The World Set Free Read online

  warily, now eagerly, now furiously, and always, as it seems,

  unsuccessfully, tried to adapt itself to the maddening misfit of

  its patched and ancient garments. And always in these books as

  one draws nearer to the heart of the matter there comes a

  disconcerting evasion. It was the fantastic convention of the

  time that a writer should not touch upon religion. To do so was

  to rouse the jealous fury of the great multitude of professional

  religious teachers. It was permitted to state the discord, but

  it was forbidden to glance at any possible reconciliation.

  Religion was the privilege of the pulpit…

  It was not only from the novels that religion was omitted. It was

  ignored by the newspapers; it was pedantically disregarded in the

  discussion of business questions, it played a trivial and

  apologetic part in public affairs. And this was done not out of

  contempt but respect. The hold of the old religious organisations

  upon men's respect was still enormous, so enormous that there

  seemed to be a quality of irreverence in applying religion to the

  developments of every day. This strange suspension of religion

  lasted over into the beginnings of the new age. It was the clear

  vision of Marcus Karenin much more than any other contemporary

  influence which brought it back into the texture of human life.

  He saw religion without hallucinations, without superstitious

  reverence, as a common thing as necessary as food and air, as

  land and energy to the life of man and the well-being of the

  Republic. He saw that indeed it had already percolated away from

  the temples and hierarchies and symbols in which men had sought

  to imprison it, that it was already at work anonymously and

  obscurely in the universal acceptance of the greater state. He

  gave it clearer expression, rephrased it to the lights and

  perspectives of the new dawn…

  But if we return to our novels for our evidence of the spirit of

  the times it becomes evident as one reads them in their

  chronological order, so far as that is now ascertainable, that as

  one comes to the latter nineteenth and the earlier twentieth

  century the writers are much more acutely aware of secular change

  than their predecessors were. The earlier novelists tried to show

  'life as it is,' the latter showed life as it changes. More and

  more of their characters are engaged in adaptation to change or

  suffering from the effects of world changes. And as we come up

  to the time of the Last Wars, this newer conception of the

  everyday life as a reaction to an accelerated development is

  continually more manifest. Barnet's book, which has served us so

  well, is frankly a picture of the world coming about like a ship

  that sails into the wind. Our later novelists give a vast gallery

  of individual conflicts in which old habits and customs, limited

  ideas, ungenerous temperaments, and innate obsessions are pitted

  against this great opening out of life that has happened to us.

  They tell us of the feelings of old people who have been wrenched

  away from familiar surroundings, and how they have had to make

  peace with uncomfortable comforts and conveniences that are still

  strange to them. They give us the discord between the opening

  egotisms of youths and the ill-defined limitations of a changing

  social life. They tell of the universal struggle of jealousy to

  capture and cripple our souls, of romantic failures and tragical

  misconceptions of the trend of the world, of the spirit of

  adventure, and the urgency of curiosity, and how these serve the

  universal drift. And all their stories lead in the end either to

  happiness missed or happiness won, to disaster or salvation. The

  clearer their vision and the subtler their art, the more

  certainly do these novels tell of the possibility of salvation

  for all the world. For any road in life leads to religion for

  those upon it who will follow it far enough…

  It would have seemed a strange thing to the men of the former

  time that it should be an open question as it is to-day whether

  the world is wholly Christian or not Christian at all. But

  assuredly we have the spirit, and as surely have we left many

  temporary forms behind. Christianity was the first expression of

  world religion, the first complete repudiation of tribalism and

  war and disputation. That it fell presently into the ways of more

  ancient rituals cannot alter that. The common sense of mankind

  has toiled through two thousand years of chastening experience to

  find at last how sound a meaning attaches to the familiar phrases

  of the Christian faith. The scientific thinker as he widens out

  to the moral problems of the collective life, comes inevitably

  upon the words of Christ, and as inevitably does the Christian,

  as his thoughtgrows clearer, arrive at the world republic. As

  for the claims of the sects, as for the use of a name and

  successions, we live in a time that has shaken itself free from

  such claims and consistencies.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH

  THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN

  Section 1

  The second operation upon Marcus Karenin was performed at the new

  station for surgical work at Paran, high in the Himalayas above

  the Sutlej Gorge, where it comes down out of Thibet.

  It is a place of such wildness and beauty as no other scenery in

  the world affords. The granite terrace which runs round the four

  sides of the low block of laboratories looks out in every

  direction upon mountains. Far below in the hidden depths of a

  shadowy blue cleft, the river pours down in its tumultuous

  passage to the swarming plains of India. No sound of its roaring

  haste comes up to those serenities. Beyond that blue gulf, in

  which whole forests of giant deodars seem no more than small

  patches of moss, rise vast precipices of many-coloured rock,

  fretted above, lined by snowfalls, and jagged into pinnacles.

  These are the northward wall of a towering wilderness of ice and

  snow which clambers southward higher and wilder and vaster to the

  culminating summits of our globe, to Dhaulagiri and Everest.

  Here are cliffs of which no other land can show the like, and

  deep chasms in which Mt. Blanc might be plunged and hidden. Here

  are icefields as big as inland seas on which the tumbled boulders

  lie so thickly that strange little flowers can bloom among them

  under the untempered sunshine. To the northward, and blocking

  out any vision of the uplands of Thibet, rises that citadel of

  porcelain, that gothic pile, the Lio Porgyul, walls, towers, and

  peaks, a clear twelve thousand feet of veined and splintered rock

  above the river. And beyond it and eastward and westward rise

  peaks behind peaks, against the dark blue Himalayan sky. Far

  away below to the south the clouds of the Indian rains pile up

  abruptly and are stayed by an invisible hand.

  Hither it was that with a dreamlike swiftness Karenin flew high

  over the irrigations of Rajputana and the towers and cupolas of

  the ultimate Delhi; and the lit
tle group of buildings, albeit the

  southward wall dropped nearly five hundred feet, seemed to him as

  he soared down to it like a toy lost among these mountain

  wildernesses. No road came up to this place; it was reached only

  by flight.

  His pilot descended to the great courtyard, and Karenin assisted

  by his secretary clambered down through the wing fabric and made

  his way to the officials who came out to receive him.

  In this place, beyond infections and noise and any distractions,

  surgery had made for itself a house of research and a healing

  fastness. The building itself would have seemed very wonderful to

  eyes accustomed to the flimsy architecture of an age when power

  was precious. It was made of granite, already a little roughened

  on the outside by frost, but polished within and of a tremendous

  solidity. And in a honeycomb of subtly lit apartments, were the

  spotless research benches, the operating tables, the instruments

  of brass, and fine glass and platinum and gold. Men and women

  came from all parts of the world for study or experimental

  research. They wore a common uniform of white and ate at long

  tables together, but the patients lived in an upper part of the

  buildings, and were cared for by nurses and skilled

  attendants…

  The first man to greet Karenin was Ciana, the scientific director

  of the institution. Beside him was Rachel Borken, the chief

  organiser. 'You are tired?' she asked, and old Karenin shook his

  head.

  'Cramped,' he said. 'I have wanted to visit such a place as

  this.'

  He spoke as if he had no other business with them.

  There was a little pause.

  'How many scientific people have you got here now?' he asked.

  'Just three hundred and ninety-two,' said Rachel Borken.

  'And the patients and attendants and so on?'

  'Two thousand and thirty.'

  'I shall be a patient,' said Karenin. 'I shall have to be a

  patient. But I should like to see things first. Presently I will

  be a patient.'

  'You will come to my rooms?' suggested Ciana.

  'And then I must talk to this doctor of yours,' said Karenin.

  'But I would like to see a bit of this place and talk to some of

  your people before it comes to that.'

  He winced and moved forward.

  'I have left most of my work in order,' he said.

  'You have been working hard up to now?' asked Rachel Borken.

  'Yes. And now I have nothing more to do-and it seems strange…

  And it's a bother, this illness and having to come down to

  oneself. This doorway and the row of windows is well done; the

  gray granite and just the line of gold, and then those mountains

  beyond through that arch. It's very well done…'

  Section 2

  Karenin lay on the bed with a soft white rug about him, and

  Fowler, who was to be his surgeon sat on the edge of the bed and

  talked to him. An assistant was seated quietly in the shadow

  behind the bed. The examination had been made, and Karenin knew

  what was before him. He was tired but serene.

  'So I shall die,' he said, 'unless you operate?'

  Fowler assented. 'And then,' said Karenin, smiling, 'probably I

  shall die.'

  'Not certainly.'

  'Even if I do not die; shall I be able to work?'

  'There is just a chance…'

  'So firstly I shall probably die, and if I do not, then perhaps I

  shall be a useless invalid?'

  'I think if you live, you may be able to go on-as you do now.'

  'Well, then, I suppose I must take the risk of it. Yet couldn't

  you, Fowler, couldn't you drug me and patch me instead of all

  this-vivisection? A few days of drugged and active life-and

  then the end?'

  Fowler thought. 'We are not sure enough yet to do things like

  that,' he said.

  'But a day is coming when you will be certain.'

  Fowler nodded.

  'You make me feel as though I was the last of

  deformity-Deformity is uncertainty-inaccuracy. My body works

  doubtfully, it is not even sure that it will die or live. I

  suppose the time is not far off when such bodies as mine will no

  longer be born into the world.'

  'You see,' said Fowler, after a little pause, 'it is necessary

  that spirits such as yours should be born into the world.'

  'I suppose,' said Karenin, 'that my spirit has had its use. But

  if you think that is because my body is as it is I think you are

  mistaken. There is no peculiar virtue in defect. I have always

  chafed against-all this. If I could have moved more freely and

  lived a larger life in health I could have done more. But some

  day perhaps you will be able to put a body that is wrong

  altogether right again. Your science is only beginning. It's a

  subtler thing than physics and chemistry, and it takes longer to

  produce its miracles. And meanwhile a few more of us must die in

  patience.'

  'Fine work is being done and much of it,' said Fowler. 'I can

  say as much because I have nothing to do with it. I can

  understand a lesson, appreciate the discoveries of abler men and

  use my hands, but those others, Pigou, Masterton, Lie, and the

  others, they are clearing the ground fast for the knowledge to

  come. Have you had time to follow their work?'

  Karenin shook his head. 'But I can imagine the scope of it,' he

  said.

  'We have so many men working now,' said Fowler. 'I suppose at

  present there must be at least a thousand thinking hard,

  observing, experimenting, for one who did so in nineteen

  hundred.'

  'Not counting those who keep the records?'

  'Not counting those. Of course, the present indexing of research

  is in itself a very big work, and it is only now that we are

  getting it properly done. But already we are feeling the benefit

  of that. Since it ceased to be a paid employment and became a

  devotion we have had only those people who obeyed the call of an

  aptitude at work upon these things. Here-I must show you it

  to-day, because it will interest you-we have our copy of the

  encyclopaedic index-every week sheets are taken out and replaced

  by fresh sheets with new results that are brought to us by the

  aeroplanes of the Research Department. It is an index of

  knowledge that growscontinually, an index that becomes

  continually truer. There was never anything like it before.'

  'When I came into the education committee,' said Karenin, 'that

  index of human knowledge seemed an impossible thing. Research had

  produced a chaotic mountain of results, in a hundred languages

  and a thousand different types of publication…' He smiled

  at his memories. 'How we groaned at the job!'

  'Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall

  see.'

  'I have been so busy with my own work--Yes, I shall be glad to

  see.'

  The patient regarded the surgeon for a time with interested eyes.

  'You work here always?' he asked abruptly.

  'No,' said Fowler.

  'But mostly you work here?'

  'I have worked about seven years out of
the past ten. At times I

  go away-down there. One has to. At least I have to. There is a

  sort of grayness comes over all this, one feels hungry for life,

  real, personal passionate life, love-making, eating and drinking

  for the fun of the thing, jostling crowds, having adventures,

  laughter-above all laughter--'

  'Yes,' said Karenin understandingly.

  'And then one day, suddenly one thinks of these high mountains

  again…'

  'That is how I would have lived, if it had not been for

  my-defects,' said Karenin. 'Nobody knows but those who have

  borne it the exasperation of abnormality. It will be good when

  you have nobody alive whose body cannot live the wholesome

  everyday life, whose spirit cannot come up into these high places

  as it wills.'

  'We shall manage that soon,' said Fowler.

  'For endless generations man has struggled upward against the

  indignities of his body-and the indignities of his soul. Pains,

  incapacities, vile fears, black moods, despairs. How well I've

  known them. They've taken more time than all your holidays. It

  is true, is it not, that every man is something of a cripple and

  something of a beast? I've dipped a little deeper than most;

  that's all. It's only now when he has fully learnt the truth of

  that, that he can take hold of himself to be neither beast nor

  cripple. Now that he overcomes his servitude to his body, he can

  for the first time think of living the full life of his body…

  Before another generation dies you'll have the thing in hand.

  You'll do as you please with the old Adam and all the vestiges

  from the brutes and reptiles that lurk in his body and spirit.

  Isn't that so?'

  'You put it boldly,' said Fowler.

  Karenin laughed cheerfully at his caution… 'When,' asked

  Karenin suddenly, 'when will you operate?'

  'The day after to-morrow,' said Fowler. 'For a day I want you to

  drink and eat as I shall prescribe. And you may think and talk

  as you please.'

  'I should like to see this place.'

  'You shall go through it this afternoon. I will have two men

  carry you in a litter. And to-morrow you shall lie out upon the

  terrace. Our mountains here are the most beautiful in the

  world…'

  Section 3

  The next morning Karenin got up early and watched the sun rise