So I would advise the readers of _Anticipations_ and _Mankind in the
Making_ to be influenced by the spirit rather than by the letter of
these two books. The spirit is definite enough; it is the spirit of
humaneness, of a passionate criticism of all the evils, miseries and
disease that are the outcome of our present haphazard civilisation;
the spirit for a desire for order, wider prospects and opportunities,
greater freedom for growth. Men are born unequal, with different
tendencies, different desires, different potentialities, but there
should be a place for every one of them in the great economy of "The
New Republic." Each has to learn the lesson--for 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