In Childhood’s End, a benevolent race of aliens comes to govern Earth. The Overlords, as humanity names them, initiate a century of utopia on Earth, which ends with all human children transcending into the Overmind, an immaterial, universal collective consciousness. In doing so, the children advance the human race into the next stage of their evolutionary development, though they destroy the Earth and the non-transcendent humans in the process. The Overlords want to join the Overmind themselves but are unable to, since they have so committed themselves to scientific rationality that they have lost their capacity to appreciate the mystical and paranormal—the very capacity that allows humanity to transcend. Through this, Clarke suggests that although science and its requisite rationalism will take humanity into the future, sacrificing all forms of mysticism (that is, openness to the supernatural, spiritual, and scientifically unexplainable) will lead to a lifeless world and eliminate any potential for transcendence.
The Overlords themselves are the epitome of scientific rationalism: their home world is utterly utilitarian and devoid of aesthetic artwork or even decoration, they seek knowledge above all else, and they are living proof of the boundless possibilities of technology and scientific discovery. The Overlords prevent humanity from destroying itself—teaching them to set aside conflict—while utilizing technology and sophisticated organization to provide food, shelter, and basic amenities to every person on Earth at almost no cost. This all demonstrates the capacity of scientific progress to shepherd and provide for humanity.
Yet, though they have no desire to do so, the presence of the Overlords and their technology also inadvertently destroys organized religion, suggesting that pure rationalism is incompatible with the trappings of mystical beliefs. The Overloads’ advanced technology allows humanity to effectively look back through time and witness the birth of every major religion, seeing that they are all mere myths. Although they take no pleasure in destroying the major mystical beliefs of humankind, the Overlords’ very presence is inconsistent with many of those primary beliefs. Their knowledge and technological prowess elevates science and rationalism above religion—physical comforts of materialism replace the psychological comforts of mysticism, suggesting that the role of religion in society can be subverted by scientific knowledge and replaced by material security and abundance.
Although the Overlords are technically advanced and have achieved a pure level of rationalism, they are tragic figures and find themselves in envy of human beings’ capacity for mysticism, which will allow them to join the Overmind. The Overlords have developed their faculties for knowledge, science, and technology to their fullest potential, but in doing so they have so elevated rationalism that they have essentially killed their own capacity for transcendence or imagination. They are described as being in an “evolutionary cul-de-sac,” a dead end with nowhere else to go. Their race is doomed to be nothing more than a tool of the Overmind, but never to join it. Humanity, by contrast, has evolved in a less purely rationalistic direction. They are less technologically adept and less knowledgeable, yet this also means that they are more receptive to the possibility of irrational or supernatural experiences (as demonstrated by the myriad religions formerly practiced). Even after religion has been eradicated, the humans, in their penchant for mysticism, ascribe a sort of godhood to the Overlords, imagining them to be truly all-powerful and all-knowing.
The Overlords seem to regret their development into purely rational beings and envy the humans for their maintained mystical capacity. The Overlords wish to join the Overmind and take the next step in their racial development, but instead are forever imprisoned by their rationalism and unable to join the universal collective consciousness. This suggests a distinct value in being able to embrace the potential for things to exist beyond one’s own understanding, as human beings do.
Yet even among humans, it is only the children, who are still open-minded, pliable, and have yet to develop a skepticism towards the mystical and paranormal, who are able to achieve transcendence and join the Overmind. Through this, Clark suggests that a childlike ability to believe in the unknown and unproven is vital to maintaining humanity’s capacity for mysticism, which will potentially play a role in the future development of the human race. This rather ironically echoes the admonition of Jesus Christ to be like children in their innocent capacity to believe, an idea which directly affronts scientific rationalism.
Clarke himself was a great advocate of scientific achievement and optimism, and yet in this story he warns against entirely throwing off mysticism and openness to the supernatural, arguing that it is a necessary trait of human beings and has a role to play in human development.
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Science and Mysticism Quotes in Childhood’s End
He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and now the stars—the aloof, indifferent stars—had come to him.
“Can you deny that the Overlords have brought security, peace, and prosperity to the world?”
“That is true, but they have taken our liberty. Man does not live—”
“—by bread alone. Yes, I know—but this is the first age in which every man was sure of getting even that.”
Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal—and power.
The end of strife and conflict of all kinds had also meant the virtual end of creative art. There were myriads of performers, amateur and professional, yet there had been no really outstanding new works of literature, music, painting, or sculpture for a generation. The world was still living on the glories of a past that could never return.
Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his own planet. It was a much fairer, but a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords had abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure.
The human race continued to bask in the long, cloudless summer afternoon of peace and prosperity. Would there ever be a winter again? It was unthinkable. The age of reason, prematurely welcomed by the leaders of the French Revolution two and a half centuries before, had now really arrived. This time, there was no mistake.
Suppose, in [the Overlords’] altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?
The universe was vast, but that fact terrified him less than its mystery. George was not a person who thought deeply on such matters, yet it sometimes seemed to him that men were like children amusing themselves in some secluded playground, protected from the fierce realities of the outer world.
Twenty years ago, the Overlords had announced that they had discontinued all use of their surveillance devices, so that humanity no longer need consider itself spied upon. However, the fact that such devices still existed meant that nothing could be hidden form the Overlords if they really wanted to see it.
This was a thought that had never occurred to [George]. He had subconsciously assumed that the Overlords possessed all knowledge and all power—that they understood, and were probably responsible for, the things that had been happening to Jeff.
In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.
“All of our sojourn here has been based on a vast deception, a concealment of truths which you were not ready to face.”
For all their achievements, thought Karellen, for all their mastery of the physical universe, his people were no better than a tribe that has passed its whole existence upon some flat and dusty plain. Far off were the mountains, where power and beauty dwelt […] And they could only watch and wonder; they could never scale those heights.
