THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE
lieved to-day that our dense populations are in the opening phase of a process of diffusion and aeration. It seems inevitable also that at least the mass of white population in the world will be forced some way up the scale of education and personal efficiency in the next two or three decades. It is not difficult to collect reasons for supposing—and such reasons have been collected—that in the near future, in a couple of hundred years, as one rash optimist has written, or in a thousand or so, humanity will be definitely and conscientiously organising itself as a great world-state—a great world-state that will purge from itself much that is mean, much that is bestial, and much that makes for individual dulness and dreariness, greyness and wretchedness in the world of to-day; and although we know that there is nothing final in that world-state, although we see it only as something to be reached and passed, although we are sure there will be no such sitting down to restore and perfect a culture as the positivists foretell, yet few people can persuade themselves to see anything beyond that except in the vaguest and most general terms. That world-state of more vivid, beautiful, and eventful people is, so to speak, on the brow of the hill, and we cannot see over, though some of us can imagine great uplands beyond and something, something that glitters elusively, taking first one form and then another, through the haze. We can see no detail, we can see nothing definable, and it is simply, I know, the sanguine necessity of our minds that makes us believe those uplands of the future are still more gracious
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