A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE
T. Fisher Unwin
Paternoster Square
1905
There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life; which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Shakespeare, 2Henry IV., III. i.
They pass through whirl-pools, and deep woes doshun,
Who the event weigh, ‘ere the action’sdone.
Webster,Duchess of Malfi, II. 4.
PREFACE
The following was at first intended to be no morethan an attempt to foresee the probable trend of mechanical inventionand scientific discovery during the present century. But as the worktook shape it was seen to involve a certain amount of what may becalled moral conjecture, since the material progress of the new agecould not very well be imagined without taking into account its mentalcharacteristics. In these expectations of an optimist, a great ethicalimprovement of the civilised human race has been anticipated, and arate of progress foreseen which perhaps no previous writers have lookedfor. Both in regard to moral development and material progress, it hasbeen the aim of the author to predict nothing that the tendencies ofexisting movement do not justify us in expecting.
An attempt of this kind is exposed to facile criticism.It will be easy for objectors to signalise this or that expectedinvention as beyond scientific possibility, that or the other moralreform as fit only for Utopia