The World Set Free - H. G. Wells (i love reading books txt) 📗

of science is man made; that does not alter the fact that men do so predominatingly make history, that you could nearly write a complete history of the world without mentioning a woman’s name. And on the other hand we have a gift of devotion, of inspiration, a distinctive power for truly loving beautiful things, a care for life and a peculiar, keen, close eye for behaviour. You know men are blind beside us in these last matters. You know they are restless⁠—and fitful. We have a steadfastness. We may never draw the broad outlines nor discover the new paths, but in the future isn’t there a confirming and sustaining and supplying role for us? As important, perhaps, as yours? Equally important. We hold the world up, Karenin, though you may have raised it.”

“You know very well, Rachel, that I believe as you believe. I am not thinking of the abolition of woman. But I do want to abolish⁠—the heroine, the sexual heroine. I want to abolish the woman whose support is jealousy and whose gift possession. I want to abolish the woman who can be won as a prize or locked up as a delicious treasure. And away down there the heroine flares like a divinity.”

“In America,” said Edwards, “men are fighting duels over the praises of women and holding tournaments before Queens of Beauty.”

“I saw a beautiful girl in Lahore,” said Kahn, “she sat under a golden canopy like a goddess, and three fine men, armed and dressed like the ancient paintings, sat on steps below her to show their devotion. And they wanted only her permission to fight for her.”

“That is the men’s doing,” said Edith Haydon.

“I said,” cried Edwards, “that man’s imagination was more specialised for sex than the whole being of woman. What woman would do a thing like that? Women do but submit to it. Or take advantage of it.”

“There is no evil between men and women that is not a common evil,” said Karenin. “It is you poets, Kahn, with your love songs which turn the sweet fellowship of comrades into this woman-centred excitement. But there is something in women, in many women, which responds to these provocations, they succumb to a peculiarly self-cultivating egotism. They become the subjects of their own artistry. They develop and elaborate themselves as scarcely any man would ever do. They look for golden canopies. And even when they seem to react against that, they may do it still. I have been reading in the old papers of the movements to emancipate women that were going on before the discovery of atomic force. These things which began with a desire to escape from the limitations and servitude of sex, ended in an inflamed assertion of sex, and women more heroines than ever. Helen of Holloway was at last as big a nuisance in her way as Helen of Troy, and so long as you think of yourselves as women”⁠—he held out a finger at Rachel and smiled gently⁠—“instead of thinking of yourselves as intelligent beings, you will be in danger of⁠—Helenism. To think of yourselves as women is to think of yourselves in relation to men. You can’t escape that consequence. You have to learn to think of yourselves⁠—for our sakes and your own sakes⁠—in relation to the sun and stars. You have to cease to be our adventure, Rachel, and come with us upon our adventures.⁠ ⁠…”

He waved his hand towards the dark sky above the mountain crests.

§ VIII

“These questions are the next questions to which research will bring us answers,” said Karenin. “While we sit here and talk idly and inexactly of what is needed and what may be, there are hundreds of keen-witted men and women who are working these things out, dispassionately and certainly, for the love of knowledge. The next science to yield great harvests now will be psychology and neural physiology. These perplexities of the situation between man and woman and the trouble with the obstinacy of egotism⁠—these are temporary troubles, the issue of our own times. Suddenly all these differences that seem so fixed will dissolve, all these incompatibles will run together, and we shall go on to mould our bodies and our bodily feelings and personal reactions as boldly as we begin now to carve mountains and set the seas in their places and change the currents of the wind.”

“It is the next wave,” said Fowler, who had come out upon the terrace and seated himself silently behind Karenin’s chair.

“Of course, in the old days,” said Edwards, “men were tied to their city or their country, tied to the homes they owned or the work they did.⁠ ⁠…”

“I do not see,” said Karenin, “that there is any final limit to man’s power of self-modification.”

“There is none,” said Fowler, walking forward and sitting down upon the parapet in front of Karenin so that he could see his face. “There is no absolute limit to either knowledge or power.⁠ ⁠… I hope you do not tire yourself talking.”

“I am interested,” said Karenin. “I suppose in a little while men will cease to be tired. I suppose in a little time you will give us something that will hurry away the fatigue products and restore our jaded tissues almost at once. This old machine may be made to run without slacking or cessation.”

“That is possible, Karenin. But there is much to learn.”

“And all the hours we give to digestion and half living; don’t you think;⁠—there will be some way of saving these?”

Fowler nodded assent.

“And then sleep again. When man with his blazing lights made an end to night in his towns and houses⁠—it is only a hundred years or so ago that that was done⁠—then it followed he would presently resent his eight hours of uselessness. Shan’t we presently take a tabloid or lie in some field of force that will enable us to do with an hour or so of slumber and rise refreshed again?”

“Frobisher and Ameer Ali have done work