September 30, 1920] 



NATURE 



139 



that by the beg-jnning of the third century B.C. 

 there had already arisen in the Western civilisa- 

 tion of the Old World the great structural ideas 

 (i) of communicable and verifiable knowledge, as 

 contrasted with priest-guarded mysteries; (2) of 

 one universal God of Righteousness, whose temple 

 is the whole world ; and (3) of a world polity of 

 which Alexander the Great became the symbol. 

 " The rest of the history of mankind is very largely 

 the history of these three ideas of science, of a 

 universal righteousness, and of a human common- 

 weal." The Fifth Book gives an account of the 

 rise and collapse of the Roman Empire — an ac- 

 Dunt which seems to us to betray bias. It was a 

 >cry unsound political system. "The clue to all 

 its failure lies in the absence of any free mental 

 activity and any organisation for the increase, 

 development, and application of knowledge." It 

 was "a colossally ignorant and unimaginative 

 l-'mpire." When the smash came "there was one 

 thing that did not perish, but grew, and that was 

 the tradition of the world-empire of Rome and of 

 the supremacy of the Casars." The Great War 

 "mowed down no fewer than four Caesars" who 

 insisted on keeping up the evil tradition. We do 

 not hear much of Roman Law from Mr. Wells, 

 l)ut he frankly confesses that he "contemplates 

 the law and lawyers of to-day with a tempera- 

 mental lack of appreciation." 



The Sixth Book is chiefly concerned with 

 Christianity and its idea of the Kingdom of God, 

 and with Islam with its broad idea of human 

 brotherhood under God. It is admitted that the 

 founder of Islam "had to tack on to his assertion 

 I if the supremacy of God an assertion that 

 Muhammad was in especial his prophet, a queer 

 little lapse into proprietorship, a touchingly base- 

 less claim for the copyright of an idea which, as 

 a matter of fact, he had picked up from the Jews 

 iiid Christians about him." Regarding Christi- 

 iiiity, the author quotes with approval a sentence 

 irom Dean Inge's "Outspoken Essays": "St. 

 I'aul understood what most Christians never 

 realise, namely, that the Gospel of Christ is not 

 ; religion, but religion itself in its most universal 

 .md deepest significance." Thereafter follows a 

 p.issage which will interest many, in which Mr. 

 Wells declares that there is no antagonism 

 '•ftween science and religion. What he says 

 ■cms to us to suggest rather that there is no 

 iiitagonism between science and morals. "The 

 isychologist can now stand beside the preacher 

 nd assure us that there is no reasoned peace of 

 heart, no balance and no safety in the soul, until 

 NO. 2657, VOL. 106] 



a man in losing his life has found it, and has 

 schooled and disciplined his interests and will 

 beyond greeds, rivalries, fears, instincts, and 

 narrow affections." And then he goes on to say, 

 all too elliptically : "The history of our race and 

 personal religious experience run so closely par- 

 allel as to seem to a modern observer almost the 

 same thing ; both tell of a being at first scattered 

 and blind and utterly confused, feeling its way 

 slowly to the serenity and salvation of an ordered 

 and coherent purpose. That in the simplest is 

 the outline of history ; whether one have a re- 

 ligious purpose or disavow a religious purpose 

 altogether, the lines of the outline remain the 

 same. " 



In the Seventh Book the Age of the Land Ways 

 is illustrated by the great empire of Jengis Khan 

 and his successors, very sympathetically sketched 

 {" the blood in our veins was brewed on the steppes 

 as well as on the ploughlands "). Land ways give 

 place to sea ways and Western civilisation has its 

 renascence ("Europe begins to Think for Itself," 

 "Paper Liberated the Human Mind," "the ex- 

 pansion of human horizons," "intimations of a 

 new and profounder social justice "). The Eighth 

 Book is devoted to the Age of the Great Powers. 



"Tremendously as these phantoms, the Powers, 

 rule our minds and lives to-day, they are, as this 

 history shows clearly, things only of the last few 

 centuries, a mere hour, an incidental phase, in the 

 vast, deliberate history of our kind. They mark 

 a phase of relapse, a backwater, as the rise of 

 Machiavellian monarchy marks a backwater; they 

 are part of the same eddy of faltering faith, in a 

 process altogether greater and altogether different 

 in general character^ the process of the moral and 

 intellectual reunion of mankind. For a time men 

 have relapsed upon these national or imperial gods 

 of theirs ; it is but for a time. The idea of the 

 world state, the universal kingdom of righteous- 

 ness, of which every living soul shall be a citizen, 

 was already in the world two thousand years ago, 

 never more to leave it. Men know that it is 

 present, even when they refuse to recognise it." 



Glimpses of this same vision we find throughout 

 the book ; it is so dominant in Mr. Wells's mind 

 that he has seen all history in the light of it. 

 Whether it makes for good history we do not 

 know ; it has made for a fascinating book which 

 it does one good to read. Its influence will be 

 far-reaching. 



To what prospect does his study of universal 

 history lead Mr. Wells? The trend of human 

 evolution points in the direction of internationalism 

 — but beyond. "Our true nationality is mankind." 

 Religion and education, closely interwoven influ- 



