this age of muddles and passions

Olaf Stapledon writing to H G Wells, June 1937: “I can’t help thinking about the universe as a whole, even though philosophically it is futile. So I let it come out as myth, and I find it gives me a sort of emotional stability, much needed in this age of muddles and passions.” The MIT Press Reader https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-man-who-saw-humanity-from-two-billion-years-away/ Yes, exactly. Because, as Stapledon put it in a review of Wells’ Star Begetter: Wells “is too ready to assume that an idealisation of the positivistic, scientific mood, which is mainly a product of the nineteenth century, really can adequately suggest the essence of the truly human adult mentality.” The MIT Press Reader https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-man-who-saw-humanity-from-two-billion-years-away/ Plus ça change. Much credit to Matthew De Abaitua for finding these in the archives in the course of writing a new introduction to Stapledon’s Last and First Men.