This book is a frank criticism of most of the dominant ideas andinstitutions of our time: a confession of faith in nearly all the moredaring heresies which hold, so to say, the firing line of ourliterature: a conception of a new social order and new planetaryarrangement. It is therefore candidly egoistic, and I should like toexplain the circumstances in which it was designed and written.
It was conceived, and much of it was written, during the long voyagefrom Australia to England. At that time I had issued, if I may includethe introduction to English readers of foreign writers, some fiftypublications, and in these I had generally described remote periods ofhistory, or even remoter periods of the earth’s story or distantregions of the universe. Many had asked me to tell them things moreintimate and important than the way in which stars were formed, or themanners of extinct Dinosaurs and ancient empresses: asked if thirtyyears’ study of philosophy, science, and history had given me nointerest in, or light upon, the problems of the hour. In Australasiathis request was made more insistently than ever. Our ancientprejudices have been transplanted into the soil of the new world, andthey have thriven there, like the gorse, the sparrow, the rabbit, andso many other pests which sentimental colonists have introduced inorder to remind them of “home.” But new ideas also have beenimported, and they find a rich soil in the free, unconventional,enterprising colonial mind. Men and women are asking the samequestions there as in London and New York.
The general drift or implication of these questions obsessed me dailyduring the slow traverse of the Southern Ocean. Day after day thegreat liner visibly rounded this vast ball of metal which we call ourearth; and to me there is no more impressive symbol than this of thepower and the future of man. Some complain that at sea they feel theearth and man and man’s concerns made trivial by the great fireswhich blaze through the darker sky. But largeness is not greatness,and a vast prairie in some inaccessible region does not make lessprecious the little plot of earth at your door that you can makebeautiful. Your predominant feeling, when you round the globe and seewith your own eye its limitations, is one of power. This sphere, youfeel, is the principality of man; and there never was a power sodespotic and far-reaching as the power of a united race would be. Youfed as if the earth could be embraced in the arms of a giant, andhumanity is the giant. If men were agreed in their designs, the earthwould be as clay in the hand of the potter. It would prove as passiveand tractable as the child’s ball of plasticine—if all, or thegreat part of, men and women were agreed as to the shape it wasdesirable to impose on it. In our age differences of ideal restrainthe hand and prevent us from giving a fairer face to the earth. Thepower of a united mankind would be something akin to omnipotence.Every man or woman who has seen the earth with this larger vision mustseethe with impatience to end this conflict of old traditions and newideas which paralyses our hands; to do what he or she can toaccelerate that final harmony of conviction which will set free thefingers of the Great Potter. That is the controlling sentiment of thislittle book.
It happens that, before the book reaches the public, one of thosetraditions which it assails has spread a ghastly devastation over theface of the earth. For nearly twenty years I have used my slenderopportunities as speaker and writer to denounce the military machine:to imagine the mighty resources we waste