It is easy to speak of children; but how can I tell you anything
significant of our adult experience, in relation to which not only the
world of the First Men but the worlds of the most developed earlier
species seem so naïve?
The source of the immense difference between ourselves and all other
human races lies in the sexual group, which is in fact much more than a
sexual group.
The designers of our species set out to produce a being that might be
capable of an order of mentality higher than their own. The only
possibility of doing so lay in planning a great increase of brain
organization. But they knew that the brain of an individual human being
could not safely be allowed to exceed a certain weight. They therefore
sought to produce the new order of mentality in a system of distinct and
specialized brains held in ‘telepathic’ unity by means of ethereal
radiation. Material brains were to be capable of becoming on some
occasions mere nodes in a system of radiation which itself should then
constitute the physical basis of a single mind. Hitherto there had been
‘telepathic’ communication between many individuals, but no
super-individual, or group-mind. It was known that such a unity of
individual minds had never been attained before, save on Mars; and it
was known how lamentably the racial mind of Mars had failed to transcend
the minds of the Martians. By a combination of shrewdness and good luck
the designers hit upon a policy which escaped the Martian failure. They
planned as the basis of the super-individual a small multi-sexual group.
Of course the mental unity of the sexual group is not the direct outcome
of the sexual intercourse of its members. Such intercourse does occur.
Groups differ from one another very greatly in this respect; but in most
groups all the members of the male sexes have intercourse with all the
members of the female sexes. Thus sex is with us essentially social. It
is impossible for me to give any idea of the great range and intensity
of experience afforded by these diverse types of union. Apart from this
emotional enrichment of the individuals, the importance of sexual
activity in the group lies in its bringing individuals into that extreme
intimacy, temperamental harmony, and complementariness, without which no
emergence into higher experience would be possible.
Individuals are not necessarily confined to the same group for ever.
Little by little a group may change every one of its ninety-six members,
and yet it will remain the same super-individual mind, though enriched
with the memories grafted into it by the newcomers. Very rarely does an
individual leave a group before he has been in it for ten thousand
years. In some groups the members live together in a common home. In
others they live apart. Sometimes an individual will form a sort of
monogamous relation with another individual of his group, homing with
the chosen one for many thousands of years, or even for a lifetime.
Indeed some claim that life-long monogamy is the ideal state, so deep
and delicate is the intimacy which it affords. But of course, even in
monogamy, each partner must be periodically refreshed by intercourse
with other members of the group, not only for the spiritual health of
the two partners themselves, but also that the group-mind may be
maintained in full vigour. Whatever the sexual custom of the group,
there is always in the mind of each member a very special loyalty
towards the whole group, a peculiar sexually toned _esprit de corps_,
unparalleled in any other species.
Occasionally there is a special kind of group intercourse in which,
during the actual occurrence of group mentality, all the members of one
group will have intercourse with those of another. Casual intercourse
outside the group is not common, but not discouraged. When it occurs it
comes as a symbolic act crowning a spiritual intimacy.
Unlike the physical sex-relationship, the mental unity of the group
involves all the members of the group every time it occurs, and so long
as it persists. During times of group experience the individual
continues to perform his ordinary routine of work and recreation, save
when some particular activity is demanded of him by the group-mind
itself. But all that he does as a private individual is carried out in a
profound absent-mindedness. In familiar situations he reacts correctly,
even to the extent of executing familiar types of intellectual work or
entertaining acquaintances with intelligent conversation. Yet all the
while he is in fact ‘far away’, rapt in the process of the group-mind.
Nothing short of an urgent and unfamiliar crisis can recall him; and in
recalling him it usually puts an end to the group’s experience.
Each member of the group is fundamentally just a highly developed human
animal. He enjoys his food. He has a quick eye for sexual attraction,
within or without the group. He has his personal idiosyncrasies and
foibles, and is pleased to ridicule the foibles of others—and of
himself. He may be one of those who abhor children, or one of those who
enter into children’s antics with fervour, if they will tolerate him. He
may move heaven and earth to procure permission for a holiday in the
Land of the Young. And if he fails, as he almost surely does, he may go
walking with a friend, or boating and swimming, or playing violent
games. Or he may merely potter in his garden, or refresh his mind though
not his body by exploring some favourite region of the past. Recreation
occupies a large part of his life. For this reason he is always glad to
get back to work in due season, whether his function is to maintain some
part of the material organization of our world, or to educate, or to
perform scientific research, or to cooperate in the endless artistic
venture of the race, or, as is more likely, to help in some of those
innumerable enterprises whose nature it is impossible for me to
describe.
As a human individual, then, he or she is somewhat of the same type as a
member of the Fifth species. Here once more is the perfected glandular
outfit and instinctive nature. Here too is the highly developed sense
perception and intellection. As in the Fifth species, so in the
Eighteenth, each individual has his own private needs, which he heartily
craves to fulfil; but also, in both species, he subordinates these
private cravings to the good of the race absolutely and without
struggle. The only kind of conflict which ever occurs between
individuals is not the irreconcilable conflict of wills, but the
conflict due to misunderstanding, to imperfect knowledge of the matter
under dispute; and this can always be abolished by patient telepathic
explication.
In addition to the brain organization necessary to this perfection of
individual human nature, each member of a sexual group has in his own
brain a special organ which, useless by itself, can cooperate
‘telepathically’ with the special organs of other members of the group
to produce a single electro-magnetic system, the physical basis of the
group-mind. In each sub-sex this organ has a peculiar form and function;
and only by the simultaneous operation of the whole ninety-six does the
group attain unified mental life. These organs do not merely enable each
member to share the experience of all; for this is already provided in
the sensitivity to radiation which is characteristic of all brain tissue
in our species. By means of the harmonious activity of the special
organs a true group-mind emerges, with experience far beyond the range
of the individuals in isolation.
This would not be possible did not the temperament and capacity of each
sub-sex differ appropriately from those of the others. I can only hint
at these differences by analogy. Among the First Men there are many
temperamental types whose essential natures the psychologists of that
species never fully analysed. I may mention, however, as superficial
designations of these types, the meditative, the active, the mystical,
the intellectual, the artistic, the theoretical, the concrete, the
placid, the highly-strung. Now our sub-sexes differ from one another
temperamentally in some such manners as these, but with a far greater
range and diversity. These differences of temperament are utilized for
the enrichment of a group-self, such as could never have been attained
by the First Men, even if they had been capable of ‘telepathic’
communication and electro-magnetic unity; for they had not the range of
specialized brain form.
For all the daily business of life, then, each of us is mentally a
distinct individual, though his ordinary means of communication with
others is ‘telepathic’. But frequently he wakes up to be a group-mind.
Apart from this ‘waking of individuals together’, if I may so call it,
the group-mind has no existence; for its being is solely the being of
the individuals comprehended together. When this communal awakening
occurs, each individual experiences all the bodies of the group as ‘his
own multiple body’, and perceives the world equally from all those
bodies. This awakening happens to all the individuals at the same time.
But over and above this simple enlargement of the experienced field is
the awakening into new kinds of experience. Of this obviously I can tell
you nothing, save that it differs from the lowlier state more radically
than the infant mind differs from the mind of the individual adult, and
that it consists of insight into many unsuspected and previously
inconceivable features of the familiar world of men and things. Hence,
in our group mode, most, but not all, of the perennial philosophical
puzzles, especially those connected with the nature of personality, can
be so lucidly restated that they cease to be puzzles.
Upon this higher plane of mentality the sexual groups, and therefore the
individuals participating in them, have social intercourse with one
another as super-individuals. Thus they form together a community of
minded communities. For each group is a person differing from other
groups in character and experience somewhat as individuals differ. The
groups themselves are not allocated to different works, in such a manner
that one group should be wholly engaged in industry, another in
astronomy, and so on. Only the individuals are thus allocated. In each
group there will be members of many professions. The function of the
group itself is purely some special manner of insight and mode of
appreciation; in relation to which, of course, the work of the
individuals is constantly controlled, not only while they are actually
supporting the group-self, but also when they have each fallen once more
into the limited experience which is ordinary individual selfhood. For
though, as individuals, they cannot retain clear insight into the high
matters which they so recently experienced, they do remember so much as
is not beyond the range of individual mentality; and in particular they
remember the bearing of the group experience upon their own conduct as
individuals.
Recently another and far more penetrating kind of experience has been
attained, partly by good fortune, partly through research directed by
the group-minds. For these have specialized themselves for particular
functions in the mental life of the race, as previously the individuals
were specialized for functions within the mind of a group. Very rarely
and precariously has this supreme experience been achieved. In it the
individual passes beyond his group experience, and becomes the mind of
the race. At all times, of course, he can communicate ‘telepathically’
with other individuals anywhere upon the planet; and frequently the
whole race ‘listens in’ while one individual addresses the world. But in
the true racial experience the situation is different. The system of
radiation which embraces the whole planet, and includes the million
million brains of the race, becomes the physical basis of a racial self.
The individual discovers himself to be embodied in all the bodies of the
race. He savours in a single intuition all bodily contacts, including
the mutual embraces of all lovers. Through the myriad feet of all men
and women he enfolds his world in a single grasp. He sees with all eyes,
and comprehends in a single vision all visual fields. Thus he perceives
at once and as a continuous, variegated sphere, the whole surface of the
planet. But not only so. He now stands above the group-minds as they
above the individuals. He regards them as a man may regard his own vital
tissues, with mingled contempt, sympathy, reverence, and dispassion. He
watches them as one might study the living cells of his own brain; but
also with the aloof interest of one observing an ant hill; and yet again
as one enthralled by the strange and diverse ways of his fellow-men; and
further as one who, from above the battle, watches himself and his
comrades agonizing in some desperate venture; yet chiefly as the artist
who has no thought but for his vision and its embodiment. In the racial
mode a man apprehends all things astronomically. Through all eyes and
all observatories, he beholds his voyaging world, and peers outward into
space. Thus he merges in one view, as it were, the views of deck-hand,
captain, stoker, and the man in the crow’s-nest. Regarding the solar
system simultaneously from both limbs of Neptune, he perceives the
planets and the sun stereoscopically, as though in binocular vision.
Further, his perceived ‘now’ embraces not a moment but a vast age. Thus,
observing the galaxy from every point in succession along Neptune’s wide
orbit, and watching the nearer stars shift hither and thither, he
actually perceives some of the constellations in three dimensions. Nay,
with the aid of our most recent instruments the whole galaxy appears
stereoscopically. But the great nebulae and remote universes remain mere
marks upon the flat sky; and in contemplation of their remoteness man,
even as the racial self of the mightiest of all human races, realizes
his own minuteness and impotence.
But chiefly the racial mind transcends the minds of groups and
individuals in philosophical insight into the true nature of space and
time, mind and its objects, cosmical striving and cosmical perfection.
Some hints of this great elucidation must presently be given; but in the
main it cannot be communicated. Indeed such insight is beyond the reach
of ourselves as isolated individuals, and even beyond the group-minds.
When we have declined from the racial mentality, we cannot clearly
remember what it was that we experienced.
In particular we have one very perplexing recollection about our racial
experience, one which involves a seeming impossibility. In the racial
mind our experience was enlarged not only spatially but temporarily in a
very strange manner. In respect of temporal perception, of course, minds
may differ in two ways, in the length of the span which they can
comprehend as ‘now’, and the minuteness of the successive events which
they can discriminate within the ‘now’. As individuals we can hold
within one ‘now’ a duration equal to the old terrestrial day; and within
that duration, we can, if we will, discriminate rapid pulsations such as
commonly we hear together as a high musical tone. As the race-mind we
perceived as ‘now’ the whole period since the birth of the oldest living
individuals, and the whole past of the species appeared as personal
memory, stretching back into the mist of infancy. Yet we could, if we
willed, discriminate within the ‘now’ one light-vibration from the next.
In this mere increased breadth and precision of temporal perception
there is no contradiction. But how, we ask ourselves, could the
race-mind experience as ‘now’ a vast period in which it had no existence
whatever? Our first experience of racial mentality lasted only as long
as Neptune’s moon takes to complete one circuit. Before that period,
then, the race-mind was not. Yet during the month of its existence it
regarded the whole previous career of the race as ‘present’.
Indeed, the racial experience has greatly perplexed us as individuals,
and we can scarcely be said to remember more of it than that it was of
extreme subtlety and extreme beauty. At the same time we often have of
it an impression of unspeakable horror. We who, in our familiar
individual sphere are able to regard all conceivable tragedy not merely
with fortitude but with exultation, are obscurely conscious that as the
racial mind we have looked into an abyss of evil such as we cannot now
conceive, and could not endure to conceive. Yet even this hell we know
to have been acceptable as an organic member in the austere form of the
cosmos. We remember obscurely, and yet with a strange conviction, that
all the age-long striving of the human spirit, no less than the petty
cravings of individuals, was seen as a fair component in something far
more admirable than itself; and that man ultimately defeated, no less
than man for a while triumphant, contributes to this higher excellence.
How colourless these words! How unworthy of that wholly satisfying
beauty of all things, which in our awakened racial mode we see face to
face. Every human being, of whatever species, may occasionally glimpse
some fragment or aspect of existence transfigured thus with the cold
beauty which normally he cannot see. Even the First Men, in their
respect for tragic art, had something of this experience. The Second,
and still more surely the Fifth, sought it deliberately. The winged
Seventh happened upon it while they were in the air. But their minds
were cramped; and all that they could appreciate was their own small
world and their own tragic story. We, the Last Men, have all their zest
in private and in racial life, whether it fares well or ill. We have it
at all times, and we have it in respect of matters inconceivable to
lesser minds. We have it, moreover, intelligently. Knowing well how
strange it is to admire evil along with good, we see clearly the
subversiveness of this experience. Even we, as mere individuals, cannot
reconcile our loyalty to the striving spirit of man with our own divine
aloofness. And so, if we were mere individuals, there would remain
conflict in each of us. But in the racial mode each one of us has now
experienced the great elucidation of intellect and of feeling. And
though, as individuals once more, we can never recapture that far-seeing
vision, the obscure memory of it masters us always, and controls all our
policies. Among yourselves, the artist, after his phase of creative
insight is passed, and he is once more a partisan in the struggle for
existence, may carry out in detail the design conceived in his brief
period of clarity. He remembers, but no longer sees the vision. He tries
to fashion some perceptible embodiment of the vanished splendour. So we,
living our individual lives, delighting in the contacts of flesh, the
relations of minds, and all the delicate activities of human culture,
cooperating and conflicting in a thousand individual undertakings and
performing each his office in the material maintenance of our society,
see all things as though transfused with light from a source which is
itself no longer revealed.
I have tried to tell you something of the most distinctive
characteristics of our species. You can imagine that the frequent
occasions of group mentality, and even more the rare occasions of race
mentality, have a far-reaching effect on every individual mind, and
therefore on our whole social order. Ours is in fact a society
dominated, as no previous society, by a single racial purpose which is
in a sense religious. Not that the individual’s private efflorescence is
at all thwarted by the racial purpose. Indeed, far otherwise; for that
purpose demands as the first condition of its fulfilment a wealth of
individual fulfilment, physical and mental. But in each mind of man or
woman the racial purpose presides absolutely; and hence it is the
unquestioned motive of all social policy.
I must not stay to describe in detail this society of ours, in which a
million million citizens, grouped in over a thousand nations, live in
perfect accord without the aid of armies or even a police force. I must
not tell of our much prized social organization which assigns a unique
function to each citizen, controls the procreation of new citizens of
every type in relation to social need, and yet provides an endless
supply of originality. We have no government and no laws, if by law is
meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered
without the aid of cumbersome machinery. Yet, though our society is in
this sense an anarchy, it lives by means of a very intricate system of
customs, some of which are so ancient as to have become spontaneous
taboos, rather than deliberate conventions. It is the business of those
among us who correspond to your lawyers and politicians to study these
customs and suggest improvements. Those suggestions are submitted to no
representative body, but to the whole world-population in ‘telepathic’
conference. Ours is thus in a sense the most democratic of all
societies. Yet in another sense it is extremely bureaucratic, since it
is already some millions of terrestrial years since any suggestion put
forward by the College of Organizers was rejected or even seriously
criticized, so thoroughly do these social engineers study their
material. The only serious possibility of conflict lies now between the
world population as individuals and the same individuals as group minds
or racial mind. But though in these respects there have formerly
occurred serious conflicts, peculiarly distressing to the individuals
who experienced them, such conflicts are now extremely rare. For, even
as mere individuals, we are learning to trust more and more to the
judgement and dictates of our own super-individual experience.
It is time to grapple with the most difficult part of my whole task.
Somehow, and very briefly, I must give you an idea of that outlook upon
existence which has determined our racial purpose, making it essentially
a religious purpose. This outlook has come to us partly through the work
of individuals in scientific research and philosophic thought, partly
through the influence of our group and racial experiences. You can
imagine that it is not easy to describe this modern vision of the nature
of things in any manner intelligible to those who have not our
advantages. There is much in this vision which will remind you of your
mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than
similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of our thought.
For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect, we are sure
only that it is very beautiful. While they pass to their conclusion
without the aid of intellect, we have used that staff every step of the
way. Thus, even when in respect of conclusions we agree with your
mystics rather than your plodding intellectuals, in respect of method we
applaud most your intellectuals; for they scorned to deceive themselves
with comfortable fantasies.