The Complete Novels of Olaf Stapledon. Olaf Stapledon

look to for strength; but he, the youngest, is different from the rest. In him the spirit, which is but the flesh awakened into spirituality, has power to withstand the tempest of solar energy longer than the rest of us. It is as though the sun itself were eclipsed by this spirit’s brightness. It is as though in him at last, and for a day only, man’s promise were fulfilled. For though, like others, he suffers in the flesh, he is above his suffering. And though more than the rest of us he feels the suffering of others, he is above his pity. In his comforting there is a strange sweet raillery which can persuade the sufferer to smile at his own pain. When this youngest brother of ours contemplates with us our dying world and the frustration of all man’s striving, he is not, like us, dismayed, but quiet. In the presence of such quietness despair wakens into peace. By his reasonable speech, almost by the mere sound of his voice, our eyes are opened, and our hearts mysteriously filled with exultation. Yet often his words are grave.

      Let his words, not mine, close this story:

      Great are the stars, and man is of no account to them. But man is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived and a star kills. He is greater than those bright blind companies. For though in them there is incalculable potentiality, in him there is achievement, small, but actual. Too soon, seemingly, he comes to his end. But when he is done he will not be nothing, not as though he had never been; for he is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things.

      Man was winged hopefully. He had in him to go further than this short flight, now ending. He proposed even that he should become the Flower of All Things, and that he should learn to be the All-Knowing, the All-Admiring. Instead, he is to be destroyed. He is only a fledgling caught in a bush-fire. He is very small, very simple, very little capable of insight. His knowledge of the great orb of things is but a fledgling’s knowledge. His admiration is a nestling’s admiration for the things kindly to his own small nature. He delights only in food and the food-announcing call. The music of the spheres passes over him, through him, and is not heard.

      Yet it has used him. And now it uses his destruction. Great, and terrible, and very beautiful is the Whole; and for man the best is that the Whole should use him.

      But does it really use him? Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness.

      But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.

Last Men in London

       Table of Contents

       PREFACE

       INTRODUCTION THE FUTURE’S CONCERN WITH THE PAST

       CHAPTER I THE WORLD OF THE LAST MEN

       1. HOLIDAY ON NEPTUNE

       2. MEN AND MAN

       3. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

       CHAPTER II EXPLORING THE PAST

       1. THE PORTAL TO THE PAST

       2. DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS

       3. INFLUENCING PAST MINDS

       4. HOVERING OVER TIME

       5. DESCENT AMONG THE FIRST MEN

       6. IN THE STREETS OF LONDON

       CHAPTER III THE CHILD PAUL

       1. PAUL AND HIS NEPTUNIAN PARASITE

       2. THE CHILD PAUL

       3. EARLY EXPERIMENTS ON PAUL

       4. PAUL’S CHANGING WORLD

       CHAPTER IV PAUL COMES OF AGE

       1. PAUL AND SEX

       2. PAUL DEVOUT

       3. PAUL FACES THE FACTS

       CHAPTER V ORIGINS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR

       1. THE NEPTUNIAN ATTITUDE TO THE WAR

       2. THE PHILOSOPHICAL LEMURS

       3. PREHISTORIC ORIGINS OF THE WAR

       4. THE HISTORICAL PERIOD

       CHAPTER VI THE WAR

       1. EUROPE BEFORE THE WAR

       2. EUROPE CHOOSES WAR

       3. EUROPE AT WAR

       4. PAUL IN THE WAR

       CHAPTER VII AFTER THE WAR

       1. THE NEW HOPE

       2.

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