[7] For Shaw's opinions on phonetics see "Pygmalion", "Captain Brassbound's Conversion", and Henderson's biography, p. 326.
[8] Von unmusikalischen England und seiner musikalischen Heilsarmee. Deutscher Wille, February, 1916.
[CHAPTER II]
H. G. WELLS
Scientific Futurist
We are in the beginning of the greatest change that humanity has ever undergone. There is no shock, no epoch-making incident—but then there is no shock at a cloudy daybreak. At no point can we say, "Here it commences, now; last minute was night and this is morning." But insensibly we are in the day. If we care to look, we can foresee growing knowledge, growing order, and presently a deliberate improvement of the blood and character of the race. And what we can see and imagine gives us a measure and gives us faith for what surpasses the imagination.
It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. We cannot see, there is no need for us to see, what this world will be like when the day has fully come. We are creatures of the twilight. But it is out of our race and lineage that minds will spring that will reach back to us in our littleness to know us better than we know ourselves, and that will reach forward fearlessly to comprehend this future that defeats our eyes. All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things, and a day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amid the stars.—"The Discovery of the Future" (1902).
Is Wells also among the prophets? Surely, and none with better right, even though we use the word "prophet" in its narrowest and most ordinary sense as one who foretells the future. He has foretold many futures for us, some utterly abhorrent, others more or less attractive. If we shudder at the thought of humanity on a freezing world fighting a losing battle with gigantic crustaceans as in "The Time Machine", or being suffocated on a blazing world as in "The Star", or being crushed under the tyranny of an omnipotent trust as in "When the Sleeper Wakes"—if none of these please us, then we have the option of a businesslike and efficient organization of society under the domination of the engineer as in "Anticipations", or a socialistic state under the beneficent sway of the Samurai as in "A Modern Utopia," or an instantaneous amelioration of human nature as "In the Days of the Comet." In thus presenting various solutions to the world problem Wells is not inconsistent. Every complicated equation has several roots, some of them imaginary. In solving a physical problem the scientist begins by disentangling the forces involved and then, taking them one at a time, calculates what would be the effect if the other forces did not act. So Wells is applying the scientific method to sociology when he attempts to isolate social forces and deal with them singly. If nothing intervenes to divert it, says the hydraulic engineer, the water of this mountain stream will develop such a momentum on reaching the valley. If no limitations are placed upon the consolidation of capital, says Mr. Wells, we may have a handful of directors ruling the world, as depicted in "When the Sleeper Wakes."