a must be a
world-state, or else people might make war on it. It does not seem to
occur to him that, for a good many of us, if it were a world-state we
should still make war on it to the end of the world. For if we admit
that there must be varieties in art or opinion what sense is there in
thinking there will not be varieties in government? The fact is very
simple. Unless you are going deliberately to prevent a thing being
good, you cannot prevent it being worth fighting for. It is impossible
to prevent a possible conflict of civilizations, because it is
impossible to prevent a possible conflict between ideals. If there were
no longer our modern strife between nations, there would only be a
strife between Utopias. For the highest thing does not tend to union
only; the highest thing, tends also to differentiation. You can often
get men to fight for the union; but you can never prevent them from
fighting also for the differentiation. This variety in the highest
thing is the meaning of the fierce patriotism, the fierce nationalism
of the great European civilization. It is also, incidentally, the
meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity.

But I think the main mistake of Mr. Wells's philosophy is a somewhat
deeper one, one that he expresses in a very entertaining manner in the
introductory part of the new Utopia. His philosophy in some sense
amounts to a denial of the possibility of philosophy itself. At least,
he maintains that there are no secure and reliable ideas upon which we
can rest with a final mental satisfaction. It will be both clearer,
however, and more amusing to quote Mr. Wells himself.

He says, "Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the
mind of a pedant).... Being indeed!--there is no being, but a
universal becoming of individualities, and Plato turned his back on
truth when he turned towards his museum of specific ideals." Mr. Wells
says, again, "There is no abiding thing in what we know. We change from
weaker to stronger lights, and each more powerful light pierces our
hitherto opaque foundations and reveals fresh and different opacities
below." Now, when Mr. Wells says things like this, I speak with all
respect when I say that he does not observe an evident mental
distinction. It cannot be true that there is nothing abiding in what we
know. For if that were so we should not know it all and should not call
it knowledge. Our mental state may be very different from that of
somebody els