In this new posture Wells does not stand alone. He is typical of an entire generation of Englishmen that knows not Oxford, a generation which has been busy with all manner of significant movements and discoveries, too busy indeed to relate them to the common reason of humankind. During these years the word "academic" has been outlawed; naturally so, for the academic mind is to the creative mind what the digestive system is to the human body: a period of energetic exercise must precede its operation. But in order that ideas may be incorporated in society they must submit themselves at the right moment to those digestive processes by which they are liquefied and transmitted through the veins to all the various members of the common organism.