# The Works of H. G. Wells (Atlantic Edition)/Preface to Volume 11

PREFACE TO VOLUME XI
Here, very much out of its proper order, is a theological book, "The Undying Fire." It is modelled very closely upon the Book of Job; most of its characters are obviously the characters of that great dramatic dialogue modernised; like the Book of Job it is a discussion about evil and the will of God. The rest of the volume may be regarded as an explanatory appendix to this dialogue novel. It is a carefully winnowed gathering of the writer's theological discussion for the last fifteen years.
"First and Last Things" was written in 1907-8 under the stimulation of a discussion about fundamental ideas that was going on in the London Fabian Society. Various members read papers entitled "What I Believe;" and "First and Last Things" was, to begin with, one of these papers. But having launched out upon confession, the writer's desire for explicitness and fullness expanded it into a book. It was revised in 1917. The revised version is reprinted here with the exception of eleven sections that were not good enough to reprint. They dealt with the Churches, brotherhoods and the organisations of men and women for mutual help and support in their efforts after righteousness. The writer has no aptitude for such organisation or indeed for any sort of co-operative work, and these sections are not worth reading. Several of these sections simply enlarge ​upon the idea of the Samurai already given in "A Modern Utopia."
Finally bound up in this volume is "God the Invisible King," which was not written and issued until 1917. It is put here into one cover with "First and Last Things" because the former explains and is necessary to the understanding of the latter work. It is a strenuous attempt to gather up into the recognised forms and terms of contemporary religion the beliefs embodied in the earlier book. The writer has personified and emotionalised to his utmost. He has done all he can in this book to express his ideas on current religious phraseology. Perhaps he has done too much. His religious outlook is in truth Promethean rather than Theistic, Manichean rather than Catholic, Persian rather than either Greek or Hebrew.
Let him insist upon the connection of "God the Invisible King" with the metaphysical sections of "First and Last Things."
In the voluminous discussion that has arisen out of "God the Invisible King" nothing has so impressed him as the impossibility of getting to understandings with people who are unconscious of metaphysical difficulties and who consequently use words with an uncritical confidence. Anyone who would fully understand the reasoning of "God the Invisible King" must grasp the fundamental scepticism about human thought which underlies that discourse.
The writer questions the ultimate validity of human thought—he does not deny it but he questions it; he is saturated with the idea of its incurable in​accuracy at present and of its unavoidable sketchiness and artistry. There are groups of those who criticise "God the Invisible King"—the most striking cases are the critics from the Rationalist Press Association and from the Roman Catholic Church—who are manifestly saturated by the absolutely opposite idea, the conviction that the terms of human thought are solid, opaque and stable. They will allow no license to poetry unless it scans, rhymes, is printed in lines and otherwise marked clearly as such. Otherwise they insist upon a literal and material consistency. When they encounter such a phrase as "God walked in the garden" they insist that it follows that he cast a shadow, crushed stray caterpillars in the turf and kicked aside the gravel. The former group demand therefore footprints and the size of His boots for purposes of verification, being equally prepared to deny the Presence altogether or prove a Cockney trespasser; the second, following the same line of thought in an opposite direction, are ready to welcome any stray scraps of boot-heel, any cast shoe protectors or the like as evidence to silence the sceptic. Either side is equally angry when it is told that the statement was not intended to that extent. There is virtuous indignation.
Or again if one writes, "God responds," they demand "by a voice?" or "was it by planchette?" or how the trick was done. Mr. William Archer became almost facetious in his "God and Mr. Wells" because God who can come into men's hearts as a still small voice does not come in with a few recipes of practical value. Many people have evidently never realised ​that all discussion except the discussion of matters of fact is incurably poetical. Yet all terms used in human speech are either the names of definite facts in the common experience of men or they are metaphors, witticisms or a deliberate distortion or extension of such terms to express vaguely apprehended realities that are otherwise elusive. "Molecule" and "ether" are just as real and just as unreal as the personality of God. Anyone may jeer at the preposterous idea of a medium as rigid as steel in which we move freely, yet that was the conception of "ether" necessitated by physical science a few years ago; anyone can refuse to find any further significance than a faint squeak in a "still small voice." Yet in either case there is something there and the word or phrase we use is the most expressive we can find. But both Rationalist and Romanist are blind with the vanity of mental finality. The Rationalist knows exactly that that something is It and not Him, the Romanist knows the exact contrary in clear detail. He knows indeed at what rate God's beard grows. With neither type is any real understanding possible until the almost wilful metaphysical ignorance that sanctions this conceit of exactitude has been overcome.