Stapledon, Olaf 1937. Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future. London: Penguin Books Limited. [Internet Archive]
Preface
This is a work of fiction. I have tried to invent a story which may seem a possible, or at least not wholly impossible, account of the future of man; and I have tried to make that story relevant to the change that is taking place to-day in man's outlook. (Stapledon 1937: v)
This has to be pointed out because the book has a prophetic air to it. I've seen some reviews that say something like "I had to return to the title page and confirm that this was written in 1930 several times because it seemed improbable".
To romance of the future may seem to be indulgence in ungoverned speculation for the sake of the marvellous. Yet controlled imagination in this sphere can be a very valuable exercise for minds bewildered about the present and its potentialities. To-day we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to entertain new values. (Stapledon 1937: v)
Another constant refrain in the review is Stapledon's boundless imagination. Nowadays it is generally held that we have become futureless - faced with climate collapse and various crises, we can no longer well imagine what awaits ahead. That is to say, we envisage the future of our race less and less because that way lies doom. Hopefully this, one of the first "future histories", will work as an antidote to this sentiment.
But if such imaginative construction of psosible futures is to be at all potent, our imagination must be strictly disciplined. We must endeavour not to go beyond the bounds of possibility set by the particular state of culture within which we live. The merely fantastic has only minor power. Not that we should seek actually to prophesy what will as a matter of fact occur; for in our present state such prophecy is certainly futile, save in the simplest matters. We are not to set up as historians attempting to look ahead instead of backwards. We can only select a certain thread out of the tangle of many equally valid possibilities. But we must select with a purpose. The activity that we are undertaking is not science, but art; and the effect that it should have on the reader is the effect that art should have. (Stapledon 1937: v)
Already something for cultural semiotics to bite on: imagining the future is constrained or limited by the particular state of culture in which which the imagineer lives. As to a certain thread out of the tangle there's a possible parallel with Lotman's discussion of culture and explosion, which argues along the same lines.
Yet our aim is not merely to create æsthetically admirable fiction. We must achieve neither mere history, nor mere fiction, but myth. A true myth is one which, within the universe of a certain culture (living or dead), expresses richly, and often perhaps tragically, the highest admirations possible within [|] that culture. A false myth is one which either violently transgresses the limits of credibility set by its own cultural matrix, or expresses admirations less developed than those of its culture's best vision. This book can no more claim to be true myth than true prophecy. But it is an essay in myth creation. (Stapledon 1937: v-vi)
Hot damn. It just keeps on getting better. The book is purposefully mythopoietic. Myth is a means to express a culture's particular ideals - its highest admirations, its best vision of what it cam become.
The kind of future which is here imagined, should not, I think, seem wholly fantastic, or at any rate not so fantastic as to be without significance, to modern western individuals who are familiar with the outlines of contemporary thought. Had I chosen matter in which there was nothing whatever of the fantastic, its very plausibility would have rendered it unplausible. For one thing at least is almost certain about the future, namely, that very much of it will be such as we should call incredible. In one important respect, indeed, I may perhaps seem to have strayed into barren extravagance. I have supposed an inhabitant of the remote future to be communicating with us of to-day. I have pretended that he has the power of partially controlling the operations of minds now living, and that this book is the product of such influence. Yet even this fiction is perhaps not wholly excluded by our thought. I might, of course, easily have omitted it without more than superficial alteration of the theme. But its introduction was more than a convenience. Only by some such radical and bewildering device could I embody the possibility that there may be more in time's nature than is revealed to us. Indeed, only by some such trick could I do justice to the conviction that our whole present mentality is but a confused and halting first experiment. (Stapledon 1937: vi)
Imagining the future should not be so wild as to be completely meaningless. It should be anchored in plausibility, better yet in what might seem way too obvious. A century after this book we are indeed living in a world that would appear incredible to Stapledon's contemporaries. The only seemingly-impossible aspect here is the literary device of one of the last humans billions of years hence communicating with one of the first humans in the beginning of the 20th century. Paratemporal telepathy? As to the present mental confusion, this appears to be a common through-line in Stapledon's works, both fiction and non-fiction; reportedly he is constantly playing around with the pythagorean view of the human soul as consisting of a rational and an irrational part, and aiming towards leaving our lower or base parts behind in favour of becoming "pure mind".
If ever this book should happen to be discovered by some future individual, for instance by a member of the next generation sorting out the rubbish of his predecessors, it will certainly raise a smile; for very much is bound to happen of which no hint is yet discoverable. And indeed even in our generation circumstances may well change so unexpectedly and so radically that this book may very soon look ridiculous. But no matter. We of to-day must conceive our relation to the rest of the universe as best we can; and even if our images must seem fantastic to future men, they may none the less serve their purpose to-day. (Stapledon 1937: vi)
Moi? | This recognition of his own inevitable failure to predict even the near future is also as insightful as it is prophetic - WWII did indeed only a few years later turn much of this book's contents ridiculous. One particular instance I'm already aware of is humanity inventing nuclear weapons centuries later, whereas it actually occurred within his own lifetime.
Some readers, taking my story to be an attempt at phrophecy, may deem it unwarrantably pessimistic. But it is not prophecy; it is myth, or an essay in myth. We all desire the future to turn out more happily than I have figured it. In particular we desire our present civilization to advance steadily toward some kind [|] of Utopia. The thought that it may decay and collapse, and that all its spiritual treasure may be look irrevocably, is repugnant to us. Yet this must be faced as at least a possibility. And this kind of tragedy, the tragedy of a race, must, I think, be admitted in any adequate myth. (Stapledon 1937: vi-vii)
The opposite of utopia is not dystopia, but the complete collapse of civilization; not totalitarian society but no society, no humans at all.
And so, while gladly recognizing that in our time there are strong seeds of hope as well as of despair, I have imagined for æsthetic purposes that our race will destroy itself. There is to-day a very earnest movement for peace and international unity; and surely with good fortune and intelligent management it may triumph. Most earnestly we must hope that it will. But I have figured things out in this book in such a manner that this great movement fails. I suppose it incapable of preventing a succession of national wars; and I permit it only to achieve the goal of unity and peace after the mentality of the race has been undermined. May this not happen! May the League of Nations, or some more strictly cosmopolitan authority, win through before it is too late! Yet let us find room in our minds and in our hearts for the thought that the whole enterprise of our race may be after all but a minor and unsuccessful episode in a vaster drama, which also perhaps may be tragic. (Stapledon 1937: vii)
The League of Nations did indeed fail to prevent WWII, just like the United Nations is currently failling to prevent WWIII. Stapledon's outlook comes across as extremely realistic. Humanity is just a brief blip of life in the universe.
American readers, if ever there are any, may feel that their great nation is given a somewhat unattractive part in the story. I have imagined the triumph of the cruder sort of Americanism over all that is best and most promising in American culture. may this not occur in the real world! Americans themselves, however, admit the possibility of such an issue, and will, I hope, forgive me for emphasizing it, and using it as an early turning-point in the long drama of Man. (Stapledon 1937: vii)
Americanization was spot on. And recent years have shown how powerfully the cruder sort trumps triumphs in America.
Any attempt to conceive such a drama must take into account whatever contemporary science has to say about man's own nature and his physical environment. I have tried to supplement my own slight knowledge of natural science by pestering my scientific friends. (Stapledon 1937: vii)
Everyone should pester their scientific friends.
Introduction, by One of the Last Men
This book has two authors, one contemporary with its readers, the other an inhabitant of an age which they would call the distant future. The brain that conceives and writes these sentences lives in the time of Einstein. Yet I, the true inspirer of this book, I who have begotten it upon that brain, I who influence that primitive being's conception, inhabit an age which, for Einstein, lies in the very remote future. (Stapledon 1937: 11)
John Dee and Uriel. Aleister Crowley and Aiwass. See also the current speculations about "extraterrestials" (UAP-s) possibly being time-travellers.
The actual writer thinks he is merely contriving a work of fiction. Though he seeks to tell a plausible story, he neither believes it himself, nor expects others to believe it. Yet the story is true. A being whom you would call a future man has seized the docile but scarcely adequate brain of your contemporary, and is trying to direct its familiar processes for an alien purpose. Thus a future epoch makes contact with your age. Listen patiently; for we who are the Last Men earnestly desire to communicate with you, who are members of the First Human Species. We can help you, and we need your help. (Stapledon 1937: 11)
A future man hijacked the brain of a mild-mannered modern human. They picked an English philosopher for this purpose. I.e. someone whose native language will become the lingua franca for the next century, at least, and whose intellectual interests in ethics and psychology lend credence to this being a fruit of his own imagination.
You cannot believe it. Your acquaintance with time is very imperfect, and so your understanding of it is defeated. But no matter. Do not perplex yourselves about this truth, so difficult to you, so familiar to us of a later æon. Do but entertain, merely as a fiction, the idea that the thought and will of individuals future to you may intrude, rarely and with difficulty, into the mental processes of some of your contemporaries. Pretend that you believe this, and that the following chronicle is an authentic message from the Last Men. Imagine the consequences of such a belief. Otherwise I cannot give life to the great history which it is my task to tell. (Stapledon 1937: 11)
The influence on Arrival (2016) is palpable. This play with the concept of time could also lead to employing the philosophy of David Zilberman (cf. e.g. 2021: 49-50).
When your writers romance of the future, they too easily imagine a progress toward some kind of Utopia, in which beings like themselves live in unmitigated bliss among circumstances perfectly suited to a fixed human nature. I shall not describe any [|] such paradise. Instead, I shall record huge fluctuations of joy and woe, the results of changes not only in man's environment but in his fluid nature. And I must tell how, in my own age, having at last achieved spiritual maturity and the philosophic mind, man is forced by an unexpected crisis to embark on an enterprise both repugnant and desperate. (Stapledon 1937: 11-12)
Of course human nature is not fixed if your timescale is billions of years. Perfection, though, will never be achieved - the future man admits that once our long distant successors reach something like it, they're still don't reach a paradise but are instead faced with final extinction.
But first, it is well to contemplate for a few moments the mere magnitudes of cosmical events. For, compressed as it must necessarily be, the narrative that I have to tell may seem to present a sequence of adventures and disasters crowded together, with no intervening peace. But in fact man's career has been less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than a great sluggish river, broken very seldom by rapids. Ages of quiescence, often of actual stagnation, filled with the monotonous problems and toils of countless almost identical lives, have been punctuated by rare moments of racial adventure. Nay, even these few seemingly rapid events themselves were in fact often long-drawn-out and tedious. They acquire a mere illusion of speed from the speed of the narrative. (Stapledon 1937: 12)
There's a ready parallel with Juri Lotman's treatment of history - the stair-like figure representing sudden bursts of activity separated by periods of relative stability.
While the near past and the near future display within them depth beyond depth, time's remote immensities are foreshortened into flatness. It is almost inconceivable to simple minds that man's whole history should be but a moment in the life of the stars, and that remote events should embrace within themselves æon upon æon. (Stapledon 1937: 12)
A mere blip.
Somehow, then, I must help you to feel not only the vastness of time and space, but also the vast diversity of mind's possible modes. But this I can only hint to you, since so much lies wholly beyond the range of your imagination. (Stapledon 1937: 13)
The philosopher writes about consciousness.
Historians living in your day need grapple only with one moment of the flux of time. But I have to present in one book the essence not of centuries but of æons. Clearly we cannot walk at leisure through such a tract, in which a million terrestial years are but as a year is to your historians. We must fly. We must travel as you do in your aeroplanes, observing only the broad features of the continent. But since the flier sees nothing of the minute inhabitants below him, and since it is they who make history, we must also punctuate our flight with many descents, skimming as it were over the house-tops, and even alighting at critical points to speak face to face with individuals. And as the plane's journey must begin with a slow ascent from the intricate pedestrian view to wider horizons, so we must begin with a somewhat close inspection of that little period which includes the culmination and collapse of your own primitive civilization. (Stapledon 1937: 13)
Hence we begin from home base - the immediate centuries ahead, and then presumably increase in speed until we reach the Last Men.
I.1. Balkan Europe: The European War and After
Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, opened bewildered eyes, and slept again. One of these moments of precocious experience embrcaes the whole struggle of the First Men from savagery towards civilization. Within that moment, you stand almost in the very instant when the species attains its zenith. Scarcely at all beyond your own day is this early culture to be seen progressing, and already in our time the mentality of the race shows signs of decline. (Stapledon 1937: 15)
I wonder what he means by these signs of decline. By the 1930s? Is he bemoaning the end of the Victorian Era?
The first, and some would say the greatest, achievement of your own 'Western' culture was the conceiving of two ideals of conduct, both essential to the spirit's well-being. Socrates, delighting in the truth for its own sake and not merely for practical ends, glorified unbiased thinking, honesty of mind and speech. Jesus, delighting in the actual human persons around him, and in that flavour of divinity which, for him, pervaded the world, stood for unselfish love of neighbours and of God. Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though starting with a different emphasis, involved the other. (Stapledon 1937: 15)
I would have thought that Stapledon would veer towards Firstness (Passion) and Thirdness (Reason), but it turns out that he instead loses Firstness in favor of Secondness (Will), in which he encompasses compassion (love, friendship, and all the other good stuff that was Aesara's First).
Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was never really capable. For many centuries these twin stars enticed the more precociously human of human animals, in vain. And the failure to put these ideals in practice helped to engender in the race a cynical lassitude which was one cause of its decay. (Stapledon 1937: 15)
Vitality? The 1920s were indeed a time of vitalism. How would the human brain become more coherent, I do not know. The phrasing in "the more [...] human of human animals" makes it out that these socratic and christian tendencies are
There were other causes. The peoples from whom sprang Socrates and Jesus were also among the first to conceive admiration for Fate. In Greek tragic art and Hebrew worship of divine law, as also in the Indian resignation, men experienced, at first very obscurely, that vision of an alien and supernal beauty, which was to exalt and perplex him again and again throughout his whole career. The conflict between this worship and the intransigent loyalty to Life, embattled against Death, proved insoluble. And though few individuals were ever clearly conscious of the issue, the first human species was again and again unwittingly hampered in its spiritual development by this supreme perplexity. (Stapledon 1937: 16)
See Plato (in The Republic) and the oneness of the good, or various later thinkers on the lawfulness of the Third. This is most likely what Stapledon means by "an alien and supernal beauty" - the lawfulness of the universe.
While man was being whipped and enticed by these precocious experiences, the actual social constitution of his world kept changing so rapidly through increased mastery over physical energy, that his primitive nature could no longer cope with the complexity of his environment. Animals that were fashioned for hunting and fighting in the wild were suddenly called upon to be citizens, and moreover citizens of a world-community. (Stapledon 1937: 16)
The only thing I take issue with here is "fashioned for" - this is creationism, no?
The European War, called at the time the War to End War, was the first and least destructive of those world conflicts which display so tragically the incompetence of the First Men to control their own nature. (Stapledon 1937: 16)
We've had two world wars, yes, but what about a third one?
The peace which followed the European War is one of the most significant moments of ancient history; for it epitomizes both the dawning vision and the incurable blindness, both the impulse toward a highel loyalty and the compulsive tribalism of a race which was, after all, but superficially human. (Stapledon 1937: 17)
The human race - not yet quite human.
I.2. Balkan Europe: The Anglo-French War
During this century the will for peace and sanity was already becoming a serious factor in history. Save for a number of the most untoward accidents, to be recorded in due course, the party of peace might have dominated Europe during its most dangerous period; and, through Europe, the world. With either a little less bad luck or a fraction more of vision and self-control at this critical time, there might never have occurred that æon of darkness, in which the First Men were presently to be submerged. For had victory been gained before the general level of mentality had seriously begun to decline, the attainment of the world state might have been regarded, not as an end, but as the first step toward true civilization. But this was not to be. (Stapledon 1937: 17)
I still have no clue as to what he means by the decline of mentality. What mentality? What kind of decline? Quantitative or qualitative? I suspect that what he is actually bemoaning is the end of classical liberal education, e.g. the rote study of latin and classical poetry.
After the European War the defeated nation, formerly no less militaristic than the others, now became the most pacific, and a stronghold of enlightenment. Almost everywhere, indeed, there had occurred a profound change of heart, but chiefly in Germany. (Stapledon 1937: 17)
This was perhaps not true after WWI but has certainly become true after WWII.
Italians peculiarly sensitive to national prestige; and since among Western peoples national vigour was measured in terms of military glory, the Italians were fired, by their success against a rickety foreign domination, to vindicate themselves more thoroughly against the change of mediocrity in warfare. After the European War, however, Italy passed through a phase of social disorder and self-distrust. Subsequently a flamboyant but sincere national party gained control of the State, and afforded the Italians a new self-respect, based on reform of the social services, and on militaristic policy. Trains became punctual, streets clean, morals puritanical. Aviation records were won for Italy. The young, dressed up and taught to play at soldiers with real fire-arms, were persuaded to regard themselves as saviours of the nation, encouraged to shed blood, and used to enforce the will of the Government. The whole movement was engineered chiefly by a man whose genius in action combined with his rhetoric and crudity of thought to make him a very successful dictator. Almost miraculously he drilled the Italian nation into efficiency. At the same time, with great emotional effect and incredible lack of humour he trumpeted Italy's self-importance, and her will to 'expand.' And since Italians were slow to learn the necessity of restricting their population, 'expansion' was a real need. (Stapledon 1937: 18)
Uh, why does this read like an endorsement of Italian fascism? It it especially ironic to read such praises of their militarism, considering the many embarassments it endured in WWII.
Scarcely had the last veterans of the European War ceased from wearying their juniors with reminiscence, when the long rivalry between France and England culminated in a dispute between their respective Governments over a case of sexual outrage said to have been committed by a French African soldier upon an Englishwoman. In this quarrel, the British Government happened to be definitely in the wrong, and was probably confused by its own sexual repressions. The outrage had never been committed. The facts which gave rise to the rumour were, that an idle and neurotic Englishwoman in the south of France, craving the embraces of a 'cave man', had seduced a Senegalese corporal in her own apartments. When, later, he had shown signs of boredom, she took revenge by declaring that he had attacked her indecently in the woods above the town. This rumour was such that the English were all too prone to savour and believe. (Stapledon 1937: 19)
Italy vs France. France vs England. I can see how someone (whoever wrote the foreword to the first American edition of this book) would recommend the readers skip the first chapters and the most egregious historical mispredictions. | Rape is a sexual outrage and an indecent attack. Also, somewhat casual misogyny with this false rape accusation story.
At the same time, the magnates of the English Press could not resist this opportunity of trading upon the public's sexuality, tribalism and self-righteousness. There followed an epidemic of abuse, and occasional violence, against French subjects in England; and thus the party of fear and militarism in France was given the opportunity it had long sought. (Stapledon 1937: 19)
Something that could equally be said of Reddit and other modern social media that feeds on ragebait.
In an instant, the whole fruit of this effort for disarmament [|] was destroyed. That subtle difference of mentality which had ever made it impossible for these two nations to understand one another, was suddenly exaggerated by this provocative incident into an apparently insoluble discord. England reverted to her conviction that all Frenchmen were sensualists, while to France the English appeared, as often before, the most offensive of hypocrites. In vaid did the saner minds in each country insist on the fundamental humanity of both. In vain did the chastened Germans seek to mediate. (Stapledon 1937: 19-20)
I'm beginning to think this discourse on "mentality" might be Lévy-Bruhlian. The chastened Germans - Stapledon did really seem to get the history of the 20th century as wrong as it was possible to get.
While the London papers were selling out upon the news that war was declared, enemy planes appeared over the city. In a couple of hours a third of London was in ruins, and half her population lay poisoned in the streets. One bomb, falling beside the British Museum, turned the whole of Bloomsbury into a crater, wherein fragments of mummies, statues, and manuscripts were mingled with the contents of shops, and morsels of salesmen and the intelligentsia. Thus in a moment was destroyed a large proportion of England's most precious relics and most fertile brains. (Stapledon 1937: 20)
There is something vaguely sinister in the "most fertile brains", especially considering that this was the heyday of eugenics.
Then occurred one of those microscopic, yet supremely potent incidents which sometimes mould the course of events for centuries. During the bombardment a special meeting of the British Cabinet was held in a cellar in Downing Streets. The party in power at the time was progressive, mildly pacifist, and timorously cosmopolitan. [.|.] No plane, no ship, no soldier of Britain shall commit any further act of hostility. Do what you will. It would be better even that a great people should be destroyed than that the whole race should be thrown into turmoil. (Stapledon 1937: 20-21)
This made me look up the English equivalent for the Estonian word läila. It's "drool". I.e. so sugary sweet that it is no longer fit for consumption.
But you will not strike again. As our own eyes have been opened by agony, yours now will be opened by our act of brotherhood. The spirit of France and the spirit of England differ. They differ deeply; but once as the eye differs from the hand. Without you, we should be barbarians. And without us, even the bright spirit of France would be but half expressed. For the spirit of France lives again in our culture and in our very speech; and the spirit of England is that which srikes from you your most distinctive brilliance.' (Stapledon 1937: 21)
On its own terms this is not half bad. At least it's a possible point of contact with cultural semiotics: it's an illustration of intercultural relations where "enemies" have complex intercultural relations of mutual influence. (The same would also hold between Ukraine and Russia today.)
But since those days much had happened. Increased communication, increased cultural intercourse, and a prolonged vigorous campaign for cosmopolitanism, had changed the mentality of Europe. Even so, when, after a brief discussion, the Government ordered this unique message to be sent, its members were awed by their own act. (Stapledon 1937: 21)
Recent history has shown that the mentality of the general population means very little when the dictator of an authoritarian regime decides to attack a nation they have more in common than with anyone else - not only "increased communication" but literally millions of each others' people living amongst the other nation.
In a few seconds an immense explosion occurred in the neighbourhood of a great school and a royal palace. There was hideous destruction in the school. The palace escaped. But, chief disaster for the cause of peace, a beautiful and extravagantly popular young princess was caught by the explosion. Her body, obscenely mutilated, but still recognizable to every student of the illustrated papers, was impaled upon some high park-railings beside the main thoroughfare toward the city. Immediately after the explosion the enemy plane crashed, burst into flame, and was destroyed with its occupants. (Stapledon 1937: 22)
I did not expect the French to take out Queen Elizabeth.
A moment's cool thinking would have convinced all onlookers that this disaster was an accident, that the plane was a belated straggler in distress, and no messenger of hate. But, confronted with the mangled bodies of schoolboys, and harrowed by cries of agony and terror, the populace was in no state for ratiocination. Moreover there was the princess, an overwhelmingly potent sexual symbol and emblem of tribalism, slaugtered and exposed before the eyes of her adorers. (Stapledon 1937: 22)
It's been a hot minute since I've read the word "ratiocination". Clearly, Stapledon was acquainted with the works of William Hamilton. | Viewing the princess as a "sexual symbol" comes across as overly revealing. Was Elizabeth a baddie in her youth? I can only think of those photographs of her standing next to a jeep during WWII. Whereas someone like Meghan Markle is so blatantly out to be a symbol of some sort that it merited a South Park episode.
And, had the war been nipped at the outset, as it almost was, the party of sanity throughout the world would have been very greatly strengthened; the precarious will to unity would have gained the conviction which it lacked, would have dominated man not merely during the terrified revulsion after each spasm of national strife, but as a permanent policy based on mutual trust. (Stapledon 1937: 24)
The only way this work can be read as if it was all true (as the Future Man claims in the introduction) is if all of this occurred in a parallel reality - the third entry in the trilogy, Star Maker (1937), reportedly proposes something like the concept of the multiverse. It's not out of the question - for the sake of the illusion of reality - that we are told here a history of a universe close, but not exact match, to ours, so as to lend credence to the author's claim that this is a work of fiction.
Indeed so delicately balanced were man's primitive and developed impulses at this time, that, but for this trivial accident, the movement which was started by England's peace message might have proceeded steadily and rapidly toward the unification of the race. It might, that is, have attained its goal, before, instead of after, the period of mental deterioration, which in fact resulted from a long epidemic of wars. And so the first Dark Age might never have occurred. (Stapledon 1937: 24)
Man's primitive impulses, I presume, include the aforementioned sexuality, tribalism, and self-righteousness (Stapledon 1937: 19, above) and the developed impulses are presumably linked with the aforementioned progressivism, pacifism, and cosmopolitanism (1937: 20-21, also above). This "unification of the race" appears to be a common theme throughout Stapledon's works - it calls to mind the Overview effect, and is a common trope in ufology: if only we knew for certain that aliens exist, humankind would unite as one. What Stapledon means by mental deterioration becomes subtly clearer - in analogy with the Middle Ages (earlier called the Dark Age), it would probably entail subsistence economy and little to none literary output (e.g. how there's a 400-year chasm between 5th century philosophers like Boethius and 9th century Arabic scholars).
I.3. Balkan Europe: Europe after the Anglo-French War
A subtle change now began to affect the whole mental climate of the planet. This is remarkable, since, viewed for instance from America or China, this war was, after all, but a petty disturbance, scarcely more than a brawl between quarrelsome statelets, an episode in the decline of a senile civilization. Expressed in dollars, the damage was not impressive to the wealthy West and the potentially wealthy East. The British Empire, indeed, that unique banyan tree of peoples, was henceforward less effective in world diplomacy; but since the bond that held it together was by now wholly a bond of sentiment, the Empire was not disintegrated by the misfortune of its parent trunk. Indeed, a common fear of American economic imperialism was already helping the colonies to remain loyal. (Stapledon 1937: 24)
Is there a mental climate encompassing the whole planet? | This is more-or-less how many appear to view the Russian invasion of Ukraine - a mere squabble in Eastern Europe. They may not realize that if Russia succeeds in its unprovoked aggression, anyone anywhere is liable to start up territorial wars of conquest and their own home may be bombed because the enemy militia wants to take over the industrial and mineral resources in their vicinity. | That "bond of sentiment" really dates it to the 1920s when e.g. Durkheim, Malinowski and Shand used the vocabulary of bonds and sentiments. | Somewhat odd to meet a reference to American economic imperialism in this era when USA was supposed to be isolationist and a decade or two away from it achieving said imperialism in full force.
In spite of the inveterate blindness and meanness of France in international policy, and the even more disastrous timidity of England, their influence on culture had been salutary, and was at this moment sorely needed. For, poles asunder in tastes and ideals, these two peoples were yet alike in being on the whole more sceptical. [|] and in their finest individuals more capable of dispassionate yet creative intelligence than any other Western people. This very character produced their distinctive faults, namely, in the English a cautioun that amounted often to moral cowardice, and in the French a certain myopic complacency and cunning, which masqueraded as realism. Within each nation there was, of course, great variety. (Stapledon 1937: 24-25)
This was written at a time when French romances were still all the rage (see how Malinowski spent most of his time during his fieldwork). | There's a very specific attitude here towards passions and intelligence. | English moral cowardice and French complacency are also reflected in Wilfred Trotter, who depicts the French as sheep (complacency = protective gregariousness), and the English as bees (cautious and slow to react, but going all-in when provoked).
The English sinned through faint-heartedness, and with open eyes. Among all nations they excelled in the union of common sense and vision. But also among all nations they were most ready to betray their visions in the name of common sense. Hence their reputation for perfidity. (Stapledon 1937: 25)
The English send the European Union £350 million a week. Let them fund their NHS instead. That's just common sense!
Differences of national character and patriotic sentiment were not the most fundamental distinctions between men at this time. Although in each nation a common tradition or cultural environment imposed a certain uniformity on all its members, yet in each nation every mental type was present, though in different proportions. The most significant of all cultural differences between men, namely, the difference between the tribalists and the cosmopolitans, traversed the national boundaries. (Stapledon 1937: 25)
The permanent dynamic synchrony of mentalities.
In many races there had, no doubt, long existed some fidelity toward the dispassionate intelligence. But it was England and France that excelled in this respect. On the other hand, even in these two nations there was much that was opposed to this allegiance. These, like all peoples of the age, were liable to bouts of insane emotionalism. Indeed the French mind, in general so clear sighted, so realistic, so contemptuous of ambiguity and mist, so detached in all its final valuations, was yet so obsessed with the idea 'France' as to be wholly incapable of generosity in international affairs. (Stapledon 1937: 26)
Again ironic that "French theory" has become synonymous with ambiguous inanities and convoluted discourse.
Beyond Germany, Russia. Here was a people whose genius needed, even more than that of the Germans, discipline under the critical intelligence. Since the Bolshevic revolution, there had risen in the scattered towns of this immense tract of corn and forest, and still more in the metropolis, an original mode of art and thought, in which were blended a passion for iconoclasm, a vivid sensuousness, and yet also a very remarkable and essentially mystical or intuitive power of detachment from all private cravings. (Stapledon 1937: 27)
Mysticism is the keyword here. By the looks of it, they still believe in witchcraft. The medieval age seemingly never ended in Russia.
Still more important, the native Russian disposition not to take material possessions very seriously co-operated with the political revolution, and brought about such a freedom from the snobbery of wealth as was quite foreign to the West. Attention which elsewhere was absorbed in the amassing or display of money was in Russia largely devoted either to spontaneous instinctive enjoyments or to cultural activity. (Stapledon 1937: 28)
Insert pictures of Russian mafia gravestones, Stalin's Dacha or Putin's Palace, and StopXam videos of Russian housewives riding huge gas guzzlers on pedestrian paths to evade traffic jams.
After the Bolshevic revolution the new Russia had been boycotted by the West, and had therefore passed through a stage of self-conscious extravagance. Communism and naïve materialism became the dogmas of a new crusading atheist church. All criticism was suppressed, even more rigorously than was the opposite criticism in other countries; and Russians were taught to think of themselves as saviours of mankind. (Stapledon 1937: 28)
They appear to be laboring under this delusion still. See Russian World.
Bit by bit, economic intercourse with the West was restored, and with it cultural intercourse increased. (Stapledon 1937: 28)
The English was slower in muddying "intercourse" and "interaction". "Cultural intercourse" is a term that could be rehabilitated.
For the Russian state came increasingly under the influence of Western, and especially American, finance. The materialism of the official creed also became a farce, for it was foreign to the Russian mind. Thus between practice and theory there was, in both respects, a profound inconsistency. What was once a vital and promising culture became insincere. (Stapledon 1937: 29)
"Vranyo expresses white lies or half-lies in Russian culture, told without the intention of (maliciously) deceiving, but as a fantasy, suppressing unpleasant parts of the truth." (Wikipedia)
I.4. Balkan Europe: The Russo-German War
The economic life of the human race had for some time been based on coal, but latterly oil had been found a far more convenient source of power; and as the oil store of the planet was much smaller than its coal store, and the expenditure of oil had of course been wholly uncontrolled and wasteful, a shortage was already being felt. Thus the national ownership of the remaining oil fields had become a main factor in politics and a fertile source of wars. America, having used up most of her own supplies, was now anxious to compete with the still prolific sources under Chinese control, by forestalling Germany in Russia. (Stapledon 1937: 30)
Insert unimaginative joke about Americans finding oil in your pantry and deciding that they need to bring democracy to your kitchen.
Later, even when sane industrial reorganization in [|] Germany had deprived communism of its appeal to the workers, and thus had rendered it impotent, the habit of anti-communist vituperation persisted. (Stapledon 1937: 30-31)
Define:vituperation - "bitter and abusive language".
This dread was one cause of the formation of a European Confederacy, in which all the nations of Europe, save Russia, surrendered their sovereignty to a common authority and actually pooled their armaments. (Stapledon 1937: 31)
European Union? China's not in it (not in Europe), and it's not directed against America (as far as I know).
Final consolidation was the fruit of the Russo-German War, the cause of which was partly economic and partly sentimental. (Stapledon 1937: 31)
The Russo-German War is probably an approximation of WWII in our universe.
Half a century after the Anglo-French War, a second-rate German author published a typically German book of the baser sort. For as each nation had its characteristic virtues, so also each was prone to characteristic follies. This book was one of those brilliant but extravagant works in which the whole diversity of existence is interpreted under a single formula, with extreme detail and plausibility, yet with amazing naïveté. Highly astute within its own artificial universe, it was none the less in wider regard quite uncritical. In two large volumes the author claimed that the cosmos was a dualism in which a heroic and obviously Nordic spirit ruled by divine right over an un-self-disciplined, yet servile and obviously Slavonic spirit. The whole of history, and of evolution, was interpreted on this principle; and of the contemporary world it was said that the Slavonic element was poisoning Europe. One phrase in particular caused fury in Moscow, 'the anthropoid face of the Russian sub-man.' (Stapledon 1937: 32)
Wait, but Mein Kampf was single-volume...
The details of this war do not matter to one intent upon the history of mind in the Solar System, but its result was important. (Stapledon 1937: 32)
The general aim of this book.
II.1. Europe's Downfall: Europe and America
In the Far East, China, already half American, though largely Russian and wholly Eastern, patiently improved her rice lands, pushed forward her railways, organized her industries, and spoke fair to all the world. Long ago, during her attainment of unity and independence, China had learnt much from militant Bolshevism. And after the collapse of the Russian state it was [|] in the East that Russian culture continued to live. Its mysticism influenced India. Its social ideal influenced China. Not indeed that China took over the theory, still less the practice, of communism; but she learnt to entrust herself increasingly to a vigorous, devoted and despotic party, and to feel in terms of the social whole rather than individualistically. Yet she was honeycombed with individualism, and in spite of her rulers she had precipitated a submerged and desperate class of wage slaves. (Stapledon 1937: 33-34)
In the Last Man's universe there's a permanent opposite day: it is Europe that has become Americanized, and Russia is set to become a Chinese vassal state. The influence of Indian mysticism runs in the opposite direction, and while they do have a despotic party, China does the opposite of "speaking fair" and has instead become a global loan-shark.
In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared and envied, universally respected for their enterprise, yet for their complacency very widely despised, the Americans were rapidly changing the whole character of man's existence. By this time every human being throughout the planet made use of American products, and there was no region where American capital did not support local labour. Moreover the American press, gramophone, radio, cinematograph and televisor ceaselessly drenched the planet with American thought. Year by year the æther reverberated with echoes of New York's pleasures and the religiosu fervours of the Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even while she was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race. This, perhaps, would not have mattered, had America been able to give of her very rare best. But inevitably only her worst could be propagated. Only the most vulgar traits of that potentially great people could get through into the minds of foreigners by means of these crude instruments. And so, by the floods of poison issuing from this people's baser members, the whole world, and with it the nobler parts of America herself, were irrevocably corrupted. (Stapledon 1937: 34)
World Police. Add to the list of technologies: computers, internet and smartphones. Americanization - making other people the mirror image of stereotypical "dumb Americans". With the ongoing trend in Europe of doing away socialized health care and free higher education, we just might be heading that way.
But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentially a race of bright, but arrested, adolescents. Something lacked which should have enabled them to grow up. One who looks back across the æons to this remote people can see their fate already woven of their circumstance and their disposition, and can appreciate the grim jest that these, who seemed to themselves gifted to rejuvenate the planet, should have plunged it, inevitably, through spiritual desolation into senility and age-long night. (Stapledon 1937: 35)
This curious lack of something, I think, was answered by Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson (1951): friendship. According to this theory, Europeans have a friendship culture - people grow up, mature and age together within a linguistically separated countries covered by networks of friendship associations. Americans on the other hand have a popularity culture - the vast distances and constant need to move from state to state, from coast to coast, have made transient connections with well-known people, rather than deep and long-lasting connections with regular people, the cornerstone of American culture. My point being that you don't have to grow up if you can just move a few states over and no-one there knows you.
Yet here was a people of unique promise, gifted innately beyond all other peoples. Here was a race brewed of all the races, and mentally more effervescent than any. (Stapledon 1937: 35)
Durkheimianism identified.
[...] yet the whole was increasingly one people, proud of its individuality, of its success, of its idealistic mission in the world, proud also of its optimistic and anthropocentric view of the universe. What might not this energy have achieved, had it been more critically controlled, had it been forced to attend to life's more forbidding aspectS! Direct tragic experience might perhaps have opened the hearts of this people. Intercourse with a more mature culture might have refined their intelligence. But the very success which had intoxicated them rendered them also too complacent to learn from less prosperous competitors. (Stapledon 1937: 35)
Noted because from what I've seen - I found an ebook of his A Modern Theory of Ethics (1929), a physical copy of the original goes for £150-£1000 - Stapledon is pretty conscious of anthropocentrism, e.g. "Somehow we look with disfavour on the utopia in which a multitude of serfs exists only to maintain a cultured aristocracy. Yet we see nothing wrong in the servitude of our horses and cattle." (2023[1929]: 114)
Thus it was that America sank further and further into Americanism. Vast wealth and industry, and also brilliant invention, were concentrated upon puerile ends. In particular the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. Those who achieved power were satisfied so long as they could merely retain it, and advertise it uncritically in the conventionally self-assertive manner. (Stapledon 1937: 36)
This is a people who would vote a sleazy deadbeat businessman and reality TV personality to be their president and then attempt to make him an unelected ruler.
II.2. Europe's Downfall: The Origins of a Mystery
While the Americans were mobilizing their whole armament there occurred the really interesting event of the war. It so happened that an international society of scientific workers was meeting in England at Plymouth, and a young Chinese physicist had expressed his desire to make a report to a select committee. As he had been experimenting to find means for the utilization of subatomic energy by the annihilation of matter, it was with some excitement that, according to instruction, the forty international representatives travelled to the north coast of Devon and met upon the bare headland called Hartland Point. (Stapledon 1937: 37)
Here come the atomic bombs.
Formerly this would have implied a rather uncritical leaning toward materialism, and an affectation of cynicism; but by now it was fashionable to profess an equally uncritical belief [|] that all natural phenomena were manifestations of the cosmic mind. In both periods, when a man passed beyond the sphere of his own serious scientific work he chose his beliefs irresponsibly, according to his taste, much as he chose his recreation or his food. (Stapledon 1937: 37-38)
This right here is a universal statement. It's become a real problem in our social media era that people who are experts in their own field feel like they're equally qualified to talk about any and all subjects whatever. What's really happening is that they're choosing their beliefs in fields they don't actually know irresponsibly, according to their taste.
The West African president of the Society was a biologist, famous for his interbreeding of man and ape. (Stapledon 1937: 38)
What the actual fuck.
The young Mongol stood up, and produced from a case an instrument rather like the old-fashioned rifle. (Stapledon 1937: 38)
Magic wand.
Turning towards Lundy, he said, 'That island is no longer inhabited, and as it is something of a danger to shipping, I will remove it.' So saying he aimed his instrument at the distant cliff, but continued speaking. 'This trigger will stimulate the ultimate positive and negative charges which constitute the atoms at a certain point on the rock face to annihilate each other. These stimulated atoms will infect their neighbours, and so on indefinitely. This second trigger, however, will stop the actual annihilation. Were I to refrain from using it, the process would indeed continue indefinitely, perhaps until the whole of the planet had disintegrated.' (Stapledon 1937: 39)
It would require only one such device to malfunction to destroy the whole.
II.3. Europe's Downfall: Europe Murdered
The European Government sought out the unknown saviour of Europe, to thank him, and secure his process for their own use. The President of the scientific society gave an account of the meeting and the unanimous vote. He and his colleagues were promptly arrested, and 'pressure', first moral and then physical, was brought to bear on them to make them disclose the secret; for the world was convinced that they really know it, and were holding it back for their own purposes. (Stapledon 1937: 42)
It is difficult to imagine European Union today torturing scientists to gain information about a secret weapon. That it would be done at a time when humans live to be 150, even more so.
Thus Europe died. All centres of intellectual life were blotted out, and of the agricultural regions only the uplands and mointains were untouched. The spirit of Europe lived henceforth only in a piece-meal and dislocated manner in the minds of Americans, Chinese, Indians, and the rest. (Stapledon 1937: 43)
Doom and gloom.
But the most lasting agony of this war was suffered, not be the defeated, but by the victors. For when their passion had cooled the Americans could not easily disguise from themselves that they had committed murder. They were not at heart a brutal folk, but rather a kindly. They liked to think of the world as a place of innocent pleasure-seeking, and of themselves as the main purveyors of delight. Yet they had been somehow drawn into this fantastic crime; and henceforth an all-pervading sense of collective guilt warped the American mind. They had ever been vainglorious and intolerant; but now these qualities in them became extravagant even to insanity. Both as individuals and collectively, they became increasingly frightened of criticism, increasingly prone to blame and hate, increasingly self-righteous, increasingly hostile to the critical intelligence, increasingly superstitious. (Stapledon 1937: 44)
Approximately what actually happened to the Germans.
III.1. America and China: The Rivals
At other times the nations would burst apart into two great camps, and the League would be temporarily forgotten in their disunion. This happened in the Russo-German War, which was possible only because America favoured Russia and China favoured Germany. (Stapledon 1937: 45)
American favours Ukraine, China favours Russia.
Within each system there were of course real differences of culture, of which the chief was the difference between the Chinese and Indian mentalities. The Chinese were interested in appearances, in the sensory, the urbane, the practical; while the Individuals inclined to seek behind appearances for some ultimate reality, of which this life, they said, was but a passing aspect. Thus the average Indian never took to heart the practical social problem in all its seriousness. The ideal of perfecting this world was never an all-absorbing interest to him; since he had been taught to believe that this world was mere shadow. There was, indeed, a time when China had mentally less in common with India than with the West, but fear of America had drawn the two greta Eastern peoples together. They agreed at least in earnest hate of that strange blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary, and the barbarian conqueror, which was the American abroad. (Stapledon 1937: 46)
Not all that bad characterizations. Stapledon's take on Americans really dates this into the 1920s.
America, indeed, professed to have outgrown nationalism, and to stand for political and cultural world unity. But she conceived this unity as a unity under American organization; and by culture she meant Americanism. This kind of cosmopolitanism was regarded by Asia and Africa without sympathy. (Stapledon 1937: 46)
Relevant for an analysis of Stapledon's use of "culture".
These two faiths were at one in their respect for crude physical movement. And here lay the deepest difference between the American and the Chinese minds. For the former activity, any sort of activity, was an end in itself; for the latter, activity was but a progress toward the true end, which was rest, and peace of mind. Action was to be undertaken only when equilibrium was disturbed. And in this respect China was at one with India. Both preferred contemplation to action. (Stapledon 1937: 48)
Vita activa and vita contemplativa reframed as American and Chinese mindsets.
Thus in China and India the passion for wealth was less potent than in America. Wealth was the power to set things and people in motion; and in America, therefore, wealth came to be frankly regarded as the breath of God, the divine spirit immanent in man. God was the supreme Boss, the universal Employer. His wisdom was conceived as a stupendous efficiency, his love as munificence towards his employees. The parable of the talents was made the corner-stone of education; and to be wealthy, therefore, was to be respected as one of God's chief agents. The typical American man of big business was one who, in the midst of a show of luxury, was at heart ascetic. He valued his splendour only because it advertised to all men that he was of the elect. The typical Chinese wealthy man was one who savoured his luxury with a delicate and lingering palate, and was seldom tempted to sacrifice it to the barren lust of power. (Stapledon 1937: 48)
God is just the ultimate "big man upstairs". This view of wealth once again makes me think of Trump, a millionaire whose whole life is mingling with "the elect", and sitting alone before a television screen at the end of the day. Outward ostentation and inward void.
But in truth what was average Chinese worker wanted was not symbolical self-assertion through the control of privately owned machines, but security of life, and irresponsible leisure. In the earlier phase of 'modern' [|] China there had indeed been serious explesions of class hatred. Almost every one of the great Chinese industrial centres had, at some point in its career, massacred its employers, and declared itself an independent communist city-state. But communism was alien to China, and none of these experiments was permanently successful. Latterly, when the rule of the Nationalist Party had become secure, and the worst industrial evils had been abolished, class feeling had given place to a patriotic loathing of American interference and American hustle, and those who worked under American employers were often called traitors. (Stapledon 1937: 48-49)
And yet somehow the China of our time is both communist and an interfering hustler.
The Party was an intensely practical yet idealistic organization, half civil service, half religious order, though violently opposed to every kind of religion. Modelled originally on the Bolshevic Party of Russia, it had also drawn inspiration from the native and literal civil service of old China, and even from the tradition of administrative integrity which had been the best, the sole, contribution of British Imperialism to the East. Thus, by a route of its own, the Party had approached the ideal of the Platonic governors. In order to be admitted to the Party, it was necessary to do two things, to pass a very strict written examination on Western and Chinese social theory, and to come through a five years apprenticeship in actual administrative work. Outside the Party, China was still extremely corrupt; for peculation and nepotism were not censured, so long as they were kept decently hidden. But the Party set a brillian texample of self-oblivious devotion; and this unheard-of honesty was one source of its power. It was universally recognized that the party man was genuinely interested in social rather than private matters; and consequently he was trusted. The supreme object of his loyalty was not the Party, but China, not indeed the mass of Chinese individuals, whom he regarded with almost the same nonchalance as he regarded himself, but the corporate unity and culture of the race. (Stapledon 1937: 49)
This comes across as eerily accurate. Someone compared Russian and Chinese party systems like this: Russia is corrupt through and through - higher-ups merely have an opportunity to be corrupt on a larger scale; China on the other hand roots out corruption the higher you get in the organization. The end result is a corrupt society governed by honest philosopher-princes.
But in truth this culture, which the common people so venerated in their superiors and mimicked in their own lives, was scarcely less superficial than the cult of power against which it was pitted. For it was almost wholly a cult of social rectitude and textual learning; not so much of the merely literary learning which had obsessed ancient China, as of the vast corpus of contemporary scientific dogma, and above all of pure mathematics. In old days the candidate for office had to show minute but uncritical knowledge of classical writers; now he had to give proof of a no less barren agility in describing the established formulæ of physics, biology, psychology, and more particularly of economics and social theory. And though never encouraged to puzzle over the philosophical basis of mathematics, he was expected to be familiar with the intricacy of at least one branch of that vast game of skill. So great was the mass of information forced upon the student, that he had no time to think of the mutual implications of the various branches of his knowledge. (Stapledon 1937: 50)
Something like phatic intellectualism.
Pessimistic about the remote future of the race, and contemptuous of American evangelism, they accepted as the end of living the creation of an intricately unified pattern of human lives set in a fair environment. Society, the supreme work of art (so they put it), is a delicate and perishable texture of human intercourse. They even entertained the possibility that in the last resort, not only the individual's life, but the whole career of the race, might be tragic, and should be valued according to the standards of tragic art. (Stapledon 1937: 51)
Not bad. This is how "a minority of original minds" in the Party view society.
And, consequent on this lack, another disability crippled them. Both were by now without that irreverent wit which individuals of an earlier generation had [|] loved to exercise upon one another and on themselves, and even on their most sacred values. (Stapledon 1937: 51)
Makes me want to start up a fourierian listicle of types of wit.
III.2. America and China: The Conflict
The planet was now a delicately organized economic unit, and big business in all lands was emphatically contemptuous of patriotism. Indeed the whole adult generation of the period was consciously and without reselve internationalist and pacifist. Yet this logically unassailable conviction was undermined by a biological craving for adventurous living. Prolonged peace and improved social conditions had greatly reduced the danger and hardship of life, and there was no socially harmless substitute to take the place of war in exercising the primitive courage and anger of animals fashioned for the wild. (Stapledon 1937: 52)
They had no video games. Yet again there's that irksome creationist "fashioned for".
The actual occasion of conflict, however, was, as usual, an accident. A scandal was brought to light about child labour in certain Indian factories. Boys and girls under twelve were being badly sweated, and in their abject state their only adventure was precocious sex. (Stapledon 1937: 53)
Jesus christ, Stapledon!
At the outbreak of war neither side had any appreciable armament, for war had long ago been 'outlawed'. This fact, however, made little [|] difference; since the warfare of the period could be carried on with great effect simply by the vast swarms of civil air-craft, loaded with poison, high explosives, disease microbes, and the still more lethal 'hypobiological' organism, which contemporary science sometimes regarded as the simplest living matter, sometimes as the most complex molecules. (Stapledon 1937: 53-54)
Nanobots?
Europe was under Chinese military rule. This was enforced by armies of sturdy Central-Asiatics, who were already beginning to wonder why they did not make themselves masters of China also. The Chinese language, with European alphabet, was taught in all schools. (Stapledon 1937: 54)
Very odd statement against even my superficial background knowledge that the written Chinese characters (Hanzi) is the only thing that enables speakers of various dialects (Mandarin, Cantonese, Min, Wu, Hakka, Xiang, Gan, Jin and Hoizhou) to mutually understand each other.
III.3. America and China: On an Island in the Pacific
The conversation was amicable, and proceeded without hitch; for there was agreement about the practical measures to be adopted. The government in each country was to be overthrown at once. Both representatives were confident that this could be done if it could be attempted simultaneously on each side of the Pacific; for in both countries finance and the people could be trusted. In place of the national governments, a World Finance Directorate was to be created. This was to [|] be composed of the leading commercial and industrial magnates of the world, along with representatives of the workers' organizations. The American representative should be the first president of the Directorate, and the Chinese the first vice-president. The Directorate was to manage the whole economic re-organization of the world. In particular, industrial conditions in the East were to be brought into line with those of America, while on the other hand the American monopoly of Antartica was to be abolished. That rich and almost virgin land was to be subjected to the control of the Directorate. (Stapledon 1937: 56-57)
Establishing a new world order.
At this point occurred one of those incidents which, minute in themselves, have disproportionately great effects. The unstable nature of the First Men made them peculiarly liable to suffer from such accidents, and especially so in their decline. (Stapledon 1937: 57)
Recall the "fluid nature" of man's nature (Stapledon 1937: 12, above).
The talk was interrupted by the appearance of a human figure swimming round a promonotory into the little bay. In the shallows she arose, and walked out of the water towards the creators of the World State. A bronze young smiling woman, completely nude, with breasts heaving after her long swim, she stood before them, hesitating. [...] And she, with that added grace which haloes women when they feel the kiss of an admiring gaze, pressed the sea from her hair and stood at the point of speech. (Stapledon 1937: 57)
A watery tart appears.
Then absently she continued, 'Perhaps I should not suffer from this restlessness, this craving to experience the world, if only I were to experience motherhood instead. Many of the islanders from time to time have enriched me with their embraces. But with none of them could I permit myself to conceive. they are dear; but not one of them is at heart more than a child.' (Stapledon 1937: 59)
What the hell is this.
You must educate your people out of their lascivious and idle ways, and give them modern scientific religion. Teachers in your schools and universities must pledge themselves to the modern fundamentalized physics and behaviorism, and must enforce worship of the Divine Mover. The change will be difficult, but we will help you. You will need a strong order of Inquisitors, responsible to the Directorate. They will see also to the reform of your people's sexual frivolity in which you squander so much of the Divine Energy. (Stapledon 1937: 60)
In the Last Man's universe the Americans never got over their puritan hang-ups, it seems.
He answered flatly, as if repeating a lesson, 'God is the all-pervading spirit of movement which seeks to actualize itself wherever it is latent. God has appointed the great American people to mechanize the universe.' (Stapledon 1937: 60)
The Americans' religion of automation.
But it would be undignified in China to let this great change be imposed upon her externally. You must give me time to form in Asia a native and spontaneous party of Energists, who will themselves propagate your gospel, and perhaps give it an elegance which, if I may say so, it has not yet. (Stapledon 1937: 61)
This reminds me of a clip I saw long ago of a lanky man who's whole deal was walking fast and promoting the idea that walking fast everywhere is the healthiest way to live.
IV.1. An Americanized Planet: The Foundation of the First World State
But the population was by now eager for peace; and, although a few business mgnates were shot, and a crowd of workers here and there mown down, the opposition was irresistible. Very soon the governing clique collapsed. (Stapledon 1937: 63)
Being this blasé towards killing large numbers of people at once betrays Stapledon's own age.
The new order consisted of a vast system akin to guild socialism, yet at bottom individualistic. Each industry was in theory democratically governed by all its members, but in practice was controlled by its dominant individuals. Coordination of all industries was effected by a World Industrial Council, whereon the leaders of each industry discussed the affairs of the planet as a whole. The status of each industry on the Council was determined partly by its economic power in the world, partly by public esteem. (Stapledon 1937: 63)
I've only found one paper that explicitly deals with the socialist tendencies in Stapledon's writings but it's first among my to-read list.
Shortly after the system had been inaugurated the Vice-President sought to overthrow the President by publishing his connection with the coloured woman who now styled herself the Daughter of Man. This piece of scandal was expected to enrage the virtuous American public against their hero. But by a stroke of genius the President saved both himself and the unity of the world. Far from denying the charge, he gloried in it. In that moment of sexual triumph, he said, a great truth had been revealed to him. Without this daring sacrifice of his private purity, he would never have been really fit to be President of the World; he would have remained simply an American. In this lady's veins flowed the blood of all races, and in her mind all cultures mingled. His union with her, confirmed by many subsequent visits, had taught him to enter into the spirit of the East, and had given him a broad human sympathy such as his high office demanded. (Stapledon 1937: 64)
Just straight up weird stuff, man.
The President's explanation of his conduct enhanced his prestige both in America and Asia. America was hypnotized [|] by the romantic religiosity of the story. Very soon it became fashionable to be a strict monogamist with one domestic wife, and one 'symbolical' wife in the East, or in another town, or a neighbouring street, or with several such in various localities. (Stapledon 1937: 64-65)
As if men needed a religious or symbolical reason to sleep around.
IV.2. An Americanized Planet: The Dominance of science
A century after the founding of the first World State a rumour began to be heard in China about the supreme secret of scientific religion, the awful mystery of Gordelphus, by means of which it should be possible to utilize the energy locked up in the opposition of proton and electron. Long ago discovered by a Chinese physicist and saint, this invaluable knowledge was now reputed to have been preserved ever since among the élite of science, and to be ready for publication as soon as the world seemed fit to possess it. (Stapledon 1937: 66)
A continuation with atomic energy.
Science itself, the actual corpus of natural knowledge, had by now become so complex that only a tiny fraction of it could be mastered by one brain. Thus students of one branch of science knew practically nothing of the work of others in kindred branches. Especially was this the case with the huge science called Sub-atomic Physics. Within this were contained a dozen studies, any one of which was as complex as the whole of the physics of the Nineteenth Christian Century. This growing complexity had rendered students in one field ever more reluctant to criticize, or even to try to understand, the principles of other fields. Each petty department, jealous of its own preserves, was meticulously respectful of the preserves of others. In an earlier period the sciences had been co-ordinated and criticized philosophically by their own leaders and by the technical philosophers. But, philosophy, as a rigorous technical discipline, no longer existed. (Stapledon 1937: 67)
Science with no interdisciplinary cross-pollenation.
About two centuries after the formation of the first World State, the President of the World declared that the time was ripe for a formal union of science and religion, and called a conference of the leaders of these two great disciplines. Upon that island in the Pacific which had become the Mecca of cosmopolitan sentiment, and was by now one vast many-storied, and cloud-capped Temple of Peace, the heads of Buddhism, [|] Mohamedanism, Hinduism, the Regenerate Christian Brotherhood and the Modern Catholic Church in South America, agreed that their differences were but differences of expression. (Stapledon 1937: 67-68)
This does sound a bit like Arthur C. Clarke's The Foundation.
IV.3. An Americanized Planet: Material Achievement
Save for occasional minor local conflicts, easily quelled by the World Police, the race was now a single social unity for some four thousand years. (Stapledon 1937: 68)
Now literally.
During the first of these millennia material progress at least was rapid, but subsequently there was little change until the final disintegration. The whole energy of man was concentrated on maintaining at a constant pitch the furious [|] routine of his civilization, until, after another three thousand years of lavish expenditure, certain essential sources of power were suddenly exhausted. Nowhere was there a mental agility to cope with this novel crisis. The whole social order collapsed. (Stapledon 1937: 68-69)
4000 years to figure out novel sources of energy but nada.
All the continents, indeed, were by now minutely artificialized. Save for the many wild reserves which were cherished as museoums and playgrounds, not a square mile of territory was left in a natural state. Nor was there any longer a distinction between agricultural and industrial areas. All the continents were urbanized, not of course in the manner of the congested industrial cities of an earlier age, but none the less urbanized. Industry and agriculture interpenetrated everywhere. (Stapledon 1937: 69)
Impressive, considering the whole Earth's land-mass (even Siberia?). Also a similarity with Clarke's Foundation.
This was possible partly through the great development of aerial communication, partly through a no less remarkable improvement of architecture. Great advances in artificial materials had enabled the erection of buildings in the form of slender pylons which, rising often to a height of three miles, or even more, and founded a quarter of a mile beneath the ground, might yet occupy a ground plan of less than half a mile across. In section these structures were often cruciform; and on each floor, the centre of the long-armed cross consisted of an aerial landing, providing direct access from the air for the dwarf private aeroplanes which were by now essential to the life of every adult. These gigantic pillars of architecture, prophetic of the still mightier structures of an age to come, were scattered over every continent in varying density. Very rarely were they permitted to approach one another by a distance less than their height; on the other hand, save in the arctic, they were very seldom separated by more than twenty miles. The general appearance of every country was thus rather like an open forest of lopped tree-trunks, gigantic in stature. Clouds often encircled the middle heights of these artificial peaks, or blotted out all but the lower stories. Dwellers in the summits were familiar with the spectacle of a dazzling ocean of cloud, [|] dotted on all sides with steep islands of architecture. Such was the altitude of the upper floors that it was sometimes necessary to maintain in them, not merely artificial heating, but artificial air pressure and oxygen supply. (Stapledon 1937: 69-70)
Almost the stereotypical image of a utopian future, even in the The World If meme.
At the same time the cosmopolitan spirit, which was learning to regard the whole race as compatriots, was also beginning to take a broader view temporally, and to see things with the eyes of remote generations. During the first and sanest thousand years of the World State, there was a widespread determination not to incur the blame of the future by wasting power. Thus not only was there serious economy (the first large-scale cosmopolitan enterprise), but also efforts were made to utilize more permanent sources of power. Wind was used extensively. On every building swarms of windmills generated electricity, and every mountain range was similarly decorated, while every considerable fall of water forced its way through turbines. More important still was the utilization of power derived from volcanos and from borings into the subterranean heat. (Stapledon 1937: 70)
The birth of long-termism. Wind, hydro- and volcanic, but no sun-generated energy.
Perhaps the greatest physical achievement of the First World State in its earlier and more vital phase had been in preventive medicine. Though the biological sciences had long ago become stereotyped in respect of fundamental theories, they continued to produce many practical benefits. No longer did men and women have to dread for themselves or those dear to them such afflictions as cancer, tuberculosis, angina pectoris, the rheumatic diseases, and the terrible disorders of the nervous system. No longer were there sudden microbic devastations. No longer was child-birth an ordeal, and womanhood itself a source of suffering. There were no more chronic invalids, no more life-long cripples. Only senility remained; and even this could be repeatedly alleviated by physiological rejuvenation. The removal of all these ancient sources of weakness and misery, which formerly had lamed the race and haunted so many individuals either with definite terrors or vague and scarcely conscious despond, brought about now a pervading buoyancy and optimism impossible to earlier peoples.s (Stapledon 1937: 71)
Some of these we're already working on today.
IV.4. An Americanized Planet: The Culture of the First World State.
Every individual was a well-fed and physically healthy human animal. He was also economically independent. His working day was never more than six hours, often only four. He enjoyed a fair share of the products of industry; and in his long holidays he was free to wander in his own aeroplane all over the planet. With good luck he might find himself rich, even for those days, at forty; and if fortune had not favoured him, he might yet expect affluence before he was eighty, when he could still look forward to a century of active life. (Stapledon 1937: 72)
Not yet the Jetsons future of two hours of work per week. And still monetary and hierarchical rich vs poor.
But in spite of this material prosperity he was a slave. His work and his leisure consisted of feverish activity, punctuated by moments of listless idleness which he regarded as both sinful and unpleasant. Unless he was one of the furiously successful minority, he was apt to be haunted by moments of brooding, too formless to be called meditation, and of yearning, too blind to be called desire. For he and all his contemporaries were ruled by certain ideas which prevented them from living a fully human life. (Stapledon 1937: 72)
Keenly looking forward to what the fully human life consists of.
Of these ideas one was the ideal of progress. For the individual, the goal imposed by his religious teaching was continuous advance in aeronautical prowess, legal sexual freedom, and millionaireship. For the race also the ideal was progress, and progress of the same unintelligent type. Ever more brilliant and extensive aviation, ever more extensive legal sexual intercourse, ever more gigantic manufacture, and consumption, were to be co-ordinated in an ever more intricately organized social system. For the last three thousand years, indeed, progress even of this rude kind had been minute; but this was a source of pride rather than of regret. It implied that the goal was already almost attained, the perfection which should justify the release of the secret of divine power, and the inauguration of an era of incomparably mightier activity. (Stapledon 1937: 72)
Likewise, if this growth for the sake of growth is an example of unintelligent progress, I wonder what constitutes intelligent progress.
One each of the frequent Days of Sacret Flight special rituals of communal and solo aviation were performed at every religious centre. On these occasions the whole sky would be intricately patterned with thousands of planes, wheeling, tumbling, soaring, plunging, in perfect order and at various altitudes, the dance at one level being subtly complementary to the dance at others. It was as though the spontaneous evolutions of many distinct flocks of redshank and dunlin were multiplied a thousand-fold in complexity, and subordinated to a single ever-developming terpsichorean theme. Then suddenly the whole would burst asunder to the horizon, leaving the sky open for the quartets, duets and solos of the most brilliant stars of flight. (Stapledon 1937: 73)
What a tremendous waste of energy. ...Coal-energy.
Thus when American culture dominated the planet, the pure Negroes became [|] a sacred caste. Forbidden many of the rights of citizenship, they were regarded as the private servants of Gordelphus. They were both scared and outcast. This dual rôle was epitomized in an extravagant ritual which took place once a year in each of the great national parks. A white woman and a Negro, both chosen for their prowess in dance, performed a long and symbolical ballet, which culminated in a ritual act of sexual violation, performed in full view of the maddened spectators. This over, the Negro knifed his victim, and fled through the forest pursued by an exultant mob. If he reached sanctuary, he became a peculiarly sacred object for the rest of his life. But if he was caught, he was torn to pieces, or drenched with inflammable spirit and burned. Such was the superstition of the First Men at this time that the participants in this ceremony were seldom reluctant; for it was firmly believed that both were assured of eternal life in Gordelpus. (Stapledon 1937: 74-75)
Stapledon, WTF.
There was good reason also for the respect which they received, since they retained and used somewhat ruthlessly a certain degree of the most distinctively human attribute, intelligence. (Stapledon 1937: 76)
These past few pages were so full of racist stereotypes it was difficult to get through them. But at least there's this - intelligence as the most distinctive human attribute. The same claim made by the very first philosophers, i.e. the pythagoreans.
The general revulsion from intelligence was a corollary of the adoration of instinct, and this in turn was an aspect of the worship of activity. Since the unconscious source of human vigour was the divine energy, spontaneous impulse must so far as possible never be thwarted. Reasoning was indeed permitted to the individual within the sphere of his official work, but never beyond. And not even specialists might indulge in reasoning and experiment without obtaining a licence for the particular research. The licence was expensive, and was only granted if the goal in view could be shown to be an increase of world [|] activity. In old times certain persons of morbid curiosity had dared to criticize the time-honoured methods of doing things, and had suggested 'better' methods not convenient to the Sacred Order of Scientists. This had to be stopped. By the fourth millennium of the World State the operations of civilization had become so intricately stereotyped that novel situations of a major order never occurred. (Stapledon 1937: 76-77)
At first brush this reminded me of Huxley's World Controller condemning a biological thesis. Overall it invokes Stapledon's exclusion of Firstness - only Activity (Secondness) and Reason (Thirdness) are addressed, and only the lower one permitted. The bit about situations becoming stereotyped reads like Alan Gardiner's interpretation of phatic communion a few years later (1932), so I wouldn't here surprised if he had read Stapledon and liked this bit right here.
One kind of intellectual pursuit in addition to finance was, indeed, honoured, namely mathematical calculation. All ritual movements, all the motions of industrial machinery, all observable natural phenomena, had to be minutely described in mathematical formulæ. The records were filed in the sacred archives of the S.O.S. And there they remained. This vast enterprise of mathematical description was the main work of the scientists, and was said to be the only means by which the evanescent thing, movement, could be passed into the eternal being of Gordelpus. (Stapledon 1937: 77)
The congenialities with Gardiner continue. This might also be used as a key to open something new with Malinowski's use of Dewey's report on substitution signs (i.e. mathematical symbols).
When a man had won his wings, he was formally initiated into the mystery of sex and all its 'biologico-religious' significance. He was also allowed to take a 'domestic wife,' and after a much more severe aviation test, any number of 'symbolical' wives. Similarly with the woman. These two kinds of partnership differed greatly. The 'domestic' husband and wife appeared in public together, and their union was indissoluble. The 'symbolic' union, on the other hand, could be dissolved by either party. Also it was too sacred ever to be revealed, or even mentioned, in public. (Stapledon 1937: 78)
Marriage vs casual lovers.
The other great heresy was derived partly from the energy of repressed intellective impulses, and was practised by persons of natural curiosity who, nevertheless, shared the universal paucity of intelligence. These pathetic devotees of intellect were inspired by Socrates. That great primitive had insisted that clear thought is impossible without clear definition of terms, and that without clear thinking man misses fullness of being. These his last disciples were scarcely less fervent admirers of truth than their master, yet they missed his spirit completely. Only by knowing the truth, they said, can the individual attain immortality; only by defining can he know the truth. Therefore, meeting together in secret, and in constant danger of arrest for illicit intellection, they disputed endlessly about the definition of things. But the things which they were concerned to define were not the basic concepts of human thought; for these, they affirmed, had been settled once for all by Socrates and his immediate followers. Therefore, accepting these as true, and grossly misunderstanding [|] them, the ultimate Socratics undertook to define all the processes of the world state and the ritual of the established religion, all the emotions of men and women, all the shapes of noses, mouths, buildings, mountains, clouds, and in fact the whole superficies of their world. Thus they believed that they emancipated themselves from the philistinism of their age, and secured comradeship with Socrates in the hereafter. (Stapledon 1937: 78-79)
The philosophical crime being committed here is involved with the "superficies" - instead of things in themselves, these last Socratics are concerned with the reflections of things (i.e. not ideas but images). Though, historically, it may also be that - at least with the definitions of emotions - Stapledon had his contemporary researchers like Shand in mind.
IV. An Americanized Planet: Downfall
But by now the ancient way of life was too deeply rooted. Consequently, we observe the fantastic spectacle of a world engaged, devotedly and even heroically, on squandering its resources in vast aeronautical displays, not through single-minded faith in their rightness and efficacy, but solely in a kind of desperate automatism. Like those little rodents whose migration became barred by an encroachment of the sea, so that annually they drowned themselves in thousands, the First Men helplessly continued in their ritualistic behaviour; but unlike the lemmings, they were human enough to be at the same time oppressed by unbelief, an unbelief which, moreover, they dared not recognize. (Stapledon 1937: 81)
Automatism, another one of my favorite topics that I've done next to nothing with. The lemmings thing is a myth created by an early nature documentary.
The ancient 'American Madness', which long ago had been used against China, now devastated America. The great stations of water-power and wind-power were wrecked by lunatic mobs who sought vengeance upon anything associated with authority. Whole populations vanished in an orgy of cannibalism.
In Asia and Africa, some semblance of order was maintained for a while. Presently, however, the American Madness spread to these continents also, and very soon all living traces of their civilization vanished.
Only in the most naturally fertile areas of the world could the diseased remnant of a population now scrape a living from the soil. Elsewhere, utter desolation. With easy strides the jungle came back into its own. (Stapledon 1937: 82)
Evokes the planet Miranda from Serenity.
V.1. The Fall of the First Men: The First Dark Age
We have reached a period in man's history rather less than five thousand years after the life of Newton. In this chapter we must cover about one hundred and fifteen thousand years, and in the next chapter another ten million years. That will bring us to a point as remotely future from the First World State as the earliest anthropoids were remotely past. During the first tenth of the first million years after after the fall of the World State, during a hundred thousand years, man remained in complete eclipse. Not till the close of this span, which we will call the First Dark Age, did he struggle once more from savagery through baptism into civilization. And then his renaissance was relatively brief. From its earliest beginnings to its end, it covered only fifteen thousand years; and in its final agony the planet was so seriously damaged that mind lay henceforth in deep slumber for ten more millions of years. This was the Second Dark Age. Such is the field which we must observe in this and the following chapter. (Stapledon 1937: 83)
Suddenly we're talking of time spans as great as the subspecies (hundreds of thousands of years), and then whole millions. Nothing of note happened for millions of years?
It might have been expected that, after the downfall of the First World State, recovery would have occurred within a few generations. Historians have, indeed, often puzzled over the cause of this surprisingly complete and lasting degradation. Innate human nature was roughly the same immediately after as immediately before the crisis; yet minds that had easily maintained a world-civilization in being, proved quite incapable of building a new order on the ruins of the old. Far from recovering, man's estate rapidly deteriorated till it had sunk into abject savagery. (Stapledon 1937: 83)
Note the numerous technologically illiterate civilizations in science fiction: once brilliant and inventive, now merely capable of maintaining the existing infrastructure. To think that this downfall was caused by obsession with airplanes and dropping babies from them!
But a far more profound and lasting cause doomed the First Men to lie prone for a long while, once they had fallen. A subtle physiological change, which it is tempting to call 'general senesence of the species', was undermining the human body and mind. The chemical equilibrium of each individual was becoming more unstable, so that, little by little, man's unique gift of prolonged youth was being lost. Far more rapidly than of old, his tissues failed to compensate for the wear and tear of living. This disaster was by no means inevitable; but it was brought on by influences peculiar to the make-up of the species, and aggravated artificially. For during some thousands of years man had been living at too high a pressure in a biologically unnatural environment, and had found no means of compensating his nature for the strain thus put upon it. (Stapledon 1937: 84)
Another typical sci-fi trope familiar from Stargate: humans become 'the greys' over time. Not comprehending, though, if "too high a pressure" is a reference to the Energists' obsession with constant motion or the literal air pressure in three mile high spires they lived in.
Deprived of power, machinery, and chemical fertilizers, these bumpkins were hard put to it to keep themselves alive. And indeed only a tenth of their number survived the great disaster. The second generation knew civilization only as a legend. Their days were filled with ceaseless tillage, and in banding together to fight marauders. Women became once more sexual and domestic chattels. The family, or tribe of families, became the largest social whole. (Stapledon 1937: 84)
Why is this the default mode of humanity?
Their tools were but broken pebbles, chipped improvements upon natural stones. On almost every one they engraved the same pathetic symbol, the Swastika or cross, which had been used by the First Men as a sacred emblem throughout their existence, though with varying significance. In this instance it had originally been the figure of an aeroplane diving to destruction, and had been used by the rebels to symbolize the downfall of Gordelphus and the State. But subsequent generations reinterpreted the emblem as the sign manual of a divine ancestor, and as a memento of the golden age from which they were destined to decline for ever, or until the gods should intervene. Almost one might say that in its persistent use of this symbol the first human species unwittingly epitomized its own dual and self-thworting nature. (Stapledon 1937: 85)
Even some casual semiotics.
Fragments of the old culture were indeed preserved in the tangle of folk lore that meshed the globe, but they were distorted beyond recognition. Thus there was a wide-spread belief that the world had begun as fire, and that life had evolved out of the fire. After the apes had appeared, evolution ceased (so it was said), until divine spirits came down and possessed the female apes, thereby generating human beings. Thus had arisen the golden age of the divine ancestors. But unfortunately after a while the beast in man had triumphed over the god, so that progress had given place to age-long decay. And indeed decay was now unavoidable, until such time as the gods should see fit to come down to cohabit with women and fire the race once more. (Stapledon 1937: 86)
A virgin Mary story universalized for the whole human race. This paragraph might as well be frame with a "Ancient astronaut theorists believe..."
So well had the past built, and with such durable material, that even after a hundred millenia the ruins were still recognizably artifacts. Though for the most part they were of course by now little more than pyramids of debris overgrown with grass and brushwood, most of them retained some stretch of standing wall, and here and there a favoured specimen still reared from its rubble-encumbered base a hundred foot or so of cliff, punctured with windows. Fantastic legends now clustered round these relics. In one myth the men of old had made for themselves huge palaces which could fly. (Stapledon 1937: 86)
Somewhat like some medieval castles and fortresses in Europe. The "flying palaces" might as well be a reference to the Vimana.
V.2. The Fall of the First Men: The Rise of Patagonia
As the centuries piled up, the human species had inevitably diverged once more into many races in the various geographical areas. And each race consisted of a swarm of tribes, each ignorant of all but its immediate neighbours. After many millenia this vast diversification of stocks and cultures made it possible for fresh biological transfusions and revivifications to occur. At last, after many racial copulations, a people arose in whom the ancient dignity of humanity was somewhat restored. Once more there was a real distinction between the progressive and the backward regions, between 'primitive' and relatively enlightened cultures. (Stapledon 1937: 87)
Another cycle?
For a grave disability hampered the Patagonians. They began to grow old before their adolescence was completed. In the days of Einstein, an individual's youth lasted some twenty-five years, and under the World State it had been artificially doubled. After the downfall of civilization the increasing natural brevity of the individual life was no longer concealed by artifice, and at the end of the First Dark Age a boy of fifteen was already settling into middle age. Patagonian civilization at its height afforded considerable ease and security of life, and enabled man to live to seventy or even eighty; but the period of sensitive and supple youth remained at the very best little more than a decade and a half. Thus the truly young were never able to contribute to culture before they were already at heart middle-aged. At fifteen their bones were definitely becoming brittle, their hair grizzled, their faces lined. Their joints and muscles were stiffening, their brains were no longer quick to learn new adjustments, their fervour was evaporating. (Stapledon 1937: 88)
What a horrible future for the species.
Moreover, because their animal nature was somewhat subdueb, the Patagonians were more capable of dispassionate cognition, and more inclined toward intellectualism. They were a people in whom rational behaviour was less often subverted by passion, though more liable to fail through mere indolence or faint-heartedness. (Stapledon 1937: 88)
You're more likely to be a thinker if your bones become brittle by 15?
One source of the special character of the Patagonian mind was that in it the sexual impulse was relatively weak. Many obscure causes had helped to temper that lavish sexuality in respect of which the first human species differed from all other animals, even the continuously sexual apes. These causes were diverse, but they combined to produce in the last phase of the life of the species a general curtailment of excess energy. In the Dark Age the severity of the struggle for existence had thrust the sexual interest back almost into the subordinate place which it occupies in the animal mind. Coitus became a luxury only occasionally desired, while self-preservation had become once more an urgent and ever-present necessity. When at last life began to be easier, sexuality remained in partial eclipse, for the forces of racial 'senesence' were at work. Thus the Patagonian culture differed in mood from all the earlier cultures of the First Men. Hithero it had been the clash of sexuality and social taboo that had generated half the fervour and half the delusions of the race. (Stapledon 1937: 89)
Likewise, I don't imagine much horizontal dancing goes on when one false move is liable to break bones.
V.3. The Fall of the First Men: The Cult of Youth
Most significant for the historian who would understand their special mentality is the theme of the god-man; so curiously did it resemble, yet differ from, similar themes in earlier cultures of the first human species. He was conceived as eternally adolescent, and as mystically the son of all men and women. Far [|] from being the Elder Brother, he was the Favourite Child; and indeed he epitomises that youthful energy and enthusiasm which the race new guessed was slipping away from it. Though the sexual interest of this people was weak, the parental interest was curiously strong. But the worship of the Favourite Son was not merely parental; it expressed also both the individual's craving for his own lost youth, and his obscure sense that the race itself was senescent. (Stapledon 1937: 90-91)
Jesus, but not baby Jesus, a child Jesus.
It was believed that the prophet had actually lived a century as a fresh adolescent. He was designated the Boy who Refused to Grow up. And this vigour of will was possible to him, it was said, because in him the feeble vitality of the race was concentrated many millionfold. For he was the fruit of all parental passion that ever was and would be; and as such he was divine. Primarily, he was the Son of Man, but also he was God. For God, in this religion, was no prime Creator but the fruit of man's endeavour. (Stapledon 1937: 91)
The kid just manifested staying young.
The propagation of this attractive gospel was favoured by a seeming miracle. The prophet turned out to be biologically unique among Patagonians. When many of his coevals were showing signs of senescence, he remained physically young. Also he possessed a sexual vigour which to the Patagonians seemed miraculous. And since sexual taboo was unknown, he exercised himself so heartily in love-making, that he had paramours in every village, and presently his offspring were numbered in hundreds. In this respect his followers strove hard to live up to him, though with small success. But it was not only physically that the prophet remained young. He preserved also a strikingly youthful agility of mind. His sexual prodigality, though startling to his contemporaries, was in him a temperate overflow of surplus energy. Far from exhausting him, it refreshed him. (Stapledon 1937: 92)
Why is everything Stapledon writes about sexuality so weird?
V.4 The Fall of the First Men: The Catastrophe
And the crisis came when, in the basement of a shattered pylon in China, they found a store of metal plates (constructed of an immensely durable artificial element), on which were embossed crowded lines of writing. These objects were, in fact, blocks from which books were printed a thousand centuries earlier. Other deposits were soon discovered, and bit by bit the dead language was deciphered. Within three centuries the outline of the ancient culture was laid bare; and presently the whole history of man's rise and ruin fell upon this latter-day civilization with crushing effect, as though an ancient pylon were to have fallen on a village of wigwams at its foot. The pioneers discovered that all the ground which they had so painfully won from the wild had been conquered long ago, and lost; that on the material side their glory was nothing beside the glory of the past; and that in the sphere of mind they had established only a few scattered settlements where formerly was an empire. (Stapledon 1937: 96)
A civilization crushed by the knowledge of an earlier civilization.
But as time passed the mental difference between the two classes increased. Superior intelligence became rarer and rarer among the proletariat; the governors were recruited more and more from their own offspring, until finally they became an hereditary caste. The gulf widened. The governors began to lose all mental contact with the governed. They made a mistake which could never have been committed had their psychology kept pace with their other sciences. Even confronted with the workers' lack of intelligence, they came to treat them more and more as children, and forgot that, though simple, they were grown men and women who needed to feel themselves as free partners in a great human enterprise. (Stapledon 1937: 100)
Isn't that a common refrain throughout human history?
When rumour got afoot that in future mechanical power would be unlimited, the people expected a millennium. Every one would have his own limitless source of energy. Work would cease. Pleasure would be increased to infinity. Unfortunately the first use made of the new power was extensive mining at unheard-of depths in search of metals and other minerals which had long ago ceased to be available near the surface. This involved difficult and dangerous work for the miners. There were casualties. Riots occurred. The new power was used upon the rioters with murderous effect, the governors declaring that, though their paternal hearts bled for their foolish children, this chastisement was necessary to prevent worse evils. (Stapledon 1937: 101)
Reminiscent of the birth of the internet, which was hoped would democratize the society and lead to more freedom, instead of being co-opted for state propaganda and centralized to all hell by corporations.
A power unit was seized, and after a bout of insane monkeying with the machinery, the mischief-makers inadvertently got things into such a state that at last the awful djin of physical energy was able to wrench off his fetters and rage over the planet. The first explosion was enough to blow up the mountain range above the mine. In those mountains were huge tracts of the critical element, and these were detonated by rays from the initial explosion. This sufficed to set in action still more remote tracts of the element. An incandescent hurricane spread over the whole of Patagonia, reinforcing itself with fresh atomic fury wherever it went. It raged along the line of the Andes and the Rockies, scorching both continents with its heat. It undermined and blew up the Behring Straits, spread like a brood of gigantic fiery serpents into Asia, Europe and Africa. Martians, already watching the earth as a cat a bird beyond its spring, noted that the brilliance of the neighbour planet was suddenly enhanced. Presently the oceans began to boil here and there with submarine commotion. Tidal waves mangled the coasts and floundered up the valleys. But in time the general sea level sank considerably through evaporation and the opening of chasms in the ocean floor. All volcanic regions became fantastically active. The polar caps began to melt, but prevented the arctic regions from being calcined like the rest of the planet. The atmosphere was a continuous dense cloud of moisture, fumes and dust, churned in ceaseless hurricanes. As the fury of the electromagnetic collapse proceeded, the surface temperature of the planet steadily increased, till only in the Arctic and a few favoured corners of the sub-Arctic could life persist. (Stapledon 1937: 102)
Well done. You deed it.
VI.1. Transition: The First Men at Bay
The crew consisted of twenty-eight men and seven women. Individuals of an earlier and more sexual race, proportioned thus, in such close proximity and isolation, would almost certainly have fallen foul of one another sooner or later. But the Patagonians the arrangement was not intolerable. Besides managing the whole domestic side of the expedition, the seven women were able to provide moderate sexual delight for all, for in this people the female sexuality was much less reduced than the male. There were, indeed, occasional jealousies and feuds in the little community, but these were subordinated to a strong esprit de corps. The whole company had, of course, been very carefully chosen for comradeship, loyalty, and health, as well as for technical skill. All claimed descent from the Divine Boy. All were of the governing class. (Stapledon 1937: 103)
A convenient plot device for beginning a new race of men afresh.
With a change of wind, the sea around them was infuriated with falling debris, often red hot. Miraculously they got away and fled north again. After creeping along the Siberian coast they were at last able to find a tolerable resting-place at the mouth of one of the great rivers. The ship was brought to anchor, and the crew rested. They were a diminished company, for six men and two women had been lost on the voyage. (Stapledon 1937: 104)
This was mentioned in the Wikipedia article - only a patch of the Northern coast of Siberia remained inhabitable.
This common purpose now began to exalt them, and brought them all into a rare intimacy. 'We are ordinary folk,' said the biologist, 'but somehow we must become great.' And they were, indeed, in a manner made great by their unique position. In generous minds a common purpose and common suffering breed a deep passion of comradeship, expressed perhaps not in words but in acts of devotion. These, in their loneliness and their sense of obligation, experienced not only comradeship, but a vivid communion with one another as instruments of a sacred cause. (Stapledon 1937: 105)
The use of "communion" here should be unpacked at a later date. Unity of sentiment?
The party found it possible to grow maize and even rice from seed brought from a ruined store in Norway. But the great heat, frequent torrential rain, and lack of sunlight, made agriculture laborious and precarious. (Stapledon 1937: 105)
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built in 2006.
The adults of the party devoted much of their leisure during the long winters to the heroic labour of recording the outline of man's whole knowledge. This task was very dear to the leader, but the others often grew weary of it. To each person a certain sphere of culture was assigned; and after he or she had thought out a section and scribbled it down on slate, it was submitted to the company for criticism, and finally engraved deeply on tablets of hard stone. Many thousands of such tablets were produced in the course of years, and were stored in a cave which was carefully prepared for them. Thus was recorded something of the history of the earth and of man, the outlines of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and geometry. (Stapledon 1937: 108)
Write the history of humanity... From memory!
Brought into a ruined world without their own consent, they refused to accept the crushing obligation toward an improbable future. Hunting, and the daily struggle of a pioneering age, afforded their spirits full exercise in courage, mutual loyalty, and interest in one another's personality. They would live for the present only, and for the tangible reality, not for a culture which they knew only by hearsay. In particular, they loathed the hardship of engraving endless verbiage upon granitic slabs. (Stapledon 1937: 109)
The anti-natalists would love this.
Music and romance, indeed, were now the main expression of the finer nature of these beings, and became the vehicles of obscure religious experience. The intellectualism of the elders was ridiculed. What could their poor sciences tell of [|] reality, of the many-faced, never-for-a-moment-the-same, superbly inconsequent, and ever-living Real? Man's intelligence was all right for hunting and tillage in the world of common sense; but if he rode it further afield, he would find himself in a desert, and his soul would starve. Let him live as nature prompted. Let him keep the young god in his heart alive. Let him give free play to the struggling, irrational, dark vitality that sought to realize itself in him not as logic but as beauty. (Stapledon 1937: 109-110)
Stapledon the philosopher shines through here.
Though mental vigour waned, certain desirable characteristics were consolidated. The founders of the group represented the best remaining stock of the first human species. They had been chosen for their hardihood and courage, their native loyalty, their strong cognitive interest. Consequently, in spite of phases of depression, the race not only survived but retained its curiosity and its group feeling. Even while the ability of men deceased, their will to understand, and their sense of racial unity, remained. Though their conception of man and the universe gradually sank into a crude myth, they preserved a strong unreasoning loyalty towards the future, and toward the now sacred stone library which was rapidly becoming unintelligible to them. (Stapledon 1937: 110)
See "intellectual integrity" and "integrity of will" (above).
VI.2. Transition: The Second Dark Age
Meanwhile, ordinary geological processes, augmented by the strains to which the planet was subjected by increased internal pressure, began to change the continents. South America mostly collapsed into the hollows blasted beneath it, but a new land rose to join Brazil with West Africa. The East Indies and Australia became a continuous continent. The huge mass of Thibet sank deeply into its disturbed foundations, lunged West, and buckled Afghanistan into a range of peaks nearyl forty thousand feet above the sea. Europe sank under the Atlantic. (Stapledon 1937: 111)
First the Americans destroye Europeans and then the Patagonians accidentally finish off the whole continent, erasing its face from the Earth.
Everywhere there were birds. Many of the places left vacant by the destruction of the ancient fauna were now filled by birds which had discarded flight and developed pedestrian habits. (Stapledon 1937: 112)
Is this a premonition?
And so they remained for a million years. Psychologically they were so crippled that they had almost completely lost the power of innovation. When their sacred quarries in the hills were covered with ice, they had not the wit to use stone from the valleys, but were reduced to making implements of bone. Their language degenerated into a few grunts to signify important acts, and a more complex system of emotional expressions. For emotionally these creatures still preserved a certain refinement. Moreover, though they had almost wholly lost the power of intelligent innovation, their [|] instinctive responses were often such as a more enlightened intelligence would justify. They were strongly social, deeply respectful of the individual human life, deeply paternal, and often terribly earnest in their religion. (Stapledon 1937: 112-113)
The human race became completely phatic once again.
VII. The Rise of the Second Men: The Appearance of a New Species
It was some ten million years after the Patagonian disaster that the first elements of a new human species appeared, in an epidemic of biological variations, many of which were extremely valuable. Upon this raw material the new and stimulating environment worked for some hundred thousand years until at last there appeared the Second Man.
Though of greater stature and more roomy cranium, these beings were not wholly unlike their predecessors in general proportions. Their heads, indeed, were large even for their [.|.] bodies, and their necks massive. Their hands were huge, but finely moulded. Their almost titanic size entailed a seemingly excessive strength of support; their legs were stouter, even proportionately, than the legs of the earlier species. Their feet had lost the separate toes, and, by a strengthening and growing together of the internal bones, had become more efficient instruments of locomotion. During the Siberian exile the First Men had acquired a thick hairy covering, and most races of the Second Men retained something of this blonde hirsute appearance throughout their career. Their eyes were large, and often jade green, their features firm as carved granite, yet mobile and lucent. Of the second human species one might say that Nature had at last repeated and far excelled the noble but unfortunate type which she had achieved once, long ago, with the first species, in certain prehistoric cave-dwelling hunters and artists. (Stapledon 1937: 113-115)
I can see how with this description - nearly hairy and hoofed - someone might think that Stapledon was taking humankind in a "demonic" direction.
Their chemical organization was such that their tissues were kept in better repair. Their teeth, though proportionately small and few, were almost completely immune from caries. Such was their glandular equipment that puberty did not begin till twenty; and not till they were fifty did they reach maturity. At about one hundred and ninety their powers began to fail, and after a few years of contemplative retirement they almost invariably died before true senility could begin. It was as though, when a man's work was finished, and he had meditated in peace upon his whole career, there were nothing further to hold his attention and prevent him from falling asleep. Mothers carried the fœtus for three years, suckled the infant for five years, and were sterile during this period and for another seven years. (Stapledon 1937: 115)
Some advantages, some disadvantages. A pregnancy of three years sounds like a whole ordeal.
But sexual interest was strangely altered. Around the ancient core of delight in physical and mental contact with the opposite sex there now appeared a kind of innately sublimated, and no less poignant, appreciation of the unique physical and mental forms of all kinds of live things. It is difficult for less ample natures to imagine this expansion of the innate sexual interest; for to them it is not apparent that the lusty admiration which at first directs itself solely on the opposite sex is the appropriate attitude to all the beauties of flesh and spirit in beast and bird and plant. (Stapledon 1937: 116)
The second race of men were all furries.
Parental interest also was strong in the new species, but it too was universalized. It had become a strong innate interest in, and a devotion to, all beings that were conceived as in need of help. In the earlier species this passionate spontaneous altruism occurred only in exceptional persons. In the new species, however, all normal men and women experienced altruism as a passion. And yet at the same time primitive parenthood had become tempered to a less possessive and more objective love, which among the First Men was less common than they themselves were pleased to believe. (Stapledon 1937: 116)
The philosopher's imagination at work.
Assertiveness had also greatly changed. Formerly very much of a man's energy had been devoted to the assertion of himself as a private individual over against other individuals; and very much of his generosity had been at bottom selfish. But in the Second Men this competitive self-assertion, this championship of the most intimately known animal against all others, was greatly tempered. Formerly the major enterprises of society would never have been carried through had they not been able to annex to themselves the egoism of their champions. (Stapledon 1937: 116)
Now I have to look into "self-assertion" in both Stapledon's writings and his era generally. This is by-and-largy the theme of selfishness in Malinowski's phatic communion.
It would not be true to say that the strongest interest of these beings was social. They were never prone to exalt the abstraction called the state, or the nation, or even the world-common-wealth. For their most characteristic factor was not mere gregariousness but something novel, namely an innate interest in personality, bot hin the actual diversity of persons and in the ideal of personal development. They had a remarkable power of vividly intuiting their fellows as unique persons with special needs. Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another. But the Second Men, more intensely and accurately self-conscious, were also more intensely and accurately conscious of one another. This they achieved by no unique faculty, but solely by a more ready interest in each other, a finer insight, and a more active imagination. (Stapledon 1937: 117)
Stapledon's critique of human social psychology through a comparison with an idealized race of humans. This second race of Men, I have to admit, are beginning to sound like the Na'vi in James Cameron's Avatar.
And there was a wealth of traditional fairy-stories whose appeal was grounded in philosophical puzzles. Little children delighted to hear how the poor things called Illusions were banished from the Country of the Real, how one-dimensional Mr. Line woke up in a two-dimensional world, and how a brave young tune slew cacophonous beasts and won a melodious bride in that strange country where the landscape is all of sound and all living things are music. (Stapledon 1937: 117)
Another premonition: in one of Stapledon's following books there's a universe made of music, according to Wikipedia.
In the earlier species, indeed, the nervous system had maintained only a very precarious unity, and was all too liable to derangement by the rebellion of one of its subordinate parts. [|] But in the second species the highest centres maintained an almost absolute harmony among the lower. Thus the moral conflict between momentary impulse and considered will, and again between private and public interest, played a very subordinate part among the Second Men. (Stapledon 1937: 117-118)
Recording this to help make sense of Stapledon's own philosophy, where "impulses" apparently play a leading role.
In particular, two capacities which for the First Men had been unattainable ideals were now realized in every normal individual, namely the power of wholly dispassionate cognition, and the power of loving one's neighbour as oneself, without reservation. Indeed, in this respect the Second Men might be called 'Natural Christians', so readily and constantly did they love one another in the manner of Jesus, and infuse their whole social policy with loving-kindness. Early in their career they [|] conceived the religion of love, and they were possessed by it again and again, in diverse forms, until their end. On the other hand, their gift of dispassionate cognition helped them to pass speedily to the admiration of fate. (Stapledon 1937: 118-119)
Again and again these two tendencies crop up: the Socratic and the Jesusian. These tendencies should be examined more closely in Stapledon's philosophical writings.
In the lives of humble individuals there are many occasions when nothing but an heroic effort can wrest their private fortunes from stagnation or decline, and set them pioneering in new spheres. Among the First Men this effort was often called forth by passionate regard for self. And it was upon the tidal wave of innumerable egoisms, blindly surging in one direction, that the first species was carried forward. But, to repeat, in the Second Men self-regard was never an over-mastering motive. Only at the call of social loyalty or personal love would a man spur himself to desperate efforts. Whenever the stake appeared to be mere private advancement, he was apt to prefer peace to enterprise, the delights of sport, companionship, art or intellect, to the slavery of self-regard. And so in the long run, though the Second Men were unfortunate in their almost complete immunity from the lust of power and personal ostentation (which cursed the earlier species with industrialism and militarism), and though they enjoyed long ages of idyllic peace, often upon a high cultural plane, their progress toward full self-conscious mastery of the planet was curiously slow. (Stapledon 1937: 119)
Cool, but isn't this the same argument about selfishness that economists have made for centuries (cf. e.g. Madden 1966: 134).
VII.2. The Rise of the Second Men: The Intercourse of Three Species
The remaining tribes of the First Men, with whom the new species could not normally interbreed, were unable to live up to the higher culture that flooded round them and over them. They faded out. (Stapledon 1937: 119)
Homo sapiens goes out much the way of the Neanderthals.
If ever these tortures roused some exceptional subman to rebel, the monjeys flared into contemptuous rage at such a lack of humour, so incapable were they of realizing the subjective [|] processes of others. To one another they could, indeed, be kindly and generous; but even among themselves the imp of humour would sometimes run riot. (Stapledon 1937: 122-123)
This subchapter is too crazy to be quoted from at length, but this expression is something. Namely, it seems to lack the key word "the subjective [mental] processes of others".
They carefully infected large quantities of nuts with the plagues rampant among those herds of submen which had not been domesticated. Very soon caravans of infected nuts were scattered over Asia. The effect upon a race wholly fresh to these microbes was disastrous. Not only were the pioneering settlements wiped out, but the bulk of the species also. The submen themselves had become adjusted to the microbes, and even reproduced more rapidly because of them. Not so the more delicately organized species. They died off like autumn leaves. Civilization fell to pieces. In a few generations Asia was peopled only by a handful of scattered savages, all diseased and mostly crippled. (Stapledon 1937: 123)
Even the empathetic-philosophical supermen race can't catch a break.
VII.3. The Rise of the Second Men: The Zenith of the Second Men
But of all the natural disasters which befell the Second Men, the worst was due to a spontaneous change in their own physical constitution. Just as the fangs of the ancient sabre-toothed tiger had finally grown so large that the beast could not eat, so the brain of the second human species threatened to outgrow the rest of its body. In a cranium that was originally roomy enough, this rare product of nature was now increasingly cramped; while a circulatory system, that was formerly quite adequate, was becoming more and more liable to fail in pumping blood through so cramped a structure. These two causes at last began to take serious effect. Congenital imbecility became increasingly common, along with all manner of acquired mental diseases. (Stapledon 1937: 124)
They became too brainy for their own good.
One of these precarious flashes of spirit occurred in the Yang-tze valley as a sudden and brief effulgence of city states peopled by neurotics, geniuses and imbeciles. The lasting upshot of this civilization was a brilliant literature of despair, dominated by a sense of the difference between the actual and the potential in man and the universe. Later, when the race had attained its noontide [|] glory, it was wont to brood upon this tragic voice from the past in order to remind itself of the underlying horror of existence. (Stapledon 1937: 124-125)
Is this some sort of veiled reference to some extant literary movement?
But inevitably there came an end. A virus, whose subtle derangement of the grandular system was never suspected by a race still innocent of physiology, propagated throughout the world a mysterious fatigue. Century by century, agriculture withdrew from the hills and deserts, craftsmanship deteriorated, thought became stereotyped. And the vast lethargy produced a vast despond. At length the nations lost touched with one another, forgot one another, forgot their culture, crumbled into savage tribes. Once more Earth slept. (Stapledon 1937: 126)
Whatever this virus's name, it sure was "long", handicapping the Second Men for centuries.
Many thousand years later, long after the disease was spent, several great peoples developed in isolation. When at last they made contact, they were so alien that in each there had to occur a difficult cultural revolution, not unaccompanied by bloodshed, before the world could once more feel as one. But this second world order endured only a few centuries, for profound subconscious differences now made it impossible for the races to keep whole-heartedly loyal to each other. (Stapledon 1937: 126)
Too bad that this is barely a sketch - this is exactly the stuff that could be elaborated with semiotics of culture.
Mining and manufacture, even with plentiful electric power, were occupations scarcely less arduous than of old; but since each individual was implicated by vivid sympathy in the lives of all persons within his ken, there was little or no obsession with private economic power. The will to avoid industrial evils was effective, because sincere. (Stapledon 1937: 127)
"Industrial evils". A phrase that could equally apply for modern industry, where grand statements of vision and mission are mere lip service and ignored in favor of slightly higher profit margins.
Again, though they participated in one another far more than their predecessors, they themselves were dogged by despair at the distortion and error which spoiled every mind's apprehension of others. Like their predecessors, they had passed through all the naïve phases of self-consciousness and other-consciousness, and through idealizations of various modes of personality. (Stapledon 1937: 127)
I had to check: my eyes have not seen "other-consciousness" anywhere before.
They even conceived that the ideal community should be knit into one mind by each unique individual's direct telepathic apprehension of the experience of all his fellows. And the fact that this ideal seemed utterly unattainable wove through their whole culture a thread of darkness, a yearning for spiritual union, a horror [|] of loneliness, which never seriously troubled their far more insulated predecessors. (Stapledon 1937: 127-128)
Enter: collective mind.
This craving for union influenced the sexual life of the species. In the first place, so closely was the mental related to the physiological in their composition, that when there was no true union of minds, the sexual act failed to give conception. Casual sexual relations thus came to be regarded very differently from those which expressed a deeper intimacy. They were treated as a delightful embroidery on life, affording opportunity of much elegance, light-hearted tenderness, banter, and of course physical inebriation; but they were deemed to signify nothing more than the delight of friend in friend. Where there was a marriage of minds, but then only during the actual passion of communion, sexual intercourse almost always resulted in conception. Under these circumstances, intimate persons had often to practise contraception, but acquaintances never. (Stapledon 1937: 128)
Perhaps the first instance of Stapledon treating something sexual in this book that's still weird but in a good way.
Not only were both men and women encouraged to have as much casual sexual intercourse as they needed for their enrichment, but also, on the higher plane of spiritual union, strict monogamy was deprecated. For in sexual union of this higher kind they saw a symbol of that communion of minds which they longed to make universal. Thus the most precious gift that a lover could bring to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union, it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could contribute from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with others. Yet though as a principle monogamy was not applauded, the higher kind of union would in practice sometimes result in a life-long partnership. (Stapledon 1937: 128)
I'm sure the polyamorous would love this.
Obviously any account of the natural science and the philosophy of the Second Man would be unintelligible to readers of this book. Suffice it that they avoided the errors which had led the First Men into false abstraction, and into metaphysical theories which were at once sophisticated and naïve. (Stapledon 1937: 129)
Scoff.
The world community reached at length a certain relative perfection and equilibrium. There was a long summer of social harmony, prosperity, and cultural embellishment. Almost all that could be done by mind in the stage to which it had then reached seemed to have been done. Generations of long-lived, eager, and mutually delightful beings succeeded one another. (Stapledon 1937: 130)
And finally triads! (1) prosperity, (2) social harmony, and (3) cultural embellishment; and (1) long-lived, (2) mutually delighted, and (3) eager beings.
There was a widespread feeling that the time had come for man to gather all his strength for a flight into some new sphere of mentality. The present type of human being, it was recognized, was but a rough and incoherent natural product. It was time for man to take control of himself and remake himself upon a nobler pattern. With this end in view, two great works were sot afoot, research into the ideal of human nature, and research into practical means of remaking human nature. Individuals in all lands, living their private lives, delighting in each other, keeping the tissue of society alive and vigorous, were deeply moved by the thought that their world community was at last engaged upon this heroic task. (Stapledon 1937: 130)
Here comes bioengineering new species of humans.
VIII.1. The Martians: The First Martian Invasion
These extraordinary specks of cloud were all of about the same size, the largest of them appearing smaller than the moon's disc; but in form they varied greatly, and were seen to be changing their shapes more rapidly than the natural cirrus which they slightly resembled. In fact, though there was much that was cloudlike in their form and motion, there was also something definite about them, both in their features and behaviour, which suggested life. (Stapledon 1937: 131)
See: shape-shifting UFOs.
But before they had retreated three paces, a long proboscis shot out of the main mass with the speed of a chameleon's tongue, and enveloped them. Slowly it withdrew; but the young men had been gathered in with it. The cloud, or jelly, churned itself violently for some seconds, then ejected the bodies in a single chewed lump. (Stapledon 1937: 132)
Not a peaceful greeting.
VIII.2. The Martians: Life on Mars
Our concern is with humanity, and with the Martians only in relation to men. But in order to understand the tragic intercourse of the two palnets, it is necessary to glance at conditions on Mars, and conceive something of those fantastically different yet fundamentally similar beings, who were now seeking to possess man's home. (Stapledon 1937: 133)
This Martian episode is bizarre. Stapledon, through his contact with the Future Men, is aware of other life in the solar system but only mentions it in passing?
Terrestial organisms, and Martian organisms of the tellestial type, maintained themselves as vital unities by means of nervous systems, or other forms of material contact between parts. In the most developed forms, an immensely complicated neural 'telephone' system connected every part of the body with a vast central exchange, the brain. Thus on the earth a single organism was without exception a continuous system of matter, which maintained a certain constancy of form. But from the [|] distinctively Martian subvital unit there evolved at length, a very different kind of complex organism, in which material contact of parts was not necessary either to co-ordination of behaviour or unity of consciousness. These ends were achieved upon a very different physical basis. The ultra-microscopic subvital members were sensitive to all kinds of aetherial vibrations, directly sensitive, in a manner impossible to terrestial life; and they could also initiate vibrations. Upon this basis Martian life developed at length the capacity of maintaining vital organization as a single conscious individual without continuity of living matter. Thus the typical Martian organism was a cloudlet, a group of free-moving members dominated by a 'group-mind'. But in one species individuality came to inhere, for certain purposes, not in distinct cloudlets only, but in a great fluid system of cloudlets. Such was the single-minded Martian host which invaded the Earth. (Stapledon 1937: 134-135)
A crash coulse on exobiology to explain the Martian "cloudlets".
The Martians, it should be noted, had three possible forms, or formations, namely: first, an 'open order' of independent and very tenuous cloudlets in 'telepathic' communication, and often in strict unity as a group mind; second, a more concentrated and less vulnerable corporate cloud; and third, an extremely concentrated and formidable cloud-jelly. (Stapledon 1937: 136)
Pure weirdness. See all the chorus of praises for Stapledon's wild and incomparable imagination.
In the earliest stages of evolution on Mars the units had become independent of each other as soon as they parted in reproduction. But later the hithero useless and rudimentary power of emitting radiation was specialized, so that, after reproduction, free individuals came to maintain radiant contact with one another, and to behave with ever-increasing co-ordination. Stil llater, these organized groups themselves maintained radiant contact with groups of their offspring, thus constituting larger individuals with specialized members. With each advance in [|] complexity the sphere of radiant influence increased; until, at the zenith of Martian evolution, the whole planet (save for the remaining animal and vegetable representatives of the other and unsuccessful kind of life) constituted sometimes a single biological and psychological individual. (Stapledon 1937: 137-138)
Another collective, planet-wide, mind.
Others again were specialized to filful the function of the brain of man; but in a peculiar manner. The whole volume of the cloudlet vibrated with innumerable 'wireless' messages in very many wave-lengths from the different 'organs'. It was the function of the 'brain' units to receive, and correlate, and interpret [|] these messages in the light of past experience, and to initiate responses in the wave-lengths appropriate to the organs concerned. (Stapledon 1937: 137-138)
And here we have Stapledon anticipating communication theory and cybernetics.
One other physiological function we must note before considering the Martian psychology. The fully evolved, but as yet uncivilized, Martian had long ago ceased to depend for his chemicals on wind-borne volcanic dust. Instead, he rested at night on the ground, like a knee-high mist on terrestial meadows, and projected specialized tubular groups of units into the soil, like rootlets. Part of the day also had to be occupied in this manner. Somewhat later this process was supplemented by devouring the declining plant-life of the planet. But the final civilized Martians had greatly improved their methods of exploiting the ground and the sunlight, both by mechanical means and by artificial specialization of their own organs. (Stapledon 1937: 138)
Instructions for the Mars Rover to look out for: mist.
VIII.3. The Martians: The Martian Mind
The most distinctive feature of the Martian, compared with man, was that his individuality was both far more liable to disruption, and at the same time immeasurably more capable of direct participation in the minds of other individuals. The human mind in its solid body maintained its unity and its dominance over its members in all normal circumstances. Only in disease was man liable to mental or physical dissociation. On the other hand, he was incapable of direct contact with other individuals, and the emergence of a 'super-mind' in a group of individuals was quite impossible. (Stapledon 1937: 139)
Man can only have intercourse, while the Martian can have interaction (cf. Carr 2023 linked above).
The Martians, moreover, were hampered by being almost identical in character. They possessed perfect harmony; but only through being almost wholly in temperamental unison. They were all hobbled by their sameness to one another. They were without that rich diversity of personal character, which enabled the human spirit to cover so wide a field of mentality. This infinite variety of human nature entailed, indeed, endless wasteful and cruel personal conflicts in the first, and even to some extent in the second, species of man; but also it enabled every individual of developed sympathy to enrich his spirit by intercourse with individuals whose temperament, thought and ideals differed from his own. (Stapledon 1937: 140)
Lacking heterogeneity.
This would not have been amiss, had the mind of the race, into which he so frequently awoke under the influence of the general radiation, been indeed a mind of higher rank than his own. But it was not. It was but a pooling of the percipience and thought and will of the cloudlets. (Stapledon 1937: 140)
The collective noun for perceptions - percipience. The problem here is that the whole is not greater than the parts.
Instinctive gregariousness was, of course, extremely developed in the Martian at the expense of instinctive self-assertion. (Stapledon 1937: 141)
Jotted down as a pair of opposites.
At the time of the invasion, the Martians were still advancing intellectually; and, indeed, it was through an achievement in theoretical physics that they were able to leave their planet. They had long known that minute particles at the upper limit of the atmosphere might be borne into space by the pressure of the sun's rays at dawn and sunset. And at length they discovered how to use this pressure as the wind is used in sailing. Dissipating themselves into their ultra-microscopic units, they contrived to get a purchase on the gravitational fields of the solar system, as a boat's keel and rudder get a purchase on the water. Thus they were able to tack across to the earth as an armada of ultra-microscopic vessels. Arrived in the terrestial sky, they re-formed themselves as cloudlets, swam through the dense air to the alpine summit, and climbed downwards, as a swimmer may climb down a ladder under water. (Stapledon 1937: 142)
Imagine the Martians surrounding the Mars Rover as aerosolised particles it cannot detect.
VIII.4. The Martians: Delusions of the Martians
But, as with other species in biological history, the capacity by which it triumphed became at length a source of weakness. When the species reached a stage corresponding to primitive human culture, one of its races, achieving a still higher degree of radiant intercourse and physical unity, was able to behave as a single vital unit; and so it succeeded in exterminating all its rivals. Racial conflict had persisted for many thousands of years, but as soon as the favoured race had developed this almost absolute solidarity of will, its victory was sweeping, and was clinched by joyous massacre of the enemy.
But ever afterwards the Martians suffered from the psychological effects of their victory at the close of the epoch of racial wars. The extreme brutality with which the other races had been exterminated conflicted with the generous impulses which civilization had begun to foster, and left a scar upon the conscience of the victors. In self-defence they persuaded themselves that since they were so much hmore admirable than the rest, the extermination was actually a sacred duty. (Stapledon 1937: 143)
Kill everyone else and be left alone to ponder over what you've done, in solitude, for ever.
The Martians knew, of course, that 'solid matter' was solid by virtue of the interlocking of the minute electro-magnetic systems called atoms. Now rigidity had for them somewhat the same significance and prestige that air, breath, spirit, had for early man.It was in the quasi-solid form that Martians were physically most potent; and the maintenance of this form was exhausting and difficult. These facts combined in the Martian consciousness with the knowledge that rigidity was after all the outcome of interlocked electro-magnetic systems. Rigidity was thus endowed with a peculiar sanctity. The superstition was gradually consolidated, by a series of psychological accidents, into a fanatical admiration of all very rigid materials, but especially of hard crystals, and above all of diamonds. For diamonds were extravagantly resistant; and at the same time, as the Martians themselves put it, diamonds were superb jugglers with the ethereal radiation called light. Every diamond was therefore a supreme embodiment of the tense energy and eternal equilibrium of the cosmos, and must be treated with reverence. (Stapledon 1937: 144)
That's why the surface of Mars looks like a heap of rocks to us - it is their temple of rigidity.
Far from being superior to the private mind, the public mind which obsessed every Martian was in many ways actually inferior. It had comeinto dominance in a crisis which demanded severe military co-ordination; and though, since that remote age, it had made great intellectual progress, it remained at heart a military mind. Its disposition was something between that of a field-marshal and the God of the ancient Hebrews. A certain English philosopher once described and praised the fictitious corporate personality of the state, nad named it 'Leviathan'. The Martian super-individual was Leviathan endowed with consciousness. In this consciousness there was nothing but what was easily assimilated and in accord with tradition. Thus the public mind was always intellectually and culturally behind the times. (Stapledon 1937: 145)
The same applies for human culture, semiotically, though this is not the proper time and place to dissect this question. In a sense, the "common core" of a society's culture is constantly lagging behind the knowledge and experiences of private individuals.
IX.1. Earth and Mars: The Second Men at Bay
In their native atmosphere they swam hither and thither with ease and considerable speed; but the treacly air of the earth hampered them as a bird's wings are hampered under water. Moreover, owing to their extreme buoyancy as individual cloudlets, they were scarcely able to dive down so far as the mountain-tops. Excessive exygen was also a source of distress; it tended to put them into a violent fever, which they had only been able to guard against very imperfectly. Even more damaging was the excessive moisture of the atmosphere, both through its solvent effect upon certain factors in the subvital units, and because heavy rain interfered with the physiological processes of the cloudlets and washed many of their materials to the ground. (Stapledon 1937: 146)
Water melts witches in L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz as it does aliens in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, and here we have a convincingly "scientific" explanation of how moisture in Earth's atmosphere hampers a Martian invasion.
But the pioneering army (or individual, for throughout the adventure it maintained unity of consciousness) had much to report at home. As was expected, there was rich vegetation, and water was even too abundant. There were solid animals, of the type of the prehistoric Martian fauna, but mostly two-legged and erect. Experiment had shown that these creatures died when they were pulled to pieces, and that though the sun's rays affected them by setting up chemical action in their visual organs, they had no really direct sensitivity to radiation. Obviously, therefore, they must be unconscious. On the other hand, the terrestial atmosphere was permanently alive with radiation of a violent and incoherent type. It was still uncertain whether these crude ethereal agitations were natural phenomena, mere careless offshoots of the cosmic mind, or whether they were emitted by a terrestial organism. There was reason to suppose this last to be the case, and that the solid organisms were used by some hidden terrestial intelligence as instruments; for there were buildings, and many of the bipeds were found within the buildings. Moreover, the sudden violent concentration of beam radiation upon the Martian cloud suggested purposeful and hostile behaviour. Punitive action had therefore been taken, and many buildings and bipeds had been destroyed. The physical basis of such a terrestial intelligence was still to be discovered. It was certainly not in the terrestial clouds, for these had turned out to be insensitive to radiation. Anyhow, it was obviously an intelligence of very low order, for its radiation was scarcely at all systematic, and was indeed excessively crude. One or two unfortunate diamonds had been found in a building. There was no sign that they were properly venerated. (Stapledon 1937: 147)
The Martians came over here, found some dumb animals and tried to talk to the clouds.
Some years after the first invasion, the Martians appeared again, and in far greater force. This time, moreover, they were almost immune from man's offensive radiation. Operating simultaneously from all the alpine regions of the earth, they began to dry up the great rivers at their sources; and, venturing further afield, they spread over jungle and agricultural land, and stripped off every leaf. Valley after valley was devastated as though by endless swarms of locusts, so that in whole countries there was no ta green blade left. The booty was carried off to Mars. Myriads of the subvital units, specialized for transport of water and food materials, were loaded each with a few molecules of the treasure, and dispatched to the home planet. The traffic continued indefinitely. Meanwhile the main body of the Martians proceeded to explore and loot. They were irresistible. For the absorption of water and leafage, they spread over the countryside as an impalpable mist which man had no means to dispel. For the destruction of civilization, they became armies of gigantic cloud-jellies, far bigger than the brute which had formed itself during the earlier invasion. Cities were knocked down and flattened, human beings masticated into pulp. Man tried weapon after weapon in vain. (Stapledon 1937: 148)
Imagine a devastating mist descending upon Earth and all water along with all organic matter evaporating and disappearing into space. This reminds me heavily of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008, though based on a 1951 film).
Presently the Martians discovered the sources of terrestial radiation in the innumerable wireless transmitting stations. Here at last was the physical basis of the terrestial intelligence! But what a lowly creature! What a caricature of life! Obviously in respect of complexity and delicacy of organization these wretched immobile systems of glass, metal and vegetable compounds were not to be compared with the Martian cloud. Their only feat seemed to be that they had managed to get control of the unconscious bipeds who tended them. (Stapledon 1937: 148)
This is wonderfully humorous. The radio towers certainly have domesticated a species of bipedal mammals.
They had long known very well that the universe was once in which there could be not only private but also great public tragedies; and their philosophy did not seek to conceal this fact. Private tragedy they were able to face with a bland fortitude, and even an ecstasy of acceptance, such as the earlier species had but rarely attained. Public tragedy, even world-tragedy, they declared should be faced in the same spirit. But to know world-tragedy in the abstract, is very different from the direct acquaintance with it. And now the Second Men, even while they held their attention earnestly fixed upon the practical work of defence, were determined to absorb this tragedy into the very depths of their being, to scrutinize it fearlessly, savour it, digest it, so that its fierce potency should henceforth be added to them. (Stapledon 1937: 150)
I sincerely hope that there is secondary literature on this philosophy of world-tragedy.
The Martian invaders were all dead, but their subvital units were dispensed over the planet as a virulent ultra-microscopic dust. For, though as members of the living cloud they could enter the human body without doing permanent harm, now that they were freed from their functions within the higher organic system, they became a predatory virus. Breathed into man's lungs, they soon adapted themselves to the new environment, and threw his tissues into disorder. Each cell that they entered overthrew its own constitution, like a state which the enemy has successfully infected with lethal propaganda through a mere handful of agents. Thus, though man was temporarily victor over the Martian super-individual, his own vital units were poisoned and destroyed by the subvital remains of his dead enemy. A race whose physique had been as utopian as its body politic, was reduced to timid invalidity. And it was left in possession of a devastated planet. (Stapledon 1937: 151)
Jesus Christ. Why are there so many infectious diseases in this book? Seemingly no species is without them, even the Martians.
Four centuries passed, and then again the Martian clouds appeared in the sky. Once more devastation and slaughter. Once more a complete failure of the two mentalities to conceive one another. Once more the Martians were destroyed. Once more the pulmanory plague, the slow purging, a crippled population, and generous suicide. (Stapledon 1937: 152)
Noted for Stapledon framing them as "mentalities".
IX.2. Earth and Mars: The Ruin of Two Worlds
During the considerable period before their settlement their mentality had scarcely changed; but actual habitation of the earth now began to undermine their self-complacency and their unity. It was borne in upon certain exploring Martians that the terrestial bipeds, though insensitive to radiation, were actually the intelligences of the planet. At first sight this fact was studiously shunned, but little by little it gripped the attention of all terrestial Martians. (Stapledon 1937: 153)
But how can these solid bipeds have intelligence if they do not emit radiation? Impossible!
The colonial public mind itself changed its character as the centuries passed, until it became seriously alienated from Martian orthodoxy. Presently, indeed, it began to undergo a very strange and thorough metamorphosis, from which, conceivably, it might have emerged as the noblest inhabitants of the solar system. Little by little it fell into a kind of hypnotic trance. That is to say, it ceased to possess the attention of its private members, yet remained as a unity of their subconscious, or un-noticed mentality. Radiational unity of the colony was maintained, but only in this subconscious manner; and it was at that depth that the great metamorphosis began to take place under the fertilizing influence of the new ideas; which, so to speak, were generated in the tempest of the fully conscious mental revolution, and kept on spreading down into the oceanic depth of the subconsciousness. Such a condition was likely to produce in time the emergence of a qualitatively new and finer mentality, and to waken at last into a fully conscious super-individual of higher order than its own members. (Stapledon 1937: 154)
I sense another premonition - collective trance as a means of self-transformation. From the summaries I've met I surmise that this is what the Eighteenth Men undergo.
Once more, though interrupted now and again by decades of agony, human beings lived in peace and relative prosperity. Life was somewhat harder than formerly, and the physique of the race was definitely less reliable than of old; but men and women still enjoyed conditions which most nations of the earlier species would have envied. The age of ceaseless personal sacrifice in service of the stricken community had ended at last. Once more a wonderful diversity of untrammelled personalities was put forth. Once more the minds of men and women were devoted without hindrance to the joy of skilled work, and all the subtleties of personal intercourse. Once more the passionate interest in one's fellows, which had for so long been hushed under the all-dominating public calamity, refreshed and enlarged the mind. Once more there was music, sweet, and backward-hearkening towards a golden past. Once more a wealth of literature, and of the visual arts. Once more intellectual exploration into the nature of the physical world and the potentiality of mind. (Stapledon 1937: 155)
After how many hundreds of thousands of years, though?
The war went ill for man. The general mood changed to cold resolution. And still victory was with the Martians. Under the influence of the huge fanatical armies which were poured in from the home planet, the colonists had shed their tentative pacifism, and sought to vindicate their loyalty by ruthlessness. In reply the human race deserted its sanity, and succumbed to an uncontrollable lust for destruction. It was at this stage that [|] a human bacteriologist announced that he had bred a virus of peculiar deadliness and transmissibility, with which it would be possible to infect the enemy, but at the cost of annihilating also the human race. It is significant of the insane condition of the human population at this time that, when these facts were announced and broadcast, there was no discussion of the desirability of using this weapon. It was immediately put in action, the whole human race applauding. (Stapledon 1937: 158-159)
Biological warfare and suicide.
IX.3. Earth and Mars: The Third Dark Age
Not that intelligence itself has waned. Not that the race had sunk into mere savagery. Lassitude did not prevent it from readjusting itself to suit its new circumstances. These sleep-walkers soon invented convenient ways of making, in the home and by hand, much that had hithero been made in factories and by mechanical power. Almost without mental effort they designed and fashioned tolerable instruments out of wood and flint and bone. But though still intelligent, they had become by disposition, supine, indifferent. They would exert themselves only under the pressure of urgent primitive need. No man seemed capable of putting forth the full energy of a man. Even suffering had lost its poignancy. And no ends seemed worth pursuing that could not be realized speedily. The sting had gone out of experience. The soul was calloused against every goad. Men and women worked and played, loved and suffered; but always in a kind of rapt absent-mindedness. It was as though they were ever trying to remember something important which escaped them. The affairs of daily life seemed too trivial to be taken seriously. Yet that other, and supremely important thing, which alone deserved consideration, was so obscure that no one had any idea what it was. Nor indeed was anyone aware of this hypnotic subjection, any more than a sleeper is aware of being asleep. (Stapledon 1937: 161)
The descendant remnants of the Second Men are mentally oppressed by the loss of sight - achieving the collective mind.
But the most remarkable of all the biological trains of events in this period was the history of the Martian subvital units that had been disseminated by the slaughter of the Martian colony, and had then tormented men and animals with pulmonary diseases. As the ages passed, certain species of mammals so readjusted themselves that the Martian virus became not only harmless but necessary to their well-being. A relationship which was originally that of parasite and host became in time a true symbiosis, a co-operative partnership, in which the terrestial animals gained something of the unique attributes of the vanished Martian organisms. The time was to come when Man himself should look with envy on these creatures, and finally make use of the Martian 'virus' for his own enrichment. (Stapledon 1937: 162)
Is this how the human species becomes telepathic?
Speech almost vanished; for there was no novelty left in experience. Familiar facts and familiar emotions were conveyed increasingly by gestures which were mostly unwitting. Physically, the species had changed little. (Stapledon 1937: 163)
And he human race became completely phatic once more (as above).
X.1. The Third Men in the Wilderness: The Third Human Species
In spite of the great diversity of this span of man's history, it is a single movement within the whole symphony, just as the careers of the First and the Second Men are each a single movement. Not only is it a period dominated by a single natural human species and the artificial human species into which the natural species at length transformed itself; but, also, in spite of innumerable digressions, a single theme, a single mood of the human will, informs the whole duration. Fro now at last man's main energy is devoted to remaking his own physical and mental nature. Throughout the rise and fall of many successive cultures this purpose is progressively clarifying itself, and expressing itself in many tragic and even devastating experiments; until, toward the close of this immense period, it seems almost to achieve its end. (Stapledon 1937: 165)
They're finally going to do it, the madmen!
The vast change of conditions caused in the imprisoned race a subtle chemical re-arrangement of the germ-plasm, such that there ensued an epidemic of biological variation. Many new types appeared, but in the long run one, more vigorous and better adapted than the rest, crowded out all competitors and slowly consolidated itself as a new species, the Third Man. (Stapledon 1937: 165)
Another island, another species.
Scarcely more than half the stature of their predecessors, these beings were proportionally slight and lithe. Their skin was of a sunny brown, covered with a luminous halo of red-gold hairs, which on the head became a russet mop. Their golden eyes, reminiscent of the snake, were more enigmatic than profound. Their faces were compact as cat's muzzle, their lips full, but subtle at the corners. Their ears, objects of personal pride and of sexual admiration, were extremely variable both in individual and races. These surprising organs, which would have seemed merely ludicrous to the First Men, were expressive both of temperament and passing mood. They were immense, delicately involuted, of a silken texture, and very mobile. They gave an almost bat-like character to the otherwise somewhat [|] feline heads. But the most distinctive feature of the Third Men was their great lean hands, on which were six versatile fingers, six antennae of living steel. (Stapledon 1937: 165-166)
The Ferengi?
Hearing was so developed that a man could run through wooded country blind-fold without colliding with the trees. Moreover the great range of sounds and rhythms had acquired an extremely subtle gamut of emotional significance. Music was therefore one of the main preoccupations of the civilisations of this species. (Stapledon 1937: 166)
"Phatic" in the LaBarrean sense.
This sadism was at bottom an expression of an almost mystical reverence for sensory experience. Physical pain, being the most intense of all sensed qualities, was apt to be thought the most excellent. It might be expected that this would lead rather to self-torture than to cruelty. Sometimes it did. But in general those who could not appreciate pain in their own flesh were yet able to persuade themselves that in inflicting pain on lower animals they were creating vivid psychic reality, and therefore high excellence. It was just the intense reality of pain, they said, that made it intolerable to men and animals. Seen with the detachment of the divine mind, it appeared in its true beauty. (Stapledon 1937: 168)
Beastly stuff. Makes me think of Pinhead.
And again in a second manner sadism expressed itself. The worship of Life, as agent or subject, was complemented by worship of environment, as object to life's subjectivity, as that which remains ever foreign to life, thwarting its enterprises, torturing it, yet making it possible, and, by its very resistance, goading it into nobler expressions. Pain, it was said, was the most vivid apprehension of the sacred and universal Object. (Stapledon 1937: 169)
Somewhat incomprehensibly philosophical.
X.2. The Third Men in the Wilderness: Digressions of the Third Men
Such, in brief, was the physical and mental nature of the third human species. In spite of innumerable distractions, the spirit of the Third Men kept on returning to follow up the thread of biological interest through a thousand variegated cultures. Again and again folk after folk would clamber out of savagery and barbarism into relative enlightenment; and mostly, though not always, the main theme of this enlightenment was some special mood either of biological creativeness or of sadism, or of both. To a man born into such a society, no dominant characteristic would be apparent. He would be impressed rather by the many-sidedness of human activities in his time. He would note a wealth of personal intercourse, of social organization and industrial invention, of art and speculation, all set in that universal matrix, the private struggle to preserve or express the self. Yet the historian may often see in a society, over and above this multifarious proliferation, some one controlling theme. (Stapledon 1937: 169)
It sounds like the Third Men did not recognize their own cruelty as cruelty. That there were thousands of cultures is noted because the timespans here have once again increased hundredfold and we're talking about many millions of years.
Of these civilizations one derived its main power from wind and falling water, one from the tides, one from the earth's internal heat. The first, saved from the worst evils of industrialism by the limitations of its power, lasted some hundred thousand years in barren equilibrium, until it was destroyed by an obscure bacterium. The second was fortunately brief; but its fifty thousand years of unbridled waste of tidal energy was enough to interfere appreciably with the orbit of the moon. This world-order collapsed at length in a series of industrial wars. The third endured a quarter of a million years as a brilliantly sane and efficient world organization. Throughout most of its existence there was almost complete social harmony with scarcely as much internal strife as occurs in a bee-hive. But once more civilization came at length to grief, this time through the misguided effort to breed special human types for specialized industrial pursuits. (Stapledon 1937: 170)
We are told nothing more about a civilization of Third Men that lasted 50,000 years than that it used the ocean tides to produce energy. That humanity lived 250,000 years off of geothermal heat in beehive-like stability is saddening in a way - so many thousands of years and nothing else to note about them?
The Third Men were very subject to a craving for personal immortality. Their lives were brief, their love of life intense. It seems to them a tragic flaw in the nature of existence that the melody of the individual life must either fade into a dreary senility or be cut short, never to be repeated. Now, music had a special significance for this race. So intense was their experience of it, that they were ready to regard it as in some manner the underlying reality of all things. In leisure hours, snatched from a toilful and often tragic life, groups of peasants would seek to conjure about them by song or pipe or viol a universe more beautiful, more real, than that of daily labour. Concentrating their sensitive hearing upon the inexhaustible diversity of tone and rhythm, they would seem to themselves to be possessed by the living presence of music, and to be transported thereby into a lovelier world. No wonder they believed that every melody was a spirit, leading a life of its own within the universe of music. No wonder they imagined that a symphony or chorus was itself a single spirit inhering in all its members. No wonder it seemed to them that when men and women listened to great music, the barriers of their individuality were broken down, so that they became one soul through communion with the music. (Stapledon 1937: 171)
More and more it looks as if the subject of a musical universe (cf. e.g. above) is a kind of throughline in Stapledon's writings.
Easily he persuaded men that music was the reality, and all else illusion, that the living spirit of the universe was pure music, and that each individual animal and man, though he had a body that must die and vanish for ever, had also a soul that was music and eternal. A melody, he said, is the most fleeting of things. It happens and ceases. The great silence devours it, and seemingly annihilates it. Passage is essential to its being. Yet though for a melody, to halt is to die a violent death, all music, the prophet affirmed, has also eternal life. After silence it may occur again, with all its freshness and aliveness. Time cannot age it; for its home is in a country outside time. (Stapledon 1937: 171)
Platonic forms, but now musical melodies.
One day the sacred monarch himself, hithero a prisoner within the conventions, declared half sincere, half by policy, that he was converted to his people's faith. Bureaucracy gave place to an enlightened dictatorship, the monarch assumed the title of Supreme Melody, and the whole social order was refashioned, more to the taste of the peasants. The subtle prince, backed by the crusading zeal of his people, and favoured by the rapid spontaneous spread of the faith in all lands, conquered the whole world, and founded the universal Church of Harmony. (Stapledon 1937: 172)
Were it not framed like it is, I'd suspect Charles Fourier's fingerprints in this.
X.3. The Third Men in the Wilderness: The Vital Art
Egotism among the Third Men could not be satisfied by the exercise of economic power, nor by the mere ostentation of wealth. Not that the race was immune from egotism. On the contrary, it had lost almost all that spontaneous altruism which had distinguished the Second Men. But in most periods the only kind of personal ostentation which appealed to the Third Men was directly connected with the primitive interest in 'pecunia'. To own many and noble beasts, whether they were economically productive or not, was ever the mark of responsibility. The vulgar, indeed, were content with mere numbers, or at most with the conventional virtues of the recognized breeds. But the more refined pursued, and flaunted, certain very exact principles of aesthetic excellence in their control of living forms. (Stapledon 1937: 175)
Pecunia means "money". Ferengi confirmed.
And further, since the true end of art was not the production of individual types, but the production of a worldwide and perfectly systematic fauna and flora, it wsa inadmissible to harm even accidentally any type higher than that which it was intended to produce. For the practice of orthodox vital art was regarded as a cooperative enterprise. The ultimate artist, under God, was mankind as a whole; the ultimate work of art must be an even more subtle garment of living forms fro the adornment of the planet, and the delight of the supreme Artist, in relation to whom man was both creature and instrument. (Stapledon 1937: 177)
What in the living hell is this?
Imagine, then, a planet organized almost as a vast system of botanical and zooloogical gardens, or wild parks, interspersed with agriculture and industry. In every great centre of communications occurred annual and monthly shows. The latest creations were put through their paces, judged by the high priests of vital art, awarded distinctions, and consecrated with religious ceremony. (Stapledon 1937: 177)
Humankind the gardener.
X.4. The Third Men in the Wilderness: Conflicting Policies
The many diseases and abnormalities left over from past civilizations were patiently abolished, and various more fundamental defects were remedied. For instance, teeth, digestion, glandular equipment and the circulatory system were greatly improved. Extreme good health and considerable [|] physical beauty became universal. Child-bearing was made a painless and health-giving process. Senility was postponed. The standard of practical intelligence was appreciably raised. These reforms were made possible by a vast concerted effort of research and experiment supported by the world community. (Stapledon 1937: 178-179)
Presumably this species won't be wiped out by natural accidents (viruses and bacteria) as many earlier civilizations had.
Each individual, down to the humblest agricultural worker, had his special niche in society, allotted him by the supreme council or its delegates, according to his known heredity and the needs of society. This system, of course, sometimes led to abuse, but mostly it worked without serious friction. Such was the precision of biological knowledge that each person's mental calibre and special aptitudes were known beyond dispute, and rebellion against his lot in society would have been rebellion against his own heredity. This fact was universally known, and accepted without regret. A man had enough scope for emulation and triumph among his peers, without indulging [|] in vague attempts to transcend his own nature, by rising into a superior hierarchical order. This state of affairs would have been impossible had there not been universal faith in the religion of life and the truth of biological science. (Stapledon 1937: 179-180)
Realizing the programme laid out by Plato in The Republic.
It was such a society, almost unbelievable to the First Men, that now set about remaking human nature. Unfortunately there were conflicting views about the goal. The orthodox desired only to continue the work that had for long been on foot; though they proposed greater enterprise and co-ordination. They would perfect man's body, but upon its present plan; they would perfect his mind, but without seeking to introduce anything new in essence. His physique, percipience, memory, intelligence and emotional nature, should be improved almost beyond recognition; but they must, it was said, remain essentially what they always had been. (Stapledon 1937: 180)
One can already guess what the unorthodox party, in contrast, has in view.
A second party, however, finally persuaded orthodox opinion to amplify itself in one important respect. As had already been said, the Third Men were prone to phases of preoccupation with the ancient craving for personal immortality. This craving had often been strong among the First Men; and even the Second Men in spite of their great gift of detachment, had sometimes allowed their admiration for human personality to persuade them that souls must live for ever. (Stapledon 1937: 180)
Do you really want to live forever? Forever, and ever.
The short-lived and untheoretical Third Men, with their passion for living things of all kinds, and all the diversity of vital behaviour, conceived immortality in a variety of manners. In their final culture they imagined that at death all living things whom the Life God approved passed into another world, much like the familiar world, but happier. There they were said to live in the presence of the deity, serving him in untrammelled vital creativeness of sundry kinds. (Stapledon 1937: 180)
The "heaven" of the First Men.
Now it was believed that communication might occur between the two worlds, and that the higher types of terrestial life was that which communicated most effectively, and further that the time had now arrived for much fuller revelation of the life to come. It was therefore proposed to breed highly specialized communications whose office should be to guide this world by means of advice from the other. As among the First Men, this communication with the unseen world was believed to take place in the mediumistic trance. The new enterprise, then, was to breed extremely sensitive mediums, and to increase the mediumistic powers of the average individual. (Stapledon 1937: 181)
For some reason I really enjoy it whenever I meet the word "communicant" in a text. Anyway, I thought that the remnants of Martian subvital units were going to be the catalyst for telepathy, not cat-eared people many millions of years later wanting to make contact with God.
There was yet another party, whose aim was very different. Man, they said, is a very noble organism. We have dealt with other organisms so as to enhance in each its noblest attributes. It is time to do the same with man. What is most distinctive in man is intelligent manipulation, brain and hand. Now hand is really outclassed by modern mechanisms, but brain will never be outclassed. Therefore we must breed strictly for brain, for intelligent co-ordination of behaviour. All the organic functions which can be performed by machinery, must be relegated to machinery, so that the whole vitality of the organism may be devoted to brain-building and brain-working. We must produce an organism which shall be no mere bundle of relics left over from its primitive ancestors and precariously ruled by a glimmer of intelligence. We must produce a man who is nothing but man. When we have done this we can, if we like, ask him to find out the truth about immortality. And also, we can safely surrender to him the control of all human affairs. (Stapledon 1937: 181)
This was written long before artificial intelligence was conceived of, apparently. And finally there is an answer to what might be truly human while the First Men were merely "the more precociously human of human animals" (above). Finding out the truth about immortality from more brainy humans reminds me of the machine built to find the answer to the meaning of life in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
XI.1. Man Remakes Himself: The First of the Great Brains
But at length, several thousand years after the earliest experiments, something was produced which seemed to promise success. A human ovum had been carefully selected, fertilized in the laboratory, and largely reorganized by artificial means. By inhibiting the growth of the embryo's body, and the lower organs of the cerebral hemispheres, the dauntless experimenters succeeded at last in creating an organism which consisted of a brain twelve feet across, and a body most of which was reduced to a mere vestige upon the under-surface of the brain. The only parts of the body which were allowed to attain the natural size wer ethe arms and hands. These sinewy organs of manipulation were induced to key themselves at the shoulders into the solid masonry which formed the creature's house. Thus they were able to get a purchase for their work. The hands were the normal six-fingered hands of the Third Men, very greatly enlarged and improved. The fantastic organism was generated and matured in a building designed to house both it and the [|] complicated machinery which was necessary to keep it alive. A self-regulating pump, electrically driven, served it as a heart. A chemical factory poured the necessary materials into its blood and removed waste products, thus taking the place of digestive organs and the normal battery of glands. Its lungs consisted of a great room full of oxidizing tubes, through which a constant wind was driven by an electric fan. The same fan forced air through the artificial organs of speech. These organs were so constructed that the natural nerve-fibres, issuing from the speech centres of the brain, could stimulate appropriate electrical controls so as to produce sounds identical with those which they would have produced from a living throat and mouth. The sensory equipment of this trunkless brain was a blend of the natural and the artificial. The optic nervse were induced to grow out along two flexible probosces, five feet long, each of which bore a huge eye at the end. But by a very ingenious alteration of the structure of the eye, the natural lens could be moved aside at will, so that the retina could be applied to any of a great diversity of optical instruments. The ears also could be projected upon stalks, and were so arranged that the actual nerve endings could be brought into contact with artificial resonators of various kinds, or could listen directly to the microscopic rhythms of the most minute organisms. (Stapledon 1937: 182-183)
Jesus Christ. This is much more visceral than the Navigators in Dune.
By a technique which took centuries to develop, they induced the cells of the growing embryonic brain to spread outwards, not as normal hemispheres of convolutions, but into the pigeon-holes which had been prepared for them. Thus the artificial 'cranium' had to be a roomy turet of ferro-concrete some forty feet in diameter. A door and a passage led from the outer world into the centre of the turret, and thence other passages radiated between tiers of little cupboards. Innumerable tubes of glass, metal and a kind of vulcanite conveyed blood and chemicals over the whole system. Electric radiators preserved an even warmth in every cupboard, and throughout the innumerable carefully protected channels of the nerve fibres. Thermometers, dials, pressure gauges, indicators of all sorts, informed the attendants of every physical change in this strange half-natural, half-artificial system, this preposterous factory of mind. (Stapledon 1937: 184)
Wait, a normal sized human could walk into the super-brain? Makes me think of the Architect's room in Matrix.
Eight years after its inception the organism had filled its brain room, and attained the mentality of a new-born infant. His advance to maturity seemed to his foster-parents dishearteningly slow. Not till almost at the end of his fifth decade could he be said to have reached the mental standard of a bright adolescent. But there was no real reason for disappointment. Within another decade this pioneer of the Fourth Men had learned all that the Third Men could teach him, and had also seen that a great part of their wisdom was folly. In manial dexterity he could already vie with the best; but though manipulation afforded him intense delight, he used his hands almost wholly in service of his tireless curiosity. In fact, it was evident that curiosity was his main characteristic. He was a huge bump of curiosity equipped with most cunning hands. (Stapledon 1937: 184)
With a brain that sized it only figures.
Normal hunger and thirst he knew not, but only an experience of faintness when his blood was not properly supplied with nutriment. Sex was wholly absent from his mentality. Instinctive tenderness and instinctive group-feeling were not possible to him, for he was without the bowels of mercy. The heroic devotion of his most intimate servant called forth no gratitude, but only cold approval. (Stapledon 1937: 185)
"The Bowels of Mercy" sounds like the name of a metal band.
It may seem strange that one so completely devoid of human spmyathy could have the tact to govern a race of the emotional Third Men. But he had built up for himself a very accurate behaviouristic psychology; and like the skilful master of animals, he knew unerringly how much could be expected of his people, even though their emotions were almost wholly foreign to him. (Stapledon 1937: 185)
The book showing its age - this was the heyday of behaviorism.
Little by little the great brain probed the material universe and the universe of mentality. He mastered the principles of biological evolution, and constructed for his own delight a detailed history of life on earth. He learned, by marvellous archaeological technique, the story of all the earlier human peoples, and of the Martian episode, matters which had remained hidden from the Third Men. He discovered the principles of relativity and the quantum theory, the nature of the atom as a complex system of wave trains. He measured the cosmos; and with his delicate instruments he counted the planetary systems in many of the remote universes. He casually solved, to his own satisfaction at least, the ancient problems of good and evil, of mind and its object, of the one and the many, and of truth and error. He created many new departments of state for the purpose of recording his discoveries in an artificial language which he devised for the purpose. (Stapledon 1937: 186)
The Universe of the Mind. "Wave trains" probably a reference to string theory.
XI.2. Man Remakes Himself: The Tragedy of the Fourth Men
At the same time he caused far-reaching operations to be performed upon himself, so that he should be remade upon a more ample plan. Of the new capacities which he inculcated in himself and his progeny the most important was direct [|] sensitivity to radiation. This was achieved by incorporating in each brain-tissue a specially bred strain of Martian parasites. These henceforth were to live in the great barin as integral members of each one of its cells. Each brain was also equipped with a powerful wireless transmitting apparatus. Thus should the widely scattered sessile population maintained direct 'telepathic' contact with one another. (Stapledon 1937: 186-187)
This is definitely heading in a certain direction.
In the service of this world-wide population, those races of Third Men which had originally co-operated to produce the new human species, tilled the land, tended the cattle, manufactured the immense material requisites of the new civilization, and satisfied their spirits with an ever more stereotyped ritual of their vital art. This degradation of the whole race to a menial position had occurred slowly, imperceptibly. But the result was none the less irksome. (Stapledon 1937: 187)
This is one of the many instances when the human race succumbs to "stereotyped ritual" - in the end I shall have to examine them specifically (from a broadly "phatic" point of view).
The normal mind, when it experiences intellectual frustration, can seek recreation in companionship, or physical exercise, or art. But for the Fourth Men there was no such escape. These activities were impossible and meaningless to them. The Great Brains were whole-heartedly interested in the objective world, but solely as a vast stimulus to intellection, never for its own sake. The admired only the intellective process itself and the interpretative formulae and principles which it devised. They cared no more for men and women than for material in a test-tube, no more for one another than for mechanical calculators. Nay, of each one of them it might almost be said that he cared ever for himself solely as an instrument of knowing. Many of the species had actually sacrificed their sanity, even in some cases their lives, to the obsessive lust of intellection. (Stapledon 1937: 188)
The purest of pure reason. Another keyword to look up both here and in Stapledon's other writings: "the whole diversity of existence is interpreted under a single formula" (above).
The climax occurred in connexion with a great revival of research, which, it was said, would break down the impalpable barriers and set knowledge in progress again. The Great Brains were to be multiplied a thousand fold, and the resources of the whole planet were to be devoted far more strictly than before to the crusade of intellection. The menial Third Men would therefore have to put up with more work and less pleasure. Formerly they would willingly have accepted this fate for the glory of serving the super-human brains. But the days of their blind devotion were past. It was murmured among them that the great experiment of their forefathers had proved a great disaster, and that the Fourth Men, the Great Brains, in spite of their devilish cunning, were mere abortions. (Stapledon 1937: 188)
There were at this point already 10,000 super-brains. This step would have multiplied them to 10,000,000. With every one a factory unto its own, it would surely drain the resources of the whole planet.
In this undertaking they had been favoured by the results which a section of the natural species itself had produced long ago in the effort to breed specialized communicants to keep in touch with the unseen world. That sect, or theocratic nation, which had striven for many centuries toward this goal, had finally [|] attained what they regarded as success. There came into existence an hereditary caste of communicants. Now, though these beings were subject to mediumistic trances in which they apparently conversed with denizens of the other world and received instructions about the ordering of matters terrestial, they were in fact merely abnormally suggestible. (Stapledon 1937: 189-190)
They succeeded in producing the Kwisatz Haderach?
It was by means of this mediumistic stock that the Great BRains had intended to consolidate their position. Their earlier efforts may be passed over. But in the end they produced a race of living and even intelligent machines whose will they could control absolutely, even at a great distance. For the new variety of Third Men was 'telepathically' united with its masters. Martian units had been incorporated in its nervous system. (Stapledon 1937: 190)
If I'm reading this correctly then the super-brains did not create artificial intelligence but took control of the suggestible mediumistic communicants.
At the last moment the Great Brains were able to put into the field an army of these perfect slaves, which they equipped with the most efficient lethal weapons. The remnant of original servants discovered too late that they had been helping to produce their supplanters. They joined the rebels, only to share in the general destruction. In a few months all the Third Men, save the new docile variety, were destroyed; except for a few specimens which were preserved in cages for experimental purposes. And in a few years every type of animal that was not known to [|] be directly or indirectly necessary to human life had been exterminated. None were preserved even as specimens, for the Great Brains had already studied them through and through. (Stapledon 1937: 190-191)
Jesus Christ, what a world-tragedy, a universal holocaust.
In fact, they came to see that certain activities and certain objects were appreciated by these beings with the same clear-sighted conviction as they themselves appreciate knowledge. For instance, the natural human beings valued one another, and were sometimes capable of sacrificing themselves for the sake of others. They also valued love itself. And again they valued very seriously their artistic activities; and the activities of their bodies and of animal bodies appeared to them to have intrinsic excellence. (Stapledon 1937: 192)
A somewhat common refrain throughout this book - empathy, sympathy, fellow-feeling, etc. This, too, should be analyzed from a broadly "phatic" viewpoint.
It was obviously impossible to remake themselves so radically that they should become of a more normal type. Should they concentrate their efforts uponthe production of new individuals more harmonious than themselves? Such a work, it might be supposed, would have seemed unattractive to them. But no. They argued thus. 'It is our nature to care most for knowing. Full knowledge is to be attained only by minds both more penetrating and more broadly based than ours. Let us, therefore, waste no more time in seeking to achieve the goal in ourselves. Let us seek rather to produce a kind of being, free from our limitations, in whom we may attain the goal of perfect knowledge vicariously. The producing of such a being will exercise all our powers, and will afford the highest kind of fulfilment possible to us. To refrain from this work woud be irrational.' (Stapledon 1937: 192)
The Third Men artificially create the Fourth Men, and these in turn artificially create the Fifth Men?
XI.3. Man Remakes Himself: The Fifth Men
Special attention was given to the system of self-repair in all tissues, especially in those which had hithero been the earliest to wear out. And at the same time the mechanism regulating growth and general senesence was so designed that the new man should reach maturity at the age of two hundred years, and should remain in full vigour, for at least three thousand years, when, with the first serious symptom of decay, his heart should suddenly cease functioning. There had been some dispute whether the new being should be endowed with perennial life, like his makers. But in the end it had been decided that, since he was intended tonly as a transitional type, it would be safer to allow him only a finite, though a prolonged lifetime. (Stapledon 1937: 193)
As with the Second Men, whose "teeth [...] were almost completely immune from caries" (above).
More important was the incorporation of Martian units in the new model of germ cell. As the organism developed, these should propagate themselves and congregate in the cells of the brain, so that every brain area might be sensitive to ethereal vibrations, and the whole might emit a strong system of radiation. But care was taken so that this 'telepathic' faculty of the new species should remain subordinate. There must be no danger that the individual should become a mere resonator of the herd. (Stapledon 1937: 194)
Trying to avoid the homogeneity of mentality in the Martians in the Fifth Men.
It was necessary also to revise in great detail the whole system of natural reflexes, abolishing some, modifying others, and again strengthening others. All the more complex, 'instinctive' responses, which had persisted in man since the days of Pithecantthropus Erectus, had also to be meticulously revised, both in respect of the form of the activity and the objects upon which they should be instinctively directed. Anger, fear, curiosity, humour, tenderness, egoism, sexual passion, and sociality must all be possible, but never uncontrollable. (Stapledon 1937: 194)
A neat little rundown of what Stapledon considered to be natural reflexes or instinctive responses, i.e. emotions.
Thus, while the design included self-regard, it also involved a disposition to prize the self chiefly as a social and intellectual being, rather than as a primeval savage. (Stapledon 1937: 194)
A neat little triad: (1) a privemal savage, (2) a social being, and (3) an intellectual being.
And while it included strong sociality, the group upon which instinctive interest was to be primarily directed was to be nothing less than the organized community of all minds. (Stapledon 1937: 194)
Beyond cosmopolitanism.
It may fittingly be said of the Fifth Men that they were the first to attain true human proportions of body and mind. (Stapledon 1937: 195)
Sadly Stapledon only describes the proportions of the body in detail.
XI.4. Man Remakes Himself: The Culture of the Fifth Men
For I have at last reached that period in the history of man when he first began to reorganize his whole mentality to cope with matters whose very existence had been hithero almost completely hidden from him. The old aims persist, and are progressively realized as never before; but also they become increasingly subordinate to the requirements of new aims which are more and more insistently forced upon him by his deepening experience. Just as the interests and ideals of the First Men lie beyond the grasp of their ape contemporaries, so the interests and ideals of the Fifth Men in their full development lie beyond the grasp of the First Men. (Stapledon 1937: 197)
We First Men are already unable to understand the Fifth Men on their own terms.
Conceive a world-society developed materially far beyond the wildest dreams of America. Unlimited power, derived partly from the artificial disintegration of atoms, partly from the actual annihilation of matter through the union of electrons and protons to form radiation, completely abolished the whole grotesque burden of drudgery which hithero had seemed the inescapable price of civilization, nay of life itself. The vast economic routine of the world-community was carried on by the mere touching of appropriate buttons. Transport, mining, manufacture, and even agriculture, were performed in this manner. And indeed in most cases the systematic co-ordination of these activities was itself the work of self-regulating machinery. Thus, not only was there no longer need for any human beings to spend their lives in unskilled monotonous labour, but further, much that earlier races would have regarded as highly skilled though stereotyped work, was now carried on by machinery. (Stapledon 1937: 197)
Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism at last!
Materially every individual was a multi-millionaire, in that he had at his beck and call a great diversity of powerful mechanisms; but also he was a penniless friar, for he had no vestige of economic control over any other human being. (Stapledon 1937: 198)
The ideal.
The culture of the Fifth Men was influenced in many respects by their 'telepathic' communication with one another. The obvious advantages of this capacity were now secured without its dangers. Each individual could isolate himself at will from the radiation of his fellows, either wholyl or in respect of particular elements of his mental process; and thus he was in no danger of losing his individuality. But, on the other hand, he was immeasurably more able to participate in the experience of others that were beings for whom the only possible communication was symbolic. The result was that, though conflict of wills was still possible, it was far more easily resolved by mutual understanding than had ever been the case in earlier species. Thus there were no lasting and no radical conflicts, either of thought or desire. It was universally recognized that every discrepancy of opinion and of aim could be abolished by telepathic discussion. Sometimes the process would be easy and rapid; sometimes it could not be achieved without a patient and detailed 'laying of mind to mind', so as to bring to light the point where the difference originated. (Stapledon 1937: 199)
Finally a telepathic speces. Hopefully some one of Stapledon's other works goes into more detail.
One result of the general 'telepathic' facility of the species was that speech was no longer necessary. It was still preserved and prized, but only as a medium of art, not as a means of communication. Thinking, of course, was still carried on largely by means of words; but in communication there was no more need actually to speak the words than in thinking in private. Written language remained essential for the recording and storing of thougth. Both language and the written expression of it had become far more complex and accurate than they had ever been, more faithful instruments for the expression and creation of thought and emotion. (Stapledon 1937: 200)
Fascinating.
'Telepathy' combined with longevity and the extremely subtle brain-structure of the species to afford each individual an immense number of intimate friendships, and some slight acquaintance actually with the whole race. This, I fear, must seem incredible to my readers, unless they can be persuaded to regard it as a symptom of the high mental development of the species. However that may be, it is a fact that each person was aware of every other, at least as a face, or a name, or a holder of a certain office. It is impossible to exaggerate the effects of this facility of personal intercourse. It means that the species constituted at any moment, if not strictly a community of friends, at least a vast club or college. Further, since each individual saw his own mind reflected, as it were, in very many other minds, and since there was great variety of psychological types, the upshot in each individual was a very accurate self-consciousness. (Stapledon 1937: 200)
The ultimate phaticism: everyone in some contact with everyone else.
It was by 'telepathic' intercourse in respect of art, science, philosophy, and the appreciation of personalities, that the public mind, or rather the public culture, of the Fifth Men had being. With the Martians, 'telepathic' union took place chiefly by elimination of the differences between individuals; with the Fifth Men 'telepathic' communication was, as it were, a kind of spiritual multiplication of mental diversity, by which each [|] mind was enriched with the wealth of ten thousand million. Consequently each individual was, in a very real sense, the cultured mind of the species; but there were as many such minds as there were individuals. There was no additional racial mind over and above the minds of the individuals. Each individual himself was a conscious centre which participated in, and contributed to, the experience of all other centres. (Stapledon 1937: 200-201)
A hearty meal for the cultural semiotician to chew on.
XII.1. The Last Terrestials: The Cult of Evanescence
In their brief primitive phase, the Fifth Men, like so many other races, sought to console themselves by unreasoning faith in a life after death. They conceived, for instance, that at death terrestial beings embarked upon a career continuous with earthly life, but far more ample, either in some remote planetary system, or in some wholly distinct orb of space-time. But though such theories were never disproved in the primitive era, they gradually began to seem not merely improbable but ignoble. (Stapledon 1937: 204)
The Islands of the Blessed.
And so it became a constant aim of the Fifth Men to school themselves to admire chiefly even in the very crisis of bereavement, not persons, but that great music of innumerable personal lives, which is the life of the race. And quite early in their career they discovered an unexpected beauty in the very fact that the individual must die. So that, when they had actually come into possession of the means to make themselves immortal, [|] they refrained, choosing rather merely to increase the life-span of succeeding generations to fifty thousand years. Such a period seemed to be demanded for the full exercise of human capacity; but immortality, they held, would lead to spiritual disaster. (Stapledon 1937: 204-205)
We've rediscovered the long, lost art of dying.
They had schooled themselves to live not for the individual but for the race; and now the life of the race itself was seen to be a mere instant between the endless void of the past and the endless void of the future. [...] But in time the Fifth Men, like the Second Men long before them, came to suspect that even in this tragic brevity of mind's course there was a quality of beauty, more difficult than the familiar beauty, but also more exquisite. (Stapledon 1937: 205)
The common refrain - the beauty of traged.
The reconstruction of the past, not merely as abstract history but with the intimacy of the novel, thus became one of the main preoccupations of the Fifth Men. Many devoted themselves to this work, each individual specializing very minutely in some particular episode of human or animal history, and transmitting his work into the culture of the race. Thus increasingly the individual felt himself to be a single flicker between the teeming gulf of the never-more and the boundless void of the not-yet. (Stapledon 1937: 206)
Can I also, pretty please, have 50,000 years to study the 1920s, for example?
In this latter mood it was held that the very irrevocability of the past dignified all past existents, and dignified the cosmos, as a work of tragic art is dignified by the irrevocability of disaster. It was this mood of acquiescence and faith which in the end became the characteristic attitude of the Fifth Men for many millions of years. (Stapledon 1937: 207)
The poetics of irrevocable loss.
The effect of this increasing suspicion about the past was that a once harmonious race was divided for a while into two parties, those who insisted that the formal beauty of the universe demanded the tragic evanescence of all things, and those who determined to show that living minds could actually reach back into past events in all their pastness. (Stapledon 1937: 207)
Approaching the "framing device" of this book.
Their opponents, on the other hand, insisted that the matter must be decided dispassionately, according to the evidence. They were also able to point out that this devotion to evanescence was after all but the outcome of the conviction that the cosmos must be supremely noble. No one, it was said, really had direct vision of evanescence as in itself an excellence. (Stapledon 1937: 207)
Was it, after all, the product of a benevolent creator or a malicious demiurge?
XII.2. The Last Terrestials: Exploration of Time
A child had been selected from among those produced by an age-long breeding enterprise, directed towards the mastery of time. From infancy this child's brain had been very carefully controlled physiologically. Psychologically also he had been subjected to a severe treatment, that he might be properly schooled for his strange task. In the presence of several scientists and historians he was put into a kind of trance, and brought out of it again, half an hour later. He was then asked to give an account 'telepathically' of his experiences during the trance. Unfortunately he was now so shattered that his evidence was almost unintelligible. After some months of rest he was questioned again, and was able to describe a curious episode which turned out to be a terrifying incident in the girlhood of his dead mother. He seemed to have seen the incident through her eyes, and to have been aware of all her thoughts. (Stapledon 1937: 208)
See "genetic memory" and "racial consciousness" in Frank Herbert's Dune.
After a time the process was made much earlier, in fact, too easy. The unfortunate medium might slip so easily into the trance that his days were eaten up by the past. He might suddenly fall to the ground, and lie rapt, inert, dependent on artificial feeding, for weeks, months, even for years. Or a dozen times in the same day he might be flung into a dozen different epochs of history. Or, still more distressing, his experience of past events might not keep pace with the actual rhythm of those events themselves. Thus he might behold the events of a month, or even a lifetime, fantastically accelerated so as to occupy a trance of no more than a day's duration. Or, worse, he might find himself sliding backwards down the vista of the hours and experiencing events [|] in an order the reverse of the natural order. Even the magnificent brains of the Fifth Men could not stand this. The result was maniacal behaviour, followed by death. (Stapledon 1937: 209-210)
Don't mess with time!
The explorer retained throughout his adventure his own personality and system of memory. While experiencing the past individual's perceptions, memories, thoughts, desires, and in fact the whole process and content of the past mind, the explorer continued to be himself, and to react in terms of his own character, now condemning, now sympathizing, now critically enjoying the spectacle. (Stapledon 1937: 210)
(1) perceptions, (2) desires, and (3) thoughts. The "memory" is extraneous.
Hithero the Fifth Men had been like stay-at-home folk who had read minutely of foreign parts, but had never travelled; now they had become travellers experienced in all the continents of human time. The presence that had hithero been ghostly were now presences of flesh and blood seen in broad daylight. And so the moving instant called the present appeared no longer as the only, and infinitesimal, real, but as the growing surface of an everlasting tree of existence;. It was now the past that seemed most real, while the future still [|] seemed void, and the present merely the impalpable becomingness of the indestructible past. (Stapledon 1937: 211-212)
Stapledon was also living at a time when time-consciousness was all the rage, e.g. Henry Bergson's Time and Free Will and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time.
XII.3. The Last Terrestials: Voyaging in Space
For it was evident that, if the present acceleration of approach were to be maintained, the moon would enter the critical zone and disintegrate in less than ten million years; and, further, that the fragments would not maintain themselves as a ring, but would soon crash upon the earth. Heat generated by their impact would make the surface of the earth impossible as the home of life. A short-lived and short-sighted species might well have considered ten million years as equivalent to eternity. Not so the Fifth Men. Thinking primarily in terms of the race, they recognized at once that their whole social policy must now be dominated by this future catastrophe. (Stapledon 1937: 213)
As seen in the recent historical documentary, Moonfall (2022).
The task of rendering the 'ether ship' properly manageable and decently habitable proved difficult, but not insurmountable. The first vessel to make the either was a cigar-shaped hull some three thousand feet long, and built of metals whose artificial atoms were incomparably more rigid than anything hithero known. Batteries of 'rocket' apparatus at various points on the hull enabled the ship not only to travel forward, but to reverse, turn in any direction, or side-step. Windows of an artificial transparent element, scarcely less strong than the metal of the hull, enabled the voyagers to look aroud them. Within there was ample accommodation for a hundred persons and their provisions for three years. (Stapledon 1937: 214)
A cigar-shaped UFO, you say? Never heard of anything of the like.
Man looked upon his future home with loathing, and on his birthplace with an affection which became passionate. With its blue sky, its incomparable starry nights, its temperature and varied continents, its ample spaces of agriculture, wilderness and park, its well-known beasts and plants, and all the material fabric of the most enduring of terrestial civilizations, it seemed to the men and women who were planning flight almost a living thing imploring them not to desert it. (Stapledon 1937: 217)
Earh is paradise.
XII.4. The Last Terrestials: Preparing a New World
The commander reported that, when the sounding line was drawn up, a large spherical object was seen to be attached to it. Closer inspection showed that this object was fastened to the sounding apparatus by a hook, and was indeed unmistakably artificial, a structure of small metal plates riveted together. While preparations were being made to bring the object within the ship, it happened to bump against the hull, and then it exploded.
Evidently there must be intelligent life somewhere in the ocean of Venus. Evidently the marine Venerians resented the steady depletion of their aqueous world, and were determined to stop it. The terrestials had assumed that water in which no free oxygen was dissolved could not support life. But observation soon revealed that in this world-wide ocean there were many living species, some sessile, others free-swimming, some microscopic, others as large as whales. The basis of life in these creatures lay not in photosynthesis and chemical combination, but in the controlled disintegration of radio-active atoms. Venus was particularly rich in these atoms, and still contained certain elements which had long ago ceased to exist on the earth. The ocean fauna subsisted in the destruction of minute quantities of radio-active atoms throughout its tissues. (Stapledon 1937: 218)
First the Martians. And now there's life on Venus.
The Fifth Men were thus faced with a grave moral problem. What right had man to interfere in a world already possessed by beings who were obviously intelligent, even though their mental life was incomprehensible to man? Long ago man himself had suffered at the hands of Martian invaders, who doubtless regarded themselves as more noble than the human race. And now man was committing a similar crime. On the other hand, either the migration to Venus must go forward, or humanity must be destroyed; for it seemed quite certain by now that the moon would fall, and at no very distant date. And though man's understanding of the Venerians was so incomplete, what he did know of them strongly suggested that they were definitely inferior to himself in mental range. This judgment might, of course, be mistaken; the Venerians might after all be so superior to man that man could not get an inkling of their superiority. But this argument would apply equally to jelly-fish and micro-organisms. Judgment had to be passed according to the evidence available. So far as man could judge at all in the matter, he was definitely the higher type. (Stapledon 1937: 220)
The bitter irony was no doubt not lost on the Fifth Men.
Man dared not stop the process of electrolysis until the atmosphere had become as rich in oxygen as his native air. Long before this state was reached, it was already clear that the Venerians were beginning to feel the effects of the poison, and that in a few thousand years, at most, they would be exterminated. It was therefore determined to put them out of their misery as quickly as possible. Men could by now walk abroad on the islands of Venus, and indeed the first settlements were already being founded. They were thus able to build a fleet of powerful submarine vessels to scour the ocean and destroy the whole native fauna. (Stapledon 1937: 221)
Imagine some extraterrestials viewing mankind on Earth this way. Oh, they're going to destroy themselves by burning fossil fuels? Let them. In a few thousand years, it'll be habitable for us.
XIII.1. Humanity on Venus: Taking Root Again
Man's sojourn on Venus lasted somewhat longer than his whole career on the Earth. From the days of Pithecanthropus to the final evacuation of his native planet he passed, as we have seen, through a bewildering diversity of form and circumstance. On Venus, though the human type was somewhat more constant biologically, it was scarcely less variegated in culture. (Stapledon 1937: 223)
Of course.
Population decreased still further. Each brief generation was slightly less well developed than its parents. Intelligence declined. [|] Education became superficial and restricted. Contact with the past was no longer possible. Art lost its significance, and philosophy its dominion over the minds of men. Even applied science began to be too difficult. Unskilled control of the subatomic sources of power led to a number of disasters, which finally gave rise to a superstition that all 'tampering with nature' was wicked, and all the ancient wisdom a snare of Man's Enemy. Books, instruments, all the treasures of human culture, were therefore burnt. Only the perducable buildings resisted destruction. Of the incomparable world-order of the Fifth Men nothing was left but a few island tribes cut off from one another by the ocean, and from the rest of space-time by the depths of their own ignorance. (Stapledon 1937: 224-225)
The downfall of the Fifth Men - on Venus.
Under the influence of its marine environment, one branch of the species assumed such an aquatic habit that in time it actualyl began to develop biological adaptations for marine life. It is perhaps surprising that man was still capable of spontaneous variation; but the fifth human species was artificial, and had always been prone to epidemics of mutation. After some millions of years of variation and selection there appeared a very successful species of seal-like submen. The whole body was moulded to stream-lines. The lung capacity was greatly developed. The spine had elongated, and increased in flexibility. The legs were shrunken, grown together, and flattened into a horizontal rudder. The arms also were diminutive and fin-like, though they still retained the manipulative forefingers and thumb. (Stapledon 1937: 225)
This was also noteworthy enough to be mentioned on Wikipedia.
For another branch of the degenerated fifth species had retained a more terrestial habit and the ancient human form. Sadly reduced in stature and in brain, these abject beings were so unlike the original invaders that they are rightly considered a new species, and may therefore be called the Sixth Men. Age after age they gained a precarious livelihood by grubbing together roots upon the forest-clad islands, trapping the innumerable birds, and catching fish in the tidal inlets with ground bait. Not infrequently they devoured, or were devoured by, their seal-like relatives. So restricted and constant was the environment of these human remnants, that they remained biologically and culturally stagnant for some millions of years. (Stapledon 1937: 226)
What a sad follow-up to the magnificent Fifth Men.
During the next two hundred million years all the main phases of man's life on earth were many times repeated on Venus with characteristic differences. Theocratic empires; free and intellectualistic island cities; insecure overlordships of feudal archipelagos; rivalries of high priest and emperor; religious feuds over the interpretation of sacred scriptures; recurrent fluctuations of thought from naïve animism, through polytheism, conflicting monotheisms, and all the desperate 'isms' by which mind seeks to blur the severe outline of truth; recurrent fashions of comfort-seeking fantasy and cold intelligence; social disorders through the misuse of volcanic or wind power in industry; business empires and pseudo-communistic empires - all these forms flitted over the changing substance of mankind again and again, as in an enduring hearth fire there appear and vanish the infinitely diverse forms of flame and smoke. (Stapledon 1937: 226)
A next-to-nothing summary of 200 000 000 years. The line about isms is where Stapledon the philosopher comes to the fore again.
XIII.2. Humanity on Venus: The Flying Men
The Seventh Men were pigmies, scarcely heavier than the largest of terrestial flying birds. Through and through they were organized for flight. A leathery membrane spread from [|] the foot to the tip of the immensely elongated and strengthened 'middle' finger. The three 'outer' fingers, equally elongated, served as ribs to the membrane; while the index and thumb remained free for manipulation. The body assumed the streamlines of a bird, and was covered with a deep quilt of feathery wool. This, and the silken down of the flight-membranes, varied greatly from individual to individual in colouring and texture. (Stapledon 1937: 227-228)
What even is this.
Needs which could not be satisfied without terrestial labour tended to be outgrown. Manufactured articles became increasingly rare. Books were no longer written or read. In the main, indeed, they were no longer necessary; but to some extent their place was taken by verbal tradition and discussion, in the upper air. Of the arts, music, spoken lyrics and epic verse, nad the supreme art of winged dance, were constantly practised. The rest vanished. Many of the sciences inevitably faded into tradition; yet the true scientific spirit was preserved in a very exact meteorology, a sufficient biology, and a human psychology surpassed only by the second and fifth species at their height. None of these sciences, however, was taken very seriously, save in its practical applications. (Stapledon 1937: 231)
Curious how a winged human species addicted to flight would develop such a high level of psychology.
The Seventh Men were completely without interest in the universal and the unseen. The beauty which they sought to create was ephemeral and very largely sensuous. And they were well content that it should be so. Personal immortality, said a dying sage, would be as tedious as an endless song. Equally so with the race. The lovely flame, of which we all are members, must die, he said, must die; for without death she would fall short of beauty. (Stapledon 1937: 232)
Tragic.
Many, circling over land or sea, would now and again stoop like hawks upon the wild-fowl which formed the chief meat of the species. Others, forty or fifty thousand feet above the waves, where even the plentiful atmosphere of Venus was scarcely capable of supporting them, would be soaring, circling, sweeping, for pure joy of flight. Others, in the calm and sunshine of high altitudes, would be hanging effortless upon some steady up-current of air for meditation and the rapture of mere percipience. Not a few love-intoxicated pairs would be entwining their courses in aerial patterns, ins pires, cascades, and true-love knots of flight, presently to embrace and drop ten thousand feet in bodily union. Some would be driving hither and thither through the green mists of vegetable particles, gathering the manna in their open mouths. Companies, circling together, would be discussing matters social or aesthetic; others would be singing together, or listening to recitative epic verse. Thousands, gathering in the sky like migratory birds, would perform massed convolutions, reminiscent of the vast mechanical aerial choreography of the First World State, but more vital and expressive, as a bird's flight is more vital than the flight of any machine. (Stapledon 1937: 232)
Even Birdman sex is weird.
The islands were becoming crowded with machinery and flightless industrialists. In the air itself the winged folk found themselves outstripped by the base but effective instruments of mechanical flight. Wings became a laughing stock, and the life of natural flight was condemned as a barren luxury. It was ordained that in future every flier must serve the pedestrian world-order, or starve. And as the cultivation of wind-borne plants had been abandoned, and fishing and fowling rights were strictly controlled, this law was no empty form. At first it was impossible for the fliers to work on the ground for long hours, day after day, without incurring serious ill-health and an early death. But the pedestrian physiologists invented a drug which preserved the poor wage-slaves in something like physical health, and actually prolonged their life. No drug, however, could restore their spirit, for their normal aerial [|] habit was reduced to a few tired hours of recreation once a week. Meanwhile, breeding experiments were undertaken to produce a wholly wingless large-brained type. And finally a law was enacted by which all winged infants must be either mutilated or destroyed. At this point the fliers made an heroic but ineffectual bid for power. They attacked the pedestrian population from the air. In reply the enemy rode them down in his great aeroplanes and blew them to pieces with high explosive. (Stapledon 1937: 234-235)
Oh, good, capitalism returned and destroyed (a species of) humanity again.
XIII.3. Humanity on Venus: A Minor Astronomical Event
The flightless yet still half avian race that now possessed the planet settled down to construct a society based on industry and science. After many vicissitudes of fortune and of aim, they produced a new human species, the Eighth Men. These long-headed and substantial folk were designed to be strictly pedestrian, physically and mentally. Apt for manipulation, calculation and invention, they very soon turned Venus nito an engineer's paradise. With power drawn from the planet's central heat, their huge electric ships bored steadily through the perennial monsoons and hurricanes, which also their aircraft treated with contempt. Islands were joined by tunners and by millipede bridges. Every inch of land served some industrial or agricultural end. (Stapledon 1937: 236)
Long-headed Aliens? Never heard of such a thing.
This desperate operation was already on foot when a new astronomical discovery rendered it futile. Astronomers detected, some distance from the solar system, a volume of non-luminous gas. Calculation showed that this object and the sun were approaching one another at a tangent, and that they would collide. Further calculation revealed the probable results of this event. The sun would flare up and expand prodigiously. Life would be quite impossible on any of the planets save, just possibly, Uranus, and more probably Neptune. The three planets beyond Neptune would escape roasting, but were unsuitable for other reasons. The two outermost would remain glacial, and, moreover, lay beyond the range of the imperfect etherships of the Eighth Men. (Stapledon 1937: 237)
Another hurdle throws humankind from Venus to Neptune. Note that on the next page the "non-luminous gas" is called "the dark stranger" and "the huge foreigner" - it looks like these circumlocutions all signify a black hole.
Some, realizing that the Eighth Men themselves could never live on Neptune, advocated an orgy of pleasure-living till the end. But at length the race excelled itself in an almost unanimous resolve to devote its remaining centuries to the production of a human being capable of carrying the torch of mentality into a new world. (Stapledon 1937: 237)
Another trope that's been used in Rick and Morty (S05E03, "A Rickconvenient Mort"), where a series of planets and civilizations are having an apocalypse orgy in a row.
XIV.1. Neptune: Bird's-Eye View
We have watched the time for migration was approaching, a specially designed vegetation was shipped to Neptune and established in the warm area to fit it for man's use. Animals, [|] it was decided, would be unnecessary. Subsequently a specially designed human species, the Ninth Men, was transported to man's new home. The giant Eighth Men could not themselves inhabit Neptune. The trouble was not merely that they could scarcely support their own weight, let alone walk, but that the atmospheric pressure on Neptune was unendurable. For the great planet bore a gaseous envelope thousands of miles deep. The solid globe was scarcely more than the yolk of a huge egg. The mass of the air itself combined with the mass of the solid to produce a gravitational pressure greater than that upon the Venerian ocean floor. The Eighth Men, therefore, dared not emerge from their ether-ships to tread the surface of the planet save for brief spells in steel diving suits. (Stapledon 1937: 240)
The Fifth were intelligent, empathetic, telepathic, and space-faring. What's not to admire.
XIV.2. Neptune: Da Capo
Inevitably it was the fortunes of eight successive human species for a thousand million years, the first half of that flirkec whcih is the duration of man. Ten more species now succeed one another, or are contemporary, on the plains of Neptune. We, the Last Men, are the Eighteenth Men. Of the eight pre-Neptunian species, some, as we have seen, remained always primitive; many achieved at least a confused and fleeting civilization, and one, the brilliant Fifth, was already wakening into true humanity when misfortune crushed it. The ten Neptunian species show an even greater diversity. They range from the instinctive animal to modes of consciousness never before attained. (Stapledon 1937: 240-241)
The Ninth Men were handicapped for their intended environment.
Little by little, civilization crumbled into savagery, the torturing vision of better things was lost, man's consciousness was narrowed and coarsened into brute-consciousness. By good luck the brute precariously survived. (Stapledon 1937: 241)
Once again man becomes something less than fully human.
Two hundred million years after the solar collision innumerable species of sub-human grazers with long sheep-like muzzles, ample molars, and almost ruminant digestive systems, were competing with one another on the polar continent. Upon these preyed the sub-human carnivora, of whom some were built for speed in the chase, others for stalking and a sudden spring. But since jumping was no easy matter on Neptune, the cat-like types were all minute. They preyed upon man's more rabbit-like and rat-like descendants, or on the carrion of the larger mammals, or on the lusty worms and beetles. (Stapledon 1937: 242)
Man degenerates into various species of mammalia...
Nowhere did the typical human form survive. There were only beasts, fitted by structure and instinct to some niche or other of their infinitely diverse and roomy world. (Stapledon 1937: 242)
Brutal.
As of old, manipulation gave rise to clearer percipience. And this, in conjunction with the necessity of frequent experiments in diet, hunting, and defence, produced at length a real versatility of behaviour and suppleness of mind. The rabbit throve, adopted an almost upright gait, continued to increase in stature and in brain. Yet, just as the new hand was not merely a resurrection of the old hand, so the new regions of the brain were no mere revival of the atrophied human cerebrum, but a new organ, which overlaid and swallowed up that ancient relic. The creature's mind, therefore, was in many [|] respects a new mind, though moulded to the same great basic needs. Like his fore-runners, of course, he craved food, love, glory, companionship. In pursuit of these ends he devised weapons and traps, and built wicker villages. He held pow-wows. He became the Tenth Men. (Stapledon 1937: 243-244)
(1) percipience, (2) behaviour, and (3) mind. The human-rabbits become the Tenth Men, with a fourth addition to the "triune" brain.
XIV.3. Neptune: Slow Conquest
At last the Tenth Men were attacked by a micro-organism and demolished. From their ruins several primitive human species developed, and remained isolated in remote territories for millions of decades, until at length chance or enterprise brought them into contact. One of these early species, crouched and tusked, was persistently trapped for its ivory by an ables type, till it was exterminated. Another, long og muzzle and large of base, habitually squatted on its haunches like the kangaroo. Shortly after this industrious and social species had discovered the use of the wheel, a more primitive but more war-like type crashed into it like a tidal wave and overwhelmed it. Eerect, but literally almost as broad as they were tall, these chunkish and bloody-minded savages spread over the whole arctic and sub-arctic region and spent some millions of years in monotonous reiteration of progress and decline; until at last a slow decay of their germ-plasm almost ended man's career. (Stapledon 1937: 244)
Blink and you'll miss them, but these are the Elevent Men, Twelfth Men, and the Thirteenth Men, respectively.
But after an aeon of darkness, there appeared another thick-set, but larger barined, species. This, for the first time on Neptune, conceived the religion of love, and all those spiritual cravings and agonies which had flickered in man so often and so vainly upon Earth and Venus. There appeared again feudal empires, militant nations, economic class wars, and, not once but often, a world-state covering the whole northern hemisphere. These men it was that first crossed the equator in artificially cooled electric ships, and explored the huge south. (Stapledon 1937: 244)
I'm starting to realize that "religion of love" has a very specific meaning in Stapledon's usage.
At length, however, this second phase of Neptunian history, this era of fluctuation, was brought to an end. At the close of the six hundred million years after the first settlement of the planet, unaided nature produced, in the Fiftheenth human species, that higher form of natural man which she had produced only once before, in the Second species. And this time no Martians interfered. We must not stay to watch the struggle of this great-headed man to overcome his one serious handicap, excessive weight of cranium and unwieldy proportions of body. Suffice it that after a long-drawn-out immaturity, including one great mechanized war between the northern and southern hemispheres, the Fifteenth Men outgrew the ailments and fantasies of youth, and consolidated themselves as a single world-community. This civilization was based economically on volcanic power, and spiritually on devotion to the fulfilment of human capacity. It was this species which, for the first time on Neptune, conceived, as an enduring racial purpose, the will to remake human nature upon an ampler scale. (Stapledon 1937: 245)
The Fifteenth, like the Second Men, developed large brains naturally. I'm presuming that the last few species will be artificially produced, like the Fourth and Fifth.
The Fifteenth Men first set themselves to abolish five great evils, namely, disease, suffocating toil, senility, misunderstanding ill-will. The story of their devotion, their many disastrous experiments and ultimate triumph, cannot here be told. nor can I recount how they learned and used the secret of deriving power from the annihilation of matter, nor how they invented ether ships for the exploration of neighbouring planets, nor how, after ages of experiments, they designed and produced a new species, the Sixteenth, to supersede themselves. (Stapledon 1937: 246)
It feels like these "five great evils" are the key to Stapledon's whole narrative here - all of these have shown up several times.
The new type was analogous to the ancient Fifth, which had colonized Venus. Artificial rigid atoms had been introduced into its bone tissues, so that it might support great stature and an ample brain; in which, moreover, an exceptionally fine-grained cellular structure permitted a new complexity of organization. 'Telepathy', also, was once more achieved, not by means of the Martian units, which had long ago become extinct, but by the synthesis of new molecular groups of a similar type. Partly through the immense increase of mutual understanding, which resulted from 'telepathic' rapport, partly through improved co-ordination of the nervous system, the ancient evil of selfishness was entirely and finally abolished from the normal human beings. Egoistic impulses, whenever they refused to be subordinated, were henceforth classed as symptoms of insanity. The sensory powers of the new species were, of course, greatl improved; and it was even given a pair of eyes in the back of the head. Henceforth man was to have circular instead of a semi-circular field of vision. And such was the general intelligence of the new race that many problems formerly deemed insoluble were now solved in a single flash of insight. (Stapledon 1937: 246)
Humankind once again becomes gigantic and telepathic - fully human!
Of the great practical uses to which the Sixteenth Men put their powers, one only need be mentioned as an example. They gained control of the movement of their planet. Early in their career they were bale, with the unlimited energy at their disposal, to direct it into a wider orbit, so that its average climate became more temperate, and snow occasionally covered the polar regions. But as the ages advanced, and the sun became steadily [|] less ferocious, it became necessary to reverse this process and shift the planet gradually nearer to the sun. (Stapledon 1937: 246-247)
Just cruisin' in the Solar System with our little planet.
Though in philosophy they had delved further than had ever been possible, yet even at their deepest they found only the shifting sands of mystery. In particular they were haunted by three ancient problems, two of which were purely intellectual, namely the mystery of time and the mystery fo mind's relation to the world. Their third problem was the need somehow to reconcile their confirmed loyalty to life, which they conceived as embattled against death, with their ever-strengthening impulse to rise above the battle and admire it dispassionately. (Stapledon 1937: 247)
Reminiscent of the end of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Of the hundred million years which passed before the Sixteenth Men produced the new human type, I must not pause to tell. They thought they had achieved their hearts' desire; but in fact the glorious beings which they had produced were tortured by subtle imperfections beyond their makers' comprehension. Consequently, no sooner had these Seventeenth Men peopled the world and attained full cultural stature, than they also bent all their strength to the production of a new type, essentially like their own, but perfected. Thus after a brief career of a few hundred thousand years, crowded with splendour and agony, the Seventeenth gave place to the Eighteenth, nad, as it turns out, the Last, human species. Since all the earlier cultures find their fulfilment in the world of the Last Men, I pass over them to enlarge somewhat upon our modern age. (Stapledon 1937: 248)
This is all we glean of the enigmatic Seventeenth Men.
XV.1. The Last Men: Introduction to the Last Human Species
As a species, though we are all human, we are extremely variable in body and mind, so variable that superficially we seem to be not one species but many. Some characters, of course, are common to all of us. The traveller might perhaps be surprised by the large yet sensitive hands which are universal, both in men and women. In all of us the outermost finger bears at its tip three minute organs of manipulation, rather similar to those which were first devised for the Fifth Men. These excrescences would doubtless revolt our visitor. The pair of occipital eyes, too, would shock him; so would the upward-looking astronomical eye on the crown, which is peculiar to the Last Men. This organ was so cunningly designed that, when fully extended, about a hand-breadth from its bony case, it reveals that heavens in as much detail as your smaller astronomical telescopes. Apart from such special features as these, there is nothing definitely novel about us; though every limb, every contour, shows unmistakably that much has happened since the days of the First Men. (Stapledon 1937: 250)
Ah, finally, the Nibblerian fifth eye.
We are both more human and more animal. The primitive explorer might be more readily impressed by our animality than our humanity, so much of our humanity would lie beyond his grasp. He would perhaps at first regard us as a degraded type. He would call us faun-like, and in particular cases, ape-like, bear-like, ox-like, marsupial, or elephantine. Yet our general proportions are definitely human in the ancient manner. Where gravity is not insurmountable, the erect biped form is bound to be most serviceable to intelligent land animals; and so, after long wanderings, man has returned to his old shape. Moreover, if our observer were himself at all sensitive to facial expression, he would come to recognize in every one of our innumerable physiognomic types an indescribable but distinctively human look, the visible sign of that inward and spiritual grace which is not wholly absent from his own species. He would perhaps say, 'These men tha tare beasts are surely gods also'. He would be reminded of those old Egyptian deities with animal heads. But in us the animal and the human interpenetrate in every feature, in every curve of the body, and with infinite variety. (Stapledon 1937: 250)
And also finally the "ancient aliens" turn out to be future humans.
The traveller would recognize among us unmistakable sexual features, both of general proportions and special organs. But it would take him long to discover that some of the most striknig bodily and facial differences were due to differentiation of the two ancient sexes into many sub-sexes. Full sexual experience involves for us a complicated relationship between individuals of all these types. Of the extremely important sexual groups I shall speak again. (Stapledon 1937: 251)
Sexual intercourse now a group effort. As weird as ever, Stapledon.
If our visitor happened to be near enough to one of these great pylons, he would see it surrounded by as warm of midges, which would turn out to be human fliers, wingless, but with outspread arms. The stranger might wonder how a large organism could rise from the ground in Neptune's powerful field of gravity. Yet flight is our ordinary means of locomotion. A man has but to put on a suit of overalls fitted at various points with radiation-generatiors. Ordinary flight thus becomes a kind of aerial swimming. Only when very high speed is desired do we make use of closed-in air-boats and liners. (Stapledon 1937: 252)
Stapledon's obsession with flight finally achieves perfection in its third iteration.
Meat also, though not a part of ordinary diet, is eaten on very [|] rare and sacred occasions. The cherished wild fauna of the planet contributes its toll to periodic symbolical banquets. And whenever a human being has chosen to die, his body is ceremoniously eaten by his friends. (Stapledon 1937: 252-253)
The oft-mentioned cannibalism of the Last Men.
The ether ship is in a manner symbolic of our whole community, so highly organized is it, and so minute in relation to the void which engulfs it. The ethereal navigators, because they spend so much of their time in the empty regions, beyond the range of 'telepathic' communication and sometimes even of mechanical radio, form mentally a unique class among us. They are a hardy, simple, and modest folk. And though they embody man's proud mastery of the ether, they are never tired of reminding land-lubbers, with dour jocularity, that the most daring voyages are confined within one drop of the boundless ocean of space. (Stapledon 1937: 253)
You could just about imagine Frank Herbert furiously making notes.
XV.2. The Last Men: Childhood and Maturity
He would doubtless be surprised to see no books. In every room, however, there is a cupboard filled with minute rolls of tape, microscopically figured. Each of these rolls contains matter which could not be cramped into a score of your volumes. They are used in connexion with a pocket-instrument, the size and shape of the ancient cigarette case. When the roll is inserted, it reels itself off at any desired speed, and interferes systematically with ethereal vibrations produced by the instrument. Thus is [|] generated a very complex flow of 'telepathic' language which permeates the brain of the reader. So delicate and direct is this medium of expression that there is scarcely any possibility of misunderstanding the author's intention. (Stapledon 1937: 254-255)
Something like smartphones but not quite.
XV.2. The Last Men: A Racial Awakening
The designers of our species set out to produce a being that might be capable of an order of mentality higher than their own. The only possibility of deing so lay in planning a great increase of brain organization. But they knew that the brain of an individual human being could not safely be allowed to exceed a certain weight. They therefore sought to produce the new order of mentality in a system of distinct and specialized brains held in 'telepathic' unity by means of ethereal radiation. Material brains were to be capable of becoming on some occasions mere nodes in a system of radiation which itself should then constitute the physical basis of a single mind. Hithero there had been 'telepathic' communication between many individuals, but no super-individual, or group-mind. It was known that such a unity of individual minds had never been attained before, save on Mars; and it was known how lamentably the racial mind of Mars had failed to transcend the minds of the Martians. By a combination of shrewdness and good luck the designers hit upon a policy which escaped the Martian failure. They planned as the basis of the super-individual a small multi-sexual group. (Stapledon 1937: 258)
Makes me think of Riva and his "Chorus" of three interpreters in the Star Trek: TNG episode "Loud as a Whisper".
Individuals are not necessarily confined to the same group for ever. Little by little a group may change every one of its ninety-six members, and yet it will remain the same super-individual mind, though enriched with the memories grafted into it by the new-comers. (Stapledon 1937: 259)
˙ǝɔᴉN
Unlike the physical sex-relationship, the mental unity of the group involves all the members of the group every time it occurs, and so long as it persists. During times of group experience the individual continues to perform his ordinary routine of work and recreation, save when some particular activity is demanded of him by the group-mind itself. But all that he does as a private individual is carried out in a profound absent-mindedness. In familiar situations he reacts correctly, even to the extent of executing familiar types of intellectual work of entertaining acquaintances with intelligent conversation. Yet all the while [|] he is in fact 'far away', rapt in the process of the group-mind. Nothing short of an urgent and unfamiliar crisis can recall him; and in recalling him it usually puts an end to the group's experience. (Stapledon 1937: 259-260)
This "absent-mindedness" seems to be another thing that pops up throughout human history - appears to be a common trope in Stapledon's writings. Could be something to analyze in relation with the psychology of "automatism" (habitual, unthinking action performed while the mind wanders).
This would not be possible did not the temperament and capacity of each sub-sex differ appropriately from those of the others. I can only hint at these differences by analogy. Among the First Men there are many temperamental types whose essential natures the psychologists of that species never fully analysed. I may mention, however, as superficial designations of these types, the meditative, the active, the mystical, the intellectual, the artistic, the theoretical, the concrete, the placid, and high-strung. Now our sub-sexes differ from one another temperamentally in some such manners as these, but with a far greater range and diversity. These differences of temperament are utilized for the enrichment of a group self, such as could never have been attained by the First Men, even if they had been capable of 'telepathic' communication and electromagnetic unity; for they had not the range of specialized brain form. (Stapledon 1937: 261)
How do the intellectual and the theoretical differ?
The system of radiation which embraces the whole planet, and includes the million million brains of the race, becomes the physical basis of a racial self. The nidividual discovers himself to be embodied in all the bodies of the race. He savours in a single intuition all bodily contacts, including the mutual embraces of all lovers. Through the myriad feet of all men and women he enfolds his world in a single grasp. He [|] sees with all eyes, and comprehends in a single vision all visual fields. Thus he perceives at once and as a continuous, variegated sphere, the whole surface of the planet. But not only so. He now stands above the group-minds as they above the individuals. He regards them as a man may regard his own vital tissues, with mingled contempt, sympathy, reverence, and dispassion. (Stapledon 1937: 262-263)
An active semiosphere.
I must not tell of our prized social organization which assigns a unique function to each citizen, controls the procreation of new citizens of every type in relation to social need, and yet provides an endless supply of originality. We have no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered without the aid of cumbersome machinery. Yet, though our society is in this sense an anarchy, it lives by means of a very intricate system of customs, some of which are so ancient as to have become spontaneous taboos, rather than deliberate conventions. It is the business of those among us who correspond to your lawyers and politicians to study these customs and suggest improvements. Those suggestions are submitted to no representative body, but to the whole world-population in 'telepathic' conference. Ours is thus in a sense the most democratic of all societies. (Stapledon 1937: 266)
Here's that unanalyzable anarchist streak in Stapledon's vision of the pinnacle of humanity.
XV.4. The Last Men: Cosmology
We find ourselves living in a vast and boundless, yet finite, order of spatio-temporal events. And each of us, as the racial mind, has learned that there are other such orders, other and incommensurable spheres of events, related to our own neither spatially nor temporally but in another mode of eternal being. Of the contents of those alien spheres we know almost nothing but that they are incomprehensible to us, even in our racial mentality. (Stapledon 1937: 267)
Semiospheres.
You may wonder how we have come to detect these remote lives and intelligences. I can say only that the occurrence of mentality produces certain minute astronomical effects, to which our instruments are sensitive even at great distances. These effects increase slightly with the mere mass of living matter on any astronomical body, but far more with its mental and spiritual development. Long ago it was the spiritual development of the world-community of the Fifth Men that dragged the moon from its orbit. And in our own case, so numerous is our society to-day, and so greatly developed in mental and spiritual activities, that only by continuous expense of physical energy can we preserve the solar system from confusion. (Stapledon 1937: 269)
The Fifth Men's survey of the past drew the Moon upon them. Mind has "gravity".
I said that we regard the cosmos as very beautiful. Yet it is also very terrible. For ourselves, it is easy to look forward with equanimity to our end, and even to the end of our admired community; for what we prize most is the excellent beauty of the cosmos. But there are the myriads of spirits who have never entered into that vision. They have suffered, and they were not permitted that consolation. There are, first, the incalculable hosts of lowly creatures scattered over all the ages in all the minded worlds. Theirs was only a dream life, and their misery not often poignant; but none the less they are to be pitied for having missed the more poignant experience in which alone spirit can find fulfilment. (Stapledon 1937: 271)
The lowly suffering creatures.
Our predecessors of the Sixteenth species, oppressed by this vast horror, undertook a forlorn and seemingly irrational crusade for the rescue of the tragic past. We see how clearly that their enterprise, though desperate, was not quite fantastic. For, if ever the cosmic ideal should be realized, even though for a moment only, then in that time the awakened Soul of All will embrace within itself all spirits whatever throughout the whole of time's wide circuit. And so to each one of them, even to the least, it will seem that he has awakened and discovered himself to be the Soul of All, knowing all things and rejoicing in all things. And though afterwards, through the inevitable decay of the stars, this most glorious vision must be lost, suddenly or in the long-drawn-out defeat of life, yet would the awakened Soul of All have eternal being, and in it each martyred spirit would have beatitude eternally, though unknown to itself in its own temporal mode. (Stapledon 1937: 272)
The oneness of spirit. According to this, all beings with mind - whether they believe in the self-sacrifice of some prophet or other - will be mentally "resurrected" (awakened) in the end.
Actual music is a pattern of intertwining themes which evolve and die; and these again are woven of simpler members, which again are spun of chords and unitary tones. But the music of thes pheres is of a complexity almost infinitely more subtle, and its themes rank above and below one another in hierarchy beyond hierarchy. None but a God, none but a mind subtle as the music itself, could hear the whole in all its detail, and grasp in one act its close-knit individuality, if such it has. (Stapledon 1937: 274)
Stapledon the Pythagorean. It now makes sense why an Icelandic composer should be the one who creates a film adaptation.
XVI.1. The Last of Man: Sentence of Death
We have had to prepare for the task of preserving humanity during a most difficult period which was calculated to begin about one hundred million years hence, but might, in certain circumstances, be sprung upon us at very short notice. Long ago the human inhabitants of Venus believed that already in their day the sun was about to enter the 'white dwarf' phase, and that the time would therefore soon come when their world would be frost-bound. This calculation was unduly pessimistic; but we know now that even allowing for the slight delay caused by the great collision, [|] the solar collapse must begin at some date astronomically not very distant. We had planned that during the comparatively brief period of the actual shrinkage, we would move our planet steadily nearer to the sun, until finally it should settle in the narrowest possible orbit. (Stapledon 1937: 274-275)
The end is nigh.
Not long ago an unexpected alteration was observed to be taking place in a near star. Through no discoverable cause, it began to change from white to violet, and increase in brightness. Already it has attained such extravagant brilliance that, though its actual disc remains a mere point in our sky, its dazzling purple radiance illuminates our nocturnal landscapes with hideous beauty. Our astronomers have ascertained that this is no ordinary 'nova', that it is not one of those stars addicted to paroxysms of brilliance. It is something unprecedented, a normal star suffering from a unique disease, a fantastic acceleration of its vital process, a riotous squandering of the energy which should have remained locked within its substance for aeons. At the present rate it will be reduced either to an inert cinder or to actual annihilation in a few thousand years. (Stapledon 1937: 276)
The purple dot of doom.
The sun's remoteness might cause a delay of some thousands of years before the cumulative effects of the bombardment could start the disintegration; but sooner or later the sun itself must be infected. Probably within thirty thousand years life will be impossible anywhere within a vast radius of the sun, so vast a radius that it is quite impossible to propel our planet away fast enough to escape before the storm can catch us. (Stapledon 1937: 276)
Neptune is not fast enough to escape the Sun.
XVI.2. The Last of Man: Behaviour of the Condemned
Presently, however, we learned to contemplate the whole great saga of man as a complete work of art, and to admire it no less for its sudden and tragic end than for the promise in it which was not to be fulfilled. Grief was now transfigured wholly into ecstasy. Defeat, which had oppressed us with a sense of man's impotence and littleness among the stars, brought us into a new sympathy and reverence for all those myriads of beings in the past out of whose obscure strivings we had been born. We saw the most brilliant of our own race and the lowliest of our prehuman forerunners as essentially spirits of equal excellence, though cast in diverse circumstances. When we looked round on the heavens, and at the violet splendour which was to destroy us, we were filled with awe and pity, awe for the inconceivable potentiality of this bright host, pity for its self-thwarting effort to fulfil itself as the universal spirit. (Stapledon 1937: 277)
Humanity as a work of art - the overarching theme of this whole book.
In respect of the future, we are now setting about the forlorn task of disseminating among the stars the seeds of a new humanity. For this purpose we shall make use of the pressure of radiation from the sun, and chiefly the extravagantly potent radiation that will later be available. We are hoping to devise extremely minute eletro-magnetic 'wave-systems', akin to normal protons and electrons, which will be individually capable of sailing forward upon the hurricane of solar radiation at a speed not wholly incomparable with the speed of light itself. This is a difficult task. But, further, these units must be so cunningly inter-related that, in favourable conditions, they may tend to combine to form spheres of life, and to develop, not indeed into human beings, but into lowly organisms with a definite evolutionary bias toward the essentials of human nature. These objects we shall project from beyond our atmosphere in immense quantities at certain points of our planet's orbit, so that solar radiation may carry them toward the msot promising regions of the galaxy. The chance that any of them will survive to reach their destination is small, and still smaller the chance that any of them will find a suitable environment. (Stapledon 1937: 278)
Wilful panspermia.
We have long been able to enter into past minds and participate in their experience. Hithero we have been passive spectators merely, but recently we have acquired to power of influencing past minds. This seems an impossibility; for a past event is [|] what it is, and how can it conceivably be altered at a subsequent date, even in the minutest prespect? (Stapledon 1937: 278-279)
This was hinted at in the introduction.
Now it is true that past events are what they are, irrevocably; but in certain cases some feature of a past event may depend on an event in the far future. The past event would never have been as it actually was (and is, eternally), if there had not been going to be a certain future event, which, though not contemporaneous with the past event, influences it directly in the sphere of eternal being. The passage of events is real, and time is the successiveness of passing events; but though events have passage, they have also eternal being. ANd in certain rare cases mental events far separated in time determine one another directly by way of eternity. (Stapledon 1937: 279)
A metaphysical MacGuffin.
Our historians and psychologists, engaged on direct inspection of past minds, had often complained of certain 'singular' points in past minds, where the ordinary laws of psychology fail to give a full explanation of the course of mental events; where, in fact, some wholly unknown influence seemed to be at work. Later it was found that, in some cases at least, this disturbance of the ordinary principles of psychology corresponded with certain thoughts or desires in the mind of the observer, living in our own age. Of course, only such matters as could have significance to the past mind could influence it at all. Thoughts and desires of ours which have no meaning to the particular past individual fail to enter into his experience. New ideas and new values are only to be introduced by arranging familiar matter so that it may gain a new significance. Nevertheless we now found ourselves in possession of an amazing power of communicating with the past, and contributing to its thought and action, though of course we could not alter it. (Stapledon 1937: 279)
I really need to reread Culture and Explosion.
However that may be, there are a few ramarkable minds, scattered up and down past ages and even in the most primitive human races, which suggest an influence other than our own. They are so 'singular' in one respect or another, that we cannot give a perfectly clear psychological account of them in terms of the past only; and yet we ourselves are not the instigators of their singularity. Your Jesus, your Socrates, your Gautama, show traces of this uniqueness. But the most original of all were too eccentric to have any influence on their contemporaries. It is possible that in ourselves also there are 'singularities' which cannot be accounted for wholly in terms of ordinary biological and psychological laws. (Stapledon 1937: 280)
Reminiscent of La Barre's treatment of the psychotic vs the culture-bringer.
XVI.3. The Last of Man: Epilogue
Even the normal power of 'telepathic' communication has become so unreliable that we have been compelled to fall back upon the archaic practice of vocal symbolism. (Stapledon 1937: 284)
In the very end man talks again.
The perfectly dispassionate will had been for many millions of years universal among us, and the corner stone of our whole society and culture. We had almost forgotten that it has a physiological basis, and that if that basis were undermined, we might no longer be capable of rational conduct. But, drenched for some thousands of years by the unique stellar radiation, we have gradually lost not only the ecstasy of dispassionate worship, but even the capacity for normal disinterested behaviour. Every one is now liable to an irrational bias in favour of himself as a private person, as against his fellows. Personal envy, uncharitableness, even murder and gratuitous cruelty, formerly unknown amongst us, are now becoming common. At first when men began to notice in themselves these archaic impulses, they crushed them with amused contempt. But as the highest nerve centres fell further into decay, the brute in us began to be ever more unruly, and the human more uncertain. (Stapledon 1937: 284)
...and once again becomes selfish (insane).
Great are the stars, and man is of no account to them. But man is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived and a star kills. He is greater than those bright blind companies. For though in them there is incalculable potentiality, in him there is achievement, small, but actual. Too soon, seemingly, he comes to his end. But when he is done he will not be nothing, not as though he had never been; for he is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. (Stapledon 1937: 287)
A metaphysical consolation.
Man was winged hopefully. He had in him to go further than this short flight, now ending. He proposed even that he should become the Flower of All Things, and that he should learn to be the All-Knowing, the All-Admiring. Instead, he is to be destroyed. He is only a fledgling caught in a bush-fire. He is very small, very simple, very little capable of insight. His knowledge of the great orb of things is but a fledgling's knowledge. His admiration is a nestling's admiration for the things kindly to his own small nature. He delights only in food and the food-announcing call. The music of the spheres passes over him, through him, and is not heard. (Stapledon 1937: 287)
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man. (Stapledon 1937: 288)
The end.
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