Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (best mobile ebook reader TXT) 📖

though devoutly materialistic, were none the less

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