That is the Shavian doctrine of the Life Force, put plainly and simply.
Mr. Wells differs very sharply from Mr. Shaw in his doctrine. Mr. Shaw believes that the progress from bad to good is not inevitable: Mr. Wells believes that it is, and he produces the records of history to support his belief. Mankind, at this moment, he will admit, is in a very bloody mess, but that mess is not so frightful as, say, the mess after the Thirty Years' War. We, who contemplate the organized Murder of Youth which began in August, 1914, may fairly feel that mankind has sunk very low in barbarism, but when we survey the whole range of humanity so far as it has been recorded, the depths of 1914, deep though they are, appear to be slightly less dreadful than the depths of other days. There is a greater revolt from organized Murder to-day than there was after the Thirty Years' War. There are fewer people to-day who prate about the glories of war than there were then. (Oddly enough, or perhaps naturally enough, most of the people who still think of war as a jolly adventure live in America.) We are a little nearer to a realization of the commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" than we were before 1914. We are learning that there are no qualifications or exceptions to that commandment. It does not say, "Thou shalt not kill—except in defence of small nationalities!" It does not say, "Thou shalt not kill—except for the purpose of self-determination!" It does not say, "Thou shalt not kill—except for the establishment of a Republic in Ireland!" It does not say, "Thou shalt not kill—except for the purpose of preserving the Empire!" Tersely and without modification, it states that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in any circumstances whatever.
Here is a dilemma from which the Christian cannot easily escape, and the difficulty of doing so, apart from all ordinary considerations of decency, is bringing man sharply face to face with the fundamentals of human existence. In spite of much occasion for pessimism to-day, there is occasion for greater optimism than man ever before has had. There is a social consciousness at work in our minds and hearts that will yet deliver us from the wicked man. How few are the years since the days when men in one part of England made war on men in another part! How unthinkable it is that men in Lancaster should make war to-day in Yorkshire! True, it is less than a century since men in the Northern States of America made war on men in the Southern States. True, it is less than ten years since men in Ulster prepared themselves to make war on men in the rest of Ireland. True, at this moment, Russian fights Russian, and Sinn Feiner slays Orangeman, and Orangeman slays Sinn Feiner. True, that white man burns black man, that Christian persecutes Jew, true all this and worse, yet it remains true that when the records of time are made up and just balances are drawn in the accounts of Mankind, there is seen to be a greater perception of common purpose to-day than there was a century ago.
His scientific and historic sense keeps Mr. Wells secure in his belief that Man, although he may hinder the development of God's purpose, cannot thwart it. Mr. Shaw would perhaps agree with Mr. Wells in his belief that God's Will must ultimately find adequate expression, but he would insist that that expression may be through another instrument than man. Mr. Wells, however, would not yield to him on this point; he would insist that God's Will must ultimately find adequate expression through man. Man may, indeed be obliterated by plague and pestilence or cosmic disaster, but, failing those, man must achieve God's purpose.
IV
When one brings the Wellsian doctrine down to the details of life, one discovers what I may call a local pessimism in it. The anger which breaks out of his work is directed against the incompetence and stupidity of man which hold him back from the desirable country towards which he is marching. The greatest optimists—the men who are convinced that man's end is good and seemly—are almost always the most bitter pessimists when they are considering contemporary affairs. The visionary loves mankind in the abstract so much that when he contemplates mankind in the concrete he loses his temper. The Utopian, full of his dream of a decent and free civilization in which every man may move easily to his proper station, feels a dreadful depression when he looks upon society as it exists here and now; and there are times when, in spite of his sure and certain hope that life will ultimately find its level, he feels that man, that perverse, wayward, thwarting creature, will never fulfill the promise of his potentialities because he is too closely concerned with some tiny, personal vanity, because he allows wickedness and stupidity to influence him to a greater degree than goodness and fine thought. Who, thinking over the Big Four in Paris, and remembering that millions of young men of all nations died so that the Big Four might meet and make a more enduring peace than this world has yet known, can feel anything but anger and humiliation at what they did? Clemenceau, the "Tiger" who, having tasted blood, seemed eager to taste more; Lloyd George, who never remembers a friend or forgets an enemy; Orlando, shamelessly extending his itching palm; and Wilson, the man who went to Europe to ask for the moon and returned to America, having accepted a match ... can any of us, contemplating those four men, given by God the greatest opportunity that has ever been offered to men, that may ever be offered to men, help feeling that this world is dead and damned and that the sooner a disgusted God smashes it to pieces, the better will be the universe? Mr. Wells cannot escape, any more than the rest of us, this tendency to despair of human effort, and here and there in his books his local pessimism is expressed; but his universal optimism remains unimpaired, and one comes away from his writings in the knowledge that he believes that man sooner or later will achieve a high destiny. He whips the stupid and the selfish and the idle, but he will not permit them to persuade him from his belief that even out of these elements, a finer Man will yet be made.
V
There is a cartoon by Mr. Max Beerbohm in which he shows himself being conducted through a gallery where Mr. Wells, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Bennett and many other eminent writers are standing on inverted tubs, haranguing the universe. Having listened to the preachers and propagandists, Mr. Beerbohm turns to his guide and says, "But where are the artists?" only to be informed that "These are the artists!" It has been said that Mr. Shaw would rather be known as a great political economist than as a great dramatist, that Mr. Arnold Bennett would rather be known as an eminent business man than as an eminent novelist, that Mr. Galsworthy would prefer to be a reformer than a man of letters, and that Mr. Wells seeks fame as a sociologist and not as an artist. There is enough truth in this statement to give pause to those about whom it is made, but not sufficient to frighten us who admire them. Mr. Wells, for example, can no more elude artistry than he can refrain from thinking. He is extraordinarily indifferent to literary style, seems almost to delight in making a clumsy sentence rather than a shapely one, and, so far as one can discover, does not spend a single second on "finding the right word." The idea is his chief concern, and he cares very little for the way in which it is expressed. Nevertheless, he remains an artist, with a gift for apt expressions and a far greater gift for selection. In one of his books, he describes the prostitute as "that painted disaster of the street." In "First and Last Things," in describing the inability of the intellect to free itself from bias, he says, "the forceps of the mind is a clumsy instrument and crushes the truth a little in seizing it." At the end of "Tono-Bungay" there is an account of a trip down the Thames which is among the great pieces of prose writing. In "The Undying Fire," he gives an account of the purposeless cruelty of Nature and an account of the state of mind of a young German who goes from his remote village to join the Army at the beginning of the war, full of patriotic ardour, offering for this service and for that until at last he becomes a member of the crew of a submarine and his patriotism suffers a sea-change and becomes the desperate courage of a rat in a trap ... and these two accounts are so vivid that it is impossible for any one to rise from them unaware that they have been written by a man of genius, possessed of artistry.
He is probably the most prolific writer of his quality in the world, and if I had exact knowledge of the world's greatest authors, I should probably say that he is the most varied of them. Consider how very dissimilar his books are in range and interest. Consider that the man who wrote "The Time Machine," wrote also "The History of Mr. Polly" and the "The Undying Fire." How many writers have shown such variety as has been shown by the author of "The War in the Air," "Kipps" (that beautiful and tender book), "Tono-Bungay" and "The Soul of a Bishop." At one moment, Mr. Wells is writing "Bealby" and at the next, he is writing "God, the Invisible King." He turns from "The Wonderful Visit" to "The Outline History of the World," and writes "The Future in America" in the trail of "Love and Mr. Lewisham." ("The Future in America" is perhaps the best book of its kind that has ever been written on the problems that lie before the American people.) Queen Victoria, having been enchanted by "Alice in Wonderland," sent to a book-seller for the remainder of "Lewis Carroll's" writings, and was considerably disconcerted when she received "Plane Trigonometry" and "Curiosa Mathematica" by the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. What that excellent old lady would have thought, if having read and liked "The Sea Lady," she had been supplied with "Mankind in the Making" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and "Joan and Peter" by the same author, I cannot imagine. Mr. Wells faces life very fairly and squarely, regarding it from all angles of vision. There is only one Truth, but it may be approached by many different paths; and Mr. Wells has attempted most of them. It may seem to some of his readers at times that he is running away from things towards which he formerly ran, but it is more likely that he is merely trying another way of getting to the same point.