Man never is, but always to be, blest
New York
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright 1924
By E. P. Dutton & Company
All Rights Reserved
First Printing, November, 1924
Second Printing, March, 1925
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
I rather anticipate that superficial critics who do not like the argument of this essay will accuse it of pessimism, a charge which perhaps means little more than that they do not like it. Nevertheless, it may be worth while to point out, (1) that pessimism is not a logical objection to a contention of which the truth cannot otherwise be questioned, and (2) that though the argument of Tantalus may be said generally to corroborate that of Daedalus and Icarus, yet its conclusion is much less pessimistic than theirs, because (3) it makes it very plain that the evils which threaten the future of mankind are in no case unavoidable. If it is called ‘pessimism’ to point out the methods by which men may escape destruction, because men do not care to adopt them, I suppose it must be ‘optimism’ to rush violently and open-eyed down a precipice, and to expect to be saved by a miracle. Certainly such would appear to be the belief upon which human affairs are at present conducted.
F.C.S.S.
TANTALUS
TANTALUS
PROLOGUE: THE ORACLE
OF THE DEAD
When I read in Mr Haldane’s Daedalus the wonderful things that Science was going to do for us, and in Mr Russell’s Icarus how easily both we and it might come to grief in consequence, it at once became plain to me that of all the heroes of antiquity Tantalus would be the one best fitted to prognosticate the probable future of Man. For, if we interpret the history of Daedalus as meaning the collapse of Minoan civilization under the strain imposed on its moral fibre by material progress, and the fate of Icarus as meaning man’s inability to use the powers of the air without crashing, one could gauge the probability that history would repeat itself still further, and that man would once more allow his vices to cheat him of the happiness that seemed so clearly within his reach.