Now that I have been searching my memory, I incline rather more than I
did to the opinion that the bare suggestion at any rate of this
particular Book did come from me. I probably went to Boon soon after
this talk with Dodd and said a fine book might be written about the
Mind of Humanity, and in all likelihood I gave some outline--I have
forgotten what. I wanted a larger picture of that great Being his
imagination had struck out. I remember at any, rate Boon taking me
into his study, picking out Goldsmith's "Inquiry into the Present
State of Polite Learning," turning it over and reading from it.
"Something in this line?" he said, and read:
"'Complaints of our degeneracy in literature as well as in
morals I own have been frequently exhibited of late.... The
dullest critic who strives at a reputation for delicacy, by
showing he cannot be pleased ...'
"The old, old thing, you see! The weak protest of the living."
He turned over the pages. "He shows a proper feeling, but he's a
little thin.... He says some good things. But--'The age of Louis XIV,
notwithstanding these respectable names, is still vastly, superior.'
Is it? Guess the respectable names that age of Louis XIV could
override!--Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, D'Alembert! And
now tell me the respectable names of the age of Louis XIV. And the
conclusion of the whole matter--
"'Thus the man who, under the patronage of the great might
have done honour to humanity, when only patronized by the
bookseller becomes a thing a little superior to the fellow who
works at the press.'
"'The patronage of the great'! 'Fellow who works at the press'!
Goldsmith was a damnably genteel person at times in spite of the
'Vicar'! It's printed with the long 's,' you see. It all helps to
remind one that times have changed." ...
I followed his careless footsteps into the garden; he went
gesticulating before me, repeating, "'An Inquiry into the State of
Polite Learning'! That's what your 'Mind of the Race' means. Suppose
one did it now, we should do it differently in every way, from that."
"Yes, but how should we do it?" said I.
The project had laid hold upon me. I wanted a broad outline of the
whole apparatus of thinking and determination in the modern State;
something that should bring together all its various activities, which
go on now in a sort of deliberate ignorance of one another, which
would synthesize research, education, philosophical discussion, moral
training, public policy. "There is," I said, "a disorganized abundance
now."
"It's a sort of subconscious mind," said Boon, seeming to take me
quite seriously, "with a half instinctive will...."
We discussed what would come into the book. One got an impression of
the enormous range and volume of intellectual activity that pours
along now, in comparison with the jejune trickle of Goldsmith's days.
Then the world had--what? A few English writers, a few men in France,
the Royal Society, the new Berlin Academy (conducting its transactions
in French), all resting more or less upon the insecure patronage of
the "Great"; a few schools, public and private, a couple of dozen of
universities in all the world, a press of which _The Gentleman's
Magazine_ was the brightest ornament. Now----
It is a curious thing that it came to us both as a new effect, this
enormously greater size of the intellectual world of to-day. We didn't
at first grasp the implications of that difference, we simply found it
necessitated an enlargement of our conception. "And then a man's
thoughts lived too in a world that had been created, lock, stock, and
barrel, a trifle under six thousand years ago!..."
We fell to discussing the range and divisions of our subject. The main
stream, we settled, was all that one calls "literature" in its broader
sense. We should have to discuss that principally. But almost as
important as the actual development of ideas, suggestions, ideals, is
the way they are distributed through the body of humanity, developed,
rendered, brought into touch with young minds and fresh minds, who are
drawn so into participation, who themselves light up and become new
thoughts. One had to consider journalism, libraries, book
distribution, lecturing, teaching. Then there is the effect of laws,
of inventions.... "Done in a large, dull, half-abstract way," said
Boon, "one might fill volumes. One might become an Eminent
Sociologist. You might even invent terminology. It's a chance----"
We let it pass. He went on almost at once to suggest a more congenial
form, a conversational novel. I followed reluctantly. I share the
general distrust of fiction as a vehicle of discussion. We would, he
insisted, invent a personality who would embody our Idea, who should
be fanatically obsessed by this idea of the Mind of the Race, who
should preach it on all occasions and be brought into illuminating
contact with all the existing mental apparatus and organization of the
world. "Something of your deep, moral earnestness, you know, only a
little more presentable and not quite so vindictive," said Boon, "and
without your--lapses. I seem to see him rather like Leo Maxse: the
same white face, the same bright eyes, the same pervading suggestion
of nervous intensity, the same earnest, quasi-reasonable voice--but
instead of that anti-German obsession of his, an intelligent passion
for the racial thought. He must be altogether a fanatic. He must think
of the Mind of the Race in season and out of season. Collective
thought will be no joke to him; it will be the supremely important
thing. He will be passionately a patriot, entirely convinced of your
proposition that 'the thought of a community is the life of a
community,' and almost as certain that the tide of our thought is
ebbing."
"Is it?" said I.
"I've never thought. The 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' says it is."
"We must call the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.'"
"As a witness--in the book--rather! But, anyhow, this man of ours will
believe it and struggle against it. It will make him ill; it will
spoil the common things of life for him altogether. I seem to see him
interrupting some nice, bright, clean English people at tennis. 'Look
here, you know,' he will say, 'this is all very well. But have you
_thought_ to-day? They tell me the Germans are thinking, the
Japanese.' I see him going in a sort of agony round and about
Canterbury Cathedral. 'Here are all these beautiful, tranquil
residences clustering round this supremely beautiful thing, all these
well-dressed, excellent, fresh-coloured Englishmen in their beautiful
clerical raiment--deans, canons--and what have they _thought_, any of
them? I keep my ear to the _Hibbert Journal_, but is it enough?'
Imagine him going through London on an omnibus. He will see as clear
as the advertisements on the hoardings the signs of the formal
breaking up of the old Victorian Church of England and Dissenting
cultures that have held us together so long. He will see that the
faith has gone, the habits no longer hold, the traditions lie lax like
cut string--there is nothing to replace these things. People do this
and that dispersedly; there is democracy in beliefs even, and any
notion is as good as another. And there is America. Like a burst
Haggis. Intellectually. The Mind is confused, the Race in the violent
ferment of new ideas, in the explosive development of its own
contrivances, has lost its head. It isn't thinking any more; it's
stupefied one moment and the next it's diving about----
"It will be as clear as day to him that a great effort of intellectual
self-control must come if the race is to be saved from utter confusion
and dementia. And nobody seems to see it but he. He will go about
wringing his hands, so to speak. I fancy him at last at a
writing-desk, nervous white fingers clutched in his black hair. 'How
can I put it so that they _must_ attend and see?'"
So we settled on our method and principal character right away. But we
got no farther because Boon insisted before doing anything else on
drawing a fancy portrait of this leading character of ours and
choosing his name. We decided to call him Hallery, and that he should
look something like this--
[Illustration: _Hallery preparing to contradict._]
That was how "The Mind of the Race" began, the book that was to have
ended at last in grim burlesque with Hallery's murder of Dr. Tomlinson
Keyhole in his villa at Hampstead, and the conversation at dawn with
that incredulous but literate policeman at Highgate--he was reading a
World's Classic--to whom Hallery gave himself up.