cut up living men and reshape them into something better than the existing race, then one has a really stunning symbol of Mr. Wells's actual life effort as a radical mind of his generation; and in the lapse of Dr. Moreau's semi-human beings back to bestiality—well, consider the time still bleeding in memory when for some years the effort of every patriotic man, woman and child in the greater part of the civilized world was bent on homicide.
"When the reader comes to read the writings upon history in this collection," says Mr. Wells, "he will find the same idea of man as a re-shaped animal no longer in flaming caricature, but as a weighed and settled conviction." See "The Outline of History."
One might go through these "fantastic tales" and show how burdened they are with Mr. Wells's moral meanings, now clearly enough legible in the light of his main intention. For example, the attack of the Martians in "The War of the Worlds"—it is really a magnificent fable which ought, if it ever sinks in, to do something to persuade Mark Twain's "damned human race" that they can't afford to risk cutting one another's throats, like a lot of Mexican bandits, but had better get together and concert measures of defense against the invisible, inscrutable, known and unknown foes which threaten the extinction of humanity.
"The Food of the Gods" is an heroic allegory about the world's superior men and women, men and women whose intellectual stature exceeds that of the average man as the height of these forty-foot giants exceeds the human pygmies at their feet. These giants are benevolent creatures of great strength, long vision, creative passion. They would like to do good turns
