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
prehensile fingers. Above his mouth was a single nostril, above that an
ear, and on the top of his head a flexible three-pronged proboscis
bearing three eyes.
A very different and fairly common quasi-human kind was sometimes
produced by planets rather larger than the Earth. Owing to the greater
strength of gravitation, there would first appear, in place of the
familiar quadruped, a six-legged type. This would proliferate into
little sextuped burrowers, swift and elegant sextuped grazers, a
sextuped mammoth, complete with tusks, and many kinds of sextuped
carnivora. Man in these worlds sprang usually from some small
opposum-like creature which had come to use the first of its three pairs
of limbs for nest-building or for climbing. In time, the forepart of its
body thus became erect, and it gradually assumed a form not unlike that
of a quadruped with a human torso in place of a neck. In fact it became
a centaur, with four legs and two capable arms. It was very strange to
find oneself in a world in which all the amenities and conveniences of
civilization were fashioned to suit men of this form.
In one of these worlds, rather smaller than the rest; man was not a
centaur, though centaurs were among his remote ancestors. In subhuman
stages of evolution the pressure of the environment had telescoped the
horizontal part of the centaur’s body, so that the forelegs and the
hind-legs were drawn closer and closer together, till at last they
became a single sturdy pair. Thus man and his nearer ancestors were
bipeds with very large rumps, reminiscent of the Victorian bustle, and
legs whose internal structure still showed their “centaur” origin.
One very common kind of quasi-human world I must describe in more
detail, as it plays an important part in the history of our galaxy. In
these worlds man, though varying greatly in form and fortune in
particular worlds, had in every case developed from a sort of
five-pronged marine animal, rather like a star-fish. This creature would
in time specialize one prong for perceiving, four for locomotion. Later
it would develop lungs, a complex digestive apparatus, and a
well-integrated nervous system. Later still the perceiving limb would
produce a brain, the others becoming adapted for running and climbing.
The soft spines which covered the body of the ancestral star-fish often
developed into a kind of spiky fur. In due season there would arise an
erect, intelligent biped, equipped with eyes, nostrils, ears,
taste-organs, and sometimes organs of electric perception. Save for the
grotesqueness of their faces, and the fact that the mouth was generally
upon the belly, these creatures were remarkably human. Their bodies,
however, were usually covered with the soft spines or fat hairs
characteristic of these worlds. Clothes were unknown, save as protection
against cold in the arctic regions. Their faces, of course, were apt to
be far from human. The tall head often bore a coronet of five eyes.
Large single nostrils, used for breathing and smelling and also
speaking, formed another circlet below the eyes.
The appearance of these “Human Echinoderms” belied their nature, for
though their faces were inhuman, the basic pattern of their minds was
not unlike our own. Their senses were much like ours, save that in some
worlds they developed a far more varied color-sensitivity. Those races
that had the electric sense gave us some difficulty; for, in order to
understand their thought, we had to learn a whole new gamut of sense
qualities and a vast system of unfamiliar symbolism. The electric organs
detected very slight differences of electric charge in relation to the
subject’s own body. Originally this sense had been used for revealing
enemies equipped with electric organs of offense. But in man its
significance was chiefly social. It gave information about the emotional
state of one’s neighbors. Beyond this its function was meteorological.
One example of this kind of world, one which clearly illustrates the
type, and at the same time presents interesting peculiarities must be
described in more detail.
The key to the understanding of this race is, I believe, its strange
method of reproduction, which was essentially communal. Every individual
was capable of budding a new individual; but only at certain seasons,
and only after stimulation by a kind of pollen emanating from the whole
tribe and carried on the air. The grains of this ultra-microscopically
fine pollen dust were not germ cells but “genes,” the elementary factors
of inheritance. The precincts of the tribe were at all times faintly
perfumed by the communal pollen; but on occasions of violent group
emotion the pollen cloud became so intensified as to be actually visible
as a haze. Only on these rare occasions was conception probable.
Breathed out by every individual, the pollen was breathed in by those
who were ripe for fertilization. By all it was experienced as a rich and
subtle perfume, to which each individual contributed his peculiar odor.
By means of a curious psychical and physiological mechanism the
individual in heat was moved to crave stimulation by the full perfume of
the tribe, or of the great majority of its members; and indeed, if the
pollen clouds were insufficiently complex, conception would not occur.
Cross-fertilization between tribes happened in intertribal warfare and
in the ceaseless coming and going between tribes in the modern world.
In this race, then, every individual might bear children. Every child,
though it had an individual as its mother, was fathered by the tribe as
a whole. Expectant parents were sacred, and were tended communally. When
the baby “Echinoderm” finally detached itself from the parental body, it
also was tended communally along with the rest of the tribe’s juvenile
population. In civilized societies it was handed over to professional
nurses and teachers.
I must not pause to tell of the important psychological effects of this
kind of reproduction. The delights and disgusts which we feel in contact
with the flesh of our kind were unknown. On the other hand, individuals
were profoundly moved by the ever-changing tribal perfume. It is
impossible to describe the strange variant of romantic love which, each
individual periodically felt for the tribe. The thwarting, the
repression, the perversion of this passion was the source at once of the
loftiest and most sordid achievements of the race. Communal parenthood
gave to the tribe a unity and Strength quite unknown in more
individualistic races. The primitive tribes were groups of a few hundred
or a few thousand individuals, but in modern times their size greatly
increased. Always, however, the sentiment of tribal loyalty, if it was
to remain healthy, had to be based on the personal acquaintance of its
members. Even in the larger tribes, everyone was at least “the friend of
a friend’s friend” to every other member. Telephone, radio, and
television enabled tribes as large as our smaller cities to maintain a
sufficient degree of personal intercourse among their members.
But always there was some point beyond which further growth of the tribe
was unwholesome. Even in the smallest and most intelligent tribes there
was a constant strain between the individual’s natural passion for the
tribe and his respect for individuality in himself and his fellows. But
whereas in the small tribes and healthy larger tribes the tribal spirit
was kept sweet and sane by the mutual-respect and self-respect of the
individuals, in the largest and imperfectly sane tribes the hypnotic
influence of the tribe was all too apt to drown personality. The members
might even lose all awareness of themselves and their fellows as
persons, and become mere mindless organs of the tribe. Thus the
community would degenerate into an instinctive animal herd.
Throughout history the finer minds of the race had realized that the
supreme temptation was the surrender of individuality to the tribe.
Prophets had over and over again exhorted men to be true to themselves,
but their preaching had been almost wholly vain. The greatest religions
of this strange world were not religions of love but religions of self.
Whereas in our world men long for the Utopia in which all men shall love
one another, the “Echinoderms” were apt to exalt the religious hunger
for strength to “be oneself” without capitulation to the tribe. Just as
we compensate for our inveterate selfishness by religious veneration of
the community, so this race compensated for inveterate “gregism” by
religious veneration of the individual.
In its purest and most developed form, of course, the religion of self
is almost identical with the religion of love at its best. To love is to
will the self-fulfilment of the beloved, and to find, in the very
activity of loving, an incidental but vitalizing increase of oneself. On
the other hand, to be true to oneself, to the full potentiality of the
self, involves the activity of love. It demands the discipline of the
private self in service of a greater self which embraces the community
and the fulfilment of the spirit of the race.
But the religion of self was no more effective with the “Echinoderms”
than the religion of love with us. The precept, “Love thy neighbor as
thyself,” breeds in us most often the disposition to see one’s neighbor
merely as a poor imitation of oneself, and to hate him if he proves
different. With them the precept, “Be true to thyself,” bred the
disposition merely to be true to the tribal fashion of mentality. Modern
industrial civilization caused many tribes to swell beyond the wholesome
limit. It also introduced artificial “super-tribes” or “tribes of
tribes,” corresponding to our nations and social classes. Since the
economic unit was the internally communistic tribe, not the individual,
the employing class was a small group of small and prosperous tribes,
and the working class was a large group of large and impoverished
tribes. The ideologies of the super-tribes exercised absolute power over
all individual minds under their sway.
In civilized regions the super-tribes and the overgrown natural tribes
created an astounding mental tyranny. In relation to his natural tribe,
at least if it was small and genuinely civilized, the individual might
still behave with intelligence and imagination. Along with his actual
tribal kinsmen he might support a degree of true community unknown on
Earth. He might in fact be a critical, self-respecting and
other-respecting person. But in all matters connected with the
super-tribes, whether national or economic, he behaved in a very
different manner. All ideas coming to him with the sanction of nation or
class would be accepted uncritically and with fervor by himself and all
his fellows. As soon as he encountered one of the symbols or slogans of
his super-tribe he ceased to be a human personality and became a sort of
de-cerebrate animal, capable only of stereotyped reactions. In extreme
cases his mind was absolutely closed to influences opposed to the
suggestion of the super-tribe. Criticism was either met with blind rage
or actually not heard at all. Persons who in the intimate community of
their small native tribe were capable of great mutual insight and
sympathy might suddenly, in response to tribal symbols, be transformed
into vessels of crazy intolerance and hate directed against national or
class enemies. In this mood they would go to any extreme of
self-sacrifice for the supposed glory of the super-tribe. Also they
would show great ingenuity in contriving means to exercise their lustful
vindictiveness upon enemies who in favorable circumstances could be
quite as kindly and intelligent as themselves.
At the time of our visit to this world it seemed that mob passions would
destroy civilization completely and irrevocably. The affairs of the
world were increasingly conducted under the sway of the spreading mania
of super-tribalism; conducted, in fact, not intelligently but according
to the relative emotional compulsions of almost meaningless slogans. I
must not stay to describe how, after a period of chaos, a new way
Comments (0)