MAN’S WORLD (13)
By:
October 3, 2024
HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize Charlotte Haldane’s 1926 proto-sf novel Man’s World for HILOBROW’s readers. Written by an author married to one of the world’s most prominent eugenics advocates, this ambivalent adventure anticipates both Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale. When a young woman rebels against her conditioning, can she break free? Reissued in 2024 (with a new introduction by Philippa Levine) by the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE series.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: INTRO | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25.
NO NEW GODS FOR OLD
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. —ST. PAUL
Christopher had ‘gone away to think.’ Men and women who had a problem to solve often found it easier to isolate themselves until they had done so. There was no reason to dread solitude, and those who sought it had no feeling of loss or deprivation. All over the world hermitages were dotted about in beautiful spots; capable of resisting wild weather, and amply provisioned. They served also as refuges for fliers forced to descend. If the wanderer found one already tenanted, it was customary for him or her to pass on, unless specially asked by the occupant to share it.
Christopher had spent the night as usual in such a hut, thinking particularly about music. All the older forms had been exhausted before his time; one had repeated the same thing to the point of weariness. Yet never, until now, had music been so loved and studied. The new orientation had first been suggested, long ago, by a twentieth-century writer, one W.H. Hudson. Christopher, one of his ardent devotees, had for months been groping, timidly at first, and the with growing courage and success, for a set of symbols to express it. He had begun to make a catalogue of ‘nature’s’ sounds, and to attempt to find a scale whereby they could be truly mimicked.
The longer he remained apart from his fellows, the more difficult Christopher found it to define his god in any terms agreeable to his imagination. So long as he was surrounded by men and women, so long as their laws and their manners chafed him, he felt that their very inadequacy was guarantee of a possible alternative and complete solution to his problem elsewhere. While it was the fashion of the day to praise lavishly its benefits and endowments, the richness and variety of its life, the tolerance and acuteness of its judgments, to Christopher all this was futility and chaos. With a Miracle House round every corner, he longed for a god to arise or descend who would, with one unimaginable and stunning revelation, prove how presumptuous were the creatures who dared to force him into competition.
His imagination rejoiced when there came to it the splendid image of the god antagonist, such as the Jahveh of the ancient Hebrews. The destroyer of all would-be usurpers, the hater of even a mythical rival, the sole creator and arbiter of the world — how those old Jews had thrilled, in their moments of anguish and degradation, to the evocation of him! The more daring of them had even aspired to wrestle with this unseen and unrelenting will; to defy it; those, such as Job, who truly ‘feared God’ must surely have experienced the most voluptuous emotion possible to man.
Christopher would find himself, during walks through forests, up mountains and down into valleys, marching with a phantom procession of the gods of past days and dead peoples. He slaked his own god-hunger in the contemplation of the methods his forbears had invented in order to appease theirs.
To him the religious craving appeared simply as the incarnation of man’s supreme desire. In the beginning it had been satisfied by the means which lay at hand. Fruits of the earth, sources of fertility, valleys and rivers, mountains and oceans, and later, sun, moon, planets and stars. The number and complexity of the gods grew as men grew towards richer and more intellectual means of self-expression. Together they grew to consciousness and to morality. Nevertheless, the difference between the religious ambitions of man as personified by Christopher and those of man in his early simplicity was conditioned by development alone. Fundamentally their yearning was the same.
This proved nothing, but it cleared the ground. For if the religious urge was indeed basic and essential to humanity, it must be gratified. Christopher’s contemporaries denied it; when they met it, they attempted to pervert and sublimate it. In other days, when men had been less meddlesome, they had continued on the road that lay before them, and had worshipped such gods as came to meet them thereon; might all these not have been the various forms, progressively adapted to human development, in which the supreme spirit had chosen to incarnate itself? Might there not still be waiting a god whom human beings might adore without retrogression? If so, in order to find him, it would only be necessary to continue on that path, using the knowledge gained by science as an instrument, but refusing to be turned aside or back. One could not go back — the old religions had served their purpose, and the old gods, having accomplished their tasks, now slept everlastingly; but faith might still live, and the eternally spiritual might still be evoked in new guise.
Christopher had written:
There is every reason for not believing in God and for not seeking Him. His sole justification is the inadequacy of reason.
He had written:
I care not a fig for life if it be not eternal. For this life I care not.
He had read:
The purely human needs a corrective. It is not sufficiently humbling.
And he had written below:
The only adequate corrective is Faith.
He had also written:
You cannot expect the religious temperament to submit to the discipline of reason. It prefers the promise of eternal hell to the finality of death. The longing for immortality is so strong that only blind belief in its eventuality can appease it. And it is wiser to choose death in this belief than to await it without hope.
Where science dare not tread, there faith steps in.
The scientific mind is invariably middle-aged. But the religious mind is always either very young or very old.
Having arrived at this point in his speculations, he decided to return to Nucleus. He thought he had found a first principle, at any rate, with which to arm himself. It would be useless to seek a second, until he had tested this one. All his criticism, hitherto, had been destructive; had he been able to tear down the edifice the Leaders had built, he would have had no substitute ready to put in its place.
It was nearly two years since his separation from Nicolette. He wanted, if not to resume their old intimacy, at least to see her again, to talk with her, to fondle her, to know if with her all was well. He remembered now that Raymond must be there, and that her mating time was approaching; and in spite of his resolves he wanted, at least once before she entered on her career and became absorbed in it, to claim her again and to feel that he had yet no rival in her affection.
His musical studies had progressed well. He was already able to imitate the cries of many birds so accurately that they carried on conversations with him. He could disentangle the rhythm and the tune of the most faintly running water at a distance; the various speeds of the winds brought him each one their message; the flexion of grasses, the whirring of insects and the splashing and padding of small mammals; all minute sounds had come to him during solitary hours, when he had sat motionless, his ears attuned and receptive to all movement in that profound stillness. Already he had noted down many of their intertwined themes and was rearranging them into a vocal symphony that should be worked out one day.
One evening he came to a fir-covered hill down which a waterfall bubbled, a streak of flashing white, into a velvety green pool. He could see a long way below him, gently veiled in mist, the buildings of a community. It was almost sunset, and Christopher, gazing to the west, was again made happy by the glowing blue palette on which the sun splashed his golds, scarlets and crimsons. He paused an instant to absorb the long-drawn, rounded plaint of a wood-pigeon, and after allowing the appropriate interval to pass, he answered it in scrupulous mimicry. He forgot his intention to bathe, and sat down on the soft spongy moss, delighting in its prickliness. Then he forgot the wood-pigeon, too, and began to sing — softly at first — a bird-song that now came to him as naturally as once had come the songs of human beings. It gained in volume soon, blending as it soared the notes of joy and wistfulness. Christopher, listening to his own creation, could hardly believe that he was himself producing it. When the last note had glided like a bubble into the air, apparently reluctant to dissolve, he prepared to memorize the song. As he paused there was the comparative silence that came when only the water, the wind, the trees and the grass spoke. But then began an answering bird. Christopher, jerking up his head to catch a rising note, realized that he had hardly been aware of its predecessors, so gradually had they evolved from the accompaniment of those other sounds. He listened with growing attention and amazement, for this was the song of no bird he had ever known. His own themes were sent dancing back to him in a manner which indicated a human intelligence at work. There was in this music the gladness of the lark, the languor of the nightingale, the throbbing pride of the blackbird, even, occasionally, the staccato laugh of the rook; it was a human throat that produced so rapidly and so perfectly these diverse sounds.
Christopher sat and listened, and when the voice had finally ceased he did not in his turn, a move, but sang gay, chirrupy song, full of amusement and inquiry. Presently he was answered by half a dozen notes on an ascending scale. He waited, but no more followed. Then he began again, looking straight into the western sky, where the colour was splashed about wildly at the climax of its beauty. This time he pleaded, called, entreated the owner of the voice; high and penetrating his notes arose as if to pierce the mystery, then lost themselves among the trees. The answer was a seductive murmur; the notes flowed along one bv one, enchained by desire, infinitely caressing, irresistible as the tones of a siren. Christopher, in an access of he knew not what strange, passionate exultation, thought no more of bird music; his was now a human voice also, pouring forth the infinity of human dreams, the hunger and thirst of the senses, an emotion inexpressible in words, but which in this musical medium made its meaning as crystal clear as the waters of the fall.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.