The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1902-05-06

80 '~sNSS 1890 AA VI" 49,
earth as one stands on a footstool, and
they shall laugh and reach out their
hands among the stars"
The lecture has already aroused wide
spread interest and will probably be
much discussed.
Along certain lines, with certain limi.
tations, MI. Wells argued that a work.
ing knowledge of the things OF the fu.
ture was practicable and possible. AS
during the last century the amazing
~searchlight of inference had been pass
ed into the remoter past, so by seeking
for operating aus instead of for fos
sils the searchlight of inference nigh,
be thrown into the future. The man OF
science would believe at last that
events in A. D. 1000 were fixed, settled
and Interchangeable as those Of A. ID.
1000. with the exception Of the affairs
of mar and his children.
1t Is as simple and sure. declared
Mr.. Wells. to work out the changing
orbit of the earth in future until the
tidal drag hauls one unchanging face
at last toward the sun as it is to work
back to its blazing. molten past.
1t might be argued that man.. indi-
vidually and collectively. was an in
calculable factor, a new element offer
ing the nature of the inquiry and
stamping it as vain and hopeless. but
Mr.. Wells seemed to favor the idea
that man. though complicating. did not
alter the essential nature of induction.
Ho did not 1,nlinvn fo thu {~v1rk1,, m
of the leading man. and he confessed
to a belief that If by some juggling
with space and time Caesar. Napoleon.
William the Conqueror and other great
Municipalities had been changed at
birth it would not have produced any
serious dislOcatiOn of the course Of
destiny.
Great men. he declared. were no
more than images and symbols and in
struments taken at haphazard by the
i%ncessant, consistent forces behind
them. They were the pennibs which
Fate used in her writing. and the
more one was inclined to trust these
forces behind individuals the more one
could believe in the possibility OF a
reasoned inductive view Of the future
that would serve us in politics, morals,
social co%ntrivances and in a thousand
specious ways.
A deliberate direction Of historical,
economic and social study toward the
future and in q deliberate and courage
GUS reference to the future in moral
and religious discussion would be enor-
mously stimulating and profitable to
the intellectual life.
That man is not final is a great and
disturbing fact in scientific discovery
in the future, and the question. What
is to come after man? is the most per-
~sistently fascinating. insoluble ques-
ton in the world. But for the near
future some few general statements
have grown more certain.
Two years ago it was an %irresponsi-
BILE suggestion. but it was the common.
place remark of cabinet ministers, that
our dense populations We're in the open
ing phase Of the process OF the difu-
sion of aeration; secondly. it was inev-
liable that the mass of the white popu-
lation of the world be forced in some
way up the scale Of efficiency within
two or three decades.
Thirdly. reasons have been collected
showing that in the comparative near
future humanity would-tndeinitely
and conscientiously organizing itself
into q great world state-purge itself of
much that is mean and bestial and
dreary in the world.