|
|
|
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
account of his ideal commonwealth. It is his apologia, and it is the apologia
of all Utopias. They are in their nature ideal. Much they may contain
that is unreal, unpractical, impracticable; but if they have not been and
never can be realised, they have still their value, and they suggest laws
and inner counsels in the light and spirit of which life may be lived
even in the imperfect world in which the idealist finds himself to-day.
Such is pre-eminently the defence, if any were needed, of this interesting
and original volume. It is not exactly a great book, though a very
clever one. In some ways it seems as if it might have been better on
*
Plato, Republic, Bk ix.
117
H.G.WELLS
its own lines. It is certainly not an easy book to apprehend, but it is
filled by a lofty and elevating spirit. We must be grateful to Mr. Wells
for the effort and time which he has devoted to it, time and effort which
he might readily have spent and must often have been tempted to spend
on much easier and more lucrative writing and easier reading. In his
very interesting prefatory note to the reader, and his equally interesting
Philosophical Appendix, both highly autobiographic, he hints something
of its genesis, though not all. His art or trade, he says, is that of an
imaginative writer. How successful he has been in this every one knows.
But he desires to be something more. He desires not merely to amuse
or entertain, even in a semi-serious way, but to instruct and educate,
to enlighten the thought and lift the ideals of himself and his fellows.
He will write not merely for money or for fame, but for love and for
truth s sake. He attempted this in Anticipations and in Mankind in the
Making. He attempts it again here. And this is the most serious attempt
of all. A very serious attempt it is, more so than might at first sight
appear. The book, both in matter and in form, has been carefully studied
and thought out.
A comparative history of Utopias would be a very interesting work
to write. It would look before and after, and throw much light alike
on the history and the aspirations of mankind. It would not perhaps
suit Mr. Wells to write it himself, but he has evidently gone some way
in the preparation necessary, and in suggesting how it might be written.
He has studied most, if not all, of the famous Utopias of the past,
from Plato and Sir Thomas More and St. Augustine, through Bacon
and Campanella, Harrington and Lord Erskine, to Cabet and William
Morris and Bellamy. He has noted, too, the experiments that have actually
been tried, such as Utah and Oneida Creek. He has dipped, nay, more
than dipped, into political economy and many allied subjects. He is
further a man of science, and at first of almost exclusively scientific
training, who, following the imperious instinct of a rich and versatile
and sincere nature, has made himself a man of letters and a philosopher.
He is no mere idle singer of an empty day ; no trifling novelist with
a little more than the usual imagination and scientific information;
not even a Jules Verne, delightful and educating as Jules Verne was,
telling fairy-tales of science to amuse children, old and young, suggesting
the marvellous and delightful possibilities which its Aladdin lamps and
magic carpets have placed in our hands. His purpose is more deep and
severe than this. The result is that the book is by no means an easy
one, and may daunt many of his ordinary readers. But it is a book
118
THE CRITICAL HERITAGE
well worth reading, and reading carefully, if only for the spirit which
it engenders.
The difficulty of all Utopias is at once to give the outer picture with
sufficient naturalness and concreteness, and to convey the apprehension
of the inner spirit which is to be the secret of this outer life. Mr. Wells s
method of attacking this difficulty is highly ingenious. He imagines a
new planet, the exact counterpart of our own, excepting that, by a certain
alteration in what we call and think of as the chance, or the alterable
elements, in the course of human history, the race has developed quite
differently, has acquired far greater command than even our own in its
most modern hour, of material science, has escaped from many of the
grinding drudgeries and limitations of our physical condition, and reached,
too, a higher social and moral plane. It is and this is of its essence a
world still in progress. Mankind is still in the making in Utopia, but
man s present condition there is far in advance of ours, and, moreover,
discovers a still further promise and potency. Into this world two tourists,
after a good lunch, enjoyed on the top of a Swiss pass just before they
descend again, find themselves, whether in the body or out of the body,
whether in a waking or sleeping dream, as Plato would say, suddenly
projected. They retain their own individuality that is a large part of
the interest and it is here that Mr. Wells s skill as a novelist comes in.
They go through a variety of experiences, a good deal of time being
spent in a Utopian Lucerne; and finally they come back, if they ever
really went away, to a Utopian London, where the iridescent bubble of
their vision is rudely broken in Trafalgar Square, and the story ends.
The method as handled by Mr. Wells has one great merit, it produces
illusion, that effect so hard to achieve. We are transported out of this
world into its twin star in the most natural and easy way. We feel the
new to be unlike the old, yet not so unlike but that the old might have
grown, might yet grow, to be somewhat thus. We are not troubled with
the slow processes of development, and ever so many factors which require
elimination to give the hypothesis a chance are, ipso facto, quietly
eliminated. Yet Utopia is not so strange that an intelligent Englishman
of to-day could not live there, and even by degrees feel himself almost
at home.
Science, it need hardly be said, plays a very prominent part in Mr.
Wells s Utopia. Plato, he says truly enough, thought little of machinery,
though it must be remembered that Hephaestus and Daedalus were Greek
ideals as well as Zeus and Solon, and that to Homer, at any rate, the
conception of automaton tables and ships self-propelled and self-steering
119
H.G.WELLS
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkwiatpolny.htw.pl
|
|
| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
|
|
