Of course, no such obsession can find a firm footing in the American temperament. After a while it seems Russian and incredible. If you can't answer Dostoevsky logically, you will abandon logic. But he has stirred you up, and certain important conclusions rise to the surface. One is that it would be impossible to be such a pessimist unless one looked for a good deal in the world, and looked for it rather sharply. Idealism and courage began this course of thought. Isn't a big share of our optimism shallow? Shouldn't we go a little deeper into things before being so sure they are right? Another is that no living individual is worth very much, after all. Our only salvation is in creating a nobler race. And for that any sacrifice of present individuals is supremely worth while. It is as if some inspired member of a negro tribe in central Africa had suddenly awakened to the fact that his voodoo-worshipping friends were not acting rationally. From their status the burden of his chant might be horrible for its devilish revelations. But in our eyes he would be a seer and a prophet. Why should he have considered the feelings of the miserable savages? There is something more important than that! GEORGE SOULE. The Salvation of the World à la Wells Social Forces in England and America, by H. G. Wells. [Harper and Brothers, New York.] Like many philosophers, Mr. Wells is concerned mainly with the need of a new human race. All profound reformers want that. The method of achieving this desirable result is, however, the rock of turning. It probably isn't necessary to say that our present reformer is not one of those blind apostles of effortless immediacy. Such transmution was respectable when Botany Bay was a popular seaside resort for radical poets and philosophers. They of today realize something of the immensity of the developmental process. Their hopes are often so remote that they seem almost despair, but still time is trusted with a reliance on science for the urge toward human perfectibility. Of such the leader is H. G. Wells. Clearly the conviction that civilization needs a new race is well founded. All ideals, all ideas, civilization, culture are and have always been the products of a pitiful minority. The tendency at present is toward making the desire of the majority supreme. The majority do not cleave toward ideals--not even toward establishing their own glory. Rousseau imagined that millions loved righteousness; Jefferson made such beliefs the basis of the country's documents of incorporation. The idealists were manifestly mistaken. Men have never been drawn toward the ideals they have professed. Truth, justice, equality have never been valued when sex, property, or power were opposed. The virtues came in the early days from "Thus saith the Lord," and they come today, if they come at all, from "Thus saith a Strong Man."