Mr Wells' essays in sociology are not dry treatises, based on Blue
books and the gathering together of information and statistics from a
formless and largely worthless collection of earlier sources. He has
approached this question of man in relation to the State in the same
generous spirit displayed in his works of fiction; and it is only by
using the word "sociology" in its fuller sense as conceived by Comte,
rather than in the restricted sense of "social science" with its
implication of economics, as narrowed by Herbert Spencer, that I dare
to head this last chapter with so dangerously technicalised a term.
Indeed, I would not use the word "sociology" now if I could find a
more inclusive heading. For it must be obvious, I think, to anyone who
has followed my exposition of the romances and the novels that Mr
Wells has a way of treating all such subjects as relate to the
betterment of humanity with a broad outlook, an entire disrespect for
conventional forms however hallowed by precedent, and a habit of
trenchant criticism that could hardly be fettered by an analysis of
sociological literature or continual deference to this or that
experiment in practice or theory. He approaches his subject with the
normal mind of one who sees the world, its customs and rules of
conduct, from what is, after all, the point of view of
common-sense--another term that has been so grossly misused that the
possessor of true common-sense is apt to be regarded as a most
uncommon person. It is, in fact, the least common of qualities.
The first three books under this heading form some sort of a trilogy,
and have a definite air of consequence. Of these, _Anticipations_ was
published in 1901, and _Mankind in the Making_ and _A Modern Utopia_
followed in 1903 and 1905 respectively. The scheme of the first two
books combines a criticism of present conditions with a growing
constructiveness that points the way to the ideal of what is called
"The New Republic." Now, one of the labels that has been most
frequently and adhesively affixed to Mr Wells is that of "Socialist,"
and no doubt it would proclaim his purpose admirably enough if we
could satisfactorily define the word in its relation to him. But,
personally, I refuse so to label him, because I know that socialism
means as many things to different people as religion, and is as much a
term of reproach in the mouth of some self-labelled individualists as
the designation "Christian" might be in the mouth of the "true
believers"--as the Mohammedans call themselves. Wherefore I am
particularly anxious in approaching any description of "The New
Republic," to make it quite clear that that idealised State is not
built of the bricks that have been modelled and cast by any
recognisable group of propagandists, working to permeate, or more
forcibly to convert, a section of the public under the flags of, say,
Fabianism or Social Democracy. The essential thing about Mr Wells is
that he is not a Follower, whether of Marx, or Hyndman, or Shaw, or
Bebel; he may have learnt from any or all of them, but his theory of
social reconstruction is pre-eminently and characteristically his own.
He does not believe in the private ownership of land, for example, but
I do not remember that he has ever advocated the means of the "Single
Tax." And in these sociological essays, as in his novels, his method
is that of picturing the more desirable thing or condition, the
method of sweet persuasion rather than that of the sectarian who has
a pet specific. Nevertheless Mr Wells uses his sharpened weapon of
satire with considerable effect when he contemplates and displays for
us the world as he sees it to-day. I find no hint of sweetness or
persuasiveness on that side.
It would be impossible in an exposition of this kind to dissect these
essays in detail, nor would it be desirable. Many of the suggestions
with regard to actual practice, suggestions that might be embodied in
modern legislation, are open to criticism in detail, and I would not
pin Mr Wells down to the letter of any one of them. He has certainly
changed his mind on many points since he wrote these essays in
constructive sociology, and the fact that he has so altered and
enlarged his opinions is the best possible evidence of his reliability
and sincerity. He is before all else devoted to the services of
growth and progress. "To rebel against instinct," he writes, "to rebel
against limitation, to evade, to trip up, and at last to close with
and grapple and conquer the forces that dominate him, is the
fundamental being of man." And no man can hope to dominate those
forces, if he is content to let his opinions crystallise at the age of
thirty-five or so. If he would retain his powers of criticism and
construction he must have the patience and the energy to maintain the
normal, receptive mind with which he is naturally endowed.
Unfortunately with that endowment commonly comes another--namely, a
tendency to avoid the irk or constant struggle by taking the line of
least resistance; by adopting an opinion and upholding it in the face
of all reason; and only a man of exceptional patience, courage and
ability can keep himself free from the prejudices and fixed opinions
which not only bring him a delusive peace and certainty but also are
the means to worldly success.
So I would advise the readers of _Anticipations_ and _Mankind in the
Making_ to be influenced by the spirit rather than by the letter of
these two books. The spirit is definite enough; it is the spirit of
humaneness, of a passionate criticism of all the evils, miseries and
disease that are the outcome of our present haphazard civilisation;
the spirit for a desire for order, wider prospects and opportunities,
greater freedom for growth. Men are born unequal, with different
tendencies, different desires, different potentialities, but there
should be a place for every one of them in the great economy of "The
New Republic." Each has to learn the lesson--for discipline is
essential--that he is not an independent unit as regards his work, but
a factor, more or less insignificant, in the sum of individuals that
make up the greater State. The good New Republican "will seek
perpetually to gauge his quality, he will watch to see himself the
master of his habits and of his powers; he will take his brain, blood,
body and lineage as a trust to be administered for the world."
Such, I think, is the spirit, the permanent principle of these two
books. That remains and increases. The conception of the process by
which the New Republic shall be built is less constant, and Mr Wells
will change his opinions concerning it for just so long as he
continues to grow. Should he ever adopt an inalterable policy,
subscribe to some "ism," and wear a label, he would brand himself
truly as inconsistent. Then, indeed, he would have contradicted
himself. We search for truth never hoping to find it complete and
whole; and he who is contented with a part denies God....
_A Modern Utopia_ (1905) is an attempt to picture "The New Republic"
in being; a very different dream of reconstruction from that
displayed in Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, and _Equality_, but
having nevertheless certain points of likeness to the former at least,
and especially in the method of marking contrasts by a form of
parallelism, by keeping the world as we know it within the circle of
attention in order to break the paralysing illusion that we are moving
in romantic and quite impossible surroundings. Mr Wells' machinery is
slightly complicated. He takes two figures from the beginning of this
twentieth century. The Owner of the Voice ("you will go with him
through curious and interesting experience. Yet, ever and again, you
will find him back at the table, the manuscript in his hand ...") and
the "botanist," a foil and a stimulator to the other expositor. "The
image of a cinematograph entertainment is the one to grasp," writes Mr
Wells in his preliminary explanation. "There will be an effect of
these two people going to and fro in front of the circle of a rather
defective lantern, which sometimes jams and sometimes gets out of
focus, but which does occasionally succeed in displaying on a screen a
momentary moving picture of Utopian conditions."
I think Mr Wells tried very valiantly to avoid the all too obvious
mistake made by other Utopian builders, both romantic and practical.
He began, I feel sure, with the admirable intention of depicting the
people of the early twentieth century in new conditions, changed only
in so far as they were influenced by the presentation of finer ideals
and by more beautiful circumstance. He even introduced a contemporary
critic of Utopian conditions in the shape of the talkative person, "a
conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly
inexplicable way a most consummate ass." But once we begin to
postulate our Utopian villains, the reader's thought is distracted
from the contemplation of the heroic which is the cement that binds
every stone in the visionary city. In order to change conditions it is
necessary to change much in the present cast of human nature. In a
fiction of Utopia there is no place for a Napoleon, a Rockefeller, or
an ambition-swelled Imperialist. So Mr Wells is driven with various
hesitations and resentments to assume that the interactions of cause
and effect have indeed tended to produce a sweeter-tempered, more
generous race of men and women; that the spirit which moves us now to
seek a larger liberty and a greater tolerance has been encouraged and
increased by the exercise of its own tendencies and the sight of its
own triumphs; and that those who set their minds to the building gain
an added grace in the labour. It is a perfectly fair and consistent
assumption, but Mr Wells has been warned by his predecessors, from
Robert Owen back to Plato and forward to Edward Bellamy, that the
designs for Utopia have always been flawed by an altered conception of
the humanity that walks within the city; and he has begun by trying to
avoid a fallacy and ended by begging a question that he might very
well have convincingly argued.
By many people _A Modern Utopia_ is definitely labelled as the
"Samurai" book. That conception of a natural aristocracy of spirit and
ability did indeed return upon its creator in the form of an object
lesson that filled him with a disgust for what was really a fine
ideal, only too temptingly displayed. So many of his readers, and
particularly his younger readers, formed the wish to become "Samurai"
without more ado, a high office for which none of them, perhaps, had
the ability or the determination to fill. For Utopias take even longer
to build than Rome or London. But the plan is there--vague and
tentative as the original scheme of a Gothic cathedral, a plan to be
continually modified and changed in its most important features; and
the building has begun....
The last books that can strictly fall into the present category are
_The Future of America_ (1906) and _New Worlds for Old_ (1908). The
former is rather a record of impressions than the attempt at prophecy
which the title and the first chapter indicate; and the final
conclusion is too hesitating even to convince us that America has a
future. "I came to America questioning the certitudes of progress," Mr
Wells says in his Envoy. "For a time I forgot my questionings, I
sincerely believed, 'These people can do anything,' and, now I have it
all in perspective, I have to confess that doubt has taken me again."
And without question he has changed his opinion with regard to many of
the observations he made nine years ago. I sincerely hope he has.
_New Worlds for Old_ is quite definitely a book of suggestions with
regard to certain aspects of socialism. It is the most practical of
all the sociological books, and makes so strong an appeal to the
buried common-sense of even prejudiced readers, that a devoted
Primrose Leaguer to whom I lent my copy was quite seriously disturbed
in mind for nearly a week after he had read it. Fortunately for his
own peace, he found an answer that permitted him comfortably to avoid
the perpetual burden of an active responsibility. He thought that
"Socialism would be all right in a perfect world," or words to that
effect; and it was quite evident to him that the effort to make some
small contribution towards raising the standard of human idealism was
no part of his duty. In any case he greatly preferred the solid
assurance of the Primrose League. And, speaking generally, as I have
tried to do throughout, I find that _New Worlds for Old_ presents a
clearer indication to the possible path for the idealist than any of
the other sociological essays. _Mankind in the Making_ dealt very
largely with education directed to a particular end, but in the book I
am now considering may be found certain outlets for the expression of
the less consistently strenuous. Education, whether of individual
children in the home or regarded as a function of the State, offers
continual perplexities that only the most resolute can confront day by
day with renewed zeal; the problems of collective ownership are less
confused by psychology, and the broad principles may be adopted and
the energy of the young believer directed towards the accomplishment
of minor detail. He may, for example, find good reason for the
nationalising of the milk supply without committing himself to any
broader theory of expropriation.
Finally I come to the collection of various papers issued in 1914
under the title _An Englishman Looks at the World_--a book that I may
pass with the comment that it exhibits Mr Wells in his more captious
moods, deliberately more captious in some instances, no doubt,
inasmuch as the various papers were written for serial
publication--and that _Confession of Faith and Rule of Life_,
published in 1907 as _First and Last Things_. The opening is
unnecessarily complicated by the exposition of a metaphysic that is
quite uncharacteristic and has little to do with the personal
exposition that follows; and, indeed, I feel with regard to the whole
work that it attempts to define the indefinable. I deprecate the note
of finality implied in the title. "It is as it stands now," I read in
the Introduction, "the frank confession of what one man of the early
Twentieth Century has found in life and himself," but that man has
found much since then, and will continue to find much as he grows
continually richer in experience. So that while no student of Wells'
writings can afford to overlook _First and Last Things_, I would warn
him against the danger of concluding that in that book he will find at
last the ultimate expression of character and belief, set out in the
form of a categorical creed. Again I find a spirit and overlook the
letter. I choose to take as representative such a passage as the
following, with all its splendid vagueness and lack of dogma, rather
than a definite expression of belief that Mr Wells does not believe in
a personal immortality. This passage runs: "It seems to me that the
whole living creation may be regarded as walking in its sleep, as
walking in the sleep of individualised illusion, and that now out of
it all rises man, beginning to perceive his larger self, his universal
brotherhood, and a collective synthetic purpose to increase Power and
realise Beauty...."
* * * * *
And now that I have attempted my interpretation, I look back and
confess that it is a very personal reading of my subject. I may have
sought too eagerly for all those passages in which I found a note that
roused in me the most thrilling response. I may have omitted to
display vital issues that more truly characterise H.G. Wells than the
appealing urgencies, idealisms, and fluencies that I have found most
sympathetic and most admirable. But if I appear to have done him an
injustice in some particulars, it is rather because I have been
absorbed by the issue I sought to reveal, than because I deliberately
weighed and rejected others. This short essay can be no more than an
introduction to the works it describes. It was never intended to be
critical. I have had no intention of discussing technique, nor of
weighing Mr Wells against his contemporaries in any literary scale.
But I have attempted to interpret the spirit and the message that I
have found in his books; and I have made the essay in the hope that
any reader who may consequently be stirred to read or to re-read Wells
will do so with a mind prepared to look below the surface expression.
I feel no shade of hesitation when I say that H.G. Wells is a great
writer. His fecundity, his mastery of language, his comprehension of
character are gifts and abilities that certain of his contemporaries
have in equal, or in some particulars in larger measure. But he alone
has used his perfected art for a definite end. He has not been content
to record his observations of the world as he has seen it, to
elaborate this or that analysis of human motive, or to relate the
history of a few selected lives. He has done all this, but he has done
infinitely more by pointing the possible road of our endeavour.
Through all his work moves the urgency of one who would create
something more than a mere work of art to amuse the multitude or
afford satisfaction to the critic. His chief achievement is that he
has set up the ideal of a finer civilisation, of a more generous life
than that in which we live; an ideal that, if it is still too high for
us of this generation, will be appreciated and followed by the people
of the future.