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Men Like Gods Book 3 Chapter 3 - The Service of the Earthling · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section fifteen of Men Like Guards. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: by David Brent. Men Like Gods by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: book the third chapter the third the service of the
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  Speaker 1: Earthling One. The man to whom mister Barnsable, after due inquiries,
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  Speaker 1: went to talk, was named sun Gold. He was probably
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  Speaker 1: very old, because there were lines of age around his
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  Speaker 1: eyes and over his fine brow. He was a ruddy man,
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  Speaker 1: bearded with an auburn beard, and had streaks of white.
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  Speaker 1: His eyes were brown and nimble under his thick eyebrows.
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  Speaker 1: His hair had thin but little and flowed back like
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  Speaker 1: a man, but its copper red color had gone. He
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  Speaker 1: sat at a table with papers spread before him, making
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  Speaker 1: manuscript notes. He smiled at mister Barnstable, for he had
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  Speaker 1: been expecting him, and indicated a seat for him with
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  Speaker 1: his stout and freckled hand. Then he waited, smilingly for
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  Speaker 1: mister Barnstable to begin. This world is one triumph of
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  Speaker 1: desire for order and beauty in men's minds, said mister Barnstable.
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  Speaker 1: But it will not tolerate one useless soul in it.
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  Speaker 1: Everyone is happily active, every one but myself. I belong nowhere.
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  Speaker 1: I have nothing to do, and no one is related
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  Speaker 1: to me. Sung Gould moved his head slightly to show
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  Speaker 1: that he understood. It is hard for an earthling with
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  Speaker 1: an earthly want of training to fall into any place here,
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  Speaker 1: into any usual work or any usual relationship. One is
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  Speaker 1: a stranger. But it is still harder to have no
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  Speaker 1: place at all in the new work of which I
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  Speaker 1: am told. You know most of anybody, and are indeed
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  Speaker 1: the center and regulator. It has occurred to me that
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  Speaker 1: I might be of some use, and that I might
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  Speaker 1: indeed be as good as a utopian. If so, I
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  Speaker 1: want to be of use, you may want someone just
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  Speaker 1: to risk death, to take the danger of going into
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  Speaker 1: some strange place, someone who desires to serve utopia, and
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  Speaker 1: who need not have skill or knowledge or be a
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  Speaker 1: beautiful or able person. Mister Barnstable stopped short. Sunold conveyed
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  Speaker 1: the completest understanding of all that was in mister Barnstable's mind.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Barnstabll sat interrogative while for a time Sungold thought,
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  Speaker 1: then words and phrases began to string themselves together in
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  Speaker 1: mister Barnstable's mind. Sungold wondered if mister Barnstable understood either
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  Speaker 1: the extent or the limitations of the great discoveries that
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  Speaker 1: were now being made in Utopia. Utopia, he said, was
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  Speaker 1: passing into a phase of intense intellectual exaltation. New powers
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  Speaker 1: and possibilities intoxicated the imagination of the race, and it
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  Speaker 1: was indeed inconceivable that an unteachable and perplexed Earthling could
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  Speaker 1: be anything but distressed and uncomfortable amidst the vast, strange
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  Speaker 1: activities that must now begin. Even many of their own people,
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  Speaker 1: the more backward Utopians, were disturbed. For centuries, Utopian philosophers
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  Speaker 1: and experimentalists had been criticizing, revising, and reconstructing their former
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  Speaker 1: instinctive and traditional ideas of space and time, of form
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  Speaker 1: and substance. And now very rapidly the new ways of
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  Speaker 1: thinking were becoming clear and simple and bearing fruit in
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  Speaker 1: surprising practical applications. The limitations of space, which had seemed
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  Speaker 1: forever insurmountable, were breaking down. They were breaking down in
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  Speaker 1: a strange and perplexing way, but they were breaking down.
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  Speaker 1: It was not theoretically possible. It was rapidly becoming practically
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  Speaker 1: possible to pass from the planet Utopia, to which the
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  Speaker 1: race had hitherto been confined to other points in its
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  Speaker 1: universe of origin, that is to say, to remote planets
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  Speaker 1: and distant stars. That was the gist of the present situation.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot imagine that, said mister Barnstable. You cannot imagine it,
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  Speaker 1: sun Gold agreed, quite cordially. But it is so. A
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  Speaker 1: hundred years ago it was inconceivable here do you get
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  Speaker 1: there by some sort of back stairs in another dimension,
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  Speaker 1: said mister Barnstable. Sun Gold considered this guess. It was
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  Speaker 1: a grotesque image, he said, But from the point of
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  Speaker 1: view of an Earthling, it would serve that conveyed something
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  Speaker 1: of its quantity. But it was much more wonderful. A
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  Speaker 1: new and astounding phase has begun for life here we
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  Speaker 1: learned long ago the chief secrets for happiness upon this planet.
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  Speaker 1: Life is good in this world. You find it good
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  Speaker 1: for thousands of years. Yet it will be our fastness
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  Speaker 1: and our home. But the wind of new adventure blows
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  Speaker 1: through our life. All this world is in a mood
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  Speaker 1: like striking camp in the winter quarters. When spring approaches.
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  Speaker 1: He leans over his papers towards mister Barnstable and held
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  Speaker 1: up a finger and spoke audible words, as if to
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  Speaker 1: make his meaning plainer. It seemed to mister Manstable that
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  Speaker 1: each word translated itself into English as he spoke it.
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  Speaker 1: At any rate, mister Mansable understood the collision of our
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  Speaker 1: planet Utopia with your planet Earth was a very curious accident,
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  Speaker 1: but an unimportant accident in the story. I want you
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  Speaker 1: to understand that your universe and ours are two out
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  Speaker 1: of a great number of gravitation time universes which are
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  Speaker 1: translated together through the inexhaustible infinitude of God. They are
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  Speaker 1: similar throughout, but they are identical in nothing. Your planet
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  Speaker 1: and ours happen to be side by side, so to speak,
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  Speaker 1: but they are not traveling at exactly the same place,
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  Speaker 1: nor in a strictly parallel direction. They will drift apart
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  Speaker 1: again and follow their several destinies. When Arden and green
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  Speaker 1: Lake made their experiment, the chances of their hitting anything
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  Speaker 1: in your universe were infinitely remote. They had disregarded it.
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  Speaker 1: They were merely rotating some of our matter out of
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  Speaker 1: and then back into our universe. You fell into us
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  Speaker 1: as amazingly for us as for you. The importance of
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  Speaker 1: our discoveries for us lies in our own universe and
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  Speaker 1: not in yours. We do not want to come into
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  Speaker 1: your universe, nor have more of your world come into ours.
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  Speaker 1: You are too like us, and you are too dark
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  Speaker 1: and troubled and diseased. You are too contagious, and we
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  Speaker 1: we cannot help you yet because we are not going
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  Speaker 1: gods but men. Mister Manstable nodded, What could utopians do
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  Speaker 1: with the men of earth. We have no strong instinct
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  Speaker 1: in us to teach or dominate other adults that was
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  Speaker 1: bred out of us by long centuries of equality and
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  Speaker 1: free co operation. And you would be too numerous for
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  Speaker 1: us to teach, and much of your population would be
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  Speaker 1: grown up and set in bad habits. Your stupidities would
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  Speaker 1: get in our way. Your quarrels and jealousies and traditions,
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  Speaker 1: your flags and religions, and all your embodied spites and
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  Speaker 1: suppressions would hamper us in everything we should want to do.
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  Speaker 1: We should be impatient with you, unjust and overbearing. You
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  Speaker 1: are too like us for us to be patient with
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  Speaker 1: your failures. It would be hard to remember constantly how
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  Speaker 1: ill bred you were in Utopia. We found out long
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  Speaker 1: ago that no race of human beings was sufficiently great, subtle,
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  Speaker 1: and powerful to think and act for any other race.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps already you are finding out the same thing on Earth,
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  Speaker 1: as your races come into closer contact, and much more
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  Speaker 1: would this be true between Utopia and Earth. From what
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  Speaker 1: I know of your people and their ignorance and obstinacies,
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  Speaker 1: it is clear our people would despise you, and contempt
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  Speaker 1: is the cause of all injustice. We might end up
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  Speaker 1: exterminating you. But why should we make that possible. We
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  Speaker 1: must leave you alone. We cannot trust ourselves with you.
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  Speaker 1: Believe me, this is the only reasonable cause for us,
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  Speaker 1: mister Barnstable assented silently. You and I, two individuals, can
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  Speaker 1: be friends and understand what you say is true, said
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  Speaker 1: mister Barnstable. It is true, but it grees me it
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  Speaker 1: is true greatly. Nevertheless, I gather I at least may
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  Speaker 1: be of some service in Utopia. You can, how by
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  Speaker 1: returning to your own world. Mister Barnstable thought, for some
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  Speaker 1: moments it was what he had feared, but he had
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  Speaker 1: offered himself. I will do that by attempting to return.
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  Speaker 1: I should say there is risk you may be killed.
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  Speaker 1: I must take that. We want to verify all the
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  Speaker 1: data we have of the relations of our universe to yours.
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  Speaker 1: We want to reverse the experiment of Arden and Green
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  Speaker 1: Lake and see if we can return a living being
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  Speaker 1: to your world. We are almost certain now that we
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  Speaker 1: can do so, and that human being must care for
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  Speaker 1: us enough and care for his own world enough to
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  Speaker 1: go back and give us a sign that he has
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  Speaker 1: got there. Mister Barnstable spoke huskily. I can do that,
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  Speaker 1: he said. We can put you into that machine of yours,
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  Speaker 1: and into the clothes you wore. We can make you
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  Speaker 1: again exactly as you left your world, exactly I understand.
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  Speaker 1: And because your world is so vile and contentious, and
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  Speaker 1: yet has some strangely able brains in it here and there,
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  Speaker 1: we do not want your people to know of us
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  Speaker 1: living so close to you, for we shall be close
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  Speaker 1: to you yet for some hundreds of years at least.
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  Speaker 1: We do not want them to know, for fear that
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  Speaker 1: they should come here presently, led by some poor silly
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  Speaker 1: genius of a scientific man, come in their greedy, foolish
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  Speaker 1: breeding swarms, hammering at our doors, threatening our lives and
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  Speaker 1: spoiling our high adventures, and so have to be beaten
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  Speaker 1: off and killed like an invasion of rats or parasites. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: said mister Barnstable. Before men can come to Utopia, they
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  Speaker 1: must learn the way. Here Utopia, I see, is only
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  Speaker 1: a home for those who have learnt the way. He
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  Speaker 1: paused and answered some of his own thoughts. When I
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  Speaker 1: have returned, he said, shall I begin to forget Utopia?
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  Speaker 1: Sunguld smiled and said nothing. All my days the nostalgia
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  Speaker 1: of Utopia will distress me, and uphold you. I shall
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  Speaker 1: take up my earthly life at the point where I
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  Speaker 1: laid it down. But on earth I shall be a Utopian,
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  Speaker 1: for I feel that, having offered my service and had
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  Speaker 1: it accepted, that I am no longer an outcast in Utopia.
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  Speaker 1: I belong. Remember, you may be killed, you may die
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  Speaker 1: in the trial, as it may happen. Well, brother, the
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  Speaker 1: friendly Poor took mister Barnstable's and pressed it, and the
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  Speaker 1: deep eyes smiled. After you have returned and given us
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  Speaker 1: your sign, several of the other earthlings may also be
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  Speaker 1: sent back. Mister Barnstable sat up, but he gasped. His
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  Speaker 1: voice rose high in amazement. I thought they were hurled
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  Speaker 1: into the blank space of some outer universe, and altogether destroyed.
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  Speaker 1: Several were killed. They killed themselves by rushing down the
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  Speaker 1: side of the old fortress in the outer darkness as
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  Speaker 1: the crag rotated. The men in leather, the man you
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  Speaker 1: call long barrow, barrow longer yes, and the man who
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  Speaker 1: shrugged his shoulders and said, what would you. The others
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  Speaker 1: came back as the rotation was completed late in the day,
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  Speaker 1: asphyxiated and frozen, but not dead. They have been restored
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  Speaker 1: to life, and we are puzzled now how to dispose
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  Speaker 1: of them. They are of no use whatever in this world.
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  Speaker 1: They encumber us. It is only too manifest, said mister Manstable.
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  Speaker 1: The man you call Burley seems to be of some
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  Speaker 1: importance in your earthly affairs. We have searched his mind.
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  Speaker 1: His powers of belief are very small. He believes in
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  Speaker 1: very little but the life of a cultivated, wealthy gentleman
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  Speaker 1: who holds a position of modest distinction in the councils
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  Speaker 1: of the largely fictitious empire. It is doubtful if he
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  Speaker 1: will believe in the reality of any of this experience.
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  Speaker 1: We will make sure, anyhow, that he thinks it has
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  Speaker 1: been an imaginative dream. He will consider it too fantastic
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  Speaker 1: to talk about, because it is plain he is already
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  Speaker 1: very afraid of his imagination. He will find himself back
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  Speaker 1: in your world a few days after you reach it,
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  Speaker 1: and he will make his way to his own home
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  Speaker 1: and obstrusively. He will come next after you. You will
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  Speaker 1: see him reappear in political affairs. Perhaps a little wiser,
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  Speaker 1: it might be well, said mister Barnstable. And what are
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  Speaker 1: the sounds of his name? Rupert Catskill? He too will return.
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  Speaker 1: Your world would miss him. Nothing will make him wiser,
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  Speaker 1: said mister Barnstable, with conviction. Lady Stella will come. I
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  Speaker 1: am glad she has escaped. She will say nothing about utopia.
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  Speaker 1: She is very discreet. The priest is mad. His behavior
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  Speaker 1: has become offensive and obscene, and he is under restraint.
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  Speaker 1: What did he do? He made a number of aprons
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  Speaker 1: of black silk and set out with him to attack
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  Speaker 1: our young people in an undignified manner. You can send
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  Speaker 1: him back, said mister Barnstable, after reflection. But will your
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  Speaker 1: world allow that sort of thing? We call that sort
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  Speaker 1: of thing of purity, said mister Barnstable. But of course,
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  Speaker 1: if you like to keep him, ye shall come back,
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  Speaker 1: said sun Gold. The others you can keep, said mister Barnstable.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, you will have to keep them. Nobody on
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  Speaker 1: earth will trouble about them very much. In our world
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  Speaker 1: there are so many people that always a few are
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  Speaker 1: getting lost, as it is. Returning even the few you
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  Speaker 1: propose to do may excite attention. Local people may begin
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  Speaker 1: to notice all these wonderers coming from nowhere in particular,
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  Speaker 1: and asking their way home upon the Maidenhead road. They
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  Speaker 1: might give way under questions. You cannot send any more.
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  Speaker 1: Put the rest on an island, or something of that sort.
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  Speaker 1: I wish I could advise you to keep the priest also,
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  Speaker 1: but many people would miss him. They would suffer from
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  Speaker 1: suppressed purity and begin to behave queerly. The pulpit of
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  Speaker 1: Saint Barnabas satisfies a recognized craving. It will be quite
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  Speaker 1: easy to persuade him that utopia is a dream and delusion.
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  Speaker 1: All priests believe that naturally, of all utopias, he will
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  Speaker 1: think of it, if he thinks of it at all,
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  Speaker 1: as what would he call it? A moral nightmare? Part two.
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  Speaker 1: Their business was finished, but mister Barnstable was loath to go,
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  Speaker 1: he looked sun gold in the eye and found something
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  Speaker 1: kindly there. You have told me all that I have
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  Speaker 1: to do, he said, And it is fully time that
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  Speaker 1: I went away from you, for any moment in your
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  Speaker 1: life is more precious than a day in mind. Yet,
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  Speaker 1: because I am to go so soon and so obediently
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  Speaker 1: out of this vast and splendid world of yours, back
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  Speaker 1: to my native disorders, I could find it in my
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  Speaker 1: heart to ask you to unbend, if you could, to
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  Speaker 1: come down to me a little, and tell me simply
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  Speaker 1: and plainly of the greater days and greater achievements that
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  Speaker 1: are now dawning upon this planet. You speak of your
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  Speaker 1: being able presently to go out of this utopia to
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  Speaker 1: remote parts of your universe. That perplexes my mind. I
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  Speaker 1: am probably unfit to grasp that idea, but it is
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  Speaker 1: very important to me. It has been a belief in
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  Speaker 1: our world that at last there must be an end
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  Speaker 1: to life, because our sun and planets are cooling, and
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  Speaker 1: there seems no hope of escape from the little world
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  Speaker 1: upon which we have arisen. We were born with it,
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  Speaker 1: and we must die with it. That robbed many of
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  Speaker 1: us of hope and energy. For why should we work
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  Speaker 1: for progress in a world there must freeze and die?
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  Speaker 1: Sun Gold laughed, Your philosophers come included too soon. He
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  Speaker 1: sprawled over the table towards his hero and looked him
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  Speaker 1: earnestly in the face. Your earthly science has been going
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  Speaker 1: on for how long? Two hundred three hundred years, Sun
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  Speaker 1: Gold held up two fingers, amen. How many men, a
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  Speaker 1: few hundred who mattered in each generation? We have gone
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  Speaker 1: for three thousand years now, and a hundred million good
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  Speaker 1: brains have been put like grapes into the wine press
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  Speaker 1: of science. And we know to day how little we know.
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  Speaker 1: There is never an observation made, but a hundred observations
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  Speaker 1: are missed in the making of it. There is never
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  Speaker 1: a measurement, but some impish truth mocks us and gets
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  Speaker 1: away from us in the margin of error. I know
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  Speaker 1: something of where your scientific men are all power to
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  Speaker 1: the poor savages, because I have studied the beginnings of
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  Speaker 1: our own science in the long past of utopia. How
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  Speaker 1: can I express our distances? Since those days we have
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  Speaker 1: examined and tested, and tried and re tried a score
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  Speaker 1: of new ways of thinking about space, of which time
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  Speaker 1: is only a specialized form. We have forms of expression
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  Speaker 1: that we cannot get over to you, so that things
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  Speaker 1: that used to seem difficult and paradoxical to us, that
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  Speaker 1: probably seem hopelessly difficult and paradoxical to you, lose all
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  Speaker 1: a difficulty. In our minds. It is hard to convey
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  Speaker 1: to you. We think in terms of a space in
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  Speaker 1: which the space and time system in terms of which
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  Speaker 1: you think, is only a specialized case. So far as
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  Speaker 1: our feelings and instincts and daily habits go, we too
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  Speaker 1: live in another such system as you do, but not
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  Speaker 1: so far as our knowledge goes, not so far as
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  Speaker 1: our powers go. Our minds have exceeded our lives as
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  Speaker 1: yours will. We are still flesh and blood, still hope
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  Speaker 1: and desire. We go to and fro and look up
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  Speaker 1: and down. But thinks that seemed remote are brought near.
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  Speaker 1: Things that were inaccessible, bow down, things that were insurmountable
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  Speaker 1: lie under the hollows of our hands. And do you
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  Speaker 1: not think that your race, nor for that matter, ours,
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  Speaker 1: need ever perish? Perish? We have hardly begun. The old
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  Speaker 1: man spoke very earnestly, unconsciously, he parodied Newton. We are
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  Speaker 1: like little children. Who have been brought to the shores
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  Speaker 1: of a limitless ocean. All the knowledge we have gathered
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  Speaker 1: yet in the few score generations since first we began
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  Speaker 1: to gather knowledge is like a small handful of pebbles
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  Speaker 1: gathered upon the shore of that limitless ocean. Before us
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  Speaker 1: lies knowledge endlessly, And we may take and take, And
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  Speaker 1: as we take grow we grow in power, We grow
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  Speaker 1: in courage, We renew our youth. For mark what I say,
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  Speaker 1: our worlds grow younger. The old generations of ape and
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  Speaker 1: sub men before us had aged minds. Their narrow, reluctant
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  Speaker 1: wisdom was the meager prophet, hoarded and stale and sour
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  Speaker 1: of innumerable lives. They dreaded new things, so bitterly did
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  Speaker 1: they value the bitterly one old. But to learn is
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  Speaker 1: at length to become young again, to be released, to
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  Speaker 1: begin afresh. Your world, compared to ours, is a world
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  Speaker 1: of unteachable, encrusted souls, of bent and droning traditions, of
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  Speaker 1: hates and injuries, and suchlike, unforgettable things. End of Book three,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter three