THE ANATOMY OF FRUSTRATION : IV. THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE IMMORTALITY
By H. G. WELLS
THOSE portions of The Anatomy of Frustration which deal with what Steele calls the Rational Objective of Life," the completest, most satisfying merger-immor- tality, show him at his most characteristic ; he presses on to his end with a curious pertinacity, and it is plain that he means to get to that end. But one feels that so far as he himself is concerned he got to that end with some bold leaps of intuition and a considerable will to get there. He is himself profoundly convinced, and his affectation of open-minded enquiry wears at times extremely thin. He believes that there is no truly rational objective, no sound and sure merger-immortality, enduring and practicable and satisfying, for any intelli- gent human being, except a thorough-going self-identifica- tion with the human will and intelligence considered as a synthesis of the will-drives and the mental-drives of the entire species. He rarely writes it Humanity ; lie writes it Life ; but he admits that, outside the human range, consciousness of, much less participation in, anything of the sort is negligible.
He evokes this Life Being of his in which every one of us becomes, or can become, a phase of feeling, thrust or decision, he evokes it with such a strength of con- viction, he holds it so firmly, that it is difficult to keep in mind how modern and experimental is this general statement of his. Without the biological and psycho- logical thought of the past third of a century it could not have been made..
. The only way of escape from ultimate frustration for every living intelligence, the only way that opens a vista that can remain an open vista, lies now through this formula : " I am Life "—or, what is practically the same thing, " I am Man."
But this is not a new faith and conception of conduct that replaces outworn and discredited faiths. " A- new faith now and thus, and everything wrong before," would be altogether contrary to Steele's line of thought. Nearly everything was right or in the right direction before, but insufficient and prematurely conclusive. He unrolls a vast panorama of all the gods and divine chiefs, the mystical interpretations, the causes and devotions, the churches and organisations and patrias and gangs, the family honour and the caste duty, to which the imagination of man in his fight against the dark flood of loneliness has clung. Steele examines them without impatience.
Minds at every stage of development, in every age, have been driven to these types of resort by the same psychological need. From that point of view they are the same thing. The seeking tentacle grips this or that, but it is the same tentacle. And even if the gods are found to be incredible, if they fail the votary in the hour of need, if the dogmas lead to mutual destruction and the devotions become a trap for fruitless self- immolation, that does not end the quest ; the demand remains. A multitude of solutions that do not go far enough, nor wide enough, that betray their own unsound- ness, is no demonstration of the impossibility of any solution. Put your exploded God in a museum or your illusions in the discard ; you will be driven to try again. And so, taking an indication from this source and a phrase from that, Steele, through a sort of reductio ad tzbsurdunt of all preceding finalities, emerges with his own modern ,solution, which is, to put it simply, self- identification with the whole of life.
That means in conduct that behaviour is shaped so that its main conception is the co-operative rendering and development of experience and the progressive tlevelopment in the whole race of a co-ordinated will to continue and expand. This gives very clear and definite conceptions of what is right or wrong in the social, economic and political organisations which hold us together. And it gives equally clear indications of what is permissible or unjustifiable in personal behaviour. It takes world peace and social justice in its stride ; it makes world peace kinetic, a. clearance for action, and social justice a scheme not of rights but opportunities.
In expounding this, which he offers as the latest and best of all statements of Immortality, Steele reminds one not a little of Paul on Mars' Hill-; " Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." There is the same confident striving for an immense simplifica- tion. I suppose every man who has ever sat down to tell his religion to others has something of the same feeling, that at last he is out of the estuary marshes and channels and making for the sought-for open sea.
" And now," says Steele, ." we can really open up this subject of man's frustration. For with the broad table- lands of our common human opportunity, widespread and inviting before us, seen plainly, stated clearly, why do we not go on to them, why are we not hurrying towards them, why are we not in fact already there ? Why does our species—which is I—which is you—still live in division and confusion ? Is this now no more than a temporary state of disorganisation, the old confusions still going on, because of the extreme newness of the new ideas, or is the fog (the Mess, the Jungle) a permanent condition of human life? Shall we be for ever a medley o' individuals striving to escape from a frustration that will at last close in upon us all ? "
For Steele at least the answer was No. He insists that he as Man is the unending Beginner. That a full and happy phase of living as individuals and as a species is now within our reach—at hand. What delays us ? What hampers us ? These become the master questions in life now, and the Anatomy of Frustration the supreme study for mankind.
Steele is very elaborate and explicit about the difference between this self-merger in mankind and the ideas of Modern Democracy. Here again his quotations and references represent an enormous amount of reading. This Undying Man, this Awakening Spirit in Life, with whom we have to identify ourselves, is not the Crowd or any sort of crowd. The Russians, he thinks, may be the last people to cling to the " Mysticism of the Masses." The Mysticism of the Masses—the belief, that is, in a transcendent crowd-wisdom—was one of the mental characteristics of the nineteenth century. He quotes with infinite disapproval Lincoln's words that you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time but that you cannot fool all the people all the time. And he makes a shrewd remark that I have never heard before. Beethoven, he says, crowns his Ninth Symphony with stupendous choral effects, the liberated millions' march to triumph. There an Age finds expression. Today no Beethoven, he declares, would culminate with that brawling, swarming, shouting.
Multitudinousness of music. Now the theme would be the clear greatness of the human mind, fearless and masterful, like a new lone star arising among the stars.
[Mr. Wells' next article is entitled Salvation or Suicide."]
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