G. K. CHESTERTON

The interesting point to observe is that temperament and training have combined to give him on the one hand a hatred of this muddled, blind, and inefficient state of society in which we live, and on the other a distrust of the orderly, logical, and perfected civilization usually suggested as a possible substitute. He detests chaos, but is skeptical of cosmos. Set between these antipathetic poles, he vibrates continually like an electrified pith ball. He has a horror of waste, war, dirt, cruelty, cowardice, incompetency, vagueness of mind, dissipation of energy, inconvenience of households, and all friction, mental or physical. But yet his ineradicable realization of the concrete will not allow him to escape from these disagreeables by taking refuge in such artificial paradises as Fourier's phalanx or Morris' idyllic anarchism. Wells is a Socialist, yet he finds not merely the Marxians, but even the Fabians, too dogmatic and strait-laced for him. His "Modern Utopia" is, I think, the first to mar the perfection of its picture by admitting a rebel, a permanently irreconcilable, antagonistic individuality, a spirit that continually denies. Yet we know that if a utopia is to come on earth it must have room for such.

Wells would never make a leader in any popular movement. He has the zeal of the reformer, but he has his doubts, and, what's worse, he admits them. In the midst of his most eloquent passages he stops, shakes his head, runs in a row of dots, and adds a few words, hinting at another point of view. He has what James defined as the scientific temperament, an intense desire to prove himself right coupled with an equally intense fear lest he may be wrong.

Your true party man must be quite color blind. He must see the world in black and white; must ignore tints and intermediate shades. Wells as Socialist could not help seeing—and saying—that there were many likable things about the Liberals. As a Liberal he must admit that the Tories have the advantage in several respects. He professes to view religion rationalistically, yet there are outbursts of true mysticism to be found in his books, passages which prove that he has experienced the emotion of personal religion more clearly than many a church member.

He has the courage of his convictions, but it does not extend much beyond putting them into print. I doubt whether, if he were given autocratic power, he would inaugurate his "Modern Utopia" or any other of his visions. At least he has hitherto resisted all efforts to induce him to carry them into effect.

For instance, one of the most original and interesting features of his "Modern Utopia" was the Samurai, the ruling caste, an order of voluntary noblemen; submitting to a peculiar discipline; wearing a distinctive dress; having a bible of their own selected from the inspiring literature of all ages; spending at least a week of every year in absolute solitude in the wilderness as a sort of spiritual retreat and restorative of self-reliance. A curious conception it was, a combination of Puritanism and Bushido, of Fourier and St. Francis, of Bacon's Salomon's House, Plato's philosophers ruling the republic, and Cecil Rhodes's secret order of millionaires ruling the world.

One day a group of ardent young men and women, inspired by this ideal, came to Wells and announced that they had established the order, they had become Samurai, and expected him to become their leader, or at least to give them his blessing; instead of which Wells gave them a lecture on the sin of priggishness and sent them about their business. I have no doubt he was right about it, nor does his disapproval of this premature attempt to incorporate the Samurai in London prove that there was not something worth while in the idea. But it shows that Wells knew what his work was in the world and proposed to stick to it, differing therein from other Utopians: Edward Bellamy, who because his fantastic romance, "Looking Backward", happened to strike fire, spent the rest of his life in trying to bring about the coöperative commonwealth by means of clubs, papers, and parties; Dr. Hertzka, who wasted his substance in efforts to found a real Freeland on the steppes of Kilimanjaro, Africa.

Perhaps the matter with Wells is simply that he cannot find his proper pigeon-hole. Perhaps I can find it. Wells has little sympathy with any political grouping or ideal regnant to-day. The orthodox Tory is in his view simply a man without imagination. The orthodox Liberal is a mere sentimentalist substituting democratic phrases for science and discipline. The Imperialist, though touching Wells at some points, repels him by his mania for military expenditure and his ignorant race prejudice. The Socialist or Labor Party man is appallingly narrow and totally unimpressed with the need for intelligence to rule the State. In "The New Machiavelli" the hero hovers distressfully over the entire field of modern politics, finding as little rest for his soul as Noah's dove on the first trip from the ark found for its feet. Once and once only has Wells's ideal found even partial embodiment, and that was in the best days of the Roman Empire.

There was the Great State (in the familiar capital letters); a world state so far as the world was known and civilized. There was a universal language, exact and lucid. There was freedom and security of travel, at least as great as in those same countries to-day. True, Wells would have disapproved of slavery. But so did the Stoics of the Empire disapprove of slavery, at least in theory. Their ideal was a universal citizenship. In the later Empire every freeman in the Roman Empire was called a citizen. There was tolerance, not only of religion but of manners, such as the narrow and parochial States of Western Europe which succeeded its fall have never known till within a hundred years. Statecraft was a science; devotion to the State a cult. There were the legions, examples of duty and discipline and scientific warfare, and yet a few thousands of troops sufficed to police and guard a whole civilized, wealthy, complex world state.

But most important of all was the Roman Law. Based on logical principles; divested of superstitious accessories and irrational taboos; universal and in the main equitable; raised above the Empire and the muddy immediacies of politics till it seemed the voice of nature itself; flexible and changing, but by growth rather than whim, it was the intellectual fabric of the Empire. It so happened that a despotic Emperor wielded the power of state, but still it was the State and not the mere person of the Emperor that was really reverenced. It was certainly not the man or the artist that was divine in Nero, but the office. Even in its decadent and Byzantine days traces of the old ideal remained, and it was not "Charles Richard Henry Etcetera, by the Grace of God King of Anyland, Duke of Somewherelse, Knight of the Golden Spur, Most Reverend Lord of the Free Cities of Lower Ruritania" in the silly medieval (and modern) style, but "Senatus Populusque Romani" and "Res Publica." The medieval Papacy was as universal in structure, but was obscurantist in basis, and left behind it as a legacy the memory of the crusades and the monasteries and great cathedrals as its monuments. The Roman Empire was rationalist in basis, and left behind it laws, straight roads, aqueducts, baths, theaters, libraries, and municipal organizations. Chesterton is a romantic and rather likes than otherwise the whimsical eccentricities of modern national institutions. But Wells, though he loves to play with science, takes statecraft as seriously as Marcus Aurelius, and, like him, he is a citizen of the Great State, the Cosmopolis. The "Modern Utopia" might have grown out of the actual Roman Empire had the right turnings been taken from that time to this; no other state or civilization would have formed its basis.

The significance of Wells's advocacy of Socialism lies in the fact that it is addressed to the middle classes. He might be called "The Apostle to the Genteels." He took part for a time in the aggressive socialistic campaign led by the Fabian Society on lines distinct from but parallel to the Marxian working class propaganda. The orthodox Marxian has little use for middle-class people. He expects them to become extinct so shortly that it is no use trying to convert them. He takes no more interest in them than missionaries do in the Tasmanians. They will be ground fine between the upper and nether millstones of the trusts and the unions. Such individuals who survive will be able to do so only by becoming retainers of the capitalists, and as such will be engulfed with them in the revolutionary cataclysm which will end the present era.

With a firm faith in this theory, it is no wonder that he often manifests annoyance at the slowness of the bourgeoisie in carrying out the part assigned them in the Marxian program. They do not disappear fast enough, nor do they show any eagerness to take sides either with the proletariat or with the capitalists. On the contrary, they view both with a certain distrust and antipathy, and maintain a curious confidence in their ability to manage both factions in the future as they have in the past. In short, they are not a negligible quantity, but hold the balance of power, at least for the present, and can retard or accelerate the progress of Socialism to a considerable though an indefinite extent.

Obviously, if the middle class as a whole is to be converted to Socialism, it must be by different arguments than those found effective with the proletariat. The Manifesto does not appeal to them, because they have more to lose than their "chains." There must be something more alluring than a universal competency and a steady job to arouse them to the need of radical changes.

The sight of capitalists excites emulation and ambition rather than hatred and despair. A man is not inclined to vote millionaires out of existence so long as he cherishes a secret hope of becoming one. They do not see the proletarian papers and would be repelled by them if they did.

Wells's outline of the form that middle-class propaganda should take presents several novel and interesting points, but the most conspicuous is his discussion of the effect of Socialism on family relations. His frankness and honesty in bringing that question into the open is in commendable contrast with the tendency of most advocates of Socialism to conceal or minimize the fact that any such profound rearrangement of economic relations as is involved in Socialism must inevitably affect the family, because the economic factor in this institution is undeniably great, although how great is a matter of dispute.

Wells boldly attempts to convert a prejudice into an argument by appealing to the very classes which, it is generally supposed, would be repelled by the bare mention of the subject, to save the family from its impending disintegration by adopting Socialism.

That Wells is right in thinking that the problem of the family is a serious one at the present time is clearly shown by the statistics collected by Sidney Webb for the Fabian Society. He proves:

That the decline in the birthrate which is depriving England and Wales of at least one-fifth of every year's normal crop of babies is not accounted for by any alteration in the age, sex or marital condition of the population, by any refusal or postponement of marriage, or by any of the effects of "urbanization" or physical deterioration of sections of the community. The statistical evidence points, in fact, unmistakably to the existence of a volitional regulation of the marriage state that is now ubiquitous throughout England and Wales, among, apparently, a large majority of the population.

So much other statisticians have deduced, but Mr. Webb went farther and obtained a direct proof of his conclusion by the circulation of several hundred question blanks among middle-class families. The results are startling. Out of a total of one hundred and twenty families reporting in one category, there were only seven in which the number of children was not intentionally limited. The average number of children in such limited families is one and a half, which is only one third what it was twenty-five years ago. In about sixty per cent of the cases "the poverty of the parents in relation to their standard of comfort" was a cause in the limitation of the family.

This shows how important a factor the increased expense of raising children has become in well-to-do families, and unless the population of the future is to be recruited very largely by the improvident, ignorant, and debased, it points toward some form of state encouragement of the production of well-born children. Wells suggested a differential income tax. Doctor Galton advocated the endowment of gifted parents. The war has brought this question out of the realm of speculative controversy into that of practical necessity. Some of the remedies proposed now make the measures suggested by Wells ten years before seem timid and conservative.

His early training in dynamical physics and evolutionary biology furnished him with the modern scientific point of view when he entered upon the old battlegrounds of sociology and metaphysics. He therefore never could believe in a static state, socialistic or other, and he saw clearly that much of what passes for sound philosophical reasoning is fallacious, because the world cannot be divided up into distinct things of convenient size for handling, each done up in a neat package and plainly labeled as formal logic requires. Here he is extremely radical, going quite as far as Bergson in his anti-intellectualism though attacking the subject in a very different way. He denies the categories, the possibility of number, definition, and classification.[9]He brings three charges against our Instrument of Knowledge: first, that it can work only by disregarding individuality and treating uniques as identically similar objects in this respect or that; and, second, that it can only deal freely with negative terms by treating them as though they were positive; and, third, that the sort of reasoning which is valid for one level of human thought may not work at another. No two things are exactly alike, and when we try to define a class of varied objects we get a term which represents none of them exactly and may therefore lead to an erroneous conclusion when brought back again to a concrete case. Or, as Wells puts it in his laboratory language: "The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it." "Of everything we need to say this is true, but it is not quite true."

What the artist long ago taught us, that there are no lines in nature, the scientist has come to believe, and perhaps in time the logicians will come to see it too. At present, however, they are, as Wells says, in that stage of infantile intelligence that cannot count above two. This is amusingly illustrated in a defense of logic by Mr. Jourdain in which he says:[10]

To these strictures of Mr. Wells on logic we may reply, it seems to me, that either they are psychological—in which case they are irrelevant to logic—or they are false. Thus the principle that "no truth is quite true", implying as it does that itself is quite true, implies its own falsehood, and is therefore false.

This sort of thing might have passed as a good joke in the days of Epimenides, the Cretan, when logic was a novelty, and people amused themselves, like boys learning to lasso, in tripping each other up with it. But it is funny to see this ancient weapon of scholasticism brought out to ward off the attacks of modernism, such attacks from without the ramparts as Wells's essay and from within as F. C. S. Schiller's big volume, "Formal Logic."

Wells has not only the sense of continuity in space, but, what is rarer, the sense of continuity in time. "The race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement: it is a statement of fact." "We are episodes in an experience greater than ourselves." There is a desperate sincerity about the man that I like. He seems always to be struggling to express himself with more exactness than language allows, to say neither more nor less than he really believes at the time. I do not think that he takes delight in shocking the bourgeoisie as Shaw does. Wells would rather, I believe, agree with other people than disagree. He is not a congenital and inveterate nonconformist. But he insists always on "painting the thing as he sees it." His later novels have come under the ban of the British public libraries because, conceiving sex as a disturbing element in life, he put it into his novels as a disturbing element, thus offending both sides, those of puritanical temperament who wanted it left out altogether and those of profligate temperament who wanted to read of amorous adventure with no unpleasant facts obtruded. His sociological works, in which, while insisting on permanent monogamy as the ideal, he prophesied that the future would show greater toleration toward other forms of marital relationship, aroused less criticism than the frank portrayal of existing conditions in his novels.

All his longer novels are largely concerned with the problem of marital life but the only one of them that comes near to a solution is that entitled "Marriage." The couple in this case, the Traffords, are exceptionally decent people for characters in a modern novel, and if their marriage is not a success it is not on account of any interference from a third party, but rather because of the cares and complications that come from family life and financial prosperity. The heroine is a charming specimen of the modern young woman, educated at "Oxbridge", whose chief fault is a constitutional inability to keep her accounts straight. She spends money with excellent taste, but without regard to her husband's bank balance. Consequently Trafford has to lay aside his researches in molecular physics to work out a successful process for synthetic rubber—easy to a man of his ability.

Mr. Wells apparently adopts the theory formulated by Professor Devine, of Columbia, as to the normal division of labor between husband and wife, that men should be experts in the art of getting money and women experts in the art of spending it. Where both parties fail is in regarding these duties as ends in themselves, the men getting absorbed in business and the women buying things that they do not want, that nobody needs, just for the sake of buying. Apparently Mr. Wells has hope of curing the men, but none of curing the women.

Premature attempts at realization, the demand for immediate results, the disregard of purely scientific research, the swamping of life by restless activity and futile efforts at reform, these are the ailments of the modern world, according to our author. His satire spares neither conservatives nor radicals. The following passage would apply to New York as well as London:

London, of course, is always full of Movements. Essentially they are absorbents of superfluous feminine energy. They have a common flavor of progress and revolutionary purpose, and common features in abundant meetings, officials, and organization generally. Few are expensive and still fewer produce any tangible results in the world. They direct themselves at the most various ends: the poor, that favorite butt, either as a whole or in such typical sections as the indigent invalid or the indigent aged, the young, public health, the woman's cause, the prevention of animal food, anti-vivisection, the gratuitous advertisement of Shakespeare (that neglected poet), novel but genteel modifications of medical or religious practice, dress reform, the politer aspects of socialism, the encouragement of aeronautics, universal military service, garden suburbs, domestic arts, proportional representation, duodecimal arithmetic, and the liberation of the drama. They range in size and importance from campaigns on a Plessingtonian scale to sober little intellectual Beckingham things that arrange to meet half yearly and die quietly before the second assembly. If Heaven by some miracle suddenly gave every Movement in London all it professed to want, our world would be standing on its head and everything would be extremely unfamiliar and disconcerting. But, as Mr. Roosevelt once remarked, the justifying thing about life is the effort and not the goal, and few Movements involve any real and impassioned struggle to get to the ostensible object. They exist as an occupation; they exercise the intellectual and moral activities without undue disturbance of the normal routines of life. In the days when everybody was bicycling an ingenious mechanism called Hacker's home bicycle used to be advertised. Hacker's home bicycle was a stand bearing small rubber wheels, upon which one placed one's bicycle (properly equipped with a cyclometer) in such a way that it could be mounted and ridden without any sensible forward movement whatever. In bad weather, or when the state of the roads made cycling abroad disagreeable, Hacker's home bicycle could be placed in front of an open window and ridden furiously for any length of time. Whenever the rider tired, he could descend—comfortably at home again—and examine the cyclometer to see how far he had been. In exactly the same way the ordinary London Movement gives scope for the restless and progressive impulse in human nature without the risk of personal entanglements or any inconvenient disturbance of the milieu.[11]

To accomplish a cure, or at least to obtain a diagnosis of the evil, Mr. Wells resorts to a curious expedient which he suggested first in his "Modern Utopia", where he laid down as one of the rules of his new order of Samurai that a man who aspired to be a leader of men should for a week every year go off into the desert and live absolutely alone, without books or other distractions to keep him from thinking. But in "Marriage" Mr. Wells improves upon this plan, for Trafford and his wife go into the wilds of Labrador together. "How sweet is solitude," as the Irishman said, "when you have your sweetheart with you." So, indeed, they found it, and in their fight with cold, starvation, and wild beasts they learned how to found their love upon mutual comprehension and respect, and made of their marriage a true union. The change of heart which Trafford experiences is not altogether unlike what Christians call conversion. His line of argument, or, more properly speaking, development of thought, finds expression in fragmentary sentences muttered in the delirium of fever, a Freudian emergence of fundamental feelings, as in the following passage:

"Of course," he said, "I said it—or somebody said it—about this collective mind being mixed with other things. It's something arising out of life—not the common stuff of life. An exhalation. ... It's like the little tongues of fire that came at Pentecost.... Queer how one comes drifting back to these images. Perhaps I shall die a Christian yet.... The other Christians won't like me if I do. What was I saying?... It's what I reach up to, what I desire shall pervade me, not what I am. Just as far as I give myself purely to knowledge, to making feeling and thought clear in my mind and words, to the understanding and expression of the realities and relations of life, just so far do I achieve salvation.... Salvation!..."I wonder is salvation the same for every one? Perhaps for one man salvation is research and thought, and for another expression in art, and for another nursing lepers. Provided he does it in the spirit. He has to do it in the spirit...."This flame that arises out of life, that redeems life from purposeless triviality,isn'tlife. Let me get hold of that. That's a point. That's a very important point."

"I wonder is salvation the same for every one? Perhaps for one man salvation is research and thought, and for another expression in art, and for another nursing lepers. Provided he does it in the spirit. He has to do it in the spirit....

"This flame that arises out of life, that redeems life from purposeless triviality,isn'tlife. Let me get hold of that. That's a point. That's a very important point."

This passage from "Marriage" showed that in 1912 Wells's thought was entering upon a new phase, considerably in advance of that revealed in his "First and Last Things." He seemed to be working toward some sort of belief in God, a Bergsonian God, struggling upward in spite of and by means of inert matter and recalcitrant humanity. It would indeed be queer to find Wells not only among the prophets, but among the Christian prophets, and, as he intimates, some of the other Christians would not like it.

Wells's catholicity of sympathy recognizes no limitations of race. He has an abhorrence for race prejudice of every kind. The greatest blot he found upon American civilization was our ill treatment of the negro.[12]

In his article on "Race Prejudice" he puts it foremost among the evils of the age but even his "anticipations" could not conceive of such an insensate revival of racial animosity between civilized nations as the Great War has, brought about:

Knight errantry is as much a part of a wholesome human being as falling in love or self-assertion, and therein lies one's hope for mankind. Nearly every one, I believe—I've detected the tendency in old cheats even and disreputable people of all sorts—is ready to put in a little time and effort in dragon-slaying now and then, and if any one wants a creditable dragon to write against, talk against, study against, subscribe against, work against, I am convinced they can find no better one—that is to say, no worse one—than Race Prejudice. I am convinced myself that there is no more evil thing in this present world than Race Prejudice; none at all. I write deliberately—it is the worst single thing in life now. It justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty and abomination than any other sort of error in the world. Through its body runs the black blood of coarse lust, suspicion, jealousy and persecution and all the darkest poisons of the human soul. It is this much like the dragons of old, that it devours youth, spoils life, holds beautiful people in shame and servitude, and desolates wide regions. It is a monster begotten of natural instincts and intellectual confusion, to be fought against by all men of good intent, each in our own dispersed modern manner doing his fragmentary, inestimable share.

The abolition of hatred between castes and classes and countries, the growth of toleration and extension of coöperation, the improvement of education, and the advancement of science, are what will lead toward his ideal. And his ideal is that of an evolutionist, the opportunity for continuous growth. He has exp rest it best, perhaps, in "The Food of the Gods," in the speech of one of the new race of giants, of supermen, to his fellows as they are about to give battle to the community of ordinary people determined to destroy them:

It is not that we would oust the little people from the world in order that we, who are no more than one step upward from their littleness, may hold their world forever. It is the step we fight for and not ourselves.... We are here, Brothers, to what end? To serve the spirit and the purpose that has been breathed into our lives. We fight not for ourselves—for we are but the momentary hands and eyes of the Life of the World. Through us and through the little folk the Spirit looks and learns. From us by word and birth and act it must pass—to still greater lives. This earth is no resting place; this earth is no playing place, else indeed we might put our throats to the little people's knife, having no greater right to live than they. And they in their turn might yield to the ants and vermin. We fight not for ourselves but for growth, growth that goes on forever. To-morrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit forevermore. To grow according to the will of God! To grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light! Greater, he said, speaking with slow deliberation, greater, my Brothers! And then—still greater. To grow and again—to grow. To grow at last into the fellowship and understanding of God.

The Great War has inspired or at least instigated many works of fiction already, but the best of these, in my opinion, is Wells's "Mr. Britling Sees It Through." It does not deal much with the fighting at the front. The author is chiefly concerned with another aspect of the war, its effect upon the psychology of the Englishman. The book is divided into two parts; the first half is light, carefree and amusing after the manner of Wells's earlier romances; the other half is darkened by the war cloud and is written with more emotional power than he has hitherto shown.

Knowing Wells's habit of introducing autobiographical details into his romances, we inevitably surmise that Mr. Britling is himself. Mr. Britling is a writer whom "lots of people found interesting and stimulating, and a few found seriously exasperating." "He had ideas in the utmost profusion about races and empires and social order and political institutions and gardens and automobiles and the future of India and China and esthetics and America and the education of mankind in general.... And all that sort of thing."

This certainly reads like Wells's repertory of ideas. And to make the resemblance closer Mr. Britling writes a pamphlet, "And Now War Ends", shortly after the war began—just as Mr. Wells wrote "The War That Will End War." Several of the characters are recognizable as Mr. Wells' neighbors. At any rate we may be sure that the book reveals the changing moods not only of the author but of every thinking Englishman as the enormity, the awfulness, the all-pervasiveness of the war became slowly realized in the course of many months.

As a contrast to his typical Englishman Mr. Wells brings in an American, handled with more skill than British writers usually show in dealing with American psychology. The delight of his Mr. Direck at the recognition of the scenes and customs he had known from history and novels is well presented:

The Thames, when he sallied out to see it, had been too good to be true, the smallest thing in rivers he had ever seen, and he had had to restrain himself from affecting a marked accent and accosting some passerby with the question, "Say! But is this little wet ditch here the Historical River Thames?" In America, it must be explained, Mr. Direck spoke a very good and careful English indeed, but he now found the utmost difficulty in controlling his impulse to use a high-pitched nasal drone and indulge in dry Americanisms and poker metaphors upon all occasions. When people asked him questions he wanted to say "Yep" or "Sure", words he would no more have used in America than he could have used a bowie knife. But he had a sense of rôle. He wanted to be just exactly what he supposed an Englishman would expect him to be.

Every American tourist in England has felt this temptation. He also has the experience ascribed by Mr. Wells to his American of finding that England on closer acquaintance is not so antiquated as she looks. When asked what his impression of England is Mr. Direck answers:

That it looks and feels more like the traditional Old England than any one could possibly have believed, and that in reality it is less like the traditional Old England than any one would ever possibly have imagined. I thought when I looked out of the train this morning that I had come to the England of Washington Irving. I find that it is not even the England of Mrs. Humphry Ward.

To complete this study of national psychology there is also a German in the family circle at first, a tutor whose hobbies are Ido and internationalism and a universal index, traits drawn from Professor Ostwald apparently. He is not caricatured but we suspect that like Mr. Direck, the American, Herr Heinrich is affected by British expectations and appears more German than he is.

The book reëchoes all the passions of the war,—love, hatred, courage, despair, meanness, sacrifice, heroism, selfishness, stoicism and mad wrath,—but ends upon a clear religious tone such as has been heard but faintly in any work of Mr. Wells before. What Mr. Britling sees through is not the war, for nobody can yet see so far as that, but he sees through the doubt and turmoil of his own mind and finds internal peace in the midst of warfare. When he sits down to write a letter to the parents of Heinrich, who like his own son had fallen in France, his mind is torn by conflicting emotions, but finally these are resolved into one common chord and he writes:

Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor. But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God. Only with God. God, who fights through men against Blind Force and Night and Non-Existence; who is the end, who is the meaning. He is the only King.... Of course I must write about Him. I must tell all my world of Him. And before the coming of the true King, the inevitable King, the King who is present whenever just men foregather, this bloodstained rubbish of the ancient world, these puny kings and tawdry emperors, these wily politicians and artful lawyers, these men who claim and grab and trick and compel, these war makers and oppressors, will presently shrivel and pass—like paper thrust into a flame. Our sons have shown us God.

The curious thing about H. G. Wells is his diversity. For a person of any intellectual consistency it is impossible thoroughly to appreciate him in certain moods without disliking him in others. He is the stern moralist of "The Sleeper Awakes", the detached and exquisite artist of "Thirty Strange Stories" and "Tales of Space and Time", the genial and conciliatory sociologist of "New Worlds for Old", the intolerant Imperialist of "Anticipations", the subtle anti-moralist of "The New Machiavelli" and "Ann Veronica", the sympathetic if somewhat cynical portrayer of the shop-keeping classes of "Mr. Polly" and "The Wheels of Chance", the vague philosopher at large of "First and Last Things", the imaginative rationalist of "A Modern Utopia", the Jules-Vernish romancer of "The War of Worlds" and "The First Men in the Moon", the scientific transcendentalist of "The Food of the Gods", and in addition he seriously chronicles "Floor Games" with his boys and takes interest in fugitive essays on modern warfare and "The Misery of Boots." Unless one is alien to everything human (and superhuman), it is impossible to escape being interested in at least some of these.

Wells's philosophy is, as I have said, expressed symbolically in many of his stories. It is most fully explained in "First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and a Rule of Life" (Putnam), and in the two essays previously referred to, "Scepticism of the Instrument" (in "A Modern Utopia") and "The Discovery of the Future", first published inNature, February 6, 1902, and in the "Report of the Smithsonian Institution", 1902, and later in book form (Huebsch, New York, 1913).

His sociological studies comprise the following volumes: "Anticipations" (1901, Harper), "Mankind in the Making" (1903, Scribner), "A Modern Utopia" (1904, Scribner), "The Future in America" (1906, Harper), "New Worlds for Old" (1908, Macmillan), "Socialism and the Great State", with the collaboration of fourteen other authors (1911, Harper), "Social Forces in England and America" (1914, Harper), published in England under the title "An Englishman Looks at the World" (Cassell), "The War That Will End War" (1915), "What Is Coming?" (1916, Macmillan), "Italy, France and Britain at War" (1917, Macmillan), and "God the Invisible King" (1917, Macmillan).

His short stories have been collected in several different volumes, in part overlapping: "Thirty Strange Stories" (1898, Harper), "Tales of Time and Space" (1899, Doubleday), "Twelve Stories and a Dream" (1903, Scribner), "The Plattner Story and Others" (1897, Macmillan), "The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents" (1895, Macmillan).

Eight of the best of his short stories (including "The Star", "Armageddon" and "The Country of the Blind") are published in a sumptuous edition with Coburn's photographic illustrations by Mitchell Kennerley ("The Door in the Wall and Other Stories", 1911).

His romances include: "The Time Machine" (1895, Holt), "The Wonderful Visit" (1895), "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1896, Duffield), "The War of the Worlds" (1898, Harper), "The Invisible Man" (1897, Harper), "The Sea-Lady" (1902) "The First Men in the Moon" (1901), "When the Sleeper Wakes" (1899, Harper), rewritten (1911) as "The Sleeper Awakes" (Nelson, London), "In the Days of the Comet" (1906, Century), "The Food of the Gods" (1904, Scribner), "The War in the Air" (1908, Macmillan), "The World Set Free" (1914, Macmillan).

His novels fall naturally into two classes: first those of a lighter and humorous character: "The Wheels of Chance" (1896, Macmillan), "Love and Mr. Lewisham" (1900, Stokes), "Kipps" (1906, Scribner), "The History of Mr. Polly" (1910, Duffield), "Bealby" (1915, Macmillan), "Boon" etc. (1915, Doran).

His longer and more serious novels are: "Ann Veronica" (1909, Harper), "The New Machiavelli" (1910, Duffield), "Tono-Bungay" (1908, Duffield), "Marriage" (Duffield), "The Passionate Friends" (1913, Harper), "The Wife of Sir Isaac Harmon" (1914, Macmillan), "The Research Magnificent" (1915, Macmillan), "Mr. Britling Sees It Through" (1916, Macmillan).

To these we must add some early works: a "Textbook on Biology" in two volumes (1892) and two volumes of essays, "Select Conversations with an Uncle" (1895, Saalfield) and "Certain Personal Matters" (1897). He has, like Stevenson, devoted much attention to devising floor games for children and has published two books upon it: "Floor Games" and "Little Wars" (Small, Maynard).

Wells still awaits his Boswell, but we have "The World of H. G. Wells" by Van Wyck-Brooks (1915, Kennerley), a lively and appreciative critique, and "H. G. Wells, A Biography and a Critical Estimate of his Work" by J. D. Beresford (1915, Holt), still briefer, equally interesting, and containing a list of his writings to date. An autobiographical sketch was written for the Russian edition of his works (1909) and published in T. P.'s Magazine (1912).

Of magazine articles and critiques the following have for one reason or another special interest:

"Les Idées de Wells sur l'Humanité future" by Charles Duguet inRevue des Idées, 1908.

"Wells" by Chesterton inAmerican Magazine, vol. 71, p. 32 (1910).

"Wells and his Point of View" inCatholic World, vol. 91 (four articles, 1910).

"Wells and Bergson" by P. E. B. Jourdain inHibbert Journal, vol. 10, p. 835, July, 1912. "H. G. Wells et la Pensée contemporaine" by René Leguy inMercure de France(1912).

The contributions of Mr. Wells to current magazines and newspapers are too numerous to enumerate, but I must not omit the two articles on Socialism which he contributed toThe Independent, October 25 and November 3, 1906, and an article on "The Nature of Love" (The Independent, August 13, 1908).

[1]See "Major Prophets of To-day", p. 232.

[2]"Heretics", by G. K. Chesterton, p. 85.

[3]"In the Days of the Comet", by H. G. Wells. New York: The Century Company.

[4]The World Set Free.

[5]From Wells's "Anticipations."

[6]From Kellermann's account of the Battle of Loos.

[7]It would be interesting to learn where Wells happened to get hold of the idea that time is the fourth dimension of reality and how much he knew then of the history of the conception. He could not, at any rate, for all his prophetic powers, have foreseen the important part it was to play in scientific thought and metaphysical speculation in the coming century. Lorentz, Einstein and Minkowski have incorporated it into their new theory of relativity which threatens to abolish the ether and to make mass a variable, dependent on velocity. Our ordinary Euclidean or three dimensional space would thus be a cross-section at a certain time. (See "The Time-Space Manifold of Relativity", by Edwin B. Wilson and G. N. Lewis, inProceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, November, 1912.) Heinrich Czolbe in 1875 brought forward the theory (see Müller,Archiv für systematische Philosophie, XVII, p. 106), and Lotze discusses it in his "Microcosmos." Bergson's philosophy is based upon the distinction he draws between psychological duration and the physical treatment of time as a kind of space. Professor Pitkin of Columbia criticizes Wells's time-machine from the metaphysical standpoint in "Time and Pure Activity" (Journal Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. ii, No. 19).

[8]"Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump. Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times. Prepared for Publication by Reginald Bliss, with an Ambiguous Introduction by H. G. Wells." (Doran, 1915.)

[9]He has given three statements of his views on this point: First, in an article, "Rediscovery of the Unique", in Fortnightly Review, July, 1891; second, in a paper read to the Oxford Philosophical Society and published in Mind, XIII, No. 51, and as an appendix to "A Modern Utopia"; and, third, in Book I of "First and Last Things."

[10]"Logic, M. Bergson and Mr. H. G. Wells", by Philip E. B. Jourdain inHibbert Journal, X, p. 835.

[11]"Marriage," Duffield and Company, 1912.

[12]See "The Tragedy of Color", chapter xii of "The Future in America", and his article on "Race Prejudice", inThe Independentof February 14, 1907.

The central truth to be uttered about Mr. Chesterton is that he is the greatest prophet of our generation. He is as great as Tolstoy or Ibsen. It may seem rash to set him beside these great prophets, but time will ratify my rashness. A prophet is a man of genius with a spiritual message for his age.The spiritual message delivered by Mr. Chesterton is mightier than any other sounding in our ears. He is a bigger man than Maeterlinck or Bergson, though we know it not. As a prophet he is larger in every way than Mr. Shaw or Mr. Wells or Mr. Arnold Bennett, because he deals with the soul, whereas they deal with the soul's environment. They deal with man as a social animal. He deals with man as a spiritual being.Our failure to salute the prophet is complete, and it is emphasized by our failure to perceive that he is the authentic voice of that English soul which is now wrestling with the Teutonic soul for the soul of the world.He is the soul of England.—James Douglas in theObserver, 1916.

The spiritual message delivered by Mr. Chesterton is mightier than any other sounding in our ears. He is a bigger man than Maeterlinck or Bergson, though we know it not. As a prophet he is larger in every way than Mr. Shaw or Mr. Wells or Mr. Arnold Bennett, because he deals with the soul, whereas they deal with the soul's environment. They deal with man as a social animal. He deals with man as a spiritual being.

Our failure to salute the prophet is complete, and it is emphasized by our failure to perceive that he is the authentic voice of that English soul which is now wrestling with the Teutonic soul for the soul of the world.He is the soul of England.—James Douglas in theObserver, 1916.

Can a journalist have a philosophy of life, and if so would it be worth talking about? In answer to the first question I shall quote Chesterton to the effect that everybody has a philosophy, even generals and journalists. To prove the affirmative of the second I shall present, as Exhibit B, the whole body of Chesterton's works. Perhaps the most heretical passage of his book on "Heretics" was that which begins:

But there are some people, nevertheless—and I am one of them—who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them.

Like many other things in Chesterton's works this does not sound so heretical now as when it was written, about the time when the weary old world had finished Chapter XIX of the second volume of his history and had turned over the page in hopes of finding something new and exciting in Chapter XX—and found it. Chesterton's countrymen then were keeping careful count of Germany's soldiers and ships, but they were contentedly ignorant of German philosophy. But as soon as the war broke out they began with feverish haste to translate and study Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, and any other books which might throw light upon the GermanWeltanschauung, but which in the leisurely days of peace they had no time to read.

It is convenient to compare Shaw and Chesterton because they are antithetic in temperament and opinion and represent two opposite currents of modern thought. Shaw stands for the earlier rationalistic, socialistic revolt against the conventions of society. Chesterton stands for the later conservative reaction to all this, for ecclesiasticism, nationalism, and traditionalism. Shaw is a vegetarian and teetotaler. Chesterton is quite the opposite; he champions the public house as a good old English institution. Shaw is a suffragist; Chesterton is dead set against anything of the kind. Shaw came from the most pronounced Protestant stock, the Ulster kind, and, as we can see from his introduction to "Androcles and the Lion", he has constructed a sort of religion for himself, though he could hardly be accounted orthodox. Chesterton is a Catholic, though of the Anglican rather than the Roman variety, a champion of orthodoxy, and a defender of all forms of ritualism and medievalism. Chesterton makes it his business to find a logical basis for popular traditions, customs, and superstitions which have always been regarded as purely irrational and arbitrary even by those who liked them and defended them as poetic and conforming to a deeper reality than that of reason. Shaw is always showing how absurd and illogical are the soundest axioms and the most unquestioned platitudes, whether of orthodox conservative or orthodox revolutionary thought. Chesterton discovers new reasons in things; Shaw discovers new unreasons in things.

Chesterton appears in the capacity of permanent minority leader. But this is in respect to that really small minority of professional writers, speakers, and agitators who set the fashions for the Zeitgeist. Actually he has the backing of the great inarticulate immobile mass of the people.

Chesterton has discovered how to be witty though orthodox. But his orthodoxy is so extreme that it seems heterodoxy to most of us. Perhaps that accounts for his success in making it sound paradoxical. As Wesley determined that the devil had no right to all the pretty music, so Chesterton determined that the iconoclasts should not monopolize all the cleverness. His originality consists in his genius for turning platitudes into epigrams. He can put the most unquestioned axiom in a way to shock the world. If he is right in what he says in his books on Watts that "there is only one thing that requires real courage to say and that is a truism", Chesterton must be the bravest man alive. But even he finds it necessary to promulgate his truisms in the disguise of sensational novelties.

Chesterton's ideal is a complete democracy, not merely democracy in politics but democracy in science, religion, literature, sport, and art. If you say this is impracticable he doubtless would retort that it was the essence of an ideal to be impracticable, otherwise it would be confounded with dull reality. He always champions the opinion of the many against that of the few, the laymen against the expert.

Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If scientific civilization goes on (which is most improbable) only one man will laugh because he can laugh better than the rest.—"Heretics."It was absurd to say that Waterloo was won on Eton cricket fields. But it might have fairly been said that Waterloo was won on the village green, where clumsy boys played a very clumsy cricket.... It is a good sign in a nation when such things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is a bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them and that the nation is merely looking on.—"All Things Considered."

It was absurd to say that Waterloo was won on Eton cricket fields. But it might have fairly been said that Waterloo was won on the village green, where clumsy boys played a very clumsy cricket.

... It is a good sign in a nation when such things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is a bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them and that the nation is merely looking on.—"All Things Considered."

On this ground he hated Germany even before the war, as a nation ruled by experts. He denounced its workingmen's insurance, its governmental efficiency, its higher criticism, and the like. "I am all for German fantasy, but I will resist German earnestness till I die. I am all for Grimm's Fairy Tales; but if there is such a thing as Grimm's Law, I would break it if I knew what it was."[1]

It is on the basis of democracy that he defends religion:

That Christianity is identical with democracy is the hardest of gospels: there is nothing that so strikes men with fear as that they are all sons of God.—"Twelve Types."It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated and ought to be treated more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in a village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.... If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.... Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom: tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.—"Orthodoxy."

That Christianity is identical with democracy is the hardest of gospels: there is nothing that so strikes men with fear as that they are all sons of God.—"Twelve Types."

It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated and ought to be treated more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in a village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.... If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.... Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom: tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.—"Orthodoxy."

I expect some time to find Chesterton defending the Trinity on the ground that it is more democratic than Mohammedan monotheism, a sort of commission government extended to the universe.

Chesterton has the true artist's love for the individual and the concrete. He delights in clear outlines and bright colors. He thinks in pictures. I have never seen any of his painting, but he must have the color sense strongly developed. He will halt in a stern chase or in the height of an argument to describe a sunset with the most chromatic language at his command. He studied art at the Slade School in London, and although he was soon switched off into journalism he still reverts to the pencil on occasion. He has supplied the illustrations to three of Belloc's books; "The Great Enquiry", "The Green Overcoat", and "Emmanuel Burden."[2]The last, a satire on imperialistic financiering, is one of the cleverest pieces of irony to be found in all literature, but it raises the question of whether the ironical tone can be sustained through a whole volume without a decline of interest. When the question of illustration arose Chesterton sent out for a bundle of wrapping paper, and in the course of one evening drew all of the portraits in the book as well as a lot that were not used.

For the understanding of Chesterton's romances it is necessary to remember that the more non-sensical they seem, the more sense they have in them. This is because when he gets blinded by a big idea he sees men as concepts walking. He is too much of a Platonist to be a good novelist. He admires Dickens but never imitates him, for Chesterton's stories are singularly devoid of individuals. All the little variations and accidental peculiarities that make a type into a person in the great novels of the world are lacking. In "The Ball and the Cross" Mac Ian is simply the archetype of the Catholic Romanticist and Turnbull of the Revolutionary Rationalist. Neither of them ever does anything out of character, but then neither of them has any character outside of the Idea that made them what they are. Each falls in love with a girl of the opposite type, drawn to scale. This is carried farther yet by the introduction of an incredibly consistent Tolstoyan and a Nietzschean beside whom Nietzsche would seem all too human. Thus the whole book is balanced and matched like old-fashioned wall paper or an Italian garden.

Manalive comes closer to being real. He certainly is alive, but he is not a man; he is an ideal, Chesterton's superman. "All habits are bad habits" is the text of G. K. Chesterton's "Manalive", which proved as delightful to his admirers and distasteful to his antipathists as any of his former productions. In his essays Mr. Chesterton's method is first to set down something that sounds like a wild absurdity and then to argue the reader into the admission—cheerful or indignant, according to his temperament—that it is a very sensible thing after all. In his romances his method is essentially the same. Nobody could act crazier than Mr. Innocent Smith in the first chapters of this volume, but in the end he is proved, by a long legal process, to be the only really sane man of the lot. He is accused of about as many crimes as the hero of Jokai's tale, "The Death's Head", confessed to, but he turns out to be quite as guiltless. Charges of murder, burglary, bigamy, and kidnaping, amply certificated, slip off him like water off a duck's back. Neither prison nor asylum can hold Manalive. Smith's theory is that if you keep the commandments, you may violate the conventions; which, being the reverse of the ordinary rule of procedure, gets him into all sorts of misunderstandings. He had evidently read Schopenhauer's theory that the only happiness is the pursuit of happiness, and, what is more, he acts upon it by letting go what he most delights in that he may recapture it. He goes round the world in search of his own home, and his series of amorous adventures are conducted in strict accord with monogamous morality. By getting outside of himself he can gain the joy of coveting his own possessions. The economic law of diminishing returns applies to all our habitual pleasures, and to escape it we must be continually seeking new investments.

So Manalive is distinguished from ordinary men in that he has legs that he uses. He is not rooted. He breaks out and runs around and discovers the most novel and wonderful things in the most commonplace environment.

Mr. Chesterton is as fond of a chase as a fox hunter or a kinetoscope man. We have it in "Manalive" as we have it in "The Man Who Was Thursday" and "The Ball and the Cross." As usual he stops every little while and paints a cloudscape to rest our eyes; and all along he enlivens the way by epigrams and inverted proverbs. Here are a few:

When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but when they are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. We are never free until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist until it is declared by authority.For she was one of those women who at bottom regard all men as equally mad, wild animals of some utterly separate species.Though she never spoke she always looked as if she might speak any minute. Perhaps this is the very definition of a companion.All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That's the only difference between science and religion there's ever been or ever will be.The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.With our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity, if we were not kept young by death. Providence has to cut immortality into lengths for us, as nurses cut the bread and butter into fingers.

For she was one of those women who at bottom regard all men as equally mad, wild animals of some utterly separate species.

Though she never spoke she always looked as if she might speak any minute. Perhaps this is the very definition of a companion.

All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That's the only difference between science and religion there's ever been or ever will be.

The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.

With our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity, if we were not kept young by death. Providence has to cut immortality into lengths for us, as nurses cut the bread and butter into fingers.

The most fantastic and therefore characteristic of Chesterton's romances is "The Man Who Was Thursday" which the French are able more concisely to entitleNommé Jeudi. The author calls it "A Nightmare", and it is. The only books to compare with it are George Macdonald's "Lilith", Strindberg's "Dream Plays", and Andreyev's "Masked Ball"; but for wild imagining, grotesquerie, farcicality, and swift transformations it cannot be matched. It is a detective story, a motion-picture chase, and a system of theology, all in one. Like all dreams, according to Freud, it is symbolic, but the symbolism is not to be interpreted in the usual Freudian way, for Chesterton is clean-minded. The clue to it is to be found in his earliest book of essays, "The Defendant", when he argues for the moral value of the detective story in the following fashion: "By dealing with the unsleeping sentinels who guard the outposts of society, it tends to remind us that we live in an armed camp, making war upon a chaotic world, and that the criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but traitors within our gates."

The detective, he says, who stands alone and fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves' kitchen, is the original and poetic figure, and the criminals surrounding him represent cosmic conservatism. But in "The Man Who Was Thursday" each one of the six detectives, separately commissioned by the mysterious head of the secret police to enter the inner circle of seven anarchists, believes himself to be fighting single-handed for law and order against a criminal conspiracy to destroy civilization. The seven pseudo-anarchists go through all sorts of perilous and absurd adventures in the course of which they are metamorphosed successively into the seven days of the week, the seven days of creation, the seven orders of created things, and the seven angels of heaven. Finally seated upon seven thrones, robed in state, blazoned—of course, since it is Chesterton—with heraldic devices, they recognize one another as friends and allies through all their strange strife. It reminds one of Emerson's Brahma: "If the red slayer thinks he slays." But Chesterton is too much of a Manichean to let it go at that. One of the anarchists turns out to be genuine, the only real one in the world, the irreconcilable rebel, the Eternal Anarchist, the spirit that continually denies, the leader of His Majesty's Opposition. In some ways Chesterton's conception of the devil reminds one of Andreyev's "Anathema" or perhaps rather of the Satan whom Dostoievsky introduces into his "Brothers Karamazarov." Chesterton's mind seems to have a curious affinity to the Russian, though so far as I remember his writings show no evidence of being influenced by Russian literature.

"The Man Who Was Thursday" affects readers variously. To some it seems ridiculous; to others blasphemous. Julius West, usually sympathetic, dismisses it in his biography of Chesterton as incomprehensible and tiresome. Yet three people I know—a man, a woman, and a child—consider it one of the most wonderful books in the world, and know it almost by heart.

My own opinion is that it shows that Chesterton has not yet found the true medium for the expression of his genius. Drawing and writing are too slow and cold to give scope to his pictorial imagination. He should, like D'Annunzio, take to the screen. "The Man Who Was Thursday" would make a magnificent scenario as it stands, and Chesterton could then add all of the things he thought of or saw while composing it but could not put into words.

Blake, too, was a man who would have done wonders with the cinematograph if it had only been invented sooner. Chesterton, in his sketch of Blake, explains his difficulties of expression by word and picture:

How shall we manage to state in an obvious and alphabetical manner the ultimate query, the primordial pivot on which the whole modern problem turns? It cannot be done in long rationalistic words: they convey by their very sound the suggestion of something subtle. One must try to think of something in the way of a plain street metaphor or an obvious analogy. For the thing is not too hard for human speech: it is actually too obvious for human speech.

Chesterton's theory of the use of symbolism, even absurd symbolism, is given in his "Defense of Nonsense".

Every great literature has always been allegorical—allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, the Odyssey because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle....Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction may seem) are the two supreme symbolic assertions of the truth that to draw out the soul of things with a syllogism is as impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook.

Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction may seem) are the two supreme symbolic assertions of the truth that to draw out the soul of things with a syllogism is as impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook.

Chesterton at the beginning of his career wrote "A Defense of Detective Stories"[3]and he has since shown that he knows how to write them, in the collections entitled "The Club of Queer Trades", "The Innocence of Father Brown", and "The Wisdom of Father Brown." But they are different from ordinary detective stories not merely because a mild-mannered priest takes the place of Sherlock Holmes but more because they frequently have nothing to do with crime and all parties turn out, as in "Thursday", to have the best of intentions, whatever their actions. Chesterton's method in these stories is much the same as he employs in his essays; that is, he piles up paradoxical impossibilities, and then by some simple expedient resolves them into apparent reasonableness. The author's obvious enjoyment of his own ingenuity adds to the reader's delight. It would be interesting to know whether he has in mind the solution when he lays out the plot or whether he is not playing a game with himself like jackstraws, pitting his skill as a disentangler against a muddle of his own making.

As an artist Chesterton has always been attracted by the Orient, with its mystical fanaticisms, its cruel colors, and its unfamiliar habits of thought. But while Turkey is all very well at a distance, Turkey in Europe is to him a distinct and horrible menace. In "The Flying Inn" we have a story of Mohammedan influence not only in Europe but in England itself. This novel is an allegory of the war between the sacred symbol of the cross and the sacred symbol of the crescent, as Chesterton has similarly related the struggle of the Ball and the Cross in his book of that name.

The champions of the crescent are Misysra Ammon, the Prophet of the Moon, and Lord Ivywood, an eccentric nobleman, a fanatic against the liquor traffic as the embodiment of Christian custom as opposed to Moslem. Misysra, who is as fertile with impossible theories as with plausible arguments to support them, maintains that England is Mohammedan at heart and proves it in a hundred ways from the contempt with which the pig is popularly spoken of to the absence of any "idolatrous" animal or vegetable forms in modern cubist painting. Lord Ivywood's persecution of the inn-keepers sends one of them adrift throughout the country carrying his inn-sign with him and accompanied by Captain Dalroy, an athletic Irishman who champions the cause of the cross.

So far we have a straight Chesterton novel, a symbolic theme variegated by satires on modern life. But Chesterton really seems uncertain that he aimed to write a prose novel at all, for the book is plentifully interspersed with verses, serious, comic, ironical, militant, in good meter and in bad, till the novel takes on the not unpleasant appearance of a Chesterton anthology of songs.

Everybody who likes G. K. Chesterton has wished that he might be induced to follow the example of Charles Dickens and write a Child's History of England. When a literary man of wayward genius undertakes to interpret and record the story of his country the result is almost always worth while. We do not get the white sunlight of impartiality, but we get a beautiful rainbow of prejudices, personal opinions, and mystical insight. Chesterton has still to write us a complete English history, but he has dealt faithfully with about a century and a half of it in "The Crimes of England." It is due to him to say that the unhistorical character of the work is caused rather by partisan emphasis than by any inaccuracy of detail. Rarely if ever has Chesterton written with such care for his facts, and, as for his transcendental interpretation of them, he has as much warrant to philosophize as Carlyle or Taine or any other literary historian. But one does tend to get the impression from the book that only Prussians had ever incurred the scriptural curse on him who removes his neighbor's landmark.

For the "crimes of England" are really the crimes of Prussia, and England's guilt is summed up in the phrase that English politics has been devoted ever since the time of Frederick the Great to "the belittlement of France and the gross exaggeration of Germany." Chesterton denounces the part played by his country in the wars of Frederick the Great, in the Napoleonic struggles, in the repression of Ireland, in tolerating Bismarck's schemes of aggrandizement, only to bring into darker relief the wickedness of the state which used England throughout all these years as a catspaw. Yet the indictment of England as Prussia's accomplice is delivered in very sharp terms; so far as Chesterton shows bias it is pro-French or pro-Irish rather than pro-British. He really believes that the war is an epic struggle between the old soul of Christendom, most clearly incarnated in the Catholic nations, and a blast of sinister materialism from the wastes and forests of Brandenburg. In this belief he writes not only seriously, but soberly, as befits the great hour, and concludes his book with a vivid and moving description of the Battle of the Marne which has in it a world of eloquence and no "cleverness" at all.

The large volume of "Criticisms and Appreciations of Dickens" is composed of his prefaces to the separate books of Dickens. Although not so important a piece of work as Chesterton's biography of Dickens, they are well worth bringing together in this way, because they form not only a brilliant piece of literary interpretation, but because they show that it is possible to write prefaces to the classics which will increase the desire to read the book instead of dampening one's ardor at the start with a mass of dry and trivial details of the author's life and environment. Chesterton has the first requisite of a good introducer, an enthusiasm for his subject and a belief in the importance of his message for the times in which we live. His comparison of Dickens and Thackeray, if not quite fair, has at least sufficient point to suggest thought.

Thackeray has become classical; but Dickens has done more; he has remained modern. There was a painful moment (somewhere about the eighties) when we watched anxiously to see whether Dickens was fading from the modern world. We have watched a little longer, and with great relief we begin to realize that it is the modern world that is fading. All that universe of ranks and respectabilities in comparison with which Dickens was called a caricaturist, all that Victorian universe in which he seemed vulgar—all that is itself—breaking up like a cloud-land. And only the caricatures of Dickens remain like things carved in stone.

But whether his medium is fiction, criticism, or editorial, Chesterton is always a moralist, differing, however, from most moralists in that he is never prosy and never directs his preachments at obsolete evils and deceased sinners.

Prose and poetry are such widely sundered fields that a reputation made in one does not carry over into the other. When Scott dropped poetry to take up novel writing he found it expedient to leave his name behind. When Kipling passed in the reverse direction from prose to poetry he had to cultivate a newclientèle. It is very amusing to hear two lovers of Hardy or of Meredith sing peans of praise to their favorite author in strophe and antistrophe until on descending from the general to the particular they discover that one was extolling the poet and the other the novelist and that each had never read, or but lightly esteemed what the other most admired.

So while the essays and romances of Gilbert Keith Chesterton reach thousands of readers week by week through the journals, and are bought with avidity in volume form, his poems are but little known to readers of his prose, although they have, I fancy, a circle of their own. Yet no one can understand Chesterton fully who ignores his verse, for his thought, expressed through this medium, is seen from another angle and so gains solidity to the view.

Chesterton, like Tennyson, has taken one of England's legendary heroes as the theme of an epic by which to express his philosophy of life and his message to his age. The stories of Alfred he accepts as uncritically and handles as freely as Tennyson did those of Arthur, but the poems resultant show not merely the difference between the authors, but also, in a way, the difference between the past century and the present one, the contrast between a faintly hopeful agnosticism and a robustious affirmation of faith.

In his "Alarms and Discursions" he has told us in prose of the impressions made upon him by his visit to the Vale of the White Horse and Ethandune. These he transmutes into poetry in "The Ballad of the White Horse."[4]In the beautiful dedication to his wife he gives her credit for having opened his eyes to the Christian significance of the wars of Alfred against the Danes. Miss Frances Blogg, whom he married in 1900, was described by one who knew her then as "a conservative rebel against the conventions of the unconventional." We may assume that it was largely through her influence that he was converted from youthful atheism to extremest orthodoxy. I can quote only a few stanzas from this dedication although such fragments are distressing to those who know the whole and aggravating to those who do not.

Lady, by one light onlyWe look from Alfred's eyes,We know he saw athwart the wreckThe sign that hangs about your neck,Where One more than MelchizedekIs dead and never dies.Therefore I bring these rimes to you,Who brought the cross to me,Since on you flaming without flawI saw the sign that Guthrum sawWhen he let break his ships of awe,And laid peace upon the sea.Do you remember when we wentUnder a dragon moon,And 'mid volcanic tints of nightWalked where they fought the unknown fightAnd saw black trees on the battle-height,Black thorn on Ethandune?And I thought "I will go with you,As man with God has gone,And wander with a wandering star,The wandering heart of things that are,The fiery cross of love and warThat like your self goes on."O go you onward, where you areShall honor and laughter be,Past purpled forest and pearled foam,God's winged pavilion free to roam,Your face, that is a wandering home,A flying home to me.* * * * * * *Up through an empty house of starsBeing what heart you are,Up the inhuman steeps of spaceAs on a staircase go in grace,Carrying the firelight on your faceBeyond the loneliest star.

Back to Index Next