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The World Set Free Chapter 5 - The Last Days of Marcus Karenin Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter five of the World Set Free by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Adam Rcitage, June two
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Speaker 1: thousand nine, Alexandria, Virginia, The World Set Free by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: Chapter the fifth, The Last Days of Marcus Kernan, Section one.
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Speaker 1: The second operation upon Marcus Krenan was performed at the
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Speaker 1: new station for surgical work at Paran, high in the Himalayas,
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Speaker 1: above the Sutles Gorge, where it comes down out of Tibet.
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Speaker 1: It is a place of such wildness and beauty as
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Speaker 1: no other scenery in the world affords. The granite terrace,
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Speaker 1: which runs around the four sides of the low block
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Speaker 1: of laboratories, looks out in every direction upon mountains far below,
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Speaker 1: in the hidden depths of a shadowy blue cleft. The
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Speaker 1: river pours down in its tumultuous passage to the swarming
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Speaker 1: plains of India. No sound of its roaring haste comes
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Speaker 1: up to these serenities. Beyond that blue gulf, in which
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Speaker 1: whole forests of rock deodars seem no more than small
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Speaker 1: patches of moss, rise, vast precipices of many colored rock,
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Speaker 1: fretted above, lined by snowfalls jagged into pinnacles. These are
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Speaker 1: the northward wall of a towering wilderness of ice and snow,
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Speaker 1: which clambers southward, higher and wilder and vaster to the
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Speaker 1: culminating summits of our globe. To Dowlagiri and Everest. Here
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Speaker 1: are cliffs of which no other land can show the like,
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Speaker 1: and deep chasms in which Mount Blanc might be plunged
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Speaker 1: and hidden. Here are ice fields as big as inland seas,
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Speaker 1: on which the tumbled boulders lie so thickly that strange
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Speaker 1: little flowers can bloom among them. Under the untempered sunshine.
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Speaker 1: To the northward, and blocking out any vision of the
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Speaker 1: uplands of Tibet, rises that citadel of porcelain, that Gothic pile,
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Speaker 1: the Leo Porgil Walls towers and peaks, a clear twelve
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Speaker 1: thousand feet of veined and splintered rock above the river
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Speaker 1: and beyond it, and eastward and westward rise peaks behind
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Speaker 1: peaks against the dark blue Himalayan sky far away below
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Speaker 1: to the south, the clouds of the Indian rains pile
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Speaker 1: up abruptly and are stayed by an invisible hand. Hither
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Speaker 1: it was that, with a dreamlike swiftness, Karnan flew high
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Speaker 1: over the irrigations of Rajputana, and the towers and cupolas
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Speaker 1: of the Ultimate Delhi, and the little group of buildings Elbite.
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Speaker 1: The southward wall dropped nearly five hundred feet, seemed to
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Speaker 1: him as he soared down to it, like a toll
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Speaker 1: lost among these mountain wildernesses. No road came up to
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Speaker 1: this place. It was reached only by flight. His pilot
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Speaker 1: descended to the great courtyard, and Karenin, assisted by his secretary,
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Speaker 1: clambered down through the wing fabric and made his way
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Speaker 1: to the officials who came out to receive him. In
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Speaker 1: this place, beyond infections and noise and any distractions, surgery
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Speaker 1: had made for itself a house of research and a
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Speaker 1: healing fastness. The building itself would have seemed very wonderful
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Speaker 1: to eyes accustomed to the flimsy architecture of an age
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Speaker 1: when power was precious. It was made of granite, already
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Speaker 1: a little roughened on the outside by frost, but polished within,
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Speaker 1: and of a tremendous solidity, and in a honeycomb of
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Speaker 1: subtly lit apartments, where the spotless research benches, the operating tables,
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Speaker 1: the instruments of brass and fine glass, and platinum and gold.
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Speaker 1: Men and women came from all parts of the world
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Speaker 1: for study or experimental research. They wore a common uniform
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Speaker 1: of white and ate at long tables together. But the
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Speaker 1: patients lived in an upper part of the buildings and
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Speaker 1: were cared for by nurses and skilled attendants. The first
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Speaker 1: man to greet Karinan was Siana, the scientific director of
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Speaker 1: the institution. Beside him was Rachel Borkin, the chief organizer.
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Speaker 1: You are tired, she asked, and old Koreanan shook his
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Speaker 1: head cramped. He said, I have wanted to visit such
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Speaker 1: a place as this. He spoke as if he had
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Speaker 1: no other business with them. There was a little pause.
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Speaker 1: How many scientific people have you got here now, he asked?
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Speaker 1: Just three hundred and ninety two, said Rachel Borkin, and
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Speaker 1: the patients and attendants and so on to two thousand
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Speaker 1: and thirty. I shall be a patient, said Karenan. I
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Speaker 1: shall have to be a patient, but I should like
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Speaker 1: to see things first. Presently, I will be a patient.
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Speaker 1: You will come to my rooms, suggested Sienna, and then
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Speaker 1: I must talk to this doctor of yours, said Kreenan.
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Speaker 1: But I would like to see a bit of this
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Speaker 1: place and talk to some of your people before it
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Speaker 1: comes to that. He winced and moved forward. I have
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Speaker 1: left most of my work in order, he said. You
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Speaker 1: have been working hard up to now. Yes, and now
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Speaker 1: I have nothing more to do. And it seems strange,
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Speaker 1: and it's a bother, this illness in having to come
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Speaker 1: down to oneself. This doorway and the row of windows
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Speaker 1: is well done. The gray granite is just the line
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Speaker 1: of gold, and then those mountains beyond through that arch.
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Speaker 1: It's all very well done. Section two. Karena lay on
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Speaker 1: the bed with a soft white rug about him, and Fowler,
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Speaker 1: who was to be his surgeon, sat on the edge
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Speaker 1: of the bed and talked to him. An assistant was
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Speaker 1: seated quietly in the shadow behind the bed. The examination
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Speaker 1: had been made, and Karina knew what was before him.
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Speaker 1: He was tired but serene. So I shall die, he said,
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Speaker 1: unless you operate. Fowler assented, and then said Karena, smiling,
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Speaker 1: Probably I shall die, not certainly, even if I do
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Speaker 1: not die, Shall I be able to work? There is
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Speaker 1: just a chance. So firstly I shall probably die, and
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Speaker 1: if I do not, then perhaps I shall be a
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Speaker 1: useless invalid. I think if you live, you may be
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Speaker 1: able to go on as you do. Now, well, then
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Speaker 1: I suppose I must take the risk of it. Yet,
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Speaker 1: couldn't you, Fowler, couldn't you drug me and patch me
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Speaker 1: instead of all this vivisection, A few days of drugged
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Speaker 1: and active life, and then the end? Fowler thought. We
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Speaker 1: are not sure enough yet to do things like that,
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Speaker 1: he said, But a day is coming when you will
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Speaker 1: be certain. Fowler nodded. You make me feel as though
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Speaker 1: I was the last of deformity. Deformity is uncertainty inaccuracy.
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Speaker 1: My body works doubtfully. It is not even sure that
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Speaker 1: it will die or live. I suppose the time is
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Speaker 1: not far off when such bodies as mine will no
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Speaker 1: longer be born into the world. You see, said Fowler,
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Speaker 1: after a little pause. It is necessary that spirits such
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Speaker 1: as yours should be born into the world. I suppose,
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Speaker 1: said Karenan, that my spirit has had its use. But
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Speaker 1: if you think that it is because my body is
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Speaker 1: as it is, I think you are mistaken. There is
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Speaker 1: no peculiar virtue and defect. I have always chafed against
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Speaker 1: all this. If I could have moved more freely and
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Speaker 1: lived a larger life in health, I could have done more.
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Speaker 1: But some day perhaps you will be able to put
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Speaker 1: a body that is wrong altogether right again. Your science
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Speaker 1: is only beginning. It's a subtler thing than physics and chemistry,
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Speaker 1: and it takes longer to produce its miracles. And meanwhile
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Speaker 1: a few more of us must die in patience. Fine
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Speaker 1: work is being done, and much of it, said Fowler.
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Speaker 1: I can say as much because I have nothing to
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Speaker 1: do with it. I can understand a lesson, appreciate the
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Speaker 1: discoveries of abler men, and use my hands. But those others, Pigo,
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Speaker 1: Masterson lay and the others there clearing the ground fast
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Speaker 1: for the knowledge to come. Have you had time to
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Speaker 1: follow their work? Karinan shook his head. But I can
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Speaker 1: imagine the scope of it, he said. We have so
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Speaker 1: many men working now, said Fowler. I suppose at present
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Speaker 1: there must be at least a thousand thinking, hard, observing,
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Speaker 1: experimenting for one who did so in nineteen hundred, not
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Speaker 1: counting those who keep the records, not counting those. Of course,
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Speaker 1: the present indexing of research is in itself a very
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Speaker 1: big work, and it is only now that we are
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Speaker 1: getting it properly done. But already we are feeling the
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Speaker 1: benefit of that. Since it ceased to be a paid
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Speaker 1: employment and became a devotion, we have had only those
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Speaker 1: people who obeyed the call of an aptitude at work
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Speaker 1: upon these things. Here I must show you it today,
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Speaker 1: because it will interest you. We have our copy of
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Speaker 1: the Encyclopedic. Every week sheets are taken out and replaced
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Speaker 1: by fresh sheets with new results that are brought to
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Speaker 1: us by the aeroplanes of the research department. It is
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Speaker 1: an index of knowledge that grows continually, an index that
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Speaker 1: becomes continually truer. There was never anything like it before.
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Speaker 1: When I came into the Education Committee, said Karinan, that
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Speaker 1: index of human knowledge seemed an impossible thing. Research had
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Speaker 1: produced a chaotic mountain of results in a hundred languages
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Speaker 1: and a thousand different types of publication. He smiled at
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Speaker 1: his memories. How we groaned at the job. Already the
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Speaker 1: ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall see,
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Speaker 1: I have been so busy with my own work. Yes,
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Speaker 1: I shall be glad to see. The patient regarded the
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Speaker 1: surgeon for a time with interested eyes. You work here always,
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Speaker 1: he asked abruptly. No, said Fowler, but mostly you work here.
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Speaker 1: I have worked about seven years out of the past ten.
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Speaker 1: At times I go away down there. One has to,
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Speaker 1: at least I have to. There is a sort of
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Speaker 1: grayness comes over all of this. One feels hungry for life,
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Speaker 1: real personal passionate life, love making, eating and drinking, for
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Speaker 1: the fun of the thing, jostling crowds, having adventures. Laughter
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Speaker 1: above all, laughter, yes, said Karnan understandingly. And then one
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Speaker 1: day suddenly one thinks of these high mountains again. That
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Speaker 1: is how I would have lived if it had not
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Speaker 1: been for my defects, said Krenan. Nobody knows but those
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Speaker 1: who have borne it to the exasperation of abnormality. It
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Speaker 1: will be good when you have nobody alive who's body
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Speaker 1: cannot live the wholesome everyday life, whose spirit cannot come
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Speaker 1: up into these high places as it wills. We shall
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Speaker 1: manage that soon, said Fowler. For endless generations man has
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Speaker 1: struggled upward against the indignities of his body and the
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Speaker 1: indignities of his soul. Pains incapacities, vile fears, black moods, despairs.
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Speaker 1: How well I've known them, They've taken more time than
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Speaker 1: all your holidays. It is true, is it not? That
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Speaker 1: every man is something of a cripple and something of
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Speaker 1: a beast. I've dipped a little deeper than most, that's all.
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Speaker 1: It's only now, when he has fully learnt the truth
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Speaker 1: of that, that he can take hold of himself to
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Speaker 1: be neither beast nor cripple. Now that he overcomes his
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Speaker 1: servitude to his body, he can for the first time
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Speaker 1: think of living the full life of his body before
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Speaker 1: another generation dies. You'll have the thing in hand. You'll
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Speaker 1: do as you please with the old atom and the
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Speaker 1: vestiges from the brutes and reptiles that lurk in his
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Speaker 1: body and spirit. Isn't that so you put it? Boldly?
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Speaker 1: Said Fowler. Kreenan laughed cheerfully at his caution when asked
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Speaker 1: karenin suddenly, when will you operate the day after tomorrow?
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Speaker 1: Said Fowler. For a day. I want you to drink
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Speaker 1: and eat as I shall prescribe, and you may think
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Speaker 1: and talk as you please. I should like to see
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Speaker 1: this place. You shall go through it. This afternoon, I
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Speaker 1: will have two men carry you in a litter, and
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Speaker 1: tomorrow you shall lie out upon the terrace. Our mountains
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Speaker 1: here are the most beautiful in the world. Section three.
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Speaker 1: The next morning, Karenan got up early and watched the
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Speaker 1: sun rise over the mountains, and breakfasted lightly. And then
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Speaker 1: the young Gardener, his secretary, came to consult him upon
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Speaker 1: the spending of his day. Would he care to see people,
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Speaker 1: or was this gnawing pain within him too much to
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Speaker 1: permit him to do that. I'd like to talk, said Karenan.
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Speaker 1: There must be all sorts of lively minded people here.
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Speaker 1: Let them come and gossip with me. He will distract me,
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Speaker 1: and I can't tell you how interesting it makes everything
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Speaker 1: that is going on to have seen the dawn of
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Speaker 1: one's own last day, your last day. Fowler will kill me.
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Speaker 1: If he does not, he will not leave very much
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Speaker 1: of me, So that this is my last day. Anyhow,
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Speaker 1: The days afterward, if they come at all to me,
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Speaker 1: will be refuse I know. Gardener was about to speak
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Speaker 1: when Karenan went on again. I hope he kills me, Gardener,
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Speaker 1: don't be old fashioned. The thing I am most afraid
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Speaker 1: of is that last rag of life. I may just
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Speaker 1: go on a scarred salvage of suffering stuff, and then
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Speaker 1: all the things I have hidden and kept down, or
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Speaker 1: discounted or set right afterwards will get the better of me.
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Speaker 1: I shall be peevish. I may lose my grip upon
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Speaker 1: my own egotism. It's never been a very firm grip. No, no, gardener,
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Speaker 1: don't say that you know better. You've had glimpses of it.
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Speaker 1: Suppose I came through on the other side of this affair, belittled,
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Speaker 1: vain and spiteful, using the prestige I have got among
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Speaker 1: men by my good work in the past, just to
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Speaker 1: serve some small, invalid purpose. He was silent for a time,
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Speaker 1: watching the mists among the distant precipices changed to clouds
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Speaker 1: of light and drift and dissolve before the searching rays
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Speaker 1: of the sunrise. Yes, he said, at last, I'm afraid
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Speaker 1: of these anesthetics and these fag ends of life. It's
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Speaker 1: the life. We are all afraid of death. Nobody minds
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Speaker 1: just death. Fowler is clever. But some day surgery will
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Speaker 1: know its duty better and not be so anxious just
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Speaker 1: to save something, provided only that it quivers. I have
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Speaker 1: tried to hold my end up properly and do my work.
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Speaker 1: After Fowler has done with me, I am certain I
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Speaker 1: shall be unfit for work. And what else is there
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Speaker 1: for me? I know I shall not be fit for work.
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Speaker 1: I do not see why life should be judged by
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Speaker 1: its last trailing thread of vitality. I know it for
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Speaker 1: the splendid thing. It is I who have been a
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Speaker 1: diseased creature from the beginning. I know it well enough
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Speaker 1: not to confuse it with its husks. Remember that gardener.
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Speaker 1: If presently my heart fails me and I despair, and
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Speaker 1: if I go through a little phase of pain and
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Speaker 1: ingratitude and dark forgetfulness before the end, don't believe what
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Speaker 1: I may say at the last. If the fabric is
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Speaker 1: good enough, the salvage doesn't matter. It can't matter. So
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Speaker 1: long as you were alive. You are just the moment perhaps,
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Speaker 1: But when you were dead, then you are all your life,
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Speaker 1: from the first moment to the last section four. Presently,
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Speaker 1: in accordance with his wish, people came to talk to him,
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Speaker 1: and he could forget himself again. Rachel Borkin sat for
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Speaker 1: a long time with him and talked chiefly of women
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Speaker 1: in the world, and with her was a girl named
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Speaker 1: Edith Haydon, who was already very well known as a scyitologist,
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Speaker 1: and several of the younger men who were working in
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Speaker 1: the place, and a patient named Khan, a poet, and Edwards,
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Speaker 1: a designer of plays and shows, spent some time with him.
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Speaker 1: The talk wandered from point to point, and came back
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Speaker 1: upon itself, and became now earnest and now trivial as
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Speaker 1: a chance suggestion is determined. But soon afterwards Gardner wrote
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Speaker 1: down notes of things he remembered, and it is possible
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Speaker 1: to put together again the outlook of Korenan upon the world,
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Speaker 1: and how he thought and felt about many of the
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Speaker 1: principal things in life. Our age, he said, has been
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Speaker 1: so far an age of scene shifting. We have been
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Speaker 1: preparing a stage, clearing away the setting of a drama
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Speaker 1: that was played out and growing tiresome. If I could
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Speaker 1: but sit out the first few scenes of the new spectacle,
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Speaker 1: how encumbered the world has become. It was ailing, as
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Speaker 1: I am ailing, with the growth of unmeaning things. It
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Speaker 1: was entangled, feverish, confused. It was in a sore need
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Speaker 1: of release. And I suppose that nothing less than the
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Speaker 1: violence of those bombs could have released it and made
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Speaker 1: it a healthy world again. I suppose they were necessary.
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Speaker 1: Just as everything turns to evil in a fevered body,
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Speaker 1: so everything seemed turning to evil in those last years
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Speaker 1: of the Old Time. Everywhere there were obsolete organizations seizing
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Speaker 1: upon all the fine new things that science was giving
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Speaker 1: to the world, nationalities, all sorts of political bodies, the
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Speaker 1: churches and sects, proprietorship, seizing upon those treat powers and
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Speaker 1: limitless possibilities and turning them to evil uses. And they
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Speaker 1: would not suffer open speech, They would not permit of education,
19:38
Speaker 1: They would not let go one be educated to the
19:41
Speaker 1: needs of the new time. You who are younger cannot
19:44
Speaker 1: imagine the mixture of desperate hope and protesting despair in
19:49
Speaker 1: which we who could believe in the possibilities of science
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Speaker 1: lived in those years before atomic energy came. It was
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Speaker 1: not only that the massive people would not attend, would
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Speaker 1: not understand, but that those who did not understand lack
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Speaker 1: the power of real belief. They said the things they
20:08
Speaker 1: saw the things, and the things meant nothing to them.
20:13
Speaker 1: I have been reading some old papers lately. It is
20:16
Speaker 1: wonderful how our fathers bore themselves towards science. They hated it,
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Speaker 1: they feared it. They permitted a few scientific men to
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Speaker 1: exist and work a pitiful handful. Don't find out anything
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Speaker 1: about us, they said to them, don't inflict vision upon us.
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Speaker 1: Spare our little ways of life from the fearful shaft
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Speaker 1: of understanding. But do tricks for us, little limited tricks.
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Speaker 1: Give us cheap lighting, and cure us of certain disagreeable things.
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Speaker 1: Cure us of cancer, cure us of consumption, cure our colds,
20:51
Speaker 1: and relieve us after repletion. We have changed all that gardener.
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Speaker 1: Science is no longer our servant. We know it for
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Speaker 1: something greater than our little individual selves. It is the
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Speaker 1: awakening mind of the race. And in a little while,
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Speaker 1: in a little while, I wish, indeed, I could watch
21:09
Speaker 1: for that little while, now that the curtain has risen,
21:14
Speaker 1: while I lie here, they are clearing up what is
21:17
Speaker 1: left of the bombs in London, he said. Then they
21:21
Speaker 1: are going to repair the ruins and make it as
21:24
Speaker 1: all like as possible to its former condition before the
21:27
Speaker 1: bombs fell. Perhaps they will dig out the old house
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Speaker 1: in Saint John's Wood, to which my father went after
21:35
Speaker 1: his expulsion from Russia. That London of my memory seems
21:39
Speaker 1: to me like a place in another world. For you
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Speaker 1: younger people, it must seem like a place that could
21:46
Speaker 1: never have existed. Is there much left standing, asked Edith Hayden.
21:53
Speaker 1: Square miles that are scarcely shaken in the south and northwest,
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Speaker 1: they say, and most of the bridges and large areas
22:01
Speaker 1: of Dock Westminster, which held most of the government offices,
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Speaker 1: suffered badly from the small bomb that destroyed the Parliament.
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Speaker 1: There are very few traces of the old thoroughfare of
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Speaker 1: Whitehall or the government region thereabout, but there are plentiful
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Speaker 1: drawings to scale of its buildings, and the Great Hole
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Speaker 1: in the east of London scarcely matters. That was a
22:25
Speaker 1: poor district, and very like the North and the South.
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Speaker 1: It will be possible to reconstruct most of it. It
22:32
Speaker 1: is wanted already. It becomes difficult to recall the old time,
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Speaker 1: even for us who saw it. It seems very distant
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Speaker 1: to me, said the girl. It was an unwholesome world,
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Speaker 1: reflected Karinan. I seem to remember everybody about my childhood
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Speaker 1: as if they were ill. They were ill, they were
22:54
Speaker 1: sick with confusion. Everybody was anxious about money, and everybody
22:59
Speaker 1: would doing uncongenial things. They ate a queer mixture of foods,
23:04
Speaker 1: either too much or too little, and at odd hours
23:09
Speaker 1: one sees how ill they were by their advertisements. All
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Speaker 1: of this new region of London they are opening up
23:16
Speaker 1: now is plastered with advertisements of pills. Everybody must have
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Speaker 1: been taking pills. In one of the hotel rooms in
23:25
Speaker 1: the Strand they have found the luggage of a lady
23:28
Speaker 1: covered up by falling rubble and unburnt, and she was
23:32
Speaker 1: equipped with nine different sorts of pill and tabloid. The
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Speaker 1: pill carrying age followed the weapon carrying age. They were
23:41
Speaker 1: equally strange to us. People's skins must have been a
23:45
Speaker 1: vile state. Very few people were properly washed. They carried
23:51
Speaker 1: the filth of months on their clothes. All the clothes
23:54
Speaker 1: they wore were old clothes. Our way of pulping our
23:58
Speaker 1: clothes again after a week or so of weare would
24:01
Speaker 1: have seemed fantastic to them. Their clothing hardly bears thinking about,
24:07
Speaker 1: and the congestion of them. Everybody was jostling against everybody
24:12
Speaker 1: in those awful towns in an uproar. People were run
24:16
Speaker 1: over and crushed by the hundred every year in London.
24:20
Speaker 1: The cars and omnibuses alone killed or disabled twenty thousand people.
24:25
Speaker 1: In Paris it was worse. People used to fall dead
24:29
Speaker 1: for want of air in the crowded ways. The irritation
24:33
Speaker 1: of London, internal and external, must have been maddening. It
24:38
Speaker 1: was a maddened world. It is like thinking of a
24:41
Speaker 1: sick child. One has the same effect of feverish urgencies
24:45
Speaker 1: and acute, irrational disappointments. All of history, he said, is
24:51
Speaker 1: a record of childhood, and yet not exactly a childhood.
24:57
Speaker 1: There is something clean and keen about even a sick child,
25:01
Speaker 1: and something touching. But so much of the old times
25:04
Speaker 1: makes one angry. So much they did seems grossly stupid,
25:10
Speaker 1: obstinately outrageously stupid, which is a very opposite to being
25:15
Speaker 1: fresh and young. I was reading only the other day
25:19
Speaker 1: about Bismarck, that hero of nineteenth century politics, that sequel
25:24
Speaker 1: to Napoleon, that god of blood and iron, And he
25:28
Speaker 1: was just a beery, obstinate, dull man. Indeed, that is
25:33
Speaker 1: what he was, the commonest, coarsest man whoever became great.
25:39
Speaker 1: I looked at his portraits, a heavy, almost froggish face
25:43
Speaker 1: with projecting eyes and a thick mustache to hide a
25:46
Speaker 1: poor mouth. He aimed at nothing but Germany. Germany emphasized, indurated,
25:53
Speaker 1: enlarged Germany and his class in Germany. Beyond that, he
25:58
Speaker 1: had no ideas. He was in a accessible to ideas.
26:01
Speaker 1: His mind never rose for a recorded instant above a
26:05
Speaker 1: bumpkin's elaborate cunning. And he was the most influential man
26:09
Speaker 1: in the world, in the whole world, no man ever
26:12
Speaker 1: left so deep a mark on it, because everywhere there
26:16
Speaker 1: were gross men to resonate to the heavy notes he emitted.
26:20
Speaker 1: He trampled on ten thousand lovely things, and a kind
26:24
Speaker 1: of malice in these louts made it pleasant to them
26:27
Speaker 1: to see him trample. No, he was no child. The
26:31
Speaker 1: dull national aggressiveness he stood for no childishness. Childhood is promise.
26:38
Speaker 1: He was survival. All Europe offered its children to him.
26:43
Speaker 1: It sacrificed education, art, happiness, and all its hopes of
26:48
Speaker 1: future welfare to follow a clatter of his saber. The
26:52
Speaker 1: monstrous worship of that old fool's blood and iron passed
26:57
Speaker 1: all round the earth until the atomic bunk has burnt
27:00
Speaker 1: our way to freedom again. One thinks of him now
27:05
Speaker 1: as one thinks of the megatherium, said one of the
27:09
Speaker 1: young men. From first to last, mankind made three million
27:14
Speaker 1: big guns and one hundred thousand complicated great ships for
27:18
Speaker 1: no other purpose but war. Were there no sane men
27:22
Speaker 1: in those days? Asked the young man to stand against
27:26
Speaker 1: that idolatry in a state of despair, said Edith Hayden.
27:32
Speaker 1: He is so far off, and there are men alive
27:36
Speaker 1: still who are alive when Bismarck died, said the young man.
27:49
Speaker 1: Section five. And yet it may be I am unjust
27:54
Speaker 1: to Bismarck, said Kreenan, following his own thoughts. You see,
27:59
Speaker 1: men belong to their own age. We stand upon a
28:03
Speaker 1: common stock of thought, and we fancy we stand upon
28:06
Speaker 1: the ground. I met a pleasant man the other day,
28:10
Speaker 1: a Maori whose great grandfather was a cannibal. It chanced
28:14
Speaker 1: he had a doggaro type of the old sinner, and
28:18
Speaker 1: the two were marvelously alike. One felt that a little
28:22
Speaker 1: juggling with time and either might have been the other
28:26
Speaker 1: people are cruel and stupid in a stupid age. Who
28:29
Speaker 1: might be gentle and splendid and a gracious one. The
28:33
Speaker 1: world also has its moods. Think of the mental food
28:36
Speaker 1: of Bismarck's childhood, the humiliations of Napoleon's victories, the crowded,
28:43
Speaker 1: crowning victory of the Battle of the Nations. Everybody in
28:46
Speaker 1: those days, wiser foolish, believes that the division of the
28:51
Speaker 1: world under a multitude of governments was inevitable, and that
28:55
Speaker 1: it was going on for thousands of years more. It
28:58
Speaker 1: was inevitable until it wasn't possible. Anyone who had denied
29:04
Speaker 1: that inevitability publicly would have been counted. Oh, a silly fellow.
29:10
Speaker 1: Old Bismarck was only just a little forcible on the
29:14
Speaker 1: lines of the accepted ideas. That is all. He thought that,
29:19
Speaker 1: since there had to be national governments, he would make
29:22
Speaker 1: one that was strong at home and invincible abroad. Because
29:27
Speaker 1: he had fed with a kind of rough appetite upon
29:30
Speaker 1: what we can now see were very stupid ideas, that
29:34
Speaker 1: does not make him a stupid man. We've had advantages,
29:38
Speaker 1: We've had unity and collectivism blasted into our brains. Where
29:43
Speaker 1: should we be now? But for the grace of science.
29:47
Speaker 1: I should have been an embittered, spiteful, downtrodden member of
29:51
Speaker 1: the Russian intelligensa, a conspirator, a prisoner or an assassin. You,
29:58
Speaker 1: my dear, would have been breaking dingy windows as a suffragette,
30:03
Speaker 1: never said Edith stoutly. For a time the talk broke
30:09
Speaker 1: into humorous personalities, and the young people guided at each
30:13
Speaker 1: other across the smiling old administrator. And then presently one
30:17
Speaker 1: of the young scientific men gave things a new turn.
30:21
Speaker 1: He spoke like one who was full to the brim.
30:25
Speaker 1: You know, sir, I have a fancy. It is hard
30:29
Speaker 1: to prove such things. That civilization was very near disaster
30:34
Speaker 1: when the atomic bombs came banging into it, that if
30:38
Speaker 1: there had been no Holstone and no induced radioactivity, the
30:43
Speaker 1: world would have smashed much as it did, only instead
30:48
Speaker 1: of its being a smash that opened away to better things,
30:52
Speaker 1: it might have been a smash without a recovery. It
30:55
Speaker 1: is part of my business to understand economics, and from
31:00
Speaker 1: that point of view, the century before Holston was just
31:03
Speaker 1: one hundred years crescendo of waste. Only the extreme individualism
31:08
Speaker 1: of that period, only its utter want of any collective
31:12
Speaker 1: understanding or purpose, can explain that waste. Mankind used up
31:18
Speaker 1: material insanely. They had got through three quarters of all
31:22
Speaker 1: the coal on the planet. They have used up most
31:26
Speaker 1: of the oil they had swept away their forests. They
31:30
Speaker 1: were running short of tin and copper, Their wheat areas
31:34
Speaker 1: were getting weary and populous, and many of the big
31:37
Speaker 1: towns had so lowered the water level of their available
31:41
Speaker 1: hills that they suffered a drought every summer. The whole
31:45
Speaker 1: system was rushing towards bankruptcy, and they were spending every
31:50
Speaker 1: year vaster and vaster amounts of power and energy upon
31:54
Speaker 1: military preparations, and continually expanding the debt of industry to capital.
32:01
Speaker 1: The system was already staggering when Holston began his researches.
32:06
Speaker 1: So far as the world in general went, there was
32:09
Speaker 1: no sense of danger and no sense for inquiry. They
32:13
Speaker 1: had no belief that science could save them, nor any
32:17
Speaker 1: idea that there was a need to be saved. They
32:20
Speaker 1: could not They would not see the gulf beneath their feet.
32:25
Speaker 1: It was pure good luck for mankind at large that
32:28
Speaker 1: any research at all was in progress. And as I say, sir,
32:33
Speaker 1: if that line of escape hadn't opened before now, there
32:37
Speaker 1: might have been a crash, revolution, panic, social disintegration, famine,
32:43
Speaker 1: and it is conceivable complete disorder. The rails might have
32:48
Speaker 1: rusted on the disused railways. By now, the telephone poles
32:53
Speaker 1: have rotted and fallen, the big liners dropped into sheet
32:57
Speaker 1: iron in the ports, the burnt, deserted cities become the
33:01
Speaker 1: ruinous hiding places of gangs and robbers. We might have
33:05
Speaker 1: been brigands in a shattered and attenuated world. Ah, you
33:10
Speaker 1: may smile, but that had happened before in human history.
33:14
Speaker 1: The world is still studded with the ruins of broken
33:17
Speaker 1: down civilizations. Barbaric bands made their fastness upon the Acropolis,
33:23
Speaker 1: and the tomb of Hadrian became a fortress that warred
33:27
Speaker 1: across the ruins of Rome against the Colosseum. Had all
33:32
Speaker 1: that possibility of reaction ended so certainly in nineteen forty
33:37
Speaker 1: is it also very far away? Even now? It seems
33:41
Speaker 1: far enough away now, said Edith Hayden. But forty years ago, no,
33:49
Speaker 1: said Karinan, with his eyes upon the mountains. I think
33:52
Speaker 1: you under rate the available intelligence in those early decades
33:57
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. Officially, I know politically that intelligence
34:03
Speaker 1: didn't tell, but it was there, and I question your hypothesis.
34:08
Speaker 1: I doubt if that discovery could have been delayed. There
34:12
Speaker 1: is a kind of inevitable logic now in the progress
34:15
Speaker 1: of research. For one hundred years and more, thought and
34:19
Speaker 1: science have been going their own way, regardless of the
34:22
Speaker 1: common events of life. You see, they have got loose.
34:27
Speaker 1: If there had been no Holstone, there would have been
34:31
Speaker 1: some similar man. If atomic energy had not come in
34:35
Speaker 1: one year, it would have come in another. In decadent Rome,
34:39
Speaker 1: the march of science had scarcely begun. Nineveh Babylon, Athens, Syracuse, Alexandria.
34:47
Speaker 1: These were the first rough experiments in association that made
34:52
Speaker 1: a security, a breathing space in which inquiry was born.
34:57
Speaker 1: Man had to experiment before he found out the way
35:00
Speaker 1: to begin. But already two hundred years ago he had
35:04
Speaker 1: fairly begun. The politics and dignities and wars of the
35:09
Speaker 1: nineteenth and twentieth centuries were only the last phoenix blaze
35:13
Speaker 1: of the former civilization, flaring up about the beginnings of
35:17
Speaker 1: the new which we serve. Man lives in the dawn forever,
35:23
Speaker 1: said Karinan life is beginning, in nothing else but beginning.
35:28
Speaker 1: It begins everlastingly. Each step seems vaster than the last,
35:34
Speaker 1: and does but gather us together for the next. This
35:37
Speaker 1: modern state of ours, which would have been a utopian
35:41
Speaker 1: marvel one hundred years ago is already the commonplace of life.
35:46
Speaker 1: But as I sit here and dream of the possibilities
35:49
Speaker 1: in the mind of man that now gather to a
35:52
Speaker 1: head beneath the shelter of its peace, these great mountains
35:56
Speaker 1: here seem but little things. Sa