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

was one cause of its decay.
There were other causes. The peoples from whom sprang Socrates and Jesus
were also among the first to conceive admiration for Fate. In Greek tragic art
and Hebrew worship of divine law, as also in the Indian resignation, man
experienced, at first very obscurely, that vision of an alien and supernal
beauty, which was to exalt and perplex him again and again throughout his
whole career. The conflict between this worship and the intransigent loyalty
to Life, embattled against Death, proved insoluble. And though few individuals
were ever clearly conscious of the issue, the first human species was again
and again unwittingly hampered in its spiritual development by this supreme
perplexity.
While man was being whipped and enticed by these precocious experiences,
the actual social constitution of his world kept changing so rapidly through
increased mastery over physical energy, that his primitive nature could no
longer cope with the complexity of his environment. Animals that were
fashioned for hunting and fighting in the wild were suddenly called upon to be
citizens, and moreover citizens of a world-community. At the same time they
found themselves possessed of certain very dangerous powers which their petty
minds were not fit to use. Man struggled; but, as you shall hear, he broke
under the strain.
The European War, called at the time the War to End War, was the first
and least destructive of those world conflicts which display so tragically the
incompetence of the First Men to control their own nature. At the outset a
tangle of motives, some honourable and some disreputable, ignited a conflict
for which both antagonists were all too well prepared, though neither
seriously intended it. A real difference of temperament between Latin France
and Nordic Germany combined with a superficial rivalry between Germany and
England, and a number of stupidly brutal gestures on the part of the German
Government and military command, to divide the world into two camps; yet in
such a manner that it is impossible to find any difference of principle
between them. During the struggle each party was convinced that it alone stood
for civilization. But in fact both succumbed now and again to impulses of
sheer brutality, and both achieved acts not merely of heroism, but of
generosity unusual among the First Men. For conduct which to clearer minds
seems merely sane, was in those days to be performed only by rare vision and
self-mastery.
As the months of agony advanced, there was bred in the warring peoples a
genuine and even passionate will for peace and a united world. Out of the
conflict of the tribes arose, at least for a while, a spirit loftier than
tribalism. But this fervour lacked as yet clear guidance, lacked even the
courage of conviction. The peace which followed the European War is one of the
most significant moments of ancient history; for it epitomizes both the
dawning vision and the incurable blindness, both the impulse toward a higher
loyalty and the compulsive tribalism of a race which was, after all, but
superficially human.




2. THE ANGLO-FRENCH WAR