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discussions a number of scientists recommended an 'honorable' withdrawal from Solaris.
    Many people in the world of science, however, especially among the young, had unconsciously come to regard the 'affair' as a touchstone of individual values. All things considered, they claimed, it was not simply a question of penetrating Solarist civilization; it was essentially a test of ourselves, of the limitations of human knowledge. For some time, there was a widely held notion (zealously fostered by the daily press) to the effect that the 'thinking ocean' of Solaris was a gigantic brain, prodigiously well-developed and several million years in advance of our own civilization, a sort of 'cosmic yogi,' a sage, a symbol of omniscience, which had long ago understood the vanity of all action and for this reason had retreated into an unbreakable silence. The notion was incorrect, for the living ocean was active. Not, it is true, according to human ideas—it did not build cities or bridges, nor did it manufacture flying machines. It did not try to reduce distances, nor was it concerned with the conquest of Space (the ultimate criterion, some people thought, of man's superiority). But it was engaged in a never-ending process of transformation, an 'ontological autometamorphosis.' (There were any amount of scientific neologisms in accounts of Solarist activities.) Moreover, any scientist who devotes himself to the study of Solariana has the indelible impression that he can discern fragments of an intelligent structure, perhaps endowed with genius, haphazardly mingled with outlandish phenomena, apparently the product of an unhinged mind. Thus was born the conception of the 'autistic ocean' as opposed to the 'ocean-yogi.'
    These hypotheses resurrected one of the most ancient of philosophical problems: the relation between matter and mind, and between mind and consciousness. Du Haart was the first to have the audacity to maintain that the ocean possessed a consciousness. The problem, which the methodologists hastened to dub metaphysical, provoked all kinds of arguments and discussions. Was it possible for thought to exist without consciousness? Could one, in any case, apply the word thought to the processes observed in the ocean? Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain? Whatever the terminology, the new scale of size introduced new norms and new phenomena.
    The question appeared as a contemporary version of the problem of squaring the circle. Every independent thinker endeavored to register his personal contribution to the hoard of Solarist studies. New theories proliferated: the ocean was evidence of a state of degeneration, of regression, following a phase of 'intellectual repletion'; it was a deviant neoplasm, the product of the bodies of former inhabitants of the planet, whom it had devoured, swallowed up, dissolving and blending the residue into this unchanging, self-propagating form, supracellular in structure.
    By the white light of the fluorescent tubes—a pale imitation of terrestrial daylight—I cleared the table of its clutter of apparatus and books. Arms outstretched and my hands gripping the chromium edging, I unrolled a map of Solaris on the plastic surface and studied it at length. The living ocean had its peaks and its canyons. Its islands, which were covered with a decomposing mineral deposit, were certainly related to the nature of the ocean bed. But did it control the eruption and subsidence of the rocky formations buried in its depths? No one knew. Gazing at the big flat projection of the two hemispheres, colored in various tones of blue and purple, I experienced once again that thrill of wonder which had so often gripped me, and which I had felt as a schoolboy on learning of the existence of Solaris for the first time.
    Lost in contemplation of this bewildering map, my mind in a daze, I temporarily forgot the mystery surrounding Gibarian's death and the uncertainty of my own future.
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