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Mankind in the Making
Toleration to-day is becoming a different thing from the toleration of former times. The toleration of the past consisted very largely in saying, "You are utterly wrong and totally accurst, there is no truth but my truth and that you deny, but it is not my place to destroy you and so I let you go." Nowadays there is a real disposition to accept the qualified nature of one's private certainties. One may have arrived at very definite views, one may have come to beliefs quite binding upon one's self, without supposing them to be imperative upon other people. To write "I believe" is not only less presumptuous and aggressive in such matters than to write "it is true," but it is also nearer the reality of the case. One knows what seems true to one's self, but we are coming to realize that the world is great and complex, beyond the utmost power of such minds as ours. Every day of life drives that conviction further home. And it is possible to maintain that in perhaps quite a great number of ethical, social, and political questions there is no absolute "truth" at all-at least for finite beings. To one intellectual temperament things may have a moral tint and aspect, differing widely from that they present to another; and yet each may be in its own way right. The wide differences in character and quality between one human being and another may quite conceivably involve not only differences in moral obligation, but differences in fundamental moral aspect-we may act and react upon each other towards a universal end, but without any universally applicable rule of conduct whatever.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1903
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About the author
H.G. Wells
5,088 books11k followersHerbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).
Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.
He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.
More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...
http://www.online-literature.com/well...
http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells
Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.
He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.
More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...
http://www.online-literature.com/well...
http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 21, 2011
Provided me with a hearty combination of “snores” and “sighs”. In other words, this is socialism at its most boring moments.
September 12, 2012
Wells continues to make predictions about the future in this book, but he's a lot less objective about it than he was in "Anticipation." Basically the entire thesis behind this book is that we should keep poor people from having babies so that society will be better off. We should also creepily change the educational system of the entire world to a very specific set of rules that Wells has arbitrarily decided will be best for his "New Republic." I'm interested to see what his third predictive book is going to be like, as he's gone off the deep end so often in this book. Only worth reading if you enjoy watching a great science fiction writer drown in social and political discussions that are painfully out of his league.
August 10, 2023
Summary
H.G. Wells writes his own version of Plato's Republic laying out the process required to make humanity 2.0 otherwise known as the 'New Republican'. Abandoning hope of finding absolute answers on any questions social, political or ethical, Wells decides to view life in its essence as a succession of births. If this be so, then how might we improve this succession and make it the best process possible? Wells has a plan, and he spends the next 10 chapters walking the reader through how a new republican would be welcomed into life, early education and eventually seated into the greater world of society. His ideas touch on many areas of life, sex, literature, and parenting styles.
Thoughts
Ironically in Plato's Republic the zenith of society was a philosopher, while in Wells' Republic it is the writer. Overall, the style of the book was dry, and often seemed to lack force. In fact, later on Wells himself would say about this book:
The ideas themselves were interesting at points. I specifically liked an idea around elections where officials would be elected by a randomly selected jury that was just big enough to be representative. This jury would be given several weeks to research and interview the perspective candidates before coming to their decision. I am sure in practice this would run into roadblocks, but I like the idea in principle. Secondly, I found his views on eugenics to be interesting, written before WW1 the pall around eugenics hadn't manifested, in fact the idea seemed almost obvious. After all, if we can select our cows for milk production, and our chickens for their egg laying capacity why not our children? Wells' response is that "we don't know exactly what we want, and we know even less about what is required to get there". Using beauty as a possible variable the would-be eugenicist might want to select for, he makes the argument that there are many types of beauty that would be incongruous if mixed and it is not obvious that mixing selected beautiful people would result in better results than how humans currently conduct mate selection. When it comes to something as complicated as the human organism it is probably best to be cautious when changing a system that has been working for untold eons. He does make suggestions that we could work towards negative eugenics, but only in the clearest of cases where certain illness have been exhaustively proven to be highly heritable or predictable. This is what appears to be taking place in Iceland, where nearly one hundred percent of pregnancies with positive tests for Down syndrome were terminated. Of course, he would argue for earlier intervention where parents who already have these types of diseases would be sterilized or in some other way limited from reproduction. This to, has since had an extremely sketchy history, yet the problem in its fundamental state remains for modern societies. What do we do with the information we have? Overall, I would not recommend this book as it wasn't that original of a work in such a well-trodden literary genre.
H.G. Wells writes his own version of Plato's Republic laying out the process required to make humanity 2.0 otherwise known as the 'New Republican'. Abandoning hope of finding absolute answers on any questions social, political or ethical, Wells decides to view life in its essence as a succession of births. If this be so, then how might we improve this succession and make it the best process possible? Wells has a plan, and he spends the next 10 chapters walking the reader through how a new republican would be welcomed into life, early education and eventually seated into the greater world of society. His ideas touch on many areas of life, sex, literature, and parenting styles.
Thoughts
Ironically in Plato's Republic the zenith of society was a philosopher, while in Wells' Republic it is the writer. Overall, the style of the book was dry, and often seemed to lack force. In fact, later on Wells himself would say about this book:
my style at its worst and my matter at its thinnest, and quoting it makes me feel very sympathetic with those critics who, to put it mildly, restrain their admiration for me.
The ideas themselves were interesting at points. I specifically liked an idea around elections where officials would be elected by a randomly selected jury that was just big enough to be representative. This jury would be given several weeks to research and interview the perspective candidates before coming to their decision. I am sure in practice this would run into roadblocks, but I like the idea in principle. Secondly, I found his views on eugenics to be interesting, written before WW1 the pall around eugenics hadn't manifested, in fact the idea seemed almost obvious. After all, if we can select our cows for milk production, and our chickens for their egg laying capacity why not our children? Wells' response is that "we don't know exactly what we want, and we know even less about what is required to get there". Using beauty as a possible variable the would-be eugenicist might want to select for, he makes the argument that there are many types of beauty that would be incongruous if mixed and it is not obvious that mixing selected beautiful people would result in better results than how humans currently conduct mate selection. When it comes to something as complicated as the human organism it is probably best to be cautious when changing a system that has been working for untold eons. He does make suggestions that we could work towards negative eugenics, but only in the clearest of cases where certain illness have been exhaustively proven to be highly heritable or predictable. This is what appears to be taking place in Iceland, where nearly one hundred percent of pregnancies with positive tests for Down syndrome were terminated. Of course, he would argue for earlier intervention where parents who already have these types of diseases would be sterilized or in some other way limited from reproduction. This to, has since had an extremely sketchy history, yet the problem in its fundamental state remains for modern societies. What do we do with the information we have? Overall, I would not recommend this book as it wasn't that original of a work in such a well-trodden literary genre.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews