Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/209



As a preliminary to that experiment in mutual confession from which this book arose, I found it necessary to consider and state certain truths about the nature of knowledge, about the meaning of truth and the value of words, that is to say I found I had to begin by being metaphysical. In writing out these notes now I think it is well that I should state just how important I think this metaphysical prelude is.

There is a popular prejudice against metaphysics as something at once difficult and fruitless, as an idle system of inquiries remote from any human interest. As a matter of fact metaphysical inquiries are a necessary condition to all clear thinking. I suppose this odd misconception arose from the vulgar pretensions of pedants, from their appeal to ancient names and their quotations in unfamiliar tongues, and from the easy fall into technicality of men struggling to be explicit where a high degree of explicitness is impossible. Metaphysics is a discussion of our general ideas, and naturally therefore intelligent metaphysical discussion is hardly possible except in the mother tongue in which those general ideas arose in our minds. But the interests and the pedantries that control higher education in Britain and influence it very powerfully in America, have imposed upon the proper study and teaching of metaphysics the absurd condition that it should be studied