al contact with the movement of what we call reality,
by illness and fever. Only then, indeed, did he touch the vital
issues. I find the statement of this ultimate thing, vaguely phrased
in Trafford's semi-delirium, presenting another expression of the
thought quoted from _The New Machiavelli_; the conception of humanity
as an instrument. "Something trying to exist," he says, something
"which isn't substance, doesn't belong to space or time, something
stifled and enclosed, struggling to get through." And later he
repeats: "It struggles to exist, becomes conscious, becomes now
conscious of itself. That is where I come in as a part of it. Above
the beast in me is that--the desire to know better, to
know--beautifully, and to transmit my knowledge. That's all there is
in life for me beyond food and shelter and tidying up. This
Being--opening its eyes, listening, trying to comprehend. Every good
thing in man is that--looking and making pictures, listening and
making songs.... We began with bone-scratching. We're still--near it.
I'm just a part of this beginning--mixed with other things. Every
book, every art, every religion is that, the attempt to understand and
express--mixed with other things."

I have reached something like a climax with this passage; a climax
that I would willingly maintain if it were possible, inasmuch as it
holds a representation of that unchanging influence which I find as an
inspiration and a force behind all H.G. Wells' books. Necessarily
this vital inspiration is, as he says, "mixed with other things"; he
has had to find a means to express it, and our means of expression is
limited not only by our own powers but in a large degree by the
limitations of the audience addressed. Moreover H.G. Wells' art
represents him in that it is a practical art. He is, in an
unspecialised sense, a pragmatist. He comes back from his isolations
to find in this world all the substance and potentialities of beauty
both in outward appearance and in conduct. And he is not content to
vapour of ideals. He recognises that the stuff of admiration and
desire that animates his own being is present throughout humanity.
Only the sight of it is obscured by all those stupidities and
condescensions to rule-of-thumb that he attacks so furiously. Those
are the impediments that he would clear away, and he acknowledges that
they stand between him and his own sight of beauty. He is compelled
always to struggle--and we can see the signs