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the open sea .]
Before commenting, perhaps unnecessarily, on this passage, some
sentences from Mr. Wells preface to William Clissold may be recalled:
And one other question may be glanced at here before this note concludes. There
is much discussion of opinion in this book. Does that make it anything but a
novel? Is it not quite as much life to meet and deal with a new idea as to meet
and deal with a new lover? Must the characters in our English and American
novels be for evermore as cleaned of thought as a rabbit is of its bowels, before
they can be served up for consumption?
Since Mr. Wells invites us then to the banquet of thought, we may
accompany humanity in the person of George Ponderevo into the great
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spaces of the future, to windy freedom and trackless ways. What carries
him to this happy destination is a destroyer, used by Mr. Wells (a shorter
name than Ponderevo) as a symbol of Science, or Truth, because, as
he tells us, it is irrelevant to most human interests. The significance
of a destroyer is presumably destruction, which it is surprising to find
Mr. Wells considers as irrelevant to human interests. But, apparently,
Mr. Wells prophetic élan would flag without the imaginative stimulus
of the killing of men in unfamiliar lands. Or, perhaps, Mr. Wells really
means to suggest that Science, or Truth, is destructive to humanity
which, if George is to be admitted as an exemplar, is at least an arguable
opinion. But no, Mr. Wells sees it as the heart of life, as the one enduring
thing. He sees it also as austerity, as beauty, which is surprising too,
both in view of the prose wherein he celebrates it and of the final
consummation he suggests for it, which is the windy freedom of the
unknown. It is a pity, moreover, that, having referred to a Kiplingese
surpassing in turgidity and degeneracy his own, Mr. Wells did not invent
a sample of it for our astonishment. Finally, to cut a silly business
short, it is instructive to observe that Mr. Wells omits from his symbolism
the most evident essential, which is the due and necessary return of
the destroyer from windy freedom to her moorings in the Thames; though
this consideration would interfere, it is true, with the inspired and cloacal
imagery of his peroration.
One other quotation chosen at random, for it is a matter on which
he feels keenly and lays frequent emphasis will fitly conclude this example
of Mr. Wells thought. Mr. Barnstaple, in Men Like Gods, is learning
the principles of Utopian Society.
And that brought him to the fourth Principle of Liberty, which was that Lying
is the Blackest Crime. Crystal s definition of Lying was a sweeping one; the
inexact statement of facts, even the suppression of a material fact, was Lying.
Where there are lies there cannot be freedom& . Lying the Primary Crime! How
simple that is! How true and necessary it is! That dogma is the fundamental
distinction of the scientific world state from all preceding states.
What then we have to discover is how the author of George
Ponderevo s meditations, selected as characteristic of many thousands
of pages written by Mr. Wells, of which at once the most accurate
and charitable definition is an inexact statement of facts , can, at
the same time, be sincerely persuaded that Lying is the Blackest Crime.
Stated in these terms, indeed, so common a phenomenon scarcely
demands classification. The principles of religious psychology are always
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illuminating, however, since they are simple, profound, and universal.
To adopt Mr. Wells formula, one or two of them might run as follows.
The first Principle: Since service, not self, is the goal of life, truth is
for others consumption, not one s own; therefore, II: It is at once
nobler and more useful to proclaim truth than to observe it; and a
third may be added for the benefit of artists: Represent what you
would like to see, not what you see. It would be gratuitous to pillory
Mr. Wells for adherence to such commonly accepted principles were
it not that he flies the flag not of religion, but of science, which deserves
a better advertisement. Moreover, he would still prefer, he tells us
with some acrimony, that his novels should be considered and judged
as the works of an artist; and since the distinction between art and
imitation, between the Old and the New man, between Uncle Ponderevo
and William Clissold is one of truth, some elementary discussion of
the subject is unavoidable.
The pre-eminent aspect of reality for Mr. Wells, as for others, is
himself and his own experience; an exact statement of the facts of this
reality seems, therefore, of pre-eminent importance if we are to believe
Mr. Wells that Lying is the Blackest Crime. And, indeed, Mr. Wells
exact perception of one category of facts about himself bore appropriate
fruit in comic creation, which happened to be his particular method
of accepting and assimilating the important piece of reality represented
by himself, and thereby reality as a whole. This reality was a comic
one, it may be added, because Mr. Wells, observing human life in the
person of himself, perceived as its first and essential characteristic the
discrepancy between desire and fulfilment, between pretension and
performance, between noble ideals and ignoble practice, which it is
the function of the comic artist to perceive as essential reality and exploit.
Such was, and is, we must believe, the reality as Mr. Wells sees it, since
this is the only reality he has communicated to us. Man, however, is
created to create himself; and in Tono-Bungay Mr. Wells began the
necessary substitution of the world he would like to see and the Mr.
Wells he would like to see for the world and the Mr. Wells he saw.
Whatever Mr. Wells now describes, whether it is a woman, a love affair,
society, a statesman, himself under many aliases, the world as it is,
was, or will be, we are sure of being told, not what Mr. Wells sees,
which since he is a man of talent might be of interest to others, but
what he would like to see, which is of no interest to anyone but himself.
For the world Mr. Wells would like to see and has described for us,
in place of the world he sees, in many books, resembles all such worlds
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