discipline is essential—­that he is not an independent unit as regards his work, but a factor, more or less insignificant, in the sum of individuals that make up the greater State.  The good New Republican “will seek perpetually to gauge his quality, he will watch to see himself the master of his habits and of his powers; he will take his brain, blood, body and lineage as a trust to be administered for the world.”

Such, I think, is the spirit, the permanent principle of these two books.  That remains and increases.  The conception of the process by which the New Republic shall be built is less constant, and Mr Wells will change his opinions concerning it for just so long as he continues to grow.  Should he ever adopt an inalterable policy, subscribe to some “ism,” and wear a label, he would brand himself truly as inconsistent.  Then, indeed, he would have contradicted himself.  We search for truth never hoping to find it complete and whole; and he who is contented with a part denies God....

A Modern Utopia (1905) is an attempt to picture “The New Republic” in being; a very different dream of reconstruction from that displayed in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, and Equality, but having nevertheless certain points of likeness to the former at least, and especially in the method of marking contrasts by a form of parallelism, by keeping the world as we know it within the circle of attention in order to break the paralysing illusion that we are moving in romantic and quite impossible surroundings.  Mr Wells’ machinery is slightly complicated.  He takes two figures from the beginning of this twentieth century.  The Owner of the Voice ("you will go with him through curious and interesting experience.  Yet, ever and again, you will find him back at the table, the manuscript in his hand ...”) and the “botanist,” a foil and a stimulator to the other expositor.  “The image of a cinematograph entertainment is the one to grasp,” writes Mr Wells in his preliminary explanation.  “There will be an effect of these two people going to and fro in front of the circle of a rather defective lantern, which sometimes jams and sometimes gets out of focus, but which does occasionally succeed in displaying on a screen a momentary moving picture of Utopian conditions.”

I think Mr Wells tried very valiantly to avoid the all too obvious mistake made by other Utopian builders, both romantic and practical.  He began, I feel sure, with the admirable intention of depicting the people of the early twentieth century in new conditions, changed only in so far as they were influenced by the presentation of finer ideals and by more beautiful circumstance.  He even introduced a contemporary critic of Utopian conditions in the shape of the talkative person, “a conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly inexplicable way a most consummate ass.”  But once we begin to postulate our Utopian villains, the reader’s thought is