INTIMATIONS OF THE STAR MAKER
2It must not be supposed that the normal fate of intelligent races in the galaxy is to triumph. As our experience of the destruction of worlds increased, we were increasingly dismayed by the wastefulness and seeming aimlessness of the universe. So many worlds, after so much distress, attained so nearly to social peace and joy, only to have the cup snatched from them forever.
Yet while we felt dismay, we felt also increasingly the hunger to see and to face fearlessly whatever spirit was indeed the spirit of this cosmos. For as we pursued our pilgrimage, passing again and again from tragedy to farce, from farce to glory, from glory often to a final tragedy, we felt increasingly the sense that some terrible, some holy, yet at the same time unimaginably outrageous and lethal, secret lay just beyond our reach.
There came a moment when, thinking and feeling in unison, we said to one another, 'Whether the Star Maker is Love or some other, some inhuman spirit, this must be right. And if the stars and all else are not his creatures but self-subsistent, then this too must be right. For we cannot know whether the highest place for love is on the throne or on the cross. We know, we have seen, that in the waste of stars love is indeed crucified; and rightly, for its own proving, and for the throne's glory.
Love and all that is humane we cherish in our hearts. Yet also we salute the throne and the darkness upon the throne. Whether it be Love or not Love, our hearts praise it, out-soaring reason.
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A re-imagining of Olaf Stapledon's 1937 work, "Star Maker".
#commonsenseonmars Common sense on mars