第20章 THE FOURTH(10)

"An integral part-as sight is part of a man...with no absolute separation from all the rest--no more than a separation of the imagination.The whole so far as his distinctive quality goes.I do not know how this takes shape in your mind, Sir Richmond, but to me this idea of actually being life itself upon the world, a special phase of it dependent upon and connected with all other phases, and of being one of a small but growing number of people who apprehend that, and want to live in the spirit of that, is quite central.It is my fundamental idea.We,--this small but growing minority--constitute that part of life which knows and wills and tries to rule its destiny.This new realization, the new psychology arising out of it is a fact of supreme importance in the history of life.It is like the appearance of self-consciousness in some creature that has not hitherto had self-consciousness.And so far as we are concerned, we are the true kingship of the world.

Necessarily.We who know, are the true king....I wonder how this appeals to you.It is stuff I have thought out very slowly and carefully and written and approved.It is the very core of my life....And yet when one comes to say these things to someone else, face to face....It is much more difficult to say than to write."Sir Richmond noted how the doctor's chair creaked as he rolled to and fro with the uneasiness of these intimate utterances.

"I agree," said Sir Richmond presently."One DOES think in this fashion.Something in this fashion.What one calls one's work does belong to something much bigger than ourselves.

"Something much bigger," he expanded.

"Which something we become," the doctor urged, "in so far as our work takes hold of us."Sir Richmond made no answer to this for a little while."Of course we trail a certain egotism into our work," he said.

"Could we do otherwise? But it has ceased to be purely egotism.It is no longer, 'I am I' but 'I am part.'...One wants to be an honourable part.""You think of man upon his planet," the doctor pursued."Ithink of life rather as a mind that tries itself over in millions and millions of trials.But it works out to the same thing.""I think in terms of fuel," said Sir Richmond.

He was still debating the doctor's generalization."I suppose it would be true to say that I think of myself as mankind on his planet, with very considerable possibilities and with only a limited amount of fuel at his disposal to achieve them.Yes....I agree that I think in that way....Ihave not thought much before of the way in which I think about things--but I agree that it is in that way.Whatever enterprises mankind attempts are limited by the sum total of that store of fuel upon the planet.That is very much in my mind.Besides that he has nothing but his annual allowance of energy from the sun.""I thought that presently we were to get unlimited energy from atoms," said the doctor.

"I don't believe in that as a thing immediately practicable.

No doubt getting a supply of energy from atoms is a theoretical possibility, just as flying was in the time of Daedalus; probably there were actual attempts at some sort of glider in ancient Crete.But before we get to the actual utilization of atomic energy there will be ten thousand difficult corners to turn; we may have to wait three or four thousand years for it.We cannot count on it.We haven't it in hand.There may be some impasse.All we have surely is coal and oil,--there is no surplus of wood now--only an annual growth.And water-power is income also, doled out day by day.We cannot anticipate it.Coal and oil are our only capital.They are all we have for great important efforts.

They are a gift to mankind to use to some supreme end or to waste in trivialities.Coal is the key to metallurgy and oil to transit.When they are done we shall either have built up such a fabric of apparatus, knowledge and social organization that we shall be able to manage without them--or we shall have travelled a long way down the slopes of waste towards extinction....To-day, in getting, in distribution, in use we waste enormously....As we sit here all the world is wasting fuel fantastically.""Just as mentally--educationally we waste," the doctor interjected.

"And my job is to stop what I can of that waste, to do what Ican to organize, first of all sane fuel getting and then sane fuel using.And that second proposition carries us far.Into the whole use we are making of life.

"First things first," said Sir Richmond.If we set about getting fuel sanely, if we do it as the deliberate, co-operative act of the whole species, then it follows that we shall look very closely into the use that is being made of it.When all the fuel getting is brought into one view as a common interest, then it follows that all the fuel burning will be brought into one view.At present we are getting fuel in a kind of scramble with no general aim.We waste and lose almost as much as we get.And of what we get, the waste is idiotic.