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Authors: H. G. Wells
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some unifying and justifying
reason, the erratic flat flashes and streaks and glares of traffic that
fretted to and fro overhead. A voice sang intermittently and a banjo
tinkled, but remotely enough to be indistinct and agreeable.
"After all," Sir Richmond began abruptly, "the search for some sort of
sexual modus vivendi is only a means to an end. One does not want to
live for sex but only through sex. The main thing in my life has always
been my work. This afternoon, under the Maidenhead influence, I talked
too much of sex. I babbled. Of things one doesn't usually..."
"It was very illuminating," said the doctor.
"No doubt. But a temporary phase. It is the defective bearing talks....
Just now—I happen to be irritated."
The darkness concealed a faint smile on the doctor's face.
"The work is the thing," said Sir Richmond. "So long as one can keep
one's grip on it."
"What," said the doctor after a pause, leaning back and sending wreaths
of smoke up towards the star-dusted zenith, "what is your idea of your
work? I mean, how do you see it in relation to yourself—and things
generally?"
"Put in the most general terms?"
"Put in the most general terms."
"I wonder if I can put it in general terms for you at all. It is hard to
put something one is always thinking about in general terms or to think
of it as a whole.... Now.... Fuel?...
"I suppose it was my father's business interests that pushed me towards
specialization in fuel. He wanted me to have a thoroughly scientific
training in days when a scientific training was less easy to get for a
boy than it is today. And much more inspiring when you got it. My mind
was framed, so to speak, in geology and astronomical physics. I grew up
to think on that scale. Just as a man who has been trained in history
and law grows to think on the scale of the Roman empire. I don't know
what your pocket map of the universe is, the map, I mean, by which you
judge all sorts of other general ideas. To me this planet is a little
ball of oxides and nickel steel; life a sort of tarnish on its surface.
And we, the minutest particles in that tarnish. Who can nevertheless, in
some unaccountable way, take in the idea of this universe as one whole,
who begin to dream of taking control of it."
"That is not a bad statement of the scientific point of view. I
suppose I have much the same general idea of the world. On rather more
psychological lines."
"We think, I suppose, said Sir Richmond, of life as something that is
only just beginning to be aware of what it is—and what it might be."
"Exactly," said the doctor. "Good."
He went on eagerly. "That is precisely how I see it. You and I are just
particles in the tarnish, as you call it, who are becoming dimly awake
to what we are, to what we have in common. Only a very few of us have
got as far even as this. These others here, for example...."
He indicated the rest of Maidenhead by a movement.
"Desire, mutual flattery, egotistical dreams, greedy solicitudes fill
them up. They haven't begun to get out of themselves."
"We, I suppose, have," doubted Sir Richmond.
"We have."
The doctor had no doubt. He lay back in his chair, with his hands behind
his head and his smoke ascending vertically to heaven. With the greatest
contentment he began quoting himself. "This getting out of one's
individuality—this conscious getting out of one's individuality—is one
of the most important and interesting aspects of the psychology of
the new age that is now dawning. As compared with any previous age.
Unconsciously, of course, every true artist, every philosopher, every
scientific investigator, so far as his art or thought went, has always
got out of himself,—has forgotten his personal interests and become Man
thinking for the whole race. And intimations of the same thing have been
at the heart of most religions. But now people are beginning to get
this detachment without any distinctively religious feeling or any
distinctive aesthetic or intellectual impulse,
reason, the erratic flat flashes and streaks and glares of traffic that
fretted to and fro overhead. A voice sang intermittently and a banjo
tinkled, but remotely enough to be indistinct and agreeable.
"After all," Sir Richmond began abruptly, "the search for some sort of
sexual modus vivendi is only a means to an end. One does not want to
live for sex but only through sex. The main thing in my life has always
been my work. This afternoon, under the Maidenhead influence, I talked
too much of sex. I babbled. Of things one doesn't usually..."
"It was very illuminating," said the doctor.
"No doubt. But a temporary phase. It is the defective bearing talks....
Just now—I happen to be irritated."
The darkness concealed a faint smile on the doctor's face.
"The work is the thing," said Sir Richmond. "So long as one can keep
one's grip on it."
"What," said the doctor after a pause, leaning back and sending wreaths
of smoke up towards the star-dusted zenith, "what is your idea of your
work? I mean, how do you see it in relation to yourself—and things
generally?"
"Put in the most general terms?"
"Put in the most general terms."
"I wonder if I can put it in general terms for you at all. It is hard to
put something one is always thinking about in general terms or to think
of it as a whole.... Now.... Fuel?...
"I suppose it was my father's business interests that pushed me towards
specialization in fuel. He wanted me to have a thoroughly scientific
training in days when a scientific training was less easy to get for a
boy than it is today. And much more inspiring when you got it. My mind
was framed, so to speak, in geology and astronomical physics. I grew up
to think on that scale. Just as a man who has been trained in history
and law grows to think on the scale of the Roman empire. I don't know
what your pocket map of the universe is, the map, I mean, by which you
judge all sorts of other general ideas. To me this planet is a little
ball of oxides and nickel steel; life a sort of tarnish on its surface.
And we, the minutest particles in that tarnish. Who can nevertheless, in
some unaccountable way, take in the idea of this universe as one whole,
who begin to dream of taking control of it."
"That is not a bad statement of the scientific point of view. I
suppose I have much the same general idea of the world. On rather more
psychological lines."
"We think, I suppose, said Sir Richmond, of life as something that is
only just beginning to be aware of what it is—and what it might be."
"Exactly," said the doctor. "Good."
He went on eagerly. "That is precisely how I see it. You and I are just
particles in the tarnish, as you call it, who are becoming dimly awake
to what we are, to what we have in common. Only a very few of us have
got as far even as this. These others here, for example...."
He indicated the rest of Maidenhead by a movement.
"Desire, mutual flattery, egotistical dreams, greedy solicitudes fill
them up. They haven't begun to get out of themselves."
"We, I suppose, have," doubted Sir Richmond.
"We have."
The doctor had no doubt. He lay back in his chair, with his hands behind
his head and his smoke ascending vertically to heaven. With the greatest
contentment he began quoting himself. "This getting out of one's
individuality—this conscious getting out of one's individuality—is one
of the most important and interesting aspects of the psychology of
the new age that is now dawning. As compared with any previous age.
Unconsciously, of course, every true artist, every philosopher, every
scientific investigator, so far as his art or thought went, has always
got out of himself,—has forgotten his personal interests and become Man
thinking for the whole race. And intimations of the same thing have been
at the heart of most religions. But now people are beginning to get
this detachment without any distinctively religious feeling or any
distinctive aesthetic or intellectual impulse,
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