Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The World Set Free Chapter 4 - The New Phase Part 2

Transcript

The World Set Free Chapter 4 - The New Phase Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter four of the World Set Free by H. G. Wells.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Adam Rcitich, June two
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: thousand nine, Alexandria, Virginia, The World Set Free by H. G. Wells,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Chapter the fourth the New Phase, Section nine. The early
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: years of the World Republic witnessed a certain recrudescence of
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: political adventure. There was. It is rather curious to note
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: no revival of separatism after the face of King Ferdinand
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Charles had vanished from the sight of men. But in
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a number of countries, as the first urgent physical needs
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: were met, there appeared a variety of personalities having this
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: in common, that they sought to revive political trouble in
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: clamber by its aid to positions of importance and satisfaction.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: In no case did they speak in the name of kings,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and it is clear that monarchy must have been far
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: gone in obsolescence before the twentieth century began. But they
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: made appeals to the large survivals of nationalists and racial
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: feeling that were everywhere to be found. They alleged with
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: considerable justice that the Council was overriding racial and national
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: customs and disregarding religious rules. The Great Plain of India
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: was particularly prolific in such agitators. The revival of newspapers,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: which had largely ceased during the Terrible Year because of
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: the dislocation of the coinage, gave a vehicle and a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: method of organization to these complaints. At first the Council
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: regarded this developing opposition, and then it recognized it with
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: an entirely devastating frankness. Never, of course, had there been
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: so provisional a government. It was of an extravagant illegality.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: It was indeed hardly more than a club, a club
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: of about one hundred persons. At the outset, there were
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: ninety three, and these were increased afterwards by the issue
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of invitations, which more than balanced its deaths to as
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: many at one time as one hundred and nineteen. Always
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: its constitution had been miscellaneous. At no time were these
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: invitations issued with an admission that they recognized the right
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: The old institution or monarchy had come out unexpectedly well
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: in the light of the new regime. Nine of the
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: original members of the first government were crowned heads who
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: had resigned their separate sovereignty, and in no time afterwards
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: did the number of its royal members sink below six.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: In their case there was perhaps a kind of attenuated
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: claim to rule. But except for them, and the still
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: more infinitesimal pretensions of one or two ex presidents of republics,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: no member of the Council had even the shade of
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: a right to his participation in its power. It was natural, therefore,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: that its opponents should find a common ground in a
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: clamor for representative government and build high hopes upon a
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: return to parliamentary institutions. The Council decided to give them
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: everything they wanted, but in a form that suited ill
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: with their aspirations. It became, at one stroke of representative body.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: It became, indeed magnificently representative. It became so representative that
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the politicians were drowned in a deluge of votes. Every
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: adult of either sex, from pole to pole, was given
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: a vote, and the world was divided into ten constituencies,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: which voted on the same day. By means of a
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: simple modification of the world post membership of the government,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: it was decided must be for life, save in the
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: exceptional case of a recall. But the elections which were
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: held quinquinially were arranged to add fifty members on each occasion.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: The method of proportional representation with one transferable vote was adopted,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and the voter might also write upon his voting paper
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: in especially marked space the name of any of his
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: representatives that he wished to recall. A ruler was recallable
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: by as many votes as the quota by which he
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: had been elected, and the original member by as many
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: votes in any constituency as the returning quotas in the
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: first election. Upon these conditions, the Council submitted itself very
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: cheerfully to the suffrages of the world. None of its
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: members were recalled, and its fifty new associates, which included
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: twenty seven which it had seen fit to recommend, whereof
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: an altogether too miscellaneous quality to disturb the broad trend
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: of its policy. Its freedom from rules or formalities prevented
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: any obstructive proceedings, and when one of the two newly
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: arrived Home Rule members for India sought for information how
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: to bring in a bill, they learned simply that bills
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: were not brought in. They asked for the speaker, and
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: were privileged to hear much ripe wisdom from the ex
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: king Egbert, who was now consciously among the seniors of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: the gathering. There After they were baffled men, But already
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: by that time the work of the Council was drawing
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to an end. It was concerned not so much for
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the continuation of its construction as for the preservation of
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: its accomplished work. From the dramatic instincts of the politician,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the life of the race becomes, indeed more and more
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: independent of the formal government. The Council in its opening
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: phase was heroic in spirit, a dragon slaying body. It
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: slashed out of the existence of vast knotted tangle of
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: obsolete ideas and clumsy, jealous proprietorships. Its secured by a
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: noble system of institutional precautions, freedom of inquiry, freedom of criticism,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: free communications, a common basis of education and understanding, and
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: freedom from economic oppression. With that its creative task was accomplished,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: it became more and more an established security and less
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and less an active intervention. There is nothing in our
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: time to correspond with the continual petty making and entangling
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: of laws in an atmosphere of contention. That is perhaps
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the most perplexing aspect of constitutional history in the nineteenth century.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: In that age, they seem to have been perpetually making
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: laws when we should alter regulations. The work of change,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: which we delegate to these scientific committees of specific general direction,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: which have the special knowledge needed, and which are themselves
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: dominated by the broad intellectual process of the community, was
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: in those days inextricably mixed up with legislation. They fought
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: over the details we should as soon think of fighting
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: over the arrangement of the parts of a machine. We
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: know nowadays that such things go on best within laws,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: as life goes on between earth and sky. And so
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it is that government gathers now for a day or
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: so each year under the sunshine of Bresago, when Saint
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Bruno's lilies are in flower, and does little more than
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: bless the work of its committees. And even these committees
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: are less originative and more expressive of the general thought
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: than they were at first. It becomes difficult to mark
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: out the particular directive personalities of the world. Continually we
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: are less personal. Every good thought contributes now, and every
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: able brain falls within that informal and dispersed kingship, which
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: gathers together into one purpose, the energies of the race.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Section ten. It is doubtful if we shall ever see
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: again the phase of human existence in which politics, that
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: is to say, a partisan interference with the ruling sanities
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: of the world, will be the dominant interest among serious men.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: We seem to have entered upon an entirely new phase
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: in history, in which contention, as distinguished from rivalry, has
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: almost abruptly ceased to be the usual occupation, and has
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: become at most a subdued and hidden and discredited thing.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Contentious professions cease to be an honorable employment for men.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: The peace between nations is also a piece between individuals.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: We live in a world that comes of age, man
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: the warrior, man the lawyer, and all the bickering aspects
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of life pass into obscurity. The grave dreamers, man the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: curious learner, and man the creative artists come forward to
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: replace these barbaric aspects of existence by a less ignoble adventure.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: There is no natural life of man. He is and
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: has always been, a sheath of varied and even incompatible possibilities,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a palimpsest of inherited dispositions. It was the habit of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: many writers in the early twentieth century to speak of
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: competition and the narrow private life of trade and saving
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and suspicious isolation, as though such things were in some
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: exceptional way proper to the human constitution, and as though
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: openness of mind and a preference for achievement over possession
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: were abnormal and rather unsubstantial qualities. How wrong that was
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the history of the decades immediately following the establishment of
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the World Republic witnesses. Once the world was released from
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: from the hardening insecurities of a needless struggle for life
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: that was collectively planless and individually absorbing, it became apparent
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: that there was in the vast mass of people a
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: long smothered passion to make things. The world broke out
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: into making, and at first mainly into esthetic making. This
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: phase of history, which has been not inaptly termed the efflorescence,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: is still to a large extent with us. The majority
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: of our population consists of artists, and the bulk of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: activity in the world lies no longer with necessities, but
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: with their elaboration, decoration, and refinement. There has been an
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: evident change in the quality of this making during recent years.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: It becomes more purposeful than it was, losing something of
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: its first elegance and prettiness, and gaining in intensity. But
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that is a change rather of hue than of nature,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: that comes with a deepening philosophy and a sounder education.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: For the first joyous exercises of fancy we perceive now
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the deliberation of a more constructive imagination. There is a
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: natural order in these things, and art comes before science,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: as a satisfaction of more elemental needs come before art,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and as play and pleasure come in a human life
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: before the development of a settled purpose. For thousands of years,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: this gathering impulse to creative work must have struggled in
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: man against the limitations imposed upon him by his social ineptitude.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: It was a long smoldering fire that flamed out at last.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: In all these things. The evidence of a pathetic, perpetually
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: thwarted urgency to make something is one of the most
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: touched aspects of the relics and records of our immediate ancestors.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: There exists still in the Death Area about the London bombs,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a region of deserted small homes that furnish the most
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: illuminating comment on the old state of affairs. These homes
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: are entirely horrible, uniform, square, squat, hideously proportioned, uncomfortable, dingy,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and in some respects quite filthy. Only people in complete
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: disrepair of anything better could have lived in them. But
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to each is attracted a ridiculous little rectangle of land
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: called the garden, containing usually a prop for drying clothes
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: and a loathsome box of offal, the dust bin full
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: of eggshells, cinders and such like refuse. Now that one
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: may go about this region in comparative security for the
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: London radiations have dwindled to inconsiderable proportions, it is possible
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: to trace in nearly every one of these gardens some
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: effort to make. Here it is a poor little plank
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: summer house. Here it is a fountain of bricks and
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: oyster shells. Here a rockery, here a workshop. And in
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the houses everywhere there are pitiful little decorations, clumsy models,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: feeble drawings. These efforts are almost incredibly inept, like the
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: drawings of blindfolded men. They are only one shade less
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: harrowing to a sympathetic observer than the scribblings one finds
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: upon the walls of the old prisons. But there they
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: are witnessing to the poor, buried instincts that struggled up
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: towards the light. The God of joyous expression, our poor
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: fathers ignorantly sought our freedom has declared to us. In
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the old day, the common ambition of every simple soul
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: was to possess a little property, a patch of land,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a house uncontrolled by others, an independence, as the English
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: used to put it. And what made this desire for
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: freedom and prosperity so strong was very evidently the dream
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of self expression, of doing something with it, of playing
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: with it, of making a personal delightfulness a distinctiveness. Property
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: was never more than a means to an end, nor
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: avarice more than a perversion. Men owned in order to
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: do freely. Now that every one of us has his
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: own apartments and his own privacy secure, this disposition to
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: own has found its release in a new direction. Men
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: study and save, and strive that they may leave behind
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: them a series of panels in some public arcade, a
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: row of carbon figures along a terrace, a grove, a pavilion,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: or they give themselves to the penetration of some still
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: opaque riddle in phenomena. As once men gave themselves to
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the accumulation of riches, the work that was once the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: whole substance of social existence, for most men spent all
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: their lives in earning a living, is now no more
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: than was the burden upon one of those old climbers
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: who carried knapsacks of provisions on their backs in order
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: that they might ascend mountains. It matters little to the
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: easy charities of our emancipated time that most people who
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: have made their labor contribution produce neither new beauty nor
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: new wisdom, but are simply about those pleasant activities and
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: enjoyments that reassure them that they are alive. They help,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: it may be, by reception and reverberation, and they hinder
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: nothing Section eleven. Now, all this phase of gigantic change
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: in the contours and appearances of human life which is
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: going on all about us, A change as rapid and
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: as wonderful as the swift ripening of adolescence to manhood
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: after the barbaric boyish years, is correlated with moral and
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: mental changes at least as unprecedented. It is not as
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: if old things were going out of life and new
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: things coming in. It is rather that the altered circumstances
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: of men are making an appeal to elements in his
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: nature that have hitherto been suppressed, and checking tendencies that
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: have hitherto been overstimulated and overdeveloped. He has not so
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: much grown and altered his essential being as turned new
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: aspects to the light. Such turnings round into a new
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: attitude the world has seen on a less extensive scale before.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: The Highlanders of the seventeenth century, for example, were cruel
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and bloodthirsty robbers. In the nineteenth their descendants were conspicuously
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: trusty and honorable men. There was not a people in
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Western Europe in the early twentieth century that seemed capable
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: of hideous massacres, and none that had not been guilty
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of them within the previous two centuries. The free, frank, kindly,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: gentle life of the prosperous classes in any European country
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: before the years of the Last Wars was in a
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: different world of thought and feeling from that of the dingy, suspicious, secretive,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: and uncharitable existence of the respectable poor, or of the
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: constant personal violence, the squalor and naive passions of the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: lowest stratum. Yet there were no differences of blood and
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: inherent quality between these worlds. Their differences were all in circumstances, suggestion,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: and habits of mind. And turning to more individual instances,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the constantly observed difference between one portion of a life
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and another consequent upon a religious conversion. Where a standing
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: example of the versatile possibilities of human nature. The catastrophe
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: of the atomic bombs, which shook men out of cities
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: their old established habits of thought, and out of the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: from the past. To borrow a world from the old
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: fashioned chemists, men were made nascent. They were released from
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: old ties for good or evil. They were ready for
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: new associations. The Council carried them forward for good. Perhaps,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: if his bombs had reached them destination, King Ferdinand Charles
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: might have carried them back to an endless chain of evils,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: but his task would have been a harder one than
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: the councils. The moral shock of the atomic bombs had
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: been a profound one, and for a while the cunning
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: side of the human animal was overpowered by its sincere
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: realization of the vital necessity for reconstruction. The litigious and
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: trading spirits cowered together, scared at their own consequences. Men
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: thought twice before they sought mean advantages in the face
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: of the unusual eagerness to realize new aspirations. And when
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: at last the weeds revived again and claims began to sprout,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: they sprouted upon the stony soil of law. Courts reformed
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: of laws that pointed to the future instead of the past.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And under the blazing sunshine of a transformed world, a
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: new literature, a new interpretation of history were springing into existence,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: a new teaching was already in the schools, a new
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: faith in the young. The worthy man, who forestalled the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: building of a research city for the English upon the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Sussex Downs by buying up a series of estates, was
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: dispossessed and laughed out of court when he made his
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: demand for some preposterous compensation. The owner of the discredited
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: dos patents makes his last appearance upon the scroll of
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: history as the insolvent proprietor of a paper called the
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Cry for Justice, in which he duns the world for
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a hundred million pounds. That was the ingenious Das's idea
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: of justice, that he ought to be paid about five
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: million pounds annually because he had annexed the salvage of
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: one of Holston's discoveries. Jus came at last to believe
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: quite firmly in his right, and he died a victim
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: of conspiracy mania in a private hospital at Nice. Both
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: of these men would probably have ended their days enormously
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: wealthy and of course ennobled in the England of the
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: opening twentieth century, and it is just this novelty of
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: their fates that marks the quality of the new age.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: The new government early discovered the need of a universal
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: education to fit men to the great conceptions of its
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: universal rule. It made no wrangling attacks on the local,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: racial and sectarian forms of religious profession that at the
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: time divided the earth into a patchwork of hatreds and distrust.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It left these organizations to make their peace with God
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: in their own time. But it proclaimed as if it
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: were a mere secular truth, that sacrifice vice was expected
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: from all, that respect had to be shown to all.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: It revived schools or set them up afresh all around
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the world, and everywhere. These schools taught the history of
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: war and the consequences and moral of the last war. Everywhere,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: it was taught not as a sentiment, but as a
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: matter of fact, that the salvation of the world from
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: waste and contention was the common duty and occupation of
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: all men and women. These things, which are now the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: elementary commonplaces of human intercourse, seemed to the counselors of
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Brisago when first they dared to proclaim them, marvelously daring discoveries,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: not untouched by doubt, that flushed the cheek and fired
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the eye. The Council placed all this educational reconstruction in
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the hands of a committee of men and women, which
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: did its work during the next few decades with remarkable
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: breath and effectiveness. The Educational Committee was and is the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: correlative upon the mental and spiritual side of the redistribution Committee,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: and prominent upon it, and indeed, for a time quite
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: dominating it. Was a Russian named Karinan, who was singular
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: in being a congential cripple. His body was bent so
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that he walked with difficulty, suffered much pain as he
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: grew older, and had at last to undergo two operations.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: The second killed him already malformation which was to be
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: seen in every crowd during the Middle Ages, so that
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the crippled beggar was, as it were, an essential feature
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: of the human spectacle, was becoming a strange thing in
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: the New world. It had a curious effect upon Karenan's colleagues.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Their feeling towards him was mingled with pity and a
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: sense of inhumanity that it needed usage rather than reason
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: to overcome. He had a strong face, with little, bright
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: brown eyes, rather deeply sunken, and a large, resolute, thin
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: lipped mouth. His skin was very yellow and wrinkled, his
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: hair iron gray. He was at all times an impatient
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: and sometimes an angry man, but this was forgiven him
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: because of the hot wire of suffering that was manifestly
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: thrust through his being. At the end of his life,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: his personal prestige was very great to him, far more
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: than any contemporary. It is due that self abnegation, self
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: identification with the spirit world was made the basis of
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: universal education. That General Memorandum to the Teachers, which is
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the keynote of the modern educational system, was probably entirely
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: his work. Whosoever should save his soul should lose it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: He wrote, that is the device upon the seal of
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: this document, and the starting point of all we have
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: to do. It is a mistake to regard it as
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: anything but a plain statement of fact. It is the
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: basis for your work. You have to teach self forgetfulness,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and everything else that you have to teach is contributory
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: and subordinate to that end. Education is the release of
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: man from self. You have to widen the horizons of
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: your children, encourage and intensify their curiosity and their creative impulses,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and cultivate and enlarge their sympathies. That is what you
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: are for. Under your guidance and the suggestions you will
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: bring to bear on them. You have to shed the
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: old atom of instinctive suspicions, hostilities, and passions, and to
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: find themselves again in the great being of the universe.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: The little circles of their egotisms have to be opened
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: out until they become arcs in the sweep of the
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: racial purpose. And this that you teach to others, you
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: must learn also sedulously yourselves. Philosophy, discovery, art, every sort
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of skill, every sort of service love. These are the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: means of salvation from that narrow loneliness of desire, that
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: brooding preoccupation with self and egotistical relationships, which is hell
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: for the individual, treason to the race, and exile from God.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Section twelve. As things round themselves off and accomplish themselves,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: one begins for the first time to see them clearly
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: from the perspectives of a new age. One can look
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: back upon the great and widening stream of literature with
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: a complete understanding. Things link up that seem disconnected, and
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: things that were once condemned as harsh and aimless are
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: seen to be but factors in the statement of a
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: gigantic problem. An enormous bulk of the sincere writing of
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries falls together now in
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: an unanticipated unanimity. One sees it as a huge tissue
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: of variations upon one theme, the conflict of human egotism
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: and personal passion and narrow imaginations on the one hand,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: against the growing sense of wider necessities and a possible
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: more spacious life. That conflict is in evidence in so
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: nearly a work as Voltaire's Candide, for example, in which
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the desire for justice as well as happiness beats against
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: human contrari and takes refuge at last in a forced
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: and inconclusive contentment with little things. Candide was but one
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: of the pioneers of a literature of uneasy complaint that
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: was presently an innumerable multitude of books, the novels, more
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: particularly of the nineteenth century. If one excludes the mere
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: storytellers from our consideration, witness to this uneasy realization of
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: changes that call for effort, and the lack of that effort.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: In a thousand aspects, now tragically, now comically, now with
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a funny affectation of divine detachment, a countless host of
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: witnesses tell their story of lives fretting between dreams and limitations.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Now one laughs, now one weeps. Now one reads with
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the blank astonishment at this huge and almost unpremeditated record
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: of how the growing human spirit, now warily, now eagerly,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: now furiously, and always, as it seems, unsuccessfully tried to
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: adapt itself to the maddening misfit of its patched and
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: ancient garments. And always in these books, as one draws
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: nearer to the heart of the matter, there comes a
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: disconcerting evasion. It was the fantastic convention of the time
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: that a writer should not touch upon religion. To do
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: so was to rouse the jealous fury of the great
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: multitude of professional religious teachers. It was permitted to state
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the discord, but it was forbidden to glance at any
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: possible reconciliation. Religion was the privilege of the pulpit. It
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: was not only from the novels that religion was omitted.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: It was ignored by the newspapers. It was pedantically disregarded
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: in the discussion of business questions. It played a trivial
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and apologetic part in public affairs. And this was not
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: out of contempt but respect. The whold of the old
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: religious organizations upon men's respect was still enormous, so enormous
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: that there seemed to be a quality of irreverence in
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: applying religion to the developments of every day. This strange
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: suspension of religion lasted over into the beginnings of the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: New Age. It was a clear vision of Marcus Karinan,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: much more than any other contemporary influence, which brought it
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: back into the texture of human life. He saw religion
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: without hallucinations, without superstitious reverence, as a common thing, necessary,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: as necessary as food and air, as land, and energy
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: to the life of man and the well being of
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: the republic. He saw that indeed, it had already percolated
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: away from the temples and hierarchies and symbols in which
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: men had sought to imprison it, and that it was
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: already at work, anonymous and obscurely in the universal acceptance
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: of the greater state. He gave it clearer expression, rephrased
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: it to the lights and perspectives of the new Dawn.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: But if we return to our novels for our evidence
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: of the spirit of the times, it becomes evident as
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: one reads them in their chronological order, so far as
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: that is now ascertainable, that as one comes to the
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: latter nineteenth and the earlier twentieth century, the writers are
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: much more acutely aware of secular change than their predecessors were.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: The earlier novelists tried to show life as it is.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: The latter showed life as it changes. More and more
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: of their characters are engaged in adaptation to change or
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: suffering from the effects of world changes. And as we
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: come up to the time of the Last Wars, this
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: newer conception of the everyday life as a reaction to
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: an accelerated development is continually more manifest. Barney's book, which
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: has served us so well, is frankly a picture of
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the world coming about like a ship that sails into
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the wind. Our later novelists give a vast gallery of
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: individual conflicts in which old habits and customs, limited ideas,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: ungenerous temperaments, and innate obsessions are pitted against this great
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: opening out of life that has happened to us. They
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: tell us of the feelings of old people who have
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: been wrenched away from familiar surroundings, and how they have
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: had to make peace with uncomfortable comforts and conveniences that
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: are still strange to them. They give us the discord
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: between the opening egotisms of youth and the ill defined
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: limitations of a changing social life. They tell of the
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: universal struggle of jealousy to capture and cripple our souls,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: of romantic failures and tragical misconceptions, of the trend of
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: the world, of the spirit of adventure and the urgency
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: of curiosity, and how these serve the universal drift. And
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: all their stories lead in the end either to happiness
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: mist or happiness won, to disaster or salvation. The clearer
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: their vision and the subtler their art, the more certainly
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: do these novels tell of the possibility of salvation for
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: all the world. For any road in life leads to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: religion for those upon it who will follow it far enough.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: It would have seemed a strange thing to the men
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: of the former time that it should be an open question,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: as it is today, whether the world is holy Christian
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: or not Christian at all. But assuredly we have the spirit,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: and as surely have we left many temporary forms behind.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Christianity was the first expression of world religion, the first
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: complete repudiation of tribalism and war and disputation. That it
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: fell presently into the ways of more ancient rituals cannot
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: alter that the common sense of mankind has toiled through
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: two thousand years of chastening experience to find at last
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: how sound a meaning attaches to the familiar phrases of
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: the Christian faith. The scientific thinker, as he widens out
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: to the moral problems of the collective life, comes inevitably
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: upon the words of Christ, and as inevitably does the Christian,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: as his thought grows clear, arrive at the world republic
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: as for the claims of the sex, as for the
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: use of a name and successions, We live in a
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: time that has shaken itself free from such claims and consistencies.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: End of chapter four in In In In In In