Mr. Wells will scarcely deny that if it were possible to compress his mythology and merge his Invisible King in his Veiled Being, the result would be a great simplification of the problem. But this is not, in fact, possible; for it would mean the positing of an all-good and all-powerful Creator, which is precisely the idea which Mr. Wells rebels against,[1] in common with every one who realizes the facts of life and the meaning of words. Short of this, however, is no other simplification possible? Would it not greatly clarify our thought if we could bring the Invisible King into action, not, indeed, as the creator of all things, but as the organizer and director of the surprising and almost incredible epiphenomenon which we call life? Our scheme would then take this shape: an inconceivable unity behind the veil, somehow manifesting itself, where it comes within our ken, in the dual form of a great Artificer and a mass of terribly recalcitrant matter--the only medium in which he can work. In other words, the Veiled Being would be as inscrutable as ever, but the Invisible King, instead of dropping in with a certain air of futility, like a doctor arriving too late at the scene of a railway accident, would be placed at the beginning, not of the universe at large, but of the atomic re-arrangements from which consciousness has sprung. Can we, on this hypothesis (which is practically that of Manichaeanism) hazard any guess at the motives or forces actuating the Invisible King,--or, to avoid confusion, let us say the Artificer--which should acquit him of the charge of being a callous and mischievous demon rather than a well-willing God? Can we not only place pain and evil (a tautology) to the account of sluggish, refractory matter, but also conjecture a sufficient reason why the Artificer should have started the painful evolution of consciousness, instead of leaving the atoms to whirl insentiently in the figures imposed on them by the stupendous mathematician behind the veil? [1] In _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_, which is in some sense a prologue to _God the Invisible King_, we find an emphatic renunciation of the all-good and all-powerful God. "The theologians," says Mr. Britling, "have been extravagant about God. They have had silly, absolute ideas--that he is all powerful. That he's omni-everything.... Why! if I thought there was an omnipotent God who looked down on battles and deaths and all the waste and horror of this war--able to prevent these things--doing them to amuse himself--I would spit in his empty face" (p. 406). A complete answer to this question would be a complete solution of the riddle of existence. That, if it be ever attainable, is certainly far enough off. But there are some considerations, not always sufficiently present to our minds, which may perhaps help us, not to a solution, but to a rational restatement, of the riddle.