“The island has been a new school for you,” said Chara joyfully but half-questioningly.
“Yes, in a short time here I’ve experienced a lot and have done some new thinking. All these ideas I’ve had on my mind for a long time….”
Mven Mass told her about his fears that man, by repeating the mistakes of the past, even if in a much less ugly form, is developing in a too rational, too technical manner. It seemed to Mven that on the planet of Epsilon Tucanae there was a mankind very much like ours and very beautiful in body that had paid greater attention to the perfection of the emotional side of the psyche.
“I’ve suffered a great deal from this sense of imperfect harmony with life,” answered the girl after a pause. “I’ve always wanted more of the old and much less of what is around me. I dreamed of the epoch that had not expended the strength and feelings accumulated in the primitive period, the Age of Eros in Mediterranean Antiquity. It would be a good thing for the Great World to set up a reservation for the Life of Antiquity where we could rest and acquire emotional strength. I have always tried to arouse a real strength of feeling in my audiences but, I’m afraid, only Evda Nahl has fully understood me!”
“And Mven Mass!” added the African, seriously, telling her how she had appeared to him as the copper-coloured daughter of Tucana. The girl raised her face and in the timid light of early dawn Mven Mass saw eyes so big and profound that he felt a slight dizziness, moved away from her and laughed.
“There was a time when our ancestors in their novels about the future imagined us as weakly, rickety beings with overgrown skulls. Despite the millions of animals that were tormented and slaughtered in the name of science they did not come any nearer to an understanding of the brain mechanism of man and simply because they used a knife where the most delicate measuring instruments in the molecule and atom range were needed. We now know that strong intellectual activity requires a powerful body, full of vital energy and that that body will produce strong emotions that we have so far learned only to suppress and, by suppressing them, make ourselves the poorer!”
“We are still chained to the intellect,” agreed Chara. “A lot has been done but the intellectual side continues to advance while the emotional lags behind and that is what must be looked after — so that emotion should not demand an intellectual chain but that reason should at times need emotion’s chains. I have come to regard this as so important that I intend to write a book about it.”
“Oh, of course,” exclaimed Chara enthusiastically, but grew timid and continued, “very few great scientists have devoted themselves to research into the laws of the beautiful and the fullness of emotions — I’m not talking about psychology.”
“I can understand you,” answered the African, admiring the girl who, in her confusion, had raised her proud head higher to the rays of the rising sun that again gave her skin the colour of burnished copper. Chara sat easily and lightly on the big black horse that walked in step with Mven Mass’ roan.
“We are lagging behind!” exclaimed the girl slackening her reins and urging her horse forward. The African overtook her and they cantered together along the smooth old road. They soon caught up with the others, reined in their horses and again Chara turned to Mven Mass.
“What about that girl, Onar?”
“She must go to the Great World. You said yourself that she had remained on the island quite by chance because she was attached to her mother who came here and died recently. It would be good for Onar to work with Veda, women’s gentle and sensitive hands are needed at the excavations…. And there are thousands of other jobs for which they are needed… and Beth Lohn, the new Beth Lohn who will come back with us, he’ll find her in a new way.”
Chara frowned and the bird that flew over her eyes spread its wings still more widely.
“And you won’t leave your stars?”
“Whatever the decision of the Council may be I shall continue my study of the Cosmos. But first I have to write….”
“About the stars of the human soul?”
“Quite right, Chara! So great is their variety that it takes my breath away.” Noticing that the girl was smiling gently at him, Mven Mass stopped, “Don’t you agree?”
“Of course I do. I was thinking about your experiment. You did it out of your passionately impatient desire to give people the fullness of the world. In that you were an artist and not a scientist.”
“And Renn Bose?”
“He’s different. For him the experiment was another step forward in his research but one that science required.”
“You don’t blame me, Chara?”
“No! Nor do many other people, the majority, I’m sure!”
Mven Mass took the reins in his left hand and held out his right to Chara. They entered the tiny group of houses around the station.
The waves of the Indian Ocean beat rhythmically at the foot of the cliff. In the sounds they made Mven Mass could hear the rhythmic beat of the basses in Zieg Zohr’s symphony depicting life reaching out into the Cosmos. There was one powerful note, a strong F, the basic note in terrestrial nature, that sang over the sea and compelled man to respond with his entire soul, merging with the nature that gave him birth.
The sea was transparent, shining, cleansed of the relics of the past, of predatory sharks, poisonous fish, molluscs and medusae in the same way as the life of present-day man has been cleansed of the evil and fear of past centuries. But somewhere in the distant corners of the boundless ocean the seeds of harmful life have survived and we have the Destroyer Battalions to thank for keeping our ocean waters safe and clean.
And is it not true that in the same way there suddenly arises savage stubbornness, the self-confidence of the cretin, the egoism of the beast in the transparent soul of youth? If man today does not submit to the authority of society that is directed towards wisdom and goodness but, instead, is guided by his own accidental ambition and individual passions, courage is turned into bestiality, creative activity into cruel cunning while loyalty and self-abnegation become the bulwark of tyranny, cruel exploitation and abasement. The surface layer of discipline and social culture is easily torn off, only one or two generations of poor living are needed. Mven Mass had glanced into the face of the beast there, on the Island of Oblivion. If he is not restrained, if he has his way, a monstrous despotism will come into being that will crush everything underfoot and bring back that ruthless arbitrariness that held mankind enslaved for so many centuries.
The most astounding thing in world history is the emergence of that undying hatred for knowledge and beauty that is typical of all vicious ignoramuses. This mistrust, fear and hatred are to be found in all human communities, beginning with fear of the primitive witches and witch-doctors and continuing up to the beating o(those thinkers who were ahead of their time in the Era of Disunity. The same thing occurred on other planets with highly-developed civilizations that had not succeeded in protecting their social systems from the arbitrary action of small groups of people, oligarchies, that emerged suddenly and cunningly in the most diverse forms. Mven Mass recalled that the same thing had been reported over the Great Circle about other inhabited worlds where the highest achievements of science were used to intimidate, for torture and punishment, for thought-reading and turning the masses into obedient semi-idiots ever ready to fulfil the most monstrous orders. A cry for help from such a planet had reached the Circle and flown on into space many hundreds of years after the people who sent it and their cruel rulers had perished.
Our planet is now at a stage of development when such horrors are inconceivable. But man’s spiritual development is still insufficient and people like Evda Nahl are working on the problem.