Volumes of essays, which are in fact miscellaneous articles and addresses, are a severe test of the author's worth, particularly if their subject is political or historical. Graham Wallas stands the test so well that it would alone suffice to show that he was a very remarkable man. The selection and editing [of Men and Ideas: Essays by Graham Wallas] has been done by his daughter eight years after his death, but she tells us in an editorial note that, though she is responsible for the selection, it had been her father's intention to publish such a volume. She has done her task extremely well. There is not one essay in the volume which is not of permanent interest and value, and, like everything which Wallas wrote, they have the hall-mark of the 24-carat mind and of his highly individual attitude and method of thought. The book is divided into three parts. The first part contains six biographical essays, two on Bentham and the others on William Johnson Fox, Robert Owen, Ruskin, and Lord Sheffield. The second part contains five essays on social and political subjects. Here the most important is certainly a study of the British Civil Service which he wrote in 1928, and there is also a very interesting paper on Darwinism and social motive, which he read to a Conference of Liberal Churches in 1906. Finally, there are seven essays on his special subject, education.

The outstanding quality of Wallas's mind was its originality, and one may even say that his originality was original. It did not consist in his thinking or saying particularly striking things and it was not the kind of originality which produces what is called brilliance. It came from his ability, to which Professor Gilbert Murray draws attention in his preface, always to observe and think freshly. Every one must have noticed that, if you have a picture on the wall of your room, which you may admire immensely and even consider one of the greatest masterpieces, after a certain time it almost ceases to exist to you. You hardly see it because you are always seeing it and always in the same way. Most people, even very profound and original thinkers, after a certain number of years see the objects of their observation and the subjects of their thought in just the same way. They have looked so often at the same kind of things that they lose the faculty of seeing them freshly or indeed of seeing them at all, and everything falls automatically into the pattern of their own thought. Most people would probably say that Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells, Wallas's most distinguished contemporaries, were far more original and brilliant than he was. In a sense that would be true, and yet in later life for sheer originality and freshness of thought Wallas would beat them every time. If, say in the year 1930, you had presented the three of them with a new social complex or problem, you would have been able to predict with some certainty the kind of way in which Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells would see it, though you might not be able to predict at all the extremely brilliant, original, or valuable things which they would say about it. On the other hand, it would have been quite impossible to predict how Wallas would see it, because he would see it as if he were looking at that kind of thing or problem for the first time. At first sight what he said might sound to you a little flat; yet if you thought it over, you might see that it was an entirely new way of looking at things and threw new light upon the depths of society and politics.

There is hardly an essay in this book which does not reveal this remarkable quality of Wallas's mind, and it is particularly noticeable in studies of Bentham, Darwinism, the Civil Service, and Froebelian education. It is this characteristic which enabled him to exercise a profound influence upon the readers of his books and upon his pupils. Professor Murray says that he regards Wallas "as one of the most original minds of his generation" and of The Great Society he says: "That book is one of the very few of which I could say that it made a permanent difference in my outlook on human conduct." These are high claims, but there is no exaggeration in them, and one might add that The Art of Thought is not unworthy to stand by the side of The Great Society; it makes a permanent difference in one's outlook on human thought and education. Such being Wallas's genius and achievement, it may sound strange to ask why he did not produce an even profounder book and have an even profounder influence upon his generation. Yet, to anyone who has studied his books carefully, the question ought not to seem strange. It is true that they do make a permanent difference in one's outlook on large and important areas of society, that they open new vistas of thought and enquiry. Nevertheless when one gets to the last page of them, one feels a slight sense of disappointment and frustration. The reason is that Wallas, while he had this extraordinary originality and freshness of mental vision, did not have a profoundly creative mind. The difference will be most clearly seen and the consequences apparent, if one compares the mind of Freud with that of Wallas. When you read Freud, you not only feel that he is continually seeing things with a completely fresh and original eye, but that at the same time he is synthesizing and making the most profound discoveries by flashes of creative understanding. With Wallas, you get the freshness and originality of sight and an intense stimulus to thought, but you are left then to think for yourself; the suggestion is analytic, not synthetic; and you are left with the curious feeling that the flash of creative imagination is coming—that it is coming on the next page.