III

'But first of all,' he said, 'I want to clear up a preliminary matter—of some practical importance.'

He concentrated on his hands spread out on the table before him. 'I'd like to put it to Davis. Here we have he says, a new kind of mind appearing in the world, a hard, clear, insistent mind. It used to appear at uncertain intervals. Rarely. It said: "Why not?" and it made discoveries. Now apparently it is becoming—frequent. Not abundant as yet but frequent. Well, what I want to know is, is this new kind of mind when it appears complete? Let me be perfectly plain about that. Certain genes making up the human mentality, we agree, have been altered in this new type. These new minds are harder, clearer, more essentially honest—yes. But are they completely detached from the old stuff or are they in many cases a sort of half–breed and all mixed up with it?

'I want to stress that half–breed idea. Are they so much human, human of the old pattern still, and so much—and only so much—clean Martian? So that one side of them is just the old system of self–regarding complexes, vanities, dear delusions—while the other side is like a crystal growing in mud? You see what I am after? It may not be true to talk as though we were dealing with human clay vis–à–vis with Martians. We are talking about human mud and against it we have to pit these partially liberated intelligences, still largely mixed with the old mud. All three of us have been in our various ways trying to get something like a real sense of what these new beings are. These new creatures—'

Keppel paused and looked at his hands. 'They are going to be very tragic creatures…. In many cases…. What do you make of it, Davis? Of the half–breed idea?'

'I haven't seen it like that yet. You see, I have been going about trying to find certain lucid intractable types. That was your suggestion, Doctor. I've certainly found them. I've been looking for a sort of difference….'

'You haven't thought of any other aspect?'

'No…. I haven't looked for resemblances, so to speak, in the difference,' he added after a pause. 'I've been looking for uncommon humanity; not for common humanity.'

'Well,' Keppel went on, talking chiefly to his intelligent–looking fingers, 'that half–breed idea opens up a whole new world of considerations. It banishes Thunderclap's nightmare of a lot of little active hobgoblins swarming and multiplying and desecrating our homes and everything that has made human life et cetera. In the place of that sort of thing we have to suppose an increasing number of individuals scattered about the world, who, so far at any rate, never seem to have had a suspicion that they are not just ordinary human stuff, but who find life tremendously puzzling, much more puzzling that other people do…. Now perhaps—it will be different….

'As children, like any other children, they will have begun by taking the world as they found it and believing everything they were told. Then as they grew up they will have found themselves mentally out of key. They will have found a disconcerting inconsistency about things in general. They will have thought at first that the abnormality was on the side of particular people about them and not on their own. They will have found themselves doubting whether their parents and teachers could possibly believe what they were saying. I think that among these Martians, that odd doubt—which many children nowadays certainly have—whether the whole world isn't some queer sort of put–up job and that it will all turn out quite differently presently—I think that streak of doubt would be an almost inevitable characteristic of them all.'

'That doubt about the reality of what they are told?' considered Davis. 'Children certainly have it. Even I….'

Keppel glanced at him for one half–instant.

'Now,' said Keppel, still addressing his hands, 'before I go on with these problems of what these Martians are going to do to our world, I would like to put some rather penetrating questions to myself and—both of you. You don't mind if I sort of lecture you? Or retail the obvious? I'm a professor in grain, you must remember.'

Dr. Holdman Stedding made assenting gestures and Davis remained obviously attentive.

'Let us try and make this room an apartment in the palace of truth for the time being. About ourselves…. We are sane respectable citizens in a social order that gives us a fairly good return for the services we render it. We have adjusted ourselves—and pretty comfortably—to life as we know it…. Well….

'I will ask a question and answer for myself first. Am I as easy about the validity of my mental processes? As I was when I was rising twenty? No. Since then we have had our minds washed out by a real drench of psycho–analysis. We are beginning to realize the complex system of self–deception in which we live, our wilful blindness to humiliating and restraining things, our conscious acceptance of flattering and exalting things, our tortuous subconscious or half–conscious evasions and conformities to social pressures and menaces. We take everything ready–made that we can possibly find ready–made, and there are a thousand moral issues, public issues, customary imperatives, about which—it isn't so much that we conceal our thoughts and are hypocritical, as that we will not think about them at all. We will not have thoughts to conceal. We are shifty even with ourselves. Am I overstating our subservience to the world about us?'

'I don't think so,' said Dr. Holdman Stedding. 'No.’

Davis said nothing.

'We have been born and brought up in a social order that is now obviously a failure in quite primary respects. Our social order is bankrupt. It is not delivering the goods. It is defaulting and breaking up. War, pervading and increasing brutality, lack of any real liberty, economic mismanagement, frightful insufficiency in the midst of possible super–abundance—am I overstating the indictment?'

'No,' said Dr. Holdman Stedding with a sigh. 'No.'

'Quite a lot of highly intelligent people seem to be persuaded that we are heading for a world–wide war–smash—a smash–up of civilization they call it, and all that. You have denounced all that as blank pessimism, Mr. Davis.'

'Never mind what I have written,' said Davis. 'Sufficient for the present discussion—is the present discussion.'

'Well, then, I may say the outlook for our world is, to put it mildly, menacing and disappointing.'

Dr. Holdman Stedding put both his elbows on the table. 'For any farsighted people the output for humanity has always been menacing,'

'And not particularly now? Air warfare, germs in warfare, the entire aimlessness of the unemployed, dissolving social cohesion, the rapid disappearance of mental freedom?'

'Yes,' said Dr. Holdman Stedding. 'Yes. Perhaps—particularly now. For the things we value it is an exceptionally bad outlook.'

'A general effect of things going to pieces—of large lumps falling down. Subsidences. And what I find most terrifying of all—and that is where the grim outlook for these Martians of ours comes—the increasing ineffectiveness of any fine, clear thinking in the world. I don't know if things have shown themselves to you in the same light, but what impresses me most about the present state of the world is the entire dominance of the violent, common mind, the base mind. It brutalizes. It brutalizes everything new and fine. Inventions. Our children. Either it expresses itself in stampeding mob action, revolutionary or reactionary—it is all the same in the long run—or else it embodies itself in some Hero—like this fellow Hitler—identifies itself with him and so achieves its vehement releases. Assertive patriotism, mass fear, and impulse to persecute—particularly the impulse to persecute—seem to be more dreadfully in evidence today than ever before in human affairs. Dreadfully and hideously. That's a question in your line, Davis. A question of historical estimates. Anyhow it is glaringly in evidence.

'We three sit here—lucky ones—we've got a sort of foothold. We seem comparatively safe. We've fixed up things for ourselves apparently. We may not feel quite so secure as we might have felt in Harley Street twenty–five years ago, but still we feel pretty secure. We are part of the intellectual cream of the world. And how much, I ask you, is it our world? How far dare we go out of this room and speak our minds about the things that are happening in the world now? How far dare we go even into the back corners of our own minds—with a bright light, with ruthless questions? Even you and I, Holdman Stedding, have been extremely discreet—and we are going on being extremely discreet—about this Martian business. We have our reputations to consider. We mustn't be extravagant. And so on. We are discreet even with ourselves. Do we let out what we really think about politics now, about all this bawling patriotism, about all this clammy, stale canting religiosity, about such institutions as the monarchy? Although we live here in a free country! A free country! So we are told. No concentration camps here, no inquisition, no exile, no martyrs. No visible means of restraint—and yet we are restrained. How far is our intellectual freedom here still ours, only because, as a matter of fact, we are too discreet to exercise it? Have we intellectuals here or anywhere any influence, any voice to arrest, divert, or guide this stampeding of crowds which we call the course of history—?'

'Eh?' said Davis.

'These stampedes of crowds which we call the course of history.'

'Go on,' said Davis.

'Suppose we went out, to as public a position as possible, and said plainly what we think of human affairs today?'

'I suppose,' said Dr. Holdman Stedding, 'they'd begin by smashing our windows.'

He reflected. 'The British Broadcasting Company would probably let a leash of babbling bishops loose at you. And then your students would make trouble. Your back–bench students…. I'm rather in a different position. My professional gifts give me a kind of Rasputin hold on one or two exalted families.'