VI

'In guessing about these coming people,' said Keppel, 'there is one thing we have to keep in mind. A hard, clear mind does not mean what we call a hard individual. What we call a hard man is a stupid man, who specializes in inflexibility to escape perplexity. But a hard, clear mind is a clear crystalline mind; it turns about like a lens, revealing and scrutinizing one aspect after another, one possibility after another, and this and that necessary correlation. But anyhow, let us do our best to imagine how this—this infiltration of intelligence is going to work. No mighty revolutionary conspiracy—no. They will begin to say things, question things, point things out. How will people respond?'

'Dislike, certainly,' said the doctor.

'At first, I think, they will encounter what one might call hostile neglect. They will be said to be indecisive and ineffective. They will, you see, be up against the Common Fool, the Natural Man in either of his chief forms, either dispersed in mob form as the Masses, or concentrated as a Boss. But the new kind of man will be neither, as the phrase goes, leftish nor rightish. Then, to be colloquial, where the hell are they? They won't be available for either side in the storm of silly wars and civil wars, the new Thirty Years' War, massacres, revenges, and so on, Pro–Red, Anti–Red, into which we are plainly drifting. They won't count.'

'That should give them a spell for getting together,' said Dr. Holdman Stedding.

'Not perhaps for very long. People will realize that these neutral things they say, these impartial suggestions they make, have a certain intrinsic power. They will be producing not fighting ideas but working ideas. Next, especially when the Boss side of the Common Man is in the ascendant, will come an attempt to annex their prestige and abilities in the interests of partisan governments. They will be asked to label their ideas for the Boss or against. If they refuse to be annexed, and they will refuse to be annexed, they will be said to be purely destructive, contented with nothing; accused of critical treachery. There are bad times ahead for uncompliant sane men. They will be hated by the right and by the left with an equal intensity.'

'Then how,' asked Dr. Holdman Stedding, 'will they ever gain any sort of control of the world?'

'How will sanity ever gain any sort of control of the world?'

'Yes. If you think that is an identical question.'

'I am not a prophet,' said Keppel. 'I am discussing probabilities. But given this constant seeping of clearer intelligences into our world, may not this sort of thing happen? May not all these clearer intelligences, confronted with the same world, confronted with the same problems; may they not, without any sort of political or religious organization, arrive at practically identical judgments about them—put similar values on the same things? Without much confabulation among themselves. I cling to the belief that for the human brain, properly working, there is one wisdom and not many. And if it is true, as Davis thinks, that one characteristic of this new type of mind is its resistance to crowd suggestions, crowd loyalties, instinctive mass prejudices, and mere phrases, then, without any political organization or party or movement or anything of the sort, may not these strongminded individualists everywhere begin doing sensible things and refusing to do cruel, monstrous, and foolish things—on their own?

'We assume they are going to be very capable, self–reliant people, able to do all sorts of things. Quite a large proportion of the scientific, medical, mechanical, administrative positions in the world are likely therefore to fall into their hands as they spread and increase, and their ways of thinking and acting are likely to infect all sorts of subordinates, workers and so on, associated with them. Yes. You have suggested already, Doctor, that one might possibly Martianize even ordinary people by a saner education….

'Well, then suppose presently you find an aviator in a bomber to whom it occurs to ask: "Why in the name of blood and brains am I doing this cruel and idotic task? Why don't I go off home again and drop this on those solemn homicides at G.H.Q.?" And then without further hesitation suiting the action to the thought. And when he comes down, suppose one or two men on the ground agree with him and are not in the least indignant? And in fact stand by him. Even the Roman gladiators had the wit to revolt. The Christian name of the new fighting experts we are training for the air in such quantities may prove to be Spartacus.

'Suppose again you have a skilled worker doing some very delicate work upon a big gun and it comes quite clearly into his head that it will be better for the world if that gun does not shoot. Will it shoot? Or it is a chemist manufacturing explosives. That sort of thing will certainly become quite a problem as the Martians multiply. Your blustering demagogue or your blustering dictator feels ill and needs an operation, and there is either a disastrous patriotic quack who will make a mess of him anyhow, or some quiet, self–reliant, but incalculable man with knowledge and a needle or scalpel, able to kill or cure. Why should he cure?

'The dictator will glare his cheap overpowering personality at him as far as his illness permits. Much a Martian will care. He for his part will be entirely unmelodramatic. It is your world against mine, he will say, and he will do what he thinks best for the world, and keep his own counsel. Power would be with the experts already, if only they had enough lucidity to take it. And it needs such a small step forward in lucidity.'

'But this is—sabotage!' said Dr. Holdman Stedding.

'The only reasonably reply to unreasonable compulsion is sabotage.'

'And you hint even at assassination.'

'I don't hint. Hint indeed! I speak plainly of assassination—if shooting mad dogs or rogue elephants is assassination. Assassination is the legitimate assertion of personal dignity in the face of dictatorship. It is not merely a right; it is a duty. A sacred duty. A dictator is an outlaw. He has outlawed himself. He exists and he degrades you by his mere existence. He imposes filthy tasks upon you. He can conscript you. He confronts you with a choice of evils. It is surely better to kill your dictator than let him make you kill other people—directly or indirectly. You can tell him: "You be damned" if you are strong enough; if that stops him, you can be merciful to him; but if you are not strong enough, you must kill. What else can you do? As a law–abiding man?'

'Awful,' said the doctor.

'Plain common sense.'

'No end of your Martians will get shot—if this is to be their line.'

'They will be shot to good purpose,' said Davis.

'Shooting them will do the old order no good,' said Keppel, 'There will always be more of these cool–brained gentlemen now. Trust those cosmic rays now they have begun. Trust the undying intelligence behind our minds. In a fools' world sane men will have a bad time anyhow; but they can help wind up the world of fools even if they cannot hope to see it out. One sane man will follow another; one sane man will understand another, more and more clearly. A sort of etiquette of the sane will come into operation. They will stand by each other. In spite of bad laws, in spite of foolish authority.'

'A revolution—without even a revolutionary organization?'

'No revolution. Something better than a revolution. A revolution is just a social turnover. A revolution changes nothing essential. What is a revolution really? There is an increasing disequilibrium of classes or groups, the centre of gravity shifts, the clumsy raft turns over, and a different side of the old stuff comes uppermost. That is all there is in a revolution. What I am talking about is not a revolution; it is a new kind of behaviour; it is daybreak.'

'The Enlightenment,' said Davis, trying a phrase.

'Which is coming,' said Keppel with sudden access of emphasis, 'Martians or no Martians….'

'But, my dear Keppel,' said the doctor, 'isn't this stuff you are talking just anarchism?'

'It would be anarchism, I suppose; it would mean "back to chaos," if it were not true that all sane minds released from individual motives and individual obsessions move in the same direction towards practically the same conclusions. Human minds just as much as Martians'. Rational minds don't disagree so much as people pretend. They have to follow quite definite laws. We misunderstand. We don't pause to understand. We let life hustle us along. Every tyranny in the world lives—and such systems have always lived—in a perpetual struggle against plain knowledge and illuminating discussion. We are living—let us face the facts—in a lunatic asylum crowded with patients prevented from knowledge and afraid to go sane.'

He paused and pushed the cigar–boxes towards his guests. 'A world gone sane,' said Davis.

'Planetary psycho–therapeutics,' said the doctor. 'A sane world, my masters—and then?'