John paused. Then with a sigh he resumed. “It’s no good going on about it. The upshot is simple enough. Homo sapiens is at the end of his tether, and I’m not going to spend my life tinkering a doomed species.”
“You’re mighty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” I put in. “Yes,” he said, “perfectly sure of myself in some ways, and still utterly unsure in others, in ways I can’t explain. But one thing is stark clear. If I were to take over Hom. sap. I should freeze up inside, and grow quite incapable of doing what is my real job. That job is what I’m not yet sure about, and can’t possibly explain. But it begins with something very interior to me. Of course, it’s not just saving my soul. I, as an individual, might damn myself without spoiling the world. Indeed, my damning myself might happen to be an added beauty to the world. I don’t matter on my own account, but I have it in me to do something that does matter. This I know. And I’m pretty sure I have to begin with—well, interior discovery of objective reality, in preparation for objective creation. Can you make anything of that?”
“Not much,” I said, “but go on.”
“No,” he said, “I won’t go on along that line, but I’ll tell you something else. I’ve had the hell of a fright lately. And I’m not easily frightened. This was only the second time, ever. I went to the Cup Tie Final last week to see the crowd. You remember, it was a close fight (and a damned good game from beginning to end) and three minutes before time there was trouble over a foul. The ball went into goal before the referee’s whistle had got going for the foul, and that goal would have won the match. Well, the crowd got all het up about it, as you probably heard. That’s what frightened me. I don’t mean I was scared of being hurt in a row. No, I should have quite enjoyed a bit of a row, if I’d known which side to be on, and there’d been something to fight about. But there wasn’t. It clearly was a foul. Their precious, ‘sporting instinct’ ought to have kept them straight, but it didn’t. They just lost their heads, went brute-mad over it. What got me was the sudden sense of being different from every one else, of being a human being alone in a vast herd of cattle. Here was a fair sample of the world’s population, of the sixteen hundred millions of Homo sapiens. And this fair sample was expressing itself in a thoroughly characteristic way, an inarticulate bellowing and braying, and here was I, a raw, ignorant, blundering little creature, but human, really human, perhaps the only real human being in the world; and just because I was really human, and had in me the possibility of some new and transcendent spiritual achievement, I was more important than all the rest of the sixteen hundred million put together. That was a terrifying thought in itself. What made matters worse was the bellowing crowd. Not that I was afraid of them, but of the thing they were a sample of. Not that I was afraid as a private individual, so to speak. The thought was very exhilarating from that point of view. If they had turned on me I’d have made a damned good fight for it. What terrified me was the thought of the immense responsibility, and the immense odds against my fulfilling it.”
John fell silent; and I was so stunned by his prodigious self-importance that I had nothing to say. Presently he began again.
“Of course I know, Fido old thing, the whole business must seem fantastic to you. But, perhaps, by being a bit more precise on one point I may make the thing clearer. It’s already pretty common knowledge of course that another world-war is likely, and that if it does come it may very well be the end of civilization, But I know something that makes the whole situation look much worse than it’s generally thought to be. I don’t really know what will happen to the species in the long run, but I do know that unless a miracle happens there is bound to be a most ghastly mess in the short run for psychological reasons. I have looked pretty carefully into lots of minds, big and little, and it’s devastatingly clear to me that in big matters Homo sapiens is a species with very slight educable capacity. He has entirely failed to learn his lesson from the last war. He shows no more practical intelligence than a moth that has fluttered through a candle-flame once and will do so again as soon as it has recovered from the shock. And again and yet again, till its wings are burnt. Intellectually many people realize the danger. But they are not the sort to act on the awareness, It’s as though the moth knew that the flame meant death, yet simply couldn’t stop its wings from taking it there, Then what with this new crazy religion of nationalism that’s beginning, and the steady improvement in the technique of destruction, a huge disaster is simply inevitable, barring a miracle, which of course may happen. There might be some sort of sudden leap forward to a more human mentality, and therefore a world-wide social and religious revolution. But apart from that possibility I should give the disease fifteen to twenty years to come to a head. Then one fine day a few great powers will attack one another, and—phut! Civilization will have gone in a few weeks, Now, of course, if I took charge I could probably stave off the smash. But, as I say, it would mean chucking the really vital thing I can do. Chicken-farming is not worth such a sacrifice. The upshot is, Fido, I’m through with your bloody awful species. I must strike out on my own, and, if possible, in such a way as to avoid being smashed in the coming disaster.”