distracted from the contemplation of the heroic which is the cement that binds every stone in the visionary city.  In order to change conditions it is necessary to change much in the present cast of human nature.  In a fiction of Utopia there is no place for a Napoleon, a Rockefeller, or an ambition-swelled Imperialist.  So Mr Wells is driven with various hesitations and resentments to assume that the interactions of cause and effect have indeed tended to produce a sweeter-tempered, more generous race of men and women; that the spirit which moves us now to seek a larger liberty and a greater tolerance has been encouraged and increased by the exercise of its own tendencies and the sight of its own triumphs; and that those who set their minds to the building gain an added grace in the labour.  It is a perfectly fair and consistent assumption, but Mr Wells has been warned by his predecessors, from Robert Owen back to Plato and forward to Edward Bellamy, that the designs for Utopia have always been flawed by an altered conception of the humanity that walks within the city; and he has begun by trying to avoid a fallacy and ended by begging a question that he might very well have convincingly argued.

By many people A Modern Utopia is definitely labelled as the “Samurai” book.  That conception of a natural aristocracy of spirit and ability did indeed return upon its creator in the form of an object lesson that filled him with a disgust for what was really a fine ideal, only too temptingly displayed.  So many of his readers, and particularly his younger readers, formed the wish to become “Samurai” without more ado, a high office for which none of them, perhaps, had the ability or the determination to fill.  For Utopias take even longer to build than Rome or London.  But the plan is there—­vague and tentative as the original scheme of a Gothic cathedral, a plan to be continually modified and changed in its most important features; and the building has begun....

The last books that can strictly fall into the present category are The Future of America (1906) and New Worlds for Old (1908).  The former is rather a record of impressions than the attempt at prophecy which the title and the first chapter indicate; and the final conclusion is too hesitating even to convince us that America has a future.  “I came to America questioning the certitudes of progress,” Mr Wells says in his Envoy.  “For a time I forgot my questionings, I sincerely believed, ‘These people can do anything,’ and, now I have it all in perspective, I have to confess that doubt has taken me again.”  And without question he has changed his opinion with regard to many of the observations he made nine years ago.  I sincerely hope he has.