• By and By: an Historical Romance of the Future (Dentro em Breve: um Romance Histórico do Futuro). G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, Nova Iorque, 1873. 460 pp. Richard Bentley and Son, Londres, 1873. Tinsley Brothers, Londres, 1876.
Gregg Press (reimpressão da Primeira Edição),
Informação: Primeira
publicação em 1873, em três volumes. Este é o
terceiro romance de Edward Maitland, que foi precedido por The Pilgrim and the Shrine; or,
Passages from the Life and Correspondence of Herbert Ainslie (O Peregrino
e o Santuário; ou, Passagens da Vida e Correspondência de Herbert
Ainslie, 1869), e por Higher Law: a Romance (Lei
Superior: um Romance, 1871).
Edward
Maitland acreditava que os contos então existentes sobre o futuro
prediziam erroneamente que a ciência e a tecnologia iriam dominar e
destruir a humanidade. Com esse romance ele tenta corrigir essa visão
acerca da ciência e da tecnologia, apresentando uma futura sociedade
transformada pela tecnologia em um novo Éden. Essa edição
de 1876 inclui um prefácio de quatro páginas de Maitland, no qual
ele defende seu livro das críticas de que era apenas uma obra derivada
das obras The Coming
Race (A Raça Vindoura; de
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, uma das
mais importantes obras de ficção científica, publicada em
1871) e Erewhon (novela de Samuel
Butler).
A
seguir as páginas de título, com uma foto da página de
título principal, e os links para o texto completo da obra, em Html, em inglês.
Observação:
A revisão quanto aos erros de digitalização ainda
não está completa.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
___________
I.
THE PILGRIM AND THE SHRINE.
4th Edition, 12mo, cloth, $1.50
“One
of the wisest and most charming of books.” –
II.
HIGHER LAW. A ROMANCE.
12mo, cloth, $1.75
“There
is no novel, in short, which can be compared to it for its width of view, its
cultivation, its poetry, and its deep human interest. … except
‘Romola.’” –
“Its
careful study of character, and the ingenuity and independence of its
speculations, will commend it to the admiration even of those who differ from
its conclusions most gravely.” – British Quarterly Review.
G.
P. PUTNAM’S SONS, PUBLISHERS,
CONTEÚDO
_________
(p. iii)
_________
The Pilgrim and the Shrine and Higher Law present, respectively, the evolution of religion and morals out of the
contact of the external world with the human consciousness, as well as that of
the faculties themselves out of the lower instincts. Similarly, By
and By presents a state of
society in which the intuitions are promoted to their proper supremacy over
tradition and convention. In endeavoring to exhibit the capacity of Nature to
produce, unaided, and provided only that its best be given fair play, the
highest results in character, and conduct, and faith, the purpose of the entire
series shows itself to be no other than the rehabilitation of nature; a purpose
supremely religious, inasmuch as to rehabilitate nature is to rehabilitate the
Author of nature, – the failure of the work involving that of the maker.
To
find a society resting solely on the intelligence and moral sense of its
members, as developed by rational education, it was necessary to go to a yet
far distant future. By and By, then, is an attempt to depict the condition of the
world at a time when our own country, at least, shall have made such advance in
the solution of the problems which harass the present, and shall be so far
relieved of all disabling artifices, social, political,
(p. iv)
and religious, that
individuals will be able, without penalty or reproach, to fashion their lives
according to their own preferences, the sole external limitation being that
imposed by the law of equal liberty for all.
To
depict such a society without falling in the extravagances of Utopianism,
certain conditions must be observed, the main one of which is that human nature
be regarded as a “constant quantity.” Whatever the progress made in
knowledge and the art of living, all differences will be of degree, not of
kind. Wherefore, unless the period taken be very much in advance of that
contemplated in By and By, and altogether unthinkable by us, the conditions of
existence will still necessitate the production of types varying widely in
character and development, and therefore of lives consisting of efforts
resulting more or less in alternating failure and success. No matter how
severely scientific the training, there will still be a religious side to
man’s nature, a side through which the intuitions will seek towards their
source, and deem it to be found in the eternal consciousness, inherent in the
universe of being, that for them underlies all phenomena.
It
must be expected that, as in the past, so in the future, there will be men
endowed with a genius for that righteousness which recognizes a relation to the
whole as well as to the part, and as liable under the influence of enthusiasm
to transcend the bounds of strict sanity, and in their ecstacy
to confound their spiritual imaginings with their physical perceptions, –
as ever were founders of religions of old.
With regard to woman, it must be expected that no training
will prevent the emotional from still predominating in her constitution, and
retaining her in a position in respect to man relatively the same that she has
ever held. It must be
(p. v)
expected, too, that the first choice of the ideal man of the future, as
just described, will be the woman who most nearly for him represents nature,
genuine and unsophisticated; that though he will find such nature very winning
and sweet, he will also find it very perverse and wayward, and hard to arouse
to a sense of the ideal; but because it is true and genuine, and loves its
best, he will be tender and enduring to the end, no matter at what cost to
himself. I must be expected that the conflict between soul and sense will still
be illustrated in the facts and relations of life; that to much love much more
will be forgiven than now, when the compulsion is that of the sentiments and
not of law; and that while the selfishness, insincerity, and uncharity which characterize the mere conventional, will be
the sole unpardonable sins, and a moral jar be held as justifying divorce, even
these will be “vanishing qualities” under the gradual elimination
form society of the conditions which favour their development.
It
may be further surmised of such character as has been indicated, that, while
differing from his prototypes of the past in being rich instead of poor,
educated instead of untaught, married instead of single (for how else can he
afford a complete example of the ideal life to others?), his enthusiasm
expending itself on the practical, and his whole life illustrating the gospel,
that man is to be redeemed by works, inasmuch as he has it in his power to
amend the conditions of his own existence, he will not altogether escape the
fate that has ever befallen those who have been enthusiasts for humanity, and
that the sufferings which make perfect will not be wanting to him.
While
our Romance of the Future thus becomes in a measure transformed into an
allegory, and its characters present
(p. vi)
themselves under a typical aspect, it may surely be hoped that, whatever
the view taken of details, the impression produced by the whole will be one of
hopefulness as to the possibilities of humanity; and that it is not among what
has been termed the “literature of despair,” that By and By and its companion books
can fairly be catalogued.
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