vinest that ever wore earth
about it.'--ROBERT BUCHANAN in Letter of January 1892 to _Daily
Chronicle_ regarding his poem _The Wandering Jew_. _Robert Buchanan:
His Life, Life's Work, and Life's Friendships_, by Harriett Jay, pp.
274-5.

{254}

APPENDIX XXVII

'I do not believe I have any personal immortality. I am part of an
immortality perhaps, but that is different. I am not the continuing
thing. I personally am experimental, incidental. I feel I have to do
something, a number of things no one else could do, and then I am
finished, and finished altogether. Then my substance returns to the
common lot. I am a temporary enclosure for a temporary purpose: that
served, and my skull and teeth, my idiosyncrasy and desire will
disperse, I believe, like the timbers of the booth after a fair.'--H.
G. WELLS, _First and Last Things_, p. 80.

{255}

APPENDIX XXVIII

'The estate of man upon this earth of ours may in course of time be
vastly improved. So much seems to be promised by the recent
achievements of Science, whose advance is in geometrical progression,
each discovery giving birth to several more. Increase of health and
extension of life by sanitary, dietetic, and gymnastic improvement;
increase of wealth by invention and of leisure by the substitution of
machinery for labour: more equal distribution of wealth with its
comforts and refinements; diffusion of knowledge; political
improvement; elevation of the domestic affections and social
sentiments; unification of mankind and elimination of war through
ascendency of reason over passion--all these things may be carried to
an indefinite extent, and may produce what in comparison with the
present estate of man would be a terrestrial paradise. Selection and
the merciless struggle for existence may be in some measure superseded
by selection of a more scientific and merciful kind. Death may be
deprived at all events of its pangs. On the other hand, the horizon
does not appear to be clear of cloud.... Let our fancy suppose the
most chimerical of Utopias realised in a commonwealth of man. Mortal
life prolonged to any conceivable extent is but a span. Still over
every festal board in the community of terrestrial bliss will be cast
the shadow of approaching death; and the sweeter life becomes the more
bitter death will be. {256} The more bitter it will be at least to the
ordinary man, and the number of philosophers like John Stuart Mill is
small.'--