h.g. wells and the ring of gyges

7/29/2019 H.G. Wells and the Ring of Gyges

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hilip Holt- H.G. Wells and the Ring of Gyges

Science Fiction Studies

#57 = Volume 19, Part 2 = July 1992

hilip Holt

.G. Wells and t he Ring of Gyges

th e second book of Plato’s Republic, Glau con tells the story of Gyges the Lydian , wh o

ne day foun d, quite by chance, a ring that could m ake him invisible when he turn ed it o

ay on his fin ger and visible again w hen he tu rned it the other (359c-360b). Armed with

is magic power, "he im med iately managed things so th at he b ecame one of the

essengers who wen t up to the kin g, and on coming there he seduced the kin g’s wife anith her aid set up on the k ing and slew him and possessed his k ingdom " (360a-b). Gyge

reer naturally poses certain eth ical prob lems, which G laucon goes on to elaborate.

up pose, he asks, that other people could m ake th emselves invisible:

No one could be foun d, it wou ld seem, of such ad amantin e temper

as to persevere in ju stice and end ure to refrain his h and s from the

possessions of others and not touch them, though h e might w ith

imp un ity take wh at he wished even from the market place, and

enter into houses and lie with w hom h e pleased, and slay and loosefrom bond s wh omsoever he w ould, and in all other things cond uct

him self amon g man kin d as the equ al of a god. (360b-c)

laucon d oes not mean his p remise of another ring of Gyges to be taken literally.

visib ility is a symb ol (and a pow erful on e) of the ab ility to escape d etection. The tale o

yges is used to ask in an im aginative form a qu estion th at is basic for the Republic and

ked in a nu mb er of other forms in that d ialogue: wh y should we d o right if we can get

way with doing w rong? This is a difficult and imp ortant q uestion, and answering it tak

e rest of the Republic, with its state-bu ilding, philosopher-kin gs, the d ivided line an d tve, the ed ucational p rogram for guardians, the incomprehen sible p erfect n um ber

overning all hu man births, and the myth of Er—and even then not everybod y is convinc

ut Western literature gives us another answer to Glau con ’s qu estion, one w hich takes th

emise of the ring of Gyges literally and wh ich is consequ ently shorter, simpler, and mo

ntertain ing: H.G. Wells’s short n ovel The Invisible Man.1

looking at The Inv isible Man as a reworking of the G yges story, I shall b e arguing th at

ells took the p remise of invisibility from Plato and developed it in his own way, along

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nes characteristic of Wellsian fantasy. By the sam e token , I shall be consid ering th e nov

Wells’s own treatment of some issues raised in the tale of Gyges and as his own answ e

Glau con ’s qu estions in the Republic.

Lik e Gyges, W ells’ s protagonist discovers a way of m aking h imself invisible, and like

yges, he h as no moral or social scrup les to keep him from tu rning h is new-foun d p owe

imin al ends. Griffin ’s sins range from b ad table man ners (§17:107-09) and su rliness to

u rder, and they get progressively worse through out th e book . In the early chap ters, he u arrelsome and self-centered w ith th e villagers of Ipin g, and he goes on from there to

u rglarize the vicarage, bu lly a tramp into help ing h im steal, and vandalize the town in a

f foul temper. We learn still worse things ab out h im in a flashb ack, wh en h e tells an old

hool-friend , Kemp , how he b ecame in visible. Griffin stole from his own father to finan

s experimen ts. "The m oney w as not h is," he says with out remorse, "and he sh ot

m self" (§19: 125). Once h e h ad mad e h imself in visible (after a heartless p relimin ary tria

n a neighbor’s p et cat), he bu rned his ap artment h ouse to cover his tracks an d stole food

othes, and mon ey.

riffin, then , has the temp erament of Plato’s unjust man—a determination to advance

m self at others’ expen se and a thorough lack of moral scrup les. He also h as Gyges’ spe

ow er, invisibility, wh ich sh ould en able him to get away with anythin g—at least as

lau con tells the story. On Glau con ’s premise, he shou ld b e able to wreak imm ense havo

n th e world . Griffin , in fact, thin ks as m uch. New ly invisib le, he gleefully concocts "pla

all the w ild an d w ond erful thin gs I had n ow im pu nity to do" (§20:138). An old sailor w

ads about th e invisible man in a n ewspap er is more explicit about th e possibilities, and

s catalogue soun ds very mu ch like Glau con ’s enu meration of the th ings the p ossessor o

e ring of G yges could get away with:

And just think of the things he migh t do! Where’d you be, if he took

a drop over and above, and had a fancy to go for you? Sup pose he

wan ts to rob—wh o can p revent h im? He can trespass, he can bu rgle,

he could w alk th rough a cordon of policemen as easy as me or you

could give the slip to a b lind man ! Easier! For these h ere blin d chap s

hear un comm on sharp, I’m told. And wh erever there was liqu or he

fancied—— (§14:88)

s it turns ou t, Griffin ’s amb itions go well beyond trespassing and bu rgling. After the

ashb ack, he decides to gradu ate from petty crime to terrorism:

[The] Invisib le Man , Kemp , mu st establish a Reign of Terror.... He

mu st take some town like your Burd ock an d terrify and d ominate

it. He m ust issue his orders. He can do that in a thousan d w ays—

scraps of paper thru st un der doors wou ld su ffice. And all who

disobey his orders he mu st kill, and k ill all wh o would d efend the





disobedient. (§24:169-70)

ccordin gly, Griffin , in a letter to Kemp, issues a p roclamation :

This an nou nces the first day of the Terror. Port Burd ock is n o

longer un der th e Qu een, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of

them; it is un der me—the Terror! This is d ay one of year one of the

new epoch,—the Epoch of the Invisible Man . I am In visible Man

the First. (§27:182)

here is a n ame for this sort of activity in the Republic, and it is much discussed in that

alogu e, with Thrasym achu s in b ook 1 as its energetic advocate. It is called b ecomin g a

rant, a person wh o seizes pow er by force and exercises it as he p leases, just as Gyges di

is the u ltimate su ccess of Plato’s unjust man, and the Republic un dertakes the hard cas

oving that even the tyrant’s head y success is not worth th e wrongd oing need ed to achi

hat, in fact, becomes of Griffin’s tyrann ical amb itions? Not mu ch, actually. Griffin d oe

an age to mak e a lot of noise, throw a scare into the countrysid e, steal some mon ey, and

et us n ot forget) comm it a coup le of murders, bu t The Inv isible Man is pervaded by a

owing sense of the gap betw een G riffin’s grand amb itions and wh at he can actually pu

f. What b rings h im d own is not Platonic ethics or metap hysics or his failure to become

h ilosoph er-kin g. It is rather someth ing w hich is ignored b y Plato b ut w hich fascinated

ells: the p ractical prob lems of invisib ility, and beyon d th at, the in escapab le ph ysical a

ological limitations on h um an p ower.

ells elaborates Griffin ’s problems in min ute d etail. He can b ecome invisible only by

n dergoing a treatment w hich is slow, painful, and absolutely irreversible. His in visibili

oes n ot extend to objects in contact with his b ody. Hence his clothes remain visib le, so h

u st go about either wrapp ed in b and ages or stripp ed n aked. He mu st also go hu ngry, fo

n assimilated food in his stomach remains visible too. On these points, Wells is loading

ce against his character.3 Gyges could become in visible p ainlessly, simply b y turnin g h

ng; he could reverse the process at will; and he had no p roblems w ith clothes, und igest

od, and the like. But G riffin d iscovers further p roblems w ith in visibility per se, notmply u nd er the difficult cond itions u nd er which Wells allows it to him. Walkin g is har

h en h e cann ot see his own feet. He is continu ally struck an d b ruised b y passers-by an d

early run over by traffic. He can still be detected by k een-scented dogs, sharp -eared b lin

en , and obn oxious small boys wh o can see his footprin ts. He fears discovery from rain

nd snow falling on h im, from mu d th at gets spattered on him , even from fog swirling

bout him . Even b efore he turns to serious crime, Griffin is reduced to b eing a fearful,

ku lking fu gitive, "a wrapp ed-up m ystery, a swathed and ban daged caricature of a

an !" (§23: 165).





visib ility is of little more help wh en G riffin sets out to become a crimin al. He is a

ash out as a thief, for the money h e steals remains visible —fistfuls of it floating in mid

riffin presses a tramp into service to hold th e mon ey for him, but th e man proves reluct

nd un reliable, and he h as to be continu ally watched , beaten, and threatened. He eventu

capes, takin g the money with h im. Griffin d oes rather better at straightforward violen c

u t for all the h avoc he causes he is still only a d angerous thu g, not a tyrant—not even th

rant of Port Burdock. Far from controlling society, he find s h imself in creasingly isolateom it and forced to sku lk ab out in wild places as a nak ed savage while society mobiliz

gainst h im. In th e end he is caught an d b eaten to d eath by a m ob, a crud e bu t effective

rm of the un ited comm un ity.

So far, I hav e presented Griffin as a failed G yges figure—a man wh o, like Gyges, sets o

use invisibility to get away with great crimes bu t wh o, un like Gyges, run s afoul of the

oblems created by h is invisible state. The sim ilarities betw een G riffin an d Gyges raise

wo qu estions abou t wh at Wells is doing in The Inv isible Man. Did he d raw on Plato for

emise, and if so, wh at did he d o to Plato in the process?

ells critics generally ignore the first qu estion or answ er it in th e negative. Desp ite som

waren ess of Plato’s influence on Wells in other matters, critics imp ressed w ith Wells’s

ow ers of imagin ation (wh ich are ind eed impressive) give little though t to his sources.

arely are we told more than that invisibility is a wid espread folktale motif that m akes a

w app earances in fiction.4 Wells changed folklore mainly b y giving the p remise of

visib ility a scientific basis—or rather a pseu do-scientific basis, since Wells kn ew th at i

as scientifically impossible and sold h is premise to the reader with some n ice d oub le-t

bout pu lverized glass and ind ices of refraction.5

ells would h ave had a more specific source for The Inv isible Man in a p oem b y W.S.

ilb ert entitled "The Perils of Invisib ility."6 In Gilbert’s verse, a henp ecked hu sband

ceives the gift of invisib ility from a good fairy in hopes of escapin g from his n agging

ife. Unfortunately, his clothes remain visible, and his w ife hides h is pan ts—effectively

ing him to the h ouse since (un like G riffin) he is too proper a Victorian to go u nseen in

u blic incomp letely dressed. The conn ection b etween G ilbert’s broad gag and Wells’s

agicomed y is clear enou gh: Wells amp lified, with scientific rigor and Wellsian

oroughn ess, the problems encountered by an in visible man w ith visible app urtenan ced eed, "The Perils of Invisibility" wou ld b e a suitable su btitle for Wells’s novella. Still,

ells’s deb t to Gilbert only explains w here he got G riffin ’s difficu lties. For Griffin ’s

mperamen t and am bitions and for the ethical problems posed b y his invisibility, we m

ok elsewhere. This b rings us back to Plato’s tale of Gyges—not b ecause Plato was alon

ing the p remise of invisibility or in using it to p resent the p roblems of getting away w

ron gdoin g (he w as not; see my note 4), bu t because of some closer links b etween Wells

nd Plato.





o begin w ith some th ematic conn ections, Griffin is un usu al among Wells’s inventor-

otagon ists in that h e uses science to become an arch-crimin al. Wells elsewh ere present

ank s, like Cavor in The First M en in the Moon; good scientists wh ose work p rodu ces

sru ptive sid e-effects, as in The Food of the Gods; and mad scientists, as in The Island of

octor M oreau . But n owh ere does he give us as d edicated and thoroughgoing a villain as

riffin . Comp arison with D octor Moreau is instructive here. Critics often bracket Griffin

ith Moreau as illustrations of th e dan gers of scientific know ledge un checked b y ethica

nse. The b racketin g is reasonab le; Moreau, pu blished just a year before The Inv isible Mares some interests with th at work, and its protagonist takes second place to Griffin in

ells’s rogues’ gallery. Still, the differences are sign ificant. Like Griffin , Moreau is an

utlaw scientist with a d angerous idea—turnin g animals into hu man b eings by surgical

eans—bu t he is still interested m ainly in th e principle of the thin g, "the p lasticity of

ving forms" and th e use of science to transform n ature. He does n ot try to exploit scienc

r personal gain, and he d oes not form grand schemes to use h is Beast People to win

on ey and p ower. On the contrary, he gives up any h ope of wealth and pow er in the

u man comm un ity to pu rsue his ideas on a remote island . Griffin, despite some initial

terest in invisibility as a scientific prob lem, soon b ecomes concerned m ainly with theow er it gives him. He w ants revenge on a w orld wh ich, he b elieves, has slighted an d

istreated him , and he w ants to achieve the u sual w orldly ob jectives (Gyges’ ob jectives,

ct) of wealth an d pow er. Moreau w ithdraws from society to pursue his id eas. Griffin u

s ideas to seek to domin ate society and mak e it do his b idd ing. These amb itions p lace h

oser to Gyges and th e Platonic tyrant and furth er from Wells’s other scientist-protagoni

an is generally recognized .

esides his grand amb itions an d general ruthlessness, Griffin has a few other features in

mm on w ith the Platonic tyrant. It might be fanciful to see the tramp wh om G riffinesses into his service as an examp le of the u nsavory and un reliable characters whom a

rant n eeds to recruit to help him ( Rep., 567c-568a); the tram p is low in a comic way rath

an vicious, although it is disqu ieting to find him in th e Epilogue trying to recover the

cret of invisib ility from Griffin’s noteb ooks. It is not fanciful to find echoes in Wells o

ato’s idea that the tyrannical man is enslaved to h is appetites, apt to use up his m oney,

nd ready to resort to crime to m aintain him self (574d-575a and elsewh ere). Griffin is all

ese things, although the app etites to wh ich he is "enslaved" are needs for food and she

ther than desires for luxuries. Griffin ’s men tal disorder near the end parallels Plato’s

ntention th at the un just man is really diseased in soul and un hap py (445a-b an d b ook enerally). Wells is not taking u p Plato poin t by point, bu t his story is at least consisten t

ith th e hypoth esis that he h ad certain Platonic themes rattling around in h is head and

n dergoing some im aginative elaboration.

ore imp ortant, Wells was keenly in terested in, and greatly influenced by, the work tha

esen ts the tale of Gyges. He discovered Plato’s Republic in his youth, wh en he w as

ruggling to free himself from the rigid Victorian social order in w hich he was raised an

s rigid w ays of thinkin g. Plato had a profoun d effect on h im. As he describes it in h is





xperiment in Aut obiography , he drew from Plato "the am azing and heartening su ggestio

at the w hole fabric of law, custom an d worship , wh ich seemed so in vincibly establishe

igh t b e cast into th e m elting p ot and mad e an ew" (3.6:106-07). Plato "was like the han d

rong b rother takin g hold of m e and raising m e up , to lead m e out of a prison of social

cep tance and su bmission " (4.4:141). In p articular, Plato mad e a mark on Wells’s

opian ism. Plato’s guardians, the ded icated, highly educated elite wh o ran the rep ub lic,

ere forerun ners of Wells’s "men of the N ew Repu blic," the O pen Conspiracy, the samu r

the p ub lic-spirited , scientifically trained intelligen tsia who were alone capab le of an aging the affairs of the n ew world state. Plato’s selective b reedin g (at least for

uardians) had a rough counterpart in Wells’s controls on child-bearing amon g the u nfit

ells even foun d in Plato (with little encouragem ent from Plato) a cham pion of free love

is not that Wells learned such id eas from Plato; he was an elitist and a free-love advoca

y temp erament, and his views on restricted b reeding had a nearer basis than Plato in

ntem porary thou ght on eugen ics. But Plato struck a symp athetic chord in Wells, and

ells respond ed.

n e could qu arrel that Wells’s reading of Plato was very lopsided, that he m issed the G rhilosopher’s essential conservatism, that he stressed th e Republic’s interest in the state,

olitical program, at the expen se of its imp lications for the ind ividu al, its psychology an

hics. True, bu t no m atter. Few of u s see Plato whole, least of all in our m id-teens, and

ells was n either the first nor the last p erson to draw on Plato for confirmation of his ow

ejud ices. The matu re Wells would one day d eal with some thin gs in Plato wh ich th e

outhfu l Wells overlooked. The main point is th at the Republic had a profoun d and

nd uring effect on Wells. If the work as a wh ole had su ch an im pact on him , it is likely

nough that a small bu t vivid p art of it like th e tale of Gyges would stick in his m ind .

If W ells did indeed get the p remise for The Inv isible Man out of Plato’s Republic, then w

d he d o to Plato in reworkin g the premise? Most simply and obviously, he d eveloped t

em ise along the lines characteristic of Wellsian fan tasy, takin g an incredib le hyp othesi

nd work ing it out in logical detail in an everyday setting realistically portrayed. This is

eth od w hich led Joseph Conrad to salute Wells as the "Realist of the Fantastic."9 Griffin

visib ility is the fan tastic starting-poin t, bu t everythin g else—Griffin ’s problems with

sible clothes, his tyran nical schem es, peop le’s reactions to h im—is thorough ly plausibl

nce the prem ise is granted . Plato, as we h ave seen, uses th e prem ise differently, leaving

h ysical details unexamined in order to get on w ith the eth ical problems. He w ants toxamin e the valu e of justice in itself, un affected b y consid erations of exped iency such as

pu tation and the chan ce of getting caught; the tale of Gyges is a vivid imaginative way

esenting th ese problems. The ethical problems are real enou gh sin ce most of u s, even

ithou t the ring of Gyges, find ou rselves think ing at times that we can get away with d o

ings w e shou ld n ot. Wells, on th e other han d, stares at the premise a good d eal longer a

arder, testing how it might w ork in reality and developing its imp lications in almost

ainfu l detail. Gyges has no troub le killing the kin g and seducing the qu een; invisibility

ak es him a tyrant. Griffin , by contrast, cann ot even take eating or crossing the street fo





anted; at best, invisibility mak es him a poor bu rglar and a med iocre thug.

Wells differed from Plato in th e way h e worked out the p remise of the Gyges story, he

ayed fairly close to Plato in one respect: the reaction, or comp lex of am bivalen t reaction

h ich he en courages in his au dience towards his p rotagonist. What are we to mak e of

riffin? The u sual answ er is horror: Griffin is a mon ster, a wh olly amoral person w ho u s

ience only for his own selfish en ds, an illustration of the d angers of know ledge and

ow er un checked by eth ical sense or social responsibility. This is tru e as far as it goes;ells needed to make G riffin that w ay, both to p resent the eth ical problems of pow er

ithou t responsibility (how like G yges that is!) and to throw en ough of a scare into his

aders to keep th em interested.

ill, there are some good reasons for seeing G riffin as someth ing m ore. Griffin is a little

an , exploited and victimized by th e forces of an un caring society wh ich h e cann ot contr

hen h e return s home for his father’s fu neral (20:126-27), he shows a horrifyin g

llousn ess, bu t there is p oignancy in the w ay he d escribes his estrangement from his ro

h is chan ged h ome town . His position as "a shab by, poverty-struck, hem med -inemonstrator, teaching fools in a p rovincial college" (19:124) arouses sym pathy for exploi

eop le at the bottom of the academ ic hierarchy. At the sam e time, and p aradoxically, Gri

also the su perior ind ividu al wh ose genius isolates him from the rest of society. Finally

riffin is the p ossessor of an extraordinary pow er wh ich most of us, however mu ch we

ight h ate and fear it in an other, wou ld b e glad to possess for ourselves. Wells mak es a

ow to this feeling in the Epilogue to The Inv isible Man, in wh ich w e find the tramp pori

ver the d ead G riffin ’s noteb ooks in a vain effort to un lock th e secret of invisib ility. He

ou ld n ot use such a pow er the way Griffin did , of course; bu t still, he w ould lik e to hav

So, perhap s, wou ld some oth er people. The p olice and Kemp w ould dearly love to geteir hand s on those notebooks, and their motives might not be so pu re as comp leting th

cord of the case or furtherin g the cause of d isinterested k nowled ge. The Epilogue is a

elicious touch because it suggests that Invisible Man the Second might arise, and he m i

ot b e all that different from Invisible Man th e First. Any of u s could be G riffin, but for

ck or lack of talen t.

hese are the sh adings an d comp lexities in Griffin’s character and situation th at make h i

mething more than a simp le mon ster. The first of them is not really parallelled in Plato

le of G yges; Gyges, like Griffin , starts ou t as an insign ificant character (the rags-to-richot requ ires it), but h e is n ot presented as a dow ntrodd en rebel against a cruel society. O

e oth er two p oints, Wells touches on Plato more closely, and comp arison is instru ctive.

riffin ’s position as the isolated su perior man does not figure in th e tale of Gyges, bu t it

oes involve them es that are imp ortant in the Republic. In Plato, adm irers of tyrants

hrasymachu s in th e Republic, Polus and Callicles in th e Gorgias) see the tyran t as a

p erior person w hose intelligence, energy, and ruthlessness entitle him to all the p ower

n grab over the un imagin ative, conven tional masses. Wells’s terms are different, bu t th





eme of the su perior individu al versus th e rest of society is important in The Invisible M

oth early in the b ook, wh ere Wells emp hasizes the contrast between G riffin the

ysterious stranger and th e comm on villagers of Iping, and later, wh ere the contrast is

etween the m ad scientist Griffin and the ordinary scientist Kemp . The contrast is not

articularly in Griffin ’s favor.10 Griffin will turn out to be a genius (an evil one), bu t at t

art of the n ovel we see him mostly as surly and temp eramen tal. The villagers are satiriz

a petty, dull-witted, gossipy lot, bu t there is an affectionate strain to the satire, and the

o have a cohesive, fun ctioning comm un ity—enou gh of a comm un ity, in fact, for us to bitably shocked w hen Griffin starts disrup ting it. There are good artistic reasons w hy th

ould ; we n eed to symp athize with the comm un ity when Griffin enters his naked-savag

h ase and p roclaims himself a tyrant, and the Ipin g scenes lay the found ation for that

mpath y. As for Kemp, he has b een charged w ith a bou rgeois outlook an d expedient

ing,11 bu t this comes well short of Griffin the tyrant’s vices.

ill, there remain s the fact that most of us wou ld rather like to be exception al ind ividu a

e could get away with it, and it is on th is third poin t that our responses to Gyges and

riffin are likely to have most in common . Plato recognizes Gyges ’ allure. He k now s tha

ost of us would use th e ring of G yges to be tyrants if we could, and accordingly he has

ocrates take on Glau con ’s challenge to find reasons w hy w e should not. This is the

epublic’s bu rden; the length of the d ialogue, the b readth of the issues it covers, and the

tricacy of its arguments all testify to the fact that Plato is aware th at he is confron ting a

rong, wid ely held tem ptation . Wells also recognizes the p ower of the temp tation to play

yges, bu t he u ses it differently, in a literary way. Much of the p ower of The Invisible M

mes from ou r lurk ing sym path y with G riffin. He is an an ti-social mon ster, of course, a

e are mean t to see him as one; but th en, so are most of us in some part of ourselves, som

f the time. Sympathy for the threatened commu nity may dom inate our feelings, bu t theough t of committing G riffin ’s crimes with im pu nity has its appeal. The old sailor foun

asy enou gh to thin k of all sorts of thin gs an invisible man could get away w ith, and the

amp wh o ends up with Griffin ’s notebooks w ould lik e the pow er for himself. These da

ough ts from tw o comm on p eople should alert us to the fascination of the average perso

clud ing ou rselves—with evil. We would not, in our b etter mom ents, really want to

and alize a village (even if the in hab itants are blockheads) or steal lots of money or seize

ntrol of a town an d k ill all wh o disobey us; bu t we can fantasize about such thin gs and

em vicariously in a n ovel, and we can do them with our consciences clear if the

rongd oer ultimately gets w hat is coming to h im. Griffin mak es a good literary villainecause ou r reactions to him are apt to includ e a lot of repu lsion in tension w ith a fair

easu re of attraction.

So far, I hav e exam ined The Invisible Man prim arily as a piece of literature, with Wells

work ing in an imagin ative, artistic way some themes wh ich Plato treats from a

h ilosoph ic and ethical point of view. I have not insisted that the n ovel serve a further

h ilosoph ical pu rpose. Still, novels have ideas, and Wells was most certainly a man of id

well as a m an of im agination. We might th erefore consider h ow The Inv isible Man fits





to Wells’s lifelong d ialogue w ith Plato.12

have already m entioned, for purposes of Quellenforschung, Wells’s personal and

tellectual deb ts to Plato. But th ere is a good d eal more to his dealin gs with Plato than

orrowings and deb ts, and he certainly did not swallow the Greek w hole. He d id n ot eve

wallow wh ole the side of the p hilosopher to wh ich h e was closest, the u topian d esigner

ciety. If Wells could call A Modern Utopia "the m ost Platonic of my b ooks,"13 then his

atonism was m ore a matter of reflecting on, chan ging, and qu arrelling w ith th e master

an a matter of believing an d copying. Plato’s state is static, with its in stitutions and soc

asses fixed b y law an d in capab le of chan ge except for the long, slow d ecline d escribed

ooks 8 and 9 of the Republic. Wells’s u topia is mu table, the p roduct of a long p rocess of

scussion, struggle, and reform, and capable of fu ture imp rovement. The repu blic

gorously subordin ates the hap pin ess of the ind ividual to the good of the wh ole

mm un ity; utopia legislates with a view to p romoting as mu ch ind ividual freedom as

ossible.14 Plato’s guard ians are a h ighly select class, carefully chosen, thoroughly ed uca

r their w ork, and serving for life. Wells’s samu rai are a much m ore open class. Certain

vels of intelligence, edu cation, and accomp lishm ent are requ ired for admission, bu t W

resses that these are reasonab ly attainab le; the m ain criterion for memb ership is

mm itment to th e pu blic good, expressed in obedien ce to the ru le of the order. Unlike

uardians, samurai are recruited ou t of the larger popu lation, and they m ay resign to retu

the larger popu lation. Even th e utop ian Plato, then , served Wells more as a springb oar

an as a model.

ells’s divergences from Plato on oth er matters were more serious an d overt. His ou tloo

as scientific, skep tical, and agnostic. He h ad n o reason to sh are Plato’s religious

nsib ilities, hen ce, non e to accept th e cardin al end of Plato’s ethics, the good of the sou l

eing good for Plato is often expressed (sometim es in mythological trapp ings) as bein g t

rt of person wh ose immortal soul is suited for contemp lating th e eternal Forms of thin

ter death, wh en th e soul is set free from th e bod y.15 Wells h ad little use for such n otion

is insistence on the u niq uen ess of every ind ividual entity16 mad e him hostile to catego

nd abstractions—that is, to the basic stuff of th e Platonic Theory of Forms, or Ideas, of

h ich h e wrote:

For the m ost part [Plato] tend ed to regard th e idea as the someth ingbeh ind reality, wh ereas it seems to me th at the idea is the more

proximate and less perfect thing, the thing b y wh ich th e min d, by

ignoring ind ividual d ifferences, attempts to comp rehend an

otherwise u nm anageable nu mb er of un iqu e realities. ("Scepticism

of the In stru men t," 343)

ells even argued w ith Plato about fu rniture.17 For Plato, the "real" couch is th e

anscend ent Form, wh ich is only app roximated in ph ysical couches mad e by carpen ters.





or Wells, the "real" chairs are th e un iqu e physical objects wh ich are conven iently, bu t

islead ingly, lum ped together un der a comm on n ame; it is futile to try to defin e "chair o

airish ness." In sh ort, Plato at once served Wells as an im portan t person al insp iration, a

oint of dep arture for his own intellectual efforts, and a formidab le (if sometimes

n ackn owledged) adversary.

o an y of these n on-Platonic or anti-Platonic curren ts in Wells’s think ing surface in his

eatment of a p remise from the Republic in The Inv isible Man? True, there is a b roadgreement b etween the two w orks. In b oth, crime does not pay, and the un just man en ds

ad , miserab le, and a slave to his app etites. Still, mu ch of Wells’s play with th e Gyges ta

omes at Plato’s expen se, mostly at the expen se of the side of Plato wh ich w as least

ngen ial to him—Plato the moralist, the trad itionalist, the ab stract ph ilosoph er. The

vis ible Man sweeps aside m any of the w eightiest concerns of the Republic—definitions

st ice, arguments that it is good in itsel f and not simply in its effects , philosopher -kin gs

e consideration of the good of the sou l—to focus on th e nagging p ractical problem s tha

o in G riffin. Wells’s novel, then , may b e read as the reply of the p ractical man , the

ientist, the positivist, to the problem p osed by the transcend ental, idealist ph ilosoph erhy worry about how we w ould u se the ring of Gyges, he asks, when we could not get

way with it anyway? This mu ch m ight be taken as flippan t and d ismissive, bu t there is

ore to The Invisible Man than that. Wells took G laucon’s challen ge seriously, and if he

as to answ er it at all, he n eeded (being Wells) an an swer anchored in the real world. He

odu ced an an swer based on tw o recurring motifs in his think ing, the inh erent natural

mitations on h um an p ower (Griffin’s) and th e strength of the h um an comm un ity

ganized for good un der scientific leadin g (Kemp ’s). The term s of the answer are, in the

nd, characteristically Wellsian.18

OTES

The Invisible Man tend s to be scanted with p erfun ctory treatment by critics; welcome exceptio

clud e Bergon zi, 112-22; Drap er, 47-50; Kagarlit sk i, 57-63; Lake; McConnell, 111-24; Ph ilm us, 10

; and Williamson, 83-88.

The h istoric Gyges, in fact, is the first person w hose pow er is called "tyranny" by a Greek auth

Arch ilochu s, fr. 19 in West, 8). A tyrannos, in G reek terms, is someone w ho seizes power by for

ther than gaining it constitutionally. The term is not necessarily p ejorative (some tyrants m adeood rulers), bu t it had acqu ired a bad odor in Ath ens b y Plato’s day. Tyranny is an im portant

eme in the Republic. It is the h eight of inju stice, and Thrasymachu s argues that th e tyrant wh o

t away with anythin g is the h app iest of men (344a-c). Tyranny figures promin ently in the d eca

the id eal state as it passes throu gh several types of constitution late in the d ialogue. Tyrann y

e last and w orst of the constitution s (562a-569c), and the m an w ith th e soul of a tyrant is p rey t

p etite, apt to sq uand er his resou rces and turn to crime (571a-576c)—is ultim ately, on Socrates’

owin g, the unh app iest of men (576c-580c and 587a-588a, wh ere we retu rn to the tyrant as the

p reme examp le of the u nju st man). Tyrants and th eir miseries are highlighted in the myth of E

e end of th e d ialogu e (615c-616a and 619b-c).





And inconsisten tly at th at. As Kagarlitski (59) and Williamson (85-86) poin t ou t, Griffin could

ve mad e invisible clothes for him self, and ind eed in one p reliminary experimen t he does mak

ece of wool invisib le (§20:128). But Wells needs to k eep G riffin n aked , both as a hardsh ip on

riffin an d as an expression of Griffin’s role as an anti-social savage.

Bergonzi, 113-14; Chernysheva, 39; Gill, 56-57; Philmus, 100-01; Raknem, 398-99. Only Philmus

en tions Plato amon g Wells’s pred ecessors in treating the p remise of invisibility, and then onlyne among m any. On Wells’s recasting of folklore in to SF generally, see Chern ysheva and

amyatin.

Wells kn ew, as h e wrote Arnold Benn ett in 1897 (Wilson, 34-35), that an invisib le man wou ld

ve to be blind since he would h ave to remove all pigment from his retina and elimin ate the

ility of the lens of h is eye to refract light.

Gilbert, 260-65 (not in the original edition of th e Bab Ballads); on Gilb ert as a sou rce for Wells

e H ain ing, 59-62, and Raknem, 388-99.

Plato, Rep., 458e-461b; Wells, Ant icipat ions, §9:257-58 an d A Modern Utopia, §5.1:122-27 an d

.2:161-67. But n ote th at in Plato th e au thorities make suitable m atches for child bearing; in Wel

ey merely discourage or prevent u nsu itable matches.

Wells, Experiment in A ut obiography , §4.4:146-47 an d §7.4:399. The on ly b asis I can f in d for f ree

ve in th e Republic is an obiter dictum that p arents past their prim e as breeders may "form such

lations w ith w hom soever they p lease" (461b-c); the ad olescent Wells found this p rospect very

citing.

On Wells’s method see his preface to The Scient ific R omances (London , 1933; NY, 1934, as Seve

mous N ovels). The Con rad q uotation (from a fan letter to Wells on The Inv isible Man dated

ecember 4, 1898) is worth giving in fu ll. "I am always p owerfully imp ressed by your w ork.

mpressed is the word O! Realist of the Fantastic, whether you like it or not. And if you w ant to

n ow w hat imp resses me it is to see how you contrive to give over hum anity into the clutches of

mp ossible and yet manage to keep it down (or up) to its hum anity, to its flesh, blood, sorrow, fo

hat is the achievemen t! In th is little book you d o it with an ap palling completeness" (Karl and

avies, 126).

0. Readin gs of this asp ect of the n ovel vary wid ely; my ow n, close to Bergonzi ’s (114-17), is

latively symp athetic to the rest of society—more so than those of Batchelor (22: the read er’s

mp athies are with Griffin against "the oafish inh abitants of Iping" until Wells un wisely turns

in gs aroun d in the second half of the novel) and Borrello (60-61: Griffin is a visionary and

ogressive, Kemp is convention al and un imaginative).

. Kagarlitski, 62, and Ph ilm us, 103-04.

. Wells’s comp lex relationsh ip w ith Plato need s fuller stud y; Drap er, 11-23, provid es the best





scussion I have seen.

. Experiment in A ut obiography , §4.4:147; Wells som etimes u ses "Platon ic" to m ean "rad ically

opian."

. Rep., 419a-421c (where th e good of th e wh ole is param oun t partly b ecause th e ideal state is a

od el of the ind ividual soul); A Modern Utopia, §2.

. The myth of Er in book 10 of the Republic is an ob vious examp le. Similar ideas recur in the m

the afterlife at the en d of th e Gorgias and throughout the Phaedo.

. See especially h is 1891 essay "The Red iscovery of th e Unique" and h is 1903 lecture "Scepticis

the Instrumen t," prin ted as an app end ix to A Modern Utopia. It is an in teresting sign of Wells

mb ivalence about Plato that the "most Platon ic" of his books carried the most anti-Platonic of h

pendices.

. Compare "Scepticism," 341 with Rep., 595a-598d.

. Earlier versions of th is pap er were read at an English Dep artment colloqu ium at the Un iversi

Wyomin g on Febru ary 2, 1989, and at the annual m eeting of the Classical Association of the

id d le West and South in Lexington , KY, on March 31, 1989. My th ank s to my colleagues James

rrester (Philosoph y) and Keith Hu ll (English) for useful d iscussions and comm ents on drafts,

SFS’s anonym ous referee for helpful comm ents.

ORKS CITED

atchelor, John. H.G. W ells . Camb rid ge, UK, 1985.

ergonzi, Bernard . The Early H.G. Wells: A Study of t he Scientific Romances. Manchester, UK, 19

orrello, Alfred. H.G. W ells: Aut hor in A gony . Carbondale, IL, 1972.

hern ysheva, Tatyana. "The Folktale, Wells, and Mod ern Science Fiction." H.G. W ells and M odeience Fict ion . Ed. D arko Suvin and Robert M. Philm us. Lewisb urg, PA, 1977. 35-37.

rap er, Michael. H.G. W ells. NY, 1988.

ilbert, W.S. Fifty • Bab’ Ballads. Lond on : Routled ge, 1890.

ill, Stephen . Scient ific Rom ances of H.G. Wells. Corn wall, On t., 1975.





ain ing, Peter, ed. The H.G. W ells Scrapbook . Lon don , 1978.

agarlitsky, J. The Life and Thought of H.G. W ells. Trans. Moura Bud berg. NY, 1966.

arl, Frederick R., and Lauren ce Davies, eds. The Collected Lett ers of Joseph Conrad . Vol. 2.

ambrid ge, UK, 1986.

ake, David J. "The Wh iteness of G riffin an d H .G. Wells’s Images of Death, 1897-1914." SFS 8:123, March 1981.

cConnell, Frank . The Science Fiction of H.G. Wells. NY, 1981.

hilmu s, Robert M. In to t he Unk now n: The Evolut ion o f Science Fict ion from Francis Godw in to H

ells. Berk eley, CA, 1970, 1983.

ato. The Republic. Tran s. Paul Sh orey. Camb rid ge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1930. Passages

ted by p age and section (327a-621d) in Stephan us’

edition of Plato (Paris 1578), wh ich are givenost editions and translations.

aknem , Ingvald. H.G. W ells and His Crit ics. Oslo, 1962.

ells, H.G. Ant icipat ions. 1901. Works 4:1-282.

————. Experiment in A ut obiography . NY, 1934.

————. The Inv isible Man. 1897. Works 3:1-205.

————. A Modern Utopia. 1905. Works 9:1-331.

————. "The Red iscovery of th e Un ique" (1891). H.G. W ells: Early W rit ings in Science and

ience Fict ion . Ed. Robert M . Philm us an d David Y. Hu ghes. Berk eley, CA, 1975. 22-31.

————. "Scepticism of th e Instru ment" (1903). Works 9:333-54.

————. The W orks of H.G. W ells: A t lant ic Edit ion. 28 vols . NY & London , 1924-27. West, M.L. Iambi et elegi graeci. Vol. 1. Oxford , 1971.

illiamson , Jack. H.G. W ells: Crit ic of Progress. Baltim ore, 1973.

ilson, Harris, ed. Arnold Bennet t and H.G. W ells . Urb an a, IL, 1960.

amyatin , Yevgeny. "H.G. Wells." Trans. Mirra Gin sbu rg. Midw ay 10:97-126, Su mmer 1969.





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