And even in the act of saying that things change, we say that there is something unchangeable.
But certainly the best example of Mr. Wells's fallacy can be found in the example which he himself chooses. It is quite true that we see a dim light which, compared with a darker thing, is light, but which, compared with a stronger light, is darkness.
But the quality of light remains the same thing, or else we should not call it a stronger light or recognize it as such.
If the character of light were not fixed in the mind, we should be quite as likely to call a denser shadow a stronger light, or vice versa If the character of light became even for an instant unfixed, if it became even by a hair's-breadth doubtful, if, for example, there crept into our idea of light some vague idea of blueness, then in that flash we have become doubtful whether the new light has more light or less. In brief, the progress may be as varying as a cloud, but the direction must be as rigid as a French road.
North and South are relative in the sense that I am North of Bournemouth and South of Spitzbergen. But if there be any doubt of the position of the North Pole, there is in equal degree a doubt of whether Iam South of Spitzbergen at all. The absolute idea of light may be practically unattainable. We may not be able to procure pure light.
We may not be able to get to the North Pole. But because the North Pole is unattainable, it does not follow that it is indefinable.
And it is only because the North Pole is not indefinable that we can make a satisfactory map of Brighton and Worthing.
In other words, Plato turned his face to truth but his back on Mr. H. G. Wells, when he turned to his museum of specified ideals.
It is precisely here that Plato shows his sense. It is not true that everything changes; the things that change are all the manifest and material things. There is something that does not change;and that is precisely the abstract quality, the invisible idea.
Mr. Wells says truly enough, that a thing which we have seen in one connection as dark we may see in another connection as light.
But the thing common to both incidents is the mere idea of light--which we have not seen at all. Mr. Wells might grow taller and taller for unending aeons till his head was higher than the loneliest star.
I can imagine his writing a good novel about it. In that case he would see the trees first as tall things and then as short things;he would see the clouds first as high and then as low.
But there would remain with him through the ages in that starry loneliness the idea of tallness; he would have in the awful spaces for companion and comfort the definite conception that he was growing taller and not (for instance) growing fatter.
And now it comes to my mind that Mr. H. G. Wells actually has written a very delightful romance about men growing as tall as trees;and that here, again, he seems to me to have been a victim of this vague relativism. "The Food of the Gods" is, like Mr. Bernard Shaw's play, in essence a study of the Superman idea. And it lies, I think, even through the veil of a half-pantomimic allegory, open to the same intellectual attack. We cannot be expected to have any regard for a great creature if he does not in any manner conform to our standards. For unless he passes our standard of greatness we cannot even call him great. Nietszche summed up all that is interesting in the Superman idea when he said, "Man is a thing which has to be surpassed." But the very word "surpass" implies the existence of a standard common to us and the thing surpassing us.
If the Superman is more manly than men are, of course they will ultimately deify him, even if they happen to kill him first.
But if he is simply more supermanly, they may be quite indifferent to him as they would be to another seemingly aimless monstrosity.
He must submit to our test even in order to overawe us.
Mere force or size even is a standard; but that alone will never make men think a man their superior. Giants, as in the wise old fairy-tales, are vermin. Supermen, if not good men, are vermin.
"The Food of the Gods" is the tale of "Jack the Giant-Killer"told from the point of view of the giant. This has not, I think, been done before in literature; but I have little doubt that the psychological substance of it existed in fact. I have little doubt that the giant whom Jack killed did regard himself as the Superman.
It is likely enough that he considered Jack a narrow and parochial person who wished to frustrate a great forward movement of the life-force.
If (as not unfrequently was the case) he happened to have two heads, he would point out the elementary maxim which declares them to be better than one. He would enlarge on the subtle modernity of such an equipment, enabling a giant to look at a subject from two points of view, or to correct himself with promptitude.
But Jack was the champion of the enduring human standards, of the principle of one man one head and one man one conscience, of the single head and the single heart and the single eye.
Jack was quite unimpressed by the question of whether the giant was a particularly gigantic giant. All he wished to know was whether he was a good giant--that is, a giant who was any good to us.
