Looking Backward
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Historical Section Shawmut College, Boston,
December 26,
2000
Living as we do in the closing year of the twentieth century, enjoying the
blessings of a social order at once so simple and logical that it seems but the
triumph of common sense, it is no doubt difficult for those whose studies have
not been largely historical to realize that the present organization of society
is, in its completeness, less than a century old. No historical fact is,
however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth
century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all
its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little
patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem
that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since
then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval! The readiness with
which men accustom themselves, as matters of course, to improvements in their
condition, which, when anticipated, seemed to leave nothing more to be desired,
could not be more strikingly illustrated. What reflection could be better
calculated to moderate the enthusiasm of reformers who count for their reward on
the lively gratitude of future ages!
The object of this volume is to assist persons who, while desiring to gain a
more definite idea of the social contrasts between the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, are daunted by the formal aspect of the histories which treat the
subject. Warned by a teacher's experience that learning is accounted a weariness
to the flesh, the author has sought to alleviate the instructive quality of the
book by casting it in the form of a romantic narrative, which he would be glad
to fancy not wholly devoid of interest on its own account.
The reader, to whom modern social institutions and their underlying
principles are matters of course, may at times find Dr. Leete's explanations of
them rather trite—but it must be remembered that to Dr. Leete's guest they were
not matters of course, and that this book is written for the express purpose of
inducing the reader to forget for the nonce that they are so to him. One word
more. The almost universal theme of the writers and orators who have celebrated
this bimillennial epoch has been the future rather than the past, not the
advance that has been made, but the progress that shall be made, ever onward and
upward, till the race shall achieve its ineffable destiny. This is well, wholly
well, but it seems to me that nowhere can we find more solid ground for daring
anticipations of human development during the next one thousand years, than by
"Looking Backward" upon the progress of the last one hundred.
That this volume may be so fortunate as to find readers whose interest in the
subject shall incline them to overlook the deficiencies of the treatment is the
hope in which the author steps aside and leaves Mr. Julian West to speak for
himself.