8 Mr. K G. Wells [Jan. 24, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, January 24, 1902. 



Sir James Cbiohton-Browne, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S., Treasurer 

 and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



H. G. Wells, Esq., B.Sc. 



The Discovery of the Future. 



It will lead into my subject most conveniently to contrast and 

 separate two divergent types of mind, types which are to be dis- 

 tinguished chiefly by their attitude towards time, and more particu- 

 larly by the relative importance they attach and the relative amount 

 of thought they give to the future of things. 



The first of these two types of mind — and it is, I think, the 

 predominant type, the type of the majority of living people — is that 

 which seems scarcely to think of the future at all, which regards it 

 as a sort of black non-existence upon which the advancing present 

 will presently write events. The second type, which is, I think, a 

 more modern and much less abundant type of mind, thinks constantly, 

 and by preference, of things to come, and of present things mainly 

 in relation to the results that must arise from them. The former 

 type of mind, when one gets it in its purity, is retrospective in habit, 

 and it interprets the things of the present, and gives value to this and 

 denies it to that, entirely with relation to the past. The latter type 

 of mind is constructive in habit ; it interprets the things of the 

 present and gives value to this or that, entirely in relation to things 

 designed or foreseen. 



While from that former point of view our life is simply to reajD 

 the consequences of the past, from this our life is to prepare the 

 future. The former type one might speak of as the legal or sub- 

 missive type of mind, because the business, the practice, and the 

 training of a lawyer dispose him towards it ; he of all men must most 

 constantly refer to the law made, the right established, the precedent 

 set, and most consistently ignore or condemn the thing that is only 

 seeking to establish itself. The latter type of mind I might for con- 

 trast call the legislative, creative, organising, or masterful type, 

 because it is perpetually attacking and altering the established order 

 of things, perpetually falling away from respect for what the past 

 has given us. It sees the world as one great workshop, and the 

 present is no more than material for the future, for the thing that is 

 yet destined to be. It is in the active mood of thought, while the 

 former is in the passive ; it is the mind of youth — it is the mind most 



