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Mankind in the Making by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
page 228 of 322 (70%)
speak frankly, Fear. We know, very many of us, that our present state
has many evil aspects, seems unjust and wasteful of human happiness, is
full of secret and horrible dangers, abounding in cruelties and painful
things; that our system of sanctions and prohibitions is wickedly
venial, pressing far more gravely on the poor than on the rich, and
that it is enormously sapped by sentimentalities of various sorts and
undermined and qualified by secret cults; it is a clogged and an ill-
made and dishonest machine, but we have a dread, in part instinctive,
in part, no doubt, the suggestion of our upbringing and atmosphere, of
any rash alterations, of any really free examination of its
constitution. We are not sure or satisfied where that process of
examination may not take us; many more people can take machines to
pieces than can put them together again. Mr. Grant Allen used to call
our current prohibitions Taboos. Well, the fact is, in these matters
there is something that is probably an instinct, a deeply felt
necessity for Taboos. We know perhaps that our Taboos were not devised
on absolutely reasonable grounds, but we are afraid of just how many
may not collapse before a purely reasonable inquiry. We are afraid of
thinking quite freely even in private. We doubt whether it is wise to
begin, though only in the study and alone. "Why should we--? Why
should we not--?" And the thought of a public discussion without
limitations by a hasty myriad untrained to think, does, indeed, raise
an image of consequences best conveyed perhaps by that fine indefinite
phrase, "A Moral Chaos." These people who are for the free, frank, and
open discussion assume so much; they either intend a sham with foregone
conclusions, or they have not thought of all sorts of things inherent
in the natural silliness of contemporary man.

On the whole I think a man or woman who is no longer a fabric of pure
emotion may, if there is indeed the passion for truth and the clear
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