Seeing the depth, we shall see also the height, and we shall praise both
Last and First Men“Seeing the depth, we shall see also the height, and we shall praise both” names the Second Men’s effort to face catastrophe not merely with endurance but with admiration. First offered as a response to the Martian raids, the saying becomes a creed whose hopeful promise is gradually unsettled by the disasters that follow.
Formulation and First Use
During the first agony of invasion, the Second Men resolved to absorb tragedy into their understanding of themselves and the world. They would scrutinize and digest it, seeking to turn its force into part of their own being. Rather than curse or supplicate their gods, they affirmed: “Thus, and thus, and thus, is the world. Seeing the depth we shall see also the height; and we shall praise both.” The saying binds recognition of suffering to a promise of higher vision: to see the depth is also, they believed, to become capable of seeing and praising the height.
A Collective Religious Ideal
The spiritual leaders of humanity made the disaster an occasion for a supreme religious experience. Their teaching asked people not only to endure even the sternest outcome but to admire it. The population accepted that counsel, and literary works appeared to articulate, elaborate, and even create this elevated response in people’s hearts. The saying thus became more than a private consolation: it expressed a collective ideal for how the Second Men should understand racial tragedy within a larger order.
Repetition and Doubt
As disasters recurred over the centuries, the ideal grew harder to sustain. The Second Men began to suspect that their ancestors had mistaken longing for achievement: perhaps they had wanted to experience racial tragedy as part of cosmic beauty and then persuaded themselves that they had done so. The phrase’s promise remained central even after the Martian colony had been established and destroyed three times, but the generations gradually lost heart. They could still believe intellectually that existence possessed ultimate excellence, yet they doubted that human beings could actually experience it—or that cosmic events had any meaning at all.
Variants and Significance
When the spiritual leaders’ teaching is recalled, its wording appears in a different form: “Thus and thus is the world. Seeing the depth, we shall see also the height, and praise both.” The changed cadence preserves the movement from depth to height while making explicit the command to praise. Against the later suspicion that no such experience had ever occurred, the saying carries an irony: its confident promise survives as a standard by which the Second Men recognize their possible failure. It marks both the nobility of their effort to face collective suffering and the limit they fear they have reached.
