"Olaf Stapledon - Light and the Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

and fluctuating battle must spring at last a thing seemingly impossible, seemingly irrational, something wore stupendously
miraculous than any orthodox miracle. For how can time itself be divided into two streams? And if our planet has two futures,
which of them has place in the future of the solar system, and what of the other? Or does man's vacillation create not only two
future Earths but two future universes of stars and galaxies?

Reader, affirm if you will that only one of the two futures that I have watched is the real future, knit into the real cosmos, while
the other is mere fantasy. Then which, I ask in terror, is real, the bright or the dark? For to me, who have seen both, neither is less
real than the other, but one is infinitely more to be desired. Perhaps, reader, you will contend that both are figments of my crazy
mind, and that the real future is inaccessible and inconceivable. Believe what you will, but to me both are real, both are somehow
close-knit into the dread and lovely pattern of the universe. Nay more! My heart demands them both. For the light is more
brilliant when the dark offsets it. Though pity implores that all horror should turn out to have been a dream, yet for the light's own
sake some sterner passion demands that evil may have its triumph.

As I write this book my own death must lie somewhere in the near future. When, I cannot tell; for so minute an event could not
imprint itself on the vision that has possessed me. Seemingly it is at the time of my death that the strange experience begins,
obscurely and intermittently at first. For this reason the earlier part of the twofold story is fragmentary and chaotic, like the
experiences of childhood remembered in maturity.

Moreover the twin streams of history are in their upper reaches so similar as to be indistinguishable, like the almost identical
views which a man has through his two eyes. Not till the two futures begin to differ strikingly can they be distinguished and




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known to be inconsistent themes. Thenceforth whoever witnesses them, as I did, must become a divided personality, living not
merely two lives but in two universes.

As I write this book, immersed once more in the passions and savage deeds of contemporary mankind, hearing each day of horror
and brutality, fearing that very soon some hideous disaster may fall upon my people and on the whole human race, and on those
few who, being most dear to me, are for me the living presence of humanity, it is impossible for me to recapture fully the serene
and intelligent mood of my post-mortal experience. For throughout that age-long future I must, I think, have been strengthened
by the felt presence of other and superhuman spectators. Was it that the more lucid populations of the cosmos, in their scattered
worlds, up and down the constellations, here and there among the galaxies, had sent observers to witness the terrestrial miracle;
or had focused their attention and their presence from afar on our little orb, so forlorn, so inconsiderable, where man, poised
between the light and the dark on the knife-edge of choice, fought out his destiny. It was as though, under their influence, I was
able to put off to some extent my human pettiness; as though, haltingly and with celestial aid, I could see man's double fate
through the eyes of those superhuman but not divine intelligences. Their presence is now withdrawn. But in memory of them I
shall do my utmost to tell the twofold story at once with intimate human sympathy and with something of that calm insight which
was lent to me.

2 - THE MODERN AGE

AT SOME DATE which to readers of this book is far off in the future I became aware that I had long been dreamily witnessing a
flux of human events. Peering back into my post-mortal memory as though into a second infancy, I came upon fragments of what