GOD AND MR. WELLS

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF
"GOD THE INVISIBLE KING"

By WILLIAM ARCHER

NEW YORK · ALFRED A. KNOPF · 1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF
Published, September, 1917

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[Pg v]

FOREWORD

As I look through the proofs of this little treatise, a twinge ofcompunction comes upon me. That humane philosopher Mr. Dooley hassomewhere a saying to this effect: "When an astronomer tells me thathe has discovered a new planet, I would be the last man to brush thefly off the end of his telescope." Would not this have been a goodoccasion for a similar exercise of urbanity? Nay, may it not be saidthat my criticism of God the Invisible King is a breach ofdiscipline, like duelling in the face of the enemy? I am proud tothink that Mr. Wells and I are soldiers in the same army; ought we notat all costs to maintain a united front? On the destructive side(which I have barely touched upon) his book is brilliantly effective;on the constructive side, if unconvincing, it is thoughtful,imaginative, stimulating, a thing on the whole to be grateful for.Ought one not rather to hold one's peace than to afford the commonenemy the encouragement of witnessing a squabble in the ranks?

[Pg vi]But we must not yield to the obsession of military metaphor. It is notwhat the enemy thinks or what Mr. Wells or I think that matters—it iswhat the men of the future ought to think, as being consonant withtheir own nature and with the nature of things. Ideas, like organisms,must abide the struggle for existence, and if the Invisible King isfitted to survive, my criticism will reinforce and not invalidate him.Even if he should come to life in a way one can scarcely anticipate,his proceedings will have to be carefully watched. He cannot claim thereticences of a "party truce." He will be all the better for a candid,though I hope not captious, Opposition.

I thought of printing on my title-page a motto from Mr. Bernard Shaw;but it will perhaps come better here. "The fact," says Mr. Shaw, "thata believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than thefact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness ofcredulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by nomeans a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness outof life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateseswould be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its[Pg vii]individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At allevents, it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that ourhope lies now."

Besides, it has yet to be proved that the believer in the InvisibleKing is happier than the sceptic.

London, May 24, 1917.

CONTENTS