"Colin Wilson - The Philospher's Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Colin)

Only one aspect of my new life saddened me - the alienation from my family. From the first, my two
brothers were openly envious. I was sad about this. I had never liked my elder brother, Arnold, much,
but I was fond of Tom, who was a year my junior. Both of them began to treat me as a stranger
whenever I returned home, and made sneering comments about the тАШlife of luxuryтАЩ they must be missing.
After a while, their attitude seemed to affect my father, who also became distant and definitely hostile.
Only my mother was always pleased to see me. She understood that it was not for the тАШlife of luxuryтАЩ that
I preferred Sneinton to my own home. Even so, I took care not to say too much to her about my doings
there. She would have thought so much mental activity abnormal and unhealthy - as, in fact, have several
friends to whom I have described life at Sneinton. The truth is that the life was ideal for me. At thirteen,
my mind was hungry; I could feel myself changing almost daily. Without Lyell, it would have been a
period of frustration - of increasing desire to live a life of тАШsensations and ideasтАЩ, and hatred of the
everyday world that prevented this. The conflict had already started before I met Lyell; I was already
beginning to see my life at home and school as completely futile. What Lyell offered me was not
abnormal intellectual activity, but a life of discovery and purpose. Thirteen is the age of what Shaw calls
тАШthe birth of the moral passionтАЩ - that is, the period when ideas are not abstractions but realities, when
they are food and drink. The changes of puberty have altered oneтАЩs old conception of oneself. Identity
vanishes; oneтАЩs inner being becomes formless, chaos waiting for the act of creation. There is a brooding
feeling of anticipation; the clouds lie there, fragmentary, slate grey, waiting for the wind. And a book, a
symphony, a poem, is not merely another тАШexperienceтАЩ but a mystery, a wind blowing from the future.
The problem of death is still far away; but the problem of life seems quite as tremendous. The mind
contemplates vistas of time, the emptiness of space, and knows that the тАШordinarinessтАЩ of everyday life is
an illusion. And as the everyday becomes less real, so ideas are seen to be the only reality, and the mind
that shapes them the only true power in this world of blind natural forces.
Lyell made no attempt to influence the direction of my studies, except to recommend books to me. He
wanted me to make my own discoveries. When I first went to Sneinton, I read IrvineтАЩs fine book on the
Darwinian controversy, and became fascinated by the period. I read everything I could find about
Huxley, Darwin, Lyell, Tyndal and Herbert Spencer, and spent my days in the laboratory, dissecting
specimens and examining them under the microscope. I came completely under the influence of Sir Julian
Huxley, to whom Lyell introduced me in London. HuxleyтАЩs belief that man has become the managing
director of evolution in the universe seemed to me self-evident. I was fascinated by Wendell StanleyтАЩs
experiments in which he transformed a virus into a non-living crystal, and showed that it could still cause
disease, for they obviously opened up the question of the dividing line between living and non-living
matter. Lyell kept me up to date on the researches of Watson and Crick into DNA. And both of us
became excited about Stanley L. MillerтАЩs demonstration that organic compounds can form spontaneously
under conditions that parallel those of the earth of eighteen thousand million years ago. For they raised
the supreme question: Is тАШlifeтАЩ something that permeates the universe like some kind of electric current,
but has to wait for тАШconductorsтАЩ to form before it can enter matter? Or can it play some part in forming
the conductor? Neither of us could entertain for a moment OparinтАЩs hypothesis that life arose
тАШspontaneouslyтАЩ through the accidental build-up of organic compounds.
It was during this period that I stumbled on the trail of the тАШgreat secretтАЩ that later became my life work. I
was reading an article by Lyell on enzymes - those strange catalysts that act within living cells, and upon
which all life depends - when I came across his reference to the autolytic enzymes. I asked him what
these were, and he explained that they were enzymes of dissolution, that lay dormant in the cell until
death, when they take over their task of breaking down the proteins in the protoplasm. тАШBut if theyтАЩre
always in the cell, why donтАЩt they cause it to break down while itтАЩs alive?тАЩ тАШNo one knows.тАЩ He picked
up a book, searched for a place, and read aloud: тАШThe harpies of death sleep in every unit of our living
bodies, but as long as life is there, their wings are bound and their devouring mouths are dosed.тАЩ For
once, he seemed puzzled by my intense interest in the subject. He explained that there is nothing very
mysterious about enzymes. If you leave meat to hang, it becomes more tender because the enzymes