Science Schools Journal, Jan 1887 | Written under the pseudoym ""Walter Glockenhammer"

Wells's thoughts on two paintings by G.F. Watts, "Mammon" and "Visit To Aesculapius;" together these canvases "signify...that this nation is, as it were, two dissevered parts...ease, elegance, and pleasure are floated to-day on an ocean of toil and ignorance and want."

The Fortnightly Review, Jul 1891

An important early essay on science and philosophy, offering insight into the unfettered mind that would a few years later belong to "The Father of Science Fiction."

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Science, by making available the technological means for measuring minute differences among apparently similar phenomena, substantiates the contention that "All being is unique, or, nothing is strictly like anything else."

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The Gentleman's Magazine, Sep 1891

Contrary to popular belief, evolution is a process of twists and backslidings. Degeneration is common and not always a dead end but sometimes "a plastic process in nature." The degenerate upper Silurian mud-fish is the ancestor of the land animals; and who knows the future of the "last of the mud-fish family, man"? His varied existence and variable structure probably assure him "a long future of profound modification." Yet nature may even now be equipping some "humble" successor. "The Coming Beast must certainly be reckoned in any anticipatory calculations regarding the Coming Man."

Gentleman's Magazine, Oct 1892

The "element of individual competition [in the struggle for existence] is over-accentuated in current thought" while biological cooperation has been ignored. Wells gives a few examples of the kind of cooperation he is referring to, pointing out that man himself "is an aggregate of [cooperating] amoeboid individuals in a higher unity."

Gentleman's Magazine, Jun 1893

Wells muses, with satirical overtones, on the evolutionary ancestry of man, which he follows from the anthropoid apes backwards in time.

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The Educational Times, Sep 1, 1893

A description of the Royal College of Science in which Wells endeavours to give the reader a student's view of that institution.

Chambers's Journal, Sep 3, 1893

The loneliest of pinnacles is man's present triumph. Visions of the future must include the doom described by Thomas Hood in "The Last Man": "the earth desert through a pestilence, and two men, and then one man, looking extinction in the face."

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Included in the publication Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction

ISBN 978-0-520-02679-7

University of California Press

Pall Mall Gazette, Oct 25, 1893

With increasing knowledge of dream-physiology, the time approaches for investigators "to bring the control of dreaming as a fine art into the realm of possibilities." We may imagine the dream-addict someday ordering up a night's supply, of any sort he pleases.

Pall Mall Gazette, Nov 6, 1893

As man evolves, says Professor Holzkopf of Weissnichtwo, "the purely 'animal' about him is being, and must be, beyond all question, suppressed in his ultimate development." He forecasts the hypertrophy of the organs of intellect—hands, head, eyes—and the atrophy of the "animal" organs—nose, external ears, digestive tract. Our descendants, immersed in nutritive baths deep underground, will survive until the sun itself burns out.

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One of Wells's early speculative scientific essays.
Archival Material available at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Pall Mall Gazette, Dec 6, 1893

A catalogue of angels, including: the common white angel of "the oleograph, the Christmas card, the illustrated good book, and the plaster cast"; the art angel of "fiery red and celestial blue," "of brightness rather than sentiment"; and the biblical angel of the Hebrew and of Milton, "a vast winged strength, sombre and virile."

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Pall Mall Gazette, Dec 8, 1893

Portrays the flying man, present and future. The 19th and 20th centuries witness his fiascos and triumphs. By A.D. 21,000 batlike swarms darken the evening air, homing to suburban "rookeries" from the dome of St. Paul's. The flying man holds the future: "Even now the imaginative person may hear the beating of his wings."

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Not to be confused with the short story "The Flying Man", Pall Mall Gazette, Jan 4, 1895

Pall Mall Gazette, Jan 6, 1894

Discusses Sir Robert Ball's book The Story of the Sun (1893). The idea of electro-magnetic tides brushing by "our little eddy of planets," unsettling our compasses, making solar storms, then passing on to "the illimitable beyond" is "so powerful and beautiful as to well-nigh justify that hackneyed phrase, 'the poetry of science'."

Pall Mall Gazette, Jan 15, 1894

A review of Thomas Bonney's book The Story Of Our Planet (1893), which Wells commends an "able and popular exposition of modern geology."

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Pall Mall Gazette, Jan 24, 1894

Describes the preparation of a variety of substances for observation under the microscope and whimsically envisions a time when the slides prepared in his time will become collector's items.

Science and Art, Feb 1894

In this article Wells discusses the gradations of animal and human pain and concludes that "the province of pain" may be no more than "a phase through which life must pass on its evolution from the automatic to the spiritual."

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Pall Mall Gazette, Feb 9. 1894

A review of Edith Carrington's Workers Without Wage (1893), a children's nature book which holds up to "vile" man the "lowly goodness" of the "affectionate" spider and the "patient" snail. Wells considers that hiding the cruel aspects of nature from children is bad practice.

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Pall Mall Gazette, Feb 9, 1894

A review of Sidney J. Hickson's book The Fauna Of The Deep Sea (1893). Wells discusses some of the discoveries in a field just opening up and concludes: "our knowledge is in a very pleasant phase; enough to stimulate the imagination, and not enough to cramp its play."

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Pall Mall Gazette, Feb 19, 1894

A review of H.N. Dickson's book Meteorology - The Elements Of Weather And Climate (1893). Wells finds it "exceptionally entertaining," combining "the most modern conclusions" with accurate folk-knowledge of the still unpredictable ways of the weather.

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Pall Mall Gazette, Feb 24 1894

In this review of Norman Lockyer's book The Dawn Of Astronomy (1894) Wells focuses on man's early closeness to the cycles of the sun and the stars. Now, Wells adds, churches look onto gas-lit streets where "the Great Democracy circulates for ever" and "the silent and eternal stars are forgotten."

Included in the publication Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction

ISBN 978-0-520-02679-7

University of California Press

Pall Mall Gazette Apr 2, 1894

A dialogue in which a "perverse person" challenges a schoolmaster to prove the earth round. "The point is that you teach things at school as proofs the world is round that are no more proofs than they are poetry."

Pall Mall Gazette, Apr 3, 1894

A review of Worthington G. Smith's book Man The Primeval Savage (1894), which Wells recommends to the general reader for its accounts both of ancient bones and implements, and of modern forgeries of the same.

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Pall Mall Gazette, Apr 5 1894

A negative critique of Henry Pratt's Principia Nova Astronomica (1894) with its "brand-new" solar system — "a very nice affair, with a Central Sun, and a Polar Sun, and an Equatorial Sun, over and above the visible sun of your vulgar astronomers."

Pall Mall Gazette, May, 3 1894

An article criticising the cataloguing system of the Science Library of the Royal College of Science.

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Pall Mall Gazette, May 8, 1894

An article spoofing apparatuses of unknown function exhibited by unintelligible foreigners at Royal Society soirées.

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Pall Mall Gazette, May 21, 1894

A review of Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution (1894). Wells doubts Kidd's belief that nations survive in the struggle for existence by subordinating intellectual development to "virtue, altruism, and the habit of self-sacrifice" and questions the use of the term "optimism" for a creed which gives the future to Anglo-Saxons because they are "so stupid, so pious, so sentimental."​

Pall Mall Gazette, May 22, 1894

A cyclist with a tire punctured by flints listens to an old man's dissertation to the effect that primitive man's use of flintstones was "the only thing that could engender civilisation."

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Pall Mall Gazette, June 12, 1894

A review of J.E. Gore's book The Worlds of Space (1894). Wells considers the book unimaginative with respect to the possible inhabitants of other planets, and proposes the existence of silicon-based extraterrestrial life forms.

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Pall Mall Gazette, Jun 22 1894

A review of Orville W. Owens book Francis Bacon's Cypher Story. Wells describes how Owen pasted up the pages of all of works which have at one time or another been attributed to Francis Bacon (The Faerie Queene, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Shakespeare's plays, and all the rest) and rolled them back and forth on a thousand feet of canvas until every line mated with a physically distant one to produce a secret history of Elizabethan profligacy.

Nature, July 26, 1894

In this article Wells criticises how scientists usually go about popularising science, for example, by using language that is either too technical or condescendingly simplistic. "Intelligent common people come to scientific books...for problems to exercise their minds upon... There is a keen pleasure in seeing a previously unexpected generalisation skilfully developed."

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Pall Mall Gazette, Aug 25, 1894

A review Anton Kerner von Marilaun's The Natural History Of Plants (trans. F.W. Oliver, 1894).

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Pall Mall Gazette, Sep 20, 1894

An article in which Wells describes how his restless imagination used to lead him about as if he were tied by a string and how he tamed it by becoming a writer.

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Pall Mall Gazette, Sep 25, 1894

An article in which Wells points out that the fossil record never shows "a really dominant species succeeded by it own descendants." Accordingly, he argues, Man may eventually be displaced by crustaceans, cephalopods, ants, or even plague bacilli etc., to name only a few possibilities "out of a host of others."

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Reprinted with a slight addition in the book Certain Personal Matters

Nature, Sep 27 1894

A critique of the predominant approach to teaching science, which inculcates facts, but not the method of discovery.

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Pall Mall Gazette, Oct 9, 1894

A review of J.W. Thomas's Spiritual Law In The Natural World (1894), which Wells calls "what one may perhaps call the New Theology, theology 'up-to-date.'"

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Pall Mall Gazette, Oct 12 1894

An article in which Wells argues that, in 1900, the giving of a dinner party or the hanging of a picture may be forbidden by court order if either is deemed unwholesome by Mrs. Hallelujah, Mr. Peahen, or other guardians of public morality.

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The Saturday Review, Nov 10, 1894

In this article Wells notes that the tendency to perceive every process as cyclical is "woven into the texture of our being." However, he argues, "many times this perception is of delusive — e.g., one day the sun will rise for the last time." On the cosmic level, "the main course is forward, from the things that are past and done with for ever to things that are altogether new."

Pall Mall Gazette, Nov 13, 1894

A review in which Wells characterises E. Sandford, author of A Manual Of The Exotic Ferns And Selaginella (1894), as "an extreme expression of the specialist type." Knowing all about the cultivation of ferns, he has not a suspicion of the findings of botany in the last forty years—facts of fertilization, reproduction, and classification—known to "almost any high- school girl."

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Saturday Review, Nov 24, 1894

An article in which Wells discusses what factors should be taken into account when observing the planet Mercury as it crosses the sun's disc.

The Saturday Review, Dec 1, 1894

Reprinted in the book Certain Personal Matters

In this article Wells envisages a world with a moon so bright that the stars are invisible and speculates on the reaction of its inhabitants if the moon failed and the existence of the stars were revealed. There is a fear of the night "that comes with knowledge, when we see in its true proportion this little life of ours."

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Nature , Dec 6 1894

A review of Frank Podmore's book Apparitions And Thought Transference (1894?; Wells attacks research into occult phenomena as unscientific because its results cannot be verified by repeated experiments.​

The Saturday Review, Dec 8,1894

In this article Wells discusses the differences between the offspring (including twins) of the same parents, which he finds one of the fascinating enigmas of heredity.

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The Saturday Review, Dec 15, 1894

In this article Wells argues that that the rate of change in species, and hence their "plasticity," varies in direct proportion to their fecundity and the span between generations. Thus "The true heirs of the future are the small, fecund, and precocious creatures... No doubt man is the lord of the whole earth to-day, but the lordship of the future is another matter."

Pall Mall Gazette, Nov 29 1894

A critique of Frederick Hovenden's book What Is Heat? A Peek Into Nature's Most Hidden Secrets (18943). Wells debunks the idea that "heat is a current of ether running in and out of molecules."

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Pall Mall Gazette, Dec 15, Nov 28 and Dec 8, 1894

A three-part series about the shortcomings of science teaching.

The Saturday Review, Dec 22, 1894

In this article Wells argues that certain non-organic elements, such as the silicon-aluminum cycle, could "afford the necessary material basis for a quasi-conscious and even mental superstructure." On this basis he envisions the possibility of silicon-aluminium organisms.

Pall Mall Gazette, Dec 22 1894

A review of J.A. Fleming's Electric Lamps And Electric Lighting and R. Mullineux Walmsley's The Electric Current. The one, says Wells, is a "readable volume" for nontechnical people, the other a second-hand handbook of batteries, circuitry and "professorial disregard" of "the real substance of electrical engineering" today — the dynamo.

The Saturday Review, Dec 22 1894

In this review of C. Lloyd Morgan's An Introduction To Comparative Psychology (1894), Wells indicates that he has a higher opinion of animal intelligence than Morgan: "It may be that Professor Lloyd Morgan's dog, experimenting on Professor Lloyd Morgan with a dead rat or a bone, would arrive at a very low estimate indeed of the powers of the human mind."

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Nature, Dec 27, 1894

Reviews three scientific textbooks which Wells criticises for the absence "of that progressive reasoning process which is the very essence of genuine scientific study"—that is, the process of establishing evidence for why something is a scientific fact.

Saturday Review, Dec 29, 1894

A brief expository critique of August Weismann's theory of germ plasm, against which the main objection is that the presumed immortality of germ cells seems to be another version of the theory that all individuals were preformed at the beginning of time.

The Saturday Review, Dec 29, 1894

Wells uses George Trumbull Ladd's book Psychology, Descriptive And Explanatory (1894) to launch an attack on the state of contemporary psychology, which he regards as being weighed down by unscientific assumptions.

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Pall Mall Gazette, Dec 31, 1894

Reprinted, with revisions, in the book Certain Personal Matters

"All the time these creatures are living their vigorous fussy little lives in this drop of water they are being watched by a creature of whose presence they do not dream." "Even so, it may be, the [observer] himself is being curiously observed."

Pall Mall Gazette, Jan 1, 1895

A review of A. Milnes Marshall's Lectures On The Darwinian Theory, 4 which Wells considers to be "the clearest modern exposition" for the general reader. Furthemore, says Wells, "when such dark speculations as those of Weismannism" are used by the "small fry of science" to belittle Darwin, Marshall's is "a needful tribute to the memory of the greatest biologist" of all time.

Pall Mall Gazette, Jan 5 1895

A review of A.L. Ternant's The Telegraph (trans. R. Routledge) in which the praises the French scientist's book for its wide-ranging historical exposition of the development of various telegraph systems, ancient and modern.

 ​electricity and making a general attack on this kind of dilettantism.

The Saturday Review, Jan 19, 1895

A review of R. Hartig's book The Diseases Of Trees (1894), together with a brief discussion of plant pathology.

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The Saturday Review, Jan 19, 1895

"There is in science... some sanction for the belief that a living thing might be taken in hand and so moulded and modified that at best it would retain scarcely anything of its inherent form and disposition; that the thread of life might be preserved unimpaired while shape and mental superstructure were so extensively recast as even to justify our regarding the result as a new variety of being." Wells argues in favor of this idea by using familiar examples, such as those drawn from surgery: "If we concede the justification of vivisection, we may imagine as possible in the future, operators, armed with antiseptic surgery and a growing perfection in the knowledge of the laws of growth, taking living creatures and moulding them into the most amazing forms."

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Pall Mall Gazette, Jan 25 1895

An article on the significance and function of colour in animals. Wells cites F.E. Beddard's book Animal Colouration(1892) as his main source. 

The Saturday Review, Feb 2 1895

"Modification ... involved in the change [designated] A," required for successful adaptation, brings with it "other consequent changes ... the directly unserviceable and yet absolutely necessary modifications B, C, and D"; hence, "a perfectly useless organ" may be just this kind of "bye-product" and does not necessarily pose an objection to the theory of natural selection. Wells then goes on to speculate on whether the higher attributes of mind might be such "bye-products" of evolutionary adaptation.

The Saturday Review, Feb 9 1895

A popularized account of Lord Rayleigh's discovery of argon.​

The Saturday Review, Feb 16 1895

On the basis of the geological theory that continental land masses have persisted fundamentally unchanged in scope in geological time, Wells reasons that terrestrial life must have begun in the higher northern latitudes and "In the struggle for existence between the older and newer type [i.e., species], generally the newer prevailed and drove the older southwards."

The Saturday Review, Feb 23 1895

An article about the factors that determine the life span of living organisms. "The business of the animal seems to be, not to live its own life, but to reproduce its own kind, and the term of life at its disposal is adjusted accurately to the special difficulties of this purpose." The generalisation also applies to man under natural conditions.

Pall Mall Gazette, Mar 4 1895

With a perfunctory nod to reform, Wells turns with relish from the rationalized standards urged in Wordsworth Donisthorpe's A System of Measures to Donisthorpe's account of such "natural" standards as the hand's-length or the ox's "furrow-long...... growing," says Wells, "visibly out of the soil." 

Pall Mall Gazette, Mar 7 1895

A review of W. de W. Abney's Colour Vision (1895), "a fairly exhaustive account of the sensations of colour from the scientific side" and a work particularly stimulating to "the artist and art critic among those who find pleasure in untechnical scientific books addressed to the general reader."

The Saturday Review, Mar 9, 1895

A discussion of new biometric studies of variation in species, wherein Wells observes: "Variation occurs in every direction [i.e., all possibilities are tried], with complete symmetry; it does not occur in a definite direction as if it were following some inherent tendency of the animal to develop in a particular fashion. These minute variations offer a fair field for natural selection to reject or select."

Pall Mall Gazette, Mar 13, 1895

A review of Sir Archibald Geikie's Memoir of Sir A.C. Ramsay, in which one eminent geologist shuffles the life of another into a detritus "shaken up together and thrown down before the reader."

Pall Mall Gazette, Mar 15, 1895

An article about the discovery of argon and its properties. "Surely there are still wonders left in the world, and the healthy discoverer may keep a good heart yet, though Africa be explored."

The Saturday Review, Mar 23, 1895

Complex organisms are mortal but "death is not inherent in living matter. Protoplasm may live forever." Nevertheless, "mortal man and the immortal protozoa have the same barren immortality; the individuals perish, living on only in their descendants...the type alone persists."

The Saturday Review, Apr 6, 1895

An article about examples of pollination by various insects.

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Pall Mall Gazette, Apr 11, 1895

A review of Armand de Quatrefages's book The Pygmies (trans. Frederick Starr, 1895). Wells criticises the author's efforts "to establish the high moral standards of these primitive people, and to imply the primordial elevation of humanity."

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The Saturday Review, Apr 20, 1895

A review of I. W. Heysinger's The Source and Mode of Solar Energy, pointing out Heysinger's ignorance in equating solar energy with electricity and making a general attack on this kind of dilettantism.

The Saturday Review, Apr 27, 1895

An article about some of the animals to be found in the New Forest.

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The Saturday Review, May 4, 1895

A discussion of the controversy surrounding the discovery of argon.

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The Saturday Review, Aug 17 1895

"Isolation on islands has played a larger part in the evolution of the animals and plants than is usually attributed to it" since this isolation, which according to modern geological findings is intermittent, gives rise in its periodicity to "an immense number of new species" among which natural selection takes place whenever the island resumes its connection with the mainland.

Nature, Aug 29 1895

A review of The Evergreen by Patrick Geddes et al., in which Wells rejects Geddes' arguments against the idea that the struggle for existence is the prime mechanism in evolution: "As a matter of fact Natural Selection grips us more firmly than it ever did, because the doubts thrown upon the inheritance of acquired characteristics have deprived us of our trust in education as a means of redemption for decadent families."

Knowledge, Oct 1895

An article in which Wells argues that past changes on the lunar surface of the moon escaped observation not only because they were less noticeable than changes on the surface of the Earth but also because "the eye that watched [the moon] was set against the expectation of change."

The Ludgate, Apr 1896

Light-hearted speculation on the future evolution of the human nose. "The nose of to-day...is in...a transitory and developing stage. One may imagine 'advanced' noses, inspired with an evolutionary striving towards something higher, remoter, better..."

In this article Wells argues that if "there has been an evolution of protoplasm upon Mars, there is every reason to think that the creatures on Mars would be different from the creatures of earth, in form and function, in structure and in habit, different beyond the most bizarre imaginings of nightmare." "No phase of anthropomorphism is more naive than the supposition of men on Mars."

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The Saturday Review, May 9, 1896

A discussion of the evolution of the nose from primitive chemotropic mechanisms, of the eye from primitive phototropic mechanisms, and of the ear, as "an organ for translating vibrations into touches."

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The Saturday Review, June 27 1896

In this article Wells asks why the skeleton is made of phosphate and carbonate of lime rather than of silica, which would be sturdier and more durable. He also ask why a skeletal structure has evolved at all, since it is "not simply explicable as a response to the need for support and armature". He concedes that these are as yet unanswerable questions, and suggests "that the line of advance in biology lies now along the path of physiological chemistry [i.e., biochemistry]."

The Saturday Review, Aug 8, 1896

In this article Wells points out that the differences between animals and plants are not so great as most people imagine. All plants have at least local motion, with the "lower forms of plant life" moving "as actively as animal protoplasm"; moreover, the process whereby plants absorb and assimilate nourishment is not so mechanical as it is usually supposed to be.

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The Saturday Review, Sep 5, 1896

In this article Wells argues that the fact that oxygen responds in more than one way to spectroscopic analysis means "that there are two kinds of oxygen, one with an atom a little heavier than the other. And this opens one's eyes to an amazing possibility...that, after all, atoms might not be all exactly alike, that they might have individuality, just as animals have."​

Fortnightly Review, Oct 1896

Because he is not as much subject to the rigors of natural selection as, say, rabbits, "man has undergone...but an infinitesimal alteration in his intrinsic nature since the age of unpolished stone," especially since civilization impedes the workings of natural selection. Civilised man is a composite of the "natural man...the culminating ape" and the "artificial man...the highly plastic creature of tradition, suggestion, and reasoned thought"; and save for the "padding of suggested emotional habits" (Wells's definition of morality), he is no different from the Paleolithic savage. Wells concludes by saying that "in Education lies the possible salvation of mankind from misery and sin" entailed by the evolutionary process.

The Academy, Jan 9, 1897

A review of C. Lloyd Morgan's Habit And Instinct (1896). Morgan argues that the human body and instincts are no longer evolving. The mental environment alone evolves. Despite his brute ancestry, man can shape his world through science, art, and education, and so "cease to be driven, a dry leaf before the wind." y with

Fortnightly Review, Feb 1897

In this article Wells argues that "we must needs regard social organization and individual morality as determining one another."

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Natural Science, Apr 1897

In this article Wells defends his position on evolution against objections raised by F.H. Perry Coste in the preceding issue of Natural Science. "My interest in these theories [about the nature of man] lies chiefly in their application... After Darwin it has become inevitable that moral conceptions should be systematically restated in terms of our new conception of the material destiny of man."

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The Saturday Review, Feb 12, 1898

A review of Grant Allen's The Evolution Of The Idea Of God (1897) and of an anonymous work about the Kabbalah called The Canon (1897). Wells recommends Allen's book as one "certainly...to be read," but disagrees with Allen's notion that man could have come in only one way to the worship of God.

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The Daily Mail, Nov 27, 1897

A review of Grant Allen's book The Evolution Of The Idea Of God (1897)

6 and Jan 27, 1917

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Mind, Jul 1904 A paper delivered to the Oxford Philosophical Society on Nov 8, 1903

Wells mistrusts the uniformity of formal logic because: (1) it classifies "uniques as identically similar objects" under some term that automatically accumulates a specious significance thereby; (2) "it can only deal freely with negative terms by treating them as though they were positive", and (3) it projects onto the same plane ideas which in fact are stratified at various levels of meaning and thus renders contradictory notions whose real relation to one another is complementary. In Wells' universe of uniques, "ethical, social and religious teaching [come] into the province of poetry." Since philosophy, too, is self-expression, this essay contains much autobiographical material.

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