"Olaf Stapledon - Last And First Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

features of the continent. But since the flier sees nothing of the minute
inhabitants below him, and since it is they who make history, we must also
punctuate our flight with many descents, skimming as it were over the
house-tops, and even alighting at critical points to speak face to face with
individuals. And as the plane's journey must begin with a slow ascent from the
intricate pedestrian view to wider horizons, so we must begin with a somewhat
close inspection of that little period which includes the culmination and
collapse of your own primitive civilization.




THE CHRONICLE




I. BALKAN EUROPE




1. THE EUROPEAN WAR AND AFTER


OBSERVE now your own epoch of history as it appears to the Last Men.
Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and
itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, opened bewildered eyes, and slept
again. One of these moments of precocious experience embraces the whole
struggle of the First Men from savagery toward civilization. Within that
moment, you stand almost in the very instant when the species attains its
zenith. Scarcely at all beyond your own day is this early culture to be seen
progressing, and already in your time the mentality of the race shows signs of
decline.
The first, and some would say the greatest, achievement of your own
"Western" culture was the conceiving of two ideals of conduct, both essential
to the spirit's well-being. Socrates, delighting in the truth for its own sake
and not merely for practical ends, glorified unbiased thinking, honesty of
mind and speech. Jesus, delighting in the actual human persons around him, and
in that flavour of divinity which, for him, pervaded the world, stood for
unselfish love of neighbours and of God. Socrates woke to the ideal of
dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet
self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity
of will. Each, of course, though starting with a different emphasis, involved
the other.
Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of
vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was never
really capable. For many centuries these twin stars enticed the more
precociously human of human animals, in vain. And the failure to put these
ideals in practice helped to engender in the race a cynical lassitude which