The Lost World

“She could but refuse me, and better to be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother.”

Ned explains his rationale for proposing to Gladys, even though he is not certain that she will accept. Gladys appreciates bold gestures, and he would rather fail while acting than remain passive. Ned’s attitude foreshadows how Gladys will choose someone else while Ned is away. He becomes neither a repulsed lover nor an accepted brother.

“If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.”

The academics doubt Challenger’s account partly because he was the only one there. Ned wants to have an adventure and an incredible story to tell. Rather than report on other people’s exploits, he wants to prove his own courage and gain professional accolades in the process. The reference to “the things” foreshadows how many indescribable things he will see in South America.

“It is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away [...] from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards.”

Ned is taken with the idea of forging his destiny. He resolves to seize opportunities when they arrive, and to create opportunities when he can. He has not achieved the results he wants by the way he has lived his life; he is willing to leave certainty and comforts behind at great risk, for great rewards.

“You seem very anxious to lose your life.”

“To justify my life, Sir.”

In the absence of adventure, Ned sees his life as meaningless. His insistence that he must justify his life speaks to the attitudes of the time when explorers were dashing public figures. Ned measures his worth by his experience and finds himself wanting when the novel begins. His companions—particularly Roxton—find danger to be a necessary evil in the pursuit of glory.

“I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.” 

The bacteriologist Tarp Henry foreshadows the unbelievable things that Ned will see. Challenger observed many fantastic sights with his eyes, but no one believed him. For Tarp, reality is revealed only at the microscopic level. He is skeptical of his own senses, but not of scientific tools.

“You quote an isolated sentence from my lecture, and appear to have some difficulty in understanding it. I should have thought that only a sub-human intelligence could have failed to grasp the point, but if it really needs amplification I shall consent to see you at the hour named.”

Challenger’s response to Ned’s letter epitomizes his character. He is challenging, insulting, but he also invites Ned to see him, perhaps to evaluate whether Ned’s curiosity will matter more than what he sees as Ned’s “sub-human intelligence.” 

“He was too absurd to make me angry. Indeed, it was a waste of energy, for if you were going to be angry with this man you would be angry all the time.”

This is another example of Challenger’s characterization. Whatever his faults may be, he is consistent in his approach. Ned understands that Challenger is authentic. If he wishes to see more of him, he must leave anger aside. Later, it will be clear that Challenger’s temperament and his indomitable will are what have made him so successful.

“I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it.”

Challenger sees something promising in Ned. He has little patience for fools, and he keeps Ned around, despite insulting his intelligence. However, this also shows Challenger’s willingness to treat people as tools to further his own ends. Luckily, Challenger’s goals are good for the world at large; he seeks primarily to advance scientific knowledge.

“The individual must not monopolize what is meant for the world.”

Challenger is never modest about his abilities or knowledge. He stops himself from telling Ned more about his expedition; he wants him to hear it as he addresses the crowd that night. However, his remark reinforces his sense of destiny and his own importance. He has discovered something that the world must know, and he is aware that he is playing a role in scientific history.

“Why on earth people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not take the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strange mysteries of modern life.”

Ned describes a man who speaks so quietly that he can barely hear him. This echoes the later remark that there are great stories that go untold, because the potential teller knows that he will not be believed. 

“There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.”

Roxton explains one of the tenets that makes him such a formidable adventurer. He is not merely a lover of danger and exploration, but an idealist who believes in fighting battles that require his help. He is willing to fight for causes larger than himself, even though his actions bring him personal glory.

“I'm like an old golf-ball—I've had all the white paint knocked off me long ago. Life can whack me about now, and it can't leave a mark. But a sportin' risk, young fellah, that's the salt of existence.”

Roxton echoes a popular sentiment among adventurers: risk is what makes life exhilarating. Roxton is not interested in mere existence; he loves danger because it earns him fame and makes him feel alive. He would rather lose his life doing what he loves than live a meaningless—or in Ned’s words, “unjustified”—existence.

“Brain, character, soul—only as one sees more of life does one understand how distinct each is.”

This quote relates to the theme of science’s limits. The brain is the province of science, subject to empirical study and experiments. Character is not simply a function of science, and there are many who do not believe the soul exists. Doyle was a spiritualist who did not believe that science could answer all questions.

“It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations.”

Ned is impressed with Challenger and Summerlee’s courage in the face of danger. Their commitment to science is so complete that they can compartmentalize their fears as they hear war drums and study the landscape. Scientific endeavor is bigger than personal discomfort or risk.

“There's many a man who never tells his adventures, for he can't hope to be believed.”

Roxton has never been to the plateau in South America, but he understands the cynicism of the people to whom he often reports. There are more fantastic stories than the world will ever hear, because the would-be tellers know that there is almost no point in telling them to skeptics.

“It was surely well for man that he came late in the order of creation. There were powers abroad in earlier days which no courage and no mechanism of his could have met. What could his sling, his throwing-stick, or his arrow avail him against such forces as have been loose tonight? Even with a modern rifle it would be all odds on the monster.”

Challenger explains that, had man been an earlier part of creation, he would have been helpless. The scale and savagery of the creatures on the plateau does not fit in modern times; modern man would not have survived in the past. It is only because of modern technology, and the will to conquer, that mankind can survive in a place like the South American plateau.

“I may have said somewhere in this chronicle that I am too imaginative to be a really courageous man, but that I have an overpowering fear of seeming afraid.”

Ned does not view himself as a brave man, despite the fact that he travels to the plateau of his own volition. His imagination makes him open to many possibilities. He believes this makes him less courageous, because he does not have a single-minded (unimaginative) purpose that drives his every action.

“His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure—all the more intense for being held tightly in—his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours.”

Ned admires Roxton’s ability to treat all forms of risk as a game. A companion who defies Fate and Death is invaluable in a dangerous situation. These qualities are part of what convinces Ned to return to the plateau with Roxton.

“But it was different out upon the rose-tinted waters of the central lake. It boiled and heaved with strange life. Great slate-colored backs and high serrated dorsal fins shot up with a fringe of silver, and then rolled down into the depths again. The sand-banks far out were spotted with uncouth crawling forms, huge turtles, strange saurians, and one great flat creature like a writhing, palpitating mat of black greasy leather, which flopped its way slowly to the lake.”

Doyle uses poetic language and lengthy sentences when describing the oddest parts of the landscape. The “uncouth” creatures connote an alien primitivism. Doyle’s most lyrical writing describes what Ned finds to be the most unnatural parts of their journey.

“Those fierce fights, when in the dawn of the ages the cave-dwellers held their own against the tiger folk, or the elephants first found that they had a master, those were the real conquests—the victories that count.”

Challenger places little value on minor skirmishes. When he speaks of fighting, and of war, his perspective is that of history writ large. He is most satisfied when he can frame any conflict he participates in as part of a larger struggle. For Roxton, there are no trivial battles. In his view, everything he does has consequences for humanity, for better or worse.

“Apparently the age of romance was not dead, and there was common ground upon which the wildest imaginings of the novelist could meet the actual scientific investigations of the searcher for truth.”

Ned summarizes Summerlee’s speech to the audience. His speech merges two of the novel’s themes: the usefulness of imagination and the necessity for scientific progress. The discoveries in South America make it possible for people to indulge their most romantic, adventurous ideals, while also sticking to the scientific method.

“A year ago one man said certain things. Now four men have said other and more startling ones. Was this to constitute a final proof where the matters in question were of the most revolutionary and incredible character?”

One of the skeptics raises a good point. Is it more rational to accept the word of four men over one, particularly when the claims are fantastic? The scientists in the book require higher standards of evidence than personal assurances. Anecdotal science has its place but cannot constitute final proof.

“It couldn’t have been so very deep, could it, if you could go off to the other end of the world and leave me here alone.”

Gladys shows her hypocrisy. She wanted a man who loved danger and risk, which spurred Ned to make his journey. Now she uses his willingness to leave her as proof that their relationship was never deep to begin with. She frames his leaving as abandonment.