I and my kind exist for primarily is battle with that, to annoy it, disarrange it, reconstruct it.”  This confession is so lucid and characteristic that I cannot improve upon it, and yet I see that it is a statement likely to arouse considerable resentment, “Of course we are detestable,” Remington admits in this connection; and in these later, more urgently critical novels, we recognise a little too clearly that note of protest, almost of defensive proclamation.  And in none of them do we see it more definitely than in the book now under consideration.  In many ways The New Machiavelli stands apart from the other novels.  I find it a little bitter in places, because the thing condemned appears too small for such unequivocal condemnation.  The following superlative summary is put into the mouth of a minor character, but I think it is fairly representative of Remington’s later attitude.  “But of all the damned things that ever were damned,” says the plain-spoken Britten, “your damned shirking, temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the utterly damnedest.”  As a commentary, I find this exaggerated; and although it is in the mouth of one who is not presented as a spokesman for Mr Wells’ own opinions, I feel that it comes very near to being a text for a considerable section of the political criticism; and that it indicates bias, a departure from normality.

And yet, despite this occasional exhibition of temper, The New Machiavelli is a most illuminating book.  It reveals with extraordinary clearness the Wells of that period; but it also gives us a sight of the spirit in him that does not change.  All his books, romances, novels and essays indicate a gradual process of growth; if we were to apply any label to him, we should inevitably land ourselves in confusion.  He is nothing “in the first place” but a man with an intense desire to understand life.  As he says in this book:  “A human being who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the first place, or a statesman in the first place, is thereby and inevitably—­though he bring God-like gifts to the pretence—­a quack.”  But while he may dissociate himself from any clique, and disclaim any fixed opinion that might earn for him the offensive and fiercely rejected label, he nevertheless presents to us one unchanging attitude in these very refusals.  “I’m going to get experience for humanity out of all my talents—­and bury nothing,” says Remington; and that purpose is implicit in every book that Wells has written.  He is an empiric, using first this test and then that to try the phenomena of life; publishing the detail of his experiment and noting certain deductions.  But while he may offer a prescription for certain symptoms, he gives us to understand that he is only diagnosing a phase in human development; that he is seeking an ultimate which he never hopes to find, and that the deductions he draws to-day may be rejected