"Wells, H G - The Research Magnificent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

is did not occur. He found his limitations soon enough; he was
perpetually rediscovering them, but out of these interments of the
spirit he rose again--remarkably. When we others have decided that,
to be plain about it, we are not going to lead the noble life at
all, that the thing is too ambitious and expensive even to attempt,
we have done so because there were other conceptions of existence
that were good enough for us, we decided that instead of that
glorious impossible being of ourselves, we would figure in our own
eyes as jolly fellows, or sly dogs, or sane, sound, capable men or
brilliant successes, and so forth--practicable things. For Benham,
exceptionally, there were not these practicable things. He
blundered, he fell short of himself, he had--as you will be told--
some astonishing rebuffs, but they never turned him aside for long.
He went by nature for this preposterous idea of nobility as a linnet
hatched in a cage will try to fly.

And when he discovered--and in this he was assisted not a little by
his friend at his elbow--when he discovered that Nobility was not
the simple thing he had at first supposed it to be, he set himself
in a mood only slightly disconcerted to the discovery of Nobility.
When it dawned upon him, as it did, that one cannot be noble, so to
speak, IN VACUO, he set himself to discover a Noble Society. He
began with simple beliefs and fine attitudes and ended in a
conscious research. If he could not get through by a stride, then
it followed that he must get through by a climb. He spent the
greater part of his life studying and experimenting in the noble
possibilities of man. He never lost his absurd faith in that
conceivable splendour. At first it was always just round the corner
or just through the wood; to the last it seemed still but a little
way beyond the distant mountains.

For this reason this story has been called THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT.
It was a real research, it was documented. In the rooms in
Westhaven Street that at last were as much as one could call his
home, he had accumulated material for--one hesitates to call it a
book--let us say it was an analysis of, a guide to the noble life.
There after his tragic death came his old friend White, the
journalist and novelist, under a promise, and found these papers; he
found them to the extent of a crammed bureau, half a score of patent
files quite distended and a writing-table drawer-full, and he was
greatly exercised to find them. They were, White declares, they are
still after much experienced handling, an indigestible aggregation.
On this point White is very assured. When Benham thought he was
gathering together a book he was dreaming, White says. There is no
book in it. . . .

Perhaps too, one might hazard, Benham was dreaming when he thought
the noble life a human possibility. Perhaps man, like the ape and
the hyaena and the tapeworm and many other of God's necessary but
less attractive creatures, is not for such exalted ends. That doubt