What Nietzsche said about Socrates is true of Mr. Shaw even in a higher degree; that his reason is stronger than his instincts, and has usurped the place of his instincts. Without Love, he yet affirms creation. What can be his reason for doing so? Why should he wish Life to persist if he does not love Life? Is it in order that people might still converse wittily, and the epigram might not die? Or so that exceptional men might experience forever the joy of intellectual conflict, the satisfaction found in the ruthless exposure of fallacy and weakness, and the proud feeling of mental power? We know that Mr. Shaw regards the brain as an end--the purpose of Life being to perfect a finer and finer brain--and we know, too, that to Mr. Shaw the highest joy the brain can experience is not that of knowing, but of fighting. Knowledge to him is a weapon with which to wage war. Does he desire Life to continue so that controversy might continue? Well, let us look, then, for some other reason for his praise of Love. He himself lacks Love:--Can it be that he praises it for the same reason for which the Christian praises what he is not but would fain be? And his love of Love is then something pathetic, founded on "unselfishness"? And himself, a Romantic? 155 _Mr. H. G. Wells_ How much has Mr. Wells's scientific training had to do with his conception of Love? As a student of biology, it was natural he should see Love as sex. In all his theories, indeed, there is more of the scientist than of the artist. Scientific certainly, is his simple acceptance of sex as a fact, and his unhesitating association of it with generation, and of both with Love. The innocence of the scientist and not of the artist is his, an innocence Darwinian, not Goethean. And so, although his purpose is fine--to restore in his books an innocent conception of sexual Love--in doing so, his biology always runs away with his art. For he would render sex significant by reading it into all creation, as the meaning of creation; thus making the instrument more than the agent, the very meaning of the agent! But this robs both creation and sex of their significance. The way to restore an innocent conception of sexual Love is by reading creation into it, by seeing it as part of the universal Becoming, by carrying it away on the great purifying stream of Becoming. In spite of his genius, and still more of his cleverness, Mr. Wells here began at the wrong end. But it is doubtful whether any one in this generation has sufficient artistic power and elevation to express in art this conception of Love. Within the limits of Realism, especially of "physiological Realism," it certainly cannot be expressed. Nothing less than the symbolic may serve for it. 156 _The Idealism of Love_