/6 / CHRONICLESnslowly extinguished, but perish forever if suddenly doused),nand sets himself to warn humankind of the deadly peril theynstand in.nCass is eventually incarcerated in an asylum, where thenflames again convince him that their intentions are good.nMeanwhile, however, their more lucid companions, in thensun, have as usual discovered that Reality “was wholly aliennto the spirit, and wholly indifferent to the most sacrednvalues of the awakened minds of the cosmos,” and arenundergoing a desperate religious war in which the flames’noriginal pious agnosticism, which I mentioned before, isnlost. Cass, now converted to that typically Stapledoniannposition, is threatened by flames converted in their turn to anmilitant theism. Cass dies in a fire, victim of homicide or,nas some suppose, his own deranged endeavor.nThe swirling confusions of Stapledonian history are herencompressed into one man’s life, and the struggle to livenlucidly, without self-deception, is allowed its full ironicalnperversity. Who is deceived? Who is sane? Allegorically, ofncourse, the flames are simply those technological powersnwhose use may lead to utopia or to disaster. Or else they arena shifting image of the individual-in-community, lessninclined than we to imagine that they are atomic individualsnrather than elements within the global or the stellarncommunity, and by the same token all too ready to ignorenthe needs and passions of each such element and fall intonthe little death of the hive-mind (the constant peril in Lastnand First Men). Or else again, they are images of thendivision that concerned Stapledon so often, between sleepnand awakened life. The Flames even allows him what hendoes not attempt elsewhere, the thought that presentnindividuals are fallen creatures, forever reaching towards anperfection they have lost: “Each new experience came to usnwith a haunting sense of familiarity and a suspicion that thennew version was but a crude and partial substitute for thenold.”nThe flames entertain the project of initiating nuclearnSauce For the GoosenGreek myths and legends have beenngiving food for thought to philosophersnsince the time of Xenophanesnand Plato. The 19th century wasnrich in theories; Max Miiller regardednmyths as a disease of language,nand E.B. Tylor—the fathernof anthropology—looked at themnas a universal stage in primitiventhought. More recently, the Frenchnhave taken to speculating ponderouslynand mysteriously: ClaudenLevi-Strauss, Georges Dumezil,nJean-Pierre Vernant, and MarcelnDetienne.nIn his 1981 L’lnvention de lanmythologie, now translated by Mar-nREVISIONSngaret Cook as The Creation of Mythologyn(Chicago: University ofnChicago Press), Detienne does angood job of demolishing the fatuousntheories of his predecessors. Hisnown thesis is less earth-shatteringnthan his solemn prose suggests: Mythology,nhe argues, came into existencenwhen the tales were no longernaccepted as true. An important partnof his evidence is the growing separationnof logos (as true account)nfrom mythos (false story). Unfortunately,nGreek authors are not sonclever as Detienne, and Aristofle,nin the Poetics, contrives to use mythosnto mean simply story or plot.nSomeone reafly must register ancomplaint against the growing in­nnnspasm, “through loyalty to the spirit in us,” if they shouldndecide that the human species was doomed to selfdestructionnsooner or later, rather as the Fifth Men ofnStapledon’s other future history (Last and First Men)ndestroy the inhabitants of Venus, on the plea that they arenless developed and failing creatures. This slaughter, incidentally,nproduces in its agents on the one hand ann”unreasoning disgust with humanity” and on the other an”grave elation” expressing itself in the thought that “thenmurder of Venerian life was terrible but right.” Thenprotagonist of Odd John assures his biographer bluntly, “Ifnwe could wipe out your whole species, we would.” Stapledon’snpostwar, post-Holocaust writings are, unsurprisingly,nmuch more alive to the hideous reahty such fables cloak.nHe was, as I said, a man of his time, though one who strovento reach beyond it.nThe unresolved ambiguities of this story—Are the flamesntrustworthy or not? Is Cass insane or not? Is the god ofnhumane devotion certain to be victorious or not? Are thendemands of the heart to be accepted alongside the judgmentsnof the mind or not?—are what make it art rathernthan academic philosophy. Phflosophers are not supposednto be ambiguous but to foflow single-mindedly where thenargument may lead. My own view is that it is not possiblenthat there should be only one road to so great a mystery. Inhave a personal and philosophical preference, that is, fornthe ambiguous and unsetfling, and I do not think thatnphilosophers should always be explicit and precise. “Notnsuch as I had dreamed must the real be, but infinitely morensubtle, more dread, more excellent. And infinitely nearernhome. Yet, however false the vision in detafl of structure,neven perhaps in its whole form, in temper surely it wasnrelevant; in temper perhaps it was even true,” writesnStapledon in Starmaker.nIn this, Stapledon echoed Plato’s judgment, that it isnthrough the telling of stories, true in temper if not in detafl,nthat we make our phflosophical conclusions real to our-nfluence of irresponsible French intellectuals.nEven a short list of thesennuisances is suggestive: Levi-nStrauss, Barthes, Derrida, Lacan,nSartre. They all express “bright”nideas within impenetrable systemsn— just the sort of combinationnguaranteed to unsettle the light witsnof American academics. Sometimesnthe French even have a goodnidea or two—as is the case withnDetienne, but they’re so mysticalnabout the whole thing, it hardlynseems worth the effort. Their bestnbooks are like decent pieces of meatnruined by a canned sauce bearnaise.nAmericans—predictably—nthrow away the beef and lick theirnlips over the sauce. (TF)n