{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_30882/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_30882","id":"gutenberg_30882","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30882","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946. God the invisible king"],"text":"Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Ritu Aggarwal and\nthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team at\nhttps://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  GOD AND MR. WELLS\n\n  A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF\n  \"GOD THE INVISIBLE KING\"\n\n\n\n\n  GOD AND MR. WELLS\n\n  A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF\n  \"GOD THE INVISIBLE KING\"\n\n  By WILLIAM ARCHER\n\n\n  NEW YORK . ALFRED A. KNOPF . 1917\n\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY\n  ALFRED A. KNOPF\n  _Published, September, 1917_\n\n\n  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n\n\n\nFOREWORD\n\n\nAs I look through the proofs of this little treatise, a twinge of\ncompunction comes upon me. That humane philosopher Mr. Dooley has\nsomewhere a saying to this effect: \"When an astronomer tells me that\nhe has discovered a new planet, I would be the last man to brush the\nfly off the end of his telescope.\" Would not this have been a good\noccasion for a similar exercise of urbanity? Nay, may it not be said\nthat my criticism of _God the Invisible King_ is a breach of\ndiscipline, like duelling in the face of the enemy? I am proud to\nthink that Mr. Wells and I are soldiers in the same army; ought we not\nat all costs to maintain a united front? On the destructive side\n(which I have barely touched upon) his book is brilliantly effective;\non the constructive side, if unconvincing, it is thoughtful,\nimaginative, stimulating, a thing on the whole to be grateful for.\nOught one not rather to hold one's peace than to afford the common\nenemy the encouragement of witnessing a squabble in the ranks?\n\nBut we must not yield to the obsession of military metaphor. It is not\nwhat the enemy thinks or what Mr. Wells or I think that matters--it is\nwhat the men of the future ought to think, as being consonant with\ntheir own nature and with the nature of things. Ideas, like organisms,\nmust abide the struggle for existence, and if the Invisible King is\nfitted to survive, my criticism will reinforce and not invalidate him.\nEven if he should come to life in a way one can scarcely anticipate,\nhis proceedings will have to be carefully watched. He cannot claim the\nreticences of a \"party truce.\" He will be all the better for a candid,\nthough I hope not captious, Opposition.\n\nI thought of printing on my title-page a motto from Mr. Bernard Shaw;\nbut it will perhaps come better here. \"The fact,\" says Mr. Shaw, \"that\na believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the\nfact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of\ncredulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no\nmeans a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out\nof life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of\nSocrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys;\nand its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all\nevents, it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our\nhope lies now.\"\n\nBesides, it has yet to be proved that the believer in the Invisible\nKing is happier than the sceptic.\n\n  LONDON, _May_ 24, 1917.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n    I The Great Adventurer                                         1\n   II A God Who \"Growed\"                                           3\n  III New Myths for Old                                            8\n   IV The Apostle's Creed                                         32\n    V When Is a God Not a God?                                    47\n   VI For and Against Personification                             73\n  VII Back to the Veiled Being                                   101\n\n\n\n\nGOD AND MR. WELLS\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nTHE GREAT ADVENTURER\n\n\nWhen it was known that Mr. H. G. Wells had set forth to discover God,\nall amateurs of intellectual adventure were filled with pleasurable\nexcitement and anticipation. For is not Mr. Wells the great Adventurer\nof latter-day literature? No quest is too perilous for him, no\nforlorn-hope too daring. He led the first explorers to the moon. He\nit was who lured the Martians to earth and exterminated them with\nmicrobes. He has ensnared an angel from the skies and expiscated a\nmermaid from the deep. He has mounted a Time Machine (of his own\ninvention) and gone careering down the vistas of the Future. But these\nwere comparatively commonplace feats. After all, there had been a\nJules Verne, there had been a Gulliver and a Peter Wilkins, there had\nbeen a More, a Morris and a Bellamy. It might be that he was fitted\nfor far greater things. \"There remains,\" we said to ourselves, \"the\nblue ribbon of intellectual adventure, the unachieved North Pole of\nspiritual exploration. He has had countless predecessors in the\nenterprise, some of whom have loudly claimed success; but their\nlog-books have been full of mere hallucinations and nursery tales.\nWhat if it should be reserved for Mr. Wells to bring back the first\nauthentic news from a source more baffling than that of Nile or\nAmazon--the source of the majestic stream of Being? What if it should\nbe given him to sign his name to the first truly-projected chart of\nthe scheme of things?\"\n\nWe almost held our breath in eager anticipation, just as we did when\nthere came from America a well-authenticated rumor that the problem of\nflying had at last been solved. Were we on the brink of another and\nmuch more momentous discovery? Was Mr. Wells to be the Peary of the\ngreat quest? Or only the last of a thousand Dr. Cooks?\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nA GOD WHO \"GROWED\"\n\n\nOur excitement, our suspense, were so much wasted emotion. Mr. Wells's\nenterprise was not at all what we had figured it to be.\n\n  GOD\n  THE INVISIBLE KING\n\nis a very interesting, and even stimulating disquisition, full of a\nfine social enthusiasm, and marked, in many passages, by deep poetic\nfeeling. But it is not a work of investigation into the springs of\nBeing. Mr. Wells explicitly renounces from the outset any dealings\nwith \"cosmogony.\" It is a description of a way of thinking, a system\nof nomenclature, which Mr. Wells declares to be extremely prevalent in\n\"the modern mind,\" from which he himself extracts much comfort and\nfortification, and which he believes to be destined to regenerate the\nworld.\n\nBut Mr. Wells will not have it that what is involved is a mere system\nof nomenclature. He avers that he, in common with many other\nlike-minded persons, has achieved, not so much an intellectual\ndiscovery as an emotional realisation, of something actual and\nobjective which he calls God. He does not, so far as I remember, use\nthe term \"objective\"; but as he insists that God is \"a spirit, a\nperson, a strongly marked and knowable personality\" (p. 5), \"a single\nspirit and a single person\" (p. 18), \"a great brother and leader of\nour little beings\" (p. 24) with much more to the same purpose, it\nwould seem that he must have in his mind an object external to us, no\nmere subjective \"stream of tendency,\" or anything of that sort. It\nwould of course be foolish to doubt the sincerity of the conviction\nwhich he so constantly and so eagerly asserts. Nevertheless, one\ncannot but put forward, even at this stage, the tentative theory that\nhe is playing tricks with his own mind, and attributing reality and\npersonality to something that was in its origin a figure of speech. He\nhas been hypnotized by the word God:\n\n  As when we dwell upon a word we know,\n  Repeating, till the word we know so well\n  Becomes a wonder, and we know not why.\n\nAt all events, \"God the Invisible King\" is not the creator and\nsustainer of the universe. As to the origin of things Mr. Wells\nprofesses the most profound agnosticism. \"At the back of all known\nthings,\" he says, \"there is an impenetrable curtain; the ultimate of\nexistence is a Veiled Being, which seems to know nothing of life or\ndeath or good or ill.... The new religion does not pretend that the\nGod of its life is that Being, or that he has any relation of control\nor association with that Being. It does not even assert that God knows\nall, or much more than we do, about that ultimate Being\" (p. 14). Very\ngood; but--here is the first question which seems to arise out of the\nWellsian thesis--are we not entitled to ask of \"the new religion\" some\nmore definite account of the relation between \"God\" and \"the Veiled\nBeing\"? Surely it is not enough that it should simply refrain from\n\"asserting\" anything at all on the subject. If \"God\" is outside\nourselves (\"a Being, not us but dealing with us and through us,\" p. 6)\nwe cannot leave him hanging in the void, like the rope which the\nIndian conjurer is fabled to throw up into the air till it hooks\nitself on to nothingness. If we are to believe in him as a lever for\nthe righting of a world that has somehow run askew, we want to know\nsomething of his fulcrum. Is it possible thus to dissociate him from\nthe Veiled Being, and proclaim him an independent, an agnostic God? Do\nwe really get over any difficulty--do we not rather create new\ndifficulties,--by saying, as Mr. Wells practically does, \"Our God is\nno metaphysician. He does not care, and very likely does not know, how\nthis tangle of existence came into being. He is only concerned to\ndisentangle it a little, to reduce the chaos of the world to some sort\nof seemliness and order\"? Is it an idle and presumptuous curiosity\nwhich enquires whether we are to consider him co-ordinate with the\nVeiled Being, and in that case probably hostile, or subordinate, and\nin that case instrumental? Are we, in a word, to consider the earth a\nlittle rebel state in the gigantic empire of the universe, working out\nits own salvation under its Invisible King? Or are we to regard God as\nthe Viceroy of the Veiled Being, to whom, in that case, our ultimate\nallegiance is due?\n\nI talked the other day to a young Australian who had been breaking new\nland for wheat-growing. \"What do you do?\" I asked, \"with the stumps of\nthe trees you fell? It must be a great labour to clear them out.\" \"We\ndon't clear them out,\" he replied. \"We use ploughs that automatically\nrise when they come to a stump, and take the earth again on the other\nside.\" I cannot but conjecture that Mr. Wells's thinking apparatus is\nfitted with some such automatic appliance for soaring gaily over the\nsnags that stud the ploughlands of theology.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nNEW MYTHS FOR OLD\n\n\nBefore examining the particular attributes and activities of the\nInvisible King, let us look a little more closely into the question\nwhether a God detached alike from man below and (so to speak) from\nheaven above, is a thinkable God in whom any satisfaction can be\nfound. Mr. Wells must not reply (he probably would not think of doing\nso) that \"satisfaction\" is no test: that he asserts an objective truth\nwhich exists, like the Nelson Column or the Atlantic Ocean, whether we\nfind satisfaction in it or not. Though he does not mention the word\n\"pragmatism,\" his standards are purely pragmatist. He offers no jot or\ntittle of evidence for the existence of the Invisible King, except\nthat it is a hypothesis which he finds to work extremely well.\nSatisfaction and nothing else is the test he applies. So we have every\nright to ask whether the renunciation of all concern about the Veiled\nBeing, and concentration upon the thought of a finite God, practically\nunrelated to the infinite, can bring us any reasonable sense of\nreconciliation to the nature of things. For that, I take it, is the\nessence of religion.\n\nIt was in no spirit of irony that I began this essay by expressing the\nlively interest with which I learned that Mr. Wells was setting out on\nthe quest for God. The dogmatic agnosticism which declares it\nimpossible ever to know anything about the whence, how and why of the\nuniverse does not seem to me more rational than any other dogma which\njumps from \"not yet\" to \"never.\" Mr. Wells himself disclaims that\ndogma. He says: \"It may be that minds will presently appear among us\nof such a quality that the face of that Unknown will not be altogether\nhidden\" (p. 108). And in another place (p. 15) he suggests that \"our\nGod, the Captain of Mankind,\" may one day enable us to \"pierce the\nblack wrappings,\" or, in other words, to get behind the veil. There is\nnothing, then, unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable\ninquisitiveness as to God, in the non-Wellsian sense of the term. God\nsimply means the key to the mystery of existence; and though the keys\nhitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round\nwithout unlocking anything, it does not follow that no real key exists\nwithin the reach of human investigation or speculation. Therefore one\nnaturally feels a little stirring of hope at the news that a fresh and\nkeen intellect, untrammelled by the folk-lore theologies of the past,\nis applying itself to the problem. It is always possible, however\nimprobable, that we may be helped a little forwarder on the path\ntowards realization. One comes back to the before-mentioned analogy of\nflying. We had been assured over and over again, on the highest\nauthority, that it was an idle dream. When we wanted to express the\nsuperlative degree of the impossible, we said \"I can no more do it\nthan I can fly.\" But the irrepressible spirit of man was not to be\ndaunted by _a priori_ demonstrations of impossibility. One day there\ncame the rumour that the thing had been achieved, followed soon by\nocular demonstration; and now we rub shoulders every day with men who\nhave outsoared the eagle, and--alas!--carried death and destruction\ninto the hitherto stainless empyrean.\n\nIt would seem, then, that there is no reason absolutely to despair of\nsome advance towards a conception of the nature and reason of the\nuniverse. And it is certain that Mr. Wells's God would stand a better\nchance of satisfying the innate needs of the human intelligence if he\nhad not (apparently) given up as a bad job the attempt to relate\nhimself to the causal plexus of the All. Is he outside that causal\nplexus, self-begotten, self-existent? Then he is the miracle of\nmiracles, a second mystery superimposed on the first. If, on the other\nhand, he falls within the system, he might surely manage to convey to\nhis disciples some glimmering notion of his place in it. The\nbirth-stories of Gods are always grotesque and unedifying, but that is\nbecause they belong to folk-lore. If this God does not belong to\nfolk-lore, surely his relation to the Veiled Being might be indicated\nwithout impropriety. Mr. Wells, as we have seen, hints that his\nreticence may be due to the fact that he does not know. In that case\nthis \"modern\" God is suspiciously like all the ancient Gods, whose\nmost unfortunate characteristic was that they never knew anything more\nthan their worshippers. The reason was not far to seek--namely, that\nthey were mere projections of the minds of these worshippers,\nfashioned in their own image. But Mr. Wells assures us that this is\nnot the case of the Invisible King.\n\nMr. Wells will scarcely deny that if it were possible to compress his\nmythology and merge his Invisible King in his Veiled Being, the result\nwould be a great simplification of the problem. But this is not, in\nfact, possible; for it would mean the positing of an all-good and\nall-powerful Creator, which is precisely the idea which Mr. Wells\nrebels against,[1] in common with every one who realizes the facts of\nlife and the meaning of words. Short of this, however, is no other\nsimplification possible? Would it not greatly clarify our thought if\nwe could bring the Invisible King into action, not, indeed, as the\ncreator of all things, but as the organizer and director of the\nsurprising and almost incredible epiphenomenon which we call life? Our\nscheme would then take this shape: an inconceivable unity behind the\nveil, somehow manifesting itself, where it comes within our ken, in\nthe dual form of a great Artificer and a mass of terribly recalcitrant\nmatter--the only medium in which he can work. In other words, the\nVeiled Being would be as inscrutable as ever, but the Invisible King,\ninstead of dropping in with a certain air of futility, like a doctor\narriving too late at the scene of a railway accident, would be placed\nat the beginning, not of the universe at large, but of the atomic\nre-arrangements from which consciousness has sprung. Can we, on this\nhypothesis (which is practically that of Manichaeanism) hazard any\nguess at the motives or forces actuating the Invisible King,--or, to\navoid confusion, let us say the Artificer--which should acquit him of\nthe charge of being a callous and mischievous demon rather than a\nwell-willing God? Can we not only place pain and evil (a tautology) to\nthe account of sluggish, refractory matter, but also conjecture a\nsufficient reason why the Artificer should have started the painful\nevolution of consciousness, instead of leaving the atoms to whirl\ninsentiently in the figures imposed on them by the stupendous\nmathematician behind the veil?\n\n    [1] In _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_, which is in some sense\n    a prologue to _God the Invisible King_, we find an emphatic\n    renunciation of the all-good and all-powerful God. \"The\n    theologians,\" says Mr. Britling, \"have been extravagant about\n    God. They have had silly, absolute ideas--that he is all\n    powerful. That he's omni-everything.... Why! if I thought\n    there was an omnipotent God who looked down on battles and\n    deaths and all the waste and horror of this war--able to\n    prevent these things--doing them to amuse himself--I would\n    spit in his empty face\" (p. 406).\n\nA complete answer to this question would be a complete solution of the\nriddle of existence. That, if it be ever attainable, is certainly far\nenough off. But there are some considerations, not always sufficiently\npresent to our minds, which may perhaps help us, not to a solution,\nbut to a rational restatement, of the riddle.\n\nIt is possible to suppose, in the first place, that the Artificer,\nthough entirely well-meaning, was not a free agent. We can construct a\nmyth in which an Elder Power should announce to a Younger Power his\nintention of setting a number of sentient puppets dancing for his\namusement, and regaling himself with the spectacle of their antics, in\nutter heedlessness of the agonies they must endure, which would,\nindeed, lend an additional savor to the diversion. This Elder Power,\nwith the \"sportsman's\" preference for pigeons as against clay balls,\nwould be something like the God of Mr. Thomas Hardy. Then we can\nimagine the Younger Power, after a vain protest demanding, as it were,\nthe vice-royalty of the new kingdom, in order that he might shape its\npolity to high and noble ends, educe from tragic imperfection some\napproach to perfection, and, in short, make the best of a bad\nbusiness. We should thus have (let us say) Marcus Aurelius claiming a\nproconsulate under Nero, and, with very limited powers, gradually\nsubstituting order and humanity for oppression and rapine. This\nfairy-tale is not unlike Mr. Wells's; but I submit that it has the\nadvantage of placing the Invisible King, or his equivalent, in a\nconceivable relation to the whole mundane process.\n\nNow let us proceed to the alternative hypothesis. Let us suppose that\nthe Artificer was a free agent, and that he voluntarily, and in full\nview of the consequences, engineered the conjunction of atoms from\nwhich consciousness arose. He could have let it alone, he could have\nsuffered life to remain an abortive, slumbering potentiality, like the\nfire in a piece of flint; yet he deliberately clashed the flint and\nsteel and kindled the torch which was to be handed on, not only from\ngeneration to generation, but from species to species, through all the\nstages of a toilsome, slaughterous, immeasurable ascent. If we accept\nthis hypothesis, can we acquit the Artificer of wanton cruelty? Can we\nview his action with approval, even with gratitude? Or must we, like\nMr. Wells, if we wish to find an outlet for religious emotion,\npostulate another, subsequent, intermeddling Power--like, say, an\nAmerican consul at the scene of the Turkish massacre--wholly guiltless\nof the disaster of life, and doing his little best to mitigate and\nremedy it?\n\nIn the present state of our knowledge, it is certainly very difficult\nto see how the kindler of the _vitai lampada_, supposing him to have\nbeen responsible for his actions, can claim from a jury of human\nbeings a verdict of absolute acquittal. But we can, even now, see\ncertain extenuating circumstances, which evidence not yet available\nmay one day so powerfully reinforce as to enable him to leave the\nCourt without a stain on his character.\n\nFor one thing, we are too much impressed and oppressed by the ideas of\nmagnitude and multitude. Since we have realized the unspeakable\ninsignificance of the earth in relation to the unimaginable vastness\nof star-sown space, we have come to feel such a disproportion between\nthe mechanism of life and its upshot, as known in our own experience,\nthat we have a vague sense of maleficence, or at any rate of brutal\ncarelessness, in the responsible Power, whoever that may be. \"What is\nit all,\" we say, \"but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million\nmillion of suns?\" We feel like insects whom the foot of a heedless\ngiant may at any moment crush. We dream of the swish of a comet's tail\nwiping out organic life on the planet, and we see, as a matter of\nfact, great natural convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or\nthe eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities just as an\nelephant might treat an ant-hill. It is this sense of the immeasurable\ndisproportion in things that a pessimist poet has expressed in the\nwell-known sonnet:--\n\n  Know you, my friend, the sudden ecstasy\n    Of thought that time and space annihilates,\n    Creation in a moment uncreates,\n  And whirls the mind, from secular habit free,\n  Beyond the spheres, beyond infinity,\n    Beyond the empery of the eternal Fates,\n    To where the Inconceivable ruminates,\n  The unthinkable \"To be or not to be?\"\n  Then, as Existence flickers into sight,\n    A marsh-flame in the night of Nothingness--\n  The great, soft, restful, dreamless, fathomless night--\n  We know the Affirmative the primal curse,\n    And loathe, with all its imbecile strain and stress,\n  This ostentatious, vulgar Universe.\n\nThe mood here recorded is one that must be familiar to most thinking\npeople. \"The undevout astronomer is mad,\" said eighteenth-century\ndeism: to-day we are more apt to think that the uncritical astronomer\nis dense. There is a sort of colossal stupidity about the stars in\ntheir courses that overpowers and disquiets us. If (as Alfred Russel\nWallace has argued) the geocentric theory was not so far out after\nall, and the earth, holding a specially favored place in the universe,\nis the only home of life, then the disproportion of mechanism to\nresult seems absolutely appalling. If, on the other hand, all the\nmillion million of suns are pouring out vital heat to a like number\nof inhabited planetary systems, the sheer quantity of life, of\nstruggle, of suffering implied, seems a thought at which to shudder.\nWe are inclined to say to the inventor of sentience: \"Since this\ningenious combination of yours was at best such a questionable boon,\nsurely you might have been content with one experiment.\"\n\nBut all such criticism rests upon a fallacy, or rather a brace of\ninterrelated fallacies. There can be no disproportion between\nconsciousness and the unconscious, because they are absolutely\nincommensurable; and number, in relation to consciousness, is an\nillusion. Consciousness, wherever it exists, is single, indivisible,\ninextensible; and other consciousnesses, and the whole external\nuniverse, are, to the individual percipient, but shapes in a more or\nless protracted dream.\n\nWhy should we trouble about vastness--mere extension in space? There\nis a sense in which the infinitesimally small is more marvellous, more\ndisquieting, than the infinitely great. The ant, the flea, nay, the\nphagocyte in our blood, is really a more startling phenomenon than all\nthe mechanics and chemistry of the heavens. In worrying about the\nbigness and the littleness of things, we are making the human body\nour standard--the body whose dimensions are no doubt determined by\nconvenience in relation to terrestrial conditions, but have otherwise\nno sort of sanctity or superiority, rightness or fitness. It happens\nto be the object to which is attached the highest form of\nconsciousness we know; but consciousness itself has neither parts nor\nmagnitude. And consciousness itself is essentially greater than the\nvery vastness which appals us, seeing that it embraces and envelops\nit. Enormous depths of space are pictured in my brain, through my\noptic nerve; and what eludes the magic mirror of my retina, my mind\ncan conceive, apprehend, make its own. It is not even true to say that\nthe mind cannot conceive infinity--the real truth (if I may for once\nbe Chestertonian), the real truth is that it can conceive nothing\nelse. \"When Berkeley said there was no matter\"--it mattered greatly\nwhat he said. Nothing can be more certain than that, apart from\npercipience, there is no matter that matters. From the point of view\nof pantheism (the only logical theism) God, far from being a Veiled\nBeing, or an Invisible King, is precisely the mind which translates\nitself into the visible, sensible universe, and impresses itself, in\nthe form of a never-ending pageant, upon our cognate minds. It has\nbeen thought that human consciousness may have come into being because\nGod wanted an audience. He was tired of being a cinematograph-film\nunreeling before empty benches. Some people have even carried the\nspeculation further, and wondered whether the attachment of\npercipience to organized matter, as in the case of human beings, may\nnot be a necessary stage in the culture of a pure percipience, capable\nof furnishing the pageant of the universe with a permanent and\nappreciative audience. In that case the Scottish Catechism would be\njustified, which asks \"What is the chief end of man?\" and answers (as\nStevenson says) nobly if obscurely: \"To glorify God and to enjoy Him\nforever.\" But enough of these idle fantasies. What is certain is that\nwe can hold up our heads serenely among the immensities, knowing that\nwe are immenser than they. Even if they were malevolent--and that they\ndo not seem to be--they are no more terrible than the familiar dangers\nof our homely earth. They cannot hurt us more than we can be hurt--an\nobvious truism but one which is often overlooked. And this brings us\nto the consideration of the second fallacy which sometimes warps our\njudgment as to the responsibility of the Power which invented life.\n\nWe are all apt to speak and think as though sentience were an article\ncapable of accumulation, like money or merchandise, in enormous\naggregates--as though pleasure, and more particularly pain, were\nsubject to the ordinary rules of arithmetic, so that minor quantities,\nadded together, might mount up to an indefinitely gigantic total.\nPoets and philosophers, time out of mind, have been heartbroken over\nthe enormous mass of evil in the world, and have spoken as though\nanimated nature were one great organism, with a brain in which every\npang that afflicted each one of its innumerable members was piled up\ninto a huge, pyramidal agony. But this is obviously not so. That very\n\"individuation\" which to some philosophies is the primal curse--the\ncondition by all means to be annulled and shaken off[2]--forbids the\nadding up of units of sentience. If \"individuation\" is the source of\nhuman misery (which seems a rather meaningless proposition) it is\nbeyond all doubt its boundary and limit. We are each of us his own\nuniverse. With each of us the universe is born afresh; with each of us\nit dies--assuming, that is to say, that consciousness is extinguished\nat death. There never has been and never can be in the world more\nsuffering than a single organism can sustain--which is another way of\nsaying that nothing can hurt us more than we can be hurt. Is this an\noptimistic statement? Far from it. The individual is capable of great\nextremities of suffering; and though not all men, or even most, are\nput to the utmost test in this respect, there are certainly cases not\na few in which a man may well curse the day he was born, and see in\nthe universe that was born with him nothing but an instrument of\ntorture. But such an one must speak for himself. It is evident that,\ntake them all round, men accept life as no such evil gift. It cannot\neven be said that, in handing it on to others, they are driven by a\nfatal instinct which they know in their hearts to be cruel, and would\nresist if they could. The vast majority have been, and still are,\nentirely light-hearted about the matter, thus giving the best possible\nproof that they cherish no grudge against the source of being, but\nfind it, on the balance, acceptable enough. If it be said that this is\ndue to stupidity, then stupidity is one of the factors in the case\nwhich the great Artificer must be supposed to have foreseen and\nreckoned upon. All these considerations must be taken into account\nwhen we try to sum up the responsibility of an organizer and director\nof life, acting of his own free will, although he knew that the\nconditions under which he had to work would make the achievement of\nany satisfactory result a slow, laborious and painful business.\n\n    [2] Mr. Wells himself is not far from this view. See _God the\n    Invisible King_, pp. 73, 76, and this book, pp. 39-40.\n\n\"But sympathy!\" it may be said--\"You have left sympathy out of the\nreckoning. Unless we are not only 'individuals' but iron-clad\negotists, we suffer with others more keenly, sometimes, than in our\nown persons.\" Sympathy, no doubt, is, like the summer sun and the\nfrost of winter, a fact of common experience causing us alternate joy\nand pain; but it means no sort of breach in the wall of\n\"individuation.\" Our nearest and dearest are simply factors in our\nenvironment, most influential factors, but as external to us as the\ntrees or the stars. We cannot, in any real sense, draw away their\npains and add them to our own, any more than they, in their turn, can\nrelieve us of our toothache or our sciatica. They are the points,\ndoubtless, at which our environment touches us most closely, but\nneither incantation nor Act of Parliament, neither priest nor\nregistrar, can make even man and wife really \"one flesh.\" It was\nnecessary for the conservation of the species that a strict limit\nshould be set to the operation of sympathy. Had that emotion been\nable to pierce the shell of individuality, so that one being could\nactually add the sufferings of another, or of many others, to his own,\nlife would long ago have come to an end. As it is, sympathy implies an\nimaginative extension of individuality, which is of enormous social\nvalue. But we remain, none the less, isolated each in his own\nuniverse, and our fellow-men and women are but shapes in the panorama,\nthe strange, fantastic dream, which the Veiled Showman unrolls before\nus.\n\nIn these post-Darwinian days, moreover, we are inclined to give way to\ncertain morbid and sentimental exaggerations of sympathy, which do\nsome injustice to the great Artificer whom we are for the moment\nassuming to be responsible for sentient life. Many of us are much\nconcerned about \"nature, red in tooth and claw.\" It is a sort of\nnightmare to us to think of the tremendous fecundity of swamp and\njungle, warren and pond, and of the ruthless struggle for existence\nwhich has made earth, air, and sea one mighty battle-ground. In this\nwe are again letting the fallacy of number take hold of us. There can\nbe no aggregate of suffering among lower, any more than among higher,\norganisms; and the amount of pain which individual animals have to\nendure--even animals of those species which we can suppose to possess\na certain keenness of sensibility--is probably, in the vast majority\nof cases, very trifling. Half the anguish of humanity proceeds from\nthe power of looking before and after. The animal, though he may\nsuffer from fear of imminent, visible danger, cannot know the torture\nof long-drawn apprehension. For most of his life he is probably aware\nof a vague well-being; then of a longer or shorter--often a very\nshort--spell of vague ill-being; and so, the end. Nor is it possible\nto doubt that the experience of some animals includes a great deal of\npositive rapture. If the lark be not really the soul of joy, he is the\ngreatest hypocrite under the sun. Many insects seem to be pin-points\nof vibrant vitality which we can scarcely believe to be unaccompanied\nby pleasurable sensation. The mosquito which I squash on the back of\nmy hand, and which dies in a bath of my own blood, has had a short\nlife but doubtless a merry one. The moths which, in a tropic night,\nlie in calcined heaps around the lamp, have probably perished in\npursuit of some ecstatic illusion. It does not seem, on the whole,\nthat we need expend much pity on the brute creation, or make its\ndestinies a reproach to the great Artificer. Which is not to say, of\ncourse, that we ought not to detest and try with all our might to\nabolish the cruelties of labor, commerce, sport and war.\n\nAgain, as to the great calamities--the earthquakes, shipwrecks,\nrailway accidents, even the wars--which are often made a leading count\nin the arraignment of the Author of Sentience, we must not let\nourselves be deceived by the fallacy of number. Their spectacular,\ndramatic aspect naturally attracts attention; but the death-roll of a\ngreat shipwreck is in fact scarcely more terrible than the daily bills\nof mortality of a great city. It is true that a violent death,\novertaking a healthy man, is apt to involve moments, perhaps hours, of\nacute distress which he might have escaped had he died of gradual\ndecay or of ordinary well-tended disease; and a very short space of\nthe agony sometimes attendant upon (say) a railway accident, probably\nrepresents itself to the sufferer as an eternity. But there is also\nanother side to the matter. Instantaneous death in a great catastrophe\nmust be reckoned as mere euthanasia; and even short of this, the\nattendant excitement has often the effect of an anodyne. In the\nupshot, no doubt, such occurrences are rightly called disasters, since\ntheir tendency is to cause needlessly painful death, under\ncircumstances, which in the main, enhance its terrors; but the\nsufferings of the victims cannot be added together because they occur\nwithin a limited area, any more than if they had been spread over an\nindefinite tract of space. As for war, it increases the liability of\nevery individual who comes within its wide-flung net to intense bodily\nand mental suffering, and to premature and painful death. Moreover, it\ndestroys social values which _can_ be added up. In this respect it\nleaves the world face to face with an appalling deficit. But we must\nnot let it weigh upon us too heavily, or make it too great a reproach\nto the Artificer of human destiny. For the soldier, like every other\nsentient organism, is immured in his own universe, and his individual\ndebit-and-credit account with the Power which placed him there would\nbe no whit different if he were indeed the only real existence, and\nthe world around him were naught but a dance of shadows.\n\nIf there were a country of a hundred million people, in which every\ncitizen was born to an allowance of five pounds, which in all his life\nhe could not possibly increase, or invest in joint-stock enterprises,\nthough he might leave some of it unexpended--we should not, in spite\nof the L500,000,000 of its capital, call that a wealthy country. Its\neffective wealth would be precisely a five-pound note. Similarly,\ngiven a world in which every one is born with a limited capacity of\nsentience, inalienable, incommunicable, unique, we should do wrong to\ncall that world a multi-millionaire in misery, even if it could be\nproved that in each individual account the balance of sensation was on\nthe wrong side of the ledger. It is true that if, in one man's\naccount, the balance were largely to the bad, he would be entitled to\nreproach the Veiled Banker, even though five hundred or five thousand\nof his fellows declared themselves satisfied with the result of their\naudit. But if the Banker, in opening business, had good reason to\nthink that, in the long run, the contents would largely outvote the\nnon-contents, we could scarcely blame him for going ahead. And what\nif, for contents and malcontents alike, he had an uncovenanted bonus\nup his sleeve?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn this disquisition, with its shifting personifications, its\nArtificer, Author, Banker and the like, we may seem to have wandered\nfar away from Mr. Wells and his Invisible King; but I hope the reader\nhas not wholly lost the clue. Let us recapitulate. Starting from the\nidea that its total renunciation of metaphysics, its incuriousness as\nto causation, was a weakness in Mr. Wells's system, inasmuch as an\neager curiosity as to these matters is an inseparable part of our\nintellectual outfit, we set about enquiring whether it might not be\npossible to abandon the notions of omnipotence, omniscience and\nomni-benevolence, and yet to conceive a doctrine of origins into which\na well-willing God should enter, not, like the Invisible King, as a\nsort of remedial afterthought, but as a prime mover in this baffling\nbusiness of life. We put forward two hypotheses, each of which seemed\nmore thinkable, less in the air, so to speak, than Mr. Wells's scheme\nof things. We imagined a wholly callous, unpitying Power, wantonly\nsetting up combinations in matter which it knew would work out in\ncruelty and misery, and another co-ordinate though not quite equal\nPower interfering from the first to introduce into the combinations of\nthe Elder Deity a slow but sure bias towards the good. Then we\nproposed an alternative hypothesis, logically simpler, though more\ndifficult from the moral point of view. We conceived at the source of\norganic life an intelligent and well-willing Power constrained, by\nsome necessity \"behind the veil,\" to carry out his purposes through\nthe sluggish, refractory, hampering medium of matter. Supposing this\nPower free to act or to refrain from acting, we asked whether he could\ntake the affirmative course--choose the \"Everlasting Yea\" as Carlyle\nwould phrase it--without forfeiting our esteem and disqualifying for\nthe post of Invisible King in the Wellsian sense of the term. In a\ntentative way, not exempt, perhaps, from a touch of special pleading,\nwe advanced certain considerations which seemed to suggest that his\ndecision to kindle the torch of life might, after all, be justified.\nOur provisional conclusion was that though, as at present advised, we\nmight not quite see our way to hail him as a beneficent Invisible\nKing, yet we need not go to the opposite extreme of writing him down a\nmere Ogre God, indifferent to the vast and purposeless process of\ngroaning and travail, begetting and devouring, which he had wantonly\ninitiated. That is the point at which we have now arrived.\n\nI hope it need not be said I do not attribute any substantive value to\nthe hypothetical myths here put forward and discussed--that I do not\naccept either of them, or propose that anyone else should accept it,\nas a probable adumbration of what actually occurred \"in the\nbeginning\"--a first chapter in a new Book of Genesis. My purpose was\nsimply, since myth-making was the order of the day, to hint a\ncriticism of Mr. Wells's myth, by placing beside it one or two other\nfantasies, perhaps as plausible as his, which had the advantage of not\nentirely eluding the question of origins. I submit, with great\nrespect, that my Artificer comes a little less out of the blue than\nhis Invisible King--that is all I claim for him.\n\nBut here Mr. Wells puts in a protest, not without indignation.\nMyth-making, he declares, is _not_ the order of the day. Had he wanted\nto indulge in myth-making, he could easily have found some\nmetaphysical affiliation for his Invisible King. What he has done is\nto record a profound spiritual experience, common to himself and many\nother good men and true, which has culminated in the recognition of an\nactual Power, objectively extant in the world, to which he has felt it\na sacred duty to bear witness. Very good; so be it; let us now look\nmore in detail into the gospel according to Wells.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE APOSTLE'S CREED\n\n\nA gospel it is, in all literalness; an evangel; a message of glad\ntidings. It is not merely _a_ truth, it is \"the Truth\" (p. 1). Let\nthere be no mistake about it: Mr. Wells's ambition is to rank with St.\nPaul and Mahomet, as the apostle of a new world-religion. He does not\nin so many words lay claim to inspiration, but it is almost inevitably\ndeducible from his premises. He is uttering the first clear and\ndefinite tidings of a God who is endowed with personality, character,\nwill and purpose. To that Deity he has submitted himself in\nenthusiastic devotion. If the God does not seize the opportunity to\nspeak through such a marvellously suitable, such an ideal, mouthpiece,\nthen practical common-sense cannot be one of his attributes. Which of\nthe other Gods who have announced themselves from time to time has\nfound such a megaphone to reverberate his voice? St. Paul was a poor\ntent-maker, whose sermons were not even reported in the religious\npress, while his letters probably counted their public by scores, or\nat most by hundreds. Mr. Wells, from the outset of his mission, has\nthe ear of two hemispheres.\n\nWhat, then, does he tell us of his God? The first characteristic which\ndifferentiates him from all the other Gods with a big G--for of course\nwe pay no heed to the departmental gods of polytheism--the first fact\nwe must grasp and hold fast to, is that he lays no claim to infinity.\n\"This new faith ... worships _a finite God_\" (p. 5; Mr. Wells's\nitalics). \"He has begun and he never will end\" (p. 18). \"He is within\ntime and not outside it\" (p. 7). Nothing can be more definite than\nthat. There was a time when God did not exist; and then somehow,\nsomewhen, he came into being.\n\nPerhaps to ask \"When?\" would be to trespass on the department of\norigins, from which we are explicitly warned off. It would be to\ntrench upon \"cosmogony.\" Yet we are not quite without guidance. \"The\nrenascent religion,\" we are told, \"has always been here; it has always\nbeen visible to those that had eyes to see\" (p. 1). \"Always,\" in this\ncontext, can only mean during the whole course of human history.\nTherefore God must have come into being some time between the issue\nof the creative fiat and the appearance of man on the planet. This is\na pretty wide margin, but it is something to go upon. He may have been\ncontemporary with the amoeba, or with the ichthyosaurus, or haply\nwith the earliest quadrumana. At the very latest (if \"always\" is\naccurate) he must have made his appearance exactly at the same time as\nman; and if I were to give my opinion, I should say that was extremely\nprobable. At all events, even if he preceded man by a few thousand or\nmillion years, we are compelled to assume that he came in preparation\nfor the advent of the human species, determined to be on hand when\nwanted. For we do not gather that the lower animals stand in need of\nhis services, or are capable of benefiting by them. One might be\ntempted to conceive him as guiding the course of evolution and\nhastening its laggard process; but (as we shall see) he scorns the\nrole of Providence, and resolutely abstains from any intromission in\norganic or meteorological concerns. It would be pleasant to think that\nhe had something to do with (for instance) the retreat of the ice-cap\nin the northern hemisphere; but we are not encouraged to indulge in\nany such speculation. It would appear that the activity of God is\npurely psychical and moral--that he has no interest in biology, except\nas it influences, and is influenced by, sociology. In short, from all\nthat one can make out, this God is strictly correlative to Man; and\nthat is a significant fact which we shall do well to bear in mind.\n\nAs we have already seen, the Infinite (or Veiled) Being is not God (p.\n13); nor is God the Life Force, the \"impulse thrusting through matter\nand clothing itself in continually changing material forms ... the\nWill to Be\" (pp. 15-16). As we have also seen, Mr. Wells refuses to\ndefine the relation of his God, this \"spirit,\" this \"single spirit and\nsingle person,\" to either of these inscrutable entities. \"God,\" he\nsays, \"comes to us neither out of the stars nor out of the pride of\nlife, but as a still small voice within\" (p. 18). It is by \"faith\"\nthat we \"find\" him (p. 13); but Mr. Wells \"doubts if faith can be\ncomplete and enduring if it is not secured by the definite knowledge\nof the true God\" (p. 135). What, then, is \"faith\" in this context? It\nwould be too much to say, with the legendary schoolboy, that it is\n\"believing what you know isn't true.\" The implication seems rather to\nbe that if you begin by believing on inadequate grounds, you will\npresently attain to belief on adequate grounds, or, in other words,\nknowledge. Thus, when you go to a spiritual seance in a sceptical\nframe of mind, the chill of your aura frightens the spirits away, and\nyou obtain no manifestations; but if you go in a mood of faith, which\npractically means confident expectation, the phenomena follow, and you\ndepart a convert. I use this illustration in no scoffing spirit. The\npresupposition is not irrational. It amounts, in effect, to saying\nthat you must go some way to meet God before God can or will come to\nyou. This seems a curious coyness; but as God is finite and\nconditioned, a bit of a character (\"a strongly marked and knowable\npersonality,\" p. 5), there is nothing contradictory in it. Even when\nwe read that \"the true God goes through the world like fifes and drums\nand flags, calling for recruits along the street\" (p. 40), we must not\nseize upon the letter of a similitude, and talk about inconsistency.\nYou must go out to meet even the Salvation Army. It offers you\nsalvation in vain if you obstinately bolt your door, and insist that\nan Englishman's house is his castle.\n\nThe finding of this God is very like what revivalists call\n\"conversion\" (p. 21). You are oppressed by \"the futility of the\nindividual life\"; you fall into \"a state of helpless self-disgust\"\n(p. 21); you are, in short, in the condition described by Hamlet when\nhe says: \"It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly\nframe the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent\ncanopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this\nmajestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other\nthing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.\" The\ncondition may result, as in Hamlet's case, from an untoward\nconjunction of outward circumstances; or it may be of physiological\n(liverish) origin. The methods of treatment are many--some of them\n(such as the administration of alcohol in large doses) disastrously\nunwise. In some states of society and periods of history, religion is\nthe popular specific; and there have been, and are, forms of religion\nto which alcohol would be preferable. Fortunately, one can say without\na shadow of hesitancy that \"the modern religion\" lies under no such\nsuspicion. As dispensed by Mr. Wells, it is entirely wholesome. If it\nis found to cheer, it will certainly not inebriate. Indeed, the doubt\none feels as to its popular success lies in the very fact that it\ncontains but an innocuous proportion of alcohol.\n\nYou find yourself, then, in the distressful case described by Hamlet\nand Mr. Wells. \"Man delights you not, no, nor woman neither.\" You\ncannot muster up energy even to kill King Claudius. You go about\ngloomily soliloquizing on suicide and kindred topics. Then, \"in some\nway the idea of God comes into the distressed mind\" (p. 21). It\ndevelops through various stages, outlined by Mr. Wells in the passage\ncited. In the modern man, it would seem, one great difficulty lies in\n\"a curious resistance to the suggestion that God is truly a person\"\n(p. 22). It is here, no doubt, that faith comes in; at all events, you\nultimately get over this stumbling-block. \"Then suddenly, in a little\nwhile, in his own time, God comes. The cardinal experience is an\nundoubting immediate sense of God. It is the attainment of an absolute\ncertainty that one is not alone in oneself\" (p. 23). You have come, in\nfact, to the gate of Damascus. You have found salvation.\n\nYes, salvation!--there is no other word for it. Mr. Wells does not\nhesitate to use both that word and its correlative, damnation. From\nwhat, then, are you saved? Why, from quite a number of things. You are\nsaved \"from the purposelessness of life\" (p. 18). God's immortality\nhas \"taken the sting from death\" (p. 22). You have escaped \"from the\npainful accidents and chagrins of individuation\" (p. 73). \"Salvation\nis to lose oneself\" (p. 73); it is \"a complete turning away from self\"\n(p. 84). \"Damnation is really over-individuation, and salvation is\nescape from self into the larger being of life\" (p. 76). In another\nplace we are told that salvation is \"escape from the individual\ndistress at disharmony and the individual defeat by death, into the\nKingdom of God, and damnation can be nothing more and nothing less\nthan the failure or inability or disinclination to make that escape\"\n(p. 148). On the next page we have another definition of damnation\n(borrowed, it would seem, from Mr. Clutton Brock), with which I hasten\nto express my cordial and enthusiastic agreement: \"_Satisfaction with\nexisting things is damnation._\" I have always thought that hell was\nthe headquarters of conservatism, and am delighted to find such\ninfluential backing for that pious opinion.\n\nAs for sin, it seems to be a falling away from the state of grace\nattained through conversion. You can and do sin while you are still\nunconverted; for we are told that \"repentance is the beginning and\nessential of the religious life\" (p. 165). Probably (though this is\nnot clear) your unregenerate condition is in itself sinful,\n\"individuation\" being not very different from the Original Sin of the\ntheologians. But it is sin after regeneration that really matters.\n\"Salvation leaves us still disharmonious, and adds not one inch to our\nspiritual and moral nature\" (p. 146). \"It is the amazing and\ndistressful discovery of every believer so soon as the first\nexaltation of belief is past, that one does not remain always in touch\nwith God\" (p. 149). One backslides. One reverts to one's unregenerate\ntype. The old Adam makes disquieting resurgences in the swept and\ngarnished mansion from which he seemed to have been for ever cast out.\n\"This is the personal problem of Sin. _Here prayer avails; here God\ncan help us_\" (p. 150). And what is still more consoling, \"though you\nsin seventy times seven times, God will still forgive the poor rest of\nyou.... There is no sin, no state that, being regretted and repented\nof, can stand between God and man\" (p. 156).\n\nWe shall have to consider later what useful purpose (if any) is served\nby this free-and-easy use of the dialect of revivalism. In the\nmeantime, one would be sorry to seem to write without respect of the\ndepth of conviction which Mr. Wells throws into his account of the\nsupreme spiritual experience of finding God. \"Thereafter,\" he says,\n\"one goes about the world like one who was lonely and has found a\nlover, like one who was perplexed and has found a solution\" (pp.\n23-24). God is a \"huge friendliness, a great brother and leader of our\nlittle beings\" (p. 24). \"He is a stimulant; he makes us live\nimmortally and more abundantly. I have compared him to the sensation\nof a dear strong friend who comes and stands quietly beside one,\nshoulder to shoulder\" (p. 39). It certainly takes some courage for a\nmodern Englishman, not by profession a licensed dealer in spiritual\nsentimentality, to write like this.\n\nAnd now comes the question, What does God do? What does he aim at? And\nhow does he effect his purposes? The answer seems to be that, in a\nliteral, tangible sense, he does nothing. He operates solely in and\nthrough the mind of man; and even through the mind of man he does not\ninfluence external events. This, it may be said, is impossible, since\nall those external events which we call human conduct flow from the\nmind of man. Perhaps it would be correct to say (for here Mr. Wells\ngives us no explicit guidance) that external events are only a\nby-product of the influence of God: that, having begotten a certain\nspiritual state which he feels to be generally desirable, he takes no\nresponsibility for the particular consequences that are likely to flow\nfrom it. So, at least, one can best interpret Mr. Wells's repeated\ndisclaimer of the idea that \"God is Magic or God is Providence\" (p.\n27), that \"all the time, incalculably, he is pulling about the order\nof events for our personal advantages\" (p. 35-6). Commenting on Mr.\nEdwyn Bevan's phrase for God, \"the Friend behind phenomena,\" Mr. Wells\ninsists that the expression \"carries with it no obligation whatever to\nbelieve that this Friend is in control of the phenomena\" (p. 87).\nPerhaps not; but it is a question for after consideration whether\nlucidity is promoted by giving the name God to a Power which has no\npower--which does not seem even to make directly purposive use of the\ninfluence which it possesses over the minds of believers. Once, in a\ncoasting steamer on the Pacific, I nearly died of sea-sickness. A\nfriend was with me, the soul of kindness, such a lovable old man that\nI write this down partly for the pleasure of recalling him. He used to\ncome to my cabin every hour or so, shake his head mournfully, and go\naway again. I felt his good will and was grateful for it; but it would\nbe affectation to pretend that I would not have been still more\ngrateful had he possessed some \"control of phenomena\"--had he brought\nwith him a remedy. Since those days, more than one efficacious\npreventive of sea-sickness has been discovered; and I own to counting\nthe nameless chemists who have achieved this marvel among the most\nauthentic friends to poor humanity of whom we have any knowledge.\nWhere is the God (as Mr. Zangwill has pertinently enquired) who will\ngive us a cure for cancer?\n\nThis, however, is a digression, or at any rate an anticipation. What\nthe Invisible King actually does, without meddling with phenomena, is\nto assume the \"captaincy\" of the \"racial adventure\" in which we are\nengaged (p. 76). \"God must love his followers as a great captain loves\nhis men ... whose faith alone makes him possible. It is an austere\nlove. The Spirit of God will not hesitate to send us to torment and\nbodily death\" (p. 67). And what is this \"racial adventure\"? It is, in\nthe first place, the achievement of Mr. Wells's political ideals--an\nobject which has all my sympathy, since they happen to be, generally\nspeaking, my own. \"As a knight in God's service,\" says Mr. Wells, \"I\ntake sides against injustice, disorder, and against all those\ntemporal kings, emperors, princes, landlords, and owners, who set\nthemselves up against God's rule and worship\" (p. 97). By all means!\nOnly one does not see how, if the kings, emperors and landlords\ndeclare that they, too, have found God, and found him on the side of\nmonarchy and landlordism, this contention of theirs is to be confuted.\nIf God does not control phenomena, the actual controllers of events\nwill be able to maintain in the future, as in the past, that he is on\nthe side of the big battalions--an argument which it will be hard to\nmeet, except by raising bigger battalions. In the meantime we have to\nnote that God's political opinions are only provisional, and that he\nhimself is open to conviction. \"The first purpose of God is the\nattainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means to more\nknowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power\" (p. 98-9). And the\nobject to which he will apply this power is \"the conquest of death:\nfirst the overcoming of death in the individual by the incorporation\nof the motives of his life into an undying purpose, and then the\ndefeat of that death which seems to threaten our species upon a\ncooling planet beneath a cooling sun\" (p. 99). Ultimately, then, it\nwould seem that God does intend to undertake the control of\nphenomena. Dealing with ice-caps is not so entirely outside his\nprovince as one had hastily assumed. The Invisible King is not, after\nall, a _roi faineant_. He will begin to do things as soon as he knows\nhow: any other course would be obviously rash. One would like to live\na few hundred thousand years, to see him come into overt action. Yet,\nin this far-reaching program, there seems to lurk a certain\ncontradiction, or at least an ambiguity. If, for the believer in God,\ndeath has, here and now, lost its sting--if \"we come staggering\nthrough into the golden light of his kingdom, to fight for his kingdom\nhenceforth, until, at last, we are altogether taken up into his being\"\n(p. 68)--one does not quite see the reason for this long campaign\nagainst death. Surely the logical consummation would be an ultimate\nracial euthanasia, an absorption of humanity into God, a vast\napotheosis-nirvana, after which the earth and sun could go on cooling\nat their leisure.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nApart from one or two irrepressible \"asides,\" I have attempted in this\nchapter to let Mr. Wells speak for himself, proclaim the faith that is\nin him, and draw the portrait of his God. Many details are of course\nomitted, for which the reader must turn to the original text. He will\nfind it a pleasant and profitable task. The remainder of my present\nundertaking falls into three parts. First I must ask the reader to\nconsider with me whether Mr. Wells's gospel can be accepted as a real\naddition to knowledge, like (say) the discovery of radium, or whether\nit is only a re-description in new language (or old language slightly\nrefurbished) of familiar facts of spiritual experience. In the second\nplace, assuming that we have to fall back on the latter alternative,\nwe shall enquire whether anything would be gained by the general\nacceptance of this new-old, highly emotionalized terminology. Thirdly,\nI shall venture to suggest that when Mr. Wells says \"The first purpose\nof God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means\nto more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power,\" he is only\nchoosing a mythological way of expressing the fact that if God (in the\nordinary, non-Wellsian sense of the word) is ever to be found, it must\nbe through patient investigation of the phenomena in which he clothes\nhimself.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nWHEN IS A GOD NOT A GOD?\n\n\nThough many of Mr. Wells's asseverations of the substantive reality of\nhis Invisible King have been quoted above, it would be easy to\nlengthen their array. There is nothing on which he is so insistent.\nFor example, \"God is no abstraction nor trick of words....[3] He is as\nreal as a bayonet thrust or an embrace\" (p. 56). And again, on the\nsame page: \"He feels us and knows us; he is helped and gladdened by\nus. He hopes and attempts.\" There is no limit to the anthropomorphism\nof the language which Mr. Wells currently employs. Or rather, there is\nonly one limit: he disclaims the notion that his God is actually\nexistent in space, that he has parts and dimensions, and inhabits a\nform in any way analogous to ours. He is the Invisible King, not\nmerely, like the Spanish Fleet, because he \"is not yet in sight,\" but\nbecause he has no material or \"astral\" integument. Being outside space\n(though inside time) he can be omnipresent (p. 61). But of course Mr.\nWells would not pretend that no deity can be called anthropomorphic\nwho is not actually conceived as incarnate in the visible figure of a\nman. An anthropomorphic God is one who reflects the mental\ncharacteristics of his worshippers; and that Mr. Wells's God does, if\never God did in this world.\n\n    [3] The words here omitted, \"no Infinite,\" are nothing to the\n    present purpose. Mr. Wells has started by making this\n    declaration, which we accept without difficulty. No one will\n    suspect the Invisible King of being an \"Infinite\" in\n    disguise.\n\nYet almost in the same breath in which he is claiming for his God the\nfullest independent reality--thinking of him \"as having moods and\naspects, as a man has, and a consistency we call his character\" (p.\n63)--he will use language implying that he is that very abstraction of\nthe better parts of human nature which has been proposed for worship\nin all the various \"religions of humanity,\" \"ethical churches,\" and so\nforth, for two or three generations past. Listen to this: \"Though he\ndoes not exist in matter or space, he exists in time, just as a\ncurrent of thought may do; he changes and becomes more even as a man's\nthought gathers itself together; somewhere in the dawning of mankind\nhe had a beginning, an awakening, and as mankind grows he grows....\n_He is the undying human memory, the increasing human will_\" (p. 61).\nWhen, in the last chapter, I discussed the date of the divinity's\nbirth, I had overlooked this text. Here we have it in black and white\nthat he did not precede mankind--that, of course, would have implied\nindependence--but began with the \"dawning\" of the race, and has grown\nwith its growth. Moreover, the analogy of a \"current of thought\" is\nexpressly suggested--reinforcing the suspicion which has all along\nhaunted us that the God of Mr. Wells is nothing else than what is\nknown to less mythopoeic thinkers as a \"stream of tendency.\" But Mr.\nWells will by no means have it so. Indeed he evidently regards this as\nthe most annoying, and perhaps damnable, of heresies. On the very next\npage he proceeds to rule out the suggestion that \"God is the\ncollective mind and purpose of the human race.\" \"You may declare,\" he\nsays, \"that this is no God, but merely the sum of mankind. But those\nwho believe in the new ideas very steadfastly deny that. God is, they\nsay, not an aggregate but a synthesis.\" And he goes on to suggest\nvarious analogies: a temple is more than a gathering of stones, a\nregiment more than an accumulation of men: we do not love the soil of\nour back garden, or the chalk of Kent, or the limestone of Yorkshire;\nyet we love England, which is made up of these things. So God is more\nthan the sum or essence of the nobler impulses of the race: he is a\nspirit, a person, a friend, a great brother, a captain, a king: he \"is\nlove and goodness\" (p 80); and without him the Service of Man is \"no\nbetter than a hobby, a sentimentality or a hypocrisy\" (p. 95).\n\nLet us reflect a little upon these analogies, and see whether they\nrest on any solid basis. Why is a temple more than a heap of stones?\nBecause human intelligence and skill have entered into the stones and\norganized them to serve a given purpose or set of purposes: to delight\nthe eye, to elevate the mind, to express certain ideas, to afford\nshelter for worshippers against wind, rain and sun. Why is a regiment\nmore than a mob? Again because it has been deliberately and\nelaborately organized to fulfil certain functions. Why is England more\nthan the mere rocks of which it is composed? Because these materials\nhave been grouped, partly by nature, but very largely by the labor of\nuntold generations of our fathers, into forms which give pleasure to\nthe eye and appeal to our most intimate and cherished associations.\nBesides, when we speak of \"England,\" we do not think only or mainly\nof its physical aspects. We think of it as a great community, with an\nancient, and in some ways admirable, tradition of political life, with\na splendid record of achievement in both material and spiritual\nthings, with a great past, and (we hope) a greater future. In all\nthese cases the parts have been fused into a whole by human effort,\neither consciously or instinctively applied; and it is in virtue of\nthis effort alone that the whole transcends its parts. But in the case\nof a God \"synthetized\" out of the thought and feeling of untold\ngenerations of men, the analogy breaks down at every point. To assume\nthat portions of psychic experience are capable of vital coalescence,\nis to beg the whole question. We know that stone can be piled on\nstone, that men can be trained to form a platoon, a cohort, a phalanx;\nbut that detached fragments of mind are capable of any sort of\ncohesion and organization we do not know at all. And, even if this\npoint could be granted, where is the organizing power? We should have\nto postulate another God to serve as the architect or the\ndrill-sergeant of our synthetic divinity. Nor would it help matters to\nsuggest that the God (as it were) crystallized himself; for that is to\nassume structural potentialities in his component parts which must\nhave come from somewhere, so that again we have to presuppose another\nGod. It is true, no doubt, that portions of thought and feeling can be\ncollected, arranged, edited, in some sense organized, by human effort;\nbut the result is an encyclopaedia, a thesaurus, an anthology, a\nliturgy, a bible--not a God. It may, like the Vedas, the Hebrew\nScriptures and the Koran, become an object of idolatry; but even its\nidolaters see in it only an emanation from God, not the God himself.\nAll this argument may strike the reader as extremely nebulous, but I\nsubmit that the fault is not mine. It was not I who sought to\ndemonstrate the reality of a figure of speech by placing it on all\nfours with a cathedral and a regiment. The whole contention is so\nbaffling that reason staggers and flounders as in a quicksand. It\nrests upon a mixture of categories, as palpable and yet as elusive as\nanything in _The Hunting of the Snark_.\n\nIf you tell me that Public Opinion is a God, I am quite willing to\nconsider whether the metaphor is a luminous and helpful one. But if\nyou protest that it is no metaphor at all, but a literal statement of\nfact, like the statement that Mr. Woodrow Wilson is President of the\nUnited States, I no longer know where we are. Mr. Wells's \"undying\nhuman memory and increasing human will\" cannot exactly be identified\nwith Public Opinion, but it belongs to the same order of ideas. Here\nthere is an actual workable analogy. But there is no practicable\nanalogy between a purely mental concept and a physical construction.\nYou will not help me to believe in (say) the doctrine of Original Sin,\nby assuring me that it is built, like the Tower Bridge, on the\ncantilever principle.\n\nIt is quite certain that, if passionate conviction and the free use of\nanthropomorphic language can make a figure of speech a God, the\nInvisible King is an individual entity, as detached from Mr. Wells as\nMichelangelo's Moses from Michelangelo. Paradoxically enough, he has\nput on \"individuation\" that his worshippers may escape from it. Mr.\nWells's book teems with expressions--I have given many examples of\nthem--which are wholly inapplicable to any metaphor, however\ngalvanized into a semblance of life by ecstatic contemplation in the\ndevotional mind. For example, when we are told that it is doubtful\nwhether \"God knows all, or much more than we do, about the ultimate\nBeing,\" the mere assertion of a doubt implies the possibility of\nknowledge of a quite different order from any that exists in the human\nintelligence. Mr. Wells explicitly assures us that knowledge of the\nVeiled Being is (for the present at any rate) inaccessible to our\nfaculties; but he implies that such knowledge _may_ be possessed by\nthe Invisible King; and as knowledge cannot possibly be a synthesis of\nignorances, it follows that the Invisible King has powers of\napprehension quite different from, and independent of, any operation\nof the human brain. These powers may not, as a matter of fact, have\nsolved the enigma of existence; but it is clearly implied that they\nmight conceivably do so; and indeed the text positively asserts that\nGod knows _something_ more of the Veiled Being than we do, though\nperhaps not \"much.\" In view of this passage, and many others of a like\nnature, we cannot fall back on the theory that Mr. Wells is merely\ntrying, by dint of highly imaginative writing, to infuse life into a\ndeliberate personification, like Robespierre's Goddess of Reason or\nMatthew Arnold's Zeitgeist. However difficult it may be, we must\naccustom ourselves to the belief that his assertions of the personal\nexistence of his God represent the efficient element in his thought,\nand that if other passages seem inconsistent with that idea--seem to\npoint to mere abstraction or allegorization of the mind of the\nrace--it is these passages, and not the more full-blooded\npronouncements, that must be cancelled as misleading or inadequate.\nThere can be no doubt that the God to whom Mr. Wells seeks to convert\nus is (in his apostle's conception) much more of a President Wilson\nthan of a Zeitgeist.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt would be possible, of course, for a God, however dubious and even\ninconceivable the method of his \"synthesis,\" to manifest himself in\nhis effects--to prove his existence by his actions. But this, as we\nhave seen, the Invisible King scorns to do. His adherents, we are\ntold, \"advance no proof whatever of the existence of God but their\nrealization of him\" (p. 98). There is a sort of implication that the\nDeity will not descend to vulgar miracle-working. \"An evil and\nadulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be\ngiven to it\"--not even \"the sign of Jonah the prophet.\"\n\nBut to ask for some sort of visible or plausibly conjecturable effect\nis not at all the same thing as to ask for miracles. Mr. Wells\nproclaims with all his might that the Invisible King works the most\nmarvellous and beneficent changes in the minds of his devotees; why,\nthen, do these changes produce no recognizable effect on the course of\nevents? The God who can work upon the human mind has the key to the\nsituation in his hands--why, then, does he make such scant use of it?\nIs God only a luxury for the intellectually wealthy? The champagne of\nthe spiritual life? A stimulant and anodyne highly appreciated in the\nbest circles, but inaccessible to the man of small spiritual means,\nwhether he be a dweller in palaces or in the slums?\n\nTo say that a given Power can and does potently affect the human mind,\nand yet cannot, or at least does not, produce any appreciable or\ndemonstrable effect on the external aspects of human life, is like\nasking us to believe that a man is a heaven-born conductor who can get\nnothing out of his orchestra but discords and cacophonies.\n\nMr. Wells may perhaps reply that his God _does_ recognizably influence\nthe course of events--indeed, that everything in history which we see\nto be good and desirable is the work of the Invisible King--but that\nhe does not advance this fact as a proof of God's existence, because\nit is discernible only to the eye of faith and cannot be brought home\nto unregenerate reason. I do not imagine that he will take this line,\nfor it would come dangerously near to identifying God with\nProvidence--a heresy which he abhors. But supposing some other adept\nin \"modern religion\" were to make this claim on behalf of the\nInvisible King, would it go any way towards persuading us that we owe\nhim our allegiance?\n\nThe assumption would be, as I understand it, that of a finite God,\nunable to modify the operations of matter, but with an unlimited, or\nat any rate a very great, power of influencing the workings of the\nhuman mind. He would have no control over meteorological conditions:\nhe could not \"ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm\"; he could\nnot subdue the earthquake or prevent the Greenland glacier from\n\"calving\" icebergs into the Atlantic. He could not release the human\nbody from the rhythms of growth and decay; he could not eradicate that\nroot of all evil, the association of consciousness with a mechanism\nrequiring to be constantly stoked with a particular sort of fuel which\nexists only in limited quantities. If God could arrange for life to be\nmaintained on a diet of inorganic substances--if he could enable\nanimals, like plants, to go direct to minerals and gases for their\nsustenance, instead of having it, so to speak, half-digested in the\nvegetable kingdom--or even if, under the present system, he could make\nfecundity, in any given species, automatically proportionate to the\nsupply of food--he would at one stroke refashion earthly life in an\nextremely desirable sense. But this we assume to be beyond his\ncompetence: the Veiled Being has autocratically imposed the struggle\nfor existence as an inexorable condition of the Invisible King's\nactivities, except in so far as it can be eluded by and through the\nhuman intelligence. His problem, then, will be to guide the minds of\nmen towards a realization that their higher destiny lies in using\ntheir intelligence to substitute ordered co-operation for the\nsanguinary competition above which merely instinctive organism are\nincapable of rising.\n\nObserve that in exercising this power of psychical influence there\nwould be no sort of miracle-working, no interference with the order of\nnature. The influence of mind upon mind, even without the intervention\nof words or other symbols, is a part of the order of nature which no\none to-day dreams of questioning. Hypnotic suggestion is a department\nof orthodox medical practice, and telepathy is more and more widely\nadmitted, if only as a refuge from the hypothesis of survival after\ndeath. If, then, we have a divine mind applying itself to the problems\nof humanity, and capable of suggesting ideas to the mind of\nman--appealing, as a \"still small voice\" (p. 18), to his\nintelligence, his emotions and his will--one cannot but figure its\npower for good as almost illimitable. What is to prevent it from\nachieving a very rapid elimination of the ape and the tiger, the\nJunker and the Tory, and substituting social enthusiasms for\nindividual passions as the motive-power of human conduct? We may admit\nthat the brain of man must first be developed up to a certain point\nbefore divine suggestion could effectively work upon it. But we know\nthat men and races of magnificent brainpower must have existed on the\nplanet thousands and thousands of years ago. What, then, has the\nInvisible King made of his opportunities?\n\nFrankly, he has made a terrible hash of them. It is hard to see how\nthe progress of the race could possibly have been slower, more\nlaborious, more painful than in fact it has been. No doubt there have\nbeen a few splendid spurts, which we may, if we please, trace to the\ngenial goading of the Invisible King. But all the great movements have\ndribbled away into frustration and impotence. There was, for example,\nthe glorious intellectual efflorescence of Greece. There, you may say,\nthe Invisible King was almost visibly at work. But, after all, what a\nflash-in-the-pan it was! Hellas was a little island of light\nsurrounded by gloomy immensities of barbarism; yet, instead of\nstablishing and fortifying a political cosmos, its leading men had\nnothing better to do than to plunge into the bloody chaos of the\nPeloponnesian War, and set back the clock of civilization by untold\ncenturies. What was the Invisible King about when that catastrophe\nhappened? Similarly, the past two centuries, and especially the past\nseventy-five years, have witnessed a marvellous onrush in man's\nintellectual apprehension of the universe and mastery over the latent\nenergies of matter. But because moral and political development has\nlagged hopelessly behind material progress, the world is plunged into\na war of unexampled magnitude and almost unexampled fury, wherein the\nheights of the air and depths of the sea are pressed into the service\nof slaughter. Where was the Invisible King in July, 1914? Or, for that\nmatter, what has he been doing since July, 1870? \"Either he was\nmusing, or he was on a journey, or peradventure he slept.\" Truly it\nwould seem that he might have advised Mr. Wells to wait for the \"Cease\nfire!\" before proclaiming his godhead.\n\nOf course Mr. Wells will remind me that he claims for him no material\npotency; and I must own that no happier moment could have been chosen\nfor the annunciation of an impotent God. But the plea does not quite\ntally with the facts. In the first place (as we have seen) the\nInvisible King is _going_ to do things--he is going to do very\nremarkable things as soon as he knows how. And in the second place it\nis impossible to conceive that the tremendous psychical influence\nwhich is claimed for this God can be exercised without producing\nexternal reactions. Why, he is actually stated to be--like another\nGod, his near relative, whom he rather unkindly disowns--he is stated\nto be \"the light of the world\" (p. 18). Is there any meaning in such a\nstatement if it be not pertinent to ask what sort of light has led the\nworld into the ghastly quagmire in which it is to-day agonizing? The\ntruth is that Mr. Wells attributes to his God powers which, even if he\nhad no greater knowledge than Mr. Wells himself possesses, could be\nused to epoch-making advantage. Fancy an omnipresent H. G. Wells, able\nto speak in a still small voice to all men of good-will throughout the\nworld! What a marvellous revolution might he not effect! Mr. Wells\nhimself has outlined such a revolution in one of his most thoughtful\nromances, _In the Days of the Comet_. From the fact that it does not\noccur, may we not fairly suspect that the Invisible King is a creation\nof the same mythopoeic faculty which engendered the wonder-working\ncomet with its aura of sweet-reasonableness?\n\nIf we turn to Mr. Britling, we find that that eminent publicist was\ndistressed by a sense of the difficulty of conveying God's message to\nthe world; only he modestly attributed it to defects in his own\nequipment rather than to powerlessness on the part of God. We read on\npage 427:--\"Never had it been so plain to Mr. Britling that he was a\nweak, silly, ill-informed and hasty-minded writer, and never had he\nfelt so invincible a conviction that the Spirit of God was in him, and\nthat it fell to him to take some part in the establishment of a new\norder of living upon the earth.... Always he seemed to be on the verge\nof some illuminating and beautiful statement of his cause; always he\nwas finding his writing inadequate, a thin treachery to the impulse of\nhis heart.\" Have we not in such an experience an irrefutable proof of\nthe inefficacy of Mr. Britling's God? Always the world has been all\nears for a clear, convincing, compulsive message from God; always, or\nat any rate for many thousands of years, there have been men who\nseemed the predestined mouthpieces of such a message; always what\npurported to be the word of God has proved to be either powerless to\nmake itself heard, or powerful only to the begetting of hideous moral\nand social corruptions. God spoke (it is said) through the Vedic\n_rishis_, the sages of the Himalayas--and the result has been caste,\ncow-worship, suttee, abominations of asceticism, and nameless orgies\nof sensuality. God spoke through Moses, and the result was--Judaism!\nGod spoke through Jesus, and the result was Arianism and\nAthanasianism, the Papacy, the Holy Office, the Thirty Years' War,\nmassacres beyond computation, and the slowly calcined flesh of an\ninnumerable army of martyrs. All this, no doubt, was due to gross and\npalpable misunderstanding of the message delivered through Jesus; but\nsince it was so fatally open to misunderstanding, would it not better\nhave remained undelivered? Could the world have been appreciably worse\noff without it? The question is rather an idle one, since it turns on\n\"might have beens.\" That the element of good in the message of Jesus\nhas been to some extent efficient, no one would deny. But the alloy of\npotential evil has made itself so overpoweringly actual that to strike\na balance between the two forces is impossible, and the question is\ngenerally decided by throwing a solid chunk of prejudice into one\nscale or the other.\n\nThere has never been a time when a really well-informed revelation,\nuttered with charm and power, might not have revolutionized the world.\n\"A well-informed revelation!\" the reader may cry: \"What terrible\nbathos!\" Mr. Wells, moreover, speaks slightingly of revelation (pp.\n19, 163) in a tone that seems to imply that \"modern religion\" would\nhave nothing to do with it even if it could. But the demand for a\nrevelation is eminently reasonable and justified; and the only trouble\nabout the historic revelations is that they have all been so\nshockingly ill-informed, and have revealed nothing to the purpose.\nRobert Louis Stevenson anticipated Mr. Wells's view of the matter when\nhe wrote ironically:--\n\n  It's a simple thing that I demand,\n    Though humble as can be--\n  A statement fair in my Maker's hand\n    To a gentleman like me--\n\n  A clean account, writ fair and broad,\n    And a plain apologee--\n  Or deevil a ceevil word to God\n    From a gentleman like me.\n\nBut why this irony? What an infinity of trouble and pain would have\nbeen saved if such a \"clean account, writ fair and broad,\" had been\nvouchsafed, and had been found to tally with the facts! Nor have the\nreputedly wise and good of this world seen any presumption in desiring\nsuch a _communique_. Most of them thought they had received it, and\nmany wasted half their lives in attempting to reconcile new knowledge\nwith old ignorance, promulgated under the guarantee of God. I cannot\nbut think that the poet got nearer the heart of the matter who\nwrote:--\n\n  Was Moses upon Sinai taught\n  How Sinai's mighty ribs were wrought?\n  Did Buddha, 'neath the bo-tree's shade,\n  Learn how the stars were poised and swayed?\n\n  Did Jesus still pain's raging storm,\n  And dower the world with chloroform?\n  Or Mahomet a jehad decree\n  'Gainst microbe-harboring gnat and flea?\n\n  Has revelation e'er revealed\n  Aught from its age and hour concealed?\n  Or miracle, since time began,\n  Conferred a single boon on Man?\n\nTruly, we may agree with Mr. Wells that the Invisible King was\nprobably not in the secrets of the Veiled Being, else he could\nscarcely have kept them so successfully. But have we any use for a God\nwho can teach us nothing? who has to be taught by us before he can do\nanything worth mentioning? The old Gods who professed to teach were\nmuch more rational in theory, if only their teaching had not been all\nwrong. Man has built up his knowledge of the universe he lives in by\nslow, laborious degrees, not helped, but constantly and cruelly\nhindered, by his Gods. Yet Mr. Wells will surely not deny that an\napproximately true conception of the process of nature, and of his own\norigin and history, was an indispensable basis for all right and\nlasting social construction. What colossal harm has been wrought, for\ninstance, by the fairy-tale of the Fall, and all its theological\nconsequences! Yet, age after age, the Invisible King did nothing to\nshake its calamitous prestige. Of late it is true that the progress of\nknowledge has seemed no longer slow, but amazingly rapid; but that is\nbecause the amount of energy devoted to it has been multiplied a\nhundredfold. Each new step is still a very short one: it is generally\nfound that several investigators have independently arrived at the\nverge of a new discovery, and it is often a matter of chance which of\nthem first crosses the line and is lucky enough to associate his name\nwith the completed achievement. All this means that to-day, as from\nthe beginning, man has to wring her secrets from Nature in the sweat\nof his brain, and without the smallest assistance from any Invisible\nKing or other potentate. To-day there are doubtless beneficent secrets\nunder our very noses, so to speak, which one word of a still small\nvoice might enable us to grasp, but which may remain undiscovered, to\nour great detriment, for centuries to come. There is, in short, no\nsingle point, either in history or in contemporary life, where \"the\nlight of the world\" can be shown, or plausibly conjectured, to have\nlighted us to any practical purpose. And it is futile to urge, I\nrepeat, that it could not have done so without a miraculous\ndisturbance of the order of nature. The influence of mind upon mind,\nhowever conveyed, is the most natural thing in the world; and, short\nof transplanting mountains, inhibiting earthquakes, and teaching\npeople to subsist on air, there is nothing that mind cannot do.\n\nBesides, when we come to think of it, why this prejudice against\nmiracles? Why is Mr. Wells so sternly opposed to the bare idea of\nProvidence? \"Fear and feebleness,\" he says, \"go straight to the\nHeresies that God is Magic or that God is Providence\" (p. 27)--as\nthough it were disgracefully pusillanimous to prefer a well-governed\nto an ungoverned world. God, in the ordinary sense of the word, the\nsense we all understand, is unquestionably magic, whether we like it\nor not. He is none the less magic because he works through one great\nspell, and not through a host of minor, petti-fogging miracles. Upon\nthe matter of fact we are all agreed, Mr. Chesterton only dissenting;\nbut Mr. Wells writes as if it were an essentially godlike thing, and\ngreatly to the credit of any and every God, to give Nature its head,\nand take no further trouble about the matter. I cannot share that\nview. My only objection to Providence is that it manifestly does not\nexist. If it did exist, and made the world an appreciably better place\nto live in, why should we grudge it a few miracles? There is a touch\nof the sour-grapes philosophy in the rationalist attitude on this\nmatter which Mr. Wells attributes to his Invisible King. Because we\ncan't have any miracles, we say we don't want them. Also, no doubt, we\nsee that the alleged miracles of the past were childish futilities,\ndoing at most a little temporary good to individuals, never rendering\nany permanent service to a city or a nation, and much less to mankind\nat large. They were a sort of niggardly alms from omnipotence, not a\ngenerous endowment or a liberal compensation. But is that any reason\nwhy an intelligent Power should be unable to devise a really helpful\nmiracle? Another plausible objection is that, even if we could admit\nthe justice of a system of rewards and punishments, good and evil are\nso inextricably intermixed in this world that it is impossible to\ndistribute benefits on a satisfactory moral scheme. It is impossible\nto manipulate the rainfall so that the righteous farmer shall have\njust what he wants at the appropriate seasons, while his wicked\nneighbour suffers from alternate drought and floods; nor can it be\narranged that the midday express shall convey all the good people\nsafely, while the 4.15, which is wrecked, carries none but undesirable\ncharacters. To this it might be replied that the inconceivable\ncomplexity of the chess-board of the world exists only in relation to\nour human faculties; but what is far more to the point is the\nindubitable fact that many salutary miracles might be wrought which\nwould raise no question whatever as to the moral merits or defects of\nthe beneficiaries. Miracles of alleged justice may reasonably be\ndeprecated; but where is the objection to miracles of mercy, falling,\nlike the blessed rain from heaven, on both just and unjust?\n\nThe haughty soul of Mr. Wells may prefer a deity who offers us no\ntangible bribes--who not only does not work miracles, but will not\neven utilize to material ends that great system of wireless telegraphy\nbetween his mind and ours which he has, by hypothesis, at his\ndisposal. Mine, I confess, is a humbler spirit. I should be perfectly\nwilling to accept even thaumaturgic benefits if only they came in my\nway; and I cannot regard it as a merit in a God that he should\ncarefully abstain from using even his powers of suggestion to do some\npractical good in the world, and, incidentally, to demonstrate his own\nexistence.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is difficult, in the course of a long discussion, to keep the\nattention fixed on the precise point at issue. I therefore sum up in a\nfew words the argument of this chapter.\n\nIn the first place, I have shown that, if words mean anything, Mr.\nWells does actually wish us to believe that his God is not a figure of\nspeech, but a person, an individual, as real and independent an entity\nas the Kaiser or President Wilson. In the second place, I have\nenquired whether anything he says enables us to conceive _a priori_\nthe possibility of such an entity disengaging itself from the mind of\nthe race, and have regretfully been led to the conclusion that the\ngenesis of this God remains at least as insoluble a mystery as that of\nany other God ever placed before a confiding public. Thirdly, I have\napproached the question _a posteriori_ and enquired whether history or\npresent experience offers any evidence from which we can reasonably\ninfer the existence and activity of such a God--arriving once more at\na negative conclusion. With the best will in the world, I can discover\nnothing in this Invisible King but a sort of new liqueur--or old\nliqueur with a new label--suited, no doubt, to the constitutions of\ncertain very exceptional people. Mr. Wells avers that he himself finds\nit supremely grateful and comforting, and further appeals to the\ntestimony of a number of other (unnamed) believers--\"English,\nAmericans, Bengalis, Russians, French ... Positivists, Baptists,\nSikhs, Mohammedans\" (p. 4)--a quaint Pentecostal gathering. It is\ntrue, of course, that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and\nof the liqueur in the drinking. But some of us are inveterately\nsceptical of the virtues of alcohol, even in non-intoxicant doses, and\nare apt to think that the man who discovers a remedy for sea-sickness\nor a prophylactic against typhoid is a greater benefactor of the race\nthan a God whose special characteristic it is to be not only invisible\nhimself but equally imperceptible in his workings.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nFOR AND AGAINST PERSONIFICATION\n\n\nFor those of us who cannot accept Mr. Wells's Invisible King as a God\nin any useful or even comprehensible sense of the term, there remains\nthe question whether he is a useful figure of speech. Metaphors and\npersonifications are often things of great potency, whether for good\nor evil. It might quite well happen that, if we wholly rejected Mr.\nWells's gospel, on account of a mere squabble as to the meaning of the\nword \"God,\" we should thereby lose something which might have been of\nthe utmost value to us. Let us not run the risk of throwing out the\nbaby with the bath-water.\n\nTake the case of a very similar personification with which we are all\nfamiliar--to wit, John Bull. Is he a helpful or a detrimental\n\"synthesis\"? It is not quite easy to say. There is a certain\ngeniality, a bluff wholesomeness, a downright honesty about him, which\nhas doubtless its value; but on the other hand he is the incarnation\nof Philistinism and Toryism, the perfect expression of the average\nsensual man. I am told that in one of his avatars he has something\nlike two million worshippers, on whom his influence is of the most\nquestionable, precisely because they have implicit \"faith\" in him, and\nregard him as a \"Friend behind phenomena,\" a \"great brother,\" a\n\"strongly marked and knowable personality, loving, inspiring, and\nlovable.\" That is an illustration of the dangers which may lurk in\nprosopopoeia. But in the main we can regard John Bull without too\nmuch misgiving, because we cannot regard him seriously. His worship\nwill always be seasoned with the saving grace of humor. He can do\nservice in two capacities--sometimes as an ideal, often as a\ndeterrent. Whatever religious revolutions may await us, we are not\nlikely to see St. Paul's Cathedral solemnly re-dedicated to the\nworship of John Bull. He and his sister divinity, Mrs. Grundy, have\nnever lacked adorers in that basilica; but their cult is probably not\non the increase.\n\nThe Invisible King, on the other hand, is a personage to be taken with\nthe utmost seriousness. If he has anything like the success Mr. Wells\nanticipates for him, it is quite on the cards that he might oust the\npresent Reigning Family from one or all of the cathedrals. It is true\nthat Mr. Wells deprecates any ritual worship; but \"religious thought\nfinely expressed\" would always be in order; and he \"does not see why\nthere should not be, under God, associations for building cathedrals\nand such like great still places urgent with beauty, into which men\nand women may go to rest from the clamor of the day's confusions\" (p.\n168). If cathedrals may be built, all the more clearly may they be\nappropriated--if you can convert or evict the dean and chapter. If the\nInvisible King should take the fancy of the nation and the world, as\nMr. Wells would have us think that he is already doing, he is bound to\nbecome the object of a formal cult. We shall very soon see a\nprayer-book of the \"modern religion\" with marriage, funeral and\nperhaps baptismal services, with daily lessons, and with suitable\nforms of prayer for persons who cannot trust themselves to extempore\ncommunings even with a \"great brother.\"\n\nWell, there might be no great harm in this. Some solemn form for the\nexpression of cosmic, and even of mundane or political, emotion would\ndoubtless be useful; and if the \"modern religion\" could be saved from\ndegenerating into a hysterical superstition on the one hand, or a\npetrified, persecuting orthodoxy on the other, it would certainly be a\nvast improvement on many of the religions of to-day.\n\nBut the ambitions of the Invisible King go far beyond the mere\npresidency of an Ethical Church on an extended scale. He is to be a\nKing and no mistake; not even a King of Kings, but \"sole Monarch of\nthe universal earth.\" Autocracies, oligarchies, and democracies are\nalike to be swept out of his path. The \"implicit command\" of the\nmodern religion \"to all its adherents is to make plain the way to the\nworld theocracy\" (p. 97). How the fiats of the Invisible King are to\nbe issued, we are not informed. If through the ballot-box--\"vox\npopuli, vox dei\"--then the distinction between theocracy and democracy\nwill scarcely be apparent to the naked eye. And one does not see how,\nin the transition stage at any rate, recourse to the ballot-box is to\nbe avoided, if only as a lesser evil than recourse to howitzers, tanks\nand submarines. We read that \"if you do not feel God then there is no\npersuading you of him\"; but if you do, \"you will realize more and more\nclearly, that thus and thus and no other is his method and intention\"\n(p. 98). Now, assuming (no slight assumption) that the oracles of\nGod, the message of the still small voice, will be identically\ninterpreted by all believers, the unbelievers, those who \"do not feel\nGod,\" have still to be dealt with; and, as they are not open to\npersuasion, it would seem that the faithful must be prepared either to\nshoot them down or to vote them down--whereof the latter seems the\nhumaner alternative. It is true that Mr. Wells's God is a man of war;\nlike that other whom he disowns but strangely resembles, \"he brings\nmankind not rest but a sword\" (p. 96). But we may confidently hold\nthat this, at any rate, is but a manner of speaking. Even if the God\nis real, his sword is metaphoric. Mr. Wells is not seriously proposing\nto take his cue from his Mohammedan friends, raise the cry of \"Allahu\nAkbar!\" and propagate his gospel scimitar in hand. It is hard to see,\nthen, what other method there can be of dealing with the heathen,\nexcept the method of the ballot-box--of course with proportional\nrepresentation. When there are no more heathen--when the whole world\ncan read the will of God by direct intuition, as though it were\nwritten in letters of fire across the firmament--then, indeed, the\nballot-box may join the throne, sceptre and crown in the historical\nmuseum. But even the robust optimism of the _gottestrunken_ Mr. Wells\ncan scarcely conceive this millennium to be at hand. So that in the\nmeantime it seems unwise to speak slightingly of democracy, lest we\nthereby help the Powers, both here and elsewhere, which are fighting\nfor something very much worse. For I take it that the worst enemy of\nthe Wellsian God is the Superman, who has quite a sporting chance of\ncoming out on top, if not actually in this War, at least in the welter\nthat will succeed it.\n\nBut seriously, is any conceivable sort of theocracy a desirable ideal?\nOr, to put the same question in more general terms, is it wise of Mr.\nWells to make such play with the word \"God\"? He himself admits that\n\"God trails with him a thousand misconceptions and bad associations:\nhis alleged infinite nature, his jealousy, his strange preferences,\nhis vindictive Old Testament past\" (p. 8)--and, it may fairly be\nadded, his blood-boltered, Kultur-stained present. Is it possible to\ndeodorize a word which comes to us redolent of \"good, thick stupefying\nincense-smoke,\" mingled with the reek of the auto-da-fe? Can we beat\ninto a ploughshare the sword of St. Bartholomew, and a thousand other\ndeeds of horror? God has been by far the most tragic word in the whole\nvocabulary of the race--a spell to conjure up all the worst fiends in\nhuman nature: arrogance and abjectness, fanaticism, hatred and\natrocity. Religious reformers--with Jesus at their head--have time and\nagain tried to divest it of some, at least, of its terrors, but they\nhave invariably failed. Will Mr. Wells succeed any better? Is it not\napparent in the foregoing discussion that, even if the word had no\nother demerits, it leads us into regions in which the mind can find no\nfirm foothold? I have done my best to accept Mr. Wells's definitions,\nbut I am sure he feels that I have constantly slipped from the strait\nand narrow path. Has he himself always kept to it? I think not. And,\nwaiving that point, is it at all likely that people in general will be\nmore successful than I have been in grasping and holding fast to the\ndifferentiating attributes of Mr. Wells's divinity? If the word is at\nbest a confusion and at worst a war-whoop, should we not try to\ndispense with it, to avoid it, to find a substitute which should more\naccurately, if less truculently, express our idea? Is it wise or kind\nto seek to impose on the future an endless struggle with its sinister\nambiguities?\n\nThere are, no doubt, regions of thought from which it is extremely\ndifficult to exclude the word; but these, fortunately, are regions in\nwhich it is almost necessarily divested of its historical\nassociations. As a term of pure philosophy, if safeguarded by careful\ndefinition, it is a convenient piece of shorthand, obviating the\nnecessity for a constant recourse to cumbrous formulas. But politics\nis not one of these regions of thought; and it is precisely in\npolitics that the intervention of God has from of old been most\ndisastrous. \"Theocracy\" has always been the synonym for a bleak and\nnarrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained, tyranny. Why seek to revive\nand rehabilitate a word of such a dismal connotation? I suggest that\neven if the Invisible King _were_ a God, it would be tactful to\npretend that he was not. As he is _not_ a God, in any generally\nunderstood sense of the term, it seems a curious perversity to pretend\nthat he is.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nEven in the region of morals it is a backward step to restore God to\nthe supremacy from which he has with the utmost difficulty been\ndeposed. I am sure Mr. Wells does not in his heart believe that any\ntheological sanction is required for the plain essentials of social\nwell-doing, or any theological stimulus for the rare sublimities of\nvirtue. Incalculable mischief has been wrought by the clerical\nendeavour to set up a necessary association between right conduct and\northodoxy, between heterodoxy and vice. This Mr. Wells knows as well\nas I do; yet he can use such phrases as \"Without God, the 'Service of\nMan' is no better than a hobby or a sentimentality or a hypocrisy.\" No\ndoubt he has carefully explained that he does not mean by God or\nreligion what the clergy mean; but can he be sure that by imitating\ntheir phrases he may not imperceptibly slide into their frame of mind?\nor at any rate tempt the weaker brethren to do so? In using such an\nexpression he comes perilously near the attitude adopted by the Bishop\nof London in a recent address to the sailors of the Grand Fleet. His\nLordship told his hearers--we have it on his own authority--that\n\"there was in everyone a good man and a bad man. And I have not known\na case,\" he added, \"where the good man conquered the bad man without\nreligion.\" Can there be any doubt that the Bishop was either\ntelling--well, not the truth--or shamelessly playing with words? Of\ncourse it may be said that any man who keeps his lower instincts in\ncontrol does so by aid of a feeling that there are higher values in\nlife than sensual gratification or direct self-gratification of any\nsort; and we may, if we are so minded, call this feeling religion. But\nit is a very inconvenient meaning to attach to the word, and we cannot\ntake it to be the meaning the Bishop had in view. What he meant, in\nall probability--what he desired his simple-minded hearers to\nunderstand--was that he had never known a good man who did not\nbelieve, if not in all the dogmas of the Church of England, at any\nrate in the Christian Trinity, the fall of man, redemption from sin,\nand the inspiration of the Scriptures. He meant that no man could be\ngood who did not believe that God has given us in writing a synopsis\nof his plan of world-government, and has himself sojourned on earth\nand submitted to an appearance of death, some two thousand years ago,\nin fulfilment of the said plan. If he did _not_ mean that, he was, I\nrepeat, playing with words and deceiving his hearers, who would\ncertainly understand him to mean something to that effect; and if he\n_did_ mean that, he departed very palpably from the truth. The Bishop\nof London is no recluse, shut up in a monastery among men of his own\nfaith. He is a man of the modern world, and he must know, and know\nthat he knows, scores of men as good as himself who have no belief in\nanything that he would recognize as religion. Perhaps he was not\ndirectly conscious of telling a falsehood, for \"faith\" plays such\nhavoc with the intellect that men cease to attach any living meaning\nto words, and come to deal habitually in those unrealized phrases\nwhich we call cant. But whatever may have been his excuses to his\nconscience, he was saying a very noxious thing to the simple, gallant\nsouls who heard him. Many of them must have been well aware that they\nhad no faith that would have satisfied the Bishop of London, and that\nwhatever religious ideas lurked in their minds were of very little use\nto them in struggling with the temptations of a sailor's life. Where\nwas the sense in telling them that the ordinary motives which make for\ngood conduct--prudence, self-respect, loyalty, etc., etc.--are of no\navail, and that they must inevitably be bad men if they had not \"found\nreligion\"? If such talk does no positive harm, it is only because men\nhave learnt to discount the patter of theology. Yet here we find Mr.\nWells, after vigorously disclaiming any participation in the Bishop's\nbeliefs, falling into the common form of episcopal patter, and telling\nme, for example--a benighted but quite well-intentioned heathen--that\nI can do no good in my generation unless I believe in a God whom he\nand a number of Eastern sages, Parthians, Medes, Elamites and dwellers\nin Mesopotamia, have recently \"synthetized\" out of their inner\nconsciousnesses! It is not Mr. Wells's fault if I do not abandon the\nsteep and thorny track of austerity which I have hitherto pursued,\ninvest all my spare cash either in whiskey or in whiskey shares, and\ngo for my philosophy in future to the inspiring author of _Musings\nwithout Method_ in \"Blackwood.\"\n\nIt is not quite clear why Mr. Wells should accept so large a part of\nthe Christian ethic and yet refuse to identify his Invisible King with\nChrist. One would have supposed it quite as easy to divest the\nChrist-figure of any inconvenient attributes as to eliminate\nomniscience and omnipotence from the God-idea. Mr. Wells constantly\nallows his thoughts to run into the stereotype moulds of biblical\nphraseology. We have seen how he talks of \"the still small voice,\" of\n\"the light of the world,\" \"taking the sting from death\" and of God\ncoming \"in his own time\" and bringing \"not rest but a sword.\" To those\ninstances may be added such phrases as \"death will be swallowed up in\nvictory\" (p. 39), \"by the grace of the true God\" (p. 44), \"God is\nLove\" (p. 65), \"the Son of Man\" (p. 86), \"I become my brother's\nkeeper\" (p. 97), \"he it is who can deliver us 'from the body of this\ndeath'\" (p. 99). But the clearest indication of Christian influence is\nto be found in Mr. Wells's unhesitating and emphatic adoption of the\nidea that \"Salvation is indeed to lose oneself\" (p. 73). \"The\ndifference,\" he says, \"between ... the unbeliever and the servant of\nthe true God is this ... that the latter has experienced a complete\nturning away from self. This only difference is all the difference in\nthe world\" (p. 84). It is curious what a fascination this turn of\nphrase has exercised upon many and diverse intelligences. Mr. Bernard\nShaw, for instance, adopts it with enthusiasm. Henrik Ibsen--if it is\never possible to tie a true dramatist down to a doctrine--preaches in\n_Peer Gynt_ that \"to be thyself is to slay thyself.\" Mr. Wells has a\ncloud of witnesses to back him up; and yet it is very doubtful whether\nthe turn of phrase is a really helpful one--whether it does not rather\nget in the way of the natural man in his quest for a sound rule of\nlife.\n\nIt is a commonplace that the entirely self-centred man--the Robinson\nCrusoe of a desert island of egoism--is unhappy. At least if he is not\nhe belongs to a low intellectual and moral type: the proof being that\nall development above the level of the oyster and the slug has\ninvolved more or less surrender of the immediate claims of \"number\none\" to some larger unity. Progress has always consisted, and still\nconsists, in the widening of the ideal concept which appeals to our\nloyalty. Is it not Mr. Wells's endeavour in this very book to claim\nour devotion for the all-embracing and ultimate ideal--the human race?\nSo far, we are all at one. But when we are told that \"conversion\" or\n\"salvation\" consists in a \"_complete_ turning away from self,\" common\nsense revolts. It is not true either in every-day life or in larger\nmatters of conduct. In every-day life the incurably \"unselfish\" person\nis an intolerable nuisance. Here the common-sense rule is very simple:\nyou have no right to seek your own \"salvation,\" or, in non-theological\nterms, your own self-approval, at the cost of other people's; you have\nno business to offer sacrifices which the other party ought not to\naccept. It is true that in the application of this simple rule\ndifficult problems may arise; but a little tact will generally go a\nlong way towards solving them. In these matters an ounce of tact is\nworth a pound of casuistry. And in our every-day England, in all\nclasses, it is my profound conviction that a reasonable selflessness\nis very far from uncommon, very far from being confined to the\n\"converted\" of any religion. For forty years I have watched it growing\nand spreading before my very eyes. Reading the other way _The\nRoundabout Papers_, I was greatly struck by the antiquated cast of the\nmanners therein described. Of course Thackeray, in his day, was\nreputed a cynic, and supposed to have an over-partiality for studying\nthe seamy side of things. But even if that had been true (which I do\nnot believe) it would not have accounted for all the difference\nbetween the world he saw and that in which we move to-day. I suggest,\nthen, that so far as the minor moralities are concerned, no new\nreligion is required, and we have only to let things pursue their\nnatural trend.\n\nAnd what of the great selflessnesses? What of the ideal loyalties?\nWhat of the long-accumulated instincts which tell a man, in tones\nwhich brook no contradiction, that the shortest life and the cruellest\ndeath are better than the longest life of sensual self-contempt? Here,\nas it seems to me, Mr. Wells's apostolate of a new religion is very\nconspicuously superfluous--much more so than it would have been five\nyears ago. For have not he and I been privileged to witness one of the\nmost beautiful sights that the world ever saw--the flocking of Young\nEngland, in its hundreds upon hundreds of thousands, to endure the\nextremity of hardship and face the high probability of a cruel death,\nnot for England alone, not even for England, France and Belgium, but\nfor what they obscurely but very potently felt to be the highest\ninterests of the very same ideal entity which Mr. Wells proposes to\nour devotion--the human race? I am sure he would be the last to\nminimize the significance of that splendid uprising. No doubt there\nwere other motives at work: in some, the mere love of change and\nadventure; in others, the pressure of public opinion. But my own\nobservation assures me that, on the whole, these unideal motives\nplayed a very small part. The young men simply felt that he who held\nback was unfaithful to his fathers and unworthy of his sons; and they\n\"turned away from self\" without a moment's hesitation, and streamed to\nthe colors with all the more eagerness the longer the casualty-lists\ngrew, and the more clearly the horrors they had to face were brought\nhome to them. Has there been any voluntary \"slaying of self\" on so\nhuge a scale since the world began? I have not heard of it. And Mr.\nWells will scarcely tell me that these young men went through the\nexperiences he describes as \"conversion,\" and escaped from the burden\nof \"over-individuation\" by throwing themselves into the arms of a\nsynthetic God! Many of them, no doubt, would have expressed their\nidealism, had they expressed it at all, in terms of Christianity; but\nthat, we are told, is a delusion, and the only true God is the\nInvisible King. If that be so, the conclusion would seem to be that,\nin the present stage of the evolution of human character, no God at\nall is needed to enable millions of men, in whom the blood runs high\nand the joy of life is at its keenest, to achieve the conquest of self\nin one of its noblest forms. Or (what comes to the same thing) any\nsort of God will serve the purpose. Your God (divested of metaphysical\nattributes) is simply a name for your own better instincts and\nimpulses. Many people, perhaps most, share Mr. Wells's tendency to\nexternalize, objectivate, personify these impulses; and there may be\nno harm in doing so. But when it comes to asserting that your own\npersonification is the only true one, then--I am not so sure.\n\nFinally there arises the question whether the personification of the\nInvisible King can really, in any comprehensible sense, and for any\nconsiderable number of normal human beings, rob death of its sting,\nthe grave of its victory? On this point discussion cannot possibly be\nconclusive, for the ultimate test is necessarily a personal one. If\nany sane and sincere person tells me that a certain idea, or emotion,\nor habit of mind, or even any rite or incantation, has deprived death\nof its terrors for him, I can only congratulate him, even if I have to\nconfess that my own experience gives me no clue to his meaning. It is\nnot even very profitable to enquire whether a man can be confident of\nhis own attitude towards death unless he has either come very close to\nits brink himself, or known what it means to witness the extinction of\na life on which his whole joy in the present and hope for the future\ndepended. All one can do is to try to ascertain as nearly as possible\nwhat the contemner of death really means, and to consider whether his\nindividual experience or feeling is, or is likely to become, typical.\n\nOne thing we must plainly realize, and that is that, for the purposes\nof his present argument, Mr. Wells conceives death to be a real\nextinction of the individual consciousness. He does not formally\ncommit himself to a denial of personal immortality, but it is a\ncontingency which he declines to take into account. Oddly enough, in\ntrying to acclimatize our minds to the idea of such an absolutely\nincorporeal and immaterial, yet really existent, being as his\nInvisible King, he comes near to clearing away the one great obstacle\nto belief in survival after death. \"From the earliest ages,\" he says,\n\"man's mind has found little or no difficulty in the idea of something\nessential to the personality, a soul or a spirit or both, existing\napart from the body and continuing after the destruction of the body,\nand being still a person and an individual\" (p. 59). He does not\nactually say that there _is_ no difficulty about this conception: he\nonly says that, as a matter of history, the great mass of men have\nfound it easy and natural to believe in ghosts. But it is hard to see\nany force in his argument at this point unless he means to imply that\nhe himself finds \"little or no difficulty\" in conceiving the continued\nexistence of a spiritual consciousness and individuality after the\ndissolution of the body to which it has been attached; and if he does\nmean this, it is hard to see why he does not take his stand beside Sir\nOliver Lodge on the spiritist platform. To many of us, the extreme\ndifficulty of such a conception is the one great barrier to the\nacceptance of the spiritist theory, for which remarkable evidence can\ncertainly be adduced. This, however, is a digression. So far as _God\nthe Invisible King_ is concerned, Mr. Wells must be taken as ignoring,\nif not rejecting, the idea of personal immortality.\n\nThe victory over death, then, which the Invisible King is said to\nachieve, does not consist in its abolition. It may probably be best\ndefined as the perfect reconcilement of the believer to the extinction\nof his individual consciousness. And what are the grounds of that\nreconcilement? Let us search the scriptures. Where the steps are\ndescribed by which the catechumen approaches the full realization of\nGod, it is said that at that stage he feels that \"if there were such a\nbeing he would supply the needed consolation and direction, his\ncontinuing purpose would knit together the scattered effort of life,\n_his immortality would take the sting from death_\" (p. 21-22). A\nlittle further on, the idea is elaborated in a high strain of\nmysticism. God, who \"captains us but does not coddle us\" (p. 42), will\nby no means undertake to hold the believer scatheless among the\npitfalls and perils that beset our earthly pilgrimage. \"But God will\nbe with you nevertheless. In the reeling aeroplane, or the dark\nice-cave, God will be your courage. Though you suffer or are killed,\nit is not an end. He will be with you as you face death; he will die\nwith you as he has died already countless myriads of brave deaths. He\nwill come so close to you that at the last you will not know whether\nit is you or he who dies, and the present death will be swallowed up\nin his victory\" (p. 39). The passage has already been quoted in which\nit is written that, at the end of the fight for God's Kingdom, \"we are\naltogether taken up into his being\" (p. 68). In a discussion of \"the\nreligion of atheists\" we are told that unregenerate man is \"acutely\naware of himself as an individual and unawakened to himself as a\nspecies,\" wherefore he \"finds death frustration.\" His mistake is in\nnot seeing that his own frustration \"may be the success and triumph of\nhis kind\" (p. 72). At the point where we are told that \"the first\npurpose of God is the attainment of clear knowledge,\" we are further\ninformed that \"he will apprehend more fully as time goes on\" the\npurpose to which this knowledge is to be applied. But already it is\npossible to define \"the broad outlines\" of his purpose. \"It is the\nconquest of death; first the overcoming of death in the individual _by\nthe incorporation of the motives of his life into an undying purpose_\"\n(p. 99), and then, as we saw before, the defeat of the threatened\nextinction of life through the cooling of the planet. These, I think,\nare the chief texts bearing directly on this particular matter; but\nthere is one other remark which must not be overlooked. \"A convicted\ncriminal, frankly penitent,\" we are told, \"... may still die well and\nbravely on the gallows, to the glory of God. He may step straight from\nthat death into the immortal being of God.\"\n\nTo what, now, does all this amount? Is there any more substantial\nsolace in it than in the \"Oh, may I join the Choir Invisible\"\naspiration of mid-nineteenth-century positivism? Far be it from me to\nspeak contemptuously of that aspiration. It gives a new orientation\nand consistency to thought and effort during life; and to the man who\nfeels that his little note will melt into the world-harmony that is to\nbe, that thought may impart a certain serenity under the shadow of the\nend. It is certainly better to feel at night, \"I have done a fair\nday's work,\" than to lie down with the confession, \"My day has been\nwasted, and worse.\" No one wants, I suppose, to say with Peer Gynt:--\n\n  Thou beautiful earth, be not angry with me,\n  That I trampled thy grasses to no avail;\n  Thou beautiful sun, thou hast squandered away\n  Thy glory of light in an empty hut.\n  Beautiful sun and beautiful earth,\n  You were foolish to bear and give light to my mother.\n\nBut there is also another side to the question. The more surely you\nbelieve that \"through the ages one increasing purpose runs\"--the more\nintimately you have merged your individual will in what Mr. Wells\nwould call the will of the Invisible King--the less do you relish the\nthought that you can never see that will worked out. The intenser your\ninterest in the play, the greater your disinclination to leave the\ntheatre just as the plot is thickening. Nor does it afford much\nconsolation to know that the Producer is just (as it were) getting\ninto his stride, and that, if the house should become too cold for\ncomfort, arrangements will be made for the transference of the\nproduction to another theatre, with a better heating-apparatus.\n\nIs there any real escape from the fact that for each of us the one\nthing that actually exists is our individual consciousness? It is our\nuniverse; and if its trembling flame is blown out, that particular\nuniverse is no more. If its limits of \"individuation\" are\nirrecoverably lost, what avails it to tell us that the flame is\nabsorbed into the light of the world or the dayspring on high? Is it\npossible to imagine that the rain-drop which falls in the Atlantic\nthrills with a great rapture as its molecules disperse in the moment\nof coalescence, because it is now part of an infinite and immortal\nentity? Yes, it is possible to imagine it rejoicing that its \"chagrins\nof egotism,\" as an individual drop, are now over; in fact, this is\nprecisely the sort of thing that some poets love to imagine; but has\nit any real relevance to our sublunary lot? Can it minister any\nsubstantial comfort or fortification to the normal man in the moment\nof peril or agony? I ask; I do not answer. Can Mr. Wells put in the\nwitness-box any flight-lieutenant who will swear that in his reeling\naeroplane, as death seemed on the point of engulfing him, he felt\nuncertain whether it was God or he that was about to die, and\ngloriously certain that in any case he was about to \"step straight\ninto the immortal being of God\"? And even if, in the excitement of\nviolent action, such hallucinations do mean something to a peculiar\ntype of mind, has any one dying of pneumonia or Bright's disease been\nknown to declare that, though his mortal spark was on the point of\nextinction, he felt that \"by the incorporation of the motives of his\nlife into an undying purpose\" he had triumphed over death and the\ngrave? The simple soul who says \"We shall meet in Heaven\" no doubt\nenjoys such a triumph--and even if he fails to keep the appointment,\nno one is any the worse. But where are the men and women who feel the\nimmortality of God, however we define or construct him, a rich\ncompensation for their own mortality?\n\nIt may be said that I am applying shockingly terrestrial tests to Mr.\nWells's soaring transcendentalisms. I am simply asking: \"Will they\nwork?\" A world-religion cannot be what I have called a luxury for the\nintellectually wealthy. It must be within the reach of plain men and\nwomen; and plain men and women cannot, as the French say, \"pay\nthemselves with words.\" Take them all round, they do not make too much\nof death. With or without the aid of religion, they generally meet it\nwith tolerable fortitude. But it will be hard to persuade them that\nannihilation is a thing to be faced with rapture, because a synthetic\nGod is indestructible; or that death is not death because other people\nwill be alive a hundred or a thousand years hence. Even if you cannot\noffer them another life, you may tell them of the grave as a place\nwhere the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest, and\nthey will understand. But will they understand if you tell them that\nwe triumph over the grave because God dies with us and yet never dies?\nI fear it will need something clearer and more credible than this to\nmake the undertaker a popular functionary.\n\nThe doctrines of \"the modern religion\" may give us a new motive for\nliving; but how can they at the same time diminish our distaste for\ndying? That might be their effect, no doubt, in cases where we felt\nthat our death was promoting some great and sacred cause more than our\nlife could have done; but such cases must always be extremely rare.\nEven the soldier on the battlefield will help his country more by\nliving than by dying, if he can do so without failing in his duty. His\ndeath is not a triumph, but only a lesser evil than cowardice and\ndisgrace. And what shall we say, for example, of the case of a young\nbiologist who dies of blood-poisoning on the eve of a great and\nbeneficent discovery? Is not this a case in which the modern God might\nwith advantage have swerved from his principles and (for once) played\nthe part of Providence? It is better, no doubt, to die in a good cause\nthan to throw away life in the pursuit of folly or vice; but is it\nnot playing with words to say that even the end of a martyr to science\nlike Captain Scott, or a martyr to humanity like Edith Cavell, is a\ntriumph over death and the grave? It is a triumph over cowardice,\nbaseness, the love of ease and safety, all the paltrier aspects of our\nnature; but a triumph over death it is not. If it be true (which I do\nnot believe) that German soldiers sign a declaration devoting the\nglycerine in their dead bodies to their country's service, one may\nimagine that some of them feel a species of satisfaction in resolving\nupon this final proof of patriotism; but it will be a gloomy\nsatisfaction at best; there will be a lack of exhilaration about it;\nif the Herr Hauptmann who witnesses their signatures congratulates\nthem on having triumphed over death, they will be apt to think it a\nrather empty form of words. If they had had the advantage of reading\nJane Austen, they would probably say with Mr. Bennet, \"Let us take a\nmore cheerful view of the subject, and suppose that I survive.\"\n\nI fear that not even the companionship offered by the modern God in\nthe act of dissolution will make death a cheerful experience, or\ninduce ordinary, unaffected mortals to glory in their mortality. It\nis too much the habit of Gods to pretend to die when they don't really\ndie at all--when, in fact, the whole idea is a mere intellectual\nhocus-pocus.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nBACK TO THE VEILED BEING\n\n\nWhy has Mr. Wells partly goaded and partly hypnotized himself into the\nbelief that he is the predestined prolocutor of a new hocus-pocus?\nRightly or wrongly, I diagnose his case thus: What he really cares for\nis the future of humanity, or, in more concrete language, social\nbetterment. He suffers more than most of us from the spectacle of the\nworld of to-day, because he has the constructive imagination which can\nplace alongside of that chaos of cupidities and stupidities a vision\nof a rational world-order which seems easily attainable if only some\nmalignant spell could be lifted from the spirit of man. But he finds\nhimself impotent in face of the crass inertia of things-as-they-are.\nExcept the gift of oratory, he has all possible advantages for the\npart of a social regenerator. He has the pen of a ready and sometimes\nvery impressive writer; he has a fair training in science; he has a\nfertile and inventive brain; his works of fiction have won for him a\ngreat public, both in Europe and America; yet he feels that his social\nphilosophy, his ardent and enlightened meliorism, makes no more\nimpression than the buzzing of a gnat in the ear of a drowsy mastodon.\nAt the same time he has persuaded himself, whether on internal or on\nexternal evidence--partly, I daresay, on both--that men cannot thrive,\neither as individuals or as world-citizens, without some relation of\nreverence and affection to something outside and above themselves. He\nforesees that Christianity will come bankrupt out of the War, and yet\nthat the huge, shattering experience will throw the minds of men open\nto spiritual influences. At the same time (of this one could point to\nseveral incidental evidences) he has come a good deal in contact with\nIndian religiosity, and learnt to know a type of mind to which God, in\none form or another, is indeed an essential of life, while the\nparticular form is a matter of comparative indifference. Then the idea\nstrikes him: \"Have we not here a great opportunity for placing the\nmotive-power of spiritual fervor behind, or within, the sluggish\nframework of social idealism? Here it lies, well thought-out,\ncarefully constructed, but inert, like an aeroplane without an\nengine. By giving the glow of supernaturalism, of the worship of a\npersonal God, to the good old Religion of Humanity, may we not impart\nto our schemes for a well-ordered world precisely the uplift they at\npresent lack? It was all very well for chilly New England\ntranscendentalism to 'hitch its waggon to a star,' but the result is\nthat Boston is governed by a Roman Catholic Archbishop. It is really\nmuch easier and more effective to hitch our waggon to God, who, being\na synthesis of our own higher selves, will naturally pull it in\nwhatever direction we want. Thus the mass of mankind will escape from\nthat spiritual loneliness which is so discomfortable to them, and will\nfind, in one and the same personification, a deity to listen to their\nprayers, and a 'boss,' in the Tammany sense of the term, to herd them\nto the polling-booths. What we want is collectivism touched with\nemotion. By proclaiming it to be the will of God, and identifying\nsound politics with ecstatic piety, we may shorten by several\ncenturies the path to a new world-order.\"\n\nThis is a translation into plain English of the thoughts which would\nseem to have possessed Mr. Wells's mind during the past year or so. I\ndo not for a moment mean that he put them to himself in plain\nEnglish. That would be to accuse him of insincerity--a thought which I\nmost sincerely disclaim. I have not the least doubt that the Invisible\nKing does actually supply a \"felt want\" in his spiritual outfit, and\nthat he is perfectly convinced that most other people are similarly\nconstituted and will welcome this new object of loyalty and devotion.\nTime will show whether his psychology is correct. If it is, then he\nhas indeed made an important discovery. To use a very homely\nillustration: a carrot dangled from the end of a stick before a\ndonkey's nose makes no mechanical difference in the problem of\ntraction presented by the costermonger's barrow. If anything, it adds\nto the weight to be drawn. But if the sight of it cheers, heartens,\nand inspires the donkey, helping him to overcome those fits of\nlethargy so characteristic of his race, then the carrot may quite\nappreciably accelerate the general rate of progress. It all depends on\nthe psychology of the donkey.\n\nMoses doubtless did very wisely in going up into Mount Sinai and\nabiding there forty days and forty nights. Whatever he may have seen\nand heard, the semblance of communion with a Higher Power\nunquestionably lent a prestige to his scheme of social reform which\nit could never have attained had he offered it on its inherent merits,\nas the project of a mere human legislator, or (still worse) of a man\nof letters. Moses, in fact, knew his Children of Israel. Does Mr.\nWells know his modern Englishmen or Anglo-Americans?\n\nThat is the question.\n\nMr. Bernard Shaw has made a similar and very ingenious attempt, not\nexactly to found a new religion, but to place his ideas in a religious\natmosphere. In the preface to _Androcles and the Lion_ (a disquisition\njust about as long as _God the Invisible King_) he propounds the\nquestion, \"Why not give Christianity a trial?\" and opens the\ndiscussion thus: \"The question seems a hopeless one after 2,000 years\nof resolute adherence to the old cry of 'Not this man, but Barabbas.'\nYet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of\nhis strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his millions of\nmoney, and his moralities and churches and political constitutions.\n'This man' has not been a failure yet; for nobody has ever been sane\nenough to try his way.\" Then he goes on to shew, by a course of very\nplausible reasoning, that the teaching of Jesus was, in all\nessentials, an exact anticipation of the economic and social\nphilosophy of G. B. S.; so that, in giving political expression to\nthat philosophy, we should be, for the first time, establishing the\nKingdom of Christ upon earth. It is true that there are passages in\nthe Gospels which no more accord with Mr. Shaw's sociology than do\nomnipotence and omniscience with the theology of Mr. Wells. But these\npassages do not embarrass Mr. Shaw. He simply points out that, at\nMatthew xvi, 16, where Peter hailed him as \"the Christ, the Son of the\nliving God,\" Jesus went mad. Up to that fatal moment \"his history is\nthat of a man sane and interesting apart from his special gifts as\norator, healer and prophet\"; but from that point onward he set to work\nto live up to \"his destiny as a god,\" part of which was to be killed\nand to rise again. Many other prophets have gone mad--for instance,\nRuskin and Nietzsche. Therefore we can have no difficulty in simply\neliminating as a morbid aberration whatever is un-Shavian in the\nmessage of Jesus, and accepting the rest as the sincere milk of the\nword. Mr. Shaw's attempt to place his philosophy under divine\npatronage is not so serious as Mr. Wells's; for Mr. Shaw can never\ntake himself quite seriously for five pages together. But the motive,\nin each case, in manifestly the same--to obtain for a system of ideas\nthe prestige, the power of insinuation, penetration, and stimulation,\nthat attaches to the very name of religion.\n\nThe notion is a very tempting one. What every prophet wants, in the\nbabel of latter-day thought, is a magic sounding-board which shall\nmake his voice carry to the ends of the earth and penetrate to the\ndullest understanding. The more he believes in his own reason, the\nmore he yearns for some method of out-shouting the unreason of his\nneighbours. German philosophy thought it had discovered the ideal\nreverberator in the artillery of Herr Krupp von Bohlen; but the world\nis curiously indisposed to conversion by cannon, and has retorted in a\nstill louder roar of high-explosive arguments. God, as a\npolitico-philosophical ally, is certainly cheaper than Herr Krupp;\nand, divested of his mediaeval sword and tinder-box, he is decidedly\nhumaner. But is the glamour of his name quite what it once was? Or can\nit be restored to its pristine potency?\n\nOn a question, such as this, on which the evidence is too vague, too\nvoluminous and too complex to be interpreted with any certainty, our\nwishes are apt to take control of our thoughts. Making all allowance\nfor this source of error, I nevertheless venture to suggest to Mr.\nWells that we may perhaps be passing out of, not into, an age of\nreligiosity. May it not be that the time has come to give the name of\nGod a rest? Is it not possible, and even probable, that, while the\nvast apocalypse of the observatory and the laboratory is proceeding\nwith unexampled speed, thinking people may prefer to await its\ndevelopments, rather than pin their faith to an interim, synthetic\nGod, whom his own still, small voice must, in moments of candor,\nconfess to be merely make-believe? Is it the fact that men, or even\nwomen, of our race are, as a rule, absolutely dependent for courage,\nenergy, self-control and self-devotion, upon some \"great brother\"\noutside themselves, \"a strongly-marked personality, loving, inspiring\nand lovable,\" whom they conceive to be always within call? In making\nthis assumption, is not Mr. Wells ignoring the great mass of paganism\nin the world around him--not all of it, or even most of it,\nself-conscious and self-confessed, but none the less real on that\naccount? He makes a curious remark as to the personage whom he calls\n\"the benevolent atheist,\" which is, I take it, his nickname for the\nman who is not much interested in midway Gods between himself and the\nVeiled Being. This hapless fellow-creature, says Mr. Wells, \"has not\nreally given himself or got away from himself. He has no one to whom\nhe can give himself. _He is still a masterless man_\" (p. 83). As Mr.\nWells has evidently read a good deal about Japan, he no doubt takes\nthis expression from Japanese feudalism, which made a distinct class\nof the \"ronin\" or masterless man, who had, by death or otherwise, lost\nhis feudal superior. But is it really, to our Western sense, a\nmisfortune to be a masterless man? Does the healthy human spirit\nsuffer from having no one to bow down to, no one to relieve it of the\nburden of choice, responsibility, self-control? If our feudal\nallegiance has terminated through the death of the Gods who asserted a\nhereditary claim upon it, must we make haste to build ourselves an\nidol, or synthetize a mosaic ikon, to serve as the recipient of our\nobeisances, genuflexions, osculations? I cannot believe that this is a\ngeneral, and much less a universal, tendency. If any one is irked by\nthe condition of a \"masterless man,\" the Roman Catholic Church holds\nwide its doors for him. It seems very doubtful whether any less\nancient, dogmatic, hieratic, spectacular form of make-believe will\nserve his turn.\n\nIt has sometimes seemed to me that the one great advantage of Western\nChristianity lies in the fact that nobody very seriously believes in\nit. \"Nobody\" is not a mathematically accurate expression, but it is\nquite in the line of the truth. You have to go to Asia to find out\nwhat religion means. If you cannot get so far, Russia will serve as a\nhalf-way house; but to study religion on its native heath, so to\nspeak, you must go to India. Of course there may be some illusion in\nthe matter, due to one's ignorance of the languages and inability to\nestimate the exact spiritual significance of outward manifestations;\nbut I cannot believe that, anywhere between Suez and Singapore, there\nexists that healthy godlessness, that lack of any real effective\ndependence on any outward Power \"dal tetto in su,\" which is so common\nin and around all Christian churches. In China and Japan it is another\nmatter. There, I fancy, religious \"ronins\" are common enough. But in\nthe lands of the Crescent and the land of \"OM,\" anything like freedom\nof the human spirit is probably very rare and very difficult. The\ndifference does not arise from any lesser stringency in the claims of\nChristianity to spiritual dominion, but rather, I imagine, from a\ndeep-seated divergence in racial heredity. We Western Aryans have\nbehind us the serene and splendid rationalisms of Greece and Rome. We\nare accustomed from childhood to the knowledge that our civilization\nwas founded by two mighty aristocracies of intellect, to whom the\nreligions of their day were, as they are to us, nothing but more or\nless graceful fairy-tales.[4] We know that many of the greatest men\nthe world ever saw, while phrasing their relation to the \"deus\nabsconditus\" in various ways, were utterly free from that penitential,\nsupplicatory abjectness which is the mark of Asian salvationism. And\nthough of course the conscious filiation to Greece and Rome is rare,\nthe habit of mind which holds up its head in the world and feels no\nchildish craving to cling to the skirts of a God, is not rare at all.\nTherefore I conceive that people who are shaken out of their\nconventional, unrealized Christianity by the earthquake of the war\nwill not, as a rule, be in any hurry to rush into the arms of the\n\"great brother\" constructed for them by Mr. Wells. It is easier to\npicture them flocking to the banner of the Fabian Jesus--the Christ\nuncrucified, and restored to sanity, of Mr. Bernard Shaw.\n\n    [4] Namque deos didici securum agere aevum,\n    nec, siquid miri faciat natura, deos id\n    tristes ex alto caeli demittere tecto.\n                                  HORACE, _Satires_ I., 5.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nDoes it really seem to Mr. Wells an arid and damnable \"atheism\" that\nfinds in the very mystery of existence a subject of contemplation so\ninexhaustibly marvellous as to give life the fascination of a\ndetective story? When Mr. Wells tells us that \"the first purpose of\nGod is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means to\nmore knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power,\" he states what\nis, to many of us, the first and last article of religion--only that\nwe prefer to steer clear of hocus-pocus and substitute \"Man\" for\n\"God.\" If we are almost, or even quite, reconciled to the cruelties\nand humiliations of life by the thought of its visual glories, its\nintellectual triumphs, and the mysteries with which it is surrounded,\nis that frame of mind wholly unworthy to be called religious? If it\nis, I, for one, shall not complain; for religion, like God, is a word\nthat has been--\n\n    Defamed by every charlatan\n  And soil'd with all ignoble use.\n\nBut it will be difficult to persuade me of the loftier spirituality,\nor even the more abiding solace, involved in ecstatic devotion to a\nfigure of speech.\n\nThere are two elements of consolation in life: the things of which we\nare sure, and the things of which we are unsure. We are sure that man\nhas somehow been launched upon the most romantic adventure that mind\ncan conceive. He has set forth to conquer and subdue the world,\nincluding the stupidities and basenesses of his own nature. At first\nhis progress was incalculably slow; then he came on with a rush in the\ngreat sub-tropical river basins; and presently, where the brine of the\nAEgean got into his blood, he achieved such miracles of thought and art\nthat his subsequent history, for well-nigh two thousand years, bore\nthe appearance of retrogression. I have already asked what the\nInvisible King was about when he suffered the glory that was Athens to\nsink in the fog-bank that was Alexandria. At all events, that\nwonderful false-start came to nothing. Rome succeeded to the\nworld-leadership; and Rome, though energetic and capable, was never\nbrilliant. With her, European free thought, investigation, science\nflickered out, and Asian religion took its place. Truly the slip-back\nfrom antiquity to the dark ages offers a specious argument to the\natheists--the true and irredeemable atheists--who deny the reality of\nprogress. Specious, but quite insubstantial; for we can analyze the\nterrestrial conditions which led to that catastrophe, and assure\nourselves that the bugbear of their recurrence is nothing more than a\nbugbear. The printing-press alone is an inestimable safeguard. If the\nGreeks had hit upon the idea of movable types--and it is little to the\ncredit of the Invisible King that they did not--the onrush of\nbarbarism and Byzantinism would not have been half so disastrous. And\neven through the Dark Ages the bias towards betterment is still\nperceptible, though its operation was terribly hampered. Then, at\nlast, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took up the thread of\nprogress where antiquity had dropped it. Science revived, and bade\ndefiance to dogma. The garnering of knowledge began afresh; and true\nknowledge has this to distinguish it from pseudo-sciences like\nastrology, theology, and philately, that it is instinct with\nprocreative vigour. Knowledge breeds knowledge with ever-increasing\nrapidity; and the result is that the past hundred years have seen\nadditions to man's control over the powers of nature which outstrip\nthe wildest imaginings of Eastern romance. When Mr. Gladstone first\nwent to Rome in 1832, his \"transportation\" was no swifter and scarcely\nmore comfortable than that of Caesar in the fifties before Christ.\nToday he could fly over the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa, and then cover\nthe distance from Milan onwards at the rate of seventy miles an hour\nin a limousine as luxurious as an Empress's boudoir. We are piling up\nthe knowledge which is power at an enormous rate--indeed rather too\nrapidly, since we have not yet the sense to discriminate between power\nfor good and power for evil. But \"burnt bairns dread the fire,\" and\nafter the present awful experience, there is fair ground for hope that\nmeasures will be taken to provide strait-waistcoats for the criminal\nlunatics whose vanity and greed impel them to let loose the powers of\ndestruction.\n\nCan any thinking man say that the world is quite the same to him since\nthe invention of wireless telegraphy? True it is only one among the\nmultitude of phenomena behind which the Veiled Being dissembles\nhimself. But is it not a phenomenon of a new and perhaps an\nepoch-marking order? It may not make the veil more diaphanous, but it\nsomehow suggests an alteration--perhaps a progressive alteration--in\nits texture.\n\nWhen we say we are sure of the fact of progress, the atheist comes\ndown on us with the retort that we thereby confess ourselves naive and\ncredulous optimists. As well say that when we express our confidence\nthat the North Western Railway will carry us to Manchester, we thereby\nimply the belief that Manchester is the Earthly Paradise. It is quite\npossible--any one who is so minded may say it is quite probable--that\nprogress means advance towards disillusion. What we are sure of is\nmerely this: that life may be, and ought to be, a very different thing\nfrom what it now is, and that it is in our own power to make it so. We\nhave not the least doubt that the generations which come after us will\nsay:--\n\n  We will not cease from mortal strife,\n    Nor shall the sword slip from our hand,\n  Till we have built Jerusalem\n    In England's green and pleasant land.\n\nBut whether, when they have built it, they will think Jerusalem worth\nthe building is quite a different matter. It may be that Leopardi was\nright when he said, \"Men are miserable by necessity, but resolute in\nbelieving themselves to be miserable by accident.\" That is a\nproposition which the individual can accept or reject so far as his\nown little span is concerned, but on which the race, as such, can pass\nno valid judgment. Life has never had a fair chance. It has always\nbeen so beset with accidental and corrigible evils that no man can say\nwhat life, in its ultimate essence, really is. All we know is that\nmany of its miseries are factitious, inessential, eminently curable;\nand till these are eradicated, how are we to determine whether there\nare other evils too deep-rooted for our surgery? It may be, for\nexample, that the elimination of Pain would only leave a vacuum for\nTedium to rush in; but how are we to decide this _a priori_? Let us\nlearn what are the true potentialities of life before we undertake to\ndeclare whether it is worth living or not.\n\nPerhaps I may be allowed to quote at this point some words of my own\nwhich express the idea I am trying to convey as clearly as I am\ncapable of putting it. They are part of the last paragraph of an\naddress entitled _Knowledge and Character: The Straight Road in\nEducation_:[5]\n\n    The great, dominant, all-controlling fact of this life is the\n    innate bias of the human spirit, not towards evil, as the\n    theologians tell us, but towards good. But for this bias, man\n    would never have been man; he would only have been one more\n    species of wild animal ranging a savage, uncultivated globe,\n    the reeking battle-ground of sheer instinct and appetite. But\n    somehow and somewhere there germinated in his mind the idea\n    that association, co-operation, would serve his ends better\n    than unbridled egoism in the struggle for existence. Instead\n    of \"each man for himself\" his motto became \"each man for his\n    family, or his tribe, or his nation, or--ultimately--for\n    humankind.\" And, at a very early stage, what made for\n    association, co-operation, brotherhood, came to be designated\n    \"good,\" while that which sinned against these upward\n    tendencies was stigmatized as \"evil.\" From that moment the\n    battle was won, and the transfiguration of human life became\n    only a matter of time. The prejudice in favour of the idea of\n    good is the fundamental fact of our moral nature. It has an\n    irresistible, a magical prestige. We have made, and are still\n    making, a myriad mistakes--tragic and horrible mistakes--in\n    striving for good things which are evils in disguise. A few\n    of us (though relatively not very many) try to overcome the\n    prejudice altogether, and say, \"Evil, be thou my good!\" But\n    even these recreants and deserters from the great army of\n    humanity have to express themselves in terms of good, and to\n    take their stand on a sheer contradiction. Evil, as such, has\n    simply not a fighting chance. The prestige of good is\n    stupendous. We are all hypnotized by it; and the reason we\n    are slow in realizing the ideal is, not that we are evil, but\n    that we are stupid.\n\n    [5] London: George Allen and Unwin, 1916.\n\n\"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens\"--no one had a\nbetter right to say that than a German poet. But though the Invisible\nKing has made a poor fight against human stupidity, it is not really\nunconquerable. If Gods cannot conquer it, men can. Its strongholds\nare falling one by one, and, though a long fight is before us, its end\nis not in doubt.\n\nWe may even hope, not without some plausibility, that moral progress\nmay be all the more rapid in the future because the limit of what\nmay be called mechanical progress cannot be so very far off. The\nconquest of distance is the great material fact that makes for\nworld-organization; and distance cannot, after all, be more than\nannihilated--it cannot be reduced to a minus quantity. Now that we can\nwhisper round the globe as we whisper round the dome of St. Paul's, we\ncannot get much further on that line of advance, until immaterial\nthought-transference shall enable us \"to flash through one another in\na moment as we will.\" We may before long have reduced the crossing of\nthe Atlantic from five days to one, or even less; but in that\ndirection, too, there is a limit to progress; no invention will enable\nus to arrive before we start. The conquest of physical disease seems\nto be well within view; the possibilities of intensive cultivation and\nselective breeding in plants and animals are likely to be rapidly\ndeveloped. When such material problems cease to exercise the first\nfascination upon the enquiring mind, the mental sciences, psychology\nand sociology, with the great neglected art of education, may come\ninto their kingdom. Then the atheism which avers that the world stands\nstill, or moves only in a circle, will no longer be possible. Then all\nreasonable men will feel themselves soldiers in \"a mighty army which\nhas won splendid victories (though here and there chequered with\ndefeats) on its march out of the dim and tragic past, and is clearly\ndestined to far greater triumphs in the future, if only each man does,\nwith unflinching loyalty, the duty assigned to him.\" That loyalty will\nthen be the conscious and acknowledged rule of life, as it is now in\nan instinctive and half-realized fashion. It will help us, more than\nall the personifications in the world, to \"turn away from self.\" It\nwill not take the sting from death, but it will enable us to feel that\nwe have earned our rest, and brought no disgrace upon the colors of\nour regiment.\n\nIs it necessary to protest once more that this assurance of progress\ntowards the good is not to be confounded with optimism? For it is\nclear that \"good\" is a question-begging word. The only possible\ndefinition of \"good\" is \"that which makes for life\"--for life, not\nonly measured by quantity, but by quality and intensity--\"that ye may\nhave life more abundantly.\" Why is egoism evil? Because a world in\nwhich it reigned supreme would very soon come to an end, or at any\nrate could not support anything like the abundance of life which is\nrendered possible by mutual aid and co-operation. Why are order,\njustice, courage, humanity good? Because they enable more people to\nlead fuller lives than would be possible in the absence of such\nguiding principles. But in all this we assume the validity of the\nstandard--\"life\"--which is precisely what pessimism denies. And\npessimism may quite conceivably be in the right on't. It is quite\nconceivable that, having made the best that can possibly be made of\nlife, a world-weary race might decide that the best was not good\nenough, and deliberately turn away from it. But that is a contingency,\na speculation, which no sane man would allow to affect his action here\nand now, or to impair his loyalty to his comrades in the great\nterrestrial adventure.\n\nAnd is not this question of the ultimate value of life precisely one\nof the uncertainties which lend--if the flippancy may be excused--a\n\"sporting interest\" to our position? I have said that we have two\nelements of consolation: the things which are sure and the things\nwhich are unsure: in other words, the axioms and the mysteries.\nReason is all very well so far as it goes, and we do right to trust to\nit; but it may prove, after all, that the things that are behind and\nbeyond and above reason are the things that really matter. Does this\nseem a concession to obscurantism? Not at all--for the things\nobscurantism glories in are things beneath reason, which is quite\nanother affair. At the same time, we are too apt to think that reason\nhas drawn a complete outline-map of its \"sphere of influence,\" in\nwhich there are many details to be filled in, but no boundaries to be\nshifted, no regions wholly unexplored. It is, for instance, very\nunreasonable to hold that we can draw a hard and fast line between the\nmaterially possible and impossible. There is certainly a curious\nragged edge to our purely scientific knowledge, and it may well be\nthat in following up the frayed-out threads we may come upon things\nvery surprising and important. For example, the question whether\nconsciousness can exist detached from organized matter, or attached to\nsome form of matter of which we have no knowledge, I regard as purely\na question of evidence; and I not only admit but assert that the\nevidence pointing in that direction is worthy of careful examination.\nThe interpretation which sees in it a proof of personal immortality\nmay be wrong, but that does not prove that the right interpretation is\nnot worth discovering. The spiritist voyagers may not have reached the\nIndies of their hopes, yet may have stumbled upon an unsuspected\nAmerica. Nor does the fact that they are eager and credulous\ninvalidate the whole, or anything like the whole, of their evidence.\n\nAfter all, is it a greater miracle that consciousness should exist\n_de_tached from matter than that it should exist _at_tached to matter?\nYet the latter miracle nobody doubts, except in the nursery games of\nthe metaphysicians.\n\nTo define, or rather to adumbrate, the realm of mystery, which is yet\nas indisputably real as the realm of reason and sense, we naturally\nturn to the poets, the seers. Here is a glimpse of it through the eyes\nof Francis Thompson, that creature of transcendent vision who made a\nstrange pretence of wearing the blinkers of the Roman Catholic Church.\nThus he writes in his \"Anthem of Earth\":--\n\n                        Ay, Mother! Mother!\n  What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed,\n  Thou lustingly engender'st,\n  To sweat, and make his brag, and rot,\n  Crowned with all honour and all shamefulness?\n  From nightly towers\n  He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens,\n  Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust,\n  And yet is he successive unto nothing\n  But patrimony of a little mould,\n  And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth\n  Avid of all dominion and all mightiness,\n  All sorrow, all delight, all topless grandeurs,\n  All beauty and all starry majesties,\n  And dim transtellar things;--even that it may,\n  Filled in the ending with a puff of dust,\n  Confess--\"It is enough.\" The world left empty\n  What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded\n  For pride, for potency, infinity,\n  All heights, all deeps, and all immensities,\n  Arras'd with purple like the house of kings,--\n  To stall the grey rat, and the carrion-worm\n  Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries!\n  Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues,\n  Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark\n  As we ourselves, thy darkest!\n\nSurely this is the very truth. Man is a hieroglyph to which reason\nsupplies no key--nay, reason itself is the heart of the enigma. And\ndoes not this lend a strange fascination to the adventure of life?\n\nAnother singer, in a very much simpler strain, puts something of the\nsame idea:--\n\n  Marooned on an isle of mystery,\n    From a stupor of sleep we woke,\n  And gazed at each other wistfully,\n    A wondering, wildered folk.\n\n  There were flowery valleys and mountains blue,\n    And pastures, and herds galore,\n  And fruits that were luscious to bite into,\n    Though bitter at the core.\n\n  So we plucked up heart, and we dree'd our weird\n    Through flickering gleam and gloom,\n  And still for rescue we hoped--or feared--\n    From our island home and tomb.\n\n  But never over the sailless sea\n    Came messenger bark or schooner\n  With news from the far-off realm whence we\n  Set sail for that isle of mystery,\n  Or a whisper of apology\n    From our mute, malign marooner.\n\nThe strain of pessimism in this is even more marked than in Thompson's\n\"Anthem\"; and indeed it is hard to deny that the resolute silence of\nthe \"Veiled Being,\" the \"Invisible King,\" and all the Gods and\ngodlings ever propounded to mortal piety, is one of their most\nsuspicious characteristics. Yet it may be that this reproach, however\nnatural, does the Veiled Being--or the Younger Power of our\nalternative myth--a measure of injustice. It may be that the great\nDramaturge keeps his plot to himself precisely in order that the\ninterest may be maintained up to the fall of the curtain. It may be\nthat its disclosure would upset the conditions of some vast experiment\nwhich he is working out. Where would be the interest of a race if its\nresult were a foregone conclusion? Where the passion of a battle if\nits issue were foreknown? What if we should prove to be somnambulists\ntreading some dizzy edge between two abysses, and able to reach the\ngoal only on condition that we are unconscious of the process? Perhaps\nthe sanest view of the problem is that presented in Bliss Carman's\nhaunting poem\n\n  THE JUGGLER\n\n  Look how he throws them up and up,\n  The beautiful golden balls!\n  They hang aloft in the purple air,\n  And there never is one that falls.\n\n  He sends them hot from his steady hand,\n  He teaches them all their curves;\n  And whether the reach be little or long,\n  There never is one that swerves.\n\n  Some, like the tiny red one there,\n  He never lets go far;\n  And some he has sent to the roof of the tent\n  To swim without a jar.\n\n  So white and still they seem to hang,\n  You wonder if he forgot\n  To reckon the time of their return\n  And measure their golden lot.\n\n  Can it be that, hurried or tired out,\n  The hand of the juggler shook?\n  O never you fear, his eye is clear,\n  He knows them all like a book.\n\n  And they will home to his hand at last,\n  For he pulls them by a cord\n  Finer than silk and strong as fate,\n  That is just the bid of his word.\n\n  Was ever there such a sight in the world?\n  Like a wonderful winding skein,--\n  The way he tangles them up together\n  And ravels them out again!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  If I could have him at the inn\n  All by myself some night,--\n  Inquire his country, and where in the world\n  He came by that cunning sleight!\n\n  Where do you guess he learned the trick\n  To hold us gaping here,\n  Till our minds in the spell of his maze almost\n  Have forgotten the time of year?\n\n  One never could have the least idea.\n  Yet why he disposed to twit\n  A fellow who does such wonderful things\n  With the merest lack of wit?\n\n  Likely enough, when the show is done\n  And the balls all back in his hand,\n  He'll tell us why he is smiling so,\n  And we shall understand.\n\nI am not, perhaps, very firmly assured of this consummation. Yet I am\nmuch more hopeful of one day understanding the Juggler and the Balls\nthan of ever getting into confidential relations with Mr. Wells's\nInvisible King.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne is conscious of a sort of churlishness in thus rejecting the\nadvances of so amiable a character as the Invisible King. But is Mr.\nWells, on his side, quite courteous, or even quite fair, to the Veiled\nBeing? \"Riddle me no riddles!\" he seems to say; \"I am tired of your\nguessing games. Let us have done with 'distressful enquiry into\nultimate origins,' and 'bring our minds to the conception of a\nspontaneous and developing God'--one of whose existence and\nbenevolence we are sure, since we made him ourselves. I want something\nto worship, to take me out of myself, to inspire me with brave phrases\nabout death. How can one worship an insoluble problem? Will an enigma\ndie with me in a reeling aeroplane? While you lurk obstinately behind\nthat veil, how can I even know that your political views are sound?\nWhereas the Invisible King gives forth oracles of the highest\npolitical wisdom, in a voice which I can scarcely distinguish from my\nown. You are a remote, tantalizing entity with nothing comforting or\nstimulating about you. But as for my Invisible King, 'Closer is he\nthan breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.'\"\n\nA little way back, I compared Mr. Wells to Moses; but, looked at from\nanother point of view, he and his co-religionists may rather be\nlikened to the Children of Israel. Tired of waiting for news from the\nGod on the cloudy mountain-top, did they not make themselves a\nsynthetic deity, finite, friendly, and very like the Invisible King,\ninasmuch as he seems to have worked no miracles, and done, in fact,\nnothing whatever? But the God on the mountain-top was wroth, and\naccused them of idolatry, surely not without reason. For what is\nidolatry if it be not manufacturing a God, whether out of golden\nearrings or out of humanitarian sentiments, and then bowing down and\nworshipping it?\n\nThe wrath of the tribal God against his bovine rival was certainly\nexcessive--yet we cannot regard idolatry as one of the loftier\nmanifestations of the religious spirit. The man who can bow down and\nworship the work of his hands shows a morbid craving for\nself-abasement. It is possible, no doubt, to plead that the graven\nimage is a mere symbol of incorporeal, supersensible deity; and the\nplea is a good one, if, and in so far as, we can believe that the\ndistinction between the sign and the thing signified is clear to the\nmind of the devotee. The difficulty lies in believing that the type of\nmind which is capable of focussing its devotion upon a statuette is\nalso capable of distinguishing between the idea of a symbol and the\nidea of a portrait. But when we pass from the work of a man's hands to\nthe work of his brain--from an actual piece of sculpture to a mental\nconstruction--the plea of symbolism can no longer be advanced. This\ngraven image of the mind, so to speak, is the veritable God, or it is\nnothing; and Mr. Wells, as we have seen, is profuse in his assurances\nthat it is the veritable God. That is what makes his whole attitude\nand argument so baffling. One can understand an idolater who says \"I\nbelieve that my God inhabits yonder image,\" or \"Yonder image is only a\nconvenient point of concentration for the reverence, gratitude, and\nlove which pass through it to the august and transcendent Spirit whom\nit symbolizes.\" But how are we to understand the idolater who adores,\nand claims actual divinity for, an emanation from his own brain and\nthe brains of a certain number of like-minded persons? Is it not as\nthough a ventriloquist were to prostrate himself before his own\npuppet?\n\nThis craving for something to worship points to an almost uncanny\nrecrudescence of the spirit of Asia in a fine European intelligence.\nFor my own part, as above stated, I cannot believe Mr. Wells's case to\nbe typical; but in that I may be mistaken. It is possible that an\nepidemic of Asiatic religiosity may be one of the sequels of the War.\nIf that be so--if there are many people who shrink from the condition\nof the spiritual \"ronin,\" and are in search of a respectable \"daimio\"\nto whom to pay their devotion--I beg leave strongly to urge the claims\nof the Veiled Being as against the Invisible King.\n\nHe has at the outset the not inconsiderable advantage of being an\nentity instead of a non-entity. Whoever or whatever he may be, we are\ncompelled by the very constitution of our minds to assume his (or its)\nexistence; whereas there is manifestly no compulsion to assume the\nexistence of the Invisible King.\n\nThen, again, the Veiled Being is entirely unpretentious. There is no\nbluster and no cant about him. He does not claim our gratitude for the\ndoubtful boon of life. He does not pretend to be just, while he is\ncommitting, or winking at, the most intolerable injustices. He does\nnot set up to be long-suffering, while in fact he is childishly\ntouchy. He does not profess to be merciful, while the incurable ward,\nthe battlefield--nay, even the maternity home and the dentist's\nparlor--are there to give him the lie. (Here, of course, I am not\ncontrasting him with the Invisible King, but with more ancient and\nstill more Asian divinities.) It is the moral pretensions tagged on by\nthe theologians to metaphysical Godhead that revolt and estrange\nreasonable men--Mr. Wells among the rest. If you tell us that behind\nthe Veil we shall find a good-natured, indulgent old man, who chastens\nus only for our good, is pleased by our flatteries (with or without\nmusic), and is not more than suitably vexed at our naughtinesses in\nthe Garden of Eden and elsewhere--we reply that this is a nursery tale\nwhich has been riddled, time out of mind, not by wicked sceptics, but\nby the spontaneous, irrepressible criticism of babes and sucklings.\nBut if you divest the Veiled Being of all ethical--or in other words\nof all human--attributes, then there is no difficulty whatever in\nadmiring, and even adoring, the marvels he has wrought. Tennyson went\ndeeper than he realized into the nature of things when he wrote--\n\n  \"For merit lives from man to man,\n   But not from man, O Lord, to thee.\"\n\nOnce put aside all question of merit and demerit, of praise and blame,\nand more especially (but this will shock Mr. Wells) of salvation and\ndamnation--and nothing can be easier than to pay to the works of the\nVeiled Being the meed of an illimitable wonder. When we think of the\nroaring vortices of flame that spangle the heavens night by night, at\ndistances that beggar conception: when we think of our tiny earth,\nwrapped in its little film of atmosphere, spinning safely for ages\nuntold amid all these appalling immensities: and when we think, on the\nother hand, of the battles of claw and maw going on, beneath the\nstarry vault, in that most miraculous of jewels, a drop of water: we\ncannot but own that the Power which set all this whirl of atoms agoing\nis worthy of all admiration. And approbation? Ah, that is another\nmatter; for there the moral element comes in. It is possible (and here\nlies the interest of the enigma) that the Veiled Being may one day\njustify himself even morally. Perhaps he is all the time doing so\nbehind the veil. But on that it is absolutely useless to speculate.\nLight may one day come to us, but it will come through patient\ninvestigation, not through idle pondering and guessing. In the\nmeantime, poised between the macrocosm and the microcosm, ourselves\nincluding both extremes, and being, perhaps, the most stupendous\nmiracle of all, we cannot deny to this amazing frame of things the\ntribute of an unutterable awe. If that be religion, I profess myself\nas religious as Mr. Wells. I am even willing to join him in some\noutward, ceremonial expression of that sentiment, if he can suggest\none that shall not be ridiculously inadequate. What about kneeling\nthrough the C Minor Symphony? That seems to me about as near as we can\nget. Or I will go with him to Primrose Hill some fine morning (like\nthe Persian Ambassador fabled by Charles Lamb) and worship the Sun,\nchanting to him William Watson's magnificent hymn:--\n\n    \"To thee as our Father we bow,\n      Forbidden thy Father to see,\n  Who is older and greater than thou, as thou\n    Art greater and older than we.\"\n\nThe sun, at any rate, is not a figure of speech, and is a symbol which\nruns no risk of being mistaken for a portrait. If Mr. Wells would be\ncontent with some such \"bright sciential idolatry,\" I would willingly\ndeclare myself a co-idolater. But alas! he is the hierophant of the\nInvisible King, and prayer to that impotent potentate is to me a moral\nimpossibility. I would rather face damnation, especially in the mild\nform threatened by Mr. Wells, which consists (pp. 148-149) in not\nknowing that you are damned.\n\nAnd if Mr. Wells maintains that in the worship of the non-moral Veiled\nBeing there is no practical, pragmatic comfort, I reply that I am not\nso sure of that. When all is said and done, is there not more hope,\nmore solace, in an enigma than in a _facon de parler_? I should be\nquite willing to accept the test of the reeling aeroplane. The aviator\ncan say to his soul: \"Here am I, one of the most amazing births of\ntime, the culmination of an endless series of miracles. Perhaps I am\non the verge of extinction--if so, what does it all matter? But\nperhaps, on the contrary, I am about to plunge into some new\nadventure, as marvellous as this. More marvellous it cannot be, but\nit may perhaps be more agreeable. At all events, there is something\nfascinating in this leap in the dark. Good bye, my soul! Good-bye,\nmy memory!\n\n  'If we should meet again, why, we shall smile;\n   If not, why then this parting was well made.'\"\n\nI cannot but think that there is as much religion and as much solace\nin such a shaking-off of \"the bur o' the world\" as in the thought that\nthe last new patent God is going to die with you, and that you,\nunconsciously and indistinguishably merged in him, are going to live\nfor ever.\n\n\n\n\n  THE NEWEST BORZOI BOOKS\n\n\n  LUSTRA\n    _By Ezra Pound_\n\n  DANDELIONS\n    _By Coulson T. Cade_\n\n  A CHASTE MAN\n    _By Louis Wilkinson_\n\n  GOD AND MR. WELLS\n    _By William Archer_\n\n  MARTIN RIVAS\n    _By Alberto Blest-Gana_\n\n  BEATING 'EM TO IT\n    _By Chester Cornish_\n\n  A BOOK OF PREFACES\n    _By H. L. Mencken_\n\n  THE THREE BLACK PENNYS\n    _By Joseph Hergesheimer_\n\n  INTERPRETERS AND INTERPRETATIONS\n    _By Carl Van Vechten_\n\n  MR. GEORGE JEAN NATHAN PRESENTS\n    _By George Jean Nathan_\n\n  OTHERS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE NEW VERSE\n    _Edited by Alfred Kreymborg_\n    1917 Issue\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER'S NOTES\n\n\n1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.\n\n2. The words amoeba, mythopoeic and prosopopoeia use \"oe\" ligature in\nthe original text.\n\n3. The following misprints have been corrected:\n     \"blackslides\" corrected to \"backslides\" (page 40)\n     \"annhilated\" corrected to \"annihilated\" (page 119)\n\n4. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies\nin spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been\nretained.","title":"God and Mr. Wells: A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King'","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":29261}