V H. G. Wells ADA E. DAVIS, PALM BEACH, FLORIDA. 5 ARIOUSLY known as a novelist,1 a writer of fantastic and imaginative romances,2 a sociologist, and the creator of a one-volume world's history, Mr. Wells with his project of a World State, now emerges as a political scientist, to use his own modest phrase, "A student of the human outlook." Perhaps this versatility is but a proof of his genius which verifies the dictum of Anatole France that "H. G. Wells is the greatest intellectual force in the English-speaking world." As one of his critics remarks, "if we were to apply a label to H. G. Wells we should inevitably land ourselves in confusion."s "The essential thing about Wells is that he is not a follower, but an absorber of all." Hence it is difficult to pigeon-hole him without doing violence to the fecundity and independence of his thought. One might hazard the opinion, however, that Mr. Wells looks at education "in the large," not so much from the standpoint of individual culture and training, but as a great force in social evolution which "releases mankind from base and narrow things."10 "For what is a man without instruction? He is born as the beasts are born, a greedy 1 H. G. Wells, Love and Mr. Lewisham; Kipps, Mr. Polly, The Wheels of Chance, The New Machiavelli, Ann Veronica, Tono Bungay, Marriage, Bealby, The Passionate Friends, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, The Research Magnificent, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, Joan and Peter, The Undying Fire, Men Like Gods. 2 The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Wonderful Visit, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The War in the Air, In the Days of the Comet. 3 Mankind in the Making, First and Last Things, What is Coming, War and the Future, God the Invisible King, The Salvaging of Civilization. 4 The Outline of History. 5 The Salvaging of Civilization, pp. 44-69. 6 Ibid., p. 16. 7 Sidney Dark, An Outline of Wells, p. 3. 8 J. D. Beresford, H. G. Wells, p. 80. 9 Ibid. p. 100. 10 The Undying Fire, p. 62. egotism, a clutching desire, a thing of lusts and fears. He can regard nothing except in relation to himself. . . And it is we teachers alone who can lift him out of this self· preoccupation. We can release him into a wider circle of ideas beyond himself in which he can at length forget himself and his meagre personal ends altogether. We can open his eyes to the past and to the future and to the undying life of man, so through us and through us only he escapes from death and futility."11 This civilizing process as a struggle between the egoistic and social instincts is a recurrent theme. "For every one there are two diametrically different ways of thinking about life; there is individualism, the way that comes as naturally as the grunt from the pig, of thinking outwardly from one's self as the center of the universe, and there is the way that every religion is trying in some form to teach, of thinking back to one's self from greater standards and realities."12 And again he says: "The overriding powers that hitherto in the individual soul and in the community have struggled and prevailed against the ferocious base and individual impulses that divide us from one another, have been the powers of religion and education. Religion and education have been the chief synthetic forces throughout this great story of enlarging human co-operations that we have traced from its beginnings."18 Of his deep interest in education and his qualifications to speak with authority, we have Mr. Wells' own words in one of his most recent books: "I am a trained teacher and a student of pedagogic science. I am a watchful parent and I know what time and opportunity are wasted in school."14 Again he says: "I am an old and seasoned educationist; most of my earliest writings are concealed in the anonymity of the London Educational papers of a quarter of a century ago, 11 H. H. Wells, The Undying Fire, p. 60. 12 H. G. Wells, What is Coming? p. 91. 13 H. G. Wells, Outline of History, p. 1088. 14 H. G. Wells, The Salvaging of Civilization, p. 150. and my knowledge of educational literature is fairly extensive."15 From this interest of a watchful parent and a sympathetic observer of child life, we have two books on children's play.16 One called "Floor Games" suggests various delightful projects of islands and oceans and cities to be made from simple and easily obtainable material. The idea of this little book is quite in line with progressive views on manual activity and "socialization." The other book, "Little Wars," described as a game for boys from 12 to 150, is more novel in conception. Its purpose is to induce pacificism by playing at war. As the author says, "Little War brings you to It (Peace) as nothing else but great war can do."17 If the military spirit of the world could be completely purged by exposing all young boys and men to this game what an incalculable boom to social progress it would be! According to Wells, as we have shown above, religion and education have not only been civilizing forces in the story of mankind, but in two great world religions the very idea of popular education originated. "Both Christianity and Islam promised to supply for the first time in human experience a common moral education for a mass of people, to supply them with a common history of the past and a common idea of human purpose and destiny; in that, their enormous historical importance lies."18 "From the days of the first Christian propaganda, popular education had been smouldering in Europe, just as it had smouldered in Asia wherever Islam had set its foot, because of the necessity of making the believer understand a little of the belief by which he is saved and of enabling him to read a little in the sacred books by which his belief is conveyed."19 Early Christianity sowed the seed of popular education; the Catholic church watered and nourished it. "The Catholic church provided a system of popular teaching, a number of universities and methods of intellectual intercommunication. By this achievement it opened the way to new possibilities of human government, possibilities that are still being apprehended and worked out in the world in which we are living. Hitherto the government of states has either been authoritative under some uncriticized and unchallenged priest or monarch, or it has been a democracy, uneducated and uninformed, which degenerated with any increase in size, as Rome and Athens did, into a mere rule by mob and politician. But by the 13th century, the first intimations had already dawned of an ideal of government which is still making its way to realization, the modern ideal, the ideal of a world-wide educational government, in which the ordinary man is neither slave of an absolute monarch nor of a demagogue-ruled state, but an informed, inspired and consulted part of his community. It is upon the word, educational, that stress must be laid and upon the idea that information must precede consultation. It is in the practical realization of this idea that education is a collective function and not a private affair, that one essential distinction of the modern state from any of its precursors lies. The modern citizen must be informed first and then consulted. Before he can vote, he must hear the evidence; before he can decide, he must know. It is not by setting up polling booths, but by setting up schools and making literature and knowledge and news universally accessible that the way is opened from servitude and confusion to that willing, co-operative state which is the modern ideal. Votes in themselves are worthless things. Men had votes in Italy in the time of the Gracchi. Their votes did not help them. Until a man has education a vote is a useless and dangerous thing for him to possess. The ideal community towards which we move is not a community of will simply, it is a community of knowledge and will, replacing a community of faith and obedience. Education is the adapter which will make the nomadic spirit of freedom and self-reli ance compatible with the co-operations of civilization."20 While the modern democratic state is an idea resulting from popular education which was fostered by the Catholic church, the church had no intention of bringing forth such a novelty in government. "But though it is certain that the Catholic church opened up the prospect of the modern educational state in Europe, it is equally certain that the Catholic church never intended to do anything of the sort. It did not send out knowledge with its blessing, but let it loose inadvertently."21 An added impetus was given popular education outside the church after the age of machinery. "A vast proportion of mankind in the early civilization was employed in purely mechanical drudgery. Where a weight had to be lifted, men lifted it, where a rock had to be quarried, men chipped it out. The Roman equivalent of the steamship was the galley with its banks of sweating rowers. . . . But with the introduction of power-driven machinery. . . . . human beings were no longer wanted as a source of mere indiscriminated power. What could be done mechanically by human being could be done faster and better by machine. The human being was needed now where choice and intelligence had to be exercised. Human beings were wanted only as human beings. The drudge, on whom all the previous civilization had rested, the creature of mere obedience, the man whose brain was superfluous had become unnecessary to the welfare of mankind. . . It became more and more plain to the intelligent, directive people that the common man had now to be something better than a drudge. He had to be educated."22 Of the relation of the education of the masses to the introduction of machinery, Mr. Wells says further: "The second half of the 19th century was a period of rapid advance in popular education throughout all the Western world. There was no parallel advance in the education of the upper classes so the great 20 H. G. Wells, Outline of History, pp. 706 and 707. 21 H. G. Wells, Outline of History, p. 707. 22 Ibid., p. 932. |