Page:Mankind in the Making (Wells).djvu/407

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XI

The Man's Own Share

In this manner it is that the initial proposition of New Republicanism works itself out. It shapes into the rough outline of an ideal new State, a New Republic, a great confederation of English-speaking republican communities, each with its non-hereditary aristocracy, scattered about the world, speaking a common language, possessing a common living body of literature and a common scientific and, in its higher stages at least, a common educational organization; and it indicates in crude, broad suggestions the way towards that State from the present condition of things. It insists as a cardinal necessity, not indeed as an end, but as an indispensable instrument by which this world State must be made and sustained, upon a great, a contemporary, and a universally accessible literature—a literature not simply of thought and science, but of power, which shall embody and make real and living the sustaining dreams of the coming time, and which shall draw together and bring into intelligent correlation all those men and women who are working now discontentedly and wastefully