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THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE

by

H. G. WELLS







[Illustration]

New York
B. W. Huebsch
1913

Copyright, 1913,
By B. W. Huebsch

Printed in U. S. A.




THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE[1]

BY H. G. WELLS

  [1] A discourse delivered at the Royal Institution.


It will lead into my subject most conveniently to contrast and separate
two divergent types of mind, types which are to be distinguished chiefly
by their attitude toward time, and more particularly by the relative
importance they attach and the relative amount of thought they give to
the future.

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 blank 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 reap 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 submissive type of
mind, because the business, the practice, and the training of a lawyer
dispose him toward it; he of all men must constantly refer to the law
made, the right established, the precedent set, and consistently ignore
or condemn the thing that is only seeking to establish itself. The
latter type of mind I might for contrast call the legislative, creative,
organizing, 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 more manifest among the western nations, while the former is
the mind of age, the mind of the oriental.

Things have been, says the legal mind, and so we are here. The creative
mind says we are here because things have yet to be.

Now I do not wish to suggest that the great mass of people belong to
either of these two types. Indeed, I speak of them as two distinct and
distinguishable types mainly for convenience and in order to accentuate
their distinction. There are probably very few people who brood
constantly upon the past without any thought of the future at all, and
there are probably scarcely any who live and think consistently in
relation to the future. The great mass of people occupy an intermediate
position between these extremes, they pass daily and hourly from the
passive mood to the active, they see this thing in relation to its
associations and that thing in relation to its consequences, and they
do not even suspect that they are using two distinct methods in their
minds.

But for all that they are distinct methods, the method of reference to
the past and the method of reference to the future, and their mingling
in many of our minds no more abolishes their difference than the
existence of piebald horses proves that white is black.

I believe that it is not sufficiently recognized just how different
in their consequences these two methods are, and just where their
difference and where the failure