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1、【国外文学】Darkness and the LightPrefaceA REVIEWER OF an earlier book of mine said that it was difficult to see why such a book should ever have been written. From his point of view the remark was reasonable enough, for the aim of the book happened to fall outside the spot-light of his consciousness. All
2、 the same, the fact that the great majority of books ought never to have been written must give the writer pause. To-day, what with the paper shortage and the urgency of war work, the question whether a book is worth writing, let alone publishing, is more pertinent than ever. Whether this book has e
3、nough significance to justify its appearance must be left to the judgment of readers and reviewers; but perhaps they will not take it amiss if I offer a word of explanation.This book is, of course, not meant to be regarded as prophecy. Neither of the two futures which I here imagine for mankind is i
4、n the least likely to happen. Historical prediction is doomed always to fail. The most sophisticated sociologist, let alone a writer of fiction, is scarcely a more trustworthy prophet than Old Moore. Certainly I, who entirely failed to foresee the advent of Fascism, cannot lay claim to describe the
5、next phase of European change.But this book is not concerned to prophesy. It seeks merely to give a symbolic expression to two dispositions now in conflict in the world. For lack of better words I call them the will for darkness and the will for the light. I present in concrete form, but rather as c
6、aricature than with photographic accuracy, two kinds of possibility that lie before the human race. The justification for writing such a book depends on the answers to three questions. Is there such a conflict? Is it important? Is the caricature that I have drawn of it well enough drawn to clear the
7、 mind and stir the heart?Olaf Stapledon October 1941Chapter 1 Mans Two FuturesIS IT credible that our world should have two futures? I have seen them. Two entirely distinct futures lie before mankind, one dark, one bright; one the defeat of all mans hopes, the betrayal of all his ideals, the other t
8、heir hard-won triumph.At some date within the age that we call modern, some date not precisely known to me, for I looked back towards it from the distant futures as though searching in my remote past, the single torrent of terrestrial events is split, as though by a projecting promontory, so that it
9、 becomes thenceforth two wholly distinct and mutually exclusive surging floods of intricate existence, each one a coherent and actual history, in which the lives of countless generations succeed one another along separate ravines of time.How can this be? It cannot! Yet I have seen it happen. I have
10、watched those two divergent futures. I have lived through them. In any world, as on our planet, it needs must happen, when the will for the light and the will for the darkness are so delicately balanced in the ordinary half-lucid spirits of the world that neither can for long prevail over the other.
11、 Out of their age-long stress and fluctuating battle must spring at last a thing seemingly impossible, seemingly irrational, something wore stupendously miraculous than any orthodox miracle. For how can time itself be divided into two streams? And if our planet has two futures, which of them has pla
12、ce in the future of the solar system, and what of the other? Or does mans vacillation create not only two future Earths but two future universes of stars and galaxies?Reader, affirm if you will that only one of the two futures that I have watched is the real future, knit into the real cosmos, while
13、the other is mere fantasy. Then which, I ask in terror, is real, the bright or the dark? For to me, who have seen both, neither is less real than the other, but one is infinitely more to be desired. Perhaps, reader, you will contend that both are figments of my crazy mind, and that the real future i
14、s inaccessible and inconceivable. Believe what you will, but to me both are real, both are somehow close-knit into the dread and lovely pattern of the universe. Nay more! My heart demands them both. For the light is more brilliant when the dark offsets it. Though pity implores that all horror should
15、 turn out to have been a dream, yet for the lights own sake some sterner passion demands that evil may have its triumph.As I write this book my own death must lie somewhere in the near future. When, I cannot tell; for so minute an event could not imprint itself on the vision that has possessed me. S
16、eemingly it is at the time of my death that the strange experience begins, obscurely and intermittently at first. For this reason the earlier part of the twofold story is fragmentary and chaotic, like the experiences of childhood remembered in maturity.Moreover the twin streams of history are in the
17、ir upper reaches so similar as to be indistinguishable, like the almost identical views which a man has through his two eyes. Not till the two futures begin to differ strikingly can they be distinguished and known to be inconsistent themes. Thenceforth whoever witnesses them, as I did, must become a
18、 divided personality, living not merely two lives but in two universes.As I write this book, immersed once more in the passions and savage deeds of contemporary mankind, hearing each day of horror and brutality, fearing that very soon some hideous disaster may fall upon my people and on the whole hu
19、man race, and on those few who, being most dear to me, are for me the living presence of humanity, it is impossible for me to recapture fully the serene and intelligent mood of my post-mortal experience. For throughout that age-long future I must, I think, have been strengthened by the felt presence
20、 of other and superhuman spectators. Was it that the more lucid populations of the cosmos, in their scattered worlds, up and down the constellations, here and there among the galaxies, had sent observers to witness the terrestrial miracle; or had focused their attention and their presence from afar
21、on our little orb, so forlorn, so inconsiderable, where man, poised between the light and the dark on the knife-edge of choice, fought out his destiny. It was as though, under their influence, I was able to put off to some extent my human pettiness; as though, haltingly and with celestial aid, I cou
22、ld see mans double fate through the eyes of those superhuman but not divine intelligences. Their presence is now withdrawn. But in memory of them I shall do my utmost to tell the twofold story at once with intimate human sympathy and with something of that calm insight which was lent to me.Chapter 2
23、 The Modern AgeAT SOME DATE which to readers of this book is far off in the future I became aware that I had long been dreamily witnessing a flux of human events. Peering back into my post-mortal memory as though into a second infancy, I came upon fragments of what must have been a long age of turmo
24、il. Within that age must have lain, or must lie, the period that readers of this book call modern, a moment within a longer period during which the struggle between the light and the darkness remained inconclusive.On the one side was the sluggish reptilian will for ease and sleep and death, rising s
25、ometimes to active hate and destructiveness; on the other side the still blindfold and blundering will for the lucid and coherent spirit. Each generation, it seemed, set out with courage and hope, and with some real aptitude for the life of love and wisdom, but also with the fatal human frailty, and
26、 in circumstances hostile to the generous development of the spirit. Each in turn, in the upshot of innumerable solitary ephemeral struggles, sank into middle age, disillusioned or fanatical, inert or obsessively greedy for personal power.The world was a chrysalis world, but the chrysalis was damage
27、d. Under the stress of science and mechanization the old order had become effete, the old patterns of life could no longer be healthily lived; yet the new order and the new mentality could not be born. The swarms of human creatures whose minds had been moulded to the old patterns were plunged from s
28、ecurity into insecurity and bewilderment. Creatures specialized by circumstance to knit themselves into the existing but disintegrating social texture found themselves adrift in dreadful chaos, their talents useless, their minds out-moded, their values falsified. And so, like bees in a queenless hiv
29、e, they floundered into primitive ways. They became marauding gangsters, or clamoured for some new, strong, ruthless and barbaric tribal order, into which they might once more themselves. In this nadir of civilization, this wide-craving for the savage and the stark, this night of spirit, there rose
30、to power the basest and hitherto most despised of human types, the hooligan and the gun-man, who recognized no values but personal dominance, whose vengeful aim was to trample the civilization that spurned them, and to rule for brigandage alone a new gangster society.Thus, wherever the breakdown of
31、the old order was far gone, a new order did indeed begin to emerge, ruthless, barbaric, but armed with science and intricately fashioned for war. And war in that age, though not perpetual, was never far away. In one region or another of the planet there was nearly always war. No sooner had one war e
32、nded than another began elsewhere. And where there was no actual war, there was the constant fear of wars to come.The crux for this unfinished human species, half animal but potentially humane, had always been the inconclusive effort to will true community, true and integrated union of individual sp
33、irits, personal, diverse, but mutually comprehending and mutually cherishing. And always the groping impulse for community had been frustrated by the failure to distinguish between true community and the savage unity of the pack; and on the other hand between a mans duty to the innermost spirit and
34、mere subtle self-pride, and again between love and mere possessiveness.And now, in this final balance of the strife between light and darkness, the newly won Aladdins lamp, science, had given men such power for good and evil that they inevitably must either win speedily through to true community or
35、set foot upon a steepening slope leading to annihilation. In the immediate contacts of man with man, and in the affairs of cities, provinces, slates and social classes, and further (newest and most dangerous necessity) in the ordering of the planet as a whole, there must now begin some glimmer of a
36、new spirit; or else, failing in the great test, man must slide into a new and irrevocable savagery. And in a world close-knit by science savagery brings death.In the new world, made one by trains, ships, aeroplanes and radio there was room for one society only. But a world-wide society must inevitab
37、ly be planned and organized in every detail. Not otherwise can freedom and fulfilment be secured for all individuals. The old haphazard order so favourable to the fortunate and cunning self-seeker, was everywhere vanishing. Inevitably mens lives were bound to be more and more regulated by authority.
38、 But what authority, and in what spirit? A great planned state, controlled without insight into true community, must turn to tyranny. And, armed with science for oppression and propaganda, it must inevitably destroy the humanity of its citizens. Only the insight and the will of true community can wi
39、eld rightly a states authority, let alone a worlds.Lacking that insight and that will, the states of the world in the age of balanced light and darkness bore very heavily on their citizens and on one another. For national safety mens actions were increasingly controlled by the state, their minds inc
40、reasingly moulded to the formal pattern that the state required of them. All men were disciplined and standardized. Everyone had an official place and task in the huge common work of defence and attack. Anyone who protested or was lukewarm must be destroyed. The state was always in danger, and every
41、 nerve was constantly at strain. And because each state carefully sowed treason among the citizens of other states, no man could trust his neighbour. Husbands and wives suspected one another. Children proudly informed against their parents. Under the strain even of peace-time life, all minds were da
42、maged. Lunacy spread like a plague. The most sane, though in their own view their judgment was unwarped, were in fact fear-tortured neurotics. And so the race, as a whole, teased by its obscure vision of the spirit, its frail loyalty to love and reason, surrendered itself in the main to its baser na
43、ture.Chapter 3 Mankind at the Cross Roadsi. Rise and Fall of a German ReichOF THE detailed historical events of this age of fluctuation I cannot recover much. Of the war which is present to me as I write this book I remember almost nothing. A few shreds of recollection suggest that it resulted in a
44、British victory of sorts, but I place no reliance on this surmise. If it is correct, the great opportunity afforded by this victory, the opportunity of a generous peace and a federal order in Europe, must have been missed; for rival imperialisms continued to exist after that war and real peace was n
45、ot established. Subsequent wars and upheavals come rather more clearly into my mind. For instance, I seem to remember a defeat of the democratic peoples, led at first by the British, but later by the North Americans, against a totalitarian Europe. For a while the struggle was between Britain alone a
46、nd the whole of Europe, martialled once more by Germany. Not till the remnant of the British forces had been driven into Scotland, and were desperately holding a line roughly equivalent to the Roman Wall, did the American power begin to make itself felt, and then only for a while; for in America, as
47、 elsewhere, the old order was failing, its leaders had neither the imagination nor the courage to adjust themselves to the new world-conditions. Consequently, when at last their turn came they were quite incapable of organizing their haphazard capitalism for war. The American people began to realize
48、 that they were the victims of incompetence and treachery, and the population of the Atlantic seaboard demanded a new regime. In this state of affairs resistance became impossible. Britain was abandoned, and North America reverted to a precarious isolationism knowing that the struggle would very soo
49、n begin again.This Euro-American war was certainly not the war which is being waged while I write this book, in spite of obvious similarities. At this time the Germans had recovered from that extravagant hooliganism which had turned the world against them in an earlier period. They had in a manner reverted from Nazism to the more respectable Prussianism. Other facts also show that this was not our present war. Both India and South Africa had left the British Empire and were already well-established independent states. Moreove