Olaf Stapledon - Odd John

“You arrogant young cub!” I protested. “I don’t believe we are as bad as you think.”

“Oh, don’t you! Of course not, you’re one of the pack,” he said. “Look here, now! I’ve spent some time and trouble poking about in Europe, and what do I find? In my simplicity I thought the fellows who had come to the top, the best minds, the leaders in every walk, would be something like real human beings, fundamentally sane, rational, efficient, self-detached, loyal to the best in them. Actually they are nothing of the sort. Mostly they’re even below the average. Their position has underminded them. Think of old Z (naming a Cabinet minister). You’d be amazed if you could see him as I have seen him. He simply can’t experience anything clearly and correctly, except things that bear on his petty little self-esteem. Everything has to penetrate to him through a sort of eider-down of preconceived notions, clichés , diplomatic phrases. He has no more idea of the real issues in politics to-day than a mayfly has of the fish in the stream it’s fluttering on. He has, of course, the trick of using a lot of phrases that might mean very important things, but they don’t mean them to him . They are just counters for him, to be used in the game of politics. He’s simply not alive , to the real things. That’s what’s the matter with him. And take Y, the Press magnate. He’s just a nimble-witted little guttersnipe who has found out how to hoax the world into giving him money and power. Talk to him about the real things, and he just hasn’t a notion what you’re driving at. But it’s not only that sort that terrify me with their combination of power and inanity. Take the real leaders, take young X, whose revolutionary ideas are going to have a huge effect on social thought. He’s got a brain, and he’s using it on the right side, and he has nerve, too. But—well, I’ve seen enough of him to spot his real motive, hidden from himself, of course. He had a thin time long ago, and now he wants to get his own back, he wants to make the oppressor frightened of him. He wants to use the have-nots to break the haves, for his own satisfaction. Well, let him get his own back, and good luck to him. But fancy taking that as your life’s goal, even unconsciously! It has made him do damned good work, but it has crippled him, too, poor devil. Or take that philosopher bloke, W, who did so much toward showing up the old school with their simple trust in words. He’s really in much the same fix as X. I know him pretty well, the perky old bird. And knowing him I can see the mainspring of all that brilliant work quite clearly, namely, the idea of himself as bowing to no man and no god, as purged of prejudice and sentimentality, as faithful to reason yet not blindly trustful of it. All that is admirable. But it obsesses him, and actually warps his reasoning. You can’t be a real philoso pher if you have an obsession. On the other hand, take V. He knows all about electrons and all about galaxies, and he’s first class at his job. Further, he has glimmers of spiritual experience. Well, what’s the mechanism this time? He’s a kind creature, very sympathetic. And he likes to think that the universe is all right from the human point of view. Hence all his explorations and speculations. Well, so long as he sticks to science he is sound enough. But his spiritual experience tells him science is all very superficial. Right, again; but his is not very deep spiritual experience, and it gets all mixed up with kindliness, and he tells us things about the universe that are sheer inventions of his kindliness.”

John paused. Then with a sigh he resumed. “It’s no good going on about it. The upshot is simple enough. Homo sapiens is at the end of his tether, and I’m not going to spend my life tinkering a doomed species.”

“You’re mighty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” I put in. “Yes,” he said, “perfectly sure of myself in some ways, and still utterly unsure in others, in ways I can’t explain. But one thing is stark clear. If I were to take over Hom. sap . I should freeze up inside, and grow quite incapable of doing what is my real job. That job is what I’m not yet sure about, and can’t possibly explain. But it begins with something very interior to me . Of course, it’s not just saving my soul. I, as an individual, might damn myself without spoiling the world. Indeed, my damning myself might happen to be an added beauty to the world. I don’t matter on my own account, but I have it in me to do something that does matter. This I know . And I’m pretty sure I have to begin with—well, interior discovery of objective reality, in preparation for objective creation. Can you make anything of that?”

“Not much,” I said, “but go on.”

“No,” he said, “I won’t go on along that line, but I’ll tell you something else. I’ve had the hell of a fright lately. And I’m not easily frightened. This was only the second time, ever. I went to the Cup Tie Final last week to see the crowd. You remember, it was a close fight (and a damned good game from beginning to end) and three minutes before time there was trouble over a foul. The ball went into goal before the referee’s whistle had got going for the foul, and that goal would have won the match. Well, the crowd got all het up about it, as you probably heard. That’s what frightened me. I don’t mean I was scared of being hurt in a row. No, I should have quite enjoyed a bit of a row, if I’d known which side to be on, and there’d been something to fight about. But there wasn’t. It clearly was a foul. Their precious, ‘sporting instinct’ ought to have kept them straight, but it didn’t. They just lost their heads, went brute-mad over it. What got me was the sudden sense of being different from every one else, of being a human being alone in a vast herd of cattle. Here was a fair sample of the world’s population, of the sixteen hundred millions of Homo sapiens . And this fair sample was expressing itself in a thoroughly characteristic way, an inarticulate bellowing and braying, and here was I, a raw, ignorant, blundering little creature, but human, really human, perhaps the only real human being in the world; and just because I was really human, and had in me the possibility of some new and transcendent spiritual achievement, I was more important than all the rest of the sixteen hundred million put together. That was a terrifying thought in itself. What made matters worse was the bellowing crowd. Not that I was afraid of them , but of the thing they were a sample of. Not that I was afraid as a private individual, so to speak. The thought was very exhilarating from that point of view. If they had turned on me I’d have made a damned good fight for it. What terrified me was the thought of the immense responsibility, and the immense odds against my fulfilling it.”

John fell silent; and I was so stunned by his prodigious self-importance that I had nothing to say. Presently he began again.

“Of course I know, Fido old thing, the whole business must seem fantastic to you. But, perhaps, by being a bit more precise on one point I may make the thing clearer. It’s already pretty common knowledge of course that another world-war is likely, and that if it does come it may very well be the end of civilization, But I know something that makes the whole situation look much worse than it’s generally thought to be. I don’t really know what will happen to the species in the long run, but I do know that unless a miracle happens there is bound to be a most ghastly mess in the short run for psychological reasons. I have looked pretty carefully into lots of minds, big and little, and it’s devastatingly clear to me that in big matters Homo sapiens is a species with very slight educable capacity. He has entirely failed to learn his lesson from the last war. He shows no more practical intelligence than a moth that has fluttered through a candle-flame once and will do so again as soon as it has recovered from the shock. And again and yet again, till its wings are burnt. Intellectually many people realize the danger. But they are not the sort to act on the awareness, It’s as though the moth knew that the flame meant death, yet simply couldn’t stop its wings from taking it there, Then what with this new crazy religion of nationalism that’s beginning, and the steady improvement in the technique of destruction, a huge disaster is simply inevitable, barring a miracle, which of course may happen. There might be some sort of sudden leap forward to a more human mentality, and therefore a world-wide social and religious revolution. But apart from that possibility I should give the disease fifteen to twenty years to come to a head. Then one fine day a few great powers will attack one another, and—phut! Civilization will have gone in a few weeks, Now, of course, if I took charge I could probably stave off the smash. But, as I say, it would mean chucking the really vital thing I can do. Chicken-farming is not worth such a sacrifice. The upshot is, Fido, I’m through with your bloody awful species. I must strike out on my own, and, if possible, in such a way as to avoid being smashed in the coming disaster.”