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 towards 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 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.