Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗
- Author: Olaf Stapledon
- Performer: -
Book online «Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗». Author Olaf Stapledon
the great seminal ideas of the modern world had been conceived
centuries ago. Since then, world-changing applications of these ideas
had indeed been made; but none of these sensational inventions had
depended on the extreme kind of penetrating the whole course of thought
in an earlier age. Recently there had been, Bvalltu admitted, a spate of
revolutionary scientific discoveries and theories, but not one of them,
he said, contained any really novel principle. They were all
re-combinations of familiar principles. Scientific method, invented some
centuries ago, was so fertile a technique that it might well continue to
yield rich fruit for centuries to come even in the hands of workers
incapable of any high degree of originality.
But it was not in the field of science so much as in moral and practical
activity that the deterioration of mental caliber was most evident. I
myself, with Bvalltu’s aid, had learnt to appreciate to some extent the
literature of that amazing period, many centuries earlier, when every
country seemed to blossom with art, philosophy and religion; when people
after people had changed its whole social and political order so as to
secure a measure of freedom and prosperity to all men; when state after
state had courageously disarmed, risking destruction but reaping peace
and prosperity; when police forces were disbanded, prisons turned into
libraries or colleges; when weapons and even locks and keys came to be
known only as museum pieces; when the four great established priesthoods
of the world had exposed their own mysteries, given their wealth to the
poor, and led the triumphant campaign for community; or had taken to
agriculture, handicrafts, teaching, as befitted humble supporters of the
new priestless, faithless, Godless religion of worldwide community and
inarticulate worship. After some five hundred years locks and keys,
weapons and doctrines, began to return. The golden age left behind it
only a lovely and incredible tradition, and a set of principles which,
though now sadly misconceived, were still the best influences in a
distraught world.
Those scientists who attributed mental deterioration to the increase of
cosmic rays affirmed that if the race had discovered science many
centuries earlier, when it had still before it the period of greatest
vitality, all would have been well. It would soon have mastered the
social problems which industrial civilization entails. It would have
created not merely a “mediaeval” but a highly mechanized Utopia. It
would almost certainly have discovered how to cope with the excess of
cosmic rays and prevent deterioration. But science had come too late.
Bvalltu, on the other hand, suspected that deterioration was due to some
factor in human nature itself. He was inclined to believe that it was a
consequence of civilization, that in changing the whole environment of
the human species, seemingly for the better, science had unwittingly
brought about a state of affairs hostile to spiritual vigor. He did not
pretend to know whether the disaster was caused by the increase of
artificial food, or the increased nervous strain of modern conditions,
or interference with natural selection, or the softer upbringing of
children, or to some other cause. Perhaps it should be attributed to
none of these comparatively recent influences; for evidence did suggest
that deterioration had set in at the very beginning of the scientific
age, if not even earlier. It might be that some mysterious factor in the
conditions of the golden age itself had started the rot. It might even
be, he suggested, that genuine community generated its own poison, that
the young human being, brought up in a perfected society, in a veritable
“city of God” on earth, must inevitably revolt toward moral and
intellectual laziness, toward romantic individualism and sheer
devilment; and that once this disposition had taken root, science and a
mechanized civilization had augmented the spiritual decay.
Shortly before I left the Other Earth a geologist discovered a fossil
diagram of a very complicated radio set. It appeared to be a
lithographic plate which had been made some ten million years earlier.
The highly developed society which produced it had left no other trace.
This find was a shock to the intelligent world; but the comforting view
was spread abroad that some non-human and less hardy species had long
ago attained a brief flicker of civilization. It was agreed that man,
once he had reached such a height of culture, would never have fallen
from it.
In Bvalltu’s view man had climbed approximately to the same height time
after time, only to be undone by some hidden consequence of his own
achievement.
When Bvalltu propounded this theory, among the ruins of Us native city,
I suggested that some time, if not this time, man would successfully
pass this critical point in his career. Bvalitu then spoke of another
matter which seemed to indicate that we were witnessing the final act of
this long-drawn-out and repetitive drama. It was known to scientists
that, owing to the weak gravitational hold of their world, the
atmosphere, already scant, was steadily deceasing. Sooner or later
humanity would have to face the problem of stopping this constant
leakage of precious oxygen. Hitherto life had successfully adapted
itself to the progressive rarefaction of atmosphere, but the human
physique had already reached the limit of adaptability in this respect.
If the loss were not soon checked, the race would inevitably decline.
The only hope was that some means to deal with the atmospheric problem
would be discovered before the onset of the next age of barbarism. There
had only been a slight possibility that this would be achieved. This
slender hope the war had destroyed by setting the clock of scientific
research back for a century just at the time when human nature itself
was deteriorating and might never again be able to tackle so difficult a
problem.
The thought of the disaster which almost certainly lay in wait for the
Other Men threw me into a horror of doubt about the universe in which
such a thing could happen. That a whole world of intelligent beings
could be destroyed was not an unfamiliar idea to me; but there is a
great difference between an abstract possibility and a concrete and
inescapable danger. On my native planet, whenever I had been dismayed by
the suffering and the futility of individuals, I had taken comfort in
the thought that at least the massed effect of all our blind striving
must be the slow but glorious awakening of the human spirit. This hope,
this certainty, had been the one sure consolation. But now I saw that
there was no guarantee of any such triumph. It seemed that the universe,
or the maker of the universe, must be indifferent to the fate of worlds.
That there should be endless struggle and suffering and waste must
of’course be accepted; and gladly, for these were the very soil in which
the spirit grew. But that all struggle should be finally, absolutely
vain, that a whole world of sensitive spirits fail and die, must be
sheer evil. In my horror it seemed to me that Hate must be the Star
Maker.
Not so to Bvalitu. “Even if the powers destroy us,” he said, “who are
we, to condemn them? As well might a fleeting word judge the speaker
that forms it. Perhaps they use us for their own hihg ends, use our
strength and our weakness, our joy and our pain, in some theme
inconceivable to us, and excellent.” But I protested, “What theme could
justify such waste, such futility? And how can we help judging; and how
otherwise can we judge than by the light of our own hearts, by which we
judge ourselves? It would be base to praise the Star Maker, knowing that
he was too insensitive to care about the fate of his worlds.” Bvalitu
was silent in his mind for a moment. Then he looked up, searching among
the smoke-clouds for a daytime star. And then he said to me in his mind,
“If he saved all the worlds, but tormented just one man, would you
forgive him? Or if he was a little harsh only to one stupid child? What
has our pain to do with it, or our failure? Star Maker! It is a good
word, though we can have no notion of its meaning. Oh, Star Maker, even
if you destroy me, I must praise you. Even if you torture my dearest.
Even if you torment and waste all your lovely worlds, the little
figments of your imagination, yet I must praise you. For if you do so,
it must be right. In me it would be wrong, but in you it must be right.”
He looked down once more upon the ruined city, then continued, “And if
after all there is no Star Maker, if the great company of galaxies leapt
into being of their own accord, and even if this little nasty world of
ours is the only habitation of the spirit anywhere among the stars, and
this world doomed, even so, even so, I must praise. But if there is no
Star Maker, what can it be that I praise? I do not know. I will call it
only the sharp tang and savor of existence. But to call it this is to
say little.”
I TRAVEL AGAIN
I MUST have spent several years on the Other Earth, a period far longer
than I intended when I first encountered one of its peasants trudging
through the fields. Often I longed to be at home again. I used to wonder
with painful anxiety how those dear to me were faring, and what changes
I should discover if I were ever to return. It was surprising to me that
in spite of my novel and crowded experiences on the Other Earth thoughts
of home should continue to be so insistent. It seemed but a moment since
I was sitting on the hill looking at the lights of our suburb. Yet
several years had passed. The children would be altered almost beyond
recognition. Their mother? How would she have fared?
Bvalltu was partly responsible for my long spell on the Other Earth. He
would not hear of my leaving till we had each attained a real
understanding of the other’s world. I constantly stimulated his
imagination to picture as clearly as possible the life of my own planet,
and he had discovered in it much the same medley of the splendid and the
ironical as I had discovered in his. In fact he was far from agreeing
with me that his world was on the whole the more grotesque.
The call to impart information was not the only consideration that bound
me to Bvalitu. I had come to feel a very strong friendship for him. In
the early days of our partner ship there had sometimes been strains.
Though we were both civilized human beings, who tried always to behave
with courtesy and generosity, our extreme intimacy did sometimes fatigue
us. I used, for instance, to find his passion for the gustatory fine art
of his world very wearisome. He would sit by the hour passing his
sensitive fingers over the impregnated cords to seize the taste
sequences that had for him such great subtlety of form and symbolism. I
was at first intrigued, then aesthetically stirred; but in spite of his
patient help I was never at this early stage able to enter fully and
spontaneously into the aesthetic of taste. Sooner or later I was
fatigued or bored. Then again, I was impatient of his periodic need for
sleep. Since I was disembodied, I myself felt no such need. I could, of
course, disengage myself from Bvalitu and roam the world alone; but I
was often exasperated by the necessity of breaking off the day’s
interesting
Comments (0)