Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (bts book recommendations .txt) 📕

prehensile fingers. Above his mouth was a single nostril, above that an

ear, and on the top of his head a flexible three-pronged proboscis

bearing three eyes.

A very different and fairly common quasi-human kind was sometimes

produced by planets rather larger than the Earth. Owing to the greater

strength of gravitation, there would first appear, in place of the

familiar quadruped, a six-legged type. This would proliferate into

little sextuped burrowers, swift and elegant sextuped grazers, a

sextuped mammoth, complete with tusks, and many kinds of sextuped

carnivora. Man in these worlds sprang usually from some small

opposum-like creature which had come to use the first of its three pairs

of limbs for nest-building or for climbing. In time, the forepart of its

body thus became erect, and it gradually assumed a form not unlike that

of a quadruped with a human torso in place of a neck. In fact it became

a centaur, with four legs and two capable arms. It was very strange to

find oneself in a world in which all the amenities and conveniences of

civilization were fashioned to suit men of this form.

In one of these worlds, rather smaller than the rest; man was not a

centaur, though centaurs were among his remote ancestors. In subhuman

stages of evolution the pressure of the environment had telescoped the

horizontal part of the centaur’s body, so that the forelegs and the

hind-legs were drawn closer and closer together, till at last they

became a single sturdy pair. Thus man and his nearer ancestors were

bipeds with very large rumps, reminiscent of the Victorian bustle, and

legs whose internal structure still showed their “centaur” origin.

One very common kind of quasi-human world I must describe in more

detail, as it plays an important part in the history of our galaxy. In

these worlds man, though varying greatly in form and fortune in

particular worlds, had in every case developed from a sort of

five-pronged marine animal, rather like a star-fish. This creature would

in time specialize one prong for perceiving, four for locomotion. Later

it would develop lungs, a complex digestive apparatus, and a

well-integrated nervous system. Later still the perceiving limb would

produce a brain, the others becoming adapted for running and climbing.

The soft spines which covered the body of the ancestral star-fish often

developed into a kind of spiky fur. In due season there would arise an

erect, intelligent biped, equipped with eyes, nostrils, ears,

taste-organs, and sometimes organs of electric perception. Save for the

grotesqueness of their faces, and the fact that the mouth was generally

upon the belly, these creatures were remarkably human. Their bodies,

however, were usually covered with the soft spines or fat hairs

characteristic of these worlds. Clothes were unknown, save as protection

against cold in the arctic regions. Their faces, of course, were apt to

be far from human. The tall head often bore a coronet of five eyes.

Large single nostrils, used for breathing and smelling and also

speaking, formed another circlet below the eyes.

The appearance of these “Human Echinoderms” belied their nature, for

though their faces were inhuman, the basic pattern of their minds was

not unlike our own. Their senses were much like ours, save that in some

worlds they developed a far more varied color-sensitivity. Those races

that had the electric sense gave us some difficulty; for, in order to

understand their thought, we had to learn a whole new gamut of sense

qualities and a vast system of unfamiliar symbolism. The electric organs

detected very slight differences of electric charge in relation to the

subject’s own body. Originally this sense had been used for revealing

enemies equipped with electric organs of offense. But in man its

significance was chiefly social. It gave information about the emotional

state of one’s neighbors. Beyond this its function was meteorological.

One example of this kind of world, one which clearly illustrates the

type, and at the same time presents interesting peculiarities must be

described in more detail.

The key to the understanding of this race is, I believe, its strange

method of reproduction, which was essentially communal. Every individual

was capable of budding a new individual; but only at certain seasons,

and only after stimulation by a kind of pollen emanating from the whole

tribe and carried on the air. The grains of this ultra-microscopically

fine pollen dust were not germ cells but “genes,” the elementary factors

of inheritance. The precincts of the tribe were at all times faintly

perfumed by the communal pollen; but on occasions of violent group

emotion the pollen cloud became so intensified as to be actually visible

as a haze. Only on these rare occasions was conception probable.

Breathed out by every individual, the pollen was breathed in by those

who were ripe for fertilization. By all it was experienced as a rich and

subtle perfume, to which each individual contributed his peculiar odor.

By means of a curious psychical and physiological mechanism the

individual in heat was moved to crave stimulation by the full perfume of

the tribe, or of the great majority of its members; and indeed, if the

pollen clouds were insufficiently complex, conception would not occur.

Cross-fertilization between tribes happened in intertribal warfare and

in the ceaseless coming and going between tribes in the modern world.

In this race, then, every individual might bear children. Every child,

though it had an individual as its mother, was fathered by the tribe as

a whole. Expectant parents were sacred, and were tended communally. When

the baby “Echinoderm” finally detached itself from the parental body, it

also was tended communally along with the rest of the tribe’s juvenile

population. In civilized societies it was handed over to professional

nurses and teachers.

I must not pause to tell of the important psychological effects of this

kind of reproduction. The delights and disgusts which we feel in contact

with the flesh of our kind were unknown. On the other hand, individuals

were profoundly moved by the ever-changing tribal perfume. It is

impossible to describe the strange variant of romantic love which, each

individual periodically felt for the tribe. The thwarting, the

repression, the perversion of this passion was the source at once of the

loftiest and most sordid achievements of the race. Communal parenthood

gave to the tribe a unity and Strength quite unknown in more

individualistic races. The primitive tribes were groups of a few hundred

or a few thousand individuals, but in modern times their size greatly

increased. Always, however, the sentiment of tribal loyalty, if it was

to remain healthy, had to be based on the personal acquaintance of its

members. Even in the larger tribes, everyone was at least “the friend of

a friend’s friend” to every other member. Telephone, radio, and

television enabled tribes as large as our smaller cities to maintain a

sufficient degree of personal intercourse among their members.

But always there was some point beyond which further growth of the tribe

was unwholesome. Even in the smallest and most intelligent tribes there

was a constant strain between the individual’s natural passion for the

tribe and his respect for individuality in himself and his fellows. But

whereas in the small tribes and healthy larger tribes the tribal spirit

was kept sweet and sane by the mutual-respect and self-respect of the

individuals, in the largest and imperfectly sane tribes the hypnotic

influence of the tribe was all too apt to drown personality. The members

might even lose all awareness of themselves and their fellows as

persons, and become mere mindless organs of the tribe. Thus the

community would degenerate into an instinctive animal herd.

Throughout history the finer minds of the race had realized that the

supreme temptation was the surrender of individuality to the tribe.

Prophets had over and over again exhorted men to be true to themselves,

but their preaching had been almost wholly vain. The greatest religions

of this strange world were not religions of love but religions of self.

Whereas in our world men long for the Utopia in which all men shall love

one another, the “Echinoderms” were apt to exalt the religious hunger

for strength to “be oneself” without capitulation to the tribe. Just as

we compensate for our inveterate selfishness by religious veneration of

the community, so this race compensated for inveterate “gregism” by

religious veneration of the individual.

In its purest and most developed form, of course, the religion of self

is almost identical with the religion of love at its best. To love is to

will the self-fulfilment of the beloved, and to find, in the very

activity of loving, an incidental but vitalizing increase of oneself. On

the other hand, to be true to oneself, to the full potentiality of the

self, involves the activity of love. It demands the discipline of the

private self in service of a greater self which embraces the community

and the fulfilment of the spirit of the race.

But the religion of self was no more effective with the “Echinoderms”

than the religion of love with us. The precept, “Love thy neighbor as

thyself,” breeds in us most often the disposition to see one’s neighbor

merely as a poor imitation of oneself, and to hate him if he proves

different. With them the precept, “Be true to thyself,” bred the

disposition merely to be true to the tribal fashion of mentality. Modern

industrial civilization caused many tribes to swell beyond the wholesome

limit. It also introduced artificial “super-tribes” or “tribes of

tribes,” corresponding to our nations and social classes. Since the

economic unit was the internally communistic tribe, not the individual,

the employing class was a small group of small and prosperous tribes,

and the working class was a large group of large and impoverished

tribes. The ideologies of the super-tribes exercised absolute power over

all individual minds under their sway.

In civilized regions the super-tribes and the overgrown natural tribes

created an astounding mental tyranny. In relation to his natural tribe,

at least if it was small and genuinely civilized, the individual might

still behave with intelligence and imagination. Along with his actual

tribal kinsmen he might support a degree of true community unknown on

Earth. He might in fact be a critical, self-respecting and

other-respecting person. But in all matters connected with the

super-tribes, whether national or economic, he behaved in a very

different manner. All ideas coming to him with the sanction of nation or

class would be accepted uncritically and with fervor by himself and all

his fellows. As soon as he encountered one of the symbols or slogans of

his super-tribe he ceased to be a human personality and became a sort of

de-cerebrate animal, capable only of stereotyped reactions. In extreme

cases his mind was absolutely closed to influences opposed to the

suggestion of the super-tribe. Criticism was either met with blind rage

or actually not heard at all. Persons who in the intimate community of

their small native tribe were capable of great mutual insight and

sympathy might suddenly, in response to tribal symbols, be transformed

into vessels of crazy intolerance and hate directed against national or

class enemies. In this mood they would go to any extreme of

self-sacrifice for the supposed glory of the super-tribe. Also they

would show great ingenuity in contriving means to exercise their lustful

vindictiveness upon enemies who in favorable circumstances could be

quite as kindly and intelligent as themselves.

At the time of our visit to this world it seemed that mob passions would

destroy civilization completely and irrevocably. The affairs of the

world were increasingly conducted under the sway of the spreading mania

of super-tribalism; conducted, in fact, not intelligently but according

to the relative emotional compulsions of almost meaningless slogans. I

must not stay to describe how, after a period of chaos, a new way