First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life

In First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life, H. G. Wells sets out not a systematic theology but a lucid, exploratory credo: a statement of metaphysics, ethics, social purpose, and personal discipline. Written in a plain yet intellectually vigorous prose, the book belongs to the Edwardian age of scientific humanism, when inherited religious certainties were being tested by evolution, psychology, and modern politics. Its style is candid, argumentative, and essayistic, revealing Wells‘s desire to make belief practical rather than merely doctrinal. Wells, already famous for scientific romances such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, was also a public thinker deeply engaged with education, socialism, and the future of civilization. His training in biology under T. H. Huxley, his lower-middle-class struggles, and his faith in planned social progress all inform this confession. The book emerges from a mind seeking moral order without orthodoxy, and collective hope without illusion. Readers interested in Wells beyond fiction will find this volume essential. It illuminates the ethical and philosophical foundations beneath his novels and social writings, while also offering a historically significant portrait of modern belief in transition. Thoughtful, humane, and provocative, it rewards anyone drawn to literature, philosophy, and the intellectual history of modernity.