H. G. Wells "Science and the World Mind", 1942

This means that before taking an interest in something, doing something, responding to all sorts of calls, often stupid, it is desirable to put things in order in your mind: get acquainted, and what is already in the world, what has been created? And why, of course. There will be fewer mistakes and disappointments. Read it.

H. G. Wells "Science and the World Mind", 1942.

First of all, I intend to repeat again a number of provisions that I have repeatedly expressed over the past few years. They seem to me the most important of all that can be said about our life and the modern world. And, nevertheless, most of those to whom they have become known clearly do not attach importance to them. They are not discussed; they are not argued about. People simply behave as if nothing has been said.

This "blindness" to words, this dismissive unwillingness to speak out, is what I want to talk about in my article. I ask you to pay attention to what I will call "world public opinion" here, which is by no means a coherent system of views; this is all irresponsible, inconsistent chatter; we express and shout out some thoughts, and neither one attaches importance to what the other says. If some mighty, superhuman intelligence somewhere in space asked: "What is Man, Homo sapiens, thinking about now?" "He's feverish," would be the answer. – He's delirious. He used to just mumble something, but now he wakes up with pain, and he spoke louder."

"For what purpose?"

"Without any purpose. He just says one thing, then another, without even pausing to reflect on his own words."

I will allow myself to return to some of my judgments, which clearly did not convince anyone of anything.

First. Over the past forty years, a radical revolution has taken place in the conditions of human existence. They have changed so radically that Homo sapiens can no longer live as it has lived for the past tens of millennia. Like any other animal species, it must adapt to these changed conditions or perish as a species. It can either completely die out, or take some new or new forms. There is nothing to assume that it will remain as it is. The only question is whether he will be able to adapt so quickly that he will have time to become a progressive super-Homo – dominant species – or at least degenerate into a certain subspecies of man, or he will not be able to adapt at all, and he will come to an end.

I will allow myself to dwell on this in a little more detail, and remind you of one phenomenon that is constantly observed in ecology.

The whole history of the past, in general, suggests that the human race cannot survive. In the past, dominant orders, groups of species, as a rule, disappeared from the face of the earth during their heyday. The claim that they were ousted by rivals is an old environmental mistake. They simply failed to adapt. Their first reaction to the changed conditions was the appearance of random mutations, some of which existed for some time, but did not help the genus survive. Something similar happened, for example, with dinosaurs and dinotherias. They came to an end in their prime.

Is there any evidence that the creature we call Homo sapiens is not in danger of a similar fate? There is. It's his gift of speech. The proof is not the only one, but almost the only one. A person can be informed of all kinds of information. He has the ability to listen and learn. All other living beings are deprived of this ability. He adapts to new conditions a thousand times faster than any other animal. Nothing prevents each new generation of Homo sapiens from studying how the mind of its predecessors adapted to the changed conditions. Having changed his behavior, he can exist in new conditions, if they have not changed too much. I emphasize if they have not changed too much.

Thus, for several tens of thousands of years of its development, this peculiar animal has always kept pace with changing conditions. Inventions and discoveries also transformed the war and the economy, contributed to the expansion of social groups, but all this happened so quickly that Homo sapiens did not have time to rebuild spiritually. Up until 1900, humanity multiplied, and its dominance on our planet increased at a rate that no previous phase of animal evolution had ever known. A million years ago, various Hominidoe species were a group of rarely seen animals. In a short period of geological time, one of these species broke out of the darkness of obscurity to become, as they say, "the crown of creation." At the very zenith and at the peak of his dominance, he sowed the seeds of his biological collapse with the same speed.

Now let me return to the analysis of the events of the last forty-odd years.

Firstly, mainly thanks to aviation, radio and in general all means of communication and communication, what can be called the almost complete destruction of distance has occurred. Now the news is being learned almost simultaneously all over the globe. With good or bad intentions, people can transfer bombs, drugs and any goods from one end of the earth to the other in a day or a little over a day. Distances no longer serve to protect the sovereignty of individual States. Now the boundaries of one overlap the boundaries of the other. We live on each other's doorstep. In fact, humanity has become one community. In 1900, it would have been physically impossible to manage the affairs of humanity as a single, comprehensive world system. Governments could keep the peace in very large territories, but not on a global scale. The destruction of distance has now made this not only possible, but imperative, given the bomber aircraft and the total nature of modern warfare.

I turn to the second point: over the past forty years, our ability to extract and use material energy has grown amazingly. The world of 1900 was a world of comparative human failure. For the vast majority of people, it was a world of exhausting work, competition and almost inevitable social inequality. Now it is a world of inexhaustible resources of material energy. The need for hard physical labor is steadily decreasing, and will soon disappear altogether. There is no longer a need for people who are untrained or familiar with only one specialty; they must also be mentally adapted to an ever-changing world. To meet its demands, fewer and fewer people are required, limited by the concept of ownership and methods of financing, which have remained almost the same as in the last century. The conditions of existence have changed radically, and we are just beginning to change the system of our behavior.

Therefore, the most pressing social problem has become the so-called problem of unemployment. Everywhere there is an excess of young people full of energy, for whom the modern world cannot provide any tolerable life. They can easily be incited to all sorts of outrages, and they easily fall under any influence if it promises them at least some hope or entertainment. The last forty years have been mainly the story of the destruction of the old political and social system by these crazy, misguided, restless young people. Hooligans, Apaches, "moonlayers" (Members of the Irish Land League who, in protest, destroyed the crops and cattle of English landowners at night.) and anarchists of the end of the last century have now given way to gangsters, Ku Klux Klansmen's and the like. They created illegal organizations. They got close to the politicians, and their malicious terrorism spread to entire countries, to the whole world. Thirst for power, reckless rebellion because of broken hopes – these are the forces that unleashed the most monstrous war in the history of mankind.

The decrepit, dying social and political system under which, we live has not provided for such a situation, and has not taken any measures to save. In America, they said, "Go West, young man." But the young man has already reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and looks across the sea at the overpopulated islands of Japan. In the UK and Western Europe, we talked: "Emigrate, emigrate!" But all the lands that could be turned into colonies have already been captured, and when the Germans demand "Lebensraum" (living space (German)), their plans apparently boil down to colonization on the corpses of other peoples.

In the past, with less abundance, young people did not find themselves in such a plight: a life of servitude opened up before them, but in abundance, and small principalities and duchies from time-to-time discharged wars with excessive tension. Our rulers also find no other way out than to start a war, and they allowed a massacre in which three to four million of these bankrupt young people were killed in a hundred days. However, in our social disorder, this kind of temporary measure does not save anything. The war nowadays is not limited to the destruction of young people alone, the viability of the whole society is falling. Population reduction does not solve the problem. With a smaller population and fewer opportunities for control, the number of dissatisfied young people remains proportionally unchanged. Soon, when this stupid, senseless war ends with some equally stupid, unplanned world, the problem of young people without any prospects will face us even more menacingly.

Our society will have to face a whole generation of people who have only been taught to fight, and these people will ask us: "What are you going to do with us now?"

Are we ready for this critical situation? I have learned that Lord Race and Mr. Greenwood are developing plans for the reconstruction of the world, and I have some information about how they are going to redesign the world. Only one thing is more or less definitely known: that the construction of houses along our highways should be avoided… Well, and then? I dare say that this has nothing to do with the demands of young people whom we have trained to kill, and only to kill. They will come back, these young people, impatient, as only young people can be impatient, and ask: "Well, what are you going to do for us this time?".

What are we going to do for them this time?

Due to the reduction of distances, due to the fact that we are being pressed by the uncontrolled accumulation of wealth, the modern state is increasingly beginning to resemble an old, venerable ship that has already served its time on international sea routes and which has now been hastily equipped with new powerful engines that do not correspond to the strength of its hull, and sent on a long dangerous voyage. And these engines are blowing the old vessel to pieces at full speed.

So far, I have been repeating the obvious things, although for some reason they are completely ignored even now. Now I will allow myself to turn to the third most important aspect of modern difficulties, which is also almost not given importance in that hodgepodge of loyal and fanatical propaganda, full of prejudices and anecdotal information, which in our schools and universities is called "history". Namely, modern states and communities are biologically quite different organisms than those that provided the material for our outdated history textbooks. They are like mammals, and we still think of them as reptiles and amphibians, from which they originated.

Let's compare, for example, Elizabethan England with the England of our days. First of all, let's pay attention to the age ratio. The world of Elizabeth's time was a youthful world: despite the harsh natural selection among infants and children, the survivors, that is, the hardiest, rarely reached the age of seventy, and most often died under fifty. Childbirth and the burial of children were the main occupation of women. In those days there were no dentists, and as soon as a person lost a tooth, romance came to an end. Youth was truly fleeting. We would have put young Romeo in jail for getting engaged to Juliet before he reached marriageable age. Garbage littered the streets; plumbing was rare, and there was no water in the houses at all. Ordinary citizens were dirty, they smelled disgusting. Men carried weapons, using them in skirmishes and for self-defense. According to the norms of modern powerful democratic states, the public temperament was distinguished by vivacity, frivolity, courage and recklessness. And what was the situation in those days with the spread of literacy? The broad strata of the population were absolutely illiterate. In public affairs, they played a small role than dogs or livestock. They could be kept in subjection, and incited to mutiny, but they were completely ignorant. Political decisions were made by the Court, and the Church and the Law supplied ministers. The grammar schools of the time of King Edward produced one or two outstanding people from among the bourgeoisie, among whom the most remarkable was a certain William Shakespeare. Up until the Napoleonic Wars, the conduct of war, the organization and control of trade and commercial activities were beyond the reach of the general population. In these states and communities of the past, there were also great minds and thinkers, but the bulk of the population had nothing that could be called thinking or mind.

Now everything is different. Under the influence of the very forces that destroyed rough physical labor, literacy has seeped into the very bottom, and the whole society has already mastered knowledge. All classes have awakened, and are closely watching what is happening in the world. In our country, you will meet young people who studied with copper money, who spend days in public libraries, buy Penguin publications (Cheap books on various branches of knowledge.) and am much more educated than many young people of the old school, who still claim a monopoly in parliament.

There are two similar phenomena in modern England, which you would not have found even in the beginning in England during the time of Queen Elizabeth: I mean advertising and propaganda. Our school history textbooks tell us nothing about the rapid growth of mass production, mass trade and newspaper advertising in the last half of our century. They do not dare to say so as not to anger the mighty organizations of big business. But young people should know the truth. Only now, in the midst of a totalitarian war, we realized what a colossal impact this – the spread of advertising and propaganda – has on the worldview of all mankind. On the one hand, there is a system of old, deliberate deception, organized commercial deception, and deception that permeates soulless religious organizations, there is a tinsel of ranks and privileges that have long outlived themselves; this whole system is in contradiction with the crude realism of violence, intimidation, cruelty and lies. The war is between deceivers and executioners. But in this battle, it is only very approximately possible to determine the boundaries of the fighting sides. Only approximately. In contrast to this conflict, there is also the struggle of the intellectual minority, which seeks to extract reasonable life principles from this mess. This is the current state of minds all over the world, and that is why the fate of humanity is being decided in this propaganda war.

And now I will briefly dwell on what simple common sense tells us about the situation of humanity. It is quite obvious that when peace reigns on earth, we will need allied control over air transport and over international transportation of goods. Further, we must not allow our planet to be at the mercy of ruthless political and commercial arbitrariness, and this can be avoided by adopting Mr. Gifford Pinchot's project on the Federal Protection of World Resources. Thirdly, we must ensure that a clear Declaration of Human Rights becomes the basic law on our planet, which would ensure everyone a fair use of the available resources and would bring to everyone the consciousness that he is the owner of our land. Here is an obvious triple imperative that Homo sapiens will inevitably face.

This imperative is so clear that I will not waste my readers' time with unnecessary arguments. Another thing is not entirely clear – what is the reason that to most people these requirements seem either banal or ridiculous and unworkable, and why we are apparently powerless to make them the property of minds all over the world. First of all, the answer suggests itself that there is no reasonable world public opinion yet, but only universal dementia; that it is worth going beyond the boundaries of our relatively educated circles, and you will find yourself among backward, inconsistent screamers who are unable to realize what a fatal fate is in store for them. That is why I ask you to carefully understand the nature and peculiarities of possible world public opinion and ask yourself whether we have fully fulfilled our duty in this matter of human interaction – we, scientists and writers, who have certain grounds to consider ourselves the intellectual leaders of humanity.

I suggest you summon a certain spirit – right now – to take part in this discussion. Not the spirit of someone who lived on earth. This is a much more terrible ghost than the restless, unavenged, unburied poor man of old. This spirit is our contemporary, he is now standing next to me, questioning our claims, appealing to our strength and courage, this is a New world order, the very existence of which depends on us.

"You are talking," the Alien observes, "about a New World Order. But this is impossible without world public opinion. And world public opinion requires a common language in which people from one end of the federation could exchange thoughts with people living at the other end. What are you doing for this?"

We are doing so little for this that when we start discussing this issue at a conference of scientists, we will probably resurrect a lot of nonsense that should have been rejected many years ago.

For example, people are still sluggishly, automatically repeating that this minimum of a rational world order will deprive our white light of some beautiful diversity that exists now. "This terrible monotony!" they say.

I would ask them to take a closer look at the modern world and realize how deceptive this apparent diversity is. All over the world, from China to Peru, they will see a lot of young people who wear almost the same uniform and go through the same drill; in every city they will see the same anti-aircraft batteries, patrol airships, bomb shelters, and so on. Wherever they go, to the east or to the west, they will catch the eye of the same type of shops, guarded warehouses and standardized goods – humanity everywhere is brought to a deathly monotonous daily life. People live in the same houses, wear the same clothes, eat the same non-nutritious food, and poison themselves with the same patent medicines. And if a fine local craft flourished somewhere, then an uncontrolled powerful businessman-merchant took it into his hands, inflated the prices of materials, dyes, fabric, metal, etc., forged and vulgarized products. Meanwhile, the Federal Protection of National Resources and the Declaration of Human Rights and Human Dignity, strongly warning against leveling people, would seek to preserve and restore national identity. The World Federation – an association not only political, but economic and legal – means the inviolability of national characteristics throughout the world.

And now, in particular, about the language. We need a universal language in which the global interests of humanity would be discussed, an important mediator for political, scientific, philosophical and religious ties. It should be a great and flexible language, which, however, will not prevent anyone from being bilingual, or even a polyglot. In the recent past, in the world of irreconcilable monarchies and diplomats, which we need to get rid of in order not to perish, aggressive governments of various states, enslaving and assimilating foreign peoples, sought to displace local languages, which naturally caused hatred for the language of these aggressive powers. Boycotting the imposed language has become a matter of honor. But as soon as these attempts to eradicate local languages cease, there will also be no objections to giving international public opinion an international language. I imagine that everywhere on earth people will remain attached to their language, to their native language, the language of tender feelings, lyrical poetry and communication in a narrow circle. And why shouldn't an international language have a variety of intonations and pronunciation, as long as it doesn't interfere with understanding each other. I cannot imagine that the demand of our Newcomer from the world of the future to have an international language will stand in the way of the development of the mighty culture of ten thousand local languages – the more, the better – when they are freed from the unfortunate political arbitrariness.

Now I will allow myself to dwell on the main point of the problem and I want to ask whether we are really fulfilling our duty, we are sociologists, environmental specialists, a significant part of the members of the British Association, the world intelligentsia and people of our plan in general – are we doing everything in our power to resolve the issue of methods and organization this world public opinion embodied in an international language? This must be done urgently, and only we are able to develop a clear, definite plan for how to do it. What can we practically offer about this? Do we have anything ready-made that would not cause controversy? As far as I have been able to find out, we have only a bunch of unrelated, ill-conceived materials, some successful considerations and those unsurprising data that people respectfully listen to, declare that they are extremely encouraging, and forget about them.

I know that many of us are already beginning to realize that this is not enough, and they are increasingly demanding that we shake ourselves up and act together.

The degree of consistency of work varies in different spheres of human activity, united by sciences. In general, a lot has been done in the field of engineering and practical physics, medicine, chemistry and astronomy to coordinate forces. We will not meet people who build dams, build bridges, write recipes or report some new celestial phenomenon on a whim, based on scattered, unconfirmed ideas, on some encouraging observations, on something else of the same kind. When a person claims to have made a discovery or observation in these areas, his work is immediately checked by control experiments, confirmed, rejected or amended. The raw material does not give the right to a patent. These fields of science, which mark progress, are gaining strength from year to year.

The other day I saw a huge Leek telescope being made in Pasadena, and it seemed to me a perfect and grandiose creation. He inspires almost awe. There, in front of this product of colossal will and wisdom, I felt like a pygmy. And yet, believe me, the creation of a telescope is a matter of much less importance than our business of coordinating the thoughts and tasks of humanity.

What can we offer our Alien and the whole world?

The question of an international language occupied people's minds long before I was born, and several so-called artificial auxiliary languages were invented – Esperanto, Ido and the like. They absorbed some amount of mental energy, and quite solid organizations were created, so that for a Japanese Esperantist, for example, who came to Peru, or Norway, or South Africa, it became possible to have a conversation with one or two experts in this language. But knowing Esperanto will not help him at all to talk to other people of these countries. It's like being a member of an international chess association. It reminds me of those mysterious moths that search for their females at a great distance. But I still don't know how to achieve communication between all people. Obviously, we, whose direct duty it is to develop projects and programs and communicate new facts to the whole world – if we had the same desire to act together as representatives of more applied sciences – could have long ago put things in order in these countless projects of artificial languages; we could have decided what social conditions are favorable for them, and which are harmful, and to determine where to stop our already losing patience Alien.

Along with these mental exercises, attempts are being made to explore the possibility of using any of the existing languages as an international one, but in a simpler, simplified form. A lot of people worked on these projects in isolation. The experiment with Basic English (A system of teaching English based on the limitation of its vocabulary.) is extremely valuable – the work that we associate with the names of Ogden, Richards and others. In general, most people tend to believe that English should be used as the basis for an international language – I emphasize, not as an international language, but as a basis. Its wide distribution all over the world at the present time, the absence of declensions and the simplicity of grammar, the ability to assimilate foreign words speak in favor of such a project. Against him, one can put forward a rigid aristocratic conservatism, which still plays a big role in the English education system – zealously classical and caste-based – which not only does not contribute to this kind of dissemination of the language, but stubbornly resists it.

It is quite obvious that before offering English to the Future World, it is necessary to change its spelling. It has become obvious not now, we have known about it for a long time, but the Future is persistently knocking at the door, and what do we have ready for it? And here again we have an urgent task to unite our efforts and achieve some definite solutions.

The works of various spelling schools appear on my desk – they all despise each other– and after a fierce struggle they are sent to the paper basket. Let's start with the D. Billings school, which, for some vague, perhaps financial reasons, insists that there should be only twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and not one more. I confess, for me it is as convincing as the letter of an illiterate drunkard. Our alphabet covers only a little more than half of the sounds necessary for international communication. And in the field of phonetics there is complete confusion, impenetrable jungle of new concepts.

In this matter, as in most others, I am not an expert at all, but in my time, I was lucky enough to have a lot of conversations with two very gifted, passionately passionate people about this issue – Sir Harry Johnston and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Shaw has a keen ear and is obsessed with phonetics. He, of course, understands this much better than me. And he says that for an alphabet that would meet the requirements of an international language, about forty-one letters are needed. This, apparently, is not far from the truth. But have we done anything to combine efforts and create a single alphabet, develop a standard key to it and put it into circulation? Of course, we need clear, definite letters, which cannot be confused with one another or with fuzzy letters already known to us. We don't need a letter that reads like B in one language and F or C in another, which means K in one language and S in another, we don't need a single E combining a short modest eta with a lush epsilon and so on. Common sense tells us all this. But how much has been done in this area and what are we doing?

In any of the countless phonetic projects, you will discover the most unthinkable ways of phonetic transcription. Ordinary letters are printed upside down, standing obliquely and just lying down; having exhausted the entire typesetting register, poor workers are attracted by bold font, italics, mathematical notation, and frenzied punctuation marks. Fonts, of course, are not enough, and this leads to the fact that most phonetic alphabets are simply ridiculous. But world public opinion cannot do without a phonetic alphabet. So, in this case, there is a lot of work to be done on coordination.

I want to focus on one more side of the issue of creating world public opinion. We are talking about the meaning or semantics of words, in the study of which another important, as yet uncoordinated shift is planned. We are gradually beginning to understand what jokes words can play on us. Books such as The Tyranny of Words, for example, encourage many people to study the verbal material more thoroughly: they imagined that they were thinking and exchanging thoughts, whereas in reality they simply exchanged outdated, worn-out coins that should be withdrawn from circulation. I will not name names and lavish compliments, because I am not so well oriented to determine who is who in this extremely important field. However, my knowledge is enough to understand that the notorious dictionary of the English language, which the speakers of its offer to the world as the best means of expressing thoughts, is actually a big swindler, a giant, who is no more useful than Tristram Shandy's bull; and at the same time a cheeky swindler, because he strikes our imagination with shiny armor a lot of vulgarity. Its only excuse is that in general it is not as bad as other possible international languages.

And what evil does the careless use of words bring us! In all ages, people for many years could not agree and tormented each other because of the conflict between science and religion. This has always been the cause of darkness and downtroddenness, persecution and persecution, and to this day brings us many troubles. And talking about it is like looking for a conflict between wild wildflowers and flowers on wallpaper. And yet you will meet a lot of people who are able to jump up irritably from their seats and say: "Oh, everyone knows what science is and what religion is."

In fact, hardly anyone knows this, otherwise there would not be this ridiculous antagonism. Personally, I think the word "science" is extremely deceptive, it has some kind of patina of complete categoricality, which does not correspond to its real essence at all. The first scientific publication in England was "Philosophical Works". If you were a member of the Royal Society at that time and started talking about "science" and "scientists", no one would understand what you mean by that. The word "religion" is even more vague. You can easily collect a dozen contradictory explanations of these words. And, of course, trouble was inevitable here.

The conflict over the inaccurate names "religion" and "science" is explained very simply. The clergy, who in the past directed and controlled the behavior of people, considered it necessary to have a mythology to interpret the moral conflict of humanity, and with this mythology they closely linked their moral code. And it based all explanations on guesses and only guesses, just like primitive people. It created a myth about the creation of the world and indicated its exact date, composed a story about paradise, sin and fall, and on this basis built a vast, complex system of its influence on humanity, making faith in this mythology the essence of religion and at the same time discarding many important aspects of religious life. Most religious conflicts, wars and persecutions were connected with the issues of determining the meaning of words. Let's remember how much blood was shed because of the word filioque (Filioque (Latin) "and from the son" – a Catholic addition to the "creed", was approved at the Toledo Church Council of 589; it was the cause of the struggle and constant strife between the Catholic and Greek-Byzantine churches; disputes are still being conducted by theologians.). Athanasian faith is a fantastic set of unthinkable definitions.

With the development of natural philosophy, the ancient far-fetched mythology began to cause doubt. People began to comprehend a new history of life in time, and this understanding threatened the clergy, its authority, dogmas, church ceremonies, its power over the destinies of people. The priests could not even admit the idea that religious life was possible without their cherished mythology, and, naturally, they did everything in their power to convince kind, simple-minded people who believed them that the new science meant the end of religion in general. Don't listen to her, don't study her.

Meanwhile, the expansion of knowledge about the great past and the indelible belief in the possibilities of humanity does not mean the end of religion, but rather its rebirth. But how this ill-conceived, rashly expressed thought hinders us! How cruelly we pay for a careless, irresponsible statement. In a world hungry for a single religion that can unite us with our fellow men, we still refuse to recognize this thirst and tolerate dead religions, as dead and untenable as the languages they cling to. Just as financial and proprietary interests, obsolete customs of the dead past are fighting against the obvious need to protect the world's resources, just as governments with their narrow state borders are waging a desperate struggle against universal federal peace, so powerful religious organizations are the very people who in their hearts said to themselves "there is no God," and they publicly defend a monopoly on his name – they use any confusion of minds to hinder the development of the solidarity of science and religion, the solidarity that the world needs so much now.

In this regard, there is another urgent task that needs to be solved now and together, namely: it is necessary to introduce critical research of the meaning of words into the practice of language learning in schools and colleges as soon as possible. I myself began to understand what language is only at school, when I began to learn sentence analysis. We should supplement such classes with semantic analysis. It is necessary to teach teenagers to always ask themselves the question: "What do the expressions I use mean? What is their meaning? And what false ideas are mixed with them?" Knowledge of semantics can be a reliable protection for our children from the hopeless nonsense that prevents the world from freeing itself from its current dementia.

And now let's turn to one more side of the question of the organization of a reasonable world public opinion.

We want to bring together all the world's information and create a reference body for world public opinion. Humanity should not only think clearly and express its thoughts, but also have access on a global scale to the entire volume of knowledge and ideas that it has ever had.

Something is already being done in this regard; only a general energetic effort is needed, and we will provide a material basis, registering units for this most important factor of world public opinion.

It is very difficult to list everything that has been done and what is being done in this area. And much more is being done than many intelligent people think. And now, I believe, we are able to collect all the material, everything that has been done, talk about it, and win enough prestige for ourselves to attract funds and provide public support. I tried-perhaps in a journalistic clumsy and unattractive way-to mentally put these materials together. I used the term "world encyclopedia" to cover the accumulated samples of thought, art and science in its entirety. My encyclopedia would be much more important than the outdated, poorly planned "Encyclopedia Britannica", which is still in demand. It would include all museums, art galleries, collections of documents, atlases, materials for studying the universe. In its present form, it is a huge, scattered – or, let's say, poorly assembled – hard-to-access treasure trove of knowledge, and our first attempts to attack it should be aimed at providing an index to all this initial material.

In this sense, much has been done under the general name "documentation". I know this mainly through Professor Pollard, Dr. S.K. Bradford and their assistants. This organization is almost as international as the British Association. Recently, a conference was held in London, attended by delegations from many countries, and during the last Paris exhibition, I had the opportunity to attend a congress whose participants came from more than thirty countries. In the more systematized sciences, unnecessary coincidences and repetitions have already been largely eliminated, and documentation is steadily being reduced to ever wider invaluable catalogs.

Along with this, every effort is being made to record as much accumulated knowledge as possible, and to protect these records from the hurricane of senseless destruction that is sweeping over our planet now. Micrography is being used more and more widely for this purpose. And here, especially interesting and promising work is being done by my old friend Dr. Kenneth Mies from the Kodak Company and Watson Davis from the Washington Scientific Society. Now it is possible to fit an entire library into a small box, and in this way a significant part of early English literature has already been collected, packed, and stored. We now have the opportunity to reproduce natural colors. Any painting, building, mechanism or animal can be shown in its natural color and in motion, and since the possibilities of reproduction and distribution of such material are truly limitless, nothing prevents us from sending such films to students in the manner of a mobile library in any part of the world. This is the destruction of distance in the intellectual plan.

Please note, no one can laugh at this anymore, and call it fantastic nonsense. Such work is actually underway, only organization and money are needed to cover the entire volume of human knowledge and thought with it. This is what can be done by joint efforts now with the entire mass of intellectual accumulations of mankind.

But this is only one, the most important part of the world encyclopedia. All this mass of accumulations should bear fruit, such material should be constantly processed and assimilated. The world public opinion needs it to be taken into account and rethought; but there are many repetitions and mistakes here – many data are too contradictory and ridiculous, or are displaced by others, better expressed, or no longer have any value. Don't destroy them. Let them lie in the attic. They may be needed; the needs of world public opinion include both generalization and analysis, and for this it is necessary that hundreds and thousands of people constantly update and redevelop these general and private data. This is the idea we have when we say "encyclopedia", but if I had the opportunity to go back to the beginning, I would abandon the term "world encyclopedia" and replace it with the words "World Institute of Thought and Knowledge".

We have several special encyclopedias of considerable value, but general encyclopedias have remained at the level of samples from a century ago for too long. They have been turned into a profitable commodity, and it is unlikely that we would err against the truth if we say that they are collections of various materials put together according to the taste of the bookseller. However, France – bless her! – I did a great job. The Encyclopedia de Monzie, which was published before the occupation of the country, is a brilliant attempt to create an orderly, modern picture of the world. I have the first eleven volumes, and I hope to have them all someday. I took them to a respectable, very respectable English publisher and asked him why we should not translate these books in order to distribute them among two hundred and fifty million – if not more – people who speak and read English. "I don't think such an edition will pay off," he replied, and stopped the conversation. So that's it. For him, this was the decisive measure. Our Association should explain the urgent need for a modern encyclopedia and achieve its publication in conditions that do not depend on the arbitrariness of merchants.

I will not indulge in dreams, describing how a constantly updated, modernized universal encyclopedia becomes the basis of the education system in the world community. After all, amazingly little has been done yet. Even in the charming, eye-pleasing rural colleges established in Cambridge shire, most books are rubbish, and most of all reference books. Go to any of these places, imagining that you are a boy of twelve or thirteen years old and eagerly reaching for knowledge, and see what kind of literature will be offered to you. It seems to me that it would be useful for many of the pundits from time to time to put themselves in the place of an inquisitive boy who wants to know everything, and check which books are provided to him in an industrial center or in rural areas. Meanwhile, who should be educated, if not these inquisitive boys and girls! He or she is the only living reality compared to corporate hats and robes (Academic clothes of English professors and students.), academic degrees, titles and claims.

They say the world's population is two thousand million and Egyptian slave labor has become ridiculous. We have to train all these people and unite them. Just think what that means! How many educated teachers will be needed for every two thousand people, even with the maximum use of radio, cinema and gramophone. How many spiritual mentors and healers of spiritual wounds? What kind of mental support will they need? You will be able to answer these questions more accurately than I can.

In my article, I tried to soberly assess the true situation of humanity, but now everyone is beginning to understand that this true picture is gloomy, and even monstrous, not only from the standpoint of common sense, but from any point of view.

I tried to put forward something like the idea of a giant enterprise that people are called to carry out, people of our and only our plan. The British Association, and, in particular, its department of social and international scientific relations, as well as similar organizations around the world have opportunities to unite our frivolous world and turn it into a reasonable effective intelligence. The Association is independent and well organized. It consists of various departments that provide an opportunity for the fullest exchange of scientific experience between people working in certain scientific fields. At the same time, its doors are open to any educated person from the outside who wants to listen and learn. There is absolutely no aristocratic isolation of the Royal Society in it. My old teacher Thomas Huxley said more than once that the elementary course he taught for students was the most valuable training for him, because it obliged him to review his own research work in the light of general biology and the general picture of our life. In organizations like the British Association and related institutions, a specialist can teach and learn while remaining humane. It can remain an organic element of world public opinion.

There are not many of us, and the world is relatively large. This is not a reason for cowardice. The greatest thing in life began with the embryo. We are a humble beginning, capable of moving a spiritual avalanche that will cleanse the world for a new life. We are able to start it, and if we don't, no one will. Only people of our plan can do this.

Some of you will say: "Dreams. Impossible dreams!"

Maybe it is. It may very well be impossible. But I tell you, if you don't share these dreams, if you don't do everything possible to realize them during the short time we have left, then instead of waking up, new nightmares will fall on you, on you and your loved ones, on everyone who is dear to you.

I don't know what someone who belongs to a species that has failed to adapt feels. I have lived my seventy-five years in an era of progress, but I can imagine how bitterly our children and your children's children, all the young growth, will pay with shame, need and deprivation; I can imagine their life, ugly, unhealthy, bestial, while Nature, without haste and without delay, as is typical of her, she will not sweep them off the face of the earth.

I could have left it at that. It's a spectacular ending, spectacular from a literary point of view; but it's not entirely justified. This is the natural course of things. I believe that we are still heading towards collapse, towards extinction, but we should not be discussing the course of things, but something more definite, and here we will have to face two most difficult problems – quantitative definitions, temporary definitions and the still barely noticeable process of development of mass psychology. It is possible that we are entering an intermediate phase of mental fatigue and a phase of hypocritical, duplicitous religious wars. When I say religious wars, I mean, of course, the crusades and predatory wars that are being waged in the name of dead religions that still burden our planet. A dead religion is like a dead cat: the more ossified and rotten it is, the better it is a throwing weapon. The unrest and unrest caused by these wars can here and there create conditions for reasonable, persistent people to implement this eternal task – to develop the structure of world order and world public opinion. This is not an excuse to delay, but it convinces us that hope must be combined with determination to fulfill the task that the Alien from the Future sets before us.

I'm not going to apologize that I wrote an article that wasn't original at all. I have not made a single proposal that has not been tested in practice and the feasibility of which has not been proven; even my main idea about the coherence of efforts is only an echo of what is being done by the Branch of the British Association for Social International Scientific Relations. My role was to state and attract attention. I am something of a BBC announcer. I just summed it up. We transmit the latest news from scientists around the world in 1941. This is the quintessence of what scientists can tell the world. And we have to say it firmly and clearly. We, the workers of intellectual labor, must decide whether we will become like Greek slaves and do what our masters, gangsters and speculators order us to do, or take our rightful place as masters and servants of the peoples of the whole world.

I prepared the above as an introductory speech at the final meeting of the department devoted to the topic "Science and world public Opinion" at a conference convened by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in London on September 27, 1941; I was invited as chairman. In my report, I tried to summarize the results, present the problem of world public opinion, unite the uncoordinated elements and propose something like a single plan of action, to which the authority of the British Association would give weight.

I understood that the meeting at which I was supposed to preside was the rarest – perhaps unique – opportunity to achieve unity on the issue of influencing humanity, because the lack of unity, as I argued in my article, is the greatest of the evils that we have to face. We have a lot of wonderful thoughts expressed, constructive experiments are conducted, but in case of contradictions, we – by the word "we" I mean the world of science in the broadest sense, as it is represented by the Association – do not know how to solve them in any way effectively and together. We are too individualistic. We don't listen to each other in order to reach mutual understanding. One talks about such and such an aspect, the second focuses on another, and as a result, the algebraic sum of our guiding influence on the world is negligible.

"Is it possible to restore order in this most important issue?" I asked. Sir Richard Gregory, in his opening speech at the opening of the conference, showed that this can be done, that we are able to make a determined effort to reach maximum agreement; and that at the final meeting we could focus on his speech and derive considerable benefit from it.

We had a lot of conversations on the sidelines before this problem took a definite form. When I told the organizers that I wanted to open the meeting with a report, for forty-five minutes or even more, they replied that it was impossible. Since my speech was intended to summarize and sum up, I zealously protested. The work of the conference took place in new conditions, under conditions of great tension, but it seemed to me that we were facing the danger of coming to what my report was directed against, namely, to inconsistent statements and declarations that would lead us to nothing. Our chairman fully agreed with me on this. He agreed that it would not be possible to withstand the regulations, and he would have to ask for additional time. After all, it may happen that we will contradict each other, and there will not be enough time to reconcile our differences.

But the organizers of the conference were in a difficult situation – time was limited, and there were a lot of reports, and we reconciled on a compromise: in the hope that later the report would be printed, we decided to reproduce it on a mimeograph and distribute it to the participants of the last afternoon meeting, as well as to those who would like to read it. In the fifteen-minute introductory speech provided to me, I could only list the main theses of my main report and make a few comments on the opinions expressed during the two and a half days of fruitful work of the conference that passed after my report was prepared.

Bernal, for example, expressed thoughts that coincided so much with mine that it seemed to me that he was reading my report. But after all, we talked a lot with him, and these words became our common ones – mine to the same extent as his. And I heard several speakers, for example, Professor A.V. Hill, Mr. Maysky, J. B. Halden, who spoke more vividly and decisively on the issues that I tried to raise. I added: "If I had been given time, I would, of course, have amended my report, taking into account some very important messages that we have heard here. I think many of us were deeply impressed by Sir John Orr's approach to the world problem as a food problem. This is a completely new point of view, and currently it can find a warm response in American agriculture. The presentation of Sir John Orr was illustrated by several reports, of which, in my opinion, the most striking were the reports of Sir John Russell and Mr. Noel Bakers. Sir John Orr has the clarity, simplicity and power of scientific thinking. His report was, I think, the most recent and valuable of all the wonderful speeches that we have heard here. There is no need to force-feed human beings, he told us, put the best within their reach and they will take everything themselves. His idea, I would like to emphasize, is by no means limited to material food.

Dr. Jennings White expressed some brilliant thoughts about education. He said that in this sense, in any case, there is no difference between soul and body. Put the material, diverse and abundant, in front of an intelligent, naturally inquisitive person – and there will be no need for that disgusting cramming, which we call "education". Instead of the word "training", he used the old medical term "eutrophy" (good nutrition (lat.)), I admit, I really like this definition. I hope and believe that our thought and will are gradually turning to the eutrophic world.

In these last three days, I also realized that material necessity prevails over human activity, traditions, and prejudices, and I would undoubtedly correct my report and stop there. The material necessity that has everywhere influenced collective behavior in the last third of the century is the need to regulate the amount of precipitation and conserve the energy of water and land. We will not forget the very recent tragedy of the Dnieper dam. But dams should be built by states with any form of government, communist Russia, as well as individualistic America. And although Lord Haley, a supporter of extreme paternalism, apparently does not suspect that the statute of Westminster weakened the British Empire, which was revealed even when Lord Haley was surveying Africa and studying the issue of our responsibility for Africa, the meaning of the same physical material necessity was evident from his words. From the excellent report presented by the Tennessee Valley Authority, it is clear that the dam – that is, the application of technical science – is revolutionizing human life. It was interesting to hear Professor Albin Hansen prove that, no matter what, it is possible to continue to make a profit from housing construction. I believe, however, that most of us will agree with the well-reasoned criticism of Mr. H.P. Vowles, who broke this statement. We can say that the dam is necessary for the person himself, for his own salvation he must be restrained.

As you can see, the world problem can be approached from a variety of angles, depending on your mindset. All roads lead to the federal structure of the world. Protecting humanity from all sorts of Blitzkriegs (lightning war (German)) is, for example, my approach; however, you can approach this problem from the point of view of protecting natural resources or distributing food. If your arguments are consistent and strictly scientific, if you do not distract from the topic, then, in the end, we will all agree on the future of humanity. I happened to see all sorts of symbolic figures representing science – mostly they were appetizing ladies, very frivolously dressed. Personally, I would prefer that the learned mind be depicted as a dog, a cross between a bulldog and a terrier, which unclenches its jaws only in order to squeeze them tighter.

I, in any case, should not be sprayed. Our task is to be practical. Our task is to unite, therefore I welcome Sir Richard's proposal to create special committees to summarize everything that has been done at this and previous conferences, and to compile a report that would reflect a well–thought-out scientific point of view on the issues raised, provided, of course, that these committees are not too cumbersome, immediately they will get to work and focus on compiling the report.

In my article, I avoided any idealistic or unrealistic statements. This is a practical study. From beginning to end, this is a summary.

Since the time of Buddha and Confucius, many beautiful and noble words have been said about freedom, justice, equality and brotherhood of people. I have been told – not always by the highest authorities – that we are imbued with these ideas and that our task is to translate them into material form. This is a more difficult task. The liberation of world public opinion practically did not begin at all when these great aspirations were determined. It began with the invention of paper and the printing press. Our task is to promote these ideas, and the less we dilute them with rhetoric, the less we wander into the wilds of disunity, the better it will be.