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diff --git a/42221-0.txt b/42221-0.txt index 940854a..bd6c514 100644 --- a/42221-0.txt +++ b/42221-0.txt @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42221 *** +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42221 *** THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS @@ -3498,5 +3498,4 @@ the "gigantic childishness" of the American mind. End of Project Gutenberg's The World of H.G. Wells, by Van Wyck Brooks - *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42221 *** diff --git a/42221-8.txt b/42221-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c01c22f..0000000 --- a/42221-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3889 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World of H.G. Wells, by Van Wyck Brooks - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The World of H.G. Wells - -Author: Van Wyck Brooks - -Release Date: February 27, 2013 [EBook #42221] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive) - - - - - -THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS - -BY - -VAN WYCK BROOKS - - - -NEW YORK - -MITCHELL KENNERLEY - -MCMXV - - -_To_ - -_Max Lippitt Larkin_ - - - - -CONTENTS - - - -Introduction - -I. The First Phase - -II. Towards Socialism - -III. Socialism "True and False" - -IV. The Philosophy of the New Republican - -V. Human Nature - -VI. A Personal Chapter - -VII. The Spirit of Wells - - - - - - -INTRODUCTION - - -A natural pause appears to have come in the career of Mr. H.G. Wells. -After so many years of travelling up and down through time and space, -familiarizing himself with all the various parts of the solar system and -presenting himself imaginatively at all the various geological epochs, -from the Stone Age to the end of the world, he has for good and all -domesticated himself in his own planet and point of time. This gradual -process of slowing down, so to speak, had been evident from the moment -of his first appearance. The most obvious fact about his romances of -science, considered as a series, is that each one more nearly approached -the epoch in which we live, and the realities of this epoch. From the -year A.D. 802, 701, witnessed in his first romance by the Time -Traveller, we found ourselves at last in the presence of a decade only -so remote as that of the war which has now befallen Europe. A similar -tendency in his novels has been equally marked. The possibilities of -science and socialism have received a diminishing attention relatively -beside the possibilities of human reaction to science and socialism. It -is individual men and women, and the motives and personalities of -individual men and women, which now concern him. Still retaining the -entire planet as the playground of his ideas, still upholding science -and socialism as his essential heroes, he has been driven by experience -to approach these things through human nature as it is. In a recent -essay he has told us not to expect any more dramatic novelties: for the -present at any rate our business must be to make science and socialism -feel at home. Whether or not this may stand as a general diagnosis of -our epoch, it is a remarkable confession with regard to his own place in -it. For it signifies nothing less than that he has reached the limit of -his own circle of ideas and finished his own pioneering, and that his -work for the future will be to relate the discoveries of his youth with -human experience. He is no longer a "new voice"; his work belongs, for -good or ill, to history and literature, and he presents himself from -this time forward as a humanist. - -In this new posture Wells does not stand alone. He is typical of an -entire generation of Englishmen that knows not Oxford, a generation -which has been busy with all manner of significant movements and -discoveries, too busy indeed to relate them to the common reason of -humankind. During these years the word "academic" has been outlawed; -naturally so, for the academic mind is to the creative mind what the -digestive system is to the human body: a period of energetic exercise -must precede its operation. But in order that ideas may be incorporated -in society they must submit themselves at the right moment to those -digestive processes by which they are liquefied and transmitted through -the veins to all the various members of the common organism. - -During the last twenty years modern thought has been dominated to an -extraordinary degree by men who have been educated solely through the -movements in which they have taken part: seldom has there been so -universal and so hectic an empiricism. But this is the way the earth -moves. Like an inchworm it doubles itself up at intervals and then -gradually stretches itself straight again. The whole nineteenth century, -according to Taine, was occupied in working out two or three ideas -concocted in Germany during the Napoleonic era. History is a succession -of Gothic invasions and academic subversions. It marks the end of one of -those eras which perpetually overlap one another in various groups of -men and cycles of thought that our own Visigoths have capitulated. As -the pressure of their own immediate points of view relaxes and they -cease to identify their own progress with the progress of men in -general, they become perhaps less striking but certainly more useful. - -Intensely preoccupied with contemporary ideas and inventions, -brilliantly gifted and full of life, these leaders of thought were more -innocent of literature and history than a fresh-man. Both Wells and -Bernard Shaw have confessed that throughout their most active -intellectual careers they believed instinctively that progress was -mainly a matter of chronology. To discover the future Wells considered -it necessary merely to set his imagination at work on Chicago and -multiply it by a thousand; while the famous remark of Shaw that he was -"better than Shakespeare" sprang from his assumption that, living three -centuries later, he naturally stood (as a dwarf, in his own phrase) upon -Shakespeare's shoulders. This naïveté placed them at the mercy of -literature, as they soon discovered. Everyone knows the change that came -over Bernard Shaw's cosmos when for the first time, a few years ago, he -read two or three pre-Darwinian philosophers: one could almost have -heard a pin drop when he stopped talking about being better than -Shakespeare. A similar experience, exhibited in his books, has befallen -Wells, and there is no doubt that reading has contributed to the -progressive modesty of his point of view. Each monument of historic -experience that he has absorbed has left its mark on him. Rabelais, -Machiavelli, Plato, incorporated at regular intervals in his own work, -have certainly contributed to make him less agile and less dramatic. - -Let us take advantage of these post-prandial moments to survey some of -the remarkable ideas which have been added to the general stock during -this period. After the fashion of Cato, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells have -come late to the study of Greek. Bernard Shaw read Plato at fifty, and -in his latest book Wells has insisted that in the Great State everyone -will study Greek. Nothing could signify more plainly that these -outriders of the Modern Mind have come to a halt and wish to connect -themselves with tradition, with history, with literature, with religion, -with the grand current of human experience. Having been for so long -experimenting with new and untried forces, sharply separated from what -is received and understood, they should be related to the familiar -landmarks and connected with the main stream of English thought and -literature. - -Grotesque and violent as it may at first appear, I believe that in the -future Wells will be thought of as having played toward his own epoch a -part very similar to that played by Matthew Arnold. I say this with full -recognition of their remoteness in personal quality, recognizing also -the difference in their direct objects of attack, in the precise causes -they uphold. One thinks of these two vivid personalities--Wells--how -shall one picture him?--and Matthew Arnold, that superb middle-class -gentleman with his great face and deprecating hands--and the comparison -is instantly ludicrous. In reality the entire trend of Arnold's social -criticism was anti-individualistic and in a straight line with -socialism. Seen retrospectively the main work of Wells has not been to -promote any intellectual or economic doctrine, but to alter the English -frame of mind. The function of each of these men has been to bring home -to the English mind a range of ideas not traditional in it. - -Indeed this comparison holds (the shock once over) not merely with -regard to their general function, but in their specific attitude toward -most of the branches of thought and action they have concerned -themselves with. Wells on Education, on Criticism, on Politics and the -nostrums of Liberalism, Wells even on Religion continues the propaganda -of Arnold. Everywhere in these so superficially dissimilar writings is -exhibited the same fine dissatisfaction, the same faith in ideas and -standards, the same dislike of heated bungling, plunging, wilfulness, -and confusion; even the same predominant contempt for most things that -are, the same careful vagueness of ideal. It was Arnold who passed his -life in trying to make England believe in and act upon ideas instead of -"muddling through," who never wearied of holding up the superiority of -everything French and everything German to everything English, who -adopted into his own language that phrase about "seeing things as in -themselves they really are." Read his chapter on _Our Liberal -Practitioners_ and you will find the precise attitude of Wells toward -the premature inadequate doing of things rather than the continued -research, experiment, and discipline which lead to right fulfilments. -Who urged the ventilation of life, affairs, conduct in the light of -world experience? Who preached the gospel of reasonableness, mutual -understanding, and more light? Who spurred England to cultivate the -virtue of intellectual curiosity? Who believed with a paradoxical -passion in coolness and detachment? In each of these things what Arnold -was to his generation Wells remarkably has been to ours. Differing in -their view of the substance of religion, their conception of the Church -as a great common receptacle for the growing experience of the race is -precisely the same, fragmentation, segregation, sectarianism being to -both of them in this matter the greatest of evils. The love of -curiosity, centrality, ventilation, detachment, common understanding, -coolness and reasonableness and a realistic vision, the dislike of -confusion, bungling, wilfulness, incompetence, hot-headedness, -complacency, sectarianism--these are quite fundamental traits, and -Arnold and Wells share them in a remarkable degree. It is quite true -that Arnold lived in a universe which only with some reluctance -confessed to three dimensions, while that of Wells trembles with the -coming of a fourth. But in any case it is worth while to release a -phenomenon like Wells from the medium of purely contemporary influences, -and for this purpose it is convenient to see a socialist in the light of -a man who knew nothing of socialism, to see that socialism is itself a -natural outgrowth of those "best things that have been thought and said -in the world." It is important to realize that the train of thought and -the circle of ideas of this man are connected with a well-recognized -branch of intellectual tradition. And even socialism is benefitted by -having friends at court. - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE FIRST PHASE - - -"I am, by a sort of predestination, a socialist," Wells wrote once. And -everything one can say of him serves merely to explain, justify, -qualify, illuminate and refine that statement. - -First of all it implies a certain disposition and certain habits of -mind, habits of mind which are all to be found in the first phase of his -work, in those marvellous tales of Time and Space that won him his -original sensational fame. It is this disposition behind them, this -quality they have as of an inevitable attitude toward life and the -world, which distinguishes them at once from those other superficially -similar tales of Jules Verne. The marvels of Jules Verne are just -marvels, delightful, irresponsible plunderings from a helpless universe. -To the grown-up mind they have a little of that pathetic futility one -associates with a millionaire's picture-gallery, where all sorts of -things have been brought together, without any exercise of inevitable -personal choice, because they are expensive. I don't know that the tales -of Wells are better tales, but they have that ulterior synthetic quality -that belongs to all real expressions of personality. Wells was never -merely inventive; his invention was the first stage of an imaginative -growth. - -Now the quality that pervades all these early writings is what may be -called a sense of the infinite plasticity of things. He conceived a -machine that could travel through time, a man who found a way to become -invisible, a drug that made men float like balloons, another drug that -enabled men to live a thousand hours in one, a crystal egg through which -one could watch the life in Mars, a man who could stop the sun like -Joshua, a food that turned men into giants, a biologist who discovered a -method of carving animals into men, an angel who visited a rural vicar, -a mermaid who came to earth in search of a soul, a homicidal orchid, a -gigantic bird hatched from a prehistoric egg, a man who passed outside -space. In short, the universe appeared to him like that magic shop of -which he also wrote, where the most astonishing things may happen, if -you are the Right Sort of Boy. - -If all this implies anything it implies that things in general are not -fixed and static, but that they are, on the contrary, infinitely -plastic, malleable, capable of responding to any purpose, any design you -may set working among them. The universe, it seems to assume, may be and -quite possibly is proceeding after some logical method of its own, but -so far as man is concerned this method appears to be one of chance. -Obviously, man can do the most surprising things in it, can take as it -were all sorts of liberties with it. The universe, in short, is like a -vacant field which may or may not belong to some absent landlord who has -designs of his own upon it; but until this absent landlord appears and -claims his field, all the children in the neighborhood can build huts in -it and play games upon it and, in a word, for all practical purposes, -consider it their own. - -This idea of the relation between free will and determinism is the -underlying assumption of Wells, as he explains it in _First and Last -Things_: - - Take life at the level of common sensations and common - experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's - freedom of will, unless it is his complete moral - responsibility. But make only the least penetrating of - scientific analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable - consequences, a rigid succession of cause and effect. - -And elsewhere he says: - - On the scientific plane one is a fatalist.... But does the - whole universe of fact, the external world about me, the - mysterious internal world from which my motives rise, form - one rigid and fated system as Determinists teach? I incline - to that belief.... From me as a person this theory of - predestination has no practical value.... I hesitate, I - choose just as though the thing was unknowable. For me and - my conduct there is that much wide practical margin of - freedom. I am free and freely and responsibly making the - future--so far as I am concerned. - -In a word, for all the purposes that affect man's need the universe is -infinitely plastic and amenable to his will. Like every clean-cut -philosophical conception, this clears the ground for practical conduct -and a certain sort of direct action. - -There was a time, no doubt, when he shared the old Utopian folly of -expecting a sudden and unanimous change of human will. When the universe -appears as unconventional as it used to appear to Wells, there can -surely be no reason to think it impossible, after a comet has collided -with the world, for the human race to become suddenly Utopian. Generally -speaking, comets do not collide with the world, and in the same way men -are slow to change. But certainly if Wells ever thought of humanity as -merely a multiplication of one pattern, certainly if he has long since -abandoned the idea of our all turning over a new leaf one fine morning, -he has never lost his faith in free will as regards the individual. He -has always believed in the personal doctrine of summarily "making an end -to things" as distinguished from the old-fashioned doctrine of "making -the best of things"; and there is nothing more modern about him than his -aversion to the good old English theory of "muddling through." - -Mr. Polly is a good example of his view of personal direct action, the -getting rid, quickly and decisively, of a situation that has only -sentiment to save it from complete demoralization. "When a man has once -broken through the wall of every-day circumstances," he remarks at the -moment of the Polly _débâcle_, "he has made a discovery. If the world -does not please you, _you can change it_. Determine to alter it at any -price, and you can change it altogether." Mr. Polly sets fire to his -shop, takes to the road and repairs his digestion. Desertion of duty and -the quick repudiation of entanglements make him healthy and sensible and -give him a sense of purpose in things. And I know of nothing in all -Wells that is described with more relish than that Beltane festival -which occurs toward the end of _In the Days of the Comet_. The world's -great age has begun anew, and the enlightened men of the new time revive -the May Day of old in order to burn the useless trappings of the past. -They heap old carpets on the fire, ill-designed furniture, bad music and -cheap pictures, stuffed birds, obsolete school-books, dog-eared penny -fiction, sham shoes, and all the corrugated iron in the world; every -tangible thing that is useless, false, disorderly, accidental, obsolete, -and tawdry to celebrate the beginning of things that are clean, -beautiful, and worthy. Sceptical, hesitant, and personal as Wells has -become, that indicates a strong primitive mental trait. Philosophy does -not spring out of the brain; we hate the hateful things of our own -experience, just as we think the things we desire. And though there are -nine and sixty ways of being a socialist, they all unite in a certain -sense of the plasticity and malleability of things human, a certain -faith in the possibility of asserting order in the midst of disorder and -intelligently cleaning house. - -Inherent in this trait is another--detachment. You only become aware of -confusion when you stand free of it, when you cease to be a part of it. -And of all writers who have so immediately felt life I doubt if there -has been one so detached as Wells. The mental detachment of his early -tales is a detachment half scientific, half artistic; scientific as of -one who sees things experimentally in their material, molecular aspect, -artistic as of one conscious of moulding will and placed amid plastic -material. Thus, for example, he sees human beings quite stripped of -their distinctively human qualities; he sees men anatomically, as in -that passage where the Invisible Man, killed with a spade, becomes -visible again as a corpse: - - Everyone saw, faint and transparent as though it were made - of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves - could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp - and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they - stared.... And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet - and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his - body, that strange change continued. First came the little - white nerves, a hazy gray stretch of a limb, then the glossy - bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first - a faint fogginess, then growing rapidly dense and opaque. - -Similar is a passage in _A Story of the Days to Come_, where he -describes an ordinary breakfast of our own day: "the rude masses of -bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fat before they -could be made palatable, the still recognizable fragments of recently -killed animals, hideously charred and hacked." That surely is quite as a -man from another planet, or a chemist after a long day's work in the -laboratory, would view our familiar human things. And one recalls -another sentence from _Kipps_ where this detachment links itself with a -deeper social insight and hints at the part it had come to play in -Wells's later mind: "I see through the darkness," he says, toward the -end of the book, "the souls of my Kippses as they are, _as little pink -strips of quivering, living stuff_, as things like the bodies of little -ill-nourished, ailing, ignorant children--children who feel pain, who -are naughty and muddled and suffer, and do not understand why." - -And just as he sees men and human things chemically and anatomically, so -he sees the world astronomically. He has that double quality (like his -own Mr. Bessel) of being bodily very active in life and at the same time -watching it from a great distance. In his latest book he has figured a -god looking on from the clouds; and there is nothing in his novels more -stimulating and more uncanny than a certain faculty of telescoping his -view suddenly from the very little to the very large, expanding and -contracting his vision of things at will. You find the germ of this -faculty in his early tales. Looking down as though from a balloon he -sees the world as a planet, as a relatively small planet. In doing so he -maintains at first a purely scientific set of values; he is not led, as -he has since been led, and as Leopardi was led by the same imaginative -experience, to adopt poetical values and to feel acutely the littleness -and the powerlessness of man. His values remain scientific, and the -absurdity he feels is the absurdity an astronomer must feel, that in so -small a space men can vaunt themselves and squabble with one another. -Race prejudice, for example, necessarily appears to him as foolish as it -would appear to ordinary eyes among insects that happen to be swarming -on a fallen apple. Once you get it into your mind that the world is a -ball in space, you find a peculiar silliness in misunderstandings on -that ball. This reflection has led to many views of life; in Wells it -led to a sense of the need of human solidarity. - -And solidarity implies order. The sense of order is one of those -instincts exhibited everywhere in the writings of Wells that serve as -preliminaries to his social philosophy. There is a passage in _Kipps_ -where he pictures the satisfactions of shopkeeping to an elect soul: -"There is, of course, nothing on earth," he says, "and I doubt at times -if there is a joy in heaven, like starting a small haberdasher's shop. -Imagine, for example, having a drawerful of tapes, or again, an array of -neat, large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. -Think of your cottons, your drawer of colored silks," etc. De Foe knew a -similar satisfaction and has pictured it in _Robinson Crusoe_. De Foe -was himself a shopkeeper, just as Wells has been in one of his -incarnations; and he knew that good shopkeeping is the microcosm of all -good political economy. The satisfaction of a thoroughly competent man -who is thrown on a desert island, and sets to work to establish upon it -a political economy for one, is a satisfaction by itself. That certainly -is a primitive relish, and it is one of the first gestures of Wells's -sociology. - -Now the sense of solidarity, the sense of order, implies the -subordination of details, the discipline of constituent units. Only in -his later works did Wells begin to consider the problems of the -individual life; in his novels he has considered them almost -exclusively, but always in relation to the constructive purpose of -society and as what may be called human reservations from it. The -telescope has been adjusted to a close range, and the wider -relationships are neither so emphasized nor so easily discerned. -Nevertheless it is still the world that matters to Wells--the world, the -race, the future; not the individual human being. And if, relatively, he -has become more interested in the individual and less in the world, that -is because he is convinced that the problems of the world can best be -approached through the study of individuals. His philosophy has grown -less abstract in harmony with his own experience; but the first sketch -of his view of human nature and its function is to be found crudely -outlined in the scientific romances. How does it figure there? - -The human beings who flit through these early tales are all -inconspicuous little men, whose private existence is of no account, and -who exist to discover, invent, perform all sorts of wonderful -experiments which almost invariably result in their summary and quite -unimportant destruction. They are merely, in the most complete sense, -experiments in the collective purpose, and their creator has toward them -just the attitude of an anatomist toward the animals upon which he is -experimenting; not indifferent to their suffering as suffering, but -ignoring it in the spirit of scientific detachment necessary to -subordinate means to an end. "I wanted--it was the only thing I -wanted--to find out the limit of plasticity in a living form," says Dr. -Moreau in his confession; "and the study has made me as remorseless as -nature." - -Invariably these experiments in human possibility, placed in a world -where charity is not so strong as fear, die quite horribly. Dr. Moreau -is destroyed by the beasts he is attempting to vivisect into the -semblance of men, the Invisible Man is battered to death with a spade, -the Visiting Angel burns to death in attempting to carry out his -celestial errand, the man who travels to the moon cannot get back alive. -Does not all this foreshadow the burden of the later novels, that the -individual who plans and wills for the race is destroyed and broken by -the jealousy, prejudice and inertia in men and the blind immemorial -forces of nature surging through himself? These are the forces that are -figured, in the early tales, by that horrible hostile universe of -nature, and the little intrepid men moving about in the midst of it. And -the mind of Wells is always prepared for the consequences of what it -engenders. The inevitable result of creating an imaginary world of -malignant vegetables and worse than antediluvian monsters is that the -imaginary men you also create shall suffer through them. You reverse the -order of evolution and return men to conditions where life is cheap. An -imagination which has accustomed itself to running loose among planets -and falling stars, which has lived habitually in a universe where worlds -battle with one another, is prepared to stomach a little needless -bloodshed. The inflexible pursuit of an end implies the sacrifice of -means, and if your experiment happens to be an invisible man you will -produce the invisibility even though it kills the man. - -Widen the range and this proposition logically transmutes itself into a -second: if your experiment happens to be an orderly society you will -produce order at the expense of everything that represents disorder. And -from the point of view of a collective purpose, ends, motives and -affections that are private and have no collective significance -represent disorder. Now the whole purpose of Wells's later work has been -to illuminate and refine this proposition. He has flatly distinguished -between two sorts of human nature, the constructive, experimental sort -which lives essentially for the race, and the acquiescent, ineffectual -sort which lives essentially for itself or the established fact; and he -gives to his experimental men and women an almost unlimited charter to -make ducks and drakes of the ineffectual. Think of the long list of dead -and wounded in his novels--Mr. Pope, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Magnet, Mr. -Manning, Margaret, Marion--and you realize how much of a certain -cruelty, a certain ruthlessness is in the very nature of his philosophy -of experimental direct action. - -Another primitive relish exhibited in these early tales is the delight -of constructing things. The Time Machine, for example, is the work of a -mind that immoderately enjoys inventing, erecting, and putting things -together; and there is not much difference between constructing an -imaginary machine and constructing an imaginary society. If Wells's -early Utopian speculations are ingenious impossibilities, are they any -more or less so than his mechanical speculations? One doesn't begin life -with an overwhelming recognition of the obstacles one may encounter--one -doesn't fret too much about the possible, the feasible, or even the -logical. It was enough for Wells that he had built his Time Machine, -though the logic by which the Time Traveller explains his process is a -logic that gives me, at least, a sense of helpless, blinking -discomfort--partly, I confess, because to this day I don't believe there -is anything the matter with it. In any case it is the sheer delight of -construction that fascinates him, and everything that is associated with -construction fascinates him. He is in love with steel; he speaks with a -kind of ecstasy somewhere of "light and clean and shimmering shapes of -silvered steel"; steel and iron have for him the transcendental charm -that harebells and primroses had for Wordsworth. A world like that in -_The Sleeper Awakes_--a world of gigantic machines, air fleets, and the -"swimming shadows and enormous shapes" of an engineer's nightmare--is -only by afterthought, one feels, the speculation of a sociologist. It -expresses the primitive relish of a constructive instinct. It expresses -also a sheer curiosity about the future. - -In a chapter of his book on America Wells has traced the development of -what he calls his prophetic habit of mind as a passage through four -stages: the millennial stage of an evangelical childhood when an -imminent Battle of Armageddon was a natural thing to be looked for; the -stage of ultimate biological possibilities; the stage of prediction by -the rule-of-three; and a final stage of cautious anticipation based upon -the study of existing facts--a gradual passage from the region of -religious or scientific possibilities to the region of human -probabilities. "There is no Being but Becoming" was the first of his -mental discoveries; and finding years later that Heraclitus had said the -same thing, he came to regard the pre-Aristotelian metaphysics as the -right point of departure for modern thought. Consider this passage: - - I am curiously not interested in things and curiously - interested in the consequences of things.... I have come to - be, I am afraid, even a little insensitive to fine immediate - things through this anticipatory habit.... This habit of - mind confronts and perplexes my sense of things that simply - _are_, with my brooding preoccupation with how they will - shape presently, what they will lead to, what seed they will - sow and how they will wear. At times, I can assure the - reader, this quality approaches other-worldliness in its - constant reference to an all-important hereafter. There are - times indeed when it makes life seem so transparent and - flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an equally - transitory series of consequences, that the enhanced sense - of instability becomes restlessness and distress; but on the - other hand nothing that exists, nothing whatever, remains - altogether vulgar or dull and dead or hopeless in its - light.... But the interest is shifted. The pomp and splendor - of established order, the braying triumphs, ceremonies, - consummations,--one sees these glittering shows for what - they are--through their threadbare grandeur shine the little - significant things that will make the future. - -And the burden of his lecture _The Discovery of the Future_ is that an -inductive knowledge of the future is not only very largely possible, but -is considerably more important for us than the study of the past. Even -in the sciences, he says, the test of their validity is their power to -produce confident forecasts. Astronomy is based on the forecast of -stellar movements, medical science exists largely for diagnosis. It is -this thought which determines the nature of his own sociology. - -There is usually something inept in speaking of a man, and especially an -artist, as interchangeable with any ism. Socialism, in the common sense -of the word, is a classification of men. Individual socialists are as a -rule something more than socialists; often they are socialists by -necessity, or imagination, or sentiment, or expediency--their socialism -is not inherent, not the frame of their whole being. In the degree that -socialism is a classification, or a school of thought, or an economic -theory, the individual socialist will, in practice, make mental -reservations from it. Now my whole aim in this chapter has been to -suggest that if socialism had not existed Wells would have invented it. -It is not something which at a given moment or even after a long process -of imaginative conversion or conviction came into his life. It is, in -his own formulation of it, the projection of his whole nature, the -expression of his will, the very content of his art. With one or two -exceptions--works deliberately devoted to propaganda or exposition--even -his purely sociological writings are subjective writings, personal and -artistic in motive; socialism figures in them just as Catholicism -figures in the masses of Mozart, or the brotherhood of man in the poems -of Whitman, not as a cause but as a satisfying conception of truth. And -just as, if one were to study the psychology of Mozart or Whitman, one -would find habits of mind that inevitably produced the individual -Catholicism of the one and the individual fraternalism of the other; so -behind the socialism of Wells are certain habits of mind, certain -primitive likes, relishes, instincts, preferences: a faith in free will, -a sense of order and the subordination of details to design, a personal -detachment, a pleasure in construction, a curiosity about the future. - -These are innate qualities, which inevitably produced their own -animating purpose. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -TOWARDS SOCIALISM - - -Of all the battered, blurred, ambiguous coins of speech there is none so -battered, blurred, and ambiguous as the word socialism. It mothers a -dozen creeds at war with one another. And the common enemy looks on, -fortified with the Socratic irony of the "plain man," who believes he -has at last a full excuse for not understanding these devious doings. - -Therefore I take refuge in saying that H.G. Wells is an artist, neither -more nor less, that socialism is to him at bottom an artistic idea, and -that if it had not existed in the world he would have invented it. This -clears me at once of the accusing frowns of any possible Marxian reader, -and it also states a truth at the outset. For if the orthodox maintain -that socialism is not an affair of choices, may I not retort that here -actually is a mind that chooses to make it so? Here is an extraordinary -kind of Utopian who has all the equipment of the orthodox and yet -remains detached from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is always jealous of its -tabernacles and will not see itself dramatically; it has no concern with -artistic presentations. But I protest there ought to be no quarrel here. -If a socialism fundamentally artistic is an offence to the orthodox, let -them accept it, without resentment, as a little harmless fun--all art -being that. - -Having said so much I return to my own difficulty, for it is very hard -to focus H.G. Wells. He has passed through many stages and has not yet -attained the Olympian repose. Artist as he is, he has been hotly -entangled in practical affairs. There are signs in his early books that -he once shared what Richard Jeffries called the "dynamite -disposition,"--even now he knows, in imagination alone, the joy of black -destruction. He has also been, and ceased to be, a Fabian. But it is -plain that he has passed for good and all beyond the emotional plane of -propaganda. He has abandoned working-theories and the deceptions of the -intellect which make the man of action. He has become at once more -practical and more mystical than a party programme permits one to be. -Here is a world where things are being done--a world of which capital -and labor are but one interpretation. How far can these things and the -men who do them be swept into the service of the race? That is the -practical issue in his mind, and the mystical issue lies in the -intensity and quality of the way in which he feels it. - -To see him clearly one has to remember that he is not a synthetic -thinker but a sceptical artist, whose writings are subjective even when -they seem to be the opposite, whose personality is constantly growing, -expanding, changing, correcting itself ("one can lie awake at night and -hear him grow," as Chesterton says), and who believes moreover that -truth is not an absolute thing but a consensus of conflicting individual -experiences, a "common reason" to be wrought out by constant free -discussion and the comparison and interchange of personal discoveries -and ideas. He is not a sociologist, but, so to say, an artist of -society; one of those thinkers who are disturbed by the absence of right -composition in human things, by incompetent draughtsmanship and the -misuse of colors, who see the various races of men as pigments capable -of harmonious blending and the planet itself as a potential work of art -which has been daubed and distorted by ill-trained apprentices. In Wells -this planetary imagination forms a permanent and consistent mood, but it -has the consistency of a mood and not the consistency of a system of -ideas. And though he springs from socialism and leads to socialism, he -can only be called a socialist in the fashion--to adopt a violently -disparate comparison--that St. Francis can be called a Christian. That -is to say, no vivid, fluctuating human being, no man of genius can ever -be embodied in an institution. He thinks and feels it afresh; his -luminous, contradictory, shifting, evanescent impulses may, on the -whole, ally him with this or that aggregate social view, but they will -not let him be subdued to it. As a living, expanding organism he will -constantly urge the fixed idea to the limit of fluidity. So it is with -Wells. There are times when he seems as whimsical as the wind and as -impossible to photograph as a chameleon. - -Just here I should like to give what may be taken as his own view of -capital and labor socialism in relation to the constructive socialism he -himself has at heart. I am putting together certain brief passages from -_The Passionate Friends_: - - I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems - only by the way. They have played their part in a greater - scheme.... With my innate passionate desire to find the - whole world purposeful, I cannot but believe that.... - Strangest of saviours, there rises over the conflicts of men - the glittering angular promise of the machine. There is no - longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do not - need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are - no longer essential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his - brother man out of the need of servitude. He struggles - through to a new phase, a phase of release, a phase when - leisure and an unexampled freedom are possible to every - human being.... - - Human thought has begun to free itself from individual - entanglements and dramatic necessities and accidental - standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective will - towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or - kingdoms or peoples, a mind and will to which we all - contribute and which none of us may command nor compromise - by our private errors. It ceases to be aristocratic; it - detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us - all. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find - ourselves in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and - jealousies and conflicts, helping and serving in the making - of a new world-city, a new greater State above our legal - States, in which all human life becomes a splendid - enterprise, free and beautiful.... - - I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of - human society. Ours are not economic but psychological - difficulties.... - -These last two sentences really tell the whole story. To pass from -economics to psychology is to pass from Man to men, from society as a -direct object of attack to the individuals who compose it. And this -marks the evolution of Wells the romancer and Wells the expositor of -socialist doctrine into Wells the novelist. It is the problems of human -interaction that occupy him now. But informing these problems, reaching -behind and embracing them, is a general view of the world which has only -become more intimate, more personal, and more concrete with time. - -When, in _New Worlds for Old_, Wells set himself to explain socialism as -he conceived it, he assumed as his first principle a certain Good Will -in men, an operating will steadily working in life toward betterment. In -other words, he supplemented the ordinary socialist idea of economic -determinism, which may or may not inevitably bring about order on the -industrial plane, with a constructive purpose, which, in his view, can -alone bring about the salvation of the race. But this Good Will is not a -fatality; it exists only by virtue of remaining a conscious effort. In -his experiments in Time and Space Wells had accustomed himself to seeing -that the immense possibilities of what might be, so far as the universe -is concerned, predetermined things, were, so far as man is concerned, -matters of chance. To human society at least, if not to our planet, the -most unpropitious things are possible in the future; and there is no -reason to suppose that the destiny of the universe, which at every turn -cuts athwart the destiny of every species contained in it, should, left -to itself, work favorably to man. - -This notion is in itself quite outside socialism and does not -necessarily lead into socialism. It was Huxley who said that the world -and the universe, society and nature, are demonstrably at cross -purposes, and that man has to pit his microcosm against the macrocosm. -Huxley, in his famous lecture on _Ethics and Evolution,_ went on from -this to a kind of informal and unavowed socialism, figuring society as a -well-tended garden preserved by man's careful art from the ravages and -invasions of that hostile world of chance, with its gigantic weeds and -blind impulsions, which everywhere lies waiting round about it. Our -work, he implied, must be in every way to minimize for ourselves the -elements of chance, to become aware of our species in a collective -sense, battling with nature and moulding our own future. - -I do not suppose that Wells consciously adopted this idea from Huxley. -In itself that would be of little consequence, except so far as it shows -the continuity of thought and the development of socialism out of -science. But Wells was for several years a pupil of Huxley, and it is -reasonably plain that the mood in which he wrote his scientific romances -was strongly impregnated by Huxley's influence. The sinister, -incalculable, capricious, destructive forces outside man are symbolized, -as I have said, by those colliding comets, invading Martians, and -monstrous creatures among which the earlier Wells moved and had his -being; just as the sinister, incalculable, capricious forces within man -which urge him to destruction form so great a part of his later novels. -Most of his heroes (typified in _The New Machiavelli_) come to grief -through the blind irrational impulsions within themselves. And he is -equally haunted by what he has called the "Possible Collapse of -Civilization." I do not know how much this is due to an evangelical -childhood, in which Time, Death, and Judgment are always imminent; how -much to an overbalancing study of science at the expense of the -humanities; how much to an overdeveloped sense of the hazard that life -is; and how much to plain facts. But there it is: it has always been a -fixed conviction with Wells that man personal and man social is dancing -on a volcano. - -Therefore he has come to socialism not by the ordinary course but by a -route obscure and lonely. The sense of possible catastrophe and -collapse, the folly of leaving things to chance, the infinite waste and -peril of committing our affairs to nature rather than to art--these are -some of the negative reasons that have made it impossible for him to -fall in with the non-socialist ideal in human affairs, that "broadening -down from precedent to precedent" which he calls "muddling through": a -doctrine that is wholly compatible with a world of haphazard motives, -accidental fortunes, accidental management, a democratic individualism -that places power in irresponsible hands and suppresses talents that -society cannot afford to lose, a governmental system that concerns -itself with legal and financial arrangements, experts with no sense of a -common purpose, patriotisms that thrive on international bad feelings, -and that competitive principle which succeeds in the degree in which it -ignores the general welfare--a chaos of private aims, private virtues, -private motives, without any collective human design at all. - -In the light of these opposed ideas of society as a thing of Chance and -as a thing of Design, let me run over two or three of the tales of -Wells. - -First of all there is the special _laissez faire_ of pure economic -determinism. _The Time Machine_ pictures a possible result of the -Marxian process which has led to an irrevocable division of classes. The -rich, who were, in the old time, in comparison with the poor, -disciplined and united, have long since reached a point where work and -fear are for them things of the past. They occupy the surface of the -earth, and idleness and futility have made them light-headed, puny, -helpless creatures, stirring about and amusing themselves in the -sunlight. The poor, meanwhile, driven underground where they burrow and -tend machinery and provide, have lost all human semblance and become -white, horrible ghoul-like creatures that see in the dark; at night they -swarm out of their holes and feed upon the creatures of the upper air. -The one class has lost all power to defend itself and the other all pity -to spare, and gradually, year after year, mankind comes to its end. - -Then there is the ordinary _laissez faire_ of capitalism, a result of -which is pictured in _The Sleeper Awakes_. The Sleeper, one recalls, -awakens four generations hence to find himself the master-capitalist, -owner of half the world, and the world is one where capital and labor -have irrevocably destroyed the possibility of a constructive human -scheme. But the responsibility for that future is very ingeniously -placed upon us of the present time; for Graham's ownership of the world -is the outcome of one of those irresponsible whims that in our day -characterize the whole individualistic view of property. His cousin, -having no family to inherit his possessions, has left the whole in trust -for the Sleeper, half in jest, expecting him never to waken; and in time -the trustees of this vested fund have become the irresponsible -bureaucrats of the world. "We were making the future," says the awakened -Sleeper, looking out upon this monstrous outcome of whim and _laissez -faire_; "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were -making." - -Consider also _The Empire of the Ants_, in which Wells has figured a -possible reconquest of man by nature, owing to the greater collective -discipline of at least one non-human species. He imagines a species of -poisonous ants with only a little greater faculty of organized -co-operative intelligence than ordinary ants, which have terrorized and -finally routed several villages of unintelligent and unorganized -Brazilian natives far up the Amazon. The Brazilian government sends -against them an outworn inefficient gunboat, with an incompetent captain -and a muddle-headed crew; and when they arrive the ants fall upon the -only man sent ashore and sting him to death. The captain repeats over -and over, "But what can we _do_?" And at last with tremendous decision -he fires a gun at them and retires. The story ends with a report that -the ants are swarming all over the interior of Brazil and that nobody -knows how to prevent them from occupying the whole of South America. - -And then there is _The History of Mr. Polly._ I ignore for the moment -the individual aspect of his case, for Mr. Polly is not merely an -individual--he is an emblem of the whole, he is society _in concreto_. -We find him at the opening of the book sitting on a stile, suffering -from indigestion and consequently depressed in spirits. It is two -o'clock of a Sunday afternoon, and he has just finished his mid-day -meal. He has eaten cold potatoes, cold pork, Rashdall's mixed -pickles--three gherkins, two onions, a small cauliflower head and -several capers; cold suet pudding, treacle and pale cheese, three slices -of grey bread, and a jug of beer. He hates himself, he hates his wife, -he hates existence. But Mr. Polly's interior, the things that have gone -into it and the emotions that rise out of it, are only typical of an -entire life that has, to quote Macaulay's eulogy of the British -constitution, thought nothing of symmetry and much of convenience. - -Each of the novels of Wells, in one aspect at least, presents the -accidental nature of our world in some one typical case. _Love and Mr. -Lewisham_ shows how in the case of one of those young students who have, -as things are, no chance at all, but who are the natural builders of a -better world, the constructive possibility is crushed by the primary -will to live. At eighteen Mr. Lewisham is an assistant master at one of -those incompetent private-enterprise schools which for Wells (as also -for Matthew Arnold) epitomize our haphazard civilization. He has a -"future"--the Schema which he pins to his bedroom wall promises -unimaginable achievements. He marries, and you feel that he should marry -and that he has married the right person. But then with interests -divided he has to find money and in doing so he fails in his -examinations. At last it becomes a choice between his career and his -children, between the present and the future, and the children and the -future win. Society loses just in the degree that Lewisham himself -loses, for he was fitted to be a builder; and society has first, in the -face of all his efforts, imperfectly equipped him and then consistently -refused to take advantage of his talents. - -Just as Lewisham is a potential builder of society who is defeated, so -Kipps is a specimen of the raw material, the muddled inferior material -with which society has to deal and refuses to deal. Kipps, like Mr. -Polly, is from the beginning a victim of accident, spawned on the world, -miseducated, apprenticed at fourteen to a Drapery Bazaar. He grows up -ignorant, confused, irresponsible; and then suddenly, as accidentally as -he was born, has £26,000 and responsibility thrust upon him. The fortune -of Kipps lifts him at once out of the obscure negligible world of the -populace and makes him a figure to be reckoned with. Therein lies the -comedy of the book. He tries to make himself what in his own view a man -of means ought to be; naturally he sees money not as a force but as a -thing to be spent, and he finds that even from this point of view he has -no freedom of will, and that his lack of training inevitably places him -in the hands of equally irresponsible persons who want his money. He -wishes to build a house, designed after his own vaguely apprehended -needs and desires, and somehow under the wand of the architect a house -with eleven bedrooms springs from the ground, a house plainly far beyond -his own or Ann's power of management, and the prospect of disrespectful -servants, terrifying callers, and a horde of scheming lawyers, -tradesfolk and satellites. And the life of Kipps under prosperity is -summed up in the following dialogue: - - "Wonder what I shall do this afternoon," said Kipps, with - his hands deep in his pockets. - - He pondered and lit a cigarette. - - "Go for a walk, I s'pose," said Ann. - - "I _been_ for a walk this morning." - - "S'pose I must go for another," he added after an interval. - -May one suggest how the significance of such a story as this varies -according to the point of view? In the ordinary literature of comedy, -Kipps would be merely a parvenu whose want of dignity and ignorance of -the right use of money are laughable--or, if the novelist were a -humanitarian, pitiful. To the socialist, on the other hand, every -incident of his life, every gesture of his mind, is a unique indictment -of things as they are. He stands for the whole waste of human stuff in a -world which has not learned how to economize itself, whose every detail -is accidental in a general chaotic absence of social design. - -In this aspect _Tono-Bungay_ is the most powerful work of Wells. Just as -his romances of the future had exhibited the possible effects of -accidental heedless social conduct in the past, so his novels exhibit -the motives that produce this heedlessness to consequences. Thus the -world in which the Sleeper awakes, a world irrevocably ruled by the -bureaucratic trustees of an irresponsible private fortune, is just a -conceivable consequence of such a career as Uncle Ponderevo's, had not -catastrophe overwhelmed him and enabled Wells to point a much more -pregnant moral. _Tono-Bungay_ is a great epic of irresponsible -capitalism from the socialist point of view. Uncle Ponderevo is a born -commercial meteor, and when he first enters the book, a small druggist -in a dead country town, he exhibits the temperament of a Napoleon of -finance spoiling for conquest. He wants to Wake Up Wimblehurst, invent -something, do something, shove something. - - He indicated London as remotely over the top of the - dispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by - a whirl of the hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me. - - "What sort of things do they do?" I asked. "Rush about," he - said. "Do things! Somethin' glorious. There's cover - gambling. Ever heard of that, George?" He drew the air in - through his teeth. "You put down a hundred, say, and buy - ten thousand pounds' worth. See? That's a cover of one per - cent. Things go up one, you sell, realize cent per cent; - down, whiff, it's gone! Try again! Cent per cent, George, - every day. Men are made or done for in an hour. And the - shoutin'!... Well, that's one way, George. Then another - way--there's Corners!" - - "They're rather big things, aren't they?" I ventured. - - "Oh, if you go in for wheat and steel--yes. But suppose you - tackled a little thing, George. Just some leetle thing that - only needed a few thousands. Drugs, for example. Shoved all - you had into it--staked your liver on it, so to speak. Take - a drug--take ipecac, for example. Take a lot of ipecac. - Take all there is! See? There you are! There aren't - unlimited supplies of ipecacuanha--can't be!--and it's a - thing people _must_ have. Then quinine again! You watch - your chance, wait for a tropical war breaking out, let's - say, and collar all the quinine. Where _are_ they? Must - have quinine, you know--Eh? ... - - "Lord! there's no end of things--no end of _little_ things. - Dill-water--all the suff'ring babes yowling for it. - Eucalyptus again--cascara--witch hazel--menthol--all the - toothache things. Then there's antiseptics, and curare, - cocaine.... - - "Rather a nuisance to the doctors," I reflected. - - "They got to look out for themselves. By Jove, yes. They'll - do you if they can, and you do them. Like brigands. That - makes it romantic. That's the Romance of Commerce, George." - - He passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such - fragments as: "Fifty per cent, advance, sir; - security--to-morrow." - - The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a - sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever - be permitted to do in reality. It was the sort of nonsense - one would talk to make Ewart laugh and set him going on to - still odder possibilities. I thought it was part of my - uncle's way of talking. But I've learnt differently since. - The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee - something that will probably be needed and put it out of - reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy up land - upon which people will presently want to build houses, you - secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, - and so on, and so on. Of course the naïve intelligence of a - boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human - inadequacy. He begins life with the disposition to believe - in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realize how - casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and - custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is - a power as irresistible as a head master's to check - mischievous, foolish enterprises of every sort. I will - confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I - had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do - that would pretty certainly go to gaol. Now I know that any - one who could really bring it off would be much more likely - to go to the House of Lords! - -And such or nearly such is this career. Tono-Bungay, that swindling -patent medicine without value or meaning, is the insubstantial -hippogriff upon which Uncle Ponderevo soars upward on the wind of -advertisement. In a society whose basis is unlimited individual rights, -he is able to disorganize the industrial world and to work out his -absurd, inept, extravagant destiny, scattering ruin right and left. - -But the spirit of Good Will, the disinterested constructive spirit of -socialism which is the underlying assumption of Wells, appears here as -in all his later books. Out of the wreckage the constructive purpose -emerges, in the person of George Ponderevo. It shapes itself as a steel -destroyer, the work of an engineer's brain, a destroyer which England -has refused and which plunges down the Thames to the open sea, the -symbol of man's intentions, without illusions and without the hope of -personal gain, the disinterested spirit of science and truth. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -SOCIALISM TRUE AND FALSE - - - In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth - of statesmanship. It has been the chronic mistake of - statecraft and all organizing spirits to attempt immediately - to scheme and arrange and achieve. Priests, schools of - thought, political schemers, leaders of men, have always - slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out - the whole--or, at any rate, completely think out definite - parts--of the purpose and future of man, clearly and - finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct - on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing - obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, - persecution, training, pruning, secretive education, and all - the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. - - -The man who wrote that is not what is called a whole-hearted man as -regards any form of group-action. He does not "fit in." He is at bottom -a sceptic, and a sceptic is one who reduces every question to the -question of human nature. So that the socialism of Wells is necessarily -at variance with all the recognized group-forms of socialism, -Administrative, Philanthropic, and Revolutionary. I must briefly -indicate in each case what is the quality of this divergence. - -As regards the first, he has a complete distrust of what Hilaire Belloc -has called the "Servile State;" and what he distrusts he virulently -dislikes. In his view, Administrative socialism, as it appears in Sidney -Webb and the Fabian Society, and in the tendency of contemporary -Liberalism, has led to an excessive conservatism toward the existing -machinery of government, it has depended altogether too much on -organization without popular support, and as a result has tended to -throw the whole force of the socialist movement into a bureaucratic -regime of small-minded experts. The activity of the Fabians especially, -he says, has set great numbers of socialists working in the old -governmental machinery without realizing that the machinery should have -been reconstructed first. The whole tendency of this method, as it is -exhibited in the works of the English Liberal Party of to-day, is toward -a socialization of the poor without a corresponding socialization of the -rich; toward a more and more marked chasm between the regimented workers -and the free employers. - -And it throws the control of affairs into the hands of a mass of highly -specialized officials, technical minds, mutually-unenlightened experts. -In an age when the progress of society depends upon breaking down -professional barriers, when the genuine scientist, for instance, is a -man who passes beyond his own science and sees the inter-relationships -of all knowledge, the mind which has been trained in one habitual -routine is the most dangerous type of mind to place in authority. On the -one hand, society depends upon the coöperation of all sorts of -specialists, their free discussion, and comparison of methods, results, -and aims; on the other experts in office are apt to grow narrow, -impatient, and contemptuous, seeing nothing beyond their immediate -work,--and this particularly when they have been trained for -administration without any wide experience of the world. - -Therefore upon experts as such, in distinction from constructive and -coöperating specialists, Wells, with all the force of his belief in the -ventilating of knowledge and the humanizing of affairs, wages an -unceasing war. _The First Men in the Moon_ satirizes, after the fashion -of Swift, a world where the expert view of life, not only in -administration but in all work, prevails. Each inhabitant of the Moon -has a single rigidly defined function, to which everything else in his -nature is accommodated. Thus certain types of machine-menders are -compressed in jars, while others are dwarfed to fit them for fine work, -"a really more humane proceeding", as Mr. Cavor observes, "than our -method of leaving children to grow into human beings and then making -machines of them." And in _The Great State_ he returns to his attack on -government by experts: "Whatever else may be worked out in the subtler -answers our later time prepares, nothing can be clearer than that the -necessary machinery of government must be elaborately organized to -prevent the development of a managing caste in permanent conspiracy, -tacit or expressed, against the normal man." And he adds: "The Great -State will, I feel convinced, regard changes in occupation as a proper -circumstance in the life of every citizen; it will value a certain -amateurishness in its service, and prefer it to the trite omniscience of -the stale official." One of the many and increasing indications, one -might suggest, of the remarkable tendency in Wells to find good in the -old humanistic Tory, as distinguished from the modern bureaucratic -Liberal, view of life. - -But lest I be tempted to carry this latter suggestion too far just at -this point, I pass on to his equally virulent dislike of Philanthropic -socialism and the busy Superior Person in affairs; especially the type -of political woman so dear to Mrs. Humphry Ward's heart. If the expert -bureaucratic point of view represents the action of socialist thought on -the Liberal Progressive mind, so also the philanthropic superior point -of view represents the action of socialist thought on the Conservative -mind. It is arrogant, aggressive, and condescending. It implies the -raising of one's inferiors, and what weak mortal should assume that she -(for this happens to be a mainly feminine affliction) is the standard -according to which other mortals ought to be raised? - -Two of these energetic ladies have been pictured with a bitter vividness -by Wells in Altiora Bailey and Aunt Plessington, the former summing up -the Fabian-expert view, the latter summing up the Superior-philanthropic -view. Altiora has "P.B.P."--_pro bono publico_--engraved inside her -wedding ring. All the misery of the world she marshals invincibly in -statistics. She sees everything as existing in types and classes; she -pushes her cause with a hard, scheming, and wholly self-centred -eagerness, managing political dinners, indefatigably compiling -blue-books, dreaming of a world nailed as tightly and firmly under the -rule of experts as a carpet is nailed with brass tacks. - -On the other hand Aunt Plessington is the incarnation of a "Movement" -somewhat vague in purpose but always aggressively beneficial to the -helpless ones of the earth. "Her voice was the true governing-class -voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant and authoritative; it made -everything she said clear and important, so that if she said it was a -fine morning it was like leaded print in the _Times_." Her mission is -principally to interfere with the habits and tastes of the -working-class, making it impossible for them to buy tobacco and beer or -"the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which do not -sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach)." She is, in short, -one of those odious managing people who know nothing of and care nothing -for human nature, who concern themselves wholly with the effects without -penetrating to the causes of misery, who see mankind as irrevocably -divided into a governing and a governed class, and whose idea of -government is to make the governed as uncomfortably efficient as -possible and as lacking in free will. She is exactly one of those -arrogant sterile souls, in love with methods rather than men, who have -made the Servile State an imminent and horrid possibility and have -turned so many misinformed human beings (including Tolstoy) against -socialism altogether. - -If Wells dislikes Administrative and Philanthropic socialism because -they are not sufficiently human, he has an equal aversion to what is -called orthodox, that is to say, Revolutionary socialism; and in this he -includes all socialism that is fundamentally economic. "I have long -since ceased to trouble about the economics of human society," says -Stratton in _The Passionate Friends_, in words we are justified in -taking as the opinion of Wells himself. "Ours are not economic but -psychological difficulties." - -That statement is full of meaning. It expresses, not a fact but a -personal conviction--the personal conviction with which the -psychological constructive socialism of Wells begins. But before I pass -on to this I must make one comment that persists in my mind. - -Nothing is more remarkable than the unanimity with which during the last -few years the advanced world has put all its eggs in the basket of -pragmatism, the basket that has been so alluringly garnished by -Bergson's _Creative Evolution_, In this movement of thought Wells has -inevitably become one of the leaders, and his practical desertion of the -socialist cause is one of the main symptoms of it. The creative energies -of men, where society as a whole is concerned, are, in this philosophy, -conceived as bursting through the husks and institutions of the world, -not consciously destroying them but shedding them incidentally and -passing on. Now as regards sociology there is an obvious fatalism in -that; for the burden of proof lies once more on a personal basis, on a -personal basis qualified by the capacity of the person. It is true that -this creative and constructive tendency, like the total tendency of -modern life, is in the direction of socialism, it is true that a -thousand elements in modern life which could never be engaged in the -class-war are led by it into line with socialism. Yet there capitalism -is! Only the black-browed Marxian steadily contemplates the fact that -year by year the rich compound their riches and the poor their poverty, -while those that have no chance of creative outlets plant dynamite. - -I do not mean that Wells is "wrong" in abandoning the economic for the -psychological approach,--that is plainly the inevitable course for him. -I wish simply to mark a distinction. The gospel of Wells is an entirely -personal one; it frankly concerns itself with the inner realities of the -human mind, and in that lies its great importance. But let us -discriminate. Like every purely personal doctrine it contains, in -relation to the facts and causes of society, a certain quietism. It -withdraws the mind from corporate action and lays emphasis on corporate -thought. But it recognizes no corporate enemy. To be an opponent of -capitalism as such, is, in this philosophy, as quaint and crude and -crusty as to be an anti-suffragist or a believer in politics (for it has -become the fashion to believe with fervor in the franchise and scarcely -to believe at all in what the franchise stands for). - -There is then a certain danger in the creative pragmatism of this -particular time. If it actually does penetrate to the head men of the -world, if it is able to generate what I suppose may be called a "moral -equivalent" of duty--and there is almost a probability that it will--the -hazard is won. If it does not--and many keen thinkers and men of action -are obdurate--then we shall simply have the _fait accompli_ with -compound interest. What if it should turn out in the end, after the best -brains of socialism had all withdrawn from the economic programme of -socialism, that capitalism grows all the greener in the sunlight of -their tacit consent? There is Congress, there is Parliament, and there -they propose to remain. Suppose they are not converted from the top? Is -it altogether wise to stop persecuting them from the bottom? - -So much before I pass on. This comment does not qualify the teaching of -Wells. It merely supplements it from the economic side, and the -supplement seems to me an important one. - -Of a piece with his whole point of view is that he calls the right -sociological method not a scientific but an artistic method: it consists -of the making and comparing of Utopias. This idea he sets forth in his -paper _The So-called Science of Sociology_. "What is called the -scientific method," he says, "the method of observation, of theory about -these observations, experiments in verification of that theory and -confirmation or modification, really 'comes off' in the sciences in -which the individuality of the units can be pretty completely ignored." -The method that is all-important in the primary physical sciences where -the individuality of atoms and molecules may conveniently be ignored for -the sake of practical truth, becomes in his view proportionately untrue -as the sciences in their gradation approach the human world. "We -cannot," he says in _First and Last Things_, "put humanity into a museum -and dry it for examination; our one still living specimen is all -history, all anthropology, and the fluctuating world of men. There is no -satisfactory means of dividing it and nothing in the real world with -which to compare it. We have only the remotest idea of its 'life-cycle' -and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny." And in the -paper I have just mentioned he speaks of the Social Idea as a thing -"struggling to exist and realize itself in a world of egotisms, animals, -and brute matter.... Now I submit it is not only a legitimate form of -approach, but altogether the most promising and hopeful form of -approach, to endeavor to disentangle and express one's personal version -of that idea, and to measure realities from the standpoint of that -realization. I think, in fact, that the creation of Utopias--and their -exhaustive criticism--is the proper and distinctive method of -sociology." This notion of sociology as properly artistic in method and -diagnostic in aim indicates his main divergence from the methods and -aims of Comte and Spencer. - -And so one turns to his own illustration of this belief, _A Modern -Utopia_. It is a beautiful Utopia, beautifully seen and beautifully -thought; and it has in it some of that flavor of airy unrestraint one -finds in _News from Nowhere_. Morris, of course, carries us into a world -where right discipline has long since produced right will, so wholly and -instinctively socialized that men can afford to be as free as anarchists -would have the unsocialized men of our own time, a world such as Goethe -had in mind when he said: "There is in man a force, a spring of goodness -which counterbalances egoism; and if by a miracle it could for a moment -suddenly be active in all men, the earth would at once be free from -evil." Well, that is the miracle which has in some way just taken place -before the curtain goes up on most Utopias; and I think that Wells has -never been more skilful than in keeping this miracle quietly in his bag -of tricks and devising meanwhile a plausible transition between us and -that better world. It all happens in a moment and we are there. By an -amazing legerdemain of logic he leaps the gap and presents us with a -planet which at every point tallies with our own. It is a planet which -does not contain a State but is a State, the flexible result of a free -social gesture. - -_Mankind in the Making_ should be taken as introductory to _A Modern -Utopia_. It is the sketch of a method towards attaining such a world -state. It is a kind of treatise on education based on the assumption -that "our success or failure with the unending stream of babies is the -measure of our civilization." It opens with a complete repudiation of -"scientific" breeding, as a scheme which ignores the uniqueness of -individual cases and the heterogeneous nature of human ideals. "We are," -says Wells, "not a bit clear what points to breed for, and what points -to breed out;" while the interplay of strong and varied personalities we -desire is contradictory to any uniform notions of beauty, capacity, and -sanity, which thus cannot be bred for, so to speak, in the abstract. But -in _A Modern Utopia_ he outlines certain conditions limiting parentage, -holding it necessary that in order to be a parent a man must be above a -certain minimum of capacity and income, failing which he is indebted to -the State for the keep of his children. Motherhood is endowed and -becomes in this way a normal and remunerative career, which renders the -mother capable of giving her time to the care and education of her -children, as millions are not in a wage-earning civilization, and makes -both her and her children independent of the ups and downs of her -husband. His very detailed suggestions about the education of young -children (illustrated also in _The Food of the Gods_) are at once a -reminiscence of Rabelais and an anticipation of Madame Montessori. He -insists upon uniform pronunciation (a very important matter in England, -where diversity of language is one of the bulwarks of a rigid -class-system), the universality and constant revision of text-books, the -systematic reorganization of public library and bookselling methods, -with a view to making the race think as a whole. He urges the necessity -of rescuing literature from the accidents of the book-market by endowing -critical reviews, chairs for the discussion of contemporary thought, and -qualified thinkers and writers regardless of their special bias or -principles. To strike a mean between the British abuse of government by -hereditary privilege and the American abuse of government by electoral -machines he ingeniously proposes the election of officials by the jury -method, twenty or thirty men being set aside by lot to determine the -proper holders of office. And he is convinced of the importance in a -democracy of abundant honors, privileges, even titles, and abundant -opportunities for fruitful leisure. - -I have already spoken of his belief that the right sociological method -is the creation and comparison of individual Utopias. Thus his own -free-hand sketch of a better world is, in fact, a criticism of all -previous works of the kind. As distinguished from them the modern -Utopia, he says, has to present not a finally perfect stage but a -hopefully ascending one; it has to present men not as uniform types but -as conflicting individualities with a common bond; and moreover it has -to occupy, not some remote island or province "over the range" but a -whole planet. The Utopia of Wells is a world which differs from the -present world in one fundamental respect only--it has one initial -advantage: that every individual in it has been _started right_, in the -degree in which the collective knowledge of the world has rendered that -possible. - -But there is no need for me to say anything more about these books. They -are the free and suggestive motions of a mind inexhaustibly fertile and -given to many devices. Anyone who has read Wells at all is aware of his -ingenuity, his equal capacity for large schemes and minute details, his -truly Japanese belief in radical changes, once they are seen to be -necessary and possible. And indeed the details of social arrangement -follow naturally and profusely enough, once you get the frame of mind -that wishes them. Wells in his Utopia presupposes the frame of mind. In -short, he puts education first; he believes that the essential problems -of the present are not economic but psychological. - -And here where the constructive theory of Wells begins, let me quote a -passage from _The New Machiavelli_ that gives the gist of it: - - The line of human improvements and the expansion of human - life lies in the direction of education and finer - initiatives. If humanity cannot develop an education far - beyond anything that is now provided, if it cannot - collectively invent devices and solve problems on a much - richer, broader scale than it does at the present time, it - cannot hope to achieve any very much finer order or any more - general happiness than it now enjoys. We must believe, - therefore, that it can develop such a training and - education, or we must abandon secular constructive hope. And - here my initial difficulty as against crude democracy comes - in. If humanity at large is capable of that high education - and those creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must - its better and more vigorous types be so capable. And if - those who have power and scope and freedom to respond to - imaginative appeals cannot be won to the idea of collective - self-development, then the whole of humanity cannot be won - to that. From that one passes to what has become my general - conception in politics, the conception of the constructive - imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful - people, enterprising people, influential people, amidst whom - power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-conscious, - highly selective, open-minded, devoted, aristocratic - culture, which seems to me to be the necessary next phase in - the development of human affairs. I see human progress, not - as the spontaneous product of crowds of low minds swayed by - elementary needs, but as a natural but elaborate result of - intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and - curiosity liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions - and motives, modified and redirected by literature and art. - -This permeation of the head men of the world, this creation of a natural -collective-minded aristocracy appears now to be the permanent hope of -Wells. It is the stuff of all his novels, it is the centre of his -ethical system; and his _Utopia_ is made possible by the existence in it -of just such a flexible leading caste--the so-called Samurai. But -before coming to the inner implications of this, to the individual and -personal realities and difficulties of this, I must follow the -development of the idea in Wells himself. At various times, in various -works, he has presented it from a dozen different angles: as something -that is certain to come, as something he greatly desires to come, as -something that will not come at all except through prodigious effort, as -something that will come through a general catastrophe, as something -that will come through isolated individual endeavor, and the like. That -is to say he has presented his idea through all the various literary -mediums of exposition, fable, prophecy, psychological analysis, and -ethical appeal. - -It appears in a crude form in his first avowedly sociological work, -_Anticipations_. He there attempts to show that the chaos of society is -of itself beginning to generate a constructive class, into whose hands -it must ultimately fall. The advance of mechanism, he predicts, will -produce four clearly defined classes: an immense shareholding class with -all the potentialities of great property and a complete lack of function -with regard to that property; a non-producing class of middle-men -dependent on these, and composed of agents, managers, lawyers, clerks, -brokers, speculators, typists, and organizers; the expropriated class of -propertyless and functionless poor, whose present livelihood is -dependent on the fact that machinery is not yet so cheap as their labor. -And amid this generally disorganized mass a fourth element will define -itself. This in rudiment is the element of mechanics and engineers, -whose work makes it necessary for them to understand the machines they -are making and to be continually on the lookout for new methods. These -men, he holds, will inevitably develop a common character based on a -self-wrought scientific education and view of life. About them as a -nucleus all the other skilled and constructive minds--doctors, teachers, -investigators, writers, and the like--will tend to group themselves; and -as the other classes in their very nature will tend to social -disintegration, these will inevitably grow more and more conscious of a -purpose, a reason, a function in common, and will disentangle themselves -from the aimless and functionless masses about them. Democracy, as we -know it, will meanwhile pass away. For democratic government unavoidably -reduces itself to government by party machines and party machines depend -for their existence on alarms, quarrelsome patriotisms, and -international exasperations whose almost inevitable outcome is war. - -Whether war follows or not, the power of society is bound to fall into -the hands of the scientifically trained, constructive middle class, -because this class is the only indispensable element in it. Without war -this must occur just as soon as the spending and purchasing power of the -shareholding class becomes dependent for its existence on the class -which alone can save society from destruction. With war it will occur -with even greater rapidity: for in the warfare of the future that nation -is bound to win which has most effectively realized socialist ideals, in -which the government can command, with least interference from private -control, its roads, its food, its clothing, its material, its resources, -which has most efficiently organized itself as a whole; and the class -that modern warfare will bring to the front is the class that knows how -to handle machinery and how to direct it. But just as this class will be -the most efficient in war, so will it be the most careful to prevent -war: it will in fact confirm the ultimate tendency toward a World State -at peace with itself, through the agency, not of any of the governments -that we know to-day but of an informal coöperative organization which is -altogether outside the governmental systems of society, and which may in -time assimilate the greater part of the population of the world. - -Such is the argument of this book, and except for the inevitability of -it--the belief that all this _must_ come to pass--Wells has not since -abandoned it in any essential way. The new aristocracy that figures -there, the advance-guard of a better civilization, is precisely the -ethical ideal which is embodied in the chief characters of his novels. -Thus too the Samurai of _A Modern Utopia_ are figured as having arisen -at first informally as the constructive minds disentangling themselves -from the social chaos. Gradually becoming aware through research, -discussion and coöperation of a common purpose, they have at last -assumed a militant form and supplanted the political organizations of -the world. - -The general intention of all this finds utterance in the most poetic of -all the fables of Wells, _The Food of the Gods_. The Food itself, -invented by two undistinguished-looking scientists, becomes current in -the world through the very haphazardness of a society which will not -control discoveries detrimental to it and which consequently has no -means of coping with a discovery capable of superseding it. -"Heracleophorbia" has thus the same initial advantage as Tono-Bungay or -any other shabby patent medicine. It has an additional advantage; for -while patent medicines have the sanction of private enterprise and are -controlled by secret patents for the gain of their inventors, the Food -of the Gods, like every discovery of honorable scientists, is given -freely to the world. Thus the Food and the gigantic race of supermen who -spring from it and bring with them a nobler order of things are -themselves generated by the very chaos they promise to supplant. Just in -proportion as the inventors are frank and open men, having no secret -gainful purpose, the Food spreads far and wide. It is stolen, spilled, -scattered; and wherever it falls every living thing grows gigantic. -Immense wasps drone like motor-cars over the meadows, chickens grow as -large as emus, and here and there a baby fed upon it and unable -thereafter to accept any less robust diet grows gradually to Rabelaisian -proportions. Caddles, a type of all the growing giants, comes to his -forty-foot maturity in a remote village where, as the mellow vicar -observes, "Things change, but Humanity--_aere perennius_." There he is -taught by the little folk to submit himself to all his governors, -teachers, spiritual pastors and masters and to order himself lowly and -reverently to all his betters. They put him to work in the chalk-pits, -where he learns to manage a whole quarry single-handed and makes of -himself a rudimentary engineer, and then he breaks loose and tramps to -London. He finds himself in the crowded New Kent Road, and they tell him -he is obstructing the traffic: "But where is it going?" he says; "where -does it come from? What does it mean?" Around him play the electric -signs advertising Yanker's Yellow Pills and Tupper's Tonic Wine for -Vigor, conveying to his troubled mind the significance of a world of -chaos and accident, perverted instinct, and slavery to base suggestion. - -Is it necessary to say that society becomes alarmed at last? Is it -necessary to add that Wells opens fire upon it with his whole battery of -satire? Plainly men and giants cannot live in the same world; the little -men find their little ways, their sacred customs of order, home, and -religion threatened by a strange new thing. The Children of the Food -meanwhile have grown beyond the conventions and proportions of common -life; they have experienced a kind of humanity to which all men can -attain and from which there can be no retrogression to the lesser -scheme. In the end, having found one another, they assemble in their -embankment, the world against them. They sit amid their vast machinery, -Titanic shapes in the darkness broken by searchlights and the flames of -their forges. An ambassador from the old order brings them the terms -upon which they may go free. They must separate themselves from the -world and give up the Food. They refuse: - -"Suppose we give up this thing that stirs within us," says the Giant -Leaguer.... "What then? Will this little world of theirs be as it was -before? They may fight against greatness in us who are the children of -men, but can they conquer?... For greatness is abroad, and not only in -us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose of all things! It is in the -nature of all things, it is part of time and space. To grow and still to -grow, from first to last, that is Being, that is the law of life." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEW REPUBLICAN - - -It is obvious that the socialism of Wells, touching as it does at every -point the fabric of society, remains at bottom a personal and mystical -conception of life. His typical socialist, or constructive man, or -Samurai, or New Republican, or what you will, is as distinctly a poetic -projection from life as Nietzsche's Superman, or Carlyle's Hero, or the -Superior Man of Confucius. Like them, it implies a rule of conduct and a -special religious attitude. - -Nietzsche's Superman is a convenient figure by which for the moment to -throw into relief the point I have in mind. Plainly a conception of this -kind should never be intellectualized and defined. It is a living whole, -as a human being is a living whole, and the only way to grasp it is to -place oneself at the precise angle of the poet who conceived it. But the -fixed intellect of man is not often capable of rising to the height of -such an argument, nor do the run of critics and interpreters rise to -such a height themselves. In the case of Nietzsche, particularly, they -have confounded the confusion, urging precise definitions and at the -same time disagreeing among themselves as to which definitions may be -held valid. But indeed the Superman does not "mean" this or that: it can -merely be approached from different points of view with different -degrees of sympathy. And so it is with the New Republican of Wells. - -I have mentioned the Superman because Wells himself has reached a -conception of aristocracy similar in certain respects to that of -Nietzsche but in others wholly antagonistic. In _The Food of the Gods_ -he certainly exhibits a sympathy with Nietzsche on the poetical and -ideal side; for his giants are not simply grand-children of Rabelais, -they practise of necessity a morality at variance with that of the -little men among whom they grow. When Caddies comes to London he does -not, and cannot, expect the little men to feed him; not intending evil -and seeing merely that he must live, he sweeps the contents of a baker's -shop into his mouth with just the unconcerned innocence of laws and -prohibitions that a child would feel before a blackberry bush. The very -existence of a larger, freer race implies a larger and freer morality, -and the giants and the little folk alike see that the same world cannot -for long contain them both. But perhaps one can mark the distinction by -saying that, unlike the Superman, they are not masters but servants of -the cosmic process. They themselves are not the goal toward which the -whole creation tends. Humanity is not a setting for their splendor, but -something that wins through them its own significance. - -In fact it fully proves how profound is the socialistic instinct in -Wells, that though in English wise and almost in the manner of Carlyle -he has come to believe in the great ones of this world, he has never -lost the invincible socialist conviction that a great man is only a -figure of speech. In _The Discovery of the Future_ he says: "I must -confess that I believe that if by some juggling with space and time -Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, Edward IV, William the Conqueror, Lord Rosebery, -and Robert Burns had all been changed at birth, it would not have -produced any serious dislocation of the course of destiny. I believe -that these great men of ours are no more than images and symbols and -instruments taken, as it were, haphazard by the incessant and consistent -forces behind them." The individual who stands on his achievement, the -"lord of creation," is to him at best a little misinformed, at the worst -blustering, dishonest, presuming, absurd. - -By an original instinct the Wells hero is an inconspicuous little -person, fastidiously untheatrical, who cuts no figure personally and -who, to adopt a phrase from one of his later books, "escapes from -individuality in science and service." He abhors "personages." For the -personage is one who, in some degree, stands on his achievement, and to -Wells man, both in his love and his work, is experimental: he is an -experiment toward an impersonal synthesis, the well-being of the -species. It is true that this idea of man as an experiment does not -conflict with a very full development of personality. It consists in -that; but personality to Wells is attained purely through love and work, -and thus it comes to an end the moment it becomes static, the moment one -accepts the laurel wreath, the moment one verges on self-consequence. - -The first published utterance of Wells was, I think, a paper in _The -Fortnightly Review_ for July, 1891, called _The Rediscovery of the -Unique_. It was one of the earliest of those attacks on the logical -approach to life, so characteristic of contemporary thought: it stamped -him from the outset a pragmatist. The burden of his argument was that -since the investigations of Darwin it is no longer possible to ignore -the uniqueness of every individual thing in the universe and that "we -only arrive at the idea of similar beings by an unconscious or -deliberate disregard of an infinity of small differences"--that, in -brief, the method of classification which is the soul of logic is untrue -to the facts of life. "Human reason," he wrote, "in the light of what is -being advanced, appears as a convenient organic process based on a -fundamental happy misconception.... The _reason d'être_ of a man's mind -is to avoid danger and get food--so the naturalists tell us. His -reasoning powers are about as much a truth-seeking tool as the snout of -a pig, and he may as well try to get to the bottom of things by them as -a mole might by burrowing." - -I quote thus his rudely graphic early statement of the case, because he -has not since substantially modified it and because it shows that he -already related it to human realities: and indeed in the same paper he -pointed out the relation that such an idea must bear to ordinary -conduct: - - Beings are unique, circumstances are unique, and therefore - we cannot think of regulating our conduct by wholesale - dicta. A strict regard for truth compels us to add that - principles are wholesale dicta: they are substitutes of more - than doubtful value for an individual study of cases. - -This conception of human reason as an altogether inadequate organ for -getting at the truth of things he later expanded in his Oxford lecture, -_Scepticism of the Instrument;_ and, still further expanded, it forms -the first or metaphysical book of his _First and Last Things_. It is -unnecessary to discuss the rights and wrongs of this primary point in a -generation familiar with James and Bergson. It is an assumption of the -purely personal, experimental nature of truth which has had a sufficient -sanction of experience greatly to modify contemporary practice in ethics -and sociology. And it should be noted that Wells evolved it in his own -study of physical science (a study serious enough to result in -text-books of Biology, Zoology, and Physiography) and that he presents -it, in accordance with his own postulates, not as truth for everybody, -but as his own personal contribution to the sum of experience. The study -of science led him to see the limitations of the scientific attitude, -outside the primary physical sciences which for practical purposes can -afford to ignore individualities, in matters that approach the world of -human motives and affairs. - -I do not propose to discuss this question of logic. It is quite plain at -least, as Wells observes, in the spirit of Professor James, that "all -the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and determined -are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression." And -therefore he is justified in proceeding as follows: - - I make my beliefs as I want them. I do not attempt to go to - fact for them. I make them thus and not thus exactly as an - artist makes a picture so and not so.... That does not mean - that I make them wantonly and regardless of fact.... The - artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field of - visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative - and great poverty of test, that is all, but of no - wantonness; the conditions of Tightness are none the less - imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I - adopt certain beliefs because I feel the need of them, - because I feel an often quite unanalyzable Tightness in - them, because the alternative of a chaotic life distresses - me. - -And this is the way in which he presents the gist of his beliefs: - - I see myself in life as part of a great physical being that - strains and I believe grows toward Beauty, and of a great - mental being that strains and I believe grows towards - knowledge and power. In this persuasion that I am a gatherer - of experience, a mere tentacle that arranged thought beside - thought for this Being of the Species, this Being that grows - beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling - idea of which I stand in need, the ruling idea that - reconciles and adjudicates among my warring motives. In it I - find both concentration of myself and escape from myself, in - a word, I find _Salvation_. - -And again later: - - The race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are - the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement: - it is a statement of fact. In so far as we are individuals, - so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are - accidental, disconnected, without significance, the sport of - chance. In so far as we realize ourselves as experiments of - the species for the species, just in so far do we escape - from the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes in an - experience greater than ourselves.... Now none of this, if - you read me aright, makes for the suppression of one's - individual difference, but it does make for its correlation. - We have to get everything we can out of ourselves for this - very reason that we do not stand alone; we signify as parts - of a universal and immortal development. Our separate selves - are our charges, the talents of which much has to be made. - It is because we are episodical in the great synthesis of - life that we have to make the utmost of our individual lives - and traits and possibilities. - -Naturally then, just as he holds by the existing State as a rudimentary -collective organ in public affairs, so also, in theory, he holds by the -existing Church. His Church of the Future bears to the existing Church -just the relation which the ultimate State of socialism bears to the -existing State. "The theory of a religion," says Wells, "may propose the -attainment of Nirvana or the propitiation of an irascible Deity or a -dozen other things as its end and aim. The practical fact is that it -draws together great multitudes of diverse individualized people in a -common solemnity and self-subordination, however vague, and is so far -like the State, and in a manner far more intimate and emotional and -fundamental than the State, a synthetic power. And in particular the -idea of the Catholic Church is charged with synthetic suggestion; it is -in many ways an idea broader and finer than the constructive idea of any -existing State." - -All of which I take to be very much the position of Erasmus face to face -with Luther and of Matthew Arnold face to face on the one hand with -Nonconformity and on the other with Darwinism: that the Church is a -social fact greater in importance than any dogmatic system it contains. -To Wells any sort of voluntary self-isolation, any secession from -anything really synthetic in society, is a form of "sin." And like many -Catholics he justifies a certain Machiavelism in squaring one's personal -doubts with the collective end. Thus he holds that test oaths and -declarations of formal belief are of the same nature as the oath of -allegiance a republican takes to the King, petty barriers that cannot -weigh against the good that springs from placing oneself _en rapport_ -with the collective religious consciousness; at least in the case of -national Churches, which profess to represent the whole spiritual life -of a nation and which cannot therefore be regarded as exclusive to any -affirmative religious man. The individual, he says, must examine his -special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility -of coöperation; as far as possible he must repress his private tendency -toward social fragmentation, hold fast to the idea of the Church as -essentially a larger fact than any specific religious beliefs, and work -within it for the recognition of this fact. I have mentioned Catholic -reasoning; Wells appears to be in general agreement with Newman as to -the subordination of private intellectual scruples to the greater unity -of faith. - -But indeed I doubt if it is fair to take him too much at his word in -specific matters of this kind. _First and Last Things_ has that slightly -official quality which goes with all Confessions of Faith out loud. If -his intention has led him to square himself with lines of thought and -conduct where, to speak the truth, he is an alien, his intention -remains, and that is plain and fine. - -The synthetic motive gains its very force through the close-knitting of -keenly-developed, proud, and valiant individualities. In Wells the -synthetic motive and the individual motive qualify and buttress one -another; and he is quite as much opposed to the over-predominance of the -synthetic motive where the personal motive is deficient as he is to the -self-indulgence of the purely personal life. Thus the Assembly in _A -Modern Utopia_ is required to contain a certain number of men outside -the Samurai class, because, as they explain, "there is a certain sort of -wisdom that comes of sin and laxness, which is necessary to the perfect -ruling of life," and their Canon contains a prayer "to save the world -from unfermented men." So also in _First and Last Things_ Wells remarks: -"If I were a father confessor I should begin my catalogue of sins by -asking, 'Are you a man of regular life?' and I would charge my penitent -to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving irregularity; to -fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork and beans or give -up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners." Plainly his -collective purpose is nothing unless it consists of will, will even to -wilfulness, even to perversity. - -And this leads one back to that early assertion of his that since beings -and circumstances are unique, we must get rid of the idea that conduct -should be regulated by general principles. Similarly, at the outset of -_Mankind in the Making_ he says it is necessary "to reject and set aside -all abstract, refined, and intellectualized ideas as starting -propositions, such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, or Beauty, -and to hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Goodness and Beauty, he says, cannot -be considered apart from good and beautiful things and one's personal -notions of the good and beautiful have to be determined by one's -personal belief about the meaning of life. Thus, to take an illustration -from his novels, one of the most odious traits of such a father as Ann -Veronica's or Mr. Pope in _Marriage_ is that they wish to regulate their -daughters, not by a study of what is and must be good in their eyes, but -by a general sweeping view of what good daughters ought to be. - -Now since his own idea of the purpose of life is the development of the -collective consciousness of the race, his idea of the Good is that which -contributes to this synthesis, and the Good Life is that which, as he -says, "most richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience and -renders it available for the race, that contributes most effectively to -the collective growth." And as a corollary to this, Sin is essentially -"the service of secret and personal ends." The conflict in one way or -another between this Good and this Evil forms the substance of each of -the main group of his novels. Aside from the novels of shop-life, each -of his principal men begins life with a passionate and disinterested -ambition to gather and prepare experience and render it available for -the race; each one falls from this ambition to the service of secret and -personal ends. Lewisham, Capes, Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford are, each -in his own way, human approximations, with all the discount of actual -life, of the ethical standard of Wells himself as it is generalized in -the New Republicans and the Samurai. They illustrate how fully the -socialism of Wells is summed up in a conception of character. - -But before turning to the actual men and women who form the substance of -his novels, I must add something about those wraith-like beings, the -Samurai of _A Modern Utopia,_ which fully embody his ideal. - -The name Samurai, to begin with, is not a random choice, for it is plain -that the Japanese temper is akin to that of Wells. The career of the -Japanese as a nation during the last fifty years perfectly illustrates -his frequent contention that in modern warfare success falls to the -nation that has most completely realized the socialistic, as -distinguished from the individualistic, notion of society. "Behind her -military capacity is the disciplined experience of a thousand years," -says Lafcadio Hearn, who proceeds to show at what cost, in everything we -are apt to regard as human, this disciplined power has been -achieved--the cost of individual privacy in rights, property, and -conduct. - -But aside from social ideals and achievements one instinctively feels -that Wells likes Japanese human nature. In one of his early essays, long -since out of print, he remarks: - - I like my art unadorned; thought and skill and the other - strange quality that is added thereto to make things - beautiful--and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and - paper, and behold! a thing of beauty!--as they do in Japan. - And if it should fall into the fire--well, it has gone like - yesterday's sunset, and to-morrow there will be another. - -He contrasts this with the ordinary English view of art and property, -mahogany furniture and "handsome" possessions: - - The pretence that they were the accessories to human life - was too transparent. _We_ were the accessories; we minded - them for a little while, and then we passed away. They wore - us out and cast us aside. We were the changing scenery; they - were the actors who played on through the piece. - -_There is no Being but Becoming_ is the special dictum of Wells, a -dictum which does not consort with mahogany sideboards, but is tangibly -expressed in Japanese architecture. And if Wells naturally likes -Japanese art, its economy, delicacy, ephemerality, its catlike nicety, -its paucity of color, its emphasis of design, its "starkness," it is -plain also that many qualities of the Japanese character must also -appeal irresistibly to him: the light hold they have on all those things -into which one settles down, from stolid leather arm-chairs to -comfortable private fortunes; their lack of self-consequence, their -alertness, their athletic freedom from everything that encumbers, their -remoteness from port-wine and _embonpoint._ These things exist in -Wells's notion of right human nature. - -Thus the Samurai. They are delegates of the species, experimenting and -searching for new directions; they instinctively view themselves as -explorers for the race, as disinterested agents. And their own -self-development on this disinterested basis is not only the purpose of -their own lives, but also the method by which the Life Impulse discovers -and records itself and pushes on to ever wider and richer -manifestations. - -The socialism of Wells is merely a building out from this conception. He -is persuaded that this kind of experimental exercise is not simply a -happy indulgence for the few fortunately placed, but that it is actually -virtue and the only virtue. And this notion of personal virtue--personal -in quality, social in effect--once conceded, it follows that the -moulding of life must proceed with reference to this. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -HUMAN NATURE - - -There is always a certain disadvantage in approaching human nature -through a theory or in the light of an ideal. If I am doing that, it is -my own fault and by no means the fault of Wells. He has himself -abandoned socialism, in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has -too much of the _à priori_ about it; he has abandoned economics because -it deals with man as a mass-mind; he has come to rest in human nature -itself and he has made his theories subject to human nature. - -"All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the -story," says Thoreau. Most readers of the novels of Wells, I suppose, -have no notion that a theory of life runs through them and unites them. -And they are right. The force of a work of art does not reside in its -"inner meanings." An admirable work of art will always no doubt possess -"inner meanings" in plenty and the unhappy mind of man will always rout -them out. But to separate the intellectual structure of anything from -the thing itself is just like any other kind of vivisection: you expose -the brain and you kill the dog. A work of art is a moving living whole -that speaks to the moving living whole which is oneself. We are -insensibly modified by reading as by other experience. We come to feel -differently, see differently, act differently. Without doubt Wells has -altered the air we breathe and has made a conscious fact in many minds -the excellence that resides in certain types of men and modes of living -and the odiousness that resides in others. Socialism, like everything -else which changes the world, comes as a thief in the night. - -Still, it is plain that Wells himself began with doctrine foremost; -richness of experience has led him only after many years to get the -horse before the cart. From the first he was aware of a point of -view--it was the point of view, writ large, of his own self-made career, -growing gradually more and more coherent. Throughout his romances, down -to the very end, his chief interest was theoretical rather than human. -Only this can account for the violent wrenching of life and character in -them to suit the requirements of a predetermined idea. The Food of the -Gods, for example, is so far the essential fact of the book that bears -its name that the characters in this book are merely employed to give -the Food a recognizable human setting. Throughout his romances, indeed, -men exist for inventions, not inventions for men. - -Yet the "human interest," as it is called, was there from the outset, -side by side with this main theoretic interest in the scientific and -socialistic possibilities of life. The series of novels began almost as -early as the series of romances. Two "streams of tendency" run side by -side throughout the earlier writings of Wells--streams of tendency which -meet fully for the first time in _Tono-Bungay_, and have formed a single -main current in the novels subsequent to that. On the one hand was the -stream of constructive theory, not yet brought into contact with human -nature, on the other the stream of "human interest," not yet brought -into contact with constructive theory. Mr. Hoopdriver, of _The Wheels of -Chance,_ and Kipps, are typical of this earlier fiction, specimens of -muddled humanity as such, one might say, quite unmitigated by the train -of thought, the possibility of doing something _with_ muddled humanity, -which was growing more and more urgent in the romances. - -In _Tono-Bungay_, as I have said, one sees the union of these two trains -of interest, muddled humanity being represented in Uncle Ponderevo, -constructive theory in George Ponderevo. And in all the subsequent -novels this fusion continues. The background in each case is the static -world of muddle from which Wells is always pushing off into the open sea -of possibilities, the foreground being occupied by a series of men and -women who represent this dynamic forward movement. And the philosophy of -Wells has finally come to port in human nature. - -"Few modern socialists," he says somewhere, "present their faith as a -complete panacea, and most are now setting to work in earnest upon those -long-shirked preliminary problems of human interaction through which the -vital problem of a collective head and brain can alone be approached." -And elsewhere he says: "Our real perplexities are altogether -psychological. There are no valid arguments against a great-spirited -socialism but this, that people will not. Indolence, greed, meanness of -spirit, the aggressiveness of authority, and above all jealousy, -jealousy from pride and vanity, jealousy for what we esteem our -possessions, jealousy for those upon whom we have set the heavy fetters -of our love, a jealousy of criticism and association, these are the real -obstacles to those brave large reconstructions, those profitable -abnegations and brotherly feats of generosity that will yet turn human -life--of which our individual fives are but the momentary parts--into a -glad, beautiful and triumphant coöperation all round this sunlit world." - -Inevitably then he sees the world as divided roughly into two worlds, -and human nature as of two general kinds. There is the static world, the -normal, ordinary world which is on the whole satisfied with itself, -together with the great mass of men who compose and sanction it; and -there is the ever-advancing better world, pushing through this outworn -husk in the minds and wills of creative humanity. In one of his essays -he has figured this opposition as between what he calls the Normal -Social Life and the Great State. And in one of those _dégagé_ -touch-and-go sketches in which he so often sums up the history of -humankind, he has presented the Normal Social Life as a "common -atmosphere of cows, hens, dung, toil, ploughing, economy, and domestic -intimacy," an immemorial state of being which implies on the part of men -and women a perpetual acquiescence--a satisfied or hopeless consent--to -the end of time. But as against this normal conception of life he points -out that modern circumstances have developed in men, through machinery, -the division of labor, etc., a "surplus life" which does not fit into -the Normal scheme at all, and that humanity has returned "from a closely -tethered to a migratory existence." And he observes: "The history of the -immediate future will, I am convinced, be very largely the history of -the conflict of the needs of this new population with the institutions, -the boundaries, the laws, prejudices, and deep-rooted traditions -established during the home-keeping, localized era of mankind's career." - -Two conceptions of life, two general types of character, two ethical -standards are here set in opposition, and this opposition is maintained -throughout the novels of Wells. Thus on the title-page of _The New -Machiavelli_ appears the following quotation from Professor James: "It -suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and tough-minded -people ... do both exist." In _A Modern Utopia_ this division appears -typically in the two men from our world who play off against one -another, the botanist and the narrator of the story. The -"tender-mindedness" of the botanist is exhibited in the fact that he -cares nothing for a better world if it is to deprive him of the muddled, -inferior and sentimental attachments of his accustomed life, and prefers -them to the austerer, braver prospect that is offered him. -"Tough-mindedness," on the other hand, is above all the state of living, -not in one's attachments, habits, possessions, not in the rut of least -resistance, but in the sense of one's constructive and coöperative -relationship to the whole sum of things, in being "a conscious part of -that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe." And -indeed the constant theme of the novels of Wells might be described as -tough-mindedness with lapses. - -For the heroes of Wells do lapse: they pay that tribute to "human -nature" and the overwhelming anti-social forces in the world and in man -himself. They fall, as a rule, from "virtue" to the service of secret -and personal ends. _Cherchez la femme_. Mr. Lewisham, insufficiently -prepared and made to feel that society does not want him, has to give up -his disinterested ambitions in science and scramble for money to support -a wife whom instinct has urged him, however imprudently, to marry. -George Ponderevo gives up science and is forced into abetting his -uncle's patent medicine enterprise for the same reason. For the same -reason, too, Capes takes to commercial play-writing to support Ann -Veronica; and to stand behind the extravagance of Marjorie, Trafford, -having discovered in his researches an immensely valuable method of -making artificial india-rubber which he is going to make public for the -use of society, is persuaded to compromise his honor as a scientist and -monopolize his discovery for private gain. In _Tono-Bungay_ the -enterprise is a swindling patent medicine, which many business men would -refuse to have anything to do with; but in _Marriage_ the proposition -belongs to what is called "legitimate business," and it may be well to -quote a passage to show the subtlety and, at the same time, from this -point of view, the very substantial nature of temptation and sin: - - Solomonson had consulted Trafford about this matter at - Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that - Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to - complete and publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, - first a smashing demonstration of the unsoundness of - Behren's claim and then a lucid exposition of just what had - to be done and what could be done to make an india-rubber - absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The - business man could not believe his ears. - - "My dear chap, positively--you mustn't!" Solomonson had - screamed.... "Don't you see all you are throwing away?" - - "I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," - said Trafford.... "When men dropped that idea of concealing - knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist, and all that is - worth having in modern life, all that makes it better and - safer and more hopeful than the ancient life began." - - "My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to - give away the synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of - the window into the street!"... Everything that had made - Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to - such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as - such no concern with personal consequences; his business is - the steady relentless clarification of knowledge. The human - affairs he changes, the wealth he makes or destroys, are no - concern of his; once these things weigh with him, become - primary, he has lost his honor as a scientific man. - - "But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had - cried during those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you - are, shying this cheap synthetic rubber of yours into the - world--for it's bound to be cheap! anyone can see - that--like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good of - saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ - business is just to make bombs and drop them out of the - window? You smash up things just the same. Why! you'll ruin - hundreds and thousands of people, people living on rubber - shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable - workers in rubber works...." - - "I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said - Solomonson, leaning back in his chair at last.... "So soon, - that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can lower the - price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the - end--there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow - tea." - -There we have Eve and the apple brought up to date, sin being the choice -of a private and individual good at the expense of the general good. The -honor of a doctor or a scientist consists in not concealing and -monopolizing discoveries. But why should the line be drawn at doctors -and scientists? There is the crux of socialist ethics. - -By this type of compromise the actual New Republicans fall short of -their Utopian selves, the Samurai. But compromise is well within the -philosophy of Wells. "The individual case," he says in _First and Last -Things_, "is almost always complicated by the fact that the existing -social and economic system is based upon conditions that the growing -collective intelligence condemns as unjust and undesirable, and that the -constructive spirit in men now seeks to supersede. We have to live in a -provisional state while we dream of and work for a better one." And -elsewhere: "All socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers -far ahead of the main advance. The organized State that should own and -administer their possessions for the general good has not arrived to -take them over; and in the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory -agents according to their lights and make things ready for its coming." - -But if the New Republican is justified in compromising himself for the -means of subsistence, how much more in the matter of love! "All for -love, and the world well lost" might be written over several of Wells's -novels. But, in reality, is the world lost at all under these -conditions? On the contrary, it is gained, and the more unconsciously -the better, in babies. Love belongs to the future and the species with -more finality than the greatest constructive work of the present, and -the heroines of Wells are inordinately fond of babies. When Schopenhauer -analyzed the metaphysics of love he showed that natural selection is a -quite inevitable thing seeking its own. In Wells love is equally -irresistible and direct. Whenever it appears in his books it makes -itself unmistakably known, and, having done so, it cuts its way straight -to its consummation, through every obstacle of sentiment, affection, -custom, and conventionality. It is as ruthless as the Last Judgment, and -like the Last Judgment it occurs only once. - -Why then does it appear promiscuous? The answer to this question refers -one back to the underlying contention of Wells that there are two kinds -of human beings and two corresponding ethics, and that in the end the -New Republican who has become aware of himself cannot consort with the -Normal Social breed. But in actual life this standard becomes entangled -with many complexities. Just as, in a world of commercial competition, -it is the lot of most of those who try to give themselves -whole-heartedly to disinterested work that they place themselves at such -a disadvantage as ultimately to have to make a choice between work and -love, so the pressure of society and the quality of human nature itself -create entanglements of every kind. It is the nature of life that one -grows only gradually to the secure sense of a personal aim, and that -meanwhile day by day one has given hostages to fortune. To wake up and -find oneself suddenly the master of a purpose is without doubt, in the -majority of cases, to find oneself mortgaged beyond hope to the existing -fact. The writer who sets out to make his way temporarily and as a -stepping-stone by journalism finds himself in middle age with ample -means to write what he wishes to write only to find also that he has -become for good and all--a journalist! And so it is with lovers. Only in -the degree to which free will remains a perpetual and present faith can -"love and fine thinking" remain themselves; free of their attachments, -free of their obligations, and mortgages, and discounts. That is the -quality of a decent marriage, and the end of a marriage that is not -decent. - -It is no business of mine to justify the sexual ethics of Wells. But -there is a difference between a fact and an intention, and what I have -just said serves to explain the intention. Consider, in the light of it, -a few of his characters, both in and out of marriage. Ann Veronica from -the first frankly owns that she is not in love with Manning, but every -kind of social hypnotism is brought into motion to work on her ignorance -of life and to confuse her sense of free-will. George Ponderevo simply -outgrows Marion; but you cannot expect him not to grow, and who is -responsible for the limited, furtive, second-hand world in which Marion -has lived and which has irrevocably moulded her? Margaret's world, too, -is a second-hand world, though on a socially higher plane: she lives in -a pale dream of philanthropy and Italian art, shocked beyond any mutual -understanding by everything that really belongs in the first-hand world -of her husband. These characters meet and pass one another like moving -scales; they never stand on quite the same plane. And then the -inevitable always occurs. For, just as the Children of the Food cannot -consort with the little folk they promise to supersede, so it appears to -be a fixed part of the programme of Wells that New Republicans can only -love other New Republicans with success. - -He implies this indeed in _A Modern Utopia_: - - "A man under the Rule who loves a woman who does not follow - it, must either leave the Samurai to marry her, or induce - her to accept what is called the Woman's Rule, which, while - it exempts her from the severer qualifications and - disciplines, brings her regimen into a working harmony with - his." - - "Suppose she breaks the Rule afterwards?" - - "He must leave either her or the order." - - "There is matter for a novel or so in that." - - "There has been matter for hundreds." - -Wells has written six himself. _Love and Mr. Lewisham, Ann Veronica, -Tono-Bungay, The New Machiavelli, Marriage, The Passionate Friends_, are -all variations on this theme. In one of these alone life's double motive -succeeds in establishing itself, and it is for this reason that -_Marriage_, to my thinking the weakest of his novels from an artistic -point of view, is the most important concrete presentation of the -philosophy of Wells. It is an inferior book, but it gives one the sense -of a problem solved. By passing through a necessary yet feasible -discipline, Trafford and Marjorie bridge over the gap between haphazard -human nature and the better nature of socialism, and become Samurai in -fact. - -These entanglements of the actual world would be an overwhelming -obstacle to a socialism less vigorous than that of Wells. But obstacles -give edge to things, and for a man who loves order no one could have -pictured disorder with more relish than he. Only a pure theorist could -regret the artistic zest with which he portrays our muddled world. -Running amuck was a constant theme in his early writings; his comets ran -amuck, and so did Mr. Bessel, and there is no more relished wanton scene -than that of the Invisible Man running amuck through the Surrey -villages. Intentionally or not, this relish in disorder reinforces the -prime fact about his view of order. He abhors the kind of order which is -often ignorantly confounded with the socialist aim, the order which -classifies and standardizes. He desires a collective consciousness only -through the exercise of a universally unimpeded free will, and he would -rather have no collectiveness at all than one that implies the sacrifice -of this free will. He wishes to work only on the most genuine human -stuff. This was the basis of his break with the Fabian Society; it is -the basis of his dislike of bureaucratic methods which deprive people of -beer when they want beer. It defines his notion of the true method of -socialism as first of all an education of the human will toward -voluntary right discipline. - -His appeal, then, is a personal one. He has proved this indeed by his -repudiation of all attempts to embody in practice his proposed order of -voluntary nobility, the Samurai. Certain groups of young people actually -organized themselves upon the Rule that he had outlined, and it was this -that led him to see how entirely his ideal had been personal and -artistic rather than practical. Anyone at all familiar with religious -history and psychology will see how inevitably any such group would tend -to emphasize the Rule and the organization rather than the socially -constructive spirit for which the whole was framed, and how the -organization would itself separate from the collective life of the world -and become a new sect among the many sects. It was the same instinct -that led Emerson, Transcendental communist as he was, to look askance at -Brook Farm. It has been the want of an equal tact in eminent religious -minds that has made society a warfare of sect and opinion. - -When one tries to focus the nature of his appeal one recalls a passage -in one of his books where he sums up the ordinary mind of the world and -the function which all socialism bears to this mind: - - It is like a very distended human mind; it is without a - clear aim; it does not know except in the very vaguest terms - what it wants to do; it has impulses, it has fancies; it - begins and forgets. In addition, it is afflicted with a - division within itself that is strictly analogous to that - strange mental disorder which is known to psychologists as - multiple personality. It has no clear conception of the - whole of itself, it goes about forgetting its proper name - and address. Part of it thinks of itself as one great thing, - as, let us say, Germany; another thinks of itself as - Catholicism, another as the white race, or Judæa. At times - one might deem the whole confusion not so much a mind as - incurable dementia--a chaos of mental elements, haunted by - invincible and mutually incoherent fixed ideas.... In its - essence the socialistic movement amounts to this: it is an - attempt in this warring chaos of a collective mind to pull - itself together, to develop and establish a governing idea - of itself. It is the development of the collective - self-consciousness of humanity. - -Certainly the road to this can only be through a common understanding. -The willing and unwilling servitudes of men, the institutions of society -that place love and work in opposition to one another, the shibboleths -of party, the aggressive jingoisms of separate peoples, the immemorial -conspiracy by which men have upheld the existing fact, these things do -spring from the want of imagination, the want of energetic faith, the -want of mutual understanding. To this inner and personal problem Wells -has applied himself. Can life be ventilated, can the mass of men be -awakened to a sense of those laws of social gravitation and the -transmutation of energy by which life is proved a myriad-minded -organism, can the ever-growing sum of human experience and discovery -clear up the dark places within society and within man? Among those who -have set themselves to the secular solution of these questions--and I am -aware of the limits of any secular solution--there are few as effective -as Wells. - -Consider him in relation to a single concrete issue, the issue of -militarism: - - Expenditure upon preparation for war falls, roughly, into - two classes: there is expenditure upon things that have a - diminishing value, things that grow old-fashioned and wear - out, such as fortifications, ships, guns, and ammunition, - and expenditure upon things that have a permanent and even - growing value, such as organized technical research, - military and naval experiment, and the education and - increase of a highly trained class of war experts. - -And in _The Common Sense of Warfare_ he urges a lavish expenditure on -"education and training, upon laboratories and experimental stations, -upon chemical and physical research and all that makes knowledge and -leading." Separate the principle involved here from the issue it is -involved in, get the intention clear of the fact, and you find that he -is saying just the better sort of things that Matthew Arnold said. -Militarism granted, are you going to do military things or are you going -to make military things a stepping-stone toward the clarification of -thought, the training of men, the development of race-imagination? -Militarism has been to a large extent the impetus that has made the -Germans and the Japanese the trained, synthetic peoples they are. And -these very qualities are themselves in the end hostile to militarism. -Militarism considered in this sense is precisely what the General Strike -is in the idea of M. Georges Sorel: a myth, a thing that never comes to -pass, but which trains the general will by presenting it with a concrete -image toward which the will readily directs itself. Kipling, in the eyes -of the New Machiavelli, at least made the nation aware of what comes. - - All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, All along o' - doing things rather more or less. - -There is in this no defence of militarism. Granting the facts of -society, there is a way that accepts and secures them as they are and -another way of turning them into the service of the future, and a people -that has trained itself with reference to a particular issue has -virtually trained itself for all issues. - -But no one, I think, has measured the difficulties of real progress more -keenly than Wells has come to measure them. The further he has -penetrated into human nature the more alive he has become to these -difficulties. _The New Machiavelli_ is a modern _Rasselas_ that has no -happy valley in the end, and Remington passes from party to party, -penetrating inward from ideas to the better stuff of mankind, hoping to -embody his "white passion of statecraft," and in the end demonstrating -to himself the futility of all groups and parties alike. - -And as with parties, so with men. Consider that scene in _The Passionate -Friends_ where Stratton tries to explain in writing to his father what -he has been experiencing and why he must go away. He writes page after -page without expressing himself and at last, certain that he and his -father cannot come into touch, sends off a perfunctory note and receives -a perfunctory reply. "There are times," he adds, "when the -inexpressiveness of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to -me we are all asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still -cows who stand munching slowly in a field.... Why couldn't we and why -didn't we talk together!" - -That is the burden of his latest novel. By this touchstone he has come -to measure the possibility of that openness of mind, that mutual -understanding, that ventilation of life and thought through which alone -the Great State can exist. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A PERSONAL CHAPTER - - -I doubt if there are many living men of note who, a generation after -they are dead, will be so fully and easily "explained" as H.G. Wells. He -is a most personal and transparent writer, he is the effect of -conditions and forces which have existed for scarcely more than two -generations. But for these very reasons it is very difficult to see him -in perspective, and to explain him would be to explain the age in which -we live. Let me at least give certain facts and reflections about his -life written by Wells himself, a few years ago, in the introduction to a -Russian translation of his writings: - - I was born[1] in that queer indefinite class that we call in - England the middle class. I am not a bit aristocratic; I do - not know any of my ancestors beyond my grandparents, and - about them I do not know very much, because I am the - youngest son of my father and mother and their parents were - all dead before I was born. My mother was the daughter of an - innkeeper at a place called Midhurst, who supplied - post-horses to the coaches before the railways came; my - father was the son of the head gardener of Lord de Lisle at - Penshurst Castle, in Kent. They had various changes of - fortune and position; for most of his life my father kept a - little shop in a suburb of London, and eked out his - resources by playing a game called cricket, which is not - only a pastime, but a show which people will pay to see, and - which, therefore, affords a living to professional players. - His shop was unsuccessful, and my mother, who had been a - lady's maid, became, when I was twelve years old, - housekeeper in a large country house. I too was destined to - be a shopkeeper. I left school at thirteen for that purpose. - I was apprenticed first to a chemist, and, that proving - unsatisfactory, to a draper. But after a year or so it - became evident to me that the facilities that were and still - are increasing in England offered me better chances in life - than a shop and comparative illiteracy could do; and so I - struggled for and got various grants and scholarships that - enabled me to study and take a degree in science and some - mediocre honors in the new and now great and growing - University of London.... After I had graduated I taught - biology for two or three years, and then became a - journalist.... I began first to write literary articles, - criticisms, and so forth, and presently short imaginative - stories in which I made use of the teeming suggestions of - modern science.... - -So much for the facts. The reflections are not less illuminating: - - The literary life is one of the modern forms of adventure. - Success with a book--even such a commercially modest success - as mine has been--means in the English-speaking world not - merely a moderate financial independence, but the utmost - freedom of movement and intercourse. A poor man is lifted - out of his narrow circumstances into familiar and - unrestrained intercourse with a great variety of people. He - sees the world; if his work excites interest, he meets - philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, - professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, the - great, and he may make such use of them as he can. He finds - himself no longer reading in books and papers, but hearing - and touching at first hand the big questions that sway men, - the initiatives that shape human affairs.... To be a - literary artist is to want to render one's impressions of - the things about one. Life has interested me enormously and - filled me with ideas and associations I want to present - again. I have liked life and like it more and more. The days - in the shop and the servants' hall, the straitened struggles - of my early manhood, have stored me with vivid memories that - illuminate and help me to appreciate all the wider vistas of - my later social experiences. I have friends and intimates - now at almost every social level, from that of a peer to - that of a pauper, and I find my sympathies and curiosities - stretching like a thin spider's web from top to bottom of - the social tangle. I count that wide social range one of the - most fortunate accidents of my life, and another is that I - am of a diffident and ineffectual presence, unpunctual, - fitful, and easily bored by other than literary effort; so - that I am not tempted to cut a figure in the world and - abandon that work of observing and writing which is my - proper business in it. - -This candid and exact statement enables us to see just how far, in -matters of fact, experience and belief, the autobiographical motive has -entered his writings. It would be possible to show how inevitably such -an ideal as that of the New Republican Samurai arose from such a life; -how much that conscious and deliberate insistence on personal efficiency -and orderly ways, that repudiation of mental confusion, sluggishness, -and sentiment may figure as a kind of stepping-stone from the world of -Kipps and Polly to the world of Remington and Trafford; how a -self-wrought scientific education would form the basis of an ideal of -aristocracy rising from it; and how the motto "There is no Being but -Becoming" would express its own constant desertion of levels achieved, -its own pressing upward to levels equally transient. Just as the -"democratic person" of Whitman raises his own fervent, chaotic, and -standardless experience into an ideal, so also the ideal of Wells is -nothing else than the projection of his own experimental opportunism. It -is impossible in discussing Wells to ignore this social ascent; for in -England a man passes from one stratum to another only by virtue of a -certain lack of substantiality, a power to disencumber himself, to shed -customs and affections and all the densenesses and coagulations which -mark each grade in that closely defined social hierarchy. The world of -shopkeeping in England is a world girt about with immemorial -subjections; it is, one might say, a moss-covered world; and to shake -oneself loose from it is to become a rolling stone, a drifting and -unsettled, a detached and acutely personal, individual. It is to pass -from a certain confined social maturity, a confused mellowness, into a -world wholly adventurous and critical, into a freedom which achieves -itself at the expense of solidity and warmth. In Wells, for instance, -the sense of the soil is wholly supplanted by the sense of machinery. -His evolution has been the reverse of the usual evolution from what -Bacon called the _lumen siccum_ to the _lumen humidum_, from the dry -light to the light that is drenched in customs and affections. Instead -of growing mellower, he has grown more and more fluid and electric, in -direct ratio to the growing width of his social horizon. - -To prove this one has only to consider his novels. There was a time when -he had in common with Dickens and De Foe the quality they have in common -with one another--the quality of homeliness. He drew the little world he -knew well, the limited and lovable world of small folk. Mr. Hoopdriver, -Delia the chambermaid, Kipps and Ann Pornick--a score of these helpless, -grown-up little children he pictured with a radiant affection, tempering -the wind to the shorn lamb. It is more in the nature of his later -thought to see poverty as a wasteful rather than a cruel thing, even -though he may not have approached the harsh realism of Bernard Shaw's -observation: "I have never had any feeling about the English working -classes except a desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible -people." - -Certainly he has not experienced any other world in quite this way. "I -count that wide social range one of the most fortunate accidents in my -life," he says. Accidental one feels it to be, as of a man inhabiting -the great world by virtue of sheer talent, whose nature has not in any -sense settled there. His philosophy and his socialism are outgrowths of -his own experience; they erect into reasons and theories the nature of a -life which is not at home, and which easily unburdens itself of all that -seems insensate because it is unfamiliar. To be a socialist at all is to -have accustomed oneself, through necessity or imagination, to a certain -detachment from a great many of the familiar, lovable, encumbering, -delightful stupidities of the world. And Wells has travelled up and down -through time and space too much to have any great regard for the -present. "I have come to be, I am afraid," he says, in _The Future in -America,_ "even a little insensitive to fine immediate things through -this anticipatory habit.... There are times indeed when it makes life -seem so transparent and flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an -equally transitory series of consequences----." His hold upon the -present is so far from inevitable that _The New Machiavelli_ and -_Marriage_, realistic as they are, are represented as being written some -years hence, our own time already appearing retrospectively in them. As -little as Faust has he been tempted to call out upon the passing moment. -His main characters drift through this period of time, substantial -themselves but with a background of substantialities, in a way that -recalls Paolo and Francesca looming out of the phantom cloud-procession -of the _Inferno_. - -Into this larger world, in short, he has carried with him only himself -and his own story. We live in two worlds--the primary world of vivid -personal realities and the secondary world of our human background. It -is the secondary world that anchors us in time and space; the primary -world we carry with us as part of ourselves. In Wells there is no -secondary world, no human background, no sense of abiding relations. It -is his philosophy of life and the quality of his men and women to be -experimental in a plastic scheme. His range is very small: the same -figures reappear constantly. There is the Wells hero,--Lewisham, Capes, -Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford, Stratton; there is the Wells heroine, -Ann Veronica, Isabel, Marjorie, Lady Mary; there is the ineffectual -woman with whom the Wells hero becomes entangled, Capes's first wife, -Marion, Margaret; there is the ineffectual man with whom the Wells -heroine becomes entangled, Magnet, Manning. To strike the lowest common -denominator in this tangle is inevitably to arrive once more, one feels, -in the region of personal experience. Although it cannot be said that -his minor characters are lacking in reality, they are certainly -intellectual portraits, and outside the limits of subjective experience. -The principal men and women of Wells move through a world seen, but -hardly a world felt. - -This want of social background makes his characters as detached from the -familiar earth as chessmen are detached from a chessboard. They never -seem to be, like most men and women either in life or fiction, like the -Kipps and Polly of his own earlier fiction, vegetable growths. Heredity, -fatality, the soil are not mainly operating forces with them. They are -creatures of intelligence and free will, freely and intelligently making -and moulding themselves and their circumstances. Human nature in Wells -is very largely a sheer thing, a thing that begins with itself, answers -for itself, lives at first hand. That is the personal quality of the man -himself, and it follows that the quality is wholly convincing only where -what I have called his primary world is concerned: the rest of the world -he builds up by intelligent observation and the literary talent of -creating human stuff out of whole cloth. - -In this he is well served by his antipathies. His belief in personal -self-determinism is so strong that he instinctively sees the vegetative -nature of the ordinary life as a kind of moral slough, a state of being -detestably without initiative, faith, energy, will. And consequently the -Normal Social Life against which he is always tilting is a life seen by -him with all the vividness of an intense personal and philosophical -animosity. Consider, for example, the portraits of Mr. Pope and Mr. -Stanley, survivals in a sense of the old Sir Roger de Coverley type, -with all the sweetness gone out of it and only the odious qualities -left, the domineering, vain, proprietary qualities. They exist mainly as -symbols of everything that enlightened and right-minded daughters will -not put up with; they come as near to being the foils of right destiny -as Wells will ever allow; they sum up everything that stands in the way -of man's free will. They are mercilessly dealt with, and they are -memorable figures. - -Without this antipathy, and outside his own primary world, he pretty -generally fails. One recalls, for example, old Mrs. Trafford in -_Marriage,_ evidently intended to be his ideal of the enlightened woman -grown old. She is a pale, dimly perfect, automatically wise old lady -carved out of wood. Trafford himself, one feels, is a chip of the same -block. Trafford obviously is not Wells himself, as Ponderevo and -Remington are Wells: he is the Utopian counterpart of these persons, at -least in the matter that concerns Wells most, the matter of sex. One -could show that, aside from the six or eight chief characters who in -their various ways express the nature and experience of Wells himself, -he succeeds in his portraiture only where no demand is made on his -sympathies. - -The same absence of social background which throws into relief his -primary world of characters throws into relief also the primary facts of -human nature. Trafford and Marjorie, the most conventionally placed of -his characters, pull up stakes, leave their children, and go to -Labrador. His other men and women are even more independent of the -social network. Consequently they are independent of that chain of -relationships--friendship, affection, minor obligations--which mitigate, -subdue, soften the primary motives of most people. They are almost -startlingly physical. Their instincts are as sure as those of cavemen, -and their conduct as direct. They are as clear about the essential -matter of love as ever Schopenhauer was, or Adam and Eve, and they stand -out as sharply against the embarrassments and secrecies of the usual -world as a volcanic rock stands out against a tropical landscape. In -this without doubt they exhibit the fact that socialism does and will -actually alter human nature, and that in the instinctive socialist human -nature is already altered. For socialism inflexibly militates against -those more sentimental aspects of love, love of country as such, the -paternal and feudal principles, love of property, and the like, which -belong properly to the intelligence, all those functions where love, in -a majority of cases, goes wrong, blunders, stultifies growth, confuses -the public design of the world. As a result it throws love into relief, -emphasizes the nature of sex and the _raison d'être_ of reproduction; -makes it, to use a favorite word of Wells, stark. - -I pause at this word. It is one of those talismanic words one finds -perpetually cropping up in the writings of men who have a marked point -of view, words that express deep and abiding preferences and often set -the key of an entire philosophy. "I like bare things," says George -Ponderevo, in _Tono-Bungay;_ "stripped things, plain, austere, and -continent things, fine lines and cold colors." That is the gesture of an -artistic mind which repudiates, with an impatient sharpness, all the -entanglements of the ordinary world. It is Oriental, it is Japanese, it -is anything you like; but if it is English also it marks an entirely new -regime. Without question it is English, and American as well. Thousands -of people share that preference, and were economic socialism to go by -the board we should still have to reckon with the progress of -socialistic human nature. It detaches itself each day a little more from -property, locality, and the hope of reward; it ceases to be -necessitarian, it becomes voluntary; it relegates drudgery to mechanical -devices; it releases the individual to a sense of his own coöperative -and contributory place in the scheme of a more orderly future. -Relatively speaking, the tendency of our kind is all away from luxury, -sloth, complacency, confusion, ignorance, filth, heat, proprietorship, -and all in the direction of light, austerity, agility, intelligence, -coolness, athletic energy, understanding, cleanliness, order, "bare -things, fine lines, and cold colors." - -That is evident, and it is equally evident that the personal character -and career of Wells are emblematic of this entire tendency. He has -unravelled himself by science, talent, and vigor out of "lower middle -class" Victorianism. Is it strange that he has adopted as a kind of -sacred image that light, free, and charming product of our decade, the -aeroplane, sprung as it is out of the wreckage, out of the secret -beginnings, the confused muscularities, the effort and smoke of the most -chaotic of all centuries, like a blade of exquisitely tempered and -chased steel which justifies everything that was most laborious and -unsightly in the forge? - -But considered as a sacred image the aeroplane has its limitations. So -also, considered as an exponent of fife, has Wells. Philosophy and -religion, as he presents them, are simply what he chooses to think and -feel, what he has been led by his own experience to think and feel. His -main experience has been the experience of disentangling himself, and -therefore life, reflected from within himself, is to him a thing also -which disentangles itself and grows ever more free, simple, and lucid. -In the mind of Wells this process, has taken on an altogether mystical, -transcendental significance, a religious aspect. Possible as that is to -himself personally, how far can it be taken as an argument to the human -soul? How does it qualify him as a teacher, a public voice, a thinker -for the mass of men? How does the conception of life purely as a process -relate itself to human experience? - -Applied to history, it seems to fail. Wells is devoid of historical -imagination. In his portrait of Margaret in _The New Machiavelli_ he has -properly, though somewhat harshly, repudiated what ordinarily passes for -culture. But had he himself possessed the reality of what seems to him -simply "living at second hand," he would never have been led to refer to -Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Dürer as "pathetically reaching out, as it -were, with empty desirous hands toward the unborn possibilities of the -engineer." That is a very interesting and a very extraordinary -statement, and it is quite true that each of these men would have -rejoiced in the engineering possibilities of our time. But how much of -the soul of Michael Angelo, for example, was involved in engineering? -How far can his hands be said to have been "empty" for the want of scope -in engineering? The power and the function of Michael Angelo can rightly -be seen, not in relation to any sort of social or mechanical process, -but in relation to things that are permanent in human nature, in -relation to just those matters included in the admonition of Wells to -"reject all such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, and Beauty -and hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Again, consider a somewhat similar -reference to Marcus Aurelius, of which the gist is that the author of -the _Meditations_ was, actually in consequence of his own character, the -father of one of the worst rulers the world has known. The implication -here is that the study of self-perfection in the father was -complementary to, if not responsible for, the social impotence and -blindness of the son. Instead of dedicating himself to the static ideal -of personal character, the assumption seems to be, Marcus Aurelius ought -to have lived exclusively in his function as ruler and father. He -studied himself, not as a ruler but as a man, and the social process had -its revenge on his line. To Wells, in a word, the static elements of -character and the study of perfection are not to be distinguished from -vicious self-consequence. - -Consider also a recent passage in which he has given a general -impression of literature: - - It seems to me more and more as I live longer that most - poetry and most literature and particularly the literature - of the past is discordant with the vastness and variety, the - reserves and resources and recuperations of life as we live - it to-day. It is the expression of life under cruder and - more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who loved - and hated more naively, aged sooner, and died younger than - we do. Solitary persons and single events dominated them as - they do not dominate us. - -To appreciate this meditation one has to remember the character and -career which led to the writing of it. But so far as we others are -concerned, how far can the assumption it rests upon be considered valid, -the assumption of a process that sweeps men on and leads human nature, -as it were, progressively to shed itself? Dr. Johnson, for example, was -a man the conditions of whose life were crude and rigid in the extreme, -a man singularly dominated by solitary persons and single events, but is -his conversation discordant with the variety, the "reserves, resources, -and recuperations of life as we live it to-day"? I can well understand -this feeling. To pass directly from the thin, tentative, exhilarating, -expansive air of our own time into the presence of that funny, stuffy, -cocksure, pompous old man is to receive a preposterous shock. But having -come to laugh, one stops with a very different sensation. The depths of -personality and wisdom that exist there take on a disconcerting -significance in relation to contemporary pragmatism. The mass of men -veer about; far-separated epochs have their elective affinities, and if -anything about the future is plain it is that this, that, and the other -generation will find in Dr. Johnson a strangely premature contemporary. - -Wells has himself admitted this principle. To Plutarch, Rabelais, -Machiavelli he has paid his tribute. Hear what George Ponderevo has to -say about Plutarch in his recollections of Bladesover House: - - I found Langhorne's _Plutarch_ too, I remember, on those - shelves. It seems queer to me now to think that I acquired - pride and self-respect, the idea of a state and the germ of - public spirit, in such a furtive fashion; queer, too, that - it should rest with an old Greek, dead these eighteen - hundred years, to teach me that. - -Considering what part the notion of a state plays in his range of ideas, -that is a remarkable confession. But why stop with statecraft? The human -mind could not, in all epochs, have established permanent ideals of -statecraft without permanent ideals of a more strictly personal kind. - -The truth is that Wells, for all that he has passed outside the -economics of socialism, is really bounded by the circle of ideas which -produced them. The typical Marxian, the concentrated Marxian, will tell -you that life is summed up in the theory of value, and that the only -true thing is economic determinism. Measuring all thought by that -criterion, he finds Dante and Shakespeare unintelligible and offensive -gibberish, and will scent the trail of the capitalist in Grimm's Fairy -Tales. That is the crude form in which exclusive socialism presents -itself. To say that "the fundamental nature of life is a tissue and -succession of births" is merely a refinement of this. It is true, just -as the economic determinism of Marx on the whole is true. But the world -is full of a number of things; or rather it is the business of a -reasonable mind to see it in a number of ways at once. Because there is -a Will to Live and a Will to Power, because things grow and continue to -grow, that does not explain love, or pain, or friendship, or music, or -poetry, or indeed life. Life is a tangle, a tangle which every socialist -must feel to be disentangling itself; but it is also a riddle, and on -that point socialism has nothing to say at all. - -It is in presenting life wholly as a tangle and not at all as a riddle -that the philosophy and religion of Wells appear so inadequate. Could -Wells write a poem? one asks oneself, and the question is full of -meaning. There is nothing to suggest that at any moment of his life he -has felt this impulse, which has been the normal thing in English -authors. "Modern poetry, with an exception or so," he remarks somewhere, -and for all his writings reveal of him he might have said poetry as a -whole, "does not signify at all." It is the same with regard to music, -art, external nature. He is not wanting in the plastic sense: his -writings are filled with picturesque groupings, figures cut in outline -against a sunset, masses of machinery in the glare of the forge, things -that suggest the etcher's eye. But they are curiously impersonal. -Consider, for example, his description of Worms Cathedral: - - It rises over this green and flowery peace, a towering, - lithe, light brown, sunlit, easy thing, as unconsciously and - irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in the evening glow - under a press of canvas. - -You cannot doubt that he has felt a beauty in this, but the beauty he -feels is essentially the beauty of a piece of engineering; he is as -untouched by the strictly personal artistic and religious qualities of -this building, not to mention its connection with human history, as if -he had seen it through a telescope from another planet. It is not the -changeless riddle and partial solution of life for which this building -stands that stir in Wells the sense of beauty and meaning: it is the -mechanism, the process--his emotions gather about the physical result -which appears to justify these. - -_À chacun son infini_. - -There will always be some to whom the significance of things, the -meaning of any given present will seem to evaporate in this conception -of mankind as "permanently in transition." Reading those passages where -Wells has expressed the meaning life has for him, I feel much as I -should feel with regard to music if I heard a mass of Mozart played at -the rate of sixty beats a second, or, with regard to painting, if a -procession of Rembrandts were moved rapidly across my field of vision. -The music as a whole is a tissue and succession of sounds, the pictures -as a whole are a tissue and succession of colors. But that is not music, -that is not art. Nor is a tissue and succession of births life. - -But indeed nothing is easier than to reduce Wells to an absurdity. If he -implies anything at all he implies a "transvaluation of all values." It -remains to consider him from this point of view. - - -[Footnote 1: September 21, 1866.] - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE SPIRIT OF WELLS - - -In order to understand Wells at all one must grasp the fact that he -belongs to a type of mind which has long existed in European literature -but which is comparatively new in the English-speaking world, the type -of mind of the so-called "intellectual." He is an "intellectual" rather -than an artist; that is to say, he naturally grasps and interprets life -in the light of ideas rather than in the light of experience. - -To pass from a definition to an example, let me compare Wells in this -respect with the greatest and most typical figure of the opposite camp -in contemporary English fiction; I mean Joseph Conrad. This comparison -is all the more apt because just as much as Wells Conrad typifies the -spirit of "unrest" (a word he has almost made his own, so often does he -use it) which is the note of our age. Both of these novelists have -endeavored to express the spirit of unrest; both have suggested a way of -making it contributory to the attainment of an ideal. But how different -is their method, how different is their ideal! And roughly the -difference is this: that to Conrad the spirit of unrest is a personal -mood, a thing, as people used to say, between man and his Maker; whereas -to Wells the spirit of unrest is not a mood but a rationally explicable -frame of mind, a sense of restricted function, an issue to be fought out -not between man and nature but between man and society. In other words, -where Conrad's point of view is moral, Wells's point of view is social; -and whereas in Conrad the spirit of unrest can only be appeased by -holding fast to certain simple instinctive moral principles, integrity, -honor, loyalty, etc., contributing in this way to the ideal of personal -character, the spirit of unrest in Wells is to be appeased by working -through the established fact, by altering the environment in which man -lives, contributing in this way to the ideal of a great society of which -personal character is at once the essence and the product. - -In the end, of course, both these views of life come to the same thing, -for you cannot have a great society which is not composed of greatly -living individuals, or vice versa. But practically there is a world of -difference between them, according as any given mind emphasizes the one -or the other. This difference, I say, is the difference between life -approached through experience and life approached through ideas. And -when we penetrate behind these points of view we find that they are -determined very largely by the characters and modes of living of the men -who hold them. That explains the vital importance in literary criticism -of knowing something about the man one is discussing, as distinguished -from the work of his brain pure and simple. There is a reason why the -intellectualist point of view occurs as a rule in men who have -habitually lived the delocalized, detached, and comparatively -depersonalized life of cities, while men of the soil, of the sea, of the -elements, men, so to speak, of intensive experience, novelists like -Conrad or Tolstoy or Hardy, are fundamentally non-intellectual, -pessimistic, and moral. - -And this explains the natural opposition between Conrad and Wells. Aside -from the original bent of his mind, the intensive quality of Conrad's -experience--an experience of ships and the minute, simple, personal, -tragic life of ships, set off against the impersonal, appalling sea and -an always indifferent universe, a life remote from change, in which the -relations of things are in a peculiar sense abiding and in which only -one problem exists, the problem of character, imminent nature being kept -at bay only through the loyalty, integrity and grit of men--the -intensive quality of this experience, I say, acting upon an artistic -mind, would naturally tend to produce not only a bitterly profound -wisdom, but an equally profound contempt for the play of ideas, so -irresponsible in comparison, and for a view of the world based upon -ideas the real cost of which has never been counted in the face of -hunger, icy winds, storm and shipwreck, and the abysmal forces of -nature. Men who go down to the sea in ships have a right to say for -themselves (tempering the credulity of those who have remained at home) -that the intellectualist view of life is altogether too easy and too -glib. It is they who throw into relief the deep, obscure conviction of -the "plain man"--commonly the good man--that to endeavor to make life -conform with ideas is in some way to deprive the world of just those -elements which create character and to strike at an ideal forged through -immemorial suffering and effort. - -Merely to dismiss as dumb folly an all but universal contention of this -kind (no doubt in the back of people's minds when they say that -socialism, for instance, is "against human nature") is to beg the whole -question of intellectualism itself. For, if it could be conclusively -shown that any view of life not incidentally but by its nature -emasculated life and destroyed the roots of character, then of course, -no matter how rationally self-evident it might be and how much confusion -and suffering it might avert, it would never even justify its own reason -for being--it would never _succeed,_ the best part of human nature would -oppose it to the end of time and the intelligence itself would be -discredited. And indeed to the man of experience rather than the man of -ideas, just because of his rich humanity, just because he never passes -out of the personal range, belong the ideal things, morality, -philosophy, art. Like charity, these things "begin at home"; and -whenever (as in pragmatism, when pragmatism ceases to be a method and -claims to be an interpretation of life) they are approached not from the -side of experience but from the side of ideas they cease to have any -real substance. Morality has no substance when it springs from the mind -instead of the conscience, art when it appeals to the mind instead of -the perceptions; and as to philosophy, what is any scheme of things that -springs out of the head of a man who is not himself wise? It is a -certain condemnation of Bergson, for example, that he would never pass -muster in a group of old fishermen smoking their pipes on the end of a -pier. Not that they would be expected in any case to know what he was -talking about, but that his fibre so plainly is the fibre not of a wise -but of a clever man and that in everything, as Emerson said, you must -have a source higher than your tap. - -That is why, as it seems to me, Wells ought not to be considered from -any of these absolute standpoints. He has put before us not so much a -well-wrought body of artistic work, or a moral programme, or an -explanation of life--words quite out of place in connection with -him--as a certain new spirit, filled with all sorts of puzzled -intimations of a new beauty and even a new religion to be generated out -of a new order of things that is only glimpsed at present. And the point -I should like to make about this spirit is that it is entirely -irrelevant to the values of life as we know them, but that it may in the -end prove to have contributed to an altogether fresh basis for human -values. - -To illustrate what I mean by this irrelevance as regards present values -and this possibility as regards future values let me turn to that long -brilliant passage in _The New Machiavelli_ where Remington goes from -club to club, passing in review the spiritual possibilities of each -political party, and finds nothing but a desolation of triviality, -pomposity, confusion, and "utterly damned old men." Consider the -contempt and hopelessness that fill his mind. One has to forget entirely -the ordinary man's view of politics, sincerely held as it is; one has to -think of politics as a means of straightening out and re-engendering a -whole world of confused anguish before one can see any justification for -this righteous wit and savage indignation against the dulness of -leaders. Considered by the current values of life in which politics are -regarded as an effect of man's incompetence rather than as a cause of -his virtue, treated intensively, as a novelist of experience rather than -of ideas would have treated them, in what a different light each of -these "utterly damned old men" would appear, each one a tiny epic of -tragic and comic efforts, disappointments, misconceptions, providing one -in the end with how much of an excuse for blame, ridicule or contempt! -Everything indeed depends upon where a given mind chooses to lay -emphasis. In this scene Wells has judged everything by his ideal of a -great society, just as Conrad, faced with the same material, would have -judged everything by his ideal of personal character. Conrad would have -used those men to give us an understanding of life as it is, whereas -Wells has used them simply to throw into relief his idea of what life -ought to be. Conrad would have created a work of art, illustrated a -moral programme, and interpreted life. Wells, admittedly a clever -caricaturist, only rises above the level of a clever caricaturist -according as we accept the validity of his ideal and share the spirit in -which he writes. Like many children of light, Wells is not wise in his -own generation. But perhaps another generation will justify him. - -If Wells had lingered in these deep realities of his own time he would -have been a greater artist. And indeed so marked has been his own -development away from the world of ideas and toward the world of -experience that were he to begin afresh it is likely that he would -resemble the type of novelist of which I have taken Conrad as an example -far more than his former self. Of socialism he has abandoned all the -theories and most of the schemes and retained only the frame of mind. He -has taken year by year a more intensive view of life, he has grown too -conscious of the inertia that impedes ideas and the overwhelming -immediacies of the actual world to be called glib and easy any more. -"How little and feeble is the life of man, a thing of chances, -preposterously unable to find the will to realize even the most timid of -its dreams!" he says in one of his latest novels, and if he has kept -alive his faith in ideas, who will deny that he has begun to count the -cost of it? - -From this side, I think, it is no longer possible for anyone to assail -him, so frankly has he given hostages to "actuality." It is from the -other side, his own side, and especially in the light of his own ideal, -that an answer is required for the slackness which has come upon him and -which is very marked in his recent novels. Is it possible to ignore the -fact that since he wrote _The New Machiavelli_ the work of Wells has -lived on its capital and lost the passionate curiosity and personal -conviction that made him the force he was in our epoch? Always unwilling -to check his talent and publish only the results of his genuine mental -progress, he has become, in spite of splendid moments, too much of the -common professional novelist, dealing with levels and phases of life -where he obviously does not belong, astray from his own natural point of -intense contact with things. I want to avoid the usual habit of critics -who think it their business to put authors in their places, but is it -not a fact that Wells understands the Kippses and Pollys far better than -the lords and ladies of England and that he was at his best in -elaborating a bridge--a wonderful visionary bridge--between the little -world of dumb routine and the great world of spacious initiatives? -Carlyle with his Great Man theory, forged out of his own travail and -weakness, in the end fell on his knees before the illusion of lordship. -Fifteen years ago one might have predicted the same future for the -Samurai of Wells, not because the Samurai are themselves equivocal but -because Wells is an Englishman. There so plainly to the English mind the -great gentlemen are, the men who can and the men who never do! Towards -this Circe of the English imagination Wells has travelled with a fatal -consistency, and the result to be foreseen was first of all fatuity and -in the end extinction. - -After he had written _The New Machiavelli_ Wells had reached a point -where his ideas, in order to be saved, had to be rescued from himself. -To believe that life can be straightened out by the intelligence is -necessarily to have "travelled light," in a measure; too much experience -is the end of that frame of mind. In _Tono-Bungay_ and _The New -Machiavelli_ ideas and experience met in a certain invisible point ---that is the marvel which has made these books unique and, I suppose, -permanent; the greatest possible faith in ideas was united with the -greatest possible grasp of everything that impedes them. One had -therefore a sense of tragic struggle, in which the whole life of our -time was caught up and fiercely wrestled with; one had the feeling that -here was the greatest moment in the life of a writer suddenly become -great. But with these books some secret virtue seems to have passed out -of Wells. Since then his ideas have been hardly more than a perfunctory -repetition and his experience more and more remote and unreal; and -looking back one seems to discover something highly symbolic in the -tragical conquest of ideas by passion with which _The New Machiavelli_ -concludes. - -But indeed Wells was always a man whose ideas were greater than himself. -"I stumble and flounder," says George Ponderevo, "but I know that over -all these merry immediate things, there are other things that are great -and serene, very high, beautiful things--the reality. I haven't got it, -but it's there nevertheless. I'm a spiritual guttersnipe in love with -unimaginable goddesses." And just for this reason the spirit which in -his great days possessed him is independent of any fate that may befall -Wells himself and his art. More than this, by frankly and fully testing -his ideas in a life-and-death struggle with reality he has, even at the -cost of his own shipwreck, removed from the cause of ideas the greatest -reproach which has always been brought against it. Revolutionists, -doctrinaires, idealogues have notoriously failed to test the validity of -their ideas even in the face of their own private passions and -confusions; they have rarely considered for a moment that their own -lives totally unfit them for supposing that men are naturally good and -that to make reason prevail is one of the simplest operations in the -world. Wells, on the other hand, has consistently shown that theory -divorced from practice is a mode of charlatanism, that "love and fine -thinking" must go together, and that precisely because of man's -individual incapacity to live, as things are, with equal honesty the -life of ideas and the life of experience, the cause he has at heart must -be taken out of the hands of the individual and made to form a common -impersonal will and purpose in the mind of the race as a whole. - - * * * * * - -Intellectualism, in fact, the view that life can be determined by ideas -(and of this socialism is the essence) if it can be justified at all has -to be justified in the face of all current human values. It is based on -an assumption, a grand and generous assumption, I maintain, and one that -has to take what is called a sporting chance with all the odds against -it. This assumption is, that on the whole human nature can be trusted to -take care of itself while the surplus energy of life, commonly absorbed -in the struggle against incapacity, sloth, perversity, and disorder -("original sin," to sum it all up), is released for the organization of -a better scheme for mankind; and further, that this better scheme, -acting on a race naturally capable of a richer and fuller life, will -have the effect on men as a whole that re-environing has on any cramped, -ill-nourished, unventilated organism, and that art, religion, morals -(all that makes up the substance and meaning of life) instead of being -checked and blighted in the process will in the end, strong enough to -bear transplantation, be re-engendered on a finer and freer basis. This, -in a word, is the contention of the intellectual, a splendid gambler's -chance, on which the future rests, and to which people have committed -themselves more than they know. It is a bridge thrown out across the -void, resting at one end on the good intentions of mankind and relying -at the other upon mankind's fulfilling those good intentions. It is -based like every great enterprise of the modern world upon credit, and -its only security is the fact that men thus far and on the whole have -measured up to each enlargement of their freedom and responsibility. - -To feel the force of this one has to think of the world as a world. Just -here has been the office of socialism, to show that society is a -colossal machine of which we are all parts and that men in the most -exact sense are members one of another. In the intellectualist scheme of -things that mathematical proof has to come first; it has to take root -and bury itself and become the second nature of humankind before the new -world of instinct can spring out of it and come to blossom. - -That has been the office of socialism, and just so far as that proof has -been established socialism has played its part. Now the point I want to -make about Wells is that in him one sees already in an almost precocious -form the second stage of this process. In him this new world of -intelligence is already exuberant with instinct; the social machine has -become a personality; that cold abstraction the world has become in his -hands a throbbing, breathing, living thing, as alive, awake, aware of -itself, as engaging, adventurous, free, critical, well-primed, -continent, and all-of-a-piece as a strong man running a race. People -never felt nature as a personality before Wordsworth showed them that it -was, or a locomotive before Kipling wrote _McAndrew's Hymn_; and it -seems to me that Wells has done for the social organism very much what -Wordsworth did for nature, discovering in a thing previously felt to be -inanimate a matter for art and a basis for religious emotion. - -But if the world is a personality it is a very stupid, sluggish, -unawakened personality, differing from nature in this respect, that we -ourselves compose the whole of it and have it in our hands to do what we -will with it. It has always been out of joint, a great slipshod -Leviathan, at sixes and sevens, invertebrate and fungus-brained. Just so -is the average man, sunk in routine, oppressed with microscopic tasks -that give birth one to another, his stomach at war with his head, his -legs unwilling to exercise him, resentful of his own capacity not to be -dull. But certain happier moments bring him an exuberant quickened life -in which routine tasks fall nimbly from his fingers and he is aware of a -wide, humorous, generous, enlightened vision of things; he pulls himself -together, his parts reinforce one another, his mind wakens, his heart -opens, his fancy stirs, he is all generosity and happiness, capable of -anything that is disinterested, fine, and becoming to a free man. It is -in these moments that individual men have done all the things which make -up the real history of this planet. - -If individual men are capable of this amazing experience, then why not -the world? That is the spirited question Wells has propounded in a -hundred different forms, in his earlier, more theoretical, and more -optimistic writings suggesting that society as a whole should turn over -a new leaf, and even picturing it as doing so, in his later work, more -experienced and less hopeful but with a compensating fervor, picturing -the attempt of delegated individuals to act on society's behalf. I do -not wish at this point to become pious and solemn in tone; that would be -inept in connection with Wells. But I do wish to make it plain that if -he is devoid of those grander traits which spring from the sense of -being "tenon'd and mortised" upon something beyond change, if his -strength lies wholly in his intelligence, the intelligence itself in -Wells is an amazing organ, a troubled and rapturous organ, an organ as -visionary and sensitive as the soul of a Christian saint. That is why I -have said that in him the new world, governed by the intelligence, is -already exuberant with instinct; and anyone who doubts that he has -lavished a very genuine religious instinct upon the social process -itself and in the dream of a society free, magnanimous and seemly, -should turn to the passage where he describes Machiavelli, after the -heat and pettiness of the day, retiring into his chamber alone, putting -on his dress of ceremony and sitting down before his table in the -presence of that magnificent thought. - -The mass of men have acted more consistently than they know on the -principle that the whole world is nothing in comparison with one soul, -for their politics and economic science, solemn as they appear, are as -frivolous and secondary as if they actually did believe fervently that -heaven is their true home and the world a bad business of little -account. In all that concerns private virtue and the private life, in -religion, poetry, their lawyer, their doctor, their broker, they exact -the last degree of excellence and efficiency, but they trust to the -blind enterprise of individual men to push mankind chaotically forward -little by little. We are in fact so wonderfully made that if our grocer -tells us in the morning that he has no fresh eggs he throws us into a -deeper despondency than six readings of the _Inferno_ could ever do. And -that explains why so few people can extend themselves imaginatively into -the greater circles that surround them, why, on the social plane, we -never think of demanding wisdom from politicians, why we never dream of -remembering that they should belong to the august family of Plutarch, -why it is not the profound views of wise men and the brilliant -discoveries of science that fill the newspapers, but the incredibly -banal remarks of this president and that prime minister, why presidents -and prime ministers in a society that lives from hand to mouth are so -much more important than poets and prophets, and why statesmanship has -gathered about itself a literature so incomparably trivial and dull. -Socialists, indeed, just because they alone are serious about the world, -are apt to be the least mundane in spirit; they are, as Wells has -himself said, "other-worldly" about the world itself. - -But indeed I should make a mistake were I to over-stress the solemnities -that underlie the spirit of Wells. In tone he is more profane than -sacred, that is to say he is a realist. He wants a world thrillingly -alive, curious, exercised, magnanimous, with all its dim corners lighted -up, shaken out of its dulness and complacency, keen, elastic, tempered -like a fine blade--the counterpart on a grand scale of what he most -admires in the individual. "Stephen," says Lady Mary in _The Passionate -Friends_, "promise me. Whatever you become, you promise and swear here -and now never to be grey and grubby, never to be humpy and snuffy, never -to be respectable and modest and dull and a little fat, like--like -everybody." And in _First and Last Things_ he gives the other side of -the medal: - - Much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to - taste life. I am not happy until I have done and felt - things. I want to get as near as I can to the thrill of a - dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air. - And not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do I - want to understand. I want to know something of the jolly - wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its - wash. I want to get the fine quintessence of that. - -It stands to reason that a spirit of this kind does not consort with any -pre-arranged pocket ground-plan, so to speak, of the world as it should -be. Of this, to be sure, he is often accused, and he has given us a -humorous version of his Utopia as it may appear to certain of his -contemporaries: - - Mr. G.K. Chesterton mocks valiantly and passionately, I - know, against an oppressive and obstinately recurrent - anticipation of himself in Socialist hands, hair clipped, - meals of a strictly hygienic description at regular hours, a - fine for laughing, not that he would want to laugh, and - austere exercises in several of the more metallic virtues - daily. Mr. Max Beerbohm's conception is rather in the nature - of a nightmare, a hopeless, horrid, frozen flight from the - pursuit of Mr. Sidney Webb and myself, both of us short, - inelegant men, but for all that terribly resolute, - indefatigable, incessant to capture him, to drag him off to - a mechanical Utopia, and then to take his thumb-mark and his - name, number him distinctly in indelible ink, and let him - loose (under inspection) in a world of great round lakes of - blue lime-water and vistas of white sanitary tiling. - -That is a not unjust parody of Wells's Utopia as it would be if he had -remained in the circle of his Fabian friends. Being what he is, it bears -much the same relation to his idea as that world of harps and crowns and -milk and honey bore in the mediæval imagination to the idea of heaven. -You have to mingle these notions with your experience of human hearts to -realize the inadequacy of symbols. Wells, I suspect, has a fondness for -white sanitary tiling, just as plenty of good Christians have found in -milk and honey a foretaste of unthinkable felicity; but when it comes to -the actual architecture and domestic arrangements of paradise they are -both quite willing to take on trust the accommodating good will of God -and man. Somehow or other, by the time we have got there, we shall not -find it monotonous--to this, at least, one's faith, whatever it may be, -ought to be equal. - -I have given too few quotations in this book, and now I have left it to -a point where if I give any at all it must be to illustrate less the art -of Wells as a thing by itself than a train of thought. He is at his best -in brief scenes, where all his gifts of humor, satire, characterization -and phrase come to a head (think, for example, of Aunt Plessington's -speech, the funeral of Mr. Polly's father, the pages dealing with Cousin -Nicodemus Frapp's house-hold, and the somewhat prolonged episode of the -"reet Staffordshire" cousins in _The New Machiavelli_); and indeed, so -insistent is his point of view that in every one of these episodes one -finds in opposition the irrepressible new world of Wells and the -stagnant world out of which it springs. One of the best of these scenes, -luckily, is brief and connected enough to be quoted as a whole. It is a -picture of the tea-hour in the servants' hall at Bladesover House. - - I sat among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian - chair, trying to exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great - rocks, and my mother sat with an eye upon me, resolute to - suppress the slightest manifestation of vitality. It was - hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these rather - over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful - restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be - thrust in among their dignities. - - Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat - it out perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the - same. - - "Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask. "Sugar, - Mrs. Latude-Fernay?" - - The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They - say," she would begin, issuing her proclamation--at least - half her sentences began "they say"--"sugar is fatt-an-ing, - nowadays. Many of the best people do not take it at all." - - "Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits, intelligently. - - "Not with anaything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of - crushing repartee, and drank. - - "What won't they say next?" said Miss Fison. - - "They do say such things!" said Mrs. Booch. - - "They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors - are not recomm-an-ding it now." - - My Mother: "No, ma'am?" - - Mrs. Mackridge: "No, ma'am." - - Then, to the table at large: "Poor Sir Roderick, before he - died, consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have - sometimes fancied it may have hastened his end." - - This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner - and a pause was considered due to the sacred memory of Sir - Roderick. - - "George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!" - - Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favorite piece - from her repertoire. "The evenings are drawing out nicely," - she would say, or if the season was decadent, "How the - evenings draw in!" It was an invaluable remark to her; I do - not know how she would have got along without it. - - My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would - always consider it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and - regard the evening in the act of elongation or contraction, - whichever phase it might be. - - A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or - shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. - -There is, I think, a special sort of connection between Wells and -America; and there are times when it seems to me that were the spirit of -America suddenly to become critical of itself it would resemble nothing -in the world so much as the spirit of Wells magnified by many diameters. -His instincts are all as it were instincts of the intelligence; his -mind, like the American mind, is a disinherited mind, not connected with -tradition, thinking and acting _de novo_ because there is nothing to -prevent it from doing so. Perfectly American is his alertness, his -versatility, adaptability, his thorough-going pragmatism, perfectly -American are the disconcerting questions that he asks ("Is the Navy -_bright_?"). Perfectly American is his view of the traditional English -ideal of human nature--that strange compound of good intentions, homely -affection, stubborn strength, insensibility to ideas, irrational -self-sacrifice, domestic despotism, a strong sense of property in things -and people, stupidity, sweetness and confusion of mind--an ideal through -which it has been one of his never-failing delights to send electric -shocks. And indeed the type of character he has presented in his heroes, -in Remington, Trafford and Ponderevo, is a type to be found perhaps more -plentifully than elsewhere in American research bureaus, hospitals and -laboratories. He thinks and feels critically so many of the things -America lives and does unconsciously. Perhaps in this distinction lies -the immediate value of his criticism for us. - -For in his mind Americans can see themselves reflected in the light of -what they chiefly need, that synthetic motive without which a secular -and industrial race is as devoid of animating morality as a swarm of -flies. This want, most obvious on the political and economic plane, is -indeed fundamental. Wells has grasped it from many different angles but -never with more point than in his essay _The American Population_. -Consider this passage, where he takes as a text one of Arthur Brisbane's -editorials in the "New York Journal": - - It is the voice of the American tradition strained to the - utmost to make itself audible to the new world, and cracking - into italics and breaking into capitals with the strain. The - rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public - void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive - things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalizations, a - public which has carried the conception of freedom to its - logical extreme of entire individual detachment. These - telltale columns deal all with personality and the drama of - personal life. They witness to no interest but the interest - in intense individual experiences. The engagements, the love - affairs, the scandals of conspicuous people are given in - pitiless detail in articles adorned with vigorous portraits - and sensational pictorial comments. Even the eavesdroppers - who write this stuff strike the personal note, and their - heavily muscular portraits frown beside the initial letter. - Murders and crimes are worked up to the keenest pitch of - realization, and any new indelicacy in fashionable costume, - any new medical device or cure, any new dance or - athleticism, any new breach in the moral code, any novelty - in sea-bathing or the woman's seat on horse-back, or the - like, is given copious and moving illustration, stirring - headlines, and eloquent reprobation. There is a colored - supplement of knock-about fun, written chiefly in the quaint - dialect of the New York slums. It is a language from which - "th" has vanished, and it presents a world in which the - kicking by a mule of an endless succession of victims is an - inexhaustible joy to young and old. "Dat ole Maud!" There is - a smaller bale dealing with sport. In the advertisement - columns one finds nothing of books, nothing of art; but - great choice of bust developers, hair restorers, nervous - tonics, clothing sales, self-contained flats, and business - opportunities.... - - Individuality has, in fact, got home to itself, and, as - people say, taken off its frills.... The "New York - American" represents a clientèle to be counted by the - hundred thousand, manifestly with no other solicitudes, - just burning to live and living to burn. - -Now that is a very fair picture, not merely of popular America but of -the whole contemporary phase of popular civilization, uprooted from the -state of instinct, intensive experience and the immemorial immediacies -of duty and the soil. To the artist and the moralist it is a cause of -hopeless pessimism, as any civilization must be which has lost touch -with all its values and been rationalized to the point of anarchy. For -this there is only one salvation. If civilization has lost the faculty -of commanding itself and pulling itself together in its individual -aspect, it must pull itself together collectively. That essentially is -the fighting chance of intellectualism, the hope that, inasmuch as the -world has already lost touch with experience and committed itself to a -regime of ideas, by organizing this regime of ideas and by mechanizing -so far as possible the material aspect of things, the values of life can -be re-engendered on a fresh basis. From this follows the oft-repeated -phrase of Wells that the chief want of the American people is a "sense -of the state." For the peril and the hope of American life (granting -that, as things are, society must be brought into some kind of coherence -before morality, art and religion can once more attain any real meaning) -lies in the fact that while at present Americans are aware of themselves -only as isolated individuals they are unconsciously engaged in works of -an almost appalling significance for the future of society. A Trust is a -work of this kind, and whether it is to be a gigantic good or a gigantic -evil depends wholly upon whether its controlling minds are more -conscious of their individual or their social function. The mechanism of -society in America is already developed to a very high point; what is -wanting, and without this everything is wanting, is an understanding of -the right function of this mechanism. So much does it all depend upon -whether the financial mind can subdue itself to the greater mind of the -race. - -If the future is anywhere going to follow the lines that Wells has -suggested for it--and being an opportunist his aims are always in touch -with agreeable probabilities--it will most likely be in America. He has -lately given his idea of what the State should aim to be--"planned as -an electric traction system is planned, without reference to -pre-existing apparatus, upon scientific lines"; an idea remarkably of a -piece with the American imagination and one which the American -imagination is perfectly capable of translating into fact. American, -too, are the methods in which Wells has come to believe for bringing the -Great State into existence. His conviction is that socialism will come -through an enlightened individualism, outside the recognized -governmental institutions, and that the ostensible States will be -superseded virtually by informal centres of gravity quite independent of -them. America alone at present justifies this speculation. For the -centre of gravity in American affairs has always been extra-governmental, -and consistently in America where wealth gathers there also the -institutions of socialism spring into being. The rudiments of the -Socialist State, falsely based as they are but always tending to subvert -this false basis, are certainly to be found, if anywhere, in the -Rockefeller Institute, the Carnegie and Russell Sage Foundations, the -endowed universities and bureaus of research, and in the type of men -they breed. Consider the following passage from _The Passionate Friends_ -and the character of the American, Gidding, which is indicated in it: - - To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably - magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all - science, all knowledge, all philosophical and political - ideas, round about the habitable globe. His mind began - producing concrete projects as a firework being lit produces - sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" the most colossal of - printing and publishing projects, as a man might work out - the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was so - entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to - go on from the proposition that understanding was the - primary need of humanity to the systematic organization of - free publishing, exhaustive discussion, intellectual - stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacists - might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure. - - "Say, Stratton," he said, after a conversation that had - seemed to me half fantasy, "let's _do_ it." - -It is perfectly possible in fact that socialism will come into being -first of all under the form of Cecil Rhodes's dream, as a secret order -of millionaires "promoting" not their own aims but society itself. That -is one of the possibilities at least that lie in what Wells has called -the "gigantic childishness" of the American mind. - - - - - - INDEX - - - _America, The Future in_ - America, Wells and - _American Population, The_ - _Ann Veronica_ - _Anticipations_ - Arnold, Matthew - - Bacon - Beerbohm, Max - Belloc, Hilaire - Bergson, Henri - Brisbane, Arthur - Brook Farm - - Carlyle - Catholic Church, the - Cato - Chesterton, G.K. - Chicago - _Comet, In the Days of the_ - _Common Sense of Warfare, The_ - Comte - Confucius - Conrad, Joseph - _Creative Evolution_ - - Dante - Darwin - De Foe - Dickens - _Discovery of the Future, The_ - Dürer - - Emerson - _Empire of the Ants, The_ - Erasmus - _Ethics and Evolution_ - - Fabian Society - _First and Last Things_ - _First Men in the Moon, The_ - _Food of the Gods, The_ - _Fortnightly Review, The_ - Francis, St. - - Goethe - _Great State, The_ - Grimm's Fairy Tales - - Hardy, Thomas - Hearn, Lafcadio - Heraclitus - Hero, The - _History of Mr. Polly, The_ - Huxley - - _Inferno, The_ - _Invisible Man, The_ - _Island of Dr. Moreau, The_ - - James, William - Japanese, the - Jeffries, Richard - Johnson, Dr. - - Kipling, Rudyard - _Kipps_ - - Leonardo da Vinci - Leopardi - _Love and Mr. Lewisham_ - Luther - - Macaulay - Machiavelli - _Mankind in the Making_ - Marcus Aurelius - _Marriage_ - Michael Angelo - _Modern Utopia, A_ - Montessori, Madame - Morris, William - _McAndrew's Hymn_ - - _New Machiavelli, The_ - Newman, Cardinal - New Republican, the - _News from Nowhere_ - _New Worlds for Old_ - Nietzsche - - _Our Liberal Practitioners_ - _Passionate Friends, The_ - Plato - Plutarch - - Rabelais - _Rasselas_ - _Rediscovery of the Unique, The_ - Rhodes, Cecil - _Robinson Crusoe_ - - Samurai, the - _Scepticism of the Instrument,_ - Schopenhauer - _Servile State, The_ - Shakespeare - Shaw, Bernard - _Sleeper Awakes, The_ - _So-Called Science of Sociology, The_ - Sorel, Georges - Spencer, Herbert - _Story of the Days to Come, A_ - Superman, the - Superior Man, the - Swift - - Taine, H.A. - Thoreau - _Time Machine, The_ - Tolstoy - _Tono-Bungay_ - - Verne, Jules - - Ward, Mrs. Humphry - Webb, Sidney - _Wheels of Chance, The_ - Whitman, Walt - Wordsworth - Worms Cathedral - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The World of H.G. 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diff --git a/42221.txt b/42221.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7d08286..0000000 --- a/42221.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3889 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World of H.G. Wells, by Van Wyck Brooks - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The World of H.G. Wells - -Author: Van Wyck Brooks - -Release Date: February 27, 2013 [EBook #42221] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive) - - - - - -THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS - -BY - -VAN WYCK BROOKS - - - -NEW YORK - -MITCHELL KENNERLEY - -MCMXV - - -_To_ - -_Max Lippitt Larkin_ - - - - -CONTENTS - - - -Introduction - -I. The First Phase - -II. Towards Socialism - -III. Socialism "True and False" - -IV. The Philosophy of the New Republican - -V. Human Nature - -VI. A Personal Chapter - -VII. The Spirit of Wells - - - - - - -INTRODUCTION - - -A natural pause appears to have come in the career of Mr. H.G. Wells. -After so many years of travelling up and down through time and space, -familiarizing himself with all the various parts of the solar system and -presenting himself imaginatively at all the various geological epochs, -from the Stone Age to the end of the world, he has for good and all -domesticated himself in his own planet and point of time. This gradual -process of slowing down, so to speak, had been evident from the moment -of his first appearance. The most obvious fact about his romances of -science, considered as a series, is that each one more nearly approached -the epoch in which we live, and the realities of this epoch. From the -year A.D. 802, 701, witnessed in his first romance by the Time -Traveller, we found ourselves at last in the presence of a decade only -so remote as that of the war which has now befallen Europe. A similar -tendency in his novels has been equally marked. The possibilities of -science and socialism have received a diminishing attention relatively -beside the possibilities of human reaction to science and socialism. It -is individual men and women, and the motives and personalities of -individual men and women, which now concern him. Still retaining the -entire planet as the playground of his ideas, still upholding science -and socialism as his essential heroes, he has been driven by experience -to approach these things through human nature as it is. In a recent -essay he has told us not to expect any more dramatic novelties: for the -present at any rate our business must be to make science and socialism -feel at home. Whether or not this may stand as a general diagnosis of -our epoch, it is a remarkable confession with regard to his own place in -it. For it signifies nothing less than that he has reached the limit of -his own circle of ideas and finished his own pioneering, and that his -work for the future will be to relate the discoveries of his youth with -human experience. He is no longer a "new voice"; his work belongs, for -good or ill, to history and literature, and he presents himself from -this time forward as a humanist. - -In this new posture Wells does not stand alone. He is typical of an -entire generation of Englishmen that knows not Oxford, a generation -which has been busy with all manner of significant movements and -discoveries, too busy indeed to relate them to the common reason of -humankind. During these years the word "academic" has been outlawed; -naturally so, for the academic mind is to the creative mind what the -digestive system is to the human body: a period of energetic exercise -must precede its operation. But in order that ideas may be incorporated -in society they must submit themselves at the right moment to those -digestive processes by which they are liquefied and transmitted through -the veins to all the various members of the common organism. - -During the last twenty years modern thought has been dominated to an -extraordinary degree by men who have been educated solely through the -movements in which they have taken part: seldom has there been so -universal and so hectic an empiricism. But this is the way the earth -moves. Like an inchworm it doubles itself up at intervals and then -gradually stretches itself straight again. The whole nineteenth century, -according to Taine, was occupied in working out two or three ideas -concocted in Germany during the Napoleonic era. History is a succession -of Gothic invasions and academic subversions. It marks the end of one of -those eras which perpetually overlap one another in various groups of -men and cycles of thought that our own Visigoths have capitulated. As -the pressure of their own immediate points of view relaxes and they -cease to identify their own progress with the progress of men in -general, they become perhaps less striking but certainly more useful. - -Intensely preoccupied with contemporary ideas and inventions, -brilliantly gifted and full of life, these leaders of thought were more -innocent of literature and history than a fresh-man. Both Wells and -Bernard Shaw have confessed that throughout their most active -intellectual careers they believed instinctively that progress was -mainly a matter of chronology. To discover the future Wells considered -it necessary merely to set his imagination at work on Chicago and -multiply it by a thousand; while the famous remark of Shaw that he was -"better than Shakespeare" sprang from his assumption that, living three -centuries later, he naturally stood (as a dwarf, in his own phrase) upon -Shakespeare's shoulders. This naivete placed them at the mercy of -literature, as they soon discovered. Everyone knows the change that came -over Bernard Shaw's cosmos when for the first time, a few years ago, he -read two or three pre-Darwinian philosophers: one could almost have -heard a pin drop when he stopped talking about being better than -Shakespeare. A similar experience, exhibited in his books, has befallen -Wells, and there is no doubt that reading has contributed to the -progressive modesty of his point of view. Each monument of historic -experience that he has absorbed has left its mark on him. Rabelais, -Machiavelli, Plato, incorporated at regular intervals in his own work, -have certainly contributed to make him less agile and less dramatic. - -Let us take advantage of these post-prandial moments to survey some of -the remarkable ideas which have been added to the general stock during -this period. After the fashion of Cato, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells have -come late to the study of Greek. Bernard Shaw read Plato at fifty, and -in his latest book Wells has insisted that in the Great State everyone -will study Greek. Nothing could signify more plainly that these -outriders of the Modern Mind have come to a halt and wish to connect -themselves with tradition, with history, with literature, with religion, -with the grand current of human experience. Having been for so long -experimenting with new and untried forces, sharply separated from what -is received and understood, they should be related to the familiar -landmarks and connected with the main stream of English thought and -literature. - -Grotesque and violent as it may at first appear, I believe that in the -future Wells will be thought of as having played toward his own epoch a -part very similar to that played by Matthew Arnold. I say this with full -recognition of their remoteness in personal quality, recognizing also -the difference in their direct objects of attack, in the precise causes -they uphold. One thinks of these two vivid personalities--Wells--how -shall one picture him?--and Matthew Arnold, that superb middle-class -gentleman with his great face and deprecating hands--and the comparison -is instantly ludicrous. In reality the entire trend of Arnold's social -criticism was anti-individualistic and in a straight line with -socialism. Seen retrospectively the main work of Wells has not been to -promote any intellectual or economic doctrine, but to alter the English -frame of mind. The function of each of these men has been to bring home -to the English mind a range of ideas not traditional in it. - -Indeed this comparison holds (the shock once over) not merely with -regard to their general function, but in their specific attitude toward -most of the branches of thought and action they have concerned -themselves with. Wells on Education, on Criticism, on Politics and the -nostrums of Liberalism, Wells even on Religion continues the propaganda -of Arnold. Everywhere in these so superficially dissimilar writings is -exhibited the same fine dissatisfaction, the same faith in ideas and -standards, the same dislike of heated bungling, plunging, wilfulness, -and confusion; even the same predominant contempt for most things that -are, the same careful vagueness of ideal. It was Arnold who passed his -life in trying to make England believe in and act upon ideas instead of -"muddling through," who never wearied of holding up the superiority of -everything French and everything German to everything English, who -adopted into his own language that phrase about "seeing things as in -themselves they really are." Read his chapter on _Our Liberal -Practitioners_ and you will find the precise attitude of Wells toward -the premature inadequate doing of things rather than the continued -research, experiment, and discipline which lead to right fulfilments. -Who urged the ventilation of life, affairs, conduct in the light of -world experience? Who preached the gospel of reasonableness, mutual -understanding, and more light? Who spurred England to cultivate the -virtue of intellectual curiosity? Who believed with a paradoxical -passion in coolness and detachment? In each of these things what Arnold -was to his generation Wells remarkably has been to ours. Differing in -their view of the substance of religion, their conception of the Church -as a great common receptacle for the growing experience of the race is -precisely the same, fragmentation, segregation, sectarianism being to -both of them in this matter the greatest of evils. The love of -curiosity, centrality, ventilation, detachment, common understanding, -coolness and reasonableness and a realistic vision, the dislike of -confusion, bungling, wilfulness, incompetence, hot-headedness, -complacency, sectarianism--these are quite fundamental traits, and -Arnold and Wells share them in a remarkable degree. It is quite true -that Arnold lived in a universe which only with some reluctance -confessed to three dimensions, while that of Wells trembles with the -coming of a fourth. But in any case it is worth while to release a -phenomenon like Wells from the medium of purely contemporary influences, -and for this purpose it is convenient to see a socialist in the light of -a man who knew nothing of socialism, to see that socialism is itself a -natural outgrowth of those "best things that have been thought and said -in the world." It is important to realize that the train of thought and -the circle of ideas of this man are connected with a well-recognized -branch of intellectual tradition. And even socialism is benefitted by -having friends at court. - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE FIRST PHASE - - -"I am, by a sort of predestination, a socialist," Wells wrote once. And -everything one can say of him serves merely to explain, justify, -qualify, illuminate and refine that statement. - -First of all it implies a certain disposition and certain habits of -mind, habits of mind which are all to be found in the first phase of his -work, in those marvellous tales of Time and Space that won him his -original sensational fame. It is this disposition behind them, this -quality they have as of an inevitable attitude toward life and the -world, which distinguishes them at once from those other superficially -similar tales of Jules Verne. The marvels of Jules Verne are just -marvels, delightful, irresponsible plunderings from a helpless universe. -To the grown-up mind they have a little of that pathetic futility one -associates with a millionaire's picture-gallery, where all sorts of -things have been brought together, without any exercise of inevitable -personal choice, because they are expensive. I don't know that the tales -of Wells are better tales, but they have that ulterior synthetic quality -that belongs to all real expressions of personality. Wells was never -merely inventive; his invention was the first stage of an imaginative -growth. - -Now the quality that pervades all these early writings is what may be -called a sense of the infinite plasticity of things. He conceived a -machine that could travel through time, a man who found a way to become -invisible, a drug that made men float like balloons, another drug that -enabled men to live a thousand hours in one, a crystal egg through which -one could watch the life in Mars, a man who could stop the sun like -Joshua, a food that turned men into giants, a biologist who discovered a -method of carving animals into men, an angel who visited a rural vicar, -a mermaid who came to earth in search of a soul, a homicidal orchid, a -gigantic bird hatched from a prehistoric egg, a man who passed outside -space. In short, the universe appeared to him like that magic shop of -which he also wrote, where the most astonishing things may happen, if -you are the Right Sort of Boy. - -If all this implies anything it implies that things in general are not -fixed and static, but that they are, on the contrary, infinitely -plastic, malleable, capable of responding to any purpose, any design you -may set working among them. The universe, it seems to assume, may be and -quite possibly is proceeding after some logical method of its own, but -so far as man is concerned this method appears to be one of chance. -Obviously, man can do the most surprising things in it, can take as it -were all sorts of liberties with it. The universe, in short, is like a -vacant field which may or may not belong to some absent landlord who has -designs of his own upon it; but until this absent landlord appears and -claims his field, all the children in the neighborhood can build huts in -it and play games upon it and, in a word, for all practical purposes, -consider it their own. - -This idea of the relation between free will and determinism is the -underlying assumption of Wells, as he explains it in _First and Last -Things_: - - Take life at the level of common sensations and common - experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's - freedom of will, unless it is his complete moral - responsibility. But make only the least penetrating of - scientific analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable - consequences, a rigid succession of cause and effect. - -And elsewhere he says: - - On the scientific plane one is a fatalist.... But does the - whole universe of fact, the external world about me, the - mysterious internal world from which my motives rise, form - one rigid and fated system as Determinists teach? I incline - to that belief.... From me as a person this theory of - predestination has no practical value.... I hesitate, I - choose just as though the thing was unknowable. For me and - my conduct there is that much wide practical margin of - freedom. I am free and freely and responsibly making the - future--so far as I am concerned. - -In a word, for all the purposes that affect man's need the universe is -infinitely plastic and amenable to his will. Like every clean-cut -philosophical conception, this clears the ground for practical conduct -and a certain sort of direct action. - -There was a time, no doubt, when he shared the old Utopian folly of -expecting a sudden and unanimous change of human will. When the universe -appears as unconventional as it used to appear to Wells, there can -surely be no reason to think it impossible, after a comet has collided -with the world, for the human race to become suddenly Utopian. Generally -speaking, comets do not collide with the world, and in the same way men -are slow to change. But certainly if Wells ever thought of humanity as -merely a multiplication of one pattern, certainly if he has long since -abandoned the idea of our all turning over a new leaf one fine morning, -he has never lost his faith in free will as regards the individual. He -has always believed in the personal doctrine of summarily "making an end -to things" as distinguished from the old-fashioned doctrine of "making -the best of things"; and there is nothing more modern about him than his -aversion to the good old English theory of "muddling through." - -Mr. Polly is a good example of his view of personal direct action, the -getting rid, quickly and decisively, of a situation that has only -sentiment to save it from complete demoralization. "When a man has once -broken through the wall of every-day circumstances," he remarks at the -moment of the Polly _debacle_, "he has made a discovery. If the world -does not please you, _you can change it_. Determine to alter it at any -price, and you can change it altogether." Mr. Polly sets fire to his -shop, takes to the road and repairs his digestion. Desertion of duty and -the quick repudiation of entanglements make him healthy and sensible and -give him a sense of purpose in things. And I know of nothing in all -Wells that is described with more relish than that Beltane festival -which occurs toward the end of _In the Days of the Comet_. The world's -great age has begun anew, and the enlightened men of the new time revive -the May Day of old in order to burn the useless trappings of the past. -They heap old carpets on the fire, ill-designed furniture, bad music and -cheap pictures, stuffed birds, obsolete school-books, dog-eared penny -fiction, sham shoes, and all the corrugated iron in the world; every -tangible thing that is useless, false, disorderly, accidental, obsolete, -and tawdry to celebrate the beginning of things that are clean, -beautiful, and worthy. Sceptical, hesitant, and personal as Wells has -become, that indicates a strong primitive mental trait. Philosophy does -not spring out of the brain; we hate the hateful things of our own -experience, just as we think the things we desire. And though there are -nine and sixty ways of being a socialist, they all unite in a certain -sense of the plasticity and malleability of things human, a certain -faith in the possibility of asserting order in the midst of disorder and -intelligently cleaning house. - -Inherent in this trait is another--detachment. You only become aware of -confusion when you stand free of it, when you cease to be a part of it. -And of all writers who have so immediately felt life I doubt if there -has been one so detached as Wells. The mental detachment of his early -tales is a detachment half scientific, half artistic; scientific as of -one who sees things experimentally in their material, molecular aspect, -artistic as of one conscious of moulding will and placed amid plastic -material. Thus, for example, he sees human beings quite stripped of -their distinctively human qualities; he sees men anatomically, as in -that passage where the Invisible Man, killed with a spade, becomes -visible again as a corpse: - - Everyone saw, faint and transparent as though it were made - of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves - could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp - and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they - stared.... And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet - and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his - body, that strange change continued. First came the little - white nerves, a hazy gray stretch of a limb, then the glossy - bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first - a faint fogginess, then growing rapidly dense and opaque. - -Similar is a passage in _A Story of the Days to Come_, where he -describes an ordinary breakfast of our own day: "the rude masses of -bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fat before they -could be made palatable, the still recognizable fragments of recently -killed animals, hideously charred and hacked." That surely is quite as a -man from another planet, or a chemist after a long day's work in the -laboratory, would view our familiar human things. And one recalls -another sentence from _Kipps_ where this detachment links itself with a -deeper social insight and hints at the part it had come to play in -Wells's later mind: "I see through the darkness," he says, toward the -end of the book, "the souls of my Kippses as they are, _as little pink -strips of quivering, living stuff_, as things like the bodies of little -ill-nourished, ailing, ignorant children--children who feel pain, who -are naughty and muddled and suffer, and do not understand why." - -And just as he sees men and human things chemically and anatomically, so -he sees the world astronomically. He has that double quality (like his -own Mr. Bessel) of being bodily very active in life and at the same time -watching it from a great distance. In his latest book he has figured a -god looking on from the clouds; and there is nothing in his novels more -stimulating and more uncanny than a certain faculty of telescoping his -view suddenly from the very little to the very large, expanding and -contracting his vision of things at will. You find the germ of this -faculty in his early tales. Looking down as though from a balloon he -sees the world as a planet, as a relatively small planet. In doing so he -maintains at first a purely scientific set of values; he is not led, as -he has since been led, and as Leopardi was led by the same imaginative -experience, to adopt poetical values and to feel acutely the littleness -and the powerlessness of man. His values remain scientific, and the -absurdity he feels is the absurdity an astronomer must feel, that in so -small a space men can vaunt themselves and squabble with one another. -Race prejudice, for example, necessarily appears to him as foolish as it -would appear to ordinary eyes among insects that happen to be swarming -on a fallen apple. Once you get it into your mind that the world is a -ball in space, you find a peculiar silliness in misunderstandings on -that ball. This reflection has led to many views of life; in Wells it -led to a sense of the need of human solidarity. - -And solidarity implies order. The sense of order is one of those -instincts exhibited everywhere in the writings of Wells that serve as -preliminaries to his social philosophy. There is a passage in _Kipps_ -where he pictures the satisfactions of shopkeeping to an elect soul: -"There is, of course, nothing on earth," he says, "and I doubt at times -if there is a joy in heaven, like starting a small haberdasher's shop. -Imagine, for example, having a drawerful of tapes, or again, an array of -neat, large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. -Think of your cottons, your drawer of colored silks," etc. De Foe knew a -similar satisfaction and has pictured it in _Robinson Crusoe_. De Foe -was himself a shopkeeper, just as Wells has been in one of his -incarnations; and he knew that good shopkeeping is the microcosm of all -good political economy. The satisfaction of a thoroughly competent man -who is thrown on a desert island, and sets to work to establish upon it -a political economy for one, is a satisfaction by itself. That certainly -is a primitive relish, and it is one of the first gestures of Wells's -sociology. - -Now the sense of solidarity, the sense of order, implies the -subordination of details, the discipline of constituent units. Only in -his later works did Wells begin to consider the problems of the -individual life; in his novels he has considered them almost -exclusively, but always in relation to the constructive purpose of -society and as what may be called human reservations from it. The -telescope has been adjusted to a close range, and the wider -relationships are neither so emphasized nor so easily discerned. -Nevertheless it is still the world that matters to Wells--the world, the -race, the future; not the individual human being. And if, relatively, he -has become more interested in the individual and less in the world, that -is because he is convinced that the problems of the world can best be -approached through the study of individuals. His philosophy has grown -less abstract in harmony with his own experience; but the first sketch -of his view of human nature and its function is to be found crudely -outlined in the scientific romances. How does it figure there? - -The human beings who flit through these early tales are all -inconspicuous little men, whose private existence is of no account, and -who exist to discover, invent, perform all sorts of wonderful -experiments which almost invariably result in their summary and quite -unimportant destruction. They are merely, in the most complete sense, -experiments in the collective purpose, and their creator has toward them -just the attitude of an anatomist toward the animals upon which he is -experimenting; not indifferent to their suffering as suffering, but -ignoring it in the spirit of scientific detachment necessary to -subordinate means to an end. "I wanted--it was the only thing I -wanted--to find out the limit of plasticity in a living form," says Dr. -Moreau in his confession; "and the study has made me as remorseless as -nature." - -Invariably these experiments in human possibility, placed in a world -where charity is not so strong as fear, die quite horribly. Dr. Moreau -is destroyed by the beasts he is attempting to vivisect into the -semblance of men, the Invisible Man is battered to death with a spade, -the Visiting Angel burns to death in attempting to carry out his -celestial errand, the man who travels to the moon cannot get back alive. -Does not all this foreshadow the burden of the later novels, that the -individual who plans and wills for the race is destroyed and broken by -the jealousy, prejudice and inertia in men and the blind immemorial -forces of nature surging through himself? These are the forces that are -figured, in the early tales, by that horrible hostile universe of -nature, and the little intrepid men moving about in the midst of it. And -the mind of Wells is always prepared for the consequences of what it -engenders. The inevitable result of creating an imaginary world of -malignant vegetables and worse than antediluvian monsters is that the -imaginary men you also create shall suffer through them. You reverse the -order of evolution and return men to conditions where life is cheap. An -imagination which has accustomed itself to running loose among planets -and falling stars, which has lived habitually in a universe where worlds -battle with one another, is prepared to stomach a little needless -bloodshed. The inflexible pursuit of an end implies the sacrifice of -means, and if your experiment happens to be an invisible man you will -produce the invisibility even though it kills the man. - -Widen the range and this proposition logically transmutes itself into a -second: if your experiment happens to be an orderly society you will -produce order at the expense of everything that represents disorder. And -from the point of view of a collective purpose, ends, motives and -affections that are private and have no collective significance -represent disorder. Now the whole purpose of Wells's later work has been -to illuminate and refine this proposition. He has flatly distinguished -between two sorts of human nature, the constructive, experimental sort -which lives essentially for the race, and the acquiescent, ineffectual -sort which lives essentially for itself or the established fact; and he -gives to his experimental men and women an almost unlimited charter to -make ducks and drakes of the ineffectual. Think of the long list of dead -and wounded in his novels--Mr. Pope, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Magnet, Mr. -Manning, Margaret, Marion--and you realize how much of a certain -cruelty, a certain ruthlessness is in the very nature of his philosophy -of experimental direct action. - -Another primitive relish exhibited in these early tales is the delight -of constructing things. The Time Machine, for example, is the work of a -mind that immoderately enjoys inventing, erecting, and putting things -together; and there is not much difference between constructing an -imaginary machine and constructing an imaginary society. If Wells's -early Utopian speculations are ingenious impossibilities, are they any -more or less so than his mechanical speculations? One doesn't begin life -with an overwhelming recognition of the obstacles one may encounter--one -doesn't fret too much about the possible, the feasible, or even the -logical. It was enough for Wells that he had built his Time Machine, -though the logic by which the Time Traveller explains his process is a -logic that gives me, at least, a sense of helpless, blinking -discomfort--partly, I confess, because to this day I don't believe there -is anything the matter with it. In any case it is the sheer delight of -construction that fascinates him, and everything that is associated with -construction fascinates him. He is in love with steel; he speaks with a -kind of ecstasy somewhere of "light and clean and shimmering shapes of -silvered steel"; steel and iron have for him the transcendental charm -that harebells and primroses had for Wordsworth. A world like that in -_The Sleeper Awakes_--a world of gigantic machines, air fleets, and the -"swimming shadows and enormous shapes" of an engineer's nightmare--is -only by afterthought, one feels, the speculation of a sociologist. It -expresses the primitive relish of a constructive instinct. It expresses -also a sheer curiosity about the future. - -In a chapter of his book on America Wells has traced the development of -what he calls his prophetic habit of mind as a passage through four -stages: the millennial stage of an evangelical childhood when an -imminent Battle of Armageddon was a natural thing to be looked for; the -stage of ultimate biological possibilities; the stage of prediction by -the rule-of-three; and a final stage of cautious anticipation based upon -the study of existing facts--a gradual passage from the region of -religious or scientific possibilities to the region of human -probabilities. "There is no Being but Becoming" was the first of his -mental discoveries; and finding years later that Heraclitus had said the -same thing, he came to regard the pre-Aristotelian metaphysics as the -right point of departure for modern thought. Consider this passage: - - I am curiously not interested in things and curiously - interested in the consequences of things.... I have come to - be, I am afraid, even a little insensitive to fine immediate - things through this anticipatory habit.... This habit of - mind confronts and perplexes my sense of things that simply - _are_, with my brooding preoccupation with how they will - shape presently, what they will lead to, what seed they will - sow and how they will wear. At times, I can assure the - reader, this quality approaches other-worldliness in its - constant reference to an all-important hereafter. There are - times indeed when it makes life seem so transparent and - flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an equally - transitory series of consequences, that the enhanced sense - of instability becomes restlessness and distress; but on the - other hand nothing that exists, nothing whatever, remains - altogether vulgar or dull and dead or hopeless in its - light.... But the interest is shifted. The pomp and splendor - of established order, the braying triumphs, ceremonies, - consummations,--one sees these glittering shows for what - they are--through their threadbare grandeur shine the little - significant things that will make the future. - -And the burden of his lecture _The Discovery of the Future_ is that an -inductive knowledge of the future is not only very largely possible, but -is considerably more important for us than the study of the past. Even -in the sciences, he says, the test of their validity is their power to -produce confident forecasts. Astronomy is based on the forecast of -stellar movements, medical science exists largely for diagnosis. It is -this thought which determines the nature of his own sociology. - -There is usually something inept in speaking of a man, and especially an -artist, as interchangeable with any ism. Socialism, in the common sense -of the word, is a classification of men. Individual socialists are as a -rule something more than socialists; often they are socialists by -necessity, or imagination, or sentiment, or expediency--their socialism -is not inherent, not the frame of their whole being. In the degree that -socialism is a classification, or a school of thought, or an economic -theory, the individual socialist will, in practice, make mental -reservations from it. Now my whole aim in this chapter has been to -suggest that if socialism had not existed Wells would have invented it. -It is not something which at a given moment or even after a long process -of imaginative conversion or conviction came into his life. It is, in -his own formulation of it, the projection of his whole nature, the -expression of his will, the very content of his art. With one or two -exceptions--works deliberately devoted to propaganda or exposition--even -his purely sociological writings are subjective writings, personal and -artistic in motive; socialism figures in them just as Catholicism -figures in the masses of Mozart, or the brotherhood of man in the poems -of Whitman, not as a cause but as a satisfying conception of truth. And -just as, if one were to study the psychology of Mozart or Whitman, one -would find habits of mind that inevitably produced the individual -Catholicism of the one and the individual fraternalism of the other; so -behind the socialism of Wells are certain habits of mind, certain -primitive likes, relishes, instincts, preferences: a faith in free will, -a sense of order and the subordination of details to design, a personal -detachment, a pleasure in construction, a curiosity about the future. - -These are innate qualities, which inevitably produced their own -animating purpose. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -TOWARDS SOCIALISM - - -Of all the battered, blurred, ambiguous coins of speech there is none so -battered, blurred, and ambiguous as the word socialism. It mothers a -dozen creeds at war with one another. And the common enemy looks on, -fortified with the Socratic irony of the "plain man," who believes he -has at last a full excuse for not understanding these devious doings. - -Therefore I take refuge in saying that H.G. Wells is an artist, neither -more nor less, that socialism is to him at bottom an artistic idea, and -that if it had not existed in the world he would have invented it. This -clears me at once of the accusing frowns of any possible Marxian reader, -and it also states a truth at the outset. For if the orthodox maintain -that socialism is not an affair of choices, may I not retort that here -actually is a mind that chooses to make it so? Here is an extraordinary -kind of Utopian who has all the equipment of the orthodox and yet -remains detached from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is always jealous of its -tabernacles and will not see itself dramatically; it has no concern with -artistic presentations. But I protest there ought to be no quarrel here. -If a socialism fundamentally artistic is an offence to the orthodox, let -them accept it, without resentment, as a little harmless fun--all art -being that. - -Having said so much I return to my own difficulty, for it is very hard -to focus H.G. Wells. He has passed through many stages and has not yet -attained the Olympian repose. Artist as he is, he has been hotly -entangled in practical affairs. There are signs in his early books that -he once shared what Richard Jeffries called the "dynamite -disposition,"--even now he knows, in imagination alone, the joy of black -destruction. He has also been, and ceased to be, a Fabian. But it is -plain that he has passed for good and all beyond the emotional plane of -propaganda. He has abandoned working-theories and the deceptions of the -intellect which make the man of action. He has become at once more -practical and more mystical than a party programme permits one to be. -Here is a world where things are being done--a world of which capital -and labor are but one interpretation. How far can these things and the -men who do them be swept into the service of the race? That is the -practical issue in his mind, and the mystical issue lies in the -intensity and quality of the way in which he feels it. - -To see him clearly one has to remember that he is not a synthetic -thinker but a sceptical artist, whose writings are subjective even when -they seem to be the opposite, whose personality is constantly growing, -expanding, changing, correcting itself ("one can lie awake at night and -hear him grow," as Chesterton says), and who believes moreover that -truth is not an absolute thing but a consensus of conflicting individual -experiences, a "common reason" to be wrought out by constant free -discussion and the comparison and interchange of personal discoveries -and ideas. He is not a sociologist, but, so to say, an artist of -society; one of those thinkers who are disturbed by the absence of right -composition in human things, by incompetent draughtsmanship and the -misuse of colors, who see the various races of men as pigments capable -of harmonious blending and the planet itself as a potential work of art -which has been daubed and distorted by ill-trained apprentices. In Wells -this planetary imagination forms a permanent and consistent mood, but it -has the consistency of a mood and not the consistency of a system of -ideas. And though he springs from socialism and leads to socialism, he -can only be called a socialist in the fashion--to adopt a violently -disparate comparison--that St. Francis can be called a Christian. That -is to say, no vivid, fluctuating human being, no man of genius can ever -be embodied in an institution. He thinks and feels it afresh; his -luminous, contradictory, shifting, evanescent impulses may, on the -whole, ally him with this or that aggregate social view, but they will -not let him be subdued to it. As a living, expanding organism he will -constantly urge the fixed idea to the limit of fluidity. So it is with -Wells. There are times when he seems as whimsical as the wind and as -impossible to photograph as a chameleon. - -Just here I should like to give what may be taken as his own view of -capital and labor socialism in relation to the constructive socialism he -himself has at heart. I am putting together certain brief passages from -_The Passionate Friends_: - - I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems - only by the way. They have played their part in a greater - scheme.... With my innate passionate desire to find the - whole world purposeful, I cannot but believe that.... - Strangest of saviours, there rises over the conflicts of men - the glittering angular promise of the machine. There is no - longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do not - need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are - no longer essential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his - brother man out of the need of servitude. He struggles - through to a new phase, a phase of release, a phase when - leisure and an unexampled freedom are possible to every - human being.... - - Human thought has begun to free itself from individual - entanglements and dramatic necessities and accidental - standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective will - towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or - kingdoms or peoples, a mind and will to which we all - contribute and which none of us may command nor compromise - by our private errors. It ceases to be aristocratic; it - detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us - all. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find - ourselves in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and - jealousies and conflicts, helping and serving in the making - of a new world-city, a new greater State above our legal - States, in which all human life becomes a splendid - enterprise, free and beautiful.... - - I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of - human society. Ours are not economic but psychological - difficulties.... - -These last two sentences really tell the whole story. To pass from -economics to psychology is to pass from Man to men, from society as a -direct object of attack to the individuals who compose it. And this -marks the evolution of Wells the romancer and Wells the expositor of -socialist doctrine into Wells the novelist. It is the problems of human -interaction that occupy him now. But informing these problems, reaching -behind and embracing them, is a general view of the world which has only -become more intimate, more personal, and more concrete with time. - -When, in _New Worlds for Old_, Wells set himself to explain socialism as -he conceived it, he assumed as his first principle a certain Good Will -in men, an operating will steadily working in life toward betterment. In -other words, he supplemented the ordinary socialist idea of economic -determinism, which may or may not inevitably bring about order on the -industrial plane, with a constructive purpose, which, in his view, can -alone bring about the salvation of the race. But this Good Will is not a -fatality; it exists only by virtue of remaining a conscious effort. In -his experiments in Time and Space Wells had accustomed himself to seeing -that the immense possibilities of what might be, so far as the universe -is concerned, predetermined things, were, so far as man is concerned, -matters of chance. To human society at least, if not to our planet, the -most unpropitious things are possible in the future; and there is no -reason to suppose that the destiny of the universe, which at every turn -cuts athwart the destiny of every species contained in it, should, left -to itself, work favorably to man. - -This notion is in itself quite outside socialism and does not -necessarily lead into socialism. It was Huxley who said that the world -and the universe, society and nature, are demonstrably at cross -purposes, and that man has to pit his microcosm against the macrocosm. -Huxley, in his famous lecture on _Ethics and Evolution,_ went on from -this to a kind of informal and unavowed socialism, figuring society as a -well-tended garden preserved by man's careful art from the ravages and -invasions of that hostile world of chance, with its gigantic weeds and -blind impulsions, which everywhere lies waiting round about it. Our -work, he implied, must be in every way to minimize for ourselves the -elements of chance, to become aware of our species in a collective -sense, battling with nature and moulding our own future. - -I do not suppose that Wells consciously adopted this idea from Huxley. -In itself that would be of little consequence, except so far as it shows -the continuity of thought and the development of socialism out of -science. But Wells was for several years a pupil of Huxley, and it is -reasonably plain that the mood in which he wrote his scientific romances -was strongly impregnated by Huxley's influence. The sinister, -incalculable, capricious, destructive forces outside man are symbolized, -as I have said, by those colliding comets, invading Martians, and -monstrous creatures among which the earlier Wells moved and had his -being; just as the sinister, incalculable, capricious forces within man -which urge him to destruction form so great a part of his later novels. -Most of his heroes (typified in _The New Machiavelli_) come to grief -through the blind irrational impulsions within themselves. And he is -equally haunted by what he has called the "Possible Collapse of -Civilization." I do not know how much this is due to an evangelical -childhood, in which Time, Death, and Judgment are always imminent; how -much to an overbalancing study of science at the expense of the -humanities; how much to an overdeveloped sense of the hazard that life -is; and how much to plain facts. But there it is: it has always been a -fixed conviction with Wells that man personal and man social is dancing -on a volcano. - -Therefore he has come to socialism not by the ordinary course but by a -route obscure and lonely. The sense of possible catastrophe and -collapse, the folly of leaving things to chance, the infinite waste and -peril of committing our affairs to nature rather than to art--these are -some of the negative reasons that have made it impossible for him to -fall in with the non-socialist ideal in human affairs, that "broadening -down from precedent to precedent" which he calls "muddling through": a -doctrine that is wholly compatible with a world of haphazard motives, -accidental fortunes, accidental management, a democratic individualism -that places power in irresponsible hands and suppresses talents that -society cannot afford to lose, a governmental system that concerns -itself with legal and financial arrangements, experts with no sense of a -common purpose, patriotisms that thrive on international bad feelings, -and that competitive principle which succeeds in the degree in which it -ignores the general welfare--a chaos of private aims, private virtues, -private motives, without any collective human design at all. - -In the light of these opposed ideas of society as a thing of Chance and -as a thing of Design, let me run over two or three of the tales of -Wells. - -First of all there is the special _laissez faire_ of pure economic -determinism. _The Time Machine_ pictures a possible result of the -Marxian process which has led to an irrevocable division of classes. The -rich, who were, in the old time, in comparison with the poor, -disciplined and united, have long since reached a point where work and -fear are for them things of the past. They occupy the surface of the -earth, and idleness and futility have made them light-headed, puny, -helpless creatures, stirring about and amusing themselves in the -sunlight. The poor, meanwhile, driven underground where they burrow and -tend machinery and provide, have lost all human semblance and become -white, horrible ghoul-like creatures that see in the dark; at night they -swarm out of their holes and feed upon the creatures of the upper air. -The one class has lost all power to defend itself and the other all pity -to spare, and gradually, year after year, mankind comes to its end. - -Then there is the ordinary _laissez faire_ of capitalism, a result of -which is pictured in _The Sleeper Awakes_. The Sleeper, one recalls, -awakens four generations hence to find himself the master-capitalist, -owner of half the world, and the world is one where capital and labor -have irrevocably destroyed the possibility of a constructive human -scheme. But the responsibility for that future is very ingeniously -placed upon us of the present time; for Graham's ownership of the world -is the outcome of one of those irresponsible whims that in our day -characterize the whole individualistic view of property. His cousin, -having no family to inherit his possessions, has left the whole in trust -for the Sleeper, half in jest, expecting him never to waken; and in time -the trustees of this vested fund have become the irresponsible -bureaucrats of the world. "We were making the future," says the awakened -Sleeper, looking out upon this monstrous outcome of whim and _laissez -faire_; "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were -making." - -Consider also _The Empire of the Ants_, in which Wells has figured a -possible reconquest of man by nature, owing to the greater collective -discipline of at least one non-human species. He imagines a species of -poisonous ants with only a little greater faculty of organized -co-operative intelligence than ordinary ants, which have terrorized and -finally routed several villages of unintelligent and unorganized -Brazilian natives far up the Amazon. The Brazilian government sends -against them an outworn inefficient gunboat, with an incompetent captain -and a muddle-headed crew; and when they arrive the ants fall upon the -only man sent ashore and sting him to death. The captain repeats over -and over, "But what can we _do_?" And at last with tremendous decision -he fires a gun at them and retires. The story ends with a report that -the ants are swarming all over the interior of Brazil and that nobody -knows how to prevent them from occupying the whole of South America. - -And then there is _The History of Mr. Polly._ I ignore for the moment -the individual aspect of his case, for Mr. Polly is not merely an -individual--he is an emblem of the whole, he is society _in concreto_. -We find him at the opening of the book sitting on a stile, suffering -from indigestion and consequently depressed in spirits. It is two -o'clock of a Sunday afternoon, and he has just finished his mid-day -meal. He has eaten cold potatoes, cold pork, Rashdall's mixed -pickles--three gherkins, two onions, a small cauliflower head and -several capers; cold suet pudding, treacle and pale cheese, three slices -of grey bread, and a jug of beer. He hates himself, he hates his wife, -he hates existence. But Mr. Polly's interior, the things that have gone -into it and the emotions that rise out of it, are only typical of an -entire life that has, to quote Macaulay's eulogy of the British -constitution, thought nothing of symmetry and much of convenience. - -Each of the novels of Wells, in one aspect at least, presents the -accidental nature of our world in some one typical case. _Love and Mr. -Lewisham_ shows how in the case of one of those young students who have, -as things are, no chance at all, but who are the natural builders of a -better world, the constructive possibility is crushed by the primary -will to live. At eighteen Mr. Lewisham is an assistant master at one of -those incompetent private-enterprise schools which for Wells (as also -for Matthew Arnold) epitomize our haphazard civilization. He has a -"future"--the Schema which he pins to his bedroom wall promises -unimaginable achievements. He marries, and you feel that he should marry -and that he has married the right person. But then with interests -divided he has to find money and in doing so he fails in his -examinations. At last it becomes a choice between his career and his -children, between the present and the future, and the children and the -future win. Society loses just in the degree that Lewisham himself -loses, for he was fitted to be a builder; and society has first, in the -face of all his efforts, imperfectly equipped him and then consistently -refused to take advantage of his talents. - -Just as Lewisham is a potential builder of society who is defeated, so -Kipps is a specimen of the raw material, the muddled inferior material -with which society has to deal and refuses to deal. Kipps, like Mr. -Polly, is from the beginning a victim of accident, spawned on the world, -miseducated, apprenticed at fourteen to a Drapery Bazaar. He grows up -ignorant, confused, irresponsible; and then suddenly, as accidentally as -he was born, has L26,000 and responsibility thrust upon him. The fortune -of Kipps lifts him at once out of the obscure negligible world of the -populace and makes him a figure to be reckoned with. Therein lies the -comedy of the book. He tries to make himself what in his own view a man -of means ought to be; naturally he sees money not as a force but as a -thing to be spent, and he finds that even from this point of view he has -no freedom of will, and that his lack of training inevitably places him -in the hands of equally irresponsible persons who want his money. He -wishes to build a house, designed after his own vaguely apprehended -needs and desires, and somehow under the wand of the architect a house -with eleven bedrooms springs from the ground, a house plainly far beyond -his own or Ann's power of management, and the prospect of disrespectful -servants, terrifying callers, and a horde of scheming lawyers, -tradesfolk and satellites. And the life of Kipps under prosperity is -summed up in the following dialogue: - - "Wonder what I shall do this afternoon," said Kipps, with - his hands deep in his pockets. - - He pondered and lit a cigarette. - - "Go for a walk, I s'pose," said Ann. - - "I _been_ for a walk this morning." - - "S'pose I must go for another," he added after an interval. - -May one suggest how the significance of such a story as this varies -according to the point of view? In the ordinary literature of comedy, -Kipps would be merely a parvenu whose want of dignity and ignorance of -the right use of money are laughable--or, if the novelist were a -humanitarian, pitiful. To the socialist, on the other hand, every -incident of his life, every gesture of his mind, is a unique indictment -of things as they are. He stands for the whole waste of human stuff in a -world which has not learned how to economize itself, whose every detail -is accidental in a general chaotic absence of social design. - -In this aspect _Tono-Bungay_ is the most powerful work of Wells. Just as -his romances of the future had exhibited the possible effects of -accidental heedless social conduct in the past, so his novels exhibit -the motives that produce this heedlessness to consequences. Thus the -world in which the Sleeper awakes, a world irrevocably ruled by the -bureaucratic trustees of an irresponsible private fortune, is just a -conceivable consequence of such a career as Uncle Ponderevo's, had not -catastrophe overwhelmed him and enabled Wells to point a much more -pregnant moral. _Tono-Bungay_ is a great epic of irresponsible -capitalism from the socialist point of view. Uncle Ponderevo is a born -commercial meteor, and when he first enters the book, a small druggist -in a dead country town, he exhibits the temperament of a Napoleon of -finance spoiling for conquest. He wants to Wake Up Wimblehurst, invent -something, do something, shove something. - - He indicated London as remotely over the top of the - dispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by - a whirl of the hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me. - - "What sort of things do they do?" I asked. "Rush about," he - said. "Do things! Somethin' glorious. There's cover - gambling. Ever heard of that, George?" He drew the air in - through his teeth. "You put down a hundred, say, and buy - ten thousand pounds' worth. See? That's a cover of one per - cent. Things go up one, you sell, realize cent per cent; - down, whiff, it's gone! Try again! Cent per cent, George, - every day. Men are made or done for in an hour. And the - shoutin'!... Well, that's one way, George. Then another - way--there's Corners!" - - "They're rather big things, aren't they?" I ventured. - - "Oh, if you go in for wheat and steel--yes. But suppose you - tackled a little thing, George. Just some leetle thing that - only needed a few thousands. Drugs, for example. Shoved all - you had into it--staked your liver on it, so to speak. Take - a drug--take ipecac, for example. Take a lot of ipecac. - Take all there is! See? There you are! There aren't - unlimited supplies of ipecacuanha--can't be!--and it's a - thing people _must_ have. Then quinine again! You watch - your chance, wait for a tropical war breaking out, let's - say, and collar all the quinine. Where _are_ they? Must - have quinine, you know--Eh? ... - - "Lord! there's no end of things--no end of _little_ things. - Dill-water--all the suff'ring babes yowling for it. - Eucalyptus again--cascara--witch hazel--menthol--all the - toothache things. Then there's antiseptics, and curare, - cocaine.... - - "Rather a nuisance to the doctors," I reflected. - - "They got to look out for themselves. By Jove, yes. They'll - do you if they can, and you do them. Like brigands. That - makes it romantic. That's the Romance of Commerce, George." - - He passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such - fragments as: "Fifty per cent, advance, sir; - security--to-morrow." - - The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a - sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever - be permitted to do in reality. It was the sort of nonsense - one would talk to make Ewart laugh and set him going on to - still odder possibilities. I thought it was part of my - uncle's way of talking. But I've learnt differently since. - The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee - something that will probably be needed and put it out of - reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy up land - upon which people will presently want to build houses, you - secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, - and so on, and so on. Of course the naive intelligence of a - boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human - inadequacy. He begins life with the disposition to believe - in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realize how - casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and - custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is - a power as irresistible as a head master's to check - mischievous, foolish enterprises of every sort. I will - confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I - had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do - that would pretty certainly go to gaol. Now I know that any - one who could really bring it off would be much more likely - to go to the House of Lords! - -And such or nearly such is this career. Tono-Bungay, that swindling -patent medicine without value or meaning, is the insubstantial -hippogriff upon which Uncle Ponderevo soars upward on the wind of -advertisement. In a society whose basis is unlimited individual rights, -he is able to disorganize the industrial world and to work out his -absurd, inept, extravagant destiny, scattering ruin right and left. - -But the spirit of Good Will, the disinterested constructive spirit of -socialism which is the underlying assumption of Wells, appears here as -in all his later books. Out of the wreckage the constructive purpose -emerges, in the person of George Ponderevo. It shapes itself as a steel -destroyer, the work of an engineer's brain, a destroyer which England -has refused and which plunges down the Thames to the open sea, the -symbol of man's intentions, without illusions and without the hope of -personal gain, the disinterested spirit of science and truth. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -SOCIALISM TRUE AND FALSE - - - In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth - of statesmanship. It has been the chronic mistake of - statecraft and all organizing spirits to attempt immediately - to scheme and arrange and achieve. Priests, schools of - thought, political schemers, leaders of men, have always - slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out - the whole--or, at any rate, completely think out definite - parts--of the purpose and future of man, clearly and - finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct - on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing - obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, - persecution, training, pruning, secretive education, and all - the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. - - -The man who wrote that is not what is called a whole-hearted man as -regards any form of group-action. He does not "fit in." He is at bottom -a sceptic, and a sceptic is one who reduces every question to the -question of human nature. So that the socialism of Wells is necessarily -at variance with all the recognized group-forms of socialism, -Administrative, Philanthropic, and Revolutionary. I must briefly -indicate in each case what is the quality of this divergence. - -As regards the first, he has a complete distrust of what Hilaire Belloc -has called the "Servile State;" and what he distrusts he virulently -dislikes. In his view, Administrative socialism, as it appears in Sidney -Webb and the Fabian Society, and in the tendency of contemporary -Liberalism, has led to an excessive conservatism toward the existing -machinery of government, it has depended altogether too much on -organization without popular support, and as a result has tended to -throw the whole force of the socialist movement into a bureaucratic -regime of small-minded experts. The activity of the Fabians especially, -he says, has set great numbers of socialists working in the old -governmental machinery without realizing that the machinery should have -been reconstructed first. The whole tendency of this method, as it is -exhibited in the works of the English Liberal Party of to-day, is toward -a socialization of the poor without a corresponding socialization of the -rich; toward a more and more marked chasm between the regimented workers -and the free employers. - -And it throws the control of affairs into the hands of a mass of highly -specialized officials, technical minds, mutually-unenlightened experts. -In an age when the progress of society depends upon breaking down -professional barriers, when the genuine scientist, for instance, is a -man who passes beyond his own science and sees the inter-relationships -of all knowledge, the mind which has been trained in one habitual -routine is the most dangerous type of mind to place in authority. On the -one hand, society depends upon the cooperation of all sorts of -specialists, their free discussion, and comparison of methods, results, -and aims; on the other experts in office are apt to grow narrow, -impatient, and contemptuous, seeing nothing beyond their immediate -work,--and this particularly when they have been trained for -administration without any wide experience of the world. - -Therefore upon experts as such, in distinction from constructive and -cooperating specialists, Wells, with all the force of his belief in the -ventilating of knowledge and the humanizing of affairs, wages an -unceasing war. _The First Men in the Moon_ satirizes, after the fashion -of Swift, a world where the expert view of life, not only in -administration but in all work, prevails. Each inhabitant of the Moon -has a single rigidly defined function, to which everything else in his -nature is accommodated. Thus certain types of machine-menders are -compressed in jars, while others are dwarfed to fit them for fine work, -"a really more humane proceeding", as Mr. Cavor observes, "than our -method of leaving children to grow into human beings and then making -machines of them." And in _The Great State_ he returns to his attack on -government by experts: "Whatever else may be worked out in the subtler -answers our later time prepares, nothing can be clearer than that the -necessary machinery of government must be elaborately organized to -prevent the development of a managing caste in permanent conspiracy, -tacit or expressed, against the normal man." And he adds: "The Great -State will, I feel convinced, regard changes in occupation as a proper -circumstance in the life of every citizen; it will value a certain -amateurishness in its service, and prefer it to the trite omniscience of -the stale official." One of the many and increasing indications, one -might suggest, of the remarkable tendency in Wells to find good in the -old humanistic Tory, as distinguished from the modern bureaucratic -Liberal, view of life. - -But lest I be tempted to carry this latter suggestion too far just at -this point, I pass on to his equally virulent dislike of Philanthropic -socialism and the busy Superior Person in affairs; especially the type -of political woman so dear to Mrs. Humphry Ward's heart. If the expert -bureaucratic point of view represents the action of socialist thought on -the Liberal Progressive mind, so also the philanthropic superior point -of view represents the action of socialist thought on the Conservative -mind. It is arrogant, aggressive, and condescending. It implies the -raising of one's inferiors, and what weak mortal should assume that she -(for this happens to be a mainly feminine affliction) is the standard -according to which other mortals ought to be raised? - -Two of these energetic ladies have been pictured with a bitter vividness -by Wells in Altiora Bailey and Aunt Plessington, the former summing up -the Fabian-expert view, the latter summing up the Superior-philanthropic -view. Altiora has "P.B.P."--_pro bono publico_--engraved inside her -wedding ring. All the misery of the world she marshals invincibly in -statistics. She sees everything as existing in types and classes; she -pushes her cause with a hard, scheming, and wholly self-centred -eagerness, managing political dinners, indefatigably compiling -blue-books, dreaming of a world nailed as tightly and firmly under the -rule of experts as a carpet is nailed with brass tacks. - -On the other hand Aunt Plessington is the incarnation of a "Movement" -somewhat vague in purpose but always aggressively beneficial to the -helpless ones of the earth. "Her voice was the true governing-class -voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant and authoritative; it made -everything she said clear and important, so that if she said it was a -fine morning it was like leaded print in the _Times_." Her mission is -principally to interfere with the habits and tastes of the -working-class, making it impossible for them to buy tobacco and beer or -"the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which do not -sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach)." She is, in short, -one of those odious managing people who know nothing of and care nothing -for human nature, who concern themselves wholly with the effects without -penetrating to the causes of misery, who see mankind as irrevocably -divided into a governing and a governed class, and whose idea of -government is to make the governed as uncomfortably efficient as -possible and as lacking in free will. She is exactly one of those -arrogant sterile souls, in love with methods rather than men, who have -made the Servile State an imminent and horrid possibility and have -turned so many misinformed human beings (including Tolstoy) against -socialism altogether. - -If Wells dislikes Administrative and Philanthropic socialism because -they are not sufficiently human, he has an equal aversion to what is -called orthodox, that is to say, Revolutionary socialism; and in this he -includes all socialism that is fundamentally economic. "I have long -since ceased to trouble about the economics of human society," says -Stratton in _The Passionate Friends_, in words we are justified in -taking as the opinion of Wells himself. "Ours are not economic but -psychological difficulties." - -That statement is full of meaning. It expresses, not a fact but a -personal conviction--the personal conviction with which the -psychological constructive socialism of Wells begins. But before I pass -on to this I must make one comment that persists in my mind. - -Nothing is more remarkable than the unanimity with which during the last -few years the advanced world has put all its eggs in the basket of -pragmatism, the basket that has been so alluringly garnished by -Bergson's _Creative Evolution_, In this movement of thought Wells has -inevitably become one of the leaders, and his practical desertion of the -socialist cause is one of the main symptoms of it. The creative energies -of men, where society as a whole is concerned, are, in this philosophy, -conceived as bursting through the husks and institutions of the world, -not consciously destroying them but shedding them incidentally and -passing on. Now as regards sociology there is an obvious fatalism in -that; for the burden of proof lies once more on a personal basis, on a -personal basis qualified by the capacity of the person. It is true that -this creative and constructive tendency, like the total tendency of -modern life, is in the direction of socialism, it is true that a -thousand elements in modern life which could never be engaged in the -class-war are led by it into line with socialism. Yet there capitalism -is! Only the black-browed Marxian steadily contemplates the fact that -year by year the rich compound their riches and the poor their poverty, -while those that have no chance of creative outlets plant dynamite. - -I do not mean that Wells is "wrong" in abandoning the economic for the -psychological approach,--that is plainly the inevitable course for him. -I wish simply to mark a distinction. The gospel of Wells is an entirely -personal one; it frankly concerns itself with the inner realities of the -human mind, and in that lies its great importance. But let us -discriminate. Like every purely personal doctrine it contains, in -relation to the facts and causes of society, a certain quietism. It -withdraws the mind from corporate action and lays emphasis on corporate -thought. But it recognizes no corporate enemy. To be an opponent of -capitalism as such, is, in this philosophy, as quaint and crude and -crusty as to be an anti-suffragist or a believer in politics (for it has -become the fashion to believe with fervor in the franchise and scarcely -to believe at all in what the franchise stands for). - -There is then a certain danger in the creative pragmatism of this -particular time. If it actually does penetrate to the head men of the -world, if it is able to generate what I suppose may be called a "moral -equivalent" of duty--and there is almost a probability that it will--the -hazard is won. If it does not--and many keen thinkers and men of action -are obdurate--then we shall simply have the _fait accompli_ with -compound interest. What if it should turn out in the end, after the best -brains of socialism had all withdrawn from the economic programme of -socialism, that capitalism grows all the greener in the sunlight of -their tacit consent? There is Congress, there is Parliament, and there -they propose to remain. Suppose they are not converted from the top? Is -it altogether wise to stop persecuting them from the bottom? - -So much before I pass on. This comment does not qualify the teaching of -Wells. It merely supplements it from the economic side, and the -supplement seems to me an important one. - -Of a piece with his whole point of view is that he calls the right -sociological method not a scientific but an artistic method: it consists -of the making and comparing of Utopias. This idea he sets forth in his -paper _The So-called Science of Sociology_. "What is called the -scientific method," he says, "the method of observation, of theory about -these observations, experiments in verification of that theory and -confirmation or modification, really 'comes off' in the sciences in -which the individuality of the units can be pretty completely ignored." -The method that is all-important in the primary physical sciences where -the individuality of atoms and molecules may conveniently be ignored for -the sake of practical truth, becomes in his view proportionately untrue -as the sciences in their gradation approach the human world. "We -cannot," he says in _First and Last Things_, "put humanity into a museum -and dry it for examination; our one still living specimen is all -history, all anthropology, and the fluctuating world of men. There is no -satisfactory means of dividing it and nothing in the real world with -which to compare it. We have only the remotest idea of its 'life-cycle' -and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny." And in the -paper I have just mentioned he speaks of the Social Idea as a thing -"struggling to exist and realize itself in a world of egotisms, animals, -and brute matter.... Now I submit it is not only a legitimate form of -approach, but altogether the most promising and hopeful form of -approach, to endeavor to disentangle and express one's personal version -of that idea, and to measure realities from the standpoint of that -realization. I think, in fact, that the creation of Utopias--and their -exhaustive criticism--is the proper and distinctive method of -sociology." This notion of sociology as properly artistic in method and -diagnostic in aim indicates his main divergence from the methods and -aims of Comte and Spencer. - -And so one turns to his own illustration of this belief, _A Modern -Utopia_. It is a beautiful Utopia, beautifully seen and beautifully -thought; and it has in it some of that flavor of airy unrestraint one -finds in _News from Nowhere_. Morris, of course, carries us into a world -where right discipline has long since produced right will, so wholly and -instinctively socialized that men can afford to be as free as anarchists -would have the unsocialized men of our own time, a world such as Goethe -had in mind when he said: "There is in man a force, a spring of goodness -which counterbalances egoism; and if by a miracle it could for a moment -suddenly be active in all men, the earth would at once be free from -evil." Well, that is the miracle which has in some way just taken place -before the curtain goes up on most Utopias; and I think that Wells has -never been more skilful than in keeping this miracle quietly in his bag -of tricks and devising meanwhile a plausible transition between us and -that better world. It all happens in a moment and we are there. By an -amazing legerdemain of logic he leaps the gap and presents us with a -planet which at every point tallies with our own. It is a planet which -does not contain a State but is a State, the flexible result of a free -social gesture. - -_Mankind in the Making_ should be taken as introductory to _A Modern -Utopia_. It is the sketch of a method towards attaining such a world -state. It is a kind of treatise on education based on the assumption -that "our success or failure with the unending stream of babies is the -measure of our civilization." It opens with a complete repudiation of -"scientific" breeding, as a scheme which ignores the uniqueness of -individual cases and the heterogeneous nature of human ideals. "We are," -says Wells, "not a bit clear what points to breed for, and what points -to breed out;" while the interplay of strong and varied personalities we -desire is contradictory to any uniform notions of beauty, capacity, and -sanity, which thus cannot be bred for, so to speak, in the abstract. But -in _A Modern Utopia_ he outlines certain conditions limiting parentage, -holding it necessary that in order to be a parent a man must be above a -certain minimum of capacity and income, failing which he is indebted to -the State for the keep of his children. Motherhood is endowed and -becomes in this way a normal and remunerative career, which renders the -mother capable of giving her time to the care and education of her -children, as millions are not in a wage-earning civilization, and makes -both her and her children independent of the ups and downs of her -husband. His very detailed suggestions about the education of young -children (illustrated also in _The Food of the Gods_) are at once a -reminiscence of Rabelais and an anticipation of Madame Montessori. He -insists upon uniform pronunciation (a very important matter in England, -where diversity of language is one of the bulwarks of a rigid -class-system), the universality and constant revision of text-books, the -systematic reorganization of public library and bookselling methods, -with a view to making the race think as a whole. He urges the necessity -of rescuing literature from the accidents of the book-market by endowing -critical reviews, chairs for the discussion of contemporary thought, and -qualified thinkers and writers regardless of their special bias or -principles. To strike a mean between the British abuse of government by -hereditary privilege and the American abuse of government by electoral -machines he ingeniously proposes the election of officials by the jury -method, twenty or thirty men being set aside by lot to determine the -proper holders of office. And he is convinced of the importance in a -democracy of abundant honors, privileges, even titles, and abundant -opportunities for fruitful leisure. - -I have already spoken of his belief that the right sociological method -is the creation and comparison of individual Utopias. Thus his own -free-hand sketch of a better world is, in fact, a criticism of all -previous works of the kind. As distinguished from them the modern -Utopia, he says, has to present not a finally perfect stage but a -hopefully ascending one; it has to present men not as uniform types but -as conflicting individualities with a common bond; and moreover it has -to occupy, not some remote island or province "over the range" but a -whole planet. The Utopia of Wells is a world which differs from the -present world in one fundamental respect only--it has one initial -advantage: that every individual in it has been _started right_, in the -degree in which the collective knowledge of the world has rendered that -possible. - -But there is no need for me to say anything more about these books. They -are the free and suggestive motions of a mind inexhaustibly fertile and -given to many devices. Anyone who has read Wells at all is aware of his -ingenuity, his equal capacity for large schemes and minute details, his -truly Japanese belief in radical changes, once they are seen to be -necessary and possible. And indeed the details of social arrangement -follow naturally and profusely enough, once you get the frame of mind -that wishes them. Wells in his Utopia presupposes the frame of mind. In -short, he puts education first; he believes that the essential problems -of the present are not economic but psychological. - -And here where the constructive theory of Wells begins, let me quote a -passage from _The New Machiavelli_ that gives the gist of it: - - The line of human improvements and the expansion of human - life lies in the direction of education and finer - initiatives. If humanity cannot develop an education far - beyond anything that is now provided, if it cannot - collectively invent devices and solve problems on a much - richer, broader scale than it does at the present time, it - cannot hope to achieve any very much finer order or any more - general happiness than it now enjoys. We must believe, - therefore, that it can develop such a training and - education, or we must abandon secular constructive hope. And - here my initial difficulty as against crude democracy comes - in. If humanity at large is capable of that high education - and those creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must - its better and more vigorous types be so capable. And if - those who have power and scope and freedom to respond to - imaginative appeals cannot be won to the idea of collective - self-development, then the whole of humanity cannot be won - to that. From that one passes to what has become my general - conception in politics, the conception of the constructive - imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful - people, enterprising people, influential people, amidst whom - power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-conscious, - highly selective, open-minded, devoted, aristocratic - culture, which seems to me to be the necessary next phase in - the development of human affairs. I see human progress, not - as the spontaneous product of crowds of low minds swayed by - elementary needs, but as a natural but elaborate result of - intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and - curiosity liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions - and motives, modified and redirected by literature and art. - -This permeation of the head men of the world, this creation of a natural -collective-minded aristocracy appears now to be the permanent hope of -Wells. It is the stuff of all his novels, it is the centre of his -ethical system; and his _Utopia_ is made possible by the existence in it -of just such a flexible leading caste--the so-called Samurai. But -before coming to the inner implications of this, to the individual and -personal realities and difficulties of this, I must follow the -development of the idea in Wells himself. At various times, in various -works, he has presented it from a dozen different angles: as something -that is certain to come, as something he greatly desires to come, as -something that will not come at all except through prodigious effort, as -something that will come through a general catastrophe, as something -that will come through isolated individual endeavor, and the like. That -is to say he has presented his idea through all the various literary -mediums of exposition, fable, prophecy, psychological analysis, and -ethical appeal. - -It appears in a crude form in his first avowedly sociological work, -_Anticipations_. He there attempts to show that the chaos of society is -of itself beginning to generate a constructive class, into whose hands -it must ultimately fall. The advance of mechanism, he predicts, will -produce four clearly defined classes: an immense shareholding class with -all the potentialities of great property and a complete lack of function -with regard to that property; a non-producing class of middle-men -dependent on these, and composed of agents, managers, lawyers, clerks, -brokers, speculators, typists, and organizers; the expropriated class of -propertyless and functionless poor, whose present livelihood is -dependent on the fact that machinery is not yet so cheap as their labor. -And amid this generally disorganized mass a fourth element will define -itself. This in rudiment is the element of mechanics and engineers, -whose work makes it necessary for them to understand the machines they -are making and to be continually on the lookout for new methods. These -men, he holds, will inevitably develop a common character based on a -self-wrought scientific education and view of life. About them as a -nucleus all the other skilled and constructive minds--doctors, teachers, -investigators, writers, and the like--will tend to group themselves; and -as the other classes in their very nature will tend to social -disintegration, these will inevitably grow more and more conscious of a -purpose, a reason, a function in common, and will disentangle themselves -from the aimless and functionless masses about them. Democracy, as we -know it, will meanwhile pass away. For democratic government unavoidably -reduces itself to government by party machines and party machines depend -for their existence on alarms, quarrelsome patriotisms, and -international exasperations whose almost inevitable outcome is war. - -Whether war follows or not, the power of society is bound to fall into -the hands of the scientifically trained, constructive middle class, -because this class is the only indispensable element in it. Without war -this must occur just as soon as the spending and purchasing power of the -shareholding class becomes dependent for its existence on the class -which alone can save society from destruction. With war it will occur -with even greater rapidity: for in the warfare of the future that nation -is bound to win which has most effectively realized socialist ideals, in -which the government can command, with least interference from private -control, its roads, its food, its clothing, its material, its resources, -which has most efficiently organized itself as a whole; and the class -that modern warfare will bring to the front is the class that knows how -to handle machinery and how to direct it. But just as this class will be -the most efficient in war, so will it be the most careful to prevent -war: it will in fact confirm the ultimate tendency toward a World State -at peace with itself, through the agency, not of any of the governments -that we know to-day but of an informal cooperative organization which is -altogether outside the governmental systems of society, and which may in -time assimilate the greater part of the population of the world. - -Such is the argument of this book, and except for the inevitability of -it--the belief that all this _must_ come to pass--Wells has not since -abandoned it in any essential way. The new aristocracy that figures -there, the advance-guard of a better civilization, is precisely the -ethical ideal which is embodied in the chief characters of his novels. -Thus too the Samurai of _A Modern Utopia_ are figured as having arisen -at first informally as the constructive minds disentangling themselves -from the social chaos. Gradually becoming aware through research, -discussion and cooperation of a common purpose, they have at last -assumed a militant form and supplanted the political organizations of -the world. - -The general intention of all this finds utterance in the most poetic of -all the fables of Wells, _The Food of the Gods_. The Food itself, -invented by two undistinguished-looking scientists, becomes current in -the world through the very haphazardness of a society which will not -control discoveries detrimental to it and which consequently has no -means of coping with a discovery capable of superseding it. -"Heracleophorbia" has thus the same initial advantage as Tono-Bungay or -any other shabby patent medicine. It has an additional advantage; for -while patent medicines have the sanction of private enterprise and are -controlled by secret patents for the gain of their inventors, the Food -of the Gods, like every discovery of honorable scientists, is given -freely to the world. Thus the Food and the gigantic race of supermen who -spring from it and bring with them a nobler order of things are -themselves generated by the very chaos they promise to supplant. Just in -proportion as the inventors are frank and open men, having no secret -gainful purpose, the Food spreads far and wide. It is stolen, spilled, -scattered; and wherever it falls every living thing grows gigantic. -Immense wasps drone like motor-cars over the meadows, chickens grow as -large as emus, and here and there a baby fed upon it and unable -thereafter to accept any less robust diet grows gradually to Rabelaisian -proportions. Caddles, a type of all the growing giants, comes to his -forty-foot maturity in a remote village where, as the mellow vicar -observes, "Things change, but Humanity--_aere perennius_." There he is -taught by the little folk to submit himself to all his governors, -teachers, spiritual pastors and masters and to order himself lowly and -reverently to all his betters. They put him to work in the chalk-pits, -where he learns to manage a whole quarry single-handed and makes of -himself a rudimentary engineer, and then he breaks loose and tramps to -London. He finds himself in the crowded New Kent Road, and they tell him -he is obstructing the traffic: "But where is it going?" he says; "where -does it come from? What does it mean?" Around him play the electric -signs advertising Yanker's Yellow Pills and Tupper's Tonic Wine for -Vigor, conveying to his troubled mind the significance of a world of -chaos and accident, perverted instinct, and slavery to base suggestion. - -Is it necessary to say that society becomes alarmed at last? Is it -necessary to add that Wells opens fire upon it with his whole battery of -satire? Plainly men and giants cannot live in the same world; the little -men find their little ways, their sacred customs of order, home, and -religion threatened by a strange new thing. The Children of the Food -meanwhile have grown beyond the conventions and proportions of common -life; they have experienced a kind of humanity to which all men can -attain and from which there can be no retrogression to the lesser -scheme. In the end, having found one another, they assemble in their -embankment, the world against them. They sit amid their vast machinery, -Titanic shapes in the darkness broken by searchlights and the flames of -their forges. An ambassador from the old order brings them the terms -upon which they may go free. They must separate themselves from the -world and give up the Food. They refuse: - -"Suppose we give up this thing that stirs within us," says the Giant -Leaguer.... "What then? Will this little world of theirs be as it was -before? They may fight against greatness in us who are the children of -men, but can they conquer?... For greatness is abroad, and not only in -us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose of all things! It is in the -nature of all things, it is part of time and space. To grow and still to -grow, from first to last, that is Being, that is the law of life." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEW REPUBLICAN - - -It is obvious that the socialism of Wells, touching as it does at every -point the fabric of society, remains at bottom a personal and mystical -conception of life. His typical socialist, or constructive man, or -Samurai, or New Republican, or what you will, is as distinctly a poetic -projection from life as Nietzsche's Superman, or Carlyle's Hero, or the -Superior Man of Confucius. Like them, it implies a rule of conduct and a -special religious attitude. - -Nietzsche's Superman is a convenient figure by which for the moment to -throw into relief the point I have in mind. Plainly a conception of this -kind should never be intellectualized and defined. It is a living whole, -as a human being is a living whole, and the only way to grasp it is to -place oneself at the precise angle of the poet who conceived it. But the -fixed intellect of man is not often capable of rising to the height of -such an argument, nor do the run of critics and interpreters rise to -such a height themselves. In the case of Nietzsche, particularly, they -have confounded the confusion, urging precise definitions and at the -same time disagreeing among themselves as to which definitions may be -held valid. But indeed the Superman does not "mean" this or that: it can -merely be approached from different points of view with different -degrees of sympathy. And so it is with the New Republican of Wells. - -I have mentioned the Superman because Wells himself has reached a -conception of aristocracy similar in certain respects to that of -Nietzsche but in others wholly antagonistic. In _The Food of the Gods_ -he certainly exhibits a sympathy with Nietzsche on the poetical and -ideal side; for his giants are not simply grand-children of Rabelais, -they practise of necessity a morality at variance with that of the -little men among whom they grow. When Caddies comes to London he does -not, and cannot, expect the little men to feed him; not intending evil -and seeing merely that he must live, he sweeps the contents of a baker's -shop into his mouth with just the unconcerned innocence of laws and -prohibitions that a child would feel before a blackberry bush. The very -existence of a larger, freer race implies a larger and freer morality, -and the giants and the little folk alike see that the same world cannot -for long contain them both. But perhaps one can mark the distinction by -saying that, unlike the Superman, they are not masters but servants of -the cosmic process. They themselves are not the goal toward which the -whole creation tends. Humanity is not a setting for their splendor, but -something that wins through them its own significance. - -In fact it fully proves how profound is the socialistic instinct in -Wells, that though in English wise and almost in the manner of Carlyle -he has come to believe in the great ones of this world, he has never -lost the invincible socialist conviction that a great man is only a -figure of speech. In _The Discovery of the Future_ he says: "I must -confess that I believe that if by some juggling with space and time -Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Edward IV, William the Conqueror, Lord Rosebery, -and Robert Burns had all been changed at birth, it would not have -produced any serious dislocation of the course of destiny. I believe -that these great men of ours are no more than images and symbols and -instruments taken, as it were, haphazard by the incessant and consistent -forces behind them." The individual who stands on his achievement, the -"lord of creation," is to him at best a little misinformed, at the worst -blustering, dishonest, presuming, absurd. - -By an original instinct the Wells hero is an inconspicuous little -person, fastidiously untheatrical, who cuts no figure personally and -who, to adopt a phrase from one of his later books, "escapes from -individuality in science and service." He abhors "personages." For the -personage is one who, in some degree, stands on his achievement, and to -Wells man, both in his love and his work, is experimental: he is an -experiment toward an impersonal synthesis, the well-being of the -species. It is true that this idea of man as an experiment does not -conflict with a very full development of personality. It consists in -that; but personality to Wells is attained purely through love and work, -and thus it comes to an end the moment it becomes static, the moment one -accepts the laurel wreath, the moment one verges on self-consequence. - -The first published utterance of Wells was, I think, a paper in _The -Fortnightly Review_ for July, 1891, called _The Rediscovery of the -Unique_. It was one of the earliest of those attacks on the logical -approach to life, so characteristic of contemporary thought: it stamped -him from the outset a pragmatist. The burden of his argument was that -since the investigations of Darwin it is no longer possible to ignore -the uniqueness of every individual thing in the universe and that "we -only arrive at the idea of similar beings by an unconscious or -deliberate disregard of an infinity of small differences"--that, in -brief, the method of classification which is the soul of logic is untrue -to the facts of life. "Human reason," he wrote, "in the light of what is -being advanced, appears as a convenient organic process based on a -fundamental happy misconception.... The _reason d'etre_ of a man's mind -is to avoid danger and get food--so the naturalists tell us. His -reasoning powers are about as much a truth-seeking tool as the snout of -a pig, and he may as well try to get to the bottom of things by them as -a mole might by burrowing." - -I quote thus his rudely graphic early statement of the case, because he -has not since substantially modified it and because it shows that he -already related it to human realities: and indeed in the same paper he -pointed out the relation that such an idea must bear to ordinary -conduct: - - Beings are unique, circumstances are unique, and therefore - we cannot think of regulating our conduct by wholesale - dicta. A strict regard for truth compels us to add that - principles are wholesale dicta: they are substitutes of more - than doubtful value for an individual study of cases. - -This conception of human reason as an altogether inadequate organ for -getting at the truth of things he later expanded in his Oxford lecture, -_Scepticism of the Instrument;_ and, still further expanded, it forms -the first or metaphysical book of his _First and Last Things_. It is -unnecessary to discuss the rights and wrongs of this primary point in a -generation familiar with James and Bergson. It is an assumption of the -purely personal, experimental nature of truth which has had a sufficient -sanction of experience greatly to modify contemporary practice in ethics -and sociology. And it should be noted that Wells evolved it in his own -study of physical science (a study serious enough to result in -text-books of Biology, Zoology, and Physiography) and that he presents -it, in accordance with his own postulates, not as truth for everybody, -but as his own personal contribution to the sum of experience. The study -of science led him to see the limitations of the scientific attitude, -outside the primary physical sciences which for practical purposes can -afford to ignore individualities, in matters that approach the world of -human motives and affairs. - -I do not propose to discuss this question of logic. It is quite plain at -least, as Wells observes, in the spirit of Professor James, that "all -the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and determined -are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression." And -therefore he is justified in proceeding as follows: - - I make my beliefs as I want them. I do not attempt to go to - fact for them. I make them thus and not thus exactly as an - artist makes a picture so and not so.... That does not mean - that I make them wantonly and regardless of fact.... The - artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field of - visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative - and great poverty of test, that is all, but of no - wantonness; the conditions of Tightness are none the less - imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I - adopt certain beliefs because I feel the need of them, - because I feel an often quite unanalyzable Tightness in - them, because the alternative of a chaotic life distresses - me. - -And this is the way in which he presents the gist of his beliefs: - - I see myself in life as part of a great physical being that - strains and I believe grows toward Beauty, and of a great - mental being that strains and I believe grows towards - knowledge and power. In this persuasion that I am a gatherer - of experience, a mere tentacle that arranged thought beside - thought for this Being of the Species, this Being that grows - beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling - idea of which I stand in need, the ruling idea that - reconciles and adjudicates among my warring motives. In it I - find both concentration of myself and escape from myself, in - a word, I find _Salvation_. - -And again later: - - The race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are - the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement: - it is a statement of fact. In so far as we are individuals, - so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are - accidental, disconnected, without significance, the sport of - chance. In so far as we realize ourselves as experiments of - the species for the species, just in so far do we escape - from the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes in an - experience greater than ourselves.... Now none of this, if - you read me aright, makes for the suppression of one's - individual difference, but it does make for its correlation. - We have to get everything we can out of ourselves for this - very reason that we do not stand alone; we signify as parts - of a universal and immortal development. Our separate selves - are our charges, the talents of which much has to be made. - It is because we are episodical in the great synthesis of - life that we have to make the utmost of our individual lives - and traits and possibilities. - -Naturally then, just as he holds by the existing State as a rudimentary -collective organ in public affairs, so also, in theory, he holds by the -existing Church. His Church of the Future bears to the existing Church -just the relation which the ultimate State of socialism bears to the -existing State. "The theory of a religion," says Wells, "may propose the -attainment of Nirvana or the propitiation of an irascible Deity or a -dozen other things as its end and aim. The practical fact is that it -draws together great multitudes of diverse individualized people in a -common solemnity and self-subordination, however vague, and is so far -like the State, and in a manner far more intimate and emotional and -fundamental than the State, a synthetic power. And in particular the -idea of the Catholic Church is charged with synthetic suggestion; it is -in many ways an idea broader and finer than the constructive idea of any -existing State." - -All of which I take to be very much the position of Erasmus face to face -with Luther and of Matthew Arnold face to face on the one hand with -Nonconformity and on the other with Darwinism: that the Church is a -social fact greater in importance than any dogmatic system it contains. -To Wells any sort of voluntary self-isolation, any secession from -anything really synthetic in society, is a form of "sin." And like many -Catholics he justifies a certain Machiavelism in squaring one's personal -doubts with the collective end. Thus he holds that test oaths and -declarations of formal belief are of the same nature as the oath of -allegiance a republican takes to the King, petty barriers that cannot -weigh against the good that springs from placing oneself _en rapport_ -with the collective religious consciousness; at least in the case of -national Churches, which profess to represent the whole spiritual life -of a nation and which cannot therefore be regarded as exclusive to any -affirmative religious man. The individual, he says, must examine his -special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility -of cooperation; as far as possible he must repress his private tendency -toward social fragmentation, hold fast to the idea of the Church as -essentially a larger fact than any specific religious beliefs, and work -within it for the recognition of this fact. I have mentioned Catholic -reasoning; Wells appears to be in general agreement with Newman as to -the subordination of private intellectual scruples to the greater unity -of faith. - -But indeed I doubt if it is fair to take him too much at his word in -specific matters of this kind. _First and Last Things_ has that slightly -official quality which goes with all Confessions of Faith out loud. If -his intention has led him to square himself with lines of thought and -conduct where, to speak the truth, he is an alien, his intention -remains, and that is plain and fine. - -The synthetic motive gains its very force through the close-knitting of -keenly-developed, proud, and valiant individualities. In Wells the -synthetic motive and the individual motive qualify and buttress one -another; and he is quite as much opposed to the over-predominance of the -synthetic motive where the personal motive is deficient as he is to the -self-indulgence of the purely personal life. Thus the Assembly in _A -Modern Utopia_ is required to contain a certain number of men outside -the Samurai class, because, as they explain, "there is a certain sort of -wisdom that comes of sin and laxness, which is necessary to the perfect -ruling of life," and their Canon contains a prayer "to save the world -from unfermented men." So also in _First and Last Things_ Wells remarks: -"If I were a father confessor I should begin my catalogue of sins by -asking, 'Are you a man of regular life?' and I would charge my penitent -to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving irregularity; to -fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork and beans or give -up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners." Plainly his -collective purpose is nothing unless it consists of will, will even to -wilfulness, even to perversity. - -And this leads one back to that early assertion of his that since beings -and circumstances are unique, we must get rid of the idea that conduct -should be regulated by general principles. Similarly, at the outset of -_Mankind in the Making_ he says it is necessary "to reject and set aside -all abstract, refined, and intellectualized ideas as starting -propositions, such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, or Beauty, -and to hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Goodness and Beauty, he says, cannot -be considered apart from good and beautiful things and one's personal -notions of the good and beautiful have to be determined by one's -personal belief about the meaning of life. Thus, to take an illustration -from his novels, one of the most odious traits of such a father as Ann -Veronica's or Mr. Pope in _Marriage_ is that they wish to regulate their -daughters, not by a study of what is and must be good in their eyes, but -by a general sweeping view of what good daughters ought to be. - -Now since his own idea of the purpose of life is the development of the -collective consciousness of the race, his idea of the Good is that which -contributes to this synthesis, and the Good Life is that which, as he -says, "most richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience and -renders it available for the race, that contributes most effectively to -the collective growth." And as a corollary to this, Sin is essentially -"the service of secret and personal ends." The conflict in one way or -another between this Good and this Evil forms the substance of each of -the main group of his novels. Aside from the novels of shop-life, each -of his principal men begins life with a passionate and disinterested -ambition to gather and prepare experience and render it available for -the race; each one falls from this ambition to the service of secret and -personal ends. Lewisham, Capes, Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford are, each -in his own way, human approximations, with all the discount of actual -life, of the ethical standard of Wells himself as it is generalized in -the New Republicans and the Samurai. They illustrate how fully the -socialism of Wells is summed up in a conception of character. - -But before turning to the actual men and women who form the substance of -his novels, I must add something about those wraith-like beings, the -Samurai of _A Modern Utopia,_ which fully embody his ideal. - -The name Samurai, to begin with, is not a random choice, for it is plain -that the Japanese temper is akin to that of Wells. The career of the -Japanese as a nation during the last fifty years perfectly illustrates -his frequent contention that in modern warfare success falls to the -nation that has most completely realized the socialistic, as -distinguished from the individualistic, notion of society. "Behind her -military capacity is the disciplined experience of a thousand years," -says Lafcadio Hearn, who proceeds to show at what cost, in everything we -are apt to regard as human, this disciplined power has been -achieved--the cost of individual privacy in rights, property, and -conduct. - -But aside from social ideals and achievements one instinctively feels -that Wells likes Japanese human nature. In one of his early essays, long -since out of print, he remarks: - - I like my art unadorned; thought and skill and the other - strange quality that is added thereto to make things - beautiful--and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and - paper, and behold! a thing of beauty!--as they do in Japan. - And if it should fall into the fire--well, it has gone like - yesterday's sunset, and to-morrow there will be another. - -He contrasts this with the ordinary English view of art and property, -mahogany furniture and "handsome" possessions: - - The pretence that they were the accessories to human life - was too transparent. _We_ were the accessories; we minded - them for a little while, and then we passed away. They wore - us out and cast us aside. We were the changing scenery; they - were the actors who played on through the piece. - -_There is no Being but Becoming_ is the special dictum of Wells, a -dictum which does not consort with mahogany sideboards, but is tangibly -expressed in Japanese architecture. And if Wells naturally likes -Japanese art, its economy, delicacy, ephemerality, its catlike nicety, -its paucity of color, its emphasis of design, its "starkness," it is -plain also that many qualities of the Japanese character must also -appeal irresistibly to him: the light hold they have on all those things -into which one settles down, from stolid leather arm-chairs to -comfortable private fortunes; their lack of self-consequence, their -alertness, their athletic freedom from everything that encumbers, their -remoteness from port-wine and _embonpoint._ These things exist in -Wells's notion of right human nature. - -Thus the Samurai. They are delegates of the species, experimenting and -searching for new directions; they instinctively view themselves as -explorers for the race, as disinterested agents. And their own -self-development on this disinterested basis is not only the purpose of -their own lives, but also the method by which the Life Impulse discovers -and records itself and pushes on to ever wider and richer -manifestations. - -The socialism of Wells is merely a building out from this conception. He -is persuaded that this kind of experimental exercise is not simply a -happy indulgence for the few fortunately placed, but that it is actually -virtue and the only virtue. And this notion of personal virtue--personal -in quality, social in effect--once conceded, it follows that the -moulding of life must proceed with reference to this. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -HUMAN NATURE - - -There is always a certain disadvantage in approaching human nature -through a theory or in the light of an ideal. If I am doing that, it is -my own fault and by no means the fault of Wells. He has himself -abandoned socialism, in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has -too much of the _a priori_ about it; he has abandoned economics because -it deals with man as a mass-mind; he has come to rest in human nature -itself and he has made his theories subject to human nature. - -"All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the -story," says Thoreau. Most readers of the novels of Wells, I suppose, -have no notion that a theory of life runs through them and unites them. -And they are right. The force of a work of art does not reside in its -"inner meanings." An admirable work of art will always no doubt possess -"inner meanings" in plenty and the unhappy mind of man will always rout -them out. But to separate the intellectual structure of anything from -the thing itself is just like any other kind of vivisection: you expose -the brain and you kill the dog. A work of art is a moving living whole -that speaks to the moving living whole which is oneself. We are -insensibly modified by reading as by other experience. We come to feel -differently, see differently, act differently. Without doubt Wells has -altered the air we breathe and has made a conscious fact in many minds -the excellence that resides in certain types of men and modes of living -and the odiousness that resides in others. Socialism, like everything -else which changes the world, comes as a thief in the night. - -Still, it is plain that Wells himself began with doctrine foremost; -richness of experience has led him only after many years to get the -horse before the cart. From the first he was aware of a point of -view--it was the point of view, writ large, of his own self-made career, -growing gradually more and more coherent. Throughout his romances, down -to the very end, his chief interest was theoretical rather than human. -Only this can account for the violent wrenching of life and character in -them to suit the requirements of a predetermined idea. The Food of the -Gods, for example, is so far the essential fact of the book that bears -its name that the characters in this book are merely employed to give -the Food a recognizable human setting. Throughout his romances, indeed, -men exist for inventions, not inventions for men. - -Yet the "human interest," as it is called, was there from the outset, -side by side with this main theoretic interest in the scientific and -socialistic possibilities of life. The series of novels began almost as -early as the series of romances. Two "streams of tendency" run side by -side throughout the earlier writings of Wells--streams of tendency which -meet fully for the first time in _Tono-Bungay_, and have formed a single -main current in the novels subsequent to that. On the one hand was the -stream of constructive theory, not yet brought into contact with human -nature, on the other the stream of "human interest," not yet brought -into contact with constructive theory. Mr. Hoopdriver, of _The Wheels of -Chance,_ and Kipps, are typical of this earlier fiction, specimens of -muddled humanity as such, one might say, quite unmitigated by the train -of thought, the possibility of doing something _with_ muddled humanity, -which was growing more and more urgent in the romances. - -In _Tono-Bungay_, as I have said, one sees the union of these two trains -of interest, muddled humanity being represented in Uncle Ponderevo, -constructive theory in George Ponderevo. And in all the subsequent -novels this fusion continues. The background in each case is the static -world of muddle from which Wells is always pushing off into the open sea -of possibilities, the foreground being occupied by a series of men and -women who represent this dynamic forward movement. And the philosophy of -Wells has finally come to port in human nature. - -"Few modern socialists," he says somewhere, "present their faith as a -complete panacea, and most are now setting to work in earnest upon those -long-shirked preliminary problems of human interaction through which the -vital problem of a collective head and brain can alone be approached." -And elsewhere he says: "Our real perplexities are altogether -psychological. There are no valid arguments against a great-spirited -socialism but this, that people will not. Indolence, greed, meanness of -spirit, the aggressiveness of authority, and above all jealousy, -jealousy from pride and vanity, jealousy for what we esteem our -possessions, jealousy for those upon whom we have set the heavy fetters -of our love, a jealousy of criticism and association, these are the real -obstacles to those brave large reconstructions, those profitable -abnegations and brotherly feats of generosity that will yet turn human -life--of which our individual fives are but the momentary parts--into a -glad, beautiful and triumphant cooperation all round this sunlit world." - -Inevitably then he sees the world as divided roughly into two worlds, -and human nature as of two general kinds. There is the static world, the -normal, ordinary world which is on the whole satisfied with itself, -together with the great mass of men who compose and sanction it; and -there is the ever-advancing better world, pushing through this outworn -husk in the minds and wills of creative humanity. In one of his essays -he has figured this opposition as between what he calls the Normal -Social Life and the Great State. And in one of those _degage_ -touch-and-go sketches in which he so often sums up the history of -humankind, he has presented the Normal Social Life as a "common -atmosphere of cows, hens, dung, toil, ploughing, economy, and domestic -intimacy," an immemorial state of being which implies on the part of men -and women a perpetual acquiescence--a satisfied or hopeless consent--to -the end of time. But as against this normal conception of life he points -out that modern circumstances have developed in men, through machinery, -the division of labor, etc., a "surplus life" which does not fit into -the Normal scheme at all, and that humanity has returned "from a closely -tethered to a migratory existence." And he observes: "The history of the -immediate future will, I am convinced, be very largely the history of -the conflict of the needs of this new population with the institutions, -the boundaries, the laws, prejudices, and deep-rooted traditions -established during the home-keeping, localized era of mankind's career." - -Two conceptions of life, two general types of character, two ethical -standards are here set in opposition, and this opposition is maintained -throughout the novels of Wells. Thus on the title-page of _The New -Machiavelli_ appears the following quotation from Professor James: "It -suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and tough-minded -people ... do both exist." In _A Modern Utopia_ this division appears -typically in the two men from our world who play off against one -another, the botanist and the narrator of the story. The -"tender-mindedness" of the botanist is exhibited in the fact that he -cares nothing for a better world if it is to deprive him of the muddled, -inferior and sentimental attachments of his accustomed life, and prefers -them to the austerer, braver prospect that is offered him. -"Tough-mindedness," on the other hand, is above all the state of living, -not in one's attachments, habits, possessions, not in the rut of least -resistance, but in the sense of one's constructive and cooperative -relationship to the whole sum of things, in being "a conscious part of -that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe." And -indeed the constant theme of the novels of Wells might be described as -tough-mindedness with lapses. - -For the heroes of Wells do lapse: they pay that tribute to "human -nature" and the overwhelming anti-social forces in the world and in man -himself. They fall, as a rule, from "virtue" to the service of secret -and personal ends. _Cherchez la femme_. Mr. Lewisham, insufficiently -prepared and made to feel that society does not want him, has to give up -his disinterested ambitions in science and scramble for money to support -a wife whom instinct has urged him, however imprudently, to marry. -George Ponderevo gives up science and is forced into abetting his -uncle's patent medicine enterprise for the same reason. For the same -reason, too, Capes takes to commercial play-writing to support Ann -Veronica; and to stand behind the extravagance of Marjorie, Trafford, -having discovered in his researches an immensely valuable method of -making artificial india-rubber which he is going to make public for the -use of society, is persuaded to compromise his honor as a scientist and -monopolize his discovery for private gain. In _Tono-Bungay_ the -enterprise is a swindling patent medicine, which many business men would -refuse to have anything to do with; but in _Marriage_ the proposition -belongs to what is called "legitimate business," and it may be well to -quote a passage to show the subtlety and, at the same time, from this -point of view, the very substantial nature of temptation and sin: - - Solomonson had consulted Trafford about this matter at - Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that - Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to - complete and publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, - first a smashing demonstration of the unsoundness of - Behren's claim and then a lucid exposition of just what had - to be done and what could be done to make an india-rubber - absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The - business man could not believe his ears. - - "My dear chap, positively--you mustn't!" Solomonson had - screamed.... "Don't you see all you are throwing away?" - - "I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," - said Trafford.... "When men dropped that idea of concealing - knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist, and all that is - worth having in modern life, all that makes it better and - safer and more hopeful than the ancient life began." - - "My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to - give away the synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of - the window into the street!"... Everything that had made - Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to - such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as - such no concern with personal consequences; his business is - the steady relentless clarification of knowledge. The human - affairs he changes, the wealth he makes or destroys, are no - concern of his; once these things weigh with him, become - primary, he has lost his honor as a scientific man. - - "But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had - cried during those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you - are, shying this cheap synthetic rubber of yours into the - world--for it's bound to be cheap! anyone can see - that--like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good of - saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ - business is just to make bombs and drop them out of the - window? You smash up things just the same. Why! you'll ruin - hundreds and thousands of people, people living on rubber - shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable - workers in rubber works...." - - "I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said - Solomonson, leaning back in his chair at last.... "So soon, - that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can lower the - price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the - end--there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow - tea." - -There we have Eve and the apple brought up to date, sin being the choice -of a private and individual good at the expense of the general good. The -honor of a doctor or a scientist consists in not concealing and -monopolizing discoveries. But why should the line be drawn at doctors -and scientists? There is the crux of socialist ethics. - -By this type of compromise the actual New Republicans fall short of -their Utopian selves, the Samurai. But compromise is well within the -philosophy of Wells. "The individual case," he says in _First and Last -Things_, "is almost always complicated by the fact that the existing -social and economic system is based upon conditions that the growing -collective intelligence condemns as unjust and undesirable, and that the -constructive spirit in men now seeks to supersede. We have to live in a -provisional state while we dream of and work for a better one." And -elsewhere: "All socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers -far ahead of the main advance. The organized State that should own and -administer their possessions for the general good has not arrived to -take them over; and in the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory -agents according to their lights and make things ready for its coming." - -But if the New Republican is justified in compromising himself for the -means of subsistence, how much more in the matter of love! "All for -love, and the world well lost" might be written over several of Wells's -novels. But, in reality, is the world lost at all under these -conditions? On the contrary, it is gained, and the more unconsciously -the better, in babies. Love belongs to the future and the species with -more finality than the greatest constructive work of the present, and -the heroines of Wells are inordinately fond of babies. When Schopenhauer -analyzed the metaphysics of love he showed that natural selection is a -quite inevitable thing seeking its own. In Wells love is equally -irresistible and direct. Whenever it appears in his books it makes -itself unmistakably known, and, having done so, it cuts its way straight -to its consummation, through every obstacle of sentiment, affection, -custom, and conventionality. It is as ruthless as the Last Judgment, and -like the Last Judgment it occurs only once. - -Why then does it appear promiscuous? The answer to this question refers -one back to the underlying contention of Wells that there are two kinds -of human beings and two corresponding ethics, and that in the end the -New Republican who has become aware of himself cannot consort with the -Normal Social breed. But in actual life this standard becomes entangled -with many complexities. Just as, in a world of commercial competition, -it is the lot of most of those who try to give themselves -whole-heartedly to disinterested work that they place themselves at such -a disadvantage as ultimately to have to make a choice between work and -love, so the pressure of society and the quality of human nature itself -create entanglements of every kind. It is the nature of life that one -grows only gradually to the secure sense of a personal aim, and that -meanwhile day by day one has given hostages to fortune. To wake up and -find oneself suddenly the master of a purpose is without doubt, in the -majority of cases, to find oneself mortgaged beyond hope to the existing -fact. The writer who sets out to make his way temporarily and as a -stepping-stone by journalism finds himself in middle age with ample -means to write what he wishes to write only to find also that he has -become for good and all--a journalist! And so it is with lovers. Only in -the degree to which free will remains a perpetual and present faith can -"love and fine thinking" remain themselves; free of their attachments, -free of their obligations, and mortgages, and discounts. That is the -quality of a decent marriage, and the end of a marriage that is not -decent. - -It is no business of mine to justify the sexual ethics of Wells. But -there is a difference between a fact and an intention, and what I have -just said serves to explain the intention. Consider, in the light of it, -a few of his characters, both in and out of marriage. Ann Veronica from -the first frankly owns that she is not in love with Manning, but every -kind of social hypnotism is brought into motion to work on her ignorance -of life and to confuse her sense of free-will. George Ponderevo simply -outgrows Marion; but you cannot expect him not to grow, and who is -responsible for the limited, furtive, second-hand world in which Marion -has lived and which has irrevocably moulded her? Margaret's world, too, -is a second-hand world, though on a socially higher plane: she lives in -a pale dream of philanthropy and Italian art, shocked beyond any mutual -understanding by everything that really belongs in the first-hand world -of her husband. These characters meet and pass one another like moving -scales; they never stand on quite the same plane. And then the -inevitable always occurs. For, just as the Children of the Food cannot -consort with the little folk they promise to supersede, so it appears to -be a fixed part of the programme of Wells that New Republicans can only -love other New Republicans with success. - -He implies this indeed in _A Modern Utopia_: - - "A man under the Rule who loves a woman who does not follow - it, must either leave the Samurai to marry her, or induce - her to accept what is called the Woman's Rule, which, while - it exempts her from the severer qualifications and - disciplines, brings her regimen into a working harmony with - his." - - "Suppose she breaks the Rule afterwards?" - - "He must leave either her or the order." - - "There is matter for a novel or so in that." - - "There has been matter for hundreds." - -Wells has written six himself. _Love and Mr. Lewisham, Ann Veronica, -Tono-Bungay, The New Machiavelli, Marriage, The Passionate Friends_, are -all variations on this theme. In one of these alone life's double motive -succeeds in establishing itself, and it is for this reason that -_Marriage_, to my thinking the weakest of his novels from an artistic -point of view, is the most important concrete presentation of the -philosophy of Wells. It is an inferior book, but it gives one the sense -of a problem solved. By passing through a necessary yet feasible -discipline, Trafford and Marjorie bridge over the gap between haphazard -human nature and the better nature of socialism, and become Samurai in -fact. - -These entanglements of the actual world would be an overwhelming -obstacle to a socialism less vigorous than that of Wells. But obstacles -give edge to things, and for a man who loves order no one could have -pictured disorder with more relish than he. Only a pure theorist could -regret the artistic zest with which he portrays our muddled world. -Running amuck was a constant theme in his early writings; his comets ran -amuck, and so did Mr. Bessel, and there is no more relished wanton scene -than that of the Invisible Man running amuck through the Surrey -villages. Intentionally or not, this relish in disorder reinforces the -prime fact about his view of order. He abhors the kind of order which is -often ignorantly confounded with the socialist aim, the order which -classifies and standardizes. He desires a collective consciousness only -through the exercise of a universally unimpeded free will, and he would -rather have no collectiveness at all than one that implies the sacrifice -of this free will. He wishes to work only on the most genuine human -stuff. This was the basis of his break with the Fabian Society; it is -the basis of his dislike of bureaucratic methods which deprive people of -beer when they want beer. It defines his notion of the true method of -socialism as first of all an education of the human will toward -voluntary right discipline. - -His appeal, then, is a personal one. He has proved this indeed by his -repudiation of all attempts to embody in practice his proposed order of -voluntary nobility, the Samurai. Certain groups of young people actually -organized themselves upon the Rule that he had outlined, and it was this -that led him to see how entirely his ideal had been personal and -artistic rather than practical. Anyone at all familiar with religious -history and psychology will see how inevitably any such group would tend -to emphasize the Rule and the organization rather than the socially -constructive spirit for which the whole was framed, and how the -organization would itself separate from the collective life of the world -and become a new sect among the many sects. It was the same instinct -that led Emerson, Transcendental communist as he was, to look askance at -Brook Farm. It has been the want of an equal tact in eminent religious -minds that has made society a warfare of sect and opinion. - -When one tries to focus the nature of his appeal one recalls a passage -in one of his books where he sums up the ordinary mind of the world and -the function which all socialism bears to this mind: - - It is like a very distended human mind; it is without a - clear aim; it does not know except in the very vaguest terms - what it wants to do; it has impulses, it has fancies; it - begins and forgets. In addition, it is afflicted with a - division within itself that is strictly analogous to that - strange mental disorder which is known to psychologists as - multiple personality. It has no clear conception of the - whole of itself, it goes about forgetting its proper name - and address. Part of it thinks of itself as one great thing, - as, let us say, Germany; another thinks of itself as - Catholicism, another as the white race, or Judaea. At times - one might deem the whole confusion not so much a mind as - incurable dementia--a chaos of mental elements, haunted by - invincible and mutually incoherent fixed ideas.... In its - essence the socialistic movement amounts to this: it is an - attempt in this warring chaos of a collective mind to pull - itself together, to develop and establish a governing idea - of itself. It is the development of the collective - self-consciousness of humanity. - -Certainly the road to this can only be through a common understanding. -The willing and unwilling servitudes of men, the institutions of society -that place love and work in opposition to one another, the shibboleths -of party, the aggressive jingoisms of separate peoples, the immemorial -conspiracy by which men have upheld the existing fact, these things do -spring from the want of imagination, the want of energetic faith, the -want of mutual understanding. To this inner and personal problem Wells -has applied himself. Can life be ventilated, can the mass of men be -awakened to a sense of those laws of social gravitation and the -transmutation of energy by which life is proved a myriad-minded -organism, can the ever-growing sum of human experience and discovery -clear up the dark places within society and within man? Among those who -have set themselves to the secular solution of these questions--and I am -aware of the limits of any secular solution--there are few as effective -as Wells. - -Consider him in relation to a single concrete issue, the issue of -militarism: - - Expenditure upon preparation for war falls, roughly, into - two classes: there is expenditure upon things that have a - diminishing value, things that grow old-fashioned and wear - out, such as fortifications, ships, guns, and ammunition, - and expenditure upon things that have a permanent and even - growing value, such as organized technical research, - military and naval experiment, and the education and - increase of a highly trained class of war experts. - -And in _The Common Sense of Warfare_ he urges a lavish expenditure on -"education and training, upon laboratories and experimental stations, -upon chemical and physical research and all that makes knowledge and -leading." Separate the principle involved here from the issue it is -involved in, get the intention clear of the fact, and you find that he -is saying just the better sort of things that Matthew Arnold said. -Militarism granted, are you going to do military things or are you going -to make military things a stepping-stone toward the clarification of -thought, the training of men, the development of race-imagination? -Militarism has been to a large extent the impetus that has made the -Germans and the Japanese the trained, synthetic peoples they are. And -these very qualities are themselves in the end hostile to militarism. -Militarism considered in this sense is precisely what the General Strike -is in the idea of M. Georges Sorel: a myth, a thing that never comes to -pass, but which trains the general will by presenting it with a concrete -image toward which the will readily directs itself. Kipling, in the eyes -of the New Machiavelli, at least made the nation aware of what comes. - - All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, All along o' - doing things rather more or less. - -There is in this no defence of militarism. Granting the facts of -society, there is a way that accepts and secures them as they are and -another way of turning them into the service of the future, and a people -that has trained itself with reference to a particular issue has -virtually trained itself for all issues. - -But no one, I think, has measured the difficulties of real progress more -keenly than Wells has come to measure them. The further he has -penetrated into human nature the more alive he has become to these -difficulties. _The New Machiavelli_ is a modern _Rasselas_ that has no -happy valley in the end, and Remington passes from party to party, -penetrating inward from ideas to the better stuff of mankind, hoping to -embody his "white passion of statecraft," and in the end demonstrating -to himself the futility of all groups and parties alike. - -And as with parties, so with men. Consider that scene in _The Passionate -Friends_ where Stratton tries to explain in writing to his father what -he has been experiencing and why he must go away. He writes page after -page without expressing himself and at last, certain that he and his -father cannot come into touch, sends off a perfunctory note and receives -a perfunctory reply. "There are times," he adds, "when the -inexpressiveness of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to -me we are all asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still -cows who stand munching slowly in a field.... Why couldn't we and why -didn't we talk together!" - -That is the burden of his latest novel. By this touchstone he has come -to measure the possibility of that openness of mind, that mutual -understanding, that ventilation of life and thought through which alone -the Great State can exist. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A PERSONAL CHAPTER - - -I doubt if there are many living men of note who, a generation after -they are dead, will be so fully and easily "explained" as H.G. Wells. He -is a most personal and transparent writer, he is the effect of -conditions and forces which have existed for scarcely more than two -generations. But for these very reasons it is very difficult to see him -in perspective, and to explain him would be to explain the age in which -we live. Let me at least give certain facts and reflections about his -life written by Wells himself, a few years ago, in the introduction to a -Russian translation of his writings: - - I was born[1] in that queer indefinite class that we call in - England the middle class. I am not a bit aristocratic; I do - not know any of my ancestors beyond my grandparents, and - about them I do not know very much, because I am the - youngest son of my father and mother and their parents were - all dead before I was born. My mother was the daughter of an - innkeeper at a place called Midhurst, who supplied - post-horses to the coaches before the railways came; my - father was the son of the head gardener of Lord de Lisle at - Penshurst Castle, in Kent. They had various changes of - fortune and position; for most of his life my father kept a - little shop in a suburb of London, and eked out his - resources by playing a game called cricket, which is not - only a pastime, but a show which people will pay to see, and - which, therefore, affords a living to professional players. - His shop was unsuccessful, and my mother, who had been a - lady's maid, became, when I was twelve years old, - housekeeper in a large country house. I too was destined to - be a shopkeeper. I left school at thirteen for that purpose. - I was apprenticed first to a chemist, and, that proving - unsatisfactory, to a draper. But after a year or so it - became evident to me that the facilities that were and still - are increasing in England offered me better chances in life - than a shop and comparative illiteracy could do; and so I - struggled for and got various grants and scholarships that - enabled me to study and take a degree in science and some - mediocre honors in the new and now great and growing - University of London.... After I had graduated I taught - biology for two or three years, and then became a - journalist.... I began first to write literary articles, - criticisms, and so forth, and presently short imaginative - stories in which I made use of the teeming suggestions of - modern science.... - -So much for the facts. The reflections are not less illuminating: - - The literary life is one of the modern forms of adventure. - Success with a book--even such a commercially modest success - as mine has been--means in the English-speaking world not - merely a moderate financial independence, but the utmost - freedom of movement and intercourse. A poor man is lifted - out of his narrow circumstances into familiar and - unrestrained intercourse with a great variety of people. He - sees the world; if his work excites interest, he meets - philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, - professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, the - great, and he may make such use of them as he can. He finds - himself no longer reading in books and papers, but hearing - and touching at first hand the big questions that sway men, - the initiatives that shape human affairs.... To be a - literary artist is to want to render one's impressions of - the things about one. Life has interested me enormously and - filled me with ideas and associations I want to present - again. I have liked life and like it more and more. The days - in the shop and the servants' hall, the straitened struggles - of my early manhood, have stored me with vivid memories that - illuminate and help me to appreciate all the wider vistas of - my later social experiences. I have friends and intimates - now at almost every social level, from that of a peer to - that of a pauper, and I find my sympathies and curiosities - stretching like a thin spider's web from top to bottom of - the social tangle. I count that wide social range one of the - most fortunate accidents of my life, and another is that I - am of a diffident and ineffectual presence, unpunctual, - fitful, and easily bored by other than literary effort; so - that I am not tempted to cut a figure in the world and - abandon that work of observing and writing which is my - proper business in it. - -This candid and exact statement enables us to see just how far, in -matters of fact, experience and belief, the autobiographical motive has -entered his writings. It would be possible to show how inevitably such -an ideal as that of the New Republican Samurai arose from such a life; -how much that conscious and deliberate insistence on personal efficiency -and orderly ways, that repudiation of mental confusion, sluggishness, -and sentiment may figure as a kind of stepping-stone from the world of -Kipps and Polly to the world of Remington and Trafford; how a -self-wrought scientific education would form the basis of an ideal of -aristocracy rising from it; and how the motto "There is no Being but -Becoming" would express its own constant desertion of levels achieved, -its own pressing upward to levels equally transient. Just as the -"democratic person" of Whitman raises his own fervent, chaotic, and -standardless experience into an ideal, so also the ideal of Wells is -nothing else than the projection of his own experimental opportunism. It -is impossible in discussing Wells to ignore this social ascent; for in -England a man passes from one stratum to another only by virtue of a -certain lack of substantiality, a power to disencumber himself, to shed -customs and affections and all the densenesses and coagulations which -mark each grade in that closely defined social hierarchy. The world of -shopkeeping in England is a world girt about with immemorial -subjections; it is, one might say, a moss-covered world; and to shake -oneself loose from it is to become a rolling stone, a drifting and -unsettled, a detached and acutely personal, individual. It is to pass -from a certain confined social maturity, a confused mellowness, into a -world wholly adventurous and critical, into a freedom which achieves -itself at the expense of solidity and warmth. In Wells, for instance, -the sense of the soil is wholly supplanted by the sense of machinery. -His evolution has been the reverse of the usual evolution from what -Bacon called the _lumen siccum_ to the _lumen humidum_, from the dry -light to the light that is drenched in customs and affections. Instead -of growing mellower, he has grown more and more fluid and electric, in -direct ratio to the growing width of his social horizon. - -To prove this one has only to consider his novels. There was a time when -he had in common with Dickens and De Foe the quality they have in common -with one another--the quality of homeliness. He drew the little world he -knew well, the limited and lovable world of small folk. Mr. Hoopdriver, -Delia the chambermaid, Kipps and Ann Pornick--a score of these helpless, -grown-up little children he pictured with a radiant affection, tempering -the wind to the shorn lamb. It is more in the nature of his later -thought to see poverty as a wasteful rather than a cruel thing, even -though he may not have approached the harsh realism of Bernard Shaw's -observation: "I have never had any feeling about the English working -classes except a desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible -people." - -Certainly he has not experienced any other world in quite this way. "I -count that wide social range one of the most fortunate accidents in my -life," he says. Accidental one feels it to be, as of a man inhabiting -the great world by virtue of sheer talent, whose nature has not in any -sense settled there. His philosophy and his socialism are outgrowths of -his own experience; they erect into reasons and theories the nature of a -life which is not at home, and which easily unburdens itself of all that -seems insensate because it is unfamiliar. To be a socialist at all is to -have accustomed oneself, through necessity or imagination, to a certain -detachment from a great many of the familiar, lovable, encumbering, -delightful stupidities of the world. And Wells has travelled up and down -through time and space too much to have any great regard for the -present. "I have come to be, I am afraid," he says, in _The Future in -America,_ "even a little insensitive to fine immediate things through -this anticipatory habit.... There are times indeed when it makes life -seem so transparent and flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an -equally transitory series of consequences----." His hold upon the -present is so far from inevitable that _The New Machiavelli_ and -_Marriage_, realistic as they are, are represented as being written some -years hence, our own time already appearing retrospectively in them. As -little as Faust has he been tempted to call out upon the passing moment. -His main characters drift through this period of time, substantial -themselves but with a background of substantialities, in a way that -recalls Paolo and Francesca looming out of the phantom cloud-procession -of the _Inferno_. - -Into this larger world, in short, he has carried with him only himself -and his own story. We live in two worlds--the primary world of vivid -personal realities and the secondary world of our human background. It -is the secondary world that anchors us in time and space; the primary -world we carry with us as part of ourselves. In Wells there is no -secondary world, no human background, no sense of abiding relations. It -is his philosophy of life and the quality of his men and women to be -experimental in a plastic scheme. His range is very small: the same -figures reappear constantly. There is the Wells hero,--Lewisham, Capes, -Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford, Stratton; there is the Wells heroine, -Ann Veronica, Isabel, Marjorie, Lady Mary; there is the ineffectual -woman with whom the Wells hero becomes entangled, Capes's first wife, -Marion, Margaret; there is the ineffectual man with whom the Wells -heroine becomes entangled, Magnet, Manning. To strike the lowest common -denominator in this tangle is inevitably to arrive once more, one feels, -in the region of personal experience. Although it cannot be said that -his minor characters are lacking in reality, they are certainly -intellectual portraits, and outside the limits of subjective experience. -The principal men and women of Wells move through a world seen, but -hardly a world felt. - -This want of social background makes his characters as detached from the -familiar earth as chessmen are detached from a chessboard. They never -seem to be, like most men and women either in life or fiction, like the -Kipps and Polly of his own earlier fiction, vegetable growths. Heredity, -fatality, the soil are not mainly operating forces with them. They are -creatures of intelligence and free will, freely and intelligently making -and moulding themselves and their circumstances. Human nature in Wells -is very largely a sheer thing, a thing that begins with itself, answers -for itself, lives at first hand. That is the personal quality of the man -himself, and it follows that the quality is wholly convincing only where -what I have called his primary world is concerned: the rest of the world -he builds up by intelligent observation and the literary talent of -creating human stuff out of whole cloth. - -In this he is well served by his antipathies. His belief in personal -self-determinism is so strong that he instinctively sees the vegetative -nature of the ordinary life as a kind of moral slough, a state of being -detestably without initiative, faith, energy, will. And consequently the -Normal Social Life against which he is always tilting is a life seen by -him with all the vividness of an intense personal and philosophical -animosity. Consider, for example, the portraits of Mr. Pope and Mr. -Stanley, survivals in a sense of the old Sir Roger de Coverley type, -with all the sweetness gone out of it and only the odious qualities -left, the domineering, vain, proprietary qualities. They exist mainly as -symbols of everything that enlightened and right-minded daughters will -not put up with; they come as near to being the foils of right destiny -as Wells will ever allow; they sum up everything that stands in the way -of man's free will. They are mercilessly dealt with, and they are -memorable figures. - -Without this antipathy, and outside his own primary world, he pretty -generally fails. One recalls, for example, old Mrs. Trafford in -_Marriage,_ evidently intended to be his ideal of the enlightened woman -grown old. She is a pale, dimly perfect, automatically wise old lady -carved out of wood. Trafford himself, one feels, is a chip of the same -block. Trafford obviously is not Wells himself, as Ponderevo and -Remington are Wells: he is the Utopian counterpart of these persons, at -least in the matter that concerns Wells most, the matter of sex. One -could show that, aside from the six or eight chief characters who in -their various ways express the nature and experience of Wells himself, -he succeeds in his portraiture only where no demand is made on his -sympathies. - -The same absence of social background which throws into relief his -primary world of characters throws into relief also the primary facts of -human nature. Trafford and Marjorie, the most conventionally placed of -his characters, pull up stakes, leave their children, and go to -Labrador. His other men and women are even more independent of the -social network. Consequently they are independent of that chain of -relationships--friendship, affection, minor obligations--which mitigate, -subdue, soften the primary motives of most people. They are almost -startlingly physical. Their instincts are as sure as those of cavemen, -and their conduct as direct. They are as clear about the essential -matter of love as ever Schopenhauer was, or Adam and Eve, and they stand -out as sharply against the embarrassments and secrecies of the usual -world as a volcanic rock stands out against a tropical landscape. In -this without doubt they exhibit the fact that socialism does and will -actually alter human nature, and that in the instinctive socialist human -nature is already altered. For socialism inflexibly militates against -those more sentimental aspects of love, love of country as such, the -paternal and feudal principles, love of property, and the like, which -belong properly to the intelligence, all those functions where love, in -a majority of cases, goes wrong, blunders, stultifies growth, confuses -the public design of the world. As a result it throws love into relief, -emphasizes the nature of sex and the _raison d'etre_ of reproduction; -makes it, to use a favorite word of Wells, stark. - -I pause at this word. It is one of those talismanic words one finds -perpetually cropping up in the writings of men who have a marked point -of view, words that express deep and abiding preferences and often set -the key of an entire philosophy. "I like bare things," says George -Ponderevo, in _Tono-Bungay;_ "stripped things, plain, austere, and -continent things, fine lines and cold colors." That is the gesture of an -artistic mind which repudiates, with an impatient sharpness, all the -entanglements of the ordinary world. It is Oriental, it is Japanese, it -is anything you like; but if it is English also it marks an entirely new -regime. Without question it is English, and American as well. Thousands -of people share that preference, and were economic socialism to go by -the board we should still have to reckon with the progress of -socialistic human nature. It detaches itself each day a little more from -property, locality, and the hope of reward; it ceases to be -necessitarian, it becomes voluntary; it relegates drudgery to mechanical -devices; it releases the individual to a sense of his own cooperative -and contributory place in the scheme of a more orderly future. -Relatively speaking, the tendency of our kind is all away from luxury, -sloth, complacency, confusion, ignorance, filth, heat, proprietorship, -and all in the direction of light, austerity, agility, intelligence, -coolness, athletic energy, understanding, cleanliness, order, "bare -things, fine lines, and cold colors." - -That is evident, and it is equally evident that the personal character -and career of Wells are emblematic of this entire tendency. He has -unravelled himself by science, talent, and vigor out of "lower middle -class" Victorianism. Is it strange that he has adopted as a kind of -sacred image that light, free, and charming product of our decade, the -aeroplane, sprung as it is out of the wreckage, out of the secret -beginnings, the confused muscularities, the effort and smoke of the most -chaotic of all centuries, like a blade of exquisitely tempered and -chased steel which justifies everything that was most laborious and -unsightly in the forge? - -But considered as a sacred image the aeroplane has its limitations. So -also, considered as an exponent of fife, has Wells. Philosophy and -religion, as he presents them, are simply what he chooses to think and -feel, what he has been led by his own experience to think and feel. His -main experience has been the experience of disentangling himself, and -therefore life, reflected from within himself, is to him a thing also -which disentangles itself and grows ever more free, simple, and lucid. -In the mind of Wells this process, has taken on an altogether mystical, -transcendental significance, a religious aspect. Possible as that is to -himself personally, how far can it be taken as an argument to the human -soul? How does it qualify him as a teacher, a public voice, a thinker -for the mass of men? How does the conception of life purely as a process -relate itself to human experience? - -Applied to history, it seems to fail. Wells is devoid of historical -imagination. In his portrait of Margaret in _The New Machiavelli_ he has -properly, though somewhat harshly, repudiated what ordinarily passes for -culture. But had he himself possessed the reality of what seems to him -simply "living at second hand," he would never have been led to refer to -Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Duerer as "pathetically reaching out, as it -were, with empty desirous hands toward the unborn possibilities of the -engineer." That is a very interesting and a very extraordinary -statement, and it is quite true that each of these men would have -rejoiced in the engineering possibilities of our time. But how much of -the soul of Michael Angelo, for example, was involved in engineering? -How far can his hands be said to have been "empty" for the want of scope -in engineering? The power and the function of Michael Angelo can rightly -be seen, not in relation to any sort of social or mechanical process, -but in relation to things that are permanent in human nature, in -relation to just those matters included in the admonition of Wells to -"reject all such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, and Beauty -and hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Again, consider a somewhat similar -reference to Marcus Aurelius, of which the gist is that the author of -the _Meditations_ was, actually in consequence of his own character, the -father of one of the worst rulers the world has known. The implication -here is that the study of self-perfection in the father was -complementary to, if not responsible for, the social impotence and -blindness of the son. Instead of dedicating himself to the static ideal -of personal character, the assumption seems to be, Marcus Aurelius ought -to have lived exclusively in his function as ruler and father. He -studied himself, not as a ruler but as a man, and the social process had -its revenge on his line. To Wells, in a word, the static elements of -character and the study of perfection are not to be distinguished from -vicious self-consequence. - -Consider also a recent passage in which he has given a general -impression of literature: - - It seems to me more and more as I live longer that most - poetry and most literature and particularly the literature - of the past is discordant with the vastness and variety, the - reserves and resources and recuperations of life as we live - it to-day. It is the expression of life under cruder and - more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who loved - and hated more naively, aged sooner, and died younger than - we do. Solitary persons and single events dominated them as - they do not dominate us. - -To appreciate this meditation one has to remember the character and -career which led to the writing of it. But so far as we others are -concerned, how far can the assumption it rests upon be considered valid, -the assumption of a process that sweeps men on and leads human nature, -as it were, progressively to shed itself? Dr. Johnson, for example, was -a man the conditions of whose life were crude and rigid in the extreme, -a man singularly dominated by solitary persons and single events, but is -his conversation discordant with the variety, the "reserves, resources, -and recuperations of life as we live it to-day"? I can well understand -this feeling. To pass directly from the thin, tentative, exhilarating, -expansive air of our own time into the presence of that funny, stuffy, -cocksure, pompous old man is to receive a preposterous shock. But having -come to laugh, one stops with a very different sensation. The depths of -personality and wisdom that exist there take on a disconcerting -significance in relation to contemporary pragmatism. The mass of men -veer about; far-separated epochs have their elective affinities, and if -anything about the future is plain it is that this, that, and the other -generation will find in Dr. Johnson a strangely premature contemporary. - -Wells has himself admitted this principle. To Plutarch, Rabelais, -Machiavelli he has paid his tribute. Hear what George Ponderevo has to -say about Plutarch in his recollections of Bladesover House: - - I found Langhorne's _Plutarch_ too, I remember, on those - shelves. It seems queer to me now to think that I acquired - pride and self-respect, the idea of a state and the germ of - public spirit, in such a furtive fashion; queer, too, that - it should rest with an old Greek, dead these eighteen - hundred years, to teach me that. - -Considering what part the notion of a state plays in his range of ideas, -that is a remarkable confession. But why stop with statecraft? The human -mind could not, in all epochs, have established permanent ideals of -statecraft without permanent ideals of a more strictly personal kind. - -The truth is that Wells, for all that he has passed outside the -economics of socialism, is really bounded by the circle of ideas which -produced them. The typical Marxian, the concentrated Marxian, will tell -you that life is summed up in the theory of value, and that the only -true thing is economic determinism. Measuring all thought by that -criterion, he finds Dante and Shakespeare unintelligible and offensive -gibberish, and will scent the trail of the capitalist in Grimm's Fairy -Tales. That is the crude form in which exclusive socialism presents -itself. To say that "the fundamental nature of life is a tissue and -succession of births" is merely a refinement of this. It is true, just -as the economic determinism of Marx on the whole is true. But the world -is full of a number of things; or rather it is the business of a -reasonable mind to see it in a number of ways at once. Because there is -a Will to Live and a Will to Power, because things grow and continue to -grow, that does not explain love, or pain, or friendship, or music, or -poetry, or indeed life. Life is a tangle, a tangle which every socialist -must feel to be disentangling itself; but it is also a riddle, and on -that point socialism has nothing to say at all. - -It is in presenting life wholly as a tangle and not at all as a riddle -that the philosophy and religion of Wells appear so inadequate. Could -Wells write a poem? one asks oneself, and the question is full of -meaning. There is nothing to suggest that at any moment of his life he -has felt this impulse, which has been the normal thing in English -authors. "Modern poetry, with an exception or so," he remarks somewhere, -and for all his writings reveal of him he might have said poetry as a -whole, "does not signify at all." It is the same with regard to music, -art, external nature. He is not wanting in the plastic sense: his -writings are filled with picturesque groupings, figures cut in outline -against a sunset, masses of machinery in the glare of the forge, things -that suggest the etcher's eye. But they are curiously impersonal. -Consider, for example, his description of Worms Cathedral: - - It rises over this green and flowery peace, a towering, - lithe, light brown, sunlit, easy thing, as unconsciously and - irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in the evening glow - under a press of canvas. - -You cannot doubt that he has felt a beauty in this, but the beauty he -feels is essentially the beauty of a piece of engineering; he is as -untouched by the strictly personal artistic and religious qualities of -this building, not to mention its connection with human history, as if -he had seen it through a telescope from another planet. It is not the -changeless riddle and partial solution of life for which this building -stands that stir in Wells the sense of beauty and meaning: it is the -mechanism, the process--his emotions gather about the physical result -which appears to justify these. - -_A chacun son infini_. - -There will always be some to whom the significance of things, the -meaning of any given present will seem to evaporate in this conception -of mankind as "permanently in transition." Reading those passages where -Wells has expressed the meaning life has for him, I feel much as I -should feel with regard to music if I heard a mass of Mozart played at -the rate of sixty beats a second, or, with regard to painting, if a -procession of Rembrandts were moved rapidly across my field of vision. -The music as a whole is a tissue and succession of sounds, the pictures -as a whole are a tissue and succession of colors. But that is not music, -that is not art. Nor is a tissue and succession of births life. - -But indeed nothing is easier than to reduce Wells to an absurdity. If he -implies anything at all he implies a "transvaluation of all values." It -remains to consider him from this point of view. - - -[Footnote 1: September 21, 1866.] - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE SPIRIT OF WELLS - - -In order to understand Wells at all one must grasp the fact that he -belongs to a type of mind which has long existed in European literature -but which is comparatively new in the English-speaking world, the type -of mind of the so-called "intellectual." He is an "intellectual" rather -than an artist; that is to say, he naturally grasps and interprets life -in the light of ideas rather than in the light of experience. - -To pass from a definition to an example, let me compare Wells in this -respect with the greatest and most typical figure of the opposite camp -in contemporary English fiction; I mean Joseph Conrad. This comparison -is all the more apt because just as much as Wells Conrad typifies the -spirit of "unrest" (a word he has almost made his own, so often does he -use it) which is the note of our age. Both of these novelists have -endeavored to express the spirit of unrest; both have suggested a way of -making it contributory to the attainment of an ideal. But how different -is their method, how different is their ideal! And roughly the -difference is this: that to Conrad the spirit of unrest is a personal -mood, a thing, as people used to say, between man and his Maker; whereas -to Wells the spirit of unrest is not a mood but a rationally explicable -frame of mind, a sense of restricted function, an issue to be fought out -not between man and nature but between man and society. In other words, -where Conrad's point of view is moral, Wells's point of view is social; -and whereas in Conrad the spirit of unrest can only be appeased by -holding fast to certain simple instinctive moral principles, integrity, -honor, loyalty, etc., contributing in this way to the ideal of personal -character, the spirit of unrest in Wells is to be appeased by working -through the established fact, by altering the environment in which man -lives, contributing in this way to the ideal of a great society of which -personal character is at once the essence and the product. - -In the end, of course, both these views of life come to the same thing, -for you cannot have a great society which is not composed of greatly -living individuals, or vice versa. But practically there is a world of -difference between them, according as any given mind emphasizes the one -or the other. This difference, I say, is the difference between life -approached through experience and life approached through ideas. And -when we penetrate behind these points of view we find that they are -determined very largely by the characters and modes of living of the men -who hold them. That explains the vital importance in literary criticism -of knowing something about the man one is discussing, as distinguished -from the work of his brain pure and simple. There is a reason why the -intellectualist point of view occurs as a rule in men who have -habitually lived the delocalized, detached, and comparatively -depersonalized life of cities, while men of the soil, of the sea, of the -elements, men, so to speak, of intensive experience, novelists like -Conrad or Tolstoy or Hardy, are fundamentally non-intellectual, -pessimistic, and moral. - -And this explains the natural opposition between Conrad and Wells. Aside -from the original bent of his mind, the intensive quality of Conrad's -experience--an experience of ships and the minute, simple, personal, -tragic life of ships, set off against the impersonal, appalling sea and -an always indifferent universe, a life remote from change, in which the -relations of things are in a peculiar sense abiding and in which only -one problem exists, the problem of character, imminent nature being kept -at bay only through the loyalty, integrity and grit of men--the -intensive quality of this experience, I say, acting upon an artistic -mind, would naturally tend to produce not only a bitterly profound -wisdom, but an equally profound contempt for the play of ideas, so -irresponsible in comparison, and for a view of the world based upon -ideas the real cost of which has never been counted in the face of -hunger, icy winds, storm and shipwreck, and the abysmal forces of -nature. Men who go down to the sea in ships have a right to say for -themselves (tempering the credulity of those who have remained at home) -that the intellectualist view of life is altogether too easy and too -glib. It is they who throw into relief the deep, obscure conviction of -the "plain man"--commonly the good man--that to endeavor to make life -conform with ideas is in some way to deprive the world of just those -elements which create character and to strike at an ideal forged through -immemorial suffering and effort. - -Merely to dismiss as dumb folly an all but universal contention of this -kind (no doubt in the back of people's minds when they say that -socialism, for instance, is "against human nature") is to beg the whole -question of intellectualism itself. For, if it could be conclusively -shown that any view of life not incidentally but by its nature -emasculated life and destroyed the roots of character, then of course, -no matter how rationally self-evident it might be and how much confusion -and suffering it might avert, it would never even justify its own reason -for being--it would never _succeed,_ the best part of human nature would -oppose it to the end of time and the intelligence itself would be -discredited. And indeed to the man of experience rather than the man of -ideas, just because of his rich humanity, just because he never passes -out of the personal range, belong the ideal things, morality, -philosophy, art. Like charity, these things "begin at home"; and -whenever (as in pragmatism, when pragmatism ceases to be a method and -claims to be an interpretation of life) they are approached not from the -side of experience but from the side of ideas they cease to have any -real substance. Morality has no substance when it springs from the mind -instead of the conscience, art when it appeals to the mind instead of -the perceptions; and as to philosophy, what is any scheme of things that -springs out of the head of a man who is not himself wise? It is a -certain condemnation of Bergson, for example, that he would never pass -muster in a group of old fishermen smoking their pipes on the end of a -pier. Not that they would be expected in any case to know what he was -talking about, but that his fibre so plainly is the fibre not of a wise -but of a clever man and that in everything, as Emerson said, you must -have a source higher than your tap. - -That is why, as it seems to me, Wells ought not to be considered from -any of these absolute standpoints. He has put before us not so much a -well-wrought body of artistic work, or a moral programme, or an -explanation of life--words quite out of place in connection with -him--as a certain new spirit, filled with all sorts of puzzled -intimations of a new beauty and even a new religion to be generated out -of a new order of things that is only glimpsed at present. And the point -I should like to make about this spirit is that it is entirely -irrelevant to the values of life as we know them, but that it may in the -end prove to have contributed to an altogether fresh basis for human -values. - -To illustrate what I mean by this irrelevance as regards present values -and this possibility as regards future values let me turn to that long -brilliant passage in _The New Machiavelli_ where Remington goes from -club to club, passing in review the spiritual possibilities of each -political party, and finds nothing but a desolation of triviality, -pomposity, confusion, and "utterly damned old men." Consider the -contempt and hopelessness that fill his mind. One has to forget entirely -the ordinary man's view of politics, sincerely held as it is; one has to -think of politics as a means of straightening out and re-engendering a -whole world of confused anguish before one can see any justification for -this righteous wit and savage indignation against the dulness of -leaders. Considered by the current values of life in which politics are -regarded as an effect of man's incompetence rather than as a cause of -his virtue, treated intensively, as a novelist of experience rather than -of ideas would have treated them, in what a different light each of -these "utterly damned old men" would appear, each one a tiny epic of -tragic and comic efforts, disappointments, misconceptions, providing one -in the end with how much of an excuse for blame, ridicule or contempt! -Everything indeed depends upon where a given mind chooses to lay -emphasis. In this scene Wells has judged everything by his ideal of a -great society, just as Conrad, faced with the same material, would have -judged everything by his ideal of personal character. Conrad would have -used those men to give us an understanding of life as it is, whereas -Wells has used them simply to throw into relief his idea of what life -ought to be. Conrad would have created a work of art, illustrated a -moral programme, and interpreted life. Wells, admittedly a clever -caricaturist, only rises above the level of a clever caricaturist -according as we accept the validity of his ideal and share the spirit in -which he writes. Like many children of light, Wells is not wise in his -own generation. But perhaps another generation will justify him. - -If Wells had lingered in these deep realities of his own time he would -have been a greater artist. And indeed so marked has been his own -development away from the world of ideas and toward the world of -experience that were he to begin afresh it is likely that he would -resemble the type of novelist of which I have taken Conrad as an example -far more than his former self. Of socialism he has abandoned all the -theories and most of the schemes and retained only the frame of mind. He -has taken year by year a more intensive view of life, he has grown too -conscious of the inertia that impedes ideas and the overwhelming -immediacies of the actual world to be called glib and easy any more. -"How little and feeble is the life of man, a thing of chances, -preposterously unable to find the will to realize even the most timid of -its dreams!" he says in one of his latest novels, and if he has kept -alive his faith in ideas, who will deny that he has begun to count the -cost of it? - -From this side, I think, it is no longer possible for anyone to assail -him, so frankly has he given hostages to "actuality." It is from the -other side, his own side, and especially in the light of his own ideal, -that an answer is required for the slackness which has come upon him and -which is very marked in his recent novels. Is it possible to ignore the -fact that since he wrote _The New Machiavelli_ the work of Wells has -lived on its capital and lost the passionate curiosity and personal -conviction that made him the force he was in our epoch? Always unwilling -to check his talent and publish only the results of his genuine mental -progress, he has become, in spite of splendid moments, too much of the -common professional novelist, dealing with levels and phases of life -where he obviously does not belong, astray from his own natural point of -intense contact with things. I want to avoid the usual habit of critics -who think it their business to put authors in their places, but is it -not a fact that Wells understands the Kippses and Pollys far better than -the lords and ladies of England and that he was at his best in -elaborating a bridge--a wonderful visionary bridge--between the little -world of dumb routine and the great world of spacious initiatives? -Carlyle with his Great Man theory, forged out of his own travail and -weakness, in the end fell on his knees before the illusion of lordship. -Fifteen years ago one might have predicted the same future for the -Samurai of Wells, not because the Samurai are themselves equivocal but -because Wells is an Englishman. There so plainly to the English mind the -great gentlemen are, the men who can and the men who never do! Towards -this Circe of the English imagination Wells has travelled with a fatal -consistency, and the result to be foreseen was first of all fatuity and -in the end extinction. - -After he had written _The New Machiavelli_ Wells had reached a point -where his ideas, in order to be saved, had to be rescued from himself. -To believe that life can be straightened out by the intelligence is -necessarily to have "travelled light," in a measure; too much experience -is the end of that frame of mind. In _Tono-Bungay_ and _The New -Machiavelli_ ideas and experience met in a certain invisible point ---that is the marvel which has made these books unique and, I suppose, -permanent; the greatest possible faith in ideas was united with the -greatest possible grasp of everything that impedes them. One had -therefore a sense of tragic struggle, in which the whole life of our -time was caught up and fiercely wrestled with; one had the feeling that -here was the greatest moment in the life of a writer suddenly become -great. But with these books some secret virtue seems to have passed out -of Wells. Since then his ideas have been hardly more than a perfunctory -repetition and his experience more and more remote and unreal; and -looking back one seems to discover something highly symbolic in the -tragical conquest of ideas by passion with which _The New Machiavelli_ -concludes. - -But indeed Wells was always a man whose ideas were greater than himself. -"I stumble and flounder," says George Ponderevo, "but I know that over -all these merry immediate things, there are other things that are great -and serene, very high, beautiful things--the reality. I haven't got it, -but it's there nevertheless. I'm a spiritual guttersnipe in love with -unimaginable goddesses." And just for this reason the spirit which in -his great days possessed him is independent of any fate that may befall -Wells himself and his art. More than this, by frankly and fully testing -his ideas in a life-and-death struggle with reality he has, even at the -cost of his own shipwreck, removed from the cause of ideas the greatest -reproach which has always been brought against it. Revolutionists, -doctrinaires, idealogues have notoriously failed to test the validity of -their ideas even in the face of their own private passions and -confusions; they have rarely considered for a moment that their own -lives totally unfit them for supposing that men are naturally good and -that to make reason prevail is one of the simplest operations in the -world. Wells, on the other hand, has consistently shown that theory -divorced from practice is a mode of charlatanism, that "love and fine -thinking" must go together, and that precisely because of man's -individual incapacity to live, as things are, with equal honesty the -life of ideas and the life of experience, the cause he has at heart must -be taken out of the hands of the individual and made to form a common -impersonal will and purpose in the mind of the race as a whole. - - * * * * * - -Intellectualism, in fact, the view that life can be determined by ideas -(and of this socialism is the essence) if it can be justified at all has -to be justified in the face of all current human values. It is based on -an assumption, a grand and generous assumption, I maintain, and one that -has to take what is called a sporting chance with all the odds against -it. This assumption is, that on the whole human nature can be trusted to -take care of itself while the surplus energy of life, commonly absorbed -in the struggle against incapacity, sloth, perversity, and disorder -("original sin," to sum it all up), is released for the organization of -a better scheme for mankind; and further, that this better scheme, -acting on a race naturally capable of a richer and fuller life, will -have the effect on men as a whole that re-environing has on any cramped, -ill-nourished, unventilated organism, and that art, religion, morals -(all that makes up the substance and meaning of life) instead of being -checked and blighted in the process will in the end, strong enough to -bear transplantation, be re-engendered on a finer and freer basis. This, -in a word, is the contention of the intellectual, a splendid gambler's -chance, on which the future rests, and to which people have committed -themselves more than they know. It is a bridge thrown out across the -void, resting at one end on the good intentions of mankind and relying -at the other upon mankind's fulfilling those good intentions. It is -based like every great enterprise of the modern world upon credit, and -its only security is the fact that men thus far and on the whole have -measured up to each enlargement of their freedom and responsibility. - -To feel the force of this one has to think of the world as a world. Just -here has been the office of socialism, to show that society is a -colossal machine of which we are all parts and that men in the most -exact sense are members one of another. In the intellectualist scheme of -things that mathematical proof has to come first; it has to take root -and bury itself and become the second nature of humankind before the new -world of instinct can spring out of it and come to blossom. - -That has been the office of socialism, and just so far as that proof has -been established socialism has played its part. Now the point I want to -make about Wells is that in him one sees already in an almost precocious -form the second stage of this process. In him this new world of -intelligence is already exuberant with instinct; the social machine has -become a personality; that cold abstraction the world has become in his -hands a throbbing, breathing, living thing, as alive, awake, aware of -itself, as engaging, adventurous, free, critical, well-primed, -continent, and all-of-a-piece as a strong man running a race. People -never felt nature as a personality before Wordsworth showed them that it -was, or a locomotive before Kipling wrote _McAndrew's Hymn_; and it -seems to me that Wells has done for the social organism very much what -Wordsworth did for nature, discovering in a thing previously felt to be -inanimate a matter for art and a basis for religious emotion. - -But if the world is a personality it is a very stupid, sluggish, -unawakened personality, differing from nature in this respect, that we -ourselves compose the whole of it and have it in our hands to do what we -will with it. It has always been out of joint, a great slipshod -Leviathan, at sixes and sevens, invertebrate and fungus-brained. Just so -is the average man, sunk in routine, oppressed with microscopic tasks -that give birth one to another, his stomach at war with his head, his -legs unwilling to exercise him, resentful of his own capacity not to be -dull. But certain happier moments bring him an exuberant quickened life -in which routine tasks fall nimbly from his fingers and he is aware of a -wide, humorous, generous, enlightened vision of things; he pulls himself -together, his parts reinforce one another, his mind wakens, his heart -opens, his fancy stirs, he is all generosity and happiness, capable of -anything that is disinterested, fine, and becoming to a free man. It is -in these moments that individual men have done all the things which make -up the real history of this planet. - -If individual men are capable of this amazing experience, then why not -the world? That is the spirited question Wells has propounded in a -hundred different forms, in his earlier, more theoretical, and more -optimistic writings suggesting that society as a whole should turn over -a new leaf, and even picturing it as doing so, in his later work, more -experienced and less hopeful but with a compensating fervor, picturing -the attempt of delegated individuals to act on society's behalf. I do -not wish at this point to become pious and solemn in tone; that would be -inept in connection with Wells. But I do wish to make it plain that if -he is devoid of those grander traits which spring from the sense of -being "tenon'd and mortised" upon something beyond change, if his -strength lies wholly in his intelligence, the intelligence itself in -Wells is an amazing organ, a troubled and rapturous organ, an organ as -visionary and sensitive as the soul of a Christian saint. That is why I -have said that in him the new world, governed by the intelligence, is -already exuberant with instinct; and anyone who doubts that he has -lavished a very genuine religious instinct upon the social process -itself and in the dream of a society free, magnanimous and seemly, -should turn to the passage where he describes Machiavelli, after the -heat and pettiness of the day, retiring into his chamber alone, putting -on his dress of ceremony and sitting down before his table in the -presence of that magnificent thought. - -The mass of men have acted more consistently than they know on the -principle that the whole world is nothing in comparison with one soul, -for their politics and economic science, solemn as they appear, are as -frivolous and secondary as if they actually did believe fervently that -heaven is their true home and the world a bad business of little -account. In all that concerns private virtue and the private life, in -religion, poetry, their lawyer, their doctor, their broker, they exact -the last degree of excellence and efficiency, but they trust to the -blind enterprise of individual men to push mankind chaotically forward -little by little. We are in fact so wonderfully made that if our grocer -tells us in the morning that he has no fresh eggs he throws us into a -deeper despondency than six readings of the _Inferno_ could ever do. And -that explains why so few people can extend themselves imaginatively into -the greater circles that surround them, why, on the social plane, we -never think of demanding wisdom from politicians, why we never dream of -remembering that they should belong to the august family of Plutarch, -why it is not the profound views of wise men and the brilliant -discoveries of science that fill the newspapers, but the incredibly -banal remarks of this president and that prime minister, why presidents -and prime ministers in a society that lives from hand to mouth are so -much more important than poets and prophets, and why statesmanship has -gathered about itself a literature so incomparably trivial and dull. -Socialists, indeed, just because they alone are serious about the world, -are apt to be the least mundane in spirit; they are, as Wells has -himself said, "other-worldly" about the world itself. - -But indeed I should make a mistake were I to over-stress the solemnities -that underlie the spirit of Wells. In tone he is more profane than -sacred, that is to say he is a realist. He wants a world thrillingly -alive, curious, exercised, magnanimous, with all its dim corners lighted -up, shaken out of its dulness and complacency, keen, elastic, tempered -like a fine blade--the counterpart on a grand scale of what he most -admires in the individual. "Stephen," says Lady Mary in _The Passionate -Friends_, "promise me. Whatever you become, you promise and swear here -and now never to be grey and grubby, never to be humpy and snuffy, never -to be respectable and modest and dull and a little fat, like--like -everybody." And in _First and Last Things_ he gives the other side of -the medal: - - Much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to - taste life. I am not happy until I have done and felt - things. I want to get as near as I can to the thrill of a - dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air. - And not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do I - want to understand. I want to know something of the jolly - wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its - wash. I want to get the fine quintessence of that. - -It stands to reason that a spirit of this kind does not consort with any -pre-arranged pocket ground-plan, so to speak, of the world as it should -be. Of this, to be sure, he is often accused, and he has given us a -humorous version of his Utopia as it may appear to certain of his -contemporaries: - - Mr. G.K. Chesterton mocks valiantly and passionately, I - know, against an oppressive and obstinately recurrent - anticipation of himself in Socialist hands, hair clipped, - meals of a strictly hygienic description at regular hours, a - fine for laughing, not that he would want to laugh, and - austere exercises in several of the more metallic virtues - daily. Mr. Max Beerbohm's conception is rather in the nature - of a nightmare, a hopeless, horrid, frozen flight from the - pursuit of Mr. Sidney Webb and myself, both of us short, - inelegant men, but for all that terribly resolute, - indefatigable, incessant to capture him, to drag him off to - a mechanical Utopia, and then to take his thumb-mark and his - name, number him distinctly in indelible ink, and let him - loose (under inspection) in a world of great round lakes of - blue lime-water and vistas of white sanitary tiling. - -That is a not unjust parody of Wells's Utopia as it would be if he had -remained in the circle of his Fabian friends. Being what he is, it bears -much the same relation to his idea as that world of harps and crowns and -milk and honey bore in the mediaeval imagination to the idea of heaven. -You have to mingle these notions with your experience of human hearts to -realize the inadequacy of symbols. Wells, I suspect, has a fondness for -white sanitary tiling, just as plenty of good Christians have found in -milk and honey a foretaste of unthinkable felicity; but when it comes to -the actual architecture and domestic arrangements of paradise they are -both quite willing to take on trust the accommodating good will of God -and man. Somehow or other, by the time we have got there, we shall not -find it monotonous--to this, at least, one's faith, whatever it may be, -ought to be equal. - -I have given too few quotations in this book, and now I have left it to -a point where if I give any at all it must be to illustrate less the art -of Wells as a thing by itself than a train of thought. He is at his best -in brief scenes, where all his gifts of humor, satire, characterization -and phrase come to a head (think, for example, of Aunt Plessington's -speech, the funeral of Mr. Polly's father, the pages dealing with Cousin -Nicodemus Frapp's house-hold, and the somewhat prolonged episode of the -"reet Staffordshire" cousins in _The New Machiavelli_); and indeed, so -insistent is his point of view that in every one of these episodes one -finds in opposition the irrepressible new world of Wells and the -stagnant world out of which it springs. One of the best of these scenes, -luckily, is brief and connected enough to be quoted as a whole. It is a -picture of the tea-hour in the servants' hall at Bladesover House. - - I sat among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian - chair, trying to exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great - rocks, and my mother sat with an eye upon me, resolute to - suppress the slightest manifestation of vitality. It was - hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these rather - over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful - restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be - thrust in among their dignities. - - Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat - it out perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the - same. - - "Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask. "Sugar, - Mrs. Latude-Fernay?" - - The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They - say," she would begin, issuing her proclamation--at least - half her sentences began "they say"--"sugar is fatt-an-ing, - nowadays. Many of the best people do not take it at all." - - "Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits, intelligently. - - "Not with anaything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of - crushing repartee, and drank. - - "What won't they say next?" said Miss Fison. - - "They do say such things!" said Mrs. Booch. - - "They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors - are not recomm-an-ding it now." - - My Mother: "No, ma'am?" - - Mrs. Mackridge: "No, ma'am." - - Then, to the table at large: "Poor Sir Roderick, before he - died, consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have - sometimes fancied it may have hastened his end." - - This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner - and a pause was considered due to the sacred memory of Sir - Roderick. - - "George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!" - - Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favorite piece - from her repertoire. "The evenings are drawing out nicely," - she would say, or if the season was decadent, "How the - evenings draw in!" It was an invaluable remark to her; I do - not know how she would have got along without it. - - My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would - always consider it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and - regard the evening in the act of elongation or contraction, - whichever phase it might be. - - A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or - shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. - -There is, I think, a special sort of connection between Wells and -America; and there are times when it seems to me that were the spirit of -America suddenly to become critical of itself it would resemble nothing -in the world so much as the spirit of Wells magnified by many diameters. -His instincts are all as it were instincts of the intelligence; his -mind, like the American mind, is a disinherited mind, not connected with -tradition, thinking and acting _de novo_ because there is nothing to -prevent it from doing so. Perfectly American is his alertness, his -versatility, adaptability, his thorough-going pragmatism, perfectly -American are the disconcerting questions that he asks ("Is the Navy -_bright_?"). Perfectly American is his view of the traditional English -ideal of human nature--that strange compound of good intentions, homely -affection, stubborn strength, insensibility to ideas, irrational -self-sacrifice, domestic despotism, a strong sense of property in things -and people, stupidity, sweetness and confusion of mind--an ideal through -which it has been one of his never-failing delights to send electric -shocks. And indeed the type of character he has presented in his heroes, -in Remington, Trafford and Ponderevo, is a type to be found perhaps more -plentifully than elsewhere in American research bureaus, hospitals and -laboratories. He thinks and feels critically so many of the things -America lives and does unconsciously. Perhaps in this distinction lies -the immediate value of his criticism for us. - -For in his mind Americans can see themselves reflected in the light of -what they chiefly need, that synthetic motive without which a secular -and industrial race is as devoid of animating morality as a swarm of -flies. This want, most obvious on the political and economic plane, is -indeed fundamental. Wells has grasped it from many different angles but -never with more point than in his essay _The American Population_. -Consider this passage, where he takes as a text one of Arthur Brisbane's -editorials in the "New York Journal": - - It is the voice of the American tradition strained to the - utmost to make itself audible to the new world, and cracking - into italics and breaking into capitals with the strain. The - rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public - void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive - things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalizations, a - public which has carried the conception of freedom to its - logical extreme of entire individual detachment. These - telltale columns deal all with personality and the drama of - personal life. They witness to no interest but the interest - in intense individual experiences. The engagements, the love - affairs, the scandals of conspicuous people are given in - pitiless detail in articles adorned with vigorous portraits - and sensational pictorial comments. Even the eavesdroppers - who write this stuff strike the personal note, and their - heavily muscular portraits frown beside the initial letter. - Murders and crimes are worked up to the keenest pitch of - realization, and any new indelicacy in fashionable costume, - any new medical device or cure, any new dance or - athleticism, any new breach in the moral code, any novelty - in sea-bathing or the woman's seat on horse-back, or the - like, is given copious and moving illustration, stirring - headlines, and eloquent reprobation. There is a colored - supplement of knock-about fun, written chiefly in the quaint - dialect of the New York slums. It is a language from which - "th" has vanished, and it presents a world in which the - kicking by a mule of an endless succession of victims is an - inexhaustible joy to young and old. "Dat ole Maud!" There is - a smaller bale dealing with sport. In the advertisement - columns one finds nothing of books, nothing of art; but - great choice of bust developers, hair restorers, nervous - tonics, clothing sales, self-contained flats, and business - opportunities.... - - Individuality has, in fact, got home to itself, and, as - people say, taken off its frills.... The "New York - American" represents a clientele to be counted by the - hundred thousand, manifestly with no other solicitudes, - just burning to live and living to burn. - -Now that is a very fair picture, not merely of popular America but of -the whole contemporary phase of popular civilization, uprooted from the -state of instinct, intensive experience and the immemorial immediacies -of duty and the soil. To the artist and the moralist it is a cause of -hopeless pessimism, as any civilization must be which has lost touch -with all its values and been rationalized to the point of anarchy. For -this there is only one salvation. If civilization has lost the faculty -of commanding itself and pulling itself together in its individual -aspect, it must pull itself together collectively. That essentially is -the fighting chance of intellectualism, the hope that, inasmuch as the -world has already lost touch with experience and committed itself to a -regime of ideas, by organizing this regime of ideas and by mechanizing -so far as possible the material aspect of things, the values of life can -be re-engendered on a fresh basis. From this follows the oft-repeated -phrase of Wells that the chief want of the American people is a "sense -of the state." For the peril and the hope of American life (granting -that, as things are, society must be brought into some kind of coherence -before morality, art and religion can once more attain any real meaning) -lies in the fact that while at present Americans are aware of themselves -only as isolated individuals they are unconsciously engaged in works of -an almost appalling significance for the future of society. A Trust is a -work of this kind, and whether it is to be a gigantic good or a gigantic -evil depends wholly upon whether its controlling minds are more -conscious of their individual or their social function. The mechanism of -society in America is already developed to a very high point; what is -wanting, and without this everything is wanting, is an understanding of -the right function of this mechanism. So much does it all depend upon -whether the financial mind can subdue itself to the greater mind of the -race. - -If the future is anywhere going to follow the lines that Wells has -suggested for it--and being an opportunist his aims are always in touch -with agreeable probabilities--it will most likely be in America. He has -lately given his idea of what the State should aim to be--"planned as -an electric traction system is planned, without reference to -pre-existing apparatus, upon scientific lines"; an idea remarkably of a -piece with the American imagination and one which the American -imagination is perfectly capable of translating into fact. American, -too, are the methods in which Wells has come to believe for bringing the -Great State into existence. His conviction is that socialism will come -through an enlightened individualism, outside the recognized -governmental institutions, and that the ostensible States will be -superseded virtually by informal centres of gravity quite independent of -them. America alone at present justifies this speculation. For the -centre of gravity in American affairs has always been extra-governmental, -and consistently in America where wealth gathers there also the -institutions of socialism spring into being. The rudiments of the -Socialist State, falsely based as they are but always tending to subvert -this false basis, are certainly to be found, if anywhere, in the -Rockefeller Institute, the Carnegie and Russell Sage Foundations, the -endowed universities and bureaus of research, and in the type of men -they breed. Consider the following passage from _The Passionate Friends_ -and the character of the American, Gidding, which is indicated in it: - - To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably - magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all - science, all knowledge, all philosophical and political - ideas, round about the habitable globe. His mind began - producing concrete projects as a firework being lit produces - sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" the most colossal of - printing and publishing projects, as a man might work out - the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was so - entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to - go on from the proposition that understanding was the - primary need of humanity to the systematic organization of - free publishing, exhaustive discussion, intellectual - stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacists - might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure. - - "Say, Stratton," he said, after a conversation that had - seemed to me half fantasy, "let's _do_ it." - -It is perfectly possible in fact that socialism will come into being -first of all under the form of Cecil Rhodes's dream, as a secret order -of millionaires "promoting" not their own aims but society itself. That -is one of the possibilities at least that lie in what Wells has called -the "gigantic childishness" of the American mind. - - - - - - INDEX - - - _America, The Future in_ - America, Wells and - _American Population, The_ - _Ann Veronica_ - _Anticipations_ - Arnold, Matthew - - Bacon - Beerbohm, Max - Belloc, Hilaire - Bergson, Henri - Brisbane, Arthur - Brook Farm - - Carlyle - Catholic Church, the - Cato - Chesterton, G.K. - Chicago - _Comet, In the Days of the_ - _Common Sense of Warfare, The_ - Comte - Confucius - Conrad, Joseph - _Creative Evolution_ - - Dante - Darwin - De Foe - Dickens - _Discovery of the Future, The_ - Duerer - - Emerson - _Empire of the Ants, The_ - Erasmus - _Ethics and Evolution_ - - Fabian Society - _First and Last Things_ - _First Men in the Moon, The_ - _Food of the Gods, The_ - _Fortnightly Review, The_ - Francis, St. - - Goethe - _Great State, The_ - Grimm's Fairy Tales - - Hardy, Thomas - Hearn, Lafcadio - Heraclitus - Hero, The - _History of Mr. Polly, The_ - Huxley - - _Inferno, The_ - _Invisible Man, The_ - _Island of Dr. Moreau, The_ - - James, William - Japanese, the - Jeffries, Richard - Johnson, Dr. - - Kipling, Rudyard - _Kipps_ - - Leonardo da Vinci - Leopardi - _Love and Mr. Lewisham_ - Luther - - Macaulay - Machiavelli - _Mankind in the Making_ - Marcus Aurelius - _Marriage_ - Michael Angelo - _Modern Utopia, A_ - Montessori, Madame - Morris, William - _McAndrew's Hymn_ - - _New Machiavelli, The_ - Newman, Cardinal - New Republican, the - _News from Nowhere_ - _New Worlds for Old_ - Nietzsche - - _Our Liberal Practitioners_ - _Passionate Friends, The_ - Plato - Plutarch - - Rabelais - _Rasselas_ - _Rediscovery of the Unique, The_ - Rhodes, Cecil - _Robinson Crusoe_ - - Samurai, the - _Scepticism of the Instrument,_ - Schopenhauer - _Servile State, The_ - Shakespeare - Shaw, Bernard - _Sleeper Awakes, The_ - _So-Called Science of Sociology, The_ - Sorel, Georges - Spencer, Herbert - _Story of the Days to Come, A_ - Superman, the - Superior Man, the - Swift - - Taine, H.A. - Thoreau - _Time Machine, The_ - Tolstoy - _Tono-Bungay_ - - Verne, Jules - - Ward, Mrs. Humphry - Webb, Sidney - _Wheels of Chance, The_ - Whitman, Walt - Wordsworth - Worms Cathedral - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The World of H.G. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/42221.zip b/42221.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 116df23..0000000 --- a/42221.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/42221-8.txt b/old/42221-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c01c22f..0000000 --- a/old/42221-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3889 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World of H.G. Wells, by Van Wyck Brooks - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The World of H.G. Wells - -Author: Van Wyck Brooks - -Release Date: February 27, 2013 [EBook #42221] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive) - - - - - -THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS - -BY - -VAN WYCK BROOKS - - - -NEW YORK - -MITCHELL KENNERLEY - -MCMXV - - -_To_ - -_Max Lippitt Larkin_ - - - - -CONTENTS - - - -Introduction - -I. The First Phase - -II. Towards Socialism - -III. Socialism "True and False" - -IV. The Philosophy of the New Republican - -V. Human Nature - -VI. A Personal Chapter - -VII. The Spirit of Wells - - - - - - -INTRODUCTION - - -A natural pause appears to have come in the career of Mr. H.G. Wells. -After so many years of travelling up and down through time and space, -familiarizing himself with all the various parts of the solar system and -presenting himself imaginatively at all the various geological epochs, -from the Stone Age to the end of the world, he has for good and all -domesticated himself in his own planet and point of time. This gradual -process of slowing down, so to speak, had been evident from the moment -of his first appearance. The most obvious fact about his romances of -science, considered as a series, is that each one more nearly approached -the epoch in which we live, and the realities of this epoch. From the -year A.D. 802, 701, witnessed in his first romance by the Time -Traveller, we found ourselves at last in the presence of a decade only -so remote as that of the war which has now befallen Europe. A similar -tendency in his novels has been equally marked. The possibilities of -science and socialism have received a diminishing attention relatively -beside the possibilities of human reaction to science and socialism. It -is individual men and women, and the motives and personalities of -individual men and women, which now concern him. Still retaining the -entire planet as the playground of his ideas, still upholding science -and socialism as his essential heroes, he has been driven by experience -to approach these things through human nature as it is. In a recent -essay he has told us not to expect any more dramatic novelties: for the -present at any rate our business must be to make science and socialism -feel at home. Whether or not this may stand as a general diagnosis of -our epoch, it is a remarkable confession with regard to his own place in -it. For it signifies nothing less than that he has reached the limit of -his own circle of ideas and finished his own pioneering, and that his -work for the future will be to relate the discoveries of his youth with -human experience. He is no longer a "new voice"; his work belongs, for -good or ill, to history and literature, and he presents himself from -this time forward as a humanist. - -In this new posture Wells does not stand alone. He is typical of an -entire generation of Englishmen that knows not Oxford, a generation -which has been busy with all manner of significant movements and -discoveries, too busy indeed to relate them to the common reason of -humankind. During these years the word "academic" has been outlawed; -naturally so, for the academic mind is to the creative mind what the -digestive system is to the human body: a period of energetic exercise -must precede its operation. But in order that ideas may be incorporated -in society they must submit themselves at the right moment to those -digestive processes by which they are liquefied and transmitted through -the veins to all the various members of the common organism. - -During the last twenty years modern thought has been dominated to an -extraordinary degree by men who have been educated solely through the -movements in which they have taken part: seldom has there been so -universal and so hectic an empiricism. But this is the way the earth -moves. Like an inchworm it doubles itself up at intervals and then -gradually stretches itself straight again. The whole nineteenth century, -according to Taine, was occupied in working out two or three ideas -concocted in Germany during the Napoleonic era. History is a succession -of Gothic invasions and academic subversions. It marks the end of one of -those eras which perpetually overlap one another in various groups of -men and cycles of thought that our own Visigoths have capitulated. As -the pressure of their own immediate points of view relaxes and they -cease to identify their own progress with the progress of men in -general, they become perhaps less striking but certainly more useful. - -Intensely preoccupied with contemporary ideas and inventions, -brilliantly gifted and full of life, these leaders of thought were more -innocent of literature and history than a fresh-man. Both Wells and -Bernard Shaw have confessed that throughout their most active -intellectual careers they believed instinctively that progress was -mainly a matter of chronology. To discover the future Wells considered -it necessary merely to set his imagination at work on Chicago and -multiply it by a thousand; while the famous remark of Shaw that he was -"better than Shakespeare" sprang from his assumption that, living three -centuries later, he naturally stood (as a dwarf, in his own phrase) upon -Shakespeare's shoulders. This naïveté placed them at the mercy of -literature, as they soon discovered. Everyone knows the change that came -over Bernard Shaw's cosmos when for the first time, a few years ago, he -read two or three pre-Darwinian philosophers: one could almost have -heard a pin drop when he stopped talking about being better than -Shakespeare. A similar experience, exhibited in his books, has befallen -Wells, and there is no doubt that reading has contributed to the -progressive modesty of his point of view. Each monument of historic -experience that he has absorbed has left its mark on him. Rabelais, -Machiavelli, Plato, incorporated at regular intervals in his own work, -have certainly contributed to make him less agile and less dramatic. - -Let us take advantage of these post-prandial moments to survey some of -the remarkable ideas which have been added to the general stock during -this period. After the fashion of Cato, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells have -come late to the study of Greek. Bernard Shaw read Plato at fifty, and -in his latest book Wells has insisted that in the Great State everyone -will study Greek. Nothing could signify more plainly that these -outriders of the Modern Mind have come to a halt and wish to connect -themselves with tradition, with history, with literature, with religion, -with the grand current of human experience. Having been for so long -experimenting with new and untried forces, sharply separated from what -is received and understood, they should be related to the familiar -landmarks and connected with the main stream of English thought and -literature. - -Grotesque and violent as it may at first appear, I believe that in the -future Wells will be thought of as having played toward his own epoch a -part very similar to that played by Matthew Arnold. I say this with full -recognition of their remoteness in personal quality, recognizing also -the difference in their direct objects of attack, in the precise causes -they uphold. One thinks of these two vivid personalities--Wells--how -shall one picture him?--and Matthew Arnold, that superb middle-class -gentleman with his great face and deprecating hands--and the comparison -is instantly ludicrous. In reality the entire trend of Arnold's social -criticism was anti-individualistic and in a straight line with -socialism. Seen retrospectively the main work of Wells has not been to -promote any intellectual or economic doctrine, but to alter the English -frame of mind. The function of each of these men has been to bring home -to the English mind a range of ideas not traditional in it. - -Indeed this comparison holds (the shock once over) not merely with -regard to their general function, but in their specific attitude toward -most of the branches of thought and action they have concerned -themselves with. Wells on Education, on Criticism, on Politics and the -nostrums of Liberalism, Wells even on Religion continues the propaganda -of Arnold. Everywhere in these so superficially dissimilar writings is -exhibited the same fine dissatisfaction, the same faith in ideas and -standards, the same dislike of heated bungling, plunging, wilfulness, -and confusion; even the same predominant contempt for most things that -are, the same careful vagueness of ideal. It was Arnold who passed his -life in trying to make England believe in and act upon ideas instead of -"muddling through," who never wearied of holding up the superiority of -everything French and everything German to everything English, who -adopted into his own language that phrase about "seeing things as in -themselves they really are." Read his chapter on _Our Liberal -Practitioners_ and you will find the precise attitude of Wells toward -the premature inadequate doing of things rather than the continued -research, experiment, and discipline which lead to right fulfilments. -Who urged the ventilation of life, affairs, conduct in the light of -world experience? Who preached the gospel of reasonableness, mutual -understanding, and more light? Who spurred England to cultivate the -virtue of intellectual curiosity? Who believed with a paradoxical -passion in coolness and detachment? In each of these things what Arnold -was to his generation Wells remarkably has been to ours. Differing in -their view of the substance of religion, their conception of the Church -as a great common receptacle for the growing experience of the race is -precisely the same, fragmentation, segregation, sectarianism being to -both of them in this matter the greatest of evils. The love of -curiosity, centrality, ventilation, detachment, common understanding, -coolness and reasonableness and a realistic vision, the dislike of -confusion, bungling, wilfulness, incompetence, hot-headedness, -complacency, sectarianism--these are quite fundamental traits, and -Arnold and Wells share them in a remarkable degree. It is quite true -that Arnold lived in a universe which only with some reluctance -confessed to three dimensions, while that of Wells trembles with the -coming of a fourth. But in any case it is worth while to release a -phenomenon like Wells from the medium of purely contemporary influences, -and for this purpose it is convenient to see a socialist in the light of -a man who knew nothing of socialism, to see that socialism is itself a -natural outgrowth of those "best things that have been thought and said -in the world." It is important to realize that the train of thought and -the circle of ideas of this man are connected with a well-recognized -branch of intellectual tradition. And even socialism is benefitted by -having friends at court. - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE FIRST PHASE - - -"I am, by a sort of predestination, a socialist," Wells wrote once. And -everything one can say of him serves merely to explain, justify, -qualify, illuminate and refine that statement. - -First of all it implies a certain disposition and certain habits of -mind, habits of mind which are all to be found in the first phase of his -work, in those marvellous tales of Time and Space that won him his -original sensational fame. It is this disposition behind them, this -quality they have as of an inevitable attitude toward life and the -world, which distinguishes them at once from those other superficially -similar tales of Jules Verne. The marvels of Jules Verne are just -marvels, delightful, irresponsible plunderings from a helpless universe. -To the grown-up mind they have a little of that pathetic futility one -associates with a millionaire's picture-gallery, where all sorts of -things have been brought together, without any exercise of inevitable -personal choice, because they are expensive. I don't know that the tales -of Wells are better tales, but they have that ulterior synthetic quality -that belongs to all real expressions of personality. Wells was never -merely inventive; his invention was the first stage of an imaginative -growth. - -Now the quality that pervades all these early writings is what may be -called a sense of the infinite plasticity of things. He conceived a -machine that could travel through time, a man who found a way to become -invisible, a drug that made men float like balloons, another drug that -enabled men to live a thousand hours in one, a crystal egg through which -one could watch the life in Mars, a man who could stop the sun like -Joshua, a food that turned men into giants, a biologist who discovered a -method of carving animals into men, an angel who visited a rural vicar, -a mermaid who came to earth in search of a soul, a homicidal orchid, a -gigantic bird hatched from a prehistoric egg, a man who passed outside -space. In short, the universe appeared to him like that magic shop of -which he also wrote, where the most astonishing things may happen, if -you are the Right Sort of Boy. - -If all this implies anything it implies that things in general are not -fixed and static, but that they are, on the contrary, infinitely -plastic, malleable, capable of responding to any purpose, any design you -may set working among them. The universe, it seems to assume, may be and -quite possibly is proceeding after some logical method of its own, but -so far as man is concerned this method appears to be one of chance. -Obviously, man can do the most surprising things in it, can take as it -were all sorts of liberties with it. The universe, in short, is like a -vacant field which may or may not belong to some absent landlord who has -designs of his own upon it; but until this absent landlord appears and -claims his field, all the children in the neighborhood can build huts in -it and play games upon it and, in a word, for all practical purposes, -consider it their own. - -This idea of the relation between free will and determinism is the -underlying assumption of Wells, as he explains it in _First and Last -Things_: - - Take life at the level of common sensations and common - experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's - freedom of will, unless it is his complete moral - responsibility. But make only the least penetrating of - scientific analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable - consequences, a rigid succession of cause and effect. - -And elsewhere he says: - - On the scientific plane one is a fatalist.... But does the - whole universe of fact, the external world about me, the - mysterious internal world from which my motives rise, form - one rigid and fated system as Determinists teach? I incline - to that belief.... From me as a person this theory of - predestination has no practical value.... I hesitate, I - choose just as though the thing was unknowable. For me and - my conduct there is that much wide practical margin of - freedom. I am free and freely and responsibly making the - future--so far as I am concerned. - -In a word, for all the purposes that affect man's need the universe is -infinitely plastic and amenable to his will. Like every clean-cut -philosophical conception, this clears the ground for practical conduct -and a certain sort of direct action. - -There was a time, no doubt, when he shared the old Utopian folly of -expecting a sudden and unanimous change of human will. When the universe -appears as unconventional as it used to appear to Wells, there can -surely be no reason to think it impossible, after a comet has collided -with the world, for the human race to become suddenly Utopian. Generally -speaking, comets do not collide with the world, and in the same way men -are slow to change. But certainly if Wells ever thought of humanity as -merely a multiplication of one pattern, certainly if he has long since -abandoned the idea of our all turning over a new leaf one fine morning, -he has never lost his faith in free will as regards the individual. He -has always believed in the personal doctrine of summarily "making an end -to things" as distinguished from the old-fashioned doctrine of "making -the best of things"; and there is nothing more modern about him than his -aversion to the good old English theory of "muddling through." - -Mr. Polly is a good example of his view of personal direct action, the -getting rid, quickly and decisively, of a situation that has only -sentiment to save it from complete demoralization. "When a man has once -broken through the wall of every-day circumstances," he remarks at the -moment of the Polly _débâcle_, "he has made a discovery. If the world -does not please you, _you can change it_. Determine to alter it at any -price, and you can change it altogether." Mr. Polly sets fire to his -shop, takes to the road and repairs his digestion. Desertion of duty and -the quick repudiation of entanglements make him healthy and sensible and -give him a sense of purpose in things. And I know of nothing in all -Wells that is described with more relish than that Beltane festival -which occurs toward the end of _In the Days of the Comet_. The world's -great age has begun anew, and the enlightened men of the new time revive -the May Day of old in order to burn the useless trappings of the past. -They heap old carpets on the fire, ill-designed furniture, bad music and -cheap pictures, stuffed birds, obsolete school-books, dog-eared penny -fiction, sham shoes, and all the corrugated iron in the world; every -tangible thing that is useless, false, disorderly, accidental, obsolete, -and tawdry to celebrate the beginning of things that are clean, -beautiful, and worthy. Sceptical, hesitant, and personal as Wells has -become, that indicates a strong primitive mental trait. Philosophy does -not spring out of the brain; we hate the hateful things of our own -experience, just as we think the things we desire. And though there are -nine and sixty ways of being a socialist, they all unite in a certain -sense of the plasticity and malleability of things human, a certain -faith in the possibility of asserting order in the midst of disorder and -intelligently cleaning house. - -Inherent in this trait is another--detachment. You only become aware of -confusion when you stand free of it, when you cease to be a part of it. -And of all writers who have so immediately felt life I doubt if there -has been one so detached as Wells. The mental detachment of his early -tales is a detachment half scientific, half artistic; scientific as of -one who sees things experimentally in their material, molecular aspect, -artistic as of one conscious of moulding will and placed amid plastic -material. Thus, for example, he sees human beings quite stripped of -their distinctively human qualities; he sees men anatomically, as in -that passage where the Invisible Man, killed with a spade, becomes -visible again as a corpse: - - Everyone saw, faint and transparent as though it were made - of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves - could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp - and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they - stared.... And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet - and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his - body, that strange change continued. First came the little - white nerves, a hazy gray stretch of a limb, then the glossy - bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first - a faint fogginess, then growing rapidly dense and opaque. - -Similar is a passage in _A Story of the Days to Come_, where he -describes an ordinary breakfast of our own day: "the rude masses of -bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fat before they -could be made palatable, the still recognizable fragments of recently -killed animals, hideously charred and hacked." That surely is quite as a -man from another planet, or a chemist after a long day's work in the -laboratory, would view our familiar human things. And one recalls -another sentence from _Kipps_ where this detachment links itself with a -deeper social insight and hints at the part it had come to play in -Wells's later mind: "I see through the darkness," he says, toward the -end of the book, "the souls of my Kippses as they are, _as little pink -strips of quivering, living stuff_, as things like the bodies of little -ill-nourished, ailing, ignorant children--children who feel pain, who -are naughty and muddled and suffer, and do not understand why." - -And just as he sees men and human things chemically and anatomically, so -he sees the world astronomically. He has that double quality (like his -own Mr. Bessel) of being bodily very active in life and at the same time -watching it from a great distance. In his latest book he has figured a -god looking on from the clouds; and there is nothing in his novels more -stimulating and more uncanny than a certain faculty of telescoping his -view suddenly from the very little to the very large, expanding and -contracting his vision of things at will. You find the germ of this -faculty in his early tales. Looking down as though from a balloon he -sees the world as a planet, as a relatively small planet. In doing so he -maintains at first a purely scientific set of values; he is not led, as -he has since been led, and as Leopardi was led by the same imaginative -experience, to adopt poetical values and to feel acutely the littleness -and the powerlessness of man. His values remain scientific, and the -absurdity he feels is the absurdity an astronomer must feel, that in so -small a space men can vaunt themselves and squabble with one another. -Race prejudice, for example, necessarily appears to him as foolish as it -would appear to ordinary eyes among insects that happen to be swarming -on a fallen apple. Once you get it into your mind that the world is a -ball in space, you find a peculiar silliness in misunderstandings on -that ball. This reflection has led to many views of life; in Wells it -led to a sense of the need of human solidarity. - -And solidarity implies order. The sense of order is one of those -instincts exhibited everywhere in the writings of Wells that serve as -preliminaries to his social philosophy. There is a passage in _Kipps_ -where he pictures the satisfactions of shopkeeping to an elect soul: -"There is, of course, nothing on earth," he says, "and I doubt at times -if there is a joy in heaven, like starting a small haberdasher's shop. -Imagine, for example, having a drawerful of tapes, or again, an array of -neat, large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. -Think of your cottons, your drawer of colored silks," etc. De Foe knew a -similar satisfaction and has pictured it in _Robinson Crusoe_. De Foe -was himself a shopkeeper, just as Wells has been in one of his -incarnations; and he knew that good shopkeeping is the microcosm of all -good political economy. The satisfaction of a thoroughly competent man -who is thrown on a desert island, and sets to work to establish upon it -a political economy for one, is a satisfaction by itself. That certainly -is a primitive relish, and it is one of the first gestures of Wells's -sociology. - -Now the sense of solidarity, the sense of order, implies the -subordination of details, the discipline of constituent units. Only in -his later works did Wells begin to consider the problems of the -individual life; in his novels he has considered them almost -exclusively, but always in relation to the constructive purpose of -society and as what may be called human reservations from it. The -telescope has been adjusted to a close range, and the wider -relationships are neither so emphasized nor so easily discerned. -Nevertheless it is still the world that matters to Wells--the world, the -race, the future; not the individual human being. And if, relatively, he -has become more interested in the individual and less in the world, that -is because he is convinced that the problems of the world can best be -approached through the study of individuals. His philosophy has grown -less abstract in harmony with his own experience; but the first sketch -of his view of human nature and its function is to be found crudely -outlined in the scientific romances. How does it figure there? - -The human beings who flit through these early tales are all -inconspicuous little men, whose private existence is of no account, and -who exist to discover, invent, perform all sorts of wonderful -experiments which almost invariably result in their summary and quite -unimportant destruction. They are merely, in the most complete sense, -experiments in the collective purpose, and their creator has toward them -just the attitude of an anatomist toward the animals upon which he is -experimenting; not indifferent to their suffering as suffering, but -ignoring it in the spirit of scientific detachment necessary to -subordinate means to an end. "I wanted--it was the only thing I -wanted--to find out the limit of plasticity in a living form," says Dr. -Moreau in his confession; "and the study has made me as remorseless as -nature." - -Invariably these experiments in human possibility, placed in a world -where charity is not so strong as fear, die quite horribly. Dr. Moreau -is destroyed by the beasts he is attempting to vivisect into the -semblance of men, the Invisible Man is battered to death with a spade, -the Visiting Angel burns to death in attempting to carry out his -celestial errand, the man who travels to the moon cannot get back alive. -Does not all this foreshadow the burden of the later novels, that the -individual who plans and wills for the race is destroyed and broken by -the jealousy, prejudice and inertia in men and the blind immemorial -forces of nature surging through himself? These are the forces that are -figured, in the early tales, by that horrible hostile universe of -nature, and the little intrepid men moving about in the midst of it. And -the mind of Wells is always prepared for the consequences of what it -engenders. The inevitable result of creating an imaginary world of -malignant vegetables and worse than antediluvian monsters is that the -imaginary men you also create shall suffer through them. You reverse the -order of evolution and return men to conditions where life is cheap. An -imagination which has accustomed itself to running loose among planets -and falling stars, which has lived habitually in a universe where worlds -battle with one another, is prepared to stomach a little needless -bloodshed. The inflexible pursuit of an end implies the sacrifice of -means, and if your experiment happens to be an invisible man you will -produce the invisibility even though it kills the man. - -Widen the range and this proposition logically transmutes itself into a -second: if your experiment happens to be an orderly society you will -produce order at the expense of everything that represents disorder. And -from the point of view of a collective purpose, ends, motives and -affections that are private and have no collective significance -represent disorder. Now the whole purpose of Wells's later work has been -to illuminate and refine this proposition. He has flatly distinguished -between two sorts of human nature, the constructive, experimental sort -which lives essentially for the race, and the acquiescent, ineffectual -sort which lives essentially for itself or the established fact; and he -gives to his experimental men and women an almost unlimited charter to -make ducks and drakes of the ineffectual. Think of the long list of dead -and wounded in his novels--Mr. Pope, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Magnet, Mr. -Manning, Margaret, Marion--and you realize how much of a certain -cruelty, a certain ruthlessness is in the very nature of his philosophy -of experimental direct action. - -Another primitive relish exhibited in these early tales is the delight -of constructing things. The Time Machine, for example, is the work of a -mind that immoderately enjoys inventing, erecting, and putting things -together; and there is not much difference between constructing an -imaginary machine and constructing an imaginary society. If Wells's -early Utopian speculations are ingenious impossibilities, are they any -more or less so than his mechanical speculations? One doesn't begin life -with an overwhelming recognition of the obstacles one may encounter--one -doesn't fret too much about the possible, the feasible, or even the -logical. It was enough for Wells that he had built his Time Machine, -though the logic by which the Time Traveller explains his process is a -logic that gives me, at least, a sense of helpless, blinking -discomfort--partly, I confess, because to this day I don't believe there -is anything the matter with it. In any case it is the sheer delight of -construction that fascinates him, and everything that is associated with -construction fascinates him. He is in love with steel; he speaks with a -kind of ecstasy somewhere of "light and clean and shimmering shapes of -silvered steel"; steel and iron have for him the transcendental charm -that harebells and primroses had for Wordsworth. A world like that in -_The Sleeper Awakes_--a world of gigantic machines, air fleets, and the -"swimming shadows and enormous shapes" of an engineer's nightmare--is -only by afterthought, one feels, the speculation of a sociologist. It -expresses the primitive relish of a constructive instinct. It expresses -also a sheer curiosity about the future. - -In a chapter of his book on America Wells has traced the development of -what he calls his prophetic habit of mind as a passage through four -stages: the millennial stage of an evangelical childhood when an -imminent Battle of Armageddon was a natural thing to be looked for; the -stage of ultimate biological possibilities; the stage of prediction by -the rule-of-three; and a final stage of cautious anticipation based upon -the study of existing facts--a gradual passage from the region of -religious or scientific possibilities to the region of human -probabilities. "There is no Being but Becoming" was the first of his -mental discoveries; and finding years later that Heraclitus had said the -same thing, he came to regard the pre-Aristotelian metaphysics as the -right point of departure for modern thought. Consider this passage: - - I am curiously not interested in things and curiously - interested in the consequences of things.... I have come to - be, I am afraid, even a little insensitive to fine immediate - things through this anticipatory habit.... This habit of - mind confronts and perplexes my sense of things that simply - _are_, with my brooding preoccupation with how they will - shape presently, what they will lead to, what seed they will - sow and how they will wear. At times, I can assure the - reader, this quality approaches other-worldliness in its - constant reference to an all-important hereafter. There are - times indeed when it makes life seem so transparent and - flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an equally - transitory series of consequences, that the enhanced sense - of instability becomes restlessness and distress; but on the - other hand nothing that exists, nothing whatever, remains - altogether vulgar or dull and dead or hopeless in its - light.... But the interest is shifted. The pomp and splendor - of established order, the braying triumphs, ceremonies, - consummations,--one sees these glittering shows for what - they are--through their threadbare grandeur shine the little - significant things that will make the future. - -And the burden of his lecture _The Discovery of the Future_ is that an -inductive knowledge of the future is not only very largely possible, but -is considerably more important for us than the study of the past. Even -in the sciences, he says, the test of their validity is their power to -produce confident forecasts. Astronomy is based on the forecast of -stellar movements, medical science exists largely for diagnosis. It is -this thought which determines the nature of his own sociology. - -There is usually something inept in speaking of a man, and especially an -artist, as interchangeable with any ism. Socialism, in the common sense -of the word, is a classification of men. Individual socialists are as a -rule something more than socialists; often they are socialists by -necessity, or imagination, or sentiment, or expediency--their socialism -is not inherent, not the frame of their whole being. In the degree that -socialism is a classification, or a school of thought, or an economic -theory, the individual socialist will, in practice, make mental -reservations from it. Now my whole aim in this chapter has been to -suggest that if socialism had not existed Wells would have invented it. -It is not something which at a given moment or even after a long process -of imaginative conversion or conviction came into his life. It is, in -his own formulation of it, the projection of his whole nature, the -expression of his will, the very content of his art. With one or two -exceptions--works deliberately devoted to propaganda or exposition--even -his purely sociological writings are subjective writings, personal and -artistic in motive; socialism figures in them just as Catholicism -figures in the masses of Mozart, or the brotherhood of man in the poems -of Whitman, not as a cause but as a satisfying conception of truth. And -just as, if one were to study the psychology of Mozart or Whitman, one -would find habits of mind that inevitably produced the individual -Catholicism of the one and the individual fraternalism of the other; so -behind the socialism of Wells are certain habits of mind, certain -primitive likes, relishes, instincts, preferences: a faith in free will, -a sense of order and the subordination of details to design, a personal -detachment, a pleasure in construction, a curiosity about the future. - -These are innate qualities, which inevitably produced their own -animating purpose. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -TOWARDS SOCIALISM - - -Of all the battered, blurred, ambiguous coins of speech there is none so -battered, blurred, and ambiguous as the word socialism. It mothers a -dozen creeds at war with one another. And the common enemy looks on, -fortified with the Socratic irony of the "plain man," who believes he -has at last a full excuse for not understanding these devious doings. - -Therefore I take refuge in saying that H.G. Wells is an artist, neither -more nor less, that socialism is to him at bottom an artistic idea, and -that if it had not existed in the world he would have invented it. This -clears me at once of the accusing frowns of any possible Marxian reader, -and it also states a truth at the outset. For if the orthodox maintain -that socialism is not an affair of choices, may I not retort that here -actually is a mind that chooses to make it so? Here is an extraordinary -kind of Utopian who has all the equipment of the orthodox and yet -remains detached from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is always jealous of its -tabernacles and will not see itself dramatically; it has no concern with -artistic presentations. But I protest there ought to be no quarrel here. -If a socialism fundamentally artistic is an offence to the orthodox, let -them accept it, without resentment, as a little harmless fun--all art -being that. - -Having said so much I return to my own difficulty, for it is very hard -to focus H.G. Wells. He has passed through many stages and has not yet -attained the Olympian repose. Artist as he is, he has been hotly -entangled in practical affairs. There are signs in his early books that -he once shared what Richard Jeffries called the "dynamite -disposition,"--even now he knows, in imagination alone, the joy of black -destruction. He has also been, and ceased to be, a Fabian. But it is -plain that he has passed for good and all beyond the emotional plane of -propaganda. He has abandoned working-theories and the deceptions of the -intellect which make the man of action. He has become at once more -practical and more mystical than a party programme permits one to be. -Here is a world where things are being done--a world of which capital -and labor are but one interpretation. How far can these things and the -men who do them be swept into the service of the race? That is the -practical issue in his mind, and the mystical issue lies in the -intensity and quality of the way in which he feels it. - -To see him clearly one has to remember that he is not a synthetic -thinker but a sceptical artist, whose writings are subjective even when -they seem to be the opposite, whose personality is constantly growing, -expanding, changing, correcting itself ("one can lie awake at night and -hear him grow," as Chesterton says), and who believes moreover that -truth is not an absolute thing but a consensus of conflicting individual -experiences, a "common reason" to be wrought out by constant free -discussion and the comparison and interchange of personal discoveries -and ideas. He is not a sociologist, but, so to say, an artist of -society; one of those thinkers who are disturbed by the absence of right -composition in human things, by incompetent draughtsmanship and the -misuse of colors, who see the various races of men as pigments capable -of harmonious blending and the planet itself as a potential work of art -which has been daubed and distorted by ill-trained apprentices. In Wells -this planetary imagination forms a permanent and consistent mood, but it -has the consistency of a mood and not the consistency of a system of -ideas. And though he springs from socialism and leads to socialism, he -can only be called a socialist in the fashion--to adopt a violently -disparate comparison--that St. Francis can be called a Christian. That -is to say, no vivid, fluctuating human being, no man of genius can ever -be embodied in an institution. He thinks and feels it afresh; his -luminous, contradictory, shifting, evanescent impulses may, on the -whole, ally him with this or that aggregate social view, but they will -not let him be subdued to it. As a living, expanding organism he will -constantly urge the fixed idea to the limit of fluidity. So it is with -Wells. There are times when he seems as whimsical as the wind and as -impossible to photograph as a chameleon. - -Just here I should like to give what may be taken as his own view of -capital and labor socialism in relation to the constructive socialism he -himself has at heart. I am putting together certain brief passages from -_The Passionate Friends_: - - I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems - only by the way. They have played their part in a greater - scheme.... With my innate passionate desire to find the - whole world purposeful, I cannot but believe that.... - Strangest of saviours, there rises over the conflicts of men - the glittering angular promise of the machine. There is no - longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do not - need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are - no longer essential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his - brother man out of the need of servitude. He struggles - through to a new phase, a phase of release, a phase when - leisure and an unexampled freedom are possible to every - human being.... - - Human thought has begun to free itself from individual - entanglements and dramatic necessities and accidental - standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective will - towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or - kingdoms or peoples, a mind and will to which we all - contribute and which none of us may command nor compromise - by our private errors. It ceases to be aristocratic; it - detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us - all. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find - ourselves in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and - jealousies and conflicts, helping and serving in the making - of a new world-city, a new greater State above our legal - States, in which all human life becomes a splendid - enterprise, free and beautiful.... - - I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of - human society. Ours are not economic but psychological - difficulties.... - -These last two sentences really tell the whole story. To pass from -economics to psychology is to pass from Man to men, from society as a -direct object of attack to the individuals who compose it. And this -marks the evolution of Wells the romancer and Wells the expositor of -socialist doctrine into Wells the novelist. It is the problems of human -interaction that occupy him now. But informing these problems, reaching -behind and embracing them, is a general view of the world which has only -become more intimate, more personal, and more concrete with time. - -When, in _New Worlds for Old_, Wells set himself to explain socialism as -he conceived it, he assumed as his first principle a certain Good Will -in men, an operating will steadily working in life toward betterment. In -other words, he supplemented the ordinary socialist idea of economic -determinism, which may or may not inevitably bring about order on the -industrial plane, with a constructive purpose, which, in his view, can -alone bring about the salvation of the race. But this Good Will is not a -fatality; it exists only by virtue of remaining a conscious effort. In -his experiments in Time and Space Wells had accustomed himself to seeing -that the immense possibilities of what might be, so far as the universe -is concerned, predetermined things, were, so far as man is concerned, -matters of chance. To human society at least, if not to our planet, the -most unpropitious things are possible in the future; and there is no -reason to suppose that the destiny of the universe, which at every turn -cuts athwart the destiny of every species contained in it, should, left -to itself, work favorably to man. - -This notion is in itself quite outside socialism and does not -necessarily lead into socialism. It was Huxley who said that the world -and the universe, society and nature, are demonstrably at cross -purposes, and that man has to pit his microcosm against the macrocosm. -Huxley, in his famous lecture on _Ethics and Evolution,_ went on from -this to a kind of informal and unavowed socialism, figuring society as a -well-tended garden preserved by man's careful art from the ravages and -invasions of that hostile world of chance, with its gigantic weeds and -blind impulsions, which everywhere lies waiting round about it. Our -work, he implied, must be in every way to minimize for ourselves the -elements of chance, to become aware of our species in a collective -sense, battling with nature and moulding our own future. - -I do not suppose that Wells consciously adopted this idea from Huxley. -In itself that would be of little consequence, except so far as it shows -the continuity of thought and the development of socialism out of -science. But Wells was for several years a pupil of Huxley, and it is -reasonably plain that the mood in which he wrote his scientific romances -was strongly impregnated by Huxley's influence. The sinister, -incalculable, capricious, destructive forces outside man are symbolized, -as I have said, by those colliding comets, invading Martians, and -monstrous creatures among which the earlier Wells moved and had his -being; just as the sinister, incalculable, capricious forces within man -which urge him to destruction form so great a part of his later novels. -Most of his heroes (typified in _The New Machiavelli_) come to grief -through the blind irrational impulsions within themselves. And he is -equally haunted by what he has called the "Possible Collapse of -Civilization." I do not know how much this is due to an evangelical -childhood, in which Time, Death, and Judgment are always imminent; how -much to an overbalancing study of science at the expense of the -humanities; how much to an overdeveloped sense of the hazard that life -is; and how much to plain facts. But there it is: it has always been a -fixed conviction with Wells that man personal and man social is dancing -on a volcano. - -Therefore he has come to socialism not by the ordinary course but by a -route obscure and lonely. The sense of possible catastrophe and -collapse, the folly of leaving things to chance, the infinite waste and -peril of committing our affairs to nature rather than to art--these are -some of the negative reasons that have made it impossible for him to -fall in with the non-socialist ideal in human affairs, that "broadening -down from precedent to precedent" which he calls "muddling through": a -doctrine that is wholly compatible with a world of haphazard motives, -accidental fortunes, accidental management, a democratic individualism -that places power in irresponsible hands and suppresses talents that -society cannot afford to lose, a governmental system that concerns -itself with legal and financial arrangements, experts with no sense of a -common purpose, patriotisms that thrive on international bad feelings, -and that competitive principle which succeeds in the degree in which it -ignores the general welfare--a chaos of private aims, private virtues, -private motives, without any collective human design at all. - -In the light of these opposed ideas of society as a thing of Chance and -as a thing of Design, let me run over two or three of the tales of -Wells. - -First of all there is the special _laissez faire_ of pure economic -determinism. _The Time Machine_ pictures a possible result of the -Marxian process which has led to an irrevocable division of classes. The -rich, who were, in the old time, in comparison with the poor, -disciplined and united, have long since reached a point where work and -fear are for them things of the past. They occupy the surface of the -earth, and idleness and futility have made them light-headed, puny, -helpless creatures, stirring about and amusing themselves in the -sunlight. The poor, meanwhile, driven underground where they burrow and -tend machinery and provide, have lost all human semblance and become -white, horrible ghoul-like creatures that see in the dark; at night they -swarm out of their holes and feed upon the creatures of the upper air. -The one class has lost all power to defend itself and the other all pity -to spare, and gradually, year after year, mankind comes to its end. - -Then there is the ordinary _laissez faire_ of capitalism, a result of -which is pictured in _The Sleeper Awakes_. The Sleeper, one recalls, -awakens four generations hence to find himself the master-capitalist, -owner of half the world, and the world is one where capital and labor -have irrevocably destroyed the possibility of a constructive human -scheme. But the responsibility for that future is very ingeniously -placed upon us of the present time; for Graham's ownership of the world -is the outcome of one of those irresponsible whims that in our day -characterize the whole individualistic view of property. His cousin, -having no family to inherit his possessions, has left the whole in trust -for the Sleeper, half in jest, expecting him never to waken; and in time -the trustees of this vested fund have become the irresponsible -bureaucrats of the world. "We were making the future," says the awakened -Sleeper, looking out upon this monstrous outcome of whim and _laissez -faire_; "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were -making." - -Consider also _The Empire of the Ants_, in which Wells has figured a -possible reconquest of man by nature, owing to the greater collective -discipline of at least one non-human species. He imagines a species of -poisonous ants with only a little greater faculty of organized -co-operative intelligence than ordinary ants, which have terrorized and -finally routed several villages of unintelligent and unorganized -Brazilian natives far up the Amazon. The Brazilian government sends -against them an outworn inefficient gunboat, with an incompetent captain -and a muddle-headed crew; and when they arrive the ants fall upon the -only man sent ashore and sting him to death. The captain repeats over -and over, "But what can we _do_?" And at last with tremendous decision -he fires a gun at them and retires. The story ends with a report that -the ants are swarming all over the interior of Brazil and that nobody -knows how to prevent them from occupying the whole of South America. - -And then there is _The History of Mr. Polly._ I ignore for the moment -the individual aspect of his case, for Mr. Polly is not merely an -individual--he is an emblem of the whole, he is society _in concreto_. -We find him at the opening of the book sitting on a stile, suffering -from indigestion and consequently depressed in spirits. It is two -o'clock of a Sunday afternoon, and he has just finished his mid-day -meal. He has eaten cold potatoes, cold pork, Rashdall's mixed -pickles--three gherkins, two onions, a small cauliflower head and -several capers; cold suet pudding, treacle and pale cheese, three slices -of grey bread, and a jug of beer. He hates himself, he hates his wife, -he hates existence. But Mr. Polly's interior, the things that have gone -into it and the emotions that rise out of it, are only typical of an -entire life that has, to quote Macaulay's eulogy of the British -constitution, thought nothing of symmetry and much of convenience. - -Each of the novels of Wells, in one aspect at least, presents the -accidental nature of our world in some one typical case. _Love and Mr. -Lewisham_ shows how in the case of one of those young students who have, -as things are, no chance at all, but who are the natural builders of a -better world, the constructive possibility is crushed by the primary -will to live. At eighteen Mr. Lewisham is an assistant master at one of -those incompetent private-enterprise schools which for Wells (as also -for Matthew Arnold) epitomize our haphazard civilization. He has a -"future"--the Schema which he pins to his bedroom wall promises -unimaginable achievements. He marries, and you feel that he should marry -and that he has married the right person. But then with interests -divided he has to find money and in doing so he fails in his -examinations. At last it becomes a choice between his career and his -children, between the present and the future, and the children and the -future win. Society loses just in the degree that Lewisham himself -loses, for he was fitted to be a builder; and society has first, in the -face of all his efforts, imperfectly equipped him and then consistently -refused to take advantage of his talents. - -Just as Lewisham is a potential builder of society who is defeated, so -Kipps is a specimen of the raw material, the muddled inferior material -with which society has to deal and refuses to deal. Kipps, like Mr. -Polly, is from the beginning a victim of accident, spawned on the world, -miseducated, apprenticed at fourteen to a Drapery Bazaar. He grows up -ignorant, confused, irresponsible; and then suddenly, as accidentally as -he was born, has £26,000 and responsibility thrust upon him. The fortune -of Kipps lifts him at once out of the obscure negligible world of the -populace and makes him a figure to be reckoned with. Therein lies the -comedy of the book. He tries to make himself what in his own view a man -of means ought to be; naturally he sees money not as a force but as a -thing to be spent, and he finds that even from this point of view he has -no freedom of will, and that his lack of training inevitably places him -in the hands of equally irresponsible persons who want his money. He -wishes to build a house, designed after his own vaguely apprehended -needs and desires, and somehow under the wand of the architect a house -with eleven bedrooms springs from the ground, a house plainly far beyond -his own or Ann's power of management, and the prospect of disrespectful -servants, terrifying callers, and a horde of scheming lawyers, -tradesfolk and satellites. And the life of Kipps under prosperity is -summed up in the following dialogue: - - "Wonder what I shall do this afternoon," said Kipps, with - his hands deep in his pockets. - - He pondered and lit a cigarette. - - "Go for a walk, I s'pose," said Ann. - - "I _been_ for a walk this morning." - - "S'pose I must go for another," he added after an interval. - -May one suggest how the significance of such a story as this varies -according to the point of view? In the ordinary literature of comedy, -Kipps would be merely a parvenu whose want of dignity and ignorance of -the right use of money are laughable--or, if the novelist were a -humanitarian, pitiful. To the socialist, on the other hand, every -incident of his life, every gesture of his mind, is a unique indictment -of things as they are. He stands for the whole waste of human stuff in a -world which has not learned how to economize itself, whose every detail -is accidental in a general chaotic absence of social design. - -In this aspect _Tono-Bungay_ is the most powerful work of Wells. Just as -his romances of the future had exhibited the possible effects of -accidental heedless social conduct in the past, so his novels exhibit -the motives that produce this heedlessness to consequences. Thus the -world in which the Sleeper awakes, a world irrevocably ruled by the -bureaucratic trustees of an irresponsible private fortune, is just a -conceivable consequence of such a career as Uncle Ponderevo's, had not -catastrophe overwhelmed him and enabled Wells to point a much more -pregnant moral. _Tono-Bungay_ is a great epic of irresponsible -capitalism from the socialist point of view. Uncle Ponderevo is a born -commercial meteor, and when he first enters the book, a small druggist -in a dead country town, he exhibits the temperament of a Napoleon of -finance spoiling for conquest. He wants to Wake Up Wimblehurst, invent -something, do something, shove something. - - He indicated London as remotely over the top of the - dispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by - a whirl of the hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me. - - "What sort of things do they do?" I asked. "Rush about," he - said. "Do things! Somethin' glorious. There's cover - gambling. Ever heard of that, George?" He drew the air in - through his teeth. "You put down a hundred, say, and buy - ten thousand pounds' worth. See? That's a cover of one per - cent. Things go up one, you sell, realize cent per cent; - down, whiff, it's gone! Try again! Cent per cent, George, - every day. Men are made or done for in an hour. And the - shoutin'!... Well, that's one way, George. Then another - way--there's Corners!" - - "They're rather big things, aren't they?" I ventured. - - "Oh, if you go in for wheat and steel--yes. But suppose you - tackled a little thing, George. Just some leetle thing that - only needed a few thousands. Drugs, for example. Shoved all - you had into it--staked your liver on it, so to speak. Take - a drug--take ipecac, for example. Take a lot of ipecac. - Take all there is! See? There you are! There aren't - unlimited supplies of ipecacuanha--can't be!--and it's a - thing people _must_ have. Then quinine again! You watch - your chance, wait for a tropical war breaking out, let's - say, and collar all the quinine. Where _are_ they? Must - have quinine, you know--Eh? ... - - "Lord! there's no end of things--no end of _little_ things. - Dill-water--all the suff'ring babes yowling for it. - Eucalyptus again--cascara--witch hazel--menthol--all the - toothache things. Then there's antiseptics, and curare, - cocaine.... - - "Rather a nuisance to the doctors," I reflected. - - "They got to look out for themselves. By Jove, yes. They'll - do you if they can, and you do them. Like brigands. That - makes it romantic. That's the Romance of Commerce, George." - - He passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such - fragments as: "Fifty per cent, advance, sir; - security--to-morrow." - - The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a - sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever - be permitted to do in reality. It was the sort of nonsense - one would talk to make Ewart laugh and set him going on to - still odder possibilities. I thought it was part of my - uncle's way of talking. But I've learnt differently since. - The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee - something that will probably be needed and put it out of - reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy up land - upon which people will presently want to build houses, you - secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, - and so on, and so on. Of course the naïve intelligence of a - boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human - inadequacy. He begins life with the disposition to believe - in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realize how - casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and - custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is - a power as irresistible as a head master's to check - mischievous, foolish enterprises of every sort. I will - confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I - had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do - that would pretty certainly go to gaol. Now I know that any - one who could really bring it off would be much more likely - to go to the House of Lords! - -And such or nearly such is this career. Tono-Bungay, that swindling -patent medicine without value or meaning, is the insubstantial -hippogriff upon which Uncle Ponderevo soars upward on the wind of -advertisement. In a society whose basis is unlimited individual rights, -he is able to disorganize the industrial world and to work out his -absurd, inept, extravagant destiny, scattering ruin right and left. - -But the spirit of Good Will, the disinterested constructive spirit of -socialism which is the underlying assumption of Wells, appears here as -in all his later books. Out of the wreckage the constructive purpose -emerges, in the person of George Ponderevo. It shapes itself as a steel -destroyer, the work of an engineer's brain, a destroyer which England -has refused and which plunges down the Thames to the open sea, the -symbol of man's intentions, without illusions and without the hope of -personal gain, the disinterested spirit of science and truth. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -SOCIALISM TRUE AND FALSE - - - In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth - of statesmanship. It has been the chronic mistake of - statecraft and all organizing spirits to attempt immediately - to scheme and arrange and achieve. Priests, schools of - thought, political schemers, leaders of men, have always - slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out - the whole--or, at any rate, completely think out definite - parts--of the purpose and future of man, clearly and - finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct - on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing - obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, - persecution, training, pruning, secretive education, and all - the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. - - -The man who wrote that is not what is called a whole-hearted man as -regards any form of group-action. He does not "fit in." He is at bottom -a sceptic, and a sceptic is one who reduces every question to the -question of human nature. So that the socialism of Wells is necessarily -at variance with all the recognized group-forms of socialism, -Administrative, Philanthropic, and Revolutionary. I must briefly -indicate in each case what is the quality of this divergence. - -As regards the first, he has a complete distrust of what Hilaire Belloc -has called the "Servile State;" and what he distrusts he virulently -dislikes. In his view, Administrative socialism, as it appears in Sidney -Webb and the Fabian Society, and in the tendency of contemporary -Liberalism, has led to an excessive conservatism toward the existing -machinery of government, it has depended altogether too much on -organization without popular support, and as a result has tended to -throw the whole force of the socialist movement into a bureaucratic -regime of small-minded experts. The activity of the Fabians especially, -he says, has set great numbers of socialists working in the old -governmental machinery without realizing that the machinery should have -been reconstructed first. The whole tendency of this method, as it is -exhibited in the works of the English Liberal Party of to-day, is toward -a socialization of the poor without a corresponding socialization of the -rich; toward a more and more marked chasm between the regimented workers -and the free employers. - -And it throws the control of affairs into the hands of a mass of highly -specialized officials, technical minds, mutually-unenlightened experts. -In an age when the progress of society depends upon breaking down -professional barriers, when the genuine scientist, for instance, is a -man who passes beyond his own science and sees the inter-relationships -of all knowledge, the mind which has been trained in one habitual -routine is the most dangerous type of mind to place in authority. On the -one hand, society depends upon the coöperation of all sorts of -specialists, their free discussion, and comparison of methods, results, -and aims; on the other experts in office are apt to grow narrow, -impatient, and contemptuous, seeing nothing beyond their immediate -work,--and this particularly when they have been trained for -administration without any wide experience of the world. - -Therefore upon experts as such, in distinction from constructive and -coöperating specialists, Wells, with all the force of his belief in the -ventilating of knowledge and the humanizing of affairs, wages an -unceasing war. _The First Men in the Moon_ satirizes, after the fashion -of Swift, a world where the expert view of life, not only in -administration but in all work, prevails. Each inhabitant of the Moon -has a single rigidly defined function, to which everything else in his -nature is accommodated. Thus certain types of machine-menders are -compressed in jars, while others are dwarfed to fit them for fine work, -"a really more humane proceeding", as Mr. Cavor observes, "than our -method of leaving children to grow into human beings and then making -machines of them." And in _The Great State_ he returns to his attack on -government by experts: "Whatever else may be worked out in the subtler -answers our later time prepares, nothing can be clearer than that the -necessary machinery of government must be elaborately organized to -prevent the development of a managing caste in permanent conspiracy, -tacit or expressed, against the normal man." And he adds: "The Great -State will, I feel convinced, regard changes in occupation as a proper -circumstance in the life of every citizen; it will value a certain -amateurishness in its service, and prefer it to the trite omniscience of -the stale official." One of the many and increasing indications, one -might suggest, of the remarkable tendency in Wells to find good in the -old humanistic Tory, as distinguished from the modern bureaucratic -Liberal, view of life. - -But lest I be tempted to carry this latter suggestion too far just at -this point, I pass on to his equally virulent dislike of Philanthropic -socialism and the busy Superior Person in affairs; especially the type -of political woman so dear to Mrs. Humphry Ward's heart. If the expert -bureaucratic point of view represents the action of socialist thought on -the Liberal Progressive mind, so also the philanthropic superior point -of view represents the action of socialist thought on the Conservative -mind. It is arrogant, aggressive, and condescending. It implies the -raising of one's inferiors, and what weak mortal should assume that she -(for this happens to be a mainly feminine affliction) is the standard -according to which other mortals ought to be raised? - -Two of these energetic ladies have been pictured with a bitter vividness -by Wells in Altiora Bailey and Aunt Plessington, the former summing up -the Fabian-expert view, the latter summing up the Superior-philanthropic -view. Altiora has "P.B.P."--_pro bono publico_--engraved inside her -wedding ring. All the misery of the world she marshals invincibly in -statistics. She sees everything as existing in types and classes; she -pushes her cause with a hard, scheming, and wholly self-centred -eagerness, managing political dinners, indefatigably compiling -blue-books, dreaming of a world nailed as tightly and firmly under the -rule of experts as a carpet is nailed with brass tacks. - -On the other hand Aunt Plessington is the incarnation of a "Movement" -somewhat vague in purpose but always aggressively beneficial to the -helpless ones of the earth. "Her voice was the true governing-class -voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant and authoritative; it made -everything she said clear and important, so that if she said it was a -fine morning it was like leaded print in the _Times_." Her mission is -principally to interfere with the habits and tastes of the -working-class, making it impossible for them to buy tobacco and beer or -"the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which do not -sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach)." She is, in short, -one of those odious managing people who know nothing of and care nothing -for human nature, who concern themselves wholly with the effects without -penetrating to the causes of misery, who see mankind as irrevocably -divided into a governing and a governed class, and whose idea of -government is to make the governed as uncomfortably efficient as -possible and as lacking in free will. She is exactly one of those -arrogant sterile souls, in love with methods rather than men, who have -made the Servile State an imminent and horrid possibility and have -turned so many misinformed human beings (including Tolstoy) against -socialism altogether. - -If Wells dislikes Administrative and Philanthropic socialism because -they are not sufficiently human, he has an equal aversion to what is -called orthodox, that is to say, Revolutionary socialism; and in this he -includes all socialism that is fundamentally economic. "I have long -since ceased to trouble about the economics of human society," says -Stratton in _The Passionate Friends_, in words we are justified in -taking as the opinion of Wells himself. "Ours are not economic but -psychological difficulties." - -That statement is full of meaning. It expresses, not a fact but a -personal conviction--the personal conviction with which the -psychological constructive socialism of Wells begins. But before I pass -on to this I must make one comment that persists in my mind. - -Nothing is more remarkable than the unanimity with which during the last -few years the advanced world has put all its eggs in the basket of -pragmatism, the basket that has been so alluringly garnished by -Bergson's _Creative Evolution_, In this movement of thought Wells has -inevitably become one of the leaders, and his practical desertion of the -socialist cause is one of the main symptoms of it. The creative energies -of men, where society as a whole is concerned, are, in this philosophy, -conceived as bursting through the husks and institutions of the world, -not consciously destroying them but shedding them incidentally and -passing on. Now as regards sociology there is an obvious fatalism in -that; for the burden of proof lies once more on a personal basis, on a -personal basis qualified by the capacity of the person. It is true that -this creative and constructive tendency, like the total tendency of -modern life, is in the direction of socialism, it is true that a -thousand elements in modern life which could never be engaged in the -class-war are led by it into line with socialism. Yet there capitalism -is! Only the black-browed Marxian steadily contemplates the fact that -year by year the rich compound their riches and the poor their poverty, -while those that have no chance of creative outlets plant dynamite. - -I do not mean that Wells is "wrong" in abandoning the economic for the -psychological approach,--that is plainly the inevitable course for him. -I wish simply to mark a distinction. The gospel of Wells is an entirely -personal one; it frankly concerns itself with the inner realities of the -human mind, and in that lies its great importance. But let us -discriminate. Like every purely personal doctrine it contains, in -relation to the facts and causes of society, a certain quietism. It -withdraws the mind from corporate action and lays emphasis on corporate -thought. But it recognizes no corporate enemy. To be an opponent of -capitalism as such, is, in this philosophy, as quaint and crude and -crusty as to be an anti-suffragist or a believer in politics (for it has -become the fashion to believe with fervor in the franchise and scarcely -to believe at all in what the franchise stands for). - -There is then a certain danger in the creative pragmatism of this -particular time. If it actually does penetrate to the head men of the -world, if it is able to generate what I suppose may be called a "moral -equivalent" of duty--and there is almost a probability that it will--the -hazard is won. If it does not--and many keen thinkers and men of action -are obdurate--then we shall simply have the _fait accompli_ with -compound interest. What if it should turn out in the end, after the best -brains of socialism had all withdrawn from the economic programme of -socialism, that capitalism grows all the greener in the sunlight of -their tacit consent? There is Congress, there is Parliament, and there -they propose to remain. Suppose they are not converted from the top? Is -it altogether wise to stop persecuting them from the bottom? - -So much before I pass on. This comment does not qualify the teaching of -Wells. It merely supplements it from the economic side, and the -supplement seems to me an important one. - -Of a piece with his whole point of view is that he calls the right -sociological method not a scientific but an artistic method: it consists -of the making and comparing of Utopias. This idea he sets forth in his -paper _The So-called Science of Sociology_. "What is called the -scientific method," he says, "the method of observation, of theory about -these observations, experiments in verification of that theory and -confirmation or modification, really 'comes off' in the sciences in -which the individuality of the units can be pretty completely ignored." -The method that is all-important in the primary physical sciences where -the individuality of atoms and molecules may conveniently be ignored for -the sake of practical truth, becomes in his view proportionately untrue -as the sciences in their gradation approach the human world. "We -cannot," he says in _First and Last Things_, "put humanity into a museum -and dry it for examination; our one still living specimen is all -history, all anthropology, and the fluctuating world of men. There is no -satisfactory means of dividing it and nothing in the real world with -which to compare it. We have only the remotest idea of its 'life-cycle' -and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny." And in the -paper I have just mentioned he speaks of the Social Idea as a thing -"struggling to exist and realize itself in a world of egotisms, animals, -and brute matter.... Now I submit it is not only a legitimate form of -approach, but altogether the most promising and hopeful form of -approach, to endeavor to disentangle and express one's personal version -of that idea, and to measure realities from the standpoint of that -realization. I think, in fact, that the creation of Utopias--and their -exhaustive criticism--is the proper and distinctive method of -sociology." This notion of sociology as properly artistic in method and -diagnostic in aim indicates his main divergence from the methods and -aims of Comte and Spencer. - -And so one turns to his own illustration of this belief, _A Modern -Utopia_. It is a beautiful Utopia, beautifully seen and beautifully -thought; and it has in it some of that flavor of airy unrestraint one -finds in _News from Nowhere_. Morris, of course, carries us into a world -where right discipline has long since produced right will, so wholly and -instinctively socialized that men can afford to be as free as anarchists -would have the unsocialized men of our own time, a world such as Goethe -had in mind when he said: "There is in man a force, a spring of goodness -which counterbalances egoism; and if by a miracle it could for a moment -suddenly be active in all men, the earth would at once be free from -evil." Well, that is the miracle which has in some way just taken place -before the curtain goes up on most Utopias; and I think that Wells has -never been more skilful than in keeping this miracle quietly in his bag -of tricks and devising meanwhile a plausible transition between us and -that better world. It all happens in a moment and we are there. By an -amazing legerdemain of logic he leaps the gap and presents us with a -planet which at every point tallies with our own. It is a planet which -does not contain a State but is a State, the flexible result of a free -social gesture. - -_Mankind in the Making_ should be taken as introductory to _A Modern -Utopia_. It is the sketch of a method towards attaining such a world -state. It is a kind of treatise on education based on the assumption -that "our success or failure with the unending stream of babies is the -measure of our civilization." It opens with a complete repudiation of -"scientific" breeding, as a scheme which ignores the uniqueness of -individual cases and the heterogeneous nature of human ideals. "We are," -says Wells, "not a bit clear what points to breed for, and what points -to breed out;" while the interplay of strong and varied personalities we -desire is contradictory to any uniform notions of beauty, capacity, and -sanity, which thus cannot be bred for, so to speak, in the abstract. But -in _A Modern Utopia_ he outlines certain conditions limiting parentage, -holding it necessary that in order to be a parent a man must be above a -certain minimum of capacity and income, failing which he is indebted to -the State for the keep of his children. Motherhood is endowed and -becomes in this way a normal and remunerative career, which renders the -mother capable of giving her time to the care and education of her -children, as millions are not in a wage-earning civilization, and makes -both her and her children independent of the ups and downs of her -husband. His very detailed suggestions about the education of young -children (illustrated also in _The Food of the Gods_) are at once a -reminiscence of Rabelais and an anticipation of Madame Montessori. He -insists upon uniform pronunciation (a very important matter in England, -where diversity of language is one of the bulwarks of a rigid -class-system), the universality and constant revision of text-books, the -systematic reorganization of public library and bookselling methods, -with a view to making the race think as a whole. He urges the necessity -of rescuing literature from the accidents of the book-market by endowing -critical reviews, chairs for the discussion of contemporary thought, and -qualified thinkers and writers regardless of their special bias or -principles. To strike a mean between the British abuse of government by -hereditary privilege and the American abuse of government by electoral -machines he ingeniously proposes the election of officials by the jury -method, twenty or thirty men being set aside by lot to determine the -proper holders of office. And he is convinced of the importance in a -democracy of abundant honors, privileges, even titles, and abundant -opportunities for fruitful leisure. - -I have already spoken of his belief that the right sociological method -is the creation and comparison of individual Utopias. Thus his own -free-hand sketch of a better world is, in fact, a criticism of all -previous works of the kind. As distinguished from them the modern -Utopia, he says, has to present not a finally perfect stage but a -hopefully ascending one; it has to present men not as uniform types but -as conflicting individualities with a common bond; and moreover it has -to occupy, not some remote island or province "over the range" but a -whole planet. The Utopia of Wells is a world which differs from the -present world in one fundamental respect only--it has one initial -advantage: that every individual in it has been _started right_, in the -degree in which the collective knowledge of the world has rendered that -possible. - -But there is no need for me to say anything more about these books. They -are the free and suggestive motions of a mind inexhaustibly fertile and -given to many devices. Anyone who has read Wells at all is aware of his -ingenuity, his equal capacity for large schemes and minute details, his -truly Japanese belief in radical changes, once they are seen to be -necessary and possible. And indeed the details of social arrangement -follow naturally and profusely enough, once you get the frame of mind -that wishes them. Wells in his Utopia presupposes the frame of mind. In -short, he puts education first; he believes that the essential problems -of the present are not economic but psychological. - -And here where the constructive theory of Wells begins, let me quote a -passage from _The New Machiavelli_ that gives the gist of it: - - The line of human improvements and the expansion of human - life lies in the direction of education and finer - initiatives. If humanity cannot develop an education far - beyond anything that is now provided, if it cannot - collectively invent devices and solve problems on a much - richer, broader scale than it does at the present time, it - cannot hope to achieve any very much finer order or any more - general happiness than it now enjoys. We must believe, - therefore, that it can develop such a training and - education, or we must abandon secular constructive hope. And - here my initial difficulty as against crude democracy comes - in. If humanity at large is capable of that high education - and those creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must - its better and more vigorous types be so capable. And if - those who have power and scope and freedom to respond to - imaginative appeals cannot be won to the idea of collective - self-development, then the whole of humanity cannot be won - to that. From that one passes to what has become my general - conception in politics, the conception of the constructive - imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful - people, enterprising people, influential people, amidst whom - power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-conscious, - highly selective, open-minded, devoted, aristocratic - culture, which seems to me to be the necessary next phase in - the development of human affairs. I see human progress, not - as the spontaneous product of crowds of low minds swayed by - elementary needs, but as a natural but elaborate result of - intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and - curiosity liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions - and motives, modified and redirected by literature and art. - -This permeation of the head men of the world, this creation of a natural -collective-minded aristocracy appears now to be the permanent hope of -Wells. It is the stuff of all his novels, it is the centre of his -ethical system; and his _Utopia_ is made possible by the existence in it -of just such a flexible leading caste--the so-called Samurai. But -before coming to the inner implications of this, to the individual and -personal realities and difficulties of this, I must follow the -development of the idea in Wells himself. At various times, in various -works, he has presented it from a dozen different angles: as something -that is certain to come, as something he greatly desires to come, as -something that will not come at all except through prodigious effort, as -something that will come through a general catastrophe, as something -that will come through isolated individual endeavor, and the like. That -is to say he has presented his idea through all the various literary -mediums of exposition, fable, prophecy, psychological analysis, and -ethical appeal. - -It appears in a crude form in his first avowedly sociological work, -_Anticipations_. He there attempts to show that the chaos of society is -of itself beginning to generate a constructive class, into whose hands -it must ultimately fall. The advance of mechanism, he predicts, will -produce four clearly defined classes: an immense shareholding class with -all the potentialities of great property and a complete lack of function -with regard to that property; a non-producing class of middle-men -dependent on these, and composed of agents, managers, lawyers, clerks, -brokers, speculators, typists, and organizers; the expropriated class of -propertyless and functionless poor, whose present livelihood is -dependent on the fact that machinery is not yet so cheap as their labor. -And amid this generally disorganized mass a fourth element will define -itself. This in rudiment is the element of mechanics and engineers, -whose work makes it necessary for them to understand the machines they -are making and to be continually on the lookout for new methods. These -men, he holds, will inevitably develop a common character based on a -self-wrought scientific education and view of life. About them as a -nucleus all the other skilled and constructive minds--doctors, teachers, -investigators, writers, and the like--will tend to group themselves; and -as the other classes in their very nature will tend to social -disintegration, these will inevitably grow more and more conscious of a -purpose, a reason, a function in common, and will disentangle themselves -from the aimless and functionless masses about them. Democracy, as we -know it, will meanwhile pass away. For democratic government unavoidably -reduces itself to government by party machines and party machines depend -for their existence on alarms, quarrelsome patriotisms, and -international exasperations whose almost inevitable outcome is war. - -Whether war follows or not, the power of society is bound to fall into -the hands of the scientifically trained, constructive middle class, -because this class is the only indispensable element in it. Without war -this must occur just as soon as the spending and purchasing power of the -shareholding class becomes dependent for its existence on the class -which alone can save society from destruction. With war it will occur -with even greater rapidity: for in the warfare of the future that nation -is bound to win which has most effectively realized socialist ideals, in -which the government can command, with least interference from private -control, its roads, its food, its clothing, its material, its resources, -which has most efficiently organized itself as a whole; and the class -that modern warfare will bring to the front is the class that knows how -to handle machinery and how to direct it. But just as this class will be -the most efficient in war, so will it be the most careful to prevent -war: it will in fact confirm the ultimate tendency toward a World State -at peace with itself, through the agency, not of any of the governments -that we know to-day but of an informal coöperative organization which is -altogether outside the governmental systems of society, and which may in -time assimilate the greater part of the population of the world. - -Such is the argument of this book, and except for the inevitability of -it--the belief that all this _must_ come to pass--Wells has not since -abandoned it in any essential way. The new aristocracy that figures -there, the advance-guard of a better civilization, is precisely the -ethical ideal which is embodied in the chief characters of his novels. -Thus too the Samurai of _A Modern Utopia_ are figured as having arisen -at first informally as the constructive minds disentangling themselves -from the social chaos. Gradually becoming aware through research, -discussion and coöperation of a common purpose, they have at last -assumed a militant form and supplanted the political organizations of -the world. - -The general intention of all this finds utterance in the most poetic of -all the fables of Wells, _The Food of the Gods_. The Food itself, -invented by two undistinguished-looking scientists, becomes current in -the world through the very haphazardness of a society which will not -control discoveries detrimental to it and which consequently has no -means of coping with a discovery capable of superseding it. -"Heracleophorbia" has thus the same initial advantage as Tono-Bungay or -any other shabby patent medicine. It has an additional advantage; for -while patent medicines have the sanction of private enterprise and are -controlled by secret patents for the gain of their inventors, the Food -of the Gods, like every discovery of honorable scientists, is given -freely to the world. Thus the Food and the gigantic race of supermen who -spring from it and bring with them a nobler order of things are -themselves generated by the very chaos they promise to supplant. Just in -proportion as the inventors are frank and open men, having no secret -gainful purpose, the Food spreads far and wide. It is stolen, spilled, -scattered; and wherever it falls every living thing grows gigantic. -Immense wasps drone like motor-cars over the meadows, chickens grow as -large as emus, and here and there a baby fed upon it and unable -thereafter to accept any less robust diet grows gradually to Rabelaisian -proportions. Caddles, a type of all the growing giants, comes to his -forty-foot maturity in a remote village where, as the mellow vicar -observes, "Things change, but Humanity--_aere perennius_." There he is -taught by the little folk to submit himself to all his governors, -teachers, spiritual pastors and masters and to order himself lowly and -reverently to all his betters. They put him to work in the chalk-pits, -where he learns to manage a whole quarry single-handed and makes of -himself a rudimentary engineer, and then he breaks loose and tramps to -London. He finds himself in the crowded New Kent Road, and they tell him -he is obstructing the traffic: "But where is it going?" he says; "where -does it come from? What does it mean?" Around him play the electric -signs advertising Yanker's Yellow Pills and Tupper's Tonic Wine for -Vigor, conveying to his troubled mind the significance of a world of -chaos and accident, perverted instinct, and slavery to base suggestion. - -Is it necessary to say that society becomes alarmed at last? Is it -necessary to add that Wells opens fire upon it with his whole battery of -satire? Plainly men and giants cannot live in the same world; the little -men find their little ways, their sacred customs of order, home, and -religion threatened by a strange new thing. The Children of the Food -meanwhile have grown beyond the conventions and proportions of common -life; they have experienced a kind of humanity to which all men can -attain and from which there can be no retrogression to the lesser -scheme. In the end, having found one another, they assemble in their -embankment, the world against them. They sit amid their vast machinery, -Titanic shapes in the darkness broken by searchlights and the flames of -their forges. An ambassador from the old order brings them the terms -upon which they may go free. They must separate themselves from the -world and give up the Food. They refuse: - -"Suppose we give up this thing that stirs within us," says the Giant -Leaguer.... "What then? Will this little world of theirs be as it was -before? They may fight against greatness in us who are the children of -men, but can they conquer?... For greatness is abroad, and not only in -us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose of all things! It is in the -nature of all things, it is part of time and space. To grow and still to -grow, from first to last, that is Being, that is the law of life." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEW REPUBLICAN - - -It is obvious that the socialism of Wells, touching as it does at every -point the fabric of society, remains at bottom a personal and mystical -conception of life. His typical socialist, or constructive man, or -Samurai, or New Republican, or what you will, is as distinctly a poetic -projection from life as Nietzsche's Superman, or Carlyle's Hero, or the -Superior Man of Confucius. Like them, it implies a rule of conduct and a -special religious attitude. - -Nietzsche's Superman is a convenient figure by which for the moment to -throw into relief the point I have in mind. Plainly a conception of this -kind should never be intellectualized and defined. It is a living whole, -as a human being is a living whole, and the only way to grasp it is to -place oneself at the precise angle of the poet who conceived it. But the -fixed intellect of man is not often capable of rising to the height of -such an argument, nor do the run of critics and interpreters rise to -such a height themselves. In the case of Nietzsche, particularly, they -have confounded the confusion, urging precise definitions and at the -same time disagreeing among themselves as to which definitions may be -held valid. But indeed the Superman does not "mean" this or that: it can -merely be approached from different points of view with different -degrees of sympathy. And so it is with the New Republican of Wells. - -I have mentioned the Superman because Wells himself has reached a -conception of aristocracy similar in certain respects to that of -Nietzsche but in others wholly antagonistic. In _The Food of the Gods_ -he certainly exhibits a sympathy with Nietzsche on the poetical and -ideal side; for his giants are not simply grand-children of Rabelais, -they practise of necessity a morality at variance with that of the -little men among whom they grow. When Caddies comes to London he does -not, and cannot, expect the little men to feed him; not intending evil -and seeing merely that he must live, he sweeps the contents of a baker's -shop into his mouth with just the unconcerned innocence of laws and -prohibitions that a child would feel before a blackberry bush. The very -existence of a larger, freer race implies a larger and freer morality, -and the giants and the little folk alike see that the same world cannot -for long contain them both. But perhaps one can mark the distinction by -saying that, unlike the Superman, they are not masters but servants of -the cosmic process. They themselves are not the goal toward which the -whole creation tends. Humanity is not a setting for their splendor, but -something that wins through them its own significance. - -In fact it fully proves how profound is the socialistic instinct in -Wells, that though in English wise and almost in the manner of Carlyle -he has come to believe in the great ones of this world, he has never -lost the invincible socialist conviction that a great man is only a -figure of speech. In _The Discovery of the Future_ he says: "I must -confess that I believe that if by some juggling with space and time -Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, Edward IV, William the Conqueror, Lord Rosebery, -and Robert Burns had all been changed at birth, it would not have -produced any serious dislocation of the course of destiny. I believe -that these great men of ours are no more than images and symbols and -instruments taken, as it were, haphazard by the incessant and consistent -forces behind them." The individual who stands on his achievement, the -"lord of creation," is to him at best a little misinformed, at the worst -blustering, dishonest, presuming, absurd. - -By an original instinct the Wells hero is an inconspicuous little -person, fastidiously untheatrical, who cuts no figure personally and -who, to adopt a phrase from one of his later books, "escapes from -individuality in science and service." He abhors "personages." For the -personage is one who, in some degree, stands on his achievement, and to -Wells man, both in his love and his work, is experimental: he is an -experiment toward an impersonal synthesis, the well-being of the -species. It is true that this idea of man as an experiment does not -conflict with a very full development of personality. It consists in -that; but personality to Wells is attained purely through love and work, -and thus it comes to an end the moment it becomes static, the moment one -accepts the laurel wreath, the moment one verges on self-consequence. - -The first published utterance of Wells was, I think, a paper in _The -Fortnightly Review_ for July, 1891, called _The Rediscovery of the -Unique_. It was one of the earliest of those attacks on the logical -approach to life, so characteristic of contemporary thought: it stamped -him from the outset a pragmatist. The burden of his argument was that -since the investigations of Darwin it is no longer possible to ignore -the uniqueness of every individual thing in the universe and that "we -only arrive at the idea of similar beings by an unconscious or -deliberate disregard of an infinity of small differences"--that, in -brief, the method of classification which is the soul of logic is untrue -to the facts of life. "Human reason," he wrote, "in the light of what is -being advanced, appears as a convenient organic process based on a -fundamental happy misconception.... The _reason d'être_ of a man's mind -is to avoid danger and get food--so the naturalists tell us. His -reasoning powers are about as much a truth-seeking tool as the snout of -a pig, and he may as well try to get to the bottom of things by them as -a mole might by burrowing." - -I quote thus his rudely graphic early statement of the case, because he -has not since substantially modified it and because it shows that he -already related it to human realities: and indeed in the same paper he -pointed out the relation that such an idea must bear to ordinary -conduct: - - Beings are unique, circumstances are unique, and therefore - we cannot think of regulating our conduct by wholesale - dicta. A strict regard for truth compels us to add that - principles are wholesale dicta: they are substitutes of more - than doubtful value for an individual study of cases. - -This conception of human reason as an altogether inadequate organ for -getting at the truth of things he later expanded in his Oxford lecture, -_Scepticism of the Instrument;_ and, still further expanded, it forms -the first or metaphysical book of his _First and Last Things_. It is -unnecessary to discuss the rights and wrongs of this primary point in a -generation familiar with James and Bergson. It is an assumption of the -purely personal, experimental nature of truth which has had a sufficient -sanction of experience greatly to modify contemporary practice in ethics -and sociology. And it should be noted that Wells evolved it in his own -study of physical science (a study serious enough to result in -text-books of Biology, Zoology, and Physiography) and that he presents -it, in accordance with his own postulates, not as truth for everybody, -but as his own personal contribution to the sum of experience. The study -of science led him to see the limitations of the scientific attitude, -outside the primary physical sciences which for practical purposes can -afford to ignore individualities, in matters that approach the world of -human motives and affairs. - -I do not propose to discuss this question of logic. It is quite plain at -least, as Wells observes, in the spirit of Professor James, that "all -the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and determined -are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression." And -therefore he is justified in proceeding as follows: - - I make my beliefs as I want them. I do not attempt to go to - fact for them. I make them thus and not thus exactly as an - artist makes a picture so and not so.... That does not mean - that I make them wantonly and regardless of fact.... The - artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field of - visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative - and great poverty of test, that is all, but of no - wantonness; the conditions of Tightness are none the less - imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I - adopt certain beliefs because I feel the need of them, - because I feel an often quite unanalyzable Tightness in - them, because the alternative of a chaotic life distresses - me. - -And this is the way in which he presents the gist of his beliefs: - - I see myself in life as part of a great physical being that - strains and I believe grows toward Beauty, and of a great - mental being that strains and I believe grows towards - knowledge and power. In this persuasion that I am a gatherer - of experience, a mere tentacle that arranged thought beside - thought for this Being of the Species, this Being that grows - beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling - idea of which I stand in need, the ruling idea that - reconciles and adjudicates among my warring motives. In it I - find both concentration of myself and escape from myself, in - a word, I find _Salvation_. - -And again later: - - The race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are - the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement: - it is a statement of fact. In so far as we are individuals, - so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are - accidental, disconnected, without significance, the sport of - chance. In so far as we realize ourselves as experiments of - the species for the species, just in so far do we escape - from the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes in an - experience greater than ourselves.... Now none of this, if - you read me aright, makes for the suppression of one's - individual difference, but it does make for its correlation. - We have to get everything we can out of ourselves for this - very reason that we do not stand alone; we signify as parts - of a universal and immortal development. Our separate selves - are our charges, the talents of which much has to be made. - It is because we are episodical in the great synthesis of - life that we have to make the utmost of our individual lives - and traits and possibilities. - -Naturally then, just as he holds by the existing State as a rudimentary -collective organ in public affairs, so also, in theory, he holds by the -existing Church. His Church of the Future bears to the existing Church -just the relation which the ultimate State of socialism bears to the -existing State. "The theory of a religion," says Wells, "may propose the -attainment of Nirvana or the propitiation of an irascible Deity or a -dozen other things as its end and aim. The practical fact is that it -draws together great multitudes of diverse individualized people in a -common solemnity and self-subordination, however vague, and is so far -like the State, and in a manner far more intimate and emotional and -fundamental than the State, a synthetic power. And in particular the -idea of the Catholic Church is charged with synthetic suggestion; it is -in many ways an idea broader and finer than the constructive idea of any -existing State." - -All of which I take to be very much the position of Erasmus face to face -with Luther and of Matthew Arnold face to face on the one hand with -Nonconformity and on the other with Darwinism: that the Church is a -social fact greater in importance than any dogmatic system it contains. -To Wells any sort of voluntary self-isolation, any secession from -anything really synthetic in society, is a form of "sin." And like many -Catholics he justifies a certain Machiavelism in squaring one's personal -doubts with the collective end. Thus he holds that test oaths and -declarations of formal belief are of the same nature as the oath of -allegiance a republican takes to the King, petty barriers that cannot -weigh against the good that springs from placing oneself _en rapport_ -with the collective religious consciousness; at least in the case of -national Churches, which profess to represent the whole spiritual life -of a nation and which cannot therefore be regarded as exclusive to any -affirmative religious man. The individual, he says, must examine his -special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility -of coöperation; as far as possible he must repress his private tendency -toward social fragmentation, hold fast to the idea of the Church as -essentially a larger fact than any specific religious beliefs, and work -within it for the recognition of this fact. I have mentioned Catholic -reasoning; Wells appears to be in general agreement with Newman as to -the subordination of private intellectual scruples to the greater unity -of faith. - -But indeed I doubt if it is fair to take him too much at his word in -specific matters of this kind. _First and Last Things_ has that slightly -official quality which goes with all Confessions of Faith out loud. If -his intention has led him to square himself with lines of thought and -conduct where, to speak the truth, he is an alien, his intention -remains, and that is plain and fine. - -The synthetic motive gains its very force through the close-knitting of -keenly-developed, proud, and valiant individualities. In Wells the -synthetic motive and the individual motive qualify and buttress one -another; and he is quite as much opposed to the over-predominance of the -synthetic motive where the personal motive is deficient as he is to the -self-indulgence of the purely personal life. Thus the Assembly in _A -Modern Utopia_ is required to contain a certain number of men outside -the Samurai class, because, as they explain, "there is a certain sort of -wisdom that comes of sin and laxness, which is necessary to the perfect -ruling of life," and their Canon contains a prayer "to save the world -from unfermented men." So also in _First and Last Things_ Wells remarks: -"If I were a father confessor I should begin my catalogue of sins by -asking, 'Are you a man of regular life?' and I would charge my penitent -to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving irregularity; to -fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork and beans or give -up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners." Plainly his -collective purpose is nothing unless it consists of will, will even to -wilfulness, even to perversity. - -And this leads one back to that early assertion of his that since beings -and circumstances are unique, we must get rid of the idea that conduct -should be regulated by general principles. Similarly, at the outset of -_Mankind in the Making_ he says it is necessary "to reject and set aside -all abstract, refined, and intellectualized ideas as starting -propositions, such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, or Beauty, -and to hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Goodness and Beauty, he says, cannot -be considered apart from good and beautiful things and one's personal -notions of the good and beautiful have to be determined by one's -personal belief about the meaning of life. Thus, to take an illustration -from his novels, one of the most odious traits of such a father as Ann -Veronica's or Mr. Pope in _Marriage_ is that they wish to regulate their -daughters, not by a study of what is and must be good in their eyes, but -by a general sweeping view of what good daughters ought to be. - -Now since his own idea of the purpose of life is the development of the -collective consciousness of the race, his idea of the Good is that which -contributes to this synthesis, and the Good Life is that which, as he -says, "most richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience and -renders it available for the race, that contributes most effectively to -the collective growth." And as a corollary to this, Sin is essentially -"the service of secret and personal ends." The conflict in one way or -another between this Good and this Evil forms the substance of each of -the main group of his novels. Aside from the novels of shop-life, each -of his principal men begins life with a passionate and disinterested -ambition to gather and prepare experience and render it available for -the race; each one falls from this ambition to the service of secret and -personal ends. Lewisham, Capes, Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford are, each -in his own way, human approximations, with all the discount of actual -life, of the ethical standard of Wells himself as it is generalized in -the New Republicans and the Samurai. They illustrate how fully the -socialism of Wells is summed up in a conception of character. - -But before turning to the actual men and women who form the substance of -his novels, I must add something about those wraith-like beings, the -Samurai of _A Modern Utopia,_ which fully embody his ideal. - -The name Samurai, to begin with, is not a random choice, for it is plain -that the Japanese temper is akin to that of Wells. The career of the -Japanese as a nation during the last fifty years perfectly illustrates -his frequent contention that in modern warfare success falls to the -nation that has most completely realized the socialistic, as -distinguished from the individualistic, notion of society. "Behind her -military capacity is the disciplined experience of a thousand years," -says Lafcadio Hearn, who proceeds to show at what cost, in everything we -are apt to regard as human, this disciplined power has been -achieved--the cost of individual privacy in rights, property, and -conduct. - -But aside from social ideals and achievements one instinctively feels -that Wells likes Japanese human nature. In one of his early essays, long -since out of print, he remarks: - - I like my art unadorned; thought and skill and the other - strange quality that is added thereto to make things - beautiful--and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and - paper, and behold! a thing of beauty!--as they do in Japan. - And if it should fall into the fire--well, it has gone like - yesterday's sunset, and to-morrow there will be another. - -He contrasts this with the ordinary English view of art and property, -mahogany furniture and "handsome" possessions: - - The pretence that they were the accessories to human life - was too transparent. _We_ were the accessories; we minded - them for a little while, and then we passed away. They wore - us out and cast us aside. We were the changing scenery; they - were the actors who played on through the piece. - -_There is no Being but Becoming_ is the special dictum of Wells, a -dictum which does not consort with mahogany sideboards, but is tangibly -expressed in Japanese architecture. And if Wells naturally likes -Japanese art, its economy, delicacy, ephemerality, its catlike nicety, -its paucity of color, its emphasis of design, its "starkness," it is -plain also that many qualities of the Japanese character must also -appeal irresistibly to him: the light hold they have on all those things -into which one settles down, from stolid leather arm-chairs to -comfortable private fortunes; their lack of self-consequence, their -alertness, their athletic freedom from everything that encumbers, their -remoteness from port-wine and _embonpoint._ These things exist in -Wells's notion of right human nature. - -Thus the Samurai. They are delegates of the species, experimenting and -searching for new directions; they instinctively view themselves as -explorers for the race, as disinterested agents. And their own -self-development on this disinterested basis is not only the purpose of -their own lives, but also the method by which the Life Impulse discovers -and records itself and pushes on to ever wider and richer -manifestations. - -The socialism of Wells is merely a building out from this conception. He -is persuaded that this kind of experimental exercise is not simply a -happy indulgence for the few fortunately placed, but that it is actually -virtue and the only virtue. And this notion of personal virtue--personal -in quality, social in effect--once conceded, it follows that the -moulding of life must proceed with reference to this. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -HUMAN NATURE - - -There is always a certain disadvantage in approaching human nature -through a theory or in the light of an ideal. If I am doing that, it is -my own fault and by no means the fault of Wells. He has himself -abandoned socialism, in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has -too much of the _à priori_ about it; he has abandoned economics because -it deals with man as a mass-mind; he has come to rest in human nature -itself and he has made his theories subject to human nature. - -"All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the -story," says Thoreau. Most readers of the novels of Wells, I suppose, -have no notion that a theory of life runs through them and unites them. -And they are right. The force of a work of art does not reside in its -"inner meanings." An admirable work of art will always no doubt possess -"inner meanings" in plenty and the unhappy mind of man will always rout -them out. But to separate the intellectual structure of anything from -the thing itself is just like any other kind of vivisection: you expose -the brain and you kill the dog. A work of art is a moving living whole -that speaks to the moving living whole which is oneself. We are -insensibly modified by reading as by other experience. We come to feel -differently, see differently, act differently. Without doubt Wells has -altered the air we breathe and has made a conscious fact in many minds -the excellence that resides in certain types of men and modes of living -and the odiousness that resides in others. Socialism, like everything -else which changes the world, comes as a thief in the night. - -Still, it is plain that Wells himself began with doctrine foremost; -richness of experience has led him only after many years to get the -horse before the cart. From the first he was aware of a point of -view--it was the point of view, writ large, of his own self-made career, -growing gradually more and more coherent. Throughout his romances, down -to the very end, his chief interest was theoretical rather than human. -Only this can account for the violent wrenching of life and character in -them to suit the requirements of a predetermined idea. The Food of the -Gods, for example, is so far the essential fact of the book that bears -its name that the characters in this book are merely employed to give -the Food a recognizable human setting. Throughout his romances, indeed, -men exist for inventions, not inventions for men. - -Yet the "human interest," as it is called, was there from the outset, -side by side with this main theoretic interest in the scientific and -socialistic possibilities of life. The series of novels began almost as -early as the series of romances. Two "streams of tendency" run side by -side throughout the earlier writings of Wells--streams of tendency which -meet fully for the first time in _Tono-Bungay_, and have formed a single -main current in the novels subsequent to that. On the one hand was the -stream of constructive theory, not yet brought into contact with human -nature, on the other the stream of "human interest," not yet brought -into contact with constructive theory. Mr. Hoopdriver, of _The Wheels of -Chance,_ and Kipps, are typical of this earlier fiction, specimens of -muddled humanity as such, one might say, quite unmitigated by the train -of thought, the possibility of doing something _with_ muddled humanity, -which was growing more and more urgent in the romances. - -In _Tono-Bungay_, as I have said, one sees the union of these two trains -of interest, muddled humanity being represented in Uncle Ponderevo, -constructive theory in George Ponderevo. And in all the subsequent -novels this fusion continues. The background in each case is the static -world of muddle from which Wells is always pushing off into the open sea -of possibilities, the foreground being occupied by a series of men and -women who represent this dynamic forward movement. And the philosophy of -Wells has finally come to port in human nature. - -"Few modern socialists," he says somewhere, "present their faith as a -complete panacea, and most are now setting to work in earnest upon those -long-shirked preliminary problems of human interaction through which the -vital problem of a collective head and brain can alone be approached." -And elsewhere he says: "Our real perplexities are altogether -psychological. There are no valid arguments against a great-spirited -socialism but this, that people will not. Indolence, greed, meanness of -spirit, the aggressiveness of authority, and above all jealousy, -jealousy from pride and vanity, jealousy for what we esteem our -possessions, jealousy for those upon whom we have set the heavy fetters -of our love, a jealousy of criticism and association, these are the real -obstacles to those brave large reconstructions, those profitable -abnegations and brotherly feats of generosity that will yet turn human -life--of which our individual fives are but the momentary parts--into a -glad, beautiful and triumphant coöperation all round this sunlit world." - -Inevitably then he sees the world as divided roughly into two worlds, -and human nature as of two general kinds. There is the static world, the -normal, ordinary world which is on the whole satisfied with itself, -together with the great mass of men who compose and sanction it; and -there is the ever-advancing better world, pushing through this outworn -husk in the minds and wills of creative humanity. In one of his essays -he has figured this opposition as between what he calls the Normal -Social Life and the Great State. And in one of those _dégagé_ -touch-and-go sketches in which he so often sums up the history of -humankind, he has presented the Normal Social Life as a "common -atmosphere of cows, hens, dung, toil, ploughing, economy, and domestic -intimacy," an immemorial state of being which implies on the part of men -and women a perpetual acquiescence--a satisfied or hopeless consent--to -the end of time. But as against this normal conception of life he points -out that modern circumstances have developed in men, through machinery, -the division of labor, etc., a "surplus life" which does not fit into -the Normal scheme at all, and that humanity has returned "from a closely -tethered to a migratory existence." And he observes: "The history of the -immediate future will, I am convinced, be very largely the history of -the conflict of the needs of this new population with the institutions, -the boundaries, the laws, prejudices, and deep-rooted traditions -established during the home-keeping, localized era of mankind's career." - -Two conceptions of life, two general types of character, two ethical -standards are here set in opposition, and this opposition is maintained -throughout the novels of Wells. Thus on the title-page of _The New -Machiavelli_ appears the following quotation from Professor James: "It -suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and tough-minded -people ... do both exist." In _A Modern Utopia_ this division appears -typically in the two men from our world who play off against one -another, the botanist and the narrator of the story. The -"tender-mindedness" of the botanist is exhibited in the fact that he -cares nothing for a better world if it is to deprive him of the muddled, -inferior and sentimental attachments of his accustomed life, and prefers -them to the austerer, braver prospect that is offered him. -"Tough-mindedness," on the other hand, is above all the state of living, -not in one's attachments, habits, possessions, not in the rut of least -resistance, but in the sense of one's constructive and coöperative -relationship to the whole sum of things, in being "a conscious part of -that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe." And -indeed the constant theme of the novels of Wells might be described as -tough-mindedness with lapses. - -For the heroes of Wells do lapse: they pay that tribute to "human -nature" and the overwhelming anti-social forces in the world and in man -himself. They fall, as a rule, from "virtue" to the service of secret -and personal ends. _Cherchez la femme_. Mr. Lewisham, insufficiently -prepared and made to feel that society does not want him, has to give up -his disinterested ambitions in science and scramble for money to support -a wife whom instinct has urged him, however imprudently, to marry. -George Ponderevo gives up science and is forced into abetting his -uncle's patent medicine enterprise for the same reason. For the same -reason, too, Capes takes to commercial play-writing to support Ann -Veronica; and to stand behind the extravagance of Marjorie, Trafford, -having discovered in his researches an immensely valuable method of -making artificial india-rubber which he is going to make public for the -use of society, is persuaded to compromise his honor as a scientist and -monopolize his discovery for private gain. In _Tono-Bungay_ the -enterprise is a swindling patent medicine, which many business men would -refuse to have anything to do with; but in _Marriage_ the proposition -belongs to what is called "legitimate business," and it may be well to -quote a passage to show the subtlety and, at the same time, from this -point of view, the very substantial nature of temptation and sin: - - Solomonson had consulted Trafford about this matter at - Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that - Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to - complete and publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, - first a smashing demonstration of the unsoundness of - Behren's claim and then a lucid exposition of just what had - to be done and what could be done to make an india-rubber - absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The - business man could not believe his ears. - - "My dear chap, positively--you mustn't!" Solomonson had - screamed.... "Don't you see all you are throwing away?" - - "I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," - said Trafford.... "When men dropped that idea of concealing - knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist, and all that is - worth having in modern life, all that makes it better and - safer and more hopeful than the ancient life began." - - "My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to - give away the synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of - the window into the street!"... Everything that had made - Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to - such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as - such no concern with personal consequences; his business is - the steady relentless clarification of knowledge. The human - affairs he changes, the wealth he makes or destroys, are no - concern of his; once these things weigh with him, become - primary, he has lost his honor as a scientific man. - - "But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had - cried during those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you - are, shying this cheap synthetic rubber of yours into the - world--for it's bound to be cheap! anyone can see - that--like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good of - saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ - business is just to make bombs and drop them out of the - window? You smash up things just the same. Why! you'll ruin - hundreds and thousands of people, people living on rubber - shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable - workers in rubber works...." - - "I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said - Solomonson, leaning back in his chair at last.... "So soon, - that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can lower the - price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the - end--there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow - tea." - -There we have Eve and the apple brought up to date, sin being the choice -of a private and individual good at the expense of the general good. The -honor of a doctor or a scientist consists in not concealing and -monopolizing discoveries. But why should the line be drawn at doctors -and scientists? There is the crux of socialist ethics. - -By this type of compromise the actual New Republicans fall short of -their Utopian selves, the Samurai. But compromise is well within the -philosophy of Wells. "The individual case," he says in _First and Last -Things_, "is almost always complicated by the fact that the existing -social and economic system is based upon conditions that the growing -collective intelligence condemns as unjust and undesirable, and that the -constructive spirit in men now seeks to supersede. We have to live in a -provisional state while we dream of and work for a better one." And -elsewhere: "All socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers -far ahead of the main advance. The organized State that should own and -administer their possessions for the general good has not arrived to -take them over; and in the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory -agents according to their lights and make things ready for its coming." - -But if the New Republican is justified in compromising himself for the -means of subsistence, how much more in the matter of love! "All for -love, and the world well lost" might be written over several of Wells's -novels. But, in reality, is the world lost at all under these -conditions? On the contrary, it is gained, and the more unconsciously -the better, in babies. Love belongs to the future and the species with -more finality than the greatest constructive work of the present, and -the heroines of Wells are inordinately fond of babies. When Schopenhauer -analyzed the metaphysics of love he showed that natural selection is a -quite inevitable thing seeking its own. In Wells love is equally -irresistible and direct. Whenever it appears in his books it makes -itself unmistakably known, and, having done so, it cuts its way straight -to its consummation, through every obstacle of sentiment, affection, -custom, and conventionality. It is as ruthless as the Last Judgment, and -like the Last Judgment it occurs only once. - -Why then does it appear promiscuous? The answer to this question refers -one back to the underlying contention of Wells that there are two kinds -of human beings and two corresponding ethics, and that in the end the -New Republican who has become aware of himself cannot consort with the -Normal Social breed. But in actual life this standard becomes entangled -with many complexities. Just as, in a world of commercial competition, -it is the lot of most of those who try to give themselves -whole-heartedly to disinterested work that they place themselves at such -a disadvantage as ultimately to have to make a choice between work and -love, so the pressure of society and the quality of human nature itself -create entanglements of every kind. It is the nature of life that one -grows only gradually to the secure sense of a personal aim, and that -meanwhile day by day one has given hostages to fortune. To wake up and -find oneself suddenly the master of a purpose is without doubt, in the -majority of cases, to find oneself mortgaged beyond hope to the existing -fact. The writer who sets out to make his way temporarily and as a -stepping-stone by journalism finds himself in middle age with ample -means to write what he wishes to write only to find also that he has -become for good and all--a journalist! And so it is with lovers. Only in -the degree to which free will remains a perpetual and present faith can -"love and fine thinking" remain themselves; free of their attachments, -free of their obligations, and mortgages, and discounts. That is the -quality of a decent marriage, and the end of a marriage that is not -decent. - -It is no business of mine to justify the sexual ethics of Wells. But -there is a difference between a fact and an intention, and what I have -just said serves to explain the intention. Consider, in the light of it, -a few of his characters, both in and out of marriage. Ann Veronica from -the first frankly owns that she is not in love with Manning, but every -kind of social hypnotism is brought into motion to work on her ignorance -of life and to confuse her sense of free-will. George Ponderevo simply -outgrows Marion; but you cannot expect him not to grow, and who is -responsible for the limited, furtive, second-hand world in which Marion -has lived and which has irrevocably moulded her? Margaret's world, too, -is a second-hand world, though on a socially higher plane: she lives in -a pale dream of philanthropy and Italian art, shocked beyond any mutual -understanding by everything that really belongs in the first-hand world -of her husband. These characters meet and pass one another like moving -scales; they never stand on quite the same plane. And then the -inevitable always occurs. For, just as the Children of the Food cannot -consort with the little folk they promise to supersede, so it appears to -be a fixed part of the programme of Wells that New Republicans can only -love other New Republicans with success. - -He implies this indeed in _A Modern Utopia_: - - "A man under the Rule who loves a woman who does not follow - it, must either leave the Samurai to marry her, or induce - her to accept what is called the Woman's Rule, which, while - it exempts her from the severer qualifications and - disciplines, brings her regimen into a working harmony with - his." - - "Suppose she breaks the Rule afterwards?" - - "He must leave either her or the order." - - "There is matter for a novel or so in that." - - "There has been matter for hundreds." - -Wells has written six himself. _Love and Mr. Lewisham, Ann Veronica, -Tono-Bungay, The New Machiavelli, Marriage, The Passionate Friends_, are -all variations on this theme. In one of these alone life's double motive -succeeds in establishing itself, and it is for this reason that -_Marriage_, to my thinking the weakest of his novels from an artistic -point of view, is the most important concrete presentation of the -philosophy of Wells. It is an inferior book, but it gives one the sense -of a problem solved. By passing through a necessary yet feasible -discipline, Trafford and Marjorie bridge over the gap between haphazard -human nature and the better nature of socialism, and become Samurai in -fact. - -These entanglements of the actual world would be an overwhelming -obstacle to a socialism less vigorous than that of Wells. But obstacles -give edge to things, and for a man who loves order no one could have -pictured disorder with more relish than he. Only a pure theorist could -regret the artistic zest with which he portrays our muddled world. -Running amuck was a constant theme in his early writings; his comets ran -amuck, and so did Mr. Bessel, and there is no more relished wanton scene -than that of the Invisible Man running amuck through the Surrey -villages. Intentionally or not, this relish in disorder reinforces the -prime fact about his view of order. He abhors the kind of order which is -often ignorantly confounded with the socialist aim, the order which -classifies and standardizes. He desires a collective consciousness only -through the exercise of a universally unimpeded free will, and he would -rather have no collectiveness at all than one that implies the sacrifice -of this free will. He wishes to work only on the most genuine human -stuff. This was the basis of his break with the Fabian Society; it is -the basis of his dislike of bureaucratic methods which deprive people of -beer when they want beer. It defines his notion of the true method of -socialism as first of all an education of the human will toward -voluntary right discipline. - -His appeal, then, is a personal one. He has proved this indeed by his -repudiation of all attempts to embody in practice his proposed order of -voluntary nobility, the Samurai. Certain groups of young people actually -organized themselves upon the Rule that he had outlined, and it was this -that led him to see how entirely his ideal had been personal and -artistic rather than practical. Anyone at all familiar with religious -history and psychology will see how inevitably any such group would tend -to emphasize the Rule and the organization rather than the socially -constructive spirit for which the whole was framed, and how the -organization would itself separate from the collective life of the world -and become a new sect among the many sects. It was the same instinct -that led Emerson, Transcendental communist as he was, to look askance at -Brook Farm. It has been the want of an equal tact in eminent religious -minds that has made society a warfare of sect and opinion. - -When one tries to focus the nature of his appeal one recalls a passage -in one of his books where he sums up the ordinary mind of the world and -the function which all socialism bears to this mind: - - It is like a very distended human mind; it is without a - clear aim; it does not know except in the very vaguest terms - what it wants to do; it has impulses, it has fancies; it - begins and forgets. In addition, it is afflicted with a - division within itself that is strictly analogous to that - strange mental disorder which is known to psychologists as - multiple personality. It has no clear conception of the - whole of itself, it goes about forgetting its proper name - and address. Part of it thinks of itself as one great thing, - as, let us say, Germany; another thinks of itself as - Catholicism, another as the white race, or Judæa. At times - one might deem the whole confusion not so much a mind as - incurable dementia--a chaos of mental elements, haunted by - invincible and mutually incoherent fixed ideas.... In its - essence the socialistic movement amounts to this: it is an - attempt in this warring chaos of a collective mind to pull - itself together, to develop and establish a governing idea - of itself. It is the development of the collective - self-consciousness of humanity. - -Certainly the road to this can only be through a common understanding. -The willing and unwilling servitudes of men, the institutions of society -that place love and work in opposition to one another, the shibboleths -of party, the aggressive jingoisms of separate peoples, the immemorial -conspiracy by which men have upheld the existing fact, these things do -spring from the want of imagination, the want of energetic faith, the -want of mutual understanding. To this inner and personal problem Wells -has applied himself. Can life be ventilated, can the mass of men be -awakened to a sense of those laws of social gravitation and the -transmutation of energy by which life is proved a myriad-minded -organism, can the ever-growing sum of human experience and discovery -clear up the dark places within society and within man? Among those who -have set themselves to the secular solution of these questions--and I am -aware of the limits of any secular solution--there are few as effective -as Wells. - -Consider him in relation to a single concrete issue, the issue of -militarism: - - Expenditure upon preparation for war falls, roughly, into - two classes: there is expenditure upon things that have a - diminishing value, things that grow old-fashioned and wear - out, such as fortifications, ships, guns, and ammunition, - and expenditure upon things that have a permanent and even - growing value, such as organized technical research, - military and naval experiment, and the education and - increase of a highly trained class of war experts. - -And in _The Common Sense of Warfare_ he urges a lavish expenditure on -"education and training, upon laboratories and experimental stations, -upon chemical and physical research and all that makes knowledge and -leading." Separate the principle involved here from the issue it is -involved in, get the intention clear of the fact, and you find that he -is saying just the better sort of things that Matthew Arnold said. -Militarism granted, are you going to do military things or are you going -to make military things a stepping-stone toward the clarification of -thought, the training of men, the development of race-imagination? -Militarism has been to a large extent the impetus that has made the -Germans and the Japanese the trained, synthetic peoples they are. And -these very qualities are themselves in the end hostile to militarism. -Militarism considered in this sense is precisely what the General Strike -is in the idea of M. Georges Sorel: a myth, a thing that never comes to -pass, but which trains the general will by presenting it with a concrete -image toward which the will readily directs itself. Kipling, in the eyes -of the New Machiavelli, at least made the nation aware of what comes. - - All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, All along o' - doing things rather more or less. - -There is in this no defence of militarism. Granting the facts of -society, there is a way that accepts and secures them as they are and -another way of turning them into the service of the future, and a people -that has trained itself with reference to a particular issue has -virtually trained itself for all issues. - -But no one, I think, has measured the difficulties of real progress more -keenly than Wells has come to measure them. The further he has -penetrated into human nature the more alive he has become to these -difficulties. _The New Machiavelli_ is a modern _Rasselas_ that has no -happy valley in the end, and Remington passes from party to party, -penetrating inward from ideas to the better stuff of mankind, hoping to -embody his "white passion of statecraft," and in the end demonstrating -to himself the futility of all groups and parties alike. - -And as with parties, so with men. Consider that scene in _The Passionate -Friends_ where Stratton tries to explain in writing to his father what -he has been experiencing and why he must go away. He writes page after -page without expressing himself and at last, certain that he and his -father cannot come into touch, sends off a perfunctory note and receives -a perfunctory reply. "There are times," he adds, "when the -inexpressiveness of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to -me we are all asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still -cows who stand munching slowly in a field.... Why couldn't we and why -didn't we talk together!" - -That is the burden of his latest novel. By this touchstone he has come -to measure the possibility of that openness of mind, that mutual -understanding, that ventilation of life and thought through which alone -the Great State can exist. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A PERSONAL CHAPTER - - -I doubt if there are many living men of note who, a generation after -they are dead, will be so fully and easily "explained" as H.G. Wells. He -is a most personal and transparent writer, he is the effect of -conditions and forces which have existed for scarcely more than two -generations. But for these very reasons it is very difficult to see him -in perspective, and to explain him would be to explain the age in which -we live. Let me at least give certain facts and reflections about his -life written by Wells himself, a few years ago, in the introduction to a -Russian translation of his writings: - - I was born[1] in that queer indefinite class that we call in - England the middle class. I am not a bit aristocratic; I do - not know any of my ancestors beyond my grandparents, and - about them I do not know very much, because I am the - youngest son of my father and mother and their parents were - all dead before I was born. My mother was the daughter of an - innkeeper at a place called Midhurst, who supplied - post-horses to the coaches before the railways came; my - father was the son of the head gardener of Lord de Lisle at - Penshurst Castle, in Kent. They had various changes of - fortune and position; for most of his life my father kept a - little shop in a suburb of London, and eked out his - resources by playing a game called cricket, which is not - only a pastime, but a show which people will pay to see, and - which, therefore, affords a living to professional players. - His shop was unsuccessful, and my mother, who had been a - lady's maid, became, when I was twelve years old, - housekeeper in a large country house. I too was destined to - be a shopkeeper. I left school at thirteen for that purpose. - I was apprenticed first to a chemist, and, that proving - unsatisfactory, to a draper. But after a year or so it - became evident to me that the facilities that were and still - are increasing in England offered me better chances in life - than a shop and comparative illiteracy could do; and so I - struggled for and got various grants and scholarships that - enabled me to study and take a degree in science and some - mediocre honors in the new and now great and growing - University of London.... After I had graduated I taught - biology for two or three years, and then became a - journalist.... I began first to write literary articles, - criticisms, and so forth, and presently short imaginative - stories in which I made use of the teeming suggestions of - modern science.... - -So much for the facts. The reflections are not less illuminating: - - The literary life is one of the modern forms of adventure. - Success with a book--even such a commercially modest success - as mine has been--means in the English-speaking world not - merely a moderate financial independence, but the utmost - freedom of movement and intercourse. A poor man is lifted - out of his narrow circumstances into familiar and - unrestrained intercourse with a great variety of people. He - sees the world; if his work excites interest, he meets - philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, - professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, the - great, and he may make such use of them as he can. He finds - himself no longer reading in books and papers, but hearing - and touching at first hand the big questions that sway men, - the initiatives that shape human affairs.... To be a - literary artist is to want to render one's impressions of - the things about one. Life has interested me enormously and - filled me with ideas and associations I want to present - again. I have liked life and like it more and more. The days - in the shop and the servants' hall, the straitened struggles - of my early manhood, have stored me with vivid memories that - illuminate and help me to appreciate all the wider vistas of - my later social experiences. I have friends and intimates - now at almost every social level, from that of a peer to - that of a pauper, and I find my sympathies and curiosities - stretching like a thin spider's web from top to bottom of - the social tangle. I count that wide social range one of the - most fortunate accidents of my life, and another is that I - am of a diffident and ineffectual presence, unpunctual, - fitful, and easily bored by other than literary effort; so - that I am not tempted to cut a figure in the world and - abandon that work of observing and writing which is my - proper business in it. - -This candid and exact statement enables us to see just how far, in -matters of fact, experience and belief, the autobiographical motive has -entered his writings. It would be possible to show how inevitably such -an ideal as that of the New Republican Samurai arose from such a life; -how much that conscious and deliberate insistence on personal efficiency -and orderly ways, that repudiation of mental confusion, sluggishness, -and sentiment may figure as a kind of stepping-stone from the world of -Kipps and Polly to the world of Remington and Trafford; how a -self-wrought scientific education would form the basis of an ideal of -aristocracy rising from it; and how the motto "There is no Being but -Becoming" would express its own constant desertion of levels achieved, -its own pressing upward to levels equally transient. Just as the -"democratic person" of Whitman raises his own fervent, chaotic, and -standardless experience into an ideal, so also the ideal of Wells is -nothing else than the projection of his own experimental opportunism. It -is impossible in discussing Wells to ignore this social ascent; for in -England a man passes from one stratum to another only by virtue of a -certain lack of substantiality, a power to disencumber himself, to shed -customs and affections and all the densenesses and coagulations which -mark each grade in that closely defined social hierarchy. The world of -shopkeeping in England is a world girt about with immemorial -subjections; it is, one might say, a moss-covered world; and to shake -oneself loose from it is to become a rolling stone, a drifting and -unsettled, a detached and acutely personal, individual. It is to pass -from a certain confined social maturity, a confused mellowness, into a -world wholly adventurous and critical, into a freedom which achieves -itself at the expense of solidity and warmth. In Wells, for instance, -the sense of the soil is wholly supplanted by the sense of machinery. -His evolution has been the reverse of the usual evolution from what -Bacon called the _lumen siccum_ to the _lumen humidum_, from the dry -light to the light that is drenched in customs and affections. Instead -of growing mellower, he has grown more and more fluid and electric, in -direct ratio to the growing width of his social horizon. - -To prove this one has only to consider his novels. There was a time when -he had in common with Dickens and De Foe the quality they have in common -with one another--the quality of homeliness. He drew the little world he -knew well, the limited and lovable world of small folk. Mr. Hoopdriver, -Delia the chambermaid, Kipps and Ann Pornick--a score of these helpless, -grown-up little children he pictured with a radiant affection, tempering -the wind to the shorn lamb. It is more in the nature of his later -thought to see poverty as a wasteful rather than a cruel thing, even -though he may not have approached the harsh realism of Bernard Shaw's -observation: "I have never had any feeling about the English working -classes except a desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible -people." - -Certainly he has not experienced any other world in quite this way. "I -count that wide social range one of the most fortunate accidents in my -life," he says. Accidental one feels it to be, as of a man inhabiting -the great world by virtue of sheer talent, whose nature has not in any -sense settled there. His philosophy and his socialism are outgrowths of -his own experience; they erect into reasons and theories the nature of a -life which is not at home, and which easily unburdens itself of all that -seems insensate because it is unfamiliar. To be a socialist at all is to -have accustomed oneself, through necessity or imagination, to a certain -detachment from a great many of the familiar, lovable, encumbering, -delightful stupidities of the world. And Wells has travelled up and down -through time and space too much to have any great regard for the -present. "I have come to be, I am afraid," he says, in _The Future in -America,_ "even a little insensitive to fine immediate things through -this anticipatory habit.... There are times indeed when it makes life -seem so transparent and flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an -equally transitory series of consequences----." His hold upon the -present is so far from inevitable that _The New Machiavelli_ and -_Marriage_, realistic as they are, are represented as being written some -years hence, our own time already appearing retrospectively in them. As -little as Faust has he been tempted to call out upon the passing moment. -His main characters drift through this period of time, substantial -themselves but with a background of substantialities, in a way that -recalls Paolo and Francesca looming out of the phantom cloud-procession -of the _Inferno_. - -Into this larger world, in short, he has carried with him only himself -and his own story. We live in two worlds--the primary world of vivid -personal realities and the secondary world of our human background. It -is the secondary world that anchors us in time and space; the primary -world we carry with us as part of ourselves. In Wells there is no -secondary world, no human background, no sense of abiding relations. It -is his philosophy of life and the quality of his men and women to be -experimental in a plastic scheme. His range is very small: the same -figures reappear constantly. There is the Wells hero,--Lewisham, Capes, -Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford, Stratton; there is the Wells heroine, -Ann Veronica, Isabel, Marjorie, Lady Mary; there is the ineffectual -woman with whom the Wells hero becomes entangled, Capes's first wife, -Marion, Margaret; there is the ineffectual man with whom the Wells -heroine becomes entangled, Magnet, Manning. To strike the lowest common -denominator in this tangle is inevitably to arrive once more, one feels, -in the region of personal experience. Although it cannot be said that -his minor characters are lacking in reality, they are certainly -intellectual portraits, and outside the limits of subjective experience. -The principal men and women of Wells move through a world seen, but -hardly a world felt. - -This want of social background makes his characters as detached from the -familiar earth as chessmen are detached from a chessboard. They never -seem to be, like most men and women either in life or fiction, like the -Kipps and Polly of his own earlier fiction, vegetable growths. Heredity, -fatality, the soil are not mainly operating forces with them. They are -creatures of intelligence and free will, freely and intelligently making -and moulding themselves and their circumstances. Human nature in Wells -is very largely a sheer thing, a thing that begins with itself, answers -for itself, lives at first hand. That is the personal quality of the man -himself, and it follows that the quality is wholly convincing only where -what I have called his primary world is concerned: the rest of the world -he builds up by intelligent observation and the literary talent of -creating human stuff out of whole cloth. - -In this he is well served by his antipathies. His belief in personal -self-determinism is so strong that he instinctively sees the vegetative -nature of the ordinary life as a kind of moral slough, a state of being -detestably without initiative, faith, energy, will. And consequently the -Normal Social Life against which he is always tilting is a life seen by -him with all the vividness of an intense personal and philosophical -animosity. Consider, for example, the portraits of Mr. Pope and Mr. -Stanley, survivals in a sense of the old Sir Roger de Coverley type, -with all the sweetness gone out of it and only the odious qualities -left, the domineering, vain, proprietary qualities. They exist mainly as -symbols of everything that enlightened and right-minded daughters will -not put up with; they come as near to being the foils of right destiny -as Wells will ever allow; they sum up everything that stands in the way -of man's free will. They are mercilessly dealt with, and they are -memorable figures. - -Without this antipathy, and outside his own primary world, he pretty -generally fails. One recalls, for example, old Mrs. Trafford in -_Marriage,_ evidently intended to be his ideal of the enlightened woman -grown old. She is a pale, dimly perfect, automatically wise old lady -carved out of wood. Trafford himself, one feels, is a chip of the same -block. Trafford obviously is not Wells himself, as Ponderevo and -Remington are Wells: he is the Utopian counterpart of these persons, at -least in the matter that concerns Wells most, the matter of sex. One -could show that, aside from the six or eight chief characters who in -their various ways express the nature and experience of Wells himself, -he succeeds in his portraiture only where no demand is made on his -sympathies. - -The same absence of social background which throws into relief his -primary world of characters throws into relief also the primary facts of -human nature. Trafford and Marjorie, the most conventionally placed of -his characters, pull up stakes, leave their children, and go to -Labrador. His other men and women are even more independent of the -social network. Consequently they are independent of that chain of -relationships--friendship, affection, minor obligations--which mitigate, -subdue, soften the primary motives of most people. They are almost -startlingly physical. Their instincts are as sure as those of cavemen, -and their conduct as direct. They are as clear about the essential -matter of love as ever Schopenhauer was, or Adam and Eve, and they stand -out as sharply against the embarrassments and secrecies of the usual -world as a volcanic rock stands out against a tropical landscape. In -this without doubt they exhibit the fact that socialism does and will -actually alter human nature, and that in the instinctive socialist human -nature is already altered. For socialism inflexibly militates against -those more sentimental aspects of love, love of country as such, the -paternal and feudal principles, love of property, and the like, which -belong properly to the intelligence, all those functions where love, in -a majority of cases, goes wrong, blunders, stultifies growth, confuses -the public design of the world. As a result it throws love into relief, -emphasizes the nature of sex and the _raison d'être_ of reproduction; -makes it, to use a favorite word of Wells, stark. - -I pause at this word. It is one of those talismanic words one finds -perpetually cropping up in the writings of men who have a marked point -of view, words that express deep and abiding preferences and often set -the key of an entire philosophy. "I like bare things," says George -Ponderevo, in _Tono-Bungay;_ "stripped things, plain, austere, and -continent things, fine lines and cold colors." That is the gesture of an -artistic mind which repudiates, with an impatient sharpness, all the -entanglements of the ordinary world. It is Oriental, it is Japanese, it -is anything you like; but if it is English also it marks an entirely new -regime. Without question it is English, and American as well. Thousands -of people share that preference, and were economic socialism to go by -the board we should still have to reckon with the progress of -socialistic human nature. It detaches itself each day a little more from -property, locality, and the hope of reward; it ceases to be -necessitarian, it becomes voluntary; it relegates drudgery to mechanical -devices; it releases the individual to a sense of his own coöperative -and contributory place in the scheme of a more orderly future. -Relatively speaking, the tendency of our kind is all away from luxury, -sloth, complacency, confusion, ignorance, filth, heat, proprietorship, -and all in the direction of light, austerity, agility, intelligence, -coolness, athletic energy, understanding, cleanliness, order, "bare -things, fine lines, and cold colors." - -That is evident, and it is equally evident that the personal character -and career of Wells are emblematic of this entire tendency. He has -unravelled himself by science, talent, and vigor out of "lower middle -class" Victorianism. Is it strange that he has adopted as a kind of -sacred image that light, free, and charming product of our decade, the -aeroplane, sprung as it is out of the wreckage, out of the secret -beginnings, the confused muscularities, the effort and smoke of the most -chaotic of all centuries, like a blade of exquisitely tempered and -chased steel which justifies everything that was most laborious and -unsightly in the forge? - -But considered as a sacred image the aeroplane has its limitations. So -also, considered as an exponent of fife, has Wells. Philosophy and -religion, as he presents them, are simply what he chooses to think and -feel, what he has been led by his own experience to think and feel. His -main experience has been the experience of disentangling himself, and -therefore life, reflected from within himself, is to him a thing also -which disentangles itself and grows ever more free, simple, and lucid. -In the mind of Wells this process, has taken on an altogether mystical, -transcendental significance, a religious aspect. Possible as that is to -himself personally, how far can it be taken as an argument to the human -soul? How does it qualify him as a teacher, a public voice, a thinker -for the mass of men? How does the conception of life purely as a process -relate itself to human experience? - -Applied to history, it seems to fail. Wells is devoid of historical -imagination. In his portrait of Margaret in _The New Machiavelli_ he has -properly, though somewhat harshly, repudiated what ordinarily passes for -culture. But had he himself possessed the reality of what seems to him -simply "living at second hand," he would never have been led to refer to -Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Dürer as "pathetically reaching out, as it -were, with empty desirous hands toward the unborn possibilities of the -engineer." That is a very interesting and a very extraordinary -statement, and it is quite true that each of these men would have -rejoiced in the engineering possibilities of our time. But how much of -the soul of Michael Angelo, for example, was involved in engineering? -How far can his hands be said to have been "empty" for the want of scope -in engineering? The power and the function of Michael Angelo can rightly -be seen, not in relation to any sort of social or mechanical process, -but in relation to things that are permanent in human nature, in -relation to just those matters included in the admonition of Wells to -"reject all such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, and Beauty -and hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Again, consider a somewhat similar -reference to Marcus Aurelius, of which the gist is that the author of -the _Meditations_ was, actually in consequence of his own character, the -father of one of the worst rulers the world has known. The implication -here is that the study of self-perfection in the father was -complementary to, if not responsible for, the social impotence and -blindness of the son. Instead of dedicating himself to the static ideal -of personal character, the assumption seems to be, Marcus Aurelius ought -to have lived exclusively in his function as ruler and father. He -studied himself, not as a ruler but as a man, and the social process had -its revenge on his line. To Wells, in a word, the static elements of -character and the study of perfection are not to be distinguished from -vicious self-consequence. - -Consider also a recent passage in which he has given a general -impression of literature: - - It seems to me more and more as I live longer that most - poetry and most literature and particularly the literature - of the past is discordant with the vastness and variety, the - reserves and resources and recuperations of life as we live - it to-day. It is the expression of life under cruder and - more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who loved - and hated more naively, aged sooner, and died younger than - we do. Solitary persons and single events dominated them as - they do not dominate us. - -To appreciate this meditation one has to remember the character and -career which led to the writing of it. But so far as we others are -concerned, how far can the assumption it rests upon be considered valid, -the assumption of a process that sweeps men on and leads human nature, -as it were, progressively to shed itself? Dr. Johnson, for example, was -a man the conditions of whose life were crude and rigid in the extreme, -a man singularly dominated by solitary persons and single events, but is -his conversation discordant with the variety, the "reserves, resources, -and recuperations of life as we live it to-day"? I can well understand -this feeling. To pass directly from the thin, tentative, exhilarating, -expansive air of our own time into the presence of that funny, stuffy, -cocksure, pompous old man is to receive a preposterous shock. But having -come to laugh, one stops with a very different sensation. The depths of -personality and wisdom that exist there take on a disconcerting -significance in relation to contemporary pragmatism. The mass of men -veer about; far-separated epochs have their elective affinities, and if -anything about the future is plain it is that this, that, and the other -generation will find in Dr. Johnson a strangely premature contemporary. - -Wells has himself admitted this principle. To Plutarch, Rabelais, -Machiavelli he has paid his tribute. Hear what George Ponderevo has to -say about Plutarch in his recollections of Bladesover House: - - I found Langhorne's _Plutarch_ too, I remember, on those - shelves. It seems queer to me now to think that I acquired - pride and self-respect, the idea of a state and the germ of - public spirit, in such a furtive fashion; queer, too, that - it should rest with an old Greek, dead these eighteen - hundred years, to teach me that. - -Considering what part the notion of a state plays in his range of ideas, -that is a remarkable confession. But why stop with statecraft? The human -mind could not, in all epochs, have established permanent ideals of -statecraft without permanent ideals of a more strictly personal kind. - -The truth is that Wells, for all that he has passed outside the -economics of socialism, is really bounded by the circle of ideas which -produced them. The typical Marxian, the concentrated Marxian, will tell -you that life is summed up in the theory of value, and that the only -true thing is economic determinism. Measuring all thought by that -criterion, he finds Dante and Shakespeare unintelligible and offensive -gibberish, and will scent the trail of the capitalist in Grimm's Fairy -Tales. That is the crude form in which exclusive socialism presents -itself. To say that "the fundamental nature of life is a tissue and -succession of births" is merely a refinement of this. It is true, just -as the economic determinism of Marx on the whole is true. But the world -is full of a number of things; or rather it is the business of a -reasonable mind to see it in a number of ways at once. Because there is -a Will to Live and a Will to Power, because things grow and continue to -grow, that does not explain love, or pain, or friendship, or music, or -poetry, or indeed life. Life is a tangle, a tangle which every socialist -must feel to be disentangling itself; but it is also a riddle, and on -that point socialism has nothing to say at all. - -It is in presenting life wholly as a tangle and not at all as a riddle -that the philosophy and religion of Wells appear so inadequate. Could -Wells write a poem? one asks oneself, and the question is full of -meaning. There is nothing to suggest that at any moment of his life he -has felt this impulse, which has been the normal thing in English -authors. "Modern poetry, with an exception or so," he remarks somewhere, -and for all his writings reveal of him he might have said poetry as a -whole, "does not signify at all." It is the same with regard to music, -art, external nature. He is not wanting in the plastic sense: his -writings are filled with picturesque groupings, figures cut in outline -against a sunset, masses of machinery in the glare of the forge, things -that suggest the etcher's eye. But they are curiously impersonal. -Consider, for example, his description of Worms Cathedral: - - It rises over this green and flowery peace, a towering, - lithe, light brown, sunlit, easy thing, as unconsciously and - irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in the evening glow - under a press of canvas. - -You cannot doubt that he has felt a beauty in this, but the beauty he -feels is essentially the beauty of a piece of engineering; he is as -untouched by the strictly personal artistic and religious qualities of -this building, not to mention its connection with human history, as if -he had seen it through a telescope from another planet. It is not the -changeless riddle and partial solution of life for which this building -stands that stir in Wells the sense of beauty and meaning: it is the -mechanism, the process--his emotions gather about the physical result -which appears to justify these. - -_À chacun son infini_. - -There will always be some to whom the significance of things, the -meaning of any given present will seem to evaporate in this conception -of mankind as "permanently in transition." Reading those passages where -Wells has expressed the meaning life has for him, I feel much as I -should feel with regard to music if I heard a mass of Mozart played at -the rate of sixty beats a second, or, with regard to painting, if a -procession of Rembrandts were moved rapidly across my field of vision. -The music as a whole is a tissue and succession of sounds, the pictures -as a whole are a tissue and succession of colors. But that is not music, -that is not art. Nor is a tissue and succession of births life. - -But indeed nothing is easier than to reduce Wells to an absurdity. If he -implies anything at all he implies a "transvaluation of all values." It -remains to consider him from this point of view. - - -[Footnote 1: September 21, 1866.] - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE SPIRIT OF WELLS - - -In order to understand Wells at all one must grasp the fact that he -belongs to a type of mind which has long existed in European literature -but which is comparatively new in the English-speaking world, the type -of mind of the so-called "intellectual." He is an "intellectual" rather -than an artist; that is to say, he naturally grasps and interprets life -in the light of ideas rather than in the light of experience. - -To pass from a definition to an example, let me compare Wells in this -respect with the greatest and most typical figure of the opposite camp -in contemporary English fiction; I mean Joseph Conrad. This comparison -is all the more apt because just as much as Wells Conrad typifies the -spirit of "unrest" (a word he has almost made his own, so often does he -use it) which is the note of our age. Both of these novelists have -endeavored to express the spirit of unrest; both have suggested a way of -making it contributory to the attainment of an ideal. But how different -is their method, how different is their ideal! And roughly the -difference is this: that to Conrad the spirit of unrest is a personal -mood, a thing, as people used to say, between man and his Maker; whereas -to Wells the spirit of unrest is not a mood but a rationally explicable -frame of mind, a sense of restricted function, an issue to be fought out -not between man and nature but between man and society. In other words, -where Conrad's point of view is moral, Wells's point of view is social; -and whereas in Conrad the spirit of unrest can only be appeased by -holding fast to certain simple instinctive moral principles, integrity, -honor, loyalty, etc., contributing in this way to the ideal of personal -character, the spirit of unrest in Wells is to be appeased by working -through the established fact, by altering the environment in which man -lives, contributing in this way to the ideal of a great society of which -personal character is at once the essence and the product. - -In the end, of course, both these views of life come to the same thing, -for you cannot have a great society which is not composed of greatly -living individuals, or vice versa. But practically there is a world of -difference between them, according as any given mind emphasizes the one -or the other. This difference, I say, is the difference between life -approached through experience and life approached through ideas. And -when we penetrate behind these points of view we find that they are -determined very largely by the characters and modes of living of the men -who hold them. That explains the vital importance in literary criticism -of knowing something about the man one is discussing, as distinguished -from the work of his brain pure and simple. There is a reason why the -intellectualist point of view occurs as a rule in men who have -habitually lived the delocalized, detached, and comparatively -depersonalized life of cities, while men of the soil, of the sea, of the -elements, men, so to speak, of intensive experience, novelists like -Conrad or Tolstoy or Hardy, are fundamentally non-intellectual, -pessimistic, and moral. - -And this explains the natural opposition between Conrad and Wells. Aside -from the original bent of his mind, the intensive quality of Conrad's -experience--an experience of ships and the minute, simple, personal, -tragic life of ships, set off against the impersonal, appalling sea and -an always indifferent universe, a life remote from change, in which the -relations of things are in a peculiar sense abiding and in which only -one problem exists, the problem of character, imminent nature being kept -at bay only through the loyalty, integrity and grit of men--the -intensive quality of this experience, I say, acting upon an artistic -mind, would naturally tend to produce not only a bitterly profound -wisdom, but an equally profound contempt for the play of ideas, so -irresponsible in comparison, and for a view of the world based upon -ideas the real cost of which has never been counted in the face of -hunger, icy winds, storm and shipwreck, and the abysmal forces of -nature. Men who go down to the sea in ships have a right to say for -themselves (tempering the credulity of those who have remained at home) -that the intellectualist view of life is altogether too easy and too -glib. It is they who throw into relief the deep, obscure conviction of -the "plain man"--commonly the good man--that to endeavor to make life -conform with ideas is in some way to deprive the world of just those -elements which create character and to strike at an ideal forged through -immemorial suffering and effort. - -Merely to dismiss as dumb folly an all but universal contention of this -kind (no doubt in the back of people's minds when they say that -socialism, for instance, is "against human nature") is to beg the whole -question of intellectualism itself. For, if it could be conclusively -shown that any view of life not incidentally but by its nature -emasculated life and destroyed the roots of character, then of course, -no matter how rationally self-evident it might be and how much confusion -and suffering it might avert, it would never even justify its own reason -for being--it would never _succeed,_ the best part of human nature would -oppose it to the end of time and the intelligence itself would be -discredited. And indeed to the man of experience rather than the man of -ideas, just because of his rich humanity, just because he never passes -out of the personal range, belong the ideal things, morality, -philosophy, art. Like charity, these things "begin at home"; and -whenever (as in pragmatism, when pragmatism ceases to be a method and -claims to be an interpretation of life) they are approached not from the -side of experience but from the side of ideas they cease to have any -real substance. Morality has no substance when it springs from the mind -instead of the conscience, art when it appeals to the mind instead of -the perceptions; and as to philosophy, what is any scheme of things that -springs out of the head of a man who is not himself wise? It is a -certain condemnation of Bergson, for example, that he would never pass -muster in a group of old fishermen smoking their pipes on the end of a -pier. Not that they would be expected in any case to know what he was -talking about, but that his fibre so plainly is the fibre not of a wise -but of a clever man and that in everything, as Emerson said, you must -have a source higher than your tap. - -That is why, as it seems to me, Wells ought not to be considered from -any of these absolute standpoints. He has put before us not so much a -well-wrought body of artistic work, or a moral programme, or an -explanation of life--words quite out of place in connection with -him--as a certain new spirit, filled with all sorts of puzzled -intimations of a new beauty and even a new religion to be generated out -of a new order of things that is only glimpsed at present. And the point -I should like to make about this spirit is that it is entirely -irrelevant to the values of life as we know them, but that it may in the -end prove to have contributed to an altogether fresh basis for human -values. - -To illustrate what I mean by this irrelevance as regards present values -and this possibility as regards future values let me turn to that long -brilliant passage in _The New Machiavelli_ where Remington goes from -club to club, passing in review the spiritual possibilities of each -political party, and finds nothing but a desolation of triviality, -pomposity, confusion, and "utterly damned old men." Consider the -contempt and hopelessness that fill his mind. One has to forget entirely -the ordinary man's view of politics, sincerely held as it is; one has to -think of politics as a means of straightening out and re-engendering a -whole world of confused anguish before one can see any justification for -this righteous wit and savage indignation against the dulness of -leaders. Considered by the current values of life in which politics are -regarded as an effect of man's incompetence rather than as a cause of -his virtue, treated intensively, as a novelist of experience rather than -of ideas would have treated them, in what a different light each of -these "utterly damned old men" would appear, each one a tiny epic of -tragic and comic efforts, disappointments, misconceptions, providing one -in the end with how much of an excuse for blame, ridicule or contempt! -Everything indeed depends upon where a given mind chooses to lay -emphasis. In this scene Wells has judged everything by his ideal of a -great society, just as Conrad, faced with the same material, would have -judged everything by his ideal of personal character. Conrad would have -used those men to give us an understanding of life as it is, whereas -Wells has used them simply to throw into relief his idea of what life -ought to be. Conrad would have created a work of art, illustrated a -moral programme, and interpreted life. Wells, admittedly a clever -caricaturist, only rises above the level of a clever caricaturist -according as we accept the validity of his ideal and share the spirit in -which he writes. Like many children of light, Wells is not wise in his -own generation. But perhaps another generation will justify him. - -If Wells had lingered in these deep realities of his own time he would -have been a greater artist. And indeed so marked has been his own -development away from the world of ideas and toward the world of -experience that were he to begin afresh it is likely that he would -resemble the type of novelist of which I have taken Conrad as an example -far more than his former self. Of socialism he has abandoned all the -theories and most of the schemes and retained only the frame of mind. He -has taken year by year a more intensive view of life, he has grown too -conscious of the inertia that impedes ideas and the overwhelming -immediacies of the actual world to be called glib and easy any more. -"How little and feeble is the life of man, a thing of chances, -preposterously unable to find the will to realize even the most timid of -its dreams!" he says in one of his latest novels, and if he has kept -alive his faith in ideas, who will deny that he has begun to count the -cost of it? - -From this side, I think, it is no longer possible for anyone to assail -him, so frankly has he given hostages to "actuality." It is from the -other side, his own side, and especially in the light of his own ideal, -that an answer is required for the slackness which has come upon him and -which is very marked in his recent novels. Is it possible to ignore the -fact that since he wrote _The New Machiavelli_ the work of Wells has -lived on its capital and lost the passionate curiosity and personal -conviction that made him the force he was in our epoch? Always unwilling -to check his talent and publish only the results of his genuine mental -progress, he has become, in spite of splendid moments, too much of the -common professional novelist, dealing with levels and phases of life -where he obviously does not belong, astray from his own natural point of -intense contact with things. I want to avoid the usual habit of critics -who think it their business to put authors in their places, but is it -not a fact that Wells understands the Kippses and Pollys far better than -the lords and ladies of England and that he was at his best in -elaborating a bridge--a wonderful visionary bridge--between the little -world of dumb routine and the great world of spacious initiatives? -Carlyle with his Great Man theory, forged out of his own travail and -weakness, in the end fell on his knees before the illusion of lordship. -Fifteen years ago one might have predicted the same future for the -Samurai of Wells, not because the Samurai are themselves equivocal but -because Wells is an Englishman. There so plainly to the English mind the -great gentlemen are, the men who can and the men who never do! Towards -this Circe of the English imagination Wells has travelled with a fatal -consistency, and the result to be foreseen was first of all fatuity and -in the end extinction. - -After he had written _The New Machiavelli_ Wells had reached a point -where his ideas, in order to be saved, had to be rescued from himself. -To believe that life can be straightened out by the intelligence is -necessarily to have "travelled light," in a measure; too much experience -is the end of that frame of mind. In _Tono-Bungay_ and _The New -Machiavelli_ ideas and experience met in a certain invisible point ---that is the marvel which has made these books unique and, I suppose, -permanent; the greatest possible faith in ideas was united with the -greatest possible grasp of everything that impedes them. One had -therefore a sense of tragic struggle, in which the whole life of our -time was caught up and fiercely wrestled with; one had the feeling that -here was the greatest moment in the life of a writer suddenly become -great. But with these books some secret virtue seems to have passed out -of Wells. Since then his ideas have been hardly more than a perfunctory -repetition and his experience more and more remote and unreal; and -looking back one seems to discover something highly symbolic in the -tragical conquest of ideas by passion with which _The New Machiavelli_ -concludes. - -But indeed Wells was always a man whose ideas were greater than himself. -"I stumble and flounder," says George Ponderevo, "but I know that over -all these merry immediate things, there are other things that are great -and serene, very high, beautiful things--the reality. I haven't got it, -but it's there nevertheless. I'm a spiritual guttersnipe in love with -unimaginable goddesses." And just for this reason the spirit which in -his great days possessed him is independent of any fate that may befall -Wells himself and his art. More than this, by frankly and fully testing -his ideas in a life-and-death struggle with reality he has, even at the -cost of his own shipwreck, removed from the cause of ideas the greatest -reproach which has always been brought against it. Revolutionists, -doctrinaires, idealogues have notoriously failed to test the validity of -their ideas even in the face of their own private passions and -confusions; they have rarely considered for a moment that their own -lives totally unfit them for supposing that men are naturally good and -that to make reason prevail is one of the simplest operations in the -world. Wells, on the other hand, has consistently shown that theory -divorced from practice is a mode of charlatanism, that "love and fine -thinking" must go together, and that precisely because of man's -individual incapacity to live, as things are, with equal honesty the -life of ideas and the life of experience, the cause he has at heart must -be taken out of the hands of the individual and made to form a common -impersonal will and purpose in the mind of the race as a whole. - - * * * * * - -Intellectualism, in fact, the view that life can be determined by ideas -(and of this socialism is the essence) if it can be justified at all has -to be justified in the face of all current human values. It is based on -an assumption, a grand and generous assumption, I maintain, and one that -has to take what is called a sporting chance with all the odds against -it. This assumption is, that on the whole human nature can be trusted to -take care of itself while the surplus energy of life, commonly absorbed -in the struggle against incapacity, sloth, perversity, and disorder -("original sin," to sum it all up), is released for the organization of -a better scheme for mankind; and further, that this better scheme, -acting on a race naturally capable of a richer and fuller life, will -have the effect on men as a whole that re-environing has on any cramped, -ill-nourished, unventilated organism, and that art, religion, morals -(all that makes up the substance and meaning of life) instead of being -checked and blighted in the process will in the end, strong enough to -bear transplantation, be re-engendered on a finer and freer basis. This, -in a word, is the contention of the intellectual, a splendid gambler's -chance, on which the future rests, and to which people have committed -themselves more than they know. It is a bridge thrown out across the -void, resting at one end on the good intentions of mankind and relying -at the other upon mankind's fulfilling those good intentions. It is -based like every great enterprise of the modern world upon credit, and -its only security is the fact that men thus far and on the whole have -measured up to each enlargement of their freedom and responsibility. - -To feel the force of this one has to think of the world as a world. Just -here has been the office of socialism, to show that society is a -colossal machine of which we are all parts and that men in the most -exact sense are members one of another. In the intellectualist scheme of -things that mathematical proof has to come first; it has to take root -and bury itself and become the second nature of humankind before the new -world of instinct can spring out of it and come to blossom. - -That has been the office of socialism, and just so far as that proof has -been established socialism has played its part. Now the point I want to -make about Wells is that in him one sees already in an almost precocious -form the second stage of this process. In him this new world of -intelligence is already exuberant with instinct; the social machine has -become a personality; that cold abstraction the world has become in his -hands a throbbing, breathing, living thing, as alive, awake, aware of -itself, as engaging, adventurous, free, critical, well-primed, -continent, and all-of-a-piece as a strong man running a race. People -never felt nature as a personality before Wordsworth showed them that it -was, or a locomotive before Kipling wrote _McAndrew's Hymn_; and it -seems to me that Wells has done for the social organism very much what -Wordsworth did for nature, discovering in a thing previously felt to be -inanimate a matter for art and a basis for religious emotion. - -But if the world is a personality it is a very stupid, sluggish, -unawakened personality, differing from nature in this respect, that we -ourselves compose the whole of it and have it in our hands to do what we -will with it. It has always been out of joint, a great slipshod -Leviathan, at sixes and sevens, invertebrate and fungus-brained. Just so -is the average man, sunk in routine, oppressed with microscopic tasks -that give birth one to another, his stomach at war with his head, his -legs unwilling to exercise him, resentful of his own capacity not to be -dull. But certain happier moments bring him an exuberant quickened life -in which routine tasks fall nimbly from his fingers and he is aware of a -wide, humorous, generous, enlightened vision of things; he pulls himself -together, his parts reinforce one another, his mind wakens, his heart -opens, his fancy stirs, he is all generosity and happiness, capable of -anything that is disinterested, fine, and becoming to a free man. It is -in these moments that individual men have done all the things which make -up the real history of this planet. - -If individual men are capable of this amazing experience, then why not -the world? That is the spirited question Wells has propounded in a -hundred different forms, in his earlier, more theoretical, and more -optimistic writings suggesting that society as a whole should turn over -a new leaf, and even picturing it as doing so, in his later work, more -experienced and less hopeful but with a compensating fervor, picturing -the attempt of delegated individuals to act on society's behalf. I do -not wish at this point to become pious and solemn in tone; that would be -inept in connection with Wells. But I do wish to make it plain that if -he is devoid of those grander traits which spring from the sense of -being "tenon'd and mortised" upon something beyond change, if his -strength lies wholly in his intelligence, the intelligence itself in -Wells is an amazing organ, a troubled and rapturous organ, an organ as -visionary and sensitive as the soul of a Christian saint. That is why I -have said that in him the new world, governed by the intelligence, is -already exuberant with instinct; and anyone who doubts that he has -lavished a very genuine religious instinct upon the social process -itself and in the dream of a society free, magnanimous and seemly, -should turn to the passage where he describes Machiavelli, after the -heat and pettiness of the day, retiring into his chamber alone, putting -on his dress of ceremony and sitting down before his table in the -presence of that magnificent thought. - -The mass of men have acted more consistently than they know on the -principle that the whole world is nothing in comparison with one soul, -for their politics and economic science, solemn as they appear, are as -frivolous and secondary as if they actually did believe fervently that -heaven is their true home and the world a bad business of little -account. In all that concerns private virtue and the private life, in -religion, poetry, their lawyer, their doctor, their broker, they exact -the last degree of excellence and efficiency, but they trust to the -blind enterprise of individual men to push mankind chaotically forward -little by little. We are in fact so wonderfully made that if our grocer -tells us in the morning that he has no fresh eggs he throws us into a -deeper despondency than six readings of the _Inferno_ could ever do. And -that explains why so few people can extend themselves imaginatively into -the greater circles that surround them, why, on the social plane, we -never think of demanding wisdom from politicians, why we never dream of -remembering that they should belong to the august family of Plutarch, -why it is not the profound views of wise men and the brilliant -discoveries of science that fill the newspapers, but the incredibly -banal remarks of this president and that prime minister, why presidents -and prime ministers in a society that lives from hand to mouth are so -much more important than poets and prophets, and why statesmanship has -gathered about itself a literature so incomparably trivial and dull. -Socialists, indeed, just because they alone are serious about the world, -are apt to be the least mundane in spirit; they are, as Wells has -himself said, "other-worldly" about the world itself. - -But indeed I should make a mistake were I to over-stress the solemnities -that underlie the spirit of Wells. In tone he is more profane than -sacred, that is to say he is a realist. He wants a world thrillingly -alive, curious, exercised, magnanimous, with all its dim corners lighted -up, shaken out of its dulness and complacency, keen, elastic, tempered -like a fine blade--the counterpart on a grand scale of what he most -admires in the individual. "Stephen," says Lady Mary in _The Passionate -Friends_, "promise me. Whatever you become, you promise and swear here -and now never to be grey and grubby, never to be humpy and snuffy, never -to be respectable and modest and dull and a little fat, like--like -everybody." And in _First and Last Things_ he gives the other side of -the medal: - - Much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to - taste life. I am not happy until I have done and felt - things. I want to get as near as I can to the thrill of a - dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air. - And not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do I - want to understand. I want to know something of the jolly - wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its - wash. I want to get the fine quintessence of that. - -It stands to reason that a spirit of this kind does not consort with any -pre-arranged pocket ground-plan, so to speak, of the world as it should -be. Of this, to be sure, he is often accused, and he has given us a -humorous version of his Utopia as it may appear to certain of his -contemporaries: - - Mr. G.K. Chesterton mocks valiantly and passionately, I - know, against an oppressive and obstinately recurrent - anticipation of himself in Socialist hands, hair clipped, - meals of a strictly hygienic description at regular hours, a - fine for laughing, not that he would want to laugh, and - austere exercises in several of the more metallic virtues - daily. Mr. Max Beerbohm's conception is rather in the nature - of a nightmare, a hopeless, horrid, frozen flight from the - pursuit of Mr. Sidney Webb and myself, both of us short, - inelegant men, but for all that terribly resolute, - indefatigable, incessant to capture him, to drag him off to - a mechanical Utopia, and then to take his thumb-mark and his - name, number him distinctly in indelible ink, and let him - loose (under inspection) in a world of great round lakes of - blue lime-water and vistas of white sanitary tiling. - -That is a not unjust parody of Wells's Utopia as it would be if he had -remained in the circle of his Fabian friends. Being what he is, it bears -much the same relation to his idea as that world of harps and crowns and -milk and honey bore in the mediæval imagination to the idea of heaven. -You have to mingle these notions with your experience of human hearts to -realize the inadequacy of symbols. Wells, I suspect, has a fondness for -white sanitary tiling, just as plenty of good Christians have found in -milk and honey a foretaste of unthinkable felicity; but when it comes to -the actual architecture and domestic arrangements of paradise they are -both quite willing to take on trust the accommodating good will of God -and man. Somehow or other, by the time we have got there, we shall not -find it monotonous--to this, at least, one's faith, whatever it may be, -ought to be equal. - -I have given too few quotations in this book, and now I have left it to -a point where if I give any at all it must be to illustrate less the art -of Wells as a thing by itself than a train of thought. He is at his best -in brief scenes, where all his gifts of humor, satire, characterization -and phrase come to a head (think, for example, of Aunt Plessington's -speech, the funeral of Mr. Polly's father, the pages dealing with Cousin -Nicodemus Frapp's house-hold, and the somewhat prolonged episode of the -"reet Staffordshire" cousins in _The New Machiavelli_); and indeed, so -insistent is his point of view that in every one of these episodes one -finds in opposition the irrepressible new world of Wells and the -stagnant world out of which it springs. One of the best of these scenes, -luckily, is brief and connected enough to be quoted as a whole. It is a -picture of the tea-hour in the servants' hall at Bladesover House. - - I sat among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian - chair, trying to exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great - rocks, and my mother sat with an eye upon me, resolute to - suppress the slightest manifestation of vitality. It was - hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these rather - over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful - restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be - thrust in among their dignities. - - Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat - it out perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the - same. - - "Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask. "Sugar, - Mrs. Latude-Fernay?" - - The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They - say," she would begin, issuing her proclamation--at least - half her sentences began "they say"--"sugar is fatt-an-ing, - nowadays. Many of the best people do not take it at all." - - "Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits, intelligently. - - "Not with anaything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of - crushing repartee, and drank. - - "What won't they say next?" said Miss Fison. - - "They do say such things!" said Mrs. Booch. - - "They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors - are not recomm-an-ding it now." - - My Mother: "No, ma'am?" - - Mrs. Mackridge: "No, ma'am." - - Then, to the table at large: "Poor Sir Roderick, before he - died, consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have - sometimes fancied it may have hastened his end." - - This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner - and a pause was considered due to the sacred memory of Sir - Roderick. - - "George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!" - - Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favorite piece - from her repertoire. "The evenings are drawing out nicely," - she would say, or if the season was decadent, "How the - evenings draw in!" It was an invaluable remark to her; I do - not know how she would have got along without it. - - My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would - always consider it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and - regard the evening in the act of elongation or contraction, - whichever phase it might be. - - A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or - shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. - -There is, I think, a special sort of connection between Wells and -America; and there are times when it seems to me that were the spirit of -America suddenly to become critical of itself it would resemble nothing -in the world so much as the spirit of Wells magnified by many diameters. -His instincts are all as it were instincts of the intelligence; his -mind, like the American mind, is a disinherited mind, not connected with -tradition, thinking and acting _de novo_ because there is nothing to -prevent it from doing so. Perfectly American is his alertness, his -versatility, adaptability, his thorough-going pragmatism, perfectly -American are the disconcerting questions that he asks ("Is the Navy -_bright_?"). Perfectly American is his view of the traditional English -ideal of human nature--that strange compound of good intentions, homely -affection, stubborn strength, insensibility to ideas, irrational -self-sacrifice, domestic despotism, a strong sense of property in things -and people, stupidity, sweetness and confusion of mind--an ideal through -which it has been one of his never-failing delights to send electric -shocks. And indeed the type of character he has presented in his heroes, -in Remington, Trafford and Ponderevo, is a type to be found perhaps more -plentifully than elsewhere in American research bureaus, hospitals and -laboratories. He thinks and feels critically so many of the things -America lives and does unconsciously. Perhaps in this distinction lies -the immediate value of his criticism for us. - -For in his mind Americans can see themselves reflected in the light of -what they chiefly need, that synthetic motive without which a secular -and industrial race is as devoid of animating morality as a swarm of -flies. This want, most obvious on the political and economic plane, is -indeed fundamental. Wells has grasped it from many different angles but -never with more point than in his essay _The American Population_. -Consider this passage, where he takes as a text one of Arthur Brisbane's -editorials in the "New York Journal": - - It is the voice of the American tradition strained to the - utmost to make itself audible to the new world, and cracking - into italics and breaking into capitals with the strain. The - rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public - void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive - things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalizations, a - public which has carried the conception of freedom to its - logical extreme of entire individual detachment. These - telltale columns deal all with personality and the drama of - personal life. They witness to no interest but the interest - in intense individual experiences. The engagements, the love - affairs, the scandals of conspicuous people are given in - pitiless detail in articles adorned with vigorous portraits - and sensational pictorial comments. Even the eavesdroppers - who write this stuff strike the personal note, and their - heavily muscular portraits frown beside the initial letter. - Murders and crimes are worked up to the keenest pitch of - realization, and any new indelicacy in fashionable costume, - any new medical device or cure, any new dance or - athleticism, any new breach in the moral code, any novelty - in sea-bathing or the woman's seat on horse-back, or the - like, is given copious and moving illustration, stirring - headlines, and eloquent reprobation. There is a colored - supplement of knock-about fun, written chiefly in the quaint - dialect of the New York slums. It is a language from which - "th" has vanished, and it presents a world in which the - kicking by a mule of an endless succession of victims is an - inexhaustible joy to young and old. "Dat ole Maud!" There is - a smaller bale dealing with sport. In the advertisement - columns one finds nothing of books, nothing of art; but - great choice of bust developers, hair restorers, nervous - tonics, clothing sales, self-contained flats, and business - opportunities.... - - Individuality has, in fact, got home to itself, and, as - people say, taken off its frills.... The "New York - American" represents a clientèle to be counted by the - hundred thousand, manifestly with no other solicitudes, - just burning to live and living to burn. - -Now that is a very fair picture, not merely of popular America but of -the whole contemporary phase of popular civilization, uprooted from the -state of instinct, intensive experience and the immemorial immediacies -of duty and the soil. To the artist and the moralist it is a cause of -hopeless pessimism, as any civilization must be which has lost touch -with all its values and been rationalized to the point of anarchy. For -this there is only one salvation. If civilization has lost the faculty -of commanding itself and pulling itself together in its individual -aspect, it must pull itself together collectively. That essentially is -the fighting chance of intellectualism, the hope that, inasmuch as the -world has already lost touch with experience and committed itself to a -regime of ideas, by organizing this regime of ideas and by mechanizing -so far as possible the material aspect of things, the values of life can -be re-engendered on a fresh basis. From this follows the oft-repeated -phrase of Wells that the chief want of the American people is a "sense -of the state." For the peril and the hope of American life (granting -that, as things are, society must be brought into some kind of coherence -before morality, art and religion can once more attain any real meaning) -lies in the fact that while at present Americans are aware of themselves -only as isolated individuals they are unconsciously engaged in works of -an almost appalling significance for the future of society. A Trust is a -work of this kind, and whether it is to be a gigantic good or a gigantic -evil depends wholly upon whether its controlling minds are more -conscious of their individual or their social function. The mechanism of -society in America is already developed to a very high point; what is -wanting, and without this everything is wanting, is an understanding of -the right function of this mechanism. So much does it all depend upon -whether the financial mind can subdue itself to the greater mind of the -race. - -If the future is anywhere going to follow the lines that Wells has -suggested for it--and being an opportunist his aims are always in touch -with agreeable probabilities--it will most likely be in America. He has -lately given his idea of what the State should aim to be--"planned as -an electric traction system is planned, without reference to -pre-existing apparatus, upon scientific lines"; an idea remarkably of a -piece with the American imagination and one which the American -imagination is perfectly capable of translating into fact. American, -too, are the methods in which Wells has come to believe for bringing the -Great State into existence. His conviction is that socialism will come -through an enlightened individualism, outside the recognized -governmental institutions, and that the ostensible States will be -superseded virtually by informal centres of gravity quite independent of -them. America alone at present justifies this speculation. For the -centre of gravity in American affairs has always been extra-governmental, -and consistently in America where wealth gathers there also the -institutions of socialism spring into being. The rudiments of the -Socialist State, falsely based as they are but always tending to subvert -this false basis, are certainly to be found, if anywhere, in the -Rockefeller Institute, the Carnegie and Russell Sage Foundations, the -endowed universities and bureaus of research, and in the type of men -they breed. Consider the following passage from _The Passionate Friends_ -and the character of the American, Gidding, which is indicated in it: - - To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably - magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all - science, all knowledge, all philosophical and political - ideas, round about the habitable globe. His mind began - producing concrete projects as a firework being lit produces - sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" the most colossal of - printing and publishing projects, as a man might work out - the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was so - entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to - go on from the proposition that understanding was the - primary need of humanity to the systematic organization of - free publishing, exhaustive discussion, intellectual - stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacists - might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure. - - "Say, Stratton," he said, after a conversation that had - seemed to me half fantasy, "let's _do_ it." - -It is perfectly possible in fact that socialism will come into being -first of all under the form of Cecil Rhodes's dream, as a secret order -of millionaires "promoting" not their own aims but society itself. That -is one of the possibilities at least that lie in what Wells has called -the "gigantic childishness" of the American mind. - - - - - - INDEX - - - _America, The Future in_ - America, Wells and - _American Population, The_ - _Ann Veronica_ - _Anticipations_ - Arnold, Matthew - - Bacon - Beerbohm, Max - Belloc, Hilaire - Bergson, Henri - Brisbane, Arthur - Brook Farm - - Carlyle - Catholic Church, the - Cato - Chesterton, G.K. - Chicago - _Comet, In the Days of the_ - _Common Sense of Warfare, The_ - Comte - Confucius - Conrad, Joseph - _Creative Evolution_ - - Dante - Darwin - De Foe - Dickens - _Discovery of the Future, The_ - Dürer - - Emerson - _Empire of the Ants, The_ - Erasmus - _Ethics and Evolution_ - - Fabian Society - _First and Last Things_ - _First Men in the Moon, The_ - _Food of the Gods, The_ - _Fortnightly Review, The_ - Francis, St. - - Goethe - _Great State, The_ - Grimm's Fairy Tales - - Hardy, Thomas - Hearn, Lafcadio - Heraclitus - Hero, The - _History of Mr. Polly, The_ - Huxley - - _Inferno, The_ - _Invisible Man, The_ - _Island of Dr. Moreau, The_ - - James, William - Japanese, the - Jeffries, Richard - Johnson, Dr. - - Kipling, Rudyard - _Kipps_ - - Leonardo da Vinci - Leopardi - _Love and Mr. Lewisham_ - Luther - - Macaulay - Machiavelli - _Mankind in the Making_ - Marcus Aurelius - _Marriage_ - Michael Angelo - _Modern Utopia, A_ - Montessori, Madame - Morris, William - _McAndrew's Hymn_ - - _New Machiavelli, The_ - Newman, Cardinal - New Republican, the - _News from Nowhere_ - _New Worlds for Old_ - Nietzsche - - _Our Liberal Practitioners_ - _Passionate Friends, The_ - Plato - Plutarch - - Rabelais - _Rasselas_ - _Rediscovery of the Unique, The_ - Rhodes, Cecil - _Robinson Crusoe_ - - Samurai, the - _Scepticism of the Instrument,_ - Schopenhauer - _Servile State, The_ - Shakespeare - Shaw, Bernard - _Sleeper Awakes, The_ - _So-Called Science of Sociology, The_ - Sorel, Georges - Spencer, Herbert - _Story of the Days to Come, A_ - Superman, the - Superior Man, the - Swift - - Taine, H.A. - Thoreau - _Time Machine, The_ - Tolstoy - _Tono-Bungay_ - - Verne, Jules - - Ward, Mrs. Humphry - Webb, Sidney - _Wheels of Chance, The_ - Whitman, Walt - Wordsworth - Worms Cathedral - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The World of H.G. 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Wells, by Van Wyck Brooks - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The World of H.G. Wells - -Author: Van Wyck Brooks - -Release Date: February 27, 2013 [EBook #42221] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - - - -<h1>THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS</h1> - -<h3>BY</h3> - -<h2>VAN WYCK BROOKS</h2> - - - -<h5>NEW YORK</h5> - -<h5>MITCHELL KENNERLEY</h5> - -<h5>MCMXV</h5> -<hr class="full" /> - -<h4><i>To</i></h4> - -<h4><i>Max Lippitt Larkin</i></h4> - - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<h4><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h4> - - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I. The First Phase</a></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II. Towards Socialism</a></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III. Socialism "True and False"</a></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV. The Philosophy of the New Republican</a></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V. Human Nature</a></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI. A Personal Chapter</a></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII. The Spirit of Wells</a></p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> -<h3><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></h3> - - -<p>A natural pause appears to have come in the career of Mr. H.G. Wells. -After so many years of travelling up and down through time and space, -familiarizing himself with all the various parts of the solar system and -presenting himself imaginatively at all the various geological epochs, -from the Stone Age to the end of the world, he has for good and all -domesticated himself in his own planet and point of time. This gradual -process of slowing down, so to speak, had been evident from the moment -of his first appearance. The most obvious fact about his romances of -science, considered as a series, is that each one more nearly approached -the epoch in which we live, and the realities of this epoch. From the -year A.D. 802, 701, witnessed in his first romance by the Time -Traveller, we found ourselves at last in the presence of a decade only -so remote as that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> of the war which has now befallen Europe. A similar -tendency in his novels has been equally marked. The possibilities of -science and socialism have received a diminishing attention relatively -beside the possibilities of human reaction to science and socialism. It -is individual men and women, and the motives and personalities of -individual men and women, which now concern him. Still retaining the -entire planet as the playground of his ideas, still upholding science -and socialism as his essential heroes, he has been driven by experience -to approach these things through human nature as it is. In a recent -essay he has told us not to expect any more dramatic novelties: for the -present at any rate our business must be to make science and socialism -feel at home. Whether or not this may stand as a general diagnosis of -our epoch, it is a remarkable confession with regard to his own place in -it. For it signifies nothing less than that he has reached the limit of -his own circle of ideas and finished his own pioneering, and that his -work for the future will be to relate the discoveries of his youth with -human experience. He is no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> longer a "new voice"; his work belongs, for -good or ill, to history and literature, and he presents himself from -this time forward as a humanist.</p> - -<p>In this new posture Wells does not stand alone. He is typical of an -entire generation of Englishmen that knows not Oxford, a generation -which has been busy with all manner of significant movements and -discoveries, too busy indeed to relate them to the common reason of -humankind. During these years the word "academic" has been outlawed; -naturally so, for the academic mind is to the creative mind what the -digestive system is to the human body: a period of energetic exercise -must precede its operation. But in order that ideas may be incorporated -in society they must submit themselves at the right moment to those -digestive processes by which they are liquefied and transmitted through -the veins to all the various members of the common organism.</p> - -<p>During the last twenty years modern thought has been dominated to an -extraordinary degree by men who have been educated solely through the -movements in which they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> have taken part: seldom has there been so -universal and so hectic an empiricism. But this is the way the earth -moves. Like an inchworm it doubles itself up at intervals and then -gradually stretches itself straight again. The whole nineteenth century, -according to Taine, was occupied in working out two or three ideas -concocted in Germany during the Napoleonic era. History is a succession -of Gothic invasions and academic subversions. It marks the end of one of -those eras which perpetually overlap one another in various groups of -men and cycles of thought that our own Visigoths have capitulated. As -the pressure of their own immediate points of view relaxes and they -cease to identify their own progress with the progress of men in -general, they become perhaps less striking but certainly more useful.</p> - -<p>Intensely preoccupied with contemporary ideas and inventions, -brilliantly gifted and full of life, these leaders of thought were more -innocent of literature and history than a fresh-man. Both Wells and -Bernard Shaw have confessed that throughout their most active -intellectual careers they believed instinctively<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> that progress was -mainly a matter of chronology. To discover the future Wells considered -it necessary merely to set his imagination at work on Chicago and -multiply it by a thousand; while the famous remark of Shaw that he was -"better than Shakespeare" sprang from his assumption that, living three -centuries later, he naturally stood (as a dwarf, in his own phrase) upon -Shakespeare's shoulders. This naïveté placed them at the mercy of -literature, as they soon discovered. Everyone knows the change that came -over Bernard Shaw's cosmos when for the first time, a few years ago, he -read two or three pre-Darwinian philosophers: one could almost have -heard a pin drop when he stopped talking about being better than -Shakespeare. A similar experience, exhibited in his books, has befallen -Wells, and there is no doubt that reading has contributed to the -progressive modesty of his point of view. Each monument of historic -experience that he has absorbed has left its mark on him. Rabelais, -Machiavelli, Plato, incorporated at regular intervals in his own work, -have certainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> contributed to make him less agile and less dramatic.</p> - -<p>Let us take advantage of these post-prandial moments to survey some of -the remarkable ideas which have been added to the general stock during -this period. After the fashion of Cato, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells have -come late to the study of Greek. Bernard Shaw read Plato at fifty, and -in his latest book Wells has insisted that in the Great State everyone -will study Greek. Nothing could signify more plainly that these -outriders of the Modern Mind have come to a halt and wish to connect -themselves with tradition, with history, with literature, with religion, -with the grand current of human experience. Having been for so long -experimenting with new and untried forces, sharply separated from what -is received and understood, they should be related to the familiar -landmarks and connected with the main stream of English thought and -literature.</p> - -<p>Grotesque and violent as it may at first appear, I believe that in the -future Wells will be thought of as having played toward his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> epoch a -part very similar to that played by Matthew Arnold. I say this with full -recognition of their remoteness in personal quality, recognizing also -the difference in their direct objects of attack, in the precise causes -they uphold. One thinks of these two vivid personalities—Wells—how -shall one picture him?—and Matthew Arnold, that superb middle-class -gentleman with his great face and deprecating hands—and the comparison -is instantly ludicrous. In reality the entire trend of Arnold's social -criticism was anti-individualistic and in a straight line with -socialism. Seen retrospectively the main work of Wells has not been to -promote any intellectual or economic doctrine, but to alter the English -frame of mind. The function of each of these men has been to bring home -to the English mind a range of ideas not traditional in it.</p> - -<p>Indeed this comparison holds (the shock once over) not merely with -regard to their general function, but in their specific attitude toward -most of the branches of thought and action they have concerned -themselves with. Wells on Education, on Criticism, on Politics and the -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>nostrums of Liberalism, Wells even on Religion continues the propaganda -of Arnold. Everywhere in these so superficially dissimilar writings is -exhibited the same fine dissatisfaction, the same faith in ideas and -standards, the same dislike of heated bungling, plunging, wilfulness, -and confusion; even the same predominant contempt for most things that -are, the same careful vagueness of ideal. It was Arnold who passed his -life in trying to make England believe in and act upon ideas instead of -"muddling through," who never wearied of holding up the superiority of -everything French and everything German to everything English, who -adopted into his own language that phrase about "seeing things as in -themselves they really are." Read his chapter on <i>Our Liberal -Practitioners</i> and you will find the precise attitude of Wells toward -the premature inadequate doing of things rather than the continued -research, experiment, and discipline which lead to right fulfilments. -Who urged the ventilation of life, affairs, conduct in the light of -world experience? Who preached the gospel of reasonableness, mutual -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>understanding, and more light? Who spurred England to cultivate the -virtue of intellectual curiosity? Who believed with a paradoxical -passion in coolness and detachment? In each of these things what Arnold -was to his generation Wells remarkably has been to ours. Differing in -their view of the substance of religion, their conception of the Church -as a great common receptacle for the growing experience of the race is -precisely the same, fragmentation, segregation, sectarianism being to -both of them in this matter the greatest of evils. The love of -curiosity, centrality, ventilation, detachment, common understanding, -coolness and reasonableness and a realistic vision, the dislike of -confusion, bungling, wilfulness, incompetence, hot-headedness, -complacency, sectarianism—these are quite fundamental traits, and -Arnold and Wells share them in a remarkable degree. It is quite true -that Arnold lived in a universe which only with some reluctance -confessed to three dimensions, while that of Wells trembles with the -coming of a fourth. But in any case it is worth while to release a -phenomenon like Wells from the medium of purely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> contemporary influences, -and for this purpose it is convenient to see a socialist in the light of -a man who knew nothing of socialism, to see that socialism is itself a -natural outgrowth of those "best things that have been thought and said -in the world." It is important to realize that the train of thought and -the circle of ideas of this man are connected with a well-recognized -branch of intellectual tradition. And even socialism is benefitted by -having friends at court.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h4> - -<h3>THE FIRST PHASE</h3> - -<p>"I am, by a sort of predestination, a socialist," Wells wrote once. And -everything one can say of him serves merely to explain, justify, -qualify, illuminate and refine that statement.</p> - -<p>First of all it implies a certain disposition and certain habits of -mind, habits of mind which are all to be found in the first phase of his -work, in those marvellous tales of Time and Space that won him his -original sensational fame. It is this disposition behind them, this -quality they have as of an inevitable attitude toward life and the -world, which distinguishes them at once from those other superficially -similar tales of Jules Verne. The marvels of Jules Verne are just -marvels, delightful, irresponsible plunderings from a helpless universe. -To the grown-up mind they have a little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> of that pathetic futility one -associates with a millionaire's picture-gallery, where all sorts of -things have been brought together, without any exercise of inevitable -personal choice, because they are expensive. I don't know that the tales -of Wells are better tales, but they have that ulterior synthetic quality -that belongs to all real expressions of personality. Wells was never -merely inventive; his invention was the first stage of an imaginative -growth.</p> - -<p>Now the quality that pervades all these early writings is what may be -called a sense of the infinite plasticity of things. He conceived a -machine that could travel through time, a man who found a way to become -invisible, a drug that made men float like balloons, another drug that -enabled men to live a thousand hours in one, a crystal egg through which -one could watch the life in Mars, a man who could stop the sun like -Joshua, a food that turned men into giants, a biologist who discovered a -method of carving animals into men, an angel who visited a rural vicar, -a mermaid who came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> to earth in search of a soul, a homicidal orchid, a -gigantic bird hatched from a prehistoric egg, a man who passed outside -space. In short, the universe appeared to him like that magic shop of -which he also wrote, where the most astonishing things may happen, if -you are the Right Sort of Boy.</p> - -<p>If all this implies anything it implies that things in general are not -fixed and static, but that they are, on the contrary, infinitely -plastic, malleable, capable of responding to any purpose, any design you -may set working among them. The universe, it seems to assume, may be and -quite possibly is proceeding after some logical method of its own, but -so far as man is concerned this method appears to be one of chance. -Obviously, man can do the most surprising things in it, can take as it -were all sorts of liberties with it. The universe, in short, is like a -vacant field which may or may not belong to some absent landlord who has -designs of his own upon it; but until this absent landlord appears and -claims his field, all the children in the neighborhood can build huts in -it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> and play games upon it and, in a word, for all practical purposes, -consider it their own.</p> - -<p>This idea of the relation between free will and determinism is the -underlying assumption of Wells, as he explains it in <i>First and Last -Things</i>:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Take life at the level of common sensations and common -experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's -freedom of will, unless it is his complete moral -responsibility. But make only the least penetrating of -scientific analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable -consequences, a rigid succession of cause and effect.</p></blockquote> - -<p>And elsewhere he says:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>On the scientific plane one is a fatalist.... But does the -whole universe of fact, the external world about me, the -mysterious internal world from which my motives rise, form -one rigid and fated system as Determinists teach? I incline -to that belief.... From me as a person this theory of -predestination has no practical value.... I hesitate, I -choose just as though the thing was unknowable. For me and -my conduct there is that much wide practical margin of -freedom. I am free and freely and responsibly making the -future—so far as I am concerned.</p></blockquote> - -<p>In a word, for all the purposes that affect man's need the universe is -infinitely plastic and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> amenable to his will. Like every clean-cut -philosophical conception, this clears the ground for practical conduct -and a certain sort of direct action.</p> - -<p>There was a time, no doubt, when he shared the old Utopian folly of -expecting a sudden and unanimous change of human will. When the universe -appears as unconventional as it used to appear to Wells, there can -surely be no reason to think it impossible, after a comet has collided -with the world, for the human race to become suddenly Utopian. Generally -speaking, comets do not collide with the world, and in the same way men -are slow to change. But certainly if Wells ever thought of humanity as -merely a multiplication of one pattern, certainly if he has long since -abandoned the idea of our all turning over a new leaf one fine morning, -he has never lost his faith in free will as regards the individual. He -has always believed in the personal doctrine of summarily "making an end -to things" as distinguished from the old-fashioned doctrine of "making -the best of things"; and there is nothing more modern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> about him than his -aversion to the good old English theory of "muddling through."</p> - -<p>Mr. Polly is a good example of his view of personal direct action, the -getting rid, quickly and decisively, of a situation that has only -sentiment to save it from complete demoralization. "When a man has once -broken through the wall of every-day circumstances," he remarks at the -moment of the Polly <i>débâcle</i>, "he has made a discovery. If the world -does not please you, <i>you can change it</i>. Determine to alter it at any -price, and you can change it altogether." Mr. Polly sets fire to his -shop, takes to the road and repairs his digestion. Desertion of duty and -the quick repudiation of entanglements make him healthy and sensible and -give him a sense of purpose in things. And I know of nothing in all -Wells that is described with more relish than that Beltane festival -which occurs toward the end of <i>In the Days of the Comet</i>. The world's -great age has begun anew, and the enlightened men of the new time revive -the May Day of old in order to burn the useless trappings of the past. -They heap old carpets on the fire, ill-designed furniture, bad music and -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>cheap pictures, stuffed birds, obsolete school-books, dog-eared penny -fiction, sham shoes, and all the corrugated iron in the world; every -tangible thing that is useless, false, disorderly, accidental, obsolete, -and tawdry to celebrate the beginning of things that are clean, -beautiful, and worthy. Sceptical, hesitant, and personal as Wells has -become, that indicates a strong primitive mental trait. Philosophy does -not spring out of the brain; we hate the hateful things of our own -experience, just as we think the things we desire. And though there are -nine and sixty ways of being a socialist, they all unite in a certain -sense of the plasticity and malleability of things human, a certain -faith in the possibility of asserting order in the midst of disorder and -intelligently cleaning house.</p> - -<p>Inherent in this trait is another—detachment. You only become aware of -confusion when you stand free of it, when you cease to be a part of it. -And of all writers who have so immediately felt life I doubt if there -has been one so detached as Wells. The mental detachment of his early -tales is a detachment half scientific, half artistic; scientific as of -one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> who sees things experimentally in their material, molecular aspect, -artistic as of one conscious of moulding will and placed amid plastic -material. Thus, for example, he sees human beings quite stripped of -their distinctively human qualities; he sees men anatomically, as in -that passage where the Invisible Man, killed with a spade, becomes -visible again as a corpse:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Everyone saw, faint and transparent as though it were made -of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves -could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp -and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they -stared.... And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet -and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his -body, that strange change continued. First came the little -white nerves, a hazy gray stretch of a limb, then the glossy -bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first -a faint fogginess, then growing rapidly dense and opaque.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Similar is a passage in <i>A Story of the Days to Come</i>, where he -describes an ordinary breakfast of our own day: "the rude masses of -bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fat before they -could be made palatable, the still recognizable fragments of recently -killed animals, hideously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> charred and hacked." That surely is quite as a -man from another planet, or a chemist after a long day's work in the -laboratory, would view our familiar human things. And one recalls -another sentence from <i>Kipps</i> where this detachment links itself with a -deeper social insight and hints at the part it had come to play in -Wells's later mind: "I see through the darkness," he says, toward the -end of the book, "the souls of my Kippses as they are, <i>as little pink -strips of quivering, living stuff</i>, as things like the bodies of little -ill-nourished, ailing, ignorant children—children who feel pain, who -are naughty and muddled and suffer, and do not understand why."</p> - -<p>And just as he sees men and human things chemically and anatomically, so -he sees the world astronomically. He has that double quality (like his -own Mr. Bessel) of being bodily very active in life and at the same time -watching it from a great distance. In his latest book he has figured a -god looking on from the clouds; and there is nothing in his novels more -stimulating and more uncanny than a certain faculty of telescoping his -view suddenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> from the very little to the very large, expanding and -contracting his vision of things at will. You find the germ of this -faculty in his early tales. Looking down as though from a balloon he -sees the world as a planet, as a relatively small planet. In doing so he -maintains at first a purely scientific set of values; he is not led, as -he has since been led, and as Leopardi was led by the same imaginative -experience, to adopt poetical values and to feel acutely the littleness -and the powerlessness of man. His values remain scientific, and the -absurdity he feels is the absurdity an astronomer must feel, that in so -small a space men can vaunt themselves and squabble with one another. -Race prejudice, for example, necessarily appears to him as foolish as it -would appear to ordinary eyes among insects that happen to be swarming -on a fallen apple. Once you get it into your mind that the world is a -ball in space, you find a peculiar silliness in misunderstandings on -that ball. This reflection has led to many views of life; in Wells it -led to a sense of the need of human solidarity.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>And solidarity implies order. The sense of order is one of those -instincts exhibited everywhere in the writings of Wells that serve as -preliminaries to his social philosophy. There is a passage in <i>Kipps</i> -where he pictures the satisfactions of shopkeeping to an elect soul: -"There is, of course, nothing on earth," he says, "and I doubt at times -if there is a joy in heaven, like starting a small haberdasher's shop. -Imagine, for example, having a drawerful of tapes, or again, an array of -neat, large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. -Think of your cottons, your drawer of colored silks," etc. De Foe knew a -similar satisfaction and has pictured it in <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>. De Foe -was himself a shopkeeper, just as Wells has been in one of his -incarnations; and he knew that good shopkeeping is the microcosm of all -good political economy. The satisfaction of a thoroughly competent man -who is thrown on a desert island, and sets to work to establish upon it -a political economy for one, is a satisfaction by itself. That certainly -is a primitive relish, and it is one of the first gestures of Wells's -sociology.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>Now the sense of solidarity, the sense of order, implies the -subordination of details, the discipline of constituent units. Only in -his later works did Wells begin to consider the problems of the -individual life; in his novels he has considered them almost -exclusively, but always in relation to the constructive purpose of -society and as what may be called human reservations from it. The -telescope has been adjusted to a close range, and the wider -relationships are neither so emphasized nor so easily discerned. -Nevertheless it is still the world that matters to Wells—the world, the -race, the future; not the individual human being. And if, relatively, he -has become more interested in the individual and less in the world, that -is because he is convinced that the problems of the world can best be -approached through the study of individuals. His philosophy has grown -less abstract in harmony with his own experience; but the first sketch -of his view of human nature and its function is to be found crudely -outlined in the scientific romances. How does it figure there?</p> - -<p>The human beings who flit through these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> early tales are all -inconspicuous little men, whose private existence is of no account, and -who exist to discover, invent, perform all sorts of wonderful -experiments which almost invariably result in their summary and quite -unimportant destruction. They are merely, in the most complete sense, -experiments in the collective purpose, and their creator has toward them -just the attitude of an anatomist toward the animals upon which he is -experimenting; not indifferent to their suffering as suffering, but -ignoring it in the spirit of scientific detachment necessary to -subordinate means to an end. "I wanted—it was the only thing I -wanted—to find out the limit of plasticity in a living form," says Dr. -Moreau in his confession; "and the study has made me as remorseless as -nature."</p> - -<p>Invariably these experiments in human possibility, placed in a world -where charity is not so strong as fear, die quite horribly. Dr. Moreau -is destroyed by the beasts he is attempting to vivisect into the -semblance of men, the Invisible Man is battered to death with a spade, -the Visiting Angel burns to death in attempting to carry out his -celestial errand, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> man who travels to the moon cannot get back alive. -Does not all this foreshadow the burden of the later novels, that the -individual who plans and wills for the race is destroyed and broken by -the jealousy, prejudice and inertia in men and the blind immemorial -forces of nature surging through himself? These are the forces that are -figured, in the early tales, by that horrible hostile universe of -nature, and the little intrepid men moving about in the midst of it. And -the mind of Wells is always prepared for the consequences of what it -engenders. The inevitable result of creating an imaginary world of -malignant vegetables and worse than antediluvian monsters is that the -imaginary men you also create shall suffer through them. You reverse the -order of evolution and return men to conditions where life is cheap. An -imagination which has accustomed itself to running loose among planets -and falling stars, which has lived habitually in a universe where worlds -battle with one another, is prepared to stomach a little needless -bloodshed. The inflexible pursuit of an end implies the sacrifice of -means, and if your experiment happens to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> an invisible man you will -produce the invisibility even though it kills the man.</p> - -<p>Widen the range and this proposition logically transmutes itself into a -second: if your experiment happens to be an orderly society you will -produce order at the expense of everything that represents disorder. And -from the point of view of a collective purpose, ends, motives and -affections that are private and have no collective significance -represent disorder. Now the whole purpose of Wells's later work has been -to illuminate and refine this proposition. He has flatly distinguished -between two sorts of human nature, the constructive, experimental sort -which lives essentially for the race, and the acquiescent, ineffectual -sort which lives essentially for itself or the established fact; and he -gives to his experimental men and women an almost unlimited charter to -make ducks and drakes of the ineffectual. Think of the long list of dead -and wounded in his novels—Mr. Pope, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Magnet, Mr. -Manning, Margaret, Marion—and you realize how much of a certain -cruelty, a certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> ruthlessness is in the very nature of his philosophy -of experimental direct action.</p> - -<p>Another primitive relish exhibited in these early tales is the delight -of constructing things. The Time Machine, for example, is the work of a -mind that immoderately enjoys inventing, erecting, and putting things -together; and there is not much difference between constructing an -imaginary machine and constructing an imaginary society. If Wells's -early Utopian speculations are ingenious impossibilities, are they any -more or less so than his mechanical speculations? One doesn't begin life -with an overwhelming recognition of the obstacles one may encounter—one -doesn't fret too much about the possible, the feasible, or even the -logical. It was enough for Wells that he had built his Time Machine, -though the logic by which the Time Traveller explains his process is a -logic that gives me, at least, a sense of helpless, blinking -discomfort—partly, I confess, because to this day I don't believe there -is anything the matter with it. In any case it is the sheer delight of -construction that fascinates him, and everything that is associated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> with -construction fascinates him. He is in love with steel; he speaks with a -kind of ecstasy somewhere of "light and clean and shimmering shapes of -silvered steel"; steel and iron have for him the transcendental charm -that harebells and primroses had for Wordsworth. A world like that in -<i>The Sleeper Awakes</i>—a world of gigantic machines, air fleets, and the -"swimming shadows and enormous shapes" of an engineer's nightmare—is -only by afterthought, one feels, the speculation of a sociologist. It -expresses the primitive relish of a constructive instinct. It expresses -also a sheer curiosity about the future.</p> - -<p>In a chapter of his book on America Wells has traced the development of -what he calls his prophetic habit of mind as a passage through four -stages: the millennial stage of an evangelical childhood when an -imminent Battle of Armageddon was a natural thing to be looked for; the -stage of ultimate biological possibilities; the stage of prediction by -the rule-of-three; and a final stage of cautious anticipation based upon -the study of existing facts—a gradual passage from the region of -religious or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> scientific possibilities to the region of human -probabilities. "There is no Being but Becoming" was the first of his -mental discoveries; and finding years later that Heraclitus had said the -same thing, he came to regard the pre-Aristotelian metaphysics as the -right point of departure for modern thought. Consider this passage:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I am curiously not interested in things and curiously -interested in the consequences of things.... I have come to -be, I am afraid, even a little insensitive to fine immediate -things through this anticipatory habit.... This habit of -mind confronts and perplexes my sense of things that simply -<i>are</i>, with my brooding preoccupation with how they will -shape presently, what they will lead to, what seed they will -sow and how they will wear. At times, I can assure the -reader, this quality approaches other-worldliness in its -constant reference to an all-important hereafter. There are -times indeed when it makes life seem so transparent and -flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an equally -transitory series of consequences, that the enhanced sense -of instability becomes restlessness and distress; but on the -other hand nothing that exists, nothing whatever, remains -altogether vulgar or dull and dead or hopeless in its -light.... But the interest is shifted. The pomp and splendor -of established order, the braying triumphs, ceremonies, -consummations,—one sees these glittering shows for what -they are—through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> their threadbare grandeur shine the little -significant things that will make the future.</p></blockquote> - -<p>And the burden of his lecture <i>The Discovery of the Future</i> is that an -inductive knowledge of the future is not only very largely possible, but -is considerably more important for us than the study of the past. Even -in the sciences, he says, the test of their validity is their power to -produce confident forecasts. Astronomy is based on the forecast of -stellar movements, medical science exists largely for diagnosis. It is -this thought which determines the nature of his own sociology.</p> - -<p>There is usually something inept in speaking of a man, and especially an -artist, as interchangeable with any ism. Socialism, in the common sense -of the word, is a classification of men. Individual socialists are as a -rule something more than socialists; often they are socialists by -necessity, or imagination, or sentiment, or expediency—their socialism -is not inherent, not the frame of their whole being. In the degree that -socialism is a classification, or a school of thought, or an economic -theory, the individual socialist will, in practice, make mental -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>reservations from it. Now my whole aim in this chapter has been to -suggest that if socialism had not existed Wells would have invented it. -It is not something which at a given moment or even after a long process -of imaginative conversion or conviction came into his life. It is, in -his own formulation of it, the projection of his whole nature, the -expression of his will, the very content of his art. With one or two -exceptions—works deliberately devoted to propaganda or exposition—even -his purely sociological writings are subjective writings, personal and -artistic in motive; socialism figures in them just as Catholicism -figures in the masses of Mozart, or the brotherhood of man in the poems -of Whitman, not as a cause but as a satisfying conception of truth. And -just as, if one were to study the psychology of Mozart or Whitman, one -would find habits of mind that inevitably produced the individual -Catholicism of the one and the individual fraternalism of the other; so -behind the socialism of Wells are certain habits of mind, certain -primitive likes, relishes, instincts, preferences: a faith in free will, -a sense of order and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> the subordination of details to design, a personal -detachment, a pleasure in construction, a curiosity about the future.</p> - -<p>These are innate qualities, which inevitably produced their own -animating purpose.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h4> - -<h3>TOWARDS SOCIALISM</h3> - - -<p>Of all the battered, blurred, ambiguous coins of speech there is none so -battered, blurred, and ambiguous as the word socialism. It mothers a -dozen creeds at war with one another. And the common enemy looks on, -fortified with the Socratic irony of the "plain man," who believes he -has at last a full excuse for not understanding these devious doings.</p> - -<p>Therefore I take refuge in saying that H.G. Wells is an artist, neither -more nor less, that socialism is to him at bottom an artistic idea, and -that if it had not existed in the world he would have invented it. This -clears me at once of the accusing frowns of any possible Marxian reader, -and it also states a truth at the outset. For if the orthodox maintain -that socialism is not an affair of choices, may I not retort that here -actually is a mind that chooses to make it so? Here is an extraordinary -kind of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> Utopian who has all the equipment of the orthodox and yet -remains detached from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is always jealous of its -tabernacles and will not see itself dramatically; it has no concern with -artistic presentations. But I protest there ought to be no quarrel here. -If a socialism fundamentally artistic is an offence to the orthodox, let -them accept it, without resentment, as a little harmless fun—all art -being that.</p> - -<p>Having said so much I return to my own difficulty, for it is very hard -to focus H.G. Wells. He has passed through many stages and has not yet -attained the Olympian repose. Artist as he is, he has been hotly -entangled in practical affairs. There are signs in his early books that -he once shared what Richard Jeffries called the "dynamite -disposition,"—even now he knows, in imagination alone, the joy of black -destruction. He has also been, and ceased to be, a Fabian. But it is -plain that he has passed for good and all beyond the emotional plane of -propaganda. He has abandoned working-theories and the deceptions of the -intellect which make the man of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> action. He has become at once more -practical and more mystical than a party programme permits one to be. -Here is a world where things are being done—a world of which capital -and labor are but one interpretation. How far can these things and the -men who do them be swept into the service of the race? That is the -practical issue in his mind, and the mystical issue lies in the -intensity and quality of the way in which he feels it.</p> - -<p>To see him clearly one has to remember that he is not a synthetic -thinker but a sceptical artist, whose writings are subjective even when -they seem to be the opposite, whose personality is constantly growing, -expanding, changing, correcting itself ("one can lie awake at night and -hear him grow," as Chesterton says), and who believes moreover that -truth is not an absolute thing but a consensus of conflicting individual -experiences, a "common reason" to be wrought out by constant free -discussion and the comparison and interchange of personal discoveries -and ideas. He is not a sociologist, but, so to say, an artist of -society; one of those thinkers who are disturbed by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> the absence of right -composition in human things, by incompetent draughtsmanship and the -misuse of colors, who see the various races of men as pigments capable -of harmonious blending and the planet itself as a potential work of art -which has been daubed and distorted by ill-trained apprentices. In Wells -this planetary imagination forms a permanent and consistent mood, but it -has the consistency of a mood and not the consistency of a system of -ideas. And though he springs from socialism and leads to socialism, he -can only be called a socialist in the fashion—to adopt a violently -disparate comparison—that St. Francis can be called a Christian. That -is to say, no vivid, fluctuating human being, no man of genius can ever -be embodied in an institution. He thinks and feels it afresh; his -luminous, contradictory, shifting, evanescent impulses may, on the -whole, ally him with this or that aggregate social view, but they will -not let him be subdued to it. As a living, expanding organism he will -constantly urge the fixed idea to the limit of fluidity. So it is with -Wells. There are times when he seems as whimsical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> as the wind and as -impossible to photograph as a chameleon.</p> - -<p>Just here I should like to give what may be taken as his own view of -capital and labor socialism in relation to the constructive socialism he -himself has at heart. I am putting together certain brief passages from -<i>The Passionate Friends</i>:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems -only by the way. They have played their part in a greater -scheme.... With my innate passionate desire to find the -whole world purposeful, I cannot but believe that.... -Strangest of saviours, there rises over the conflicts of men -the glittering angular promise of the machine. There is no -longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do not -need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are -no longer essential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his -brother man out of the need of servitude. He struggles -through to a new phase, a phase of release, a phase when -leisure and an unexampled freedom are possible to every -human being....</p> - -<p>Human thought has begun to free itself from individual -entanglements and dramatic necessities and accidental -standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective will -towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or -kingdoms or peoples, a mind and will to which we all -contribute and which none of us may command nor compromise -by our private errors. It ceases<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> to be aristocratic; it -detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us -all. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find -ourselves in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and -jealousies and conflicts, helping and serving in the making -of a new world-city, a new greater State above our legal -States, in which all human life becomes a splendid -enterprise, free and beautiful....</p> - -<p>I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of -human society. Ours are not economic but psychological -difficulties....</p></blockquote> - -<p>These last two sentences really tell the whole story. To pass from -economics to psychology is to pass from Man to men, from society as a -direct object of attack to the individuals who compose it. And this -marks the evolution of Wells the romancer and Wells the expositor of -socialist doctrine into Wells the novelist. It is the problems of human -interaction that occupy him now. But informing these problems, reaching -behind and embracing them, is a general view of the world which has only -become more intimate, more personal, and more concrete with time.</p> - -<p>When, in <i>New Worlds for Old</i>, Wells set himself to explain socialism as -he conceived it, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>he assumed as his first principle a certain Good Will -in men, an operating will steadily working in life toward betterment. In -other words, he supplemented the ordinary socialist idea of economic -determinism, which may or may not inevitably bring about order on the -industrial plane, with a constructive purpose, which, in his view, can -alone bring about the salvation of the race. But this Good Will is not a -fatality; it exists only by virtue of remaining a conscious effort. In -his experiments in Time and Space Wells had accustomed himself to seeing -that the immense possibilities of what might be, so far as the universe -is concerned, predetermined things, were, so far as man is concerned, -matters of chance. To human society at least, if not to our planet, the -most unpropitious things are possible in the future; and there is no -reason to suppose that the destiny of the universe, which at every turn -cuts athwart the destiny of every species contained in it, should, left -to itself, work favorably to man.</p> - -<p>This notion is in itself quite outside socialism and does not -necessarily lead into socialism. It <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>was Huxley who said that the world -and the universe, society and nature, are demonstrably at cross -purposes, and that man has to pit his microcosm against the macrocosm. -Huxley, in his famous lecture on <i>Ethics and Evolution,</i> went on from -this to a kind of informal and unavowed socialism, figuring society as a -well-tended garden preserved by man's careful art from the ravages and -invasions of that hostile world of chance, with its gigantic weeds and -blind impulsions, which everywhere lies waiting round about it. Our -work, he implied, must be in every way to minimize for ourselves the -elements of chance, to become aware of our species in a collective -sense, battling with nature and moulding our own future.</p> - -<p>I do not suppose that Wells consciously adopted this idea from Huxley. -In itself that would be of little consequence, except so far as it shows -the continuity of thought and the development of socialism out of -science. But Wells was for several years a pupil of Huxley, and it is -reasonably plain that the mood in which he wrote his scientific romances -was strongly impregnated by Huxley's influence. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>The sinister, -incalculable, capricious, destructive forces outside man are symbolized, -as I have said, by those colliding comets, invading Martians, and -monstrous creatures among which the earlier Wells moved and had his -being; just as the sinister, incalculable, capricious forces within man -which urge him to destruction form so great a part of his later novels. -Most of his heroes (typified in <i>The New Machiavelli</i>) come to grief -through the blind irrational impulsions within themselves. And he is -equally haunted by what he has called the "Possible Collapse of -Civilization." I do not know how much this is due to an evangelical -childhood, in which Time, Death, and Judgment are always imminent; how -much to an overbalancing study of science at the expense of the -humanities; how much to an overdeveloped sense of the hazard that life -is; and how much to plain facts. But there it is: it has always been a -fixed conviction with Wells that man personal and man social is dancing -on a volcano.</p> - -<p>Therefore he has come to socialism not by the ordinary course but by a -route obscure and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>lonely. The sense of possible catastrophe and -collapse, the folly of leaving things to chance, the infinite waste and -peril of committing our affairs to nature rather than to art—these are -some of the negative reasons that have made it impossible for him to -fall in with the non-socialist ideal in human affairs, that "broadening -down from precedent to precedent" which he calls "muddling through": a -doctrine that is wholly compatible with a world of haphazard motives, -accidental fortunes, accidental management, a democratic individualism -that places power in irresponsible hands and suppresses talents that -society cannot afford to lose, a governmental system that concerns -itself with legal and financial arrangements, experts with no sense of a -common purpose, patriotisms that thrive on international bad feelings, -and that competitive principle which succeeds in the degree in which it -ignores the general welfare—a chaos of private aims, private virtues, -private motives, without any collective human design at all.</p> - -<p>In the light of these opposed ideas of society as a thing of Chance and -as a thing of Design, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>let me run over two or three of the tales of -Wells.</p> - -<p>First of all there is the special <i>laissez faire</i> of pure economic -determinism. <i>The Time Machine</i> pictures a possible result of the -Marxian process which has led to an irrevocable division of classes. The -rich, who were, in the old time, in comparison with the poor, -disciplined and united, have long since reached a point where work and -fear are for them things of the past. They occupy the surface of the -earth, and idleness and futility have made them light-headed, puny, -helpless creatures, stirring about and amusing themselves in the -sunlight. The poor, meanwhile, driven underground where they burrow and -tend machinery and provide, have lost all human semblance and become -white, horrible ghoul-like creatures that see in the dark; at night they -swarm out of their holes and feed upon the creatures of the upper air. -The one class has lost all power to defend itself and the other all pity -to spare, and gradually, year after year, mankind comes to its end.</p> - -<p>Then there is the ordinary <i>laissez faire</i> of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>capitalism, a result of -which is pictured in <i>The Sleeper Awakes</i>. The Sleeper, one recalls, -awakens four generations hence to find himself the master-capitalist, -owner of half the world, and the world is one where capital and labor -have irrevocably destroyed the possibility of a constructive human -scheme. But the responsibility for that future is very ingeniously -placed upon us of the present time; for Graham's ownership of the world -is the outcome of one of those irresponsible whims that in our day -characterize the whole individualistic view of property. His cousin, -having no family to inherit his possessions, has left the whole in trust -for the Sleeper, half in jest, expecting him never to waken; and in time -the trustees of this vested fund have become the irresponsible -bureaucrats of the world. "We were making the future," says the awakened -Sleeper, looking out upon this monstrous outcome of whim and <i>laissez -faire</i>; "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were -making."</p> - -<p>Consider also <i>The Empire of the Ants</i>, in which Wells has figured a -possible reconquest <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>of man by nature, owing to the greater collective -discipline of at least one non-human species. He imagines a species of -poisonous ants with only a little greater faculty of organized -co-operative intelligence than ordinary ants, which have terrorized and -finally routed several villages of unintelligent and unorganized -Brazilian natives far up the Amazon. The Brazilian government sends -against them an outworn inefficient gunboat, with an incompetent captain -and a muddle-headed crew; and when they arrive the ants fall upon the -only man sent ashore and sting him to death. The captain repeats over -and over, "But what can we <i>do</i>?" And at last with tremendous decision -he fires a gun at them and retires. The story ends with a report that -the ants are swarming all over the interior of Brazil and that nobody -knows how to prevent them from occupying the whole of South America.</p> - -<p>And then there is <i>The History of Mr. Polly.</i> I ignore for the moment -the individual aspect of his case, for Mr. Polly is not merely an -individual—he is an emblem of the whole, he is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>society <i>in concreto</i>. -We find him at the opening of the book sitting on a stile, suffering -from indigestion and consequently depressed in spirits. It is two -o'clock of a Sunday afternoon, and he has just finished his mid-day -meal. He has eaten cold potatoes, cold pork, Rashdall's mixed -pickles—three gherkins, two onions, a small cauliflower head and -several capers; cold suet pudding, treacle and pale cheese, three slices -of grey bread, and a jug of beer. He hates himself, he hates his wife, -he hates existence. But Mr. Polly's interior, the things that have gone -into it and the emotions that rise out of it, are only typical of an -entire life that has, to quote Macaulay's eulogy of the British -constitution, thought nothing of symmetry and much of convenience.</p> - -<p>Each of the novels of Wells, in one aspect at least, presents the -accidental nature of our world in some one typical case. <i>Love and Mr. -Lewisham</i> shows how in the case of one of those young students who have, -as things are, no chance at all, but who are the natural builders of a -better world, the constructive possibility is crushed by the primary -will to live. At <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>eighteen Mr. Lewisham is an assistant master at one of -those incompetent private-enterprise schools which for Wells (as also -for Matthew Arnold) epitomize our haphazard civilization. He has a -"future"—the Schema which he pins to his bedroom wall promises -unimaginable achievements. He marries, and you feel that he should marry -and that he has married the right person. But then with interests -divided he has to find money and in doing so he fails in his -examinations. At last it becomes a choice between his career and his -children, between the present and the future, and the children and the -future win. Society loses just in the degree that Lewisham himself -loses, for he was fitted to be a builder; and society has first, in the -face of all his efforts, imperfectly equipped him and then consistently -refused to take advantage of his talents.</p> - -<p>Just as Lewisham is a potential builder of society who is defeated, so -Kipps is a specimen of the raw material, the muddled inferior material -with which society has to deal and refuses to deal. Kipps, like Mr. -Polly, is from the beginning a victim of accident, spawned on <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>the world, -miseducated, apprenticed at fourteen to a Drapery Bazaar. He grows up -ignorant, confused, irresponsible; and then suddenly, as accidentally as -he was born, has £26,000 and responsibility thrust upon him. The fortune -of Kipps lifts him at once out of the obscure negligible world of the -populace and makes him a figure to be reckoned with. Therein lies the -comedy of the book. He tries to make himself what in his own view a man -of means ought to be; naturally he sees money not as a force but as a -thing to be spent, and he finds that even from this point of view he has -no freedom of will, and that his lack of training inevitably places him -in the hands of equally irresponsible persons who want his money. He -wishes to build a house, designed after his own vaguely apprehended -needs and desires, and somehow under the wand of the architect a house -with eleven bedrooms springs from the ground, a house plainly far beyond -his own or Ann's power of management, and the prospect of disrespectful -servants, terrifying callers, and a horde of scheming lawyers, -tradesfolk and satellites. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>And the life of Kipps under prosperity is -summed up in the following dialogue:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>"Wonder what I shall do this afternoon," said Kipps, with -his hands deep in his pockets.</p> - -<p>He pondered and lit a cigarette.</p> - -<p>"Go for a walk, I s'pose," said Ann.</p> - -<p>"I <i>been</i> for a walk this morning."</p> - -<p>"S'pose I must go for another," he added after an interval.</p></blockquote> - -<p>May one suggest how the significance of such a story as this varies -according to the point of view? In the ordinary literature of comedy, -Kipps would be merely a parvenu whose want of dignity and ignorance of -the right use of money are laughable—or, if the novelist were a -humanitarian, pitiful. To the socialist, on the other hand, every -incident of his life, every gesture of his mind, is a unique indictment -of things as they are. He stands for the whole waste of human stuff in a -world which has not learned how to economize itself, whose every detail -is accidental in a general chaotic absence of social design.</p> - -<p>In this aspect <i>Tono-Bungay</i> is the most powerful work of Wells. Just as -his romances <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>of the future had exhibited the possible effects of -accidental heedless social conduct in the past, so his novels exhibit -the motives that produce this heedlessness to consequences. Thus the -world in which the Sleeper awakes, a world irrevocably ruled by the -bureaucratic trustees of an irresponsible private fortune, is just a -conceivable consequence of such a career as Uncle Ponderevo's, had not -catastrophe overwhelmed him and enabled Wells to point a much more -pregnant moral. <i>Tono-Bungay</i> is a great epic of irresponsible -capitalism from the socialist point of view. Uncle Ponderevo is a born -commercial meteor, and when he first enters the book, a small druggist -in a dead country town, he exhibits the temperament of a Napoleon of -finance spoiling for conquest. He wants to Wake Up Wimblehurst, invent -something, do something, shove something.</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>He indicated London as remotely over the top of the -dispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by -a whirl of the hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me.</p> - -<p>"What sort of things do they do?" I asked. "Rush about," he -said. "Do things! Somethin' <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>glorious. There's cover -gambling. Ever heard of that, George?" He drew the air in -through his teeth. "You put down a hundred, say, and buy -ten thousand pounds' worth. See? That's a cover of one per -cent. Things go up one, you sell, realize cent per cent; -down, whiff, it's gone! Try again! Cent per cent, George, -every day. Men are made or done for in an hour. And the -shoutin'!... Well, that's one way, George. Then another -way—there's Corners!"</p> - -<p>"They're rather big things, aren't they?" I ventured.</p> - -<p>"Oh, if you go in for wheat and steel—yes. But suppose you -tackled a little thing, George. Just some leetle thing that -only needed a few thousands. Drugs, for example. Shoved all -you had into it—staked your liver on it, so to speak. Take -a drug—take ipecac, for example. Take a lot of ipecac. -Take all there is! See? There you are! There aren't -unlimited supplies of ipecacuanha—can't be!—and it's a -thing people <i>must</i> have. Then quinine again! You watch -your chance, wait for a tropical war breaking out, let's -say, and collar all the quinine. Where <i>are</i> they? Must -have quinine, you know—Eh? ...</p> - -<p>"Lord! there's no end of things—no end of <i>little</i> things. -Dill-water—all the suff'ring babes yowling for it. -Eucalyptus again—cascara—witch hazel—menthol—all the -toothache things. Then there's antiseptics, and curare, -cocaine....</p> - -<p>"Rather a nuisance to the doctors," I reflected.</p> - -<p>"They got to look out for themselves. By Jove, yes. They'll -do you if they can, and you do them. Like <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>brigands. That -makes it romantic. That's the Romance of Commerce, George."</p> - -<p>He passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such -fragments as: "Fifty per cent, advance, sir; -security—to-morrow."</p> - -<p>The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a -sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever -be permitted to do in reality. It was the sort of nonsense -one would talk to make Ewart laugh and set him going on to -still odder possibilities. I thought it was part of my -uncle's way of talking. But I've learnt differently since. -The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee -something that will probably be needed and put it out of -reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy up land -upon which people will presently want to build houses, you -secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, -and so on, and so on. Of course the naïve intelligence of a -boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human -inadequacy. He begins life with the disposition to believe -in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realize how -casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and -custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is -a power as irresistible as a head master's to check -mischievous, foolish enterprises of every sort. I will -confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I -had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do -that would pretty certainly go to gaol. Now I know that any -one who could really bring it off would be much more likely -to go to the House of Lords!</p></blockquote> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>And such or nearly such is this career. Tono-Bungay, that swindling -patent medicine without value or meaning, is the insubstantial -hippogriff upon which Uncle Ponderevo soars upward on the wind of -advertisement. In a society whose basis is unlimited individual rights, -he is able to disorganize the industrial world and to work out his -absurd, inept, extravagant destiny, scattering ruin right and left.</p> - -<p>But the spirit of Good Will, the disinterested constructive spirit of -socialism which is the underlying assumption of Wells, appears here as -in all his later books. Out of the wreckage the constructive purpose -emerges, in the person of George Ponderevo. It shapes itself as a steel -destroyer, the work of an engineer's brain, a destroyer which England -has refused and which plunges down the Thames to the open sea, the -symbol of man's intentions, without illusions and without the hope of -personal gain, the disinterested spirit of science and truth.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h4> - -<h3>SOCIALISM TRUE AND FALSE</h3> - - -<blockquote> - -<p>In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth -of statesmanship. It has been the chronic mistake of -statecraft and all organizing spirits to attempt immediately -to scheme and arrange and achieve. Priests, schools of -thought, political schemers, leaders of men, have always -slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out -the whole—or, at any rate, completely think out definite -parts—of the purpose and future of man, clearly and -finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct -on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing -obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, -persecution, training, pruning, secretive education, and all -the stupidities of self-sufficient energy.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>The man who wrote that is not what is called a whole-hearted man as -regards any form of group-action. He does not "fit in." He is at bottom -a sceptic, and a sceptic is one who reduces every question to the -question of human nature. So that the socialism of Wells is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>necessarily -at variance with all the recognized group-forms of socialism, -Administrative, Philanthropic, and Revolutionary. I must briefly -indicate in each case what is the quality of this divergence.</p> - -<p>As regards the first, he has a complete distrust of what Hilaire Belloc -has called the "Servile State;" and what he distrusts he virulently -dislikes. In his view, Administrative socialism, as it appears in Sidney -Webb and the Fabian Society, and in the tendency of contemporary -Liberalism, has led to an excessive conservatism toward the existing -machinery of government, it has depended altogether too much on -organization without popular support, and as a result has tended to -throw the whole force of the socialist movement into a bureaucratic -regime of small-minded experts. The activity of the Fabians especially, -he says, has set great numbers of socialists working in the old -governmental machinery without realizing that the machinery should have -been reconstructed first. The whole tendency of this method, as it is -exhibited in the works of the English Liberal Party of to-day, is toward -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>a socialization of the poor without a corresponding socialization of the -rich; toward a more and more marked chasm between the regimented workers -and the free employers.</p> - -<p>And it throws the control of affairs into the hands of a mass of highly -specialized officials, technical minds, mutually-unenlightened experts. -In an age when the progress of society depends upon breaking down -professional barriers, when the genuine scientist, for instance, is a -man who passes beyond his own science and sees the inter-relationships -of all knowledge, the mind which has been trained in one habitual -routine is the most dangerous type of mind to place in authority. On the -one hand, society depends upon the coöperation of all sorts of -specialists, their free discussion, and comparison of methods, results, -and aims; on the other experts in office are apt to grow narrow, -impatient, and contemptuous, seeing nothing beyond their immediate -work,—and this particularly when they have been trained for -administration without any wide experience of the world.</p> - -<p>Therefore upon experts as such, in distinction <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>from constructive and -coöperating specialists, Wells, with all the force of his belief in the -ventilating of knowledge and the humanizing of affairs, wages an -unceasing war. <i>The First Men in the Moon</i> satirizes, after the fashion -of Swift, a world where the expert view of life, not only in -administration but in all work, prevails. Each inhabitant of the Moon -has a single rigidly defined function, to which everything else in his -nature is accommodated. Thus certain types of machine-menders are -compressed in jars, while others are dwarfed to fit them for fine work, -"a really more humane proceeding", as Mr. Cavor observes, "than our -method of leaving children to grow into human beings and then making -machines of them." And in <i>The Great State</i> he returns to his attack on -government by experts: "Whatever else may be worked out in the subtler -answers our later time prepares, nothing can be clearer than that the -necessary machinery of government must be elaborately organized to -prevent the development of a managing caste in permanent conspiracy, -tacit or expressed, against the normal man." And <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>he adds: "The Great -State will, I feel convinced, regard changes in occupation as a proper -circumstance in the life of every citizen; it will value a certain -amateurishness in its service, and prefer it to the trite omniscience of -the stale official." One of the many and increasing indications, one -might suggest, of the remarkable tendency in Wells to find good in the -old humanistic Tory, as distinguished from the modern bureaucratic -Liberal, view of life.</p> - -<p>But lest I be tempted to carry this latter suggestion too far just at -this point, I pass on to his equally virulent dislike of Philanthropic -socialism and the busy Superior Person in affairs; especially the type -of political woman so dear to Mrs. Humphry Ward's heart. If the expert -bureaucratic point of view represents the action of socialist thought on -the Liberal Progressive mind, so also the philanthropic superior point -of view represents the action of socialist thought on the Conservative -mind. It is arrogant, aggressive, and condescending. It implies the -raising of one's inferiors, and what weak mortal should assume that she -(for this happens to be a mainly feminine affliction) is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>the standard -according to which other mortals ought to be raised?</p> - -<p>Two of these energetic ladies have been pictured with a bitter vividness -by Wells in Altiora Bailey and Aunt Plessington, the former summing up -the Fabian-expert view, the latter summing up the Superior-philanthropic -view. Altiora has "P.B.P."—<i>pro bono publico</i>—engraved inside her -wedding ring. All the misery of the world she marshals invincibly in -statistics. She sees everything as existing in types and classes; she -pushes her cause with a hard, scheming, and wholly self-centred -eagerness, managing political dinners, indefatigably compiling -blue-books, dreaming of a world nailed as tightly and firmly under the -rule of experts as a carpet is nailed with brass tacks.</p> - -<p>On the other hand Aunt Plessington is the incarnation of a "Movement" -somewhat vague in purpose but always aggressively beneficial to the -helpless ones of the earth. "Her voice was the true governing-class -voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant and authoritative; it made -everything she said clear and important, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>so that if she said it was a -fine morning it was like leaded print in the <i>Times</i>." Her mission is -principally to interfere with the habits and tastes of the -working-class, making it impossible for them to buy tobacco and beer or -"the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which do not -sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach)." She is, in short, -one of those odious managing people who know nothing of and care nothing -for human nature, who concern themselves wholly with the effects without -penetrating to the causes of misery, who see mankind as irrevocably -divided into a governing and a governed class, and whose idea of -government is to make the governed as uncomfortably efficient as -possible and as lacking in free will. She is exactly one of those -arrogant sterile souls, in love with methods rather than men, who have -made the Servile State an imminent and horrid possibility and have -turned so many misinformed human beings (including Tolstoy) against -socialism altogether.</p> - -<p>If Wells dislikes Administrative and Philanthropic socialism because -they are not sufficiently <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>human, he has an equal aversion to what is -called orthodox, that is to say, Revolutionary socialism; and in this he -includes all socialism that is fundamentally economic. "I have long -since ceased to trouble about the economics of human society," says -Stratton in <i>The Passionate Friends</i>, in words we are justified in -taking as the opinion of Wells himself. "Ours are not economic but -psychological difficulties."</p> - -<p>That statement is full of meaning. It expresses, not a fact but a -personal conviction—the personal conviction with which the -psychological constructive socialism of Wells begins. But before I pass -on to this I must make one comment that persists in my mind.</p> - -<p>Nothing is more remarkable than the unanimity with which during the last -few years the advanced world has put all its eggs in the basket of -pragmatism, the basket that has been so alluringly garnished by -Bergson's <i>Creative Evolution</i>, In this movement of thought Wells has -inevitably become one of the leaders, and his practical desertion of the -socialist cause is one of the main symptoms of it. The <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>creative energies -of men, where society as a whole is concerned, are, in this philosophy, -conceived as bursting through the husks and institutions of the world, -not consciously destroying them but shedding them incidentally and -passing on. Now as regards sociology there is an obvious fatalism in -that; for the burden of proof lies once more on a personal basis, on a -personal basis qualified by the capacity of the person. It is true that -this creative and constructive tendency, like the total tendency of -modern life, is in the direction of socialism, it is true that a -thousand elements in modern life which could never be engaged in the -class-war are led by it into line with socialism. Yet there capitalism -is! Only the black-browed Marxian steadily contemplates the fact that -year by year the rich compound their riches and the poor their poverty, -while those that have no chance of creative outlets plant dynamite.</p> - -<p>I do not mean that Wells is "wrong" in abandoning the economic for the -psychological approach,—that is plainly the inevitable course for him. -I wish simply to mark a distinction. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>The gospel of Wells is an entirely -personal one; it frankly concerns itself with the inner realities of the -human mind, and in that lies its great importance. But let us -discriminate. Like every purely personal doctrine it contains, in -relation to the facts and causes of society, a certain quietism. It -withdraws the mind from corporate action and lays emphasis on corporate -thought. But it recognizes no corporate enemy. To be an opponent of -capitalism as such, is, in this philosophy, as quaint and crude and -crusty as to be an anti-suffragist or a believer in politics (for it has -become the fashion to believe with fervor in the franchise and scarcely -to believe at all in what the franchise stands for).</p> - -<p>There is then a certain danger in the creative pragmatism of this -particular time. If it actually does penetrate to the head men of the -world, if it is able to generate what I suppose may be called a "moral -equivalent" of duty—and there is almost a probability that it will—the -hazard is won. If it does not—and many keen thinkers and men of action -are obdurate—then we shall simply have the <i>fait accompli</i> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>with -compound interest. What if it should turn out in the end, after the best -brains of socialism had all withdrawn from the economic programme of -socialism, that capitalism grows all the greener in the sunlight of -their tacit consent? There is Congress, there is Parliament, and there -they propose to remain. Suppose they are not converted from the top? Is -it altogether wise to stop persecuting them from the bottom?</p> - -<p>So much before I pass on. This comment does not qualify the teaching of -Wells. It merely supplements it from the economic side, and the -supplement seems to me an important one.</p> - -<p>Of a piece with his whole point of view is that he calls the right -sociological method not a scientific but an artistic method: it consists -of the making and comparing of Utopias. This idea he sets forth in his -paper <i>The So-called Science of Sociology</i>. "What is called the -scientific method," he says, "the method of observation, of theory about -these observations, experiments in verification of that theory and -confirmation or modification, really 'comes off' <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>in the sciences in -which the individuality of the units can be pretty completely ignored." -The method that is all-important in the primary physical sciences where -the individuality of atoms and molecules may conveniently be ignored for -the sake of practical truth, becomes in his view proportionately untrue -as the sciences in their gradation approach the human world. "We -cannot," he says in <i>First and Last Things</i>, "put humanity into a museum -and dry it for examination; our one still living specimen is all -history, all anthropology, and the fluctuating world of men. There is no -satisfactory means of dividing it and nothing in the real world with -which to compare it. We have only the remotest idea of its 'life-cycle' -and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny." And in the -paper I have just mentioned he speaks of the Social Idea as a thing -"struggling to exist and realize itself in a world of egotisms, animals, -and brute matter.... Now I submit it is not only a legitimate form of -approach, but altogether the most promising and hopeful form of -approach, to endeavor to disentangle and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>express one's personal version -of that idea, and to measure realities from the standpoint of that -realization. I think, in fact, that the creation of Utopias—and their -exhaustive criticism—is the proper and distinctive method of -sociology." This notion of sociology as properly artistic in method and -diagnostic in aim indicates his main divergence from the methods and -aims of Comte and Spencer.</p> - -<p>And so one turns to his own illustration of this belief, <i>A Modern -Utopia</i>. It is a beautiful Utopia, beautifully seen and beautifully -thought; and it has in it some of that flavor of airy unrestraint one -finds in <i>News from Nowhere</i>. Morris, of course, carries us into a world -where right discipline has long since produced right will, so wholly and -instinctively socialized that men can afford to be as free as anarchists -would have the unsocialized men of our own time, a world such as Goethe -had in mind when he said: "There is in man a force, a spring of goodness -which counterbalances egoism; and if by a miracle it could for a moment -suddenly be active in all men, the earth would at once be free from -evil." Well, that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>is the miracle which has in some way just taken place -before the curtain goes up on most Utopias; and I think that Wells has -never been more skilful than in keeping this miracle quietly in his bag -of tricks and devising meanwhile a plausible transition between us and -that better world. It all happens in a moment and we are there. By an -amazing legerdemain of logic he leaps the gap and presents us with a -planet which at every point tallies with our own. It is a planet which -does not contain a State but is a State, the flexible result of a free -social gesture.</p> - -<p><i>Mankind in the Making</i> should be taken as introductory to <i>A Modern -Utopia</i>. It is the sketch of a method towards attaining such a world -state. It is a kind of treatise on education based on the assumption -that "our success or failure with the unending stream of babies is the -measure of our civilization." It opens with a complete repudiation of -"scientific" breeding, as a scheme which ignores the uniqueness of -individual cases and the heterogeneous nature of human ideals. "We are," -says Wells, "not a bit clear what points to breed <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>for, and what points -to breed out;" while the interplay of strong and varied personalities we -desire is contradictory to any uniform notions of beauty, capacity, and -sanity, which thus cannot be bred for, so to speak, in the abstract. But -in <i>A Modern Utopia</i> he outlines certain conditions limiting parentage, -holding it necessary that in order to be a parent a man must be above a -certain minimum of capacity and income, failing which he is indebted to -the State for the keep of his children. Motherhood is endowed and -becomes in this way a normal and remunerative career, which renders the -mother capable of giving her time to the care and education of her -children, as millions are not in a wage-earning civilization, and makes -both her and her children independent of the ups and downs of her -husband. His very detailed suggestions about the education of young -children (illustrated also in <i>The Food of the Gods</i>) are at once a -reminiscence of Rabelais and an anticipation of Madame Montessori. He -insists upon uniform pronunciation (a very important matter in England, -where diversity of language is one of the bulwarks <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>of a rigid -class-system), the universality and constant revision of text-books, the -systematic reorganization of public library and bookselling methods, -with a view to making the race think as a whole. He urges the necessity -of rescuing literature from the accidents of the book-market by endowing -critical reviews, chairs for the discussion of contemporary thought, and -qualified thinkers and writers regardless of their special bias or -principles. To strike a mean between the British abuse of government by -hereditary privilege and the American abuse of government by electoral -machines he ingeniously proposes the election of officials by the jury -method, twenty or thirty men being set aside by lot to determine the -proper holders of office. And he is convinced of the importance in a -democracy of abundant honors, privileges, even titles, and abundant -opportunities for fruitful leisure.</p> - -<p>I have already spoken of his belief that the right sociological method -is the creation and comparison of individual Utopias. Thus his own -free-hand sketch of a better world is, in fact, a criticism of all -previous works of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>kind. As distinguished from them the modern -Utopia, he says, has to present not a finally perfect stage but a -hopefully ascending one; it has to present men not as uniform types but -as conflicting individualities with a common bond; and moreover it has -to occupy, not some remote island or province "over the range" but a -whole planet. The Utopia of Wells is a world which differs from the -present world in one fundamental respect only—it has one initial -advantage: that every individual in it has been <i>started right</i>, in the -degree in which the collective knowledge of the world has rendered that -possible.</p> - -<p>But there is no need for me to say anything more about these books. They -are the free and suggestive motions of a mind inexhaustibly fertile and -given to many devices. Anyone who has read Wells at all is aware of his -ingenuity, his equal capacity for large schemes and minute details, his -truly Japanese belief in radical changes, once they are seen to be -necessary and possible. And indeed the details of social arrangement -follow naturally and profusely enough, once you get the frame of mind -that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>wishes them. Wells in his Utopia presupposes the frame of mind. In -short, he puts education first; he believes that the essential problems -of the present are not economic but psychological.</p> - -<p>And here where the constructive theory of Wells begins, let me quote a -passage from <i>The New Machiavelli</i> that gives the gist of it:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>The line of human improvements and the expansion of human -life lies in the direction of education and finer -initiatives. If humanity cannot develop an education far -beyond anything that is now provided, if it cannot -collectively invent devices and solve problems on a much -richer, broader scale than it does at the present time, it -cannot hope to achieve any very much finer order or any more -general happiness than it now enjoys. We must believe, -therefore, that it can develop such a training and -education, or we must abandon secular constructive hope. And -here my initial difficulty as against crude democracy comes -in. If humanity at large is capable of that high education -and those creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must -its better and more vigorous types be so capable. And if -those who have power and scope and freedom to respond to -imaginative appeals cannot be won to the idea of collective -self-development, then the whole of humanity cannot be won -to that. From that one passes to what has become my general -conception in politics, the conception of the constructive -imagination working upon the vast complex of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>powerful -people, enterprising people, influential people, amidst whom -power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-conscious, -highly selective, open-minded, devoted, aristocratic -culture, which seems to me to be the necessary next phase in -the development of human affairs. I see human progress, not -as the spontaneous product of crowds of low minds swayed by -elementary needs, but as a natural but elaborate result of -intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and -curiosity liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions -and motives, modified and redirected by literature and art.</p></blockquote> - -<p>This permeation of the head men of the world, this creation of a natural -collective-minded aristocracy appears now to be the permanent hope of -Wells. It is the stuff of all his novels, it is the centre of his -ethical system; and his <i>Utopia</i> is made possible by the existence in it -of just such a flexible leading caste—the so-called Samurai. But -before coming to the inner implications of this, to the individual and -personal realities and difficulties of this, I must follow the -development of the idea in Wells himself. At various times, in various -works, he has presented it from a dozen different angles: as something -that is certain to come, as something he greatly desires to come, as -something that will not come at all except through prodigious effort, as -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>something that will come through a general catastrophe, as something -that will come through isolated individual endeavor, and the like. That -is to say he has presented his idea through all the various literary -mediums of exposition, fable, prophecy, psychological analysis, and -ethical appeal.</p> - -<p>It appears in a crude form in his first avowedly sociological work, -<i>Anticipations</i>. He there attempts to show that the chaos of society is -of itself beginning to generate a constructive class, into whose hands -it must ultimately fall. The advance of mechanism, he predicts, will -produce four clearly defined classes: an immense shareholding class with -all the potentialities of great property and a complete lack of function -with regard to that property; a non-producing class of middle-men -dependent on these, and composed of agents, managers, lawyers, clerks, -brokers, speculators, typists, and organizers; the expropriated class of -propertyless and functionless poor, whose present livelihood is -dependent on the fact that machinery is not yet so cheap as their labor. -And <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>amid this generally disorganized mass a fourth element will define -itself. This in rudiment is the element of mechanics and engineers, -whose work makes it necessary for them to understand the machines they -are making and to be continually on the lookout for new methods. These -men, he holds, will inevitably develop a common character based on a -self-wrought scientific education and view of life. About them as a -nucleus all the other skilled and constructive minds—doctors, teachers, -investigators, writers, and the like—will tend to group themselves; and -as the other classes in their very nature will tend to social -disintegration, these will inevitably grow more and more conscious of a -purpose, a reason, a function in common, and will disentangle themselves -from the aimless and functionless masses about them. Democracy, as we -know it, will meanwhile pass away. For democratic government unavoidably -reduces itself to government by party machines and party machines depend -for their existence on alarms, quarrelsome patriotisms, and -international exasperations whose almost inevitable outcome is war.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>Whether war follows or not, the power of society is bound to fall into -the hands of the scientifically trained, constructive middle class, -because this class is the only indispensable element in it. Without war -this must occur just as soon as the spending and purchasing power of the -shareholding class becomes dependent for its existence on the class -which alone can save society from destruction. With war it will occur -with even greater rapidity: for in the warfare of the future that nation -is bound to win which has most effectively realized socialist ideals, in -which the government can command, with least interference from private -control, its roads, its food, its clothing, its material, its resources, -which has most efficiently organized itself as a whole; and the class -that modern warfare will bring to the front is the class that knows how -to handle machinery and how to direct it. But just as this class will be -the most efficient in war, so will it be the most careful to prevent -war: it will in fact confirm the ultimate tendency toward a World State -at peace with itself, through the agency, not of any of the governments -that we know <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>to-day but of an informal coöperative organization which is -altogether outside the governmental systems of society, and which may in -time assimilate the greater part of the population of the world.</p> - -<p>Such is the argument of this book, and except for the inevitability of -it—the belief that all this <i>must</i> come to pass—Wells has not since -abandoned it in any essential way. The new aristocracy that figures -there, the advance-guard of a better civilization, is precisely the -ethical ideal which is embodied in the chief characters of his novels. -Thus too the Samurai of <i>A Modern Utopia</i> are figured as having arisen -at first informally as the constructive minds disentangling themselves -from the social chaos. Gradually becoming aware through research, -discussion and coöperation of a common purpose, they have at last -assumed a militant form and supplanted the political organizations of -the world.</p> - -<p>The general intention of all this finds utterance in the most poetic of -all the fables of Wells, <i>The Food of the Gods</i>. The Food itself, -invented by two undistinguished-looking <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>scientists, becomes current in -the world through the very haphazardness of a society which will not -control discoveries detrimental to it and which consequently has no -means of coping with a discovery capable of superseding it. -"Heracleophorbia" has thus the same initial advantage as Tono-Bungay or -any other shabby patent medicine. It has an additional advantage; for -while patent medicines have the sanction of private enterprise and are -controlled by secret patents for the gain of their inventors, the Food -of the Gods, like every discovery of honorable scientists, is given -freely to the world. Thus the Food and the gigantic race of supermen who -spring from it and bring with them a nobler order of things are -themselves generated by the very chaos they promise to supplant. Just in -proportion as the inventors are frank and open men, having no secret -gainful purpose, the Food spreads far and wide. It is stolen, spilled, -scattered; and wherever it falls every living thing grows gigantic. -Immense wasps drone like motor-cars over the meadows, chickens grow as -large as emus, and here and there a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>baby fed upon it and unable -thereafter to accept any less robust diet grows gradually to Rabelaisian -proportions. Caddles, a type of all the growing giants, comes to his -forty-foot maturity in a remote village where, as the mellow vicar -observes, "Things change, but Humanity—<i>aere perennius</i>." There he is -taught by the little folk to submit himself to all his governors, -teachers, spiritual pastors and masters and to order himself lowly and -reverently to all his betters. They put him to work in the chalk-pits, -where he learns to manage a whole quarry single-handed and makes of -himself a rudimentary engineer, and then he breaks loose and tramps to -London. He finds himself in the crowded New Kent Road, and they tell him -he is obstructing the traffic: "But where is it going?" he says; "where -does it come from? What does it mean?" Around him play the electric -signs advertising Yanker's Yellow Pills and Tupper's Tonic Wine for -Vigor, conveying to his troubled mind the significance of a world of -chaos and accident, perverted instinct, and slavery to base suggestion.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>Is it necessary to say that society becomes alarmed at last? Is it -necessary to add that Wells opens fire upon it with his whole battery of -satire? Plainly men and giants cannot live in the same world; the little -men find their little ways, their sacred customs of order, home, and -religion threatened by a strange new thing. The Children of the Food -meanwhile have grown beyond the conventions and proportions of common -life; they have experienced a kind of humanity to which all men can -attain and from which there can be no retrogression to the lesser -scheme. In the end, having found one another, they assemble in their -embankment, the world against them. They sit amid their vast machinery, -Titanic shapes in the darkness broken by searchlights and the flames of -their forges. An ambassador from the old order brings them the terms -upon which they may go free. They must separate themselves from the -world and give up the Food. They refuse:</p> - -<p>"Suppose we give up this thing that stirs within us," says the Giant -Leaguer.... "What then? Will this little world of theirs be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>as it was -before? They may fight against greatness in us who are the children of -men, but can they conquer?... For greatness is abroad, and not only in -us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose of all things! It is in the -nature of all things, it is part of time and space. To grow and still to -grow, from first to last, that is Being, that is the law of life."</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h4> - -<h3>THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEW REPUBLICAN</h3> - - -<p>It is obvious that the socialism of Wells, touching as it does at every -point the fabric of society, remains at bottom a personal and mystical -conception of life. His typical socialist, or constructive man, or -Samurai, or New Republican, or what you will, is as distinctly a poetic -projection from life as Nietzsche's Superman, or Carlyle's Hero, or the -Superior Man of Confucius. Like them, it implies a rule of conduct and a -special religious attitude.</p> - -<p>Nietzsche's Superman is a convenient figure by which for the moment to -throw into relief the point I have in mind. Plainly a conception of this -kind should never be intellectualized and defined. It is a living whole, -as a human being is a living whole, and the only way to grasp it is to -place oneself at the precise angle of the poet who conceived it. But the -fixed intellect <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>of man is not often capable of rising to the height of -such an argument, nor do the run of critics and interpreters rise to -such a height themselves. In the case of Nietzsche, particularly, they -have confounded the confusion, urging precise definitions and at the -same time disagreeing among themselves as to which definitions may be -held valid. But indeed the Superman does not "mean" this or that: it can -merely be approached from different points of view with different -degrees of sympathy. And so it is with the New Republican of Wells.</p> - -<p>I have mentioned the Superman because Wells himself has reached a -conception of aristocracy similar in certain respects to that of -Nietzsche but in others wholly antagonistic. In <i>The Food of the Gods</i> -he certainly exhibits a sympathy with Nietzsche on the poetical and -ideal side; for his giants are not simply grand-children of Rabelais, -they practise of necessity a morality at variance with that of the -little men among whom they grow. When Caddies comes to London he does -not, and cannot, expect the little men to feed him; not intending evil -and seeing merely that he must live, he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>sweeps the contents of a baker's -shop into his mouth with just the unconcerned innocence of laws and -prohibitions that a child would feel before a blackberry bush. The very -existence of a larger, freer race implies a larger and freer morality, -and the giants and the little folk alike see that the same world cannot -for long contain them both. But perhaps one can mark the distinction by -saying that, unlike the Superman, they are not masters but servants of -the cosmic process. They themselves are not the goal toward which the -whole creation tends. Humanity is not a setting for their splendor, but -something that wins through them its own significance.</p> - -<p>In fact it fully proves how profound is the socialistic instinct in -Wells, that though in English wise and almost in the manner of Carlyle -he has come to believe in the great ones of this world, he has never -lost the invincible socialist conviction that a great man is only a -figure of speech. In <i>The Discovery of the Future</i> he says: "I must -confess that I believe that if by some juggling with space and time -Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, Edward IV, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>William the Conqueror, Lord Rosebery, -and Robert Burns had all been changed at birth, it would not have -produced any serious dislocation of the course of destiny. I believe -that these great men of ours are no more than images and symbols and -instruments taken, as it were, haphazard by the incessant and consistent -forces behind them." The individual who stands on his achievement, the -"lord of creation," is to him at best a little misinformed, at the worst -blustering, dishonest, presuming, absurd.</p> - -<p>By an original instinct the Wells hero is an inconspicuous little -person, fastidiously untheatrical, who cuts no figure personally and -who, to adopt a phrase from one of his later books, "escapes from -individuality in science and service." He abhors "personages." For the -personage is one who, in some degree, stands on his achievement, and to -Wells man, both in his love and his work, is experimental: he is an -experiment toward an impersonal synthesis, the well-being of the -species. It is true that this idea of man as an experiment does not -conflict with a very full development of personality. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>It consists in -that; but personality to Wells is attained purely through love and work, -and thus it comes to an end the moment it becomes static, the moment one -accepts the laurel wreath, the moment one verges on self-consequence.</p> - -<p>The first published utterance of Wells was, I think, a paper in <i>The -Fortnightly Review</i> for July, 1891, called <i>The Rediscovery of the -Unique</i>. It was one of the earliest of those attacks on the logical -approach to life, so characteristic of contemporary thought: it stamped -him from the outset a pragmatist. The burden of his argument was that -since the investigations of Darwin it is no longer possible to ignore -the uniqueness of every individual thing in the universe and that "we -only arrive at the idea of similar beings by an unconscious or -deliberate disregard of an infinity of small differences"—that, in -brief, the method of classification which is the soul of logic is untrue -to the facts of life. "Human reason," he wrote, "in the light of what is -being advanced, appears as a convenient organic process based on a -fundamental happy misconception.... <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>The <i>reason d'être</i> of a man's mind -is to avoid danger and get food—so the naturalists tell us. His -reasoning powers are about as much a truth-seeking tool as the snout of -a pig, and he may as well try to get to the bottom of things by them as -a mole might by burrowing."</p> - -<p>I quote thus his rudely graphic early statement of the case, because he -has not since substantially modified it and because it shows that he -already related it to human realities: and indeed in the same paper he -pointed out the relation that such an idea must bear to ordinary -conduct:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Beings are unique, circumstances are unique, and therefore -we cannot think of regulating our conduct by wholesale -dicta. A strict regard for truth compels us to add that -principles are wholesale dicta: they are substitutes of more -than doubtful value for an individual study of cases.</p></blockquote> - -<p>This conception of human reason as an altogether inadequate organ for -getting at the truth of things he later expanded in his Oxford lecture, -<i>Scepticism of the Instrument;</i> and, still further expanded, it forms -the first or metaphysical book of his <i>First and Last <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>Things</i>. It is -unnecessary to discuss the rights and wrongs of this primary point in a -generation familiar with James and Bergson. It is an assumption of the -purely personal, experimental nature of truth which has had a sufficient -sanction of experience greatly to modify contemporary practice in ethics -and sociology. And it should be noted that Wells evolved it in his own -study of physical science (a study serious enough to result in -text-books of Biology, Zoology, and Physiography) and that he presents -it, in accordance with his own postulates, not as truth for everybody, -but as his own personal contribution to the sum of experience. The study -of science led him to see the limitations of the scientific attitude, -outside the primary physical sciences which for practical purposes can -afford to ignore individualities, in matters that approach the world of -human motives and affairs.</p> - -<p>I do not propose to discuss this question of logic. It is quite plain at -least, as Wells observes, in the spirit of Professor James, that "all -the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and determined -are less of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>nature of fact than of artistic expression." And -therefore he is justified in proceeding as follows:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I make my beliefs as I want them. I do not attempt to go to -fact for them. I make them thus and not thus exactly as an -artist makes a picture so and not so.... That does not mean -that I make them wantonly and regardless of fact.... The -artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field of -visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative -and great poverty of test, that is all, but of no -wantonness; the conditions of Tightness are none the less -imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I -adopt certain beliefs because I feel the need of them, -because I feel an often quite unanalyzable Tightness in -them, because the alternative of a chaotic life distresses -me.</p></blockquote> - -<p>And this is the way in which he presents the gist of his beliefs:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I see myself in life as part of a great physical being that -strains and I believe grows toward Beauty, and of a great -mental being that strains and I believe grows towards -knowledge and power. In this persuasion that I am a gatherer -of experience, a mere tentacle that arranged thought beside -thought for this Being of the Species, this Being that grows -beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling -idea of which I stand in need, the ruling idea that -reconciles and adjudicates <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>among my warring motives. In it I -find both concentration of myself and escape from myself, in -a word, I find <i>Salvation</i>.</p></blockquote> - -<p>And again later:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>The race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are -the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement: -it is a statement of fact. In so far as we are individuals, -so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are -accidental, disconnected, without significance, the sport of -chance. In so far as we realize ourselves as experiments of -the species for the species, just in so far do we escape -from the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes in an -experience greater than ourselves.... Now none of this, if -you read me aright, makes for the suppression of one's -individual difference, but it does make for its correlation. -We have to get everything we can out of ourselves for this -very reason that we do not stand alone; we signify as parts -of a universal and immortal development. Our separate selves -are our charges, the talents of which much has to be made. -It is because we are episodical in the great synthesis of -life that we have to make the utmost of our individual lives -and traits and possibilities.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Naturally then, just as he holds by the existing State as a rudimentary -collective organ in public affairs, so also, in theory, he holds by the -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>existing Church. His Church of the Future bears to the existing Church -just the relation which the ultimate State of socialism bears to the -existing State. "The theory of a religion," says Wells, "may propose the -attainment of Nirvana or the propitiation of an irascible Deity or a -dozen other things as its end and aim. The practical fact is that it -draws together great multitudes of diverse individualized people in a -common solemnity and self-subordination, however vague, and is so far -like the State, and in a manner far more intimate and emotional and -fundamental than the State, a synthetic power. And in particular the -idea of the Catholic Church is charged with synthetic suggestion; it is -in many ways an idea broader and finer than the constructive idea of any -existing State."</p> - -<p>All of which I take to be very much the position of Erasmus face to face -with Luther and of Matthew Arnold face to face on the one hand with -Nonconformity and on the other with Darwinism: that the Church is a -social fact greater in importance than any dogmatic system it contains. -To Wells any sort of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>voluntary self-isolation, any secession from -anything really synthetic in society, is a form of "sin." And like many -Catholics he justifies a certain Machiavelism in squaring one's personal -doubts with the collective end. Thus he holds that test oaths and -declarations of formal belief are of the same nature as the oath of -allegiance a republican takes to the King, petty barriers that cannot -weigh against the good that springs from placing oneself <i>en rapport</i> -with the collective religious consciousness; at least in the case of -national Churches, which profess to represent the whole spiritual life -of a nation and which cannot therefore be regarded as exclusive to any -affirmative religious man. The individual, he says, must examine his -special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility -of coöperation; as far as possible he must repress his private tendency -toward social fragmentation, hold fast to the idea of the Church as -essentially a larger fact than any specific religious beliefs, and work -within it for the recognition of this fact. I have mentioned Catholic -reasoning; Wells appears to be in general agreement with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>Newman as to -the subordination of private intellectual scruples to the greater unity -of faith.</p> - -<p>But indeed I doubt if it is fair to take him too much at his word in -specific matters of this kind. <i>First and Last Things</i> has that slightly -official quality which goes with all Confessions of Faith out loud. If -his intention has led him to square himself with lines of thought and -conduct where, to speak the truth, he is an alien, his intention -remains, and that is plain and fine.</p> - -<p>The synthetic motive gains its very force through the close-knitting of -keenly-developed, proud, and valiant individualities. In Wells the -synthetic motive and the individual motive qualify and buttress one -another; and he is quite as much opposed to the over-predominance of the -synthetic motive where the personal motive is deficient as he is to the -self-indulgence of the purely personal life. Thus the Assembly in <i>A -Modern Utopia</i> is required to contain a certain number of men outside -the Samurai class, because, as they explain, "there is a certain sort of -wisdom that comes of sin and laxness, which is necessary to the perfect -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>ruling of life," and their Canon contains a prayer "to save the world -from unfermented men." So also in <i>First and Last Things</i> Wells remarks: -"If I were a father confessor I should begin my catalogue of sins by -asking, 'Are you a man of regular life?' and I would charge my penitent -to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving irregularity; to -fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork and beans or give -up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners." Plainly his -collective purpose is nothing unless it consists of will, will even to -wilfulness, even to perversity.</p> - -<p>And this leads one back to that early assertion of his that since beings -and circumstances are unique, we must get rid of the idea that conduct -should be regulated by general principles. Similarly, at the outset of -<i>Mankind in the Making</i> he says it is necessary "to reject and set aside -all abstract, refined, and intellectualized ideas as starting -propositions, such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, or Beauty, -and to hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>succession of births." Goodness and Beauty, he says, cannot -be considered apart from good and beautiful things and one's personal -notions of the good and beautiful have to be determined by one's -personal belief about the meaning of life. Thus, to take an illustration -from his novels, one of the most odious traits of such a father as Ann -Veronica's or Mr. Pope in <i>Marriage</i> is that they wish to regulate their -daughters, not by a study of what is and must be good in their eyes, but -by a general sweeping view of what good daughters ought to be.</p> - -<p>Now since his own idea of the purpose of life is the development of the -collective consciousness of the race, his idea of the Good is that which -contributes to this synthesis, and the Good Life is that which, as he -says, "most richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience and -renders it available for the race, that contributes most effectively to -the collective growth." And as a corollary to this, Sin is essentially -"the service of secret and personal ends." The conflict in one way or -another between this Good and this Evil forms the substance of each of -the main group of his novels. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>Aside from the novels of shop-life, each -of his principal men begins life with a passionate and disinterested -ambition to gather and prepare experience and render it available for -the race; each one falls from this ambition to the service of secret and -personal ends. Lewisham, Capes, Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford are, each -in his own way, human approximations, with all the discount of actual -life, of the ethical standard of Wells himself as it is generalized in -the New Republicans and the Samurai. They illustrate how fully the -socialism of Wells is summed up in a conception of character.</p> - -<p>But before turning to the actual men and women who form the substance of -his novels, I must add something about those wraith-like beings, the -Samurai of <i>A Modern Utopia,</i> which fully embody his ideal.</p> - -<p>The name Samurai, to begin with, is not a random choice, for it is plain -that the Japanese temper is akin to that of Wells. The career of the -Japanese as a nation during the last fifty years perfectly illustrates -his frequent contention that in modern warfare success falls to the -nation that has most completely realized <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>the socialistic, as -distinguished from the individualistic, notion of society. "Behind her -military capacity is the disciplined experience of a thousand years," -says Lafcadio Hearn, who proceeds to show at what cost, in everything we -are apt to regard as human, this disciplined power has been -achieved—the cost of individual privacy in rights, property, and -conduct.</p> - -<p>But aside from social ideals and achievements one instinctively feels -that Wells likes Japanese human nature. In one of his early essays, long -since out of print, he remarks:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I like my art unadorned; thought and skill and the other -strange quality that is added thereto to make things -beautiful—and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and -paper, and behold! a thing of beauty!—as they do in Japan. -And if it should fall into the fire—well, it has gone like -yesterday's sunset, and to-morrow there will be another.</p></blockquote> - -<p>He contrasts this with the ordinary English view of art and property, -mahogany furniture and "handsome" possessions:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>The pretence that they were the accessories to human life -was too transparent. <i>We</i> were the accessories; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>we minded -them for a little while, and then we passed away. They wore -us out and cast us aside. We were the changing scenery; they -were the actors who played on through the piece.</p></blockquote> - -<p><i>There is no Being but Becoming</i> is the special dictum of Wells, a -dictum which does not consort with mahogany sideboards, but is tangibly -expressed in Japanese architecture. And if Wells naturally likes -Japanese art, its economy, delicacy, ephemerality, its catlike nicety, -its paucity of color, its emphasis of design, its "starkness," it is -plain also that many qualities of the Japanese character must also -appeal irresistibly to him: the light hold they have on all those things -into which one settles down, from stolid leather arm-chairs to -comfortable private fortunes; their lack of self-consequence, their -alertness, their athletic freedom from everything that encumbers, their -remoteness from port-wine and <i>embonpoint.</i> These things exist in -Wells's notion of right human nature.</p> - -<p>Thus the Samurai. They are delegates of the species, experimenting and -searching for new directions; they instinctively view <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>themselves as -explorers for the race, as disinterested agents. And their own -self-development on this disinterested basis is not only the purpose of -their own lives, but also the method by which the Life Impulse discovers -and records itself and pushes on to ever wider and richer -manifestations.</p> - -<p>The socialism of Wells is merely a building out from this conception. He -is persuaded that this kind of experimental exercise is not simply a -happy indulgence for the few fortunately placed, but that it is actually -virtue and the only virtue. And this notion of personal virtue—personal -in quality, social in effect—once conceded, it follows that the -moulding of life must proceed with reference to this.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h4> - -<h3>HUMAN NATURE</h3> - - -<p>There is always a certain disadvantage in approaching human nature -through a theory or in the light of an ideal. If I am doing that, it is -my own fault and by no means the fault of Wells. He has himself -abandoned socialism, in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has -too much of the <i>à priori</i> about it; he has abandoned economics because -it deals with man as a mass-mind; he has come to rest in human nature -itself and he has made his theories subject to human nature.</p> - -<p>"All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the -story," says Thoreau. Most readers of the novels of Wells, I suppose, -have no notion that a theory of life runs through them and unites them. -And they are right. The force of a work of art does not reside in its -"inner meanings." An admirable work of art will always no doubt possess -"inner <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>meanings" in plenty and the unhappy mind of man will always rout -them out. But to separate the intellectual structure of anything from -the thing itself is just like any other kind of vivisection: you expose -the brain and you kill the dog. A work of art is a moving living whole -that speaks to the moving living whole which is oneself. We are -insensibly modified by reading as by other experience. We come to feel -differently, see differently, act differently. Without doubt Wells has -altered the air we breathe and has made a conscious fact in many minds -the excellence that resides in certain types of men and modes of living -and the odiousness that resides in others. Socialism, like everything -else which changes the world, comes as a thief in the night.</p> - -<p>Still, it is plain that Wells himself began with doctrine foremost; -richness of experience has led him only after many years to get the -horse before the cart. From the first he was aware of a point of -view—it was the point of view, writ large, of his own self-made career, -growing gradually more and more coherent. Throughout his romances, down -to the very <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>end, his chief interest was theoretical rather than human. -Only this can account for the violent wrenching of life and character in -them to suit the requirements of a predetermined idea. The Food of the -Gods, for example, is so far the essential fact of the book that bears -its name that the characters in this book are merely employed to give -the Food a recognizable human setting. Throughout his romances, indeed, -men exist for inventions, not inventions for men.</p> - -<p>Yet the "human interest," as it is called, was there from the outset, -side by side with this main theoretic interest in the scientific and -socialistic possibilities of life. The series of novels began almost as -early as the series of romances. Two "streams of tendency" run side by -side throughout the earlier writings of Wells—streams of tendency which -meet fully for the first time in <i>Tono-Bungay</i>, and have formed a single -main current in the novels subsequent to that. On the one hand was the -stream of constructive theory, not yet brought into contact with human -nature, on the other the stream of "human interest," not yet <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>brought -into contact with constructive theory. Mr. Hoopdriver, of <i>The Wheels of -Chance,</i> and Kipps, are typical of this earlier fiction, specimens of -muddled humanity as such, one might say, quite unmitigated by the train -of thought, the possibility of doing something <i>with</i> muddled humanity, -which was growing more and more urgent in the romances.</p> - -<p>In <i>Tono-Bungay</i>, as I have said, one sees the union of these two trains -of interest, muddled humanity being represented in Uncle Ponderevo, -constructive theory in George Ponderevo. And in all the subsequent -novels this fusion continues. The background in each case is the static -world of muddle from which Wells is always pushing off into the open sea -of possibilities, the foreground being occupied by a series of men and -women who represent this dynamic forward movement. And the philosophy of -Wells has finally come to port in human nature.</p> - -<p>"Few modern socialists," he says somewhere, "present their faith as a -complete panacea, and most are now setting to work in earnest upon those -long-shirked preliminary problems of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>human interaction through which the -vital problem of a collective head and brain can alone be approached." -And elsewhere he says: "Our real perplexities are altogether -psychological. There are no valid arguments against a great-spirited -socialism but this, that people will not. Indolence, greed, meanness of -spirit, the aggressiveness of authority, and above all jealousy, -jealousy from pride and vanity, jealousy for what we esteem our -possessions, jealousy for those upon whom we have set the heavy fetters -of our love, a jealousy of criticism and association, these are the real -obstacles to those brave large reconstructions, those profitable -abnegations and brotherly feats of generosity that will yet turn human -life—of which our individual fives are but the momentary parts—into a -glad, beautiful and triumphant coöperation all round this sunlit world."</p> - -<p>Inevitably then he sees the world as divided roughly into two worlds, -and human nature as of two general kinds. There is the static world, the -normal, ordinary world which is on the whole satisfied with itself, -together with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>the great mass of men who compose and sanction it; and -there is the ever-advancing better world, pushing through this outworn -husk in the minds and wills of creative humanity. In one of his essays -he has figured this opposition as between what he calls the Normal -Social Life and the Great State. And in one of those <i>dégagé</i> -touch-and-go sketches in which he so often sums up the history of -humankind, he has presented the Normal Social Life as a "common -atmosphere of cows, hens, dung, toil, ploughing, economy, and domestic -intimacy," an immemorial state of being which implies on the part of men -and women a perpetual acquiescence—a satisfied or hopeless consent—to -the end of time. But as against this normal conception of life he points -out that modern circumstances have developed in men, through machinery, -the division of labor, etc., a "surplus life" which does not fit into -the Normal scheme at all, and that humanity has returned "from a closely -tethered to a migratory existence." And he observes: "The history of the -immediate future will, I am convinced, be very largely the history of -the conflict of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>needs of this new population with the institutions, -the boundaries, the laws, prejudices, and deep-rooted traditions -established during the home-keeping, localized era of mankind's career."</p> - -<p>Two conceptions of life, two general types of character, two ethical -standards are here set in opposition, and this opposition is maintained -throughout the novels of Wells. Thus on the title-page of <i>The New -Machiavelli</i> appears the following quotation from Professor James: "It -suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and tough-minded -people ... do both exist." In <i>A Modern Utopia</i> this division appears -typically in the two men from our world who play off against one -another, the botanist and the narrator of the story. The -"tender-mindedness" of the botanist is exhibited in the fact that he -cares nothing for a better world if it is to deprive him of the muddled, -inferior and sentimental attachments of his accustomed life, and prefers -them to the austerer, braver prospect that is offered him. -"Tough-mindedness," on the other hand, is above all the state of living, -not <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>in one's attachments, habits, possessions, not in the rut of least -resistance, but in the sense of one's constructive and coöperative -relationship to the whole sum of things, in being "a conscious part of -that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe." And -indeed the constant theme of the novels of Wells might be described as -tough-mindedness with lapses.</p> - -<p>For the heroes of Wells do lapse: they pay that tribute to "human -nature" and the overwhelming anti-social forces in the world and in man -himself. They fall, as a rule, from "virtue" to the service of secret -and personal ends. <i>Cherchez la femme</i>. Mr. Lewisham, insufficiently -prepared and made to feel that society does not want him, has to give up -his disinterested ambitions in science and scramble for money to support -a wife whom instinct has urged him, however imprudently, to marry. -George Ponderevo gives up science and is forced into abetting his -uncle's patent medicine enterprise for the same reason. For the same -reason, too, Capes takes to commercial play-writing to support Ann -Veronica; and to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>stand behind the extravagance of Marjorie, Trafford, -having discovered in his researches an immensely valuable method of -making artificial india-rubber which he is going to make public for the -use of society, is persuaded to compromise his honor as a scientist and -monopolize his discovery for private gain. In <i>Tono-Bungay</i> the -enterprise is a swindling patent medicine, which many business men would -refuse to have anything to do with; but in <i>Marriage</i> the proposition -belongs to what is called "legitimate business," and it may be well to -quote a passage to show the subtlety and, at the same time, from this -point of view, the very substantial nature of temptation and sin:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Solomonson had consulted Trafford about this matter at -Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that -Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to -complete and publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, -first a smashing demonstration of the unsoundness of -Behren's claim and then a lucid exposition of just what had -to be done and what could be done to make an india-rubber -absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The -business man could not believe his ears.</p> - -<p>"My dear chap, positively—you mustn't!" <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>Solomonson had -screamed.... "Don't you see all you are throwing away?"</p> - -<p>"I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," -said Trafford.... "When men dropped that idea of concealing -knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist, and all that is -worth having in modern life, all that makes it better and -safer and more hopeful than the ancient life began."</p> - -<p>"My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to -give away the synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of -the window into the street!"... Everything that had made -Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to -such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as -such no concern with personal consequences; his business is -the steady relentless clarification of knowledge. The human -affairs he changes, the wealth he makes or destroys, are no -concern of his; once these things weigh with him, become -primary, he has lost his honor as a scientific man.</p> - -<p>"But you <i>must</i> think of consequences," Solomonson had -cried during those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you -are, shying this cheap synthetic rubber of yours into the -world—for it's bound to be cheap! anyone can see -that—like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good of -saying you don't care about the market-place, that <i>your</i> -business is just to make bombs and drop them out of the -window? You smash up things just the same. Why! you'll ruin -hundreds and thousands of people, people living on rubber -shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable -workers in rubber works...."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>"I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said -Solomonson, leaning back in his chair at last.... "So soon, -that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can lower the -price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the -end—there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow -tea."</p></blockquote> - -<p>There we have Eve and the apple brought up to date, sin being the choice -of a private and individual good at the expense of the general good. The -honor of a doctor or a scientist consists in not concealing and -monopolizing discoveries. But why should the line be drawn at doctors -and scientists? There is the crux of socialist ethics.</p> - -<p>By this type of compromise the actual New Republicans fall short of -their Utopian selves, the Samurai. But compromise is well within the -philosophy of Wells. "The individual case," he says in <i>First and Last -Things</i>, "is almost always complicated by the fact that the existing -social and economic system is based upon conditions that the growing -collective intelligence condemns as unjust and undesirable, and that the -constructive spirit in men now seeks to supersede. We have to live in a -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>provisional state while we dream of and work for a better one." And -elsewhere: "All socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers -far ahead of the main advance. The organized State that should own and -administer their possessions for the general good has not arrived to -take them over; and in the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory -agents according to their lights and make things ready for its coming."</p> - -<p>But if the New Republican is justified in compromising himself for the -means of subsistence, how much more in the matter of love! "All for -love, and the world well lost" might be written over several of Wells's -novels. But, in reality, is the world lost at all under these -conditions? On the contrary, it is gained, and the more unconsciously -the better, in babies. Love belongs to the future and the species with -more finality than the greatest constructive work of the present, and -the heroines of Wells are inordinately fond of babies. When Schopenhauer -analyzed the metaphysics of love he showed that natural selection is a -quite inevitable thing seeking its own. In Wells love is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>equally -irresistible and direct. Whenever it appears in his books it makes -itself unmistakably known, and, having done so, it cuts its way straight -to its consummation, through every obstacle of sentiment, affection, -custom, and conventionality. It is as ruthless as the Last Judgment, and -like the Last Judgment it occurs only once.</p> - -<p>Why then does it appear promiscuous? The answer to this question refers -one back to the underlying contention of Wells that there are two kinds -of human beings and two corresponding ethics, and that in the end the -New Republican who has become aware of himself cannot consort with the -Normal Social breed. But in actual life this standard becomes entangled -with many complexities. Just as, in a world of commercial competition, -it is the lot of most of those who try to give themselves -whole-heartedly to disinterested work that they place themselves at such -a disadvantage as ultimately to have to make a choice between work and -love, so the pressure of society and the quality of human nature itself -create entanglements of every kind. It is the nature of life that one -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>grows only gradually to the secure sense of a personal aim, and that -meanwhile day by day one has given hostages to fortune. To wake up and -find oneself suddenly the master of a purpose is without doubt, in the -majority of cases, to find oneself mortgaged beyond hope to the existing -fact. The writer who sets out to make his way temporarily and as a -stepping-stone by journalism finds himself in middle age with ample -means to write what he wishes to write only to find also that he has -become for good and all—a journalist! And so it is with lovers. Only in -the degree to which free will remains a perpetual and present faith can -"love and fine thinking" remain themselves; free of their attachments, -free of their obligations, and mortgages, and discounts. That is the -quality of a decent marriage, and the end of a marriage that is not -decent.</p> - -<p>It is no business of mine to justify the sexual ethics of Wells. But -there is a difference between a fact and an intention, and what I have -just said serves to explain the intention. Consider, in the light of it, -a few of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>characters, both in and out of marriage. Ann Veronica from -the first frankly owns that she is not in love with Manning, but every -kind of social hypnotism is brought into motion to work on her ignorance -of life and to confuse her sense of free-will. George Ponderevo simply -outgrows Marion; but you cannot expect him not to grow, and who is -responsible for the limited, furtive, second-hand world in which Marion -has lived and which has irrevocably moulded her? Margaret's world, too, -is a second-hand world, though on a socially higher plane: she lives in -a pale dream of philanthropy and Italian art, shocked beyond any mutual -understanding by everything that really belongs in the first-hand world -of her husband. These characters meet and pass one another like moving -scales; they never stand on quite the same plane. And then the -inevitable always occurs. For, just as the Children of the Food cannot -consort with the little folk they promise to supersede, so it appears to -be a fixed part of the programme of Wells that New Republicans can only -love other New Republicans with success.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>He implies this indeed in <i>A Modern Utopia</i>:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>"A man under the Rule who loves a woman who does not follow -it, must either leave the Samurai to marry her, or induce -her to accept what is called the Woman's Rule, which, while -it exempts her from the severer qualifications and -disciplines, brings her regimen into a working harmony with -his."</p> - -<p>"Suppose she breaks the Rule afterwards?"</p> - -<p>"He must leave either her or the order."</p> - -<p>"There is matter for a novel or so in that."</p> - -<p>"There has been matter for hundreds."</p></blockquote> - -<p>Wells has written six himself. <i>Love and Mr. Lewisham, Ann Veronica, -Tono-Bungay, The New Machiavelli, Marriage, The Passionate Friends</i>, are -all variations on this theme. In one of these alone life's double motive -succeeds in establishing itself, and it is for this reason that -<i>Marriage</i>, to my thinking the weakest of his novels from an artistic -point of view, is the most important concrete presentation of the -philosophy of Wells. It is an inferior book, but it gives one the sense -of a problem solved. By passing through a necessary yet feasible -discipline, Trafford and Marjorie bridge over the gap between haphazard -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>human nature and the better nature of socialism, and become Samurai in -fact.</p> - -<p>These entanglements of the actual world would be an overwhelming -obstacle to a socialism less vigorous than that of Wells. But obstacles -give edge to things, and for a man who loves order no one could have -pictured disorder with more relish than he. Only a pure theorist could -regret the artistic zest with which he portrays our muddled world. -Running amuck was a constant theme in his early writings; his comets ran -amuck, and so did Mr. Bessel, and there is no more relished wanton scene -than that of the Invisible Man running amuck through the Surrey -villages. Intentionally or not, this relish in disorder reinforces the -prime fact about his view of order. He abhors the kind of order which is -often ignorantly confounded with the socialist aim, the order which -classifies and standardizes. He desires a collective consciousness only -through the exercise of a universally unimpeded free will, and he would -rather have no collectiveness at all than one that implies the sacrifice -of this free will. He wishes to work only on the most <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>genuine human -stuff. This was the basis of his break with the Fabian Society; it is -the basis of his dislike of bureaucratic methods which deprive people of -beer when they want beer. It defines his notion of the true method of -socialism as first of all an education of the human will toward -voluntary right discipline.</p> - -<p>His appeal, then, is a personal one. He has proved this indeed by his -repudiation of all attempts to embody in practice his proposed order of -voluntary nobility, the Samurai. Certain groups of young people actually -organized themselves upon the Rule that he had outlined, and it was this -that led him to see how entirely his ideal had been personal and -artistic rather than practical. Anyone at all familiar with religious -history and psychology will see how inevitably any such group would tend -to emphasize the Rule and the organization rather than the socially -constructive spirit for which the whole was framed, and how the -organization would itself separate from the collective life of the world -and become a new sect among the many sects. It was the same instinct -that led Emerson, Transcendental communist as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>he was, to look askance at -Brook Farm. It has been the want of an equal tact in eminent religious -minds that has made society a warfare of sect and opinion.</p> - -<p>When one tries to focus the nature of his appeal one recalls a passage -in one of his books where he sums up the ordinary mind of the world and -the function which all socialism bears to this mind:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>It is like a very distended human mind; it is without a -clear aim; it does not know except in the very vaguest terms -what it wants to do; it has impulses, it has fancies; it -begins and forgets. In addition, it is afflicted with a -division within itself that is strictly analogous to that -strange mental disorder which is known to psychologists as -multiple personality. It has no clear conception of the -whole of itself, it goes about forgetting its proper name -and address. Part of it thinks of itself as one great thing, -as, let us say, Germany; another thinks of itself as -Catholicism, another as the white race, or Judæa. At times -one might deem the whole confusion not so much a mind as -incurable dementia—a chaos of mental elements, haunted by -invincible and mutually incoherent fixed ideas.... In its -essence the socialistic movement amounts to this: it is an -attempt in this warring chaos of a collective mind to pull -itself together, to develop and establish a governing idea -of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>itself. It is the development of the collective -self-consciousness of humanity.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Certainly the road to this can only be through a common understanding. -The willing and unwilling servitudes of men, the institutions of society -that place love and work in opposition to one another, the shibboleths -of party, the aggressive jingoisms of separate peoples, the immemorial -conspiracy by which men have upheld the existing fact, these things do -spring from the want of imagination, the want of energetic faith, the -want of mutual understanding. To this inner and personal problem Wells -has applied himself. Can life be ventilated, can the mass of men be -awakened to a sense of those laws of social gravitation and the -transmutation of energy by which life is proved a myriad-minded -organism, can the ever-growing sum of human experience and discovery -clear up the dark places within society and within man? Among those who -have set themselves to the secular solution of these questions—and I am -aware of the limits of any secular solution—there are few as effective -as Wells.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>Consider him in relation to a single concrete issue, the issue of -militarism:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Expenditure upon preparation for war falls, roughly, into -two classes: there is expenditure upon things that have a -diminishing value, things that grow old-fashioned and wear -out, such as fortifications, ships, guns, and ammunition, -and expenditure upon things that have a permanent and even -growing value, such as organized technical research, -military and naval experiment, and the education and -increase of a highly trained class of war experts.</p></blockquote> - -<p>And in <i>The Common Sense of Warfare</i> he urges a lavish expenditure on -"education and training, upon laboratories and experimental stations, -upon chemical and physical research and all that makes knowledge and -leading." Separate the principle involved here from the issue it is -involved in, get the intention clear of the fact, and you find that he -is saying just the better sort of things that Matthew Arnold said. -Militarism granted, are you going to do military things or are you going -to make military things a stepping-stone toward the clarification of -thought, the training of men, the development <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>of race-imagination? -Militarism has been to a large extent the impetus that has made the -Germans and the Japanese the trained, synthetic peoples they are. And -these very qualities are themselves in the end hostile to militarism. -Militarism considered in this sense is precisely what the General Strike -is in the idea of M. Georges Sorel: a myth, a thing that never comes to -pass, but which trains the general will by presenting it with a concrete -image toward which the will readily directs itself. Kipling, in the eyes -of the New Machiavelli, at least made the nation aware of what comes.</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, All along o' -doing things rather more or less.</p></blockquote> - -<p>There is in this no defence of militarism. Granting the facts of -society, there is a way that accepts and secures them as they are and -another way of turning them into the service of the future, and a people -that has trained itself with reference to a particular issue has -virtually trained itself for all issues.</p> - -<p>But no one, I think, has measured the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>difficulties of real progress more -keenly than Wells has come to measure them. The further he has -penetrated into human nature the more alive he has become to these -difficulties. <i>The New Machiavelli</i> is a modern <i>Rasselas</i> that has no -happy valley in the end, and Remington passes from party to party, -penetrating inward from ideas to the better stuff of mankind, hoping to -embody his "white passion of statecraft," and in the end demonstrating -to himself the futility of all groups and parties alike.</p> - -<p>And as with parties, so with men. Consider that scene in <i>The Passionate -Friends</i> where Stratton tries to explain in writing to his father what -he has been experiencing and why he must go away. He writes page after -page without expressing himself and at last, certain that he and his -father cannot come into touch, sends off a perfunctory note and receives -a perfunctory reply. "There are times," he adds, "when the -inexpressiveness of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to -me we are all asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still -cows who stand munching <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>slowly in a field.... Why couldn't we and why -didn't we talk together!"</p> - -<p>That is the burden of his latest novel. By this touchstone he has come -to measure the possibility of that openness of mind, that mutual -understanding, that ventilation of life and thought through which alone -the Great State can exist.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h4> - -<h3>A PERSONAL CHAPTER</h3> - - -<p>I doubt if there are many living men of note who, a generation after -they are dead, will be so fully and easily "explained" as H.G. Wells. He -is a most personal and transparent writer, he is the effect of -conditions and forces which have existed for scarcely more than two -generations. But for these very reasons it is very difficult to see him -in perspective, and to explain him would be to explain the age in which -we live. Let me at least give certain facts and reflections about his -life written by Wells himself, a few years ago, in the introduction to a -Russian translation of his writings:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I was born<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> in that queer indefinite class that we call in -England the middle class. I am not a bit aristocratic; I do -not know any of my ancestors beyond <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>my grandparents, and -about them I do not know very much, because I am the -youngest son of my father and mother and their parents were -all dead before I was born. My mother was the daughter of an -innkeeper at a place called Midhurst, who supplied -post-horses to the coaches before the railways came; my -father was the son of the head gardener of Lord de Lisle at -Penshurst Castle, in Kent. They had various changes of -fortune and position; for most of his life my father kept a -little shop in a suburb of London, and eked out his -resources by playing a game called cricket, which is not -only a pastime, but a show which people will pay to see, and -which, therefore, affords a living to professional players. -His shop was unsuccessful, and my mother, who had been a -lady's maid, became, when I was twelve years old, -housekeeper in a large country house. I too was destined to -be a shopkeeper. I left school at thirteen for that purpose. -I was apprenticed first to a chemist, and, that proving -unsatisfactory, to a draper. But after a year or so it -became evident to me that the facilities that were and still -are increasing in England offered me better chances in life -than a shop and comparative illiteracy could do; and so I -struggled for and got various grants and scholarships that -enabled me to study and take a degree in science and some -mediocre honors in the new and now great and growing -University of London.... After I had graduated I taught -biology for two or three years, and then became a -journalist.... I began first to write literary articles, -criticisms, and so forth, and presently short imaginative -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>stories in which I made use of the teeming suggestions of -modern science....</p></blockquote> - -<p>So much for the facts. The reflections are not less illuminating:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>The literary life is one of the modern forms of adventure. -Success with a book—even such a commercially modest success -as mine has been—means in the English-speaking world not -merely a moderate financial independence, but the utmost -freedom of movement and intercourse. A poor man is lifted -out of his narrow circumstances into familiar and -unrestrained intercourse with a great variety of people. He -sees the world; if his work excites interest, he meets -philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, -professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, the -great, and he may make such use of them as he can. He finds -himself no longer reading in books and papers, but hearing -and touching at first hand the big questions that sway men, -the initiatives that shape human affairs.... To be a -literary artist is to want to render one's impressions of -the things about one. Life has interested me enormously and -filled me with ideas and associations I want to present -again. I have liked life and like it more and more. The days -in the shop and the servants' hall, the straitened struggles -of my early manhood, have stored me with vivid memories that -illuminate and help me to appreciate all the wider vistas of -my later social experiences. I have friends and intimates -now at almost every social level, from that of a peer to -that of a pauper, and I find my <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>sympathies and curiosities -stretching like a thin spider's web from top to bottom of -the social tangle. I count that wide social range one of the -most fortunate accidents of my life, and another is that I -am of a diffident and ineffectual presence, unpunctual, -fitful, and easily bored by other than literary effort; so -that I am not tempted to cut a figure in the world and -abandon that work of observing and writing which is my -proper business in it.</p></blockquote> - -<p>This candid and exact statement enables us to see just how far, in -matters of fact, experience and belief, the autobiographical motive has -entered his writings. It would be possible to show how inevitably such -an ideal as that of the New Republican Samurai arose from such a life; -how much that conscious and deliberate insistence on personal efficiency -and orderly ways, that repudiation of mental confusion, sluggishness, -and sentiment may figure as a kind of stepping-stone from the world of -Kipps and Polly to the world of Remington and Trafford; how a -self-wrought scientific education would form the basis of an ideal of -aristocracy rising from it; and how the motto "There is no Being but -Becoming" would express its own constant desertion of levels <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>achieved, -its own pressing upward to levels equally transient. Just as the -"democratic person" of Whitman raises his own fervent, chaotic, and -standardless experience into an ideal, so also the ideal of Wells is -nothing else than the projection of his own experimental opportunism. It -is impossible in discussing Wells to ignore this social ascent; for in -England a man passes from one stratum to another only by virtue of a -certain lack of substantiality, a power to disencumber himself, to shed -customs and affections and all the densenesses and coagulations which -mark each grade in that closely defined social hierarchy. The world of -shopkeeping in England is a world girt about with immemorial -subjections; it is, one might say, a moss-covered world; and to shake -oneself loose from it is to become a rolling stone, a drifting and -unsettled, a detached and acutely personal, individual. It is to pass -from a certain confined social maturity, a confused mellowness, into a -world wholly adventurous and critical, into a freedom which achieves -itself at the expense of solidity and warmth. In Wells, for instance, -the sense of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>the soil is wholly supplanted by the sense of machinery. -His evolution has been the reverse of the usual evolution from what -Bacon called the <i>lumen siccum</i> to the <i>lumen humidum</i>, from the dry -light to the light that is drenched in customs and affections. Instead -of growing mellower, he has grown more and more fluid and electric, in -direct ratio to the growing width of his social horizon.</p> - -<p>To prove this one has only to consider his novels. There was a time when -he had in common with Dickens and De Foe the quality they have in common -with one another—the quality of homeliness. He drew the little world he -knew well, the limited and lovable world of small folk. Mr. Hoopdriver, -Delia the chambermaid, Kipps and Ann Pornick—a score of these helpless, -grown-up little children he pictured with a radiant affection, tempering -the wind to the shorn lamb. It is more in the nature of his later -thought to see poverty as a wasteful rather than a cruel thing, even -though he may not have approached the harsh realism of Bernard Shaw's -observation: "I have never had any feeling about the English working -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>classes except a desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible -people."</p> - -<p>Certainly he has not experienced any other world in quite this way. "I -count that wide social range one of the most fortunate accidents in my -life," he says. Accidental one feels it to be, as of a man inhabiting -the great world by virtue of sheer talent, whose nature has not in any -sense settled there. His philosophy and his socialism are outgrowths of -his own experience; they erect into reasons and theories the nature of a -life which is not at home, and which easily unburdens itself of all that -seems insensate because it is unfamiliar. To be a socialist at all is to -have accustomed oneself, through necessity or imagination, to a certain -detachment from a great many of the familiar, lovable, encumbering, -delightful stupidities of the world. And Wells has travelled up and down -through time and space too much to have any great regard for the -present. "I have come to be, I am afraid," he says, in <i>The Future in -America,</i> "even a little insensitive to fine immediate things through -this anticipatory habit.... There are times indeed when it makes life -seem <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>so transparent and flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an -equally transitory series of consequences——." His hold upon the -present is so far from inevitable that <i>The New Machiavelli</i> and -<i>Marriage</i>, realistic as they are, are represented as being written some -years hence, our own time already appearing retrospectively in them. As -little as Faust has he been tempted to call out upon the passing moment. -His main characters drift through this period of time, substantial -themselves but with a background of substantialities, in a way that -recalls Paolo and Francesca looming out of the phantom cloud-procession -of the <i>Inferno</i>.</p> - -<p>Into this larger world, in short, he has carried with him only himself -and his own story. We live in two worlds—the primary world of vivid -personal realities and the secondary world of our human background. It -is the secondary world that anchors us in time and space; the primary -world we carry with us as part of ourselves. In Wells there is no -secondary world, no human background, no sense of abiding relations. It -is his philosophy of life and the quality of his men and women to be -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>experimental in a plastic scheme. His range is very small: the same -figures reappear constantly. There is the Wells hero,—Lewisham, Capes, -Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford, Stratton; there is the Wells heroine, -Ann Veronica, Isabel, Marjorie, Lady Mary; there is the ineffectual -woman with whom the Wells hero becomes entangled, Capes's first wife, -Marion, Margaret; there is the ineffectual man with whom the Wells -heroine becomes entangled, Magnet, Manning. To strike the lowest common -denominator in this tangle is inevitably to arrive once more, one feels, -in the region of personal experience. Although it cannot be said that -his minor characters are lacking in reality, they are certainly -intellectual portraits, and outside the limits of subjective experience. -The principal men and women of Wells move through a world seen, but -hardly a world felt.</p> - -<p>This want of social background makes his characters as detached from the -familiar earth as chessmen are detached from a chessboard. They never -seem to be, like most men and women either in life or fiction, like the -Kipps and Polly of his own earlier fiction, vegetable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>growths. Heredity, -fatality, the soil are not mainly operating forces with them. They are -creatures of intelligence and free will, freely and intelligently making -and moulding themselves and their circumstances. Human nature in Wells -is very largely a sheer thing, a thing that begins with itself, answers -for itself, lives at first hand. That is the personal quality of the man -himself, and it follows that the quality is wholly convincing only where -what I have called his primary world is concerned: the rest of the world -he builds up by intelligent observation and the literary talent of -creating human stuff out of whole cloth.</p> - -<p>In this he is well served by his antipathies. His belief in personal -self-determinism is so strong that he instinctively sees the vegetative -nature of the ordinary life as a kind of moral slough, a state of being -detestably without initiative, faith, energy, will. And consequently the -Normal Social Life against which he is always tilting is a life seen by -him with all the vividness of an intense personal and philosophical -animosity. Consider, for example, the portraits of Mr. Pope and Mr. -Stanley, survivals <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>in a sense of the old Sir Roger de Coverley type, -with all the sweetness gone out of it and only the odious qualities -left, the domineering, vain, proprietary qualities. They exist mainly as -symbols of everything that enlightened and right-minded daughters will -not put up with; they come as near to being the foils of right destiny -as Wells will ever allow; they sum up everything that stands in the way -of man's free will. They are mercilessly dealt with, and they are -memorable figures.</p> - -<p>Without this antipathy, and outside his own primary world, he pretty -generally fails. One recalls, for example, old Mrs. Trafford in -<i>Marriage,</i> evidently intended to be his ideal of the enlightened woman -grown old. She is a pale, dimly perfect, automatically wise old lady -carved out of wood. Trafford himself, one feels, is a chip of the same -block. Trafford obviously is not Wells himself, as Ponderevo and -Remington are Wells: he is the Utopian counterpart of these persons, at -least in the matter that concerns Wells most, the matter of sex. One -could show that, aside from the six or eight chief characters who in -their various <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>ways express the nature and experience of Wells himself, -he succeeds in his portraiture only where no demand is made on his -sympathies.</p> - -<p>The same absence of social background which throws into relief his -primary world of characters throws into relief also the primary facts of -human nature. Trafford and Marjorie, the most conventionally placed of -his characters, pull up stakes, leave their children, and go to -Labrador. His other men and women are even more independent of the -social network. Consequently they are independent of that chain of -relationships—friendship, affection, minor obligations—which mitigate, -subdue, soften the primary motives of most people. They are almost -startlingly physical. Their instincts are as sure as those of cavemen, -and their conduct as direct. They are as clear about the essential -matter of love as ever Schopenhauer was, or Adam and Eve, and they stand -out as sharply against the embarrassments and secrecies of the usual -world as a volcanic rock stands out against a tropical landscape. In -this without doubt they exhibit <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>the fact that socialism does and will -actually alter human nature, and that in the instinctive socialist human -nature is already altered. For socialism inflexibly militates against -those more sentimental aspects of love, love of country as such, the -paternal and feudal principles, love of property, and the like, which -belong properly to the intelligence, all those functions where love, in -a majority of cases, goes wrong, blunders, stultifies growth, confuses -the public design of the world. As a result it throws love into relief, -emphasizes the nature of sex and the <i>raison d'être</i> of reproduction; -makes it, to use a favorite word of Wells, stark.</p> - -<p>I pause at this word. It is one of those talismanic words one finds -perpetually cropping up in the writings of men who have a marked point -of view, words that express deep and abiding preferences and often set -the key of an entire philosophy. "I like bare things," says George -Ponderevo, in <i>Tono-Bungay;</i> "stripped things, plain, austere, and -continent things, fine lines and cold colors." That is the gesture of an -artistic mind which repudiates, with an impatient sharpness, all the -entanglements <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>of the ordinary world. It is Oriental, it is Japanese, it -is anything you like; but if it is English also it marks an entirely new -regime. Without question it is English, and American as well. Thousands -of people share that preference, and were economic socialism to go by -the board we should still have to reckon with the progress of -socialistic human nature. It detaches itself each day a little more from -property, locality, and the hope of reward; it ceases to be -necessitarian, it becomes voluntary; it relegates drudgery to mechanical -devices; it releases the individual to a sense of his own coöperative -and contributory place in the scheme of a more orderly future. -Relatively speaking, the tendency of our kind is all away from luxury, -sloth, complacency, confusion, ignorance, filth, heat, proprietorship, -and all in the direction of light, austerity, agility, intelligence, -coolness, athletic energy, understanding, cleanliness, order, "bare -things, fine lines, and cold colors."</p> - -<p>That is evident, and it is equally evident that the personal character -and career of Wells are emblematic of this entire tendency. He has -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>unravelled himself by science, talent, and vigor out of "lower middle -class" Victorianism. Is it strange that he has adopted as a kind of -sacred image that light, free, and charming product of our decade, the -aeroplane, sprung as it is out of the wreckage, out of the secret -beginnings, the confused muscularities, the effort and smoke of the most -chaotic of all centuries, like a blade of exquisitely tempered and -chased steel which justifies everything that was most laborious and -unsightly in the forge?</p> - -<p>But considered as a sacred image the aeroplane has its limitations. So -also, considered as an exponent of fife, has Wells. Philosophy and -religion, as he presents them, are simply what he chooses to think and -feel, what he has been led by his own experience to think and feel. His -main experience has been the experience of disentangling himself, and -therefore life, reflected from within himself, is to him a thing also -which disentangles itself and grows ever more free, simple, and lucid. -In the mind of Wells this process, has taken on an altogether mystical, -transcendental significance, a religious aspect. Possible as that is to -himself <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>personally, how far can it be taken as an argument to the human -soul? How does it qualify him as a teacher, a public voice, a thinker -for the mass of men? How does the conception of life purely as a process -relate itself to human experience?</p> - -<p>Applied to history, it seems to fail. Wells is devoid of historical -imagination. In his portrait of Margaret in <i>The New Machiavelli</i> he has -properly, though somewhat harshly, repudiated what ordinarily passes for -culture. But had he himself possessed the reality of what seems to him -simply "living at second hand," he would never have been led to refer to -Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Dürer as "pathetically reaching out, as it -were, with empty desirous hands toward the unborn possibilities of the -engineer." That is a very interesting and a very extraordinary -statement, and it is quite true that each of these men would have -rejoiced in the engineering possibilities of our time. But how much of -the soul of Michael Angelo, for example, was involved in engineering? -How far can his hands be said to have been "empty" for the want of scope -in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>engineering? The power and the function of Michael Angelo can rightly -be seen, not in relation to any sort of social or mechanical process, -but in relation to things that are permanent in human nature, in -relation to just those matters included in the admonition of Wells to -"reject all such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, and Beauty -and hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Again, consider a somewhat similar -reference to Marcus Aurelius, of which the gist is that the author of -the <i>Meditations</i> was, actually in consequence of his own character, the -father of one of the worst rulers the world has known. The implication -here is that the study of self-perfection in the father was -complementary to, if not responsible for, the social impotence and -blindness of the son. Instead of dedicating himself to the static ideal -of personal character, the assumption seems to be, Marcus Aurelius ought -to have lived exclusively in his function as ruler and father. He -studied himself, not as a ruler but as a man, and the social process had -its revenge on his line. To Wells, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>in a word, the static elements of -character and the study of perfection are not to be distinguished from -vicious self-consequence.</p> - -<p>Consider also a recent passage in which he has given a general -impression of literature:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>It seems to me more and more as I live longer that most -poetry and most literature and particularly the literature -of the past is discordant with the vastness and variety, the -reserves and resources and recuperations of life as we live -it to-day. It is the expression of life under cruder and -more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who loved -and hated more naively, aged sooner, and died younger than -we do. Solitary persons and single events dominated them as -they do not dominate us.</p></blockquote> - -<p>To appreciate this meditation one has to remember the character and -career which led to the writing of it. But so far as we others are -concerned, how far can the assumption it rests upon be considered valid, -the assumption of a process that sweeps men on and leads human nature, -as it were, progressively to shed itself? Dr. Johnson, for example, was -a man the conditions of whose life were crude and rigid in the extreme, -a man singularly dominated by <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>solitary persons and single events, but is -his conversation discordant with the variety, the "reserves, resources, -and recuperations of life as we live it to-day"? I can well understand -this feeling. To pass directly from the thin, tentative, exhilarating, -expansive air of our own time into the presence of that funny, stuffy, -cocksure, pompous old man is to receive a preposterous shock. But having -come to laugh, one stops with a very different sensation. The depths of -personality and wisdom that exist there take on a disconcerting -significance in relation to contemporary pragmatism. The mass of men -veer about; far-separated epochs have their elective affinities, and if -anything about the future is plain it is that this, that, and the other -generation will find in Dr. Johnson a strangely premature contemporary.</p> - -<p>Wells has himself admitted this principle. To Plutarch, Rabelais, -Machiavelli he has paid his tribute. Hear what George Ponderevo has to -say about Plutarch in his recollections of Bladesover House:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I found Langhorne's <i>Plutarch</i> too, I remember, on those -shelves. It seems queer to me now to think that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>I acquired -pride and self-respect, the idea of a state and the germ of -public spirit, in such a furtive fashion; queer, too, that -it should rest with an old Greek, dead these eighteen -hundred years, to teach me that.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Considering what part the notion of a state plays in his range of ideas, -that is a remarkable confession. But why stop with statecraft? The human -mind could not, in all epochs, have established permanent ideals of -statecraft without permanent ideals of a more strictly personal kind.</p> - -<p>The truth is that Wells, for all that he has passed outside the -economics of socialism, is really bounded by the circle of ideas which -produced them. The typical Marxian, the concentrated Marxian, will tell -you that life is summed up in the theory of value, and that the only -true thing is economic determinism. Measuring all thought by that -criterion, he finds Dante and Shakespeare unintelligible and offensive -gibberish, and will scent the trail of the capitalist in Grimm's Fairy -Tales. That is the crude form in which exclusive socialism presents -itself. To say that "the fundamental nature of life is a tissue and -succession of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>births" is merely a refinement of this. It is true, just -as the economic determinism of Marx on the whole is true. But the world -is full of a number of things; or rather it is the business of a -reasonable mind to see it in a number of ways at once. Because there is -a Will to Live and a Will to Power, because things grow and continue to -grow, that does not explain love, or pain, or friendship, or music, or -poetry, or indeed life. Life is a tangle, a tangle which every socialist -must feel to be disentangling itself; but it is also a riddle, and on -that point socialism has nothing to say at all.</p> - -<p>It is in presenting life wholly as a tangle and not at all as a riddle -that the philosophy and religion of Wells appear so inadequate. Could -Wells write a poem? one asks oneself, and the question is full of -meaning. There is nothing to suggest that at any moment of his life he -has felt this impulse, which has been the normal thing in English -authors. "Modern poetry, with an exception or so," he remarks somewhere, -and for all his writings reveal of him he might have said poetry as a -whole, "does not signify at all." It is the same with regard <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>to music, -art, external nature. He is not wanting in the plastic sense: his -writings are filled with picturesque groupings, figures cut in outline -against a sunset, masses of machinery in the glare of the forge, things -that suggest the etcher's eye. But they are curiously impersonal. -Consider, for example, his description of Worms Cathedral:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>It rises over this green and flowery peace, a towering, -lithe, light brown, sunlit, easy thing, as unconsciously and -irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in the evening glow -under a press of canvas.</p></blockquote> - -<p>You cannot doubt that he has felt a beauty in this, but the beauty he -feels is essentially the beauty of a piece of engineering; he is as -untouched by the strictly personal artistic and religious qualities of -this building, not to mention its connection with human history, as if -he had seen it through a telescope from another planet. It is not the -changeless riddle and partial solution of life for which this building -stands that stir in Wells the sense of beauty and meaning: it is the -mechanism, the process—his emotions gather about the physical result -which appears to justify these.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span><i>À chacun son infini</i>.</p> - -<p>There will always be some to whom the significance of things, the -meaning of any given present will seem to evaporate in this conception -of mankind as "permanently in transition." Reading those passages where -Wells has expressed the meaning life has for him, I feel much as I -should feel with regard to music if I heard a mass of Mozart played at -the rate of sixty beats a second, or, with regard to painting, if a -procession of Rembrandts were moved rapidly across my field of vision. -The music as a whole is a tissue and succession of sounds, the pictures -as a whole are a tissue and succession of colors. But that is not music, -that is not art. Nor is a tissue and succession of births life.</p> - -<p>But indeed nothing is easier than to reduce Wells to an absurdity. If he -implies anything at all he implies a "transvaluation of all values." It -remains to consider him from this point of view.</p> - - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> September 21, 1866.</p></div> - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h4> - -<h3>THE SPIRIT OF WELLS</h3> - - -<p>In order to understand Wells at all one must grasp the fact that he -belongs to a type of mind which has long existed in European literature -but which is comparatively new in the English-speaking world, the type -of mind of the so-called "intellectual." He is an "intellectual" rather -than an artist; that is to say, he naturally grasps and interprets life -in the light of ideas rather than in the light of experience.</p> - -<p>To pass from a definition to an example, let me compare Wells in this -respect with the greatest and most typical figure of the opposite camp -in contemporary English fiction; I mean Joseph Conrad. This comparison -is all the more apt because just as much as Wells Conrad typifies the -spirit of "unrest" (a word he has almost made his own, so often does he -use it) which is the note of our age. Both of these <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>novelists have -endeavored to express the spirit of unrest; both have suggested a way of -making it contributory to the attainment of an ideal. But how different -is their method, how different is their ideal! And roughly the -difference is this: that to Conrad the spirit of unrest is a personal -mood, a thing, as people used to say, between man and his Maker; whereas -to Wells the spirit of unrest is not a mood but a rationally explicable -frame of mind, a sense of restricted function, an issue to be fought out -not between man and nature but between man and society. In other words, -where Conrad's point of view is moral, Wells's point of view is social; -and whereas in Conrad the spirit of unrest can only be appeased by -holding fast to certain simple instinctive moral principles, integrity, -honor, loyalty, etc., contributing in this way to the ideal of personal -character, the spirit of unrest in Wells is to be appeased by working -through the established fact, by altering the environment in which man -lives, contributing in this way to the ideal of a great society of which -personal character is at once the essence and the product.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>In the end, of course, both these views of life come to the same thing, -for you cannot have a great society which is not composed of greatly -living individuals, or vice versa. But practically there is a world of -difference between them, according as any given mind emphasizes the one -or the other. This difference, I say, is the difference between life -approached through experience and life approached through ideas. And -when we penetrate behind these points of view we find that they are -determined very largely by the characters and modes of living of the men -who hold them. That explains the vital importance in literary criticism -of knowing something about the man one is discussing, as distinguished -from the work of his brain pure and simple. There is a reason why the -intellectualist point of view occurs as a rule in men who have -habitually lived the delocalized, detached, and comparatively -depersonalized life of cities, while men of the soil, of the sea, of the -elements, men, so to speak, of intensive experience, novelists like -Conrad or Tolstoy or Hardy, are fundamentally non-intellectual, -pessimistic, and moral.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>And this explains the natural opposition between Conrad and Wells. Aside -from the original bent of his mind, the intensive quality of Conrad's -experience—an experience of ships and the minute, simple, personal, -tragic life of ships, set off against the impersonal, appalling sea and -an always indifferent universe, a life remote from change, in which the -relations of things are in a peculiar sense abiding and in which only -one problem exists, the problem of character, imminent nature being kept -at bay only through the loyalty, integrity and grit of men—the -intensive quality of this experience, I say, acting upon an artistic -mind, would naturally tend to produce not only a bitterly profound -wisdom, but an equally profound contempt for the play of ideas, so -irresponsible in comparison, and for a view of the world based upon -ideas the real cost of which has never been counted in the face of -hunger, icy winds, storm and shipwreck, and the abysmal forces of -nature. Men who go down to the sea in ships have a right to say for -themselves (tempering the credulity of those who have remained at home) -that the intellectualist view <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>of life is altogether too easy and too -glib. It is they who throw into relief the deep, obscure conviction of -the "plain man"—commonly the good man—that to endeavor to make life -conform with ideas is in some way to deprive the world of just those -elements which create character and to strike at an ideal forged through -immemorial suffering and effort.</p> - -<p>Merely to dismiss as dumb folly an all but universal contention of this -kind (no doubt in the back of people's minds when they say that -socialism, for instance, is "against human nature") is to beg the whole -question of intellectualism itself. For, if it could be conclusively -shown that any view of life not incidentally but by its nature -emasculated life and destroyed the roots of character, then of course, -no matter how rationally self-evident it might be and how much confusion -and suffering it might avert, it would never even justify its own reason -for being—it would never <i>succeed,</i> the best part of human nature would -oppose it to the end of time and the intelligence itself would be -discredited. And indeed to the man of experience rather than the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 1508]</a></span>man of -ideas, just because of his rich humanity, just because he never passes -out of the personal range, belong the ideal things, morality, -philosophy, art. Like charity, these things "begin at home"; and -whenever (as in pragmatism, when pragmatism ceases to be a method and -claims to be an interpretation of life) they are approached not from the -side of experience but from the side of ideas they cease to have any -real substance. Morality has no substance when it springs from the mind -instead of the conscience, art when it appeals to the mind instead of -the perceptions; and as to philosophy, what is any scheme of things that -springs out of the head of a man who is not himself wise? It is a -certain condemnation of Bergson, for example, that he would never pass -muster in a group of old fishermen smoking their pipes on the end of a -pier. Not that they would be expected in any case to know what he was -talking about, but that his fibre so plainly is the fibre not of a wise -but of a clever man and that in everything, as Emerson said, you must -have a source higher than your tap.</p> - -<p>That is why, as it seems to me, Wells ought <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>not to be considered from -any of these absolute standpoints. He has put before us not so much a -well-wrought body of artistic work, or a moral programme, or an -explanation of life—words quite out of place in connection with -him—as a certain new spirit, filled with all sorts of puzzled -intimations of a new beauty and even a new religion to be generated out -of a new order of things that is only glimpsed at present. And the point -I should like to make about this spirit is that it is entirely -irrelevant to the values of life as we know them, but that it may in the -end prove to have contributed to an altogether fresh basis for human -values.</p> - -<p>To illustrate what I mean by this irrelevance as regards present values -and this possibility as regards future values let me turn to that long -brilliant passage in <i>The New Machiavelli</i> where Remington goes from -club to club, passing in review the spiritual possibilities of each -political party, and finds nothing but a desolation of triviality, -pomposity, confusion, and "utterly damned old men." Consider the -contempt and hopelessness that fill his mind. One has to forget entirely -the ordinary man's view <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>of politics, sincerely held as it is; one has to -think of politics as a means of straightening out and re-engendering a -whole world of confused anguish before one can see any justification for -this righteous wit and savage indignation against the dulness of -leaders. Considered by the current values of life in which politics are -regarded as an effect of man's incompetence rather than as a cause of -his virtue, treated intensively, as a novelist of experience rather than -of ideas would have treated them, in what a different light each of -these "utterly damned old men" would appear, each one a tiny epic of -tragic and comic efforts, disappointments, misconceptions, providing one -in the end with how much of an excuse for blame, ridicule or contempt! -Everything indeed depends upon where a given mind chooses to lay -emphasis. In this scene Wells has judged everything by his ideal of a -great society, just as Conrad, faced with the same material, would have -judged everything by his ideal of personal character. Conrad would have -used those men to give us an understanding of life as it is, whereas -Wells has used them simply to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>throw into relief his idea of what life -ought to be. Conrad would have created a work of art, illustrated a -moral programme, and interpreted life. Wells, admittedly a clever -caricaturist, only rises above the level of a clever caricaturist -according as we accept the validity of his ideal and share the spirit in -which he writes. Like many children of light, Wells is not wise in his -own generation. But perhaps another generation will justify him.</p> - -<p>If Wells had lingered in these deep realities of his own time he would -have been a greater artist. And indeed so marked has been his own -development away from the world of ideas and toward the world of -experience that were he to begin afresh it is likely that he would -resemble the type of novelist of which I have taken Conrad as an example -far more than his former self. Of socialism he has abandoned all the -theories and most of the schemes and retained only the frame of mind. He -has taken year by year a more intensive view of life, he has grown too -conscious of the inertia that impedes ideas and the overwhelming -immediacies of the actual world to be called <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>glib and easy any more. -"How little and feeble is the life of man, a thing of chances, -preposterously unable to find the will to realize even the most timid of -its dreams!" he says in one of his latest novels, and if he has kept -alive his faith in ideas, who will deny that he has begun to count the -cost of it?</p> - -<p>From this side, I think, it is no longer possible for anyone to assail -him, so frankly has he given hostages to "actuality." It is from the -other side, his own side, and especially in the light of his own ideal, -that an answer is required for the slackness which has come upon him and -which is very marked in his recent novels. Is it possible to ignore the -fact that since he wrote <i>The New Machiavelli</i> the work of Wells has -lived on its capital and lost the passionate curiosity and personal -conviction that made him the force he was in our epoch? Always unwilling -to check his talent and publish only the results of his genuine mental -progress, he has become, in spite of splendid moments, too much of the -common professional novelist, dealing with levels and phases of life -where he obviously does not belong, astray <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>from his own natural point of -intense contact with things. I want to avoid the usual habit of critics -who think it their business to put authors in their places, but is it -not a fact that Wells understands the Kippses and Pollys far better than -the lords and ladies of England and that he was at his best in -elaborating a bridge—a wonderful visionary bridge—between the little -world of dumb routine and the great world of spacious initiatives? -Carlyle with his Great Man theory, forged out of his own travail and -weakness, in the end fell on his knees before the illusion of lordship. -Fifteen years ago one might have predicted the same future for the -Samurai of Wells, not because the Samurai are themselves equivocal but -because Wells is an Englishman. There so plainly to the English mind the -great gentlemen are, the men who can and the men who never do! Towards -this Circe of the English imagination Wells has travelled with a fatal -consistency, and the result to be foreseen was first of all fatuity and -in the end extinction.</p> - -<p>After he had written <i>The New Machiavelli</i> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>Wells had reached a point -where his ideas, in order to be saved, had to be rescued from himself. -To believe that life can be straightened out by the intelligence is -necessarily to have "travelled light," in a measure; too much experience -is the end of that frame of mind. In <i>Tono-Bungay</i> and <i>The New -Machiavelli</i> ideas and experience met in a certain invisible point -—that is the marvel which has made these books unique and, I suppose, -permanent; the greatest possible faith in ideas was united with the -greatest possible grasp of everything that impedes them. One had -therefore a sense of tragic struggle, in which the whole life of our -time was caught up and fiercely wrestled with; one had the feeling that -here was the greatest moment in the life of a writer suddenly become -great. But with these books some secret virtue seems to have passed out -of Wells. Since then his ideas have been hardly more than a perfunctory -repetition and his experience more and more remote and unreal; and -looking back one seems to discover something highly symbolic in the -tragical conquest of ideas by <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>passion with which <i>The New Machiavelli</i> -concludes.</p> - -<p>But indeed Wells was always a man whose ideas were greater than himself. -"I stumble and flounder," says George Ponderevo, "but I know that over -all these merry immediate things, there are other things that are great -and serene, very high, beautiful things—the reality. I haven't got it, -but it's there nevertheless. I'm a spiritual guttersnipe in love with -unimaginable goddesses." And just for this reason the spirit which in -his great days possessed him is independent of any fate that may befall -Wells himself and his art. More than this, by frankly and fully testing -his ideas in a life-and-death struggle with reality he has, even at the -cost of his own shipwreck, removed from the cause of ideas the greatest -reproach which has always been brought against it. Revolutionists, -doctrinaires, idealogues have notoriously failed to test the validity of -their ideas even in the face of their own private passions and -confusions; they have rarely considered for a moment that their own -lives totally unfit them for supposing that men are <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>naturally good and -that to make reason prevail is one of the simplest operations in the -world. Wells, on the other hand, has consistently shown that theory -divorced from practice is a mode of charlatanism, that "love and fine -thinking" must go together, and that precisely because of man's -individual incapacity to live, as things are, with equal honesty the -life of ideas and the life of experience, the cause he has at heart must -be taken out of the hands of the individual and made to form a common -impersonal will and purpose in the mind of the race as a whole.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Intellectualism, in fact, the view that life can be determined by ideas -(and of this socialism is the essence) if it can be justified at all has -to be justified in the face of all current human values. It is based on -an assumption, a grand and generous assumption, I maintain, and one that -has to take what is called a sporting chance with all the odds against -it. This assumption is, that on the whole human nature can be trusted to -take care of itself while the surplus energy of life, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>commonly absorbed -in the struggle against incapacity, sloth, perversity, and disorder -("original sin," to sum it all up), is released for the organization of -a better scheme for mankind; and further, that this better scheme, -acting on a race naturally capable of a richer and fuller life, will -have the effect on men as a whole that re-environing has on any cramped, -ill-nourished, unventilated organism, and that art, religion, morals -(all that makes up the substance and meaning of life) instead of being -checked and blighted in the process will in the end, strong enough to -bear transplantation, be re-engendered on a finer and freer basis. This, -in a word, is the contention of the intellectual, a splendid gambler's -chance, on which the future rests, and to which people have committed -themselves more than they know. It is a bridge thrown out across the -void, resting at one end on the good intentions of mankind and relying -at the other upon mankind's fulfilling those good intentions. It is -based like every great enterprise of the modern world upon credit, and -its only security is the fact that men thus far and on the whole have -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>measured up to each enlargement of their freedom and responsibility.</p> - -<p>To feel the force of this one has to think of the world as a world. Just -here has been the office of socialism, to show that society is a -colossal machine of which we are all parts and that men in the most -exact sense are members one of another. In the intellectualist scheme of -things that mathematical proof has to come first; it has to take root -and bury itself and become the second nature of humankind before the new -world of instinct can spring out of it and come to blossom.</p> - -<p>That has been the office of socialism, and just so far as that proof has -been established socialism has played its part. Now the point I want to -make about Wells is that in him one sees already in an almost precocious -form the second stage of this process. In him this new world of -intelligence is already exuberant with instinct; the social machine has -become a personality; that cold abstraction the world has become in his -hands a throbbing, breathing, living thing, as alive, awake, aware of -itself, as engaging, adventurous, free, critical, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>well-primed, -continent, and all-of-a-piece as a strong man running a race. People -never felt nature as a personality before Wordsworth showed them that it -was, or a locomotive before Kipling wrote <i>McAndrew's Hymn</i>; and it -seems to me that Wells has done for the social organism very much what -Wordsworth did for nature, discovering in a thing previously felt to be -inanimate a matter for art and a basis for religious emotion.</p> - -<p>But if the world is a personality it is a very stupid, sluggish, -unawakened personality, differing from nature in this respect, that we -ourselves compose the whole of it and have it in our hands to do what we -will with it. It has always been out of joint, a great slipshod -Leviathan, at sixes and sevens, invertebrate and fungus-brained. Just so -is the average man, sunk in routine, oppressed with microscopic tasks -that give birth one to another, his stomach at war with his head, his -legs unwilling to exercise him, resentful of his own capacity not to be -dull. But certain happier moments bring him an exuberant quickened life -in which routine tasks fall nimbly from his fingers and he is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>aware of a -wide, humorous, generous, enlightened vision of things; he pulls himself -together, his parts reinforce one another, his mind wakens, his heart -opens, his fancy stirs, he is all generosity and happiness, capable of -anything that is disinterested, fine, and becoming to a free man. It is -in these moments that individual men have done all the things which make -up the real history of this planet.</p> - -<p>If individual men are capable of this amazing experience, then why not -the world? That is the spirited question Wells has propounded in a -hundred different forms, in his earlier, more theoretical, and more -optimistic writings suggesting that society as a whole should turn over -a new leaf, and even picturing it as doing so, in his later work, more -experienced and less hopeful but with a compensating fervor, picturing -the attempt of delegated individuals to act on society's behalf. I do -not wish at this point to become pious and solemn in tone; that would be -inept in connection with Wells. But I do wish to make it plain that if -he is devoid of those grander traits which spring from the sense of -being "tenon'd and mortised" upon <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>something beyond change, if his -strength lies wholly in his intelligence, the intelligence itself in -Wells is an amazing organ, a troubled and rapturous organ, an organ as -visionary and sensitive as the soul of a Christian saint. That is why I -have said that in him the new world, governed by the intelligence, is -already exuberant with instinct; and anyone who doubts that he has -lavished a very genuine religious instinct upon the social process -itself and in the dream of a society free, magnanimous and seemly, -should turn to the passage where he describes Machiavelli, after the -heat and pettiness of the day, retiring into his chamber alone, putting -on his dress of ceremony and sitting down before his table in the -presence of that magnificent thought.</p> - -<p>The mass of men have acted more consistently than they know on the -principle that the whole world is nothing in comparison with one soul, -for their politics and economic science, solemn as they appear, are as -frivolous and secondary as if they actually did believe fervently that -heaven is their true home and the world a bad business of little -account. In all <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>that concerns private virtue and the private life, in -religion, poetry, their lawyer, their doctor, their broker, they exact -the last degree of excellence and efficiency, but they trust to the -blind enterprise of individual men to push mankind chaotically forward -little by little. We are in fact so wonderfully made that if our grocer -tells us in the morning that he has no fresh eggs he throws us into a -deeper despondency than six readings of the <i>Inferno</i> could ever do. And -that explains why so few people can extend themselves imaginatively into -the greater circles that surround them, why, on the social plane, we -never think of demanding wisdom from politicians, why we never dream of -remembering that they should belong to the august family of Plutarch, -why it is not the profound views of wise men and the brilliant -discoveries of science that fill the newspapers, but the incredibly -banal remarks of this president and that prime minister, why presidents -and prime ministers in a society that lives from hand to mouth are so -much more important than poets and prophets, and why statesmanship has -gathered about itself a literature so <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>incomparably trivial and dull. -Socialists, indeed, just because they alone are serious about the world, -are apt to be the least mundane in spirit; they are, as Wells has -himself said, "other-worldly" about the world itself.</p> - -<p>But indeed I should make a mistake were I to over-stress the solemnities -that underlie the spirit of Wells. In tone he is more profane than -sacred, that is to say he is a realist. He wants a world thrillingly -alive, curious, exercised, magnanimous, with all its dim corners lighted -up, shaken out of its dulness and complacency, keen, elastic, tempered -like a fine blade—the counterpart on a grand scale of what he most -admires in the individual. "Stephen," says Lady Mary in <i>The Passionate -Friends</i>, "promise me. Whatever you become, you promise and swear here -and now never to be grey and grubby, never to be humpy and snuffy, never -to be respectable and modest and dull and a little fat, like—like -everybody." And in <i>First and Last Things</i> he gives the other side of -the medal:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to -taste life. I am not happy until I have done and felt -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>things. I want to get as near as I can to the thrill of a -dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air. -And not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do I -want to understand. I want to know something of the jolly -wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its -wash. I want to get the fine quintessence of that.</p></blockquote> - -<p>It stands to reason that a spirit of this kind does not consort with any -pre-arranged pocket ground-plan, so to speak, of the world as it should -be. Of this, to be sure, he is often accused, and he has given us a -humorous version of his Utopia as it may appear to certain of his -contemporaries:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Mr. G.K. Chesterton mocks valiantly and passionately, I -know, against an oppressive and obstinately recurrent -anticipation of himself in Socialist hands, hair clipped, -meals of a strictly hygienic description at regular hours, a -fine for laughing, not that he would want to laugh, and -austere exercises in several of the more metallic virtues -daily. Mr. Max Beerbohm's conception is rather in the nature -of a nightmare, a hopeless, horrid, frozen flight from the -pursuit of Mr. Sidney Webb and myself, both of us short, -inelegant men, but for all that terribly resolute, -indefatigable, incessant to capture him, to drag him off to -a mechanical Utopia, and then to take his thumb-mark and his -name, number him distinctly in indelible ink, and let him -loose (under inspection) in a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>world of great round lakes of -blue lime-water and vistas of white sanitary tiling.</p></blockquote> - -<p>That is a not unjust parody of Wells's Utopia as it would be if he had -remained in the circle of his Fabian friends. Being what he is, it bears -much the same relation to his idea as that world of harps and crowns and -milk and honey bore in the mediæval imagination to the idea of heaven. -You have to mingle these notions with your experience of human hearts to -realize the inadequacy of symbols. Wells, I suspect, has a fondness for -white sanitary tiling, just as plenty of good Christians have found in -milk and honey a foretaste of unthinkable felicity; but when it comes to -the actual architecture and domestic arrangements of paradise they are -both quite willing to take on trust the accommodating good will of God -and man. Somehow or other, by the time we have got there, we shall not -find it monotonous—to this, at least, one's faith, whatever it may be, -ought to be equal.</p> - -<p>I have given too few quotations in this book, and now I have left it to -a point where if I give any at all it must be to illustrate less the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>art -of Wells as a thing by itself than a train of thought. He is at his best -in brief scenes, where all his gifts of humor, satire, characterization -and phrase come to a head (think, for example, of Aunt Plessington's -speech, the funeral of Mr. Polly's father, the pages dealing with Cousin -Nicodemus Frapp's house-hold, and the somewhat prolonged episode of the -"reet Staffordshire" cousins in <i>The New Machiavelli</i>); and indeed, so -insistent is his point of view that in every one of these episodes one -finds in opposition the irrepressible new world of Wells and the -stagnant world out of which it springs. One of the best of these scenes, -luckily, is brief and connected enough to be quoted as a whole. It is a -picture of the tea-hour in the servants' hall at Bladesover House.</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I sat among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian -chair, trying to exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great -rocks, and my mother sat with an eye upon me, resolute to -suppress the slightest manifestation of vitality. It was -hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these rather -over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful -restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be -thrust in among their dignities.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat it -out perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the same.</p> - -<p>"Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask. "Sugar, -Mrs. Latude-Fernay?"</p> - -<p>The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They -say," she would begin, issuing her proclamation—at least -half her sentences began "they say"—"sugar is -fatt-an-ing, nowadays. Many of the best people do not take -it at all."</p> - -<p>"Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits, intelligently.</p> - -<p>"Not with anaything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of -crushing repartee, and drank.</p> - -<p>"What won't they say next?" said Miss Fison.</p> - -<p>"They do say such things!" said Mrs. Booch.</p> - -<p>"They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors -are not recomm-an-ding it now."</p> - -<p>My Mother: "No, ma'am?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mackridge: "No, ma'am."</p> - -<p>Then, to the table at large: "Poor Sir Roderick, before he -died, consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have -sometimes fancied it may have hastened his end."</p> - -<p>This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner -and a pause was considered due to the sacred memory of Sir -Roderick.</p> - -<p>"George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!"</p> - -<p>Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favorite piece -from her repertoire. "The evenings are drawing out nicely," -she would say, or if the season was decadent, "How the -evenings draw in!" It was an invaluable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>remark to her; I do -not know how she would have got along without it.</p> - -<p>My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would -always consider it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and -regard the evening in the act of elongation or contraction, -whichever phase it might be.</p> - -<p>A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or -shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted.</p></blockquote> - -<p>There is, I think, a special sort of connection between Wells and -America; and there are times when it seems to me that were the spirit of -America suddenly to become critical of itself it would resemble nothing -in the world so much as the spirit of Wells magnified by many diameters. -His instincts are all as it were instincts of the intelligence; his -mind, like the American mind, is a disinherited mind, not connected with -tradition, thinking and acting <i>de novo</i> because there is nothing to -prevent it from doing so. Perfectly American is his alertness, his -versatility, adaptability, his thorough-going pragmatism, perfectly -American are the disconcerting questions that he asks ("Is the Navy -<i>bright</i>?"). Perfectly American <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>is his view of the traditional English -ideal of human nature—that strange compound of good intentions, homely -affection, stubborn strength, insensibility to ideas, irrational -self-sacrifice, domestic despotism, a strong sense of property in things -and people, stupidity, sweetness and confusion of mind—an ideal through -which it has been one of his never-failing delights to send electric -shocks. And indeed the type of character he has presented in his heroes, -in Remington, Trafford and Ponderevo, is a type to be found perhaps more -plentifully than elsewhere in American research bureaus, hospitals and -laboratories. He thinks and feels critically so many of the things -America lives and does unconsciously. Perhaps in this distinction lies -the immediate value of his criticism for us.</p> - -<p>For in his mind Americans can see themselves reflected in the light of -what they chiefly need, that synthetic motive without which a secular -and industrial race is as devoid of animating morality as a swarm of -flies. This want, most obvious on the political and economic plane, is -indeed fundamental. Wells <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>has grasped it from many different angles but -never with more point than in his essay <i>The American Population</i>. -Consider this passage, where he takes as a text one of Arthur Brisbane's -editorials in the "New York Journal":</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>It is the voice of the American tradition strained to the -utmost to make itself audible to the new world, and cracking -into italics and breaking into capitals with the strain. The -rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public -void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive -things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalizations, a -public which has carried the conception of freedom to its -logical extreme of entire individual detachment. These -telltale columns deal all with personality and the drama of -personal life. They witness to no interest but the interest -in intense individual experiences. The engagements, the love -affairs, the scandals of conspicuous people are given in -pitiless detail in articles adorned with vigorous portraits -and sensational pictorial comments. Even the eavesdroppers -who write this stuff strike the personal note, and their -heavily muscular portraits frown beside the initial letter. -Murders and crimes are worked up to the keenest pitch of -realization, and any new indelicacy in fashionable costume, -any new medical device or cure, any new dance or -athleticism, any new breach in the moral code, any novelty -in sea-bathing or the woman's seat on horse-back, or the -like, is given copious and moving illustration, stirring -headlines, and eloquent reprobation. There <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>is a colored -supplement of knock-about fun, written chiefly in the quaint -dialect of the New York slums. It is a language from which -"th" has vanished, and it presents a world in which the -kicking by a mule of an endless succession of victims is an -inexhaustible joy to young and old. "Dat ole Maud!" There is -a smaller bale dealing with sport. In the advertisement -columns one finds nothing of books, nothing of art; but -great choice of bust developers, hair restorers, nervous -tonics, clothing sales, self-contained flats, and business -opportunities....</p> - -<p>Individuality has, in fact, got home to itself, and, as -people say, taken off its frills.... The "New York -American" represents a clientèle to be counted by the -hundred thousand, manifestly with no other solicitudes, -just burning to live and living to burn.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Now that is a very fair picture, not merely of popular America but of -the whole contemporary phase of popular civilization, uprooted from the -state of instinct, intensive experience and the immemorial immediacies -of duty and the soil. To the artist and the moralist it is a cause of -hopeless pessimism, as any civilization must be which has lost touch -with all its values and been rationalized to the point of anarchy. For -this there is only one salvation. If civilization has lost the faculty -of commanding <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>itself and pulling itself together in its individual -aspect, it must pull itself together collectively. That essentially is -the fighting chance of intellectualism, the hope that, inasmuch as the -world has already lost touch with experience and committed itself to a -regime of ideas, by organizing this regime of ideas and by mechanizing -so far as possible the material aspect of things, the values of life can -be re-engendered on a fresh basis. From this follows the oft-repeated -phrase of Wells that the chief want of the American people is a "sense -of the state." For the peril and the hope of American life (granting -that, as things are, society must be brought into some kind of coherence -before morality, art and religion can once more attain any real meaning) -lies in the fact that while at present Americans are aware of themselves -only as isolated individuals they are unconsciously engaged in works of -an almost appalling significance for the future of society. A Trust is a -work of this kind, and whether it is to be a gigantic good or a gigantic -evil depends wholly upon whether its controlling minds are more -conscious of their individual or <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>their social function. The mechanism of -society in America is already developed to a very high point; what is -wanting, and without this everything is wanting, is an understanding of -the right function of this mechanism. So much does it all depend upon -whether the financial mind can subdue itself to the greater mind of the -race.</p> - -<p>If the future is anywhere going to follow the lines that Wells has -suggested for it—and being an opportunist his aims are always in touch -with agreeable probabilities—it will most likely be in America. He has -lately given his idea of what the State should aim to be—"planned as -an electric traction system is planned, without reference to -pre-existing apparatus, upon scientific lines"; an idea remarkably of a -piece with the American imagination and one which the American -imagination is perfectly capable of translating into fact. American, -too, are the methods in which Wells has come to believe for bringing the -Great State into existence. His conviction is that socialism will come -through an enlightened individualism, outside the recognized -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>governmental institutions, and that the ostensible States will be -superseded virtually by informal centres of gravity quite independent of -them. America alone at present justifies this speculation. For the -centre of gravity in American affairs has always been -extra-governmental, and consistently in America where wealth gathers -there also the institutions of socialism spring into being. The -rudiments of the Socialist State, falsely based as they are but always -tending to subvert this false basis, are certainly to be found, if -anywhere, in the Rockefeller Institute, the Carnegie and Russell Sage -Foundations, the endowed universities and bureaus of research, and in -the type of men they breed. Consider the following passage from <i>The -Passionate Friends</i> and the character of the American, Gidding, which is -indicated in it:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably -magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all -science, all knowledge, all philosophical and political -ideas, round about the habitable globe. His mind began -producing concrete projects as a firework being lit produces -sparks, and soon he was "figuring <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>out" the most colossal of -printing and publishing projects, as a man might work out -the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was so -entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to -go on from the proposition that understanding was the -primary need of humanity to the systematic organization of -free publishing, exhaustive discussion, intellectual -stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacists -might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure.</p> - -<p>"Say, Stratton," he said, after a conversation that had -seemed to me half fantasy, "let's <i>do</i> it."</p></blockquote> - -<p>It is perfectly possible in fact that socialism will come into being -first of all under the form of Cecil Rhodes's dream, as a secret order -of millionaires "promoting" not their own aims but society itself. That -is one of the possibilities at least that lie in what Wells has called -the "gigantic childishness" of the American mind.</p> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<h4>INDEX</h4> -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"> -<br /> -<br /> -<i>America, The Future in</i>, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a><br /> -America, Wells and, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>-<a href='#Page_185'>185</a><br /> -<i>American Population, The</i>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>-<a href='#Page_181'>181</a><br /> -<i>Ann Veronica</i>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a><br /> -<i>Anticipations</i>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>-<a href='#Page_83'>83</a><br /> -Arnold, Matthew, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a><br /> -<br /> -Bacon, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a><br /> -Beerbohm, Max, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a><br /> -Belloc, Hilaire, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a><br /> -Bergson, Henri, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a><br /> -Brisbane, Arthur, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a><br /> -Brook Farm, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a><br /> -<br /> -Carlyle, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a><br /> -Catholic Church, the, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a><br /> -Cato, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br /> -Chesterton, G.K., <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a><br /> -Chicago, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a><br /> -<i>Comet, In the Days of the</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a><br /> -<i>Common Sense of Warfare, The</i>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a><br /> -Comte, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a><br /> -Confucius, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a><br /> -Conrad, Joseph, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>-<a href='#Page_161'>161</a><br /> -<i>Creative Evolution</i>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a><br /> -<br /> -Dante, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a><br /> -Darwin, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a><br /> -De Foe, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a><br /> -Dickens, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a><br /> -<i>Discovery of the Future, The</i>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a><br /> -Dürer, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a><br /> -<br /> -Emerson, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a><br /> -<i>Empire of the Ants, The</i>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>-<a href='#Page_52'>52</a><br /> -Erasmus, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a><br /> -<i>Ethics and Evolution</i>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a><br /> -<br /> -Fabian Society, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a><br /> -<i>First and Last Things,</i> <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>-<a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a><br /> -<i>First Men in the Moon, The</i>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a><br /> -<i>Food of the Gods, The</i>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>-<a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a><br /> -<i>Fortnightly Review, The</i>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a><br /> -Francis, St., <a href='#Page_43'>43</a><br /> -<br /> -Goethe, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a><br /> -<i>Great State, The</i>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>-<a href='#Page_65'>65</a><br /> -Grimm's Fairy Tales, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a><br /> -<br /> -Hardy, Thomas, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br /> -Hearn, Lafcadio, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a><br /> -Heraclitus, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a><br /> -Hero, The, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a><br /> -<i>History of Mr. Polly, The</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a><br /> -Huxley, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a><br /> -<br /> -<i>Inferno, The</i>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a><br /> -<i>Invisible Man, The</i>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a><br /> -<i>Island of Dr. Moreau, The</i>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a><br /> -<br /> -James, William, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a><br /> -Japanese, the, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>-<a href='#Page_104'>104</a><br /> -Jeffries, Richard, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a><br /> -Johnson, Dr., <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a><br /> -<br /> -Kipling, Rudyard, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a><br /> -<i>Kipps</i>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>-<a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a><br /> -<br /> -Leonardo da Vinci, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a><br /> -Leopardi, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a><br /> -<i>Love and Mr. Lewisham</i>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>-<a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a><br /> -Luther, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a><br /> -<br /> -Macaulay, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a><br /> -Machiavelli, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a><br /> -<i>Mankind in the Making</i>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>-<a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a><br /> -Marcus Aurelius, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a><br /> -<i>Marriage</i>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>-<a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a><br /> -Michael Angelo, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a><br /> -<i>Modern Utopia, A</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>-<a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a><br /> -Montessori, Madame, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a><br /> -Morris, William, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a><br /> -<i>McAndrew's Hymn</i>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br /> -<br /> -<i>New Machiavelli, The</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>-<a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>,<br /> -<a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>-<a href='#Page_160'>160</a>,<br /> -<a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a><br /> -Newman, Cardinal, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a><br /> -New Republican, the, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a><br /> -<i>News from Nowhere</i>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a><br /> -<i>New Worlds for Old</i>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a><br /> -Nietzsche, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a><br /> -<br /> -<i>Our Liberal Practitioners,</i> <a href='#Page_16'>16</a><br /> -<br /> -<i>Passionate Friends, The,</i> <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a><br /> -<br /> -Plato, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br /> -Plutarch, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a><br /> -<br /> -Rabelais, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a><br /> -<i>Rasselas</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br /> -<i>Rediscovery of the Unique, The</i>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a><br /> -Rhodes, Cecil, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a><br /> -<i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br /> -<br /> -Samurai, the, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a><br /> -<i>Scepticism of the Instrument,</i> <a href='#Page_93'>93</a><br /> -Schopenhauer, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a><br /> -<i>Servile State, The</i>,62<br /> -Shakespeare, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a><br /> -Shaw, Bernard, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a><br /> -<i>Sleeper Awakes, The</i>,35, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a><br /> -<i>So-Called Science of Sociology, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br /> -Sorel, Georges, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a><br /> -Spencer, Herbert, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a><br /> -<i>Story of the Days to Come, A</i>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a><br /> -Superman, the, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>-<a href='#Page_90'>90</a><br /> -Superior Man, the, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a><br /> -Swift, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a><br /> -<br /> -Taine, H.A., <a href='#Page_12'>12</a><br /> -Thoreau, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a><br /> -<i>Time Machine, The</i>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a><br /> -Tolstoy, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br /> -<i>Tono-Bungay</i>,56-<a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a><br /> -<br /> -Verne, Jules, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a><br /> -<br /> -Ward, Mrs. Humphry, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a><br /> -Webb, Sidney, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a><br /> -<i>Wheels of Chance, The,</i> <a href='#Page_109'>109</a><br /> -Whitman, Walt, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a><br /> -Wordsworth, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a><br /> -Worms Cathedral, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br /> -</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The World of H.G. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The World of H.G. Wells - -Author: Van Wyck Brooks - -Release Date: February 27, 2013 [EBook #42221] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org -(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive) - - - - - -THE WORLD OF H.G. WELLS - -BY - -VAN WYCK BROOKS - - - -NEW YORK - -MITCHELL KENNERLEY - -MCMXV - - -_To_ - -_Max Lippitt Larkin_ - - - - -CONTENTS - - - -Introduction - -I. The First Phase - -II. Towards Socialism - -III. Socialism "True and False" - -IV. The Philosophy of the New Republican - -V. Human Nature - -VI. A Personal Chapter - -VII. The Spirit of Wells - - - - - - -INTRODUCTION - - -A natural pause appears to have come in the career of Mr. H.G. Wells. -After so many years of travelling up and down through time and space, -familiarizing himself with all the various parts of the solar system and -presenting himself imaginatively at all the various geological epochs, -from the Stone Age to the end of the world, he has for good and all -domesticated himself in his own planet and point of time. This gradual -process of slowing down, so to speak, had been evident from the moment -of his first appearance. The most obvious fact about his romances of -science, considered as a series, is that each one more nearly approached -the epoch in which we live, and the realities of this epoch. From the -year A.D. 802, 701, witnessed in his first romance by the Time -Traveller, we found ourselves at last in the presence of a decade only -so remote as that of the war which has now befallen Europe. A similar -tendency in his novels has been equally marked. The possibilities of -science and socialism have received a diminishing attention relatively -beside the possibilities of human reaction to science and socialism. It -is individual men and women, and the motives and personalities of -individual men and women, which now concern him. Still retaining the -entire planet as the playground of his ideas, still upholding science -and socialism as his essential heroes, he has been driven by experience -to approach these things through human nature as it is. In a recent -essay he has told us not to expect any more dramatic novelties: for the -present at any rate our business must be to make science and socialism -feel at home. Whether or not this may stand as a general diagnosis of -our epoch, it is a remarkable confession with regard to his own place in -it. For it signifies nothing less than that he has reached the limit of -his own circle of ideas and finished his own pioneering, and that his -work for the future will be to relate the discoveries of his youth with -human experience. He is no longer a "new voice"; his work belongs, for -good or ill, to history and literature, and he presents himself from -this time forward as a humanist. - -In this new posture Wells does not stand alone. He is typical of an -entire generation of Englishmen that knows not Oxford, a generation -which has been busy with all manner of significant movements and -discoveries, too busy indeed to relate them to the common reason of -humankind. During these years the word "academic" has been outlawed; -naturally so, for the academic mind is to the creative mind what the -digestive system is to the human body: a period of energetic exercise -must precede its operation. But in order that ideas may be incorporated -in society they must submit themselves at the right moment to those -digestive processes by which they are liquefied and transmitted through -the veins to all the various members of the common organism. - -During the last twenty years modern thought has been dominated to an -extraordinary degree by men who have been educated solely through the -movements in which they have taken part: seldom has there been so -universal and so hectic an empiricism. But this is the way the earth -moves. Like an inchworm it doubles itself up at intervals and then -gradually stretches itself straight again. The whole nineteenth century, -according to Taine, was occupied in working out two or three ideas -concocted in Germany during the Napoleonic era. History is a succession -of Gothic invasions and academic subversions. It marks the end of one of -those eras which perpetually overlap one another in various groups of -men and cycles of thought that our own Visigoths have capitulated. As -the pressure of their own immediate points of view relaxes and they -cease to identify their own progress with the progress of men in -general, they become perhaps less striking but certainly more useful. - -Intensely preoccupied with contemporary ideas and inventions, -brilliantly gifted and full of life, these leaders of thought were more -innocent of literature and history than a fresh-man. Both Wells and -Bernard Shaw have confessed that throughout their most active -intellectual careers they believed instinctively that progress was -mainly a matter of chronology. To discover the future Wells considered -it necessary merely to set his imagination at work on Chicago and -multiply it by a thousand; while the famous remark of Shaw that he was -"better than Shakespeare" sprang from his assumption that, living three -centuries later, he naturally stood (as a dwarf, in his own phrase) upon -Shakespeare's shoulders. This naivete placed them at the mercy of -literature, as they soon discovered. Everyone knows the change that came -over Bernard Shaw's cosmos when for the first time, a few years ago, he -read two or three pre-Darwinian philosophers: one could almost have -heard a pin drop when he stopped talking about being better than -Shakespeare. A similar experience, exhibited in his books, has befallen -Wells, and there is no doubt that reading has contributed to the -progressive modesty of his point of view. Each monument of historic -experience that he has absorbed has left its mark on him. Rabelais, -Machiavelli, Plato, incorporated at regular intervals in his own work, -have certainly contributed to make him less agile and less dramatic. - -Let us take advantage of these post-prandial moments to survey some of -the remarkable ideas which have been added to the general stock during -this period. After the fashion of Cato, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells have -come late to the study of Greek. Bernard Shaw read Plato at fifty, and -in his latest book Wells has insisted that in the Great State everyone -will study Greek. Nothing could signify more plainly that these -outriders of the Modern Mind have come to a halt and wish to connect -themselves with tradition, with history, with literature, with religion, -with the grand current of human experience. Having been for so long -experimenting with new and untried forces, sharply separated from what -is received and understood, they should be related to the familiar -landmarks and connected with the main stream of English thought and -literature. - -Grotesque and violent as it may at first appear, I believe that in the -future Wells will be thought of as having played toward his own epoch a -part very similar to that played by Matthew Arnold. I say this with full -recognition of their remoteness in personal quality, recognizing also -the difference in their direct objects of attack, in the precise causes -they uphold. One thinks of these two vivid personalities--Wells--how -shall one picture him?--and Matthew Arnold, that superb middle-class -gentleman with his great face and deprecating hands--and the comparison -is instantly ludicrous. In reality the entire trend of Arnold's social -criticism was anti-individualistic and in a straight line with -socialism. Seen retrospectively the main work of Wells has not been to -promote any intellectual or economic doctrine, but to alter the English -frame of mind. The function of each of these men has been to bring home -to the English mind a range of ideas not traditional in it. - -Indeed this comparison holds (the shock once over) not merely with -regard to their general function, but in their specific attitude toward -most of the branches of thought and action they have concerned -themselves with. Wells on Education, on Criticism, on Politics and the -nostrums of Liberalism, Wells even on Religion continues the propaganda -of Arnold. Everywhere in these so superficially dissimilar writings is -exhibited the same fine dissatisfaction, the same faith in ideas and -standards, the same dislike of heated bungling, plunging, wilfulness, -and confusion; even the same predominant contempt for most things that -are, the same careful vagueness of ideal. It was Arnold who passed his -life in trying to make England believe in and act upon ideas instead of -"muddling through," who never wearied of holding up the superiority of -everything French and everything German to everything English, who -adopted into his own language that phrase about "seeing things as in -themselves they really are." Read his chapter on _Our Liberal -Practitioners_ and you will find the precise attitude of Wells toward -the premature inadequate doing of things rather than the continued -research, experiment, and discipline which lead to right fulfilments. -Who urged the ventilation of life, affairs, conduct in the light of -world experience? Who preached the gospel of reasonableness, mutual -understanding, and more light? Who spurred England to cultivate the -virtue of intellectual curiosity? Who believed with a paradoxical -passion in coolness and detachment? In each of these things what Arnold -was to his generation Wells remarkably has been to ours. Differing in -their view of the substance of religion, their conception of the Church -as a great common receptacle for the growing experience of the race is -precisely the same, fragmentation, segregation, sectarianism being to -both of them in this matter the greatest of evils. The love of -curiosity, centrality, ventilation, detachment, common understanding, -coolness and reasonableness and a realistic vision, the dislike of -confusion, bungling, wilfulness, incompetence, hot-headedness, -complacency, sectarianism--these are quite fundamental traits, and -Arnold and Wells share them in a remarkable degree. It is quite true -that Arnold lived in a universe which only with some reluctance -confessed to three dimensions, while that of Wells trembles with the -coming of a fourth. But in any case it is worth while to release a -phenomenon like Wells from the medium of purely contemporary influences, -and for this purpose it is convenient to see a socialist in the light of -a man who knew nothing of socialism, to see that socialism is itself a -natural outgrowth of those "best things that have been thought and said -in the world." It is important to realize that the train of thought and -the circle of ideas of this man are connected with a well-recognized -branch of intellectual tradition. And even socialism is benefitted by -having friends at court. - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE FIRST PHASE - - -"I am, by a sort of predestination, a socialist," Wells wrote once. And -everything one can say of him serves merely to explain, justify, -qualify, illuminate and refine that statement. - -First of all it implies a certain disposition and certain habits of -mind, habits of mind which are all to be found in the first phase of his -work, in those marvellous tales of Time and Space that won him his -original sensational fame. It is this disposition behind them, this -quality they have as of an inevitable attitude toward life and the -world, which distinguishes them at once from those other superficially -similar tales of Jules Verne. The marvels of Jules Verne are just -marvels, delightful, irresponsible plunderings from a helpless universe. -To the grown-up mind they have a little of that pathetic futility one -associates with a millionaire's picture-gallery, where all sorts of -things have been brought together, without any exercise of inevitable -personal choice, because they are expensive. I don't know that the tales -of Wells are better tales, but they have that ulterior synthetic quality -that belongs to all real expressions of personality. Wells was never -merely inventive; his invention was the first stage of an imaginative -growth. - -Now the quality that pervades all these early writings is what may be -called a sense of the infinite plasticity of things. He conceived a -machine that could travel through time, a man who found a way to become -invisible, a drug that made men float like balloons, another drug that -enabled men to live a thousand hours in one, a crystal egg through which -one could watch the life in Mars, a man who could stop the sun like -Joshua, a food that turned men into giants, a biologist who discovered a -method of carving animals into men, an angel who visited a rural vicar, -a mermaid who came to earth in search of a soul, a homicidal orchid, a -gigantic bird hatched from a prehistoric egg, a man who passed outside -space. In short, the universe appeared to him like that magic shop of -which he also wrote, where the most astonishing things may happen, if -you are the Right Sort of Boy. - -If all this implies anything it implies that things in general are not -fixed and static, but that they are, on the contrary, infinitely -plastic, malleable, capable of responding to any purpose, any design you -may set working among them. The universe, it seems to assume, may be and -quite possibly is proceeding after some logical method of its own, but -so far as man is concerned this method appears to be one of chance. -Obviously, man can do the most surprising things in it, can take as it -were all sorts of liberties with it. The universe, in short, is like a -vacant field which may or may not belong to some absent landlord who has -designs of his own upon it; but until this absent landlord appears and -claims his field, all the children in the neighborhood can build huts in -it and play games upon it and, in a word, for all practical purposes, -consider it their own. - -This idea of the relation between free will and determinism is the -underlying assumption of Wells, as he explains it in _First and Last -Things_: - - Take life at the level of common sensations and common - experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's - freedom of will, unless it is his complete moral - responsibility. But make only the least penetrating of - scientific analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable - consequences, a rigid succession of cause and effect. - -And elsewhere he says: - - On the scientific plane one is a fatalist.... But does the - whole universe of fact, the external world about me, the - mysterious internal world from which my motives rise, form - one rigid and fated system as Determinists teach? I incline - to that belief.... From me as a person this theory of - predestination has no practical value.... I hesitate, I - choose just as though the thing was unknowable. For me and - my conduct there is that much wide practical margin of - freedom. I am free and freely and responsibly making the - future--so far as I am concerned. - -In a word, for all the purposes that affect man's need the universe is -infinitely plastic and amenable to his will. Like every clean-cut -philosophical conception, this clears the ground for practical conduct -and a certain sort of direct action. - -There was a time, no doubt, when he shared the old Utopian folly of -expecting a sudden and unanimous change of human will. When the universe -appears as unconventional as it used to appear to Wells, there can -surely be no reason to think it impossible, after a comet has collided -with the world, for the human race to become suddenly Utopian. Generally -speaking, comets do not collide with the world, and in the same way men -are slow to change. But certainly if Wells ever thought of humanity as -merely a multiplication of one pattern, certainly if he has long since -abandoned the idea of our all turning over a new leaf one fine morning, -he has never lost his faith in free will as regards the individual. He -has always believed in the personal doctrine of summarily "making an end -to things" as distinguished from the old-fashioned doctrine of "making -the best of things"; and there is nothing more modern about him than his -aversion to the good old English theory of "muddling through." - -Mr. Polly is a good example of his view of personal direct action, the -getting rid, quickly and decisively, of a situation that has only -sentiment to save it from complete demoralization. "When a man has once -broken through the wall of every-day circumstances," he remarks at the -moment of the Polly _debacle_, "he has made a discovery. If the world -does not please you, _you can change it_. Determine to alter it at any -price, and you can change it altogether." Mr. Polly sets fire to his -shop, takes to the road and repairs his digestion. Desertion of duty and -the quick repudiation of entanglements make him healthy and sensible and -give him a sense of purpose in things. And I know of nothing in all -Wells that is described with more relish than that Beltane festival -which occurs toward the end of _In the Days of the Comet_. The world's -great age has begun anew, and the enlightened men of the new time revive -the May Day of old in order to burn the useless trappings of the past. -They heap old carpets on the fire, ill-designed furniture, bad music and -cheap pictures, stuffed birds, obsolete school-books, dog-eared penny -fiction, sham shoes, and all the corrugated iron in the world; every -tangible thing that is useless, false, disorderly, accidental, obsolete, -and tawdry to celebrate the beginning of things that are clean, -beautiful, and worthy. Sceptical, hesitant, and personal as Wells has -become, that indicates a strong primitive mental trait. Philosophy does -not spring out of the brain; we hate the hateful things of our own -experience, just as we think the things we desire. And though there are -nine and sixty ways of being a socialist, they all unite in a certain -sense of the plasticity and malleability of things human, a certain -faith in the possibility of asserting order in the midst of disorder and -intelligently cleaning house. - -Inherent in this trait is another--detachment. You only become aware of -confusion when you stand free of it, when you cease to be a part of it. -And of all writers who have so immediately felt life I doubt if there -has been one so detached as Wells. The mental detachment of his early -tales is a detachment half scientific, half artistic; scientific as of -one who sees things experimentally in their material, molecular aspect, -artistic as of one conscious of moulding will and placed amid plastic -material. Thus, for example, he sees human beings quite stripped of -their distinctively human qualities; he sees men anatomically, as in -that passage where the Invisible Man, killed with a spade, becomes -visible again as a corpse: - - Everyone saw, faint and transparent as though it were made - of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves - could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp - and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they - stared.... And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet - and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his - body, that strange change continued. First came the little - white nerves, a hazy gray stretch of a limb, then the glossy - bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first - a faint fogginess, then growing rapidly dense and opaque. - -Similar is a passage in _A Story of the Days to Come_, where he -describes an ordinary breakfast of our own day: "the rude masses of -bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fat before they -could be made palatable, the still recognizable fragments of recently -killed animals, hideously charred and hacked." That surely is quite as a -man from another planet, or a chemist after a long day's work in the -laboratory, would view our familiar human things. And one recalls -another sentence from _Kipps_ where this detachment links itself with a -deeper social insight and hints at the part it had come to play in -Wells's later mind: "I see through the darkness," he says, toward the -end of the book, "the souls of my Kippses as they are, _as little pink -strips of quivering, living stuff_, as things like the bodies of little -ill-nourished, ailing, ignorant children--children who feel pain, who -are naughty and muddled and suffer, and do not understand why." - -And just as he sees men and human things chemically and anatomically, so -he sees the world astronomically. He has that double quality (like his -own Mr. Bessel) of being bodily very active in life and at the same time -watching it from a great distance. In his latest book he has figured a -god looking on from the clouds; and there is nothing in his novels more -stimulating and more uncanny than a certain faculty of telescoping his -view suddenly from the very little to the very large, expanding and -contracting his vision of things at will. You find the germ of this -faculty in his early tales. Looking down as though from a balloon he -sees the world as a planet, as a relatively small planet. In doing so he -maintains at first a purely scientific set of values; he is not led, as -he has since been led, and as Leopardi was led by the same imaginative -experience, to adopt poetical values and to feel acutely the littleness -and the powerlessness of man. His values remain scientific, and the -absurdity he feels is the absurdity an astronomer must feel, that in so -small a space men can vaunt themselves and squabble with one another. -Race prejudice, for example, necessarily appears to him as foolish as it -would appear to ordinary eyes among insects that happen to be swarming -on a fallen apple. Once you get it into your mind that the world is a -ball in space, you find a peculiar silliness in misunderstandings on -that ball. This reflection has led to many views of life; in Wells it -led to a sense of the need of human solidarity. - -And solidarity implies order. The sense of order is one of those -instincts exhibited everywhere in the writings of Wells that serve as -preliminaries to his social philosophy. There is a passage in _Kipps_ -where he pictures the satisfactions of shopkeeping to an elect soul: -"There is, of course, nothing on earth," he says, "and I doubt at times -if there is a joy in heaven, like starting a small haberdasher's shop. -Imagine, for example, having a drawerful of tapes, or again, an array of -neat, large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. -Think of your cottons, your drawer of colored silks," etc. De Foe knew a -similar satisfaction and has pictured it in _Robinson Crusoe_. De Foe -was himself a shopkeeper, just as Wells has been in one of his -incarnations; and he knew that good shopkeeping is the microcosm of all -good political economy. The satisfaction of a thoroughly competent man -who is thrown on a desert island, and sets to work to establish upon it -a political economy for one, is a satisfaction by itself. That certainly -is a primitive relish, and it is one of the first gestures of Wells's -sociology. - -Now the sense of solidarity, the sense of order, implies the -subordination of details, the discipline of constituent units. Only in -his later works did Wells begin to consider the problems of the -individual life; in his novels he has considered them almost -exclusively, but always in relation to the constructive purpose of -society and as what may be called human reservations from it. The -telescope has been adjusted to a close range, and the wider -relationships are neither so emphasized nor so easily discerned. -Nevertheless it is still the world that matters to Wells--the world, the -race, the future; not the individual human being. And if, relatively, he -has become more interested in the individual and less in the world, that -is because he is convinced that the problems of the world can best be -approached through the study of individuals. His philosophy has grown -less abstract in harmony with his own experience; but the first sketch -of his view of human nature and its function is to be found crudely -outlined in the scientific romances. How does it figure there? - -The human beings who flit through these early tales are all -inconspicuous little men, whose private existence is of no account, and -who exist to discover, invent, perform all sorts of wonderful -experiments which almost invariably result in their summary and quite -unimportant destruction. They are merely, in the most complete sense, -experiments in the collective purpose, and their creator has toward them -just the attitude of an anatomist toward the animals upon which he is -experimenting; not indifferent to their suffering as suffering, but -ignoring it in the spirit of scientific detachment necessary to -subordinate means to an end. "I wanted--it was the only thing I -wanted--to find out the limit of plasticity in a living form," says Dr. -Moreau in his confession; "and the study has made me as remorseless as -nature." - -Invariably these experiments in human possibility, placed in a world -where charity is not so strong as fear, die quite horribly. Dr. Moreau -is destroyed by the beasts he is attempting to vivisect into the -semblance of men, the Invisible Man is battered to death with a spade, -the Visiting Angel burns to death in attempting to carry out his -celestial errand, the man who travels to the moon cannot get back alive. -Does not all this foreshadow the burden of the later novels, that the -individual who plans and wills for the race is destroyed and broken by -the jealousy, prejudice and inertia in men and the blind immemorial -forces of nature surging through himself? These are the forces that are -figured, in the early tales, by that horrible hostile universe of -nature, and the little intrepid men moving about in the midst of it. And -the mind of Wells is always prepared for the consequences of what it -engenders. The inevitable result of creating an imaginary world of -malignant vegetables and worse than antediluvian monsters is that the -imaginary men you also create shall suffer through them. You reverse the -order of evolution and return men to conditions where life is cheap. An -imagination which has accustomed itself to running loose among planets -and falling stars, which has lived habitually in a universe where worlds -battle with one another, is prepared to stomach a little needless -bloodshed. The inflexible pursuit of an end implies the sacrifice of -means, and if your experiment happens to be an invisible man you will -produce the invisibility even though it kills the man. - -Widen the range and this proposition logically transmutes itself into a -second: if your experiment happens to be an orderly society you will -produce order at the expense of everything that represents disorder. And -from the point of view of a collective purpose, ends, motives and -affections that are private and have no collective significance -represent disorder. Now the whole purpose of Wells's later work has been -to illuminate and refine this proposition. He has flatly distinguished -between two sorts of human nature, the constructive, experimental sort -which lives essentially for the race, and the acquiescent, ineffectual -sort which lives essentially for itself or the established fact; and he -gives to his experimental men and women an almost unlimited charter to -make ducks and drakes of the ineffectual. Think of the long list of dead -and wounded in his novels--Mr. Pope, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Magnet, Mr. -Manning, Margaret, Marion--and you realize how much of a certain -cruelty, a certain ruthlessness is in the very nature of his philosophy -of experimental direct action. - -Another primitive relish exhibited in these early tales is the delight -of constructing things. The Time Machine, for example, is the work of a -mind that immoderately enjoys inventing, erecting, and putting things -together; and there is not much difference between constructing an -imaginary machine and constructing an imaginary society. If Wells's -early Utopian speculations are ingenious impossibilities, are they any -more or less so than his mechanical speculations? One doesn't begin life -with an overwhelming recognition of the obstacles one may encounter--one -doesn't fret too much about the possible, the feasible, or even the -logical. It was enough for Wells that he had built his Time Machine, -though the logic by which the Time Traveller explains his process is a -logic that gives me, at least, a sense of helpless, blinking -discomfort--partly, I confess, because to this day I don't believe there -is anything the matter with it. In any case it is the sheer delight of -construction that fascinates him, and everything that is associated with -construction fascinates him. He is in love with steel; he speaks with a -kind of ecstasy somewhere of "light and clean and shimmering shapes of -silvered steel"; steel and iron have for him the transcendental charm -that harebells and primroses had for Wordsworth. A world like that in -_The Sleeper Awakes_--a world of gigantic machines, air fleets, and the -"swimming shadows and enormous shapes" of an engineer's nightmare--is -only by afterthought, one feels, the speculation of a sociologist. It -expresses the primitive relish of a constructive instinct. It expresses -also a sheer curiosity about the future. - -In a chapter of his book on America Wells has traced the development of -what he calls his prophetic habit of mind as a passage through four -stages: the millennial stage of an evangelical childhood when an -imminent Battle of Armageddon was a natural thing to be looked for; the -stage of ultimate biological possibilities; the stage of prediction by -the rule-of-three; and a final stage of cautious anticipation based upon -the study of existing facts--a gradual passage from the region of -religious or scientific possibilities to the region of human -probabilities. "There is no Being but Becoming" was the first of his -mental discoveries; and finding years later that Heraclitus had said the -same thing, he came to regard the pre-Aristotelian metaphysics as the -right point of departure for modern thought. Consider this passage: - - I am curiously not interested in things and curiously - interested in the consequences of things.... I have come to - be, I am afraid, even a little insensitive to fine immediate - things through this anticipatory habit.... This habit of - mind confronts and perplexes my sense of things that simply - _are_, with my brooding preoccupation with how they will - shape presently, what they will lead to, what seed they will - sow and how they will wear. At times, I can assure the - reader, this quality approaches other-worldliness in its - constant reference to an all-important hereafter. There are - times indeed when it makes life seem so transparent and - flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an equally - transitory series of consequences, that the enhanced sense - of instability becomes restlessness and distress; but on the - other hand nothing that exists, nothing whatever, remains - altogether vulgar or dull and dead or hopeless in its - light.... But the interest is shifted. The pomp and splendor - of established order, the braying triumphs, ceremonies, - consummations,--one sees these glittering shows for what - they are--through their threadbare grandeur shine the little - significant things that will make the future. - -And the burden of his lecture _The Discovery of the Future_ is that an -inductive knowledge of the future is not only very largely possible, but -is considerably more important for us than the study of the past. Even -in the sciences, he says, the test of their validity is their power to -produce confident forecasts. Astronomy is based on the forecast of -stellar movements, medical science exists largely for diagnosis. It is -this thought which determines the nature of his own sociology. - -There is usually something inept in speaking of a man, and especially an -artist, as interchangeable with any ism. Socialism, in the common sense -of the word, is a classification of men. Individual socialists are as a -rule something more than socialists; often they are socialists by -necessity, or imagination, or sentiment, or expediency--their socialism -is not inherent, not the frame of their whole being. In the degree that -socialism is a classification, or a school of thought, or an economic -theory, the individual socialist will, in practice, make mental -reservations from it. Now my whole aim in this chapter has been to -suggest that if socialism had not existed Wells would have invented it. -It is not something which at a given moment or even after a long process -of imaginative conversion or conviction came into his life. It is, in -his own formulation of it, the projection of his whole nature, the -expression of his will, the very content of his art. With one or two -exceptions--works deliberately devoted to propaganda or exposition--even -his purely sociological writings are subjective writings, personal and -artistic in motive; socialism figures in them just as Catholicism -figures in the masses of Mozart, or the brotherhood of man in the poems -of Whitman, not as a cause but as a satisfying conception of truth. And -just as, if one were to study the psychology of Mozart or Whitman, one -would find habits of mind that inevitably produced the individual -Catholicism of the one and the individual fraternalism of the other; so -behind the socialism of Wells are certain habits of mind, certain -primitive likes, relishes, instincts, preferences: a faith in free will, -a sense of order and the subordination of details to design, a personal -detachment, a pleasure in construction, a curiosity about the future. - -These are innate qualities, which inevitably produced their own -animating purpose. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -TOWARDS SOCIALISM - - -Of all the battered, blurred, ambiguous coins of speech there is none so -battered, blurred, and ambiguous as the word socialism. It mothers a -dozen creeds at war with one another. And the common enemy looks on, -fortified with the Socratic irony of the "plain man," who believes he -has at last a full excuse for not understanding these devious doings. - -Therefore I take refuge in saying that H.G. Wells is an artist, neither -more nor less, that socialism is to him at bottom an artistic idea, and -that if it had not existed in the world he would have invented it. This -clears me at once of the accusing frowns of any possible Marxian reader, -and it also states a truth at the outset. For if the orthodox maintain -that socialism is not an affair of choices, may I not retort that here -actually is a mind that chooses to make it so? Here is an extraordinary -kind of Utopian who has all the equipment of the orthodox and yet -remains detached from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is always jealous of its -tabernacles and will not see itself dramatically; it has no concern with -artistic presentations. But I protest there ought to be no quarrel here. -If a socialism fundamentally artistic is an offence to the orthodox, let -them accept it, without resentment, as a little harmless fun--all art -being that. - -Having said so much I return to my own difficulty, for it is very hard -to focus H.G. Wells. He has passed through many stages and has not yet -attained the Olympian repose. Artist as he is, he has been hotly -entangled in practical affairs. There are signs in his early books that -he once shared what Richard Jeffries called the "dynamite -disposition,"--even now he knows, in imagination alone, the joy of black -destruction. He has also been, and ceased to be, a Fabian. But it is -plain that he has passed for good and all beyond the emotional plane of -propaganda. He has abandoned working-theories and the deceptions of the -intellect which make the man of action. He has become at once more -practical and more mystical than a party programme permits one to be. -Here is a world where things are being done--a world of which capital -and labor are but one interpretation. How far can these things and the -men who do them be swept into the service of the race? That is the -practical issue in his mind, and the mystical issue lies in the -intensity and quality of the way in which he feels it. - -To see him clearly one has to remember that he is not a synthetic -thinker but a sceptical artist, whose writings are subjective even when -they seem to be the opposite, whose personality is constantly growing, -expanding, changing, correcting itself ("one can lie awake at night and -hear him grow," as Chesterton says), and who believes moreover that -truth is not an absolute thing but a consensus of conflicting individual -experiences, a "common reason" to be wrought out by constant free -discussion and the comparison and interchange of personal discoveries -and ideas. He is not a sociologist, but, so to say, an artist of -society; one of those thinkers who are disturbed by the absence of right -composition in human things, by incompetent draughtsmanship and the -misuse of colors, who see the various races of men as pigments capable -of harmonious blending and the planet itself as a potential work of art -which has been daubed and distorted by ill-trained apprentices. In Wells -this planetary imagination forms a permanent and consistent mood, but it -has the consistency of a mood and not the consistency of a system of -ideas. And though he springs from socialism and leads to socialism, he -can only be called a socialist in the fashion--to adopt a violently -disparate comparison--that St. Francis can be called a Christian. That -is to say, no vivid, fluctuating human being, no man of genius can ever -be embodied in an institution. He thinks and feels it afresh; his -luminous, contradictory, shifting, evanescent impulses may, on the -whole, ally him with this or that aggregate social view, but they will -not let him be subdued to it. As a living, expanding organism he will -constantly urge the fixed idea to the limit of fluidity. So it is with -Wells. There are times when he seems as whimsical as the wind and as -impossible to photograph as a chameleon. - -Just here I should like to give what may be taken as his own view of -capital and labor socialism in relation to the constructive socialism he -himself has at heart. I am putting together certain brief passages from -_The Passionate Friends_: - - I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems - only by the way. They have played their part in a greater - scheme.... With my innate passionate desire to find the - whole world purposeful, I cannot but believe that.... - Strangest of saviours, there rises over the conflicts of men - the glittering angular promise of the machine. There is no - longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do not - need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are - no longer essential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his - brother man out of the need of servitude. He struggles - through to a new phase, a phase of release, a phase when - leisure and an unexampled freedom are possible to every - human being.... - - Human thought has begun to free itself from individual - entanglements and dramatic necessities and accidental - standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective will - towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or - kingdoms or peoples, a mind and will to which we all - contribute and which none of us may command nor compromise - by our private errors. It ceases to be aristocratic; it - detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us - all. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find - ourselves in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and - jealousies and conflicts, helping and serving in the making - of a new world-city, a new greater State above our legal - States, in which all human life becomes a splendid - enterprise, free and beautiful.... - - I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of - human society. Ours are not economic but psychological - difficulties.... - -These last two sentences really tell the whole story. To pass from -economics to psychology is to pass from Man to men, from society as a -direct object of attack to the individuals who compose it. And this -marks the evolution of Wells the romancer and Wells the expositor of -socialist doctrine into Wells the novelist. It is the problems of human -interaction that occupy him now. But informing these problems, reaching -behind and embracing them, is a general view of the world which has only -become more intimate, more personal, and more concrete with time. - -When, in _New Worlds for Old_, Wells set himself to explain socialism as -he conceived it, he assumed as his first principle a certain Good Will -in men, an operating will steadily working in life toward betterment. In -other words, he supplemented the ordinary socialist idea of economic -determinism, which may or may not inevitably bring about order on the -industrial plane, with a constructive purpose, which, in his view, can -alone bring about the salvation of the race. But this Good Will is not a -fatality; it exists only by virtue of remaining a conscious effort. In -his experiments in Time and Space Wells had accustomed himself to seeing -that the immense possibilities of what might be, so far as the universe -is concerned, predetermined things, were, so far as man is concerned, -matters of chance. To human society at least, if not to our planet, the -most unpropitious things are possible in the future; and there is no -reason to suppose that the destiny of the universe, which at every turn -cuts athwart the destiny of every species contained in it, should, left -to itself, work favorably to man. - -This notion is in itself quite outside socialism and does not -necessarily lead into socialism. It was Huxley who said that the world -and the universe, society and nature, are demonstrably at cross -purposes, and that man has to pit his microcosm against the macrocosm. -Huxley, in his famous lecture on _Ethics and Evolution,_ went on from -this to a kind of informal and unavowed socialism, figuring society as a -well-tended garden preserved by man's careful art from the ravages and -invasions of that hostile world of chance, with its gigantic weeds and -blind impulsions, which everywhere lies waiting round about it. Our -work, he implied, must be in every way to minimize for ourselves the -elements of chance, to become aware of our species in a collective -sense, battling with nature and moulding our own future. - -I do not suppose that Wells consciously adopted this idea from Huxley. -In itself that would be of little consequence, except so far as it shows -the continuity of thought and the development of socialism out of -science. But Wells was for several years a pupil of Huxley, and it is -reasonably plain that the mood in which he wrote his scientific romances -was strongly impregnated by Huxley's influence. The sinister, -incalculable, capricious, destructive forces outside man are symbolized, -as I have said, by those colliding comets, invading Martians, and -monstrous creatures among which the earlier Wells moved and had his -being; just as the sinister, incalculable, capricious forces within man -which urge him to destruction form so great a part of his later novels. -Most of his heroes (typified in _The New Machiavelli_) come to grief -through the blind irrational impulsions within themselves. And he is -equally haunted by what he has called the "Possible Collapse of -Civilization." I do not know how much this is due to an evangelical -childhood, in which Time, Death, and Judgment are always imminent; how -much to an overbalancing study of science at the expense of the -humanities; how much to an overdeveloped sense of the hazard that life -is; and how much to plain facts. But there it is: it has always been a -fixed conviction with Wells that man personal and man social is dancing -on a volcano. - -Therefore he has come to socialism not by the ordinary course but by a -route obscure and lonely. The sense of possible catastrophe and -collapse, the folly of leaving things to chance, the infinite waste and -peril of committing our affairs to nature rather than to art--these are -some of the negative reasons that have made it impossible for him to -fall in with the non-socialist ideal in human affairs, that "broadening -down from precedent to precedent" which he calls "muddling through": a -doctrine that is wholly compatible with a world of haphazard motives, -accidental fortunes, accidental management, a democratic individualism -that places power in irresponsible hands and suppresses talents that -society cannot afford to lose, a governmental system that concerns -itself with legal and financial arrangements, experts with no sense of a -common purpose, patriotisms that thrive on international bad feelings, -and that competitive principle which succeeds in the degree in which it -ignores the general welfare--a chaos of private aims, private virtues, -private motives, without any collective human design at all. - -In the light of these opposed ideas of society as a thing of Chance and -as a thing of Design, let me run over two or three of the tales of -Wells. - -First of all there is the special _laissez faire_ of pure economic -determinism. _The Time Machine_ pictures a possible result of the -Marxian process which has led to an irrevocable division of classes. The -rich, who were, in the old time, in comparison with the poor, -disciplined and united, have long since reached a point where work and -fear are for them things of the past. They occupy the surface of the -earth, and idleness and futility have made them light-headed, puny, -helpless creatures, stirring about and amusing themselves in the -sunlight. The poor, meanwhile, driven underground where they burrow and -tend machinery and provide, have lost all human semblance and become -white, horrible ghoul-like creatures that see in the dark; at night they -swarm out of their holes and feed upon the creatures of the upper air. -The one class has lost all power to defend itself and the other all pity -to spare, and gradually, year after year, mankind comes to its end. - -Then there is the ordinary _laissez faire_ of capitalism, a result of -which is pictured in _The Sleeper Awakes_. The Sleeper, one recalls, -awakens four generations hence to find himself the master-capitalist, -owner of half the world, and the world is one where capital and labor -have irrevocably destroyed the possibility of a constructive human -scheme. But the responsibility for that future is very ingeniously -placed upon us of the present time; for Graham's ownership of the world -is the outcome of one of those irresponsible whims that in our day -characterize the whole individualistic view of property. His cousin, -having no family to inherit his possessions, has left the whole in trust -for the Sleeper, half in jest, expecting him never to waken; and in time -the trustees of this vested fund have become the irresponsible -bureaucrats of the world. "We were making the future," says the awakened -Sleeper, looking out upon this monstrous outcome of whim and _laissez -faire_; "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were -making." - -Consider also _The Empire of the Ants_, in which Wells has figured a -possible reconquest of man by nature, owing to the greater collective -discipline of at least one non-human species. He imagines a species of -poisonous ants with only a little greater faculty of organized -co-operative intelligence than ordinary ants, which have terrorized and -finally routed several villages of unintelligent and unorganized -Brazilian natives far up the Amazon. The Brazilian government sends -against them an outworn inefficient gunboat, with an incompetent captain -and a muddle-headed crew; and when they arrive the ants fall upon the -only man sent ashore and sting him to death. The captain repeats over -and over, "But what can we _do_?" And at last with tremendous decision -he fires a gun at them and retires. The story ends with a report that -the ants are swarming all over the interior of Brazil and that nobody -knows how to prevent them from occupying the whole of South America. - -And then there is _The History of Mr. Polly._ I ignore for the moment -the individual aspect of his case, for Mr. Polly is not merely an -individual--he is an emblem of the whole, he is society _in concreto_. -We find him at the opening of the book sitting on a stile, suffering -from indigestion and consequently depressed in spirits. It is two -o'clock of a Sunday afternoon, and he has just finished his mid-day -meal. He has eaten cold potatoes, cold pork, Rashdall's mixed -pickles--three gherkins, two onions, a small cauliflower head and -several capers; cold suet pudding, treacle and pale cheese, three slices -of grey bread, and a jug of beer. He hates himself, he hates his wife, -he hates existence. But Mr. Polly's interior, the things that have gone -into it and the emotions that rise out of it, are only typical of an -entire life that has, to quote Macaulay's eulogy of the British -constitution, thought nothing of symmetry and much of convenience. - -Each of the novels of Wells, in one aspect at least, presents the -accidental nature of our world in some one typical case. _Love and Mr. -Lewisham_ shows how in the case of one of those young students who have, -as things are, no chance at all, but who are the natural builders of a -better world, the constructive possibility is crushed by the primary -will to live. At eighteen Mr. Lewisham is an assistant master at one of -those incompetent private-enterprise schools which for Wells (as also -for Matthew Arnold) epitomize our haphazard civilization. He has a -"future"--the Schema which he pins to his bedroom wall promises -unimaginable achievements. He marries, and you feel that he should marry -and that he has married the right person. But then with interests -divided he has to find money and in doing so he fails in his -examinations. At last it becomes a choice between his career and his -children, between the present and the future, and the children and the -future win. Society loses just in the degree that Lewisham himself -loses, for he was fitted to be a builder; and society has first, in the -face of all his efforts, imperfectly equipped him and then consistently -refused to take advantage of his talents. - -Just as Lewisham is a potential builder of society who is defeated, so -Kipps is a specimen of the raw material, the muddled inferior material -with which society has to deal and refuses to deal. Kipps, like Mr. -Polly, is from the beginning a victim of accident, spawned on the world, -miseducated, apprenticed at fourteen to a Drapery Bazaar. He grows up -ignorant, confused, irresponsible; and then suddenly, as accidentally as -he was born, has L26,000 and responsibility thrust upon him. The fortune -of Kipps lifts him at once out of the obscure negligible world of the -populace and makes him a figure to be reckoned with. Therein lies the -comedy of the book. He tries to make himself what in his own view a man -of means ought to be; naturally he sees money not as a force but as a -thing to be spent, and he finds that even from this point of view he has -no freedom of will, and that his lack of training inevitably places him -in the hands of equally irresponsible persons who want his money. He -wishes to build a house, designed after his own vaguely apprehended -needs and desires, and somehow under the wand of the architect a house -with eleven bedrooms springs from the ground, a house plainly far beyond -his own or Ann's power of management, and the prospect of disrespectful -servants, terrifying callers, and a horde of scheming lawyers, -tradesfolk and satellites. And the life of Kipps under prosperity is -summed up in the following dialogue: - - "Wonder what I shall do this afternoon," said Kipps, with - his hands deep in his pockets. - - He pondered and lit a cigarette. - - "Go for a walk, I s'pose," said Ann. - - "I _been_ for a walk this morning." - - "S'pose I must go for another," he added after an interval. - -May one suggest how the significance of such a story as this varies -according to the point of view? In the ordinary literature of comedy, -Kipps would be merely a parvenu whose want of dignity and ignorance of -the right use of money are laughable--or, if the novelist were a -humanitarian, pitiful. To the socialist, on the other hand, every -incident of his life, every gesture of his mind, is a unique indictment -of things as they are. He stands for the whole waste of human stuff in a -world which has not learned how to economize itself, whose every detail -is accidental in a general chaotic absence of social design. - -In this aspect _Tono-Bungay_ is the most powerful work of Wells. Just as -his romances of the future had exhibited the possible effects of -accidental heedless social conduct in the past, so his novels exhibit -the motives that produce this heedlessness to consequences. Thus the -world in which the Sleeper awakes, a world irrevocably ruled by the -bureaucratic trustees of an irresponsible private fortune, is just a -conceivable consequence of such a career as Uncle Ponderevo's, had not -catastrophe overwhelmed him and enabled Wells to point a much more -pregnant moral. _Tono-Bungay_ is a great epic of irresponsible -capitalism from the socialist point of view. Uncle Ponderevo is a born -commercial meteor, and when he first enters the book, a small druggist -in a dead country town, he exhibits the temperament of a Napoleon of -finance spoiling for conquest. He wants to Wake Up Wimblehurst, invent -something, do something, shove something. - - He indicated London as remotely over the top of the - dispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by - a whirl of the hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me. - - "What sort of things do they do?" I asked. "Rush about," he - said. "Do things! Somethin' glorious. There's cover - gambling. Ever heard of that, George?" He drew the air in - through his teeth. "You put down a hundred, say, and buy - ten thousand pounds' worth. See? That's a cover of one per - cent. Things go up one, you sell, realize cent per cent; - down, whiff, it's gone! Try again! Cent per cent, George, - every day. Men are made or done for in an hour. And the - shoutin'!... Well, that's one way, George. Then another - way--there's Corners!" - - "They're rather big things, aren't they?" I ventured. - - "Oh, if you go in for wheat and steel--yes. But suppose you - tackled a little thing, George. Just some leetle thing that - only needed a few thousands. Drugs, for example. Shoved all - you had into it--staked your liver on it, so to speak. Take - a drug--take ipecac, for example. Take a lot of ipecac. - Take all there is! See? There you are! There aren't - unlimited supplies of ipecacuanha--can't be!--and it's a - thing people _must_ have. Then quinine again! You watch - your chance, wait for a tropical war breaking out, let's - say, and collar all the quinine. Where _are_ they? Must - have quinine, you know--Eh? ... - - "Lord! there's no end of things--no end of _little_ things. - Dill-water--all the suff'ring babes yowling for it. - Eucalyptus again--cascara--witch hazel--menthol--all the - toothache things. Then there's antiseptics, and curare, - cocaine.... - - "Rather a nuisance to the doctors," I reflected. - - "They got to look out for themselves. By Jove, yes. They'll - do you if they can, and you do them. Like brigands. That - makes it romantic. That's the Romance of Commerce, George." - - He passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such - fragments as: "Fifty per cent, advance, sir; - security--to-morrow." - - The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a - sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever - be permitted to do in reality. It was the sort of nonsense - one would talk to make Ewart laugh and set him going on to - still odder possibilities. I thought it was part of my - uncle's way of talking. But I've learnt differently since. - The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee - something that will probably be needed and put it out of - reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy up land - upon which people will presently want to build houses, you - secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, - and so on, and so on. Of course the naive intelligence of a - boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human - inadequacy. He begins life with the disposition to believe - in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realize how - casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and - custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is - a power as irresistible as a head master's to check - mischievous, foolish enterprises of every sort. I will - confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I - had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do - that would pretty certainly go to gaol. Now I know that any - one who could really bring it off would be much more likely - to go to the House of Lords! - -And such or nearly such is this career. Tono-Bungay, that swindling -patent medicine without value or meaning, is the insubstantial -hippogriff upon which Uncle Ponderevo soars upward on the wind of -advertisement. In a society whose basis is unlimited individual rights, -he is able to disorganize the industrial world and to work out his -absurd, inept, extravagant destiny, scattering ruin right and left. - -But the spirit of Good Will, the disinterested constructive spirit of -socialism which is the underlying assumption of Wells, appears here as -in all his later books. Out of the wreckage the constructive purpose -emerges, in the person of George Ponderevo. It shapes itself as a steel -destroyer, the work of an engineer's brain, a destroyer which England -has refused and which plunges down the Thames to the open sea, the -symbol of man's intentions, without illusions and without the hope of -personal gain, the disinterested spirit of science and truth. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -SOCIALISM TRUE AND FALSE - - - In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth - of statesmanship. It has been the chronic mistake of - statecraft and all organizing spirits to attempt immediately - to scheme and arrange and achieve. Priests, schools of - thought, political schemers, leaders of men, have always - slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out - the whole--or, at any rate, completely think out definite - parts--of the purpose and future of man, clearly and - finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct - on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing - obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, - persecution, training, pruning, secretive education, and all - the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. - - -The man who wrote that is not what is called a whole-hearted man as -regards any form of group-action. He does not "fit in." He is at bottom -a sceptic, and a sceptic is one who reduces every question to the -question of human nature. So that the socialism of Wells is necessarily -at variance with all the recognized group-forms of socialism, -Administrative, Philanthropic, and Revolutionary. I must briefly -indicate in each case what is the quality of this divergence. - -As regards the first, he has a complete distrust of what Hilaire Belloc -has called the "Servile State;" and what he distrusts he virulently -dislikes. In his view, Administrative socialism, as it appears in Sidney -Webb and the Fabian Society, and in the tendency of contemporary -Liberalism, has led to an excessive conservatism toward the existing -machinery of government, it has depended altogether too much on -organization without popular support, and as a result has tended to -throw the whole force of the socialist movement into a bureaucratic -regime of small-minded experts. The activity of the Fabians especially, -he says, has set great numbers of socialists working in the old -governmental machinery without realizing that the machinery should have -been reconstructed first. The whole tendency of this method, as it is -exhibited in the works of the English Liberal Party of to-day, is toward -a socialization of the poor without a corresponding socialization of the -rich; toward a more and more marked chasm between the regimented workers -and the free employers. - -And it throws the control of affairs into the hands of a mass of highly -specialized officials, technical minds, mutually-unenlightened experts. -In an age when the progress of society depends upon breaking down -professional barriers, when the genuine scientist, for instance, is a -man who passes beyond his own science and sees the inter-relationships -of all knowledge, the mind which has been trained in one habitual -routine is the most dangerous type of mind to place in authority. On the -one hand, society depends upon the cooperation of all sorts of -specialists, their free discussion, and comparison of methods, results, -and aims; on the other experts in office are apt to grow narrow, -impatient, and contemptuous, seeing nothing beyond their immediate -work,--and this particularly when they have been trained for -administration without any wide experience of the world. - -Therefore upon experts as such, in distinction from constructive and -cooperating specialists, Wells, with all the force of his belief in the -ventilating of knowledge and the humanizing of affairs, wages an -unceasing war. _The First Men in the Moon_ satirizes, after the fashion -of Swift, a world where the expert view of life, not only in -administration but in all work, prevails. Each inhabitant of the Moon -has a single rigidly defined function, to which everything else in his -nature is accommodated. Thus certain types of machine-menders are -compressed in jars, while others are dwarfed to fit them for fine work, -"a really more humane proceeding", as Mr. Cavor observes, "than our -method of leaving children to grow into human beings and then making -machines of them." And in _The Great State_ he returns to his attack on -government by experts: "Whatever else may be worked out in the subtler -answers our later time prepares, nothing can be clearer than that the -necessary machinery of government must be elaborately organized to -prevent the development of a managing caste in permanent conspiracy, -tacit or expressed, against the normal man." And he adds: "The Great -State will, I feel convinced, regard changes in occupation as a proper -circumstance in the life of every citizen; it will value a certain -amateurishness in its service, and prefer it to the trite omniscience of -the stale official." One of the many and increasing indications, one -might suggest, of the remarkable tendency in Wells to find good in the -old humanistic Tory, as distinguished from the modern bureaucratic -Liberal, view of life. - -But lest I be tempted to carry this latter suggestion too far just at -this point, I pass on to his equally virulent dislike of Philanthropic -socialism and the busy Superior Person in affairs; especially the type -of political woman so dear to Mrs. Humphry Ward's heart. If the expert -bureaucratic point of view represents the action of socialist thought on -the Liberal Progressive mind, so also the philanthropic superior point -of view represents the action of socialist thought on the Conservative -mind. It is arrogant, aggressive, and condescending. It implies the -raising of one's inferiors, and what weak mortal should assume that she -(for this happens to be a mainly feminine affliction) is the standard -according to which other mortals ought to be raised? - -Two of these energetic ladies have been pictured with a bitter vividness -by Wells in Altiora Bailey and Aunt Plessington, the former summing up -the Fabian-expert view, the latter summing up the Superior-philanthropic -view. Altiora has "P.B.P."--_pro bono publico_--engraved inside her -wedding ring. All the misery of the world she marshals invincibly in -statistics. She sees everything as existing in types and classes; she -pushes her cause with a hard, scheming, and wholly self-centred -eagerness, managing political dinners, indefatigably compiling -blue-books, dreaming of a world nailed as tightly and firmly under the -rule of experts as a carpet is nailed with brass tacks. - -On the other hand Aunt Plessington is the incarnation of a "Movement" -somewhat vague in purpose but always aggressively beneficial to the -helpless ones of the earth. "Her voice was the true governing-class -voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant and authoritative; it made -everything she said clear and important, so that if she said it was a -fine morning it was like leaded print in the _Times_." Her mission is -principally to interfere with the habits and tastes of the -working-class, making it impossible for them to buy tobacco and beer or -"the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which do not -sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach)." She is, in short, -one of those odious managing people who know nothing of and care nothing -for human nature, who concern themselves wholly with the effects without -penetrating to the causes of misery, who see mankind as irrevocably -divided into a governing and a governed class, and whose idea of -government is to make the governed as uncomfortably efficient as -possible and as lacking in free will. She is exactly one of those -arrogant sterile souls, in love with methods rather than men, who have -made the Servile State an imminent and horrid possibility and have -turned so many misinformed human beings (including Tolstoy) against -socialism altogether. - -If Wells dislikes Administrative and Philanthropic socialism because -they are not sufficiently human, he has an equal aversion to what is -called orthodox, that is to say, Revolutionary socialism; and in this he -includes all socialism that is fundamentally economic. "I have long -since ceased to trouble about the economics of human society," says -Stratton in _The Passionate Friends_, in words we are justified in -taking as the opinion of Wells himself. "Ours are not economic but -psychological difficulties." - -That statement is full of meaning. It expresses, not a fact but a -personal conviction--the personal conviction with which the -psychological constructive socialism of Wells begins. But before I pass -on to this I must make one comment that persists in my mind. - -Nothing is more remarkable than the unanimity with which during the last -few years the advanced world has put all its eggs in the basket of -pragmatism, the basket that has been so alluringly garnished by -Bergson's _Creative Evolution_, In this movement of thought Wells has -inevitably become one of the leaders, and his practical desertion of the -socialist cause is one of the main symptoms of it. The creative energies -of men, where society as a whole is concerned, are, in this philosophy, -conceived as bursting through the husks and institutions of the world, -not consciously destroying them but shedding them incidentally and -passing on. Now as regards sociology there is an obvious fatalism in -that; for the burden of proof lies once more on a personal basis, on a -personal basis qualified by the capacity of the person. It is true that -this creative and constructive tendency, like the total tendency of -modern life, is in the direction of socialism, it is true that a -thousand elements in modern life which could never be engaged in the -class-war are led by it into line with socialism. Yet there capitalism -is! Only the black-browed Marxian steadily contemplates the fact that -year by year the rich compound their riches and the poor their poverty, -while those that have no chance of creative outlets plant dynamite. - -I do not mean that Wells is "wrong" in abandoning the economic for the -psychological approach,--that is plainly the inevitable course for him. -I wish simply to mark a distinction. The gospel of Wells is an entirely -personal one; it frankly concerns itself with the inner realities of the -human mind, and in that lies its great importance. But let us -discriminate. Like every purely personal doctrine it contains, in -relation to the facts and causes of society, a certain quietism. It -withdraws the mind from corporate action and lays emphasis on corporate -thought. But it recognizes no corporate enemy. To be an opponent of -capitalism as such, is, in this philosophy, as quaint and crude and -crusty as to be an anti-suffragist or a believer in politics (for it has -become the fashion to believe with fervor in the franchise and scarcely -to believe at all in what the franchise stands for). - -There is then a certain danger in the creative pragmatism of this -particular time. If it actually does penetrate to the head men of the -world, if it is able to generate what I suppose may be called a "moral -equivalent" of duty--and there is almost a probability that it will--the -hazard is won. If it does not--and many keen thinkers and men of action -are obdurate--then we shall simply have the _fait accompli_ with -compound interest. What if it should turn out in the end, after the best -brains of socialism had all withdrawn from the economic programme of -socialism, that capitalism grows all the greener in the sunlight of -their tacit consent? There is Congress, there is Parliament, and there -they propose to remain. Suppose they are not converted from the top? Is -it altogether wise to stop persecuting them from the bottom? - -So much before I pass on. This comment does not qualify the teaching of -Wells. It merely supplements it from the economic side, and the -supplement seems to me an important one. - -Of a piece with his whole point of view is that he calls the right -sociological method not a scientific but an artistic method: it consists -of the making and comparing of Utopias. This idea he sets forth in his -paper _The So-called Science of Sociology_. "What is called the -scientific method," he says, "the method of observation, of theory about -these observations, experiments in verification of that theory and -confirmation or modification, really 'comes off' in the sciences in -which the individuality of the units can be pretty completely ignored." -The method that is all-important in the primary physical sciences where -the individuality of atoms and molecules may conveniently be ignored for -the sake of practical truth, becomes in his view proportionately untrue -as the sciences in their gradation approach the human world. "We -cannot," he says in _First and Last Things_, "put humanity into a museum -and dry it for examination; our one still living specimen is all -history, all anthropology, and the fluctuating world of men. There is no -satisfactory means of dividing it and nothing in the real world with -which to compare it. We have only the remotest idea of its 'life-cycle' -and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny." And in the -paper I have just mentioned he speaks of the Social Idea as a thing -"struggling to exist and realize itself in a world of egotisms, animals, -and brute matter.... Now I submit it is not only a legitimate form of -approach, but altogether the most promising and hopeful form of -approach, to endeavor to disentangle and express one's personal version -of that idea, and to measure realities from the standpoint of that -realization. I think, in fact, that the creation of Utopias--and their -exhaustive criticism--is the proper and distinctive method of -sociology." This notion of sociology as properly artistic in method and -diagnostic in aim indicates his main divergence from the methods and -aims of Comte and Spencer. - -And so one turns to his own illustration of this belief, _A Modern -Utopia_. It is a beautiful Utopia, beautifully seen and beautifully -thought; and it has in it some of that flavor of airy unrestraint one -finds in _News from Nowhere_. Morris, of course, carries us into a world -where right discipline has long since produced right will, so wholly and -instinctively socialized that men can afford to be as free as anarchists -would have the unsocialized men of our own time, a world such as Goethe -had in mind when he said: "There is in man a force, a spring of goodness -which counterbalances egoism; and if by a miracle it could for a moment -suddenly be active in all men, the earth would at once be free from -evil." Well, that is the miracle which has in some way just taken place -before the curtain goes up on most Utopias; and I think that Wells has -never been more skilful than in keeping this miracle quietly in his bag -of tricks and devising meanwhile a plausible transition between us and -that better world. It all happens in a moment and we are there. By an -amazing legerdemain of logic he leaps the gap and presents us with a -planet which at every point tallies with our own. It is a planet which -does not contain a State but is a State, the flexible result of a free -social gesture. - -_Mankind in the Making_ should be taken as introductory to _A Modern -Utopia_. It is the sketch of a method towards attaining such a world -state. It is a kind of treatise on education based on the assumption -that "our success or failure with the unending stream of babies is the -measure of our civilization." It opens with a complete repudiation of -"scientific" breeding, as a scheme which ignores the uniqueness of -individual cases and the heterogeneous nature of human ideals. "We are," -says Wells, "not a bit clear what points to breed for, and what points -to breed out;" while the interplay of strong and varied personalities we -desire is contradictory to any uniform notions of beauty, capacity, and -sanity, which thus cannot be bred for, so to speak, in the abstract. But -in _A Modern Utopia_ he outlines certain conditions limiting parentage, -holding it necessary that in order to be a parent a man must be above a -certain minimum of capacity and income, failing which he is indebted to -the State for the keep of his children. Motherhood is endowed and -becomes in this way a normal and remunerative career, which renders the -mother capable of giving her time to the care and education of her -children, as millions are not in a wage-earning civilization, and makes -both her and her children independent of the ups and downs of her -husband. His very detailed suggestions about the education of young -children (illustrated also in _The Food of the Gods_) are at once a -reminiscence of Rabelais and an anticipation of Madame Montessori. He -insists upon uniform pronunciation (a very important matter in England, -where diversity of language is one of the bulwarks of a rigid -class-system), the universality and constant revision of text-books, the -systematic reorganization of public library and bookselling methods, -with a view to making the race think as a whole. He urges the necessity -of rescuing literature from the accidents of the book-market by endowing -critical reviews, chairs for the discussion of contemporary thought, and -qualified thinkers and writers regardless of their special bias or -principles. To strike a mean between the British abuse of government by -hereditary privilege and the American abuse of government by electoral -machines he ingeniously proposes the election of officials by the jury -method, twenty or thirty men being set aside by lot to determine the -proper holders of office. And he is convinced of the importance in a -democracy of abundant honors, privileges, even titles, and abundant -opportunities for fruitful leisure. - -I have already spoken of his belief that the right sociological method -is the creation and comparison of individual Utopias. Thus his own -free-hand sketch of a better world is, in fact, a criticism of all -previous works of the kind. As distinguished from them the modern -Utopia, he says, has to present not a finally perfect stage but a -hopefully ascending one; it has to present men not as uniform types but -as conflicting individualities with a common bond; and moreover it has -to occupy, not some remote island or province "over the range" but a -whole planet. The Utopia of Wells is a world which differs from the -present world in one fundamental respect only--it has one initial -advantage: that every individual in it has been _started right_, in the -degree in which the collective knowledge of the world has rendered that -possible. - -But there is no need for me to say anything more about these books. They -are the free and suggestive motions of a mind inexhaustibly fertile and -given to many devices. Anyone who has read Wells at all is aware of his -ingenuity, his equal capacity for large schemes and minute details, his -truly Japanese belief in radical changes, once they are seen to be -necessary and possible. And indeed the details of social arrangement -follow naturally and profusely enough, once you get the frame of mind -that wishes them. Wells in his Utopia presupposes the frame of mind. In -short, he puts education first; he believes that the essential problems -of the present are not economic but psychological. - -And here where the constructive theory of Wells begins, let me quote a -passage from _The New Machiavelli_ that gives the gist of it: - - The line of human improvements and the expansion of human - life lies in the direction of education and finer - initiatives. If humanity cannot develop an education far - beyond anything that is now provided, if it cannot - collectively invent devices and solve problems on a much - richer, broader scale than it does at the present time, it - cannot hope to achieve any very much finer order or any more - general happiness than it now enjoys. We must believe, - therefore, that it can develop such a training and - education, or we must abandon secular constructive hope. And - here my initial difficulty as against crude democracy comes - in. If humanity at large is capable of that high education - and those creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must - its better and more vigorous types be so capable. And if - those who have power and scope and freedom to respond to - imaginative appeals cannot be won to the idea of collective - self-development, then the whole of humanity cannot be won - to that. From that one passes to what has become my general - conception in politics, the conception of the constructive - imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful - people, enterprising people, influential people, amidst whom - power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-conscious, - highly selective, open-minded, devoted, aristocratic - culture, which seems to me to be the necessary next phase in - the development of human affairs. I see human progress, not - as the spontaneous product of crowds of low minds swayed by - elementary needs, but as a natural but elaborate result of - intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and - curiosity liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions - and motives, modified and redirected by literature and art. - -This permeation of the head men of the world, this creation of a natural -collective-minded aristocracy appears now to be the permanent hope of -Wells. It is the stuff of all his novels, it is the centre of his -ethical system; and his _Utopia_ is made possible by the existence in it -of just such a flexible leading caste--the so-called Samurai. But -before coming to the inner implications of this, to the individual and -personal realities and difficulties of this, I must follow the -development of the idea in Wells himself. At various times, in various -works, he has presented it from a dozen different angles: as something -that is certain to come, as something he greatly desires to come, as -something that will not come at all except through prodigious effort, as -something that will come through a general catastrophe, as something -that will come through isolated individual endeavor, and the like. That -is to say he has presented his idea through all the various literary -mediums of exposition, fable, prophecy, psychological analysis, and -ethical appeal. - -It appears in a crude form in his first avowedly sociological work, -_Anticipations_. He there attempts to show that the chaos of society is -of itself beginning to generate a constructive class, into whose hands -it must ultimately fall. The advance of mechanism, he predicts, will -produce four clearly defined classes: an immense shareholding class with -all the potentialities of great property and a complete lack of function -with regard to that property; a non-producing class of middle-men -dependent on these, and composed of agents, managers, lawyers, clerks, -brokers, speculators, typists, and organizers; the expropriated class of -propertyless and functionless poor, whose present livelihood is -dependent on the fact that machinery is not yet so cheap as their labor. -And amid this generally disorganized mass a fourth element will define -itself. This in rudiment is the element of mechanics and engineers, -whose work makes it necessary for them to understand the machines they -are making and to be continually on the lookout for new methods. These -men, he holds, will inevitably develop a common character based on a -self-wrought scientific education and view of life. About them as a -nucleus all the other skilled and constructive minds--doctors, teachers, -investigators, writers, and the like--will tend to group themselves; and -as the other classes in their very nature will tend to social -disintegration, these will inevitably grow more and more conscious of a -purpose, a reason, a function in common, and will disentangle themselves -from the aimless and functionless masses about them. Democracy, as we -know it, will meanwhile pass away. For democratic government unavoidably -reduces itself to government by party machines and party machines depend -for their existence on alarms, quarrelsome patriotisms, and -international exasperations whose almost inevitable outcome is war. - -Whether war follows or not, the power of society is bound to fall into -the hands of the scientifically trained, constructive middle class, -because this class is the only indispensable element in it. Without war -this must occur just as soon as the spending and purchasing power of the -shareholding class becomes dependent for its existence on the class -which alone can save society from destruction. With war it will occur -with even greater rapidity: for in the warfare of the future that nation -is bound to win which has most effectively realized socialist ideals, in -which the government can command, with least interference from private -control, its roads, its food, its clothing, its material, its resources, -which has most efficiently organized itself as a whole; and the class -that modern warfare will bring to the front is the class that knows how -to handle machinery and how to direct it. But just as this class will be -the most efficient in war, so will it be the most careful to prevent -war: it will in fact confirm the ultimate tendency toward a World State -at peace with itself, through the agency, not of any of the governments -that we know to-day but of an informal cooperative organization which is -altogether outside the governmental systems of society, and which may in -time assimilate the greater part of the population of the world. - -Such is the argument of this book, and except for the inevitability of -it--the belief that all this _must_ come to pass--Wells has not since -abandoned it in any essential way. The new aristocracy that figures -there, the advance-guard of a better civilization, is precisely the -ethical ideal which is embodied in the chief characters of his novels. -Thus too the Samurai of _A Modern Utopia_ are figured as having arisen -at first informally as the constructive minds disentangling themselves -from the social chaos. Gradually becoming aware through research, -discussion and cooperation of a common purpose, they have at last -assumed a militant form and supplanted the political organizations of -the world. - -The general intention of all this finds utterance in the most poetic of -all the fables of Wells, _The Food of the Gods_. The Food itself, -invented by two undistinguished-looking scientists, becomes current in -the world through the very haphazardness of a society which will not -control discoveries detrimental to it and which consequently has no -means of coping with a discovery capable of superseding it. -"Heracleophorbia" has thus the same initial advantage as Tono-Bungay or -any other shabby patent medicine. It has an additional advantage; for -while patent medicines have the sanction of private enterprise and are -controlled by secret patents for the gain of their inventors, the Food -of the Gods, like every discovery of honorable scientists, is given -freely to the world. Thus the Food and the gigantic race of supermen who -spring from it and bring with them a nobler order of things are -themselves generated by the very chaos they promise to supplant. Just in -proportion as the inventors are frank and open men, having no secret -gainful purpose, the Food spreads far and wide. It is stolen, spilled, -scattered; and wherever it falls every living thing grows gigantic. -Immense wasps drone like motor-cars over the meadows, chickens grow as -large as emus, and here and there a baby fed upon it and unable -thereafter to accept any less robust diet grows gradually to Rabelaisian -proportions. Caddles, a type of all the growing giants, comes to his -forty-foot maturity in a remote village where, as the mellow vicar -observes, "Things change, but Humanity--_aere perennius_." There he is -taught by the little folk to submit himself to all his governors, -teachers, spiritual pastors and masters and to order himself lowly and -reverently to all his betters. They put him to work in the chalk-pits, -where he learns to manage a whole quarry single-handed and makes of -himself a rudimentary engineer, and then he breaks loose and tramps to -London. He finds himself in the crowded New Kent Road, and they tell him -he is obstructing the traffic: "But where is it going?" he says; "where -does it come from? What does it mean?" Around him play the electric -signs advertising Yanker's Yellow Pills and Tupper's Tonic Wine for -Vigor, conveying to his troubled mind the significance of a world of -chaos and accident, perverted instinct, and slavery to base suggestion. - -Is it necessary to say that society becomes alarmed at last? Is it -necessary to add that Wells opens fire upon it with his whole battery of -satire? Plainly men and giants cannot live in the same world; the little -men find their little ways, their sacred customs of order, home, and -religion threatened by a strange new thing. The Children of the Food -meanwhile have grown beyond the conventions and proportions of common -life; they have experienced a kind of humanity to which all men can -attain and from which there can be no retrogression to the lesser -scheme. In the end, having found one another, they assemble in their -embankment, the world against them. They sit amid their vast machinery, -Titanic shapes in the darkness broken by searchlights and the flames of -their forges. An ambassador from the old order brings them the terms -upon which they may go free. They must separate themselves from the -world and give up the Food. They refuse: - -"Suppose we give up this thing that stirs within us," says the Giant -Leaguer.... "What then? Will this little world of theirs be as it was -before? They may fight against greatness in us who are the children of -men, but can they conquer?... For greatness is abroad, and not only in -us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose of all things! It is in the -nature of all things, it is part of time and space. To grow and still to -grow, from first to last, that is Being, that is the law of life." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEW REPUBLICAN - - -It is obvious that the socialism of Wells, touching as it does at every -point the fabric of society, remains at bottom a personal and mystical -conception of life. His typical socialist, or constructive man, or -Samurai, or New Republican, or what you will, is as distinctly a poetic -projection from life as Nietzsche's Superman, or Carlyle's Hero, or the -Superior Man of Confucius. Like them, it implies a rule of conduct and a -special religious attitude. - -Nietzsche's Superman is a convenient figure by which for the moment to -throw into relief the point I have in mind. Plainly a conception of this -kind should never be intellectualized and defined. It is a living whole, -as a human being is a living whole, and the only way to grasp it is to -place oneself at the precise angle of the poet who conceived it. But the -fixed intellect of man is not often capable of rising to the height of -such an argument, nor do the run of critics and interpreters rise to -such a height themselves. In the case of Nietzsche, particularly, they -have confounded the confusion, urging precise definitions and at the -same time disagreeing among themselves as to which definitions may be -held valid. But indeed the Superman does not "mean" this or that: it can -merely be approached from different points of view with different -degrees of sympathy. And so it is with the New Republican of Wells. - -I have mentioned the Superman because Wells himself has reached a -conception of aristocracy similar in certain respects to that of -Nietzsche but in others wholly antagonistic. In _The Food of the Gods_ -he certainly exhibits a sympathy with Nietzsche on the poetical and -ideal side; for his giants are not simply grand-children of Rabelais, -they practise of necessity a morality at variance with that of the -little men among whom they grow. When Caddies comes to London he does -not, and cannot, expect the little men to feed him; not intending evil -and seeing merely that he must live, he sweeps the contents of a baker's -shop into his mouth with just the unconcerned innocence of laws and -prohibitions that a child would feel before a blackberry bush. The very -existence of a larger, freer race implies a larger and freer morality, -and the giants and the little folk alike see that the same world cannot -for long contain them both. But perhaps one can mark the distinction by -saying that, unlike the Superman, they are not masters but servants of -the cosmic process. They themselves are not the goal toward which the -whole creation tends. Humanity is not a setting for their splendor, but -something that wins through them its own significance. - -In fact it fully proves how profound is the socialistic instinct in -Wells, that though in English wise and almost in the manner of Carlyle -he has come to believe in the great ones of this world, he has never -lost the invincible socialist conviction that a great man is only a -figure of speech. In _The Discovery of the Future_ he says: "I must -confess that I believe that if by some juggling with space and time -Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Edward IV, William the Conqueror, Lord Rosebery, -and Robert Burns had all been changed at birth, it would not have -produced any serious dislocation of the course of destiny. I believe -that these great men of ours are no more than images and symbols and -instruments taken, as it were, haphazard by the incessant and consistent -forces behind them." The individual who stands on his achievement, the -"lord of creation," is to him at best a little misinformed, at the worst -blustering, dishonest, presuming, absurd. - -By an original instinct the Wells hero is an inconspicuous little -person, fastidiously untheatrical, who cuts no figure personally and -who, to adopt a phrase from one of his later books, "escapes from -individuality in science and service." He abhors "personages." For the -personage is one who, in some degree, stands on his achievement, and to -Wells man, both in his love and his work, is experimental: he is an -experiment toward an impersonal synthesis, the well-being of the -species. It is true that this idea of man as an experiment does not -conflict with a very full development of personality. It consists in -that; but personality to Wells is attained purely through love and work, -and thus it comes to an end the moment it becomes static, the moment one -accepts the laurel wreath, the moment one verges on self-consequence. - -The first published utterance of Wells was, I think, a paper in _The -Fortnightly Review_ for July, 1891, called _The Rediscovery of the -Unique_. It was one of the earliest of those attacks on the logical -approach to life, so characteristic of contemporary thought: it stamped -him from the outset a pragmatist. The burden of his argument was that -since the investigations of Darwin it is no longer possible to ignore -the uniqueness of every individual thing in the universe and that "we -only arrive at the idea of similar beings by an unconscious or -deliberate disregard of an infinity of small differences"--that, in -brief, the method of classification which is the soul of logic is untrue -to the facts of life. "Human reason," he wrote, "in the light of what is -being advanced, appears as a convenient organic process based on a -fundamental happy misconception.... The _reason d'etre_ of a man's mind -is to avoid danger and get food--so the naturalists tell us. His -reasoning powers are about as much a truth-seeking tool as the snout of -a pig, and he may as well try to get to the bottom of things by them as -a mole might by burrowing." - -I quote thus his rudely graphic early statement of the case, because he -has not since substantially modified it and because it shows that he -already related it to human realities: and indeed in the same paper he -pointed out the relation that such an idea must bear to ordinary -conduct: - - Beings are unique, circumstances are unique, and therefore - we cannot think of regulating our conduct by wholesale - dicta. A strict regard for truth compels us to add that - principles are wholesale dicta: they are substitutes of more - than doubtful value for an individual study of cases. - -This conception of human reason as an altogether inadequate organ for -getting at the truth of things he later expanded in his Oxford lecture, -_Scepticism of the Instrument;_ and, still further expanded, it forms -the first or metaphysical book of his _First and Last Things_. It is -unnecessary to discuss the rights and wrongs of this primary point in a -generation familiar with James and Bergson. It is an assumption of the -purely personal, experimental nature of truth which has had a sufficient -sanction of experience greatly to modify contemporary practice in ethics -and sociology. And it should be noted that Wells evolved it in his own -study of physical science (a study serious enough to result in -text-books of Biology, Zoology, and Physiography) and that he presents -it, in accordance with his own postulates, not as truth for everybody, -but as his own personal contribution to the sum of experience. The study -of science led him to see the limitations of the scientific attitude, -outside the primary physical sciences which for practical purposes can -afford to ignore individualities, in matters that approach the world of -human motives and affairs. - -I do not propose to discuss this question of logic. It is quite plain at -least, as Wells observes, in the spirit of Professor James, that "all -the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and determined -are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression." And -therefore he is justified in proceeding as follows: - - I make my beliefs as I want them. I do not attempt to go to - fact for them. I make them thus and not thus exactly as an - artist makes a picture so and not so.... That does not mean - that I make them wantonly and regardless of fact.... The - artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field of - visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative - and great poverty of test, that is all, but of no - wantonness; the conditions of Tightness are none the less - imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I - adopt certain beliefs because I feel the need of them, - because I feel an often quite unanalyzable Tightness in - them, because the alternative of a chaotic life distresses - me. - -And this is the way in which he presents the gist of his beliefs: - - I see myself in life as part of a great physical being that - strains and I believe grows toward Beauty, and of a great - mental being that strains and I believe grows towards - knowledge and power. In this persuasion that I am a gatherer - of experience, a mere tentacle that arranged thought beside - thought for this Being of the Species, this Being that grows - beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling - idea of which I stand in need, the ruling idea that - reconciles and adjudicates among my warring motives. In it I - find both concentration of myself and escape from myself, in - a word, I find _Salvation_. - -And again later: - - The race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are - the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement: - it is a statement of fact. In so far as we are individuals, - so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are - accidental, disconnected, without significance, the sport of - chance. In so far as we realize ourselves as experiments of - the species for the species, just in so far do we escape - from the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes in an - experience greater than ourselves.... Now none of this, if - you read me aright, makes for the suppression of one's - individual difference, but it does make for its correlation. - We have to get everything we can out of ourselves for this - very reason that we do not stand alone; we signify as parts - of a universal and immortal development. Our separate selves - are our charges, the talents of which much has to be made. - It is because we are episodical in the great synthesis of - life that we have to make the utmost of our individual lives - and traits and possibilities. - -Naturally then, just as he holds by the existing State as a rudimentary -collective organ in public affairs, so also, in theory, he holds by the -existing Church. His Church of the Future bears to the existing Church -just the relation which the ultimate State of socialism bears to the -existing State. "The theory of a religion," says Wells, "may propose the -attainment of Nirvana or the propitiation of an irascible Deity or a -dozen other things as its end and aim. The practical fact is that it -draws together great multitudes of diverse individualized people in a -common solemnity and self-subordination, however vague, and is so far -like the State, and in a manner far more intimate and emotional and -fundamental than the State, a synthetic power. And in particular the -idea of the Catholic Church is charged with synthetic suggestion; it is -in many ways an idea broader and finer than the constructive idea of any -existing State." - -All of which I take to be very much the position of Erasmus face to face -with Luther and of Matthew Arnold face to face on the one hand with -Nonconformity and on the other with Darwinism: that the Church is a -social fact greater in importance than any dogmatic system it contains. -To Wells any sort of voluntary self-isolation, any secession from -anything really synthetic in society, is a form of "sin." And like many -Catholics he justifies a certain Machiavelism in squaring one's personal -doubts with the collective end. Thus he holds that test oaths and -declarations of formal belief are of the same nature as the oath of -allegiance a republican takes to the King, petty barriers that cannot -weigh against the good that springs from placing oneself _en rapport_ -with the collective religious consciousness; at least in the case of -national Churches, which profess to represent the whole spiritual life -of a nation and which cannot therefore be regarded as exclusive to any -affirmative religious man. The individual, he says, must examine his -special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility -of cooperation; as far as possible he must repress his private tendency -toward social fragmentation, hold fast to the idea of the Church as -essentially a larger fact than any specific religious beliefs, and work -within it for the recognition of this fact. I have mentioned Catholic -reasoning; Wells appears to be in general agreement with Newman as to -the subordination of private intellectual scruples to the greater unity -of faith. - -But indeed I doubt if it is fair to take him too much at his word in -specific matters of this kind. _First and Last Things_ has that slightly -official quality which goes with all Confessions of Faith out loud. If -his intention has led him to square himself with lines of thought and -conduct where, to speak the truth, he is an alien, his intention -remains, and that is plain and fine. - -The synthetic motive gains its very force through the close-knitting of -keenly-developed, proud, and valiant individualities. In Wells the -synthetic motive and the individual motive qualify and buttress one -another; and he is quite as much opposed to the over-predominance of the -synthetic motive where the personal motive is deficient as he is to the -self-indulgence of the purely personal life. Thus the Assembly in _A -Modern Utopia_ is required to contain a certain number of men outside -the Samurai class, because, as they explain, "there is a certain sort of -wisdom that comes of sin and laxness, which is necessary to the perfect -ruling of life," and their Canon contains a prayer "to save the world -from unfermented men." So also in _First and Last Things_ Wells remarks: -"If I were a father confessor I should begin my catalogue of sins by -asking, 'Are you a man of regular life?' and I would charge my penitent -to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving irregularity; to -fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork and beans or give -up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners." Plainly his -collective purpose is nothing unless it consists of will, will even to -wilfulness, even to perversity. - -And this leads one back to that early assertion of his that since beings -and circumstances are unique, we must get rid of the idea that conduct -should be regulated by general principles. Similarly, at the outset of -_Mankind in the Making_ he says it is necessary "to reject and set aside -all abstract, refined, and intellectualized ideas as starting -propositions, such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, or Beauty, -and to hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Goodness and Beauty, he says, cannot -be considered apart from good and beautiful things and one's personal -notions of the good and beautiful have to be determined by one's -personal belief about the meaning of life. Thus, to take an illustration -from his novels, one of the most odious traits of such a father as Ann -Veronica's or Mr. Pope in _Marriage_ is that they wish to regulate their -daughters, not by a study of what is and must be good in their eyes, but -by a general sweeping view of what good daughters ought to be. - -Now since his own idea of the purpose of life is the development of the -collective consciousness of the race, his idea of the Good is that which -contributes to this synthesis, and the Good Life is that which, as he -says, "most richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience and -renders it available for the race, that contributes most effectively to -the collective growth." And as a corollary to this, Sin is essentially -"the service of secret and personal ends." The conflict in one way or -another between this Good and this Evil forms the substance of each of -the main group of his novels. Aside from the novels of shop-life, each -of his principal men begins life with a passionate and disinterested -ambition to gather and prepare experience and render it available for -the race; each one falls from this ambition to the service of secret and -personal ends. Lewisham, Capes, Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford are, each -in his own way, human approximations, with all the discount of actual -life, of the ethical standard of Wells himself as it is generalized in -the New Republicans and the Samurai. They illustrate how fully the -socialism of Wells is summed up in a conception of character. - -But before turning to the actual men and women who form the substance of -his novels, I must add something about those wraith-like beings, the -Samurai of _A Modern Utopia,_ which fully embody his ideal. - -The name Samurai, to begin with, is not a random choice, for it is plain -that the Japanese temper is akin to that of Wells. The career of the -Japanese as a nation during the last fifty years perfectly illustrates -his frequent contention that in modern warfare success falls to the -nation that has most completely realized the socialistic, as -distinguished from the individualistic, notion of society. "Behind her -military capacity is the disciplined experience of a thousand years," -says Lafcadio Hearn, who proceeds to show at what cost, in everything we -are apt to regard as human, this disciplined power has been -achieved--the cost of individual privacy in rights, property, and -conduct. - -But aside from social ideals and achievements one instinctively feels -that Wells likes Japanese human nature. In one of his early essays, long -since out of print, he remarks: - - I like my art unadorned; thought and skill and the other - strange quality that is added thereto to make things - beautiful--and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and - paper, and behold! a thing of beauty!--as they do in Japan. - And if it should fall into the fire--well, it has gone like - yesterday's sunset, and to-morrow there will be another. - -He contrasts this with the ordinary English view of art and property, -mahogany furniture and "handsome" possessions: - - The pretence that they were the accessories to human life - was too transparent. _We_ were the accessories; we minded - them for a little while, and then we passed away. They wore - us out and cast us aside. We were the changing scenery; they - were the actors who played on through the piece. - -_There is no Being but Becoming_ is the special dictum of Wells, a -dictum which does not consort with mahogany sideboards, but is tangibly -expressed in Japanese architecture. And if Wells naturally likes -Japanese art, its economy, delicacy, ephemerality, its catlike nicety, -its paucity of color, its emphasis of design, its "starkness," it is -plain also that many qualities of the Japanese character must also -appeal irresistibly to him: the light hold they have on all those things -into which one settles down, from stolid leather arm-chairs to -comfortable private fortunes; their lack of self-consequence, their -alertness, their athletic freedom from everything that encumbers, their -remoteness from port-wine and _embonpoint._ These things exist in -Wells's notion of right human nature. - -Thus the Samurai. They are delegates of the species, experimenting and -searching for new directions; they instinctively view themselves as -explorers for the race, as disinterested agents. And their own -self-development on this disinterested basis is not only the purpose of -their own lives, but also the method by which the Life Impulse discovers -and records itself and pushes on to ever wider and richer -manifestations. - -The socialism of Wells is merely a building out from this conception. He -is persuaded that this kind of experimental exercise is not simply a -happy indulgence for the few fortunately placed, but that it is actually -virtue and the only virtue. And this notion of personal virtue--personal -in quality, social in effect--once conceded, it follows that the -moulding of life must proceed with reference to this. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -HUMAN NATURE - - -There is always a certain disadvantage in approaching human nature -through a theory or in the light of an ideal. If I am doing that, it is -my own fault and by no means the fault of Wells. He has himself -abandoned socialism, in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has -too much of the _a priori_ about it; he has abandoned economics because -it deals with man as a mass-mind; he has come to rest in human nature -itself and he has made his theories subject to human nature. - -"All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the -story," says Thoreau. Most readers of the novels of Wells, I suppose, -have no notion that a theory of life runs through them and unites them. -And they are right. The force of a work of art does not reside in its -"inner meanings." An admirable work of art will always no doubt possess -"inner meanings" in plenty and the unhappy mind of man will always rout -them out. But to separate the intellectual structure of anything from -the thing itself is just like any other kind of vivisection: you expose -the brain and you kill the dog. A work of art is a moving living whole -that speaks to the moving living whole which is oneself. We are -insensibly modified by reading as by other experience. We come to feel -differently, see differently, act differently. Without doubt Wells has -altered the air we breathe and has made a conscious fact in many minds -the excellence that resides in certain types of men and modes of living -and the odiousness that resides in others. Socialism, like everything -else which changes the world, comes as a thief in the night. - -Still, it is plain that Wells himself began with doctrine foremost; -richness of experience has led him only after many years to get the -horse before the cart. From the first he was aware of a point of -view--it was the point of view, writ large, of his own self-made career, -growing gradually more and more coherent. Throughout his romances, down -to the very end, his chief interest was theoretical rather than human. -Only this can account for the violent wrenching of life and character in -them to suit the requirements of a predetermined idea. The Food of the -Gods, for example, is so far the essential fact of the book that bears -its name that the characters in this book are merely employed to give -the Food a recognizable human setting. Throughout his romances, indeed, -men exist for inventions, not inventions for men. - -Yet the "human interest," as it is called, was there from the outset, -side by side with this main theoretic interest in the scientific and -socialistic possibilities of life. The series of novels began almost as -early as the series of romances. Two "streams of tendency" run side by -side throughout the earlier writings of Wells--streams of tendency which -meet fully for the first time in _Tono-Bungay_, and have formed a single -main current in the novels subsequent to that. On the one hand was the -stream of constructive theory, not yet brought into contact with human -nature, on the other the stream of "human interest," not yet brought -into contact with constructive theory. Mr. Hoopdriver, of _The Wheels of -Chance,_ and Kipps, are typical of this earlier fiction, specimens of -muddled humanity as such, one might say, quite unmitigated by the train -of thought, the possibility of doing something _with_ muddled humanity, -which was growing more and more urgent in the romances. - -In _Tono-Bungay_, as I have said, one sees the union of these two trains -of interest, muddled humanity being represented in Uncle Ponderevo, -constructive theory in George Ponderevo. And in all the subsequent -novels this fusion continues. The background in each case is the static -world of muddle from which Wells is always pushing off into the open sea -of possibilities, the foreground being occupied by a series of men and -women who represent this dynamic forward movement. And the philosophy of -Wells has finally come to port in human nature. - -"Few modern socialists," he says somewhere, "present their faith as a -complete panacea, and most are now setting to work in earnest upon those -long-shirked preliminary problems of human interaction through which the -vital problem of a collective head and brain can alone be approached." -And elsewhere he says: "Our real perplexities are altogether -psychological. There are no valid arguments against a great-spirited -socialism but this, that people will not. Indolence, greed, meanness of -spirit, the aggressiveness of authority, and above all jealousy, -jealousy from pride and vanity, jealousy for what we esteem our -possessions, jealousy for those upon whom we have set the heavy fetters -of our love, a jealousy of criticism and association, these are the real -obstacles to those brave large reconstructions, those profitable -abnegations and brotherly feats of generosity that will yet turn human -life--of which our individual fives are but the momentary parts--into a -glad, beautiful and triumphant cooperation all round this sunlit world." - -Inevitably then he sees the world as divided roughly into two worlds, -and human nature as of two general kinds. There is the static world, the -normal, ordinary world which is on the whole satisfied with itself, -together with the great mass of men who compose and sanction it; and -there is the ever-advancing better world, pushing through this outworn -husk in the minds and wills of creative humanity. In one of his essays -he has figured this opposition as between what he calls the Normal -Social Life and the Great State. And in one of those _degage_ -touch-and-go sketches in which he so often sums up the history of -humankind, he has presented the Normal Social Life as a "common -atmosphere of cows, hens, dung, toil, ploughing, economy, and domestic -intimacy," an immemorial state of being which implies on the part of men -and women a perpetual acquiescence--a satisfied or hopeless consent--to -the end of time. But as against this normal conception of life he points -out that modern circumstances have developed in men, through machinery, -the division of labor, etc., a "surplus life" which does not fit into -the Normal scheme at all, and that humanity has returned "from a closely -tethered to a migratory existence." And he observes: "The history of the -immediate future will, I am convinced, be very largely the history of -the conflict of the needs of this new population with the institutions, -the boundaries, the laws, prejudices, and deep-rooted traditions -established during the home-keeping, localized era of mankind's career." - -Two conceptions of life, two general types of character, two ethical -standards are here set in opposition, and this opposition is maintained -throughout the novels of Wells. Thus on the title-page of _The New -Machiavelli_ appears the following quotation from Professor James: "It -suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and tough-minded -people ... do both exist." In _A Modern Utopia_ this division appears -typically in the two men from our world who play off against one -another, the botanist and the narrator of the story. The -"tender-mindedness" of the botanist is exhibited in the fact that he -cares nothing for a better world if it is to deprive him of the muddled, -inferior and sentimental attachments of his accustomed life, and prefers -them to the austerer, braver prospect that is offered him. -"Tough-mindedness," on the other hand, is above all the state of living, -not in one's attachments, habits, possessions, not in the rut of least -resistance, but in the sense of one's constructive and cooperative -relationship to the whole sum of things, in being "a conscious part of -that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe." And -indeed the constant theme of the novels of Wells might be described as -tough-mindedness with lapses. - -For the heroes of Wells do lapse: they pay that tribute to "human -nature" and the overwhelming anti-social forces in the world and in man -himself. They fall, as a rule, from "virtue" to the service of secret -and personal ends. _Cherchez la femme_. Mr. Lewisham, insufficiently -prepared and made to feel that society does not want him, has to give up -his disinterested ambitions in science and scramble for money to support -a wife whom instinct has urged him, however imprudently, to marry. -George Ponderevo gives up science and is forced into abetting his -uncle's patent medicine enterprise for the same reason. For the same -reason, too, Capes takes to commercial play-writing to support Ann -Veronica; and to stand behind the extravagance of Marjorie, Trafford, -having discovered in his researches an immensely valuable method of -making artificial india-rubber which he is going to make public for the -use of society, is persuaded to compromise his honor as a scientist and -monopolize his discovery for private gain. In _Tono-Bungay_ the -enterprise is a swindling patent medicine, which many business men would -refuse to have anything to do with; but in _Marriage_ the proposition -belongs to what is called "legitimate business," and it may be well to -quote a passage to show the subtlety and, at the same time, from this -point of view, the very substantial nature of temptation and sin: - - Solomonson had consulted Trafford about this matter at - Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that - Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to - complete and publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, - first a smashing demonstration of the unsoundness of - Behren's claim and then a lucid exposition of just what had - to be done and what could be done to make an india-rubber - absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The - business man could not believe his ears. - - "My dear chap, positively--you mustn't!" Solomonson had - screamed.... "Don't you see all you are throwing away?" - - "I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," - said Trafford.... "When men dropped that idea of concealing - knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist, and all that is - worth having in modern life, all that makes it better and - safer and more hopeful than the ancient life began." - - "My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to - give away the synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of - the window into the street!"... Everything that had made - Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to - such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as - such no concern with personal consequences; his business is - the steady relentless clarification of knowledge. The human - affairs he changes, the wealth he makes or destroys, are no - concern of his; once these things weigh with him, become - primary, he has lost his honor as a scientific man. - - "But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had - cried during those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you - are, shying this cheap synthetic rubber of yours into the - world--for it's bound to be cheap! anyone can see - that--like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good of - saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ - business is just to make bombs and drop them out of the - window? You smash up things just the same. Why! you'll ruin - hundreds and thousands of people, people living on rubber - shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable - workers in rubber works...." - - "I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said - Solomonson, leaning back in his chair at last.... "So soon, - that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can lower the - price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the - end--there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow - tea." - -There we have Eve and the apple brought up to date, sin being the choice -of a private and individual good at the expense of the general good. The -honor of a doctor or a scientist consists in not concealing and -monopolizing discoveries. But why should the line be drawn at doctors -and scientists? There is the crux of socialist ethics. - -By this type of compromise the actual New Republicans fall short of -their Utopian selves, the Samurai. But compromise is well within the -philosophy of Wells. "The individual case," he says in _First and Last -Things_, "is almost always complicated by the fact that the existing -social and economic system is based upon conditions that the growing -collective intelligence condemns as unjust and undesirable, and that the -constructive spirit in men now seeks to supersede. We have to live in a -provisional state while we dream of and work for a better one." And -elsewhere: "All socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers -far ahead of the main advance. The organized State that should own and -administer their possessions for the general good has not arrived to -take them over; and in the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory -agents according to their lights and make things ready for its coming." - -But if the New Republican is justified in compromising himself for the -means of subsistence, how much more in the matter of love! "All for -love, and the world well lost" might be written over several of Wells's -novels. But, in reality, is the world lost at all under these -conditions? On the contrary, it is gained, and the more unconsciously -the better, in babies. Love belongs to the future and the species with -more finality than the greatest constructive work of the present, and -the heroines of Wells are inordinately fond of babies. When Schopenhauer -analyzed the metaphysics of love he showed that natural selection is a -quite inevitable thing seeking its own. In Wells love is equally -irresistible and direct. Whenever it appears in his books it makes -itself unmistakably known, and, having done so, it cuts its way straight -to its consummation, through every obstacle of sentiment, affection, -custom, and conventionality. It is as ruthless as the Last Judgment, and -like the Last Judgment it occurs only once. - -Why then does it appear promiscuous? The answer to this question refers -one back to the underlying contention of Wells that there are two kinds -of human beings and two corresponding ethics, and that in the end the -New Republican who has become aware of himself cannot consort with the -Normal Social breed. But in actual life this standard becomes entangled -with many complexities. Just as, in a world of commercial competition, -it is the lot of most of those who try to give themselves -whole-heartedly to disinterested work that they place themselves at such -a disadvantage as ultimately to have to make a choice between work and -love, so the pressure of society and the quality of human nature itself -create entanglements of every kind. It is the nature of life that one -grows only gradually to the secure sense of a personal aim, and that -meanwhile day by day one has given hostages to fortune. To wake up and -find oneself suddenly the master of a purpose is without doubt, in the -majority of cases, to find oneself mortgaged beyond hope to the existing -fact. The writer who sets out to make his way temporarily and as a -stepping-stone by journalism finds himself in middle age with ample -means to write what he wishes to write only to find also that he has -become for good and all--a journalist! And so it is with lovers. Only in -the degree to which free will remains a perpetual and present faith can -"love and fine thinking" remain themselves; free of their attachments, -free of their obligations, and mortgages, and discounts. That is the -quality of a decent marriage, and the end of a marriage that is not -decent. - -It is no business of mine to justify the sexual ethics of Wells. But -there is a difference between a fact and an intention, and what I have -just said serves to explain the intention. Consider, in the light of it, -a few of his characters, both in and out of marriage. Ann Veronica from -the first frankly owns that she is not in love with Manning, but every -kind of social hypnotism is brought into motion to work on her ignorance -of life and to confuse her sense of free-will. George Ponderevo simply -outgrows Marion; but you cannot expect him not to grow, and who is -responsible for the limited, furtive, second-hand world in which Marion -has lived and which has irrevocably moulded her? Margaret's world, too, -is a second-hand world, though on a socially higher plane: she lives in -a pale dream of philanthropy and Italian art, shocked beyond any mutual -understanding by everything that really belongs in the first-hand world -of her husband. These characters meet and pass one another like moving -scales; they never stand on quite the same plane. And then the -inevitable always occurs. For, just as the Children of the Food cannot -consort with the little folk they promise to supersede, so it appears to -be a fixed part of the programme of Wells that New Republicans can only -love other New Republicans with success. - -He implies this indeed in _A Modern Utopia_: - - "A man under the Rule who loves a woman who does not follow - it, must either leave the Samurai to marry her, or induce - her to accept what is called the Woman's Rule, which, while - it exempts her from the severer qualifications and - disciplines, brings her regimen into a working harmony with - his." - - "Suppose she breaks the Rule afterwards?" - - "He must leave either her or the order." - - "There is matter for a novel or so in that." - - "There has been matter for hundreds." - -Wells has written six himself. _Love and Mr. Lewisham, Ann Veronica, -Tono-Bungay, The New Machiavelli, Marriage, The Passionate Friends_, are -all variations on this theme. In one of these alone life's double motive -succeeds in establishing itself, and it is for this reason that -_Marriage_, to my thinking the weakest of his novels from an artistic -point of view, is the most important concrete presentation of the -philosophy of Wells. It is an inferior book, but it gives one the sense -of a problem solved. By passing through a necessary yet feasible -discipline, Trafford and Marjorie bridge over the gap between haphazard -human nature and the better nature of socialism, and become Samurai in -fact. - -These entanglements of the actual world would be an overwhelming -obstacle to a socialism less vigorous than that of Wells. But obstacles -give edge to things, and for a man who loves order no one could have -pictured disorder with more relish than he. Only a pure theorist could -regret the artistic zest with which he portrays our muddled world. -Running amuck was a constant theme in his early writings; his comets ran -amuck, and so did Mr. Bessel, and there is no more relished wanton scene -than that of the Invisible Man running amuck through the Surrey -villages. Intentionally or not, this relish in disorder reinforces the -prime fact about his view of order. He abhors the kind of order which is -often ignorantly confounded with the socialist aim, the order which -classifies and standardizes. He desires a collective consciousness only -through the exercise of a universally unimpeded free will, and he would -rather have no collectiveness at all than one that implies the sacrifice -of this free will. He wishes to work only on the most genuine human -stuff. This was the basis of his break with the Fabian Society; it is -the basis of his dislike of bureaucratic methods which deprive people of -beer when they want beer. It defines his notion of the true method of -socialism as first of all an education of the human will toward -voluntary right discipline. - -His appeal, then, is a personal one. He has proved this indeed by his -repudiation of all attempts to embody in practice his proposed order of -voluntary nobility, the Samurai. Certain groups of young people actually -organized themselves upon the Rule that he had outlined, and it was this -that led him to see how entirely his ideal had been personal and -artistic rather than practical. Anyone at all familiar with religious -history and psychology will see how inevitably any such group would tend -to emphasize the Rule and the organization rather than the socially -constructive spirit for which the whole was framed, and how the -organization would itself separate from the collective life of the world -and become a new sect among the many sects. It was the same instinct -that led Emerson, Transcendental communist as he was, to look askance at -Brook Farm. It has been the want of an equal tact in eminent religious -minds that has made society a warfare of sect and opinion. - -When one tries to focus the nature of his appeal one recalls a passage -in one of his books where he sums up the ordinary mind of the world and -the function which all socialism bears to this mind: - - It is like a very distended human mind; it is without a - clear aim; it does not know except in the very vaguest terms - what it wants to do; it has impulses, it has fancies; it - begins and forgets. In addition, it is afflicted with a - division within itself that is strictly analogous to that - strange mental disorder which is known to psychologists as - multiple personality. It has no clear conception of the - whole of itself, it goes about forgetting its proper name - and address. Part of it thinks of itself as one great thing, - as, let us say, Germany; another thinks of itself as - Catholicism, another as the white race, or Judaea. At times - one might deem the whole confusion not so much a mind as - incurable dementia--a chaos of mental elements, haunted by - invincible and mutually incoherent fixed ideas.... In its - essence the socialistic movement amounts to this: it is an - attempt in this warring chaos of a collective mind to pull - itself together, to develop and establish a governing idea - of itself. It is the development of the collective - self-consciousness of humanity. - -Certainly the road to this can only be through a common understanding. -The willing and unwilling servitudes of men, the institutions of society -that place love and work in opposition to one another, the shibboleths -of party, the aggressive jingoisms of separate peoples, the immemorial -conspiracy by which men have upheld the existing fact, these things do -spring from the want of imagination, the want of energetic faith, the -want of mutual understanding. To this inner and personal problem Wells -has applied himself. Can life be ventilated, can the mass of men be -awakened to a sense of those laws of social gravitation and the -transmutation of energy by which life is proved a myriad-minded -organism, can the ever-growing sum of human experience and discovery -clear up the dark places within society and within man? Among those who -have set themselves to the secular solution of these questions--and I am -aware of the limits of any secular solution--there are few as effective -as Wells. - -Consider him in relation to a single concrete issue, the issue of -militarism: - - Expenditure upon preparation for war falls, roughly, into - two classes: there is expenditure upon things that have a - diminishing value, things that grow old-fashioned and wear - out, such as fortifications, ships, guns, and ammunition, - and expenditure upon things that have a permanent and even - growing value, such as organized technical research, - military and naval experiment, and the education and - increase of a highly trained class of war experts. - -And in _The Common Sense of Warfare_ he urges a lavish expenditure on -"education and training, upon laboratories and experimental stations, -upon chemical and physical research and all that makes knowledge and -leading." Separate the principle involved here from the issue it is -involved in, get the intention clear of the fact, and you find that he -is saying just the better sort of things that Matthew Arnold said. -Militarism granted, are you going to do military things or are you going -to make military things a stepping-stone toward the clarification of -thought, the training of men, the development of race-imagination? -Militarism has been to a large extent the impetus that has made the -Germans and the Japanese the trained, synthetic peoples they are. And -these very qualities are themselves in the end hostile to militarism. -Militarism considered in this sense is precisely what the General Strike -is in the idea of M. Georges Sorel: a myth, a thing that never comes to -pass, but which trains the general will by presenting it with a concrete -image toward which the will readily directs itself. Kipling, in the eyes -of the New Machiavelli, at least made the nation aware of what comes. - - All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, All along o' - doing things rather more or less. - -There is in this no defence of militarism. Granting the facts of -society, there is a way that accepts and secures them as they are and -another way of turning them into the service of the future, and a people -that has trained itself with reference to a particular issue has -virtually trained itself for all issues. - -But no one, I think, has measured the difficulties of real progress more -keenly than Wells has come to measure them. The further he has -penetrated into human nature the more alive he has become to these -difficulties. _The New Machiavelli_ is a modern _Rasselas_ that has no -happy valley in the end, and Remington passes from party to party, -penetrating inward from ideas to the better stuff of mankind, hoping to -embody his "white passion of statecraft," and in the end demonstrating -to himself the futility of all groups and parties alike. - -And as with parties, so with men. Consider that scene in _The Passionate -Friends_ where Stratton tries to explain in writing to his father what -he has been experiencing and why he must go away. He writes page after -page without expressing himself and at last, certain that he and his -father cannot come into touch, sends off a perfunctory note and receives -a perfunctory reply. "There are times," he adds, "when the -inexpressiveness of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to -me we are all asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still -cows who stand munching slowly in a field.... Why couldn't we and why -didn't we talk together!" - -That is the burden of his latest novel. By this touchstone he has come -to measure the possibility of that openness of mind, that mutual -understanding, that ventilation of life and thought through which alone -the Great State can exist. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A PERSONAL CHAPTER - - -I doubt if there are many living men of note who, a generation after -they are dead, will be so fully and easily "explained" as H.G. Wells. He -is a most personal and transparent writer, he is the effect of -conditions and forces which have existed for scarcely more than two -generations. But for these very reasons it is very difficult to see him -in perspective, and to explain him would be to explain the age in which -we live. Let me at least give certain facts and reflections about his -life written by Wells himself, a few years ago, in the introduction to a -Russian translation of his writings: - - I was born[1] in that queer indefinite class that we call in - England the middle class. I am not a bit aristocratic; I do - not know any of my ancestors beyond my grandparents, and - about them I do not know very much, because I am the - youngest son of my father and mother and their parents were - all dead before I was born. My mother was the daughter of an - innkeeper at a place called Midhurst, who supplied - post-horses to the coaches before the railways came; my - father was the son of the head gardener of Lord de Lisle at - Penshurst Castle, in Kent. They had various changes of - fortune and position; for most of his life my father kept a - little shop in a suburb of London, and eked out his - resources by playing a game called cricket, which is not - only a pastime, but a show which people will pay to see, and - which, therefore, affords a living to professional players. - His shop was unsuccessful, and my mother, who had been a - lady's maid, became, when I was twelve years old, - housekeeper in a large country house. I too was destined to - be a shopkeeper. I left school at thirteen for that purpose. - I was apprenticed first to a chemist, and, that proving - unsatisfactory, to a draper. But after a year or so it - became evident to me that the facilities that were and still - are increasing in England offered me better chances in life - than a shop and comparative illiteracy could do; and so I - struggled for and got various grants and scholarships that - enabled me to study and take a degree in science and some - mediocre honors in the new and now great and growing - University of London.... After I had graduated I taught - biology for two or three years, and then became a - journalist.... I began first to write literary articles, - criticisms, and so forth, and presently short imaginative - stories in which I made use of the teeming suggestions of - modern science.... - -So much for the facts. The reflections are not less illuminating: - - The literary life is one of the modern forms of adventure. - Success with a book--even such a commercially modest success - as mine has been--means in the English-speaking world not - merely a moderate financial independence, but the utmost - freedom of movement and intercourse. A poor man is lifted - out of his narrow circumstances into familiar and - unrestrained intercourse with a great variety of people. He - sees the world; if his work excites interest, he meets - philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, - professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, the - great, and he may make such use of them as he can. He finds - himself no longer reading in books and papers, but hearing - and touching at first hand the big questions that sway men, - the initiatives that shape human affairs.... To be a - literary artist is to want to render one's impressions of - the things about one. Life has interested me enormously and - filled me with ideas and associations I want to present - again. I have liked life and like it more and more. The days - in the shop and the servants' hall, the straitened struggles - of my early manhood, have stored me with vivid memories that - illuminate and help me to appreciate all the wider vistas of - my later social experiences. I have friends and intimates - now at almost every social level, from that of a peer to - that of a pauper, and I find my sympathies and curiosities - stretching like a thin spider's web from top to bottom of - the social tangle. I count that wide social range one of the - most fortunate accidents of my life, and another is that I - am of a diffident and ineffectual presence, unpunctual, - fitful, and easily bored by other than literary effort; so - that I am not tempted to cut a figure in the world and - abandon that work of observing and writing which is my - proper business in it. - -This candid and exact statement enables us to see just how far, in -matters of fact, experience and belief, the autobiographical motive has -entered his writings. It would be possible to show how inevitably such -an ideal as that of the New Republican Samurai arose from such a life; -how much that conscious and deliberate insistence on personal efficiency -and orderly ways, that repudiation of mental confusion, sluggishness, -and sentiment may figure as a kind of stepping-stone from the world of -Kipps and Polly to the world of Remington and Trafford; how a -self-wrought scientific education would form the basis of an ideal of -aristocracy rising from it; and how the motto "There is no Being but -Becoming" would express its own constant desertion of levels achieved, -its own pressing upward to levels equally transient. Just as the -"democratic person" of Whitman raises his own fervent, chaotic, and -standardless experience into an ideal, so also the ideal of Wells is -nothing else than the projection of his own experimental opportunism. It -is impossible in discussing Wells to ignore this social ascent; for in -England a man passes from one stratum to another only by virtue of a -certain lack of substantiality, a power to disencumber himself, to shed -customs and affections and all the densenesses and coagulations which -mark each grade in that closely defined social hierarchy. The world of -shopkeeping in England is a world girt about with immemorial -subjections; it is, one might say, a moss-covered world; and to shake -oneself loose from it is to become a rolling stone, a drifting and -unsettled, a detached and acutely personal, individual. It is to pass -from a certain confined social maturity, a confused mellowness, into a -world wholly adventurous and critical, into a freedom which achieves -itself at the expense of solidity and warmth. In Wells, for instance, -the sense of the soil is wholly supplanted by the sense of machinery. -His evolution has been the reverse of the usual evolution from what -Bacon called the _lumen siccum_ to the _lumen humidum_, from the dry -light to the light that is drenched in customs and affections. Instead -of growing mellower, he has grown more and more fluid and electric, in -direct ratio to the growing width of his social horizon. - -To prove this one has only to consider his novels. There was a time when -he had in common with Dickens and De Foe the quality they have in common -with one another--the quality of homeliness. He drew the little world he -knew well, the limited and lovable world of small folk. Mr. Hoopdriver, -Delia the chambermaid, Kipps and Ann Pornick--a score of these helpless, -grown-up little children he pictured with a radiant affection, tempering -the wind to the shorn lamb. It is more in the nature of his later -thought to see poverty as a wasteful rather than a cruel thing, even -though he may not have approached the harsh realism of Bernard Shaw's -observation: "I have never had any feeling about the English working -classes except a desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible -people." - -Certainly he has not experienced any other world in quite this way. "I -count that wide social range one of the most fortunate accidents in my -life," he says. Accidental one feels it to be, as of a man inhabiting -the great world by virtue of sheer talent, whose nature has not in any -sense settled there. His philosophy and his socialism are outgrowths of -his own experience; they erect into reasons and theories the nature of a -life which is not at home, and which easily unburdens itself of all that -seems insensate because it is unfamiliar. To be a socialist at all is to -have accustomed oneself, through necessity or imagination, to a certain -detachment from a great many of the familiar, lovable, encumbering, -delightful stupidities of the world. And Wells has travelled up and down -through time and space too much to have any great regard for the -present. "I have come to be, I am afraid," he says, in _The Future in -America,_ "even a little insensitive to fine immediate things through -this anticipatory habit.... There are times indeed when it makes life -seem so transparent and flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an -equally transitory series of consequences----." His hold upon the -present is so far from inevitable that _The New Machiavelli_ and -_Marriage_, realistic as they are, are represented as being written some -years hence, our own time already appearing retrospectively in them. As -little as Faust has he been tempted to call out upon the passing moment. -His main characters drift through this period of time, substantial -themselves but with a background of substantialities, in a way that -recalls Paolo and Francesca looming out of the phantom cloud-procession -of the _Inferno_. - -Into this larger world, in short, he has carried with him only himself -and his own story. We live in two worlds--the primary world of vivid -personal realities and the secondary world of our human background. It -is the secondary world that anchors us in time and space; the primary -world we carry with us as part of ourselves. In Wells there is no -secondary world, no human background, no sense of abiding relations. It -is his philosophy of life and the quality of his men and women to be -experimental in a plastic scheme. His range is very small: the same -figures reappear constantly. There is the Wells hero,--Lewisham, Capes, -Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford, Stratton; there is the Wells heroine, -Ann Veronica, Isabel, Marjorie, Lady Mary; there is the ineffectual -woman with whom the Wells hero becomes entangled, Capes's first wife, -Marion, Margaret; there is the ineffectual man with whom the Wells -heroine becomes entangled, Magnet, Manning. To strike the lowest common -denominator in this tangle is inevitably to arrive once more, one feels, -in the region of personal experience. Although it cannot be said that -his minor characters are lacking in reality, they are certainly -intellectual portraits, and outside the limits of subjective experience. -The principal men and women of Wells move through a world seen, but -hardly a world felt. - -This want of social background makes his characters as detached from the -familiar earth as chessmen are detached from a chessboard. They never -seem to be, like most men and women either in life or fiction, like the -Kipps and Polly of his own earlier fiction, vegetable growths. Heredity, -fatality, the soil are not mainly operating forces with them. They are -creatures of intelligence and free will, freely and intelligently making -and moulding themselves and their circumstances. Human nature in Wells -is very largely a sheer thing, a thing that begins with itself, answers -for itself, lives at first hand. That is the personal quality of the man -himself, and it follows that the quality is wholly convincing only where -what I have called his primary world is concerned: the rest of the world -he builds up by intelligent observation and the literary talent of -creating human stuff out of whole cloth. - -In this he is well served by his antipathies. His belief in personal -self-determinism is so strong that he instinctively sees the vegetative -nature of the ordinary life as a kind of moral slough, a state of being -detestably without initiative, faith, energy, will. And consequently the -Normal Social Life against which he is always tilting is a life seen by -him with all the vividness of an intense personal and philosophical -animosity. Consider, for example, the portraits of Mr. Pope and Mr. -Stanley, survivals in a sense of the old Sir Roger de Coverley type, -with all the sweetness gone out of it and only the odious qualities -left, the domineering, vain, proprietary qualities. They exist mainly as -symbols of everything that enlightened and right-minded daughters will -not put up with; they come as near to being the foils of right destiny -as Wells will ever allow; they sum up everything that stands in the way -of man's free will. They are mercilessly dealt with, and they are -memorable figures. - -Without this antipathy, and outside his own primary world, he pretty -generally fails. One recalls, for example, old Mrs. Trafford in -_Marriage,_ evidently intended to be his ideal of the enlightened woman -grown old. She is a pale, dimly perfect, automatically wise old lady -carved out of wood. Trafford himself, one feels, is a chip of the same -block. Trafford obviously is not Wells himself, as Ponderevo and -Remington are Wells: he is the Utopian counterpart of these persons, at -least in the matter that concerns Wells most, the matter of sex. One -could show that, aside from the six or eight chief characters who in -their various ways express the nature and experience of Wells himself, -he succeeds in his portraiture only where no demand is made on his -sympathies. - -The same absence of social background which throws into relief his -primary world of characters throws into relief also the primary facts of -human nature. Trafford and Marjorie, the most conventionally placed of -his characters, pull up stakes, leave their children, and go to -Labrador. His other men and women are even more independent of the -social network. Consequently they are independent of that chain of -relationships--friendship, affection, minor obligations--which mitigate, -subdue, soften the primary motives of most people. They are almost -startlingly physical. Their instincts are as sure as those of cavemen, -and their conduct as direct. They are as clear about the essential -matter of love as ever Schopenhauer was, or Adam and Eve, and they stand -out as sharply against the embarrassments and secrecies of the usual -world as a volcanic rock stands out against a tropical landscape. In -this without doubt they exhibit the fact that socialism does and will -actually alter human nature, and that in the instinctive socialist human -nature is already altered. For socialism inflexibly militates against -those more sentimental aspects of love, love of country as such, the -paternal and feudal principles, love of property, and the like, which -belong properly to the intelligence, all those functions where love, in -a majority of cases, goes wrong, blunders, stultifies growth, confuses -the public design of the world. As a result it throws love into relief, -emphasizes the nature of sex and the _raison d'etre_ of reproduction; -makes it, to use a favorite word of Wells, stark. - -I pause at this word. It is one of those talismanic words one finds -perpetually cropping up in the writings of men who have a marked point -of view, words that express deep and abiding preferences and often set -the key of an entire philosophy. "I like bare things," says George -Ponderevo, in _Tono-Bungay;_ "stripped things, plain, austere, and -continent things, fine lines and cold colors." That is the gesture of an -artistic mind which repudiates, with an impatient sharpness, all the -entanglements of the ordinary world. It is Oriental, it is Japanese, it -is anything you like; but if it is English also it marks an entirely new -regime. Without question it is English, and American as well. Thousands -of people share that preference, and were economic socialism to go by -the board we should still have to reckon with the progress of -socialistic human nature. It detaches itself each day a little more from -property, locality, and the hope of reward; it ceases to be -necessitarian, it becomes voluntary; it relegates drudgery to mechanical -devices; it releases the individual to a sense of his own cooperative -and contributory place in the scheme of a more orderly future. -Relatively speaking, the tendency of our kind is all away from luxury, -sloth, complacency, confusion, ignorance, filth, heat, proprietorship, -and all in the direction of light, austerity, agility, intelligence, -coolness, athletic energy, understanding, cleanliness, order, "bare -things, fine lines, and cold colors." - -That is evident, and it is equally evident that the personal character -and career of Wells are emblematic of this entire tendency. He has -unravelled himself by science, talent, and vigor out of "lower middle -class" Victorianism. Is it strange that he has adopted as a kind of -sacred image that light, free, and charming product of our decade, the -aeroplane, sprung as it is out of the wreckage, out of the secret -beginnings, the confused muscularities, the effort and smoke of the most -chaotic of all centuries, like a blade of exquisitely tempered and -chased steel which justifies everything that was most laborious and -unsightly in the forge? - -But considered as a sacred image the aeroplane has its limitations. So -also, considered as an exponent of fife, has Wells. Philosophy and -religion, as he presents them, are simply what he chooses to think and -feel, what he has been led by his own experience to think and feel. His -main experience has been the experience of disentangling himself, and -therefore life, reflected from within himself, is to him a thing also -which disentangles itself and grows ever more free, simple, and lucid. -In the mind of Wells this process, has taken on an altogether mystical, -transcendental significance, a religious aspect. Possible as that is to -himself personally, how far can it be taken as an argument to the human -soul? How does it qualify him as a teacher, a public voice, a thinker -for the mass of men? How does the conception of life purely as a process -relate itself to human experience? - -Applied to history, it seems to fail. Wells is devoid of historical -imagination. In his portrait of Margaret in _The New Machiavelli_ he has -properly, though somewhat harshly, repudiated what ordinarily passes for -culture. But had he himself possessed the reality of what seems to him -simply "living at second hand," he would never have been led to refer to -Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Duerer as "pathetically reaching out, as it -were, with empty desirous hands toward the unborn possibilities of the -engineer." That is a very interesting and a very extraordinary -statement, and it is quite true that each of these men would have -rejoiced in the engineering possibilities of our time. But how much of -the soul of Michael Angelo, for example, was involved in engineering? -How far can his hands be said to have been "empty" for the want of scope -in engineering? The power and the function of Michael Angelo can rightly -be seen, not in relation to any sort of social or mechanical process, -but in relation to things that are permanent in human nature, in -relation to just those matters included in the admonition of Wells to -"reject all such ideas as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty, and Beauty -and hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a -tissue and succession of births." Again, consider a somewhat similar -reference to Marcus Aurelius, of which the gist is that the author of -the _Meditations_ was, actually in consequence of his own character, the -father of one of the worst rulers the world has known. The implication -here is that the study of self-perfection in the father was -complementary to, if not responsible for, the social impotence and -blindness of the son. Instead of dedicating himself to the static ideal -of personal character, the assumption seems to be, Marcus Aurelius ought -to have lived exclusively in his function as ruler and father. He -studied himself, not as a ruler but as a man, and the social process had -its revenge on his line. To Wells, in a word, the static elements of -character and the study of perfection are not to be distinguished from -vicious self-consequence. - -Consider also a recent passage in which he has given a general -impression of literature: - - It seems to me more and more as I live longer that most - poetry and most literature and particularly the literature - of the past is discordant with the vastness and variety, the - reserves and resources and recuperations of life as we live - it to-day. It is the expression of life under cruder and - more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who loved - and hated more naively, aged sooner, and died younger than - we do. Solitary persons and single events dominated them as - they do not dominate us. - -To appreciate this meditation one has to remember the character and -career which led to the writing of it. But so far as we others are -concerned, how far can the assumption it rests upon be considered valid, -the assumption of a process that sweeps men on and leads human nature, -as it were, progressively to shed itself? Dr. Johnson, for example, was -a man the conditions of whose life were crude and rigid in the extreme, -a man singularly dominated by solitary persons and single events, but is -his conversation discordant with the variety, the "reserves, resources, -and recuperations of life as we live it to-day"? I can well understand -this feeling. To pass directly from the thin, tentative, exhilarating, -expansive air of our own time into the presence of that funny, stuffy, -cocksure, pompous old man is to receive a preposterous shock. But having -come to laugh, one stops with a very different sensation. The depths of -personality and wisdom that exist there take on a disconcerting -significance in relation to contemporary pragmatism. The mass of men -veer about; far-separated epochs have their elective affinities, and if -anything about the future is plain it is that this, that, and the other -generation will find in Dr. Johnson a strangely premature contemporary. - -Wells has himself admitted this principle. To Plutarch, Rabelais, -Machiavelli he has paid his tribute. Hear what George Ponderevo has to -say about Plutarch in his recollections of Bladesover House: - - I found Langhorne's _Plutarch_ too, I remember, on those - shelves. It seems queer to me now to think that I acquired - pride and self-respect, the idea of a state and the germ of - public spirit, in such a furtive fashion; queer, too, that - it should rest with an old Greek, dead these eighteen - hundred years, to teach me that. - -Considering what part the notion of a state plays in his range of ideas, -that is a remarkable confession. But why stop with statecraft? The human -mind could not, in all epochs, have established permanent ideals of -statecraft without permanent ideals of a more strictly personal kind. - -The truth is that Wells, for all that he has passed outside the -economics of socialism, is really bounded by the circle of ideas which -produced them. The typical Marxian, the concentrated Marxian, will tell -you that life is summed up in the theory of value, and that the only -true thing is economic determinism. Measuring all thought by that -criterion, he finds Dante and Shakespeare unintelligible and offensive -gibberish, and will scent the trail of the capitalist in Grimm's Fairy -Tales. That is the crude form in which exclusive socialism presents -itself. To say that "the fundamental nature of life is a tissue and -succession of births" is merely a refinement of this. It is true, just -as the economic determinism of Marx on the whole is true. But the world -is full of a number of things; or rather it is the business of a -reasonable mind to see it in a number of ways at once. Because there is -a Will to Live and a Will to Power, because things grow and continue to -grow, that does not explain love, or pain, or friendship, or music, or -poetry, or indeed life. Life is a tangle, a tangle which every socialist -must feel to be disentangling itself; but it is also a riddle, and on -that point socialism has nothing to say at all. - -It is in presenting life wholly as a tangle and not at all as a riddle -that the philosophy and religion of Wells appear so inadequate. Could -Wells write a poem? one asks oneself, and the question is full of -meaning. There is nothing to suggest that at any moment of his life he -has felt this impulse, which has been the normal thing in English -authors. "Modern poetry, with an exception or so," he remarks somewhere, -and for all his writings reveal of him he might have said poetry as a -whole, "does not signify at all." It is the same with regard to music, -art, external nature. He is not wanting in the plastic sense: his -writings are filled with picturesque groupings, figures cut in outline -against a sunset, masses of machinery in the glare of the forge, things -that suggest the etcher's eye. But they are curiously impersonal. -Consider, for example, his description of Worms Cathedral: - - It rises over this green and flowery peace, a towering, - lithe, light brown, sunlit, easy thing, as unconsciously and - irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in the evening glow - under a press of canvas. - -You cannot doubt that he has felt a beauty in this, but the beauty he -feels is essentially the beauty of a piece of engineering; he is as -untouched by the strictly personal artistic and religious qualities of -this building, not to mention its connection with human history, as if -he had seen it through a telescope from another planet. It is not the -changeless riddle and partial solution of life for which this building -stands that stir in Wells the sense of beauty and meaning: it is the -mechanism, the process--his emotions gather about the physical result -which appears to justify these. - -_A chacun son infini_. - -There will always be some to whom the significance of things, the -meaning of any given present will seem to evaporate in this conception -of mankind as "permanently in transition." Reading those passages where -Wells has expressed the meaning life has for him, I feel much as I -should feel with regard to music if I heard a mass of Mozart played at -the rate of sixty beats a second, or, with regard to painting, if a -procession of Rembrandts were moved rapidly across my field of vision. -The music as a whole is a tissue and succession of sounds, the pictures -as a whole are a tissue and succession of colors. But that is not music, -that is not art. Nor is a tissue and succession of births life. - -But indeed nothing is easier than to reduce Wells to an absurdity. If he -implies anything at all he implies a "transvaluation of all values." It -remains to consider him from this point of view. - - -[Footnote 1: September 21, 1866.] - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE SPIRIT OF WELLS - - -In order to understand Wells at all one must grasp the fact that he -belongs to a type of mind which has long existed in European literature -but which is comparatively new in the English-speaking world, the type -of mind of the so-called "intellectual." He is an "intellectual" rather -than an artist; that is to say, he naturally grasps and interprets life -in the light of ideas rather than in the light of experience. - -To pass from a definition to an example, let me compare Wells in this -respect with the greatest and most typical figure of the opposite camp -in contemporary English fiction; I mean Joseph Conrad. This comparison -is all the more apt because just as much as Wells Conrad typifies the -spirit of "unrest" (a word he has almost made his own, so often does he -use it) which is the note of our age. Both of these novelists have -endeavored to express the spirit of unrest; both have suggested a way of -making it contributory to the attainment of an ideal. But how different -is their method, how different is their ideal! And roughly the -difference is this: that to Conrad the spirit of unrest is a personal -mood, a thing, as people used to say, between man and his Maker; whereas -to Wells the spirit of unrest is not a mood but a rationally explicable -frame of mind, a sense of restricted function, an issue to be fought out -not between man and nature but between man and society. In other words, -where Conrad's point of view is moral, Wells's point of view is social; -and whereas in Conrad the spirit of unrest can only be appeased by -holding fast to certain simple instinctive moral principles, integrity, -honor, loyalty, etc., contributing in this way to the ideal of personal -character, the spirit of unrest in Wells is to be appeased by working -through the established fact, by altering the environment in which man -lives, contributing in this way to the ideal of a great society of which -personal character is at once the essence and the product. - -In the end, of course, both these views of life come to the same thing, -for you cannot have a great society which is not composed of greatly -living individuals, or vice versa. But practically there is a world of -difference between them, according as any given mind emphasizes the one -or the other. This difference, I say, is the difference between life -approached through experience and life approached through ideas. And -when we penetrate behind these points of view we find that they are -determined very largely by the characters and modes of living of the men -who hold them. That explains the vital importance in literary criticism -of knowing something about the man one is discussing, as distinguished -from the work of his brain pure and simple. There is a reason why the -intellectualist point of view occurs as a rule in men who have -habitually lived the delocalized, detached, and comparatively -depersonalized life of cities, while men of the soil, of the sea, of the -elements, men, so to speak, of intensive experience, novelists like -Conrad or Tolstoy or Hardy, are fundamentally non-intellectual, -pessimistic, and moral. - -And this explains the natural opposition between Conrad and Wells. Aside -from the original bent of his mind, the intensive quality of Conrad's -experience--an experience of ships and the minute, simple, personal, -tragic life of ships, set off against the impersonal, appalling sea and -an always indifferent universe, a life remote from change, in which the -relations of things are in a peculiar sense abiding and in which only -one problem exists, the problem of character, imminent nature being kept -at bay only through the loyalty, integrity and grit of men--the -intensive quality of this experience, I say, acting upon an artistic -mind, would naturally tend to produce not only a bitterly profound -wisdom, but an equally profound contempt for the play of ideas, so -irresponsible in comparison, and for a view of the world based upon -ideas the real cost of which has never been counted in the face of -hunger, icy winds, storm and shipwreck, and the abysmal forces of -nature. Men who go down to the sea in ships have a right to say for -themselves (tempering the credulity of those who have remained at home) -that the intellectualist view of life is altogether too easy and too -glib. It is they who throw into relief the deep, obscure conviction of -the "plain man"--commonly the good man--that to endeavor to make life -conform with ideas is in some way to deprive the world of just those -elements which create character and to strike at an ideal forged through -immemorial suffering and effort. - -Merely to dismiss as dumb folly an all but universal contention of this -kind (no doubt in the back of people's minds when they say that -socialism, for instance, is "against human nature") is to beg the whole -question of intellectualism itself. For, if it could be conclusively -shown that any view of life not incidentally but by its nature -emasculated life and destroyed the roots of character, then of course, -no matter how rationally self-evident it might be and how much confusion -and suffering it might avert, it would never even justify its own reason -for being--it would never _succeed,_ the best part of human nature would -oppose it to the end of time and the intelligence itself would be -discredited. And indeed to the man of experience rather than the man of -ideas, just because of his rich humanity, just because he never passes -out of the personal range, belong the ideal things, morality, -philosophy, art. Like charity, these things "begin at home"; and -whenever (as in pragmatism, when pragmatism ceases to be a method and -claims to be an interpretation of life) they are approached not from the -side of experience but from the side of ideas they cease to have any -real substance. Morality has no substance when it springs from the mind -instead of the conscience, art when it appeals to the mind instead of -the perceptions; and as to philosophy, what is any scheme of things that -springs out of the head of a man who is not himself wise? It is a -certain condemnation of Bergson, for example, that he would never pass -muster in a group of old fishermen smoking their pipes on the end of a -pier. Not that they would be expected in any case to know what he was -talking about, but that his fibre so plainly is the fibre not of a wise -but of a clever man and that in everything, as Emerson said, you must -have a source higher than your tap. - -That is why, as it seems to me, Wells ought not to be considered from -any of these absolute standpoints. He has put before us not so much a -well-wrought body of artistic work, or a moral programme, or an -explanation of life--words quite out of place in connection with -him--as a certain new spirit, filled with all sorts of puzzled -intimations of a new beauty and even a new religion to be generated out -of a new order of things that is only glimpsed at present. And the point -I should like to make about this spirit is that it is entirely -irrelevant to the values of life as we know them, but that it may in the -end prove to have contributed to an altogether fresh basis for human -values. - -To illustrate what I mean by this irrelevance as regards present values -and this possibility as regards future values let me turn to that long -brilliant passage in _The New Machiavelli_ where Remington goes from -club to club, passing in review the spiritual possibilities of each -political party, and finds nothing but a desolation of triviality, -pomposity, confusion, and "utterly damned old men." Consider the -contempt and hopelessness that fill his mind. One has to forget entirely -the ordinary man's view of politics, sincerely held as it is; one has to -think of politics as a means of straightening out and re-engendering a -whole world of confused anguish before one can see any justification for -this righteous wit and savage indignation against the dulness of -leaders. Considered by the current values of life in which politics are -regarded as an effect of man's incompetence rather than as a cause of -his virtue, treated intensively, as a novelist of experience rather than -of ideas would have treated them, in what a different light each of -these "utterly damned old men" would appear, each one a tiny epic of -tragic and comic efforts, disappointments, misconceptions, providing one -in the end with how much of an excuse for blame, ridicule or contempt! -Everything indeed depends upon where a given mind chooses to lay -emphasis. In this scene Wells has judged everything by his ideal of a -great society, just as Conrad, faced with the same material, would have -judged everything by his ideal of personal character. Conrad would have -used those men to give us an understanding of life as it is, whereas -Wells has used them simply to throw into relief his idea of what life -ought to be. Conrad would have created a work of art, illustrated a -moral programme, and interpreted life. Wells, admittedly a clever -caricaturist, only rises above the level of a clever caricaturist -according as we accept the validity of his ideal and share the spirit in -which he writes. Like many children of light, Wells is not wise in his -own generation. But perhaps another generation will justify him. - -If Wells had lingered in these deep realities of his own time he would -have been a greater artist. And indeed so marked has been his own -development away from the world of ideas and toward the world of -experience that were he to begin afresh it is likely that he would -resemble the type of novelist of which I have taken Conrad as an example -far more than his former self. Of socialism he has abandoned all the -theories and most of the schemes and retained only the frame of mind. He -has taken year by year a more intensive view of life, he has grown too -conscious of the inertia that impedes ideas and the overwhelming -immediacies of the actual world to be called glib and easy any more. -"How little and feeble is the life of man, a thing of chances, -preposterously unable to find the will to realize even the most timid of -its dreams!" he says in one of his latest novels, and if he has kept -alive his faith in ideas, who will deny that he has begun to count the -cost of it? - -From this side, I think, it is no longer possible for anyone to assail -him, so frankly has he given hostages to "actuality." It is from the -other side, his own side, and especially in the light of his own ideal, -that an answer is required for the slackness which has come upon him and -which is very marked in his recent novels. Is it possible to ignore the -fact that since he wrote _The New Machiavelli_ the work of Wells has -lived on its capital and lost the passionate curiosity and personal -conviction that made him the force he was in our epoch? Always unwilling -to check his talent and publish only the results of his genuine mental -progress, he has become, in spite of splendid moments, too much of the -common professional novelist, dealing with levels and phases of life -where he obviously does not belong, astray from his own natural point of -intense contact with things. I want to avoid the usual habit of critics -who think it their business to put authors in their places, but is it -not a fact that Wells understands the Kippses and Pollys far better than -the lords and ladies of England and that he was at his best in -elaborating a bridge--a wonderful visionary bridge--between the little -world of dumb routine and the great world of spacious initiatives? -Carlyle with his Great Man theory, forged out of his own travail and -weakness, in the end fell on his knees before the illusion of lordship. -Fifteen years ago one might have predicted the same future for the -Samurai of Wells, not because the Samurai are themselves equivocal but -because Wells is an Englishman. There so plainly to the English mind the -great gentlemen are, the men who can and the men who never do! Towards -this Circe of the English imagination Wells has travelled with a fatal -consistency, and the result to be foreseen was first of all fatuity and -in the end extinction. - -After he had written _The New Machiavelli_ Wells had reached a point -where his ideas, in order to be saved, had to be rescued from himself. -To believe that life can be straightened out by the intelligence is -necessarily to have "travelled light," in a measure; too much experience -is the end of that frame of mind. In _Tono-Bungay_ and _The New -Machiavelli_ ideas and experience met in a certain invisible point ---that is the marvel which has made these books unique and, I suppose, -permanent; the greatest possible faith in ideas was united with the -greatest possible grasp of everything that impedes them. One had -therefore a sense of tragic struggle, in which the whole life of our -time was caught up and fiercely wrestled with; one had the feeling that -here was the greatest moment in the life of a writer suddenly become -great. But with these books some secret virtue seems to have passed out -of Wells. Since then his ideas have been hardly more than a perfunctory -repetition and his experience more and more remote and unreal; and -looking back one seems to discover something highly symbolic in the -tragical conquest of ideas by passion with which _The New Machiavelli_ -concludes. - -But indeed Wells was always a man whose ideas were greater than himself. -"I stumble and flounder," says George Ponderevo, "but I know that over -all these merry immediate things, there are other things that are great -and serene, very high, beautiful things--the reality. I haven't got it, -but it's there nevertheless. I'm a spiritual guttersnipe in love with -unimaginable goddesses." And just for this reason the spirit which in -his great days possessed him is independent of any fate that may befall -Wells himself and his art. More than this, by frankly and fully testing -his ideas in a life-and-death struggle with reality he has, even at the -cost of his own shipwreck, removed from the cause of ideas the greatest -reproach which has always been brought against it. Revolutionists, -doctrinaires, idealogues have notoriously failed to test the validity of -their ideas even in the face of their own private passions and -confusions; they have rarely considered for a moment that their own -lives totally unfit them for supposing that men are naturally good and -that to make reason prevail is one of the simplest operations in the -world. Wells, on the other hand, has consistently shown that theory -divorced from practice is a mode of charlatanism, that "love and fine -thinking" must go together, and that precisely because of man's -individual incapacity to live, as things are, with equal honesty the -life of ideas and the life of experience, the cause he has at heart must -be taken out of the hands of the individual and made to form a common -impersonal will and purpose in the mind of the race as a whole. - - * * * * * - -Intellectualism, in fact, the view that life can be determined by ideas -(and of this socialism is the essence) if it can be justified at all has -to be justified in the face of all current human values. It is based on -an assumption, a grand and generous assumption, I maintain, and one that -has to take what is called a sporting chance with all the odds against -it. This assumption is, that on the whole human nature can be trusted to -take care of itself while the surplus energy of life, commonly absorbed -in the struggle against incapacity, sloth, perversity, and disorder -("original sin," to sum it all up), is released for the organization of -a better scheme for mankind; and further, that this better scheme, -acting on a race naturally capable of a richer and fuller life, will -have the effect on men as a whole that re-environing has on any cramped, -ill-nourished, unventilated organism, and that art, religion, morals -(all that makes up the substance and meaning of life) instead of being -checked and blighted in the process will in the end, strong enough to -bear transplantation, be re-engendered on a finer and freer basis. This, -in a word, is the contention of the intellectual, a splendid gambler's -chance, on which the future rests, and to which people have committed -themselves more than they know. It is a bridge thrown out across the -void, resting at one end on the good intentions of mankind and relying -at the other upon mankind's fulfilling those good intentions. It is -based like every great enterprise of the modern world upon credit, and -its only security is the fact that men thus far and on the whole have -measured up to each enlargement of their freedom and responsibility. - -To feel the force of this one has to think of the world as a world. Just -here has been the office of socialism, to show that society is a -colossal machine of which we are all parts and that men in the most -exact sense are members one of another. In the intellectualist scheme of -things that mathematical proof has to come first; it has to take root -and bury itself and become the second nature of humankind before the new -world of instinct can spring out of it and come to blossom. - -That has been the office of socialism, and just so far as that proof has -been established socialism has played its part. Now the point I want to -make about Wells is that in him one sees already in an almost precocious -form the second stage of this process. In him this new world of -intelligence is already exuberant with instinct; the social machine has -become a personality; that cold abstraction the world has become in his -hands a throbbing, breathing, living thing, as alive, awake, aware of -itself, as engaging, adventurous, free, critical, well-primed, -continent, and all-of-a-piece as a strong man running a race. People -never felt nature as a personality before Wordsworth showed them that it -was, or a locomotive before Kipling wrote _McAndrew's Hymn_; and it -seems to me that Wells has done for the social organism very much what -Wordsworth did for nature, discovering in a thing previously felt to be -inanimate a matter for art and a basis for religious emotion. - -But if the world is a personality it is a very stupid, sluggish, -unawakened personality, differing from nature in this respect, that we -ourselves compose the whole of it and have it in our hands to do what we -will with it. It has always been out of joint, a great slipshod -Leviathan, at sixes and sevens, invertebrate and fungus-brained. Just so -is the average man, sunk in routine, oppressed with microscopic tasks -that give birth one to another, his stomach at war with his head, his -legs unwilling to exercise him, resentful of his own capacity not to be -dull. But certain happier moments bring him an exuberant quickened life -in which routine tasks fall nimbly from his fingers and he is aware of a -wide, humorous, generous, enlightened vision of things; he pulls himself -together, his parts reinforce one another, his mind wakens, his heart -opens, his fancy stirs, he is all generosity and happiness, capable of -anything that is disinterested, fine, and becoming to a free man. It is -in these moments that individual men have done all the things which make -up the real history of this planet. - -If individual men are capable of this amazing experience, then why not -the world? That is the spirited question Wells has propounded in a -hundred different forms, in his earlier, more theoretical, and more -optimistic writings suggesting that society as a whole should turn over -a new leaf, and even picturing it as doing so, in his later work, more -experienced and less hopeful but with a compensating fervor, picturing -the attempt of delegated individuals to act on society's behalf. I do -not wish at this point to become pious and solemn in tone; that would be -inept in connection with Wells. But I do wish to make it plain that if -he is devoid of those grander traits which spring from the sense of -being "tenon'd and mortised" upon something beyond change, if his -strength lies wholly in his intelligence, the intelligence itself in -Wells is an amazing organ, a troubled and rapturous organ, an organ as -visionary and sensitive as the soul of a Christian saint. That is why I -have said that in him the new world, governed by the intelligence, is -already exuberant with instinct; and anyone who doubts that he has -lavished a very genuine religious instinct upon the social process -itself and in the dream of a society free, magnanimous and seemly, -should turn to the passage where he describes Machiavelli, after the -heat and pettiness of the day, retiring into his chamber alone, putting -on his dress of ceremony and sitting down before his table in the -presence of that magnificent thought. - -The mass of men have acted more consistently than they know on the -principle that the whole world is nothing in comparison with one soul, -for their politics and economic science, solemn as they appear, are as -frivolous and secondary as if they actually did believe fervently that -heaven is their true home and the world a bad business of little -account. In all that concerns private virtue and the private life, in -religion, poetry, their lawyer, their doctor, their broker, they exact -the last degree of excellence and efficiency, but they trust to the -blind enterprise of individual men to push mankind chaotically forward -little by little. We are in fact so wonderfully made that if our grocer -tells us in the morning that he has no fresh eggs he throws us into a -deeper despondency than six readings of the _Inferno_ could ever do. And -that explains why so few people can extend themselves imaginatively into -the greater circles that surround them, why, on the social plane, we -never think of demanding wisdom from politicians, why we never dream of -remembering that they should belong to the august family of Plutarch, -why it is not the profound views of wise men and the brilliant -discoveries of science that fill the newspapers, but the incredibly -banal remarks of this president and that prime minister, why presidents -and prime ministers in a society that lives from hand to mouth are so -much more important than poets and prophets, and why statesmanship has -gathered about itself a literature so incomparably trivial and dull. -Socialists, indeed, just because they alone are serious about the world, -are apt to be the least mundane in spirit; they are, as Wells has -himself said, "other-worldly" about the world itself. - -But indeed I should make a mistake were I to over-stress the solemnities -that underlie the spirit of Wells. In tone he is more profane than -sacred, that is to say he is a realist. He wants a world thrillingly -alive, curious, exercised, magnanimous, with all its dim corners lighted -up, shaken out of its dulness and complacency, keen, elastic, tempered -like a fine blade--the counterpart on a grand scale of what he most -admires in the individual. "Stephen," says Lady Mary in _The Passionate -Friends_, "promise me. Whatever you become, you promise and swear here -and now never to be grey and grubby, never to be humpy and snuffy, never -to be respectable and modest and dull and a little fat, like--like -everybody." And in _First and Last Things_ he gives the other side of -the medal: - - Much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to - taste life. I am not happy until I have done and felt - things. I want to get as near as I can to the thrill of a - dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air. - And not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do I - want to understand. I want to know something of the jolly - wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its - wash. I want to get the fine quintessence of that. - -It stands to reason that a spirit of this kind does not consort with any -pre-arranged pocket ground-plan, so to speak, of the world as it should -be. Of this, to be sure, he is often accused, and he has given us a -humorous version of his Utopia as it may appear to certain of his -contemporaries: - - Mr. G.K. Chesterton mocks valiantly and passionately, I - know, against an oppressive and obstinately recurrent - anticipation of himself in Socialist hands, hair clipped, - meals of a strictly hygienic description at regular hours, a - fine for laughing, not that he would want to laugh, and - austere exercises in several of the more metallic virtues - daily. Mr. Max Beerbohm's conception is rather in the nature - of a nightmare, a hopeless, horrid, frozen flight from the - pursuit of Mr. Sidney Webb and myself, both of us short, - inelegant men, but for all that terribly resolute, - indefatigable, incessant to capture him, to drag him off to - a mechanical Utopia, and then to take his thumb-mark and his - name, number him distinctly in indelible ink, and let him - loose (under inspection) in a world of great round lakes of - blue lime-water and vistas of white sanitary tiling. - -That is a not unjust parody of Wells's Utopia as it would be if he had -remained in the circle of his Fabian friends. Being what he is, it bears -much the same relation to his idea as that world of harps and crowns and -milk and honey bore in the mediaeval imagination to the idea of heaven. -You have to mingle these notions with your experience of human hearts to -realize the inadequacy of symbols. Wells, I suspect, has a fondness for -white sanitary tiling, just as plenty of good Christians have found in -milk and honey a foretaste of unthinkable felicity; but when it comes to -the actual architecture and domestic arrangements of paradise they are -both quite willing to take on trust the accommodating good will of God -and man. Somehow or other, by the time we have got there, we shall not -find it monotonous--to this, at least, one's faith, whatever it may be, -ought to be equal. - -I have given too few quotations in this book, and now I have left it to -a point where if I give any at all it must be to illustrate less the art -of Wells as a thing by itself than a train of thought. He is at his best -in brief scenes, where all his gifts of humor, satire, characterization -and phrase come to a head (think, for example, of Aunt Plessington's -speech, the funeral of Mr. Polly's father, the pages dealing with Cousin -Nicodemus Frapp's house-hold, and the somewhat prolonged episode of the -"reet Staffordshire" cousins in _The New Machiavelli_); and indeed, so -insistent is his point of view that in every one of these episodes one -finds in opposition the irrepressible new world of Wells and the -stagnant world out of which it springs. One of the best of these scenes, -luckily, is brief and connected enough to be quoted as a whole. It is a -picture of the tea-hour in the servants' hall at Bladesover House. - - I sat among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian - chair, trying to exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great - rocks, and my mother sat with an eye upon me, resolute to - suppress the slightest manifestation of vitality. It was - hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these rather - over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful - restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be - thrust in among their dignities. - - Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat - it out perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the - same. - - "Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask. "Sugar, - Mrs. Latude-Fernay?" - - The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They - say," she would begin, issuing her proclamation--at least - half her sentences began "they say"--"sugar is fatt-an-ing, - nowadays. Many of the best people do not take it at all." - - "Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits, intelligently. - - "Not with anaything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of - crushing repartee, and drank. - - "What won't they say next?" said Miss Fison. - - "They do say such things!" said Mrs. Booch. - - "They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors - are not recomm-an-ding it now." - - My Mother: "No, ma'am?" - - Mrs. Mackridge: "No, ma'am." - - Then, to the table at large: "Poor Sir Roderick, before he - died, consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have - sometimes fancied it may have hastened his end." - - This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner - and a pause was considered due to the sacred memory of Sir - Roderick. - - "George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!" - - Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favorite piece - from her repertoire. "The evenings are drawing out nicely," - she would say, or if the season was decadent, "How the - evenings draw in!" It was an invaluable remark to her; I do - not know how she would have got along without it. - - My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would - always consider it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and - regard the evening in the act of elongation or contraction, - whichever phase it might be. - - A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or - shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. - -There is, I think, a special sort of connection between Wells and -America; and there are times when it seems to me that were the spirit of -America suddenly to become critical of itself it would resemble nothing -in the world so much as the spirit of Wells magnified by many diameters. -His instincts are all as it were instincts of the intelligence; his -mind, like the American mind, is a disinherited mind, not connected with -tradition, thinking and acting _de novo_ because there is nothing to -prevent it from doing so. Perfectly American is his alertness, his -versatility, adaptability, his thorough-going pragmatism, perfectly -American are the disconcerting questions that he asks ("Is the Navy -_bright_?"). Perfectly American is his view of the traditional English -ideal of human nature--that strange compound of good intentions, homely -affection, stubborn strength, insensibility to ideas, irrational -self-sacrifice, domestic despotism, a strong sense of property in things -and people, stupidity, sweetness and confusion of mind--an ideal through -which it has been one of his never-failing delights to send electric -shocks. And indeed the type of character he has presented in his heroes, -in Remington, Trafford and Ponderevo, is a type to be found perhaps more -plentifully than elsewhere in American research bureaus, hospitals and -laboratories. He thinks and feels critically so many of the things -America lives and does unconsciously. Perhaps in this distinction lies -the immediate value of his criticism for us. - -For in his mind Americans can see themselves reflected in the light of -what they chiefly need, that synthetic motive without which a secular -and industrial race is as devoid of animating morality as a swarm of -flies. This want, most obvious on the political and economic plane, is -indeed fundamental. Wells has grasped it from many different angles but -never with more point than in his essay _The American Population_. -Consider this passage, where he takes as a text one of Arthur Brisbane's -editorials in the "New York Journal": - - It is the voice of the American tradition strained to the - utmost to make itself audible to the new world, and cracking - into italics and breaking into capitals with the strain. The - rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public - void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive - things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalizations, a - public which has carried the conception of freedom to its - logical extreme of entire individual detachment. These - telltale columns deal all with personality and the drama of - personal life. They witness to no interest but the interest - in intense individual experiences. The engagements, the love - affairs, the scandals of conspicuous people are given in - pitiless detail in articles adorned with vigorous portraits - and sensational pictorial comments. Even the eavesdroppers - who write this stuff strike the personal note, and their - heavily muscular portraits frown beside the initial letter. - Murders and crimes are worked up to the keenest pitch of - realization, and any new indelicacy in fashionable costume, - any new medical device or cure, any new dance or - athleticism, any new breach in the moral code, any novelty - in sea-bathing or the woman's seat on horse-back, or the - like, is given copious and moving illustration, stirring - headlines, and eloquent reprobation. There is a colored - supplement of knock-about fun, written chiefly in the quaint - dialect of the New York slums. It is a language from which - "th" has vanished, and it presents a world in which the - kicking by a mule of an endless succession of victims is an - inexhaustible joy to young and old. "Dat ole Maud!" There is - a smaller bale dealing with sport. In the advertisement - columns one finds nothing of books, nothing of art; but - great choice of bust developers, hair restorers, nervous - tonics, clothing sales, self-contained flats, and business - opportunities.... - - Individuality has, in fact, got home to itself, and, as - people say, taken off its frills.... The "New York - American" represents a clientele to be counted by the - hundred thousand, manifestly with no other solicitudes, - just burning to live and living to burn. - -Now that is a very fair picture, not merely of popular America but of -the whole contemporary phase of popular civilization, uprooted from the -state of instinct, intensive experience and the immemorial immediacies -of duty and the soil. To the artist and the moralist it is a cause of -hopeless pessimism, as any civilization must be which has lost touch -with all its values and been rationalized to the point of anarchy. For -this there is only one salvation. If civilization has lost the faculty -of commanding itself and pulling itself together in its individual -aspect, it must pull itself together collectively. That essentially is -the fighting chance of intellectualism, the hope that, inasmuch as the -world has already lost touch with experience and committed itself to a -regime of ideas, by organizing this regime of ideas and by mechanizing -so far as possible the material aspect of things, the values of life can -be re-engendered on a fresh basis. From this follows the oft-repeated -phrase of Wells that the chief want of the American people is a "sense -of the state." For the peril and the hope of American life (granting -that, as things are, society must be brought into some kind of coherence -before morality, art and religion can once more attain any real meaning) -lies in the fact that while at present Americans are aware of themselves -only as isolated individuals they are unconsciously engaged in works of -an almost appalling significance for the future of society. A Trust is a -work of this kind, and whether it is to be a gigantic good or a gigantic -evil depends wholly upon whether its controlling minds are more -conscious of their individual or their social function. The mechanism of -society in America is already developed to a very high point; what is -wanting, and without this everything is wanting, is an understanding of -the right function of this mechanism. So much does it all depend upon -whether the financial mind can subdue itself to the greater mind of the -race. - -If the future is anywhere going to follow the lines that Wells has -suggested for it--and being an opportunist his aims are always in touch -with agreeable probabilities--it will most likely be in America. He has -lately given his idea of what the State should aim to be--"planned as -an electric traction system is planned, without reference to -pre-existing apparatus, upon scientific lines"; an idea remarkably of a -piece with the American imagination and one which the American -imagination is perfectly capable of translating into fact. American, -too, are the methods in which Wells has come to believe for bringing the -Great State into existence. His conviction is that socialism will come -through an enlightened individualism, outside the recognized -governmental institutions, and that the ostensible States will be -superseded virtually by informal centres of gravity quite independent of -them. America alone at present justifies this speculation. For the -centre of gravity in American affairs has always been extra-governmental, -and consistently in America where wealth gathers there also the -institutions of socialism spring into being. The rudiments of the -Socialist State, falsely based as they are but always tending to subvert -this false basis, are certainly to be found, if anywhere, in the -Rockefeller Institute, the Carnegie and Russell Sage Foundations, the -endowed universities and bureaus of research, and in the type of men -they breed. Consider the following passage from _The Passionate Friends_ -and the character of the American, Gidding, which is indicated in it: - - To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably - magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all - science, all knowledge, all philosophical and political - ideas, round about the habitable globe. His mind began - producing concrete projects as a firework being lit produces - sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" the most colossal of - printing and publishing projects, as a man might work out - the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was so - entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to - go on from the proposition that understanding was the - primary need of humanity to the systematic organization of - free publishing, exhaustive discussion, intellectual - stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacists - might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure. - - "Say, Stratton," he said, after a conversation that had - seemed to me half fantasy, "let's _do_ it." - -It is perfectly possible in fact that socialism will come into being -first of all under the form of Cecil Rhodes's dream, as a secret order -of millionaires "promoting" not their own aims but society itself. That -is one of the possibilities at least that lie in what Wells has called -the "gigantic childishness" of the American mind. - - - - - - INDEX - - - _America, The Future in_ - America, Wells and - _American Population, The_ - _Ann Veronica_ - _Anticipations_ - Arnold, Matthew - - Bacon - Beerbohm, Max - Belloc, Hilaire - Bergson, Henri - Brisbane, Arthur - Brook Farm - - Carlyle - Catholic Church, the - Cato - Chesterton, G.K. - Chicago - _Comet, In the Days of the_ - _Common Sense of Warfare, The_ - Comte - Confucius - Conrad, Joseph - _Creative Evolution_ - - Dante - Darwin - De Foe - Dickens - _Discovery of the Future, The_ - Duerer - - Emerson - _Empire of the Ants, The_ - Erasmus - _Ethics and Evolution_ - - Fabian Society - _First and Last Things_ - _First Men in the Moon, The_ - _Food of the Gods, The_ - _Fortnightly Review, The_ - Francis, St. - - Goethe - _Great State, The_ - Grimm's Fairy Tales - - Hardy, Thomas - Hearn, Lafcadio - Heraclitus - Hero, The - _History of Mr. Polly, The_ - Huxley - - _Inferno, The_ - _Invisible Man, The_ - _Island of Dr. Moreau, The_ - - James, William - Japanese, the - Jeffries, Richard - Johnson, Dr. - - Kipling, Rudyard - _Kipps_ - - Leonardo da Vinci - Leopardi - _Love and Mr. Lewisham_ - Luther - - Macaulay - Machiavelli - _Mankind in the Making_ - Marcus Aurelius - _Marriage_ - Michael Angelo - _Modern Utopia, A_ - Montessori, Madame - Morris, William - _McAndrew's Hymn_ - - _New Machiavelli, The_ - Newman, Cardinal - New Republican, the - _News from Nowhere_ - _New Worlds for Old_ - Nietzsche - - _Our Liberal Practitioners_ - _Passionate Friends, The_ - Plato - Plutarch - - Rabelais - _Rasselas_ - _Rediscovery of the Unique, The_ - Rhodes, Cecil - _Robinson Crusoe_ - - Samurai, the - _Scepticism of the Instrument,_ - Schopenhauer - _Servile State, The_ - Shakespeare - Shaw, Bernard - _Sleeper Awakes, The_ - _So-Called Science of Sociology, The_ - Sorel, Georges - Spencer, Herbert - _Story of the Days to Come, A_ - Superman, the - Superior Man, the - Swift - - Taine, H.A. - Thoreau - _Time Machine, The_ - Tolstoy - _Tono-Bungay_ - - Verne, Jules - - Ward, Mrs. Humphry - Webb, Sidney - _Wheels of Chance, The_ - Whitman, Walt - Wordsworth - Worms Cathedral - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The World of H.G. 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