Hippocrates. It probably contains the germ of future medical treatment. | ||
| + | Hereafter we shall not try to cast out devils of disease by other | ||
| + | disease-germs only less devilish. We shall learn enough of the causes | ||
| + | of disease to stop them at their source, and knowledge growing from | ||
| + | more to more, which has taught us exactly how & | ||
| + | wrong place& | ||
| + | disease, will also show how matter may generally be kept in its right | ||
| + | place.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | made by the curative use of rays, other discoveries, | ||
| + | even now passed the brink, will have an enormous effect on medicine and | ||
| + | surgery. Already certain kinds of light cure rodent ulcer, one of the | ||
| + | most hideous and terrible diseases, not by the importation of fresh | ||
| + | substances into the body but by the modification of the tissues | ||
| + | themselves. When radiation has been fully studied it will almost | ||
| + | certainly be found that the sun, which is the source of practically all | ||
| + | terrestrial activity, has been showering upon us, ever since the | ||
| + | homogeneous vapour which was the birth-stuff of the universe aggregated | ||
| + | itself into worlds and suns and planets, rays which are capable of | ||
| + | correcting every sort of disease-germination and, properly used, of | ||
| + | preventing it. The absolute deadliness of unmodified sunlight to many | ||
| + | sorts of disease-germs is recognised already. The value of | ||
| + | sun-baths& | ||
| + | lightly covered, to the sunlight& | ||
| + | connection with an& | ||
| + | consumption. When we know just where all disease originates, and why it | ||
| + | develops, it seems likely that sunlight and oxygen its child will | ||
| + | prevent nearly all disease and cure whatever disease accidentally | ||
| + | arises. In place of temporary and dangerous expedients like | ||
| + | antiseptics, | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | exclude what ought to be kept out, and modify into innocuousness what | ||
| + | has found its way in.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | distinguished from infective, arises from food, either because the food | ||
| + | itself is not free from disease, or because, from excess in quantity or | ||
| + | error in choice, the food we take sets up the production of poisons in | ||
| + | the course of digestion, and by yielding, for instance, lactic or uric | ||
| + | acid to the blood causes rheumatism or gout, or by introducing into the | ||
| + | stomach matter in a state of incipient decay, favours typhoid and other | ||
| + | fevers.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | been eliminated from the < | ||
| + | have been got rid of.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | infective and contagious diseases it seems well within the bounds of | ||
| + | possibility that the systematic destruction of their germs may be | ||
| + | carried far enough to remove them altogether from the planet.< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | We have now, even by the <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | quarantine and a period of muzzling (from which, on no evident ground | ||
| + | except that it would interfere with the amusements of the governing | ||
| + | class to include them, sporting dogs were excluded), apparently | ||
| + | banished hydrophobia from Great Britain. If it prove to be the case | ||
| + | that just as hydrophobia cannot arise spontaneously, | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | existing infection, other infective diseases require pre-existing | ||
| + | disease before they can arise, we may get rid of them altogether. The | ||
| + | dream may appear a wild one. But it is not wilder than the dreams of a | ||
| + | thinker who anticipated any one of a hundred common facts of to-day | ||
| + | must have appeared to our great-great-grandfathers.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | altogether be banished from a world so highly artificial as that of the | ||
| + | next century will be. Undoubtedly the growth of sanitary science and | ||
| + | the knowledge of the larger facts of hygiene, which is only now | ||
| + | beginning to dawn upon us, will have a great <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | over-civilisation at present entails. But the very progress of the art | ||
| + | of healing will no doubt have the effect of perpetuating in a manner | ||
| + | the existence of illness. Every forward step in medicine serves to save | ||
| + | alive some weakling that in a less advanced civilisation would die; and | ||
| + | these survivors, possibly propagating their species, will have weak | ||
| + | descendants, | ||
| + | will certainly fasten. The discovery of means by which we can make a | ||
| + | weak & | ||
| + | likely of medical innovations. It would be altogether contrary to the | ||
| + | general spirit of the times anticipated to expect that we shall have | ||
| + | steeled our hearts to the destruction of feeble lives as dangerous to | ||
| + | the race. We are much more likely to go on finding better means to | ||
| + | perpetuate them: and this means that there will always be work for the | ||
| + | doctor, though the infective fevers will have been banished from the | ||
| + | earth. Medicine, therefore, will still aspire. But apart from what are | ||
| + | called occupation-diseases, | ||
| + | (of which the more deadly, as phosphorus match-making, | ||
| + | earthenware and the manufacture of enamelled iron will before long | ||
| + | certainly be abolished), the elaborate machinery and rapid travel of | ||
| + | the new age must needs exact a certain toll of death and <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | than the physician. Frightful accidents will occur from time to time. | ||
| + | The maim, the halt and the blind must pay the price of progress. And it | ||
| + | is hardly possible that nervous diseases and insanity, incident to the | ||
| + | pressure of civilisation, | ||
| + | alleviations of all but the last, and even of that except in its | ||
| + | extreme expression as total dementia, will have advanced to a high | ||
| + | standard. We shall no doubt, for instance, have discovered means of so | ||
| + | acting on the sensory system that we shall be able innocuously and | ||
| + | temporarily to paralyse at any desired spot the nerves which transmit | ||
| + | pain. Thus, during convalescence, | ||
| + | except that of confinement, | ||
| + | talking machines that will read and sing to him, and the theatroscopes | ||
| + | that will project before him moving and coloured pictures of life or | ||
| + | the play, will make the sick bed almost a paradise.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | which have been suggested,< | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | economical reasons, have been abandoned long before the end of the | ||
| + | century, the grazing of cattle being far too expensive a method of | ||
| + | utilising the soil, we may be quite sure that the sciences connected | ||
| + | with agriculture will <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | they now enjoy. It will grow more important with every decade to obtain | ||
| + | the greatest possible tribute from the portions of land, steadily | ||
| + | decreasing in area, which can be spared from the growing needs of the | ||
| + | builder. Every discovery of the chemist which can be laid under | ||
| + | contribution by the agriculturist will eagerly be seized upon. Every | ||
| + | means which can be devised for replacing what we take from the soil | ||
| + | will be utilised to the full: and of course the inevitable | ||
| + | disappearance of the horse as a means of traction, and of the flocks | ||
| + | and herds which now yield manure, and perhaps the gradual exhaustion of | ||
| + | the minerals (as rock phosphates) from which artificial soil enrichers | ||
| + | are prepared, will make it necessary to rearrange, on safe, economical | ||
| + | and convenient lines, our present plans of sanitation. The insane | ||
| + | wastefulness of draining into the sea cannot long be tolerated. Every | ||
| + | conceivable means of conserving our mundane capital will have to be | ||
| + | made use of. In other ways science will come to the rescue. The | ||
| + | farmer& | ||
| + | kinds will perhaps never be much affected by invention, because all | ||
| + | nature is so curiously interdependent that the eradication of one pest | ||
| + | has an awkward way of intensifying some greater evil: we destroy birds | ||
| + | and are punished by a plague of caterpillars. The accidents of | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | very small measure, though the science of meteorology, | ||
| + | helped by facilities for better observation-reporting, | ||
| + | unquestionably help the agriculturist by giving him timely warnings. It | ||
| + | seems hardly possible to doubt that the eccentricities of climate and | ||
| + | the unexpected shifting of the rainy season in Manchuria during the | ||
| + | Russo-Japanese war must have been caused by the vast atmospheric | ||
| + | disturbances created by days and weeks of cannonading: | ||
| + | is an old theory that heavy gun-fire & | ||
| + | rain.& | ||
| + | altogether exceeds any expectation which could have been formed without | ||
| + | allowing for effects of this sort. When science has pondered upon the | ||
| + | subject, and instituted in an ordered manner experiments of a kind | ||
| + | hitherto never taken very seriously, it may very well be that some | ||
| + | means less violent than the detonation of explosives may be discovered | ||
| + | by the practical meteorologist for creating disturbances in the | ||
| + | atmosphere; and while it may not be possible to prevent excessive | ||
| + | rainfall at inconvenient times, it seems easy to conceive that when | ||
| + | there is moisture in the atmosphere we may be able to bring it down as | ||
| + | rain. Of course this is a very different thing from breaking up | ||
| + | droughts: and artificial rain-making cannot in <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | The effects of deforestation have for some time been observed and the | ||
| + | plan of improving waterless areas by the contrary process is already | ||
| + | discussed. While it seems rather a & | ||
| + | undertake to meddle with the balance of atmospheric composition on a | ||
| + | large scale, especially as we know so little of the conditions that | ||
| + | even success might very possibly be attended by unforeseen and perhaps | ||
| + | calamitous results, there is nothing intrinsically absurd in the notion | ||
| + | that we might adopt means on a vast scale for increasing oceanic | ||
| + | evaporation and, utilising the exact foreknowledge of winds and air | ||
| + | currents which we shall certainly have achieved, bring moisture and | ||
| + | rain to arid tracts or countries suffering from drought. The operation | ||
| + | would no doubt require to be stupendous, but the next century is not | ||
| + | going to be afraid of stupendous operations; and anticipating vast and | ||
| + | unforeseen progress in meteorology, | ||
| + | that no practical use will be made of such progress.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | possess, and of its forces, are being steadily advanced by scientific | ||
| + | discovery, and the researches of the pure scientist are constantly | ||
| + | yielding practical results at first undreamed of, it is impossible to | ||
| + | doubt that man& | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | constitution of man that will be interrogated. Everything assists the | ||
| + | belief that this century will be among other things the century of | ||
| + | psychical advance. We appear to be on the verge of great discoveries | ||
| + | concerning the human mind, and especially concerning the relation of | ||
| + | body to consciousness. Hypnotism has only during a comparatively short | ||
| + | time been the subject of systematic observation, | ||
| + | any time during the last ten years results have been achieved which, if | ||
| + | foreseen a century ago, would certainly have produced a widespread | ||
| + | recrudescence of belief in witchcraft. What the developed science of a | ||
| + | hundred years hence will be capable of would certainly be a great deal | ||
| + | more surprising if we could foresee it to-day. It is reported from the | ||
| + | Salpetri& | ||
| + | existence of a picture on a blank sheet of paper suggested to her with | ||
| + | such vividness that, on the suggestion being revived at a subsequent | ||
| + | period, even after a considerable interval, she was able to detect that | ||
| + | the & | ||
| + | actually reversed. This phenomenon is attributed to a great | ||
| + | accentuation of the sense of vision produced by hypnotism, it being | ||
| + | supposed that the paper, perfectly blank on ordinary observation, | ||
| + | really some <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the sharpened vision of the subject was able, unconsciously, | ||
| + | utilise. What secrets in the mechanism of the senses may not this | ||
| + | fore-shadow? | ||
| + | understand hypnotism, impressions have, in a number of instances | ||
| + | sufficient to exclude all possibility of collusion or error, been | ||
| + | conveyed from one mind to another without the use of any of the | ||
| + | ordinary means of communication: | ||
| + | seriously conducted by trained observers that the faculties of thus | ||
| + | communicating and receiving impressions can be steadily cultivated. In | ||
| + | other words, it would appear that human consciousness possesses some | ||
| + | sort of emanation, and although certain & | ||
| + | possibly connected with the subject have not received universal | ||
| + | acceptance, it is evident that the future is going to enlarge | ||
| + | considerably our knowledge of the nature of mental process. At present | ||
| + | we know nothing& | ||
| + | must always remain in a like ignorance& | ||
| + | sense and consciousness. We know how the ear receives air-vibrations, | ||
| + | how it collects and conducts them to the auditory nerves, carefully | ||
| + | protecting itself, by the action of beautifully ordered springs and | ||
| + | cushions, from the effects of vibrations violent enough to be dangerous | ||
| + | to its own integrity. But even <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | vibrations as far as the nerve, and recognised the subtle variation of | ||
| + | its own substance by which the nerve conducts the impression of them to | ||
| + | the brain, we have no inkling of the means by which the phenomenon of | ||
| + | consciousness which we call & | ||
| + | that by suggestion alone we can with perfect precision, and without the | ||
| + | use of any air vibration whatever, cause a hypnotised person (or even a | ||
| + | person who has at some earlier period been hypnotised but has recovered | ||
| + | his normal state) to hear& | ||
| + | have no objective existence, just as vividly and clearly as any sounds | ||
| + | we can physically produce, does it seem extravagant to believe that the | ||
| + | whole mechanism of sense, nay, the dark mind-gulf beyond mechanism too, | ||
| + | will receive full illumination from the science of the coming time? | ||
| + | Such a discovery would, of course, throw utterly into shadow anything | ||
| + | we have yet learned of the nature of man. It would bring us a step | ||
| + | nearer to the knowledge of the unknown soul of him. What secrets might | ||
| + | it not carry with it of those mysterious co-partners, | ||
| + | thought and brain? With this, the noblest subject that can be proposed | ||
| + | to the intellect of man, the science of a hundred years hence will | ||
| + | assuredly be busy, and imagination pales before the contemplation of a | ||
| + | notion so vast. Limited as we are by the <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | time, we cannot even conjecture whither such discoveries might lead us. | ||
| + | All we can affirm is that the whole outlook of man, nay, the nature of | ||
| + | man himself, might very conceivably be changed by them, and the | ||
| + | greatest problems of the thinker may be resolved when we eat of the | ||
| + | fruit tendered us by this tree of the knowledge of good and evil. | ||
| + | Perhaps the soul of man may quail before the revelations in store, | ||
| + | fearing that in the day we eat thereof we shall surely die. | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | say, the gases which are most difficult to liquefy, and which | ||
| + | consequently store up most energy in liquefying, viz., hydrogen, oxygen | ||
| + | and nitrogen, as distinguished from ammonia, carbon-dioxide, | ||
| + | and other gases relatively easy to liquefy.& | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Recent Development of Physical Science.</ | ||
| + | 1904. London: John Murray.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | forget that a good deal of what is on record as an account of | ||
| + | experiments in transmutation is purely mystical writing, and that when | ||
| + | Paracelsus and some of the French alchemists describe what appear to be | ||
| + | chemical experiments they are in reality referring to something quite | ||
| + | different. But the learned in these matters tell me that one of their | ||
| + | chief difficulties arises from the fact that, contemporary with the | ||
| + | mystics, there were other investigators who, not having the key to the | ||
| + | occult significance of the masters& | ||
| + | themselves to research, some valuable, if accidental, results of which | ||
| + | have come down to us and are recorded in all text-books of | ||
| + | chemistry.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | have & | ||
| + | stately colloquialisms) before this suggestion, but for a remark by Dr | ||
| + | C. W. Saleeby, which may here be quoted, to keep me in countenance. | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | 1904, & | ||
| + | already obsolescent. Tuberculosis, | ||
| + | other disease, can be disposed of, apparently, whenever the human race, | ||
| + | now mightily smitten with internecine strife, decides that this | ||
| + | campaign against a common foe is worth while. It takes some seconds to | ||
| + | realise& | ||
| + | tuberculosis will signify in private and hospital practice. Yet the | ||
| + | extermination of the last tubercle bacillus is an event quite certainly | ||
| + | hidden in the womb of time& | ||
| + | science.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | full measure of validity to the contention that social developments are | ||
| + | matters of slow growth and gradual attainment rather than of sudden and | ||
| + | catastrophic change; admitting that even in the sphere of scientific | ||
| + | discovery and mechanical invention changes occur much more gradually | ||
| + | than a cursory glance at individual achievements would suggest; | ||
| + | recognising that many of the most remarkable changes whose arrival in | ||
| + | the past is the only possible valid guide to anticipation of similar or | ||
| + | kindred changes in the future; it is still a condition of such | ||
| + | anticipation that we should take account of causes likely to be | ||
| + | operative in altering the rate at which the world will move. To allow | ||
| + | that social improvements generally have the air of occurring almost | ||
| + | automatically is not to conceive that they are without cause. Neither | ||
| + | can it be believed by anyone who has studied the history of such | ||
| + | movements in the past, or <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | that the rate of development is everywhere and at all periods the same. | ||
| + | There have been eras of almost complete moral, and even of almost | ||
| + | complete mechanical, stagnation in the history of the world. There have | ||
| + | been other eras of almost violent reformation and reconstruction. To | ||
| + | reason as if these characteristics were arbitrarily or miraculously | ||
| + | imposed upon the physiognomy of society, to be content with laboriously | ||
| + | unintelligent estimation of the facts without attempting to learn | ||
| + | anything from them of their causes, is to neglect the only important | ||
| + | lesson which either history or observation is capable of teaching. | ||
| + | When, therefore, an enormous acceleration in a rate of progress already | ||
| + | unprecedented in the records of society has been predicted for the next | ||
| + | hundred years of human history, it is evident that this anticipation | ||
| + | must have been based upon some estimate of forces calculated to be | ||
| + | operative in producing acceleration.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | it is obvious enough that we shall move forward with increasing | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | automatically to facilitate fresh attainment, and the very growth of | ||
| + | population must act in the same way, as must also the struggle for | ||
| + | existence. As there are every year more <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | on scientific research and on mechanical invention, the results must be | ||
| + | progressively greater every year; and as the rewards of success are | ||
| + | increased by the growing demand resulting from a growing population, it | ||
| + | is evident that the incentives to industry in this respect are | ||
| + | proportionately liable to increase. But the ethical progress of the | ||
| + | world is actuated by forces entirely different, and what makes for | ||
| + | mechanical improvement may very easily be conceived& | ||
| + | actually been conceived by one rather conspicuous prophet& | ||
| + | operate adversely upon the moral future of the race.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | writer& | ||
| + | have made moral progress quite as remarkable as the mechanical progress | ||
| + | of which the anticipation is likely to be contested by no reasonably | ||
| + | imaginative observer. This ethical improvement, | ||
| + | momentarily imperceptible as it may be, necessarily has causes which | ||
| + | must now, however tentatively and however cursorily, be examined.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | and based upon the fundamentals of human character, is evident. That in | ||
| + | their operation they will be opposed by other influences not less easy | ||
| + | to foresee is equally manifest. What we have to precognise <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the net results likely to be achieved by the interaction of opposing | ||
| + | forces, of which those tending to improvement are confidently believed | ||
| + | the stronger.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | will undoubtedly be the reform of education, not merely by the | ||
| + | improvement of its methods in various departments, | ||
| + | much more importance, in the general spirit with which its objects will | ||
| + | be conceived. But in order to affirm that this reform will occur, we | ||
| + | must first demonstrate that the grounds upon which it is anticipated | ||
| + | are adequate. We must, in the terms of the formula above proposed, be | ||
| + | satisfied that they are in harmony with the fundamentals of human | ||
| + | character.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | approaching universality can be predicted& | ||
| + | semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus</ | ||
| + | solicitude. No progenitor of children, however little amenable to high | ||
| + | aspirations, | ||
| + | up to be wiser, stronger, better, more prosperous than himself. The | ||
| + | innate hopefulness of the race expressed in the arid comment that, in | ||
| + | his own estimation, & | ||
| + | is often discouraged by the time a man& | ||
| + | to grow up, especially in these days of late marriage and <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | have realised only too acutely by the time we are forty, that we have | ||
| + | more or less failed in the ambitions which seemed so easy of future | ||
| + | attainment when we were twenty-five, | ||
| + | light upon the career of our children, and it is to the successes and | ||
| + | the fame of our first-born that we look for consolation in the failure | ||
| + | which, for ourselves, we no longer hope to evade. Romance, celebrity, | ||
| + | even perhaps worldly reward, we can no longer expect for ourselves; but | ||
| + | these dear hands that a little time ago we held while the first | ||
| + | tottering steps of babyhood were being tried, shall return to us | ||
| + | hereafter with the laurel in them that we have never plucked. Perhaps | ||
| + | we shall not live to see it on our child& | ||
| + | that? Our confident prevision of this glory is what we console | ||
| + | ourselves withal: this, though we hardly know it, is our True | ||
| + | Romance:& | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | spheres alone do we aspire more nobly for our children than for | ||
| + | ourselves. Not success and not fame limit our demand of Fate, that she | ||
| + | repair in our children the injustice of which we ourselves cease to | ||
| + | complain. We want them to be better men and women than we have | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | nothing but the lowest motives ever seem to be accorded the smallest | ||
| + | validity by the more conspicuous among recent vaticinators of human | ||
| + | action) it behoves us to make the best we can of our children& | ||
| + | morals, if we are presently in old age likely to be dependant upon | ||
| + | them. But for those who, like Malvolio, & | ||
| + | soul,& | ||
| + | of every parent in order to be convinced that the education of the | ||
| + | future will be moralised as well as rationalised through the natural | ||
| + | emotions of man. Only the dullest and most turgid imagination will | ||
| + | consent to believe that the horrible conditions of competitive struggle | ||
| + | will be permitted to foster only the lower faculties, as greed, | ||
| + | selfishness, | ||
| + | expense of all the finer characteristics of man. There is no cynic so | ||
| + | base as would deliberately seek the fortune of his sons in the | ||
| + | inculcation of chicane. Struggle must sharpen all our intellects as | ||
| + | life grows yearly more difficult, but one by-product of this attrition | ||
| + | will be the increased morality with which the education of each | ||
| + | generation successively arising will be conceived.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | in detail by which the improvement of education will most likely be | ||
| + | sought, that to foresee what is probable is not necessarily | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | this book is not to formulate Utopia, but to predict the consequences | ||
| + | implied by existing forces after the latter have been during a stated | ||
| + | time in operation; and admitting that no reform ever practised within | ||
| + | the recorded history of man has been without drawbacks inherent in its | ||
| + | own constitution, | ||
| + | is capable of mechanical and instrumental improvement not less | ||
| + | considerable than any other labour to be undertaken by ourselves and | ||
| + | our successors. Even within a lifetime& | ||
| + | appliances for assisting the mind of the learner to apprehend the facts | ||
| + | sought to be learnt have been invented, and our children, as we all | ||
| + | know, are much more easily taught than we were ourselves. The <i lang= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the value of these improvements, | ||
| + | most of us to find it difficult to believe that any plan of teaching | ||
| + | can be better for our children than the one which produced results so | ||
| + | pleasingly exemplified by ourselves. But at all events, it will be | ||
| + | generally, if a little grudgingly, admitted that any form of | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | capable of being ranked as an improvement. Unquestionably appliances | ||
| + | having this object will be constantly invented and used during the | ||
| + | present century. For instance, it is hardly <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | in the teaching of a foreign pronunciation by the mouth of the best | ||
| + | teacher who can be hired for the work will content us, when perfected | ||
| + | talking-machines presently enable us to give examples of the still | ||
| + | better speech. Evidently a boy would learn to speak French with a purer | ||
| + | accent by listening to a phonograph which, freed of the present | ||
| + | tin-trumpet < | ||
| + | <i lang=" | ||
| + | ordinary master read aloud. To say this is not to suggest that | ||
| + | professors of languages will be dispensed with; but their teaching can | ||
| + | be thus supplemented. Similarly the use of magic-lanterns and | ||
| + | kinetoscopic pictures is capable of improving greatly upon the | ||
| + | blackboard and chalk still used. But the plan of education in itself is | ||
| + | so greatly more important to be foreseen than the mechanism by which | ||
| + | the details can be worked out, and the latter can with so very little | ||
| + | difficulty be imagined by anyone interested in them, that the reader | ||
| + | shall not be troubled with any discussion of this branch of the | ||
| + | subject, but will rather be asked to concentrate his attention upon the | ||
| + | moral and intellectual aspects of it.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | reasonable to conceive, that all social institutions will be governed | ||
| + | with ever-increasing intelligence and rationality as time goes on, and | ||
| + | that they could not possibly <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | to see that education as hitherto and at present practised would never | ||
| + | do for our grandchildren, | ||
| + | hundred years hence. To begin with, parents in that era would certainly | ||
| + | consider it hopelessly and criminally unethical, if not actively | ||
| + | immoral. Projects of reform, especially in morals, are often dismissed | ||
| + | as visionary, because it is pointed out that no changes can take place | ||
| + | in the social order which do not appeal directly to the self-interest | ||
| + | of the individual. In other words, there is no mainspring of social | ||
| + | action except aggregated selfishness. Without delaying to examine the | ||
| + | validity of the belief, it may be said at once that its full acceptance | ||
| + | is no obstacle to the admission of the whole case on which is founded | ||
| + | the belief that education will be conducted chiefly with a view to its | ||
| + | moral effect at the period I am attempting to describe. The very | ||
| + | circumstances on which writers rely, who predict the ethical | ||
| + | deterioration of man, are those which make the ethical reform of | ||
| + | education inevitable. Precisely in proportion as competition tends to | ||
| + | harden and debase, there will arise the unavoidable necessity for | ||
| + | deliberate counter-action of this tendency, resulting, as the effect of | ||
| + | the measures necessitated becomes felt, in the changes of commercial | ||
| + | and political conditions already< | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | at all <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | hence, it is not difficult to foresee the general lines upon which they | ||
| + | are likely to be met& | ||
| + | representing a perfect or ideal state, but broadly indicating the | ||
| + | methods which the effect of visible tendencies will by that time demand | ||
| + | of a practical people.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the practice of the future must be sought in the tendencies of the | ||
| + | present. The tendency most forcibly in evidence during recent times is | ||
| + | that in favour of softening the former acerbities of education. Whereas | ||
| + | the schoolhouse of half a century ago was something like a penitentiary | ||
| + | in the way it was conducted, the schoolhouse of to-day is managed as | ||
| + | much like a place of recreation as it possibly can be. At all events, | ||
| + | recreation is at least as assiduously cultivated as study, and the | ||
| + | candidate for an under-mastership who has a good cricket record will | ||
| + | find employment a good deal more easily than one with a double-first. | ||
| + | If there be any complaint of public and other upper-class schools at | ||
| + | the present time& | ||
| + | complaint& | ||
| + | than that brains are overtaxed. There is a visible reaction in regard | ||
| + | to this; but it is not to be regarded as a reaction in favour of the | ||
| + | old draconic methods. On the contrary, & | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | demands amenity of treatment for the fortunate offspring of the | ||
| + | twentieth century. The late James Payn, sanest and kindliest of men, | ||
| + | was never tired of denouncing what he called the barbarous and indecent | ||
| + | corporal punishments of Eton. He used to say that if a picture of an | ||
| + | Eton boy being birched were published in the < | ||
| + | News</ | ||
| + | tried to get either Mr Latey or Mr Shorter to insert such a picture. Be | ||
| + | this as it may, what he said was perfectly true. I shall have something | ||
| + | to say presently on this same question of school discipline: meantime | ||
| + | it may with perfect safety be predicted of the master& | ||
| + | hundred years hence that it will be found only in museums, and (whether | ||
| + | rightly or wrongly) be regarded as a relic of degrading barbarism. One | ||
| + | reason why corporal punishment will have to be abolished is that boys | ||
| + | and girls will certainly be educated together instead of apart. As we | ||
| + | could hardly cane girls (and it would be of very little use if we | ||
| + | could) we shall assuredly have to get on without caning their masculine | ||
| + | schoolmates.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | religious teaching practised in schools at the present time not only | ||
| + | has very little to do with the question of morality but tends | ||
| + | distinctly, except in Roman Catholic seminaries <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | some few non-conforming colleges where a special kind of education is | ||
| + | given, to have less and less connection therewith. Whatever moral | ||
| + | effect & | ||
| + | and recognisedly due to the & | ||
| + | that is, to public opinion among the taught, and only indirectly to | ||
| + | anything which emanates from the teachers. Assuredly a proficient | ||
| + | knowledge of Biblical history has no ethical effect greater than a | ||
| + | proficient knowledge of Greek mythology (at least of so much of it as | ||
| + | is properly selected for school use), and we have it on the authority | ||
| + | of Mr E. H. Cooper, a very entertaining if not particularly sound | ||
| + | writer on children, that even & | ||
| + | no means uniform in promoting a religious sentiment in boys.<a class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | found in the effect of public opinion and the general | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | direct moral inculcation is not very successful. It is to be assumed | ||
| + | that the ingenuity of future p& | ||
| + | discovery of the best ways in which indirect moral influence can be | ||
| + | cultivated. In view of the high importance which will evidently be | ||
| + | attached to such influence, we may take it for granted that it is not | ||
| + | in connection with any single branch of <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | be sought for, but that it will be root and branch of the whole scheme | ||
| + | of educational work. One very powerful assistance will be rendered to | ||
| + | this by the system of co-education.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | educated together a hundred years hence. The tendency of the sexes to | ||
| + | become less different intellectually is a known fact of | ||
| + | sociology.< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | dispense with the separation of the sexes in education. Wherever | ||
| + | co-education has been tried its effects have been excellent. The | ||
| + | presence of female students in medical colleges has had a markedly | ||
| + | reformative influence on the manners and moral tone of medical student | ||
| + | life, not long ago the < | ||
| + | advantages to a parent of being able to send his sons and his daughters | ||
| + | to one place of instruction, | ||
| + | companionship and maintenance of family relations thus afforded, are | ||
| + | equally obvious. In one other respect, which can only be touched upon | ||
| + | lightly here, the system of joint education must be enormously | ||
| + | beneficial, at all events to boys, and greatly beneficial to their | ||
| + | sisters. Every competent schoolmaster is acquainted with special | ||
| + | difficulties liable to arise about the age of puberty. The monastic | ||
| + | seclusion of the schoolboy <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | barracks who, according to Mr Kipling, & | ||
| + | plaster saints& | ||
| + | opposite sex, tend to accentuate these difficulties. The habit of | ||
| + | constant association with girls who are not his sisters relieves a boy | ||
| + | of the exaggerated sense of sexual isolation. A boy always brought up | ||
| + | with girls is not liable to be constantly thinking about girlhood: and | ||
| + | in practical experience many people are aware that boys who have had | ||
| + | the opportunity of frequent association with the girl friends of their | ||
| + | sisters grow into purer-minded and more chivalrous men, than those who | ||
| + | have lacked this advantage; and the thoughtful future will assuredly | ||
| + | cultivate the system which affords it. It is quite evident, in | ||
| + | addition, that the fatuous and unreasonable mystery with which for | ||
| + | centuries the natural facts most liable to be important in adult life | ||
| + | have been made inevitable subjects of unholy curiosity, will be swept | ||
| + | away, to the great enhancement of sane and clean thought in girls as | ||
| + | well as in boys, in young women even more than in young men: while the | ||
| + | tragedies which knowledge can avert, hidden horrors of our own day that | ||
| + | we are too sentimental to envisage, but that everyone must now and then | ||
| + | have met with a hint of, will happily exist no more, or occur but | ||
| + | rarely.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | assist us to the conclusion that co-education is the best, will be the | ||
| + | endeavour, everywhere apparent, to make the work of teaching agreeable | ||
| + | to the taught. This is the keynote of the tendencies whose fruition we | ||
| + | may look for at the end of this century. It will have been recognised | ||
| + | that to conceive of education as a process of forcing knowledge into | ||
| + | unwilling memories is to place the greatest possible obstacle in the | ||
| + | way of success. Even the child whose natural faculties are joyously | ||
| + | receptive is bound to resist more or less unconsciously teaching that | ||
| + | is conducted on the assumption that he won& | ||
| + | possibly help it. The worst child in the class sets the tone of the | ||
| + | rest. The boy who can most successfully evade real learning, and trick | ||
| + | his instructors well enough to escape punishment, is the hero of the | ||
| + | place. Nothing could be much worse for morality. Public opinion in | ||
| + | schools, useful as it is in other respects, is everywhere harmful in | ||
| + | this particular. The p& | ||
| + | method far more rational.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | tendency of thought is likely to develop. Here, as in so many other | ||
| + | places, etymology can help us. If we could think, whenever we talk or | ||
| + | make plans concerning the subject, of what education really | ||
| + | means& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | rationally of the work. There is no animal whose greatest pleasures are | ||
| + | derived from anything else than the exercise of its faculties. Our dog, | ||
| + | whether he jumps and tears about in glee as we take him for a walk, or | ||
| + | sits happily by our side, his head on our knees, his wistful eyes | ||
| + | scrutinising our face, sympathetic with every emotion, illustrates this | ||
| + | fact. In the one case he is exercising the natural faculties of speed | ||
| + | and vigorous agility; in the latter, the acquired and inherited | ||
| + | faculties of mental comprehension. Shut him up in a room alone, or with | ||
| + | an unfriendly person, and he is miserable or goes to sleep, providently | ||
| + | accumulating energy for the next opportunity of exercise. What I am not | ||
| + | afraid to call his mental pleasures are not less keen, if I know | ||
| + | anything at all of dogs (who have loved many of them) than his physical | ||
| + | pleasures; and I never had a dog in my life who would not cheerfully | ||
| + | neglect his food to come indoors and sit with me in my library. Are | ||
| + | children& | ||
| + | pleasure to their small proprietors than the brains of a dog? One of | ||
| + | the mistakes that we are already beginning to find out (and | ||
| + | consequently one of those which we may expect to have amended long | ||
| + | before this time next century) is the tacit assumption that games are | ||
| + | richer in pleasure than study. It isn& | ||
| + | themselves <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Plenty of them really prefer books before balls, until they go to | ||
| + | school; where we at once proceed to show them that we regard cricket as | ||
| + | a sort of alleviation of their hard lot, and with football console them | ||
| + | for their French lessons, and redress arithmetic by | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | neglect of athletics. Only, athletics will be properly treated as only | ||
| + | one of the joys of a school life that will be fulfilled of other | ||
| + | pleasures equally absorbing.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | of repulsive is part and parcel of the system on which education will | ||
| + | be conducted, and it is only incidentally that it will subserve the | ||
| + | concurrent sentimental tenderness which finds expression to-day in | ||
| + | unwise use of games in themselves highly beneficial, just as elsewhere | ||
| + | it finds expression by cultivating gluttony.< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | how to think, the intellectual exercise of thinking will be always | ||
| + | found, as it has already long ago been found where this highly unusual | ||
| + | method has been experimented with, to give keen pleasure to the | ||
| + | instructed.< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | excessive and in part exclusive training of memory, and in regard to | ||
| + | the propriety of reversing the general order of tuition by proceeding | ||
| + | from concrete facts to generalised theories instead of beginning with | ||
| + | generalisations and illustrating these by specific instances, is, for | ||
| + | practical reasons, hardly likely to be acted upon by our descendants. | ||
| + | To begin with, the culture of memory is not in itself an abuse; on the | ||
| + | contrary, it is a highly necessary feature of education. What is an | ||
| + | abuse is the <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Teachers in the future will be more anxious to develop the mind from | ||
| + | within than to graft information upon it from without. But they | ||
| + | certainly will foster the faculty called memory& | ||
| + | exactly, they will refrain from destroying that faculty in the way that | ||
| + | present-day education destroys it. For as a matter of fact, the memory | ||
| + | of a young child who has never been taught anything is invariably good, | ||
| + | being both copious and retentive. One often hears it said that children | ||
| + | quickly forget; but it is also the case that they very quickly remember | ||
| + | again. An Anglo-Indian friend told me a somewhat pleasing anecdote | ||
| + | which (though of course it does not prove) illustrates a general fact | ||
| + | of which anyone can find proofs for himself by a little observation. | ||
| + | Having taken home for a year& | ||
| + | all other English children in India, amid native servants, and speaking | ||
| + | quite correct Urdu instead of the barbarous dog-Hindustani which | ||
| + | suffices for their elders, he was under the impression, when the | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | return from refreshment in England to labour in India, that they had | ||
| + | completely forgotten the soft vernacular speech which formerly came | ||
| + | much more easily from them than English. And his belief was confirmed | ||
| + | when, the children having been promptly <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | adoring servants, an aged bearer came to him almost in tears, | ||
| + | complaining that & | ||
| + | the next day all the little people were chattering Urdu as easily as | ||
| + | ever. The fact is that a child& | ||
| + | intensely upon whatever subject interests at a given moment, and | ||
| + | neglects everything else. By our present method of education we do all | ||
| + | that the most malignant ingenuity could devise to destroy both this | ||
| + | invaluable gift of mental concentration and the accompanying faculty of | ||
| + | memory. The new teaching will industriously cultivate both. There is no | ||
| + | doubt that the premature and unskilful use of books as implements of | ||
| + | instruction is extremely bad for the memory; and the employment of | ||
| + | distasteful and inconsiderate methods of teaching is equally | ||
| + | destructive of concentration. A hundred years hence, when it has been | ||
| + | recognised that the easiest way to teach anything is to find out how a | ||
| + | child can be made to < | ||
| + | difficulty in securing attention. Children& | ||
| + | most people suppose, tire very easily. On the contrary, they are with | ||
| + | great difficulty fatigued. Anyone who has been so imprudent as to | ||
| + | embark on a course of tale-telling near bedtime or near a meal hour, | ||
| + | knows that the little people are almost incapable of being satiated. | ||
| + | And the descendants <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | insatiable of being taught, because we shall have found out how to make | ||
| + | them want to be taught.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | future, moral as well as intellectual. We shall no longer treat good | ||
| + | behaviour as if it were an artificial and unnatural abstinence from the | ||
| + | true desires of the child or of man. We shall arrange that people, | ||
| + | young and old, may < | ||
| + | be shifted. At present, all kinds of morality are approached on the | ||
| + | assumption that it is requisite to persuade to an unwilling abstinence | ||
| + | from vice, and that when the desires of the wicked have been curbed | ||
| + | into a sort of ascetic abstemiousness prompted by fear of punishment, | ||
| + | whether overt or implicit, a moral feat has been performed. The new | ||
| + | morality will only be content when the subject of it would not sin if | ||
| + | you asked him to. His moral sense will have been stoically cultivated. | ||
| + | Obedience and the law of Thou-shalt-not will be dethroned. This law | ||
| + | represents in the education of to-day the highest form of youthful | ||
| + | virtue. Yet mere obedience, even where it has always been considered | ||
| + | most valuable, namely, where it takes the shape of military discipline, | ||
| + | has proved an utter failure; the last two great wars proved the fact. | ||
| + | If the lamentable doggerel which enshrines the applauded | ||
| + | self-immolation of Casabianca <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | forgotten altogether a hundred years hence, it will assuredly be quoted | ||
| + | only as a monumental example of old-fashioned fat-headedness, | ||
| + | offensive to the sense of reason than the verses themselves are to the | ||
| + | sense of poetical taste. The Casabiancas of the next century will have | ||
| + | been allowed& | ||
| + | need to be taught this& | ||
| + | exertion will have been required. On the contrary, it is impossible to | ||
| + | listen for many hours to what goes on in a modern school without being | ||
| + | impressed with the ingenious arrangements that are required in order to | ||
| + | prevent boys and girls from thinking for themselves. The notion of | ||
| + | their doing so seems as offensive to the present race of schoolmasters | ||
| + | as, to Mr W. S. Gilbert& | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | so much to point out the errors of the present as to indicate the | ||
| + | improvements of the future: and we may be sure that the prime virtues | ||
| + | of the scholar a hundred years hence will be reasonableness and | ||
| + | ingenuity, not dull obedience. Thus right conduct will be inculcated, | ||
| + | not as an expression of obedience <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | way of behaving, and the incentive to right action will be that it is | ||
| + | also sensible action. The test of all conduct will be its results. | ||
| + | Whatever does harm to self and others will be obviously wrong; what | ||
| + | does good or is indifferent will be right. The standard of these things | ||
| + | that has to be accepted all through life will be set up from the first, | ||
| + | an enormous improvement upon the vicious system of exacting irrational | ||
| + | obedience for the first eighteen or twenty-one years of life, and | ||
| + | expecting this to produce reasonable self-government thereafter, which | ||
| + | is so fruitful in the wild-oats of early adulthood. The latter could | ||
| + | hardly be more ingeniously cultivated.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | not be employed as implements of instruction: | ||
| + | that they will not be employed as they now are, chiefly for the purpose | ||
| + | of saving a schoolmaster the trouble of making his pupils think for | ||
| + | themselves: and incidentally the abolition of this mistake will react | ||
| + | most usefully upon memory, itself, with the exception of reasoning | ||
| + | power, the most valuable of mental faculties. Oral teaching, | ||
| + | accompanied in every possible place by practical illustration, | ||
| + | store and build up memory (as it always does when we employ it now) far | ||
| + | more rapidly than anything else. The delight which this method of | ||
| + | teaching confers upon the taught is enhanced by the avidity | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | mechanics, and even geometry when taught with apparatus instead of with | ||
| + | figures, are received by children of every growth.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | controlled without some sort of punishments would, no doubt, be thought | ||
| + | ridiculous Utopianism. But the greatest part of the necessity for | ||
| + | correction will have disappeared automatically when the greatest source | ||
| + | of youthful misbehaviour& | ||
| + | been deviated into channels which will utilise it. Children whisper, | ||
| + | fidget, or make a noise in class, simply because they are bored by the | ||
| + | dulness of mechanical processes which we persistently use in seeking to | ||
| + | cram information into their minds from without instead of exercising | ||
| + | the reason that dwells within. As the education of future generations | ||
| + | will assuredly have to be a great deal more copious than what we are | ||
| + | content with now, it is fortunate that this reform will also be a great | ||
| + | economiser of time. Every schoolmaster knows that an interested class | ||
| + | progresses far more rapidly than one that is bored and consequently | ||
| + | inattentive; | ||
| + | of the highly complex law of cricket, will often be found utterly | ||
| + | incapable of applying the very simple definitions at the beginning of | ||
| + | Euclid I., for the simple reason that cricket interests him, while | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | latter is & | ||
| + | an outdoor pleasure, while Euclid is (or rather should be) an indoor | ||
| + | one. It is because in cricket we get him into the habit of reasoning | ||
| + | for himself, while in geometry we only too frequently fail to do what | ||
| + | Euclid is supposed to help us to do.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | temptations to misbehaviour resulting from the absorption of redundant | ||
| + | mental activity, it is still to be feared that disciplinary punishment | ||
| + | will sometimes be required. This will certainly not be corporal. The | ||
| + | uncivilised and degrading expedient of purposely-inflicted pain is | ||
| + | visibly on its last legs. There are still reactionary people who write | ||
| + | to the papers in order to explain that the use of scholastic torture | ||
| + | makes for manliness; they must be presumed to think that it would be on | ||
| + | the whole rather good for boys to be birched at intervals, like Charles | ||
| + | Lamb, not as a punishment, but to keep them humble. But the next | ||
| + | century will have outgrown such ideas. The commonest of present-day | ||
| + | alternatives& | ||
| + | the evil effect of this upon handwriting and health being already | ||
| + | recognised. & | ||
| + | all forms of correction, but it is only too consistent with our present | ||
| + | plans of education to treat extra <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | punishment& | ||
| + | is much more likely that the schoolmaster of a hundred years hence will | ||
| + | punish refractory and inattentive pupils by keeping-out instead of | ||
| + | keeping-in. The most detested of all chastisements will be exclusion | ||
| + | from the pleasant exercise of learning. During the Russo-Japanese War | ||
| + | newspaper readers noted with saturnine amusement that the artillery | ||
| + | regiment which in St Petersburg had the maladroitness to fire a salute | ||
| + | with a shotted gun and very nearly kill the Czar thereby, was punished | ||
| + | by being sent to the front; while at the beginning of hostilities the | ||
| + | exemplary conduct of the enormous Japanese army crowded in Tokio for | ||
| + | transport was accounted for by the threat that any soldier who | ||
| + | misbehaved himself would be left at home. It is the Japanese and not | ||
| + | the Russian ideal of discipline that will animate the schools of the | ||
| + | future. We shall no doubt emulate the reserve of the Confessor in the | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | to find; and we shall punish when punish we must. Future advantage, | ||
| + | even for oneself, is seldom a very powerful motive with the young of | ||
| + | any age. But present deprivation is a chastisement easily and keenly | ||
| + | comprehended: | ||
| + | from a lesson will no doubt supplement the immediate boredom very | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | immediate effect. I imagine that the naughty child of the future will | ||
| + | be punished by being shut up in a well-ventilated and well-lighted but | ||
| + | perfectly empty room, with pockets equally empty. At the same time, by | ||
| + | treating deprivation of it as an evident chastisement, | ||
| + | nature of instruction will be in a very useful manner impressed upon | ||
| + | the infant mind. Young persons much more easily believe what they find | ||
| + | to be treated as a matter of course than what is laboriously impressed | ||
| + | upon them by explicit inculcation. Thus the effect of rationalised | ||
| + | education will not be, as one critic has rather rashly supposed, to | ||
| + | make children little prigs. On the contrary, its effect will be to make | ||
| + | them naturally and happily interested little learners& | ||
| + | different thing. One of the very greatest improvements in the | ||
| + | rationalised education will precisely be that it cannot possibly foster | ||
| + | the awful priggishness which is a very common result of our own | ||
| + | methods.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | future will have to be much more copious than anything that is at all | ||
| + | common nowadays. The nature of its extensions will next be | ||
| + | discussed.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | education is to impress upon the mind, as a principle not to be evaded | ||
| + | by any <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | (among which are personal acts of any kind) produce fixed | ||
| + | effects& | ||
| + | knowledge, could not be traced back to pre-existing causative | ||
| + | circumstance. No department of knowledge tends so intimately to give to | ||
| + | the mind the impress of this fact in the course of its acquisition as | ||
| + | physical science. And as a proficient acquaintance with physical | ||
| + | science will be necessary to a great many occupations, | ||
| + | kinds is performed in the intelligent manner in which we have seen | ||
| + | reason to be convinced that it will be performed a hundred years hence, | ||
| + | there will be a greater practical need for scientific instruction than | ||
| + | there is now, though science is disgracefully neglected even with | ||
| + | regard to our present necessities. As education is to be given with the | ||
| + | object of fitting children for life as well as developing their minds, | ||
| + | the science of health will certainly be taught; but all physical | ||
| + | sciences will have their place on the curriculum even at the early | ||
| + | stages, because it will have been recognised that the habit of mind | ||
| + | which is formed by studies of this kind is not only very necessary to | ||
| + | an efficient working life, but also very helpful as a basis of | ||
| + | practical culture. It may be conceived that a thorough | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | essential of all education in the future as a really good training in | ||
| + | Latin <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | as many of us would like it to be considered now. Fifty years ago we | ||
| + | believed that no true education could be given in preparation for | ||
| + | ordinary life without as much Latin as was necessary in order to be | ||
| + | able to write a fair copy of elegiacs, and as much Greek as was | ||
| + | necessary in order to read Homer with comfort. A hundred years hence we | ||
| + | shall think it necessary to be able to read a scientific thesis | ||
| + | comprehendingly.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | specialised instruction will no doubt be begun; and subjects connected | ||
| + | with the evident tendency of a boy& | ||
| + | with the opportunities likely to be presented to either in forming a | ||
| + | career, will be developed to the exclusion of subjects less immediately | ||
| + | subservient to the object of making a useful citizen of him or her in | ||
| + | some particular profession or branch of industry. Practical | ||
| + | demonstrations of science, instead of being reserved for the more | ||
| + | advanced stages of tuition, will, on the contrary, form the groundwork; | ||
| + | and children will be required to work practically themselves instead of | ||
| + | merely sitting still to watch the performances (in this case apt to be | ||
| + | regarded with little more respect than scholastic conjuring tricks) of | ||
| + | a teacher. They will be invited to deduce laws for themselves from what | ||
| + | occurs in practice, and where they deduce wrong ones <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | will not be arbitrarily corrected, but assisted to make further | ||
| + | experiments which will show where the mistake occurs, until at last the | ||
| + | correct generalisation is reached. Only after a considerable course of | ||
| + | practical work will they be entrusted with books in which great | ||
| + | generalisations are to be found ready made, and these books will always | ||
| + | be regarded as a sort of <i lang=" | ||
| + | contrivance to be employed as a regrettable alternative, | ||
| + | would take too long to work everything out by the golden implement of | ||
| + | individual observation. The habit of mind thus cultivated, and the | ||
| + | manual dexterity thus obtained, will be of priceless practical worth in | ||
| + | after-life; and with what rapturous enjoyment will our descendants | ||
| + | acquire knowledge which at present we force upon our children with | ||
| + | stripes!</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | to be greatly cultivated. But mathematics, | ||
| + | ancillary to the more immediately delightful work of concrete and | ||
| + | experimental science, will lose much terror. Many mathematical | ||
| + | operations can moreover be demonstrated experimentally, | ||
| + | opportunity of thus demonstrating them will be lost. Rightly treated, | ||
| + | mathematics need never be dull. According to my own experience and all | ||
| + | that I have been able to gather from the recollections of others, | ||
| + | algebra (for instance) is never abhorred when a proper care is taken to | ||
| + | make <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | and the art of evoking this use will have been carefully developed by | ||
| + | the educational specialists who alone will be permitted to direct so | ||
| + | delicate and important a task as the training of the young. For school | ||
| + | teachers will not be merely more or less erudite people employed to | ||
| + | dispense their learning: they will be men and women who have undergone | ||
| + | long and careful instruction in the art of p& | ||
| + | specialised faculty in itself.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | in the righteous abhorrence of present-day school-children. I say | ||
| + | righteous abhorrence with intention, because this department of useful | ||
| + | learning always has the air of being purposely planned in order to | ||
| + | secure the maximum of execration accompanied by the minimum of | ||
| + | advantage. What languages will be taught a hundred years hence, and in | ||
| + | what manner will they be instilled into the children of our | ||
| + | great-great-grand-children? | ||
| + | as that which a few months ago raged about the question of compulsory | ||
| + | Greek must be more or less untrustworthy. Every man will take the view | ||
| + | of the future of the dead languages (so called, as someone< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | sanguinely remarked, because they can never die) determined by his own | ||
| + | view as to whether proficiency in the <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | of Rome ought to be maintained in his own day. But for a reason | ||
| + | probably admitting of very little controversy, | ||
| + | permissible to believe that the classical languages will at least not | ||
| + | have to meet the urgent competition of a variety of current languages | ||
| + | as subjects of useful learning. This reason is to be found in the | ||
| + | evident tendency of a paramount tongue to extrude other tongues from | ||
| + | practical employment in commerce; and commerce, more than anything | ||
| + | else, will of course always determine the question of modern language | ||
| + | study. Provided that the race which becomes paramount in the markets of | ||
| + | the world during the course of this century possesses a reasonably | ||
| + | philosophical, | ||
| + | acquire, it is likely that for commercial purposes it will become (to | ||
| + | use an incorrect, but not conveniently replaceable term) universal. To | ||
| + | the facile remark that every nation considers its own speech easy | ||
| + | enough for foreigners to acquire, and much more satisfactory in the | ||
| + | other respects named than any tongue which it is invited to give itself | ||
| + | the trouble of learning, may be opposed the reply that peoples do in | ||
| + | fact recognise, where it exists, the unsatisfactory nature of their own | ||
| + | speech. For example, nearly every Russian whom one meets in polite or | ||
| + | commercial circles speaks at least French, and often speaks it | ||
| + | admirably; while in Norway, <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | are none of them anything like so difficult to learn as Russian, | ||
| + | practically everyone speaks English. The case of Japan is even more | ||
| + | illustrative; | ||
| + | language to enable one to travel with perfect comfort is always to be | ||
| + | found current in the Mikado& | ||
| + | for domestic use the Japanese have a popular language, printed in | ||
| + | newspapers and in some books alongside of the more literary Chinese | ||
| + | id& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | language of commerce will impose itself upon at least the business | ||
| + | population of the whole world. As the substitution of modern languages | ||
| + | for the dead languages is advocated solely on utilitarian grounds, | ||
| + | which <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | to know a couple or more foreign languages is useful in trade; and as | ||
| + | no one has ever seriously pretended that French, German or any other | ||
| + | modern language can compare with Greek and Latin as intellectual | ||
| + | gymnastics and as training in the precise expression of one& | ||
| + | thoughts; it may be assumed that, on the ground of competitive | ||
| + | usefulness, the latter will not need to be dispensed with. Whether the | ||
| + | study of them will be abandoned on the ground that the time they | ||
| + | require can be better employed in some study other than that of | ||
| + | languages is another and more difficult question, the resolution of | ||
| + | which depends upon the view we take of the literary tendencies probably | ||
| + | existing after another century. If we believe that our descendants will | ||
| + | have effected so many improvements in the shape of labour-saving | ||
| + | contrivances as to afford a large increase of leisure for <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | enjoys, we shall probably expect the languages which enshrine the | ||
| + | greatest literature of the world to remain a subject of study. If we | ||
| + | believe in the growing intellectuality of man, we shall be strengthened | ||
| + | in the same expectation. If, on the other hand, we think that the | ||
| + | progress of our race will exhibit itself in the shape of greedy | ||
| + | utilitarianism and of idiotic and self-destructive immorality, we shall | ||
| + | naturally conclude that no one will be fool enough to trouble himself | ||
| + | with Homer or the Oresteian trilogy, the laments of Sappho or the | ||
| + | philosophy of Plato. Seeing what great men have taken this somewhat | ||
| + | despondent view of the future, it would perhaps be immodest to express | ||
| + | any other opinion on the subject.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | languages are taught will not be handled in the manner now current. Mr | ||
| + | Andrew Lang has, in more than one place, described his own | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | with the happiest results. A method of teaching alien languages which | ||
| + | founds itself upon an imitation of the natural picking-up of the mother | ||
| + | tongue by babies has been suggested, perhaps without sufficient | ||
| + | consideration of the vast expenditure of time necessary to the process, | ||
| + | and certainly without sufficient allowance for the fact that it would | ||
| + | be impossible to afford the same incessant <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | language of their fathers and mothers so easily. But there is no reason | ||
| + | why we should perpetuate the discouraging preponderance of grammatical | ||
| + | and etymological study which caused the late H. D. Traill to say of | ||
| + | certain professors that</ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | style</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | that schooling be made agreeable will have the best possible effect in | ||
| + | facilitating instruction. It is as literature that all | ||
| + | languages& | ||
| + | scholars& | ||
| + | than we have any example to assist us in imagining. Where a foreign | ||
| + | language pronounced with a different accent and intonation from that of | ||
| + | the learner is studied, no doubt (as already mentioned) talking | ||
| + | machines will be employed: and in addition, pupils will be required to | ||
| + | read and speak the language aloud on all possible occasions, in order | ||
| + | to exercise the organs of speech in the alien manner.< | ||
| + | id=" | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | upon here, that history ought not to be taught as if its sole purpose | ||
| + | were to store the memory with the deeds and misdeeds of kings and the | ||
| + | progress of various wars. It will certainly be studied hereafter as a | ||
| + | vast lesson in sociology and politics, as an illustration of the | ||
| + | science of human dynamics. It is perhaps not superfluous to remark that | ||
| + | brilliant examples of the new historiography have shown that the | ||
| + | difference is not, in its result, so great as some critics imagine. But | ||
| + | the deductions from the facts of history are the important matter: and | ||
| + | the way in which history will be used a hundred years hence will be in | ||
| + | instructing the future governors of the world how to use their | ||
| + | citizenship wisely. Among other things expected of the schoolmaster of | ||
| + | the future will be that he implant in his scholars an ardent desire to | ||
| + | do their part in determining the polity of the state they live in, and | ||
| + | the sacred duty of the ballot will certainly be taught with relation to | ||
| + | whatever methods of utilising the popular vote may by that time have | ||
| + | become current.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | taught as literature; and the protest against the prevalent notion that | ||
| + | high civilisation involves the decadence of beauty in any form implies | ||
| + | belief in all the arts as subjects of cultivation in the schools of the | ||
| + | future. It need not be supposed that the unreasonable waste | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | teaching such a subject as drawing, and our curious neglect of | ||
| + | sculpture and modelling, will be perpetuated. As we can already see the | ||
| + | dawn of new ideas on both these subjects the tendency of the future in | ||
| + | regard to them is not difficult to conceive, nor need space be consumed | ||
| + | in discussing them in detail. Literature and poetry (the latter, I need | ||
| + | hardly say, no longer made merely hateful as the subject of the fatuous | ||
| + | torture called & | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | doubt be taught in an elementary way to all children, and the study of | ||
| + | them developed further where a natural appetite demands it. In reply to | ||
| + | the very natural question, & | ||
| + | is only needful to say that minds exercised by being made to think | ||
| + | about such subjects, are quite certain to exhibit special predilections | ||
| + | in one place and special aversions in another, and that the | ||
| + | ascertainment of these predilections and aversions will everywhere be | ||
| + | made the subject of painstaking thought. While nobody seriously | ||
| + | pretends nowadays that a taste for literature or the arts can be | ||
| + | inoculated upon a child& | ||
| + | question the belief that a natural bent for any one of them can be | ||
| + | assisted in its development, | ||
| + | being artificially implanted, certainly is susceptible of <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | teaching in & | ||
| + | of education. We try to do a scholar& | ||
| + | laboriously show him how to use a pencil and how to copy drawings and | ||
| + | pictures; and sometimes (though this kind of instruction is usually | ||
| + | retailed by the ingenious writers who endeavour to instruct the adult | ||
| + | public through the Press) we even go to the trouble of telling him the | ||
| + | kind of pictures he ought to admire (usually forgetting that in the | ||
| + | house of Art there are many mansions, and that a disgust for the early | ||
| + | Dutch masters does not necessarily imply an incapacity for appreciating | ||
| + | Velasquez); but, whether in adolescence or maturity, we never seem to | ||
| + | arrive at the point of trying to get people to think critically for | ||
| + | themselves. We shall reform altogether the processes of artistic | ||
| + | education in the course of this century.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | neglected. If only because learning any kind of handicraft gives the | ||
| + | keenest enjoyment to children, we may be sure that manual instruction | ||
| + | will be given, and that the effect of it will be of great value, not | ||
| + | only recreative but also practical. Our mechanics will not have to | ||
| + | inaugurate the wage-earning period of their lives by the elementary | ||
| + | acquisition of the use of tools. Their future occupation will have been | ||
| + | foreseen, and both by scientific understanding <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the processes they are to subserve, and by manual practice of the exact | ||
| + | work they are to perform, they will be prepared for intelligent | ||
| + | craftsmanship; | ||
| + | possible method of attaining the best possible results makes every | ||
| + | craft, however humble, not merely delightful but also noble, being | ||
| + | automatically grasped, so that work, like learning, will be a thing of | ||
| + | joy and a source, to the worker, of lifelong self-respect.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | training administered intelligently, | ||
| + | long-sightedness and subtlety during school-days, | ||
| + | character, not by repression of any natural predilection, | ||
| + | cultivation of mental and moral impulses to good. We shall never be | ||
| + | content with an obedient abstention from misconduct, but shall | ||
| + | unrestingly contrive that the < | ||
| + | wisely be implanted in the mind, until wisdom, righteousness and | ||
| + | forethought have been stamped upon the character with so indelible an | ||
| + | imprint that it would do violence to the whole contour of the mind to | ||
| + | act in defiance of them. A people thus trained will be capable of all | ||
| + | the reforms predicted of society a hundred years hence. Not by any of | ||
| + | the unimaginable cataclysms by which dreamers have expected Utopia to | ||
| + | be established, | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | to the will of fantastic lawgivers, but by the steady growth of | ||
| + | national morality will progress,</ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | between the nature of the units and the institutions of society, the | ||
| + | rationalised, | ||
| + | looked for by all who contemplate logically and with ordered faith the | ||
| + | capabilities of their kind a hundred years hence. <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Twentieth Century Child.</ | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | properly decided that it is well for children to be fed plainly while | ||
| + | at school, parents take the greatest pleasure in alleviating this | ||
| + | plainness by & | ||
| + | wicked and immoral palate-tickling during holidays. Indeed an excessive | ||
| + | appetite seems to be regarded even by quite sensible people as rather | ||
| + | an ornament to the juvenile character. Mr Cooper, whose charming book, | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | describes with what I am afraid is approval the incident of a boy whom | ||
| + | he brought away from school for a pleasure-trip just after lunch, and | ||
| + | who cheerfully devoured a second lunch in the company of his friend. | ||
| + | Assuredly our descendants will make no such mistakes as | ||
| + | this.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | Education,& | ||
| + | Spencer in his < | ||
| + | work which, though not very practical, contains a mass of very | ||
| + | suggestive matter on a subject which no one else, so far as I am aware, | ||
| + | has approached in quite the same spirit. As this book has been | ||
| + | reprinted at so low a price as sixpence, there is no excuse for any | ||
| + | parent who is unacquainted with its absolutely invaluable | ||
| + | teachings.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Mr Andrew Lang.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | we ever have a & | ||
| + | chimerical to imagine that it might be an id& | ||
| + | Provided that some simple code of id& | ||
| + | invented to denote the very limited number of concrete notions | ||
| + | essential to commercial correspondence, | ||
| + | study Chinese, even in the most cursory manner, would think it at all a | ||
| + | severe effort of the imagination to conceive of an id& | ||
| + | notation as being used for business correspondence. In Chinese, the | ||
| + | unit of expression is an idea. Words which relate to kindred subjects | ||
| + | include, in their id& | ||
| + | Thus the id& | ||
| + | the sign for & | ||
| + | Consequently, | ||
| + | entirely unlike Chinese that a person knowing neither can distinguish | ||
| + | one from the other when heard across the width of a street, the | ||
| + | Japanese can read Chinese books without difficulty, and one form of | ||
| + | printing can be read by the Chinese of the North and those of the | ||
| + | South, although the spoken dialects differ so much that | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | spoken communication. An id& | ||
| + | (not of course so archaic nor so cumbersome as Chinese, but | ||
| + | philosophically devised for the purpose) would release the student from | ||
| + | all difficulties of speech and accent; he would always name the signs | ||
| + | to himself in his own language.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | method, it may be added, which can very usefully be practised now. | ||
| + | Those of us who & | ||
| + | before a summer holiday by reading a novel or two, would always find | ||
| + | the results of this rubbing-up process to be greatly more effective, | ||
| + | when presently utilised abroad, if we would read always < | ||
| + | instead of in silence according to the usual procedure.& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | world with an alarmed feeling that vast material progress and enlarged | ||
| + | knowledge of the visible and tangible universe are likely to be | ||
| + | accompanied by intellectual developments dangerous to the religious | ||
| + | spirit in mankind. But to consider thus is to overlook the manifest | ||
| + | trend of human thought at the present time. Of the two influences | ||
| + | named, material progress and enlarged information about the universe, | ||
| + | the former is probably much more directly liable to affect religious | ||
| + | feeling adversely than the latter. Epochs of high civilisation and | ||
| + | great luxury have often accompanied a general tendency to scepticism, | ||
| + | and these conditions are also perhaps (and for the same reasons) not | ||
| + | highly favourable to the highest developments of poetry. There have | ||
| + | been periods of scientific discovery which have coincided with the | ||
| + | spread of irreligion. During the second half of the nineteenth century | ||
| + | there was, for instance, no doubt a great increase of popular | ||
| + | scepticism <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | deductions) from science. Religion unquestionably lost ground in the | ||
| + | sense that dogmatic irreligion became rather fashionable. When the | ||
| + | people began to learn that geological research had entirely upset the | ||
| + | Biblical chronology, and that biological research had proved the | ||
| + | development of animal life by evolutionary processes not compatible | ||
| + | with a literal acceptance of the account of the creation in Genesis; | ||
| + | when knowledge of the developments of language proved that the various | ||
| + | tongues of mankind could not possibly have been the subject of a | ||
| + | sudden, cataclysmal & | ||
| + | when it became common knowledge that the sun and stars were not | ||
| + | suddenly produced for the convenience of man, but were, on the | ||
| + | contrary, for the most part much older, as suns and stars, than the | ||
| + | earth itself; it is not surprising that minds untrained in | ||
| + | philosophical deduction leaped towards atheism, although, of course, | ||
| + | none of these discoveries has any more to do with religion, as | ||
| + | religion, than, say, chemistry has to do with music. Unless one takes a | ||
| + | highly anthropomorphic view of the subject they are not even inimical | ||
| + | to revelation. Of course it is open to anyone who chooses, to say that | ||
| + | if the statements in the Bible, said to be inspired, are incorrect, the | ||
| + | Creator (and Inspirer) either did not know how He had done His work, or | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | scientific discovery has disproved revelation. But that is what I have | ||
| + | called a highly anthropomorphic argument, and it may safely be left to | ||
| + | the apologists to demolish. Assuredly it is not a sort of argument | ||
| + | likely to be met with in the cultured and logical future. But it was an | ||
| + | argument which commended itself very widely to the uncultured and | ||
| + | illogical past, and great efforts were made to deal with it. These | ||
| + | efforts were really inimical to religious faith. Religion having been | ||
| + | declared to rest upon the irrefragable rock of Holy Scripture, there | ||
| + | appeared to many excellent people an urgent necessity that science | ||
| + | should be set right, that the theory of Evolution (by which was meant, | ||
| + | for these thinkers, Darwinism) must be disproved: otherwise all faith | ||
| + | must go by the board, and the world must descend into pure materialism. | ||
| + | The Biblical criticism produced in Germany, and apparently received in | ||
| + | the very heart of the Christian camp, seemed to plain men not merely to | ||
| + | assail this irrefragable rock but to strike at the roots of religion | ||
| + | itself. Atheism, having become unfashionable, | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | great deal more philosophical. The whole question of religion was | ||
| + | conceived to hang together. The Bible was the Word of God: if the Bible | ||
| + | could not stand, God must fall. And the stability of <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Bible was considered to rest upon scientific accuracy. A miscellaneous | ||
| + | collection of writings, certainly of great, but of variously computed | ||
| + | antiquity, was to be absolutely right (which no other documents of | ||
| + | anything like the same age have ever been) on scientific facts; | ||
| + | otherwise it could not be retained as a text-book of the churches. The | ||
| + | latter (sometimes themselves claiming inspiration) had declared the | ||
| + | Bible to be directly inspired: and by some people inspiration was taken | ||
| + | to imply literal and detailed truth, though literal and detailed truth | ||
| + | would certainly have made the collection utterly incomprehensible by | ||
| + | the persons who have used it during all but the last comparatively | ||
| + | insignificant portion of its existence, and to most persons even then. | ||
| + | Evidently such a conception of the Bible, accompanied by the opinion | ||
| + | that religion could only exist on the basis of the Bible, was dangerous | ||
| + | to popular religion in proportion as the opinions here summarised met | ||
| + | with public support.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | apologists to assist the difficulty of belief by attenuating the | ||
| + | minimum required of it. The exposure of their rather circular | ||
| + | arguments& | ||
| + | of the Bible on its internal evidence& | ||
| + | thinker who had rejected (as he was encouraged to reject) the claim of | ||
| + | the Church to <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | of his own logical acuteness. With a warm glow of self-approval he | ||
| + | abandoned the ancient shibboleths and left off going to church, being | ||
| + | convinced that no really well-informed intelligence could tolerate the | ||
| + | mutual contradiction of science and religion. With no more ability to | ||
| + | understand the arguments which supported the one than the philosophy | ||
| + | which lay at the root of the other, and quite unaware that religious | ||
| + | belief is capable of development and is as much a product of evolution | ||
| + | as any material phenomenon, he considered according to temperament that | ||
| + | religion was either a mischievous invention calculated to clog the | ||
| + | progress of the world, or a pardonable aberration of amiable minds | ||
| + | seeking consolation in superstition of one sort or another. The | ||
| + | religiously-minded thinker of the same calibre welcomed with enthusiasm | ||
| + | the antagonisms of scientific schools discovered for him by the less | ||
| + | wary of his teachers, and decided that Darwin was wrong, that Huxley | ||
| + | was following false scents, and that science would have to revise all | ||
| + | its later conclusions. In neither case (naturally) was</ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | Moses,& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | supposed to be the touchstone of religion& | ||
| + | though the combatants in the popular arena were quite unaware of it, | ||
| + | the true thinkers were realising vast depths which science had left | ||
| + | still unexplored, and the very investigations undertaken to account for | ||
| + | the beginnings of life on this planet were proving the belief in the | ||
| + | spontaneous generation of life a figment. Whatever effect science may | ||
| + | have had upon myth, it was doing nothing to assail the ultimate mystery | ||
| + | which is the basic fact of religion.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | materialism began to be popularised, | ||
| + | easier to accept (or decline) scientific discoveries without | ||
| + | understanding the evidence for or against them than to grasp such | ||
| + | abstract considerations as the subjectivity of phenomena, popular | ||
| + | scepticism began to be directed into new channels. If we could only | ||
| + | know phenomena we really know nothing; and it was just as likely that | ||
| + | the most absurd myths of the hagiologist might be true as that they | ||
| + | might be false& | ||
| + | the century there is no doubt that among the masses of the people the | ||
| + | incomprehensibleness of things in general had the effect of | ||
| + | popularising a certain tolerance of Christianity among the class which, | ||
| + | a little <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | if church-going, | ||
| + | continued to be mentioned by the clergy and their adherents as the | ||
| + | subject of lamentable negligence, the habits thus deplored arose, less | ||
| + | and less from conviction and more and more from taste. People stayed | ||
| + | away from church not because they rejected Christianity but because | ||
| + | church-going bored them. If the clergy saw their congregations dwindle | ||
| + | they had themselves to thank for it. The atrocious dulness of nearly | ||
| + | all sermons drove away more churchmen than were lured from their pews | ||
| + | by militant irreligion. There is not the smallest reason to believe | ||
| + | that & | ||
| + | part in producing the indifference denounced by the churches. The | ||
| + | simple fact is that a growing appetite for amusements, athletic and | ||
| + | other, and an intolerance of the boredom inflicted by preachers too | ||
| + | indolent or too imperfectly educated to make their discourses tolerable | ||
| + | by an active mind, robbed the churches of their visitors. A good | ||
| + | preacher never lacked a crowded congregation even in the middle of a | ||
| + | week-day in the city of London; nor are such congregations lacking | ||
| + | now.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | non-Catholic countries has been a great cause of indifferentism. The | ||
| + | fostering of <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | relieve it of the duty of religious as well as the expense of other | ||
| + | teaching, cannot tend to promote religious education. To take our own | ||
| + | country for an example, fathers, who would make it a duty to instil as | ||
| + | well as they were able the principles of their own faith into the minds | ||
| + | of their children if the board schools were not supposed to teach | ||
| + | Christianity, | ||
| + | fact which makes it quite easy to understand why congregations are so | ||
| + | largely made up of elderly people, while boys and girls, not young | ||
| + | enough to be haled unwillingly to the parental pew, and young men and | ||
| + | maidens, young wives and husbands & | ||
| + | prevailing system, tend more and more to amuse themselves, not in | ||
| + | irreligion but in indifference. The squabbles of the sects have made it | ||
| + | impossible to invest Christianity in board schools, unless the law be | ||
| + | flagrantly violated, with any of the importance necessary to the | ||
| + | foundation of a genuinely religious spirit; and the very children find | ||
| + | that religion is treated as a thing of much less importance than sums | ||
| + | or a good handwriting. No one struggles and wrangles about the right | ||
| + | way to do long division. Long division, therefore, is a settled thing | ||
| + | and important. But everybody quarrels and snarls as to who shall teach | ||
| + | his particular kind of religion. Religion, therefore, is a doubtful | ||
| + | sort of thing, <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | It cannot be of much importance. If you ask father about it, he says it | ||
| + | is the teacher& | ||
| + | be attended to at a certain time so as not to interfere with the real | ||
| + | business of the day. Clearly it doesn& | ||
| + | child resolves, as soon as it is old enough, to escape from the weekly | ||
| + | boredom of sitting still for two hours in a stuffy church or chapel, | ||
| + | saying the same things over and over again, and listening to a dull man | ||
| + | in a sort of elevated and ornamented witness-box talking in a | ||
| + | patronising tone about things not easy to understand, and not in the | ||
| + | least practically useful when heard.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | has been at work to produce a result likely to affect the attitude of | ||
| + | the present century towards the question. If the facts are as I have | ||
| + | stated them (which I do not think anyone will dispute) we see one very | ||
| + | good reason why the younger generation is just now somewhat | ||
| + | irreligious. I do not believe it is nearly as irreligious as many good | ||
| + | people (on both sides) think. But I do believe that we, at all events, | ||
| + | have as a nation been doing every thing we can to make it so. There is | ||
| + | no surer way of preventing a thing& | ||
| + | State to make a show of doing it and then neglect it. If the school | ||
| + | boards had <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Christianity, | ||
| + | done it a great deal better than the boards could possibly have done | ||
| + | it, even in the best conditions. And if anyone says that you | ||
| + | can& | ||
| + | conditions which exist in England at the present time, the religious | ||
| + | spirit is not favoured unless religion < | ||
| + | beginning that the sort of life we lead now, and that we are likely to | ||
| + | go on living during the next hundred years, is probably more | ||
| + | unfavourable to the spirit than any directly irreligious influence of | ||
| + | science or discovery. People who are crowded into towns, where they are | ||
| + | out of constant touch with Nature and the immensities of space, and | ||
| + | lead a hurried, busy existence unfavourable to deep thought and | ||
| + | mysticism, are much less liable to yearn for some explanation of the | ||
| + | vast incomprehensible universe, the profound misgivings of the soul, | ||
| + | than people who have other opportunities, | ||
| + | solitude and have lain under the inscrutable stars. The very frequency | ||
| + | of terrible experience, when death stalks in the streets and a funeral | ||
| + | procession is so common a sight that men hardly turn their unbared | ||
| + | heads to look upon it, blunts the sense of awe; and in the cheap Press | ||
| + | the alleged humorist finds it a choice subject for joking. A hundred | ||
| + | years hence, <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | quite so ghastly, still more of us will have lived always in cities, | ||
| + | and been rarely intimate with Nature. Unless, therefore, some new | ||
| + | influences supervene, it is likely that the new age will be even less | ||
| + | religiously inclined than the age we live in. Is it probable that such | ||
| + | an influence will arise? Or will the next century have turned its face | ||
| + | altogether from faith and given up in despair the world-old riddle of | ||
| + | the universe?</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | of conditions unfavourable to church-going, | ||
| + | arrest the tendencies of thought at present supposed to exist must be a | ||
| + | powerful one. But in computing the exact potency which it would require | ||
| + | to possess we must take an accurate view of the tendencies themselves. | ||
| + | Now, although dogmatic religion has to a certain extent lost ground, | ||
| + | and though formal observances are somewhat neglected, it would be a | ||
| + | fallacy to consider that morality is in consequence retrograding. The | ||
| + | steady growth of such things as teetotalism; | ||
| + | conscience against tame stag hunting and against what was aptly called | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | societies for the Protection of Children and for the Prevention of | ||
| + | Cruelty to Animals; the generous responses made to any appeal for | ||
| + | public subscriptions to <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | remarkable way in which the working people, out of their miserable | ||
| + | poverty, help each other in time of strikes; the waves of public | ||
| + | indignation which the exposure of any great injustice is able to | ||
| + | arouse; all show that the world is by no means retrograde in respect of | ||
| + | morals. What is often called the growing sentimentality of the age, | ||
| + | which opens all pockets at the call of want, and doubtless sometimes | ||
| + | leads to ridiculous exhibitions of mistaken feeling, is a proof that | ||
| + | the ethical sense of the people is by no means blunt; and it shows a | ||
| + | constant tendency to become keener. It is mysticism rather than | ||
| + | morality which is chiefly lacking to a re-development of the religious | ||
| + | spirit. And although the opinions of the mass of the people are likely | ||
| + | to be influenced at all times more by the results at which what are | ||
| + | called leaders of thought arrive than by the reasons which lead up to | ||
| + | those conclusions, | ||
| + | much more thoroughly disseminated education which the necessities of | ||
| + | the coming century are going to enforce upon us, will make the people | ||
| + | more accessible to philosophical reasoning than they have ever been | ||
| + | since Socrates. Consequently, | ||
| + | hundred years hence towards mysticism will depend greatly upon the | ||
| + | conclusions of eminent thinkers. These conclusions will require time in | ||
| + | order to exercise <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | the influence will be towards and not away from mysticism.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | institution, | ||
| + | consideration of what net result is likely to be deduced from science | ||
| + | and philosophy by the improved average intelligence of this century. I | ||
| + | speak expressly of religion as an institution, | ||
| + | limit the inquiry to an attempt to determine the popular view of | ||
| + | religion; the pretence to anticipate the opinions of the great | ||
| + | philosophers that this century will no doubt produce being a little too | ||
| + | presumptuous even for the present writer, who may not be considered in | ||
| + | any event to have fallen into many errors resulting from excessive | ||
| + | modesty.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | consistency in such an inquiry by allowing here, as I have allowed all | ||
| + | through, for a great increase in general intelligence. Probably the | ||
| + | mass of the population will be less greatly removed in reflective and | ||
| + | reasoning powers from the greatest minds than at present; because the | ||
| + | changes which have been predicted are likely to have more effect in | ||
| + | raising the general standard of intelligence than in producing | ||
| + | individual and exceptional minds of very great calibre.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | advanced thinkers than now. But I do not see any reason for supposing | ||
| + | that the latter can be conspicuously greater than the thinkers of past | ||
| + | time, from Plato to Herbert Spencer. Consequently it is impossible to | ||
| + | restrict the inquiry to strictly popular developments. We must ask what | ||
| + | direction abstract thought is likely to take: and it certainly does not | ||
| + | seem that the influence of recent discoveries in | ||
| + | physics& | ||
| + | the constitution of the atom& | ||
| + | resolved by the latest science into electrons, which have been declared | ||
| + | in a passage already cited to be not merely carriers of electrical | ||
| + | charge but the electrical charges themselves, the objectivity of matter | ||
| + | has assuredly not received any new support. And if speculation as to | ||
| + | the beginning of things (always the kind of speculation most important | ||
| + | to philosophy, where philosophy is made the handmaid of religion) is | ||
| + | relieved of the necessity of accounting for the creation of matter, and | ||
| + | only has to concern itself with the creation of force, we evidently | ||
| + | approach the more abstract conception of a & | ||
| + | ourselves& | ||
| + | favourable to spiritual religion.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | alternative for revelation, and if we <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | probability as to the future of a faith in directly-revealed religion | ||
| + | we approach a much more difficult question. The verbal inspiration of | ||
| + | Scripture appears to be no longer regarded as a necessity of this | ||
| + | faith; and with its final abandonment we shall no doubt enter upon a | ||
| + | period of much more abstract thought and of vaguer belief, but (as I | ||
| + | think) also a far more spiritual attitude towards the Unseen. From the | ||
| + | moment when faith is relieved of all danger from the critical | ||
| + | discrediting of any particular set of documents, it is of course freed | ||
| + | from certain great dangers. Probably the Christian of the year 2000 | ||
| + | will have abandoned all dependence upon the authenticity of the | ||
| + | original sources of information, | ||
| + | used to be regarded as the foundations of belief take their place with | ||
| + | other mythologies. But this position need not be regarded as | ||
| + | irreligious; | ||
| + | hospitality which all truly religious thought begins to extend, not | ||
| + | merely to uncanonical scriptures but to the best religious thought of | ||
| + | all ages, will strengthen rather than weaken the spiritual attitude; | ||
| + | and, however we may probe into the sciences of life and of the | ||
| + | universe, the awful mysteries which lie beyond the sphere of science | ||
| + | will always tempt man to speculate and to aspire. Always we shall yearn | ||
| + | towards the eternities which preceded <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | which must follow the little interval that we call Time. Always beside | ||
| + | the grave that has closed upon what we have loved, despair will lure us | ||
| + | on to seek consolation in a faith which promises re-union beyond the | ||
| + | bourn. Always the manifold injustice of Fate will make aspiration | ||
| + | inevitable. Always the uplifting spectacle of the stars, the | ||
| + | immensities of ocean and infinite mysteries of the soul of man will | ||
| + | make us welcome the spiritual teaching which can throw gleams of mystic | ||
| + | illumination upon the riddles of the universe and justify the ways of | ||
| + | God to man. We may not always see our way to find efficacy in ritual | ||
| + | incense; we may not long continue to ask direct interventions of the | ||
| + | Deity in prayers which we know in a literal sense to be unthinkable and | ||
| + | profane; we may cease the impertinence of offering suggestions to the | ||
| + | Maker of the world on the subject of next week& | ||
| + | when we uplift our hearts in aspiration and beg that we may divine more | ||
| + | spiritually the nature of the Creator, and learn to love our neighbour | ||
| + | more effectually and with a better enlightenment, | ||
| + | know that our prayer is answered. If we cease to think that wicked men | ||
| + | descend into some chastisement of which fire and flames are the | ||
| + | abandoned symbols, we may still realise that none can act against the | ||
| + | moral intuitions of <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | and if this soul of man be immortal, its punishment is thus eternal | ||
| + | also, and can be cancelled only by the act of divine mercy which we | ||
| + | shall still call man& | ||
| + | the mind& | ||
| + | evidence seems to be accumulating) mind can speak to mind by other | ||
| + | means than the senses: and everything which points that way cuts fresh | ||
| + | ground from under the notion that bodily death is the end of us. | ||
| + | Although the philosophical theory of immortality does not need this | ||
| + | evidence, faith is assisted by it. On the great ideas which are the | ||
| + | support and justification of religion there seems no reason to suppose | ||
| + | that the discoveries of the next hundred years are likely to throw | ||
| + | discredit.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | education will be to conserve rather than to destroy religion; but I do | ||
| + | not believe that religion will be a historical so much as a | ||
| + | philosophical conception. The present great obstacle to religious | ||
| + | feeling in non-Catholic countries, namely the pretence of the State to | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | have been removed some while before this time next century, and | ||
| + | individual effort will be cultivated in this, as in certain other | ||
| + | respects, instead of being repressed. The Bible will be read for its | ||
| + | morals, its poetry, its <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | conceive the Divine will continue to take the shape of some kind of | ||
| + | public worship probably much unlike anything which we now practise, and | ||
| + | totally divorced from any faith in miracles and verbal inspiration. In | ||
| + | religion men will seek their consolation against the buffeting and | ||
| + | injustice of destiny, and in a more reasoned notion of immortality dry | ||
| + | their eyes before the poignant spectacle of Death.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | spiritually imaginative. We are often scornfully told that this is an | ||
| + | age of hysteria, when the mere fact is that it is an age of | ||
| + | imagination. The highly civilised life of our day<a class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | exalts intelligence in comparison with mere activity of body; mind | ||
| + | gains ascendency over muscle. It is much more important to worldly | ||
| + | success just now that a man should be able to think accurately than | ||
| + | that he should be able to lift great weights, endure great physical | ||
| + | fatigues or fight satisfactorily. Consequently, | ||
| + | premium upon intelligence, | ||
| + | strength; and this condition of affairs is likely to become accentuated | ||
| + | as the present century develops. With increase of intellectual agility | ||
| + | we obtain increase of subtlety and intuition, and of those finer | ||
| + | perceptive and <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | emotions important and interesting. It has often been argued that | ||
| + | epochs of high civilisation are unfavourable to poetry and the fine | ||
| + | arts, and a well-known passage of Macaulay argues the point at some | ||
| + | length. Whether such an epoch as that of a hundred years hence be | ||
| + | probably fertile in art or no, assuredly appreciation of the fine arts | ||
| + | will be widespread and acute. Of course you can never account for the | ||
| + | extraordinary phenomenon called genius, and while it is no doubt true | ||
| + | that genius, like everything else, is the product of its age, yet | ||
| + | genius consistently transcends its age. The number of minds in a | ||
| + | thousand able to bring a reasonable degree of competent appreciation to | ||
| + | the writings of Shakespeare is much greater now than when Shakespeare | ||
| + | wrote. There never was a time when a great writer, or a great painter | ||
| + | (despite what happened to Whistler) was in less danger of public | ||
| + | neglect than the present. And the next century will be yet more | ||
| + | critical than this. Every one of the fine arts will be more generally | ||
| + | and more subtly appreciated than now. The existing masterpieces of | ||
| + | antiquity will be even more reverently enjoyed than now, and the | ||
| + | lessons they embody will be more completely assimilated. It remains to | ||
| + | be answered, whether the next century will be fertile in new | ||
| + | masterpieces of literature and art. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the part of most writers to assume that high civilisation necessarily | ||
| + | creates epochs of ugliness. No doubt railways, factories and other | ||
| + | civilised and civilising conveniences do not, in the natural course of | ||
| + | things, tend to assume forms gratifying to the & | ||
| + | present tendency of domestic architecture, | ||
| + | abject sort of spirit by basing any effort which it may make for | ||
| + | comeliness on an attempt to imitate the picturesqueness of the past | ||
| + | rather than to form new and beautiful styles adapted to modern | ||
| + | requirements. Because old red-brick, timbered rough-cast, and the | ||
| + | quaintly-shaped buildings of old time please the eye by contrast more | ||
| + | than by inherent beauty, unintelligent builders just now think they can | ||
| + | redeem dwelling-houses from plain ugliness by imitating these | ||
| + | peculiarities, | ||
| + | are to live in such houses and by the exploiters of estate development. | ||
| + | But such fine examples as the new Westminster Cathedral show that the | ||
| + | spirit of beauty has not left our architects. The growing intelligence | ||
| + | of the new age ought, at all events, to develop, as its resources will | ||
| + | reward, originality. And the developed & | ||
| + | will demand beautiful buildings, not slavishly copied from the antique, | ||
| + | but created by the imagination of the modern. Reverence <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | natural beauty, already manifest in the revolt against | ||
| + | advertisement-boards in juxtaposition with notable scenery and even | ||
| + | along the sides of railways (where one would have thought that a little | ||
| + | more ugliness could do no great harm) will no doubt be accentuated when | ||
| + | the unviolated virginities of Nature have become fewer; and a steady | ||
| + | growth of public taste is evidenced even now by the success of the | ||
| + | better sort of street advertisements and the failure of the uglier | ||
| + | kind, as demonstrated by the steady abandonment of the latter. The most | ||
| + | fashionable artists no longer think it beneath them to design | ||
| + | wall-posters. If the advertisers who pay their large fees find it | ||
| + | profitable to purchase art in an expensive market, it must be because | ||
| + | popular taste is better than it used to be; and even if the cult of the | ||
| + | photograph and the process block in illustrated newspapers, to the | ||
| + | detriment of drawings and wood engravings, be cited as evidence in the | ||
| + | other direction, we have a right to quote in rebuttal of this the | ||
| + | rather violent efforts of the more intelligent class of amateurs to | ||
| + | secure a recognition of selective and manipulated photography as an | ||
| + | art. Moreover, just as some critics have argued that it is better for | ||
| + | the people to read the atrocious letterpress of the popular papers than | ||
| + | not to read anything, it can also presumably be contended that it is | ||
| + | better for the people to look at photographs reproduced by <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | pictures at all, though, in reality, it is doubtful whether bad | ||
| + | pictures and inferior & | ||
| + | much more degrading to popular taste than none. That we really do care | ||
| + | for pictures even in England (however little critical ability we may | ||
| + | possess to distinguish good pictures from bad) is evidenced by the | ||
| + | crowds which throng the Royal Academy. It would be better if they | ||
| + | thronged the National Gallery; but even the Royal Academy is evidence: | ||
| + | and the success of the sixpenny-admission plan on the days when it is | ||
| + | adopted, and the large attendance at Burlington House on Bank Holidays, | ||
| + | prove that the taste for pictures is shared even by the least educated | ||
| + | part of the public. Thus there is no reason to be found in present | ||
| + | tendencies for apprehending a decay of & | ||
| + | material progress. Probably even the cheap papers will eventually | ||
| + | improve, both in their reading-matter and in their illustrations, | ||
| + | it grows less profitable than it is at present to print the worst | ||
| + | attainable examples of both.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | tendency of all this is rather to develop a somewhat higher standard of | ||
| + | mediocrity than to produce brilliant examples of art in any | ||
| + | manifestation. Beauty, up to a certain point, can be bought. The demand | ||
| + | will evoke the <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | beautiful must be the spontaneous product of subtle brains and lissom | ||
| + | fingers working for Art& | ||
| + | to show that circumstances affect production even of the highest. An | ||
| + | example may be found in the extraordinary merit of modern French | ||
| + | sculpture, as compared with the wretched work produced in England. In | ||
| + | the Paris Salon, which may be said to correspond with our Royal | ||
| + | Academy, sculpture is shown in a manner which renders the huddled | ||
| + | cloak-room full of mediocre marble and third-rate work in clay at | ||
| + | Burlington House almost too painful to be ludicrous. However | ||
| + | meritorious the work of an English statuary, he would get no | ||
| + | chance& | ||
| + | there is every justification for the opinion that it is not bad work | ||
| + | which in this country produces official neglect, nor good work which in | ||
| + | France has for many years led to the loving care with which sculpture | ||
| + | is shown in Paris; but on the contrary, that the real opportunity which | ||
| + | a French sculptor obtains has been just as instrumental in fostering | ||
| + | the art there as our own utter neglect to appreciate sculpture of | ||
| + | genius has been in stifling the art here. The French treatment of | ||
| + | sculpture has not merely raised the standard of average production. It | ||
| + | has fostered actual genius. Even so the opportunities which the | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | afford to art will assuredly promote the artistic conditions favourable | ||
| + | to the development and fostering of genius, whenever genius, in its | ||
| + | shy, fairy-like way, contrives to be born, no man knows how. A general | ||
| + | power of appreciating masterpieces has never been alleged to be | ||
| + | unfavourable to their production. What is unfavourable to it in a | ||
| + | highly civilised age is the hurry and preoccupation which leave no time | ||
| + | for the appreciative faculties to employ themselves. It has been very | ||
| + | well said that the feature most inimical to art in American | ||
| + | civilisation is the absence of a & | ||
| + | be any validity in the conclusions for which I have been trying to win | ||
| + | acceptance< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | will be an age of greatly increased leisure in all ranks, and this | ||
| + | condition ought to favour art in every way as highly as the improvement | ||
| + | in the nature as well as in the extent of education must also favour | ||
| + | it. And in this there will be both action and reaction& | ||
| + | leisure and improved appreciation tending to foster genius, genius in | ||
| + | the glorious perfection of its work generously returning the benefit by | ||
| + | cultivating and refining the & | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | consequences of instruction applied <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | minds which no attempt is made to educate will be only temporary. | ||
| + | Popular & | ||
| + | might well strike with despair the most hopeful heart. But when we | ||
| + | remember that no attempt whatever is being made to educate the faculty | ||
| + | of imagination, | ||
| + | vehement effort to cram as many facts as possible into the mind of the | ||
| + | scholar, with no endeavour at all to improve the qualities of that mind | ||
| + | itself; and when we grant, as I think any reasonably intelligent | ||
| + | prevision of the future must grant, that all this will before many | ||
| + | decades have to give place to really educational processes: it seems | ||
| + | evident that the future will gradually fling aside in deserved contempt | ||
| + | the basely illiterate products of the printing press which enrich | ||
| + | popular publishers and newspaper proprietors to-day, redeem poetry from | ||
| + | its present practical neglect, and revive and enrich the <i lang= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | nineteenth century and these latter years of the dawning twentieth | ||
| + | century, have contrived to appear in masterpieces for which readers, | ||
| + | fit, if few, have never ceased to exist. One result of this will be to | ||
| + | end, and end for ever, the idiotic and reactionary policy of | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | many cases, the production of such books <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | possible. As the public for fine literature decently printed becomes | ||
| + | gradually larger, there will no longer be any object in accentuating | ||
| + | popular ignorance by withholding from the greatest part of the public | ||
| + | the opportunity to possess and to enjoy the best work in letters that | ||
| + | the age is producing, and it will be possible for the poet of delicate | ||
| + | imagination, | ||
| + | restrained and modest genius, to be as well paid as the inventors of | ||
| + | nightmare horrors and the biographers of impossibly ingenious | ||
| + | detectives apparently are to-day.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | problem of the sort of progress likely to be made in the mechanical | ||
| + | implements of the fine arts. Some conceivable developments in what may | ||
| + | be called the mechanism of literature have been discussed in the | ||
| + | chapter on journalism, and just as it was there predicted that the | ||
| + | forms of language hallowed by tradition and made classic by antiquity | ||
| + | and intrinsic beauty must always continue to be employed, so in the | ||
| + | arts it is impossible to believe that the classical methods of | ||
| + | expression can ever become obsolete. But to say this is not to imply | ||
| + | that new processes are incapable of being applied to the arts. Nothing | ||
| + | which the future may evolve as a modelling substance can conceivably | ||
| + | render obsolete clay or make marble <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | innovation is always possible and may always in the right hands yield | ||
| + | new tributes of loveliness. Prejudice is difficult to overcome where | ||
| + | art is in question. But as was recently seen in the invention of solid | ||
| + | oil paints, new media are quite capable of creating new modes of | ||
| + | expression, and daring as is the flight of imagination required by such | ||
| + | a notion, may it not be conceived that the new methods of | ||
| + | intercommunication between mind and mind, which may develop out of the | ||
| + | new psychology of our own age, might furnish the medium of a new | ||
| + | literature?</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | classical gamut must be the last word of melodic thought. The barrier | ||
| + | between East and West in regard to musical expression& | ||
| + | as yet so firm as to make us feel that & | ||
| + | meet& | ||
| + | scholar educated in England, and as well versed in Western as in | ||
| + | Eastern art, is pregnant of promise. He said to a friend of the present | ||
| + | writer, & | ||
| + | every development of intellect, you surpass us, save in one. Your music | ||
| + | is poor and mean, compared with the music of the East.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | mere snarl of incomprehensible cacophonies, | ||
| + | harmony <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | intricate, involved and subtle, no one can doubt. I remember, one | ||
| + | night, finding my way into a Chinese lodging-house in an Australian | ||
| + | city. From one of the cubicles with which it was filled came what | ||
| + | seemed to me & | ||
| + | as if some more than usually vocal tom-cat were being severely | ||
| + | ill-used.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | energetic disputations in the thin nasal and guttural tones of South | ||
| + | China, themselves, I knew, graduated in pitch, as all Chinese talk | ||
| + | requires to be in order to be understood. Making my way to the source | ||
| + | of these sounds, I found four young Chinamen. One of them was engaged | ||
| + | in an unabashed bathing of his lower limbs. Other two were squatting on | ||
| + | the floor to enjoy the music of the fourth, who sat on a high | ||
| + | packing-case, | ||
| + | instrument something like a violin. From time to time one of the others | ||
| + | would interrupt, criticising the executant, and the book would then be | ||
| + | referred to with energy and something as much like excitement as one | ||
| + | ever sees a Chinaman display. The musician would extract a few notes | ||
| + | from the instrument, clearly in defence of his rendering. Then the | ||
| + | tumult would die down while the wailing of the smitten strings went on | ||
| + | again. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | Oriental music: and it is quite possible that they may, in the future, | ||
| + | yield new harmonies and melodies as yet undreamed-of to the West; for | ||
| + | the difference is mainly, if I understand aright what Orientals say of | ||
| + | it, a difference of scale. No doubt the conventions are all different. | ||
| + | I have often observed in India that music considered to possess a | ||
| + | jovial character is a shrill wailing in slow time; whereas funereal | ||
| + | music always sounds a lively air. Western civilisation finds no | ||
| + | difficulty in comprehending the decorative art of India and the Far | ||
| + | East, nor in highly appreciating it. May not Eastern music have gifts | ||
| + | for us as yet undreamed-of?</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the emotions than music, and it is not at all difficult to | ||
| + | imagine& | ||
| + | manner in painting will from time to time develop, arriving out of | ||
| + | newly-invented implements and materials.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the numbers of those who can enjoy the masterpieces of the new age and | ||
| + | of the old, just as in music it will unquestionably be possible to | ||
| + | repeat satisfactorily an indefinite number of times any sounds that | ||
| + | have once existed. Neither will any of the arts permanently | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | them& | ||
| + | often have results which will be, to the artist, rather terrible. | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | Over-civilised, | ||
| + | man can be over-civilised.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the sense of planetary frugality. With a greatly-increased call on the | ||
| + | resources of the world entailed by the vast increase of population it | ||
| + | will be absolutely necessary for us to & | ||
| + | here do spend.& | ||
| + | which will prevail it is also certain that the new age will be an age | ||
| + | of cheapness. Of course, cheapness is a purely relative matter. The | ||
| + | suit of clothes which would be very cheap at seven guineas in the | ||
| + | United States would be very dear at that price here, not merely because | ||
| + | by reason of the tariff clothes and other things are expensive in | ||
| + | America, but also because wages are higher there than in England. In | ||
| + | spite of the enormous growth of population since, say, the accession of | ||
| + | Queen Victoria, the standard of comfort is much higher now than then, | ||
| + | and prices are lower, because production has increased more quickly | ||
| + | than population. Comforts are cheaper, wages <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | higher. But the standard of comfort will be higher still a hundred | ||
| + | years hence. Workmen will earn a greater share of the commodities of | ||
| + | life, and whether their pay be higher, computed as money, or lower, | ||
| + | makes no difference to the question of cheapness. If wages are low | ||
| + | commodities will be low-priced: that is all.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | though, even then, the monetary earnings of the worker will probably be | ||
| + | much higher than they are nowadays. It is doubtful whether so clumsy a | ||
| + | contrivance as metallic currencies, of intrinsic values corresponding | ||
| + | with their titles, can survive at all; but of course everything will be | ||
| + | computed in terms of some currency or other& | ||
| + | obsolete currency. We are apt to think that the steady value of gold | ||
| + | can be counted upon to remain a constant factor of economics. But only | ||
| + | a very small part of the real business of the world is even now | ||
| + | transacted with actual gold. Much the greatest part is transacted in | ||
| + | paper& | ||
| + | in various clearing-houses.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | State Socialism would be the political basis of future institutions, | ||
| + | currency of intrinsic value (which practically means, even now, only | ||
| + | gold currency) would be easily <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | almost every transaction would be effected by means of orders on the | ||
| + | national treasury, the State owning practically everything. Some | ||
| + | visionaries have long included the abolition of money in their schemes | ||
| + | for the immediate economic improvement of the race. But the disuse of a | ||
| + | currency is not really a means to any end. It is only an effect which | ||
| + | may or may not arise out of certain alterations in commercial method. | ||
| + | There are signs that the people are already growing tired of the | ||
| + | extravagance attached to the system of State, and even of municipal, | ||
| + | trading: and this fact makes socialism improbable. Constant complaints | ||
| + | are heard about such things as municipal tramways and municipal | ||
| + | gasworks, and the proposal to transfer the entire working of telephones | ||
| + | to the Government has been fiercely opposed. Where the post-office | ||
| + | works telephones side by side with a telephone company, as in London, | ||
| + | there is no indication that the public prefers the Government service | ||
| + | before the private service; and it is admitted that tramways privately | ||
| + | owned work more cheaply and yield better returns on their capital than | ||
| + | municipal tramways. Any interference of the State in matters that could | ||
| + | practically be left to private enterprise provokes incessant complaint. | ||
| + | When continued and developed, however, this interference has a vicious | ||
| + | habit of extending itself <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | undertaken the education of the people the State was not long in | ||
| + | carrying that system to its natural limit by relieving parents of | ||
| + | school fees. Now, free meals for poor children, or meals sold below | ||
| + | cost, are gradually becoming the fashion; what is the use of reading | ||
| + | out lessons to children who are too hungry to listen? So the State must | ||
| + | feed as well as educate. From this to the free clothing of school | ||
| + | children is a very short step. But once the unavoidable sequence of | ||
| + | such things is recognised, public opinion begins to revolt, asking | ||
| + | where, if we go on at this rate, we are likely to stop, so long as | ||
| + | there is any parental duty that the State has omitted to assume. We | ||
| + | perceive that, unless the process is arrested, the begetter of children | ||
| + | will have no obligations left, and the awful effects of relieving every | ||
| + | member of the public of all responsibility being at length recognised, | ||
| + | there is sure to be a reaction. It is certainly not beyond the wit of | ||
| + | man to contrive that it shall be impossible for parents to leave their | ||
| + | children untaught, without Government taking upon itself the function | ||
| + | of schoolmaster. A hundred years hence I hope that it will long have | ||
| + | been unnecessary to use force at all to compel parents to educate their | ||
| + | children: and by that time the folly of our (perhaps temporarily | ||
| + | unavoidable) expedients will be laughed at, and the fatuity | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | inevitably becomes the maximum standard also, will be wondered at. In | ||
| + | the matter here selected as the most convenient for illustration, | ||
| + | in other matters where State powers, or powers devolved by the State, | ||
| + | are now employed in enterprises which do not properly fall into the | ||
| + | province of Governments, | ||
| + | interference are already acting as the best possible object-lessons | ||
| + | against further interferences of the kind which makes for | ||
| + | socialism.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | socialism, none will be anything like so powerful in the present | ||
| + | century as the new anxiety with which the people will safeguard their | ||
| + | own self-respect. It must be borne in mind, and cannot be too often | ||
| + | repeated, that before many decades, systems of education will be valued | ||
| + | chiefly in proportion as they tend to develop and establish character | ||
| + | in the individual. And with the recognition of the great truth that | ||
| + | character is much the most important thing in the world, there will | ||
| + | grow up a great jealousy of anything which tends to damage the public | ||
| + | sense of individual responsibility. This jealousy cannot but be adverse | ||
| + | to socialism, whose ideal is to relieve the individual of all | ||
| + | responsibilities and to throw them upon committees.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | lost sight of. But we shall perceive that voluntary combination is a | ||
| + | form of self-government vastly more friendly to the preservation of | ||
| + | self-respect than legislative action, and also a form much less likely | ||
| + | to be oppressive. It will be seen, for instance, that it is more | ||
| + | desirable for working men to fix, through their trade-unions, | ||
| + | of labour in various industries, arranging to meet exceptional | ||
| + | circumstances where the latter arise, than for Parliament to decree | ||
| + | that nobody shall work more than eight hours a day. Neither is the | ||
| + | panacea of compulsory arbitration in trade disputes likely to be a | ||
| + | feature of future politics, because we shall certainly not be long | ||
| + | before we perceive that, while it is no doubt quite easy to compel | ||
| + | employers and employed to submit their respective cases to a tribunal | ||
| + | appointed by law, there is no known way in which the award of such a | ||
| + | tribunal can be enforced, and if there were, the effect of its | ||
| + | employment would be almost intolerably injurious to the commerce of the | ||
| + | country. What will happen a hundred years hence is that trade disputes | ||
| + | will have disappeared, | ||
| + | their own employers.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | basis of the political system of a hundred years hence, and the | ||
| + | standard of <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | everything else. But in order that this standard may be as high as the | ||
| + | advanced humanity of the new age will certainly demand for a population | ||
| + | vastly increased, it will be necessary that all the resources of the | ||
| + | planet be made the most of. That motive power, one of the most | ||
| + | important, if not the most important of all these resources, should be | ||
| + | economically produced is, as has already been said, an absolute | ||
| + | essential. When we make the most of the sources of power, and are able | ||
| + | to apply power in convenient and portable ways to all sorts of work at | ||
| + | present done by hand, one of the greatest economies conceivable will | ||
| + | have been effected. Probably muscle, as an element of workmanship, | ||
| + | become quite obsolete, though muscular strength will be developed by | ||
| + | athletics as a recreation and a safeguard to the health of the race. | ||
| + | Here again self-respect will be sedulously nurtured, for nothing | ||
| + | fosters it so much as a man& | ||
| + | All sorts of wastefully laborious methods of labour will be superseded, | ||
| + | in the same way as the steam hammer has superseded the sledge hammer. | ||
| + | With the perfect development of power-production achieved, a great deal | ||
| + | of the dirtiness of manufacture will vanish: and moreover, a use will | ||
| + | have been discovered for every by-product of every manufacture. We are | ||
| + | hideously wasteful as <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | dirt. One perceives this at once on comparing a factory where the | ||
| + | by-products are of a nature to be utilised directly, with one where | ||
| + | these products are of small value. A goldsmith& | ||
| + | place compared with the gasworks of even a modern town: but these again | ||
| + | are clean compared with what they used to be before the various | ||
| + | chemical uses of coal-tar and gas-liquor were discovered.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | that power will be obtained at a minimum of expense, all contrivances | ||
| + | which economise force will be highly valued. We have been increasingly | ||
| + | valuing them ever since steam first became important as a source of | ||
| + | motive power. Early machines in the Patents& | ||
| + | Kensington exhibit the most extraordinary recklessness in the waste of | ||
| + | power. Considering the feebleness of the motive force available, one | ||
| + | would have expected that every means would be sought to minimise | ||
| + | friction. But instead, the force was transmitted by contrivances which, | ||
| + | to a modern eye, seemed deliberately contrived to introduce as much | ||
| + | friction as possible. Every year brings out fresh inventions for the | ||
| + | avoidance of friction: and still we are but upon the very threshold of | ||
| + | the subject. It was only in 1904 that a party of railway engineers was | ||
| + | entertained by a patentee who wished to show them <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | saving in coal per train-mile which can be saved by a new bearing for | ||
| + | passenger coaches, and the superior smoothness (which is of course a | ||
| + | factor in the economy) of their running. Hardly any vehicle except a | ||
| + | bicycle or a trotting buggy is yet constructed with any serious attempt | ||
| + | to save friction at the axles. The number of industrial machines to | ||
| + | which ball-bearings might be applied with great economy of power is | ||
| + | enormous. But ball-bearings are very little used. It is probably | ||
| + | considered as yet that the saving in coal would not pay for the working | ||
| + | expenses connected with them and with other improvements. But as | ||
| + | machinery is further improved economies at present merely theoretical | ||
| + | will become practical and remunerative. In a hundred years& | ||
| + | we shall certainly be able to make generally profitable the use of many | ||
| + | devices as yet applicable only to delicate and exceptional machines, | ||
| + | and shall be able to use much power which at present runs to waste. | ||
| + | Every time a locomotive is stopped there is a great waste of power in | ||
| + | the operation of the brakes, because it is not worth while to adopt any | ||
| + | contrivance for utilising it. It disappears, as heat, and is lost. Many | ||
| + | similar wastages could be cited, and engineers would scoff at the | ||
| + | citation, on the ground that the loss is not worth saving. But it will | ||
| + | be worth saving a hundred years hence. We shall not be able to afford | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | we say, & | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | through the natural progress of discovery and the natural development | ||
| + | of thought. Illness is a waste. Illness will be much less common in a | ||
| + | hundred years& | ||
| + | world& | ||
| + | expensive a luxury for the new age to indulge itself with: and the | ||
| + | present excuse for a & | ||
| + | in America& | ||
| + | the arts, will be absurd. All classes will foster and patronise the | ||
| + | arts. For, just as we shall see that idleness is waste (and even more | ||
| + | injurious to the idler than to his fellows), so we shall also see that | ||
| + | overwork is a waste, because the legitimate purpose of human endeavour | ||
| + | is not wealth, but happiness. When all work, all will be able to | ||
| + | play.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | change of diet which the coming century must inevitably witness. Such a | ||
| + | wasteful food as animal flesh cannot survive: and even apart from the | ||
| + | moral necessity which will compel mankind, for its own preservation, | ||
| + | abandon the use of alcohol, the direct and indirect wastefulness of | ||
| + | alcohol will make it impossible for beverages containing it to be | ||
| + | tolerated. Very likely tobacco will follow it. <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | are already in sight of legislation to restrain the use of tobacco by | ||
| + | the young. It will probably be unnecessary for the law to prohibit its | ||
| + | use by adults. The frugal adult of the new age will abandon it | ||
| + | unbidden, the change taking place as smoothly and silently as the | ||
| + | process from the universal drunkenness of our great-grandfathers to the | ||
| + | relative sobriety of ourselves, a process of which it is surprising | ||
| + | that anyone can fail to perceive that the natural end must be the total | ||
| + | disuse of alcoholic drinks. All things work their way to their natural | ||
| + | conclusion, and there is no more fertile source of sociological | ||
| + | blindness than the fallacy which treats certain phenomena of society as | ||
| + | static, whereas all phenomena of society are really in the dynamic | ||
| + | state, and always must be so.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | reckless waste of wood, our present practice will certainly be | ||
| + | reformed. There will be great improvements in agricultural chemistry, | ||
| + | necessitated by the disappearance of animal manure. The obsolescence of | ||
| + | the horse is already in sight; probably we ourselves shall see the day | ||
| + | when the horse will cease to be employed except in the organised | ||
| + | material of war: and as soon as we cease to eat animals we shall cease | ||
| + | to herd cattle, sheep and poultry. But some means will have to be found | ||
| + | for returning to the soil the materials we take out of it. Of course | ||
| + | the idiotic wastefulness of <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | and the dangers, inconveniences and degrading occupations associated | ||
| + | with existing alternatives, | ||
| + | methods, lands at present unutilised will be brought under cultivation: | ||
| + | and the wasteful and selfish reservation of game preserves, deer | ||
| + | forests and excessive pleasure-grounds will have to be | ||
| + | abolished& | ||
| + | spontaneous social developments; | ||
| + | of economy in the world& | ||
| + | shall cease to behave as though the resources of the planet were | ||
| + | illimitable and could be wasted at will. In the succession of the ages | ||
| + | the spendthrift will have given birth to the miser, reversing the usual | ||
| + | order of generations. No doubt the attention concentrated upon | ||
| + | agriculture as a consequence of the greatly increased use of vegetable | ||
| + | and cereal foods will have, as one of its consequences, | ||
| + | of new means for improving all sorts of crops& | ||
| + | the wonderful achievements of the scientific agriculture of the present | ||
| + | day do not contain even the first germs. We shall also, perhaps, find | ||
| + | means for avoiding the terrible losses and wastage entailed by climatic | ||
| + | accidents. At all events, irrigation will be perfected, and probably we | ||
| + | shall be able by acclimatisation and modification to find uses for | ||
| + | crops that will flourish during that portion <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the year when, in temperate climates, the land at present lies idle. | ||
| + | This will both stimulate and further necessitate the improvements in | ||
| + | agricultural chemistry already mentioned.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | method of obtaining heat, we shall greatly economise wood; and the | ||
| + | wickedly mischievous word & | ||
| + | applied to timber regions like the Rocky Mountain district of Canada. | ||
| + | Arboriculture will become a more practical art than it as yet shows any | ||
| + | signs of being; and along with careful afforestation will go skilled | ||
| + | improvement in tree-growing. We shall replace all the trees we use by | ||
| + | better trees, better cultivated. Even so, however, there will have to | ||
| + | be devised great economies in the use of wood& | ||
| + | recent invention of a method by which, instead of being wastefully sawn | ||
| + | into planks, a tree-trunk can be cut up spirally, so that almost the | ||
| + | whole of it may be used. In many places where wood is now employed in | ||
| + | the arts, metals will doubtless be used instead, their greater neatness | ||
| + | and durability making it advisable thus to substitute them, for reasons | ||
| + | of convenience as well as economy; and probably new alloys, into which | ||
| + | the lighter metals, as aluminium, will enter, may give us increased | ||
| + | strength without increased weight, which will again be an economy, | ||
| + | because it will save power. <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | expenditure of wood will continue to be enormous.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | well as too imbecilely uncivilised, | ||
| + | well to inquire as to the manner in which its abolition is most likely | ||
| + | to be brought about. We may take it for granted that no sudden | ||
| + | political or revolutionary movement will abolish the physical conflict | ||
| + | of peoples. & | ||
| + | polemist& | ||
| + | bidding of any potentate or combination of potentates. To conceive of | ||
| + | them as thus abandoned is to overlook the whole nature of political | ||
| + | change. It is absurd (as Herbert Spencer remarks) to assume & | ||
| + | out of a community morally imperfect and intellectually imperfect, | ||
| + | there may in some way be had legislative regulation that is not | ||
| + | proportionately imperfect.& | ||
| + | believe that the moral and intellectual advance which our present | ||
| + | tendencies show to be gradually taking place& | ||
| + | to be greatly accelerated during the middle half of the next hundred | ||
| + | years& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | any great and sudden revolt of the world& | ||
| + | bloodshed and other evils much worse than bloodshed which <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | entails& | ||
| + | quite well already that war is wicked, wasteful and silly: if it were | ||
| + | possible for a suddenly-exasperated realisation of this to take an | ||
| + | instantaneous effect, we could and should similarly abolish numerous | ||
| + | other evils which we show every disposition to tolerate for some time | ||
| + | yet. The fact that single families are able to hold wealth in enormous | ||
| + | excess of the maximum amount which it can possibly be good for the | ||
| + | community that individuals should hold, is such an evil. The | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | just about as difficult, or as easy, to abolish at a stroke as war, and | ||
| + | not much less injurious. The manipulation of tariffs and currencies to | ||
| + | suit the greedy aims of manufacturers, | ||
| + | another evil which is constantly experienced or threatened in one part | ||
| + | of the world or another; and if as a race we were yet enlightened | ||
| + | enough to utter that great & | ||
| + | some day be breathed over the troubled waters of international | ||
| + | diplomacy, we should be enlightened enough to rid ourselves of these | ||
| + | other evils. But instead, the change must be gradually worked up to. It | ||
| + | is not even at all certain that the whole world will at one given | ||
| + | moment decide to abandon war. It is not necessarily the case that the | ||
| + | first nation enlightened enough to lay down the sword <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | its armed neighbours, as Bismarck prophesied, and would no doubt have | ||
| + | practised to arrange. Nor need we assume, as so many have thought it | ||
| + | necessary to believe, that universal peace can only follow the | ||
| + | exhaustion of universal war, the dove winging her first flight over the | ||
| + | shambles of Armageddon. I do not for an instant believe that the actual | ||
| + | horrors of war are the likely or possible source of peace; on the | ||
| + | contrary, war always tends to breed war, partly through international | ||
| + | exasperation, | ||
| + | professional warriors. Peace hath her outrages no less severe than war. | ||
| + | It is against the preparation for war, rather than against war itself, | ||
| + | that we shall revolt.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | tenderer conscience of the future, will help the cause of peace. The | ||
| + | world& | ||
| + | up by the inferior morality and intellect of the present age. It is not | ||
| + | from the rulers, but from the ruled, however, that peace will come. It | ||
| + | is the peoples that will refuse to be the supporters of idle, useless, | ||
| + | profligate and dangerous millions, trained to no duty but slaughter, | ||
| + | skilful only in the service of national crime. Every decade will see | ||
| + | the burden of armament grow heavier. In every decade fresh efforts will | ||
| + | be made to lift the weight of them <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | classes, and throw it upon the poor, the governed classes. The workers | ||
| + | will be taxed, and their taxes manipulated to their disadvantage. And | ||
| + | they must pay in person as well as purse. There is no civilised and | ||
| + | highly developed country in the world that can possibly escape | ||
| + | universal military service within the next quarter of a century, unless | ||
| + | it be the United States: and only that country if the people of the | ||
| + | United States abandon absolutely their present dreams of empire and | ||
| + | renounce the luxury of an effective Foreign Office. As for ourselves, | ||
| + | it is most likely universal naval service that we shall have to endure. | ||
| + | And the rulers of the nations will play the chess of diplomacy, using | ||
| + | the peoples as their pawns, until the pawns, grown wiser than the | ||
| + | bishops, and more agile than the knights, reach the eighth square of | ||
| + | intellect and become sovereign in themselves. It is not by high | ||
| + | diplomacy that war will be abandoned, but by the will of the workers. | ||
| + | Only a very careless and unthoughtful observer of the last fifteen | ||
| + | years& | ||
| + | international solidarity in labour questions. The trade societies of | ||
| + | different nations frequently contribute to each other& | ||
| + | strike-funds: | ||
| + | with increasing frequency and effectiveness every time there is any | ||
| + | special advantage to be seen <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | enemy& | ||
| + | effect of this when working men and women, infinitely the most | ||
| + | important and most worthy part of the race, are no longer degraded by | ||
| + | stupid restrictions of education, no longer brought up on the insane | ||
| + | system of striving only for a stuffed memory instead of for a developed | ||
| + | character, and have learned to think about their political duties | ||
| + | instead of only transacting them without thought, without any possible | ||
| + | opportunity of learning how to think. The whole mass of workers | ||
| + | throughout the world will come to an understanding. They have no | ||
| + | possible conflicting interests which can compare in importance with the | ||
| + | interests which, for their class, are identical all the world over. | ||
| + | Already the improved morality of the peoples will have yielded improved | ||
| + | governments, | ||
| + | administrative organ will only need to be properly stimulated by the | ||
| + | solid agreement of workers throughout civilisation. There is never the | ||
| + | least sign of international or racial jealousy among working men in | ||
| + | their international relations, and what, by reason of the clash of | ||
| + | international interests and the danger of national aggression | ||
| + | diplomatists could not accomplish, the irresistible volition of the | ||
| + | unanimous peoples will force upon the cabinets of the world. It will | ||
| + | come about by degrees. <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | long visible, long misunderstood. And we shall usefully tinker at the | ||
| + | question, often stave off little dangers of war by arbitrations, | ||
| + | treaties of mutual understanding, | ||
| + | though probably no great war necessary to reconcile the conflicting | ||
| + | destinies of peoples was ever prevented by such means, we shall avoid | ||
| + | many fights which might have arisen out of the vain notions of | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | have been found for the destruction of the machinery of war, the worst | ||
| + | danger of war will have been got rid of: and then the practice we shall | ||
| + | have had in settling disputes peacefully will be of the greatest | ||
| + | service to us.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | disbanded there will be a condition of affairs which it is highly | ||
| + | necessary to consider. In all nations entitled to rank as world-powers | ||
| + | there is an enormous military class. When the armies go home for the | ||
| + | last time, and magazine rifles and machine guns become museum objects | ||
| + | and nothing more; when it is no longer conceived to be the greatest | ||
| + | service a man can render to his country to organise clubs wherein men | ||
| + | may inexpensively learn how to shoot, so as to be able to kill each | ||
| + | other with a creditable precision when the chance comes; then there | ||
| + | will arise the problem of how to employ these disbanded drones: and to | ||
| + | some this <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | difficulties on account of the labour-problem involved.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | embarrassments from this cause is surely to misconceive the whole | ||
| + | subject of economics. The men at present withdrawn from productive | ||
| + | labour by employment, either transiently (as in countries where | ||
| + | conscription is used), or more or less permanently (as in England), | ||
| + | have to be fed, clothed and housed in any event; and they can only be | ||
| + | thus supplied with the commodities of life by the labour of other men. | ||
| + | What the term of their military service happens to be is immaterial to | ||
| + | the subject. Whether there are standing armies and navies with long or | ||
| + | short service, and a reserve; or armies and navies served for three | ||
| + | years by successive drafts; the amount of labour withdrawn in any | ||
| + | community is at any one period the same in that community. The return | ||
| + | to civil life of the volunteer armies employed in the United States | ||
| + | during the Civil War and the war of the deliverance of Cuba did not | ||
| + | produce troublesome economic conditions; and only those persons who | ||
| + | think that a society is enriched by the circulation of money spent in | ||
| + | wasteful expenditure like the fireworks and banquets consumed in | ||
| + | celebrating an event like the visit of a foreign potentate, or | ||
| + | commemorating more or less irrelevantly the <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | plot,& | ||
| + | vast accession to its productive power yielded by the abolition of | ||
| + | armaments. Similarly, to think that the suppression of Woolwich arsenal | ||
| + | and the closing of Krupp& | ||
| + | calamity instead of an enormous saving of national money, is to adopt | ||
| + | the uninstructed view of politics which conceives of governments as | ||
| + | self-supported and self-created institutions whose expenditure is a | ||
| + | gift to the people; instead of as being organisations paid by the | ||
| + | people out of earnings which would otherwise be enjoyed by themselves. | ||
| + | This sort of conception, fatuous as it appears when once reduced to | ||
| + | logical terms, is common enough. Whenever any object of popular desire | ||
| + | appears inaccessible we are always being told that the Government ought | ||
| + | to provide it& | ||
| + | producing wealth from somewhere outside the world. But such notions | ||
| + | have only to be for a moment examined in order that their fallacy may | ||
| + | become manifest and palpable; and it is equally easy to see that the | ||
| + | wealth-producing power of the men composing armies would be a direct | ||
| + | gift to the community of the world if armies were abolished, and that | ||
| + | the moneys formerly, but no longer, expended upon their accoutrements, | ||
| + | weapons and sustenance would <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | will, in fact, be one of the many economies of a hundred years | ||
| + | hence.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | to notice one very curious contention sometimes rather fancifully | ||
| + | introduced into discussions on the subject of universal peace.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | national life, and that it exercises a beneficent effect upon national | ||
| + | character& | ||
| + | attributes of courage, steadfastness and self-respect; | ||
| + | which have abandoned the art of war sink into effeminacy, slothfulness | ||
| + | and destructive luxury; and that the peace of the nations, if it ever | ||
| + | comes, will be associated with a terrible deterioration of the race. As | ||
| + | to the notion that anything can prevent the abolition of armed conflict | ||
| + | as a means of settling the differences of peoples, we may very well be | ||
| + | satisfied to await the issue. No one who recognises the steady growth | ||
| + | of humanitarian feeling; no one who remembers, even to deplore, our | ||
| + | growing sentimentalism; | ||
| + | progress, at an ever-increasing speed, must inevitably be accompanied | ||
| + | by advanced intellectuality, | ||
| + | wisdom, can doubt that a process so illogical, barbarous and | ||
| + | brutalising as battle must be banished, as well by the new humanity as | ||
| + | by <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | notion of deploring, on moral grounds, the assured coming of a reform | ||
| + | so salutary, calls for more strenuous reprobation. One would have | ||
| + | thought it evident, from the popular effect of the war in South Africa, | ||
| + | that, so far from being a matter for self-congratulation, | ||
| + | necessary war was a terrible lesson in the brutalising effect of armed | ||
| + | conflict, not alone on the men actually engaged, but also on the people | ||
| + | who remained at home. Indeed, since it is only a comparatively small | ||
| + | fraction of a community that can ever be personally active in military | ||
| + | operations, the effect on the home-stayers is evidently what the | ||
| + | upholders of war as a civilising influence must be thinking of. It | ||
| + | would be ridiculous, and it is quite unnecessary to the argument, to | ||
| + | deny the fine qualities of determination, | ||
| + | disaster, and of calm confidence in the prowess of the nation& | ||
| + | arms which, in the bulk of the English people, the Transvaal war called | ||
| + | forth. It would be just as idle to deny the sublime exhibition of | ||
| + | patriotism and self-abnegation which, on one side at least, was | ||
| + | provoked by the Russo-Japanese war. But it would also be foolish not to | ||
| + | recognise the quite evident brutalisation which has followed our war in | ||
| + | South Africa, the remarkable increase in crimes of murderous violence, | ||
| + | and especially of double crimes& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | true source of these increased evils is the reflex effect of | ||
| + | familiarity (either at first hand, or more remotely through newspaper | ||
| + | reading and through the personal narrative of returned soldiers) with | ||
| + | the notion of violent slaying, and the diminished sense of the sanctity | ||
| + | of human life which accompanies the spectacle of man-slaying by | ||
| + | wholesale held up to popular admiration, and indeed necessitated and | ||
| + | justified by the conditions of war and the duty of patriotism. No doubt | ||
| + | it is true (as has been finely said) that there is one thing which is | ||
| + | worse for a nation than war, and that is that a nation should be so | ||
| + | afraid of war as to submit to aggression rather than fight in defence | ||
| + | of its rights. But to subscribe to this doctrine, which no rational | ||
| + | thinker will dispute, is a very different thing from agreeing that the | ||
| + | nations would be otherwise than strengthened and civilised by the | ||
| + | universal abandonment of battle. Probably we are as yet some decades | ||
| + | from the time when we shall have sufficient nobility of sentiment to be | ||
| + | entirely agreed, without a single dissentient, | ||
| + | enormous service to national and international morality which Mr | ||
| + | Gladstone rendered when he had the courage to withdraw from the | ||
| + | conflict with the Boers after Majuba. It will be long before we are | ||
| + | logical enough to see that the fact of this magnanimity having been | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | its moral weight and moral beneficence. But the influence of such an | ||
| + | act cannot be without effect upon progress. It is by such acts, and the | ||
| + | possibility of their glad acceptance by nations of sufficient moral | ||
| + | elevation to perform them, that war will be banished.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | nations in time of combat, and by civilians as well as soldiers, it is | ||
| + | a new doctrine that we are asked to accept when we are told that there | ||
| + | is anything individually elevating to the character in sitting at home | ||
| + | while someone else goes out and fights for that home& | ||
| + | protection. One of the least satisfactory features of public interest | ||
| + | in games of manly endeavour and endurance, games of danger and violent | ||
| + | effort, like football and cricket, is that of the very greatly | ||
| + | increased numbers who & | ||
| + | fortunes of selected teams in the Cup contests only a very small | ||
| + | proportion play the games themselves. Thousands of young men hardly see | ||
| + | a football match from September to April, though they keenly follow the | ||
| + | admirable descriptions of them in their sporting papers. It is taking a | ||
| + | very short-sighted view to applaud the growing interest in athletics, | ||
| + | which, just now, we show, as a sign of our manliness. Not very much | ||
| + | endurance is required in order to bet on the success of <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | favourite team: and to assist, as a contributor to gate-moneys, | ||
| + | paying selected athletes to endure risk and violent fatigue in a game | ||
| + | which one does not play for oneself is exactly on a level with | ||
| + | applauding the exploits of an army to which one contributes nothing but | ||
| + | taxes.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | war-in-progress could only exercise itself during limited and | ||
| + | distressful periods. No nation is able to be seriously at war, in | ||
| + | modern conditions, for very long, and great periods of recuperation | ||
| + | must intervene between war and war; the combatant nations being | ||
| + | meanwhile subject to aggressions from keepers of the peace, because | ||
| + | they are not in a position to fight again with a fresh and an | ||
| + | unexhausted adversary. Consequently, | ||
| + | expected to be exercised chiefly in time of peace. And, in practice, it | ||
| + | does not seem to be the case that nations in which the military | ||
| + | standard is high and the military class is exalted above the civil | ||
| + | class, show always in any remarkable manner the virtues supposed to be | ||
| + | fostered by the manly art of war. No one would contend that the average | ||
| + | German is more self-reliant and self-respecting, | ||
| + | action in a moment of stress, braver, manlier, more enduring of | ||
| + | reverses of fortune, than the average American. Yet Germany, where | ||
| + | military officers are held <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | behave with unrestrained arrogance and brutality towards civilians in | ||
| + | public places without provoking any signs of popular indignation, | ||
| + | unless when their acts are commented upon in the socialist newspapers; | ||
| + | and can even inflict disgusting and degrading indignities upon private | ||
| + | soldiers without being officially punished, except where they have | ||
| + | carried brutality to the limit (and they are punished with the greatest | ||
| + | tenderness even then): Germany, I say, ought to show the virtues of a | ||
| + | military state at their best. Whereas in America, where there is | ||
| + | practically no standing army, and where military titles, the residue of | ||
| + | wars conducted almost entirely by volunteer and amateur soldiers, are | ||
| + | so common that the very holders of them treat these titles as subjects | ||
| + | of humorous depreciation, | ||
| + | high endurance, for patience under the reverses of fortune, for | ||
| + | temperance: and in the average of physical courage America far excels | ||
| + | any military nation. There seems to be no reason at all for | ||
| + | apprehending that the obsolescence of militarism will have a | ||
| + | deleterious effect on the manhood of the race: while there are | ||
| + | incontestable evidences that it will greatly foster the equally | ||
| + | important virtues of gentleness, humanity, and respect for the weak. | ||
| + | Thus, while, for reasons of sentiment and common sense, war is certain | ||
| + | to become obsolete before <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | find in the release of the funds and of the labour hitherto employed in | ||
| + | the organisation of war one of the greatest economies of an age which | ||
| + | in all things will be thrifty: and there is no reason at all to | ||
| + | apprehend difficulty in providing for the warrior who finds his | ||
| + | occupation gone, when we have so reorganised (as we must reorganise) | ||
| + | our social system, that no man will live in excessive luxury on the | ||
| + | labour of his fellows, but that all will be contributors to a common | ||
| + | frugality. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | in their widest possible sense, to mean the entire system which governs | ||
| + | the relations of the individuals in a community with each other and | ||
| + | with the community at large, we can easily see that in a | ||
| + | century& | ||
| + | be true that legislative restraints are mostly necessitated by the | ||
| + | ill-conceived energies of mankind, and that the right function of the | ||
| + | law is to assure to each citizen the largest possible liberty that is | ||
| + | consistent with the equal liberty of every other citizen and of all, | ||
| + | then it will be right to believe that the great extension of general | ||
| + | intelligence, | ||
| + | anticipated for the next century, will render many forms of existing | ||
| + | restraint obsolete because unnecessary. Regarding offences both against | ||
| + | the person and against property as manifestations, | ||
| + | of unintelligence, | ||
| + | to a diminution of their number. <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | examination of the question whether and to what extent improvements in | ||
| + | the general standard of education have in the past diminished crime, | ||
| + | and consequently how far crime is likely to be still further diminished | ||
| + | in the future, we must be careful to keep in sight two | ||
| + | considerations& | ||
| + | on the part of authority may easily make it appear that crime has | ||
| + | failed to diminish under educational influences, when it is only the | ||
| + | detection and punishment of crime that have been rendered more perfect; | ||
| + | and second, that if one kind of education have not had all the salutary | ||
| + | effects expected of it, it does not follow that a different kind will | ||
| + | not have all this expected efficacy and more. Manifestly, legislation | ||
| + | against crimes formerly outside the reach of the law& | ||
| + | creation of & | ||
| + | objected to& | ||
| + | crime in terms of prison-admissions; | ||
| + | due entirely to legislation, | ||
| + | other reform, such as the improvement of education, obviously does not | ||
| + | entitle us to connect the increase with the reform. The latter may even | ||
| + | be operating in exactly the opposite manner, despite the statistics. A | ||
| + | number of new offences were created, for instance, by what is called in | ||
| + | England the Criminal Law <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | easy for a shocked observer of prison statistics to observe, in a | ||
| + | period of years during which the administration of that useful act was | ||
| + | being perfected, dreadful increases in the crimes which it represses; | ||
| + | whereas the fact probably is that crime of this sort has diminished, | ||
| + | largely through the action of the very causes which would make it | ||
| + | appear to have been increasing. Therefore, if anyone still argues that | ||
| + | education as a means of diminishing crime has proved a failure, it is | ||
| + | not upon judicial statistics that he must base his contentions. | ||
| + | Probably that argument is obsolete: but if it were not, and if it were | ||
| + | allowed all the validity of which it is capable, it would still furnish | ||
| + | no ground whatever from which to throw doubt upon the expectation that | ||
| + | in a hundred years& | ||
| + | as a result of the improved education of the new era. For indeed, as | ||
| + | education is at present conducted, it would be rather a remarkable | ||
| + | thing that it should have any effect upon criminality at all. What | ||
| + | influence increased intelligence may have in restraining one part of | ||
| + | the population from the desire to commit crime might easily be | ||
| + | neutralised by the effect, on another portion, of the increased craft | ||
| + | and subtlety imparted by education. Knowledge can facilitate crime as | ||
| + | well as deter from it. A man who has not learned to write, it has been | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | that is not a reason for thinking that a knowledge of writing tends to | ||
| + | promote criminality. The man who, being (perhaps unduly) proficient in | ||
| + | it, becomes a forger, would not necessarily have remained blameless if | ||
| + | he had continued illiterate. He would very probably have been a thief, | ||
| + | which does not require penmanship: but on the other hand, the increased | ||
| + | facility of obtaining employment when one can write might just as | ||
| + | easily have saved him from some temptations to dishonesty. It is not | ||
| + | very rational to expect a great moral effect upon character from the | ||
| + | mere acquisition of knowledge. But from the moment we conceive that | ||
| + | means and methods of education in the future will be valued in | ||
| + | proportion to their influence in developing character, and especially | ||
| + | intelligent self-control, | ||
| + | teaching will be among the most potent of moral influences. One benefit | ||
| + | derived from this will be the possibility of abandoning legislative | ||
| + | restrictions whose effect is inimical to self-control and to | ||
| + | intelligent self-protection. It will no longer be necessary to protect | ||
| + | the people by law from the consequences of their own foolishness, | ||
| + | we shall have learned that it is much better for the public to be | ||
| + | encouraged to safeguard its own interests than to be relieved of the | ||
| + | necessity to do so. <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | restraint will have become obsolete because unnecessary, | ||
| + | fairly ask ourselves whether, in an improved moral and intellectual | ||
| + | atmosphere, it will not have been found advisable to abolish other | ||
| + | restraints and requisitions as a directly remedial measure. The | ||
| + | suggestion may, at the moment, appear chimerical, but so must every | ||
| + | intelligent anticipation of a coming time appear to anyone who | ||
| + | approaches the subject without allowing for the difference of | ||
| + | conditions, and conceives of changes which will take place so gradually | ||
| + | as to be almost unperceived, | ||
| + | saltum</ | ||
| + | nearly every social condition of the present age have appeared | ||
| + | individually to a citizen of the world of 1800, if, possessing | ||
| + | intelligence to foresee it, he lacked the imagination necessary to | ||
| + | foresee the accompanying and subservient conditions. That public | ||
| + | opinion should be so shocked by the execution of capital punishment, | ||
| + | that only the most atrocious murders are thus punished& | ||
| + | sentence, where there is any real extenuation at all, being habitually | ||
| + | commuted nowadays& | ||
| + | suggested itself even to the most alert imaginations in an age where | ||
| + | small thefts were constantly punished by death. Our sense of what may | ||
| + | be called the accidental influences <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | is even yet so little developed that only a small minority of the | ||
| + | public at the present day is able to perceive that the deterrent effect | ||
| + | of flogging, as a punishment for violent robbery, is dearly purchased | ||
| + | at the expense of the brutalising relish with which sentences of | ||
| + | flogging are welcomed by the public, and even on the judicial bench, | ||
| + | where expressions of regret that the same penalty cannot be inflicted | ||
| + | for other crimes are still common. Yet it would seem obvious enough | ||
| + | that the sanction given to acts of violence by the deliberate adoption | ||
| + | of hanging and flogging by the law, which is supposed to be the | ||
| + | exemplar of public morality, must tend nearly as much to perpetuate | ||
| + | crimes of violence as fear of these chastisements to deter. In | ||
| + | attempting to foresee the spirit of legislation in the future it is | ||
| + | absolutely necessary to foresee concurrently the spirit of the | ||
| + | communities by which the legislation will be adopted. Anticipating, | ||
| + | we cannot fail to anticipate, a sedulous care for moral effects in | ||
| + | education, we must anticipate an equal care in legislation. It would be | ||
| + | unworthy of the supremely logical age which assuredly is coming, to use | ||
| + | all possible measures in the schoolroom to foster in childhood | ||
| + | self-reliance and intelligent self-protection, | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | as possible any need for self-reliance <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | advantages attending little bits of protective law-making often blind | ||
| + | us to their ill-effects. It is no doubt very useful to provide, as we | ||
| + | do provide, that condensed milk, when deprived of its full proportion | ||
| + | of cream, shall only be sold in packages notifying that deprivation. If | ||
| + | we did not do this children would be starved by their parents& | ||
| + | ignorance. But the necessity for this enactment is at least in part | ||
| + | created by the existence of a host of similar laws, the aggregate | ||
| + | effect of which is to give a general impression that anything sold as | ||
| + | food is good and useful unless it bears some warning to the contrary; | ||
| + | and meantime every evasion of commercial morality which does not come | ||
| + | under legislative restraint is naturally held to be perfectly | ||
| + | justifiable& | ||
| + | it would be a highly perilous measure to abolish, at a stroke, all | ||
| + | protective legislation against adulterated or impoverished foods. We | ||
| + | have built up a social condition in which every man thinks himself | ||
| + | entitled to be protected against such frauds. But in a community which | ||
| + | has been taught to take care of itself, and protect itself against | ||
| + | frauds by its own intelligence, | ||
| + | and injurious. The aim of legislatures in the next century will be to | ||
| + | foster all kinds of self-reliance. They will perceive that even the | ||
| + | high importance of a reform which can be more <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | less easily enforced by law does not compensate for the bad effect of | ||
| + | thus enforcing it, if it could be maintained by the spontaneous | ||
| + | vigilance of a wisely-nurtured public; and the degrading effect of | ||
| + | superfluous law will be more dreaded than the temporary dangers against | ||
| + | which the law might protect the citizens.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | more or less extended, material progress will be accompanied by | ||
| + | numerous legal enactments such as a perfect state would dispense with, | ||
| + | and possibly the end of all of them will not have been reached even in | ||
| + | a century& | ||
| + | recently been noticeable in the new laws affecting automobile traffic | ||
| + | on roads. In a perfect state it would doubtless be unnecessary to | ||
| + | provide legal machinery to compel the owners of powerful and rapid | ||
| + | vehicles to respect the rights of their fellow-citizens and to abstain | ||
| + | from running away without identifying themselves when they had caused | ||
| + | an accident. In proportion as the moral condition of the next century | ||
| + | approximates to perfection, such ordinances as the motor-car laws will | ||
| + | be unnecessary. But for a long time new laws will always be coming into | ||
| + | necessity as a result of new inventions. For instance, when, as was | ||
| + | suggested in an earlier chapter, business is carried on largely through | ||
| + | the medium <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | special laws will have to be devised to protect trade against the | ||
| + | various kinds of fraud which this method of transaction would otherwise | ||
| + | facilitate, and some methods will have to be devised for giving legal | ||
| + | force to arrangements made by telephony, akin to the methods which now | ||
| + | give legal force to written contracts. Similarly, various by-laws will | ||
| + | have to be enacted to protect the public against the accidents | ||
| + | incidental to the various methods of rapid transit that will have come | ||
| + | into use. Probably it will no longer be necessary, and it will have | ||
| + | been perceived to be injurious, to protect travellers against their own | ||
| + | rashness.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | prosperity and high wages are fruitful in crime. Probably increased | ||
| + | consumption of alcohol in prosperous times is the sole cause of this. | ||
| + | There can be no direct connection between wealth and criminality; | ||
| + | bulk of the criminal population is, on the contrary, poor. It would be | ||
| + | idle to speculate as to whether the next century will or will not | ||
| + | continue to legislate against intoxicants, | ||
| + | certain that intoxicants will have been legislated out of existence | ||
| + | already, without waiting for the period when it would no longer be | ||
| + | necessary to abolish them forcibly. For at present, and in the more | ||
| + | immediate future, there is no ground whatever for anticipating | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | wherever law-making appears the simplest and most obvious method of | ||
| + | getting rid of any crying evil: and there can be no doubt that the | ||
| + | abuse of alcohol is an evil of precisely the sort that legislature will | ||
| + | be active in suppressing. Some changes in the method of government will | ||
| + | have to take place before Parliament can legislate against alcohol: but | ||
| + | that it will so legislate before the middle of this century is morally | ||
| + | certain. In what country the alcohol law is first likely to be passed | ||
| + | is immaterial. Every country which adopts it will thereby assist in | ||
| + | forcing the same measure upon other countries, because, with | ||
| + | international travel constantly becoming cheaper and more easy, it is | ||
| + | certain that numerous people who object to being deprived of stimulants | ||
| + | and intoxicants in one country will migrate to others where their | ||
| + | appetite can have full play, and will intensify the drink problem in | ||
| + | those countries until these, too, are forced, or will think themselves | ||
| + | forced, to legislate in self-protection. Thus such laws will become | ||
| + | universal. No doubt this condition will be reached gradually, measures | ||
| + | of restriction preceding measures of prohibition. But the end will be | ||
| + | the same, and it will be forced upon the world as much by the increased | ||
| + | evils inflicted by alcohol on nerves increasingly susceptible to its | ||
| + | influence, as by any other consideration. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the trouble to observe the nervous and physical condition of men and | ||
| + | women in the average, during even so short a period as the last quarter | ||
| + | of a century, must have been impressed by the marked increase of | ||
| + | neurotic states, not merely in exceptional individuals, | ||
| + | people. The neurotic temperament is much more adversely affected by | ||
| + | alcohol than any other; and we are all growing more neurotic. All the | ||
| + | conditions of modern life tend that way: and it is not alcohol alone | ||
| + | that will have to go, but all sorts of habit-inducing drugs, such as | ||
| + | morphine, cocaine, and the rest, all of which, like alcohol itself, | ||
| + | will soon be so restricted in regard to their sale that their abuse | ||
| + | will be rendered practically impossible, and their use restricted to a | ||
| + | purely medical employment. It is even quite possible, and I have | ||
| + | already ventured to predict,< | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | neurotism has worked itself out, even such mild exhilarants as tea and | ||
| + | coffee will have to be made the subjects of legal restriction. There | ||
| + | exist many individuals at the present moment upon whom coffee acts as a | ||
| + | stimulant nearly as powerful as alcohol, moderately employed, upon the | ||
| + | rest of us& | ||
| + | exhilaration after a cup of strong coffee as a moderate man does after | ||
| + | a glass of burgundy or a whisky-and-soda. These <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | those of a moderate use of wine or spirits: but they can become | ||
| + | perilous, and may develop in all sorts of ways, when the nervous | ||
| + | organisation becomes more delicate. Thus, the abolition of alcoholic | ||
| + | beverages, at present the fad of a minority not always very respectable | ||
| + | in the methods of its propaganda, will presently be an indispensable | ||
| + | feature of social progress.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | something like fifty per cent. of all crime will be got rid of when | ||
| + | alcohol no longer exists to cause crime. There are further ameliorative | ||
| + | influences certain to be at work which will tend to reduce the sorts of | ||
| + | crime chiefly troublesome at present. Adopting the familiar division of | ||
| + | crime into (< | ||
| + | offences against property, it is very easy to see that what may be | ||
| + | called private crime (as distinguished from crime against the body | ||
| + | politic) will diminish automatically. When the extremes of wealth and | ||
| + | poverty have become as much less marked as I have endeavoured to show | ||
| + | that they must become, it is evident that the temptation to offences of | ||
| + | greed will be greatly diminished. A large proportion of all these | ||
| + | crimes arises out of poverty alone, or out of poverty coupled with | ||
| + | stupidity. A man who has not enough intelligence to earn is very likely | ||
| + | to steal in order to provide for himself; and one who is <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | consequently not so liable to be dishonest as one who is less hopefully | ||
| + | situated. He is also likely to be more intelligent, | ||
| + | better qualified to perceive that the balance of comfort is on the side | ||
| + | of the honest worker and not on the side of the burglar or thief. | ||
| + | Anyone who has had occasion to observe the proceedings of criminal | ||
| + | courts must have noticed the frequency with which the description | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | learned no trade, and brings nothing to his work but thews and sinews. | ||
| + | It is much less common to find a trade claimed: one rarely sees a thief | ||
| + | or burglar described on the charge sheet as & | ||
| + | carpenter,& | ||
| + | even profess to have a trade. Of course where a man& | ||
| + | such as to lend itself to criminal pursuits, the case is different: one | ||
| + | finds banknote forgers described as & | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | crime of the more stupid sorts& | ||
| + | nearly always charged. It is impossible to resist the inference that | ||
| + | poverty is a determining cause in most crimes of greed. In a hundred | ||
| + | years& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | thinned the ranks of the unskilled. At the same time the inducements to | ||
| + | honesty and steady industry will have been enormously increased through | ||
| + | the universality of the profit-sharing system; and the position of the | ||
| + | steady worker will have become so greatly more attractive than that of | ||
| + | the casual thief, that only the utmost stupidity can tempt anyone to | ||
| + | the latter& | ||
| + | in the profits of labour, instead of mechanical toil for wages that do | ||
| + | not bear any relation to profits nor to anything else except the | ||
| + | fluctuations of the labour-market, | ||
| + | industrial character that it will be rare for workmen to drift into | ||
| + | crime. At the same time, and similarly, the restraint placed upon undue | ||
| + | accumulation of wealth will diminish temptation to crimes of greed at | ||
| + | the other extremity of social life. It will no longer be worth | ||
| + | anyone& | ||
| + | company-promoting. Thus, crimes against property are certain to become | ||
| + | relatively infrequent, because the greatest temptations to them will | ||
| + | have been removed.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | which offences against the person& | ||
| + | like& | ||
| + | violence will also diminish as the temper of <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | sentimentality as to revolt against the cruelty of breeding horses for | ||
| + | traction and cattle for food is not likely to be fruitful in offences | ||
| + | of violence. These offences, where associated neither with drink nor | ||
| + | robbery, probably arise more often from jealousy between the sexes than | ||
| + | anything else. It is unfortunately impossible to suggest that sexual | ||
| + | jealousy can be wholly eliminated from human nature. But no doubt its | ||
| + | violent exhibition will have been educated out of us to a large | ||
| + | measure. Other personal offences, as rape, criminal assault and various | ||
| + | criminal vices will doubtless diminish in frequency as a consequence of | ||
| + | general moral improvement. In short, the work of the policeman will be | ||
| + | greatly eased in the course of this century, and no doubt many | ||
| + | functions at present relegated to the police, such as the direction of | ||
| + | street traffic, the care of vagrant dogs, and the like, will be | ||
| + | performed by officials of a different character. Even these duties will | ||
| + | be far less onerous than they now are, when we have become intelligent | ||
| + | enough to see that the best way for every man to secure his own freedom | ||
| + | and comfort is to respect the freedom and the rights of others.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | this century it may not be temporarily needful for the State to | ||
| + | undertake the restraint of offences against the intellect, such | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | exaggerated news, and of matter calculated to encourage vice, as | ||
| + | betting. No doubt the balance of advantage is in favour of the entire | ||
| + | freedom of the Press; but it cannot be denied that this freedom is at | ||
| + | present greatly abused. It would be easy to name a dozen types of | ||
| + | periodicals whose forcible suppression would be an enormous gain to the | ||
| + | public; and in an age so increasingly prone to look to the governing | ||
| + | body for assistance in every conceivable matter no one can deny the | ||
| + | probability of some legislative steps being taken, when the public | ||
| + | first begins to concern itself seriously with public morals. But this | ||
| + | possibility is much nearer at hand than the end of this century; at the | ||
| + | latter period public opinion will probably be well able to take care of | ||
| + | itself, and any laws of the kind I have suggested will, like numerous | ||
| + | other forms of legislation, | ||
| + | into desuetude because there will be no temptation to the misdemeanours | ||
| + | they are, or may be, framed to repress.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | will take a hundred years hence can only be answered if we first | ||
| + | endeavour to see what the developments of penology, or the science of | ||
| + | punishment, are likely to be during the next hundred years. Naturally, | ||
| + | they will have the same tendencies as the society which <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | more savage punishments, | ||
| + | eliminated, together with all punishments that are not believed to be | ||
| + | reformatory in their character. And even the relatively mild penalty of | ||
| + | long imprisonment may to the gentler mind of a new age appear unduly | ||
| + | vindictive.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | evil; and our & | ||
| + | fit the particular crime for which it is awarded, but to make it | ||
| + | diminish crime as a whole. Punition as a moral force will be judged | ||
| + | according to its effect in two different directions, namely, its force | ||
| + | as a means of reforming the convicted individual by preventing his | ||
| + | relapse into crime, and its force as a means of deterring other persons | ||
| + | from committing the same crimes at all; and of these two the second | ||
| + | will be considered greatly the more important in an age that will be | ||
| + | logical as well as mild; because it is obviously a greater object to | ||
| + | produce an effect upon the minds of a possibly great number than to | ||
| + | produce it upon the mind of one culprit. Consequently, | ||
| + | benevolent solicitude for the reformation of the detected offender will | ||
| + | not be excluded from the consideration of future penologists, | ||
| + | deterring from crime of the tempted classes will be much more demanded. | ||
| + | As to this, it cannot <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | detection and in legal procedure (eliminating the chances of escape for | ||
| + | the guilty without endangering the freedom of the innocent) are capable | ||
| + | of accomplishing a great deal more than could possibly be looked for | ||
| + | from any alteration in the nature of the punishment used. Experience | ||
| + | shows that hitherto a ferocious punishment not very certainly applied | ||
| + | does not deter anything like so much as comparatively mild punishment | ||
| + | with very little chance of escape. Coining, for instance, is less | ||
| + | common now than when coiners were slowly pressed to death under | ||
| + | weights, <i>if detected</ | ||
| + | been due to fear of the punishment now long abandoned; neither was that | ||
| + | penalty removed from our system of criminal law because it had done its | ||
| + | work and stamped out counterfeiting. On the contrary, improvements in | ||
| + | the minting of real money, by rendering the detection of counterfeits | ||
| + | easy, may be said to have almost eliminated the offence in question, | ||
| + | and this result is all the more remarkable when we remember that, owing | ||
| + | to the appreciation of gold, real silver shillings, half-crowns and | ||
| + | other pieces just as good in assay as the royal mintage could be coined | ||
| + | by counterfeiters at a handsome profit.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | of committing and punishing the innocent doubtless enables many guilty | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | half the prisoners acquitted at every assize are really guilty in some | ||
| + | degree. The jurisprudence of a hundred years hence will certainly have | ||
| + | been so much improved that innocent persons will rarely be accused at | ||
| + | all, and that guilty ones will not be able to escape on technical | ||
| + | grounds: and with improved detective methods the chances of escape in | ||
| + | any given case will be greatly diminished. What punishments are | ||
| + | inflicted will be of a reformatory character, and no doubt provisional | ||
| + | release, freed from the many crying scandals of the ticket-of-leave | ||
| + | system, will play a great part in scientific penology. Recidivism will, | ||
| + | of course, be the subject of much sharper punishment. In the meantime, | ||
| + | the study of mental science in its relation to crime will have made | ||
| + | great strides, and if the views of our own age in regard to heredity | ||
| + | should be maintained, a very great source of crime will probably be got | ||
| + | rid of altogether, because men and women with just that mental twist | ||
| + | which leads to crime will, by one device or another, be absolutely | ||
| + | prevented from propagating their race.<a class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | individual reform applicable to convicts of various sorts, because the | ||
| + | nature of these methods must necessarily depend, to a great extent, | ||
| + | upon the conditions of a society of which only the most salient and | ||
| + | extreme peculiarities can be foreseen even by the most imaginative. But | ||
| + | all evidence seems to suggest that actual crime will have become much | ||
| + | diminished in amount, while the necessity for dealing with what may be | ||
| + | called technical crimes& | ||
| + | regulations made for the convenience of society rather than for the | ||
| + | defence of life and morals& | ||
| + | minimum, partly by the intelligence of the population, and partly | ||
| + | through the fact that the minor offences will have ceased to be dealt | ||
| + | with by law, and will be sufficiently repressed by natural causes. Not | ||
| + | only, therefore, will the amount of necessary restraint become less, | ||
| + | through the diminution of crime and of temptation to crime, but the | ||
| + | employment of legal restraint will be less demanded, the latter being | ||
| + | recognised as, when avoidable, dangerous to public morals. <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | while criminal law will be less active, civil litigation will also | ||
| + | probably be much less heavy. The same causes which will tend to make us | ||
| + | more careful to avoid committing offences against the common right of | ||
| + | others, will make us more scrupulous to perform contracts. And as a | ||
| + | consequence of the improved morality which there seems every reason to | ||
| + | anticipate, a hundred years hence, it will no doubt have become | ||
| + | possible to execute a reform which many thinkers have desiderated as an | ||
| + | element of perfected polity. It is hardly necessary here to | ||
| + | recapitulate the arguments in favour of the contention that the cost of | ||
| + | civil suits should be borne, as the cost of criminal prosecutions is | ||
| + | always supposed to be borne, by the State. That the man who brings | ||
| + | successfully an action at law, or successfully defends one, should be | ||
| + | able to do so only at an expense to himself, is against public policy: | ||
| + | and there are even now numerous cases every year in which even the | ||
| + | unsuccessful party in a lawsuit is really doing the public a service. | ||
| + | In a perfect state of public morality he would always be doing so: and | ||
| + | in a hundred years& | ||
| + | of public thanks than he is now& | ||
| + | impose or defend a wrong. As matters stand, it is notorious that the | ||
| + | grant of costs following the judgment in a civil suit is only a partial | ||
| + | relief to the successful suitor. He has <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | more than his solicitor can obtain leave from the taxing master to | ||
| + | collect from the other side; while if (as not infrequently happens) the | ||
| + | other side cannot pay, the costs awarded by the Court have to be borne | ||
| + | by the winner of the suit. It is a frequent reply of dishonest | ||
| + | defendants, when threatened with legal proceedings, | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | other hand, a man will often submit to oppression rather than be | ||
| + | subjected to the expense of even a successful defence. Every litigant | ||
| + | who maintains his right, whether as plaintiff or defendant, renders | ||
| + | very much the same service to the public which we often hear applauded | ||
| + | on the part of persons who & | ||
| + | criminal or misdemeanour cases. He is assisting to make probity | ||
| + | profitable and evasion dangerous; in other words, he is subserving | ||
| + | public morality and helping to repress dishonesty. It would be much to | ||
| + | the public advantage that his costs should be borne by the public | ||
| + | purse, and borne generously, every expense legitimately incurred being | ||
| + | allowed him. Logically, he ought also to receive a sufficient, and even | ||
| + | a fairly liberal, <i lang=" | ||
| + | time: and an honest loser ought to be able to receive a certificate | ||
| + | from the court entitling him to the same amenities, the withholding of | ||
| + | which would constitute a deterrent penalty against factious | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | grounds that to make the path of the litigant too easy would lead to | ||
| + | too much invocation of the law, and that the full recognition of the | ||
| + | public usefulness of litigants must be postponed to the | ||
| + | millennium& | ||
| + | be thought necessary to concede) a hundred years hence. And it is not | ||
| + | difficult to imagine means by which the public can be protected against | ||
| + | the factious and unnecessary litigation to which, in the absence of | ||
| + | some safeguard, we should certainly be exposed. The plaintiff might be | ||
| + | required to obtain some sort of < | ||
| + | before a suit of criminal libel can be prosecuted: and there would be | ||
| + | no hardship in the litigant who failed to obtain the < | ||
| + | left to bear his own expenses up to the time of failure, though, in the | ||
| + | event of his success, he would of course have them repaid. The legal | ||
| + | machinery for obtaining permission to sue need not be made too | ||
| + | complicated: | ||
| + | preliminary trial. Probably some sort of arrangement as the above will | ||
| + | be instituted a hundred years hence, and all law-costs borne by the | ||
| + | State, except in the case of obvious dishonesty or bad faith; the | ||
| + | trouble and loss of time necessarily incurred exercising a restraining | ||
| + | influence upon the litigious.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | it would be tedious to attempt to foresee all the reforms of which the | ||
| + | growing complexity of human affairs will certainly impose the necessity | ||
| + | upon us. The clumsiness of a system by which important civil cases have | ||
| + | to be tried three times, in ways differing in detail, before a final | ||
| + | decision is reached, needs no insisting upon: and there is a manifest | ||
| + | inconsistency in the fact that an action about a matter worth | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | something even more important than life, has no appeal at all against | ||
| + | an adverse verdict, except to a secret tribunal of Civil Service | ||
| + | clerks& | ||
| + | Crown stands for the Home Secretary, and the Home Secretary is | ||
| + | necessarily obliged to depend upon his assistants, who in their turn | ||
| + | may very possibly have to derive their information from officials whose | ||
| + | credit would be damaged if some fact favourable to the prisoner came | ||
| + | out. To admit this inconsistency is not by any means equivalent to | ||
| + | admitting the necessity for courts of criminal appeal: and anyone who | ||
| + | knows the methods of criminal jurisprudence in the United States must | ||
| + | recognise that such courts are capable of abuse highly dangerous to | ||
| + | public morality, so dependent upon respect for law. But with the great | ||
| + | increase in scrupulosity and in the mildness of public temper which the | ||
| + | tendencies of human development clearly vaticinate for the <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | century, it seems impossible to doubt that some method will be adopted | ||
| + | by which criminal trials can be reviewed, even though the class of | ||
| + | cases in which the necessity for review is most often mentioned now | ||
| + | will no doubt have disappeared with the abolition of capital | ||
| + | punishment. And it does not seem likely to be beyond the ingenuity of | ||
| + | the coming time to discover some means by which civil cases can be | ||
| + | settled in one trial, instead of requiring three, without danger to the | ||
| + | justice of any individual suit.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | continue a feature of modern civilisation. The remark of a legal cynic | ||
| + | that & | ||
| + | the man with a bad case has always a chance with a jury,& | ||
| + | sufficiently sound to make it a question whether juries are worth the | ||
| + | trouble given to the members of them, and the vast amount of additional | ||
| + | labour which their employment inflicts on the courts of which they are | ||
| + | a feature. The conditions which make trial by jury & | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | countries, and to a great extent in Ireland. It is no doubt | ||
| + | characteristic of the British people that we should so long as this | ||
| + | have retained the use of juries in civil suits, though even here there | ||
| + | are many cases (especially in divorce and libel) where the average | ||
| + | common <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | and constitutes a check upon his prejudice or impatience. There was a | ||
| + | time when the jury was a genuine safeguard against oppression in | ||
| + | private as well as Crown cases, and it is like us, as a nation, to have | ||
| + | retained them when their usefulness in this respect was happily | ||
| + | obsolete. But it seems to the writer pretty certain that in civil | ||
| + | trials juries will have been dispensed with long before the end of this | ||
| + | century, and this dispensation will probably be the stepping-stone to a | ||
| + | system whereby criminal causes will be tried by a bench of judges, | ||
| + | instead of by a judge and jury. The whole tendency of modern conditions | ||
| + | (in which must be included our growing, and highly discreditable, | ||
| + | individual impatience of the trouble of jury-service) seems to point to | ||
| + | this.<a class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | legislative work which will have been accomplished by the end of the | ||
| + | century. Apart from the work of gradually remodelling the law with the | ||
| + | idea (which nowhere seems to suggest itself to present-day legislators) | ||
| + | of making it act beneficially upon public character, there will no | ||
| + | doubt be a vast amount of work for the various parliaments of the world | ||
| + | in codifying existing statute- and common-law systems, which in all | ||
| + | communities have fallen into complexity and confusion of a degree which | ||
| + | makes them highly unsatisfactory instruments of social protection: and | ||
| + | there will also be a great amount of constructive legislation, | ||
| + | particularly in regard to the tenure of land, to the simplification of | ||
| + | conveyancing, | ||
| + | equitable handling of such accidental or conditional sources of wealth | ||
| + | as we call & | ||
| + | unexpected minerals, to the useful limitation of inheritance, | ||
| + | other matters too numerous to be safely named. And in order that these | ||
| + | great works may be accomplished, | ||
| + | England, but in all those States where really free parliaments exist, | ||
| + | great reforms will have been found necessary, and will have become so | ||
| + | much a part of the machinery of legislation and administration a | ||
| + | hundred years hence, that our descendants will hardly <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | able to realise how Government was ever carried on without them. | ||
| + | Indeed, it is by the difficulty of administering anything at all by | ||
| + | parliamentary methods& | ||
| + | down& | ||
| + | legislation, | ||
| + | initiate the changes whose full development will have become | ||
| + | time-honoured by the end of this century. The organisation of political | ||
| + | opposition in parliaments has reached a point which makes it evident | ||
| + | that before long the minority in parliaments will have become a | ||
| + | nonentity. The minority, in fact, has already, here and in other | ||
| + | countries (of which the Austro-Hungarian empire is, at the moment, the | ||
| + | most noticeable example), become so powerful for obstruction of | ||
| + | business that, by a sort of paradox, its power is on the eve of | ||
| + | complete destruction. At St Stephen& | ||
| + | working in this manner is plainly visible. Whatever party is in power | ||
| + | will always, so long as the existing system continues, be obliged to | ||
| + | silence the opposition by the force of parliamentary machine; and | ||
| + | whatever party is in power will always be accused of tyranny and | ||
| + | autocracy by the other party. In practice there is no method by which | ||
| + | any important government measure can be passed through the House of | ||
| + | Commons except by force. It is a mere farce <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | make a show of debating the details in committee. Naturally the | ||
| + | Opposition, when it does not want the measure passed at all, will delay | ||
| + | its passage to the last possible moment, and will make its enactment | ||
| + | impossible unless a term is set to the deliberations of committee of | ||
| + | the whole house. Whether the time granted by the Government be long or | ||
| + | short makes no difference: it is impossible to pass any serious and | ||
| + | complex bill except by the closure. In other words, the Government | ||
| + | (which practically means the Civil Service officials and parliamentary | ||
| + | draftsmen employed by the particular department concerned with the | ||
| + | bill& | ||
| + | Exchequer, or what not) must triumph. Even the suggestions of | ||
| + | individual supporters of the administration in power must be ignored, | ||
| + | unless there is a cave which might turn out the ministry altogether. In | ||
| + | detail, therefore, we are governed, not by Parliament, but by the | ||
| + | permanent officials, so far as really important Government measures are | ||
| + | concerned: and it is quite evident that bills introduced by private | ||
| + | members will very soon not be considered at all. The private member is | ||
| + | rapidly being reduced to nothingness by the force of parliamentary | ||
| + | development. Meantime, the waste of public time by the introduction and | ||
| + | debating of bills which the Opposition eventually succeeds in | ||
| + | destroying, is appalling, and of <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | the idiotic rule which destroys at the end of each session all the work | ||
| + | which has been begun and not completed. The system, not less imbecile, | ||
| + | in which opinion is ascertained in Parliament is another great | ||
| + | time-waster. It is only necessary to ask for a single moment what our | ||
| + | grandsons, or even the younger of our children, will think of a | ||
| + | Parliament in which a vote was taken by solemnly walking through | ||
| + | lobbies, with elaborate arrangements for counting and checking the | ||
| + | members (when it might all be done by the simple use of an electric | ||
| + | signal in front of each seat in the chamber) in order to perceive the | ||
| + | miserable inadequacy of even the mechanical arrangements of all the | ||
| + | parliaments of the world. And if even all the crass follies and | ||
| + | medi& | ||
| + | reformed, as nine-tenths of them could be by any competent board | ||
| + | composed of a few engineers, electricians and architects, we should | ||
| + | still be in possession of a legislative machine such as the | ||
| + | intelligence of a hundred years hence would laugh to scorn if its | ||
| + | restoration were suggested.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | as a contrivance for giving effect to the will of the peoples, has long | ||
| + | been utterly inadequate, and must be reformed from the bottom. We elect | ||
| + | members to carry out schemes of legislation and forms of policy | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | formulated, upon which, even if they were set out in full detail, we | ||
| + | could not possibly have any complete influence in giving our votes. For | ||
| + | instance, let us suppose that, at a general election, one party wishes | ||
| + | to increase the Navy, to abolish publicans& | ||
| + | legalise marriage with a deceased wife& | ||
| + | party not only objects to all these three proposals but also wishes to | ||
| + | put a protective tariff on foodstuffs and machinery, to give Home Rule | ||
| + | to Ireland, and to disestablish the Church of England. A Home Ruler who | ||
| + | was also a teetotaler could not vote for either party without outraging | ||
| + | one or other of his convictions. A believer in the support of our | ||
| + | national supremacy who also considered that the Church ought to be | ||
| + | disestablished would have to choose between voting against the increase | ||
| + | of the Navy or against the Disestablishment: | ||
| + | Wife& | ||
| + | on the other side (all of which he may agree with) if he do not wish to | ||
| + | assist in perpetuating what he believes to be a hardship to his | ||
| + | fellow-countrymen, | ||
| + | himself. And any of these perplexed voters, having somehow contrived to | ||
| + | strike a balance with his conscience, and to give a vote, will, | ||
| + | perhaps, in a year& | ||
| + | has been the <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | which is now proceeding to pass measures that he abhors. He has no | ||
| + | redress. Nor, abandoning the extreme case of such highly-mixed policies | ||
| + | as I have endeavoured to amuse the reader by imagining, has the voter | ||
| + | who changes his mind, or who finds that he has been bamboozled with | ||
| + | false promises, any means of helping to undo the harm he has helped to | ||
| + | do. It used to be said that, on an average, parliamentary government | ||
| + | worked well& | ||
| + | people. But the peoples of a hundred years hence are going to be much | ||
| + | more particular about matters of such high importance. They are not | ||
| + | going to be content with a rough approximation in matters of the very | ||
| + | highest moment when they are able to secure with perfect accuracy most | ||
| + | of their wishes in matters of quite minor importance. They will not be | ||
| + | satisfied to know exactly what time it is at any moment of the day (as | ||
| + | of course they will know, all instruments for time-measuring being | ||
| + | controlled by wireless synchronisation) and not to know exactly what | ||
| + | their rulers are going to do about matters upon which the very fate of | ||
| + | the country may depend. Neither will they have remained so stupid as to | ||
| + | think that whatever one body of politicians considers right must | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | necessarily be <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | intelligent age so clumsy a system as that of party government will | ||
| + | have been relegated to oblivion.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | nature determined by causes much too complex to be foreseen, except in | ||
| + | the merest outline, as yet; and probably it will, like most political | ||
| + | institutions, | ||
| + | already talked of, by which any matter of great national importance | ||
| + | should be made a < | ||
| + | whole nation, is no doubt capable of ingeniously modified arrangement | ||
| + | so as to provide for its expeditious use, without undue interference | ||
| + | with the course of ordinary business. But obviously this device is only | ||
| + | capable of limited application, | ||
| + | without producing dangerous confusions and incongruities, | ||
| + | community whose political education had made strides almost | ||
| + | inconceivable in the light of our present limited experience. It is | ||
| + | difficult to see how the general legislative business of a considerable | ||
| + | nation could be carried on unless by committees of a parliamentary | ||
| + | character; and limited as we are by the history of political | ||
| + | institutions arising out of states of public intelligence which will | ||
| + | have become contemptible in comparison with the intelligence of the | ||
| + | next century, there is a <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | committees or parliaments could work out otherwise than on some sort of | ||
| + | party system. But the analogy of progress in general may help us to a | ||
| + | conjecture, which is here offered only for what it is worth. All | ||
| + | progress, as we know it, is a development from the homogeneous to the | ||
| + | heterogeneous. One form of progress consists of the development of | ||
| + | specialism. At one time, and not so very long ago, every housewife made | ||
| + | her own jams, pickles, perfumes, essences and condiments, which are now | ||
| + | purchased ready made. A man of science, in Davy& | ||
| + | embraced a number of different branches as his province; whereas now | ||
| + | even a single science is seldom completely handled by any individual | ||
| + | professor, entomologists differentiating themselves from general | ||
| + | biologists, and coleopterists from general entomologists. Does it not | ||
| + | appear likely, then, that the functions of the politician and of the | ||
| + | legislator will presently be differentiated, | ||
| + | nations? In a legislature of the present time professional law-makers | ||
| + | are numerically few, and not very highly regarded. While in a matter | ||
| + | relatively unimportant, | ||
| + | specialism necessary; in a matter of the highest importance, the making | ||
| + | of a nation& | ||
| + | practitioner, | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | awaken a torrent of objection not unmingled with execration. But | ||
| + | specialism of all sorts will have extended its sway to such an extent a | ||
| + | hundred years hence that the likeliest solution of the difficulties at | ||
| + | present envisaged is that the business of law-making will be relegated | ||
| + | to a specially qualified and specially educated class, and that | ||
| + | parliaments, | ||
| + | will concern themselves with what they are often rather contumeliously | ||
| + | told now is not their business (though it ought to be); namely, the | ||
| + | management of international policy. The way in which this evolution | ||
| + | will come about is, moreover, fairly easy to imagine. At some time | ||
| + | during the century the manifold confusions, inconsistencies and evident | ||
| + | inconveniences of the existing < | ||
| + | to require drastic and laborious treatment, which can only be | ||
| + | administered by professional experts. At the same time, the public, | ||
| + | having awakened to the ludicrous fact that laws are passed in every | ||
| + | session of every Parliament in the world, which, when they come to be | ||
| + | administered, | ||
| + | unimaginatively conceived, or so clumsily expressed in the statutes | ||
| + | which embody them, that practical working immediately reveals their | ||
| + | fatal defects. A clever young lawyer once said to the present | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | so delightful as that of discovering how to circumvent the provisions | ||
| + | of an Act of Parliament. This diverting, if immoral, remark illustrates | ||
| + | the faults of a social system in which laws are made chiefly by persons | ||
| + | having little experience in the working of laws, and elected to that | ||
| + | duty by persons having no such experience at all. Having in mind the | ||
| + | fact that international law is already relegated practically to | ||
| + | specialists, | ||
| + | the Hercules that will cleanse the Augean stable of the Statute Book | ||
| + | will be a committee of professors of law. And once the public has | ||
| + | become familiarised with the idea, what more natural than that a | ||
| + | similar body should be formed to provide against such legislative | ||
| + | blunders as we were all recently laughing at, when, having provided for | ||
| + | the restraint of habitual drunkards by placing them on what was called | ||
| + | the black list, Parliament presently learned that it had so framed the | ||
| + | law that no one could be black-listed except by his own consent? The | ||
| + | development from this to a system by which laws would not merely be | ||
| + | amended, but devised <i lang=" | ||
| + | legislators, | ||
| + | to ensure that the laws created shall express the will of a sovereign | ||
| + | people sufficiently educated in political duty to possess a will worthy | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the legislative difficulty can be imagined.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | easy to reform. If despotisms were not such desperately untrustworthy | ||
| + | things, a good sound autocracy would probably be the best form of | ||
| + | government for the function of conducting the affairs of one nation | ||
| + | with another. The extraordinary diplomatic success of Russia is an | ||
| + | evidence of this. But Russia also illustrates the drawbacks of | ||
| + | despotism. In its management of foreign affairs Russia has (despite the | ||
| + | habit which its departments occasionally display of acting in conflict | ||
| + | with one another) beaten all the civilised nations. Russia has a | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | ministers to nullify each other& | ||
| + | diplomatists of other nations to procrastinate and shilly-shally over | ||
| + | negotiations in the hope that a general election will bring in a new | ||
| + | set of statesmen, easier to deal with. And Russia can herself | ||
| + | procrastinate, | ||
| + | promises, ignore her pledges, and prosecute her cryptic aims, without | ||
| + | the smallest fear of a question in Parliament to spoil her game by | ||
| + | letting all the world into her dark and devious secrets. The more a | ||
| + | nation becomes democratised, | ||
| + | foreign policy against less democratic nations, and a truly | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the world, about the worst conceivable instrument for that purpose. | ||
| + | With an ever-increasing democratisation of all governments such as we | ||
| + | are sure to witness during this century, foreign offices of the present | ||
| + | kind will become more and more incompetent until some sort of machinery | ||
| + | is invented in their place.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | arms, as a possibility always threatening in the background, tend to | ||
| + | improve matters. It will, on the contrary, make them worse. There can | ||
| + | be no doubt that the awful fear of war, which must haunt the pillow of | ||
| + | every statesman in our day with dreams of pitiable horror, does | ||
| + | exercise an influence in settling controversies which, without this | ||
| + | terror, would drag their slow length along from generation to | ||
| + | exasperated generation. And if we try to imagine that the increased | ||
| + | conscientiousness of a better time will help nations to deal more | ||
| + | honourably with each other, it is to be feared that even the vast | ||
| + | progress of the quick-moving century on which we have entered will not | ||
| + | suffice to bind the princes to its pleasure and teach their senators | ||
| + | wisdom. It is unfortunately in regard to honour between nation and | ||
| + | nation that conscience develops most slowly, and many a man who would | ||
| + | scorn to trick a fellow-citizen, | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | smuggling a box of cigars through the custom-house, | ||
| + | advocate acts of international dishonesty and oppression abhorrent to | ||
| + | any conscientious mind.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | influence of our times, which encourages nations to delay and deny to | ||
| + | each other justice and the fulfilment of solemn obligations, | ||
| + | habit of waiting upon the chances of a minister& | ||
| + | resulting change of policy. So long as almost any day may bring a new | ||
| + | set of statesmen, predisposed against anything which their predecessors | ||
| + | may have approved, diplomacy will be disfigured by ways that are dark | ||
| + | and tricks that are vain: and the logical twentieth of the centuries | ||
| + | may be trusted to perceive this. Consequently some method will have to | ||
| + | be devised by which a continuous foreign policy may be made compatible | ||
| + | with the performance of a nation& | ||
| + | nature of the new age will assist the constructive genius of the | ||
| + | reformer. No doubt the habit of changing our minds on the basic | ||
| + | principles of government about once every six years will have been | ||
| + | eradicated. Peoples will deliberate more intelligently upon the | ||
| + | important questions which they decide by their votes: and it will no | ||
| + | longer be thought& | ||
| + | thought& | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | (say) to Home Rule for Ireland must necessarily carry with it a change | ||
| + | of opinion as to whether it is desirable to extend our influence in | ||
| + | Afghanistan. When this error is abandoned, probably foreign affairs | ||
| + | will no longer be made part and parcel of the work of the same set of | ||
| + | men that is elected to manage domestic policy. It will then be possible | ||
| + | for the people to express& | ||
| + | express under the present system& | ||
| + | to international matters. And here, as everywhere, responsibility will | ||
| + | certainly exercise an educative influence. When men intelligently | ||
| + | realise that by their votes they are deciding the fate of their | ||
| + | country, they will deliberate long before yielding a decision so | ||
| + | momentous. Inasmuch as the foreign affairs of any nation are truly | ||
| + | understood only by a very limited class, because very few people are | ||
| + | willing to give up enough of their leisure to the studies necessary for | ||
| + | such an understanding, | ||
| + | the polity of the year 2000 may be the limitation of the right to vote | ||
| + | on foreign affairs to men and women who have demonstrated in some | ||
| + | sufficient manner their competence to assist in directing the action of | ||
| + | their representatives in matters so intricate. The increased leisure | ||
| + | with which other reforms already foreseen will endow the <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | of this competence, and the right to vote on foreign affairs will | ||
| + | doubtless be a coveted social distinction, | ||
| + | love of titles and the childlike pleasure of having letters after | ||
| + | one& | ||
| + | the whispered word & | ||
| + | government by those best qualified to govern& | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | will be recognised as the most satisfactory form of government: and in | ||
| + | order to exclude objectionable one-sidedness in the method of selecting | ||
| + | voters for the high duty of guarding the nation& | ||
| + | doubt some method of selection by vote can be discovered, free from | ||
| + | liability to reintroduce the baleful evil of party.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | obvious subject for conjecture is that suggested by the tendency in | ||
| + | recent times of governments (and following their example of | ||
| + | municipalities) to engage in trade. The comment which gained currency | ||
| + | over a decade ago, that we were all socialists then, is still more | ||
| + | justified now. Will States continue their increasing practice of | ||
| + | usurping the place of private adventurers? | ||
| + | telephonic and teleautographic systems, street conveyances, | ||
| + | forth, be owned and <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | after education, some other functions, including the feeding and | ||
| + | clothing of poor children during school age, and the care of the | ||
| + | unemployed (which States before long will certainly have embraced) have | ||
| + | by a more enlightened polity been returned to the proper hands? The | ||
| + | whole question of whether socialism is a probable solution of the | ||
| + | difficulties which its advocates believe it capable of solving is here | ||
| + | involved. Applying our familiar principle of estimating the tendencies | ||
| + | of the future by the trend of events in the past, it seems certain that | ||
| + | there will for a good many years immediately to come be an increase in | ||
| + | the functions assumed by the State: but that the whole plunge into | ||
| + | socialism will not be undertaken. For, while measures undisguisedly | ||
| + | socialistic in character are more and more advocated and adopted, the | ||
| + | open principle of State socialism seems to find less support every | ||
| + | year. Whenever distress becomes prevalent, plenty of writers, for | ||
| + | instance, loudly denounce Governments for not finding work for everyone | ||
| + | who fails to find work for himself& | ||
| + | one appears to think it the Government& | ||
| + | women.) But when socialism is openly propounded, the same authors just | ||
| + | as vehemently denounce the socialistic system to which this principle | ||
| + | of regarding the State as the duty-bound <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | workless clearly tends. What will most likely happen is that devices, | ||
| + | more and more socialistic, | ||
| + | inconveniences of various sorts, will be adopted and maintained until | ||
| + | their own inconvenience and injustice have made themselves felt: and | ||
| + | then a more reasonable age will get rid of them& | ||
| + | having meantime been discovered& | ||
| + | deleterious effect upon private responsibility, | ||
| + | has tolerated the old methods so long. In other words, socialistic | ||
| + | experiments will have demonstrated their own evils before the habit of | ||
| + | indulging in them has gone so far as to allow States to drift the whole | ||
| + | way into socialism. It is even possible that the example of some single | ||
| + | nation, drifting thus far, and setting up a socialistic State, may | ||
| + | serve as a useful warning to the rest of the world, and determine the | ||
| + | gradual abandonment of the dangerous tendencies which will have | ||
| + | increasingly manifested themselves. For it is certain that, unless in | ||
| + | exceptional and abnormal instances& | ||
| + | Commonwealth is very likely to furnish an example& | ||
| + | systems will always continue to develop by evolutionary, | ||
| + | revolutionary, | ||
| + | construction and elimination, | ||
| + | very greatly improved system of government <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | administration whose period of existence I have ventured to place at | ||
| + | about the beginning of the next century, has become general throughout | ||
| + | the world.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | intelligent electorate will abolish some abuses, by considering the | ||
| + | condition of the post-office department of this and other countries. It | ||
| + | is hardly thinkable that, during any period of the world& | ||
| + | history, the business of carrying letters can be thrown open to anyone | ||
| + | who chooses to undertake it. If there were nothing to be dealt with | ||
| + | except the domestic correspondence of each nation, probably it would be | ||
| + | a great deal better that it should be thus thrown open to competition: | ||
| + | it is hardly likely that the vast business of international | ||
| + | correspondence can ever be satisfactorily conducted, except by | ||
| + | administrations acting in the name and behalf of every State. But there | ||
| + | is not the least reason for thinking that the abuses which deface the | ||
| + | postal department of this and every other nation will be perpetual. The | ||
| + | British post-office contributes annually a & | ||
| + | several millions sterling to the Exchequer. Every person who writes a | ||
| + | letter, therefore, is taxed for doing it. In proportion to the | ||
| + | intelligence, | ||
| + | diligence by which he is prompted to use correspondence, | ||
| + | us is compelled <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | of the State than his neighbour who is too lazy, too ignorant or too | ||
| + | callous to trouble himself with letter-writing. No doubt it is | ||
| + | impossible, without a loss which would amount to | ||
| + | subsidising< | ||
| + | "Not in source">,</ | ||
| + | of the post-office, | ||
| + | some sort: but it surely will not be pretended that it could not be | ||
| + | conducted without exacting such a surplus as the post-office does | ||
| + | annually contribute to the Budget. The vicious manner in which we treat | ||
| + | the postal service as a sort of trading department, expected to yield | ||
| + | the Chancellor of the Exchequer a convenient sum towards his | ||
| + | expenditure, | ||
| + | minor officials, such as postmen, small post-masters, | ||
| + | messengers and the like. The post-office buys its labour in the | ||
| + | cheapest market: there is but too much reason for the belief that it | ||
| + | treats with oppressive harshness attempts on the part of its servants | ||
| + | to better their wages by organisation: | ||
| + | of Commons for sweating his work-people, | ||
| + | always reply, amid applause, that he dare not embarrass his | ||
| + | right-honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The polity of | ||
| + | the enlightened future will assuredly desist from penalising | ||
| + | intelligence, | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | man& | ||
| + | praised a hundred years hence will be that one who has succeeded in | ||
| + | managing his department with the smallest possible surplus. We have | ||
| + | only to envisage the obvious justice of this ambition to perceive the | ||
| + | objections which attach to the adoption of trading functions by the | ||
| + | State. Though it is very likely that railways will be nationalised in | ||
| + | this, as they have been nationalised or subsidised in many other | ||
| + | countries, it is quite certain that if we do nationalise them we shall | ||
| + | be compensated by none of the advantages which make us tolerant, and | ||
| + | even unconscious, | ||
| + | in most respects one of the least imperfect of bureaucracies. The | ||
| + | faults generally found with railways are precisely the faults of | ||
| + | bureaucracy, | ||
| + | in their policy, through amalgamation and arrangements for mutual | ||
| + | assistance, those faults constantly increase. The same will presently | ||
| + | be found true of all governmental usurpations of private enterprise: | ||
| + | and it cannot be doubted that in this, as in so many other respects, | ||
| + | the functions of governments will be greatly reduced a hundred years | ||
| + | hence.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | foresee the conditions of the <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | the delicate and difficult one of marriage laws: and on no subject are | ||
| + | differences of opinion so numerous and so acute. All that seems to be | ||
| + | generally agreed is that under the present system inconveniences and | ||
| + | immoralities occur: and it is (of course) supposed to be a corollary | ||
| + | that if the system were changed these inconveniences and immoralities | ||
| + | would disappear. This is the usual method of considering social | ||
| + | difficulties. Hardly anyone will consent to base plans for the future | ||
| + | upon experience of the past. It is always presumed that new laws can | ||
| + | reform abuses, without changes in the spirit of the age, which gives | ||
| + | rise to the abuses. One class of thinkers, despairing of moral | ||
| + | improvement, | ||
| + | thing to be done is to give it sanction; as it must exist, it must be | ||
| + | made respectable and unscandalous. Another set of reformers would | ||
| + | penalise immorality by forbidding the guilty party in a divorce suit to | ||
| + | re-marry, just as there are people who would prevent the physically | ||
| + | unfit from marrying at all. Both forget that the prohibition of legal | ||
| + | unions is much more likely to lead to an increase of irregular | ||
| + | connections than to produce any other effect. No doubt we could improve | ||
| + | the physical standard of the legitimately born by the prohibition last | ||
| + | digressively mentioned: but it would be at the expense of <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | increase in illegitimate births accompanied by the additional | ||
| + | disadvantage of bodily weakness. Similarly, so far from the prohibition | ||
| + | of re-marriage restraining the immorally disposed, it is much more | ||
| + | likely that it would encourage them: the fact that a co-respondent | ||
| + | could not be called upon to marry the woman divorced in consequence of | ||
| + | her guilty association with him would hardly act generally as a | ||
| + | deterrent; while, if he had been willing to face the probable | ||
| + | consequences of publicity, expense and inconvenience attending a | ||
| + | liaison with a woman under coverture, the co-respondent would not think | ||
| + | it necessary to abandon his confederate, | ||
| + | willing, to continue their connection after all the penalties had been | ||
| + | suffered, merely because the law prevented a regular union. It is | ||
| + | agreed by all jurists that the only justification for the greater | ||
| + | severity with which matrimonial infidelity is visited on women as | ||
| + | compared with men is the greater social degradation with which society | ||
| + | visits women who have offended. To penalise their offence by | ||
| + | prohibiting re-marriage would only perpetuate their degradation, | ||
| + | does in fact so perpetuate and increase it in countries where the | ||
| + | condemned party in a divorce is forbidden the altar.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | as some writers have suggested <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | do, would probably be attended by worse effects than the bold and | ||
| + | straightforward acceptance of polygamy as a necessary remedy for the | ||
| + | excess of feminine population, which a writer of letters to the shocked | ||
| + | and astonished newspapers of this city recently proposed. Neither | ||
| + | expedient is capable of being adopted: nor does there seem much | ||
| + | likelihood that public morality can be improved by legislation, | ||
| + | it is certain to be much improved by the spontaneous amelioration of | ||
| + | public sentiment< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | laws will gradually undergo amendment. It will be realised that it is | ||
| + | much more immoral to compel unwilling couples to live together | ||
| + | matrimonially, | ||
| + | of all possible mistakes. The difficulty of determining what shall be | ||
| + | done where one party wishes for divorce, while the other does not, is | ||
| + | greater: but on the whole it will probably be considered more conducive | ||
| + | to morality to dissolve the marriage here, after a precautionary and | ||
| + | experimental period of provisional separation, than to insist upon its | ||
| + | perpetuation. That age will only be ripe for such a reform as this, | ||
| + | which, by moral progress, has rendered intolerable the position of a | ||
| + | libertine capable of entering into matrimony with the deliberate | ||
| + | intention of getting out of <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | attractive, and in which the social estimate of a person who acted in | ||
| + | the same manner through instability of character would be not much | ||
| + | better. In any reform of the kind suggested, it would no doubt be | ||
| + | arranged that pecuniary liabilities, | ||
| + | education of children, would follow the party insisting on divorce; and | ||
| + | this also would act as a check upon dishonest contracts of | ||
| + | marriage.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | matrimonial connections, | ||
| + | the spirit of the age, and the first step in advance will have been | ||
| + | taken when marriage ceases to be the only legal contract which is | ||
| + | enforced notwithstanding the ignorance of a contracting party as to the | ||
| + | engagement entered into. The frequency of divorce petitions will be | ||
| + | greatly diminished from the time we get rid of the idiotic and almost | ||
| + | incredibly wicked convention by which we take every possible precaution | ||
| + | we can think of to ensure that a girl, when she marries, shall have no | ||
| + | possible means of knowing to what she is committing herself. No more | ||
| + | ingenious contrivance for obtaining marital infelicity could be | ||
| + | imagined. The next step will have been taken when it is recognised as | ||
| + | disgraceful for parents to put pressure upon the inclinations of their | ||
| + | children <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | social execration renders such pressure impossible. Concurrently with | ||
| + | this, or as a result of it, a third step will be some abatement of our | ||
| + | present entire neglect of any demand for good character in a bridegroom | ||
| + | who would be outraged if he thought that the least aspersion could be | ||
| + | suggested concerning his bride. In other words, the greatest | ||
| + | improvements in the status of the world with regard to matrimony will | ||
| + | be effected when we recognise the claim of woman to be made the equal | ||
| + | of man in knowledge, in discretion and in social rights. No legislative | ||
| + | reform as yet ever suggested could have anything like as much effect in | ||
| + | removing the evils under which we groan, in respect to matrimony, as | ||
| + | this natural and inevitable development.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the new age will not arrive at a bound, nor will their rights in | ||
| + | relation to marriage be unaccompanied by other rights at present | ||
| + | withheld, and perhaps not always unreasonably withheld. On the | ||
| + | contrary, the recognition of one set of rights will facilitate and | ||
| + | accelerate the recognition of the other. It is generally agreed that | ||
| + | the tendency of the sexes is to become less divergent, intellectually | ||
| + | and morally, for reasons connected with what Spencer calls & | ||
| + | less early arrest of individual <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | everywhere seen throughout the organic world, of a self-preserving | ||
| + | power inversely proportionate to the race-preserving | ||
| + | power.& | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | the next century, that the surest way to improved capacity is to be | ||
| + | found in increased responsibility, | ||
| + | hence, be allowed or compelled to shirk their political obligations. We | ||
| + | may see with half an eye that every year women are becoming more | ||
| + | capable, and also more desirous of aiding the counsels of the public: | ||
| + | and in some of our Colonies, as well as in some States of the American | ||
| + | Union, they are already voting, and voting (as it turns out) with the | ||
| + | most wonderful intelligence and usefulness. The influence of the female | ||
| + | vote in, for example, New Zealand has been for some time perceptible in | ||
| + | the legislation of that highly-enlightened colony: and I never heard | ||
| + | anyone object to the results of this influence except persons whose | ||
| + | conduct, or the conduct which they approved in their associates, was | ||
| + | likely to be inconvenienced by them. It is no doubt true that women are | ||
| + | a great deal more fond of demanding that the law should do work which | ||
| + | it would be better to leave to natural developments of public character | ||
| + | than could be wished: but then so are men, and it is an unquestionable | ||
| + | thing that the misdeeds which <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | women are much more likely to be bad for public morality than those | ||
| + | which women condone more freely than men. There is no particular reason | ||
| + | for thinking at the present time (though there was ample reason for | ||
| + | thinking a few decades ago) that women will be more prone to legislate | ||
| + | unnecessarily, | ||
| + | case bound to pass through a good many years of parliament-worship | ||
| + | before we awaken to the fact that the law cannot do everything, and | ||
| + | that any reform which is accomplished by the spontaneous influence of | ||
| + | public opinion is always a great deal more complete, a great deal more | ||
| + | conducive to public self-respect, | ||
| + | the special requirements of every individual circumstance that it | ||
| + | touches, than one which is laboriously and mechanically embodied in | ||
| + | statutes which cannot but be imperfect, cannot possibly fail to act | ||
| + | oppressively and unjustly in one place or another, and frequently prove | ||
| + | to be unworkable from beginning to end. <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | some methods of securing this object no doubt the unintelligent | ||
| + | sentimentality of the present time would rebel; but if any | ||
| + | inconsistency be detected in my suggestion that the next century, which | ||
| + | is expected to be even milder than this, will accept them, it only | ||
| + | needs to be replied that the gentleness of our descendants will be a | ||
| + | reasonable and ordered gentleness, not a mere effect of morbid | ||
| + | sentimentality. They will not hesitate before an apparent and temporary | ||
| + | cruelty which is capable of preventing much greater suffering in a much | ||
| + | greater number of persons. The crime of permitting children to be born | ||
| + | with brains abnormally predisposed to evil of any sort will more | ||
| + | greatly revolt an intelligent age than any conceivable measure adopted | ||
| + | for its prevention.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | perhaps, be thought that the disuse of trial by jury would be liable to | ||
| + | perpetuate a somewhat glaring abuse of our present | ||
| + | jurisprudence& | ||
| + | offences against property as compared with the disproportionately light | ||
| + | repression of offences against the person. But the mere fact that the | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | is no reason for thinking that & | ||
| + | so: and meantime, as judges, like other men, are children of their | ||
| + | epoch, we may suppose that the increased mildness of the new age will | ||
| + | be reflected here as elsewhere, and that extenuating circumstances will | ||
| + | be allowed more weight in determining a sentence for larceny, and less | ||
| + | weight in determining a sentence for assault.& | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | of Sociology</ | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div id=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | <h2 class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | processes that have brought things to their present stage are still | ||
| + | going on, not with a decreasing rapidity indicating approach to | ||
| + | cessation, but with an increasing rapidity that implies long | ||
| + | continuance and immense transformations; | ||
| + | that the remote future has in store, forms of social life higher than | ||
| + | any we have imagined: there comes a faith transcending that of the | ||
| + | Radical, whose aim is some re-organisation admitting of comparison to | ||
| + | organisations which exist. And while this conception of societies has | ||
| + | naturally evolved, beginning with small and simple types which have | ||
| + | their short existences and disappear, advancing to higher types that | ||
| + | are larger, more complex, and longer-lived, | ||
| + | types like our own, great in size, complexity, and duration, and | ||
| + | promising types transcending these in times after existing societies | ||
| + | have died away& | ||
| + | the slow course <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | amount are possible, it also implies that but small amounts of such | ||
| + | changes are possible, within & | ||
| + | Spencer: < | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | survey, to stimulate the indulgence of the reader by a reminder, based | ||
| + | upon the speed of our progress in the past and its steady acceleration | ||
| + | in recent decades, that there is much more danger of underestimating | ||
| + | than of exaggerating the advances likely to have been achieved a | ||
| + | hundred years hence. In order to guard against misconception of the | ||
| + | manner in which these advances will be brought about, it is now | ||
| + | advisable to mention specifically what has been once or twice hinted | ||
| + | parenthetically, | ||
| + | certain to be produced in a way perfectly capable of being deduced from | ||
| + | the manner of our progress in the past. One of the most fruitful causes | ||
| + | of error in existing prognostications has been the tacit assumption | ||
| + | that, at some vague moment in the spacious middle-distance of the | ||
| + | coming time, sudden and cataclysmal movements of society, and also | ||
| + | unexpected and revolutionary discoveries in science, will occur: and it | ||
| + | is as a precaution against one aspect of this mistake that a weighty | ||
| + | quotation from the writings of one of the sanest and most perspicuous | ||
| + | thinkers who <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | which he may almost be said to have created has been recalled to the | ||
| + | memory of the reader at the head of this chapter.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | visionary as it must necessarily be, was commenced with some | ||
| + | reflections on the rate of future progress made probable by the | ||
| + | movements of the recent past. But nothing whatever can be deduced from | ||
| + | what history, remote or recent, shows us, to suggest that any stable | ||
| + | institution can be created otherwise than by steady development: | ||
| + | only the speed of development which is likely to alter, and even this | ||
| + | will only alter by a progression gaining impetus from the influence of | ||
| + | its own components. Whether we consider material improvements effected | ||
| + | by science and invention and the interaction of these; or social | ||
| + | improvements effected by readjustment of the conditions of life forced | ||
| + | upon us through the influence of intellectual and moral changes in the | ||
| + | individual units of society making themselves felt as aggregated | ||
| + | forces; the manner of attainment is nearly identical. It is commonly | ||
| + | objected to this view, that whereas science and invention commonly | ||
| + | progress in a movement characterised (so to speak) by a succession of | ||
| + | jerks, social conditions change imperceptibly. But thus to object is to | ||
| + | overlook the fact that, while no doubt society develops from time to | ||
| + | time certain <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the possibility of pointing to a final moment when the satisfaction of | ||
| + | them has become at length inevitable, yet, when this satisfaction is | ||
| + | gained by legislative enactment, there is always a moment when the | ||
| + | public, ripe for a given reform, takes definite possession of it. For | ||
| + | example (to name a comparatively recent case), no doubt the desire for | ||
| + | some method by which the public could distinguish between foreign and | ||
| + | home-made articles of merchandise had for some time been generally felt | ||
| + | before the passing of the Merchandise Marks Act fixed a moment at which | ||
| + | all dubiety on the subject would vanish, by endeavouring to require | ||
| + | that any imported object bearing marks calculated to give the | ||
| + | impression that it had been manufactured in England should also bear a | ||
| + | definite and correct statement as to its place of origin. Whether we | ||
| + | consider this enactment to have been desirable or not, it is impossible | ||
| + | to deny that there was a specific moment when it took effect. And | ||
| + | similarly, the bill for the repression of secret commissions in | ||
| + | business has come so near to being passed through Parliament that many | ||
| + | people imagine it to be already law, though it is not, at the time of | ||
| + | writing, even (in a technical sense) before the legislature. Without | ||
| + | question, therefore, public opinion is ripe for this reform, and has | ||
| + | with great gradualness become so: but the reform itself, when it takes | ||
| + | place (as it may quite <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | the time this book is printed), will occur suddenly. There will be a | ||
| + | day when the manager of a business house could, with immunity from any | ||
| + | overt punishment except the loss of his employment, receive a secret | ||
| + | bribe from another house with which he was doing business on behalf of | ||
| + | his master; and a succeeding day on which, for the same offence against | ||
| + | commercial integrity, he could be charged before a magistrate and | ||
| + | ultimately punished by the law. Thus the difference between scientific | ||
| + | progress and social progress is not so great as has been sometimes | ||
| + | imagined. And on the other hand, although to the casual observer | ||
| + | scientific discoveries and new inventions often appear to have been | ||
| + | attained at a single step, to a person interested in the particular | ||
| + | branch of science, or the particular path of invention where a new | ||
| + | achievement occurs, it is generally quite evident that the latter has | ||
| + | been led up to by steady progress extending over a long period. The | ||
| + | existence of unidentified constituents in atmospheric air, for | ||
| + | instance, must have been long suspected before the isolation of argon | ||
| + | gave, to the public eye, the impression of a sudden discovery: and | ||
| + | astronomical disturbances have generally puzzled a great army of | ||
| + | observers for a long time before the public is indulged by the | ||
| + | announcement of a & | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | which I have sought to show that, as time goes on, there will be a | ||
| + | decreasing tendency to attempt desired reforms by legislative process, | ||
| + | and an increasing tendency to make the public the guardian of its own | ||
| + | security, it will be evident that any differences which exist between | ||
| + | the nature of scientific progress and the nature of social progress are | ||
| + | likely to be accentuated rather than diminished in the course of this | ||
| + | century. A change brought about by the spontaneous activity of the | ||
| + | people naturally occurs without the definite line of demarcation | ||
| + | created by an Act of Parliament.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | scientific and social progress will be noteworthy. It is a commonplace | ||
| + | of industrial history that an improvement in one machine, or the | ||
| + | introduction of some novel method of applying power, always produces, | ||
| + | and may very often necessitate, | ||
| + | not previously seen to be connected with it: and great results from | ||
| + | little causes flow. No one foresaw, when Mr Edison discovered the | ||
| + | differences in the electrical conductivity of carbon induced by slight | ||
| + | variations of pressure& | ||
| + | micro-tasimeter, | ||
| + | size of objects submitted to it& | ||
| + | presently render commercially practicable the <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | other conveniences, | ||
| + | in constant use. Similarly, political and social changes quite easy to | ||
| + | foresee will undoubtedly have effects which in their entirety no one | ||
| + | can possibly foresee. The rate of advancement cannot be calculated like | ||
| + | a geometrical progression: | ||
| + | more or less vaguely the acceleration which the action and interaction | ||
| + | of anticipated (and often antagonistic) forces will produce; the | ||
| + | general manner of the world& | ||
| + | of their activities. What we must constantly keep in mind is the fact | ||
| + | that changes in the institutions of society can only be stable when | ||
| + | they are the result of corresponding changes in the temper of the age | ||
| + | which yields them. As this temper is a thing of gradual development, | ||
| + | must believe that many temporary expedients will have to be tolerated | ||
| + | by advanced thinkers since (as Spencer remarks) society can only be | ||
| + | held together when the institutions existing, and the conceptions | ||
| + | generally current, are in tolerable harmony. We can foresee many | ||
| + | changes which will be in beneficent existence a hundred years hence; | ||
| + | but it would be irrational to show impatience because these changes | ||
| + | cannot be immediately proposed; since, being not yet in harmony with | ||
| + | the current conceptions of the world, their immediate adoption | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | their results anarchic instead of stable. For a great many years we | ||
| + | must go on passing laws for the regulation of social life, which we can | ||
| + | quite easily perceive that the altered social life of a future age will | ||
| + | not need, because they would be injurious to it. The zealous reformer | ||
| + | who wishes, as we must all wish, to help the world in its wearied way | ||
| + | to perfection must aim rather to assist the mind of people to demand | ||
| + | greater reforms than it could as yet assimilate, than to procure the | ||
| + | arrival of reforms for which society is not yet ripe, and must be | ||
| + | content with the effort</ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | world</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | possible energy in all endeavour that makes for progress. The doctrine, | ||
| + | founded upon a perception of the impossibility of regenerating society | ||
| + | except by utilising the natural and evolutionary movement of society | ||
| + | itself, that nothing ought to be done except to wait upon this | ||
| + | movement, betrays an evident confusion of thought, akin to the fallacy | ||
| + | of the schoolmen, commonly called realism, partly adopted by Comte. | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | units of society; a progress of society is only possible as the result | ||
| + | of <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | have to look for is a steady enlightenment of public ideals, issuing in | ||
| + | the triumph of wisdom over folly, of virtue over laxity, of progress | ||
| + | over reaction and < | ||
| + | opinion, exercising a salutary check upon hasty public action, and | ||
| + | giving time for the establishment of harmony between the spirit of the | ||
| + | age and the new institutions which mark its progress.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | material of daily life which, either because they did not fit in with | ||
| + | any one of the divisions into which a forecast of the future naturally | ||
| + | fell, or because the consideration of them would have obscured the | ||
| + | exposition of matters more immediately connected with each other, it | ||
| + | has not been possible to mention. For example, we have had occasion to | ||
| + | debate the methods by which men and women will transact the business of | ||
| + | trade and commerce with the aid of certain foreseen conveniences; | ||
| + | we have glanced at the probable future aspect of dwellings, conveyances | ||
| + | and similar conveniences; | ||
| + | in which our descendants are likely to attire themselves or the | ||
| + | enjoyment of these advantages. The latter and a few other minor | ||
| + | subjects may perhaps be considered now, without very much mutual | ||
| + | connection.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | tendency of civilised institutions to develop by gradual, rather than | ||
| + | violent, changes which has just been referred to. For, while a good | ||
| + | deal is heard about the & | ||
| + | writers on the subject always seem to be able to predict some time in | ||
| + | advance the movements of modish costume; and they sometimes even | ||
| + | condescend to explain the processes of thought and observation by which | ||
| + | their apparently inspired predictions are arrived at. Moreover, | ||
| + | admitting, and allowing for, the extremest variations in detail, | ||
| + | costume in civilised countries can hardly be said to have materially | ||
| + | and intrinsically altered& | ||
| + | altered its fundamental characteristics& | ||
| + | case of men, nor during a great many centuries in the case of women. | ||
| + | Since the age of knee-breeches succeeded the age of doublet and hose, | ||
| + | men have always protected their legs with & | ||
| + | integuments& | ||
| + | bag enclosing the middle of the body& | ||
| + | trunk with a coat and waistcoat; while women have always worn bodices | ||
| + | and petticoats of one shape or another. Neither has the loudest outcry | ||
| + | against the irrationality of costume as a whole, nor even the ridicule | ||
| + | showered upon single elements of it, ever had the least effect in | ||
| + | producing revolutionary modification. < | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | protests in vain against the silk & | ||
| + | more scientific and a more logical age replace absurd or otherwise | ||
| + | objectionable garments by others more reasonably designed, to such an | ||
| + | extent as to produce an entire change in the sartorial aspect of | ||
| + | civilised peoples?</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | Already sensible women decline to injure themselves and risk the injury | ||
| + | of their possible offspring at the command of fashion. Tight-lacing and | ||
| + | the wearing of such corsets as unnaturally compress the internal organs | ||
| + | of the body are evidently near the end of their long reign. In a | ||
| + | comparatively short time it is hardly possible to doubt that at least | ||
| + | these, the most evidently injurious articles of clothing still | ||
| + | surviving, will have joined the farthingale and the ruff in the | ||
| + | lumber-room of the obsolete, and when what is really the more | ||
| + | reasonable moiety of mankind is thus within easy reach of sacrificing | ||
| + | to hygiene what was dedicated to a wholly mistaken conception of | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | upon convenience and reason will follow, even to the abandonment of the | ||
| + | silk hat? If one were asked to suggest the various steps by which the | ||
| + | ultimate costume of the century, whether male or female, will be | ||
| + | arrived at, few would not boggle at the task. <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the general nature of the more-or-less-perfected dress of a hundred | ||
| + | years hence may perhaps be not unsuccessfully imagined, having in mind | ||
| + | the considerations likely to determine it.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | demanded of all costume& | ||
| + | the body the greatest possible freedom consistent with warmth, and that | ||
| + | it shall be as easy as possible to put on and take off. The highly | ||
| + | intellectual life of the next century will certainly be impatient of | ||
| + | anything which detains it with occupations so uninteresting as the | ||
| + | putting on and taking off of clothes from pursuits more attractive. | ||
| + | Hence there will doubtless be a great deal of simplification of | ||
| + | details, the greatest practical diminution in the number of single | ||
| + | objects worn. The essentials of a satisfactory outfit will be, first, | ||
| + | an inner garment next the skin, worn merely for cleanliness; | ||
| + | middle garment for warmth, and finally an outer suit for protection. | ||
| + | The innermost garment will no doubt be made of some fabric not much | ||
| + | unlike the soft silky papers now made in Japan, so that it can be | ||
| + | destroyed as soon as it is taken off. It is not in the least likely | ||
| + | that so insanitary and degrading an occupation as that of the | ||
| + | washerwoman can survive in a civilisation really advanced. The middle | ||
| + | garment, completely cleansable by vacuum action and oxygenation, | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | fibre like cotton or flax. It will most likely be some developed form | ||
| + | of & | ||
| + | means of a single knot or button, and will be just tight enough to give | ||
| + | freedom to the movements. Its warmth will be dependent upon contained | ||
| + | air, and it, like everything else we wear, will be highly porous; for | ||
| + | the importance of properly ventilating the skin, perfectly well | ||
| + | understood even now, will by that time be also acted upon. Thus far | ||
| + | male costume and female costume will be practically identical. There is | ||
| + | no reason to expect, however, that this identity will be carried so far | ||
| + | as the externals of dress, because realising (as we shall of course | ||
| + | realise) the tendency of the sexes to become less divergent in their | ||
| + | natural and moral characteristics, | ||
| + | maintain all the salutary and romantic contrast that we can. But it is | ||
| + | not to be believed that woman, already long since emancipated from the | ||
| + | corset, will have continued a slave to the skirt, the petticoat and | ||
| + | other restraining garments. With underclothes practically identical | ||
| + | with the sensible garments of men, our female descendants will no doubt | ||
| + | wear a costume much like what Miss Rehan wore as Rosalind& | ||
| + | and knee-skirt (probably in one) with gaiters made of some elastic | ||
| + | material.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | leather boot will naturally be unavailable, | ||
| + | kind of foot covering will be used. But it is not the absence of | ||
| + | leather which will determine this change. Perfectly satisfactory boots | ||
| + | of the present form are worn by some extreme vegetarians already, | ||
| + | carrying consistency to its limit. With the disappearance of the horse | ||
| + | from the streets, however& | ||
| + | at least seventy years old by this time next century (for the motor car | ||
| + | is fast pushing out the horse already)& | ||
| + | entirely impervious foot-covering will have been obviated. Towns will | ||
| + | be sanitary underfoot& | ||
| + | mud; while the drying appliances mentioned in an earlier chapter will | ||
| + | clear away rain as fast as it falls. Consequently it will no longer be | ||
| + | necessary to wear uncomfortable, | ||
| + | human foot will cease to be the source of discomfort it now more or | ||
| + | less acutely is to nine people out of every ten, and we shall be much | ||
| + | better walkers and athletes. For health will be the consideration | ||
| + | dominating all our actions, health being a subject of careful tuition | ||
| + | in every school: and as men and women will rarely need to use muscular | ||
| + | strength in their work, they will gratify the natural yearning of | ||
| + | healthy animals for exertion, in athletic sports, by no means confined | ||
| + | to the male sex.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | exhibit the extravagances, | ||
| + | characterise it, and & | ||
| + | differences,& | ||
| + | uniformities, | ||
| + | race.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | to be attained by the use of fashions is class distinction; | ||
| + | similarly jewellery is probably worn much more because it is a sign of | ||
| + | wealth than because of any intrinsic beauty which it is supposed to | ||
| + | possess. At one time a man& | ||
| + | rank in society) could be ascertained by his dress; and sumptuary laws | ||
| + | occasionally made such distinctions obligatory. It is no doubt of some | ||
| + | law of his own time that Shakespeare was thinking< | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | the tribune in < | ||
| + | appearing on a business-day without the leather aprons which marked | ||
| + | their trade:& | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | influence of a century? <span class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | evidence of these distinctions; | ||
| + | homogeneity is a reversal of the usual law of progress, and it can | ||
| + | hardly be called a sign of social advancement that artisans of our day | ||
| + | generally wear, when at work, the cast-off clothes of the employing | ||
| + | classes, bought second-hand, | ||
| + | ape the fashions of the rich. In a hundred years& | ||
| + | no worker will be ambitious to give himself the aspect of an idler, and | ||
| + | one may perpend the dry answer of an American to the remark that in the | ||
| + | United States there is no leisure-class. & | ||
| + | is,& | ||
| + | that; we call them tramps.& | ||
| + | when work is no longer treated with the disgraceful contempt which we | ||
| + | are only by degrees becoming ashamed of. Consequently the clothes worn | ||
| + | at work will no doubt be, in every trade, specially designed to | ||
| + | facilitate the exertions of the worker: and in the copious hours of | ||
| + | leisure there will be variety, increased by the wearing of special | ||
| + | garments for special amusements. It is difficult to believe that | ||
| + | anyone, whatever his work, will dispense with the comfort of a complete | ||
| + | change of dress when play-time comes: and the ingenious simplification | ||
| + | of fastenings, and the reduced number of garments worn, will facilitate | ||
| + | the enjoyment of <span class=" | ||
| + | name=" | ||
| + | dinner& | ||
| + | and stiff shirt. It is quite certain that all our clothes will be soft, | ||
| + | supple, porous, light and warm a hundred years hence, and the | ||
| + | clear-starcher will no longer have the opportunity to destroy them.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | general domestic and architectural conveniences of the next century, | ||
| + | but the subject of furniture has not been referred to in detail. | ||
| + | Allowing for the fact that animal fabrics, as wool, leather, etc., will | ||
| + | be absent, there is no particular reason why chairs, carpets and | ||
| + | curtains should be very different from what they are now. No doubt | ||
| + | light metallic alloys will often be used in the framework of chairs and | ||
| + | tables instead of wood, because the tendency of civilisation is to make | ||
| + | things lighter and less cumbersome whenever this is possible. At one | ||
| + | time it might have been thought that upholstery, carpets and curtains | ||
| + | would have to be dispensed with. But to a thoughtful observer there | ||
| + | must always have been a difficulty here. A wooden chair, and even a | ||
| + | rattan one, however cunningly shaped, is so extremely discomfortable to | ||
| + | sit in without cushions, that it was easier to imagine that invention | ||
| + | would correct the unhealthiness of cushions and stuffing, than that an | ||
| + | advanced age would consent to dispense with these <span class= | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | solution of the difficulty would be attained was actually foreseen by | ||
| + | the present writer before the introduction of vacuum cleaning was | ||
| + | accomplished, | ||
| + | rewritten when what had been somewhat fancifully described as a | ||
| + | convenience of the future suddenly became an existing factor of the | ||
| + | present: and in one or two places innovations have similarly called for | ||
| + | changes in the text& | ||
| + | give pause to critics disposed to condemn certain suggestions in this | ||
| + | book as chimerical.< | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | thoroughly cleanse and free from every particle of dust by a simple | ||
| + | mechanical process any fabric or mass of fabrics, there is no longer | ||
| + | any reason to expect that our descendants will, on hygienic grounds, | ||
| + | find it necessary to dispense with comforts so essential to restful | ||
| + | leisure as easy-chairs, | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | inventions will enhance and beautify the luxury of an age where | ||
| + | rational luxury will reign universally. One source of frequent | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | always in rooms of one size. Whether we sit alone, or entertain a | ||
| + | number of friends, the same apartment has to serve our needs: | ||
| + | consequently we are crowded on one day and chilly on the next. With | ||
| + | combustion abolished as a heating device, there will be no objection | ||
| + | against light sliding walls& | ||
| + | our allies the Japanese& | ||
| + | and not particularly desirable, at all events in England, where we have | ||
| + | no means of warming most rooms except a fire on one side, and no means | ||
| + | of cooling them at all except by letting in draughts and noise through | ||
| + | the window. No doubt when matches and fireplaces, about equally | ||
| + | causative of conflagration, | ||
| + | methods of warming the air in houses without the horrible drying of it | ||
| + | caused by the American pipe-stove system, houses will be much more | ||
| + | lightly built: and it is certainly not going to be impossible to use | ||
| + | thin, light walls without being able to hear in each room every sound | ||
| + | that occurs in the next. Concurrently, | ||
| + | size of rooms& | ||
| + | those who have not thought about the matter. In summer we shall just as | ||
| + | easily cool our houses as we shall heat them in winter. Very few | ||
| + | servants will be required (another great <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | lighting arrangements will naturally be free from their present | ||
| + | inadequacy.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | there is surely no reason why bathing should be such a tedious | ||
| + | operation as it is. Probably the speediest dresser of our own day does | ||
| + | not consume less than a quarter of an hour over his morning tub and the | ||
| + | operation of drying himself. A hundred years hence, people will be so | ||
| + | avid of every moment of life, life will be so full of busy delight, | ||
| + | that time-saving inventions will be at a huge premium. It is not | ||
| + | because we shall be hurried in nerve-shattering anxiety, as it is often | ||
| + | complained that we now are, but because we shall value at its true | ||
| + | worth the refining and restful influence of leisure, that we shall be | ||
| + | impatient of the minor tasks of every day. The bath of the next century | ||
| + | will lave the body speedily with oxygenated water delivered with a | ||
| + | force that will render rubbing unnecessary, | ||
| + | the drying cupboard, lined with some quickly-moving arrangement of soft | ||
| + | brushes, and fed with highly desiccated air, from which, almost in a | ||
| + | moment, the bather will emerge, dried, and with a skin gently | ||
| + | stimulated, and perhaps electrified, | ||
| + | down the lift to his breakfast, which he will eat to the accompaniment | ||
| + | of a summary of the morning& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | for the benefit of the family, or whispered into his ears by a | ||
| + | talking-machine.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | nightmare? That is only because the purpose of it has been overlooked. | ||
| + | Not because they will be & | ||
| + | descendants thus arrange their lives, but because they wish to reserve | ||
| + | as much time as possible for culture (physical as well as intellectual) | ||
| + | and for thought; which the better distribution of wealth and labour | ||
| + | will facilitate; while labour itself, everywhere performed | ||
| + | intelligently and with interest, will be no longer irksome. The working | ||
| + | man will ply his trade with zest& | ||
| + | family& | ||
| + | it. And, his task accomplished, | ||
| + | elevating as labour itself.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | really been perfected in a century? Decidedly not. But unless we doubt | ||
| + | the evidence which shows that improved institutions not only arise out | ||
| + | of improved popular character, but also help to promote it, we cannot | ||
| + | resist the inference that the removal of many causes of degradation | ||
| + | must bring us nearer to perfection, to which the moral evolution of the | ||
| + | race is slowly proceeding. There is nothing Utopian in the belief that | ||
| + | honesty, truthfulness, | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | new age; and from the moment when this intelligence, | ||
| + | throughout all society, begins to make the moral improvement of the | ||
| + | race a prime object in every social reform, in every piece of | ||
| + | legislation (emancipating as well as restrictive) we have a right to | ||
| + | expect the progress of morality to receive a marked impetus. | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | the perfecting of the moral type, and the dishonest man, the liar, the | ||
| + | sensualist, and the man too stupid to be unselfish, will become with | ||
| + | every decade less fit for survival, because the same unwisdom which is | ||
| + | at the bottom of his faults will handicap him in the battle of life, | ||
| + | will hinder him in the competition for the right to perpetuate his | ||
| + | characteristics in children born of his loins. It is only those who | ||
| + | conceive of the race as capable of remaining stationary, or moving | ||
| + | backward, in morals, while in every other respect it moves forward with | ||
| + | constantly-increasing momentum, who imagine that cunning and | ||
| + | unscrupulousness are likely to be fostered by enlarged civilisation. So | ||
| + | long as we allow the world to be exploited for the selfish advantage of | ||
| + | a handful of millionaires, | ||
| + | at a premium. But it is impossible to believe that the irresistible | ||
| + | power of the mass of humanity will submit in perpetuity to be thus made | ||
| + | the tools of a minority. If the <span class=" | ||
| + | href="# | ||
| + | wished to maintain that < | ||
| + | from the schoolroom. Numbers must inevitably prevail, and the world | ||
| + | will have reorganised itself in ways which, if we could foresee them in | ||
| + | their entirety, would suggest an almost unthinkable perfection. | ||
| + | <span class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | <hr class=" | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | this was the opinion of the editors of the Clarendon Press edition of | ||
| + | the Plays.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | actually correcting the proof sheets I read in a London evening | ||
| + | newspaper, < | ||
| + | certain schools for the teaching of foreign languages, a device I had | ||
| + | suggested in the chapter on Education as likely to be adopted in the | ||
| + | schools of the future.& | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
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| + | "Not in source">,</ | ||
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| + | <a href="# | ||
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| + | Marriage)</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
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| + | EDINBURGH</ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
| + | "# | ||
| + | <div class=" | ||
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| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | widely different phenomena, and is always quick to discern the inner | ||
| + | significance of literary and other fashions. He attempts to describe | ||
| + | the tendencies of English civilisation, | ||
| + | dominant ideals, and to point out recent changes which have occurred in | ||
| + | these, the nature of the foundation upon which they rest, and the | ||
| + | likelihood of catastrophes in the future.... The book is clever, | ||
| + | interesting, | ||
| + | appearance.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | new forces of which the twentieth century will see the victory or the | ||
| + | defeat will do well to read & | ||
| + | Change.& | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | vigorous, yet unaggressive; | ||
| + | treatment. One cannot overpraise such stimulating and thoughtful work | ||
| + | as Mr Masterman& | ||
| + | it is better still to make others think, and this is exactly what | ||
| + | & | ||
| + | Telegraph.</ | ||
| + | <p class=" | ||
| + | suggestive ideas on modern problems and principles buy the book, for | ||
| + | whether the reader agrees or disagrees he is compelled to | ||
| + | think.& | ||
| + | " | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
| + | </ | ||
a_hundred_years_hence_the_expectations_of_an_optimist.txt · Last modified: 2020/10/26 02:26 by briancarnell