The Sleepwalkers (263 page)

Man
entered
upon
a
spiritual
ice
age;
the
established
Churches
could
no
longer
provide
more
than
Eskimo
huts
where
their
shivering
flock
huddled
together,
while
the
campfires
of
rival
ideologies
drew
the
masses
in
wild
stampedes
across
the
ice."
²⁹

9.
The Ultimate Decision

Coincident
with
this
progressive
spiritual
dessication,
the
post-Renaissance
centuries
brought
an
unprecedented
rise
in
both
constructive
and
destructive
power.
The
operative
word
here
is
"unprecedented".
All
comparisons
with
past
epochs
break
down
before
the
fact
that
our
species
has
acquired
the
means
to
annihilate
itself,
and
make
the
earth
uninhabitable;
and
that
in
the
foreseeable
future,
it
will
be
within
its
power
to
turn
this
planet
into
a
nova
,
a
rival
sun
in
the
solar
system.
Every
age
had
its
Cassandras,
and
one
tends
to
draw
comfort
from
the
fact
that
mankind
has,
after
all,
managed
to
survive
regardless
of
their
pessimistic
prophecies.
But
such
analogies
are
no
longer
valid,
for
no
past
age,
however
convulsed,
had
the
actual
means
of
committing
racial
suicide
and
interfering
with
the
order
of
the
solar
system.

The
basic
novelty
of
our
age
is
the
combination
of
this
sudden,
unique
increase
in
physical
power
with
an
equally
unprecedented
spiritual
ebb-tide.
To
appreciate
this
novelty
one
must
abandon
the
limited
perspective
of
European
history,
and
think
in
terms
of
the
history
of
the
species.
Elsewhere
I
have
suggested
that
the
process
which
led
to
our
present
predicament
could
be
represented
by
two
curves
similar
to
temperature
charts,
one
showing
the
growing
physical
power
of
the
race,
the
other
its
spiritual
insight,
moral
awareness,
charity,
and
related
values.
For
something
of
the
order
of
several
hundred
thousand
years,
from
Cro-Magnon
man
to
about
5000
B.C.,
the
first
curve
would
depart
little
from
the
horizontal.
With
the
invention
of
the
pulley,
the
lever
and
other
simple
mechanical
devices,
the
muscular
strength
of
man
would
appear
amplified,
say,
five-fold;
after
that
the
curve
would
again
remain
horizontal
for
five
or
six
thousand
years.
But
in
the
course
of
the
last
two
hundred
years
–
a
stretch
less
than
one-thousandth
of
the
total
on
the
chart
–
the
curve
would,
for
the
first
time
in
the
history
of
the
species,
suddenly
rise
in
leaps
and
bounds;
and
in
the
last
fifty
years
–
about
one-hundred-thousandth
of
the
total
–
the
curve
rises
so
steeply
that
it
now
points
almost
vertically
upward.
A
single
example
will
illustrate
this:
after
the
First
World
War,
less
than
a
generation
before
Hiroshima,
statisticians
reckoned
that
on
an
average
ten
thousand
rifle
bullets,
or
ten
artillery
shells,
were
needed
to
kill
one
enemy
soldier.

Compared
to
the
first,
the
second
curve
will
show
a
very
slow
rise
during
the
nearly
flat
pre-historic
miles;
then
it
will
undulate
with
indecisive
ups
and
downs
through
civilized
history;
finally,
on
the
last
dramatic
fraction
of
the
chart
where
the
power
curve
shoots
upward
like
a
cobra
stabbing
at
the
sky,
the
spiritual
curve
goes
into
a
steep
decline.

The
diagram
may
be
oversimplified,
but
it
is
certainly
not
overdramatized.
To
draw
it
true
to
scale,
one
would
have
to
use
paper
about
a
hundred
yards
long,
but
even
so
the
relevant
portion
would
occupy
only
an
inch.
We
would
be
obliged
to
use
units
of
time
at
first
of
a
hundred
thousand,
then
of
a
thousand
years,
while,
as
we
approach
the
present,
the
vertical
rise
of
the
power-curve
is
greater
in
a
single
year
than
it
was
in
ten
thousand
earlier
ones.

Thus
within
the
foreseeable
future,
man
will
either
destroy
himself
or
take
off
for
the
stars.
It
is
doubtful
whether
reasoned
argument
will
play
any
significant
part
in
the
ultimate
decision,
but
if
it
does,
a
clearer
insight
into
the
evolution
of
ideas
which
led
to
the
present
predicament
may
be
of
some
value.
The
muddle
of
inspiration
and
delusion,
of
visionary
insight
and
dogmatic
blindness,
of
millennial
obsessions
and
disciplined
double-think,
which
this
narrative
has
tried
to
retrace,
may
serve
as
a
cautionary
tale
against
the
hubris
of
science
–
or
rather
of
the
philosophical
outlook
based
on
it.
The
dials
on
our
laboratory
panels
are
turning
into
another
version
of
the
shadows
in
the
cave.
Our
hypnotic
enslavement
to
the
numerical
aspects
of
reality
has
dulled
our
perception
of
non-quantitative
moral
values;
the
resultant
end-justifies-the-means
ethics
may
be
a
major
factor
in
our
undoing.
Conversely,
the
example
of
Plato's
obsession
with
perfect
spheres,
of
Aristotle's
arrow
propelled
by
the
surrounding
air,
the
forty-eight
epicycles
of
Canon
Koppernigk
and
his
moral
cowardice,
Tycho's
mania
of
grandeur,
Kepler's
sun-spokes,
Galileo's
confidence
tricks,
and
Descartes'
pituitary
soul,
may
have
some
sobering
effect
on
the
worshippers
of
the
new
Baal,
lording
it
over
the
moral
vacuum
with
his
electronic
brain.