Part 2
As regards wireless broadcasting, it is too early to speak of its permanent effects. It has come upon us like an avalanche. For the first time, it has enlisted youth in the highest electrical problems. It has paved the way for the general diffusion of scientific knowledge while ostensibly popularizing the art of music. In any case, it is a complete answer to Ben Akiba and his saying about there being nothing new.
Mr. J. B. S. Haldane[2] believes that the centre of scientific interest now lies in biology, and that physiology will eventually invade and destroy mathematical physics. It is quite possible that the advance of what physicists sometimes playfully call the “inexact” sciences may cast those of physics and chemistry entirely in the shade, but although biology has made some difference to human life in the last generation, its effects cannot remotely compare with those of physical and chemical discoveries. The mere increase of speed in transport, due to the internal-combustion engine, has caused a speeding-up of the whole nervous system and a brightening of the intelligence of all but an insignificant fraction of the population. When the choice lies between the Quick and the Dead, even the most sluggish temperament will put on a spurt, and this continued sprinting across the motor traffic has produced a more agile generation. If such a profound difference can be made in twenty years, what will be the effect of even 200 years of continually accelerated progress?
[2] _Dædalus_, pp. 10 and 16.
The continual acceleration of the rate of progress must not be lost sight of in forecasting the future. It happens to coincide with a similar increase in the consumption of accumulated fuels, like coal and oil, and might be expected to slow down when those supplies of preserved sunlight come to an end. But by that time other accumulations will no doubt have been discovered and utilized.
Unless the Russian blight extends over Europe and America, we may confidently look forward to a long era of steadily accelerated progress. What form that progress will take is notoriously difficult to forecast. The main difficulty arises from the fact that the most promising discoveries sometimes turn out to be impracticable, or at least of quite secondary importance. Nobody prophesied the great development of the motor car, nor of that gigantic child of the old Zoetrope or “Wheel of Life” which we call the Picture Theatre. A genius like H. G. Wells could indeed write a marvellously accurate forecast of flying achievements, but in one of his books he makes a great deal of the Brennan mono-rail, which, after a sensational beginning, failed to reach maturity, probably owing to the temporary failure of that much-maligned but quite essential fertilizer of inventions, capital. Other inventions, such as the speaking film, bear within themselves certain weaknesses which may prevent them from attaining great popularity.
But previous failures to peep into the future effectively shall not deter the author from another attempt to pierce the veil hiding our fate. He will proceed by “extrapolating” the curves representing progress made hitherto, but will always allow for unexpected new departures in what are already known to be possible directions.
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_Transport and Communications._――The most conspicuous changes in our mode of life have been brought about by improved means of transport. Railways and steamships have become essential to Great Britain, largely owing to the fact that food-supplies have to be purchased in exchange for exported manufactures. But even in non-industrial countries the railway has entered very largely into the life of the people. It is part of the essential attribute of life which seeks diversity and a fuller activity of the senses. Life is, in effect, prolonged when it is made to contain more and more detail. The social life of a person is roughly measured by the number of people with whom he converses in the course of a day. Improved transport means facilities for extending this number. It also means an enlargement of a person’s sphere of influence, of his “area of effective occupation.” In business, it gives an opportunity of increasing turnover, and thus reducing costs. It also facilitates competition, both in buying and selling, and thus tends to enforce the law of supply and demand and other enactments of what used to be called the “dismal science,” but now ranks as the most “actual” of all the sciences.
Postal and telegraphic facilities have the same general effect of diversifying and extending life. The telephone has produced an entirely new form of social intercourse, and a new privileged class. By acquiring a telephone number, we obtain entrance into a hall where rapid and varied communication becomes an abundant source of activity, information, and amusement.
Increased facilities of this kind also tend to cement a nation of one language into a closely organized whole, so that its cohesion and its influence abroad are strengthened. The “temperature” of the national life is raised, and it increases in proportion. An increased energy also accelerates the rate of progress, so that it tends to spread like a fire. What this acceleration will mean we can as yet only dimly surmise. A time will come, no doubt, when we may crowd into an hour a variety of experiences which our ancestors would have extended over a lifetime. We need not necessarily do so, but the mere fact that it is possible will add a zest and a richness to life such as we, with all our advantages, can as yet hardly conceive. But the general effect will be to reduce more and more the limitations now imposed upon us by space. It will no doubt be eventually possible to get into communication with anybody on earth at a moment’s notice, provided that person is willing.
_Privacy._――The last proviso is important. Civilization not only makes us more accessible to those we appreciate, but also makes us less accessible to those of whom we disapprove. An increase in our area of choice would be of little value if everybody else could choose to intrude upon us at any time or place. A limitation of social intercourse to a chosen few, or its total cessation for the time required for rest and recuperation in a strenuous life is one of the greatest boons one can desire. The rank and file is more gregarious than the _élite_ and, as one of the ideals of progress is to raise the masses towards the level occupied by the _élite_, the extension of facilities for seclusion is of the essence of progress. Hence commons and open spaces are provided in and around well-planned cities. Houses are provided with sound-proof walls, and gardens are protected as much as possible from “overlooking.” A very modern problem of the same kind is the protection of wireless listeners from oscillations produced in neighbouring receiving sets.
_Clothing._――The present generation of civilized humanity justly prides itself on its sensible style of clothing. Although masculine clothing contains a number of “vestigial” elements which are absurd survivals of former necessities, the practice, observed more especially in Great Britain, of wearing a variety of apparel suited to special occasions and occupations adds a certain elasticity to fashions which otherwise are almost comically rigid. If a man wore a wreath of flowers round his head instead of a hat he would not walk fifty yards in any London street without being arrested for “insulting behaviour” or “conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace.” Yet a woman could do so with impunity if she did it with the necessary air of assurance.
The future of clothing is largely affected by social problems. Masculine clothing ceased to be demonstrative in Europe shortly after the French Revolution. While aristocracy flourished, it paraded itself aggressively in velvet and ruffles and powdered wigs. In modern times it is bad form to strut and swagger, except on very special occasions. Good clothing is not aggressively ornate or expensive. Its quality is a matter of lines and cut and finish. Its preciousness is disguised from the uninitiated. It is like the sober and almost dingy town houses of the nobility, whose splendour is only shown to favoured friends and trusted servants. In 1794 the dress of the “aristo” was a passport to the guillotine. In later and wiser days it is a disguise to deceive the tax-collector and the demagogue, and to lull their prying rapacity into inactivity.
Feminine attire follows the same principles, modified by the essential differences between the sexes. The ideal of a well-dressed woman varies widely with her surroundings. In bad weather out of doors, or in an unsympathetic crowd, her garments will be a defensive armour designed to reveal as little of her personality as is compatible with her purpose. Under more favourable conditions, they will become a setting made as suitable as possible to the peculiar qualities and attractions of the jewel they are supposed to contain. Not every woman can, under present conditions, be beautiful, but she can suggest beauty at every turn, remind us of beautiful things, and give us that feeling of holy calm which we experience in the presence of beauty, if she will but dress appropriately to the occasion and to her own personality.
These considerations must affect our view of the appropriate styles of A.D. 2025. Dress appropriate to the occasion! Dress is, after all, a sort of extension of the physical personality. The body of a naked child at play is the most perfect thing in beauty that can be seen. All its muscles adapt themselves instantly to its activities. Everything is appropriate and harmonious. A thin and clinging covering would detract but little from its grace of movement and expression, and might, indeed, add something of force and swiftness that cannot be perceived in the mere play of muscles. Thus the plumes of a Red Indian add to the sense of speed and purpose conveyed by his movements.
I do not agree with Mr. H. G. Wells that the final ideal of clothing is its total abolition. Clothing has the effect of enlarging man’s sphere of activity until it covers the entire globe from the poles to the equator. Another advantage is that it emphasizes mental qualities rather than physical qualities. If mere physical beauty were the one essential to human well-being, mankind would have long ago insisted on its being freely displayed――and judged――without the disguise of clothing.
Instead, a common agreement among civilized peoples insists that on everyday occasions little but the face is to be visible, because its features and expression give a clue to the mentality behind them. On special occasions, such as balls and dinner parties, more may be revealed by the gentler sex, but even then the area revealed must be confined to what is least likely to show defects and is of least physiological interest and importance, so that the attention may still be directed towards mental rather than emotional or physical qualities.
The evolution of clothing will, therefore, be in the direction of adaptability to climate and occupation. New fabrics will no doubt be invented, combining the warmth of fur with the softness and flexibility of silk and the strength of linen. Dress will be light, so that half a dozen changes of costume can be carried in a handbag, and will be so designed that each change will involve no more inconvenience than does the removal of a raincoat. And so we shall eventually combine the Greek ideal of expressive drapery with the exacting conditions of a strenuous modern life.
_Housing._――Man is an animal with a cubical shell. If the earth were reduced to the size of a football and its surface were examined with a powerful microscope, we should see it studded with incrustations like dried salt, especially about the river mouths. These incrustations would be the cities, consisting of thousands of rectangular or cube-shaped blocks. With a greater magnification we might see minute specks swarming about these shell-like houses, elongated specks with their longer axis vertical, and with a marked tendency to enter the houses at nightfall and emerge again after daybreak.
If a giant had been watching the development of these incrustations for several thousand years, he would have seen them spreading from the Mediterranean and some parts of Asia till they studded the Atlantic regions. Thence, after a time, they would spread to the other side of the Atlantic, and become particularly numerous along its western shores. Watching them again for several thousand years, he might see these incrustations gradually dissolved, and the disease――he would probably call it a disease――become “generalized” all over the planet, the local incrustations giving way before a universal but only slightly crusted condition of the earth’s entire land surface.
This is the most probable solution of the general housing problem. Ordinary and wireless telephony, soon to be supplemented by “television,” will gradually reduce the isolation brought about by mere space, while underground and overground transport of goods will render the distribution of supplies less and less laborious. Houses will, therefore, be built more widely apart than they are in cities, and each will have its own private grounds. The structures will be of a material impervious to heat and cold, but transparent or translucent to light, though there will be means of darkening the whole house if desired. Artificial lighting will not be by lamps, but by a close imitation of diffused daylight, which is coolest and most restful to the eyes. There will be no domestic servants. All the “work” of the house will be done by machinery requiring but the turning of a switch and the aiming of implements resembling magic wands. Cooking will be a pleasant domestic art, most of the preparations being made by the purveyors of food stuffs. As it is unlikely that the anatomical structure and the physiological functioning of the human frame will be materially changed for thousands of years to come, food will not be very different from what it is now, but there will be a nicer discrimination of what foods, and what quantity of them, are best calculated to maintain perfect health.
_Children._――Most prophets concerning the future of the human race postulate many and radical changes in the birth and rearing of children. Some say that advancing civilization will make the present process impossible on account of the steadily increasing size of the human skull, which will eventually make normal birth impossible. Professor Haldane forecasts “ectogenesis” or the artificial ripening of the embryo outside the human body. Whatever may happen to the physical act of birth――it will no doubt be alleviated in many ways――one hopes that the tender joys of watching over the development of a child’s body and mind will not be taken away from us.
Much more enlightened care will, no doubt, be bestowed upon the welfare of the infant than is done at present. How many crimes are unwittingly committed against a child’s mentality by ignorant parents and nurses! Lies and prevarications and evasions are always reprehensible, but with children they are of fatal and life-long effect. We owe the truth to a child more than to any adult. Our promises to a child should be as binding as an oath. Tell them fairy tales by all means, but tell them with a voice and expression which inevitably stamps them as such, and makes belief optional.
I cannot see any effective substitute for family life so long as there are children to bring up. Children feed on love as they do on food and fresh air, and no vicarious love can take the place of the natural affection between children and their parents. The institution of marriage may undergo many and far-reaching changes[3], but nothing is likely to change the paramount necessity of parental care of, and responsibility for, children. Children are rooted in their parents. They are, in a sense, survivals of their parents’ personality, and constitute their chance of physical immortality. It is, therefore, absurd to suppose that the human race will at any time in its history consent to the “nationalization” of its children. On the other hand, the supervision of ill-disposed or incompetent parents by the State will, no doubt, become more and more strict.
[3] Its early history shows it to be a contrivance for the safe-guarding of infants in their earliest years by allocating a large proportion of responsibility to the father. Among Semitic and other Asiatic tribes, this allocation of responsibility was fortified by the somewhat crude precaution of secluding women. Marriage as a means of allocating responsibility will become superfluous as soon as parentage can be infallibly traced with the aid of the microscope, as some biologists confidently foretell. The chief _raison d’etre_ of marriage will then be gone, but it will no doubt continue for a considerable time as a picturesque survival of an ancient custom.
_Education._――In spite of the prodigious advance in educational methods in the last two generations, education is still in a state of primitive barbarity. We may, therefore, expect some very profound changes in the centuries to come. There is still too much of the methods of the pump about our education. The idea seems to be that the teacher draws from the well of knowledge and administers copious draughts to his pupils, and when they have swallowed these they are educated! There is no better illustration of this curious view than the modern method of imparting “higher” education. The University lecture is, of all methods of imparting knowledge, about the least effective. The student sits in a stiff attitude and maintains a pose of strained attention. He endeavours to keep his mind concentrated on the words and meaning of the professor. Every now and then he succeeds, but then his thoughts persist in following their own train of associations and the thread is broken. He jots down disconnected notes, hoping to piece them together afterwards. This piecing together is often the only process which really advances his knowledge. It brings his own will-power and faculties into action. The lecture only requires will-power for concentration on somebody else’s thought, and this effort is negative and sterile.
If lectures must be, then they should be interrupted after every ten minutes or so. The lecturer should then sit down and invite and encourage his students to ask pertinent questions or advance sound criticism.
In a class-room it is easier to keep the interest of the pupils alive. Every effort should be made to let the information come from the pupils rather than the teacher. In teaching history, for instance, I should not have set lessons at all, but ask the pupils to collect facts within a certain period, and reward them in accordance with their success in presenting the facts and linking them up with others.
The education of the future will be like the medicine of the future. Both will aim at eliciting and enlisting the powers of the pupil (or patient) rather than dosing them. For the real learning and the real cure must come from them.
Every normal child is anxious to learn, and can be easily brought to feel and appreciate the intellectual joy of comprehension. But in most children this joy is marred in early infancy by insufficient attention to their struggles to understand the great world about them. It is the years of infancy――the pre-school years――which are most important in forming habits of thought. The closest watch should be kept for early efforts at trains of reasoning. These efforts begin at the age of three or thereabouts. They are often absurd and ludicrous, but they should be treated with an indulgent and helpful respect, and wrong conclusions should be modified, not by contradiction, but by conviction of the contrary by example. If that is done, the child will learn to trust his own powers of reasoning. If it is neglected, the child’s mind will become shallow and unenterprising.
No child that can talk is too young to be asked for his opinion. He will enjoy stating it, and will, as a rule, receive protests or contrary opinions with interest and amusement.
All this may be a “counsel of perfection” to parents who are too busy to look after their infants themselves and are content to entrust their tender minds to more or less incompetent nurses. But the future will realize more and more the great importance of the growing minds of infants. In the United States this is to a large extent the case already, and, as a consequence, their infants are the brightest and most delightful creatures imaginable.
_Labour._――In one of his earliest works, “The Time Machine,” Mr. H. G. Wells forecasts a development of the labour situation very different from that of the ordinary socialist Utopia. He figures an arrangement by which all labour is done underground, and is done by creatures (one can hardly call them “people”) whose bodies and minds are thoroughly adapted to their task. The picture seems to be a skit on the Victorian idea of the “family” upstairs and the servants in the basement, but a grim and novel touch is added by the information that the workers actually live on those that dwell in the light, coming up at night to take them away in their sleep.
Such a solution, though it may draw some justification from the bee-hive or the ant-heap, is not at all likely to be adopted by the human race of the future. The essential service of Christianity, the kernel which will remain after the mythological and dogmatic accretions have been shed, is to provide mankind with an imagination capable of conceiving and realizing the sufferings of other people and creatures, and the will to remedy or obviate them as far as possible. Through centuries of abuse, neglect and misinterpretation that gift has gradually worked into the mass of civilized humanity. The humanitarian ideal is explicit and articulate in France, while in England it is disguised under such expressions as “decency” and “playing the game,” or “live and let live.”
That it has not yet remade the world is due mainly to two causes: the arrogance of those to whom money or social position gives an advantage over smaller people, and the hatred and mistrust engendered by this arrogance among the masses.
A workman in a physically fit condition does not object to working. He sometimes feels the drudgery, boredom, or discomfort of it, but if he is a skilled craftsman, his pride in his work gives him an interest and satisfaction which helps him over many hours of toil. What he does object to is to be driven and bullied by an unsympathetic and perhaps unjust overseer, who turns out the master on every occasion and lets him feel his power. He wants and sometimes admires a leader, but he does not want a slave-driver.
In war, there is the same difference between the “come on” officer and the “go-on” officer, and the same effect on discipline.
I believe that the co-operation of larger organized masses of men will not only be required in the future as in the past, but that its scale will eventually exceed anything yet seen in our history.
The key to the smooth working of such organizations is the spirit in which the enterprise is undertaken. Let us give two examples, one from the present day and one from, say, the year 2,000.
(1) A.D. 1925:
(a) Navvies required. Apply Eastern Counties Railway Co.’s Depot....
(b) Eastern Counties Railway Co., Ltd. The 250,000 5% Cumulative Participating Preference Shares are now offered for public subscription, payable as follows....
(2) A.D. 2000: