But what if a man could become unseen? What if, like a primitive deity, he could transform himself into an invisible but murderously powerful presence? Would this, at a single stroke, free him from the bounds of ordinary morality and into a new, savage, absolutely individualistic universe? . . . there were a number of arguments abroad at the end of the nineteenth century that the next stage of social evolution might lead to a "new man" who would be godlike in his potency and demonic in his freedom from conventional ideas of morality.. . . (In The Invisible Man) there is a special sense of urgency, a special sense of the apocalyptic, (for example) in a scene like the following, when the Invisible Man firsts reveals himself and runs amok in the small town of Iping, where he has been conductiong his experiments:
There were excited cries of "Hold him!" and so forth, and a young fellow, a stranger in a place whose name did not come to light, rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold, and fell over the constable's prostrate body. Half-way across the road a woman screamed as something pushed by her; a dog kicked apparently, yelped and ran howling into Huxter's yard, and with that the transit of the Invisible Man was accomplished. For a space people stood amazed and gesticulating, and then came Panic, and scattered them abroad through the village as a gust scatters dead leaves.