Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/171

 qualities as men possess now, there would be a tremendous increase in happiness due to the contentment of belonging to one common comprehensible whole, of knowing that one played a part and a worthy part in an immortal and universal task. The merest handful of people can look with content upon the tenor of their lives to-day. A few teachers are perhaps aware that they serve God rightly, a few scientific investigators, a few doctors and bridge-builders and makers of machinery, a few food-growers and sailors and the like. They can believe that they do something that is necessary, or build something which will endure. But most men and women to-day are like beasts caught in a tunnel; they follow base occupations, they trade and pander and dispute; there is no peace in their hearts; they gratify their lusts and seek excitements; they know they spend their lives in vain and they have no means of escape. The world is full of querulousness and abuse, derision and spite, mean tricks and floundering effort, vice without a gleam of pleasure and vain display, because blind Nature spews these people into being and there is no light to guide their steps. Yet there is work to be done by every one, a plain reason for that work, and happiness in the doing of it

"I do not know if any of us realise all that a systematic organisation of the human intelligence upon the work of research would mean for our race. People talk of the wonders that scientific work has given us in the past two hundred years, wonders of which for the most part we are too disordered and foolish to avail ourselves fully. But what scientific research