and regard life with the calmness of one detached
from personal interests and desires. No human being who has not thus
stood apart from life can claim to have realised himself; and in so
far as he is unable thus to separate himself temporarily from his
circumstances he confesses that he is less a personality than a bundle
of reactions to familiar stimuli. But given that power of detachment,
the reader may find in these four books matter for the reconsideration
of the whole social problem. Whether he accept such tentative
reconstructions as those suggested in _The World Set Free_ or _In the
Days of the Comet_ is relatively unimportant, the essential thing is
that he should view life with momentarily undistracted eyes; and see
both the failures of our civilisation and its potentialities for a
finer and more gracious existence....

_The First Men in the Moon_ (1901) is little more than a piece of
sheer exuberance. The theory of the means to the adventure and the
experience itself are both plausible. There are a few minor
discrepancies, but when the chief assumption is granted the
deductions will all stand examination. The invention of cavorite, the
substance that is impervious to the force--whatever it may be--of
gravitation, as other substances are impervious to light, heat, sound
or electricity, is not a priori impossible, nor is the theory that the
moon is hollow, that the "Selenites" live below the surface, or that
evolution has produced on our satellite an intelligent form which,
anatomically, is more nearly allied to the insect than to the
vertebrate type as we know it. The exposition of lunar social
conditions cannot be taken very seriously. Specialisation is the
key-note; the production by education and training, of minds, and, as
far as possible, bodies, adapted to a particular end, and incapable of
performing other technical functions. The picture of this highly
developed state, however, is not such as would tempt us to emulation.
As a machine it works; as an ideal it lacks any presentation of the
thing we call beauty. The apotheosis of intelligence in the concrete
example leaves us unambitious in that direction.

One chapter, however, stands apart and elaborates once more that
detachment for space and time which I have so particularly emphasised
as the more important feature of these particular books. Mr Bedford,
alone in his Cavorite sphere between the Earth and the Moon,
experiences this sensation of aloofn