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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

to Mr. Muir, are uncomfortable in the world;—they can neither support nor can they opposeanything with a full confidence, with the resultthat their work is inferior in relation to theirtalents compared with work produced in happierages,—jejune, incomplete, starved, anaemic,like their own feelings to the universe.

In short, we cannot stay where we are; we areon the move,—on the move, not necessarilyeither to better or to worse, but just to anequilibrium. But why not to the better? Whyshould not we begin to reap spiritual fruits fromour material conquests? If so, whence is tocome the motive power of desirable change?This brings us to Mr. Wells’s second theme.

Mr. Wells describes in the first volumeof Clissold his hero’s disillusionment withSocialism. In the third volume he inquires ifthere is an alternative. From whence are weto draw the forces which are “to change thelaws, customs, rules, and institutions of theworld?” “From what classes and types are therevolutionaries to be drawn? How are they tobe brought into co-operation? What are to betheir methods?” The Labour Movement isrepresented as an immense and dangerous forceof destruction, led by sentimentalists and pseudo-intellectuals, who have “feelings in the place ofideas.” A constructive revolution cannot pos-sibly be contrived by these folk. The creativeintellect of mankind is not to be found in thesequarters but amongst the scientists and thegreat modern business men. Unless we can