Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗
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system was the end which determined the duration of the irregular
action. Of course it was possible that in some unexplained but purely
mechanical way the presence of many planetary girdles created the
explosion, or the fiery limb. Astronomical physics could suggest no
mechanism whatever which could have this result. Telepathic research was
now undertaken in order to test the theory of stellar consciousness, and
if possible to set up communication with the minded stars. This venture
was at first completely barren. The worlds had not the slightest
knowledge of the right method of approach to minds which, if they
existed at all, must be inconceivably different from their own. It
seemed all too probable that no factors in the mentality of the minded
worlds were sufficiently akin to the stellar mentality to form a means
of contact. Though the worlds used their imaginative powers as best they
might, though they explored, so to speak, every subterranean passage and
gallery of their own mentality, tapping everywhere in the hope of
answer, they received none. The theory of stellar purposefulness began
to seem incredible. Once more the worlds began to turn to the
consolation, nay the joy, of acceptance. Nevertheless, a few
world-systems that had specialized in psychological technique persisted
in their researches, confident that, if only they could communicate with
the stars, some kind of mutual understanding and concord could be
brought about between the two great orders of minds in the galaxy. At
long last the desired contact with the stellar minds was effected. It
came not through the unaided efforts of the minded worlds of our galaxy
but partly through the mediation of another galaxy where already the
worlds and the stars had begun to realize one another.
Even to the minds of fully awakened worlds the stellar mentality was
almost too alien to be conceived at all. To me, the little human
individual, all that is most distinctive in it is now quite
incomprehensible. Nevertheless, its simpler aspect I must now try to
summarize as best I may, since it is essential to my story. The minded
worlds made their first contact with the stars on the higher planes of
stellar experience, but I shall not follow the chronological order of
their discoveries. Instead I shall begin with aspects of the stellar
nature which were haltingly inferred only after intercourse of a sort
had become fairly well established. It is in terms of stellar biology
and physiology that the reader may most easily conceive something of the
mental life of stars.
3. STARS
Stars are best regarded as living organisms, but organisms which are
physiologically and psychologically of a very peculiar kind. The outer
and middle layers of a mature star apparently consist of “tissues” woven
of currents of incandescent gases. These gaseous tissues live and
maintain the stellar consciousness by intercepting part of the immense
flood of energy that wells from the congested and furiously active
interior of the star. The innermost of the vital layers must be a kind
of digestive apparatus which transmutes the crude radiation into forms
required for the maintenance of the star’s life. Outside this digestive
area lies some sort of coordinating layer, which may be thought of as
the star’s brain. The outermost layers, including the corona, respond to
the excessively faint stimuli of the star’s cosmical environment, to
light from neighboring stars, to cosmic rays, to the impact of meteors,
to tidal stresses caused by the gravitational influence of planets or of
other stars. These influences could not, of course, produce any clear
impression but for a strange tissue of gaseous sense organs, which
discriminate between them in respect of quality and direction, and
transmit information to the correlating “brain” layer.
The sense experience of a star, though so foreign to us, proved after
all fairly intelligible. It was not excessively difficult for us to
enter telepathically into the star’s perception of the gentle
titillations, strokings, pluckings, and scintillations that came to it
from the galactic environment. It was strange that, though the star’s
own body was actually in a state of extreme brilliance, none of this
outward-flowing light took effect upon its sense organs. Only the faint
incoming light of other stars was seen. This afforded the perception of
a surrounding heaven of flashing constellations, which were set not in
blackness but in blackness tinged with the humanly inconceivable color
of the cosmic rays. The stars themselves were seen colored according to
their style and age. But though the sense perception of the stars was
fairly intelligible to us, the motor side of stellar life was at first
quite incomprehensible. We had to accustom ourselves to an entirely new
way of regarding physical events. For the normal voluntary motor
activity of a star appears to be no other than the star’s normal
physical movement studied by our science, movement in relation to other
stars and the galaxy as a whole. A star must be thought of as vaguely
aware of the gravitational influence of the whole galaxy, and more
precisely aware of the “pull” of its near neighbors; though of course
their influence would generally be far too slight to be detected by
human instruments. To these influences the star responds by voluntary
movement, which to the astronomers of the little minded worlds seems
purely mechanical; but the star itself unquestioningly and rightly feels
this movement to be the freely willed expression of its own
psychological nature. Such at least was the almost incredible conclusion
forced on us by the research carried out by the Galactic Society of
Worlds.
Thus the normal experience of a star appears to consist in perception of
its cosmical environment, along with continuous voluntary changes within
its own body and in its position in relation to other stars. This change
of position consists, of course, in rotation and passage. The star’s
motor life is thus to be thought of almost as a life of dance, or of
figure-skating, executed with perfect skill according to an ideal
principle which emerges into consciousness from the depths of the
stellar nature and becomes clearer as the star’s mind matures.
This ideal principle cannot be conceived by men save as it is manifested
in practice as the well-known physical principle of “least action,” or
the pursuit of that course which in all the gravitational and other
conditions is the least extravagant. The star itself, by means of its
purchase on the electromagnetic field of the cosmos, apparently wills
and executes this ideal course with all the attention and delicacy of
response which a motorist exercises in threading his way through traffic
on a winding road, or a ballet-dancer in performing the most intricate
movements with the greatest economy of effort. Almost certainly, the
star’s whole physical behavior is normally experienced as a blissful, an
ecstatic, an ever successful pursuit of formal beauty. This the minded
worlds were able to discover through their own most formalistic
aesthetic experience. In fact it was through this experience that they
first made contact with stellar minds. But the actual perception of the
aesthetic (or religious?) rightness of the mysterious canon, which the
stars so earnestly accepted, remained far beyond the mental range of the
minded worlds. They had to take it, so to speak, on trust. Clearly this
aesthetic canon was in some way symbolical of some spiritual intuition
that remained occult to the minded worlds.
The life of the individual star is not only a life of physical movement.
It is also undoubtedly in some sense a cultural and a spiritual life. In
some manner each star is aware of its fellow stars as conscious beings.
This mutual awareness is probably intuitive and telepathic, though
presumably it is also constantly supported by inference from observation
of the behavior of others. From the psychological relations of star with
star sprang a whole world of social experiences which were so alien to
the minded worlds that almost nothing can be said of them.
There is perhaps some reason for believing that the free behavior of the
individual star is determined not only by the austere canons of the
dance but also by the social will to cooperate with others. Certainly
the relation between stars is perfectly social. It reminded me of the
relation between the performers in an orchestra, but an orchestra
composed of persons wholly intent on the common task. Possibly, but not
certainly, each star, executing its particular theme, is moved not only
by the pure aesthetic or religious motive but also by a will to afford
its partners every legitimate opportunity for self-expression. If so,
the life of each star is experienced not only as the perfect execution
of formal beauty but also as the perfect expression of love. It would,
however, be unwise to attribute affection and comradeship to the stars
in any human sense. The most that can safely be said, is that it would
probably be more false to deny them affection for one another than to
assert that they were, indeed, capable of love. Telepathic research
suggested that the experience of the stars was through and through of a
different texture from that of the minded worlds. Even to attribute to
them thought or desire of any kind is probably grossly anthropomorphic,
but it is impossible to speak of their experience in any other terms.
The mental life of a star is almost certainly a progress from an obscure
infantile mentality to the discriminate consciousness of maturity. All
stars, young and old, are mentally “angelic,” in that they all freely
and joyfully will the “good will,” the pattern of right action so far as
it is revealed to them; but the great tenuous young stars, though they
perfectly execute their part in the galactic dance, would seem to be in
some manner spiritually naive or childlike in comparison with their more
experienced elders. Thus, though there is normally no such thing as sin
among the stars, no deliberate choice of the course known to be wrong
for the sake of some end known to be irrelevant, there is ignorance, and
consequent aberration from the pattern of the ideal as revealed to stars
of somewhat maturer mentality. But this aberration on the part of the
young is itself apparently accepted by the most awakened class of the
stars as itself a desirable factor in the dance pattern of the galaxy.
From the point of view of natural science, as known to the minded
worlds, the behavior of young stars is of course always an exact
expression of their youthful nature; and the behavior of the elder stars
an expression of their nature. But, most surprisingly, the physical
nature of a star at any stage of its growth is in part an expression of
the telepathic influence of other stars. This fact can never be detected
by the pure physics of any epoch. Unwittingly scientists derive the
inductive physical laws of stellar evolution from data which are
themselves an expression not only of normal physical influences but also
of the unsuspected psychical influence of star on star.
In early ages of the cosmos the first “generation” of stars had been
obliged to find their way unhelped from infancy to maturity; but later
“generations” were in some manner guided by the experience of their
elders so that they should pass more quickly and more thoroughly from
the obscure to the fully lucid consciousness of themselves as spirits,
and of the spiritual universe in which they dwelt. Almost certainly, the
latest stars to condense out of the primeval nebula advanced (or will
advance) more rapidly than their elders had done; and throughout the
stellar host it was believed that in due season the youngest stars, when
they had attained maturity, would pass far beyond the loftiest spirit
insight of their seniors. There is good reason to say that the two
overmastering desires
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