Let us take advantage of these post-prandial moments to survey some of the remarkable ideas which have been added to the general stock during this period. After the fashion of Cato, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells have come late to the study of Greek. Bernard Shaw read Plato at fifty, and in his latest book Wells has insisted that in the Great State everyone will study Greek. Nothing could signify more plainly that these outriders of the Modern Mind have come to a halt and wish to connect themselves with tradition, with history, with literature, with religion, with the grand current of human experience. Having been for so long experimenting with new and untried forces, sharply separated from what is received and understood, they should be related to the familiar landmarks and connected with the main stream of English thought and literature.
Grotesque and violent as it may at first appear, I believe that in the future Wells will be thought of as having played toward his own epoch a part very similar to that played by Matthew Arnold. I say this with full recognition of their remoteness in personal quality, recognizing also the difference in their direct objects of attack, in the precise causes they uphold. One thinks of these two vivid personalities--Wells--how shall one picture him?--and Matthew Arnold, that superb middle-class gentleman with his great face and deprecating hands--and the comparison is instantly ludicrous. In reality the entire trend of Arnold's social criticism was anti-individualistic and in a straight line with socialism. Seen retrospectively the main work of Wells has not been to promote any intellectual or economic doctrine, but to alter the English frame of mind. The function of each of these men has been to bring home to the English mind a range of ideas not traditional in it.