22 Mr. H. G. Wells [Jan. 24, 



But, for the nearer future, while man is still man, there are a few 

 general statements that seem to grow more certain. It seems to be 

 pretty generally believed to-day, it has become a commonplace with 

 cabinet ministers now — though it was a mere irresponsible suggestion 

 two years ago — that our dense populations are in the opening phase 

 of a process of dififusion and aeration. It seems pretty inevitable, 

 also, that the mass of white and yellow population in the world will 

 be forced some way up the scale of education and personal efSciency 

 in the next two or three decades. It is not difficult to collect reasons 

 for supposing, and such reasons have been collected, that in the near 

 future — in a couple of hundred years, as one rash optimist has written 

 — or in a thousand or so, humanity will be definitely and consciously 

 organising itself as a great world-state : a great world-state that will 

 purge from itself much that is mean, much that is bestial, and much 

 that makes for individual dulness and dreariness, greyness, and 

 wretchedness in the world of to-day. And although we know that 

 there is nothing final in that world-state ; although we see it only 

 as something to be reached and passed ; although we are sure there 

 will be no such sitting down to restore and perfect a culture as the 

 Positivists foretell, yet few people can persuade themselves to see 

 anything beyond that except in the vaguest and most general terms. 

 That world-state of more efficient, more vivid, beautiful, and event- 

 ful people is, so to speak, on the brow of a hill, and we cannot see 

 over — though some of us can imagine great uplands beyond, and 

 something — something that glitters elusively, taking first one form, 

 and then another, through the haze. We can see no detail ; we can 

 see nothing definable ; and it is simply, I know, the sanguine neces- 

 sity of our minds that makes us believe that those uplands of the 

 future are still more gracious and splendid than we can either hope 

 or imagine. But of things that can be demonstrated we have none. - 



Yet I suppose most of us entertain certain necessary persuasions, 

 without which a moral life in this world is neither a reasonable nor 

 a possible thing. All this paper is built finally upon certain negative 

 beliefs that are incapable of scientific establishment. Our lives and 

 powers are limited ; our scope in space and time is limited ; and it is 

 not unreasonable that for fundamental beliefs we must go outside the 

 sphere of reason, and set our feet upon Faith. Implicit in all such 

 speculations as this is a very definite and quite arbitrary belief, and 

 that belief is that neither humanity nor, in truth, any individual 

 human being, is living its life in vain. And it is entirely by an act 

 of faith that we must rule out of our forecasts certain possibilities — 

 certain things that one may consider improbable, and against the 

 chances ; but that no one, upon scientific grounds, can call im- 

 possible. One must admit that it is impossible to show why certain 

 things should not utterly destroy and end the entire human race and 

 story ; why night should not presently come down and make all our 

 dreams and efforts vain. It is conceivable, for example, that some 



