Arthur Machen

“ Indeed, it seems to me that all the contrivances to prolong life and to make it more comfortable, from good drains to improved surgery and anæsthetics, have been more than counterbalanced by a certain influence that I do not remember to have seen noted in this connection. The fact is that the modern world is profoundly cowardly, with the anxious, incessant, ever-gnawing cowardice that allows the patient no rest. ”

“ Were the Borgias, the poisoners of the exalted, so much worse than the persons who come to honour and great fortune by selling poisonous provisions to the helpless poor? We do not burn people alive now (save in the highly "civilised" United States of America) ; we do not sack cities. ”

“ Authors who did not please large numbers of people would be no better off than now, and as for that vision of municipalities contending for the honour of publishing our books—well, I for one cannot realise it, cannot believe in it at all, unless it is presumed that the mere readjustment of economic conditions would so change the hearts of aldermen that London would become as ancient Athens or as mediæval Florence. ”

“ Wells's good nature and moderation.
But there is a root-idea behind his arguments which we would like to have more fully elucidated—that is, his doctrine of the Universal Good Will and of its issue in a constant upward progress. Is it really proven that the Universal Good Will is any more real than the Universal Evil Will; is "Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord" a fact, while "Crucify Him" is an illusion? I know Mr. Wells's point of view is the popular one; it is the thing to dance a kind of world-dance to the accompaniment of a cosmic "For we are jolly good fellows." ”

“ And as to what may be called our modern sanitary advantages, I quite agree that if other things were equal they would be real advantages. If life were happy it would be better to have a reasonable prospect of living to eighty instead of a reasonable prospect of dying of the Black Death at thirty. ”

“ Surely a good many of us are jolly bad fellows, and unfortunately we often get the upper hand and give the good fellows the very devil's own time. I am not aware that any deep thinker of the past has ever maintained this doctrine of the Universal Good Will of men ”

“ Wells sure that this decided improvement in externals proceeds from a true improvement in the human heart? It must be remembered that there are many cruel and wicked people who faint at the sight of blood; there are many gluttons and good diners who would not like to see the pig's throat cut or the ox felled to the ground. I do not think that I am the more humane, being an eater of lobsters, because I should not like to plunge the wretched creature into boiling water. ”

“ I suppose there are many people who hear with relief—with satisfaction even—that some cruel and malignant ruffian has been hanged, and yet these people would fall fainting with horror if they were made to witness that last awful scene. ”

“ Wells is careful not to promise any new heavens or new earth; and while he argues that the great majority of people would be much more comfortable and more free from worry under the new system, he is also honest and sensible enough to admit that with many of us it would be practically "as you were." ”

“ We know the names of diseases, we know their symptoms, we know all about our own insides; we are in a perpetual terror lest something should be mortally wrong with us. It is possible that the bodily terrors of the average modern man who attains the average length of days, if added together, would surpass all the torments and the terrors of the poor wretch who swung from the cart at Tyburn. ”

“ He argued acutely and philosophically that as the sense of things became keener, the intellect more refined, so much deeper and more profound would become the wretchedness of man, so much more horrible the dread of the black pit of extinction. ”

“ To take the case of malignant disease: today the sufferer from carcinoma experiences in spirit, in dread, in foreknowledge, ten times the inevitable anguish of the body; of old such a person would die after great physical pain assuredly, but not after months or years of unspeakable mental agony. And of old the torments of the body might, and often did, become transmuted into the joys of the spirit ”

“ In honest fact it is the millionaire who deserves our profound pity, while the slave was often the merriest of men. In other words, the happiness of man, whether it be of a high or low degree, depends on facts which are in nowise related to the physical and material sphere. ”

“ Wells would certainly not commit himself to such a definition, since, both as artist and thinker, he has every reason to know better, to know that man is an extraordinary complex, who is sometimes quite unaffected by physical conditions. ”

“ One can certainly have too much of a bad thing. The maxim as to Cathay and Europe is perhaps of doubtful truth in the instances selected; but no one doubts the soundness of the general principle. Most men would prefer one exquisite dish before ten courses of insipidity or nastiness. I have never heard a really sober art-critic express a wish that Mr. ”