Mordan nodded. “No doubt. It’s a common failing, and it’s been with the race as long as it has had social organization. A little businessman thinks his tiny business is as complex and difficult as the whole government. By inversion, he conceives himself as competent to plan the government as the chief executive. Going further back in history, I’ve no doubt that many a peasant thought the job of the king was a simple one and that he could do it better if he only had a chance. What it boils down to is lack of imagination and overwhelming conceit.”
“I would never have thought them lacking in imagination.”
“There is a difference between constructive imagination and wild, uncontrolled daydreams. One is psychopathic-megalomania-unable to distinguish between fact and fancy. The other is hardheaded. In any case, the fact remains that they did not have a single competent scientist, nor a synthesist of any sort, in their whole organization. I venture to predict that, when we get around to reviewing their records, we will find that the rebels were almost all-all, perhaps-men who had never been outstandingly successful at anything. Their only prominence was among themselves.”
Hamilton thought this over to himself. He had noticed something of the sort. They had seemed like thwarted men. He had not recognized a face among them as being anyone in particular outside the Survivors Club. But inside the club they were swollen with self-importance, planning this, deciding that, talking about what they would do when they “took over.” Pipsqueaks, the lot of ’em.
But dangerous pipsqueaks, no matter what Mordan said. You were just as dead, burned by a childish man, as you would be if another killed you. “Felix, are you still awake?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recall the conversations we were having during the fight?”
“Why, um-yes-yes, I think I do.”
“You were about to say something when the gas hit us.” Hamilton was slow in replying. He recalled what had been on his mind but it was difficult to fit it into adequate words. “It’s like this, Claude. It seems to me that scientists tackle every problem but the important ones. What a man wants to know is ‘Why?’ — all that science tells him is ‘What.'”
“‘Why’ isn’t the business of science. Scientists observe, describe, hypothecate, and predict. ‘What’ and ‘How’ are their whole field; ‘Why’ doesn’t enter into it.”
“Why shouldn’t ‘Why’ enter into it? I don’t want to know how far it is from here to the Sun; I want to know why the Sun is there-and why I am standing here looking at it. I ask what life is for, and they show me a way to make better bread.”
“Food is important. Try going without it.”
“Food isn’t important after you’ve solved that problem.”
“Were you ever hungry?”
“Once-when I was studying basic socio-economics. But It was just instructional. I never expect to be hungry again — and neither does anybody else. That’s a solved problem and it answers nothing. I want to know What next? Where to? Why?”
“I had been thinking about these matters,” Mordan said slowly, “while you were sleeping. The problems of philosophy seem to be unlimited, and it is not too healthy to dwell on unlimited questions. But last night you seemed to feel that the key problem, for you, was the old, old question as to whether a man was anything more than his hundred years here on earth? Do you still feel that way?”
“Yes…I think I do. If there was anything, anything more at all, after this crazy mix-up we call living, I could feel that there might be some point to the whole frantic business, even if I did not know and could not know the full answer while I was alive.”
“And suppose there was not? Suppose that when a man’s body disintegrates, he himself disappears absolutely. I’m bound to say I find it a probable hypothesis.”
“Well — It wouldn’t be cheerful knowledge, but it would be better than not knowing. You could plan your life rationally, at least. A man might even be able to get a certain amount of satisfaction in planning things better for the future, after he’s gone. A vicarious pleasure in the anticipation.”