Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗
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superstitious. And the flavor of deity had been displaced by the flavor
of the proletariat.
Religion, then, was a very real force in the life of all these peoples.
But there was something puzzling about their devout-ness. In a sense it
was sincere, and even beneficial; for in very small personal temptations
and very obvious and stereotyped moral choices, the Other Men were far
more conscientious than my own kind. But I discovered that the typical
modern Other Man was conscientious only in conventional situations, and
that in genuine moral sensibility he was strangely lacking. Thus, though
practical generosity and superficial comradeship were more usual than
with us, the most diabolic mental persecution was perpetrated with a
clear conscience. The more sensitive had always to be on their guard.
The deeper kinds of intimacy and mutual reliance were precarious and
rare. In this passionately social world, loneliness dogged the spirit.
People were constantly “getting together,” but they never really got
there. Everyone was terrified of being alone with himself; yet in
company, in spite of the universal assumption of comradeship, these
strange beings remained as remote from one another as the stars. For
everyone searched his neighbor’s eyes for the image of himself, and
never saw anything else. Or if he did, he was outraged and terrified.
Another perplexing fact about the religious life of the Other Men at the
time of my visit was this. Though all were devout, and blasphemy was
regarded with horror, the general attitude to the deity was one of
blasphemous commercialism. Men assumed that the flavor of deity could be
bought for all eternity with money or with ritual. Further, the God whom
they worshipped with the superb and heart-searching language of an
earlier age was now conceived either as a just but jealous employer or
as an indulgent parent, or else as sheer physical energy. The crowning
vulgarity was the conviction that in no earlier age had religion been so
widespread and so enlightened. It was almost universally agreed that the
profound teachings of the prophetic era were only now being understood
in the sense in which they had originally been intended by the prophets
themselves. Contemporary writers and broadcasters claimed to be
re-interpreting the scriptures to suit the enlightened religious needs
of an age which called itself the Age of Scientific Religion. Now behind
all the complacency which characterized the civilization of the Other
Men before the outbreak of the war I had often detected a vague
restlessness and anxiety. Of course for the most part people went about
their affairs with the same absorbed and self-satisfied interest as on
my own planet. They were far too busy making a living, marrying, rearing
families, trying to get the better of one another, to spare time for
conscious doubt about the aim of life. Yet they had often the air of one
who has forgotten some very important thing and is racking his brains to
recover it, or of an aging preacher who uses the old stirring phrases
without clear apprehension of their significance. Increasingly I
suspected that this race, in spite of all its triumphs, was now living
on the great ideas of its past, mouthing concepts that it no longer had
the sensibility to understand, paying verbal homage to ideals which it
could no longer sincerely will, and behaving within a system of
institutions many of which could only be worked successfully by minds of
a slightly finer temper. These institutions, I suspected, must have been
created by a race endowed not only with much greater intelligence, but
with a much stronger and more comprehensive capacity for community than
was now possible on the Other Earth. They seemed to be based on the
assumption that men were on the whole kindly, reasonable and
self-disciplined.
I had often questioned Bvalltu on this subject, but he had always turned
my question aside. It will be remembered that, though I had access to
all his thoughts so long as he did not positively wish to withhold them,
he could always, if he made a special effort, think privately. I had
long suspected that he was keeping something from me, when at last he
told me the strange and tragic facts.
It was a few days after the bombardment of the metropolis of his
country. Through Bvalltu’s eyes and the goggles of his gas-mask I saw
the results of that bombardment. We had missed the horror itself, but
had attempted to return to the city to play some part in the rescue
work. Little could be done. So great was the heat still radiated from
the city’s incandescent heart, that we could not penetrate beyond the
first suburb. Even there, the streets were obliterated, choked with
fallen buildings. Human bodies, crushed and charred, projected here and
there from masses of tumbled masonry. Most of the population was hidden
under the ruins. In the open spaces many lay gassed. Salvage parties
impotently wandered. Between the smoke-clouds the Other Sun occasionally
appeared, and even a daytime star.
After clambering among the ruins for some time, seeking Vainly to give
help, Bvalltu sat down. The devastation round about us seemed to “loosen
his tongue,” if I may use such a phrase to express a sudden frankness in
his thinking toward myself. I had said something to the effect that a
future age would look back on all this madness and destruction with
amazement. He sighed through his gas-mask, and said, “My unhappy race
has probably now doomed itself irrevocably.” I expostulated; for though
ours was about the fortieth city to be destroyed, there would surely
some day be a recovery, and the race would at last pass through this
crisis and go forward from strength to strength. Bvalltu then told me of
the strange matters which, he said, he had often intended to tell me,
but somehow he had always shunned doing so. Though many scientists and
students of the contemporary world-society had now some vague suspicion
of the truth, it was clearly known only to himself and a few others.
The species, he said, was apparently subject to strange and
long-drawn-out fluctuations of nature, fluctuations which lasted for
some twenty thousand years. All races in all climates seemed to manifest
this vast rhythm of the spirit, and to suffer it simultaneously. Its
cause was unknown. Though it seemed to be due to an influence affecting
the whole planet at once, perhaps it actually radiated from a single
starting point, but spread rapidly into all lands. Very recently an
advanced scientist had suggested that it might be due to variations in
the intensity of “cosmic rays.” Geological evidence had established that
such a fluctuation of cosmical radiation did occur, caused perhaps by
variations in a neighboring cluster of young stars. It was still
doubtful whether the psychological rhythm and the astronomical rhythm
coincided, but many facts pointed to the conclusion that when the rays
were more violent the human spirit declined.
Bvalitu was not convinced by this story. On the whole he inclined to the
opinion that the rhythmical waxing and waning of human mentality was due
to causes nearer home. Whatever the true explanation, it was almost
certain that a high degree of civilization had been attained many times
in the past, and that some potent influence had over and over again
damped down the mental vigor of the human race. In the troughs of these
vast waves Other Man sank to a state of mental and spiritual dullness
more abject than anything which my own race had ever known since it
awoke from the subhuman. But at the wave’s crest man’s intellectual
power, moral integrity, and spiritual insight seem to have risen to a
pitch that we should regard as superhuman.
Again and again the race would emerge from savagery, and pass through
barbarian culture into a phase of worldwide brilliance and sensibility.
Whole populations would conceive simultaneously an ever-increasing
capacity for generosity, self-knowledge, self-discipline, for
dispassionate and penetrating thought and uncontaminated religious
feeling.
Consequently within a few centuries the whole world would blossom with
free and happy societies. Average human beings would attain an
unprecedented clarity of mind, and by massed action do away with all
grave social injustices and private cruelties. Subsequent generations,
inherently sound, and blessed with a favorable environment, would create
a worldwide Utopia of awakened beings.
Presently a general loosening of fiber would set in. The golden age
would be followed by a silver age. Living on the achievements of the
past, the leaders of thought would lose themselves in a jungle of
subtlety, or fall exhausted into mere slovenliness. At the same time
moral sensibility would decline. Men would become on the whole less
sincere, less self-searching, less sensitive to the needs of others, in
fact less capable of community. Social machinery, which had worked well
so long as citizens attained a certain level of humanity, would be
dislocated by injustice and corruption. Tyrants and tyrannical
oligarchies would set about destroying liberty. Hate-mad submerged
classes would give them good excuse. Little by little, though the
material benefits of civilization might smolder on for centuries, the
flame of the spirit would die down into a mere flicker in a few isolated
individuals. Then would come sheer barbarism, followed by the trough of
almost subhuman savagery.
On the whole there seemed to have been a higher achievement on the more
recent crests of the wave than on those of the “geological” past. So at
least some anthropologists persuaded themselves. It was confidently
believed that the present apex of civilization was the most brilliant of
all, that its best was as yet to come, and that by means of its unique
scientific knowledge it would discover how to preserve the mentality of
the race from a recurrence of deterioration.
The present condition of the species was certainly exceptional. In no
earlier recorded cycle had science and mechanization advanced to such
lengths. So far as could be inferred from the fragmentary relics of the
previous cycle, mechanical invention had never passed beyond the crude
machinery known in our own mid-nineteenth century. The still earlier
cycles, it was believed, stagnated at even earlier stages in their
industrial revolutions.
Now though it was generally assumed in intellectual circles that the
best was yet to be, Bvalltu and his friends were convinced that the
crest of the wave had already occurred many centuries ago. To most men,
of course, the decade before the war had seemed better and more
civilized than any earlier age. In their view civilization and
mechanization were almost identical, and never before had there been
such a triumph of mechanization. The benefits of a scientific
civilization were obvious. For the fortunate class there was more
comfort, better health, increased stature, a prolongation of youth, and
a system of technical knowledge so vast and intricate that no man could
know more than its outline or some tiny corner of its detail. Moreover,
increased communications had brought all the peoples into contact. Local
idiosyncrasies were fading out before the radio, the cinema, and the
gramophone. In comparison with these hopeful signs it was easily
overlooked that the human constitution, though strengthened by improved
conditions, was intrinsically less stable than formerly. Certain
disintegrative diseases were slowly but surely increasing. In
particular, diseases of the nervous system were becoming more common and
more pernicious. Cynics used to say that the mental hospitals would soon
outnumber even the churches. But the cynics were only jesters. It was
almost universally agreed that, in spite of wars and economic troubles
and social upheavals, all was now well, and the future would be better.
The truth, said Bvalitu, was almost certainly otherwise. There was, as I
had suspected, unmistakable evidence that the average of intelligence
and of moral integrity throughout the world had declined; and they would
probably continue to
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