Looking Backward: 2000-1887 Read online

  AUTHOR'S PREFACE

  Historical Section Shawmut College, Boston,December 26, 2000.

  Living as we do in the closing year of the twentieth century, enjoyingthe blessings of a social order at once so simple and logical that itseems but the triumph of common sense, it is no doubt difficult forthose whose studies have not been largely historical to realize thatthe present organization of society is, in its completeness, less thana century old. No historical fact is, however, better established thanthat till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the generalbelief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shockingsocial consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a littlepatching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible doesit seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as hastaken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief aninterval? The readiness with which men accustom themselves, asmatters of course, to improvements in their condition, which, whenanticipated, seemed to leave nothing more to be desired, could not bemore strikingly illustrated. What reflection could be bettercalculated to moderate the enthusiasm of reformers who count for theirreward on the lively gratitude of future ages!

  The object of this volume is to assist persons who, while desiring togain a more definite idea of the social contrasts between thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, are daunted by the formal aspectof the histories which treat the subject. Warned by a teacher'sexperience that learning is accounted a weariness to the flesh, theauthor has sought to alleviate the instructive quality of the book bycasting it in the form of a romantic narrative, which he would be gladto fancy not wholly devoid of interest on its own account.

  The reader, to whom modern social institutions and their underlyingprinciples are matters of course, may at times find Dr. Leete'sexplanations of them rather trite,--but it must be remembered that toDr. Leete's guest they were not matters of course, and that this bookis written for the express purpose of inducing the reader to forgetfor the nonce that they are so to him. One word more. The almostuniversal theme of the writers and orators who have celebrated thisbi-millennial epoch has been the future rather than the past, not theadvance that has been made, but the progress that shall be made, everonward and upward, till the race shall achieve its ineffable destiny.This is well, wholly well, but it seems to me that nowhere can we findmore solid ground for daring anticipations of human development duringthe next one thousand years, than by "Looking Backward" upon theprogress of the last one hundred.

  That this volume may be so fortunate as to find readers whose interestin the subject shall incline them to overlook the deficiencies of thetreatment is the hope in which the author steps aside and leaves Mr.Julian West to speak for himself.