Boon

So he talks, and again presently of “that world-wide im­mortal communion incessant as the march of sun and planets amidst the stars….”

And then, going on with his vast comparison, for I can­not believe this is more than a fantastic parallelism: “And if the mind that does, as we say, create is like the wafer that has become miraculously divine, then though you may not like to think of it, all you who give out books, who print books and collect books, and sell books and lend them, who bring pic­tures to people’s eyes, set things forth in theatres, hand out thought in any way from the thinking to the attentive mind, all you are priests, you do a priestly offi ce, and every bookstall and hoarding is a wayside shrine, offering consolation and re­lease to men and women from the intolerable prison of their narrow selves….”

And yet in some way he could also not believe it; he could recognize something about it that made him fi ll the mar-

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS

gin of the manuscript of this address with grotesque fi gures of an imaginary audience going out. They were, I know, as nec­essary to his whole conception as his swinging reference to the stars; both were as much part of his profound belief as the gargoyle on the spire and the high altar are necessary parts of a Gothic cathedral. And among other fi gures I am amused rather than hurt to fi nd near the end this of myself –

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS

with a view to determining just exactly what it was that irritated people in the breadth and height and expression of Hallery’s views. Or to be more exact, what he knew would have irritated people with these views if they had ever been expressed.

“It spoils the afternoon….

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS

“How well the great organized religions have understood this! How sound is the effort to meet it by shaving a priest’s head or obliging him to grow a beard, putting him into ca­nonicals, drilling him and regimenting him, so as to make him into a mere type….

This idea that the defensive instinct of the individuality, Jealousy, is constantly at war not only with other individuali­ties but with all the great de-individualizing things, with Faith, with Science, with Truth, with Beauty; that out of its resent­ments and intricate devices one may draw the explanation of most of the perplexities and humours of the intellectual life, indeed the explanation of most life and of most motives, is the quintessence of Boon. The Mind of the Race toils through this jungle of jealous individuality to emerge. And the indi­vidual, knowing that single-handed he hasn’t a chance against the immortal, allies himself with this and that, with sham im­mortalities, and partially effaced and partially confuted gen­eral things. And so it sets up its Greatnesses, to save it from greatness, its solemnities to preserve it from the overwhelm­ing gravity of truth. “See,” it can say, “I have my gods already, thank you. I do not think we will discuss this matter further.”

And from that Boon suddenly went off into absurdities.

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS

But after these scrappy notes about Jealousy and how peo­ple protect their minds against ideas, and especially the idea which is God, and against the mental intrusions of their fellow­creatures conveying ideas, I understand better the purport of that uninvited society, which he declared insisted upon com-

And yet in some extraordinary way that either I did not note at the time or that he never explained, it became present­ly the whole Conference! The various handbills, pamphlets in outline, notes for lectures, and so forth, that accompanied his notes of the Proceedings of the Royal Society may either be intended as part of the sectional proceedings of the great con­ference or as the production of this hostile organization. I will make a few extracts from the more legible of these memoranda which render the point clearer.

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS