Anticipations

Anticipations, by Herbert George Wells

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Title: Anticipations Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human
life and Thought
Author: Herbert George Wells
Release Date: September 9, 2006 [EBook #19229]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ANTICIPATIONS
OF THE
REACTION OF MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC
PROGRESS UPON HUMAN LIFE
AND THOUGHT
BY
H. G. WELLS
AUTHOR OF
"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM," "THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU," AND "TALES

OF SPACE AND TIME."
SECOND EDITION
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
1902

CONTENTS
I. LOCOMOTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 1 II. THE PROBABLE
DIFFUSION OF GREAT CITIES 33 III. DEVELOPING SOCIAL ELEMENTS 66 IV.
CERTAIN SOCIAL REACTIONS 103 V. THE LIFE-HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY
143 VI. WAR IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 176 VII. THE CONFLICT OF
LANGUAGES 215 VIII. THE LARGER SYNTHESIS 245 IX. FAITH, MORALS, AND
PUBLIC POLICY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 279

ANTICIPATIONS

I
LOCOMOTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
It is proposed in this book to present in as orderly an arrangement as the necessarily
diffused nature of the subject admits, certain speculations about the trend of present
forces, speculations which, taken all together, will build up an imperfect and very
hypothetical, but sincerely intended forecast of the way things will probably go in this
new century.[1] Necessarily diffidence will be one of the graces of the performance.
Hitherto such forecasts have been presented almost invariably in the form of fiction, and
commonly the provocation of the satirical opportunity has been too much for the
writer;[2] the narrative form becomes more and more of a nuisance as the speculative
inductions become sincerer, and here it will be abandoned altogether in favour of a
texture of frank inquiries and arranged considerations. Our utmost aim is a rough sketch
of the coming time, a prospectus, as it were, of the joint undertaking of mankind in facing
these impending years. The reader is a prospective shareholder--he and his heirs--though
whether he will find this anticipatory balance-sheet to his belief or liking is another
matter.
For reasons that will develop themselves more clearly as these papers unfold, it is
extremely convenient to begin with a speculation upon the probable developments and
changes of the means of land locomotion during the coming decades. No one who has
studied the civil history of the nineteenth century will deny how far-reaching the
consequences of changes in transit may be, and no one who has studied the military

performances of General Buller and General De Wet but will see that upon transport,
upon locomotion, may also hang the most momentous issues of politics and war. The
growth of our great cities, the rapid populating of America, the entry of China into the
field of European politics are, for example, quite obviously and directly consequences of
new methods of locomotion. And while so much hangs upon the development of these
methods, that development is, on the other hand, a process comparatively independent,
now at any rate, of most of the other great movements affected by it. It depends upon a
sequence of ideas arising, and of experiments made, and upon laws of political economy,
almost as inevitable as natural laws. Such great issues, supposing them to be possible, as
the return of Western Europe to the Roman communion, the overthrow of the British
Empire by Germany, or the inundation of Europe by the "Yellow Peril," might
conceivably affect such details, let us say, as door-handles and ventilators or mileage of
line, but would probably leave the essential features of the evolution of locomotion
untouched. The evolution of locomotion has a purely historical relation to the Western
European peoples. It is no longer dependent upon them, or exclusively in their hands. The
Malay nowadays sets out upon his pilgrimage to Mecca in an excursion steamship of iron,
and the immemorial Hindoo goes a-shopping in a train, and in Japan and Australasia and
America, there are plentiful hands and minds to take up the process now, even should the
European let it fall.
The beginning of this twentieth century happens to coincide with a very interesting phase
in that great development of means of land transit that has been the distinctive feature
(speaking materially) of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century, when it takes its
place with the other centuries in the chronological charts of the future, will, if it needs