Last and First Men · Chapter
I: The Cult of Evanescence explained
The Fifth Men, though long-lived, are mortal and develop a culture centered on the beauty of evanescence.
What happens
The Fifth Men, though long-lived, are mortal and develop a culture centered on the beauty of evanescence. They reject immortality, embracing death as a source of aesthetic and spiritual value. A conflict arises between orthodox believers in evanescence and iconoclasts who suspect the past may have eternal existence, leading to a crisis that is resolved by allowing research to proceed.
Themes in this chapter
Immortality and Death
The Fifth Men's deliberate choice to forgo immortality and their embrace of death as a source of beauty.
Cosmic Indifference and Meaning
The Fifth Men's struggle to find meaning in a cosmos that is indifferent to mind's existence.
The Limits of Knowledge
The debate over whether past events can be reached, highlighting the boundaries of empirical understanding.
Characters to notice
- The Fifth Men
The central focus of the chapter; their culture and philosophy are explored in depth.
- The Second Men
Mentioned as having previously grappled with similar existential questions.
- The Englishman
Cited as an extinct type that the Fifth Men reconstruct with affectionate insight.
- The American
Cited as an extinct type that the Fifth Men reconstruct with affectionate insight.
Key passages
“The Fifth Men had not been endowed with that potential immortality which their makers themselves possessed.”
Unlike their creators, the Fifth Men were mortal, which shaped their entire culture.
Sets the stage for the chapter's exploration of mortality.
“And so it became a constant aim of the Fifth Men to school themselves to admire chiefly even in the very crisis of bereavement, not persons, but that great music of innumerable personal lives, which is the life of the race.”
The Fifth Men trained themselves to value the collective over the individual, even in grief.
Highlights their philosophical shift toward racial continuity.
“But in time the Fifth Men, like the Second Men long before them, came to suspect that even in this tragic brevity of mind’s course there was a quality of beauty, more difficult than the familiar beauty, but also more exquisite.”
They eventually saw a deeper beauty in the brevity of consciousness, a harder but more refined aesthetic.
Shows their evolving perspective on mortality.
“Certain obscure biological facts began to make them suspect, on purely empirical grounds, that past events were not after all simply nonexistent, that though no longer existent in the temporal manner, they had eternal existence in some other manner.”
Empirical hints suggested that the past might have a form of eternal existence, challenging their core beliefs.
Introduces the conflict that divides the Fifth Men.