Regarding H.G. Wells and the War of the Worlds...
"If this is neither a dream book nor a Sybylline history, then it is a theory of world revolution. Plainly the thesis is that history must now continue to be a string of accidents with an increasingly disastrous trend, until a comprehensive faith in the modernized World-State, socialistic, cosmopolitan, and creative, takes hold of the human imagination. When the existing governments and ruling theories of life, the decaying religions and the decaying political forms of today, have sufficiently lost prestige through failure and catastrophe, then and only then will worldwide reconstruction be possible. And it must needs be the work, first of all, of an aggressive order of religiously devoted men and women who will try out and establish and impose a new pattern of living upon the race."
Such statements indicate the danger of growing old without ever growing up.
For, while announcing his devotion to science, Mr. Wells does not care to argue that a horoscope itself can be scientific, nor does he call his work science. He invokes, instead, an old magic and an old art. He combines fiction and history, mixing them so that the innocent reader will hardly know where history leaves off and fiction begins. What he wants to do is to borrow the great prestige of history, whose view is ever retrospective, for his fiction, the social purpose of which looks toward the future.
Fiction persuades where logic fails, since the human mind, though modern enough in some ways, has its old contrary habit of accepting the truth of art and rejecting the truths of science. This is an odd role in which to find the advocate of a scientifically controlled world-order.
I suppose that no other period in human history can rival the Renaissance for the sharpening of historical self-consciousness. No other time has been so determined to compile and interpret historical facts, and yet this has happened during a time when science has seemed to make discoveries that destroy the virtue of historical study.
The poor man (H.G. Wells) cannot conceive of a fact as simply being in the living harmony of things and men. For him it is not a fact until it has been "retrospected"; that is, until it has been preserved in the formaldehyde pickle of a card index and has thus been made into a specimen.
In the Wellsian future no moment will have a meaning until it has been seized, recorded, tabulated.
For Mr. Wells, Progress is the dogmatic certainty that is sufficient to motivate all human actions, and Technology is the instrument by which Progress is to be made effective. Progress is his God, and Technology is his Messiah. With respect to these deities he is pure fundamentalist, as yet untouched by the new skepticism and agnosticism that have drawn many younger intellects away from science.
The novelty of Mr. Well's ideas is therefore only superficial. His terminology is current, that is all.
But his greatest mistake is in confusing must-be with ought-to-be.
Van Wyck Brooks held it possible to argue that the "intellectualist" or Wellsian view is too glib and easy. Let Wells only be compared with the artists, who, since they look at all human motives, give a more complete interpretation and the shallowness of his views is readily evident. Artists are likely "to throw into relief the deep, obscure conviction of the 'plain man' - commonly, the good man - that to make life conform with ideas is in some way to deprive the world of just those elements which create character and to strike at an ideal forged through immemorial suffering and effort.
Why should the human species survive, if it cannot survive nobly?
In countries where they have lost the primal consciousness of unity with the earth-spirit they either have no mythology and cosmogony and thought is materialistic, or else theye go to the Greek or Jew for spiritual culture. So, distant lands are made sacred, but not the air they breathe, not the earth under foot. A culture so created rarely has deep roots, for it is derivative.
Ideals for which men are not ready to die soon perish...
Brehan - "I do not advocate philosophical indifference for I believe we can be fighters in the spirit and use immortal powers...I believe spiritual ideals, except for those who can maintain them through all conflict, are lost if we defend them by material means. There are other ways by which right can find its appropriate might"
...But how may spiritual powers, unaided by material weapons, ever win victories, they ask.
Then Brehan reveals that he is one of a small company of men scattered through the world, who by long self-discipline have learned the ancient wisdom of how "feeling and imagination radiate their influence to the boundaries of the world soul as stars shed their light through space." With the Christs and Buddhas the deed is done when the thought is born - and by "single gentleness" they do more than armies. To the architect's objections that men do not dwell in imaginary homes, Brehan answers that the physical or outer powers are enriched and not impoverished by the exercise of spiritual force.
POET - All that is substance in us aspires to the ancestral beauty
MEN OF THE WORLD STATE - All that is power in us desires to become invincible men of the World State
We can imagine natures so balanced that they may be said to be more complete symbols of the Self-existent or Solitary of the Heavens in whom all qualities inhere...
If the individual neglects "spiritual powers" he will never tread the "true path" with consistent success. All men must guard against a partial exercise of their humanity...
-Donald Davidson
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