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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

own mind as it has developed on the basis of hispersonal experience and way of life, but—shifting his angle—a point of view based on anexperience mainly different from his own, thatof a successful, emancipated, semi-scientific, notparticularly high-brow, English business man.The result is not primarily a work of art. Ideas,not forms, are its substance. It is a piece ofeducational writing—propaganda, if you like,an attempt to convey to the very big publicattitudes of mind already partly familiar to thevery small public.

The book is an omnium gatherum. I willselect two emergent themes of a quasi-economiccharacter. Apart from these, the main topic iswomen and some of their possible relationshipsin the modern world to themselves and to menof the Clissold type. This is treated with greatcandour, sympathy, and observation. It leaves,and is meant to leave, a bitter taste.

The first of these themes is a violent protestagainst Conservatism, an insistent emphasis onthe necessity and rapidity of change, the folly oflooking backwards, the danger of inadaptability.Mr. Wells produces a curious sensation, nearlysimilar to that of some of his earlier romances,by contemplating vast stretches of time back-wards and forwards which give an impression ofslowness (no need to hurry in eternity), yetaccelerating the Time Machine as he reaches pre-sent day, so that now we travel at an enormouspace and no longer have millions of years toturn round in. The Conservative influences in