“There is a reason, and a very definite one indeed.
It is the whole reason for this colony of chance-sought strangers living beyond their years.
We do not follow an idle experiment, a mere whimsy.
We have a dream and a vision.
It is a vision that first appeared to old Perrault when he lay dying in this room in the year 1789.
He looked back then on his long life,
as I have already told you,
and it seemed to him that all the loveliest things were transient and perishable,
and that war, lust, and brutality
might some day crush them until there were no more left in the world.
He remembered sights he had seen with his own eyes,
and with his mind he pictured others;
he saw the nations strengthening,
not in wisdom, but in vulgar passions and the will to destroy;
he saw their machine-power multiplying until a single-weaponed man
might have matched a whole army of the Grand Monarque.
And he perceived that when they had filled the land and sea with ruin,
they would take to the air…
Can you say that this vision was untrue?”
“True indeed.”
“But that was not all.
He foresaw a time when men,
exultant in the technique of homicide,
would rage so hotly over the world that every precious thing would be in danger,
every book and picture and harmony,
every treasure garnered through two milleniums,
the small,
the delicate,
the defenseless – all would be lost like the books of Livy,
or wrecked as the English wrecked the Summer Palace in Pekin.”
“I share your opinion of that.”
“Of course.
But what are the opinions of reasonable men against iron and steel?
Believe me, that vision of old Perrault will come true.
And that, my son, is why I am here,
and why you are here,
and why me pray to outlive the doom that gathers around on every side.”
“To outlive it?”
“There is a chance. It will come to pass before you are as old as I am.”
“And you think that Shangri-La will escape?”
“Perhaps.
We may expect no mercy, but we may faintly hope for neglect.
Here we shall stay with our books and our music and our meditations,
conserving the frail elegancies of a dying age,
and seeking such wisdom as men will need when their passions are all spent.
We have a heritage to cherish and bequeath.
Let us take what pleasure we may until that time comes.”
(James Hilton)
