ings of as many exponents of
this type of Monism.

In his volume _First and Last Things_--a work which he significantly
calls "a confession of faith and rule of life"--Mr. H. G. Wells avows
himself a believer in the "Being of the Species," and, prospectively at
least, in "the eternally conscious Being of all things." The
individual as such is merely an "experiment of the species for the
species," and without significance _per se_; we are "episodes in an
experience greater than ourselves," "incidental experiments in the
growing knowledge and consciousness of the race." Mr. Wells's
fundamental act of faith is a firm belief in "the ultimate rightness
and significance of things," including "the wheel-smashed frog on the
road, and the fly drowning in the milk." In other words, all is just
as it has to be; regrets, remorses and discontents exist only for the
"unbeliever" in this truth, while, speaking for himself, the author
frankly says, "I believe . . . that my defects and uglinesses and
failures, just as much as my powers and successes, are things that are
necessary and important." "In the last resort," he concludes his book,
"I do not care whether I am seated on a throne, or drunk, or dying in a
gutter. I follow my leading. In the ultimate I know, though I cannot
prove my knowledge in any way whatever, that everything is right, and
all things mine."

{58}

Certainly, this is uncompromising candour; but it is also,--though Mr.
Wells, strangely enough, calls himself a believer in freewill--the most
uncompromising Determinism conceivable. And this Determinism follows
quite inevitably from Mr. Wells's monistic premises--belief in a cosmic
"scheme" every part of which is ultimately right. An end in the gutter
or on the gallows may be as necessary to that scheme's perfection as a
life spent in strenuous goodness. Whatever is, is right. It can be
hardly necessary to point out that such a belief, consistently
entertained, puts an end to all moral effort; we "follow our
leading"--_i.e._, we do not drive, but drift. Arguing from his own
premises, it is absolutely vain for Mr. Wells to wax indignantly
eloquent over social abuses, as when he says:--

I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial production; I see
some who are extravagant and yet contemptible creatures of luxury, and
some leading lives of shame and indignity; . . . I see gamblers,
fools, brutes, toilers, martyrs. Their disorder of effort, the