Handelingen van het Nederlandsche Philologen-congres 13

De Voorzitter geeft ten slotte het woord aan Dr. J. Bouten, die een voordracht houdt over:

H.G. Wells as a Sociological Writer.

All H.G. Wells' works are to be regarded as links in a chain which is formed by the gradual evolution of his sociological theories. They derive their chief importance from the way in which their author interprets various conclusions arrived at by great thinkers of his own and of bygone times, and adapts them to modern conditions of life. This pupil of Darwin and Huxley, whose watchword is ‘all things drift’, keeps forever in view the changeable nature of social relations into which he tries to introducé more harmony. The student of Wells comes to distinguish a pre-war period of essentially intellectual enquiry into the social outlook and the causes by which it is determined, and a post-war phase in which his intellectualism derives support from certain emotional sources, for which the experiences of 1914 were responsible.

Wells has always laid stress on the fundamental identity of the social with the religious problem. Both demand the complete emancipation from self. He does not share the view that the religious duties of the individual involve the cultivation of the individual self with a view to a life hereafter in which alone perfection can be attained, but regards them

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entirely in the light of ‘social service’. This recognition of a duty of the individual towards humanity is at the bottom of his philosophy. To him, Socialism is not merely a struggle against poverty, but ‘the subordination of the will of the self-seeking individual to the idea of a racial well-being embodied in an organized World State’. His ‘Russia in the Shadows’ points out that the spirit of Bolshevism, in laying stress on the existence of a class-war, is diametrically opposed to religions-spirited collectivism in that it engenders a spirit of hostile competiton instead of one of friendly cooperation towards a common aim. The chief necessity in modern life seems to him the cultivation of a collective consciousness.

His early works of imaginative realism contain a gloomy social forecast. Two forms of prejudice, arising from man's inclination to listen to the voice of his evil passions and to disregard the dictates of the intellect not only seriously hamper all human progress, but actually threaten civilization with extinction. They are the class-prejudice (in When the Sleeper Wakes) and the national prejudice (in The War in the Air). The series of fantasias of possibility closes in more hopeful fashion in The World Set Free, prophesying a great and general conflict for the year 1959, and describing the methods of warfare devised by the hypertrophy of mechanical science for the destruction of mankind, but equally prognosticating the awakening of such an overwhelming desire for peace, that the way will be paved for the great synthesis of the World State.

In the novels of the pre-war period Wells enquires into the human limitations; i.e. the innate individual tendencies which hamper development. They are gathered into one focus in The Research Magnificent (1914). The next novel, Mr. Britling sees it through, enables the reader to trace the development of Wells' soul-life during the War. In its happy conjunction of the intellectual and the emotional it may be called the high-water mark of his literary production. It added the life-bringing touch to a faith which hitherto had been starved by an exclusive regard to intellectual considerations. God the Invisible King contains the essence of these new-found convictions.

Wells' post-war activity has been directed towards the salvaging of civilization, and more especially towards the urgent problem regarding the cessation of war. Everything will depend on the success of the great and general educational effort which will have to be made. Every individual must be made to share in the life of society. His Open Conspiracy, consisting of convinced individuals, will aim at subjugating and sublimating, for the collective purpose of mankind, the savage egotisms we all inherit. Works like The Outline of History, The Salvaging of Civilization and The Open Conspiracy will give the reader some idea of the manner in which Wells believes his ideal to be capable of realization.

De Voorzitter bedankt Dr. Bouten voor zijn belangrijke mededeelingen over Wells. Van de gelegenheid tot discussie wordt gebruik gemaakt door den Heer M.L. Roos, die vraagt, of Dr. Bouten's werken, zooals Wells die schrijft, wel als het beste medium beschouwt mogen worden

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voor de uitwerking van de ideeën van Wells. Als Wells alleen zuivere romans had geschreven, zou hij dan evenveel bereikt hebben als nu? Acht hij een cross tusschen een roman en een treatise den besten weg om te trachten de menschheid te verbeteren? De spreker antwoordt, dat in de The World of William Clissold Wells zijn best geslaagde combinatie van een roman en een treatise heeft gegeven. In het veel vroegere A Modern Utopia treden de bezwaren van een aldus hinken op twee gedachten wel zéér sterk aan het licht. Over het algemeen genomen geeft hij gaarne toe, dat het aan twijfel onderhevig is, of de bedoelde kruising wel de geschikste gelegenheid biedt tot het bereiken van het gestelde doel.