Russell and Wells were beneficiaries of class backgrounds which enabled them to operate at a tangent to middle-class culture, and, having scientific interests and sexual predilections in common, they covered much of the same ground in their writing. Although increasingly out of touch with the avant-garde, they exhibited none of that defensiveness which was becoming a characteristic of the middle-aged Liberal intellectual; rather they expanded into the 1920s with a certain amount of gusto, their Socialism often taking the form of a militant rationalism intended to override convention. That Wells had greater influence on Russell than had the literary intellectuals mentioned above is largely because he offered not only ideas, but an example of how the Edwardian mind could make itself effective in the modern world. In later life Russell remarked: ‘In spite of some reservations, I think one should regard Wells as having been an important force towards sane and constructive thinking both as regards social systems and as regards personal relations.’

Yet while Wells's extraordinary success illustrated the potential rewards of a provocative rationalism, it was the problems of rational belief which continued to exercise the post-war Liberal mind; and Russell's attempt to analyse the psychological tactics necessary to the pursuit of objectivity bears obvious comparison with arguments advanced in, for example, Wallas's Our Social Heritage and Hobson's Free Thought in the Social Sciences. After being demoted in the war years, reason was promoted – in both senses – by Russell thereafter.