Under a dim, impersonal sky

He was pre-eminently the son of a time between two ages — a past age of old, unquestioning faith in Authority; a future age of new faith, already born but not yet grown. Still sheltering in the shade of the old tree which was severed at the roots and toppling, he never, I think, clearly saw — though he may have had glimpses — that men, like children whose mother has departed from their home, were slowly being forced to trust in, and be good to, themselves and to one another, and so to form out of their necessity, desperately, unconsciously, their new great belief in Humanity. Yes, he was the son of a time between two ages — the product of an era without real faith — an individualist to the core.

John Galsworthy – A Portrait (1910)


Galsworthy’s essay is a portrait of an unknown eighty year old man whose life must have spanned most the Victorian era. This was one of Galsworthy’s themes, the changes he saw in the interactions between social classes, especially the effect on the upper classes, those who ran and still run things.

As Galsworthy saw it, many members of the upper classes were becoming aware that they were far more interdependent than they had supposed in the past. A servant was not merely a servant, but another individual who certainly saw and knew far more than was ever brought to the social surface. For some of Galsworthy’s characters it was a terrible discovery.


And Stephen’s self, feeling the magnetic currents of that ebb-tide drawing it down into murmurous slumber, out beyond the sand-bars of individuality and class, threw up its little hands and began to cry for help. The purple sea of self-forgetfulness, under the dim, impersonal sky, seemed to him so cold and terrible. It had no limit that he could see, no rules but such as hung too far away, written in the hieroglyphics of paling stars. He could feel no order in the lift and lap of the wan waters round his limbs. Where would those waters carry him? To what depth of still green silence? Was his own little daughter to go down into this sea that knew no creed but that of self-forgetfulness, that respected neither class nor person — this sea where a few wandering streaks seemed all the evidence of the precious differences between mankind? God forbid it!

John Galsworthy – Fraternity (1909)


We see today how terrible it still is, as WEF elites clearly intend to put the social class genie back in its bottle and preserve the precious differences between mankind. It would be naïve to forget that the upper classes have always expected to remain as the upper classes and are ruthless enough to make sure of it. The push towards sustainability is obviously an outcome of that.

Sustainability means the sustainability of a superior social class and a ruthless determination to avoid being pushed aside under a dim, impersonal sky.