AN APPEAL TO MR. H. G. WELLS
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR.] [To the Editor of TIIE SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Shortly before he died the other day, a brother of mine called my name sharply twice, in his sleep, followed by . Look out for the glass in the door ! You'll hurt (or cut) yourself ! " The previous day (note the telepathic " lag ") I had gone in a hurry to fetch a throat-specialist who lived in a block of modern flats near-by, and turning sharply down a corridor had failed to notice a huge glass door with only the narrowest of frames. I crashed into it violently and for a few moments stood wondering how near I had come to breaking it, and whether, had I done so, I should have pitched forward on to the spikes of broken glass : but being very pre- occupied I completely forgot the occurrence within a few min- utes ; and I had mentioned it to no one.
Now this episode, though in no way outstanding as such things go, is just another of those hints that give one to think, concerning Mr. Wells' analysis of Steele's magnum opus—and all such attempts to round up the whole corpus of human specula- tion. He himself wittily describes the result of his particular effort as being like " a museum after a riot." Yet, neverthe- less, he seems to assume that it represents, essentially, all that there is to life—and devotes himself to leading us around amongst the debris, discoursing upon it all in his inimitable way. But—is it all .that there is to life, this heterogeneous collection of ancient and damaged bric-a-brac, the product of our first few thousand years of gropings and fumblings ? Suppose that, after all, the true scheme of things is not fully shown forth in Mrs. Bloggs, as Mrs. Bloggs thinks herself to be, but that it is really something with far more beyond it than, say, orthodox Professor Cloggs has ever had any inkling of ? Then, surely, the ground would be cut away from under the professorial feet, which would have to turn their toes in some fresh direction ? (In any case, was not the cocksure nine- teenth-century outlook of such gentry blown sky-high thirty years ago by the discovery of the electrical nature of the atom ? And if not, should it not have been ? ) • Yes—can we not now leave the debris on the floor, and go and open the windows ? And what some people cannot understand, is how it comes that one with his grasp of things, sweeping horizons, and restless, super-inquisitive mind—one who has had all the known world " taped " for so many years— can be content to go on dealing indefinitely with material which has (to change the metaphor) been hashed and rehashed, chewed and re-chewed, ad nauseam.
Towards what new horizons would we have him advance ? . . . It others explain. For instance, Mr. G. M. N. Tyrrell, who in a short book called Grades of Significance puts forward, amongst other significant ideas, a theory of the " Warp and the Woof " of Life— the Warp being the undying main current of History (to which philosophically he himself is so faithfully wedded) and the Woof the cross-current (probably also undy- ing) of individual life, cutting across it. Or Ouspensky, per- haps, flinging windows wide with Tertium Organism and letting in line breezes from unknown lands and seas uncharted.
He must know, too, the modern astronomers and super- physicists—though one looks in vain for any hint from him of the almost mystical outlook upon which they are finding themselves forced back. But above all it is to that border-line country of pioneer work that I should like to call his serious attention, the study of which few intelligent people have ever embarked upon and subsequently treated with flippancy= psychical research. (If he will glance at the list, printed in each volume of Proceedings, of the past presidents of the (English) S.P.R., he will be assured that the subject is worthy of the attention of men of whatever type of intellectual eminence.) It is no happy-hunting-ground now for cranks— however many cranks and even rogues there may be amongst the camp-followers—but should be, and one may hope soon will be, the chosen terrain of some of the most fearless " live wires " amongst our younger scientists.
The aspects of the subject, and the angles of approach to it, are many, and its literature now immense. One might start with the fifty odd years of S.P.R. Proceedings, or merely such classics as Myers' Human Personality ; or, on the other hand, with slender volumes like On the Edge of the Etheric—a straightforward account of the experiences of a hard-headed Scottish business man—or An Adventure—the detailed story (with J. W. Dunne's foreword) of how two ladies of eminent probity and academic distinction saw the Versailles of the eighteenth century in the Versailles of the twentieth.
Does he know that in America an untravelled person of very mediocre education, whose only normal language is Middle West," has dictated at a speed of 1700 words per hour a dra- matic prose-poem of 60,000 words which contains 90 per cent. of words of pure Anglo-Saxon origin, whereas the Authorised Version can only run to 77 (Chaucer 64, and Spenser 62) ? Does not that " philological miracle " (The Case of Patience Worth) whet his insatiable curiosity ?
What did he personally make of the recent exhibition of Fire-Walking, staged at last in this country and reported with photographs in the Press ? Where does he place such facts as all these in his cosmography ? And can any conspectus of knowledge possibly be sound which ignores them—are they not rather, in the nature of things, basic and fundamental to the whole superstructure of human thought ?
The position then is this. We do not even understand consciousness, let alone Life ; but we ignore our ignorance, and brush aside the most staggering problems, such as the migration of eels and of birds, with one contemptuous word, " Instinct ! " We have not even the foggiest notion of how to set about solving such problems, have we ? The majority of our scientists—rooted in that most inelegant posture of the ostrich—still refuse to admit the existence even of human telepathy. (Mr. Wells' own only pronouncement upon such subjects relates to the apparent flux in human per- sonality ; but one must remind him that we can all still recognise H. G. Wells. " Plus ca change . . .") But why this shirking of our difficulties ? And what is there inherently improbable in, say, a Warp and Woof theory, or in the " ultimate explanation of things " being in reality a four (or multi-) dimensional one, rather than a mere extension of our obviously limited present outlook ?
What is the gist of my argument, does he say ; am I asking him to become a séance-haunting spiritualist ? I prefer not to answer, but merely to lay this very incomplete outline of " pointers " on his desk. This much one may permit oneself, however. It is pretty clear now that the advanced posts, the positions of danger (to reputations included) in man's battle for the mastery of his destiny, lie in the No-Man's- Lands of research. And one would add an invocation to him to bring up all that heavy artillery of his to where it is needed, and leave others, now, to fuss about with the commissariat in the background.—Yours very truly, C. H. B. GOWAN., Capt. R.N. (Ret.)
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