The Salvaging of Civilization

by H. G. Wells

I am myself a very under-educated person. It is a constant trouble to me. Like seeks like in this world. I propose to ask the question whether the whole world is not under-educated, and I warn you in advance that I am going to answer in the affirmative.

I am going to discuss the possibility of raising the general educational level very considerably, and I am going to consider what such a raising of the educational level would mean in human life.

I propose to adopt rather a vulgar, business-like tone about all this. I am going to apply to the human community much the same sort of tests that a manufacturer applies to his factory. His factory has some distinctive product, and when he looks into his affairs he tries to find out whether he gets the utmost quantity of the product, whether he gets the best possible quality of the product, whether he gets it as efficiently and inexpensively as possible, and constantly how he can improve his factory and his processes in all these matters.

Now the human community may be regarded as a concern engaged in the production of human life. And it may be judged very largely by the question whether the human life it produces is abundant and full and intense and beautiful.

Most of the tests that we apply to a state or a city or a period or a nation resolve themselves, you will find, into these questions:—

What was the life it produced?
What is the life it produces?

Now I will further assume that as yet the community has little or no control over the raw product, over the life, that is to say, that comes into it. I admit that from at least the time of Plato onward the possibility has been discussed of breeding human beings as we do horses and dogs. There is an enormous amount of what is called eugenic literature and discussion to-day. But I will set all that sort of thing aside from our present discussion because I do not think anything of the kind is practicable at the present time.

Quite apart from any other considerations, one has to remember one entire difference between the possible breeding of human beings and the actual breeding of dogs and horses. We breed dogs and horses for uniformity, for certain very limited specified points—speed, scent and the like. But human beings we should have to breed for variety: we cannot specify any particular points we want. We want statesmen and poets and musicians and philosophers and swift men and strong men and delicate men and brave men. The qualities of one would be the weaknesses of another.

It is really a false analogy, that between the breeding of men and the breeding of horses and dogs. In the case of human beings we want much more subtle and delicate combinations of qualities. For any practical purposes we do not know what we want nor do we know how to get it. So let us rule that theme out of our present discussion altogether.

And I also propose to rule out another set of topics from this discussion—simply because if we don't do so we shall have more matter than we can handle conveniently in the time at our disposal. I propose to leave out all questions of health and physical welfare. There is, as you know, a vast literature now in existence, concerned with the health and welfare of children before and after birth, concerned with infantile life, with social conditions and social work directed to the production of a vigorous population. I am going to assume here that all that sort of thing is seen to—that it is all right, that somebody is doing that, that we need not trouble for the present about any of those things.