The only factor which remained actively dissident was Hester. If she would not agree to come into his scheme of life, makeshift and admittedly unsatisfactory as it was, what would the outcome be? It was unthinkable that they should part. But if she was obsessed, he too was obsessed. In his case the obsession was never again to find himself in the pit into which he had allowed himself to step; from which the fire had mysteriously rescued him.
XXIV
THE PARTY OF SUPERMAN
The first of the new friends made by René were Professor McKenzie and his family. It was through Mr. Furber that the introduction was effected. He asked René to drop up one afternoon to meet a man who knew and admired his work. Since the fire Mr. Furber’s attitude towards René had mellowed. The Hardings had been, as it were, baptized in fire as Momacoans of sorts.Also René was now in the secrets of Momaco, for was he not an acquaintance of one of Momaco’s most eminent murderers? One whose “homicide among the flames” took pride of place over all murders of recent years throughout the Dominion, and had secured banner headlines in the metropolitan press of the United States. — It was Mr. Furber’s habit now to introduce René in the following manner: “Do you know Professor Harding, the historian? He nearly lost his life in the Hotel Blundell fire: and he had got to know his countryman, Martin, quite well during the three years of his stay there. You know, the murderer in the flames!”
In these introductions, needless to say, the role of the Historian was a very minor one. It was as the buddy of a murderer that he made the grade. The large, dark, mild eyes of Mr. Furber studied René’s face with sardonic interest on these occasions. For Mr. Furber acted the part imposed by time and place, and acted it with relish, but he was under no illusions, and understood how vulgar the part was that fate had cast him for. He realized (with contempt, for Professor René Harding had to “take it”) what the other must be feeling.
With Professor Ian McKenzie, however, he acted differently. The professor was an “old countryman,” and had come out only two years earlier, to teach philosophy at the University of Momaco. There were at that seat of learning two or three spectacular teachers, to enable it to hold up its head among the larger city universities. It even had a logical positivist from Cambridge (England) by way of a spot of chic — also perhaps of scandal; although, had they understood what logical positivism stands for, it would have scandalized the Methodists as much as it did the Catholics. As for Professor McKenzie, he regarded the lectures of the nimble little anti-metaphysical with bored indifference. However, a collision was carefully avoided: the little Cambridge horsefly was the possessor of a small destructive outfit, if he had nothing else, and McKenzie was a shameless metaphysician. He had no wish to be reduced to atomic dust by this patent pulverizer of everything. This was especially the case, since no retaliation was possible, the logical positivist having whittled himself away to a colourless abstraction which hardly constituted even a token target.
Professor McKenzie was a smiling Scottish sophist of about forty-five with a faint and pleasing accent, as far as possible from the aggressive Scotchiness of Glasgow. Pleasantly surprised, René found himself again, at last, in the presence of a man of his own kind.
They passed from the Library, where the meeting had taken place, into Mr. Furber’s non-business quarters (panelled with the nude photographic torsos of the juvenile male), reserved for those to be treated on terms of equality. (René felt quite uncomfortable at this honour, for he felt he ought to show, in some way, to Mr. Furber, how delighted he was to be there.) The two professors were watched by their host with a bland anticipation of something mildly amusing. It was as though they had been two mettlesome dogs, who might be expected to scrap, brought in there by the brooding aesthete. Both more or less realized what was expected of them, for McKenzie had been in Momaco long enough to understand the only terms upon which a man of mind may be treated otherwise than as an inanimate object, in such an environment. In his own case it would be the well-known pugnacity of the philosopher which would gain him momentary recognition as a living thing. He was now, he knew, expected to fight. René had a pugnacious record too; the confrontation of two such mental matadors should be productive of a kind of slanging match.
It was naturally quite impossible for these two professors to clinch at once: they had first of all to exchange a few amiable commonplaces. Where had McKenzie taught? How long had he been in Momaco, etc…? On his side, McKenzie enquired when René had arrived (assumed surprise succeeding to the information that the Hardings were old Momacoans), expressed the hope that he would have the pleasure of seeing René again, if that gentleman was remaining in the city, etc. Mr. Furber observed these boniments with the bored impatience that a person would show if two charladies, presenting themselves for employment, recognized one another, and indulged in social exchanges, so holding up the interviews.
Professor McKenzie, more conscious perhaps of his obligations, was the first to act as a professor should. There must still be a short interval, however, during which McKenzie was referring politely to René’s latest book, The Secret History of World War II. After a few more amiabilities, McKenzie went into action (much to Mr. Furber’s relief, who had begun to feel that he had got a couple of very tame controversialists before him, and that he might have to stir them up or to turn them out).
With the most disarming smile the Scottish professor began, “I do not know whether you would agree with me, Professor, but what I feel is that you cut yourself off from mankind.”
“Do I do that?” René smilingly rejoined.
“So it seems to me, Professor. If you assert that the aims and actions of human society up to date — everything except the dreams of the poets and mathematicians — are not only unworthy of record, but should be consigned to oblivion, that means that you set yourself against human beings as they are. Now, as you are aware, Professor, the position you have taken up makes you a Member of the Party of Superman.”
“What do you call the Party of Superman, Professor?” (They addressed one another as “Professor.” Anything in the shape of a title was made great use of, as the Germans are wont to do.)
“What we may call the Superman party,” Professor McKenzie continued, “is those classes of men in the twentieth century, who reach out violently towards a higher step up the evolutionary ladder. A remarkably clear-cut example of this is to be found in the arts. There the so-called Abstractists are probably the best specimens of what we are talking about. These artists are those who would banish from the visual arts the external world as it usually appears to men, and relegate such masterpieces of the past as those of Van Eyck or Memling to the status of the photograph. In architecture there is the skyscraper, and the geometric creations of Lloyd Wright. Or if we turn to music, there is the twelve-tone system. In politics, of course, the Superman party is the Bolshevist, which is a super-Puritanism, demanding that we should eradicate such basic human instincts as the profit-motive for instance. And in literature we have the invention of super-languages, such as that of James Joyce. Everywhere we have seen, from the teachings of Nietschze (Menschlich Über Menschlich, etc.) onwards, a dissatisfaction with life as it has so far been lived, and is still lived by everyone except a very few: a demand that man should remake himself and cease to live upon the paltry, mainly animal plane we know. — And now you, Professor Harding, wish to supermanize the writing of history. So far you have not had much success. If you will allow me to speak rather frankly, it has landed you in Momaco!”
Mr. Furber laughed with the expectant glee of the spectator (in the stage box). René smiled appreciatively. He liked this bright Scot. “I do not belong to the Party of Superman,” he then said with quiet indifference. “But it is a mistake which may easily be made.”
“I was mistaken?” answered McKenzie, gently ironical.
It was obvious that Mr. Furber considered that the argument had made a promising debut, and hoped that it would not be abandoned. René decided to oblige.
Smiling accommodatingly, René lighted a cigarette, and began to provide the professor with an answer. “Always, Professor, I have made it my business to keep clear of what you call the Superman party.”
“Nevertheless, it is fundamentally your party,” repeated McKenzie.
“No. I have always discouraged spectacular aims. We do not have to go outside, or beyond, what we have got. The problem is a simple one. Government is often in the hands of criminals or morons, never in the hands of first-rate men. This is a statement which most educated men would endorse. We do not have to create Supermen, but to manage, somehow, that men of a reasonably high order of intelligence and integrity govern us. No philosopher king; just first-rate, honourable, intelligent men, such as are easy to find everywhere.”
“Are you not forgetting, Professor, that ‘all power corrupts’; and that the ten just men who were elected to rule — or the two hundred, or ten thousand — would soon become as bad as any of their predecessors? It appears to me a more idealistic or unrealizable proposal to make the good and the bad change places, than to evolve a Superman, who is wiser than Man-up-to-date.”
“We quote Lord Acton too often, I think, Professor.” René looked at Professor McKenzie with polite enquiry. “Don’t you agree? Power does not always corrupt, but corruptible people too often secure it. Then, again, Superman would not be immune from corruption, unless altogether inhuman.”
“Superman would be above corruption, would he not?” said McKenzie.
“It would be interesting to know how people visualize their Superman — except, of course, the titan of the comics, who is merely larger and more muscular. For myself, I do not much care to contemplate a wiser man than Socrates or than Pascal. There seems to me something strained about the idea of Superman.What kind of man would this ‘Superman’ be? Would he still be a man?
Would he be physically exactly like ourselves? Or would he depart from the human norm visibly? What do you think, Professor?”
“I suppose he would,” said McKenzie.
“In that case his life on earth, Professor, would be a very uncomfortable one, if he were allowed to live. The first specimen of this Supermanhood would never be able to breed up a family of Supermen. He would almost certainly be destroyed, or closely confined for life, before he had time to look for a suitable mate.
So even if such a development were desirable, it may be ruled out as impossible. This is one reason, though not the only one, why I do not fly any higher than Socrates or Pascal, or Voltaire.”
“So,” Professor McKenzie smilingly reminded him, “we get back to the philosopher king.”
“And so we should, if we specifically demanded one of those three great philosophers, or their modern equivalent,” René agreed. “You would never get men to accept such sages as rulers, anyway. I agree with you, Professor, men prefer to be ruled by a vulgar blackguard. This I have, in fact, frequently pointed out. A criminal ruffian is often very popular, especially if he knows how to advertise his frailty humorously.”
There were convulsive movements and a chuckling sound from the bearded referee.
“Do you, by any chance, mean,” said Mr. Furber, “the mayor of a great neighbouring city?”
“Yes, Monsieur What’s-his-name is a good illustration,” René agreed. “Almost a standard specimen of what we have somehow to root out. It is precisely this popular appetite for the criminal and vulgar that we must not be defeatist about. Must not acquiesce in. Look at this war for instance. Are we to be defeatist about that? Must we say such things are natural and inevitable as history amply proves?”
“Yes, I am afraid so.” McKenzie nodded, in dismal assent. “The majority of men still are barbarous. But we have drifted away, Professor, from the main point, which is the quality of your new ruler.”
“Very well, let us return to that. First of all, we have to remain within the modest bounds of possibility. For our non-moronic, non-criminal, enlightened man would fall far short of those very unusual men, those philosophers whose names I mentioned (but only to indicate a type).”
“However much you reduce your claims, Professor,” the Scot persisted, “an enlightened man, well endowed with qualities of mind and heart, free of all criminal leanings, is very hard to find, and would impress other men as exceptional. The impression of strangeness would not fall far short of that which Ubermensch might be expected to produce.”
“Well, Professor,” René smiled, “I am afraid we shall have to leave out the possibility of you or me causing such horrified alarm that we should be put under lock and key before we got a chance of starting our blameless rule. Let us turn, rather, to the question of the waning, and eventual disappearance of Homo barbaricus. I am sanguine; but I am afraid I am not very successful in explaining why. However, let me try a little more. In the first years of this century the feudal, land-owning aristocracies, naturally in favour of the barbary which produced them, were still intact, except in the New World. Well, are they still intact? Will not this war yet further stamp out, or blast away, what is left of the old order, based upon barbary?
So at length the ruling classes who were traditionally interested in endorsing the barbarity of the barbarous majority, at least these classes have been almost eliminated. This is a great asset, for those who wish to liquidate the barbarous habits of mind of the majority.”
For some minutes Mr. Furber had been attempting to look like a feudal aristocrat, or at least a Medici. “You approve of the Bolshevists, then, Professor Harding?” he asked.
“No, I do not,” René told him. “But there is no such thing, in history, as an event, or as a policy, or as a party, that is all-bad, or all-good. It was a good, or that is to say a useful, action to sweep away the feudal conditions in Russia.”
But McKenzie did not seem prepared to let that stand. He leant forward, as he spoke. “The truth is, Professor, that a new feudal class takes the place of the old. And with it comes a new barbary, and even a new Dark Age.”
“There is always the chance of that: indeed it is almost the rule, that if you remove anything from the social body, in its place something of the same sort appears at once. But, to me, the Soviet Empire has not a very stable look. Its survival up-to-date has been due entirely to the benevolence of the West.”
“Oh!” protested Mr. Furber.
“It sounds to you a paradox? If you think a little,” René said, “you will see what I mean. Their strength is artificial, dependent upon the paradoxical neutrality or, as I have said, benevolence of capitalism. — However, this is really irrelevant. All that is in question is whether a new barbary, of a permanent type, is taking the place of the boyars and Junkers, and this, naturally, no one can be certain about. All one can say is that the evidence points in the other direction — towards some kind of Enlightenment, a mass rebellion against the brutal and archaic character of political leadership everywhere.”
“I am glad of that,” Mr. Furber observed in a tone of worldly irony.
René lighted a cigarette, as a sign that he had nothing more to say on those lines. As usual Mr. Furber was saturnine, taciturn, and superior. Then Professor McKenzie stirred himself, and it was seen that he did not feel, on his side, that he had exhausted the subject.
“Well, Professor, I take back what I said. I see that I was mistaken in placing you in the Party of Superman.Your position is a far more novel — and far more complicated — one than I had supposed. It seems to me to be based upon a profound psychological error. For how you expect your mild, intelligent, and blamelessly honest man to dominate the ferocious, intelligent, and unscrupulous man I fail to understand.”
“You are thinking too much of the past,” René told him. “It is an essential feature of my programme that the egotistic, the anti-social type should cease to fascinate the multitude, and rapidly diminish in numbers; and in the natural order of things the more or less enlightened will greatly increase in number and influence. Then ultra-barbarous wars should have the opposite effect f
rom leading to a more barbarous state-of-mind, which is what happens at present. A crescendo of violence should, rather, lead away from it.”
“And so you argue, the sheep should become so numerous that at last they overwhelm the wolves!” McKenzie broke in.
“It is a mistake to regard men like myself and Mr. Furber as sheep.”
All three laughed; and Mr. Furber protested, “You must leave me out of it, either as sheep or as wolf. Nothing would induce me to take power.”
“But I depend, for my theory, entirely,” René proceeded, “upon a rapidly growing scepticism and enlightenment, and on a shrinkage in the lone wolf type.”
“You cannot substantiate that,” Professor McKenzie told him; “there is no evidence of the existence of that historical process.”
Self Condemned Page 36
